Astronomers using the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have discovered 2026 ED138, a large object beyond Neptune that could become the solar system's sixth recognized dwarf planet if further observations confirm it is massive enough to be round. Located about 46 times farther from the Sun than Earth, the object is estimated to be 600 to 1,500 kilometers wide and had remained hidden because it lies against a particularly crowded field of Milky Way stars. Scientific American reports: The discovery was made by running billions of pieces of data collected by the Rubin Observatory through a search code developed by Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian astronomers Matthew Holman and Kevin Napier. "My first reaction was one of excited disbelief," Holman said in a statement. "Objects like this are very rare, so I immediately started checking whether I or the code had done something wrong."

When Holman and his colleague Mario Juric of the University of Washington went to double-check, they found 30 more observations of the object by Rubin that dated to between March and July 2026. Looking at other observation tools, the pair found even more sightings going back to 2016. Together, these data allowed the astronomers to begin mapping out 2026 ED138's orbit. The suspected dwarf planet is about 46 times as far from the sun as Earth, making it even more remote than Pluto, which is just 40 times as far. The object is also tilted off the solar system's plane by around 25 degrees, an arrangement that could be linked to disruptions caused by Neptune's gravitational pull.

Initial measurements indicate that 2026 ED138 has a diameter between 600 and 1,500 kilometers (373 and 932 miles), which makes it one of the largest dwarf planet candidates yet detected. But size isn't all that matters: further observations are required to determine if the object has enough mass to be pulled into a round shape, which is a key requirement for a dwarf planet. Despite its size, 2026 ED138 was able to avoid detection for all these years because it's located in a part of the night sky that's crowded with stars whose light drowned it out.

The CDC estimates that 19 drug-resistant pathogens cause 9.7 million infections and more than 50,000 deaths annually in the U.S., with resistance continuing to outpace development of new treatments. "The agency considers this problem to be one of our most urgent public health threats," reports NBC News. From the report: The report is the CDC's first comprehensive assessment of these drug-resistant pathogens in seven years. [...] The new report offers a detailed picture of these threats in the U.S., including a ranking of which are the most urgent concerns, based on the number and severity of infections they cause and how easily preventable or transmissible they are. The ranking also factors in how many treatment options exist and their costs. [...] The report estimates that 19 drug-resistant germs cause 9.7 million infections annually in the U.S. Of these, four pathogens are ranked as most worrisome, including the fungus Candida auris and the bacteria that causes gonorrhea, which has become resistant to all but one class of antibiotics used to treat it.

The other two urgent threats, according to the CDC, are the bacteria Acinetobacter and Enterobacterales, both of which are resistant to a class of antibiotics widely considered a "last resort" for patients. In addition, the report adds a new bacteria to the list of "concerning" threats, which are considered less worrisome but still warrant monitoring: neisseria meningitidis, which causes meningococcal disease. The rare but life-threatening illness can be prevented through childhood vaccinations, but the bacteria that causes it is slowly developing a resistance to penicillin and another antibiotic called ciprofloxacin.

The report also offers some good news: The CDC determined that the bacteria Clostridioides difficile, or "C. diff," which causes diarrhea and inflammation of the colon and can be deadly, is causing fewer cases year over year. The agency downgraded it to a serious threat, whereas it was categorized as urgent in the prior version of the report, which came out in 2019.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere rose to record highs in 2025, locking in climate impacts that will persist for centuries, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Levels of the three main greenhouse gases -- the climate-warming carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide -- all rose to unprecedented figures in 2025, the U.N.'s weather and climate agency said. The World Meteorological Organization said the rise would lead to more long-term temperature increases for the planet.

The bulletin looks at greenhouse gas concentrations -- the amount of those gases in the atmosphere -- rather than new annual emissions amounts as the world burns more coal, oil and gas. In 2025, carbon dioxide concentrations were at 426.8 parts per million (ppm); methane at 1,948 parts per billion, and nitrous oxide at 339.1 parts per billion. That takes them, respectively, to 153%, 267% and 126% of the pre-industrial levels witnessed before 1750. Of the three major greenhouse gases, CO2 accounts for about 66% of the warming effect on the climate.

Around half of the total CO2 emitted each year remains in the atmosphere; the rest is absorbed by the land and oceans. From 2024 to 2025, the global average concentration of CO2 rose by 2.8 ppm -- smaller than the record surge from 2023 to 2024 of 3.6 ppm. WMO senior scientific officer Oksana Tarasova said this reflected the "recovery of the land carbon sinks and reduced fire carbon emissions in 2025 after the strong 2023/2024 El Nino," the naturally occurring, climate-warming weather phenomenon. "However, a 2.8 ppm annual increase is still a substantial addition of carbon to the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning." It is also above the average growth rate for the past decade of 2.6 ppm -- a figure that stood at 0.8 ppm in the 1960s. "Another year, another new record," said WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett. "Greenhouse gases are trapping an unprecedented amount of heat in the atmosphere, providing energy for more extreme weather and associated risks to our economies and societies.

Further reading: UN Says Breaching 1.5C Warming Limit Is 'Imminent and Unavoidable'

Ford's upcoming $28,350 Fathom electric truck will include a built-in inverter capable of supplying up to 10 kW of AC power to a home, bringing bidirectional charging to a significantly cheaper EV. Owners will still need additional Ford home hardware for features like outage backup and peak-rate energy management, but the company expects the necessary equipment to cost substantially less than its previous-generation system. CNET reports: The upcoming Fathom will be based on what Ford calls its Universal EV Platform, designed with the aid of its 2023 acquisition, startup Auto Motive Power, with bidirectional power on the plate from the start. The hardware required to invert the battery's DC energy to an estimated 10 kW of AC home power will be built into the truck, so it won't require a separate wall-mounted inverter box. Ford says the Fathom's system will meet all applicable UL 1741 requirements and IEEE 1547 standards to ensure the vehicle is safely connected to the grid. As for the actual hardware you plug into your car, all signs point to the Fathom using the NACS plug type pioneered by Tesla and now widely adopted by new EVs in North America. In terms of the communication standard -- the one that governs how AC power is routed from the slim wall box to the car's onboard charger -- that'll be via SAE J3068, a software protocol developed for high-power, heavy-duty AC charging.

[...] However, while Fathom's Universal EV Platform eliminates the need for a wall inverter box, it doesn't completely bypass the need for additional hardware to make your home ready to accept bidirectional power. Say you wanted to take advantage of the Home Power Management feature to draw energy into the Fathom's battery when power is cheapest, and then use that energy to offset peak-hour usage when power is most expensive. You'll have to install at least the Ford Home Power Station in your home, at an additional cost. The automaker hasn't specified pricing, but says that it's working to reduce costs and expects this component alone to cost half as much as the first-generation Ford Home Energy system, which debuted at around $1,300. That could put the new system at roughly $650.

Intel, Oracle, IBM and IonQ have joined a growing list of companies objecting to having tokenized versions of their shares traded through OKX and Intercontinental Exchange's blockchain venture, bringing the total number of objections to 26. About 37% of the companies on OKXICE's original list have now opted out, according to CoinDesk. From the report: The four companies were named in an updated public notice (PDF) dated Monday, Oct. 26, from OKXICE, the two firms' joint venture. They join earlier objectors including Microsoft, Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Cisco and Wells Fargo. The growing list underscores a hurdle for OKXICE and the SEC's new framework for tokenized stock trading: building a market that issuers are willing to join. The agency's five-year "Innovation Exemption" gives qualifying venues room to test round-the-clock blockchain-based trading of stocks, and it also gives public companies an option to block their shares from being offered.

OKXICE issued its initial public notice on Oct. 4, outlining plans to use Uniswap v4 liquidity pools on OKX's XLayer blockchain, with transactions settled in stablecoins. The venue would use automated market makers -- software that executes trades through pools of assets rather than matching buyers and sellers through a conventional order book. Under the framework, venues must notify issuers and give them 30 days to object before offering tokenized versions of their shares.

Ars Technica's Dan Goodin reports: Defenders across the world face the burden of responding to yet another botched code-execution vulnerability, this time in boot-time firmware used by most of the world's server vendors and data centers. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 9.5 out of 10, resides in the TianoCore EDK II, an open source codebase that hardware makers and cloud providers use to create the UEFI firmware that runs during the boot-up sequence. Last year, a representative of the UEFI Forum called (PDF) EDK2 the "preeminent solution / implementation of the UEFI specifications." Virtually all UEFI suppliers (sometimes still called IBVs or independent BIOS vendors), including AMI, Insyde, and Phoenix, use the reference code extensively. Project Mu, Microsoft's hardened EDK2 fork, used the code containing the vulnerable component as well.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-97631, is a memory-corruption flaw in an ICMP component that attackers can exploit to execute malicious code that runs before the operating system and firmware can implement defenses like Secure Boot, which establishes a chain of trust for all code, including the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), loaded during boot. While final payloads delivered by CVE-2026-97631 have no persistence -- meaning they run only once -- they can give attackers a wide opening to install other payloads that also run each time early in the boot process.

The parties that discovered CVE-2026-97631 -- Alex Matrosov of Anthropic and Dan Holmes of Google -- had arranged for it to stay under wraps until a coordinated disclosure that was scheduled for January. AMI, a maker of motherboards and other hardware, published this pull request last month that detailed the vulnerability and included a code fix. Once the post came to the attention of the discovering parties, TianoCore Project members published a public advisory last week. With publicly available patch code, it will be trivial for advanced hackers to learn how the vulnerability is triggered and to build working exploits. Further compounding the urgency, patching UEFI code vulnerabilities in millions of end devices sold and used by thousands of hardware makers and cloud providers is cumbersome and time-consuming.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google DeepMind released its newest world model, Genie 4, in research preview on Tuesday. The latest model generates the most photorealistic and interactive worlds yet, allowing users to type prompts mid-simulation to change the scene. The model also generates real-time audio that matches the simulated world, including music, ambient noises, and interactive dialogue.

[...] Google released its predecessor, Genie 3, as a research preview a little over a year ago. Aside from being far more photorealistic and featuring audio, Genie 4 allows for freeform edits, like changing the weather or camera angle in real time or adding new people or objects. It can maintain a consistent scene for up to two minutes, double its predecessor's limit, and offers better physics and more human-like characters. Gemini, Google's AI model, is also mo "What we'll increasingly see in the future are these hybrid world models, where you have a combination of Gemini writing code and text, and Genie ingesting that in real time and simulating reality at different levels of abstraction," Tejas Kulkarni, research director at Google, said during a briefing.

Genie 4 is now available to select testers, with a broader rollout planned in the coming weeks for Google AI Ultra subscribers.

You can watch a demo of Genie 4 on YouTube.

Longtime Slashdot reader fadethepolice writes: Anduril, arguing that its manufacturing capabilities are directly applicable to laptop manufacturing, is starting a project for a fully 100% U.S.-sourced laptop. The computer will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. I did not see any information about the OS, but I'm assuming that, given the type of processor, this will be Linux-based? "Other companies might design their computers in the U.S., Anduril makes them here,â the Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said in a YouTube video. "We're making parts out of metals that the U.S. knows how to extract, knows how to refine, knows how to process, and knows how to mill at scale at a reasonable price; and that goes for the entire laptop. The same thing goes for the battery technology."

The project, called BlueChip, "will take a phased approach, beginning with expanding domestic sourcing and manufacturing, progressing toward eliminating reliance on foreign suppliers, and ultimately establishing an end-to-end American supply chain." The first device is expected in April 2027.

A press release with additional information is available here.

Apple has acknowledged an inner-display defect affecting a small number of its new $1,999 iPhone Duo foldables after customers reported hearing a crunch while unfolding the device before cracks, lines and other display failures appeared along the crease. Apple is replacing affected phones and investigating the problem.

iFixit believes a failing hinge component may be pressing into and cracking the display rather than the panel itself being defective. Bloomberg reports: Reports of the problem first surfaced on Reddit and other social media sites. Bloomberg News has since independently verified the issue with more than half a dozen customers, who provided photos showing damage to their devices or evidence of their support conversations with Apple. Apple acknowledged the issue in a statement, saying it was "aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units."

"If users experience issues with their iPhone Duo display, they should contact AppleCare for a replacement," the Cupertino, California-based company said. Most Duos aren't affected by the problem, and the units that are impacted exhibit the defect quickly, Apple said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: A Florida man who was the subject of a 2019 investigation by ProPublica was indicted last month on federal charges that he defrauded clients of his ransomware data recovery firm. According to the Justice Department, the man, Zohar Pinhasi, told customers he could recover their encrypted files without having to pay hackers, when, in reality, he paid the ransom and charged victims a hefty fee on top. The indictment mirrors the findings from ProPublica's 2019 article "The Trade Secret," which centered on Pinhasi and his scheme.

The outlet found that the ransomware victims were being harmed twice: once by the hackers, who locked their targets' files and demanded ransom, and a second time by MonsterCloud, Pinhasi's Florida-based data recovery firm, which misled its clients about not paying ransoms. "By falsely claiming to decrypt ransomware without paying off the ransomers, the defendant re-victimized his clients while extracting a hefty profit for himself," U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said in an Oct. 7 press release. "Our Office will vigorously prosecute ransomware attackers who prey on Americans from across the world and those who cynically profit from their criminal activity." [...] Pinhasi, who went by the alias Zack Green, told ProPublica in 2019 that MonsterCloud never promised clients that their data will be recovered by any particular method. "How we do it, it's our problem," he told ProPublica. "You will get your data back. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride." He called MonsterCloud's data recovery methods a "trade secret."

[...] Federal investigators found that, over the course of the scheme, Pinhasi allegedly charged clients more than $19 million and paid more than $8 million in ransom payments. In one example, Pinhasi made a ransom payment of about $8,200 but charged the client about $150,000. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison. [...] In 2019, Pinhasi touted MonsterCloud's ties to law enforcement as evidence of its integrity. Pistole, who also headed the Transportation Security Administration under President Barack Obama, was listed on MonsterCloud's website as the only member of its "Cyber Security Advisory Council."

Ahead of the touchscreen MacBook Pro expected to debut tomorrow, Apple has refreshed its standard 14-inch MacBook Pro with the new M6 processor, promising up to 20% faster multithreaded performance, improved power efficiency, and more powerful on-device AI capabilities. The Verge reports: Announced this morning through a press release, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro features three Thunder 4 USB-C ports that all support charging and DisplayPort connectivity, a MagSafe 3 charging port, full-size HDMI, and an SDXC memory card slot accommodating photographers. Pricing for the new M6 version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 with 16GB of memory, the same as last year's M5 model. Preorders start on October 28th and shipping is expected to begin on November 6th.

The new M6 processor is Apple's first 2nm chip with a bump to a 12-core CPU, up from 10 cores in the M5, and the company says it offers up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance when compared to its predecessor. The M6 also features a Dual 16-core Neural Engine to handle heavy on-device AI tasks, plus an upgraded 12-core GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core. In addition to performance improvements, Apple says its M6 processor is more power efficient.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: While global tech stocks teeter, in China they have already crashed as lofty valuations collapse under worries about AI demand and curbs on Chinese exports. The meltdown, tanking the mainland STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor leaders by 40% in less than four months and vaporizing some $480 billion in market value, is an ill omen for wobbly world markets and a dampener on China's efforts at encouraging its savers into stocks to fund the AI boom. It has also slammed the brakes on a rally running two years, since economic stimulus promises sent shares soaring, and has stalled Beijing's push to break with a long boom-bust pattern and drive a "slow bull" market that delivers reliable performance. China's broad blue-chip index has dropped about 20% from highs made in June. "The stock market later evolved into a speculative crazy bull," said Beijing-based fund manager Dong Baozhen. "And now we see the bubble bursting." There was no clear trigger for the selloff in China, though traders pointed to high valuations, tax bills, and the threat of foreign bans on Chinese data center equipment. According to Goldman Sachs, AI stocks account for 42% of China's market capitalization and 57% of trading turnover, leaving investors widely exposed to the downturn.

"What's happening is now going to put a stop for many of the companies trying to get themselves listed," said Hong Hao, managing partner and chief investment officer at Lotus Asset Management in Hong Kong.

"Overemphasising the 'technology content' -- that is, the weighting of tech companies by market value in major indexes -- leads to a deviation, even a distortion, in capital behavior," said Leo Wang, partner at Beijing-based Qianchuang Capital. "This created a severe bubble in certain sectors and a serious drain on others."

"Just like all other Chinese manufacturers, (chipmakers and AI suppliers) will eventually end up in a price war," said fund manager Wang Zhuo, partner at Shanghai Zhuozhu Investment Management. "There's no exception," he said. "All bubbles inevitably burst."

Denmark's Ministry of Digitization reportedly abandoned a pilot to replace Microsoft Office with the open-source Collabora suite less than six months after it began. Tom's Hardware reports: According to Danish publication Computerworld, the pilot project was launched in 2025 and involved 38 employees, all of whom would start using the British open-source Collabora office suite instead of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The experiment was initiated by the then Digitization Minister Caroline Stage, who wanted to reduce the country's dependence on American technology. Denmark isn't alone in moving away from U.S. software, with France and the Netherlands both taking steps to replace Microsoft Windows. However, it seemed that the experiment fizzled out less than six months after it started. It had reportedly ended by the time the Danish government called for an early election in February 2026, with some employees complaining about issues with style, paragraph formatting, blank pages, and challenges with tracking changes.

But even though it's been months since the experiment reportedly ended, Prof. Mikkel Flyberbom of the Copenhagen Business School complains that the project hasn't been properly evaluated. "It's a good idea to test alternatives in a pilot project," the professor said in an email. "However, I wish that the ministry would take the opportunity to learn from the pilot project and share those experiences with other parts of the public sector."

Susanne Rust of the Los Angeles Times reports (paywalled) that industry executives knew for decades that microplastics were infiltrating the human body. Slashdot reader joshuark shares an excerpt from the report: Scientists today say we're just beginning to understand the harm that the tiny bits of plastic we drink, eat and breathe are doing to the human body. Internal memos among company scientists and executives obtained by The Times reveal that for at least half a century, the plastics industry has been aware of and concerned about the potential for microplastic contamination in the human body. But recently discovered chemical company documents dating back several decades show that industry scientists have long been aware of -- and concerned about -- the way microplastic particles migrate beyond the gut in animals and humans, depositing in important organs. And the potential for that knowledge to affect the plastic food packaging industry.

Their concern goes back to 1974 and a scientific meeting at a New York City hotel, where a German gastroenterologist presented a scientific paper that showed for the first time that ingested particles like microplastics could infiltrate the rest of the body. His presentation was largely overlooked by the government scientists in attendance but became a point of worried discussion among company scientists. Tracey Woodruff, professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University, who reviewed the documents, said they indicate scientists and executives at major chemical companies have known and remained silent even as microplastics accumulated in tissues. She likened it to other industries that knew about pollutants -- greenhouse gases, asbestos and tobacco -- but did not take action to make them safer.

A spokesperson with the chemical industry's largest trade group took issue with that characterization. "Scientific debate over what the evidence shows is not silence. It is how sound science and effective policy advance," said Craig Davis, senior director of plastics chemistry at the American Chemistry Council. "Our industry is committed to advancing microplastics science by supporting independent research and policies that would do so."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The U.S. designated helium as a critical material on Friday because it's indispensable for making semiconductors that are essential to energy generation, and the global supply is at risk of disruption, according to the Energy Department. The designation by the Energy Department means that more federal financing will be available for helium producers and that the government will monitor it more closely. Helium is primarily produced as a byproduct of natural gas processing. The United States is the world's largest producer of natural gas and of helium. Qatar and Russia are the other top helium producers.

[...] Helium makes balloons rise, but that's not why the DOE is interested in it. Helium plays an important role in wind, solar and nuclear energy production, space exploration, medical imaging and research. Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson said helium's unique properties make it irreplaceable, such as the fact that it's non-combustible and has the lowest boiling point of any gas. The nation needs an ample supply for semiconductors, quantum and super computing, and superconducting magnets, added Robertson, who oversees the Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation.

[...] Despite environmental concerns with recovering helium from natural gas, there are also opportunities, said Greeshma Gadikota, director of the Lenfast Center for Sustainable Energy at Columbia University. "If we burn the natural gas, there are a lot of CO2 emissions associated with that," Gadikota said. "But if you just extract the helium and use it, the uses of it don't contribute necessarily to greenhouse gas emissions. "So from a climate standpoint, if we are going to continue down the line of extracting natural gas and recovering helium," she added, "I would prefer to see natural gas being used in a form where we directly produce hydrogen and we produce solid carbon." Hydrogen is a clean burning fuel, and solid carbon can provide permanent carbon sequestration and can be used widely in industrial applications, including rubber and pigments.