Face Transplants Promised Hope. Patients Were Put Through the Unthinkable | | Twenty years after surgeons in France performed the world's first face transplant, the experimental field that procedure launched is now confronting a troubling record of patient deaths, buried negative data and a healthcare system that leaves recipients financially devastated and medically vulnerable.
About 50 face transplants have been performed globally since Isabelle Dinoire received her partial face graft at University Hospital CHU Amiens-Picardie in November 2005. A 2024 JAMA Surgery study reported five-year graft survival of 85% and 10-year survival of 74%, concluding that the procedure is "an effective reconstructive option for patients with severe facial defects." The study did not track psychological wellbeing, financial outcomes, employment status or quality of life. Roughly 20% of face transplant patients have died from rejection, kidney failure, or heart failure.
The anti-rejection medications that keep transplanted faces alive can destroy kidneys and weaken immune systems to the point where routine infections become life-threatening. In the United States, the Department of Defense has funded most operations, treating them as a frontier for wounded veterans, because private insurers refuse to cover the costs. Patients who survive the surgery often find themselves unable to afford medications, transportation to follow-up appointments or basic caregiving. The field's long-term grants cover surgical innovation but not the lifelong needs of the people who receive these transplants. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
UK To Tax Electric Cars by the Mile Starting 2028 | | The UK government will levy a pay-per-mile tax on electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles starting April 2028, UK's finance minister Rachel Reeves announced, a measure designed to offset some of the fuel duty revenue that will disappear as drivers shift away from petrol and diesel cars. Electric vehicles will be charged 3 pence per mile and plug-in hybrids 1.5 pence per mile, payable annually alongside car tax. An average driver covering 8,000 miles a year would pay around $320, roughly half what a petrol or diesel driver pays in fuel duty.
The Office for Budget Responsibility expects the tax to generate $1.45 billion in its first year and $2.51 billion by 2030-31, offsetting about a quarter of the revenue losses projected from the EV transition by 2050. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders warned the new charge would "suppress demand" and make sales targets harder to achieve. New Zealand and Iceland have already introduced road pricing for EVs; demand dropped in the former but held steady in the latter. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Android's New Dual-Band Hotspot Mode Pairs 6 GHz Speed With 2.4 GHz Compatibility | | Google is testing a new Wi-Fi hotspot configuration in the latest Android Canary build that pairs the 6 GHz band's superior throughput with the 2.4 GHz band's broad device compatibility, eliminating the trade-off users previously faced when choosing between speed and legacy support. Android's default hotspot setting uses 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies, omitting 6 GHz because most devices lack support for the newer standard and because U.S. regulations previously prohibited smartphones from creating 6 GHz hotspots. Recent regulatory changes and a Pixel update unlocked standalone 6 GHz hotspots, but that option cuts off older devices entirely. The new "2.4 and 6 GHz" dual-band mode, spotted in Android Canary, is expected to arrive in an upcoming Android 16 QPR3 beta. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Defense Contractors Lobby To Kill Military Right-to-Repair, Push Pay-Per-Use Data Model | | A bipartisan right-to-repair provision that would let the U.S. military fix its own equipment faces a serious threat from defense industry lobbyists who want to replace it with a pay-per-use model for accessing repair information. A source familiar with negotiations told The Verge that there are significant concerns that the language in the National Defense Authorization Act will be swapped out for a "data-as-a-service" alternative that would require the Department of Defense to pay contractors for access to technical repair data.
The provision, introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) in their Warrior Right to Repair Act, passed the Senate in October and has support from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Army and the Navy. The National Defense Industrial Association published a white paper backing the data-as-a-service model, arguing it would protect contractors' intellectual property. Reps. Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Adam Smith (D-WA), who lead the House Armed Services Committee, outlined similar language in their SPEED Act. Rogers received more than $535,000 from the defense industry in 2024; Smith received over $310,550. The final NDAA is expected early next week. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
NASA Reduces Flights on Boeing's Starliner After Botched Astronaut Mission | | An anonymous reader shares a report: NASA has slashed the number of astronaut missions on Boeing's Starliner contract and said the spacecraft's next mission to the International Space Station will fly without a crew, reducing the scope of a program hobbled by engineering woes and outpaced by SpaceX. The most recent mishap occurred during Starliner's first crewed test flight in 2024, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Several thrusters on Starliner's propulsion system shut down during its approach to the ISS. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
AI Can Technically Perform 12% of US Labor Market's Wage Value, MIT Simulation Finds | | Researchers at MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have built a simulation that models all 151 million American workers and their skills, then maps those skills against the capabilities of over 13,000 AI tools currently in production to see where the two overlap. The answer, according to their analysis: 11.7% of the US labor market's total wage value, or about $1.2 trillion, sits in tasks that AI systems can technically perform [PDF].
The researchers call this the Iceberg Index, and the name is deliberate. The visible AI disruption happening in tech jobs right now accounts for only 2.2% of labor market wage value. The remaining exposure lurks in cognitive and administrative work across finance, healthcare administration, and professional services, and unlike tech-sector disruption, it's spread across all fifty states rather than concentrated on the coasts.
Delaware and South Dakota show higher Iceberg Index values than California because their economies lean heavily on administrative and financial work. Ohio and Tennessee register modest tech-sector exposure but substantial hidden risk in the white-collar functions that support their manufacturing bases.
To validate the framework, the researchers compared their predictions against Anthropic's Economic Index tracking real-world AI usage from millions of Claude users. The two measures agreed on state categorizations 69% of the time, with particularly strong alignment at the extremes.
The Iceberg Index doesn't predict job losses or adoption timelines. It measures technical capability, the overlap between what AI can do and what occupations require. Traditional economic indicators like GDP and unemployment explain less than five percent of the variation in this skill-based exposure, which is partly why the researchers argue workforce planners need new metrics. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
UK Police To Trial AI 'Agents' Responding To Non-Emergency Calls | | An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Call-handling agents powered by AI are to be trialled by Staffordshire Police in a bid to cut waiting times for the non-emergency 101 service. The force is set to become the third in the country to take part in the scheme testing the use of artificial "agents" to deal with calls. Under the system, the AI agent would deal with simple queries like requests for information without the need for human involvement, freeing up call handlers and reducing answering times.
Acting Chief Constable Becky Riggs confirmed the force would be looking to launch the AI pilot early in the new year. "It's a piece of technology called Agentforce. It will help with our response to the public, which historically we know we haven't done well." The senior officer said that sometimes people are not calling to report a crime, but want more information, which the technology could help with. However, if the system detects keywords suggesting vulnerability or risk or emergency, then it will be able to divert the call to a human being. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Apple Asks Indian Court to Block Antitrust Law Allowing $38 Billion Fine | | Apple is challenging a new Indian antitrust law that would let regulators calculate penalties based on global revenue -- a change that could expose the company to a fine of roughly $38 billion in its dispute with Tinder owner Match. The 2022 antitrust case centers on accusations that Apple abused its power by forcing developers to use its in-app purchase system. MacRumors reports: Last year, India passed a law that allows the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to use global turnover when calculating penalties imposed on companies for abusing market dominance. Apple can be fined up to 10 percent, which would result in a penalty of around $38 billion. Apple said that using global turnover would result in a fine that's "manifestly arbitrary, unconstitutional, grossly disproportionate, and unjust."
Apple is asking India's Delhi High Court to declare the law illegal, suggesting that penalties should be based on the Indian revenue of the specific unit that violates antitrust law. [...] Apple said in today's filing that the CCI used the new penalty law on November 10 in an unrelated case, fining a company for a violation that happened 10 years ago. Apple said it had "no choice but to bring this constitutional challenge now" to avoid having retrospective penalties applied against it, too. Match has argued that a high fine based on global turnover would discourage companies from repeating antitrust violations. Apple's plea will be heard on December 3. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
China's Giant Underground Neutrino Observatory Releases Its First Results | | China's new JUNO neutrino observatory has delivered world-leading measurements after just 59 days, offering the most precise readings yet of two key neutrino oscillation parameters. "The physics result is already world-leading in the areas that it touches," says particle physicist Juan Pedro Ochoa-Ricoux of the University of California, Irvine, who co-leads a team on JUNO. "In particular, we measured two neutrino oscillation parameters, and that measurement is already for both parameters the best in the world." The results were published in two separate preprints on arXiv.org. Scientific American reports: JUNO's spherical detector, which is akin to a 13-story-tall fishbowl, primarily measures so-called electron antineutrinos spewing from the nearby Yangjian and Taishan nuclear plants. When the particles strike a proton inside the detector, a reaction triggers two light flashes that ping photomultiplier tubes and get converted into electrical signals. The new measurements from these neutrino-proton collisions are now considered the most precise for two oscillation parameters, which act as proxies for differences in their mass, according to Ochoa-Ricoux.
"It is the first time we've turned on a scientific instrument like JUNO that we've been working on for over a decade. It's just tremendously exciting," Ochoa-Ricoux says. "And then to see that we're able to already do world-leading measurements with it, even with such a small amount of data, that's also really exciting." Still, the physicists will need years' worth of neutrino detections to answer the mass-ordering conundrum. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Mexico Unveils Plans To Build Most Powerful Supercomputer In Latin America | | An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Mexico unveiled plans Wednesday to build what it claims will be Latin America's most powerful supercomputer -- a project the government says will help the country capitalize on the rapidly evolving uses of artificial intelligence and exponentially expand the country's computing capacity. Dubbed "Coatlicue" for the Mexica goddess considered the earth mother, the supercomputer would be seven times more powerful than the region's current leader in Brazil, Jose Merino, head of the Telecommunications and Digital Transformation Agency.
President Claudia Sheinbaum said during her morning news briefing that the location for the project had not been decided yet, but construction will begin next year. "We're very excited," said Sheinbaum, an academic and climate scientist. "It is going to allow Mexico to fully get in on the use of artificial intelligence and the processing of data that today we don't have the capacity to do." Merino said that Mexico's most powerful supercomputer operates at 2.3 petaflops -- a unit to measure computing speed, meaning it can perform one quadrillion operations per second. Coatlicue would have a capacity of 314 petaflops. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Amazon Faces FAA Probe After Delivery Drone Snaps Internet Cable In Texas | | Amazon's drone-delivery program is under federal scrutiny after an MK30 aircraft clipped an internet cable in Texas. CNBC reports: The incident occurred on Nov. 18 around 12:45 p.m. Central in Waco, Texas. After dropping off a package, one of Amazon's MK30 drones was ascending out of a customer's yard when one of its six propellers got tangled in a nearby internet cable, according to a video of the incident viewed and verified by CNBC. The video shows the Amazon drone shearing the wire line. The drone's motor then appeared to shut off and the aircraft landed itself, with its propellers windmilling slightly on the way down, the video shows. The drone appeared to remain in tact beyond some damage to one of its propellers.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, a spokesperson confirmed. The National Transportation Safety Board said the agency is aware of the incident but has not opened a probe into the matter. Amazon confirmed the incident to CNBC, saying that after clipping the internet cable, the drone performed a "safe contingent landing," referring to the process that allows its drones to land safely in unexpected conditions. "There were no injuries or widespread internet service outages. We've paid for the cable line's repair for the customer and have apologized for the inconvenience this caused them," an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC, noting that the drone had completed its package delivery. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Greek Cybercrime Unit Shuts Down IPTV Pirates, 68 End Users Face Fines | | Greek authorities shut down an IPTV piracy operation on Santorini, arresting a reseller and referring 68 end users for prosecution. TorrentFreak reports: A new legal framework to tackle online infringement in Greece went live just a couple of months ago, and reports of prosecutions are already coming in. Early September, it was reported that a man from Sparta faces prosecution and a fine of up to 6,000 euros for two IPTV piracy offenses. The suspect, reportedly a cafe owner, was targeted at his workplace on a Saturday, allegedly in front of customers. One told local media that they believed that complaints of the cafe engaging in "unfair competition" preceded the untimely visit.
The Cybercrime Prosecution Directorate launched their operation in the early hours of November 19. The Athens-based unit targeted a network that sold illicit access to premium pay-TV via IPTV subscriptions. The raid, conducted on Santorini, one of the Cyclades islands, resulted in the arrest of a 48-year-old, who, from police reports, appears to be a reseller for a larger network. Customers were reportedly charged 50 euros for 3 months subscription or 100 euros for 6 months. Sales and management were handled by the 48-year-old via an online platform known as a 'panel,' while remote and in-person support were available as part of the service.
The impact of the raid was visible on the islands, locals said. According to a local report, hundreds of users in hotels, cafes, and residences on Santorini and beyond, found themselves suddenly without access to cheap TV. Apparently few areas were untouched by the disruption, such was local reliance on illegal streams. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Google's AirDrop Support For Pixel 10 Likely Exists Because of EU's Apple Ruling | | Last week, Google surprised the tech world when it announced AirDrop support on Pixel 10 devices -- all without Apple's involvement. "While it initially seemed like this was a rogue move made by Google to coerce Apple into another boundary-breaking decision, it might actually be part of the repercussions that also led to USB-C on iPhone and the adoption of RCS," reports 9to5Google. From a report: As reported by Ars Technica, the answer to this week's mysterious Quick Share upgrade lies in the EU's interoperability requirements designed for the DMA. The ruling out of the European Commission pushed Apple to begin supporting interoperable wireless standards beginning with this year's set of OS upgrades, replacing the previous proprietary standard the company used to power its various Continuity features. That forced Apple to add support for the Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-Fi Aware standard of multi-directional file sharing, at the cost of completely phasing out its previous walled-in protocol. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
OpenAI Says Dead Teen Violated TOS When He Used ChatGPT To Plan Suicide | | An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Facing five lawsuits alleging wrongful deaths, OpenAI lobbed its first defense Tuesday, denying in a court filing that ChatGPT caused a teen's suicide and instead arguing the teen violated terms that prohibit discussing suicide or self-harm with the chatbot. The earliest look at OpenAI's strategy to overcome the string of lawsuits came in a case where parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine accused OpenAI of relaxing safety guardrails that allowed ChatGPT to become the teen's "suicide coach." OpenAI deliberately designed the version their son used, ChatGPT 4o, to encourage and validate his suicidal ideation in its quest to build the world's most engaging chatbot, parents argued.
But in a blog, OpenAI claimed that parents selectively chose disturbing chat logs while supposedly ignoring "the full picture" revealed by the teen's chat history. Digging through the logs, OpenAI claimed the teen told ChatGPT that he'd begun experiencing suicidal ideation at age 11, long before he used the chatbot. "A full reading of his chat history shows that his death, while devastating, was not caused by ChatGPT," OpenAI's filing argued. [...] All the logs that OpenAI referenced in its filing are sealed, making it impossible to verify the broader context the AI firm claims the logs provide. In its blog, OpenAI said it was limiting the amount of "sensitive evidence" made available to the public, due to its intention to handle mental health-related cases with "care, transparency, and respect." The Raine family's lead lawyer called OpenAI's response "disturbing."
"They abjectly ignore all of the damning facts we have put forward: how GPT-4o was rushed to market without full testing. That OpenAI twice changed its Model Spec to require ChatGPT to engage in self-harm discussions. That ChatGPT counseled Adam away from telling his parents about his suicidal ideation and actively helped him plan a 'beautiful suicide.' And OpenAI and Sam Altman have no explanation for the last hours of Adam's life, when ChatGPT gave him a pep talk and then offered to write a suicide note."
OpenAI is leaning on its usage policies to defend against this case, emphasizing that "ChatGPT users acknowledge their use of ChatGPT is 'at your sole risk'" and that Raine should never have been allowed to use the chatbot without parental consent. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Newegg Sparks Debate With New PayPal-Integrated AI Shopping Push | | BrianFagioli writes: Newegg's new partnership with PayPal is another sign that mainstream e-commerce is shifting control from users to AI-driven intermediaries. Instead of shoppers visiting Newegg directly, PayPal's agentic commerce system pushes product discovery through AI platforms like Perplexity where recommendations, checkout, and fraud checks all happen inside someone else's controlled environment. Newegg stays the merchant of record, but the real influence shifts to the platforms that decide which products their AI agents mention. That may sound convenient, but it also means discovery becomes guided by training data and commercial integrations rather than user intent.
Slashdot readers will likely notice the other issue. This setup puts PayPal deeper into the shopping pipeline at a time when many users already avoid the company over account freezes and dispute policies. An AI-mediated shopping experience where PayPal becomes the silent gatekeeper by default is not going to sit well with everyone. And with AI agents shaping purchasing decisions based on behavior and context, the concept of intent-driven shopping starts to look a lot like quiet nudging rather than empowerment. Newegg may see this as the future, but the community will probably ask whether users truly want AI systems and PayPal deciding how they shop. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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