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One of the most common viruses in the world could be the cause of lupus, an autoimmune disease with wide-ranging symptoms, according to a new study. From a report: Until now, lupus was somewhat mysterious: No single root cause of the disease had been found, and while there is no cure, there are medications that can treat it. The research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, suggests that Epstein-Barr virus -- which 95% of people acquire at some point in life -- could cause lupus by driving the body to attack its own healthy cells. It adds to mounting evidence that Epstein-Barr is associated with multiple long-term health issues, including other autoimmune conditions. As this evidence stacks up, scientists have accelerated calls for a vaccine that targets the virus. "If we now better understand how this fastidious virus is responsible for autoimmune diseases, I think it's time to figure out how to prevent it," said Dr. Anca Askanase, clinical director of the Lupus Center at Columbia University, who wasn't involved in the new research.

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Original spacecraft deemed unsafe after cracks spotted in window

The Shenzhou-20 astronauts have returned to Earth on the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft after engineers deemed the Shenzhou-20 vehicle unsafe following a debris strike while it was docked to the Tiangong space station.…

Linux-powered PC, Arm VR headset, and refreshed controller all land on pre-order for next year

The holiday season is almost upon us, but the new gear on gamers' wish lists won't arrive until next year.…

Brussels reviewing proposal as Mountain View insists it will appeal antitrust ruling

Google has proposed a plan to the European Commission aimed at addressing antitrust concerns following a €2.95 billion fine imposed on the company for its online advertising practices.…

Abstract of a working paper [PDF] published by NBER: This paper examines the impact of the UK's decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) in 2016. Using almost a decade of data since the referendum, we combine simulations based on macro data with estimates derived from micro data collected through our Decision Maker Panel survey. These estimates suggest that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating gradually over time. We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12% and 18%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%. These large negative impacts reflect a combination of elevated uncertainty, reduced demand, diverted management time, and increased misallocation of resources from a protracted Brexit process. Comparing these with contemporary forecasts -- providing a rare macro example to complement the burgeoning micro-literature of social science predictions -- shows that these forecasts were accurate over a 5-year horizon, but they underestimated the impact over a decade.

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AI, cybersecurity, and geopolitical jitters forecast to push market to $1.4T next year

IT spending in Europe will grow 11 percent next year to hit $1.4 trillion amid a desire for cloud sovereignty, according to Gartner.…

Exploring the evolving relationship between human engineers and their algorithmic assistants

Feature Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the way software gets built, tested, and maintained — but not in the simplistic, headline-grabbing sense of "AI replacing developers."…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Singapore's central bank will hold trials to issue tokenized MAS bills next year and bring in laws to regulate stablecoins as it presses forward with plans to build a scalable and secure tokenised financial ecosystem, the bank's top official said on Thursday. "Tokenization has lifted off the ground. But have asset-backed tokens achieved escape velocity? Not yet," said Chia Der Jiun, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), a keynote address at the Singapore FinTech Festival. He said MAS has been working on the details of its stablecoin regulatory regime and will prepare draft legislation, with the emphasis on "sound reserve backing and redemption reliability." MAS is also supporting trials under the BLOOM initiative, which explores the use of tokenized bank liabilities and regulated stablecoins for settlement, he added. "In the CBDC space, I am pleased to announce that the three Singapore banks, DBS, OCBC, and UOB, have successfully conducted interbank overnight lending transactions using the first live trial issuance of Singapore dollar wholesale CBDC," he said. MAS will expand trials to include tokenized MAS bills settled with CBDC, he added.

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Public Accounts Committee tears into department responsible for the most dangerous breach in British history

The UK Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has failed to appropriately improve its data protection mechanisms, three years after the infamous 2022 Afghan data breach.…

Why Musk won't ever realize the shareholder-approved Tesla payout

Opinion At Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, more than 75 percent of voting shares backed a compensation deal for CEO Elon Musk that would make him history's first trillionaire.…

Windows giant disagrees and plans to appeal

Microsoft's attempt to claim that its software can't be resold has hit a wall at the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal, which decided that Office having clipart does not mean customers can't sell their licenses on.…

Watchdog says program buckled under procurement failures and technical complexity

The UK's state-owned savings bank has blown past its budget by £1.3 billion on a digital transformation program beset by delays, according to the National Audit Office.…

According to Car and Driver, Hyundai has suffered a data breach that leaked the personal data of up to 2.7 million customers. The leak reportedly took place in February from Hyundai AutoEver, the company's IT affiliate. It includes customer names, driver's license numbers, and social security numbers. Longtime Slashdot reader sinij writes: Thanks to tracking modules plaguing most modern cars, that data likely includes the times and locations of customers' vehicles. These repeated breaches make it clear that, unlike smartphone manufacturers that are inherently tech companies, car manufacturers collecting your data are going to keep getting breached and leaking it.

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Cybercrime crew has ravaged multiple private organizations using Oracle EBS zero-day for months

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is investigating claims of a cyberattack by extortion crew Clop.…

FOMO trumps corporate governance when it comes to AI

More than two-thirds of corporate executives say they've violated their own AI usage policies in the past three months, and over half of the leaders also ranked security and compliance as the greatest AI implementation challenge.…

Org chart games were more important than speed and accuracy

On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's reader-contributed column in which we tell your tales of tech support troubles and other workplace woes.…

Amazon announced that its satellite broadband project called Project Kuiper will now be known as Amazon Leo. GeekWire reports: Leo is a nod to "low Earth orbit," where Amazon has so far launched more than 150 satellites as part of a constellation that will eventually include more than 3,200. In a blog post, Amazon said the 7-year-old Project Kuiper began "with a handful of engineers and a few designs on paper" and like most early Amazon projects "the program needed a code name." The team was inspired by the Kuiper Belt, a ring of asteroids in the outer solar system. A new website for Amazon Leo proclaims "a new era of internet is coming," as Amazon says its satellites can help serve "billions of people on the planet who lack high-speed internet access, and millions of businesses, governments, and other organizations operating in places without reliable connectivity." Amazon said it will begin rolling out service once it's added more coverage and capacity to the network. Details about pricing and availability haven't been announced.

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Getting by with a meager $2 billion quarterly capex – vastly less than rivals, but still cashing in on AI

Chinese web giant Tencent’s capital expenditure is slowing and the company expects it will decelerate further due to its inability to buy all the GPUs it wants.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The world is still on track for a catastrophic 2.6C increase in temperature as countries have not made sufficiently strong climate pledges, while emissions from fossil fuels have hit a record high, two major reports have found. Despite their promises, governments' new emission-cutting plans submitted for the Cop30 climate talks taking place in Brazil have done little to avert dangerous global heating for the fourth consecutive year, according to the Climate Action Tracker update (PDF). The world is now anticipated to heat up by 2.6C above preindustrial times by the end of the century -- the same temperature rise forecast last year. This level of heating easily breaches the thresholds set out in the Paris climate pact, which every country agreed to, and would set the world spiraling into a catastrophic new era of extreme weather and severe hardships. A separate report found the fossil fuel emissions driving the climate crisis will rise by about 1% this year to hit a record high, but that the rate of rise has more than halved in recent years. The past decade has seen emissions from coal, oil and gas rise by 0.8% a year compared with 2.0% a year during the decade before. The accelerating rollout of renewable energy is now close to supplying the annual rise in the world's demand for energy, but has yet to surpass it. [...] The new analyses also show a worrying weakening of the planet's natural carbon sinks. The scientists said the combined effects of global heating and the felling of trees have turned tropical forests in southeast Asia and large parts of South America from overall CO2 sinks into sources of the climate-heating gas. [...] The report projects that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere will reach 425ppm (parts per million) in 2025, compared with 280ppm in the preindustrial era. It would have been 8ppm lower if the carbon sinks had not been weakened. The GCP projection for 2025 is based on monthly data up to September and has proven accurate in the previous 19 annual reports.

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Netflix is launching a new slate of TV-streamed party games that are all playable using your phone as the controller. The Verge reports: To start, Netflix is offering Boggle Party, Party Crasher: Fool Your Friends, Lego Party, Pictionary: Game Night, and Tetris Time Warp. A social deduction game based on the Knives Out series, Dead Man's Party: A Knives Out Game, is also part of this new slate but will launch at a later time. The streaming platform's approach to gaming has been unfocused, with the company bouncing between being a boutique development studio while also being a platform for premium and exclusive mobile gaming experiences. Offering party games on your TV seems like a better fit -- one that could allow Netflix to finally find its gaming footing.

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