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MIT said Friday it can no longer stand behind a widely circulated paper on AI written by a doctoral student in its economics program. The paper said that the introduction of an AI tool in a materials-science lab led to gains in new discoveries, but had more ambiguous effects on the scientists who used it. WSJ: MIT didn't name the student in its statement Friday, but it did name the paper. That paper, by Aidan Toner-Rodgers, was covered by The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets. In a press release, MIT said it "has no confidence in the provenance, reliability or validity of the data and has no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper." The university said the author of the paper is no longer at MIT. The paper said that after an AI tool was implemented at a large materials-science lab, researchers discovered significantly more materials -- a result that suggested that, in certain settings, AI could substantially improve worker productivity. But it also showed that most of the productivity gains went to scientists who were already highly effective, and that overall the AI tool made scientists less happy about their work.

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Epic's latest submission blocked right after CEO offered truce with Cupertino

Apple has blocked Epic Games' submission of Fortnite, just as it was set to return to iOS in the US. Now it cannot be found in the US App Store nor via the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union.…

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away

Microsoft is pulling the free MS365 Business Premium licenses granted to non-profits and replacing them with Business Basic and discounts for its other services.…

Early adopters of Apple's $3,500 Vision Pro mixed-reality headset report widespread disappointment a year after its February 2024 launch, with many devices now unused due to physical discomfort and social awkwardness, according to customers who spoke with WSJ. "It's just collecting dust," said Dustin Fox, a Virginia realtor who has used his headset only four times in the past year. "It's way too heavy. I can't wear it for more than 20 or 30 minutes without it hurting my neck." Customers told the paper that the device's one-pound weight causes neck strain. The device is also reeling from limited app selection and negative public reactions as primary complaints.

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'We hope it makes attendees feel safe reporting violations'

A Seattle court this week dismissed with prejudice the defamation case brought against DEF CON and its organizer Jeff Moss by former conference stalwart Christopher Hadnagy.…

Broadcom employees have had their personal data compromised following a September 2024 ransomware attack on Business Systems House (BSH), a Middle Eastern subsidiary of payroll company ADP. The breach, claimed by the Russian-speaking El Dorado ransomware group, wasn't fully identified until December when stolen data appeared online, according to The Register. Broadcom only received details of affected employees on May 12, 2025. Compromised information potentially includes national ID numbers, financial account numbers, health insurance details, dates of birth, salary information, and contact details. Five employee accounts were initially compromised, ultimately affecting 560 users. ADP has distanced itself from the incident, stating only "a small subset of ADP clients" in "certain countries in the Middle East" were affected.

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Montana has enacted SB 282, becoming the first state to prohibit law enforcement from purchasing personal data they would otherwise need a warrant to obtain. The landmark legislation closes what privacy advocates call the "data broker loophole," which previously allowed police to buy geolocation data, electronic communications, and other sensitive information from third-party vendors without judicial oversight. The new law specifically restricts government access to precise geolocation data, communications content, electronic funds transfers, and "sensitive data" including health status, religious affiliation, and biometric information. Police can still access this information through traditional means: warrants, investigative subpoenas, or device owner consent.

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Extending all the dumped devices' lives by 12 months? Like taking 2M cars off the road each year

Tech buyers should purchase refurbished devices to push vendors to make hardware more repairable and help the shift to a more circular economy, according to a senior analyst at IDC.…

For the first time, the growth in China's clean power generation has caused the nation's carbon dioxide emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth. From a report:The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that China's emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1% in the latest 12 months. Electricity supply from new wind, solar and nuclear capacity was enough to cut coal-power output even as demand surged, whereas previous falls were due to weak growth. The analysis, based on official figures and commercial data, shows that China's CO2 emissions have now been stable, or falling, for more than a year. However, they remain only 1% below the latest peak, implying that any short-term jump could cause China's CO2 emissions to rise to a new record.

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The tech biz was in the process of dropping the payroll company as it learned of the breach

EXCLUSIVE A ransomware attack at a Middle Eastern subsidiary of payroll company ADP has led to customer data theft at Broadcom, The Register has learned.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Patently Apple: It's being reported in the Gulf region that a new 5GW UAE-US AI Campus in Abu Dhabi was unveiled on Thursday at Qasr Al Watan in the presence of President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and US. President Donald Trump, who is on a state visit to the UAE. The new AI campus -- the largest of its kind outside the United States -- will host US hyperscalers and large enterprises, enabling them to leverage regional compute resources with the capability to serve the Global South. The UAE-US AI Campus will feature 5GW of capacity for AI data centers in Abu Dhabi, offering a regional platform through which US hyperscalers can provide low-latency services to nearly half of the global population. Upon completion, the facility will utilize nuclear, solar, and gas power to minimize carbon emissions. It will also house a science park focused on advancing innovation in artificial intelligence. The campus will be built by G42 and operated in partnership with several US companies including NVIDIA, OpenAI, SoftBank, Cisco and others. The initiative is part of the newly established US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership, a bilateral framework designed to deepen collaboration on artificial intelligence and advanced technologies. The UAE and US will jointly regulate access to the compute resources, which are reserved for US hyperscalers and approved cloud service providers. An official press release from the White House can be found here.

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Beast of Redmond runs scared from EC antitrust cops half decade after rivals complained

Microsoft is offering to make a series of concessions for up to ten years to pacify European Commission antitrust regulators. This follows protests from users that tying Teams with its biz productivity applications hinders competition.…

CEO warns energy demands will overwhelm grid without extra generation capacity

The UK needs more nuclear energy generation just to power all the AI datacenters that are going to be built, according to the head of Amazon Web Services (AWS).…

We suspect Philippe Salle will need it, not to mention staff and customers

If at first you don't succeed, transform, transform, and transform again is the corporate motto at Atos these days. The lumbering French-based megacorp has created another blueprint to return to its glory days, and it includes job cuts, offshoring and... AI.…

Success of UK's Universal Credit has lessons for government IT projects, former minister claims

Former UK government minister Sir Iain Duncan Smith has told a committee of MPs that the digitization of Universal Credit is a success story other government departments can learn from.…

China launched 12 satellites on Wednesday as part of the âoeThree-Body Computing Constellation,â the worldâ(TM)s first dedicated orbital computing network led by ADA Space and Zhejiang Lab. SpaceNews reports: A Long March 2D rocket lifted off at 12:12 a.m. Eastern (0412 UTC) May 14 from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. Insulation tiles fell away from the payload fairing as the rocket climbed into a clear blue sky above the spaceport. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced a fully successful launch, revealing the mission to have sent 12 satellites for a space computing constellation into orbit. Commercial company ADA Space released further details, stating that the 12 satellites form the "Three-Body Computing Constellation," which will directly process data in space, rather than on the ground, reducing reliance on ground-based computing infrastructure. The constellation will be capable of a combined 5 peta operations per second (POPS) with 30 terabytes of onboard storage. The satellites feature advanced AI capabilities, up to 100 Gbps laser inter-satellite links and remote sensing payloads -- data from which will be processed onboard, reducing data transmission requirements. One satellite also carries a cosmic X-ray polarimeter developed by Guangxi University and the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), which will detect, identify and classify transient events such as gamma-ray bursts, while also triggering messages to enable followup observations by other missions. [...] The company says the constellation can meet the growing demand for real-time computing in space, as well as help China take the lead globally in building space computing infrastructure, seize the commanding heights of this future industry. The development could mark the beginning of space-based cloud computing as a new capability, as well as open a new arena for strategic competition with the U.S. You can watch a recording of the launch here.

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DPM signs off 96MW bit barn, citing national policy shift

The British government has stepped in to overturn a local council's refusal of a proposed datacenter on green belt land, citing updated national planning policy that urges councils to find space for bit barns, labs, gigafactories, and other strategic infrastructure.…

After UK spends hundreds of millions, several say existing systems are better

English hospitals are voicing their concern about the functionality provided by Palantir, the US spy-tech firm that won a £330 million ($437 million) deal to run the Federated Data Platform for NHS England, as around a third of trusts go live on the system.…

Self-taught coders who work in HR and have a doctorate in English tend to do that

On Call Bosses often ask IT pros to clean up messes made by amateurs, and in this week's On Call – The Register's reader-contributed tech support column – we have just such a tale to tell.…

Dartmouth researchers propose that dark matter originated from massless, light-like particles in the early universe that rapidly condensed into massive particles through a spin-based interaction. Phys.Org reports: [T]he study authors write that their theory is distinct because it can be tested using existing observational data. The extremely low-energy particles they suggest make up dark matter would have a unique signature on the cosmic microwave background, or CMB, the leftover radiation from the Big Bang that fills all of the universe. "Dark matter started its life as near-massless relativistic particles, almost like light," says Robert Caldwell, a professor of physics and astronomy and the paper's senior author. "That's totally antithetical to what dark matter is thought to be -- it is cold lumps that give galaxies their mass," Caldwell says. "Our theory tries to explain how it went from being light to being lumps." Hot, fast-moving particles dominated the cosmos after the burst of energy known as the Big Bang that scientists believe triggered the universe's expansion 13.7 billion years ago. These particles were similar to photons, the massless particles that are the basic energy, or quanta, of light. It was in this chaos that extremely large numbers of these particles bonded to each other, according to Caldwell and Guanming Liang, the study's first author and a Dartmouth senior. They theorize that these massless particles were pulled together by the opposing directions of their spin, like the attraction between the north and south poles of magnets. As the particles cooled, Caldwell and Liang say, an imbalance in the particles' spins caused their energy to plummet, like steam rapidly cooling into water. The outcome was the cold, heavy particles that scientists think constitute dark matter. The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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