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Ask a model to guess a number from 1 to 50 and it's likely to answer 27

Asked to guess a number between 1 and 50, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4, Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash, and Meta's Llama 4 all provided the same answer: 27.…

Apple is considering using AI technology from Anthropic or OpenAI to power a new version of Siri, according to Bloomberg, sidelining its own in-house models in a potentially blockbuster move aimed at turning around its flailing AI effort. From the report: The iPhone maker has talked with both companies about using their large language models for Siri, according to people familiar with the discussions. It has asked them to train versions of their models that could run on Apple's cloud infrastructure for testing, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. If Apple ultimately moves forward, it would represent a monumental reversal. The company currently powers most of its AI features with homegrown technology that it calls Apple Foundation Models and had been planning a new version of its voice assistant that runs on that technology for 2026. A switch to Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI's ChatGPT models for Siri would be an acknowledgment that the company is struggling to compete in generative AI -- the most important new technology in decades. Apple already allows ChatGPT to answer web-based search queries in Siri, but the assistant itself is powered by Apple.

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Someday, my prince will come

Google has agreed to purchase 200 megawatts of fusion energy from Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). That's assuming, of course, the Massachusetts-based startup can actually get the miniaturized sun to make more power than it consumes, something even the Chocolate Factory admits is a bit of a "moonshot."…

TorrentFreak spotlights VP.net, a brand-new service from Private Internet Access founder Andrew Lee (the guy who gifted Linux Journal to Slashdot) that eliminates the classic "just trust your VPN" problem by locking identity-mapping and traffic-handling inside Intel SGX enclaves. The company promises 'cryptographically verifiable privacy' by using special hardware 'safes' (Intel SGX), so even the provider can't track what its users are up to. The design goal is that no one, not even the VPN company, can link "User X" to "Website Y." Lee frames it as enabling agency over one's privacy: "Our zero trust solution does not require you to trust us - and that's how it should be. Your privacy should be up to your choice - not up to some random VPN provider in some random foreign country." The team behind VP.net includes CEO Matt Kim as well as arguably the first Bitcoin veterans Roger Ver and Mark Karpeles. Ask Slashdot: Now that there's a VPN where you don't have to "just trust the provider" - arguably the first real zero-trust VPN - are trust based VPNs obsolete?

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Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said he regrets telling the media that "WordPress.org just belongs to me personally" during a new interview about his company's legal dispute with hosting provider WP Engine. The comment has been "taken out of context so many times" and represents "the worst thing ever," Mullenweg said in a new podcast interview with The Verge. The dispute began when Mullenweg accused WP Engine of "free-riding" on WordPress's open-source ecosystem without contributing adequate resources back to the project. Mullenweg filed a lawsuit against WP Engine while cutting off the company's access to core WordPress technologies. WP Engine countersued, and Automattic was forced to reverse some retaliatory measures. The controversy triggered significant internal upheaval at Automattic. The company offered "alignment" buyouts to employees who disagreed with the direction, reducing headcount from a peak of 2,100 to approximately 1,500 people. Mullenweg said this was "probably the fourth big time" WordPress has faced such community controversy, though the first in the current media landscape. WordPress powers 43% of websites globally. Mullenweg said he wants to return to "the most collaborative version of WordPress possible" but noted the legal proceedings continue with both sides spending "millions of dollars a month on lawyers."

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Don't leave the door open to disgruntled workers

A judge has sentenced a disgruntled IT worker to more than seven months in prison after he wreaked havoc on his employer's network following his suspension, according to West Yorkshire Police.…

China's transition to digital payments has reached the point where physical cash has nearly vanished from daily commerce, with WeChat and Alipay now handling transactions from supermarkets to public transportation across the world's second-largest economy. Many businesses no longer maintain traditional cash registers and instead scan QR codes presented by customers, while numerous taxis refuse cash payments entirely. The widespread adoption has given tech giants Tencent and Alibaba immense power over routine financial transactions, prompting China's central bank to develop a competing digital yuan currency.

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Oh, you have to divide by 100?

Thousands of Norwegians mistakenly thought they'd won life-changing sums in last week's Eurojackpot after a manual coding slip at state-owned operator Norsk Tipping.…

Time ticking for defenders as social engineering pros weave wider web

Just a few weeks after warning about Scattered Spider's tactics shifting toward the insurance industry, the same experts now say the aviation industry is now on the ransomware crew's radar.…

Microsoft's new AI diagnostic system achieved 80% accuracy in diagnosing patients compared to 20% for human doctors, while reducing costs by 20%, according to company research published Monday. The MAI Diagnostic Orchestrator queries multiple leading AI models including OpenAI's GPT, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, Meta's Llama, and xAI's Grok in what the company describes as a "chain-of-debate style" approach. The system was tested against 304 case studies from the New England Journal of Medicine using Microsoft's Sequential Diagnosis Benchmark, which breaks down each case into step-by-step diagnostic processes that mirror how human physicians work. Microsoft CEO of AI Mustafa Suleyman called the development "a genuine step toward medical superintelligence."

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NASA's future Artemis booster sputters during test

video Old Space has shown itself to be just as adept at explosive malfunctions as New Space, with Northrop Grumman encountering an anomaly during a static fire test of an updated solid rocket booster design.…

Avantare writes: Microsoft Authenticator houses your passwords and lets you sign into all of your Microsoft accounts using a PIN, facial recognition such as Windows Hello, or other biometric data, like a fingerprint. Authenticator can be used in other ways, such as verifying you're logging in if you forgot your password, or using two-factor authentication as an extra layer of security for your Microsoft accounts. In June, Microsoft stopped letting users add passwords to Authenticator, but here's a timeline of other changes you can expect, according to Microsoft: July 2025: You won't be able to use the autofill password function. August 2025: You'll no longer be able to use saved passwords.

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During which he coded Lotus 1-2-3 and co-founded Mozilla and the EFF

The man behind Lotus 1-2-3 and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has wrapped up a master's degree at MIT Sloan, decades after dropping out to help kickstart the PC software boom.…

Companies deliberately design customer service friction to discourage refunds and claims, according to research into a practice academics call "sludge." The term, coined by legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein and economist Richard H. Thaler in their updated version of "Nudge," describes tortuous administrative demands, endless wait times, and excessive procedural fuss that impede customers. ProPublica reported in 2023 that Cigna saved millions of dollars by rejecting claims without having doctors read them. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Toyota's motor-financing arm to pay $60 million for alleged misdeeds including deliberately setting up dead-end hotlines for canceling products and services. The 2023 National Customer Rage Survey found that the percentage of American consumers seeking revenge for customer service hassles had tripled in three years.

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Apple plans to release a cheaper MacBook powered by the A18 Pro chip used in the iPhone 16 Pro line, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The laptop will be priced below $999 -- first time for a MacBook Air -- and go into production in late 2025 or early 2026 on the new laptop, the analyst noted. The device will feature the same 13-inch screen as the current MacBook Air, with the chip representing the primary difference between models. The A18 Pro chip delivers single-core performance around 3,500 on Geekbench, trailing the M4 chip only slightly, though multicore performance lags significantly at approximately 8,780 versus 15,000 for the M4. The A18's multicore performance matches the original 2020 M1 chip.

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A founding member of the Xbox team says she believes Xbox hardware is "dead" and that Microsoft appears to be planning a "slow exit" from the gaming hardware business. Microsoft recently announced partnerships with external hardware companies including the ROG Xbox Ally, which runs Windows and functions as a portable PC that can run games from external stores like Steam. Laura Fryer, one of Microsoft Game Studios' first employees who worked as a producer on the original Gears of War games and served as director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, called the partnerships evidence of Microsoft's inability to ship hardware. "Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead. The plan appears to be to just drive everybody to Game Pass," Fryer said.

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Court says State arm cannot be left without maintenance, patches and upgrades because of Broadcom's new licensing model

Broadcom's VMware subsidiary must provide a Dutch government organization with continued software support for at least two years while it manages a migration to an alternative platform, according to a court ruling, or else face fines up to €25 million ($29 million).…

Nintendo pulled its products from Amazon's US site after a disagreement over unauthorized sales, meaning the e-commerce company missed out on the recent debut of Nintendo's Switch 2 -- the biggest game console launch of all time. From a report: The Japanese company stopped selling on Amazon after noticing that third-party merchants were offering games for sale in the US at prices that undercut Nintendo's advertised rates, according to a person familiar with the situation. Enterprising sellers were buying Nintendo products in bulk in Southeast Asia and exporting them to the US, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information. Nintendo product listings started disappearing from Amazon's US site last year, gaming news outlets reported at the time. The listings had previously appeared as "Sold by Amazon," which typically denotes merchandise the online retailer buys directly from brands. Some Nintendo products remained on the site, but they were listed by independent merchants who sell their goods on Amazon's sprawling online marketplace.

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Device compromises and deep-seated access to critical infrastructure exposed surveillance vulnerabilities in agency's work

A major Mexican drug cartel insider grassed on his fellow drug-peddlers back in 2018, telling the FBI that a cartel "hacker" was tracking a federal official and using their deep-rooted access to the country's critical infrastructure to kill informants.…

If you didn't like 24H2, you're probably not going to like 25H2

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 11 25H2 is almost here. However, the upgrade will be little more than an exercise in feature enablement since Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 share the same source code.…