UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has given Apple, Google, and other tech firms until September to introduce device-level protections that prevent children from taking, sharing, or viewing explicit images. "If businesses do not comply within three months, legislation will be brought forward requiring the protection to be added to all phones and tablets sold in the UK," reports The Guardian. "Tech firms that fail to do so could face fines, and their senior managers could be made criminally liable." From the report: "Today, I am calling on tech companies operating in this country to introduce vice controls that prevent children from sending and receiving sexually explicit images. Because this is not an impossible challenge," he said. "If they choose not, then we will act and we will change the law." [...] Under the changes, sexual predators will be prevented from being able to exploit and abuse victims through their devices, and children stopped from being able to access pornography, the Home Office said. Adults will still be able to take, share or view nude content once they have verified their age. In the Commons, Melanie Ward, the Labour MP for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy, said: "It's time to stop asking social media companies to make their products safe, and instead time to start requiring them to do so through regulation." Clive Efford, the Labour MP for Eltham and Chislehurst, said the "sociopaths" running social media platforms had no concern for the welfare of children. "The only message that they're going to listen to is if there's legislation put before this house that is going to act and send a clear message to them." The proposal is designed to sit alongside the Online Safety Act, which requires companies to have processes for removing material that is illegal or harmful to children.

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Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, has unabashedly courted the president’s favor. Soccer officials privately ask, who really benefits?

Researchers say mysterious, seconds-long GPS interference bursts detected across Europe appear to come from Russian EKS early-warning satellites, making this "a rare example of human-made GPS interference coming from space," reports Ars Technica. The signals may be tests of space-based jamming capability, short satellite communications, or something else, but experts say they raise troubling questions about whether GPS disruption could eventually be weaponized on a continental scale. From the report: The discovery came from an investigation detailed in a June 2 preprint paper by Todd Humphreys and his student Zach Clements at The University of Texas at Austin, along with Argyris Krizise at Stanford University in California. By sifting through public data from ground-based stations with global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers, they identified a pattern of high-powered interference lasting less than 10 seconds each time but simultaneously detectable by ground stations across Europe from Norway to Spain to Poland, and even reaching as far west as Greenland and Canada. By analyzing the ground station data from January 2019 to April 2026, the researchers found 75 days with at least one widespread GNSS interference event overlapping with the GPS L1 frequency band centered on 1575.42 megahertz. That represents the main band used for signal transmission by the US-made GPS satellite constellation and GNSS constellations from other countries. Such interference patterns happened mostly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays during business hours in Europe, Humphreys told the YouTube channel Veritasium. Because such "continental-scale" interference was simultaneously affecting GPS receivers across Europe and beyond, Humphreys and his colleagues calculated that the source had to be at least 1,200 kilometers above the Earth. [...] In the Veritasium video, Humphreys speculated that the Russians may have been testing the satellites' GPS interference capabilities only briefly on a neighboring frequency adjacent to the typical GPS band. "And then in the eventual future when there is a hot conflict, they go ahead and tune their transmitter down to the GPS band, but it's much more damaging now that it lies right on that band," he said. Incidentally, the raw data also revealed a second interference burst from the Russian satellites in a lower-frequency band used by China's BeiDou navigation system. "I can no longer say this is accidental with confidence," Humphreys told Veritasium. He also described the Russian satellites' quiet demonstration as a "massive escalation in the electronic warfare background conflict that is going on right now." Richard Bowden, division head of assured and resilient PNT at the multinational technology company GMV in Spain, wrote in a LinkedIn comment: "These signals are, without a doubt, intentional and placed on or around GNSS signals, and have the potential to disrupt legitimate use of GNSS services. But from our side at least, we can't be sure they are intentionally malicious or intended as an EW [electronic warfare] weapon."

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It’s a word ripped from Twitch streams, but it functions as a Greek chorus for an online, isolated generation.

A panel of experts explains how job seekers should prepare for the future of work.

A battery researcher's investigation, backed by more than 20 independent experts, claims Donut Lab's much-hyped "solid-state" battery is actually a conventional lithium-ion cell, with voltage curves and expansion data matching high-nickel NCM chemistry rather than the promised sodium-ion solid-state design. Electrek reports the company raised about $25 million from more than 1,300 mostly small investors on claims of 400 Wh/kg energy density, 100,000-cycle life, and 5-minute charging that now appear unsupported. From the report: The investigation consulted over 20 independent battery experts, including Julian Zanau from the Fraunhofer Research Institute, Dr. Yahim San from Justus-Liebig University, Tom Bicha from Leona, and Dr. Yuo Hesca from Seinajoki University of Applied Sciences. Every single one confirmed the tested cell is lithium-ion. There are two key pieces of evidence. First, the voltage curves from VTT testing match high-nickel lithium-ion cells (NCM chemistry). The cell sits at 3.7-3.8 volts at 50% state of charge -- right where lithium-ion cells operate. Sodium-ion cells don't go significantly past 3.5 volts at 50% SOC. The second piece of evidence is even more damning: VTT's cell expansion data. When a battery charges, ions squeeze into the anode material, causing it to expand in a predictable pattern. A graphite anode produces a distinctive "kink" in the expansion curve around 50-70% state of charge, caused by how ions reorder themselves in graphite's layered structure. The Donut Lab cell shows exactly that kink. This is critical because sodium ions are physically too large to fit into graphite layers. The graphite anode signature proves the cell uses lithium ions. The investigation puts it well: "it's like we have a slightly noisy fingerprint and a picture of the suspect's face. And yet again, it's a match." The calculated energy density? About 298 Wh/kg -- what you'd expect from a good lithium-ion cell, not the 400 Wh/kg claimed. The investigation reveals that the battery technology traces back to CT Coatings, a German company with an "eclectic" array of patents -- including inventions for screen-printed paving slabs, menu folders, and warning triangles. CT Coatings promised Nordic Nano and Donut Lab a screen-printed sodium-ion solid-state battery. What it delivered was a lithium-ion pouch cell.

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Luuk van Middelaar, a Dutch scholar, is emerging as the continent’s master strategist.

Two Times critics unpack the twin phenomenon of “Backrooms” and “Obsession” and what lessons should — and shouldn’t — be learned from their massive success.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, is running for a seat in Parliament. It’s a vital step in a campaign to oust his party colleague Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

It was not immediately clear what led to the incident, which came at a time when the cease-fire in the war has grown tenuous.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's oceans are under "severe and accelerating" pressure from human activities, with the rate of sea-level rise double that of a decade ago, according to a damning assessment from the United Nations. The "intensifying" stressors, which include pollution and large-scale industrial fishing, are cumulative, said the report, resulting in widespread biodiversity loss and putting ocean systems under "severe strain." The UN's third World Ocean Assessment, which reflects the work of nearly 600 scientists from 86 countries, looked at the oceans' health from 2021-25. The previous report, that covered up to 2018, found persistent degradation of the marine environment. Five years on, scientists know more about the cumulative impacts of anthropogenic pressures on the ocean, and the latest report shows just how much of the damage has been done in the past few years. The scientists' key findings include: - Sea levels continue to rise at an increasing rate, from 2mm a year prior to 2015 to 4.3mm a year in 2023. - 16% of the increase in global ocean heat since 1955 occurred after 2018. - The greatest relative warming has been observed in the Atlantic Ocean and the southern parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. - Large gaps in knowledge persist -- with only 27% of the ocean floor mapped by 2025, deep-sea ecosystems remain poorly understood. Lukas Meus, Greenpeace's global ocean campaigner, said: "We are calling on governments to create fully protected ocean sanctuaries that will close vast areas of the ocean off from extractive human activities. Governments have promised to protect 30% of the world's ocean by 2030 -- the minimum scientists say we need for the ocean to be able to recover."

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The proposal was seen as a possible measure of how residents felt about the recent flood of money into the city as a result of the A.I. boom.

Nithya Raman, a progressive Democrat who entered the mayoral race at the last minute, secured the second spot to face Mayor Karen Bass in November. Her comeback sets up an intraparty battle.

The president is using the slow count of mail ballots in California to renew his effort to cast doubt on election outcomes he doesn’t like, despite a lack of evidence of any widespread fraud.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey said she was not allowed to speak with immigrants at the Delaney Hall detention center.

Forget those dreary passageways. The updated transit hub would add a grand entrance with sweeping staircases leading to an airy, glass-walled concourse.

OpenAI has confidentially filed for an IPO, "setting it up for what may be the most highly anticipated market debut in recent history and a massive payday for early investors," reports CNN. The decision follows recent IPO announcements from Anthropic and SpaceX. From the report: OpenAI said it has not decided on timing yet. And because the filing is confidential, it's not yet clear how many shares the company plans to sell or at what price. "It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company," it said in a post on its newsroom page. But the company said the filing "gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best." The transition to a public company will give Wall Street a window into OpenAI's finances as the company pours billions into AI infrastructure and computing resources. Investors dumped tech stocks last week as they questioned whether a recent run-up in those shares had gone too far. OpenAI was last valued at $852 billion after raising $122 billion in March, but it's faced pressure to demonstrate it can generate the cash to match that valuation.

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Artificial intelligence is mastering the kinds of projects that have long helped to build the careers of young mathematicians. What does that mean for their future?

The Defense Department made the change after lawmakers objected to its original list, which did not include the Latter-day Saints among traditions labeled Christian.

Last Thursday, Wired reported that Meta had quietly embedded an unreleased facial recognition system called NameTag into software installed on millions of phones. In a follow-up report, Wired says the tech giant has now removed the face-recognition-related code, while saying "no final decision" has been made about whether the feature will launch. From the report: On Thursday, WIRED reported that Meta had quietly integrated substantial portions of the NameTag system into the Meta AI app. Though never publicly enabled, the feature was designed to convert faces captured by the glasses into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as faceprints, and compare them against a database of faceprints stored on the user's device. WIRED also found that faces the system failed to recognize were cropped, indexed, and stored locally for future processing. NameTag first surfaced in February, when The New York Times, citing internal Meta documents, reported that the company was developing face recognition for its smart glasses and weighing a launch as soon as this year. One memo reportedly described releasing it during a "dynamic political environment," when privacy and civil liberties advocates would be distracted. Last week, WIRED reported that much of NameTag's machinery was already built into the Meta AI app, downloaded by millions of users, as early as January, even as Meta publicly said it had made no final decision about face recognition. After WIRED's report, Stone dismissed the findings, writing that the company couldn't answer questions about how the system would work because "the feature does not exist." Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer, called the reporting "incredibly misleading" and "absolutely dishonest." [...] The newly released version of Meta AI removes nearly all traces of the feature Meta said did not yet exist. Gone is the face-recognition software itself, along with the code that ran the NameTag recognition process and the "Person recognized" alert the app would have shown if someone were identified. The update also strips out a folder where the app would have stored the cropped images and biometric signatures of faces it captured but could not identify. [...] A few fragments of the NameTag system remain in the version of latest Meta AI, including an internal debug menu label and a dormant link meant to open a recognized person's profile. The leftover code points to parts of the system that are no longer there.

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