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Tech News
A Guardian opinion column, cited via Slashdot, states that the night sky is growing 10% brighter each year and that 80% of people now live under light-polluted skies. The author argues for treating access to darkness as a right, calling for rules on light warmth, direction, and brightness rather than eliminating outdoor lighting entirely.
South Africa's air traffic control systems were targeted in a cyberattack in which a ransomware toolkit was installed on at least one operational network. The country's aviation authorities are now seeking outside assistance to respond to the breach.
The SMGCommunity group has completed a full decompilation of Super Mario Galaxy, making it the first Wii game to be entirely reverse-engineered. Developer collective Luma's Workshop has already announced an unofficial PC port called AstroCore, which it says will be coded entirely by humans without heavy AI assistance.
A jury in State of New Mexico v. Facebook, Inc. found that Meta's Facebook violated the state's Unfair Practices Act more than 43 million times, tied to misleading statements about its data practices during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Jurors determined Facebook misrepresented how it shared user data with third parties, profited from misinformation and hate speech while claiming to combat it, and made false statements about its internal Cambridge Analytica investigation. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced the verdict, which could expose Meta to significant financial penalties.
Samsung has begun rolling out a new update for the Galaxy S24, S24 Plus, S24 Ultra, and S24 FE globally, carrying the September 2026 security patch that fixes 90 vulnerabilities. The update is roughly 450MB for the standard S24 models and 438MB for the S24 FE, but it does not include the stable One UI 9 build based on Android 17, which Samsung has not yet scheduled.
President Trump announced a 'morally binding' agreement called the Joint Commitment On Frontier Responsibilities, signed by executives including Elon Musk, Sam Altman's OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jensen Huang. The deal asks companies to maintain internal safety controls and work with external auditors, and Trump said a board would oversee compliance, though no members were named. Trump also signed an executive order renaming artificial intelligence as 'superintelligence' and reaffirmed his backing of data center expansion.
Sapia.ai CEO Barb Hyman argues traditional resumes are becoming unreliable because AI tools let candidates mass-produce tailored CVs and cover letters, citing UK data showing graduate employers received an average of 140 applications per vacancy in 2025, a 30-year high. She and other recruiters say hiring is shifting toward directly assessing candidates' skills rather than relying on employment history, with Michael Page research finding about two-thirds of UK organizations already using skills-based hiring.
An advice piece examines why asking colleagues for help at work can feel uncomfortable, tracing this discomfort partly to early education, where self-reliance is emphasized and group work and requests for assistance are often discouraged. It offers guidance on framing a substantial request to a coworker in a way that strengthens rather than strains the working relationship.
A commentator describes LinkedIn as dominated by performative 'productivity' posts, including a recurring pattern of computer vision projects showing people waving their hands to be tracked by a camera. The writer says these projects, along with items like a pothole-detection demo, appear repeatedly and nearly identically across the feed, suggesting they are copied from tutorials or generated with AI coding tools rather than built from scratch.
Google's Android 17 QPR2 Beta 6.1 update lets the Pixel 11 Pro's HiLight LED flash twice when a favorite contact sends a message, a feature previously limited to calls and Gemini activity. The option can be toggled under Settings > System > HiLight or set per-contact, though no new LED colors are included in this beta. A stable version of Android 17 QPR2 is expected in December.
A group of tech workers connected OpenAI's ChatGPT to the controls of a Toyota Corolla, letting the AI attempt driving maneuvers like turns in a real-world test. According to 404 Media, one participant named Mahns said the system could fail a turn on one attempt and then succeed on a similar or different turn shortly after, without being explicitly trained for it.
President Donald Trump convened a meeting of leading US technology executives at the White House, describing it as a gathering aimed at advancing 'America's Golden Age' in AI. Attendees included leaders from OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, SpaceX, Meta and Google. The meeting took place amid growing calls from some industry figures and experts for stronger regulation of AI's potential risks.