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Submission + - China's diesel trucks are shifting to electric

Submitted by ukoda
ukoda writes: An interesting report by msn covers the rapid growth in the usage of electric trucks replacing diesel and LNG and the implications this could have global LNG and diesel demand:

China is replacing its diesel trucks with electric models faster than expected, potentially reshaping global fuel demand and the future of heavy transport.

In 2020, nearly all new trucks in China ran on diesel. By the first half of 2025, battery-powered trucks accounted for 22% of new heavy truck sales, up from 9.2% in the same period in 2024, according to Commercial Vehicle World, a Beijing-based trucking data provider. The British research firm BMI forecasts electric trucks will reach nearly 46% of new sales this year and 60% next year.

China’s trucking fleet, the world’s second-largest after the U.S., still mainly runs on diesel, but the landscape is shifting. Transport fuel demand is plateauing, according to the International Energy Agency and diesel use in China could decline faster than many expect, said Christopher Doleman, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Electric trucks now outsell LNG models in China, so its demand for fossil fuels could fall, and "in other countries, it might never take off,” he said.

The share of electrics in new truck sales, from 8% in 2024 to 28% by August 2025, has more than tripled as prices have fallen. Electric trucks outsold LNG-powered vehicles in China for five consecutive months this year, according to Commercial Vehicle World.

While electric trucks are two to three times more expensive than diesel ones and cost roughly 18% more than LNG trucks, their higher energy efficiency and lower costs can save owners an estimated 10% to 26% over the vehicle’s lifetime, according to research by Chinese scientists.

“When it comes to heavy trucks, the fleet owners in China are very bottom-line driven,” Doleman said.

Submission + - Saudi Big Bet on AI Films as Hollywood Moves from Studios to Datacentres (agbi.com)

Submitted by pbahra
pbahra writes: Saudi Arabia is betting that the future of Hollywood won’t be built in physical stages but in datacentres. In a push to anchor itself in next-generation film production, Riyadh-based Humain has led Luma AI’s latest Series C round, backing the shift towards cloud-based, AI-generated video rather than traditional studio infrastructure..

Humain’s announcement says the new investment will accelerate Luma’s development of world models capable of learning from video, audio and language to generate photorealistic scenes, environments and characters on demand. Supporters argue this could upend film-making by pushing much of Hollywood’s production pipeline into high-performance datacentres rather than physical sets.

Submission + - Ex OpenAI Researcher onl job loss (ai-2027.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

We predict that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution. We wrote a scenario that represents our best guess about what that might look like. It’s informed by trend extrapolations, wargames, expert feedback, experience at OpenAI, and previous forecasting successes.

This was also covered in an podcast interview with the author.

Submission + - Who has the biggest footprint on the Web ?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: WokeGPT: In terms of digital environmental footprint, some websites like Pinterest, Docomo, and Office.com have notably high carbon emissions due to their traffic and data usage ..

Submission + - NASA Is Tracking a Vast Anomaly Growing in Earth's Magnetic Field (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: For years, NASA has monitored a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for decades, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.

The space agency's satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.

Submission + - Children With Autism, ADHD, And Anorexia Share a Common Microbe Imbalance (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A new, small study suggests children with autism, ADHD, and anorexia

share similarly disrupted gut microbiomes, which, by some measures, have more in common with each other than with their healthy, neurotypical peers.

Led by researchers from Comenius University in Slovakia, the study used stool samples to assess the gut microbiomes of 117 children.

The exploratory study included 30 boys with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 21 girls with anorexia nervosa, and 14 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The remaining samples were from age- and sex-matched healthy and neurotypical children, providing a control group.

Submission + - AI-induced psychosis: The danger of humans and machines hallucinating together (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: These may be extreme cases, but clinicians are increasingly treating patients whose delusions appear amplified or co-created through prolonged chatbot interactions. Little wonder, when a recent report from ChatGPT-creator OpenAI revealed that many of us are turning to chatbots to think through problems, discuss our lives, plan futures and explore beliefs and feelings.

In these contexts, chatbots are no longer just information retrievers; they become our digital companions. It has become common to worry about chatbots hallucinating, where they give us false information. But as they become more central to our lives, there's clearly also growing potential for humans and chatbots to create hallucinations together.

Submission + - Physicists reveal a new quantum state where electrons run wild (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Electrons can freeze into strange geometric crystals and then melt back into liquid-like motion under the right quantum conditions. Researchers identified how to tune these transitions and even discovered a bizarre “pinball” state where some electrons stay locked in place while others dart around freely. Their simulations help explain how these phases form and how they might be harnessed for advanced quantum technologies.

Submission + - Germany caps power prices to save industry

Submitted by argStyopa
argStyopa writes: From https://www.zerohedge.com/ener...
"Germany has agreed to subsidize electricity for its heavy industries, capping prices at about €0.05 per kilowatt-hour from 2026 through 2028—a major policy move aimed at keeping its industrial base from eroding under the weight of Europe’s soaring energy costs."

As the vanguard of industrial states embracing green power, is this a tacit admission that "sustainable" was never actually a synonym for "green"?

Submission + - People Are Having AI "Children" With Their AI Partners (futurism.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: As AI chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs) become better at mimicking human connection, more and more users are falling down extremely weird rabbit holes.

Case in point, new research published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans reveals the startling depths some users are plumbing in their relationships with AI chatbots.

The international research group surveyed 29 users of the relationship-oriented chatbot app Replika, which is designed to facilitate long-term connections at various degrees of engagement, ranging from plutonic friendship to erotic roleplay. Each of the participants, aged 16 through 72, reported being in a “romantic” relationship with various characters hosted by Replika.

The level of romantic dedication people showed to their bots was startling, to say the least. Many participants told the researchers they were in love with their chatbot, which often involved roleplaying marriage, sex, homeownership, and even pregnancies.

“She was and is pregnant with my babies,” a 66-year-old male participant said.

“I’ve edited the pictures of him, the pictures of the two of us. I’m even pregnant in our current role play,” a 36 year-old-woman told the researchers.

Submission + - Chicago Property Tax Bills Finally Getting Mailed After 'Modernization' Mess

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Nearly four months later than usual thanks to a vendor’s software mess, Cook County, IL (includes Chicago) property tax bills will be mailed by Nov. 14 and be due by Dec. 15, county leaders said. Cook County tax collectors blamed a 10-year-old contract with a Texas-based company called Tyler Technologies for the delays. The contract inked in 2015 was supposed to modernize the billing system within three to five years. The months-long delay left local taxing districts, such as Chicago Public Schools, struggling to bridge costs while the tax bills sat in limbo. CPS borrowed $450 million to cover anticipated property taxes, requiring it to budget $23.2 million for interest on those loans in fiscal year 2026.

Of the delayed modernization effort, Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi said: "It was hard work. You have to go through the brain damage of converting all these different lines from an old mainframe to a new system. This vendor has sometimes made a lot of mistakes, and we have the biggest market based property tax system in the U.S. All of us agreed we’d retire the mainframe this year, but the treasurer and the clerk had their hardest work to do this year. We’re glad that they’re done."

Speaking of government software modernization efforts, how's that planned DOGE rewrite of the Social Security Administration codebase in 'months' going?

Submission + - Is having children really cost-prohibitive? (washingtonexaminer.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes:

Many couples don’t believe they can afford to start a family. As the cost of living continues to balloon, this affects a couple’s ability to raise children comfortably. For those contemplating whether to have children, the mere cost of child care, which is an average of $15,600 per year, provokes questions of whether it is even feasible.

This is not just future generation's problem. Catastrophic lack of affordability for housing, healthcare, and childcare results in fewer kids, this in turn means that in 20 years there will be less adults working and paying taxes, in turn bankrupting social nets. So today's childlessness crisis will translate to tomorrow destitute seniors crisis.

Submission + - Russia Imposes 24-Hour Mobile Internet Blackout For Travelers Returning Home (therecord.media) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Russian telecom operators have begun cutting mobile internet access for 24 hours for citizens returning to the country from abroad, in what officials say is an effort to prevent Ukrainian drones from using domestic SIM cards for navigation. “When a SIM card enters Russia from abroad, the user has to confirm that it’s being used by a person — not installed in a drone,” the Digital Development Ministry said in a statement earlier this week.

Users can restore access sooner by solving a captcha or calling their operator for identification. Authorities said the temporary blackout is meant to “ensure the safety of Russian citizens” and prevent SIM cards from being embedded in “enemy drones.” The new rule has led to unexpected outages for residents in border regions, whose phones can automatically connect to foreign carriers. Officials advised users to switch to manual network selection to avoid being cut off.

Submission + - LOGITECH HACKED (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Logitech has confirmed a cybersecurity breach after an intruder exploited a zero-day in a third-party software platform and copied internal data. The company says the incident did not affect its products, manufacturing or business operations, and it does not believe sensitive personal information like national ID numbers or credit card data were stored in the impacted system. The attacker still managed to pull limited information tied to employees, consumers, customers and suppliers, raising fair questions about how long the zero-day existed before being patched.

Logitech brought in outside cybersecurity firms, notified regulators and says the incident will not materially affect its financial results. The company expects its cybersecurity insurance policy to cover investigation costs and any potential legal or regulatory issues. Still, with zero-day attacks increasing across the tech world, even established hardware brands are being forced to acknowledge uncomfortable weaknesses in their internal systems.

Submission + - Five people plead quilty to helping North Koreans infiltrate US companies (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Within the past year, stories have been posted on Slashdot about people helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs at U.S. corporations, companies knowingly helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs, how not to hire a North Korean for a remote IT job, and how a simple question tripped up a North Korean applying for a remote IT job. The FBI is even warning companies that North Koreans working remotely can steal source code and extort money from the company, money which goes to fund the North Korean government. Now, five more people have plead guilty to knowingly helping North Koreans infiltrate U.S. companies as remote IT workers.

The five people are accused of working as “facilitators” who helped North Koreans get jobs by providing their own real identities, or false and stolen identities of more than a dozen U.S. nationals. The facilitators also hosted company-provided laptops in their homes across the U.S. to make it look like the North Korean workers lived locally, according to the DOJ press release.

These actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un’s regime $2.2 million in revenue, said the DOJ.

Three of the people — U.S. nationals Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar, and Alexander Paul Travis — each pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy.

Prosecutors accused the three of helping North Koreans posing as legitimate IT workers, whom they knew worked outside of the United States, to use their own identities to obtain employment, helped them remotely access their company-issued laptops set up in their homes, and also helped the North Koreans pass vetting procedures, such as drug tests.

The fourth U.S. national who pleaded guilty is Erick Ntekereze Prince, who ran a company called Taggcar, which supplied to U.S. companies allegedly “certified” IT workers but whom he knew worked outside of the country and were using stolen or fake identities. Prince also hosted laptops with remote access software at several residences in Florida, and earned more than $89,000 for his work, the DOJ said.

Another participant in the scheme who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy and another count of aggravated identity theft is Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors accuse of stealing U.S. citizens’ identities and selling them to North Koreans so they could get jobs at more than 40 U.S. companies.

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