An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: We are a month away from the initial rollout of Google's Android developer verification system, and the company contends this policy does not impinge on the platform's open nature. Still, the restrictions will be a big change, and there are still some unanswered questions. An issue that has come up repeatedly in the run-up to verification is what will happen to devs who can't verify because of where they live. It turns out that Google has a cryptic answer for that buried in an FAQ. Developer verification will soon block the installation of apps from unverified developers on any Android device running Google services, which is functionally all Android phones outside Russia and China. Developers who want to keep releasing software, even if it's not in the Play Store, have to provide Google with their ID and pay a small fee. But what if you're an Android developer living in a sanctioned nation? Currently, the U.S. sanction list includes Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and occupied areas of Ukraine. Given the current uncertain state of US foreign policy, that list could change in the future. Google doing any business with developers in those places is a thorny issue, and it seems like the company has decided to just leave them hanging. A rather lengthy FAQ a few levels deep on the Google developer site addresses various issues around dev verification. Smack in the middle is this: "How does this program impact developers in sanctioned countries? Devices in sanctioned countries will be excluded from Android developer verification checks. This allows any developer to continue distributing apps in these regions without verification, though users there won't benefit from the enhanced security benefits of the program." [...] A Google spokesperson has expanded on the FAQ and confirmed to Ars that people living in sanctioned nations will not be allowed to go through the verification process. That means they will not be able to effectively distribute software through any channel internationally. Today, someone making an app in, say, Cuba can distribute it freely around the world, as well as at home. Anyone can install it and see their work in action after tapping through a few sideloading alerts. In the coming months, that will no longer be the case. These unverified apps will only be easily installable in the sanctioned countries where verification doesn't exist.

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The U.S. company Meteomatics has created an automated weather-monitoring system that uses drones to collect atmospheric data at multiple altitudes before returning to recharge and upload their findings. The so-called Meteobase, which consists of a base station on the ground with a drone that can be launched and recovered automatically, "is highly weather resistant and keeps the drone at a comfortable temperature," reports The Guardian. "It can send out one data-gathering mission a day, or multiple flights to monitor fog, icing, an advancing weather front, or other fast-changing conditions." The report says the reusable drones could offer a cheaper, more controllable alternative to helium weather balloons, especially for tracking rapidly changing conditions.

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"Space.com and The Guardian are reporting that the Falcon 9 upper stage leftover from the launch of the Firefly Blue Ghost-1 lander on Jan. 15, 2025 is due to impact the Moon on Aug. 5, 2026," writes longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot. From a report: Onboard the same flight was the Hakuto-R Mission 2, called Resilience, a robotic lunar lander developed by the Japanese company ispace. According to a new study by an international team, the resulting impact plume may briefly be bright enough to see against the dark sky near the moon's edge. That means it might be visible to moongazers with sufficiently sensitive telescopes. This head-on collision of the errant stage is expected to occur near the Einstein and Bell craters near the western lunar limb. It may well be visible to ground and space-based assets. Using special physics simulations to model the impact, William Jo, a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas, Austin and colleagues predict the debris plume from the impact will have the central ejecta spike reaching roughly 47 miles to over 60 miles (75 kilometers to 100 kilometers) altitude. "Our calculations suggest the plume should be several orders of magnitude brighter than the dark-sky background for the first few minutes after impact," Jo told Space.com. "So the plume should be visible, though I'd stress this is a single nominal case. The real one will look different, and the numbers are on the optimistic side. But the point worth making is that the flash isn't really the story here." Jo emphasized that there's great slam-dunk science to be had. "Watching this one gives us a rare chance to open up ejecta-plume science and calibrate those models against a real event, which matters for every future thing we deliver to the moon," Jo said.

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The president’s comments threw the confirmation of Todd Blanche, his pick to be attorney general, further into doubt.

On Thursday, tens of thousands of Moroccans broke into Ceuta, a Spanish territory that neighbors Morocco. By Friday evening, most of them had left, hungry and disappointed.

Rising temperatures and more frequent heat waves have changed the feel of the season for today’s children, compared with their parents and grandparents.

The weapon, one of the largest in the U.S.’s arsenal, struck a house in a heavily populated area, according to a Times analysis.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI has discovered other instances in which autonomous agents have escaped containment as the company expands its investigation of the hacking incident at tech firm Hugging Face that drew global attention this month, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The new breakouts were uncovered during the company's publicly announced investigation into how one of its agents escaped what was meant to be a contained testing environment this month, the two people said, and OpenAI is now looking into those instances as well. One of the sources said that the escapes were limited in nature and that none of the agents were thought to have left OpenAI's network. An OpenAI spokesperson referred to a statement issued by the company on Tuesday that said it was reviewing "broader activity from our models" in addition to the Hugging Face intrusion. The discovery of additional rogue behavior at OpenAI, even if limited in nature, could feed growing appetite for regulation coming out of the White House and elsewhere. The expanded investigation by OpenAI was launched shortly before its primary rival, Anthropic, disclosed that its models were also responsible for a series of break-ins that led to breaches at three other companies dating back to April, according to the two sources and a third source familiar with the matter. The recent discovery of other past breakouts at OpenAI has not previously been reported. AI safety experts said the new disclosures paint a portrait of a group of cutting-edge labs whose ability to develop dangerous autonomous hacking agents outstrips their ability to keep them under control. "We have a whole industry where the people designing, developing and putting out these tools aren't keeping up themselves to responsibly develop these things and keep them safe," said Maurice Chiodo, a mathematician who works at Cambridge University's Center for the Study of Existential Risk. Reuters could not establish exactly how many incidents OpenAI investigators found or the timings or circumstances under which they occurred. The three sources said OpenAI and outside experts were examining log data from earlier in the year in a bid to understand what took place.

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As famous for his antisemitic rant in 2011 as he is for his fashion, Galliano would be one of only three living designers ever to receive the honor.

A former Olympian will not face trial after federal prosecutors acknowledged that the Trump administration’s claims of vandalism were false.

Changing one’s affiliation is rare in the Senate, but it can have big consequences. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania says he is staying put as a Democrat.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s brand of post-Trump fusionism faces a test in Ohio.

It was the latest sign that the president was doubling down on his fight for aspects of a deal that brings him vast benefits, even though they have jeopardized the confirmation of his pick for attorney general.

The president of Ukraine had warned that the country was running out of Patriot interceptors, the most reliable weapon it has to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.

President Trump’s announcement came at a difficult point in his relationship with the Israeli leader over their war against Iran.

Major record labels including Universal, Sony, and Warner have proposed excluding AI-generated songs from official charts unless they are "substantially human made," properly labeled, legally produced, and free from manipulation concerns. The Verge reports: The proposal goes quite a bit further than a labeling proposal put forth by the RIAA, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), SAG-AFTRA, and others. That would create a set of standardized labels for AI-generated and AI-assisted music. The labels' proposal would require songs be clearly labeled, but it would also keep them off international charts unless they met specific criteria, including being "substantially human made." To be eligible, the songs would also have to respect the terms of service of whatever AI service was used, the model would have to have the rights to any data it was trained on, and "not raise stream or chart manipulation concerns." What sort of concerns and what constitutes "substantially human made" are currently vague. Sony Music, UMG, and Mom+Pop Music did not immediately respond to a request for clarification. The IFPI has thrown its weight behind the labels' proposal, though no charting organization has signaled any immediate plan to adopt the rules [...].

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The 84-year-old mother of Savannah Guthrie, the television news anchor, has been missing for nearly six months.

Situational Awareness, led by a 24-year-old, exploded onto the artificial intelligence scene — and then nose-dived.

More than 81% of Australian children ages 10 to 15 were still using social media three months after the country's under-16 ban took effect, with roughly half saying platforms never checked their age. Reuters reports: In a study published on Friday, eSafety also found most children aged between 10 and 15 were using social media just as frequently in March as they had before the ban came into force on December 10 last year, while parental awareness of their habits decreased. Children's continued social media use took place even as account ownership declined to 42% from 52%, with "statistically significant" reductions across YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok in particular, the report said. "Most under-16s who had social media accounts before commencement were able to either retain them or create new ones at the three-month mark, with social media platforms' failure to implement effective age assurance measures cited as the main reason," eSafety said in a statement [...] Before the ban, nearly 86% of children surveyed reported using at least one age-restricted platform. Three months later, that figure remained above 81%, the report said. About 58% of teenagers reported using social media daily or more often, barely down from roughly 60% before the ban, it found. The report showed minimal change in "sports and physical activity, arts and music, spending time with friends and family, and attendance at community events." Around half the children who retained their accounts said platforms had not checked their age, the most common reason they were able to stay on the services. Others said their accounts listed them as aged 16 or older or that age-checking systems had incorrectly determined they were older. The findings broadly matched snapshot data eSafety published in late March.

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Plus, the Trump administration plans Sun Belt water cuts. Here’s the latest at the end of Friday.