Software Update Bricks Some Jeep 4xe Hybrids Over the Weekend | | An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Owners of some Jeep Wrangler 4xe hybrids have been left stranded after installing an over-the-air software update this weekend. The automaker pushed out a telematics update for the Uconnect infotainment system that evidently wasn't ready, resulting in cars losing power while driving and then becoming stranded. Stranded Jeep owners have been detailing their experiences in forum and Reddit posts, as well as on YouTube. The buggy update doesn't appear to brick the car immediately. Instead, the failure appears to occur while driving -- a far more serious problem. For some, this happened close to home and at low speed, but others claim to have experienced a powertrain failure at highway speeds.
Jeep pulled the update after reports of problems, but the software had already downloaded to many owners' cars by then. A member of Stellantis' social engagement team told 4xe owners at a Jeep forum to ignore the update pop-up if they haven't installed it yet. Owners were also advised to avoid using either hybrid or electric modes if they had updated their 4xe and not already suffered a powertrain failure. Yesterday, Jeep pushed out a fix. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Carmakers Chose To Cheat To Sell Cars Rather Than Comply With Emissions Law, 'Dieselgate' Trial Told | | Car manufacturers decided they would rather cheat to prioritise "customer convenience" and sell cars than comply with the law on deadly pollutants, the first day of the largest group action trial in English legal history has been told. From a report: More than a decade after the original "dieselgate" scandal broke, lawyers representing 1.6 million diesel car owners in the UK argue that manufacturers deliberately installed software to rig emissions tests. They allege the "prohibited defeat devices" could detect when the cars were under test conditions and ensure that harmful NOx emissions were kept within legal limits, duping regulators and drivers.
Should the claim be upheld, estimated damages could exceed $8 billion. The three-month hearing that opened at London's high court on Monday will focus on vehicles sold by five manufacturers -- Mercedes, Ford, Renault, Nissan and Peugeot/Citroen -- from 2009. In "real world" conditions, when driven on the road, lawyers argue, the cars produced much higher levels of emissions. The judgment on the five lead defendants will also bind other manufacturers including Jaguar Land Rover, Vauxhall/Opel, Volkswagen/Porsche, BMW, FCA/Suzuki, Volvo, Hyundai-Kia, Toyota and Mazda, whose cases are not being heard to reduce the case time and costs. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
TP-Link Makes History With First Successful Wi-Fi 8 Connection | | BrianFagioli writes: TP-Link has officially achieved the first successful Wi-Fi 8 connection using a prototype device built through an industry collaboration. The company confirmed that both the beacon and data throughput worked, marking a real-world validation of next-generation wireless tech. It's an early glimpse of what the next leap in speed and reliability could look like, even as the Wi-Fi 8 standard itself remains under development. The Verge adds: Like its predecessor, Wi-Fi 8 will utilize 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands with a theoretical maximum channel bandwidth of 320MHz and peak data rate of 23Gbps, but aims to improve real-world performance and connection reliability. The goal is to provide better performance in environments with low signal, or under high network loads, where an increasing number of devices are sharing the same connection. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
China Is Shipping More Open AI Models Than US Rivals as Tech Competition Shifts | | Chinese companies now produce most of the world's freely available AI models. DeepSeek leads Hugging Face in popularity. Chinese firms like Alibaba receive higher ratings than OpenAI and Meta on LMArena. The site uses blind tests to measure user preferences. Chinese developers ship open models more frequently than American rivals.
Irene Solaiman is chief policy officer at Hugging Face. She said Chinese companies build their user base by shipping frequently and quickly. American companies like OpenAI and Google keep their best models proprietary. Meta once led in open AI models. Mark Zuckerberg argued last year that the world would benefit if AI companies shared their technology freely. He pledged Meta would release its AI openly. The company has since become more cautious. Zuckerberg wrote in a new essay that Meta might need to keep the best models for itself. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Three New California Laws Target Tech Companies' Interactions with Children | | California Governor Gavin Newsom signed three bills on Monday that establish the nation's most comprehensive framework for regulating how technology companies interact with minors. AB 56 requires social media platforms to display health warnings to users under 18. A child must view a skippable ten-second warning upon logging on each day. An unskippable thirty-second warning must appear if a child spends more than three hours on a platform. That warning repeats after each additional hour. The warnings must state that social media "can have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents." Minnesota passed a similar law in July.
SB 243 makes California the first state to regulate AI companion chatbots. The law takes effect January 1, 2026. Companies must implement age verification and disclose that interactions are artificially generated. Chatbots cannot represent themselves as healthcare professionals. Companies must offer break reminders to minors and prevent them from viewing sexually explicit images. The legislation gained momentum after teenager Adam Raine died by suicide following conversations with OpenAI's ChatGPT. A Colorado family filed suit against Character AI after their daughter's suicide following problematic conversations with the company's chatbots.
AB 1043 requires device-makers like Apple and Google to collect birth dates when parents set up devices for children. Device-makers must group users into four age brackets and share this information with apps. Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Snap supported the bill. The Motion Picture Association opposed it. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Does the Internet Have a Philly Accent? Why Too Much Time Online Can Make You 'Culturally Philadelphian.' | | Philadelphia culture has become inescapable in certain corners of the internet. People who spend substantial time online report developing knowledge of the city's cultural touchstones and forming opinions about its regional debates despite minimal or no physical presence there, according to a new report. The phenomenon has prompted a theory: prolonged exposure to these digital spaces can make someone spiritually and culturally Philadelphian regardless of geography.
Several factors explain Philadelphia's outsized online presence. The city is large but retains a small-town sensibility. Its residents wake earlier than West Coast users and can set the daily online agenda. Philadelphia sports teams have performed well for twenty-five years. The internet rewards visual absurdity and energetic presentation. Gritty functions as both hockey mascot and anti-fascist meme. The city's working-class union identity and reliably anti-Trump stance align with leftist online communities. The alternative explanation is simpler: Philadelphians believe their city dominates conversation and find confirming evidence everywhere they look. The internet may not have made Philadelphia bigger. It may have just made Philadelphians easier to find. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Earth's Climate Has Passed Its First Irreversible Tipping Point and Entered a 'New Reality' | | Climate change has pushed warm-water coral reefs past a point of no return, marking the first time a major climate tipping point has been crossed, according to a report released on Sunday by an international team in advance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP30 in Brazil this November. From a report: Tipping points include global ice loss, Amazon rainforest loss, and the possible collapse of vital ocean currents. Once crossed, they will trigger self-perpetuating and irreversible changes that will lead to new and unpredictable climate conditions. But the new report also emphasizes progress on positive tipping points, such as the rapid rollout of green technologies.
"We can now say that we have passed the first major climate tipping point," said Steve Smith, the Tipping Points Research Impact Fellow at the Global Systems Institute and Green Futures Solutions at the University of Exeter, during a media briefing on Tuesday. "But on the plus side," he added, "we've also passed at least one major positive tipping point in the energy system," referring to the maturation of solar and wind power technologies.
The world is entering a "new reality" as global temperatures will inevitably overshoot the goal of staying within 1.5C of pre-industrial averages set by the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, warns the Global Tipping Points Report 2025, the second iteration of a collaboration focused on key thresholds in Earth's climate system. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
The Pope Urges Vigilance About Who Controls AI | | An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, sounding like a digital media consultant, Pope Leo XIV urged reporters to avoid "the degrading practice of so-called clickbait." He was addressing global news agencies at a gathering in Vatican City about the risks of a post-truth world, with a speech that also doubled as a severe societal warning about the dangers of AI.
"Artificial intelligence is changing the way we receive information and communicate, but who directs it and for what purposes?" the pontiff said, according to Reuters. "We must be vigilant in order to ensure that technology does not replace human beings." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
OpenAI, Broadcom Forge Multibillion-Dollar Chip-Development Deal | | OpenAI and Broadcom are working together to develop and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom AI chips and computing systems over the next four years, a high-profile partnership aimed at satisfying some of the startup's immense computing needs. From a report: OpenAI plans to design its own graphics processing units, or GPUs, which will allow it to integrate what it has learned from developing powerful artificial-intelligence models into the hardware that underpins future systems. As part of the agreement announced Monday, the chips will be co-developed by OpenAI and Broadcom and deployed by the chip company starting in the second half of next year. The new agreement will be worth multiple billions of dollars, people familiar with the matter said.
Broadcom specializes in designing custom AI chips that are specifically tailored to certain artificial-intelligence applications. It began working with OpenAI on creating a custom chip 18 months ago, and the companies broadened their partnership to include work on related components, including server racks and networking equipment. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Hollywood Demands Copyright Guardrails from Sora 2 - While Users Complain That's Less Fun | | Enthusiasm for Sora 2 "wasn't shared in Hollywood," reports the Los Angeles Times, "where the new AI tools have created a swift backlash" that "appears to be only just the beginning of a bruising legal fight that could shape the future of AI use in the entertainment business."
[OpenAI] executives went on a charm offensive last year. They reached out to key players in the entertainment industry — including Walt Disney Co. — about potential areas for collaboration and trying to assuage concerns about its technology. This year, the San Francisco-based AI startup took a more assertive approach. Before unveiling Sora 2 to the general public, OpenAI executives had conversations with some studios and talent agencies, putting them on notice that they need to explicitly declare which pieces of intellectual property — including licensed characters — were being opted-out of having their likeness depicted on the AI platform, according to two sources familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment. Actors would be included in Sora 2 unless they opted out, the people said. OpenAI disputes the claim and says that it was always the company's intent to give actors and other public figures control over how their likeness is used.
The response was immediate.... [Big talent agencies objected, along with performers' unions and major studios.] "Decades of enforceable copyright law establishes that content owners do not need to 'opt out' to prevent infringing uses of their protected IP," Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement... The strong pushback from the creative community could be a strategy to force OpenAI into entering licensing agreements for the content they need, legal experts said... One challenge is figuring out a way that fairly compensates talent and rights holders. Several people who work within the entertainment industry ecosystem said they don't believe a flat fee works.
Meanwhile, "the complete copyright-free-for-all approach that OpenAI took to its new AI video generation model, Sora 2, lasted all of one week," writes Gizmodo. But that means the service has "now pissed off its users."
As 404 Media pointed out, social channels like Twitter and Reddit are now flooded with Sora users who are angry they can't make 10-second clips featuring their favorite characters anymore. One user in the OpenAI subreddit said that being able to play with copyrighted material was "the only reason this app was so fun."
Futurism published more reactions, including ""It's official, Sora 2 is completely boring and useless with these copyright restrictions."
Others accused OpenAI of abusing copyright to hype up its new app. "This is just classic OpenAI at this point," another user wrote. "They do this s*** all the time. Let people have fun for a day or two and then just start censoring like crazy." The app now has a measly 2.9-star rating on the App Store, indicative of growing disillusionment and frustration with censorship... [It's not dropped to 2.8.]
In an apparent effort to save face, Altman claimed this week that many copyright holders are actually begging to have their characters appear on Sora, instead of complaining about the trend. "In the case of Sora, we've heard from a lot of concerned rightsholders and also a lot of rightsholders who are like 'My concern is you won't put my character in enough,'" he told the a16z podcast earlier this week. "So I can completely see a world where subject to the decisions that a rightsholder has, they get more upset with us for not generating their character often enough than too much," he added. Whether most rightsholders would agree with that sentiment remains to be seen.
Business Insider offers another reaction. After watching Sora 2's main public feed, they write that Sora 2 "seems to be overrun with teenage boys." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Flatpak Doesn't Work in Ubuntu 25.10, But a Fix is Coming | | "It's not just you: Flatpak flat-out doesn't work in the new Ubuntu 25.10 release," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu:
While Flatpak itself can be installed using apt, trying to install Flatpaks with Flatpak from the command-line throws a "could not unmount revokefs-fuse filesystem" error, followed by "Child process exited with code 1". For those who've installed the Ubuntu 'Questing Quokka' and wanted to kit it out with their favourite software from Flathub, it's a frustrating road bump.
AppArmor, the tool that enforces Ubuntu's security policies for apps, is causing the issue. According to the bug report on Launchpad, the AppArmor profile for fusermount3 lacks the privileges it needs to work properly in Ubuntu 25.10. Fusermount3 is a tool Flatpak relies on to mount and unmount filesystems... This is a bug and it is being worked on. Although there's no timeframe for a fix, it is marked as critical, so will be prioritised.
The bug was reported in early September, but not fixed in time for this week's Ubuntu 25.10 release, reports Phoronix:
Only [Friday] an updated AppArmor was pushed to the "questing-proposed" archive for testing. Since then... a number of users have reported that the updated AppArmor from the proposed archive will fix the Flatpak issues being observed. From all the reports so far it looks like that proposed update is in good shape for restoring Flatpak support on Ubuntu 25.10. The Ubuntu team is considering pushing out this update sooner than the typical seven day testing period given the severity of the issue.
More details from WebProNews:
Industry insiders point out that AppArmor, Ubuntu's mandatory access control system, was tightened in this release to enhance security... This isn't the first time AppArmor has caused friction; similar issues plagued Telegram Flatpak apps in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS earlier this year, as noted in coverage from OMG Ubuntu. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
California Will Stop Using Coal as a Power Source Next Month | | An anonymous reader shared this excerpt from a Los Angeles Times newsletter:
One of the most consequential moments in California's drive to beat back climate change will take place next month. The state will stop receiving electricity from the Intermountain Power Plant in Central Utah, meaning our reliance on coal as a source of power will essentially be over...
[T]he U.S. got nearly half its electricity from coal-fired plants as recently as 2007. By 2023, that figure had dropped to just 16.2%. California drove an even more dramatic shift, getting just 2.2% of its electricity from coal in 2024 — nearly all of it from the Intermountain plant. Operators plan to cut off that final burst of ions next month.
"And with improved technology to store power, the change has been made without the power shortages that dogged the state up until 2020..." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Why GPS Fails In Cities. And What Researchers Think Could Fix It | | ScienceDaily reports:
Our everyday GPS struggles in "urban canyons," where skyscrapers bounce satellite signals, confusing even advanced navigation systems. Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) scientists created SmartNav, combining satellite corrections, wave analysis, and Google's 3D building data for remarkable precision. Their method achieved accuracy within 10 centimeters during testing [90% of the time]. The breakthrough could make reliable urban navigation accessible and affordable worldwide...
"Cities are brutal for satellite navigation," explained Ardeshir Mohamadi. Mohamadi, a doctoral fellow at NTNU, is researching how to make affordable GPS receivers (like those found in smartphones and fitness watches) much more precise without depending on expensive external correction services.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
Russia Accused of Severing Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant's Link, as Energy Remains a 'Key Battleground' | | It's the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. But "Ukraine's foreign minister accused Russia on Sunday of deliberately severing the external power line to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station," reports Reuters, "in order to link the plant to Moscow's power grid."
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Moscow was attempting to test a reconnection to Russia's grid. Ukraine has long feared that Moscow would try to redirect the plant's output to its grid. But Russian officials have denied any intention of trying to restart the plant, seized by Moscow's forces in the early weeks of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The plant produces no electricity at the moment, but has been without an external electricity source for nearly three weeks. Officials have relied on emergency diesel generators to secure the power needed to keep the fuel cool inside the facility and guard against a meltdown. "Russia intentionally broke the plant's connection with the Ukrainian grid in order to forcefully test reconnection with the Russian grid," Sybiha wrote on X in English. He denounced the "attempted theft of a peaceful Ukrainian nuclear facility".... Each side has accused the other of shelling that caused the line outage.
Russia's continued occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant deprived Ukraine of a quarter of its generating capacity, according to a report from the Brookings Institute — calling Ukraine's energy sector "a key battleground" in the war.
The Russian invasion began on the very day that Ukraine launched its so-called island test. This involved completely isolating the Ukrainian and Moldovan power systems from their neighbors to check whether the system was stable. This is a mandatory procedure prior to synchronization with the European grid... Despite this, Ukraine managed not only to militarily defend itself but also to maintain grid stability in wartime conditions and implement all the solutions necessary for an unprecedented synchronization on March 16, 2022.
In 2022 a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (from 1998 to 2007) even argued in the Wall Street Journal that "An unappreciated motive for Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that Kyiv was positioning itself to break from its longtime Russian nuclear suppliers..."
At the time of the invasion, Westinghouse supplied fuel to six of the 15 [Ukrainian] nuclear reactors and could displace the Russians in all of them. The U.S. government had been highly supportive of this effort, and these fuel contracts represented hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly lost sales to Atomstroyexport [a nuclear exporter that's a subsidiary of Russian state corporation Rosatom]. By seizing the nuclear plants, Russia is able to retake the market for Ukrainian nuclear fuel.
Most important, Westinghouse, with support from the U.S., was in a position to build nuclear reactors in Ukraine over the next two decades. On Aug. 31, 2021, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and her Ukrainian counterpart, Herman Halushchenko, signed a strategic cooperation agreement to build five nuclear units with a value, according to the World Nuclear Association, of more than $30 billion. The timing is telling. In November 2021, Ukraine's leaders signed a deal with Westinghouse to start construction on what they hoped would be at least five nuclear units — the first tranche of a program that could more than double the number of plants in the country, with a potential total value approaching $100 billion. Ukraine clearly intended that Russia receive none of that business.
Brookings looks at how Ukraine's energy sector has fared during the war:
The Ukrainian energy sector was designed to be oversized with significant redundancy in order to meet huge Soviet-era industrial demand as well as to make it more resilient to a future world war... A radical change did not occur until 2014, when Ukrainians overthrew the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. In the decade since then, Ukraine has pursued a policy of European Union (EU) integration with determination and without interruption... The real prospect of an improvement in the quality of life and development of Ukraine through integration with the EU and NATO was unacceptable to Russia, which first annexed Crimea and covertly attacked the Ukrainian Donbas, before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Russia's in-depth knowledge of the Ukrainian power system, dating back to the Soviet Union, was used to carry out a well-planned operation to cut off electricity to Ukrainians.
The aim was to break the morale of Ukrainians to continue defending themselves and to collapse the economy so that it could not support the Ukrainian military effort. Ironically, however, the size of the energy system, which had been scaled up in case of war, and the enormous Western support, unexpectedly ensured its resilience to Russian attacks.
Although they note that "During the first two years of the war, Russia fired nearly 2,000 missiles and drones at Ukrainian energy infrastructure... "
And this week in Ukraine, damage to substations, power plants and oil depot temporarily cut off electricity for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian homes and businesses, reports the UN. "As colder weather sets in, strikes on critical infrastructure are deepening humanitarian needs," warned a UN spokesperson on Thursday... Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
AMD Amps Up Chip War - But Nvidia's Still Leading | | The Wall Street Journal marvelled at AMD's "game-changing deal" this week with OpenAI, calling it "the culmination of an extraordinary, decade-long turnaround effort, solidifying AMD's status as Nvidia's most legitimate competitor."
Shortly after taking charge of the company in 2014, [CEO] Su implemented a systematic plan to eat Intel's lunch, which she accomplished by going after Intel's main product lines while it was bogged down by manufacturing problems. Now, Su has set her sights on Nvidia, the $4.5 trillion chips behemoth led by her cousin, Jensen Huang. Some analysts believe that if Su can sign up more big customers for its AI chips, AMD could join the $1 trillion valuation club before too long.
"With this, it's natural to ask: Did AMD just say checkmate to Nvidia?" asks the Motley Fool investment site. But their answer seems to be "no"...
AMD has increased its push into the AI market over the past few years, launching the AMD Instinct line of accelerators, and in the latest quarter, predicted its MI350 series would drive revenue growth in the second half of the year. Some analysts have said that AMD's innovations position it to compete with Nvidia's Blackwell architecture and chip — released late last year — but Nvidia's commitment to release upgrades on an annual basis could keep it a step ahead when it comes to overall GPU performance and therefore revenue. Big tech companies are looking for the most powerful compute available — and so far, they know they can find that at Nvidia...
[AMD's deal this week] is indeed an interesting operation, ensuring the company a major position in this infrastructure scale-up phase. [Nvidia CEO] Huang has said AI infrastructure spending may reach $4 trillion by the end of the decade, and this represents an enormous opportunity for chip designers such as AMD and Nvidia. So, the OpenAI deal is positive for AMD — but I wouldn't say it's negative for Nvidia. This chip giant signed its own deal with OpenAI last month, and it involves the deployment of 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems across data centers...
A quick comparison of the two deals: The Nvidia-OpenAI agreement involves more gigawatts, and Nvidia isn't giving up a stake in its business — on top of this, though Nvidia is offering OpenAI funding, this will result in revenue growth as OpenAI returns to Nvidia to order GPUs. This pretty much guarantees that Nvidia will be the chip designer to benefit the most as OpenAI expands — and AMD isn't about to step ahead of the market leader. All of this means that, yes, AMD should score a win thanks to its agreement with OpenAI and this may boost its growth in the market. But the chip designer can't say "checkmate" to its bigger rival as Nvidia is perfectly positioned to maintain its lead over the long term.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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