The FCC mistakenly published a 163-page PDF containing detailed schematics for Apple's upcoming iPhone 16e, despite Apple explicitly requesting indefinite confidentiality to protect trade secrets. AppleInsider reports: A cover letter is also distributed alongside the schematics, addressed to the FCC and dated September 16, 2024. The letter from Apple is a request for the confidential treatment of documents that are filed with the FCC. [...] The letter from Apple requests a series of documents are withheld from public viewing "indefinitely." The justification is that they contain "confidential and proprietary trade secrets" that are not disclosed to the public post-release, due to giving competitors an "unfair advantage."

The list of documents, Apple states, includes: Block Diagrams, Electrical Schematic Diagrams, Technical Descriptions, Product Specifications, Antenna Locations, Tune-Up Procedure, and Software Security Description. Other documents, such as external and internal photographs, shots of the test setup, and the user manual, are deemed to be less damaging and have "short-term confidentiality" requirements. In those cases, Apple asks for short-term confidentiality for 180 days after the equipment authorization is granted by the FCC.

The Taliban have imposed a nationwide telecommunications shutdown in Afghanistan, severing fibre-optic connections and cutting off internet, mobile, and satellite services as part of "morality" measures. Netblock is currently tracking the outages. The BBC reports: Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Flights from Kabul airport have also been disrupted, according to reports. Several people in Kabul have told the BBC that their fibre-optic internet stopped working towards the end of the working day, around17:00 local time (12:30 GMT). Because of this, it is understood many people will not notice the impact until Tuesday morning, when banking services and other businesses are due to resume. [...]

The Taliban earlier said an alternative route for internet access would be created, without giving any details. Business leaders at the time warned that if the internet ban continued their activities would be seriously hit. Hamid Haidari, former editor-in-chief of Afghan news channel 1TV, said after the shutdown that "loneliness enveloped the entire country." "Afghanistan has now officially taken first place in the competition with North Korea for [internet] disconnection" he said on X.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law on Monday that will force major AI companies to reveal their safety protocols -- marking the end of a lobbying battle with big tech companies like ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Meta and setting the groundwork for a potential national standard.

The proposal was the second attempt by the author, ambitious San Francisco Democrat state Sen. Scott Wiener, to pass such legislation after Newsom vetoed a broader measure last year that set off an international debate. It is already being watched in Congress and other states as an example to follow as lawmakers seek to rein in an emerging technology that has been embraced by the Trump administration in the race against China, but which has also prompted concerns for its potential to create harms.

F-Droid has warned that Google's upcoming developer verification program will kill the free and open source app repository. Google announced plans several weeks ago to force all Android app developers to register their apps and identity with the company. Apps not validated by Google will not be installable on certified Android devices.

F-Droid says it cannot require developers to register with Google or take over app identifiers to register for them. The site operators say doing so would effectively take over distribution rights from app authors. Google plans to begin testing the verification scheme in the coming weeks and may charge registration fees. Unverified apps will start being blocked next year in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand before expanding globally in 2027. F-Droid is calling on US and EU regulators to intervene.

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is planning to release a new version of its Sora video generator that creates videos featuring copyrighted material unless copyright holders opt out of having their work appear, according to people familiar with the matter. OpenAI began alerting talent agencies and studios about the forthcoming product and its opt-out process over the last week and plans to release the new version in the coming days, the people said.

The new opt-out process means that movie studios and other intellectual property owners would have to explicitly ask OpenAI not to include their copyrighted material in videos Sora creates. While copyrighted characters will require an opt-out, the new product won't generate images of recognizable public figures without their permission, people familiar with OpenAI's thinking said.

The UK government will underwrite a $2 billion loan guarantee to Jaguar Land Rover in a bid to support its suppliers as a cyber-attack continues to halt production at the car maker. BBC: Business Secretary Peter Kyle said the loan, from a commercial bank, would protect jobs in the West Midlands, Merseyside and across the UK. The manufacturer has been forced to suspend production for weeks after being targeted by hackers at the end of August. There have been growing concerns some suppliers, mostly small businesses, could go bust due to the prolonged shutdown.

About 30,000 people are directly employed at the company's UK plants with about 100,000 working for firms in the supply chain. Some of these firms supply parts exclusively to JLR, while others sell components to other carmakers as well. It is believed to be the first time that a company has received government help as a result of a cyber-attack.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In a preprint titled "Can LIGO Detect Daylight Savings Time?," Reed Essick, former LIGO member and now a physicist at the University of Toronto, gives a simple answer to the paper's title: "Yes, it can." The paper, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, was recently uploaded to arXiv. That might seem like an odd connection. It's true that observational astronomy must contend with noise from light pollution, satellites, and communication signals. But these are tangible sources of noise that scientists can sink their teeth into, whereas daylight savings time is considerably more nebulous and abstract as a potential problem.

To be clear, and as the paper points out, daylight savings time does not influence actual signals from merging black holes billions of light-years away -- which, as far as we know, don't operate on daylight savings time. The "detection" here refers to the "non-trivial" changes in human activity having to do with the researchers involved in this kind of work, among other work- and process-related factors tied to the sudden shift in time. The presence of individuals -- whether through operational workflows or even their physical activity at the observatories -- has a measurable impact on the data collected by LIGO and its sister institutions, Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan, the new paper argues.

To see why this might be the case, consider again the definition of gravitational waves: ripples in space-time. A very broad interpretation of this definition implies that any object in space-time affected by gravity can cause ripples, like a researcher opening a door or the rumble of a car moving across the LIGO parking lot. Of course, these ripples are so tiny and insignificant that LIGO doesn't register them as gravitational waves. But continued exposure to various seismic and human vibrations does have some effect on the detector -- which, again, engineers and physicists have attempted to account for. What they forgot to consider, however, were the irregular shifts in daily activity as researchers moved back and forth from daylight savings time. The bi-annual time adjustment shifted LIGO's expected sensitivity pattern by roughly 75 minutes, the paper noted. Weekends, and even the time of day, also influenced the integrity of the collected data, but these factors had been raised by the community in the past.

The European way of life is being jeopardized by environmental degradation, a report has found, with EU officials warning against weakening green rules. The Guardian: The continent has made "important progress" in cutting planet-heating pollution, according to the European Environment Agency, but the death of wildlife and breakdown of the climate are ruining ecosystems that underpin the economy. The seventh edition of the report, which has been published every five years since 1995, found:

1. More than 80% of protected habitats are in a poor or bad state, with "unsustainable" consumption and production patterns driving loss of wildlife.
2. The EU's "carbon sink" has declined by about 30% in a decade as logging, wildfires and pests damage forests.
3. Emissions from transport and food have barely budged since 2005, despite progress in other sectors.
4. Member states have failed to adapt to extreme weather as fast as risk levels have risen.
5. Water stress already affects one in three Europeans and will worsen as the climate changes.

A review of 62 scientific studies published in Osteoporosis International found that microplastics weaken bones by disrupting bone marrow stem cells and stimulating osteoclasts, cells that degrade bone tissue. Laboratory experiments found the particles reduce cell viability, induce premature cellular aging, modify gene expression, and trigger inflammatory responses. Animal studies found microplastic accumulation decreases white blood cell counts and deteriorates bone microstructure, creating irregular cell structures that increase fracture risk. Rodrigo Bueno de Oliveira from the State University of Campinas in Brazil said the effects interrupted skeletal growth in test animals.

Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5 ran autonomously for 30 hours to build a chat application similar to Slack or Teams, generating approximately 11,000 lines of code before stopping upon task completion. The model, announced today, marks a significant leap from the company's Opus 4 model, which ran for seven hours in May.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 performs three times better at browser navigation and computer use than Anthropic's October technology. Beta-tester Canva deployed the model for complex engineering tasks in its codebase and product features. Anthropic paired the release with virtual machines, memory, context management, and multi-agent support tools, enabling developers to build their own AI agents using the same building blocks that power Claude Code.

An anonymous reader writes: Landlords are using a service that logs into a potential renter's employer systems and scrapes their paystubs and other information en masse, potentially in violation of U.S. hacking laws, according to screenshots of the tool shared with 404 Media.

The screenshots highlight the intrusive methods some landlords use when screening potential tenants, taking information they may not need, or legally be entitled to, to assess a renter.

"This is a statewide consumer-finance abuse that forces renters to surrender payroll and bank logins or face homelessness," one renter who was forced to use the tool and who saw it taking more data than was necessary for their apartment application told 404 Media. 404 Media granted the person anonymity to protect them from retaliation from their landlord or the services used.

[...] "Argyle hijacked my live Workday session, stayed hidden from view, and downloaded every pay stub plus all W-4s back to 2024, each PDF seconds apart," they said. "Workday audit logs show dozens of 'Print' events from two IPs from a MAC which I do not use," they added, referring to a MAC address, a unique identifier assigned to each device on a network.

An anonymous reader shares a report: You've probably heard of vibe coding -- novices writing apps by creating a simple AI prompt -- but now Microsoft wants to introduce a similar thing for its Office apps. The software maker is launching a new Agent Mode in Excel and Word that can generate complex spreadsheets and documents with just a prompt. A new Office Agent in Copilot chat, powered by Anthropic models, is also launching today that can create PowerPoint presentations and Word documents from a "vibe working" chatbot.

[...] Agent Mode essentially takes a complex task and breaks it down with planning and reasoning that you can follow. It then uses OpenAI's GPT-5 model to break down each step of document creation into an agentic task and execute it. It's like watching an automated macro in real time, showing everything it's doing in the sidebar.

The world's highest bridge opened in China on Sunday, taking the crown from another bridge in the same province. From a report: The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge soars about 2,050 feet above a river and gorge in the southern Chinese province of Guizhou. It is more than twice as high as the Royal Gorge Bridge, which is suspended 956 feet above the Arkansas River in Colorado and is the highest in the United States.

According to Chinese state media, the new Guizhou bridge also sets a record as the world's longest bridge in a mountainous region, spanning 4,600 feet across. Hailed as China's latest "infrastructure miracle," the bridge is designed to spur tourism and economic growth in one of the country's least developed regions.

What's the proper punishment for an illegal U-turn? If you're a human being in California, it's a fine of up to $234. If you're a robot, apparently, it's nothing at all. The San Francisco Standard: This injustice became apparent to many Facebook users Saturday night after a viral post from the San Bruno Police Department showed footage of officers pulling over a Waymo for the scofflaw maneuver only to discover that no one was behind the wheel.

The car stopped automatically when it saw the police lights during a Friday evening DUI checkpoint, but instead of a person IRL, officers say they were connected with a Waymo rep over the phone. After a brief exchange, the Waymo was sent on its way. Under current law, officials explained, they couldn't issue a ticket. "Our citation books don't have a box for 'robot,'" they joked on Facebook. "Hopefully the reprogramming will keep it from making any more illegal moves."

BrianFagioli writes: Electronic Arts has agreed to a $55 billion buyout by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), private equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, marking the largest all-cash sponsor take-private deal ever. Shareholders will receive $210 per share, a 25 percent premium over EA's unaffected price, and once the transaction closes the company will be delisted from public markets. EA CEO Andrew Wilson will remain in charge, with the group arguing that private ownership will allow the publisher to innovate faster and expand its global footprint.

The deal, however, is already sparking controversy. PIF, a sovereign wealth fund controlled by the Saudi government, will effectively gain control of one of the most influential names in gaming. While investors stand to profit, many gamers and industry watchers are concerned about how Saudi ownership could shape EA's creative direction, monetization strategies, and role in esports. With regulatory approvals still pending, the takeover raises difficult questions about the intersection of gaming, politics, and global soft power.