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Australia's world-first social media ban for under-16s moved closer to implementation after a key trial found that checking a user's age is technologically possible and can be integrated into existing services. From a report: The conclusions are a blow to Facebook-owner Meta Platforms, TikTok and Snap, which opposed the controversial legislation. Some platform operators had questioned whether a user's age could be reliably established using current technology. The results of the government-backed trial clear the way for the law to come into force by the end of the year. The findings also potentially allow other jurisdictions to follow Australia's lead as countries around the world grapple with ways to protect children from harmful content online. "Age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective," the government-commissioned Age Assurance Technology Trial said in a statement Friday announcing its preliminary findings.

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Expects Huawei to start exporting AI chips soon, creating global fight for tech stack dominance

China’s AI and chipmaking prowess lags the USA’s by just two years, and America’s efforts to slow its progress could be hobbling its own semiconductor industry, according to Trump administration tech czar David Sacks.…

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A team of biologists from Northeastern University and the University of Kentucky has found one of the key molecules involved in axolotl regeneration. It's a crucial component in ensuring the body grows back the right parts in the right spot: for instance, growing a hand, from the wrist. "The cells can interpret this cue to say, 'I'm at the elbow, and then I'm going to grow back the hand' or 'I'm at the shoulder... so I'm going to then enable those cells to grow back the entire limb'," biologist James Monaghan explains. That molecule, retinoic acid, is arranged through the axolotl body in a gradient, signaling to regenerative cells how far down the limb has been severed. Closer to the shoulder, axolotls have higher levels of retinoic acid, and lower levels of the enzyme that breaks it down. This ratio changes the further the limb extends from the body. The team found this balance between retinoic acid and the enzyme that breaks it down plays a crucial role in 'programming' the cluster of regenerative cells that form at an injury site. When they added surplus retinoic acid to the hand of an axolotl in the process of regenerating, it grew an entire arm instead. In theory, the human body has the right molecules and cells to do this too, but our cells respond to the signals very differently, instead forming collagen-based scars at injury sites. Next, Monaghan is keen to find out what's going on inside cells -- the axolotl's, and our own -- when those retinoic acid signals are received. The research is published in Nature Communications.

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Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from the Cool Down: A team of chemical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented a new process to separate crude oil components, potentially bringing forward a replacement that can cut its harmful carbon pollution by 90%. The original technique, which uses heat to separate crude oil into gasoline, diesel, and heating oil, accounts for roughly 1% of all global energy consumption and 6% of dirty energy pollution from the carbon dioxide it releases. "Instead of boiling mixtures to purify them, why not separate components based on shape and size?" said Zachary P. Smith, associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT and senior author of the study, as previously reported in Interesting Engineering. The team invented a polymer membrane that divides crude oil into its various uses like a sieve. The new process follows a similar strategy used by the water industry for desalination, which uses reverse osmosis membranes and has been around since the 1970s. [The membrane excelled in lab tests. It increased the toluene concentration by 20 times in a mixture with triisopropylbenzene. It also effectively separated real industrial oil samples containing naphtha, kerosene, and diesel.]

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The first macOS Tahoe beta appears to drop support for legacy FireWire 400 and 800, making it impossible to sync or mount older iPods and external drives that rely on the standard. MacRumors reports: Unlike on macOS Sequoia and earlier versions, the first macOS Tahoe beta does not include a FireWire section in the System Settings app. Of course, this could all end up being a false alarm. It is still early in the macOS Tahoe beta testing cycle, and FireWire support could return in a later beta version, or in time for the final release. FireWire was primarily developed by Apple, but it was later standardized as IEEE 1394 and licensed for use in non-Apple devices. iPods started to transition from FireWire to USB for data transfer in 2003, so the standard is very outdated, but it would still be the end of an era if macOS Tahoe drops it. The last Mac with a FireWire port was released in 2012, so connecting older iPods and FireWire drives to newer Macs has long required the use of adapters.

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Publishers face an existential threat in the AI era and need to take action to make sure they are fairly compensated for their content, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Axios at an event in Cannes on Thursday. From a report: Search traffic referrals have plummeted as people increasingly rely on AI summaries to answer their queries, forcing many publishers to reevaluate their business models. Ten years ago, Google crawled two pages for every visitor it sent a publisher, per Prince. He said that six months ago: For Google that ratio was 6:1 For OpenAI, it was 250:1 For Anthropic, it was 6,000:1 Now: For Google, it's 18:1 For OpenAI, it's 1,500:1 For Anthropic, it's 60,000:1 Between the lines: "People aren't following the footnotes," Prince said.

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Fujitsu picked to build system using 'MONAKA-X' CPUs

Fujitsu has bagged the contract to design Japan's next-gen supercomputer to succeed the Fugaku system, and it looks set to be another Arm-based behemoth, using a CPU derived from its upcoming MONAKA datacenter silicon.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hollywood Reporter: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li and a legion of the all-time greats of martial cinema are about to get an AI makeover. In a sign-of-the-times announcement at the Shanghai International Film Festival on Thursday, a collection of Chinese studios revealed that they are turning to AI to re-imagine around 100 classics of the genre. Lee's classic Fist of Fury (1972), Chan's breakthrough Drunken Master (1978) and the Tsui Hark-directed epic Once Upon a Time in China (1991), which turned Li into a bone fide movie star, are among the features poised for the treatment, as part of the "Kung Fu Movie Heritage Project 100 Classics AI Revitalization Project." There will also be a digital reworking of the John Woo classic A Better Tomorrow (1986) that, by the looks of the trailer, turns the money-burning anti-hero originally played by Chow Yun-fat into a cyberpunk, and is being claimed as "the world's first full-process, AI-produced animated feature film." The big guns of the Chinese industry were out in force on the sidelines of the 27th Shanghai International Film Festival to make the announcements, too. They were led by Zhang Pimin, chairman of the China Film Foundation, who said AI work on these "aesthetic historical treasures" would give them a new look that "conforms to contemporary film viewing." "It is not only film heritage, but also a brave exploration of the innovative development of film art," Zhang said. Tian Ming, chairman of project partners Shanghai Canxing Culture and Media, meanwhile, promised the work -- expected to include upgrades in image and sound as well as overall production levels -- while preserving the storytelling and aesthetic of the originals -- would both "pay tribute to the original work" and "reshape the visual aesthetics." "We sincerely invite the world's top AI animation companies to jointly start a film revolution that subverts tradition," said Tian, who announced a fund of 100 million yuan ($13.9 million) would be implemented to kick-start the work.

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Starting mid-July 2025, Microsoft 365 will begin blocking legacy authentication protocols like Remote PowerShell and FrontPage RPC to enhance security under its "Secure by Default" initiative. Admins must now grant explicit consent for third-party app access, which could disrupt workflows but aims to reduce unauthorized data exposure. The Register reports: First in line for the chop is legacy browser authentication to SharePoint and OneDrive using the Remote PowerShell (RPS) protocol. According to Microsoft, legacy authentication protocols like RPS "are vulnerable to brute-force and phishing attacks due to non-modern authentication." The upshot is that attempting to access OneDrive or SharePoint via a browser using legacy authentication will stop working. Also being blocked is the FrontPage Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol. Microsoft FrontPage was a web authoring tool that was discontinued almost two decades ago. However, the protocol for remote web authoring has lived on until now. Describing legacy protocols like RPC as "more susceptible to compromise," Microsoft will block them to prevent their use in Microsoft 365 clients. Finally, third-party apps will need administrator consent to access files and sites. Microsoft said: "Users allowing third-party apps to access file and site content can lead to overexposure of an organization's content. Requiring admins to consent to this access can help reduce overexposure." "While laudable, shifting consent to the administrator could disrupt some workflows," writes The Register's Richard Speed. "The Microsoft-managed App Consent Policies will be enabled, and users will be unable to consent to third-party applications accessing their files and sites by default. Need consent? A user will need to request an administrator to consent on their behalf."

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SpaceX's Starship exploded on its test stand in South Texas ahead of an engine test, marking the fourth loss of a Starship this year. "In three previous test flights, the vehicle came apart or detonated during its flight," notes the Washington Post. No injuries were reported but the incident highlights ongoing technical challenges as SpaceX races to prove Starship's readiness for deep-space travel. From the report: In a post on the social media site X, SpaceX said that the explosion on the test stand, which could be seen for miles, happened at about 11 p.m. Central time. For safety reasons, the company had cleared personnel from around the site, and "all personnel are safe and accounted for," it said. The company is "actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials," the post continued. "There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue." Starship comprises two stages -- the Super Heavy booster, which has 33 engines, and the Starship spacecraft itself, which has six. Before Wednesday's explosion, the spacecraft was standing alone on the test stand, and not mounted on top of the booster, when it blew up. The engines are test-fired on the Starship before it's mounted on the booster. SpaceX had been hoping to launch within the coming weeks had the engine test been successful. [...] In a post on X, Musk said that preliminary data pointed to a pressure vessel that failed at the top of the rocket. You can watch a recording of the explosion on YouTube. SpaceX called the incident a "rapid unscheduled disassembly," which caught the attention of Slashdot reader hambone142. In a story submitted to the Firehose, they commented: "I worked for a major computer company whose power supplies caught on fire. We were instructed to cease saying that and instead say the power supply underwent a 'thermal event.' Gotta love it."

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Baseball, apple pie, and assisted programming

US-based software developers are the world's most prolific users of AI coding assistants, a trend that researchers believe has national economic implications.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cybernews: Several collections of login credentials reveal one of the largest data breaches in history, totaling a humongous 16 billion exposed login credentials. The data most likely originates from various infostealers. Unnecessarily compiling sensitive information can be as damaging as actively trying to steal it. For example, the Cybernews research team discovered a plethora of supermassive datasets, housing billions upon billions of login credentials. From social media and corporate platforms to VPNs and developer portals, no stone was left unturned. Our team has been closely monitoring the web since the beginning of the year. So far, they've discovered 30 exposed datasets containing from tens of millions to over 3.5 billion records each. In total, the researchers uncovered an unimaginable 16 billion records. None of the exposed datasets were reported previously, bar one: in late May, Wired magazine reported a security researcher discovering a "mysterious database" with 184 million records. It barely scratches the top 20 of what the team discovered. Most worryingly, researchers claim new massive datasets emerge every few weeks, signaling how prevalent infostealer malware truly is. "This is not just a leak -- it's a blueprint for mass exploitation. With over 16 billion login records exposed, cybercriminals now have unprecedented access to personal credentials that can be used for account takeover, identity theft, and highly targeted phishing. What's especially concerning is the structure and recency of these datasets -- these aren't just old breaches being recycled. This is fresh, weaponizable intelligence at scale," researchers said. The only silver lining here is that all of the datasets were exposed only briefly: long enough for researchers to uncover them, but not long enough to find who was controlling vast amounts of data. Most of the datasets were temporarily accessible through unsecured Elasticsearch or object storage instances. Key details to be aware of: - The records include billions of login credentials, often structured as URL, login, and password. - The datasets include both old and recent breaches, many with cookies, tokens, and metadata, making them especially dangerous for organizations without multi-factor authentication or strong credential practices. - Exposed services span major platforms like Apple, Google, Facebook, Telegram, GitHub, and even government services. - The largest dataset alone includes 3.5 billion records, while one associated with the Russian Federation has over 455 million; many dataset names suggest links to malware or specific regions. - Ownership of the leaked data is unclear, but its potential for phishing, identity theft, and ransomware is severe -- especially since even a - Basic cyber hygiene -- such as regularly updating strong passwords and scanning for malware -- is currently the best line of defense for users.

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To stop AI scam callers, break automatic speech recognition systems

Researchers based in Israel and India have developed a defense against automated call scams.…