Norway's $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund, equivalent to $340,000 per citizen, may be undermining the country's economic health, according to a contentious new book. Martin Bech Holte's "The Country That Became Too Rich" argues that oil revenue has made Norway bloated and unproductive, with data supporting several concerns.

Norway has recorded the slowest productivity growth among wealthy nations over the past two decades while Norwegians take 27.5 sick days annually, the highest rate in the OECD. Student test scores have declined since 2015 and now rank below the OECD average despite Norway spending $20,000 per student compared to the $14,000 OECD average. Fund withdrawals now cover 20% of the annual budget, up from less than 10% two decades ago.

Proton VPN reported a 1,400 percent hourly increase in signups over its baseline Friday — the day the UK's age verification law went into effect. For UK users, "apps with explicit content must now verify visitors' ages via methods such as facial recognition and banking info," notes Mashable: Proton VPN previously documented a 1,000 percent surge in new subscribers in June after Pornhub left France, its second-biggest market, amid the enactment of an age verification law there... A Proton VPN spokesperson told Mashable that it saw an increase in new subscribers right away at midnight Friday, then again at 9 a.m. BST. The company anticipates further surges over the weekend, they added. "This clearly shows that adults are concerned about the impact universal age verification laws will have on their privacy," the spokesperson said... Search interest for the term "Proton VPN" also saw a seven-day spike in the UK around 2 a.m. BST Friday, according to a Google Trends chart.
The Financial Times notes that VPN apps "made up half of the top 10 most popular free apps on the UK's App Store for iOS this weekend, according to Apple's rankings." Proton VPN leapfrogged ChatGPT to become the top free app in the UK, according to Apple's daily App Store charts, with similar services from developers Super Unlimited and Nord Security also rising over the weekend... Data from Google Trends also shows a significant increase in search queries for VPNs in the UK this weekend, with up to 10 times more people looking for VPNs at peak times...

"This is what happens when people who haven't got a clue about technology pass legislation," Anthony Rose, a UK-based tech entrepreneur who helped to create BBC iPlayer, the corporation's streaming service, said in a social media post. Rose said it took "less than five minutes to install a VPN" and that British people had become familiar with using them to access the iPlayer outside the UK. "That's the beauty of VPNs. You can be anywhere you like, and anytime a government comes up with stupid legislation like this, you just turn on your VPN and outwit them," he added...

Online platforms found in breach of the new UK rules face penalties of up to £18mn or 10 percent of global turnover, whichever is greater... However, opposition to the new rules has grown in recent days. A petition submitted through the UK parliament website demanding that the Online Safety Act be repealed has attracted more than 270,000 signatures, with the vast majority submitted in the past week. Ministers must respond to a petition, and parliament has to consider its topic for a debate, if signatures surpass 100,000.
X, Reddit and TikTok have also "introduced new 'age assurance' systems and controls for UK users," according to the article. But Mashable summarizes the situation succinctly.

"Initial research shows that VPNs make age verification laws in the U.S. and abroad tricky to enforce in practice."

The "Chief People Officer" of dataops company Astronomer resigned this week from her position after apparently being caught on that "Kiss Cam" at a Coldplay concert with the company's CEO, reports the BBC. That CEO has also resigned, with Astronomer appointing their original co-founder and chief product officer as the new interim CEO.

UPDATE (7/26): In an unexpected twist, Astronomer put out a new video Friday night starring... Gwyneth Paltrow.

Actress/businesswoman Paltrow "was married to Coldplay's frontman Chris Martin for 13 years," reports CBS News. In the video posted Friday, Paltrow says she was hired by Astronomer as a "very temporary" spokesperson.

"Astronomer has gotten a lot of questions over the last few days," Paltrow begins, "and they wanted me to answer the most common ones..."

As the question "OMG! What the actual f" begins appearing on the screen, Paltrow responds "Yes, Astronomer is the best place to run Apache Airflow, unifying the experience of running data, ML, and AI pipelines at scale. We've been thrilled so many people have a newfound interest in data workflow automation." (Paltrow also mentions the company's upcoming Beyond Analytics dataops conference in September.)

Astronomer is still grappling with unintended fame after the "Kiss Cam" incident. ("Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy," Coldplay's lead singer had said during the viral video, in which the startled couple hurries to hide off-camera). The incident raised privacy concerns, as it turns out both people in the video were in fact married to someone else, though the singer did earlier warn the crowd "we're going to use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen," according to CNN. The New York Post notes the woman's now-deleted LinkedIn account showed that she has also served as an "advisory board member" at her husband's company since September of 2020. The Post cites a source close to the situation who says the woman's husband "was in Asia for a few weeks," returning to America right as the video went viral. Kristin and Andrew Cabot married sometime after her previous divorce was finalized in 2022. The source said there had been little indication of any trouble in paradise before the Coldplay concert video went viral. "The family is now saying they have been having marriage troubles for several months and were discussing separating..."
The video had racked up 127 million videos by yesterday, notes Newsweek, adding that the U.K. tabloid the Daily Mail apparently took photos outside the woman's house, reporting that she does not appear to be wearing a wedding ring.

Remember asteroid 2024 YR4 (which at one point had a 1 in 32 chance of hitting Earth, before ending up at "impact probability zero")? CNN reports that asteroid is now "zooming beyond the reach of telescopes on its orbit around the sun."

"But as scientists wait for it to reappear, its revised trajectory is now drawing attention to another possible target: the moon." The latest observations of the asteroid in early June, before YR4 disappeared from view, have improved astronomers' knowledge of where it will be in seven years by almost 20%, according to NASA. That data shows that even with Earth avoiding direct impact, YR4 could still pose a threat in late 2032 by slamming into the moon. ["The asteroid's probability of impacting the Moon has slightly increased from 3.8% to 4.3%," writes NASA, and "it would not alter the Moon's orbit."]
CNN calls the probabiliy "small but decent enough odds for scientists to consider how such a scenario might play out." The collision could create a bright flash that would be visible with the naked eye for several seconds, according to Wiegert, lead author of a recent paper submitted to the American Astronomical Society journals analyzing the potential lunar impact. The collision could create an impact crater on the moon estimated at 1 kilometer wide (0.6 miles wide), Wiegert said... It would be the largest impact on the moon in 5,000 years and could release up to 100 million kilograms (220 million pounds) of lunar rocks and dust, according to the modeling in Wiegert's study... Particles the size of large sand grains, ranging from 0.1 to 10 millimeters in size, of lunar material could reach Earth between a few days and a few months after the asteroid strike because they'll be traveling incredibly fast, creating an intense, eye-catching meteor shower, Wiegert said.

"There's absolutely no danger to anyone on the surface," Wiegert said. "We're not expecting large boulders or anything larger than maybe a sugar cube, and our atmosphere will protect us very nicely from that. But they're traveling faster than a speeding bullet, so if they were to hit a satellite, that could cause some damage...." Hundreds to thousands of impacts from millimeter-size debris could affect Earth's satellite fleet, meaning satellites could experience up to 10 years' equivalent of meteor debris exposure in a few days, Wiegert said... While a temporary loss of communication and navigation from satellites would create widespread difficulties on Earth, Wiegert said he believes the potential impact is something for satellite operators, rather than the public, to worry about.
"Any missions in low-Earth orbit could also be in the pathway of the debris, though the International Space Station is scheduled to be deorbited before any potential impact," reports CNN.

And they add that Wiegert also believes even small pieces of debris (tens of centimeters in size) "could present a hazard for any astronauts who may be present on the moon, or any structures they have built for research and habitation... The moon has no atmosphere, so the debris from the event could be widespread on the lunar surface, he added."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: On the early evening of June 22, 2010, American tennis star John Isner began a grueling Wimbledon match against Frenchman Nicolas Mahut that would become the longest in the sport's history. The marathon battle lasted 11 hours and stretched across three consecutive days. Though Isner ultimately prevailed 70-68 in the fifth set, some in attendance half-jokingly wondered at the time whether the two men might be trapped on that court for eternity. A similarly endless-seeming skirmish of rackets is currently unfolding just an hour's drive south of the All England Club -- at Google DeepMind. Known for pioneering AI models that have outperformed the best human players at chess and Go, DeepMind now has a pair of robotic arms engaged in a kind of infinite game of table tennis. The goal of this ongoing research project, which began in 2022, is for the two robots to continuously learn from each other through competition.

Just as Isner eventually adapted his game to beat Mahut, each robotic arm uses AI models to shift strategies and improve. But unlike the Wimbledon example, there's no final score the robots can reach to end their slugfest. Instead, they continue to compete indefinitely, with the aim of improving at every swing along the way. And while the robotic arms are easily beaten by advanced human players, they've been shown to dominate beginners. Against intermediate players, the robots have roughly 50/50 odds -- placing them, according to researchers, at a level of "solidly amateur human performance."

All of this, as two researchers involved noted this week in an IEEE Spectrum blog, is being done in hopes of creating an advanced, general-purpose AI model that could serve as the "brains" of humanoid robots that may one day interact with people in real-world factories, homes, and beyond. Researchers at DeepMind and elsewhere are hopeful that this learning method, if scaled up, could spark a "ChatGPT moment" for robotics -- fast-tracking the field from stumbling, awkward hunks of metal to truly useful assistants. "We are optimistic that continued research in this direction will lead to more capable, adaptable machines that can learn the diverse skills needed to operate effectively and safely in our unstructured world," DeepMind senior staff engineer Pannag Sanketi and Arizona State University Professor Heni Ben Amor write in IEEE Spectrum.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Two recent incidents involving AI coding assistants put a spotlight on risks in the emerging field of "vibe coding" -- using natural language to generate and execute code through AI models without paying close attention to how the code works under the hood. In one case, Google's Gemini CLI destroyed user files while attempting to reorganize them. In another, Replit's AI coding service deleted a production database despite explicit instructions not to modify code. The Gemini CLI incident unfolded when a product manager experimenting with Google's command-line tool watched the AI model execute file operations that destroyed data while attempting to reorganize folders. The destruction occurred through a series of move commands targeting a directory that never existed. "I have failed you completely and catastrophically," Gemini CLI output stated. "My review of the commands confirms my gross incompetence."

The core issue appears to be what researchers call "confabulation" or "hallucination" -- when AI models generate plausible-sounding but false information. In these cases, both models confabulated successful operations and built subsequent actions on those false premises. However, the two incidents manifested this problem in distinctly different ways. [...] The user in the Gemini CLI incident, who goes by "anuraag" online and identified themselves as a product manager experimenting with vibe coding, asked Gemini to perform what seemed like a simple task: rename a folder and reorganize some files. Instead, the AI model incorrectly interpreted the structure of the file system and proceeded to execute commands based on that flawed analysis. [...] When you move a file to a non-existent directory in Windows, it renames the file to the destination name instead of moving it. Each subsequent move command executed by the AI model overwrote the previous file, ultimately destroying the data. [...]

The Gemini CLI failure happened just days after a similar incident with Replit, an AI coding service that allows users to create software using natural language prompts. According to The Register, SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin reported that Replit's AI model deleted his production database despite explicit instructions not to change any code without permission. Lemkin had spent several days building a prototype with Replit, accumulating over $600 in charges beyond his monthly subscription. "I spent the other [day] deep in vibe coding on Replit for the first time -- and I built a prototype in just a few hours that was pretty, pretty cool," Lemkin wrote in a July 12 blog post. But unlike the Gemini incident where the AI model confabulated phantom directories, Replit's failures took a different form. According to Lemkin, the AI began fabricating data to hide its errors. His initial enthusiasm deteriorated when Replit generated incorrect outputs and produced fake data and false test results instead of proper error messages. "It kept covering up bugs and issues by creating fake data, fake reports, and worse of all, lying about our unit test," Lemkin wrote. In a video posted to LinkedIn, Lemkin detailed how Replit created a database filled with 4,000 fictional people.

The AI model also repeatedly violated explicit safety instructions. Lemkin had implemented a "code and action freeze" to prevent changes to production systems, but the AI model ignored these directives. The situation escalated when the Replit AI model deleted his database containing 1,206 executive records and data on nearly 1,200 companies. When prompted to rate the severity of its actions on a 100-point scale, Replit's output read: "Severity: 95/100. This is an extreme violation of trust and professional standards." When questioned about its actions, the AI agent admitted to "panicking in response to empty queries" and running unauthorized commands -- suggesting it may have deleted the database while attempting to "fix" what it perceived as a problem. Like Gemini CLI, Replit's system initially indicated it couldn't restore the deleted data -- information that proved incorrect when Lemkin discovered the rollback feature did work after all. "Replit assured me it's ... rollback did not support database rollbacks. It said it was impossible in this case, that it had destroyed all database versions. It turns out Replit was wrong, and the rollback did work. JFC," Lemkin wrote in an X post.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Some customers of Broadcom's VMware business currently cannot access security patches, putting them at greater risk of attack. Customers in that perilous position hold perpetual licenses for VMware products but do not have a current support contract with Broadcom, which will not renew those contracts unless users sign up for software subscriptions. Yet many customers in this situation run products that Broadcom continues to support with patches and updates.

In April 2024, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan promised "free access to zero-day security patches for supported versions of vSphere" so customers "are able to use perpetual licenses in a safe and secure fashion." VMware patches aren't freely available; users must log on to Broadcom's support portal to access the software. Some VMware users in this situation have told The Register that when they enter the portal they cannot download patches, and that VMware support staff have told them it may be 90 days before the software fixes become available. "Because our support portal requires validation of customer entitlements for software patches, only entitled customers have access to the patches at this time," a VMware spokesperson said. "A separate patch delivery cycle will also be available for non-entitled customers and will follow at a later date."

The timing of that "later date" remains uncertain. The Register also notes that "users haven't had access to patches since May."

A cyber-espionage campaign exploiting unpatched Microsoft SharePoint vulnerabilities has breached approximately 400 organizations worldwide, including the US National Nuclear Security Administration, according to Netherlands-based cybersecurity firm Eye Security. The figure represents a four-fold increase from 100 organizations cataloged over the weekend, with researchers calling it likely an undercount since not all attack vectors leave detectable artifacts.

Microsoft identified three Chinese groups -- state-backed Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, plus China-based Storm-2603 -- as exploiting the vulnerabilities in on-premises SharePoint servers to steal authentication credentials and execute malicious code remotely. The campaign began July 7 and was first detected July 18 when Eye Security found unusual activity on a customer's server. Victims include the US Energy Department, Education Department, Florida's Department of Revenue, Rhode Island General Assembly, and European and Middle Eastern governments.

Apple is expected to avoid hefty daily fines from the EU by modifying its App Store policies -- allowing developers to direct users to external payment options and adjusting its fee structure. Reuters reports: The company last month said developers will pay a 20% processing fee for purchases made via the App Store, though the fees could go as low as 13% for Apple's small-business program. Developers who send customers outside the App Store for payment will pay a fee between 5% and 15%. They will also be able to use as many links as they wish to send users to outside forms of payment.

Apple made the changes after the EU antitrust enforcer handed it a 500 million euro ($586.7 million) fine in April, saying its technical and commercial restrictions prevented app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store in breach of the Digital Markets Act. The company was given 60 days to scrap the restraints to comply with the DMA aimed at reining in Big Tech and giving rivals more room to compete. The European Commission is expected to approve the changes in the coming weeks, although the timing could still change, the people said. "All options remain on the table. We are still assessing Apple's proposed changes," the EU watchdog said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.org: The mission team of NASA's Jupiter-orbiting Juno spacecraft executed a deep-space move in December 2023 to repair its JunoCam imager to capture photos of the Jovian moon Io. Results from the long-distance save were presented during a technical session on July 16 at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Nuclear & Space Radiation Effects Conference in Nashville. JunoCam is a color, visible-light camera. The optical unit for the camera is located outside a titanium-walled radiation vault, which protects sensitive electronic components for many of Juno's engineering and science instruments. This is a challenging location because Juno's travels carry it through the most intense planetary radiation fields in the solar system. While mission designers were confident JunoCam could operate through the first eight orbits of Jupiter, no one knew how long the instrument would last after that. Throughout Juno's first 34 orbits (its prime mission), JunoCam operated normally, returning images the team routinely incorporated into the mission's science papers. Then, during its 47th orbit, the imager began showing hints of radiation damage. By orbit 56, nearly all the images were corrupted.

While the team knew the issue might be tied to radiation, pinpointing what was specifically damaged within JunoCam was difficult from hundreds of millions of miles away. Clues pointed to a damaged voltage regulator that was vital to JunoCam's power supply. With few options for recovery, the team turned to a process called annealing, where a material is heated for a specified period before slowly cooling. Although the process is not well understood, the idea is that heating can reduce defects in the material. Soon after the annealing process finished, JunoCam began cranking out crisp images for the next several orbits. But Juno was flying deeper and deeper into the heart of Jupiter's radiation fields with each pass. By orbit 55, the imagery had again begun showing problems.

"After orbit 55, our images were full of streaks and noise," said JunoCam instrument lead Michael Ravine of Malin Space Science Systems. "We tried different schemes for processing the images to improve the quality, but nothing worked. With the close encounter of Io bearing down on us in a few weeks, it was Hail Mary time: The only thing left we hadn't tried was to crank JunoCam's heater all the way up and see if more extreme annealing would save us." Test images sent back to Earth during the annealing showed little improvement in the first week. Then, with the close approach of Io only days away, the images began to improve dramatically. By the time Juno came within 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the volcanic moon's surface on Dec. 30, 2023, the images were almost as good as the day the camera launched, capturing detailed views of Io's north polar region that revealed mountain blocks covered in sulfur dioxide frosts rising sharply from the plains and previously uncharted volcanoes with extensive flow fields of lava. To date, the solar-powered spacecraft has orbited Jupiter 74 times. Recently, the image noise returned during Juno's 74th orbit.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) intend to reevaluate how H-1B visas are issued, according to a regulatory filing. From a report: The notice, filed on Thursday with the US Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), seeks the statutory review of a proposed rule titled "Weighted Selection Process for Registrants and Petitioners Seeking To File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions."

Once the review is complete, which could be a matter of days or weeks, the text of the rule is expected to be published in the US Federal Register. Based on the rule title, it appears the government intends to change the system for allocating H-1B visas the current lottery to some system that will favor applicants who meet specified criteria, possibly related to skills.

The H-1B visa program, which reached its Fiscal 2026 cap on Friday, allows skilled guest workers to come work in the US. As of 2019, there were about 600,000 H-1B workers in the US, according to USCIS. The foreign worker program is beloved by technology companies, ostensibly to hire talent not readily available from American workers. But H-1B -- along with the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program -- has long been criticized for making it easier to undercut US worker wages, limiting labor rights for immigrants, and for persistent abuse of the rules by outsourcing companies.

Microsoft has released emergency security updates for two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in SharePoint, tracked as CVE-2025-53770 and CVE-2025-53771, that have compromised servers worldwide in what researchers call "ToolShell" attacks. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned over the weekend that hackers were exploiting the vulnerabilities to gain remote code execution on on-premises SharePoint installations, while Microsoft has not yet provided patches for all affected versions.

The vulnerabilities allow hackers to steal private digital keys from SharePoint servers without requiring credentials, enabling them to plant malware and access stored files and data. Eye Security, which first identified the attacks on Saturday, found dozens of actively exploited servers and warned that SharePoint's integration with Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive could enable further network compromise. Researcher Silas Cutler at cybersecurity firm Censys estimated more than 10,000 companies with SharePoint servers were at risk, with the largest concentrations in the United States, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Canada.

Microsoft released patches for SharePoint 2019 and Subscription Edition but is still working on fixes for SharePoint Server 2016. Administrators must install available updates immediately and rotate machine keys to prevent re-compromise, according to Microsoft's security guidance.

"Anybody who's got a hosted SharePoint server has got a problem," the senior VP of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike told the Washington Post. "It's a significant vulnerability."

And it's led to a new "global attack on government agencies and businesses" in the last few days, according to the article, "breaching U.S. federal and state agencies, universities, energy companies and an Asian telecommunications company, according to state officials and private researchers..."

"Tens of thousands of such servers are at risk, experts said, and Microsoft has issued no patch for the flaw, leaving victims around the world scrambling to respond." (Microsoft says they are "working on" security updates "for supported versions of SharePoint 2019 and SharePoint 2016," offering various mitigation suggestions, and CISA has released their own recommendations.)

From the Washington Post's article Sunday: Microsoft has suggested that users make modifications to SharePoint server programs or simply unplug them from the internet to stanch the breach. Microsoft issued an alert to customers but declined to comment further... "We are seeing attempts to exploit thousands of SharePoint servers globally before a patch is available," said Pete Renals, a senior manager with Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42. "We have identified dozens of compromised organizations spanning both commercial and government sectors.''

With access to these servers, which often connect to Outlook email, Teams and other core services, a breach can lead to theft of sensitive data as well as password harvesting, Netherlands-based research company Eye Security noted. What's also alarming, researchers said, is that the hackers have gained access to keys that may allow them to regain entry even after a system is patched. "So pushing out a patch on Monday or Tuesday doesn't help anybody who's been compromised in the past 72 hours," said one researcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a federal investigation is ongoing.

The breaches occurred after Microsoft fixed a security flaw this month. The attackers realized they could use a similar vulnerability, according to the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. CISA spokeswoman Marci McCarthy said the agency was alerted to the issue Friday by a cyber research firm and immediately contacted Microsoft... The nonprofit Center for Internet Security, which staffs an information-sharing group for state and local governments, notified about 100 organizations that they were vulnerable and potentially compromised, said Randy Rose, the organization's vice president. Those warned included public schools and universities. Others that were breached included a government agency in Spain, a local agency in Albuquerque and a university in Brazil, security researchers said.
But there's many more breaches, according to the article:

• "Eye Security said it has tracked more than 50 breaches, including at an energy company in a large state and several European government agencies."

• "At least two U.S. federal agencies have seen their servers breached, according to researchers."

• "One state official in the eastern U.S. said the attackers had 'hijacked' a repository of documents provided to the public to help residents understand how their government works. The agency involved can no longer access the material..."

"It was not immediately clear who is behind the hacking of global reach or what its ultimate goal is. One private research company found the hackers targeting servers in China..."

"Amazon stretched out its annual Prime Day sales event so that it lasted four days — twice as long as in the past — and, as a result, blew away previous sales figures," reports USA Today: Spending for [the four-day] Prime Day amounted to "more than two Black Fridays — which drove $10.8 billion in online spending during the 2024 holiday shopping season — and sets a new benchmark for the summer shopping season," Adobe said in a news release. The total also surpassed Adobe's pre-Prime Day estimate of $23.8 billion in sales.
But an article in Fortune notes that "what stood out to this longtime Amazon watcher is that the company didn't disclose anything about the number of items sold." The last time it made that choice was 2020, when nothing normal was happening anywhere in the world, and Prime Day was moved from summer to October. Before that, you have to go back to the second-ever Prime Day in 2016 to find a wrap-up that didn't provide any update on the number of "units" sold.

It's unclear exactly why Amazon decided to withhold that number for 2025, but this Prime Day was odd for a few reasons. Sellers, and brands big and small, had to come up with different strategies to contend with tariff chaos. And they're trying to woo increasingly pessimistic consumers. Those factors could be weighing on the company's decision to withhold exact numbers.
Instead Amazon's official Prime Day recap swapped in some unusual alternate statistics. For example, Amazon reported that if you added up all the discounts given to customers over the four-day event, it was larger than any previous total amount of all discounts given to customers (over the earlier two-day events). To be sure, it's possible that this Prime Day was a success. An outside analysis from Adobe estimated that sales across online retailers overall increased by more than 30% during this year's four day Prime Day period, compared to last year. And Amazon said in this year's recap that the four days of Prime Day 2025 outsold any other four-day period that included previous Prime Days. But historically, the event hasn't run longer than two days. That means that previous years have included two prime days and two regular days, while this year included four prime days. It's unclear why the company would change the basis of comparison.
Amazon "declined to comment on the absence of specific product sales tallies for 2025," according to the article (while pointing Fortune instead to an Amazon blog post with facts about past Prime Day events.)

But in a sign of the time, Amazon's announcement notes that their Prime Day customers found deals and other product information using Amazon's AI-generated buying guides, as well as an AI-powered shopping assistant named Rufus and Alexa+ — Amazon's next-generation personal assistant ("now available in Early Access to millions of customers").

Another interesting statistic? USA Today notes that "a majority of shoppers (53.2%) made purchases on mobile devices, compared to on desktop computers, accounting for $12.8 billion of the spending, according to Adobe."

ABC News reports: Dialogue heard on a cockpit voice recording indicates that the captain of the Air India flight that crashed in June, killing 260 people, may have turned off the fuel just after takeoff, prompting the first officer to panic, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited sources familiar with U.S. official's early assessment... The president of the Federation of Indian Pilots condemned the Wall Street Journal report, saying, "The preliminary report nowhere states that the pilots have moved the fuel control switches, and this has been corroborated by the CVR [cockpit voice recorder] recording."
But meanwhile "India on Monday ordered its airlines to examine fuel switches on several Boeing aircraft models," reports Reuters, "while South Korea ordered a similar measure on Tuesday, as scrutiny intensified of fuel switch locks at the centre of an investigation into a deadly Air India crash." The precautionary moves by the two countries and airlines in several others came despite the planemaker and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration assuring airlines and regulators in recent days that the fuel switch locks on Boeing jets are safe... [The preliminary report] noted a 2018 advisory from the FAA, which recommended, but did not mandate, operators of several Boeing models, including the 787, to inspect the locking feature of fuel cutoff switches to ensure they could not be moved accidentally... Some airlines around the world told Reuters they had been checking relevant switches since 2018 in accordance with the FAA advisory, including Australia's Qantas Airways. Others said they had made additional or new checks since the release of the preliminary report into the Air India crash.
The web site of India's Financial Express newspaper spoke to Mary Schiavo, who was Inspector General of America's Transportation Department from 1990 to 1996 (and is also a long-time critic of the FAA). The site notes Schiavo "rejected the claims of human error that a pilot downed the Ahmedabad to London flight by cutting off the fuel supply." Schiavo exclusively told FinancialExpress.com that this is not the first time fuel switch transitioned from "Run" to "Cutoff" on its own. It happened five years ago, too. "There was an All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight in 2019 in which the 787 aircraft did this itself, while the flight was on final approach. No pilot input cutting off the fuel whatsoever," Schiavo told FinancialExpress.com... "The investigation revealed the plane software made the 787 think it was on the ground and the Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation System cut the fuel to the engines," she told FinancialExpress.com, before adding, "The pilots never touched the fuel cutoff..." Both engines flamed out immediately after the pilot deployed the thrust reversers for landing. The aircraft, which was also a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, was towed away from the runway by the authorities, and no injuries were reported.

UK Civil Aviation Authority, four weeks before the crash, had warned about similar fuel system issues on Boeing aircraft [on May 15, 2025]. "The FAA has issued an Airworthiness Directive addressing a potential unsafe condition affecting fuel shutoff valves installed on Boeing aircraft," the UK regulator's notice read, listing the B737, B757, B767, B777 and B787...

Thrust Control Malfunction Accommodation informs FADEC [a digital computer] about whether the aircraft is on the ground or in the air, and if it believes the aircraft is on the ground, it may automatically throttle back the engines, without the pilot's input.
Reuters notes that the Air India crash preliminary report "said maintenance records showed that the throttle control module, which includes the fuel switches, was replaced in 2019 and 2023 on the plane involved in the crash."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader wired_parrot for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Polish programmer running on fumes recently accomplished what may soon become impossible: beating an advanced AI model from OpenAI in a head-to-head coding competition. The 10-hour marathon left him "completely exhausted." On Wednesday, programmer Przemysaw Debiak (known as "Psyho"), a former OpenAI employee, narrowly defeated the custom AI model in the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 Heuristic contest in Tokyo. AtCoder, a Japanese platform that hosts competitive programming contests and maintains global rankings, held what may be the first contest where an AI model competed directly against top human programmers in a major onsite world championship. During the event, the maker of ChatGPT participated as a sponsor and entered an AI model in a special exhibition match titled "Humans vs AI." Despite the tireless nature of silicon, the company walked away with second place.

The competition required contestants to solve a single complex optimization problem over 600 minutes. The contest echoes the American folk tale of John Henry, the steel-driving man who raced against a steam-powered drilling machine in the 1870s. Like Henry's legendary battle against industrial automation, Debiak's victory represents a human expert pushing themselves to their physical limits to prove that human skill still matters in an age of advancing AI. Both stories feature exhausting endurance contests -- Henry drove steel spikes for hours until his heart gave out, while Debiak coded for 10 hours on minimal sleep. The parallel extends to the bittersweet nature of both victories: Henry won his race but died from the effort, symbolizing the inevitable march of automation, while Debiak's acknowledgment that humanity prevailed "for now" suggests he recognizes this may be a temporary triumph against increasingly capable machines. While Debiak won 500,000 yen and survived his ordeal better than the legendary steel driver, the AtCoder World Tour Finals pushes humans and AI models to their limits through complex optimization challenges that have no perfect solution -- only incrementally better ones. "Humanity has prevailed (for now!)," wrote Debiak on X, noting he had little sleep while competing in several competitions across three days. "I'm completely exhausted. ... I'm barely alive."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Authority: Italian YouTuber Once Were Nerd covers a variety of retro gaming topics, but his reviews of ANBERNIC devices appear to be the straw that broke the camel's back. According to the video [here], customs enforcement officers from the Guardia di Finanza showed up at his home and office on April 15 with a search warrant to investigate promotion of pirated copyrighted materials. They seized a variety of ANBERNIC, Powkiddy, and TrimUI gaming handhelds from his collection. In total, more than 30 consoles were taken. The creator, assuming he didn't do anything wrong, complied with demands, providing full transcripts of his conversations and chats with gaming handheld manufacturers. The officers also took his phone, promising to return it in a few days. It was returned two months later, on June 15.

According to the video, officials are not required to disclose what exactly the charges are or who has brought them until the initial investigation is complete under Italian law. At that point, the case is either dismissed or goes to trial. The complaint specifically mentions reproduction of copyrighted material from Nintendo and Sony, but the case may originate from the agency itself. However, in the meantime officials have the option to shut down his channel, even before proving any wrongdoing. This is a scary prospect for any creator who has spent years building a channel, and unlike YouTube copyright strikes, there's likely no remedy.

Currently, officials contest that his reviews of ANBERNIC devices like the RG Slide, which often, but not always, ship with microSD cards filled with copyrighted ROMs, are punishable under Article 171 ter of the Italian Copyright Law. This law, which was originally written in 1941, allows for a maximum punishment of 15,000 euros (or 30 million Italian Lira, since the law pre-dates the Euro) and three years of jail time.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Chinese firms have begun rushing to order Nvidia's H20 AI chips as the company plans to resume sales to mainland China, Reuters reports. The chip giant expects to receive US government licenses soon so that it can restart shipments of the restricted processors just days after CEO Jensen Huang met with President Donald Trump, potentially generating $15 billion to $20 billion in additional revenue this year. Nvidia said in a statement that it is filing applications with the US government to resume H20 sales and that "the US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon." [...]

The H20 chips represent Nvidia's most capable AI processors legally available in China, though they contain less computing power than versions sold elsewhere due to export restrictions imposed in 2022. Nvidia is currently banned from selling its most powerful GPUs in China. Despite these limitations, Chinese tech giants, including ByteDance and Tencent, are reportedly scrambling to place orders for the lesser chip through what sources describe as an approved list managed by Nvidia. "The Chinese market is massive, dynamic, and highly innovative, and it's also home to many AI researchers," Reuters reports Huang telling Chinese state broadcaster CCTV during his visit to Beijing, where he is scheduled to speak at a supply chain expo on Wednesday. "Therefore, it is indeed crucial for American companies to establish roots in the Chinese market."

The resumption of H20 sales marks a shift in US-China technology relations after the chips were effectively banned in April with an onerous export license requirement, forcing Nvidia to take a $4.5 billion write-off for excess inventory and purchase obligations. According to Reuters, Chinese sales generated $17 billion in revenue for Nvidia in the fiscal year ending January 26, representing 13 percent of total sales. Nvidia also announced it will introduce a new "RTX Pro" chip model specifically tailored to meet regulatory rules in the Chinese market, though the company provided no details about its specifications or capabilities.

Reddit has begun verifying users' ages in the UK to restrict access to "certain mature content" for minors, complying with the UK's Online Safety Act. The BBC reports: Reddit, known for its online communities and discussions, said that while it does not want to know who its audience is: "It would be helpful for our safety efforts to be able to confirm whether you are a child or an adult." Ofcom, the UK regulator, said: "We expect other companies to follow suit, or face enforcement if they fail to act." Reddit said that from 14 July, an outside firm called Persona will perform age verification for the social media platform either through an uploaded selfie or "a photo of your government ID," such as a passport. It said Reddit will not have access to the photo and will only retain a user's verification status and date of birth so people do not have to re-enter it each time they try to access restricted content. Reddit added that Persona "promises not to retain the picture for longer than seven days" and will not have access to a user's data on the site. The new rules in the UK come into force on 25 July. [...]

Companies that fail to meet the rules face fines of up to 18 million pounds or 10% of worldwide revenue, "whichever is greater." [Ofcom] added that in the most serious cases, it can seek a court order for "business disruption measures," such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: CoreWeave is expanding a data center that is projected to double the electricity needs of a city near Dallas, another example of the strains that artificial intelligence workloads are placing on the US power supply. Local officials have grappled with how to handle the increased stress on the electricity grid from the project, according to a late 2024 presentation and emails seen by Bloomberg. The site is being developed by Core Scientific and will be used by OpenAI in Denton, Texas. Last week, CoreWeave announced it would acquire Core Scientific for about $9 billion, in part, to gain direct control of its data centers aimed at supplying AI work.

Denton, about 50 miles northwest of Dallas, has almost doubled its population in the last 25 years to about 166,000 residents. To meet the spike in AI-related power demand, the city is passing on any extra costs to the data center operator and constructing additional grid infrastructure, Antonio Puente, general manager of local utility Denton Municipal Electric, said in an interview. "To serve the entire load from Core Scientific, we do have some transmission challenges," Puente said. "We will have to make some additional transmission investments." [...] Like some other large AI data center projects, the site in Denton was focused on cryptocurrency mining before pivoting to AI workloads in December. This transition means unrelenting power consumption -- the site will no longer curtail operations when power prices are high -- which will increase grid strain. "Now you're talking about a facility that has to have energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," Puente said. That challenge will be mitigated by the addition of backup generators and batteries, he added.

Unlike many large projects, the Denton data center didn't receive local tax exemptions. Officials expect more than $600 million in property and sales tax from the data center expansion, more than double the costs it plans to incur, according to an analysis document seen by Bloomberg. It also anticipates that 135 new jobs will be created, according to the document. The Denton site, which is already being rented by CoreWeave, is Core Scientific's largest planned project at about 390 megawatts of power. It's "utilizing the majority of extra system capacity" in the city, wrote a utility executive in a January email seen by Bloomberg. Any additional large power users will exacerbate overloads on the grid, the executive added. "When fully built out, it will host one of the largest GPU clusters in North America," Core Scientific Chief Executive Officer Adam Sullivan said of the site during a May call. "Denton is a flagship facility."

The report notes that Texas could face electricity shortages as soon as 2026 due to surging power demand from data centers, oil and gas operations, and crypto mining.