An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: In its most aggressive attack against offshore wind yet, the Trump administration halted the $5 billion Empire Wind 1, already under construction off New York's coast. Norwegian developer Equinor announced yesterday that it received notice from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) ordering Empire Wind 1 to halt all activities on the outer continental shelf until BOEM has completed its review. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted this tweet yesterday: ".@Interior, in consultation with @HowardLutnick, is directing @BOEM to immediately halt all construction activities on the Empire Wind Project until further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis."

Burgum gave no indication of what insufficiencies there were in the approval process for the fully permitted offshore wind project, despite Trump's recent declaration of a national energy emergency that speeds up permitting processes. The commercial lease for the 810-megawatt (MW) Empire Wind 1's federal offshore wind area was signed in March 2017 during the first Trump administration. It was approved by the Biden administration in November 2023 and began construction in 2024. The project is being developed under contract with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). Empire Wind 1, which was due to come online in 2027, has the potential to power 500,000 New York homes. Equinor says it's considering appealing the order.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul issued a statement: "Every single day, I'm working to make energy more affordable, reliable and abundant in New York and the federal government should be supporting those efforts rather than undermining them. Empire Wind 1 is already employing hundreds of New Yorkers, including 1,000 good-paying union jobs as part of a growing sector that has already spurred significant economic development and private investment throughout the state and beyond. As Governor, I will not allow this federal overreach to stand. I will fight this every step of the way to protect union jobs, affordable energy and New York's economic future."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Robotaxi development is speeding at a fast pace in China, but we don't hear much about it in the USA, where the news focuses mostly on Waymo, with a bit about Zoox, Motional, May, trucking projects and other domestic players. China has 4 main players with robotaxi service, dominated by Baidu (the Chinese Google.) A recent session at last week's Ride AI conference in Los Angeles revealed some details about the different regulatory regime in China, and featured a report from a Chinese-American YouTuber who has taken on a mission to ride in the different vehicles.

Zion Maffeo, deputy general counsel for Pony.AI, provided some details on regulations in China. While Pony began with U.S. operations, its public operations are entirely in China, and it does only testing in the USA. Famously it was one of the few companies to get a California "no safety driver" test permit, but then lost it after a crash, and later regained it. Chinese authorities at many levels keep a close watch over Chinese robotaxi companies. They must get approval for all levels of operation which control where they can test and operate, and how much supervision is needed. Operation begins with testing with a safety driver behind the wheel (as almost everywhere in the world,) with eventual graduation to having the safety driver in the passenger seat but with an emergency stop. Then they move to having a supervisor in the back seat before they can test with nobody in the vehicle, usually limited to an area with simpler streets.

The big jump can then come to allow testing with nobody in the vehicle, but with full time monitoring by a remote employee who can stop the vehicle. From there they can graduate to taking passengers, and then expanding the service to more complex areas. Later they can go further, and not have full time remote monitoring, though there do need to be remote employees able to monitor and assist part time. Pony has a permit allowing it to have 3 vehicles per remote operator, and has one for 15 vehicles in process, but they declined comment on just how many vehicles they actually have per operator. Baidu also did not respond to queries on this. [...] In addition, Chinese jurisdictions require that the system in a car independently log any "interventions" by safety drivers in a sort of "black box" system. These reports are regularly given to regulators, though they are not made public. In California, companies must file an annual disengagement report, but they have considerable leeway on what they consider a disengagement so the numbers can't be readily compared. Chinese companies have no discretion on what is reported, and they may notify authorities of a specific objection if they wish to declare that an intervention logged in their black box should not be counted. On her first trip, YouTuber Sophia Tung found Baidu's 5th generation robotaxi to offer a poor experience in ride quality, wait time, and overall service. However, during a return trip she tried Baidu's 6th generation vehicle in Wuhan and rated it as the best among Chinese robotaxis, approaching the quality of Waymo.

Back in 2023 Python's infrastructure director called it "the first step in our plan to build financial support and long-term sustainability of PyPI" while giving users "one of our most requested features: organization accounts." (That is, "self-managed teams with their own exclusive branded web addresses" to make their massive Python Package Index repository "easier to use for large community projects, organizations, or companies who manage multiple sub-teams and multiple packages.")

Nearly two years later, they've announced that they're "making progress" on its rollout... Over the last month, we have taken some more baby steps to onboard new Organizations, welcoming 61 new Community Organizations and our first 18 Company Organizations. We're still working to improve the review and approval process and hope to improve our processing speed over time. To date, we have 3,562 Community and 6,424 Company Organization requests to process in our backlog.
They've also onboarded a PyPI Support Specialist to provide "critical bandwidth to review the backlog of requests" and "free up staff engineering time to develop features to assist in that review." (And "we were finally able to finalize our Terms of Service document for PyPI," build the tooling necessary to notify users, and initiate the Terms of Service rollout. [Since launching 20 years ago PyPi's terms of service have only been updated twice.]

In other news the security developer-in-residence at the Python Software Foundation has been continuing work on a Software Bill-of-Materials (SBOM) as described in Python Enhancement Proposal #770. The feature "would designate a specific directory inside of Python package metadata (".dist-info/sboms") as a directory where build backends and other tools can store SBOM documents that describe components within the package beyond the top-level component." The goal of this project is to make bundled dependencies measurable by software analysis tools like vulnerability scanning, license compliance, and static analysis tools. Bundled dependencies are common for scientific computing and AI packages, but also generally in packages that use multiple programming languages like C, C++, Rust, and JavaScript. The PEP has been moved to Provisional Status, meaning the PEP sponsor is doing a final review before tools can begin implementing the PEP ahead of its final acceptance into changing Python packaging standards. Seth has begun implementing code that tools can use when adopting the PEP, such as a project which abstracts different Linux system package managers functionality to reverse a file path into the providing package metadata.

Security developer-in-residence Seth Larson will be speaking about this project at PyCon US 2025 in Pittsburgh, PA in a talk titled "Phantom Dependencies: is your requirements.txt haunted?"
Meanwhile InfoWorld reports that newly approved Python Enhancement Proposal 751 will also give Python a standard lock file format.

For the second time, President Trump has extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. operations by 75 days. The TikTok deal "requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed," said Trump in a post on his Truth Social platform. The extension will "keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days."

"We hope to continue working in Good Faith with China, who I understand are not very happy about our Reciprocal Tariffs (Necessary for Fair and Balanced Trade between China and the U.S.A.!)," Trump added. CNBC reports: ByteDance has been in discussion with the U.S. government, the company told CNBC, adding that any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law. "An agreement has not been executed," a spokesperson for ByteDance said in a statement. "There are key matters to be resolved." Before Trump's decision, ByteDance faced an April 5 deadline to carry out a "qualified divestiture" of TikTok's U.S. business as required by a national security law signed by former President Joe Biden in April 2024.

ByteDance's original deadline to sell TikTok was on Jan. 19, but Trump signed an executive order when he took office the next day that gave the company 75 more days to make a deal. Although the law would penalize internet service providers and app store owners like Apple and Google for hosting and providing services to TikTok in the U.S., Trump's executive order instructed the attorney general to not enforce it. "This proves that Tariffs are the most powerful Economic tool, and very important to our National Security!," Trump said in the Truth Social post. "We do not want TikTok to 'go dark.' We look forward to working with TikTok and China to close the Deal. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has agreed to pay $100 million in cash to settle a long-running lawsuit claiming it overcharged advertisers by failing to provide promised discounts and charged for clicks on ads outside the geographic areas the advertisers targeted. A preliminary settlement of the 14-year-old class action, which began in March 2011, was filed late Thursday in the San Jose, California, federal court, and requires a judge's approval.

Advertisers who participated in Google's AdWords program, now known as Google Ads, accused the search engine operator of breaching its contract by manipulating its Smart Pricing formula to artificially reduce discounts. The advertisers also said Google, a unit of Mountain View, California-based Alphabet, misled them by failing to limit ad distribution to locations they designated, violating California's unfair competition law. Thursday's settlement covers advertisers who used AdWords between January 1, 2004, and December 13, 2012.

Google denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle. "This case was about ad product features we changed over a decade ago and we're pleased it's resolved," spokesman Jose Castaneda said in an emailed statement. Lawyers for the plaintiffs may seek fees of up to 33% of the settlement fund, plus $4.2 million for expenses. According to court papers, the case took a long time as the parties produced extensive evidence, including more than 910,000 pages of documents and multiple terabytes of click data from Google, and participated in six mediation sessions before four different mediators.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) says banks no longer need prior approval before engaging in crypto-related activities, such as holding digital currency assets or partnering with companies in the industry. Axios reports: After publishing a general caution against banks participating in the industry just two years ago, the FDIC is the latest Trump administration regulator to change its tune entirely amid the president's warm embrace of crypto. "With today's action, the FDIC is turning the page on the flawed approach of the past three years," FDIC acting chairman Travis Hill said in a statement.

The OCC was the first of those regulators to revise their guidance, telling banks it supervises earlier this month that they no longer need permission to engage in certain common cryptocurrency-related activities. The Fed as of Friday had not issued any update, though chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers during a congressional hearing last month that the central bank would take a fresh look at the guidance. The new policy clarifies that "FDIC-supervised institutions may engage in permissible activities, including ... digital assets, provided that they adequately manage the associated risks."

Stanford University researchers have proposed creating "bodyoids" -- ethically sourced human bodies grown from stem cells without neural components for consciousness or pain sensation -- to revolutionize medical research and address organ shortages. In a new opinion piece published in MIT Technology Review, scientists Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi argue that recent advances in biotechnology make this concept increasingly plausible. The approach would combine pluripotent stem cells, artificial uterus technology, and genetic techniques to inhibit brain development.

The researchers point to persistent shortages of human biological materials as a major bottleneck in medical progress. More than 100,000 patients currently await solid organ transplants in the US alone, while less than 15% of drugs entering clinical trials receive regulatory approval. These lab-grown bodies could potentially generate patient-specific organs that are perfect immunological matches, eliminate the need for lifelong immunosuppression, and provide personalized drug screening models.

In an op-ed for MIT Technology Review, authors Carsten T. Charlesworth, Henry T. Greely, and Hiromitsu Nakauchi make the case for human "bodyoids" that could reduce animal testing, improve drug development, and alleviate organ shortages: Why do we hear about medical breakthroughs in mice, but rarely see them translate into cures for human disease? Why do so few drugs that enter clinical trials receive regulatory approval? And why is the waiting list for organ transplantation so long? These challenges stem in large part from a common root cause: a severe shortage of ethically sourced human bodies. It may be disturbing to characterize human bodies in such commodifying terms, but the unavoidable reality is that human biological materials are an essential commodity in medicine, and persistent shortages of these materials create a major bottleneck to progress.

This imbalance between supply and demand is the underlying cause of the organ shortage crisis, with more than 100,000 patients currently waiting for a solid organ transplant in the US alone. It also forces us to rely heavily on animals in medical research, a practice that can't replicate major aspects of human physiology and makes it necessary to inflict harm on sentient creatures. In addition, the safety and efficacy of any experimental drug must still be confirmed in clinical trials on living human bodies. These costly trials risk harm to patients, can take a decade or longer to complete, and make it through to approval less than 15% of the time.

There might be a way to get out of this moral and scientific deadlock. Recent advances in biotechnology now provide a pathway to producing living human bodies without the neural components that allow us to think, be aware, or feel pain. Many will find this possibility disturbing, but if researchers and policymakers can find a way to pull these technologies together, we may one day be able to create "spare" bodies, both human and nonhuman. These could revolutionize medical research and drug development, greatly reducing the need for animal testing, rescuing many people from organ transplant lists, and allowing us to produce more effective drugs and treatments. All without crossing most people's ethical lines.

Although it may seem like science fiction, recent technological progress has pushed this concept into the realm of plausibility. Pluripotent stem cells, one of the earliest cell types to form during development, can give rise to every type of cell in the adult body. Recently, researchers have used these stem cells to create structures that seem to mimic the early development of actual human embryos. At the same time, artificial uterus technology is rapidly advancing, and other pathways may be opening to allow for the development of fetuses outside of the body. Such technologies, together with established genetic techniques to inhibit brain development, make it possible to envision the creation of "bodyoids" -- a potentially unlimited source of human bodies, developed entirely outside of a human body from stem cells, that lack sentience or the ability to feel pain.

President Trump signed a long-expected executive action on Thursday calling on U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities." From a report: "We're going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs," Trump said. "And this is a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it's a common sense thing to do, and it's going to work, absolutely."

The move has been expected since early February, when the White House revealed its intentions but withheld the action until after McMahon's Senate confirmation. It now arrives more than a week after the Trump administration has already begun sweeping layoffs at the Education Department. According to the administration's own numbers, Trump inherited a department with 4,133 employees. Nearly 600 workers have since chosen to leave, by resigning or retiring. And last week, 1,300 workers were told they would lose their jobs as part of a reduction in force. That leaves 2,183 staff at the department -- roughly half the size it was just a few weeks ago.

The order instructs McMahon to act "to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law," an acknowledgement that the department and its signature responsibilities were created by Congress and cannot legally be ended without congressional approval. That would almost certainly require 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to overcome a Democratic filibuster.

A newly FDA-approved form of adaptive deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease adjusts electrical stimulation in real time based on an individual's brain signals, improving symptom control and reducing medication dependence. Scientific American: For decades, Keith Krehbiel took high doses of medications with a debilitating side effect -- severe nausea -- following his diagnosis with early-onset Parkinson's disease at age 42 in 1997. When each dose wore off, he experienced dyskinesia -- involuntary, repetitive muscle movements. In his case, this consisted of head bobbing and weaving. Krehbiel is among one million Americans who live with this progressive neurological disorder, which causes slowed movements, tremors and balance problems. But soon after surgery to implant electrodes into specific areas of his brain in 2020, his life dramatically improved. "My tremor went away almost entirely," says Krehbiel, now age 70 and a professor emeritus of political science at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, whose Parkinson's symptoms began at age 40 and were initially misdiagnosed as repetitive stress injury from computer use. "I reduced my Parkinson's meds by more than two thirds," he adds. "And I no longer have a sensation of a foggy brain, nor nausea or dyskinesia."

Krehbiel was the first participant to enroll in a clinical trial testing a new form of deep-brain stimulation (DBS), a technology that gained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Parkinson's tremor and essential tremor in 1997 (it was later approved for other symptoms and conditions). The new adaptive system adjusts stimulation levels automatically based on the person's individual brain signals. In late February it received FDA approval for Parkinson's disease "based on results of the international multicenter trial, which involved participants at 10 sites across a total of four countries -- the U.S., the Netherlands, Canada and France. This technology is suitable for anyone with Parkinson's, not just individuals in clinical trials, says Helen Bronte-Stewart, the recent trial's global lead investigator and a neurologist specializing in movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. "Like a cardiac pacemaker that responds to the rhythms of the heart, adaptive deep-brain stimulation uses a person's individual brain signals to control the electric pulses it delivers," Bronte-Stewart says. "This makes it more personalized, precise and efficient than older DBS methods."

"Traditional DBS delivers constant stimulation, which doesn't always match the fluctuating symptoms of Parkinson's disease," adds neurologist Todd Herrington, another of the trial's investigators and director of the deep-brain stimulation program at Massachusetts General Hospital. With adaptive DBS, "the goal is to adjust stimulation in real time to provide more effective symptom control, fewer side effects and improved patient quality of life." Current FDA approval of this adaptive system is for the treatment of Parkinson's only, not essential tremor, dystonia (a neurological disorder that causes excessive, repetitive and involuntary muscle contractions) or epilepsy, which still rely on traditional, continuous DBS, Herrington says.

The Washington Post reports: Meta was willing to go to extreme lengths to censor content and shut down political dissent in a failed attempt to win the approval of the Chinese Communist Party and bring Facebook to millions of internet users in China, according to a new whistleblower complaint from a former global policy director at the company.

The complaint by Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked on a team handling China policy, alleges that the social media giant so desperately wanted to enter the lucrative China market that it was willing to allow the ruling party to oversee all social media content appearing in the country and quash dissenting opinions. Meta, then called Facebook, developed a censorship system for China in 2015 and planned to install a "chief editor" who would decide what content to remove and could shut down the entire site during times of "social unrest," according to a copy of the 78-page complaint exclusively seen by The Washington Post.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg also agreed to crack down on the account of a high-profile Chinese dissident living in the United States following pressure from a high-ranking Chinese official the company hoped would help them enter China, according to the complaint, which was filed in April to the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]. When asked about its efforts to enter China, Meta executives repeatedly "stonewalled and provided nonresponsive or misleading information" to investors and American regulators, according to the complaint.

Wynn-Williams bolstered her SEC complaint with internal Meta documents about the company's plans, which were reviewed by The Post. Wynn-Williams, who was fired from her job in 2017, is also scheduled to release a memoir this week documenting her time at the company, titled "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism." According to a memo in the complaint, Meta leaders faced aggressive pressure by Chinese government officials to host Chinese users' data to local data centers, which Wynn-Williams alleges would have made it easier for the Chinese Communist Party to covertly obtain the personal information of its citizens.
Wynn-Williams told the Washington Post that "for many years Meta has been working hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party, briefing them on the latest technological developments and lying about it."

Reached for a comment, Meta spokesman Andy Stone told the Washington Post it was "no secret" they'd been interested in operating in China. "This was widely reported beginning a decade ago. We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019." Although the Post shares new details about what a Facebook privacy policy staffer offer China in negotations in 2014. ("In exchange for the ability to establish operations in China, FB will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese users' data — including Hongkongese users' data.")

The Post also describes one iteration of a proposed agreement in 2015. "To aid the effort, Meta built a censorship system specially designed for China to review, including the ability to automatically detect restricted terms and popular content on Facebook, according to the complaint...

"In 2017, Meta covertly launched a handful of social apps under the name of a China-based company created by one of its employees, according to the complaint."

San Francisco-based biotech startup Loyal says a drug it developed to increase dogs' lifespan "has passed a significant milestone on the way to regulatory approval," reports the Washington Post: The Food and Drug Administration certified the daily pill as having a "reasonable expectation of effectiveness" at extending senior dogs' lifespans. The regulator's Center for Veterinary Medicine still has to certify that the drug is safe and that Loyal can manufacture it at scale before vets can prescribe the pill to dogs 10 years or older that weigh 14 pounds or more. Loyal's CEO, Celine Halioua, estimates that the process should be complete by the end of 2025 and called the FDA's initial recognition "a key step" to extending dogs' lives...

In the past decade, a subculture of tech entrepreneurship has focused on helping people stave off death, hawking custom-made dietary supplements and $2,500 full-body MRIs and investing in the development of antiaging drugs, among many other efforts. According to data firm Pitchbook, about $900 million in venture capital has been poured into antiaging and longevity start-ups in the past 12 months. Loyal has raised more than $150 million in venture funding since its 2019 founding to develop lifespan-extending drugs initially focused on canines.

Launching veterinary drugs is in some ways easier than winning approval for human treatments. Because dogs and humans have evolved alongside one another, Halioua hopes to eventually apply her findings about pets to help prolong their owners' lives. "If we can successfully delay the onset and severity of age-related diseases in dogs, it's extremely compelling evidence that it will also do that in humans," Halioua said. The biological processes of aging unfold faster in dogs because they live such short lives, she said, helping researchers and entrepreneurs probe how they work.
"Loyal's pill is a result of research into how to mimic the life-extending benefit of caloric restriction without the appetite suppression," according to the article, "and without the need for an owner to restrict their dog's food.

"The drug aims to improve a dog's metabolic fitness, or the body's ability to convert nutrients into energy and regulate hormones, which declines in humans and canines with age..."

"Tesla is taking steps to launch a ride-sharing service that could compete directly with Uber, Lyft and Waymo," reports Axios, noting that Tesla "has filed for a transportation charter-party carrier permit from the California Public Utilities Commission, Bloomberg reported Thursday." "That classification means Tesla would own and control the fleet of vehicles," Bloomberg reported... "In its communications with California officials, Tesla discussed driver's license information and drug-testing coordination, suggesting the company intends to use human drivers, at least initially," Bloomberg reported. The company is seeking the same type of permit that Waymo uses to run its robotaxi business.Uber is gearing up to begin offering autonomous vehicle services in partnership with Waymo in Austin and Atlanta later this year.
The article also adds that Musk "told investors in January that 'I'm confident that we will release unsupervised FSD in California this year,' referring to the company's Full Self-Driving system." But "Tesla has yet to apply for a permit to operate driverless vehicles..." notes the EV blog Electrek, adding "This is just a step for Tesla to test ride-hailing services ahead of autonomy."

Reuters also points out that "Earlier in October, Tesla revealed the Cybercab, a robotaxi concept that had no steering wheel or control pedals... He has said the Cybercab will go into production in 2026 and will also be available for customers to buy for less than $30,000."

Alibaba will partner with Apple to support AI features on iPhones in China, sending Alibaba's shares surging over 9% to a three-year high. Reuters reports: "They talked to a number of companies in China. In the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honored to do business with a great company like Apple," Tsai said at the World Government Summit in Dubai. Apple continues to work with Baidu on AI features for iPhones in China, The Information reported on Thursday, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

While Apple's phones outside China utilize a combination of its proprietary Apple Intelligence and OpenAI's ChatGPT, Tsai did not specify whether the Alibaba partnership would follow a similar model. In China, consumer-facing AI products require regulatory approval, and The Information reported earlier that both Alibaba and Apple have already submitted materials to authorities. "Instead of viewing the Alibaba-Apple partnership through the lens of China's AI strength, the partnership is mainly a recognition of Alibaba's AI capability," said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at tech research firm Omdia.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A groundbreaking NHS trial will attempt to boost patients' mood using a brain-computer-interface that directly alters brain activity using ultrasound. The device, which is designed to be implanted beneath the skull but outside the brain, maps activity and delivers targeted pulses of ultrasound to "switch on" clusters of neurons. Its safety and tolerability will be tested on about 30 patient in the 6.5 million-pound trial, funded by the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria).

[...] The latest trial will test a device developed by the US-based non-profit Forest Neurotech. In contrast to invasive implants, in which electrodes are inserted into a specific location in the brain, Forest 1 uses ultrasound to read-out and modify activity. Aria describes the device as "the most advanced BCI in the world" due to its ability to modify activity across multiple regions simultaneously. This widens potential future applications to a huge patient population affected by conditions such as depression, anxiety and epilepsy, which are all "circuit level" conditions rather than being localized in a specific brain region.

The NHS trial will recruit patients who, due to brain injury, have had part of their skull temporarily removed to relieve a critical buildup of pressure in the brain. This means the device can be tested without having to perform surgery. When placed beneath the skull, or in individuals with a skull defect, ultrasound can detect tiny changes in blood flow to produce 3D maps of brain activity with a spatial resolution of about 100 times that of a typical fMRI scan. The same implant can deliver focused ultrasound to mechanically nudge neurons towards firing, providing a way to remotely dial activity up at precise locations. Participants will wear the device on their scalp at the site of the skull defect for two hours. Their brain activity will be measured and researchers will test whether patients' mood and feelings of motivation can be reliably altered.

There are safety considerations, as ultrasound can cause tissue to heat up. Prof Elsa Fouragnan, a neuroscientist at the University of Plymouth, which is collaborating on the project, said: "What we're trying to minimize is heat. There's a safety and efficacy trade-off." She added that it would also be important to ensure that personality or decision-making were not altered in unintended ways -- for instance, making someone more impulsive. The study will run for three and a half years starting from March, with the first eight months focused on securing regulatory approval. If successful, Forest hopes to move into a full clinical trial for a condition such as depression. Aimun Jamjoom, a consultant neurosurgeon at the Barking, Havering and Redbridge university hospitals NHS trust, who is leading the project, said: "[T]he ability to offer a safer form of surgery is very exciting. If you look at conditions like depression or epilepsy, [up to] a third of these patients just don't get better. It's those groups where a technology like this could be a life-changing solution."

Eric Council Jr. pleaded guilty to identity theft and access device fraud after hijacking the SEC's X account to falsely announce Bitcoin ETF approval. He was compensated in Bitcoin by co-conspirators, and while the Justice Department continues its investigation, Council faces up to five years in prison. Gizmodo reports: According to the Justice Department, Council accessed the SEC's account using an attack called SIM swapping, in which a perpetrator uses social engineering to trick a phone carrier's customer service representatives into transferring an individual's phone number to a new device. Basically, they call into a support line and use pieces of personal information about a victim they have gathered online to convince the representative they are the person they are targeting. Once perpetrators take the number and can begin receiving text messages, they are able to reset the passwords of accounts on services like X. It is not really a "hack" in the traditional sense that they are not finding flaws in software but rather exploiting human trust.

Unfortunately for individuals like Council, all Bitcoin transactions are logged on a blockchain for anyone to see, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for investigators to find. If he did make out with a lot of crypto, it would be hard to keep it hidden forever. Council allegedly did not post the message himself to the SEC's X account, but conducted the SIM swap and left the rest of the work to his co-conspirators who compensated Council in the form of, of course, Bitcoin. The price of the cryptocurrency rose by $1,000 after the fake announcement, according to the Justice Department, and fell by $2,000 after the SEC issued a correction. That could have led to a big windfall depending on how much Bitcoin the perpetrators held at the time.

Anduril will take over management and eventual manufacturing of the U.S. Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) from Microsoft, a significant shift in one of the military's most ambitious augmented reality projects.

The deal, which requires Army approval, could be worth over $20 billion in the next decade if all options are exercised, according to Bloomberg. The IVAS system, based on Microsoft's HoloLens mixed reality platform, aims to equip soldiers with advanced capabilities including night vision and airborne threat detection.

Under the new arrangement, Microsoft will transition to providing cloud computing and AI infrastructure, while Anduril assumes control of hardware production and software development. The Army has planned orders for up to 121,000 units, though full production hinges on passing combat testing this year.

The program has faced technical hurdles, with early prototypes causing headaches and nausea among soldiers. The current slimmer version has received better feedback, though cost remains a concern - the Army indicated the $80,000 per-unit price needs to "be substantially less" to justify large-scale procurement.

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, writing in a blog post: This move has been so many years in the making, over a decade of hacking and scheming and dreaming and building with exactly this specific outcome clearly visualized in my mind's eye. I can hardly believe I managed to pull it off. Everything I've done in my career -- building Oculus out of a camper trailer, shipping VR to millions of consumers, getting run out of Silicon Valley by backstabbing snakes, betting that Anduril could tear people out of the bigtech megacorp matrix and put them to work on our nation's most important problems -- has led to this moment. IVAS isn't just another product, it is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine how technology supports those who serve. We have a shot to prove that this long-standing dream is no windmill, that this can expand far beyond one company or one headset and act as a a nexus for the best of the best to set a new standard for how a large collection of companies can work together to solve our nation's most important problems.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been demanding an overhaul of a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, and now his telecom policy director has been chosen to lead the federal agency in charge of the grant money. "Congratulations to my Telecom Policy Director, Arielle Roth, for being nominated to lead NTIA," Cruz wrote last night, referring to President Trump's pick to lead the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Roth's nomination is pending Senate approval. Roth works for the Senate Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Cruz. "Arielle led my legislative and oversight efforts on communications and broadband policy with integrity, creativity, and dedication," Cruz wrote.

Shortly after Trump's election win, Cruz called for an overhaul of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which was created by Congress in November 2021 and is being implemented by the NTIA. Biden-era leaders of the NTIA developed rules for the program and approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory, but a major change in approach could delay the distribution of funds. Cruz previously accused the NTIA of "technology bias" because the agency prioritized fiber over other types of technology. He said Congress would review BEAD for "imposition of statutorily-prohibited rate regulation; unionized workforce and DEI labor requirements; climate change assessments; excessive per-location costs; and other central planning mandates."

Roth criticized the BEAD implementation at a Federalist Society event in June 2024. "Instead of prioritizing connecting all Americans who are currently unserved to broadband, the NTIA has been preoccupied with attaching all kinds of extralegal requirements on BEAD and, to be honest, a woke social agenda, loading up all kinds of burdens that deter participation in the program and drive up costs," she said. Municipal broadband networks and fiber networks in general could get less funding under the new plans. Roth is "expected to change the funding conditions that currently include priority access for government-owned networks" and "could revisit decisions like the current preference for fiber," Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Congress defined priority broadband projects under BEAD as those that "ensure that the network built by the project can easily scale speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses; and support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services."

The Biden NTIA determined that only end-to-end fiber-optic architecture meet these criteria. "End-to-end fiber networks can be updated by replacing equipment attached to the ends of the fiber-optic facilities, allowing for quick and relatively inexpensive network scaling as compared to other technologies. Moreover, new fiber deployments will facilitate the deployment and growth of 5G and other advanced wireless services, which rely extensively on fiber for essential backhaul," the Biden NTIA said (PDF).

"iPhone devices are now eligible to test SpaceX-owned Starlink's direct-to-cell capability," Reuters reported this week, citing an announcement from T-Mobile: T-Mobile and Elon Musk's SpaceX are currently testing the Starlink cell network on a trial basis after receiving approval from the Federal Communications Commission in November last year. The trial offers 'text via satellite', while voice and data features will be added in the future, according to the T-Mobile website. T-Mobile initially only listed a few Android smartphones as eligible devices to test the network, but has now added iPhone devices with the latest iOS 18.3 software update.
The next day stock prices fell for several direct-to-smartphone satellite companies, reports SpaceNews: Shares in Globalstar, which enables connectivity beyond the reach of cellular towers on the latest iPhones via a far-reaching partnership with Apple, closed down nearly 18% the following day. Constellation developer AST SpaceMobile slipped 12%. Canada's MDA, which is building at least 17 satellites for Globalstar after Apple agreed to cover most of the costs to replenish the constellation, also saw its shares fall more than 9%...

"Combined, today's price action in Globalstar and satellite manufacturer MDA suggest a real investor fear that SpaceX could disintermediate the Apple-Globalstar partnership," said Adam Rhodes, a senior telecoms analyst at Octus. "However, it appears to us that there is room for both services. Based on the information we have seen, we do not anticipate that Apple views the T-Mobile-Starlink service as a replacement for the Globalstar MSS network, but rather it is choosing to enable the added feature on its T-Mobile phones...." B. Riley analyst Mike Crawford noted that Apple's two binding contracts with Globalstar extend well into the next decade, ensuring both capital expenditure (capex) and recurring service revenues.
Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

India's IT minister on Thursday praised DeepSeek's progress and said the country will host the Chinese AI lab's large language models on domestic servers, in a rare opening for Chinese technology in India. From a report: "You have seen what DeepSeek has done -- $5.5 million and a very very powerful model," IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday, responding to criticism New Delhi has received for its own investment in AI, which has been much less than many other countries.

Since 2020, India has banned more than 300 apps and services linked to China, including TikTok and WeChat, citing national security concerns. The approval to allow DeepSeek to be hosted in India appears contingent on the platform storing and processing all Indian users' data domestically, in line with India's strict data localization requirements. [...] DeepSeek's models will likely be hosted on India's new AI Compute Facility. The facility is powered by 18,693 graphics processing units (GPUs), nearly double its initial target -- almost 13,000 of those are Nvidia H100 GPUs, and about 1,500 are Nvidia H200 GPUs.