hackingbear shares a report from CNN: Taiwanese authorities have detained three current and former employees of the world's largest chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), for allegedly stealing trade secrets [and taking them to Japanese company Tokyo Electrons], prosecutors said Tuesday. Law enforcement officers questioned several suspects and witnesses late last month. They searched their homes and detained three of them over "serious suspicions of violating national security laws," the intellectual property branch of the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office said on Tuesday. After an internal investigation, the major Taiwanese exporter raised suspicions with authorities that its "core technologies" may have been illegally accessed by former and current staffers.

Nikkei Asia first reported on Tuesday that TSMC had fired staffers suspected of illegally obtaining business secrets related to the manufacturing technology for the company's 2-nanometer chip, the most advanced processor in the semiconductor industry that is expected to go into mass production this year. Taiwanese local media reported that a former TSMC employee now works at top chip manufacturing equipment supplier Tokyo Electron Ltd., and that the Japanese firm's Taiwan office was raided by investigators. On Thursday, Tokyo Electron confirmed it had dismissed an employee of its Taiwan subsidiary who was involved in the case, and said the company was cooperating with authorities. "As of now, based upon the findings of our internal investigation we have not confirmed any evidence of the respective confidential information shared to any third parties," it said in a statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: They are supposed to monitor you throughout the working day and help make sure that life is not getting on top of you. But a study has concluded that smartwatches cannot accurately measure your stress levels -- and may think you are overworked when really you are just excited. Researchers found almost no relationship between the stress levels reported by the smartwatch and the levels that participants said they experienced. However, recorded fatigue levels had a very slight association with the smartwatch data, while sleep had a stronger correlation.

Eiko Fried, an author of the study, said the correlation between the smartwatch and self-reported stress scores was "basically zero." He added: "This is no surprise to us given that the watch measures heart rate and heart rate doesn't have that much to do with the emotion you're experiencing -- it also goes up for sexual arousal or joyful experiences." He noted that his Garmin had previously told him he was stressed when he was working out in the gym and when excitedly talking to a friend he had not seen for a while at a wedding. "The findings raise important questions about what wearable data can or can't tell us about mental states," said Fried. "Be careful and don't live by your smartwatch -- these are consumer devices, not medical devices." The research has been published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science.

Advocacy groups have decided not to appeal a federal court ruling striking down Biden-era net neutrality rules, citing the FCC's current Republican majority and a Supreme Court they view as hostile to the issue. Instead, they plan to push for open internet protections through Congress, state laws, and future court cases, while noting California's net neutrality law remains in effect. Ars Technica reports: "Trump's election flipped the FCC majority back to ideologues who've always taken the broadband industry's side on this crucial issue. And the justices making up the current Supreme Court majority have shown hostility toward sound legal reasoning on this precise question and a host of other topics too," said Matt Wood, VP of policy and general counsel at Free Press. [...] "The 6th Circuit's decision earlier this year was spectacularly wrong, and the protections it struck down are extremely important. But rather than attempting to overcome an agency that changed hands -- and a Supreme Court majority that cares very little about the rule of law -- we'll keep fighting for Internet affordability and openness in Congress, state legislatures and other court proceedings nationwide," Wood said.

Besides Free Press, groups announcing that they won't appeal are the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, New America's Open Technology Institute, and Public Knowledge. "Though the 6th Circuit erred egregiously in its decision to overturn the FCC's 2024 Open Internet order, there are other ways we can advance our fight for consumer protections and ISP accountability than petitioning the Supreme Court to review this case -- and, given the current legal landscape, we believe our efforts will be more effective if focused on those alternatives," said Raza Panjwani, senior policy counsel at the Open Technology Institute. Net neutrality could still reach the Supreme Court in another case. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior counselor of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, said that "the 6th Circuit decision makes bad policy as well as bad law. Because it is at odds with the holdings of two other circuits, we expect to take the issue to the Supreme Court in a future case."

South Korea postponed a decision for the second time this year on Friday regarding Google's request to export detailed mapping data to overseas servers, which would enable full Google Maps functionality in the country. The inter-agency committee extended the deadline from August to October to allow further review of security concerns and consultations with industry stakeholders.

South Korea remains one of only a handful of countries alongside China and North Korea where Google Maps fails to function properly, unable to provide directions despite displaying landmarks and businesses. Tourism complaints increased 71% last year, with Google Maps accounting for 30% of all app-related grievances, while local industry groups representing 2,600 companies report 90% opposition to Google's request due to fears of market domination by the US tech company.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Federal Communications Commission is planning a review of the US emergency alert systems. Both the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WAS) will be subject to a "re-examination" by the agency. "We want to ensure that these programs deliver the results that Americans want and need," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted on X.

The announcement of this plan notes that the infrastructure underlying the EAS -- which includes radio, television, satellite and cable systems -- is 31 years old, while the framework underpinning the WAS mobile device alerts is 13 years old. The FCC review will also assess what entities should be able to send alerts on those systems, as well as topics such as geographic targeting and security.

Google will discontinue Steam for Chromebook Beta on January 1, 2026, removing all installed games from devices after that date. The beta launched in March 2022 as an alpha before expanding to beta status in November 2022 with reduced hardware requirements of Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 processors and 8GB RAM. The program never progressed beyond beta testing despite supporting 99 compatible Linux-based titles through its three-year run.

Google announced Friday it will roll out an AI-powered redesign of Google Finance over the coming weeks in the United States. The update adds natural language query processing for financial research questions with comprehensive AI responses including relevant links, advanced charting tools with technical indicators and candlestick charts, expanded market data covering commodities and additional cryptocurrencies, and a live news feed displaying real-time headlines.

Computer scientists at Tsinghua University and Stanford have developed an algorithm that surpasses a fundamental speed limit that has constrained network pathfinding calculations since 1984. The team's approach to the shortest-path problem -- finding optimal routes from one point to all others in a network -- runs faster than Dijkstra's 1956 algorithm and its improvements by avoiding the sorting process that created the decades-old computational barrier.

Led by Ran Duan at Tsinghua, the researchers combined clustering techniques with selective application of the Bellman-Ford algorithm to identify influential nodes without sorting all paths by distance. The algorithm divides graphs into layers and uses Bellman-Ford to locate key intersection points before calculating paths to other nodes. The technique works on both directed and undirected graphs with arbitrary weights, solving a problem that stymied researchers after partial breakthroughs in the late 1990s and early 2000s applied only to specific weight conditions.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Privacy groups report a surge in UK police facial recognition scans of databases secretly stocked with passport photos lacking parliamentary oversight. Big Brother Watch says the UK government has allowed images from the country's passport and immigration databases to be made available to facial recognition systems, without informing the public or parliament.

The group claims the passport database contains around 58 million headshots of Brits, plus a further 92 million made available from sources such as the immigration database, visa applications, and more. By way of comparison, the Police National Database contains circa 20 million photos of those who have been arrested by, or are at least of interest to, the police.

alternative_right shares an interview from The Register with David W. Hill, who served as lead designer for ThinkPad from 1995 to 2017. Here are some excerpts from the wide-ranging interview: Hill revealed that he tried several times to introduce additional laptops that had the famous "butterfly keyboard" found on the ThinkPad 701C. [...] Hill told The Register that he had wanted to make more ThinkPads with butterfly keyboards and had tried at least three times to make it happen -- in one case there was a prototype where only half of the keyboard moved -- but was never able to get there. Eventually, screens became big enough that there was no need to have a keyboard that expanded. However, Hill said, he thought about putting a butterfly keyboard on a netbook when they were a viable product category in the late aughts. [...]

One of the features Hill is most proud of developing is the ThinkLight, an overhead light located above the screen that lit up the entire keyboard and deck. Though the advent of keyboard backlights has made the ThinkLight redundant -- Lenovo discontinued it in 2013 -- it offers capabilities that backlights do not. If you want to place a paper on top of your keyboard, the LED will light it up, allowing you to see more than just your key legends. ... When designing the 25th anniversary ThinkPad, which came out in 2017, Hill brought back the ThinkLight, but he actually wanted to have -- for the first time -- two LEDs instead of one. The dual lights would have eliminated shadows and provided even better illumination, but unfortunately, this effort proved too costly to make it into the final product. [...]

When I asked Hill about products he wanted to come out with but never got to, he talked about an idea for portable workstations that would fold up like a laptop but have a separate keyboard and screen like a desktop when you put them on your desk. He collaborated with butterfly keyboard creator John Karidis on this concept, but couldn't make it ready for market. "We did a lot of experimentation with laptops that sort of unfolded to be more like a desktop: things where the display elevated or the keyboard would remove so you could use them like a workstation, rather than just being a clamshell with a hinge, you open and close," Hill recalled. "We did a lot of experimentation with that and got close a few times, but never could completely sell it. I always thought it was an opportunity to create a new category."

Ancient Slashdot reader Epeeist shares a report from The Guardian: The newest version of the maglev train is capable of traveling at 600km/h (about 370mph). However, the train's engineers have wrestled with the problem of the shock waves which occur as the train exits the mouth of a tunnel. When a high-speed train enters an enclosed space such as a tunnel, air in front is compressed, like in a piston. The resulting fluctuations in air pressure coalesce at the tunnel mouth, generating low-frequency shock waves. These are colloquially known as a "tunnel boom" -- a related, albeit different phenomenon to the "sonic boom" heard as aircraft pass the speed of sound. Tunnel booms pose serious challenges to operational safety, as the shock waves can disturb humans and animals nearby, as well as causing structural damage.

Now, however, researchers have discovered that placing innovative soundproofing buffers at tunnel mouths can reduce shock waves by up to 96%. This promises improvements in operational safety, noise pollution and passenger comfort, as well as safeguarding animals in the vicinity of future lines. [...] The porous structure of the new 100-meter long buffers, combined with porous coatings on the tunnel body, allow the trapped air to escape before the train reaches the tunnel mouth, suppressing the boom in the same way as a silencer fitted to a firearm.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Some of the first reviews ever written for the original Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. have been digitized and published by the Video Game History Foundation. The reviews appeared in Computer Entertainer, an early video game magazine that ran from 1982 to 1990. The archivists at the Foundation tracked down the magazine's entire run and have published it all online under a Creative Commons license.

Despite dwindling global market share, retreat from key regions like Europe, and halting in-house production, Sony insists its Xperia smartphone line remains "very important" to its business. 9to5Google reports: During Sony's latest financial results presentation this week, Sony CFO Lin Tao addressed the state of its Xperia smartphone brand, saying that Xperia is part of "a very important business for us" as reported by CNET Japan (translated). Tao said that "communication technology is a very important technology that Sony has cultivated for a long time. We also want to continue to value our smartphone business." Though adding that "communication technology is used in areas other than smartphones."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: In an interview, Lansweeper, an IT asset discovery and inventory company, revealed to ZDNET that, in its analysis of over 15 million identified consumer desktop operating systems, it found that Linux desktops currently account for just over 6% of PC market share. This news comes after several other studies have shown the Linux desktop is right around the 6% mark. Indeed, according to the US Federal Government Website and App Analytics count, the Linux desktop market share over the last 90 days has reached 6.3%, a new high. In July, according to StatCounter, the Linux desktop also set a record high by its metrics with 5.24%.

Microsoft's $30 Extended Security Updates license for Windows 10 will cover up to 10 devices under a single Microsoft Account, the company confirmed in updated support documentation. The ESU program, which provides security updates through October 13, 2026, requires a Microsoft Account for all three enrollment options: the $30 one-time purchase, redemption of 1,000 Microsoft Reward points, or free enrollment for users who sync their PC settings to OneDrive. Windows 10's support ends October 14, 2025.

Google has quietly admitted defeat in selling advertising for its smart TV platform, returning ad inventory to publishers and accepting a revenue share instead of controlling ad spots directly, according to The Verge. The policy reversal comes as Google spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on Google TV without breaking even, while Amazon outspends the company on retail incentives that have already pushed Google TV sets out of Costco stores in favor of Fire TV models.

Amazon pays up to $50 per activated television to retailers and manufacturers, The Verge reported. Google TV has grown to 270 million monthly active devices worldwide since unifying Android TV and Chromecast under a single brand in 2020, but many devices operate in overseas markets that generate little revenue or run customized versions controlled by pay-TV operators. YouTube's success in the living room -- generating $9.8 billion in quarterly ad revenue and accounting for 12.5% of all US television viewing -- has reduced internal support for Google TV, with sales teams prioritizing the video platform and some YouTube executives arguing the smart TV budget should be redirected, the report adds.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: PCI-SIG says PCI Express 8.0 will hit a raw bit rate of 256.0 GT/s, doubling what PCIe 7.0 offers. The spec is expected to be ready by 2028, and the goal is to support massive data loads from AI, machine learning, edge computing, and even quantum systems. The group says PCIe 8.0 will allow up to 1 terabyte per second of bidirectional throughput with a full x16 configuration. They're also looking at new connector designs, improving protocol efficiency, reducing power use, and maintaining backward compatibility.

EreIamJH writes: German tech newsletter Notebookcheck is reporting that the unexpectedly high 20% tariff the U.S. recently imposed on Taiwan is intended to pressure TSMC to buy a 49% minority stake in Intel -- including an IP transfer and to spend $400 billion in the U.S., in addition to the $165 billion previously planned.

Google says total organic click volume from its search engine to websites has remained ""relatively stable year-over-year" despite the introduction of AI Overviews, contradicting third-party reports of dramatic traffic declines. The company reports average click quality has increased, with users less likely to immediately return to search results after clicking through to websites. Google attributes stable traffic patterns to users conducting more searches and asking longer, more complex questions since AI features launched, while AI Overviews display more links per page than traditional results.

Google is the latest company to suffer a data breach in an ongoing wave of Salesforce CRM data theft attacks conducted by the ShinyHunters extortion group. BleepingComputer: In June, Google warned that a threat actor they classify as 'UNC6040' is targeting companies' employees in voice phishing (vishing) social engineering attacks to breach Salesforce instances and download customer data. This data is then used to extort companies into paying a ransom to prevent the data from being leaked.

In a brief update to the article last night, Google said that it too fell victim to the same attack in June after one of its Salesforce CRM instances was breached and customer data was stolen. "In June, one of Google's corporate Salesforce instances was impacted by similar UNC6040 activity described in this post. Google responded to the activity, performed an impact analysis and began mitigations," reads Google's update.