U.S. officials issued an advisory warning that foreign-made solar-powered highway infrastructure may contain hidden radios embedded in inverters and batteries. Reuters reports: The advisory, disseminated late last month by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration, comes amid escalating government action over the presence of Chinese technology in America's transportation infrastructure. The four-page security note, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, said that undocumented cellular radios had been discovered "in certain foreign-manufactured power inverters and BMS," referring to battery management systems. The note, which has not previously been reported, did not specify where the products containing undocumented equipment had been imported from, but many inverters are made in China. There is increasing concern from U.S. officials that the devices, along with the electronic systems that manage rechargeable batteries, could be seeded with rogue communications components that would allow them to be remotely tampered with on Beijing's orders. [...] The August 20 advisory said the devices were used to power a range of U.S. highway infrastructure, including signs, traffic cameras, weather stations, solar-powered visitor areas and warehouses, and electric vehicle chargers. The risks it cited included simultaneous outages and surreptitious theft of data. The alert suggested that relevant authorities inventory inverters across the U.S. highway system, scan devices with spectrum analysis technology to detect any unexpected communications, disable or remove any undocumented radios, and make sure their networks were properly segmented.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motor1: BMW watched from the sidelines as Audi, Porsche, Mercedes, Volvo, and others announced lofty EV goals a few years ago, only to backtrack in recent months. Munich never vowed to go fully electric within a set timeframe, instead preferring to give customers the freedom of choice. It projects demand will be evenly split between gas and electric cars by 2030, but Bavaria hasn't committed to a combustion-free future. The company maintains its desire to give people what they want rather than artificially restricting powertrains to EVs, as the European Union plans for 2035. In an interview with Australian magazine CarExpert, Chief Technology Officer Joachim Post argued it should ultimately come down to buyers, not the EU: "Finally, the customer decides." Provided the ban takes effect in a little over nine years, the board member fears it could have massive repercussions: "If the European Commission is going to say they have a plan to cut the combustion engine in 2035, they're not asking the customers and how [EV charging] infrastructure is coming up, how the energy prices are and all the things there. It's stupid to do that in that way. And you can kill an industry doing it that way." His concerns are echoed by Mercedes CEO Ola Kallenius, who recently warned the European car industry is "heading at full speed against a wall" and could even "collapse" if the EU doesn't reconsider. The statement came shortly after Stuttgart's boss admitted the company had to make a "course correction" to keep combustion engines longer than initially planned. Mercedes continues to invest in conventional powertrains, and there's even a completely new V-8 from AMG on the way. The report notes that BMW continues to generate strong profits from its combustion engines, ranging from three-, four-, six-, and eight-cyclinder engines to a Rolls-Royce V-12 -- even supplying rivals like Toyota and possibly soon Mercedes. In fact, the "M" in BMW stands for "Motoren" (German for "engine").

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President Trump on Tuesday issued a memorandum directing the FDA and HHS to crack down on misleading direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads, requiring clearer disclosure of risks and ensuring that promotions don't overstate benefits or push costly drugs over generics. Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares an excerpt from the memorandum: The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall therefore take appropriate action to ensure transparency and accuracy in direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising, including by increasing the amount of information regarding any risks associated with the use of any such prescription drug required to be provided in prescription drug advertisements, to the extent permitted by applicable law. The Commissioner of Food and Drugs shall take appropriate action to enforce the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act's prescription drug advertising provisions, and otherwise ensure truthful and non-misleading information in direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisements. "Advertising dollars is a major avenue for pharmaceutical companies to influence news and attempt to shape public opinion," comments sinij. "Advertising was a major contributor to painkiller addiction, where networks were hesitant to cover early reports of addictiveness. It is likely directly contributing today to lack of critical coverage of Ozempic. It is just too big of a conflict of interest to allow to stand."

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Oracle shares had their best day since 1992, skyrocketing 36% and adding $244 billion in market value as surging AI-driven cloud demand pushed the company toward a $1 trillion valuation. The surge boosted founder Larry Ellison's fortune by $100 billion, making him the new world's wealthiest person. CNBC reports: The company said Tuesday after the bell that it has $455 billion in remaining performance obligations, up 359% from a year earlier. "This is a very historic kind of print right here from Oracle with this backlog," Ben Reitzes, technology research head at Melius Research, told CNBC's "Closing Bell: Overtime" on Tuesday. "The Street was looking for about $180 billion in RPO and they're talking about a number that is a multiple of that. That is astounding." Oracle now sees $18 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue in fiscal 2026, with the company calling for the annual sum to reach $32 billion, $73 billion, $114 billion and $144 billion over the subsequent four years. Other analysts were left "blown away" and "in shock." D.A. Davidson's Gil Luria called it "absolutely staggering on CNBC's "Fast Money." Wells Fargo analysts said it was a "momentous confirmation" of the AI trade. Oracle's cloud revenue projections overshadowed an otherwise lackluster fiscal first-quarter report in which the company missed expectations on the top and bottom lines. The company had earnings of an adjusted $1.47 per share for the quarter, just below the $1.48 per share expected by analysts polled by LSEG. Revenue for the first quarter came in at $14.93 billion, missing the $15.04 billion expected.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday afternoon, Anthropic experienced a brief but complete service outage that took down its AI infrastructure, leaving developers unable to access Claude.ai, the API, Claude Code, or the management console for around half an hour. The outage affected all three of Anthropic's main services simultaneously, with the company posting at 12:28 pm Eastern that "APIs, Console, and Claude.ai are down. Services will be restored as soon as possible." As of press time, the services appear to be restored. The disruption, though lasting only about 30 minutes, quickly took the top spot on tech link-sharing site Hacker News for a short time and inspired immediate reactions from developers who have become increasingly reliant on AI coding tools for their daily work. "Everyone will just have to learn how to do it like we did in the old days, and blindly copy and paste from Stack Overflow," joked one Hacker News commenter. Another user recalled a joke from a previous AI outage: "Nooooo I'm going to have to use my brain again and write 100% of my code like a caveman from December 2024." The most recent outage came at an inopportune time, affecting developers across the US who have integrated Claude into their workflows. One Hacker News user observed: "It's like every other day, the moment US working hours start, AI (in my case I mostly use Anthropic, others may be better) starts dying or at least getting intermittent errors. In EU working hours there's rarely any outages." Another user also noted this pattern, saying that "early morning here in the UK everything is fine, as soon as most of the US is up and at it, then it slowly turns to treacle." While some users criticized Anthropic for reliability issues in recent months, the company's status page acknowledged the issue within 39 minutes of the initial reports, and by 12:55 pm Eastern announced that a fix had been implemented and that the company's teams were monitoring the results.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Getting cash from an ATM is growing increasingly expensive as fees reach record highs. Americans are now paying an average of $4.86 for out-of-network ATM withdrawals, up 1.9% from $4.77 last year, according to a new survey from Bankrate.com. That's the highest on record, according to the personal finance website, which starting tracking ATM fees 27 years ago. "ATM fees are just one of those avenues that the bank can very freely continue to charge fees," Bankrate financial analyst Stephen Kates told CBS MoneyWatch. Those costs include charges from both ATM owners and banks. According to the survey, the average fee from cash machine providers is $3.22. Banks charge $1.64 on average, up 3.8% from 2024 -- the highest since 2018. As a result, Americans in certain metro areas could see average combined fees of more than $5.

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US Senator Ron Wyden says glaring cybersecurity flaws by Microsoft enabled a ransomware attack on a US hospital system and has called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. Bloomberg: In a letter sent Wednesday to FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, the Oregon Democrat accused Microsoft of "gross cybersecurity negligence," which he said had resulted in ransomware attacks against US critical infrastructure. The senator cited the case of the 2024 breach at Ascension, one of the nation's largest nonprofit health systems. The intrusion shut down computers at many of Ascension's hospitals, leading to suspended surgeries and the theft of sensitive data on more than 5 million patients. Wyden said an investigation by his office found that the Ascension hack began after a contractor carried out a search using Microsoft's Bing search engine and was served a malicious link, which led to the contractor inadvertently downloading malware. That allowed hackers access to Ascension's computer networks. According to Wyden, the attackers then gained access to privileged accounts by exploiting an insecure encryption technology called RC4, which is supported by default on Windows computers. The hacking method is called Kerberoasting, which the company described as a type of cyberattack in which intruders aim to gather passwords by targeting an authentication protocol called Kerberos.

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Apple's newly launched iPhone Air will ship globally without physical SIM card slots. The move follows the company previously eliminating SIM trays in US models starting in 2022. Global consultancy firm Roland Berger forecasts eSIM connections will reach 75% of smartphone connections by 2030, rising from 10% in 2023. CCS Insight predicts eSIM-capable handsets will increase from 1.3 billion to 3 billion by 2030. Google offers eSIM-only Pixel 10 models in the US.

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The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a safety alert [PDF], warning airlines about lithium battery fire risks in passenger compartments after recording 50 incidents involving smoke, fire, or extreme heat from the devices this year. The FAA recommended airlines implement risk mitigation strategies including clear passenger messaging and updated firefighting procedures and training.

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Bending Spoons has entered a definitive agreement with Vimeo to purchase the video platform for $1.38 billion. From a report: Per the agreement, Bending Spoons will acquire Vimeo in an all-cash transaction and take Vimeo (VMEO), a public company, private. Vimeo shareholders will receive $7.85 per share in cash when the transaction closes. [...] Vimeo, once a significant player in the streaming video space, has lost massive ground to other platforms, including YouTube, in recent years. Rather than fight a losing battle in the creator space, Vimeo has catered more toward business and enterprise users lately.

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Analyst Ben Thompson, commenting on Apple's outlook following the launch of the iPhone 17 lineup: Apple, to be fair, isn't selling the same sugar water year-after-year in a zero sum war with other sugar water companies. Their sugar water is getting better, and I think this year's seasonal concoction is particularly tasty. What is inescapable, however, is that while the company does still make new products -- I definitely plan on getting new AirPod Pro 3s! -- the company has, in the pursuit of easy profits, constrained the space in which it innovates. That didn't matter for a long time: smartphones were the center of innovation, and Apple was consequently the center of the tech universe. Now, however, Apple is increasingly on the periphery, and I think that, more than anything, is what bums people out: no, Apple may not be a sugar water purveyor, but they are farther than they have been in years from changing the world.

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The narrative podcast industry that exploded after Serial's 2014 debut has largely collapsed. Pineapple Street Studios shut down in June after producing hits like Missing Richard Simmons. Amazon dismantled Wondery in August, laying off 110 employees less than five years after acquiring the studio for $300 million. Spotify terminated Gimlet in 2023 despite paying $230 million for the company in 2019. Major outlets including Pushkin Industries and This American Life have conducted layoffs. Talk shows and celebrity podcasts continue growing while investigative audio series struggle to find funding. Edison Research reports 55% of Americans consumed podcasts last month, but advertising dollars are flowing to cheaper chat formats rather than resource-intensive narrative productions.

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NASA: After a year's worth of scientific scrutiny, the 'Sapphire Canyon' rock sample remains the mission's best candidate for containing signs of ancient microbial life processes. A sample collected by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover from an ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life. Taken from a rock named "Cheyava Falls" last year, the sample, called "Sapphire Canyon," contains potential biosignatures, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature. A potential biosignature is a substance or structure that might have a biological origin but requires more data or further study before a conclusion can be reached about the absence or presence of life. "This finding by Perseverance, launched under President Trump in his first term, is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars. The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars," said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. "NASA's commitment to conducting Gold Standard Science will continue as we pursue our goal of putting American boots on Mars' rocky soil."

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Cindy Cohn, who has led the Electronic Frontier Foundation as Executive Director for the past decade and has been with the organization for over 25 years, will step down by mid-2026. The digital rights group is launching a search for her successor. From a press release: "It's been the honor of my life to help EFF grow and become the strong, effective organization it is today, but it's time to make space for new leadership. I also want to get back into the fight for civil liberties more directly than I can as the executive director of a thriving 125-person organization," Cohn said. "I'm incredibly proud of all that we've built and accomplished. One of our former interns once called EFF the joyful warriors for internet freedom and I have always loved that characterization." "I know EFF's lawyers, activists and technologists will continue standing up for freedom, justice and innovation whether we're fighting trolls, bullies, corporate oligarchs, clueless legislators or outright dictators," she added. [...] Cohn said she made the decision to step down more than a year ago, and later informed EFF's Board of Directors and executive staff. The Board of Directors has assembled a search committee, which in turn has engaged leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates to conduct a search for EFF's new executive director. Inquiries about the search can be directed to EFF@russellreynolds.com. The search committee hopes to hire someone next spring, with Cohn planning to remain at EFF for a transition period through early summer.

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Microsoft is diversifying its AI portfolio by integrating some of Anthropic's AI features into Office 365 apps. "The move will blend Anthropic and OpenAI technology in the apps, after years in which Microsoft primarily used OpenAI for the new features in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint," reports Reuters. From the report: Developers making Office AI features found Anthropic's latest models performed better than OpenAI in automating tasks such as financial functions in Excel or generating Powerpoint presentations based on instructions, the report said, citing one of the two people involved in the effort. Microsoft will pay its cloud rival Amazon Web Services to access the Anthropic models, according to the report. AWS is one of Anthropic's largest shareholders. OpenAI's launch of GPT-5 is a step up in quality but Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4 performs better in creating Powerpoint presentations that are more aesthetically pleasing, the report said. Microsoft plans to announce the move in the coming weeks, while the price of AI tools in Office will stay the same, the report said. "As we've said, OpenAI will continue to be our partner on frontier models and we remain committed to our long-term partnership," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Employees at Robert F Kennedy Jr.'s Department of Health and Human Services received an email Tuesday morning with the subject line "AI Deployment," which told them that ChatGPT would be rolled out for all employees at the agency. The deployment is being overseen by Clark Minor, a former Palantir employee who's now Chief Information Officer at HHS. "Artificial intelligence is beginning to improve health care, business, and government," the email, sent by deputy secretary Jim O'Neill and seen by 404 Media, begins. "Our department is committed to supporting and encouraging this transformation. In many offices around the world, the growing administrative burden of extensive emails and meetings can distract even highly motivated people from getting things done. We should all be vigilant against barriers that could slow our progress toward making America healthy again." "I'm excited to move us forward by making ChatGPT available to everyone in the Department effective immediately," it adds. "Some operating divisions, such as FDA and ACF [Administration for Children and Families], have already benefitted from specific deployments of large language models to enhance their work, and now the rest of us can join them. This tool can help us promote rigorous science, radical transparency, and robust good health. As Secretary Kennedy said, 'The AI revolution has arrived.'" [...] The email says that the rollout was being led by Minor, who worked at the surveillance company Palantir from 2013 through 2024. It states Minor has "taken precautions to ensure that your work with AI is carried out in a high-security environment," and that "you can input most internal data, including procurement sensitive data and routine non-sensitive personally identifiable information, with confidence." It then goes on to say that "ChatGPT is currently not approved for disclosure of sensitive personally identifiable information (such as SSNs and bank account numbers), classified information, export-controlled data, or confidential commercial information subject to the Trade Secrets Act." The email does not distinguish what "non-sensitive personally identifiable information" is. HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. [...] The agency has also said it plans to roll out AI through HHS's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that will determine whether patients are eligible to receive certain treatments. These types of systems have been shown to be biased when they've been tried, and result in fewer patients getting the care they need.

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Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian revealed the company has already made billions from AI by monetizing through consumption-based pricing, subscriptions, and upselling. "Our backlog is now at $106 billion -- it is growing faster than our revenue," said Kurian, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference in San Francisco. "More than 50% of it will convert to revenue over the next two years." CNBC reports: Kurian said some people pay Google by consumption, giving the example of AI infrastructure purchased by enterprise customers. "Whether it's a GPU, TPU or a model, you pay by token -- meaning you pay by what you use," he said. Tokens represent chunks of text that a AI models process when they generate or interpret language. Some people use customer service systems, paying for it by what Kurian called "deflection rates." Such rates are priced based on the business value customers get -- things like uptime, scalability, AI features and security. Google Cloud also provides tools like a "deflection dashboard," that customers can use to track and manage agent interactions. Last month, Google won a $10 billion cloud contract from Meta spanning six years. Meta had largely been reliant on Amazon Web Services for cloud infrastructure, though it also uses Microsoft Azure. Some customers pay for cloud services by way of subscriptions. "You pay per user per monthly fee -- for example, agents or Workspace," said Kurian, referring to the company's Gemini products, which has its own subscription tiers with various storage options, and the Google Workspace productivity suite, which also has several subscription tiers. Google One, a popular personal cloud storage subscription, offers a basic monthly service to users for $1.99 a month. Earlier this year, the company offered a new subscription tier called "Google AI Ultra," which offers exclusive access to the company's most "cutting edge" AI products with 30 terabytes of storage for $249.99 per month. Kurian gave an example of Google Cloud's cybersecurity subscription tiers, saying "we've seen huge growth in that." Kurian said that upselling is another key aspect of Google Cloud's strategy. "We also upsell people as they use more of it from one version to another because we have higher quality models and higher-priced tiers," Kurian said. He said that once customers use Google's AI services, they wind up using more of the company's products. "That leads customers who sign a commitment or contract to spend more than they contacted for, which drives more revenue growth," he added. Kurian says it is capturing new customers more quickly too. "We've seen 28% sequential quarter-over-quarter growth in new customer wins in the first half of the year," said Kurian, adding that nearly two-thirds of customers already use Google Cloud's AI tools in a meaningful way. "Selling to existing customers is always easier than selling to new customers, so it helps us improve the cost of sales," Kurian said.

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The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress shows U.S. high school seniors' math and reading scores at their lowest in decades, with nearly half failing to reach basic proficiency in math and one-third below basic in reading. The Associated Press reports: A decade-long slide in high schoolers' reading and math performance persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 12th graders' scores dropping to their lowest level in more than 20 years, according to results released Tuesday from an exam known as the nation's report card. Eighth-grade students also lost significant ground in science skills, according to the results from the National Assessment of Education Progress. The assessments were the first since the pandemic for eighth graders in science and 12th graders in reading and math. They reflect a downward drift across grade levels and subject areas in previous releases from NAEP, which is considered one of the best gauges of the academic progress of U.S. schools. "Scores for our lowest-performing students are at historic lows," said Matthew Soldner, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. "These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted and focused action to accelerate student learning." [...] In reading, the average score in 2024 was the lowest score in the history of the assessment, which began in 1992. Thirty-two percent of high school seniors scored below "basic," meaning they were not able to find details in a text to help them understand its meaning. In math, the average score in 2024 was the lowest since 2005, when the assessment framework changed significantly. On the test, 45% of high school seniors scored below "basic" achievement, the highest percentage since 2005. Only 33% of high school seniors were considered academically prepared for college-level math courses, a decline from 37% in 2019.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: Intel has removed its chief executive officer of products, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, as part of a major shake-up of the executive branch of the embattled chip firm, according to Reuters. This is part of new CEO Lip-Bu Tan's plan to reshape the company under his leadership, flattening the leadership structure so he makes more of the important decisions about day-to-day operation. [...] Holthaus is the latest high-profile figure at Intel to get the axe, ending a 30-year career at Intel, but a mere 10 months in her CEO of products role, and a temporary position as co-CEO after the previous CEO, Pat Gelsinger, suddenly left in 2024. "Throughout her incredible career, Michelle has transformed major businesses, built high-performing teams and worked to delight our customers," Tan said in a statement. "She has made a lasting impact on our company and inspired so many of us with her leadership. We are grateful for all Michelle has given Intel and wish her the best." Intel has said Holthaus will remain with the company in an advisory role, but her position will not be filled by anyone else. What Intel is doing, though, is bringing in executives from elsewhere, including one who worked at Tan's previous endeavour, Cadence. Srinivasan Iyengar joined the company in June and will take on the role of head of a new central engineering division. This group will focus on developing a new custom silicon business for external customers. Although Intel's fabrication business has been one of its worst-performing in recent years, and there are still talks of it selling large portions of it, it's found a new lease of life following U.S. government investment and Bu Tan's leadership. With Iyengar's new role, though, it's possible we'll see Intel designing chips for customers, rather than merely producing them. That could see it compete against the likes of Broadcom and Marvell. With Tan pushing for a faster, leaner business overall, Iyengar will report directly to him in his new role. Intel also announced that it had acquired the services of former executive vice president of solutions engineering at Arm, Kevork Kechichian. He'll begin heading Intel's datacenter group, and brings years of experience at ARM, NXP Semiconductor, and Qualcomm.

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Apple's new Watch lineup introduces blood pressure monitoring, sleep scoring, and upgraded hardware across the Series 11 ($399), Ultra 3 ($799), and SE 3 ($249). Ars Technica reports: The Apple Watch 11 is supposed to be able to alert users about "possible hypertension" by using data from an optical heart rate sensor "to analyze how a user's blood vessels respond to the beats of the heart," per its announcement. According to Apple's presentation, the smartwatch will look for chronic hypertension over 30-day periods. Apple's presentation noted that the Watch Series 11 won't be able to identify all hypertension, but the company said that it expects to notify over 1 million people with undiagnosed hypertension during the feature's first year of availability. The feature is based on machine-learning and training data built from multiple studies examining over 100,000 people combined, Apple noted. Apple said it expects the blood pressure monitoring feature to receive Food and Drug Administration clearance soon and to get approval in 150 regions this month. The new watch will use a 5G modem and also introduce a feature that provides wearers with a "sleep score" that's based on the duration of their sleep, the consistency of their bedtime, how often they awaken from their sleep, and how much time they spend in each sleep stage. The Watch will analyze those factors every night and then provide a breakdown of how each score is calculated. The feature is based on an algorithm tested with 5 million nights of sleep data, Apple said. Other updates include the use of INX glass with ceramic coating that's supposed to make the Watch Series 11 two times more scratch-resistant than its predecessor. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 also debuted with hypertension notifications and sleep scoring, but comes equipped with a brighter edge-viewable OLED display, stronger radios with 5G and satellite support, and a larger 42-hour battery. It starts at $799. Meanwhile, the budget-friendly SE 3 adds the new S10 chip with always-on display, faster charging, and expanded health tracking -- including sleep scores, apnea alerts, and temperature monitoring. It starts at $249.

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