Electrek reports: EV and battery supply chain research specialists Benchmark Mineral Intelligence reports that 2.0 million electric vehicles were sold globally in November 2025, bringing global EV sales to 18.5 million units year-to-date. That's a 21% increase compared to the same period in 2024. Europe was the clear growth leader in November, while North America continued to lag following the expiration of US EV tax credits. China, meanwhile, remains the world's largest EV market by a wide margin. Europe's EV market jumped 36% year-over-year in November 2025, with BEV sales up 35% and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) sales rising 39%. That brings Europe's total EV sales to 3.8 million units for the year so far, up 33% compared to January-November 2024... In North America, EV sales in the US did tick up month-over-month in November, following a sharp October drop after federal tax credits expired on September 30, 2025. Brands including Kia (up 30%), Hyundai (up 20%), Honda (up 11%), and Subaru (232 Solterra sales versus just 13 the month before) all saw gains, but overall volumes remain below levels when the federal tax credit was still available... [North America shows a -1% drop in EV sales from January to November 2025 vs. January to November 2024]

Year-to-date, EV sales in China are up 19%, with 11.6 million units sold. One of the biggest headlines out of China is exports. BYD reported a record 131,935 EV exports in November, blowing past its previous high of around 90,000 units set in June. BYD sales in Europe have jumped more than fourfold this year to around 200,000 vehicles, doubled in Southeast Asia, and climbed by more than 50% in South America...

"Overall, EV demand remains resilient, supported by expanding model ranges and sustained policy incentives worldwide," said Rho Motion data manager Charles Lester.
Beyond China, Europe, and North America, the rest of the world saw a 48% spike in EV sales in 2025 vs the same 11 months in 2024, representing 1.5 million EVs sold.

"The takeaway: EV demand continues to grow worldwide," the article adds, "but policy support — or the lack thereof — is increasingly shaping where this growth shows up."

New England's last coal-fired power plant "has ceased operations three years ahead of its planned retirement date," reports the New Hampshire Bulletin.

"The closure of the New Hampshire facility paves the way for its owner to press ahead with an initiative to transform the site into a clean energy complex including solar panels and battery storage systems." "The end of coal is real, and it is here," said Catherine Corkery, chapter director for Sierra Club New Hampshire. "We're really excited about the next chapter...." The closure in New Hampshire — so far undisputed by the federal government — demonstrates that prolonging operations at some facilities just doesn't make economic sense for their owners. "Coal has been incredibly challenged in the New England market for over adecade," said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association.

Merrimack Station, a 438-megawatt power plant, came online in the1960s and provided baseload power to the New England region for decades. Gradually, though, natural gas — which is cheaper and more efficient — took over the regional market... Additionally, solar power production accelerated from 2010 on, lowering demand on the grid during the day and creating more evening peaks. Coal plants take longer to ramp up production than other sources, and are therefore less economical for these shorter bursts of demand, Dolan said. In recent years, Merrimack operated only a few weeks annually. In 2024, the plant generated just0.22% of the region's electricity. It wasn't making enough money to justify continued operations, observers said.

The closure "is emblematic of the transition that has been occurring in the generation fleet in New England for many years," Dolan said. "The combination of all those factors has meant that coal facilities are no longer economic in this market."
Meanwhile Los Angeles — America's second-largest city — confirmed that the last coal-fired power plant supplying its electricity stopped operations just before Thanksgiving, reports the Utah News Dispatch: Advocates from the Sierra Club highlighted in a news release that shutting down the units had no impact on customers, and questioned who should "shoulder the cost of keeping an obsolete coal facility on standby...." Before ceasing operations, the coal units had been working at low capacities for several years because the agency's users hadn't been calling on the power [said John Ward, spokesperson for Intermountain Power Agency].
The coal-powered units "had a combined capacity of around 1,800 megawatts when fully operational," notes Electrek, "and as recently as 2024, they still supplied around 11% of LA's electricity. The plant sits in Utah's Great Basin region and powered Southern California for decades." Now, for the first time, none of California's power comes from coal. There's a political hiccup with IPP, though: the Republican-controlled Utah Legislature blocked the Intermountain Power Agency from fully retiring the coal units this year, ordering that they can't be disconnected or decommissioned. But despite that mandate, no buyers have stepped forward to keep the outdated coal units online. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is transitioning to newly built, hydrogen-capable generating units at the same IPP location, part of a modernization effort called IPP Renewed. These new units currently run on natural gas, but they're designed to burn a blend of natural gas and up to 30% green hydrogen, and eventually100% green hydrogen. LADWP plans to start adding green hydrogen to the fuel mix in 2026.
"With the plant now idled but legally required to remain connected, serious questions remain about who will shoulder the cost of keeping an obsolete coal facility on standby," says the Sierra Club.

One of the natural gas units started commerical operations last Octoboer, with the second starting later this month, IPP spokesperson John Ward told Agency].
the Utah News Dispatch.

A former Chinese official who fled to the U.S. says Beijing has used advanced surveillance technology from U.S. companies to track, intimidate, and punish him and his family across borders. ABC News reports: Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: Don't return to China, a friend warned. You're now a fugitive. Days later, a stranger snapped a photo of Li in a cafe. Terrified South Korea would send him back, Li fled, flew to the U.S. on a tourist visa and applied for asylum. But even there -- in New York, in California, deep in the Texas desert -- the Chinese government continued to hunt him down with the help of surveillance technology.

Li's communications were monitored, his assets seized and his movements followed in police databases. More than 40 friends and relatives -- including his pregnant daughter -- were identified and detained, even by tracking down their cab drivers through facial recognition software. Three former associates died in detention, and for months shadowy men Li believed to be Chinese operatives stalked him across continents, interviews and documents seen by The Associated Press show.

The Chinese government is using an increasingly powerful tool to cement its power at home and vastly amplify it abroad: Surveillance technology, much of it originating in the U.S., an AP investigation has found. Within China, this technology helped identify and punish almost 900,000 officials last year alone, nearly five times more than in 2012, according to state numbers. Beijing says it is cracking down on corruption, but critics charge that such technology is used in China and elsewhere to stifle dissent and exact retribution on perceived enemies.

Outside China, the same technology is being used to threaten wayward officials, along with dissidents and alleged criminals, under what authorities call Operations "Fox Hunt" and "Sky Net." The U.S. has criticized these overseas operations as a "threat" and an "affront to national sovereignty." More than 14,000 people, including some 3,000 officials, have been brought back to China from more than 120 countries through coercion, arrests and pressure on relatives, according to state information.

Chandler, Arizona unanimously rejected a proposed AI data center despite heavy lobbying from Big Tech interests and former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Politico reports: The Chandler City Council last night voted down a request by a New York developer to rezone land to build a data center and business complex. The local battle escalated in October after Sinema showed up at a planning commission meeting to offer public comment warning officials in her home state that federal authority may soon stomp on local regulations. "Chandler right now has the opportunity to determine how and when these new, innovative AI data centers will be built," she told local officials. "When federal preemption comes, we'll no longer have that privilege."

Explaining her no vote, Chandler Vice Mayor Christine Ellis said that she had long framed her decision about the local benefits rather than the national push to build AI. She recalled a meeting with Sinema where she asked point-blank, "what's in it for Chandler?" "If you can't show me what's in it for Chandler, then we are not having a conversation," Ellis said before voting against the project. [...]

The project, along with Sinema's involvement, attracted significant community opposition, with speakers raising concerns about whether the project would use too much water or raise power prices. Residents packed the council chambers, with many holding up signs reading "No More Data Centers." According to the city's planning office, more than 200 comments were filed against the proposal compared to just eight in favor.

Framework Computer raised DDR5 memory prices for its Laptop DIY Editions by 50% due to industry-wide memory shortages. Phoronix reports: Framework Computer is keeping the prior prices for existing pre-orders and also is foregoing any price changes for their pre-built laptops or the Framework Desktop. Framework Computer also lets you order DIY laptops without any memory at all if so desired for re-using existing modules or should you score a deal elsewhere.

Due to their memory pricing said to be more competitive below market rates, they also adjusted their return policy to prevent scalpers from purchasing DIY Edition laptops with memory while then returning just the laptops. The DDR5 must be returned now with DIY laptop order returns. Additional details can be found via the Framework Blog.

The pro-Russian CyberVolk group resurfaced with a Telegram-based ransomware-as-a-service platform, but fatally undermined its own operation by hardcoding master encryption keys in plaintext. The Register reports: First, the bad news: the CyberVolk 2.x (aka VolkLocker) ransomware-as-a-service operation that launched in late summer. It's run entirely through Telegram, which makes it very easy for affiliates that aren't that tech savvy to lock files and demand a ransom payment. CyberVolk's soldiers can use the platform's built-in automation to generate payloads, coordinate ransomware attacks, and manage their illicit business operations, conducting everything through Telegram.

But here's the good news: the ransomware slingers got sloppy when it came time to debug their code and hardcoded the master keys -- this same key encrypts all files on a victim's system -- into the executable files. This could allow victims to recover encrypted data without paying the extortion fee, according to SentinelOne senior threat researcher Jim Walter, who detailed the gang's resurgence and flawed code in a Thursday report.

Phoebe Gates, Bill Gates' youngest daughter, has raised $30 million for the AI shopping app she built in her Stanford dorm room with classmate Sophia Kianni. The app is called Phia and is pitched as a way to simplify price comparison and secondhand shopping. "Its AI-powered search engine -- available as an app and as a browser extension for Chrome and Safari -- pulls listings from more than 40,000 retail and resale sites so users can compare prices, surface real-time deals, and determine whether an item's cost is typical, high or fair," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The app has reached 750,000 downloads in eight months and is valued at $180 million. From the report: Gates told Elle that when she first floated the idea to her parents, they urged her to keep it as a side project -- advice she followed by enrolling in Stanford's night program after moving to New York and finishing her degree in 2024. "They were like, 'Okay, you can do this as a side thing, but you need to stay in school.' I don't think people would expect that from my family, to be honest," she said.

Her father dropped out of Harvard University in 1975 to launch Microsoft. Kianni even paused her degree temporarily "to learn, as quickly as possible, as much as we could about the industry that we would be operating in," she told Vogue. Bill Gates has not invested in the company, though he has publicly supported its mission.

The SEC has granted the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., or DTCC, a no-action letter allowing it to custody and recognize tokenized stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries on approved blockchains for three years. "Although this program is a pilot subject to various operational limitations, it marks a significant incremental step in moving markets onchain," SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said in a statement. Bloomberg reports: With the permission, DTCC will also extend their record-keeping to the blockchain, Michael Winnike, global head of strategy and market solutions at DTCC Clearing & Securities Services, said in an interview. "It's the same legal entitlement, the same stock that you would hold in your account from the DTCC in traditional form," Winnike said. [...] The SEC's authorization of tokenization services only applies to a specific set of securities that trade often. The approval includes the Russell 1000 index which represents the 1,000 largest publicly traded US companies, as well as exchange-traded funds that track major indices and US Treasury bills, bonds and notes, Winnike said. "This allows us both to create value for the markets, while staying in a pre-defined pool of highly-liquid securities to start," said Winnike. The firm's ultimate aspiration is to add its entire depository, which represents $100 trillion in securities, to the blockchain, a move that would require further expansion of the no-action relief from the SEC, he said.

Winnike said the tokenization service will help bridge the traditional and digital worlds in part because the new technology will have the same legal entitlements and controls as traditional markets, including freezing or forced transfers if assets are stolen. "This enables participants to adopt and integrate, because they know there is a trusted party that can recover their securities as needed" and can address potential errors, he said. The new blockchain service will also allow investors to move assets all the time, not just Monday through Friday when traditional markets are open. "That creates a lot of new utility," Winnike said. "It brings the two ecosystems together."

Cadmium zinc telluride (CZT), a hard-to-manufacture semiconductor produced by only a handful of companies, is enabling a quiet revolution in medical imaging, science, and security by delivering faster scans, lower radiation doses, and far more precise X-ray and gamma-ray detection. "You get beautiful pictures from this scanner," says Dr Kshama Wechalekar, head of nuclear medicine and PET. "It's an amazing feat of engineering and physics." The BBC reports: Kromek is one of just a few firms in the world that can make CZT. You may never have heard of the stuff but, in Dr Wechalekar's words, it is enabling a "revolution" in medical imaging. This wonder material has many other uses, such as in X-ray telescopes, radiation detectors and airport security scanners. And it is increasingly sought-after. Investigations of patients' lungs performed by Dr Wechalekar and her colleagues involve looking for the presence of many tiny blood clots in people with long Covid, or a larger clot known as a pulmonary embolism, for example.

The 1-million-pound scanner works by detecting gamma rays emitted by a radioactive substance that is injected into patients' bodies. But the scanner's sensitivity means less of this substance is needed than before: "We can reduce doses about 30%," says Dr Wechalekar. While CZT-based scanners are not new in general, large, whole-body scanners such as this one are a relatively recent innovation. CZT itself has been around for decades but it is notoriously difficult to manufacture. "It has taken a long time for it to develop into an industrial-scale production process," says Arnab Basu, founding chief executive of Kromek.

[...] The newly formed CZT, a semiconductor, can detect tiny photon particles in X-rays and gamma rays with incredible precision -- like a highly specialized version of the light-sensing, silicon-based image sensor in your smartphone camera. Whenever a high energy photon strikes the CZT, it mobilizes an electron and this electrical signal can be used to make an image. Earlier scanner technology used a two-step process, which was not as precise. "It's digital," says Dr Basu. "It's a single conversion step. It retains all the important information such as timing, the energy of the X-ray that is hitting the CZT detector -- you can create color, or spectroscopic images."

Broadcom has quietly pulled VMware vSphere Foundation from parts of EMEA, pushing smaller customers toward far more expensive bundles and prompting some to consider jumping to Hyper-V or Nutanix. The Register reports: VVF is a bundle that offers compute, storage, and networking virtualization, and a platform to run containers. It's most useful in hyperconverged infrastructure and hybrid clouds, but is less capable than the Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud suite. Virtzilla said EMEA customers would need to check with their local dealer to see if VVF was still on sale in their country. "VVF is no longer available in some EMEA countries, but for the majority it is still available," a Broadcom spokesperson said. "Customers will have to reach out to sales reps or partners to determine availability of a given product in their region. These changes were recent."

Our initial tipster said their reseller clued them into the impending change when VMware's new fiscal year started in November. This anonymous customer told us that their hardware fleet boasts thousands of compute cores and without more affordable options, his organization was looking at their annual VMware spend leaping by 10x from around $130,000 to $1.3 million. "We're currently looking to jump ship to either Microsoft's Hyper-V or Nutanix, as we can't eat (that) increase," they told The Register. [...]

For the moment, a Broadcom spokesperson told us it has no plans to ditch VMware vSphere Standard, the basic server virtualization bundle which we're told makes up about 60 percent of the company's licenses and is a lower-cost way to access VMware's hypervisor than buying its full suite of VMware Cloud Foundation products. "We have not announced any changes to the availability of vSphere Standard in EMEA nor end of support for vSphere Standard," the spokesperson said via email. "The product remains fully available across EMEA today. However, Broadcom product availability can vary by region to align with local market requirements, customer demand, and other considerations."

A UC Berkeley professor, suspecting years of targeted computer damage against one Ph.D. student, secretly installed a hidden camera that allegedly caught another doctoral candidate sabotaging the student's laptop. The student now faces felony vandalism charges and is due for his first court appearance on Dec. 15. The Mercury News reports: A UC Berkeley professor smelled a rat -- over the years there had been $46,855 in damage from computers that failed, and nearly all of it seemed to affect one particular Ph.D. candidate at the college's Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department.

The professor wondered if the student's luck was really that bad, or if something else was afoot. So he installed a hidden camera -- disguised in a department laptop, and pointed it at the student's computer. According to police, the sly move captured another Ph.D. candidate, 26-year-old Jiarui Zou, damaging his fellow student's computer with some implement that caused sparks to fly out of the laptop.

Now, Zou has been charged with three felony counts of vandalism, related to the destruction of three computers on Nov. 9-10. The charges allege the damage amounted to more than $400 each time, though the professor who reported the vandalism, and the affected student, told police they suspect Zou of the additional incidents that had been going on for years, court records show.

During the company's first "Autonomy & AI Day" event today, Rivian unveiled a major autonomy push featuring custom silicon, lidar, and a "large driving model." It also hinted at a potential entry into the self-driving ride-hail market, according to CEO RJ Scaringe. TechCrunch reports: Rivian said it will expand the hands-free version of its driver-assistance software to "over 3.5 million miles of roads across the USA and Canada" and will eventually expand beyond highways to surface streets (with clearly painted road lines). This expanded access will be available on the company's second-generation R1 trucks and SUVs. It's calling the expanded capabilities "Universal Hands-Free" and will launch in early 2026. Rivian says it will charge a one-time fee of $2,500 or $49.99 per month.

"What that means is you can get into the vehicle at your house, plug in the address to where you're going, and the vehicle will completely drive you there," Scaringe said Thursday, describing a point-to-point navigation feature. After that, Rivian plans to allow drivers to take their eyes off the road. "This gives you your time back. You can be on your phone, or reading a book, no longer needing to be actively involved in the operation of vehicle." Rivian's driver assistance software won't stop there; the EV maker laid out plans on Thursday to enhance its capabilities all the way up to what it's calling "personal L4," a nod to the level set by the Society of Automotive Engineers that means a car can operate in a particular area with no human intervention.

After that, Scaringe hinted that Rivian will be looking at competing with the likes of Waymo. "While our initial focus will be on personally owned vehicles, which today represent a vast majority of the miles driven in the United States, this also enables us to pursue opportunities in the ride-share space," he said. To help accomplish these lofty goals, Rivian has been building a "large driving model" (think: an LLM but for real-world driving), part of a move away from a rules-based framework for developing autonomous vehicles that has been led by Tesla. The company also showed off its own custom 5nm processor, which it says will be built in collaboration with both Arm and TSMC.

Stanford researchers spent much of the past year building an AI bot called Artemis that scans networks for software vulnerabilities, and when they pitted it against ten professional penetration testers on the university's own engineering network, the bot outperformed nine of them. The experiment offers a window into how rapidly AI hacking tools have improved after years of underwhelming performance.

"We thought it would probably be below average," said Justin Lin, a Stanford cybersecurity researcher. Artemis found bugs at a fraction of human cost -- just under $60 per hour compared to the $2,000 to $2,500 per day that professional pen testers typically charge. But its performance wasn't flawless. About 18% of its bug reports were false positives, and it completely missed an obvious vulnerability on a webpage that most human testers caught. In one case, Artemis found a bug on an outdated page that didn't render in standard browsers; it used a command-line tool called Curl instead of Chrome or Firefox.

Dan Boneh, a Stanford computer science professor who advised the researchers, noted that vast amounts of software shipped without being vetted by LLMs could now be at risk. "We're in this moment of time where many actors can increase their productivity to find bugs at an extreme scale," said Jacob Klein, head of threat intelligence at Anthropic.

NASA has lost contact with its MAVEN Mars orbiter after it passed behind Mars. When it remerged from behind the planet, the spacecraft never resumed communications. SpaceNews reports: MAVEN launched in November 2013 and entered orbit around Mars in September 2014. The spacecraft's primary science mission is to study the planet's upper atmosphere and interactions with the solar wind, including how the atmosphere escapes into space. That is intended to help scientists understand how the planet changes from early in its history, when it had a much thicker atmosphere and was warm enough to support liquid water on its surface.

MAVEN additionally serves as a communications relay, using a UHF antenna to link the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on the Martian surface with the Deep Space Network. NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft also serve as communications relays for the rovers, but are both significantly older than MAVEN. The spacecraft has suffered some technical problems in the past, notably with its inertial measurement units (IMUs) used for navigation. In 2022, MAVEN switched to an "all-stellar" navigation system to minimize the use of the IMUs.

MAVEN has enough propellant to maintain its orbit through at least the end of the decade. NASA's fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, though, zeroed out funding for MAVEN, which cost $22.6 million to operate in 2024. MAVEN was one of several missions "operating well past the end of prime mission" the proposal would terminate, despite MAVEN's role as a communications relay.

A startup called Operation Bluebird is petitioning the US Patent and Trademark Office to strip X Corp of the "Twitter" and "tweet" trademarks, hoping to relaunch a new Twitter with the old brand, bird logo, and "town square" vibe. "The TWITTER and TWEET brands have been eradicated from X Corp.'s products, services, and marketing, effectively abandoning the storied brand, with no intention to resume use of the mark," the petition states. "The TWITTER bird was grounded." Ars Technica reports: If successful, two leaders of the group tell Ars, Operation Bluebird would launch a social network under the name Twitter.new, possibly as early as late next year. (Twitter.new has created a working prototype and is already inviting users to reserve handles.)

Michael Peroff, an Illinois attorney and founder of Operation Bluebird, said that in the intervening years, more Twitter-like social media networks have sprung up or gained traction -- like Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky. But none have the scale or brand recognition that Twitter did prior to Musk's takeover. "There certainly are alternatives," Peroff said. "I don't know that any of them at this point in time are at the scale that would make a difference in the national conversation, whereas a new Twitter really could."

Similarly, Peroff's business partner, Stephen Coates, an attorney who formerly served as Twitter's general counsel, said that Operation Bluebird aims to recreate some of the magic that Twitter once had. "I remember some time ago, I've had celebrities react to my content on Twitter during the Super Bowl or events," he told Ars. "And we want that experience to come back, that whole town square, where we are all meshed in there." "Mere 'token use' won't be enough to reserve the mark," said Mark Lemley, a Stanford Law professor and expert in trademark law. "Or [X] could defend if it can show that it plans to go back to using Twitter. Consumers obviously still know the brand name. It seems weird to think someone else could grab the name when consumers still associate it with the ex-social media site of that name. But that's what the law says."

EU regulators say Google's Play Store changes still don't meet fairness rules and are preparing a potentially hefty 2026 fine unless Google makes deeper concessions. Reuters reports: Google Play has been in the European Commission's crosshairs since March, with regulators singling out technical restrictions preventing app developers from steering users to other channels for cheaper offers. Another issue is the service fee charged by Google for facilitating an app developer's initial acquisition of a new customer via Google Play which the regulator said goes beyond what is justified.

Tweaks to Google Play announced in August to make it easier for app developers to direct customers to other channels and choose a fee model are still falling short, the people said, with the EU antitrust regulator viewing Apple's recent changes to its App Store as a benchmark. [...] Google can still offer to make more changes before regulators impose a fine, likely in the first quarter of the next year, the people said, adding that the timing of any sanction can still change. "We continue to work closely with the European Commission in its ongoing investigation but have serious concerns that further changes would put Android and Play users at risk of malware, scams and data theft. Unlike iOS, Android is already open by design," a Google spokesperson said.

Qualcomm has acquired RISC-V startup Ventana to strengthen its CPU ambitions beyond mobile, "reinforcing its commitment and leadership in the development of the RISC-V standard and ecosystem," the company said in a press release. CRN Magazine reports: The San Diego-based company said Ventana's expertise in RISC-V, a free and open alternative to the Arm and x86 instruction set architectures, will enhance its CPU engineering capabilities and complement "existing efforts to develop custom Oryon CPU technology." Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Qualcomm, which has already been using RISC-V for some products outside the PC and server markets, said Ventana's contributions will boost its "technology leadership in the AI era across all businesses," indicating the broad impact expected by this acquisition. "We believe the RISC-V instruction set architecture has the potential to advance the frontier on CPU technology, enabling innovation across products," Durga Malladi, executive vice president and general manager of technology planning, edge solutions and data center for Qualcomm, said in a statement. "The acquisition of Ventana Micro Systems marks a pivotal step in our journey to deliver industry-leading RISC-V-based CPU technology across products."

Further reading: Qualcomm Is Buying Arduino, Releases New Raspberry Pi-Esque Arduino Board

Adobe is integrating Photoshop, Express, and Acrobat directly into ChatGPT so users can edit photos, design graphics, and tweak PDFs through the chatbot. The Verge reports: The Adobe apps are free to use, and can be activated by typing the name of the app alongside an uploaded file and conversational instruction, such as "Adobe Photoshop, help me blur the background of this image." ChatGPT users won't have to specify the name of the app again during the same conversation to make additional changes. Depending on the instructions, Adobe's apps may offer a selection of results to choose from, or provide a UI element that the user can manually control -- such as Photoshop sliders for adjusting contrast and brightness.

The ChatGPT apps don't provide the full functionality of Adobe's desktop software. Adobe says the Photoshop app can edit specific sections of images, apply creative effects, and adjust image settings like brightness, contrast and exposure. Acrobat in ChatGPT can edit existing PDFs, compress and convert other documents into a PDF format, extract text or tables, and merge multiple files together.

The Adobe Express app allows ChatGPT users to both generate and edit designs, such as posters, invitations, and social media graphics. Everything in the design can be edited without leaving ChatGPT, from replacing text or images, to altering colors and animating specific sections. If ChatGPT users do want more granular control over a project they started in the chatbot, those photos, PDFs, and designs can be opened directly in Adobe's native apps to pick up where they left off.

A study this week has found that shoppers using Instacart are often charged different prices for identical products at the same store at the same time, even when selecting in-store pickup rather than delivery. The Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive policy group, and Consumer Reports organized nearly 200 volunteers across four cities to simultaneously check prices on 20 grocery items. Price differences appeared on nearly three-quarters of the items tested. In one test, more than 40 participants selected the same Safeway in Washington, D.C. and the same brand of eggs. Prices ranged from $3.99 to $4.79 -- a 20% spread. At a Target in North Canton, Ohio, Skippy peanut butter was $2.99 for some shoppers and $3.59 for others. The full 20-item basket varied by about 7% within each store.

An Instacart spokeswoman said retailers on its platform set their own prices and that some run short-term, randomized pricing tests. The company said tests were "never based on personal or behavioral characteristics." Instacart acquired Eversight, an AI-driven pricing optimization company, in 2022. A Target spokesman said the company is not affiliated with Instacart and bears no responsibility for prices on the platform. Safeway and parent company Albertson's declined to comment.

Nvidia has developed location verification technology that could determine which country its AI chips are operating in, Reuters reports, citing a source, a capability that may help address ongoing concerns about the smuggling of advanced semiconductors to restricted markets like China. The feature, which Nvidia has demonstrated privately in recent months but has not released, would be an optional software tool that customers install. It taps into the confidential computing capabilities of Nvidia's GPUs and uses the time delay in communicating with Nvidia-run servers to approximate a chip's location.

The technology will first be available on Nvidia's newest Blackwell chips, though the company is examining options for its older Hopper and Ampere generations. U.S. lawmakers and the White House have pushed for location verification measures as the Department of Justice has brought criminal cases against smuggling rings allegedly attempting to move more than $160 million worth of Nvidia chips to China.