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OpenAI and Sur Energy have signed a letter of intent to build a $25 billion, 500-megawatt data center in Argentina, marking OpenAI's first major infrastructure project in Latin America. The "Stargate Argentina" initiative is backed by Argentina's RIGI tax incentives and positioned as "one of the largest technology and energy infrastructure initiatives" in the nation's history. "We are proud to announce plans to launch Stargate Argentina, an exciting new infrastructure project in partnership with one of the country's leading energy companies, Sur Energy," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on social media. Altman added that the region was "full of talent, creativity and ambition."

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Lyft is teaming up with Tensor Auto to launch hundreds of AI-powered "Robocars" across Europe and North America starting in 2027. Bloomberg reports: Tensor Robocars, the first deliveries of which are planned in late 2026, have more than 100 sensors including cameras, lidars and radars, and processes sensor data with artificial intelligence technology powered by Nvidia Corp. chips on board. The vehicles will come from the manufacturer with Lyft's platform installed, which will allow owners to make money on the rideshare network in markets where level 4 autonomous technology is available, according to the joint statement. Lyft has reserved hundreds of Robocars via its affiliates for its own fleet operations, subject to regulatory approvals.

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Researchers tracking 2,158 domains hosting YYlaiyu phishing pages

Exclusive A Chinese-developed phishing kit hosted on thousands of domains and boasting 97 different brands to make criminals' scams look more believable is driving a surge in financial fraud around the globe, according to security researchers.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CSO Online: On Sept. 17, security vendor SonicWall announced that cybercriminals had stolen backup files configured for cloud backup. At the time, the company claimed the incident was limited to "less than five percent" of its customers. Now, the firewall provider has admitted that "all customers" using the MySonicWall cloud backup feature were affected. According to the company, the stolen files contain encrypted credentials and configuration data. "[W]hile encryption remains in place, possession of these files could increase the risk of targeted attacks," SonicWall warns in its press release. Security specialist Arctic Wolf also warns of the consequences of the incident. "Firewall configuration files store sensitive information that can be leveraged by threat actors to exploit and gain access to an organization's network," explains Stefan Hostetler, threat intelligence researcher at Arctic Wolf. "These files can provide threat actors with critical information such as user, group, and domain settings, DNS and log settings, and certificates," he adds. Arctic Wolf has previously observed threat actors, including nation-state and ransomware groups, exfiltrating firewall configuration files to use for future attacks. SonicWall urges all customers and partners to regularly check their devices for updates. Admins can find additional information here.

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smooth wombat writes: At one point in technology history, floppy disks reigned supreme. Files, pictures, games, everything was put on a floppy disk. But technology doesn't stand still and as time went on disks were replaced by CDs, DVDs, thumb drives, and now cloud storage. Despite these changes, floppy disks are still found in long forgotten corners of businesses or stuffed in boxs in the attic. What is on these disks is anyone's guess, but Cambridge University Library is racing against time to preserve the data. However, lack of hardware and software to read the disks, if they're readable at all, poses unique challenges. Some of the world's most treasured documents can be found deep in the archives of Cambridge University Library. There are letters from Sir Isaac Newton, notebooks belonging to Charles Darwin, rare Islamic texts and the Nash Papyrus -- fragments of a sheet from 200BC containing the Ten Commandments written in Hebrew. These rare, and often unique, manuscripts are safely stored in climate-controlled environments while staff tenderly care for them to prevent the delicate pages from crumbling and ink from flaking away. But when the library received 113 boxes of papers and mementoes from the office of physicist Stephen Hawking, it found itself with an unusual challenge. Tucked alongside the letters, photographs and thousands of pages relating to Hawking's work on theoretical physics, were items now not commonly seen in modern offices -- floppy disks. They were the result of Hawking's early adoption of the personal computer, which he was able to use despite having a form of motor neurone disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, thanks to modifications and software. Locked inside these disks could be all kinds of forgotten information or previously unknown insights into the scientists' life. The archivists' minds boggled. These disks are now part of a project at Cambridge University Library to rescue hidden knowledge trapped on floppy disks. The Future Nostalgia project reflects a larger trend in the information flooding into archives and libraries around the world.

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Australia's Queensland state government said on Friday it would run coal power plants at least into the 2040s, reversing a previous plan to pivot rapidly to renewables and in turn making national emissions reduction targets harder to achieve. From a report: The centre-right Liberal National Party won last year's election in Queensland, a huge chunk of land in Australia's northeast where more than 60% of electricity comes from coal-fired plants that are mostly owned by the state.

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AI model maker touts effort to depoliticize its product

OpenAI says GPT-5 has 30 percent less political bias than its prior AI models.…

A new book, by Wall Street Journal reporter Saabira Chaudhuri, traces how disposability became a deliberate business strategy rather than an accidental consequence of modern commerce. The book, titled "Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic," emerged from her reporting on how plastic bottles transformed bottled water from an occasional restaurant treat into an everyday staple. Excerpts from a Bloomberg story: After World War II, the plastics industry made a conscious pivot. Lloyd Stouffer, an industry figure, openly said plastics should move from durable goods to disposables because companies make more money selling something a thousand times than once. The industry sold consumers on hygiene, convenience, modernity and easier household management. McDonald's dropped polystyrene clamshells in the late 1980s under activist pressure but simply swapped one single-use product for another. Paper containers still cannot be recycled well once food soaks in. The old diaper-service model disappeared. Companies collected, washed and returned cloth diapers like the milkman, but plastics helped kill that business model. Chaudhuri argues companies built their businesses on disposability and will not change unless regulation forces everyone to move together. Executives admit that if they launch a reusable product but competitors do not, they lose market share and face shareholder backlash. Packaging standardization would improve recycling economics. Colored plastics like red shampoo bottles cannot be recycled in a closed loop and are down-cycled into gray products like pipes.

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Does it work? Inconclusive. Still, 55% of business leaders say that adopting AI is worth the impact on workers

ai-pocalypse Business leaders are racing to jump aboard the AI bandwagon, and a new study from the British Standards Institute suggests young college grads are being hit hardest.…

Google is introducing a new Chrome browser feature for Android and desktop users that automatically turns off notifications for websites that you're already ignoring. From a report: Chrome's Safety Check feature already provides similar functionality for camera access and location tracking permissions. This new auto-revocation feature builds on a similar Android feature that already makes it easier for Chrome users to unsubscribe from website notifications they don't care about with a single tap. The feature doesn't revoke notifications for any web apps installed on the device, and permissions will only be disabled for sites that send a lot of notifications that users rarely engage with. Less than one percent of all web notifications in Chrome currently receive any interaction from users, according to Google, often making them more distracting than helpful.

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US datacenters are experiencing a significant shift toward coal-powered energy due to elevated natural gas prices and rapidly growing electricity demand. From a report: According to a research note from financial services firm Jefferies, datacenter operators are racing to connect new capacity to the electrical grid, with accelerated load growth expected during the 2026-2028 period. This spike in demand is driving an unexpected resurgence in coal generation, which has increased nearly 20 percent year-to-date. The research note, seen by The Register, states: "We raise our estimate for coal generation by ~11 percent (driven by higher capacity factors), and staying elevated through 2027 on favorable fuel pricing vs gas (particularly for existing fleet)." Warnings emerged last year that rising energy demand from the proliferation of data centers in the US risked outstripping available generation capacity, potentially extending the operational life of coal-fired power plants. Further reading: India Needs Coal For the Next Decade and Nobody Wants To Say It.

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Apple is updating its Security Bounty program this November to offer some of the highest rewards in the industry. From a report: It has doubled its top award from $1 million to $2 million for the discovery of "exploit chains that can achieve similar goals as sophisticated mercenary spyware attacks" and which requires no user interaction. But the maximum possible payout can exceed $5 million dollars for the discovery of more critical vulnerabilities, such as bugs in beta software and Lockdown Mode bypasses. Lockdown Mode is an upgraded security architecture in the Safari browser. In addition, the company is rewarding the discovery of exploit chains with one-click user interaction with up to $1 million instead of just $250,000. The reward for attacks requiring physical proximity to devices can now also go up to $1 million, up from $250,000, while the maximum reward for attacks requiring physical access to locked devices has been doubled to $500,000. Finally, researchers "who demonstrate chaining WebContent code execution with a sandbox escape can receive up to $300,000."

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And they’re likely still abusing the same SharePoint flaws for initial access

The ransomware gang caught exploiting Microsoft SharePoint zero-days over the summer has added a new tool to its arsenal: Velociraptor, an open-source digital forensics and incident response app not previously tied to ransomware incidents.…

Security team cuts allegedly targeted workers based on race, national origin, age, and whistleblowing

Five former members of Kyndryl's internal IT security team have sued the IBM spinoff alleging that they were terminated as part of a campaign targeting employees based on their race, national origin, age, disability, and whistleblowing activities.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: Control of NSO Group is set to leave Israeli hands. A group of American investors led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds has agreed to acquire the controversial spyware developer in a deal valued at several tens of millions of dollars. The transaction is expected to be signed in the coming days, though its completion will require approval from Israel's Defense Export Control Agency (DECA) at the Ministry of Defense. Since March 2023, NSO's shares have been held by a Luxembourg-based holding company wholly owned by founder Omri Lavie. The company's lender syndicate, which had extended roughly $500 million in loans to finance a share buyback from the private equity fund Francisco Partners, transferred ownership to Lavie following the restructuring.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Poland's critical infrastructure has been subject to a growing number of cyberattacks by Russia, whose military intelligence, has trebled its resources for such action against Poland this year, the country's digital affairs minister told Reuters. Of the 170,000 cyber incidents that have been identified in the first three quarters of this year, a significant portion has been attributed to Russian actors, while other cases are financially motivated, involving theft or other forms of cybercrime, Krzysztof Gawkowski said. He said Poland is a subject to between 2,000 and 4,000 incidents a day and that 700 to 1,000 are "taken up by us, meaning they posed a real threat or had the potential to cause serious problems," he said. Foreign adversaries are now expanding their focus beyond water and sewage systems to the energy sector, he said.

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Xi to the left of me, Trump is to the right; Huang I am, stuck in the middle with GPUs

The US Senate has passed a provision that would give US firms first dibs on advanced chips, just as China tightens customs checks on Nvidia GPUs, leaving the company caught between competing policies across the Pacific.…

Tata Consultancy Services made its steepest-ever job cuts as strained ties with the US and a rapid shift toward AI reshape the country's $280 billion IT services sector. From a report: India's biggest private-sector employer cut 19,755 employees in the quarter ended Sept. 30, according to the company's quarterly earnings presentation. That number includes staff fired by the company and people who left voluntarily. The number of employees at Asia's biggest IT outsourcer fell 3.2% from the previous quarter, dipping below 600,000 for the first time since since the year ended March 2022. The company made a provision of 11.35 billion rupees ($128 million) in the quarter for severance related costs.

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Usually we’d say patch up… not this time

Security research firm Huntress is warning all users of Gladinet's CentreStack and Triofox file-sharing tools to urgently apply an available mitigation, as a zero-day is being actively exploited and there's no patch available.…

Viva Insights turns AI guzzling into a leaderboard

Microsoft is adding Copilot adoption benchmarks to Viva Insights, a tool that lets managers monitor teams to spot those that are gulping down the AI Kool-Aid fastest.…