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ChatGPT maker places other vendors under review following breach

OpenAI says API users may be affected by a recent breach at its former data analytics provider, Mixpanel.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: NASA has slashed the number of astronaut missions on Boeing's Starliner contract and said the spacecraft's next mission to the International Space Station will fly without a crew, reducing the scope of a program hobbled by engineering woes and outpaced by SpaceX. The most recent mishap occurred during Starliner's first crewed test flight in 2024, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Several thrusters on Starliner's propulsion system shut down during its approach to the ISS.

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$12K machine promises performance that can scale to 32 chip servers and beyond but immature stack makes harnessing compute challenging

hands on Tenstorrent probably isn't the first name that springs to mind when it comes to AI infrastructure. But unlike the litany of AI chip startups vying for VC funding and a slice of Nvidia's pie, Tenstorrent's chips actually exist outside the lab.…

ExoMars project may actually get to the red planet one day

The European Space Agency's long-delayed Rosalind Franklin rover has received a boost with confirmation that NASA is staying in the project.…

Agency flags hijacks of insecure studio-to-transmitter gear after attackers pipe in fake alerts and vulgar audio

Malicious intruders have hijacked US radio gear to turn emergency broadcast tones into a profanity-laced alarm system.…

Researchers at MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have built a simulation that models all 151 million American workers and their skills, then maps those skills against the capabilities of over 13,000 AI tools currently in production to see where the two overlap. The answer, according to their analysis: 11.7% of the US labor market's total wage value, or about $1.2 trillion, sits in tasks that AI systems can technically perform [PDF]. The researchers call this the Iceberg Index, and the name is deliberate. The visible AI disruption happening in tech jobs right now accounts for only 2.2% of labor market wage value. The remaining exposure lurks in cognitive and administrative work across finance, healthcare administration, and professional services, and unlike tech-sector disruption, it's spread across all fifty states rather than concentrated on the coasts. Delaware and South Dakota show higher Iceberg Index values than California because their economies lean heavily on administrative and financial work. Ohio and Tennessee register modest tech-sector exposure but substantial hidden risk in the white-collar functions that support their manufacturing bases. To validate the framework, the researchers compared their predictions against Anthropic's Economic Index tracking real-world AI usage from millions of Claude users. The two measures agreed on state categorizations 69% of the time, with particularly strong alignment at the extremes. The Iceberg Index doesn't predict job losses or adoption timelines. It measures technical capability, the overlap between what AI can do and what occupations require. Traditional economic indicators like GDP and unemployment explain less than five percent of the variation in this skill-based exposure, which is partly why the researchers argue workforce planners need new metrics.

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Brewer finally tallies fallout from September attack as it pushes earnings into 2026

Asahi has finally done the sums on September's ransomware attack in Japan, conceding the crooks may have helped themselves to personal data tied to almost 2 million people.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Call-handling agents powered by AI are to be trialled by Staffordshire Police in a bid to cut waiting times for the non-emergency 101 service. The force is set to become the third in the country to take part in the scheme testing the use of artificial "agents" to deal with calls. Under the system, the AI agent would deal with simple queries like requests for information without the need for human involvement, freeing up call handlers and reducing answering times. Acting Chief Constable Becky Riggs confirmed the force would be looking to launch the AI pilot early in the new year. "It's a piece of technology called Agentforce. It will help with our response to the public, which historically we know we haven't done well." The senior officer said that sometimes people are not calling to report a crime, but want more information, which the technology could help with. However, if the system detects keywords suggesting vulnerability or risk or emergency, then it will be able to divert the call to a human being.

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OVH stuck between a rock and a hard place as investigators demand access

A Canadian court has ordered French cloud provider OVHcloud to hand over customer data stored in Europe, potentially undermining the provider's claims about digital sovereignty protections.…

Audit sympathetic toward Comhairle nan Eilean Siar as staff stretched to capacity trying to recover

Auditors remain concerned about the cyber resilience of a Scottish council as some systems are yet to be fully rebuilt following a ransomware attack in November 2023.…

IT in the firing line as 'legacy' roles under the microscope

AI-pocalypse New research suggests AI deployment is creating significant workforce redundancies across major organizations.…

Debian 13.2 freshness, better HiDPI support, and 101 other things to run on your Pi

Raspberry Pi Ltd has shipped two updates for its single-board computers: a very small refresh to Pi OS 6, and a more substantial upgrade to the tool that writes your Pi's operating system to an SD card.…

Apple is challenging a new Indian antitrust law that would let regulators calculate penalties based on global revenue -- a change that could expose the company to a fine of roughly $38 billion in its dispute with Tinder owner Match. The 2022 antitrust case centers on accusations that Apple abused its power by forcing developers to use its in-app purchase system. MacRumors reports: Last year, India passed a law that allows the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to use global turnover when calculating penalties imposed on companies for abusing market dominance. Apple can be fined up to 10 percent, which would result in a penalty of around $38 billion. Apple said that using global turnover would result in a fine that's "manifestly arbitrary, unconstitutional, grossly disproportionate, and unjust." Apple is asking India's Delhi High Court to declare the law illegal, suggesting that penalties should be based on the Indian revenue of the specific unit that violates antitrust law. [...] Apple said in today's filing that the CCI used the new penalty law on November 10 in an unrelated case, fining a company for a violation that happened 10 years ago. Apple said it had "no choice but to bring this constitutional challenge now" to avoid having retrospective penalties applied against it, too. Match has argued that a high fine based on global turnover would discourage companies from repeating antitrust violations. Apple's plea will be heard on December 3.

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Arm and RISC-V would like a word

Feature Remember when high-performance computing always seemed to be about x86? Exactly a decade ago, almost nine in ten supercomputers in the TOP500 (a list of the beefiest machines maintained twice yearly by academics) were Intel-based. Today, it's down to 57 percent.…

Chipzilla can certainly use foundry smarts, but denies the allegation

Taiwanese foundry TSMC believes a former executive has leaked company secrets to Intel and is testing the matter in court.…

China's new JUNO neutrino observatory has delivered world-leading measurements after just 59 days, offering the most precise readings yet of two key neutrino oscillation parameters. "The physics result is already world-leading in the areas that it touches," says particle physicist Juan Pedro Ochoa-Ricoux of the University of California, Irvine, who co-leads a team on JUNO. "In particular, we measured two neutrino oscillation parameters, and that measurement is already for both parameters the best in the world." The results were published in two separate preprints on arXiv.org. Scientific American reports: JUNO's spherical detector, which is akin to a 13-story-tall fishbowl, primarily measures so-called electron antineutrinos spewing from the nearby Yangjian and Taishan nuclear plants. When the particles strike a proton inside the detector, a reaction triggers two light flashes that ping photomultiplier tubes and get converted into electrical signals. The new measurements from these neutrino-proton collisions are now considered the most precise for two oscillation parameters, which act as proxies for differences in their mass, according to Ochoa-Ricoux. "It is the first time we've turned on a scientific instrument like JUNO that we've been working on for over a decade. It's just tremendously exciting," Ochoa-Ricoux says. "And then to see that we're able to already do world-leading measurements with it, even with such a small amount of data, that's also really exciting." Still, the physicists will need years' worth of neutrino detections to answer the mass-ordering conundrum.

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Africa is again at the center of strife

ICANN has defended its decision to fund a group that proposed a radical new governance model that would give states a role in regulating the internet, and distanced itself from the group’s proposal.…

Analyst Counterpoint says second-hand phones are also helping Cupertino to the smartphone shipment summit

Apple is set to displace Samsung as the world’s top smartphone manufacturer, measured by shipment volume, according to analyst firm Counterpoint.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Mexico unveiled plans Wednesday to build what it claims will be Latin America's most powerful supercomputer -- a project the government says will help the country capitalize on the rapidly evolving uses of artificial intelligence and exponentially expand the country's computing capacity. Dubbed "Coatlicue" for the Mexica goddess considered the earth mother, the supercomputer would be seven times more powerful than the region's current leader in Brazil, Jose Merino, head of the Telecommunications and Digital Transformation Agency. President Claudia Sheinbaum said during her morning news briefing that the location for the project had not been decided yet, but construction will begin next year. "We're very excited," said Sheinbaum, an academic and climate scientist. "It is going to allow Mexico to fully get in on the use of artificial intelligence and the processing of data that today we don't have the capacity to do." Merino said that Mexico's most powerful supercomputer operates at 2.3 petaflops -- a unit to measure computing speed, meaning it can perform one quadrillion operations per second. Coatlicue would have a capacity of 314 petaflops.

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Amazon's drone-delivery program is under federal scrutiny after an MK30 aircraft clipped an internet cable in Texas. CNBC reports: The incident occurred on Nov. 18 around 12:45 p.m. Central in Waco, Texas. After dropping off a package, one of Amazon's MK30 drones was ascending out of a customer's yard when one of its six propellers got tangled in a nearby internet cable, according to a video of the incident viewed and verified by CNBC. The video shows the Amazon drone shearing the wire line. The drone's motor then appeared to shut off and the aircraft landed itself, with its propellers windmilling slightly on the way down, the video shows. The drone appeared to remain in tact beyond some damage to one of its propellers. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, a spokesperson confirmed. The National Transportation Safety Board said the agency is aware of the incident but has not opened a probe into the matter. Amazon confirmed the incident to CNBC, saying that after clipping the internet cable, the drone performed a "safe contingent landing," referring to the process that allows its drones to land safely in unexpected conditions. "There were no injuries or widespread internet service outages. We've paid for the cable line's repair for the customer and have apologized for the inconvenience this caused them," an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC, noting that the drone had completed its package delivery.

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