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KONNI espionage crew covertly abused Google’s Find My Device feature to remotely factory-reset Android phones

North Korean state-backed spies have found a new way to torch evidence of their own cyber-spying – by hijacking Google's "Find Hub" service to remotely wipe Android phones belonging to their South Korean targets.…

Apple has launched the iPhone Pocket, a knitted bag designed to hold iPhones. The limited edition collaboration with Japanese designer Issey Miyake costs $229.95 for the crossbody version. A shorter version is priced at $149.95. Apple said the 3D-knitted design was inspired by "a piece of cloth" and was born from the idea of creating an additional pocket for any iPhone and small everyday items. Yoshiyuki Miyamae, design director at Miyake Design Studio, said the product "speaks to the bond between iPhone and its user" and explores "the joy of wearing iPhone in your own way." Steve Jobs mocked similar $29 iPod Socks as "a revolutionary new product" in 2004.

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Hungry Hippo won't move to the launchpad until next year

Aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider Rocket Lab has confirmed what many have long suspected: its "Hungry Hippo" Neutron rocket won't be hitting the launchpad until 2026 at the earliest.…

Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity has verified around 17.5 million people through its iris-scanning Orb device. The company has set a goal of reaching 1 billion users, so it is less than 2% of the way there. The startup has raised $240 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital and Khosla Ventures. PitchBook estimates its valuation at $2.5 billion. The Orb is a volleyball-sized metal sphere that scans irises to generate a World ID. Users can claim tokens of the cryptocurrency Worldcoin, currently worth around 80 cents per coin. Business Insider spoke to former Tools for Humanity employees, a former Orb operator from Kenya, and a former head of operations in Mexico City. Some questioned whether the company had a clear long-term strategy. Nick Maynard, vice president of fintech market research at Juniper Research, said he does not see a killer use case that will drive major traction. The company also continues to face regulatory headwinds. In October, agencies in the Philippines, Colombia and Thailand took action to halt operations. German authorities determined last year that the company's data protection measures would not be sufficient to protect against cybercriminals or state attackers.

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Samsung is rolling out new conversational AI across its 2025 TVs that lets users ask questions about what's on the screen and beyond it. From a report: First announced in September, the generative AI update is rolling out now with support for several languages. Vision AI Companion is based on an upgraded, generative AI-based version of Samsung's virtual assistant Bixby. Samsung suggests you can use it to ask questions about on-screen content -- what that actor is famous for, who painted that artwork, or what the final score was in a football game. It can go beyond that though, offering TV and movie recommendations along with cooking advice, travel tips, and local restaurant discovery.

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Lobbying efforts gain ground as proposals carve myriad holes into regulations

Privacy advocates are condemning the European Commission's leaked plans to overhaul digital privacy legislation, accusing officials of bypassing proper legislative processes to favor Big Tech interests.…

Disclosure? We've heard of it

The US datacenter industry is reaping huge benefits from state-level subsidies, but transparency around these incentives is limited and states that do calculate their returns find they are losing money on the deals.…

The UK and China today signed a new bilateral agreement on scientific collaboration [non-paywalled source], narrowing the scope of their partnership to exclude sensitive technologies. Lord Patrick Vallance, Britain's science and technology minister, met his Chinese counterpart Chen Jiachang in Beijing and agreed to focus cooperation on health, climate, planetary sciences, and agriculture. The previous agreement from 2017 had included satellites, remote sensing technology and robotics. Those fields are absent from the new accord. The countries announced no new funding for joint research. Vallance said the UK had "deliberately gone for areas which we think are not carrying such a security risk."

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Risk list highlights misconfigs, supply chain failures, and singles out prompt injection in AI apps

The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) just published its top 10 categories of application risks for 2025, its first list since 2021. It found that while broken access control remains the top issue, security misconfiguration is a strong second, and software supply chain issues are still prominent.…

Years of development still needed but AI, 3D printing, and other alternative options on the horizon

The UK Government has unveiled a roadmap to replace animal testing with AI-driven options and other alternatives, targeting the elimination of certain regulatory tests by the end of 2026.…

Clop's Oracle EBS exploit spree shows no sign of slowing, claims nearly 30 more casualties in media, finance, and tech.

Digital engineering outfit GlobalLogic says personal data from more than 10,000 current and former employees was exposed in the wave of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) attacks attributed to the Clop ransomware gang. The Hitachi-owned biz joins a growing roster of high-profile victims that also now includes The Washington Post and Allianz UK.…

Norwegian testers claim maker has remote access, while UK importer says supplier complies with the law

UK governmental is working with the National Cyber Security Centre to understand and "mitigate" any risk that China-made imported electric buses could be remotely accessed and potentially disabled.…

Tariffs can't stop cheaper, better Chinese tech, says Jefferies. Tesla is Amercia's great hope

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) could become standard at datacenters as AI infrastructure expand, with analysts forecasting 20 GW of capacity deployed over the next decade.…

Massive increase in policy claims… and data doesn’t even cover the major attacks of 2025

The number of successful cyber insurance claims made by UK organizations shot up last year, according to the latest figures from the industry's trade association.…

Continuous track of long awaited AFV hits the ground ... and the terrain is pretty bumpy

The British Army just received its first new armored fighting vehicle (AFV) for nearly three decades, but it is years late, hit by rising costs, is still reportedly injuring its crew, and there are questions about whether it remains relevant in the age of drone warfare. …

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: The UK Department for Education is "replacing its narrowly focused computer science GCSE with a broader, future-facing computing GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education] and exploring a new qualification in data science and AI for 16-18-year-olds." The move aims to correct unintended consequences of a shift made more than a decade ago from the existing ICT (Information and Communications Technology) curriculum, which focused on basic digital skills, to a more rigorous Computer Science curriculum at the behest of major tech firms and advocacy groups to address concerns about the UK's programming talent pipeline. The UK pivot from rigorous CS to AI literacy comes as tech-backed nonprofit Code.org leads a similar shift in the U.S., pivoting from its original 2013 mission calling for rigorous CS for U.S. K-12 students to a new mission that embraces AI literacy. Code.org next month will replace its flagship Hour of Code event with a new Hour of AI "designed to bring AI education into the mainstream" with the support of its partners, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Code.org has pledged to engage 25 million learners with the new Hour of AI this school year.

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Your real problem: 40kW racks, melting datacenters and rising power bills

Opinion In recent discussions with industry vendor sales/marketing types, I've been hearing that HPC demand is falling off while AI system demand is continuing to increase. I've also seen articles implying that AI is somehow displacing HPC. Huh?…

China's CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, "adding evidence to the hope that the world's biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO2 emissions well ahead of schedule," reports the Guardian. From the report: Rapid increases in the deployment of solar and wind power generation -- which grew by 46% and 11% respectively in the third quarter of this year -- meant the country's energy sector emissions remained flat, even as the demand for electricity increased. China added 240GW of solar capacity in the first nine months of this year, and 61GW of wind, putting it on track for another renewable record in 2025. Last year, the country installed 333GW of solar power, more than the rest of the world combined. [...] The analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), for the science and climate policy website Carbon Brief, found China's CO2 emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, thanks in part to declining emissions in the travel, cement and steel industries. But China has a record of underpromising and overdelivering on climate targets. Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a US-based thinktank, said in a recent note that the latest Chinese climate targets should be seen as a baseline and not a ceiling.

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Sachin Katti was one of new Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan's first appointments

Sachin Katti, the exec Intel promoted to chief technology and AI officer in April, will leave the x86 giant to join OpenAI after just six months in the job.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: It appears that Neom -- Saudi Arabia's hugely expensive, architecturally bizarre urban development project -- is floundering and close to collapse. A new report from the Financial Times cites high-level sources within the project to paint a picture of dysfunction and failure at the heart of the quixotic effort. Neom was envisioned as a vast series of fantastical urban developments spread across the coast of the Red Sea. At the center of the project is The Line -- a proposed 105-mile-long city which developers had initially projected could house as many as 9 million people by the year 2030. The Line is defined by bizarre architectural flourishes that, as the story notes, have seemed impossible even to the execs tasked with making them a reality. One such addition is an upside-down building, dubbed "the chandelier," that is supposed to hang over a "gateway" marina to the city: "As architects worked through the plans, the chandelier began to seem implausible. One recalled warning Tarek Qaddumi, The Line's executive director, of the difficulty of suspending a 30-story building upside down from a bridge hundreds of metres in the air. 'You do realize the earth is spinning? And that tall towers sway?' he said. The chandelier, the architect explained, could 'start to move like a pendulum,' then 'pick up speed,' and eventually 'break off,' crashing into the marina below." Yes, that doesn't sound great. Now, according to those sources the FT talked to, the project is looking more and more like a hugely expensive pipe dream that will never come to pass: "Today, with at least $50 billion spent, the desert is pock-marked with piling, and deep trenches stretch across the landscape. But Prince Mohammed, who chairs Neom, has dramatically scaled back the first phase of the plans. Neom told the FT that The Line remained 'a strategic priority' that would ultimately 'provide a new blueprint for humanity by changing the way people live.' But they described it as a 'multi-generational development of unprecedented scale and complexity.'" The outlet interviewed workers on the project who seem to feel that it's only a matter of time before the project is declared DOA: "While Neom employees say that much of The Line might still be technically buildable, they are not convinced anyone is ready to pay for it. Construction work across Neom has slowed, with the desert ski resort Trojena, the intended venue for the 2029 Asian Winter Games, one of the few sites still moving ahead at pace ... one former employee has said that everyone knows the project won't work; it is now just a matter of letting MBS down gently." Chief among the project's problems is the fact that, as Neom's bizarre developments have failed to materialize, it has become increasingly difficult to encourage investors to put up money for the absurdly expensive project. FT notes: "Senior executives were constantly asking for more money, but The Line was competing with other Neom projects. Some wealthy Saudi families put modest sums into the project, but the large investments Riyadh hoped to lure from foreign backers never materialized." The lack of adequate funding coming in has led a senior construction manager to tell FT that he feels the Line will never be built.

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