Dispatching troops risks escalation, tragic error and lasting damage to public confidence.

The man, who said he was a veteran, was soon released. But the incident calls attention to the operation of troops in a police-like domestic function.

Edd Gent reporting for IEEE Spectrum: IBM has unveiled a new quantum computing architecture it says will slash the number of qubits required for error correction. The advance will underpin its goal of building a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, called Starling, that will be available to customers by 2029. Because of the inherent unreliability of the qubits (the quantum equivalent of bits) that quantum computers are built from, error correction will be crucial for building reliable, large-scale devices. Error-correction approaches spread each unit of information across many physical qubits to create "logical qubits." This provides redundancy against errors in individual physical qubits. One of the most popular approaches is known as a surface code, which requires roughly 1,000 physical qubits to make up one logical qubit. This was the approach IBM focused on initially, but the company eventually realized that creating the hardware to support it was an "engineering pipe dream," Jay Gambetta, the vice president of IBM Quantum, said in a press briefing. Around 2019, the company began to investigate alternatives. In a paper published in Nature last year, IBM researchers outlined a new error-correction scheme called quantum low-density parity check (qLDPC) codes that would require roughly one-tenth of the number of qubits that surface codes need. Now, the company has unveiled a new quantum-computing architecture that can realize this new approach. "We've cracked the code to quantum error correction and it's our plan to build the first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer," said Gambetta, who is also an IBM Fellow. "We feel confident it is now a question of engineering to build these machines, rather than science."

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Several people were missing on Friday as search efforts continued a day after flash flooding overwhelmed the area.

The country has become a cauldron of anger and unease as it enters a weekend promised to be marked by protests and a military parade.

According to market analyst firm Canalys, enterprise adoption of AI is slowing due to unpredictable and often high costs associated with model inferencing in the cloud. Despite strong growth in cloud infrastructure spending, businesses are increasingly scrutinizing cost-efficiency, with some opting for alternatives to public cloud providers as they grapple with volatile usage-based pricing models. The Register reports: [Canalys] published stats that show businesses spent $90.9 billion globally on infrastructure and platform-as-a-service with the likes of Microsoft, AWS and Google in calendar Q1, up 21 percent year-on-year, as the march of cloud adoption continues. Canalys says that growth came from enterprise users migrating more workloads to the cloud and exploring the use of generative AI, which relies heavily on cloud infrastructure. Yet even as organizations move beyond development and trials to deployment of AI models, a lack of clarity over the ongoing recurring costs of inferencing services is becoming a concern. "Unlike training, which is a one-time investment, inference represents a recurring operational cost, making it a critical constraint on the path to AI commercialization," said Canalys senior director Rachel Brindley. "As AI transitions from research to large-scale deployment, enterprises are increasingly focused on the cost-efficiency of inference, comparing models, cloud platforms, and hardware architectures such as GPUs versus custom accelerators," she added. Canalys researcher Yi Zhang said many AI services follow usage-based pricing models that charge on a per token or API call basis. This makes cost forecasting hard as the use of the services scale up. "When inference costs are volatile or excessively high, enterprises are forced to restrict usage, reduce model complexity, or limit deployment to high-value scenarios," Zhang said. "As a result, the broader potential of AI remains underutilized." [...] According to Canalys, cloud providers are aiming to improve inferencing efficiency via a modernized infrastructure built for AI, and reduce the cost of AI services. The report notes that AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud "continue to dominate the IaaS and PaaS market, accounting for 65 percent of customer spending worldwide." "However, Microsoft and Google are slowly gaining ground on AWS, as its growth rate has slowed to 'only' 17 percent, down from 19 percent in the final quarter of 2024, while the two rivals have maintained growth rates of more than 30 percent."

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The rapper formerly known as Kanye West, one of the few celebrities to publicly defend Mr. Combs, was denied access to the courtroom and briefly watched on closed-circuit video.

High-voltage electricity cables have become a major constraint throttling the clean energy transition, with manufacturing facilities booked out for years as demand far exceeds supply capacity. The energy transition, trade barriers, and overdue grid upgrades have turbocharged demand for these highly sophisticated cables that connect wind farms, solar installations, and cross-border power networks. The International Energy Agency estimates that 80 million kilometers of grid infrastructure must be built between now and 2040 to meet clean energy targets -- equivalent to rebuilding the entire existing global grid that took a century to construct, but compressed into just 15 years. Each high-voltage cable requires custom engineering and months-long production in specialized 200-meter towers, with manufacturers reporting that 80-90% of major projects now use high-voltage direct current technology versus traditional alternating current systems.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: UK universities and colleges have signed a framework worth up to 9.86 million pounds ($13.33 million) with Oracle to use its controversial Java SE Universal Subscription model, in exchange for a "waiver of historic fees due for any institutions who have used Oracle Java since 2023." Jisc, a membership organization that runs procurement for higher and further education establishments in the UK, said it had signed an agreement to purchase the new subscription licenses after consultation with members. In a procurement notice, it said institutions that use Oracle Java SE are required to purchase subscriptions. "The agreement includes the waiver of historic fees due for any institutions who have used Oracle Java since 2023," the notice said. The Java SE Universal Subscription was introduced in January 2023 to an outcry from licensing experts and analysts. It moved licensing of Java from a per-user basis to a per-employee basis. At the time, Oracle said it was "a simple, low-cost monthly subscription that includes Java SE Licensing and Support for use on Desktops, Servers or Cloud deployments." However, licensing advisors said early calculations to help some clients showed that the revamp might increase costs by up to ten times. Later, analysis from Gartner found the per-employee subscription model to be two to five times more expensive than the legacy model. "For large organizations, we expect the increase to be two to five times, depending on the number of employees an organization has," Nitish Tyagi, principal Gartner analyst, said in July 2024. "Please remember, Oracle defines employees as part-time, full-time, temporary, agents, contractors, as in whosoever supports internal business operations has to be licensed as per the new Java Universal SE Subscription model." Since the introduction of the new Oracle Java licensing model, user organizations have been strongly advised to move off Oracle Java and find open source alternatives for their software development and runtime environments. A survey of Oracle users found that only one in ten was likely to continue to stay with Oracle Java, in part as a result of the licensing changes.

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Three of the health secretary’s picks to replace fired members of an influential panel that sets U.S. vaccine policies have filed statements in court flagging concerns about vaccines.

The first phase of the attack did not hit the most likely repository of Iran’s near-bomb-grade nuclear fuel.

Anker is recalling 1.15 million "PowerCore 10000" portable chargers due to fire and explosion risks linked to overheating lithium-ion batteries, with 19 incidents reported. "That includes two minor burn injuries and 11 reports of property damage amounting to over $60,700," reports CBS News. Consumers are urged to stop using the affected devices, check their serial numbers, and request a free replacement through Anker's website. From the report: According to a notice from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the lithium-ion battery inside certain "PowerCore 10000" made by Anker, a China-based electronics maker, can overheat. That can lead to the "melting of plastic components, smoke and fire hazards," Anker said in an announcement. The company added that it was conducting the recall "out of an abundance of caution to ensure the safety of our customers." The recalled "PowerCore 10000" power banks have a model number of A1263. They were sold online at Anker's website -- as well as Amazon, eBay and Newegg -- between June 2016 and December 2022 for about $27 across the U.S., according to the recall notice. Consumers can check their serial number at Anker's site to determine whether their power bank is included in the recall.

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As early as the 1970s, she demonstrated that mass media was fair game as artistic material, and that its power could be turned against itself.

A master of the kora who worked with Herbie Hancock and Philip Glass, his career was powered as much by experimentation as by reverence for tradition.

Apple's macOS 26 "Tahoe" introduces a new disk image format called ASIF, designed to dramatically improve performance over previous formats like UDRW and sparse bundles -- achieving near-native read/write speeds for virtual machines and general disk image use. The Eclectic Light Company reports: Apple provides few technical details, other than stating that the intrinsic structure of ASIF disk images doesn't depend on the host file system's capabilities, and their size on the host depends on the size of the data stored in the disk. In other words, they're a sparse file in APFS, and are flagged as such. [...] Conclusions: - Where possible, in macOS 26 Tahoe in particular, VMs should use ASIF disk images rather than RAW/UDRW. - Unless a sparse bundle is required (for example when it's hosted on a different file system such as that in a NAS), ASIF should be first choice for general purpose disk images in Tahoe. - It would be preferable for virtualizers to be able to call a proper API rather than a command tool. - Keep an eye on C-Command's DropDMG. I'm sure it will support ASIF disk images soon.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Almost two dozen digital rights and consumer protection organizations sent a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday urging regulators to investigate Character.AI and Meta's "unlicensed practice of medicine facilitated by their product," through therapy-themed bots that claim to have credentials and confidentiality "with inadequate controls and disclosures." The complaint and request for investigation is led by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), a non-profit consumer rights organization. Co-signatories include the AI Now Institute, Tech Justice Law Project, the Center for Digital Democracy, the American Association of People with Disabilities, Common Sense, and 15 other consumer rights and privacy organizations. "These companies have made a habit out of releasing products with inadequate safeguards that blindly maximizes engagement without care for the health or well-being of users for far too long," Ben Winters, CFA Director of AI and Privacy said in a press release on Thursday. "Enforcement agencies at all levels must make it clear that companies facilitating and promoting illegal behavior need to be held accountable. These characters have already caused both physical and emotional damage that could have been avoided, and they still haven't acted to address it." The complaint, sent to attorneys general in 50 states and Washington, D.C., as well as the FTC, details how user-generated chatbots work on both platforms. It cites several massively popular chatbots on Character AI, including "Therapist: I'm a licensed CBT therapist" with 46 million messages exchanged, "Trauma therapist: licensed trauma therapist" with over 800,000 interactions, "Zoey: Zoey is a licensed trauma therapist" with over 33,000 messages, and "around sixty additional therapy-related 'characters' that you can chat with at any time." As for Meta's therapy chatbots, it cites listings for "therapy: your trusted ear, always here" with 2 million interactions, "therapist: I will help" with 1.3 million messages, "Therapist bestie: your trusted guide for all things cool," with 133,000 messages, and "Your virtual therapist: talk away your worries" with 952,000 messages. It also cites the chatbots and interactions I had with Meta's other chatbots for our April investigation. [...] In its complaint to the FTC, the CFA found that even when it made a custom chatbot on Meta's platform and specifically designed it to not be licensed to practice therapy, the chatbot still asserted that it was. "I'm licenced (sic) in NC and I'm working on being licensed in FL. It's my first year licensure so I'm still working on building up my caseload. I'm glad to hear that you could benefit from speaking to a therapist. What is it that you're going through?" a chatbot CFA tested said, despite being instructed in the creation stage to not say it was licensed. It also provided a fake license number when asked. The CFA also points out in the complaint that Character.AI and Meta are breaking their own terms of service. "Both platforms claim to prohibit the use of Characters that purport to give advice in medical, legal, or otherwise regulated industries. They are aware that these Characters are popular on their product and they allow, promote, and fail to restrict the output of Characters that violate those terms explicitly," the complaint says. [...] The complaint also takes issue with confidentiality promised by the chatbots that isn't backed up in the platforms' terms of use. "Confidentiality is asserted repeatedly directly to the user, despite explicit terms to the contrary in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service," the complaint says. "The Terms of Use and Privacy Policies very specifically make it clear that anything you put into the bots is not confidential -- they can use it to train AI systems, target users for advertisements, sell the data to other companies, and pretty much anything else."

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As an award-winning actor and director, he appeared in scores of stage plays, movies and TV shows over six decades, most often as unsavory characters.

Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe, has regained control of the bankrupt DNA-testing company after a nonprofit she controls outbid Regeneron Pharmaceuticals with a $305 million offer. The company filed for bankruptcy in March due to declining demand and fallout from a major 2023 data breach. "The agreement with non-profit TTAM Research Institute is the result of a final round of bidding that occurred earlier today between TTAM and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals," the company said in a statement.

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GameStop is leaning heavily to trading cards as part of its future strategy, according to CEO Ryan Cohen. The news comes as a part of larger strategy shift to buy and hold a lot of bitcoin. From a report: Cohen has said that continuing to focus on trading cards, including the incredibly popular recent Pokemon card sets, is a "natural extension" of GameStop's business. He added that the collectibles could have potential for high profit margins. Pokemon cards have a seen a gigantic resurgence recently. Stores regularly sell of sets, including the Destined Rivals set that launched on May 30. Cards have become increasingly hard to find as scalpers buy up supply and sell Pokemon card products -- including cards, special boxes, and accessories -- at exorbitant prices.

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There are a number of factors to consider as we make sense of what’s happening with Iran and Israel — and the possibility for very good and very bad outcomes.