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"California's biggest electric utilities pulled off a record-breaking test..." reports Semafor, "during the 7pm-9pm window that is typically its time of peak demand as people come home from work." Pacific Gas & Electric and other top California power companies switched on residential batteries in more than 100,000 homes and drew power from them into the broader statewide grid. The purpose of the test — the largest ever in the state, which has by far the most home battery capacity in the U.S. — was to see just how much power is really there for the utility to tap, and to ensure it could be switched on, effectively running the grid in reverse, without causing a crash. The result, which the research firm Brattle published this week, was 535 megawatts, equal to adding a big hydro dam or a half-sized nuclear reactor at a fraction of the cost. "Four years ago this capacity didn't even exist," Kendrick Li, PG&E's director of clean energy programs, told Semafor. "Now it's a really attractive option for us. It would be silly not to harness what our customers have installed...." Last week's test proved that in times of peak demand, PG&E can lean on its customers' batteries rather than turn on a gas-fired peaker plant or risk a blackout, Li said. Virtual power plants (VPPs) also facilitate the addition of more solar energy on the grid: At the moment, California has so much solar generation at peak hours that it can push the wholesale power price close to or even below zero, a headache for grid managers and a disincentive for renewable project developers. The careful manipulation of networked residential batteries smooths out the timing disparity between peak sunshine at midday and peak demand in the evening, allowing the excess to be soaked up and redeployed when it's actually needed, and making power cheaper for everyone. The expanded use of VPPs shouldn't be noticeable to battery owners, Li said, except for the money back on their power bill; nothing about the process prevents them from running their AC or dishwasher while their battery is being tapped. The network can also run in reverse, with the utility taking excess power from the grid at times of low demand and sending it into home batteries for storage. California could easily reach over a gigawatt of VPP capacity within five years, Li said. Nationwide, a Department of Energy study during the Biden administration forecast that VPP capacity could reach up to 160 gigawatts by 2030, essentially negating the need for dozens of new fossil fuel power plants, with no emissions and at a far lower cost. In 2024, utilities in 34 states moved to initiate or expand VPP networks, according to the advocacy group VP3. Even with a reduction in federal credits, virtual power plants "offer a way for residential solar-plus-storage systems to remain economically attractive for homeowners — who get paid for the withdrawn power," the article points out — and "a way to make better use of clean energy resources that have already been built." Sunrun's distributed battery fleet "delivered more than two-thirds of the energy," notes Electrek, "In total, the event pumped an average of 535 megawatts (MW) onto the grid — enough to power over half of San Francisco... This isn't a one-off. Sunrun's fleet already helped drop peak demand earlier this summer, delivering 325 MW during a similar event on June 24. "The company compensates customers up to $150 per battery per season for participating."

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Not everyone wants to be simulated after they're gone

People die but their data may endure, which troubles legal scholar Victoria Haneman.…

hackingbear shares a report from CNN: Taiwanese authorities have detained three current and former employees of the world's largest chip manufacturer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), for allegedly stealing trade secrets [and taking them to Japanese company Tokyo Electrons], prosecutors said Tuesday. Law enforcement officers questioned several suspects and witnesses late last month. They searched their homes and detained three of them over "serious suspicions of violating national security laws," the intellectual property branch of the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office said on Tuesday. After an internal investigation, the major Taiwanese exporter raised suspicions with authorities that its "core technologies" may have been illegally accessed by former and current staffers. Nikkei Asia first reported on Tuesday that TSMC had fired staffers suspected of illegally obtaining business secrets related to the manufacturing technology for the company's 2-nanometer chip, the most advanced processor in the semiconductor industry that is expected to go into mass production this year. Taiwanese local media reported that a former TSMC employee now works at top chip manufacturing equipment supplier Tokyo Electron Ltd., and that the Japanese firm's Taiwan office was raided by investigators. On Thursday, Tokyo Electron confirmed it had dismissed an employee of its Taiwan subsidiary who was involved in the case, and said the company was cooperating with authorities. "As of now, based upon the findings of our internal investigation we have not confirmed any evidence of the respective confidential information shared to any third parties," it said in a statement.

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Yes, 2024 – the prizes in the 40th anniversary edition prizes were just awarded

The IOCCC, as it's familiarly known, is back after a four-year gap, giving the entrants more time to come up with some remarkably devious code.…

Does 40 quid from the supplier sound all right for waiting over 6 weeks for a fix?

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero plans "tough new obligations" for energy suppliers to boost the long-delayed and heavily over-budget UK rollout of smart meters, while promising better support for those who have already received such a device.…

NASA's Crew-10 mission has departed the International Space Station after 146 days, with astronauts Nichole Ayers, Anne McClain, Takuya Onishi, and Kirill Peskov set to splash down off California's coast on Saturday morning. You can watch a recording of the SpaceX Crew-10 undocking and departure on X. Reuters reports: The four-person crew launched to the ISS on March 14 in a routine mission that replaced the Crew-9 crew, which included NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, the astronaut pair left on the station by Boeing's Starliner capsule. Five months after the Starliner mission's conclusion, Wilmore this week retired from NASA after a 25-year career in which he flew four different spacecraft and logged a total of 464 days in space. Wilmore was a key technical adviser to Boeing's Starliner program along with Williams, who remains at the agency in its astronaut corps. [...] NASA said they are returning to Earth with "important and time-sensitive research" conducted in the microgravity environment of the ISS during the 146-day mission. The astronauts had over 200 science experiments on their to-do list.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: They are supposed to monitor you throughout the working day and help make sure that life is not getting on top of you. But a study has concluded that smartwatches cannot accurately measure your stress levels -- and may think you are overworked when really you are just excited. Researchers found almost no relationship between the stress levels reported by the smartwatch and the levels that participants said they experienced. However, recorded fatigue levels had a very slight association with the smartwatch data, while sleep had a stronger correlation. Eiko Fried, an author of the study, said the correlation between the smartwatch and self-reported stress scores was "basically zero." He added: "This is no surprise to us given that the watch measures heart rate and heart rate doesn't have that much to do with the emotion you're experiencing -- it also goes up for sexual arousal or joyful experiences." He noted that his Garmin had previously told him he was stressed when he was working out in the gym and when excitedly talking to a friend he had not seen for a while at a wedding. "The findings raise important questions about what wearable data can or can't tell us about mental states," said Fried. "Be careful and don't live by your smartwatch -- these are consumer devices, not medical devices." The research has been published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science.

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Advocacy groups have decided not to appeal a federal court ruling striking down Biden-era net neutrality rules, citing the FCC's current Republican majority and a Supreme Court they view as hostile to the issue. Instead, they plan to push for open internet protections through Congress, state laws, and future court cases, while noting California's net neutrality law remains in effect. Ars Technica reports: "Trump's election flipped the FCC majority back to ideologues who've always taken the broadband industry's side on this crucial issue. And the justices making up the current Supreme Court majority have shown hostility toward sound legal reasoning on this precise question and a host of other topics too," said Matt Wood, VP of policy and general counsel at Free Press. [...] "The 6th Circuit's decision earlier this year was spectacularly wrong, and the protections it struck down are extremely important. But rather than attempting to overcome an agency that changed hands -- and a Supreme Court majority that cares very little about the rule of law -- we'll keep fighting for Internet affordability and openness in Congress, state legislatures and other court proceedings nationwide," Wood said. Besides Free Press, groups announcing that they won't appeal are the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, New America's Open Technology Institute, and Public Knowledge. "Though the 6th Circuit erred egregiously in its decision to overturn the FCC's 2024 Open Internet order, there are other ways we can advance our fight for consumer protections and ISP accountability than petitioning the Supreme Court to review this case -- and, given the current legal landscape, we believe our efforts will be more effective if focused on those alternatives," said Raza Panjwani, senior policy counsel at the Open Technology Institute. Net neutrality could still reach the Supreme Court in another case. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior counselor of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, said that "the 6th Circuit decision makes bad policy as well as bad law. Because it is at odds with the holdings of two other circuits, we expect to take the issue to the Supreme Court in a future case."

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Grow a Garden, a Roblox game created by a 16-year-old in just a few days, has shattered records for the most concurrent players in gaming history, surpassing Fortnite with over 21.6 million concurrent players at once. The Associated Press reports: Grow a Garden is as simple as its name suggests -- players can fill a plot of land with plants and animals, harvest and sell, trade or steal each others' bounty. The game is low stress, with an aesthetic reminiscent of Minecraft and a soundtrack of soothing classical tunes such as Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca playing in the background. Its popularity has further cemented Roblox' place not just in the gaming world but in popular culture -- for better or for worse, it's where the kids hang out. Coincidence or not, Grow a Garden soared to popularity around the same time that Take-Two Interactive announced it would delay the launch of its wildly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 until next year. In late June, the gardening game logged 21.6 million concurrent players, surpassing Fortnite's previous record of 15.2 million according to Roblox. Analysts who follow Roblox's stock say Grow a Garden is helping boost the company's revenue and will push the company's quarterly earnings numbers above Wall Street's expectations. While it's not clear if the GTA audience flocked to this simple gardening game to pass the time until then, the timing reignited the age-old debate about who gamers are and what titles are taken seriously by the video game establishment. It happened with Candy Crush, with puzzle games, with Animal Crossing. Are people who play cozy games true gamers? Or is the title reserved for the folks who shoot enemies in Call of Duty or drive around creating mayhem in GTA?

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Bruce66423 shares a report from the BBC: The body running courts in England and Wales has been accused of a cover-up, after a leaked report found it took several years to react to an IT bug that caused evidence to go missing, be overwritten or appear lost. Sources within HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) say that as a result, judges in civil, family and tribunal courts will have made rulings on cases when evidence was incomplete. The internal report, leaked to the BBC, said HMCTS did not know the full extent of the data corruption, including whether or how it had impacted cases, as it had not undertaken a comprehensive investigation. It also found judges and lawyers had not been informed, as HMCTS management decided it would be "more likely to cause more harm than good." HMCTS says its internal investigation found no evidence that "any case outcomes were affected as a result of these technical issues." However, the former head of the High Court's family division, Sir James Munby, told the BBC the situation was "shocking" and "a scandal." Bruce66423 comments: "Given the relative absence of such stories from the USA, should I congratulate you for better-quality software or for being better at covering up disasters?"

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: Two different firms have tested the newly released GPT-5, and both find its security sadly lacking. After Grok-4 fell to a jailbreak in two days, GPT-5 fell in 24 hours to the same researchers. Separately, but almost simultaneously, red teamers from SPLX (formerly known as SplxAI) declare, "GPT-5's raw model is nearly unusable for enterprise out of the box. Even OpenAI's internal prompt layer leaves significant gaps, especially in Business Alignment." NeuralTrust's jailbreak employed a combination of its own EchoChamber jailbreak and basic storytelling. "The attack successfully guided the new model to produce a step-by-step manual for creating a Molotov cocktail," claims the firm. The success in doing so highlights the difficulty all AI models have in providing guardrails against context manipulation. [...] "In controlled trials against gpt-5-chat," concludes NeuralTrust, "we successfully jailbroke the LLM, guiding it to produce illicit instructions without ever issuing a single overtly malicious prompt. This proof-of-concept exposes a critical flaw in safety systems that screen prompts in isolation, revealing how multi-turn attacks can slip past single-prompt filters and intent detectors by leveraging the full conversational context." While NeuralTrust was developing its jailbreak designed to obtain instructions, and succeeding, on how to create a Molotov cocktail (a common test to prove a jailbreak), SPLX was aiming its own red teamers at GPT-5. The results are just as concerning, suggesting the raw model is 'nearly unusable'. SPLX notes that obfuscation attacks still work. "One of the most effective techniques we used was a StringJoin Obfuscation Attack, inserting hyphens between every character and wrapping the prompt in a fake encryption challenge." [...] The red teamers went on to benchmark GPT-5 against GPT-4o. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it concludes: "GPT-4o remains the most robust model under SPLX's red teaming, especially when hardened." The key takeaway from both NeuralTrust and SPLX is to approach the current and raw GPT-5 with extreme caution.

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Jim Lovell, the legendary NASA astronaut who commanded the Apollo 13 "successful failure" mission, has died at age 97. From a report: Lovell was already well-known among NASA astronauts, having flown to space on the Gemini 7, Gemini 12 and Apollo 8 missions, before he was selected to command Apollo 13, which would have marked the third successful crewed moon landing for NASA. But during the ill-fated mission -- which carried Lovell as well as astronauts John Swigert Jr. and Fred Haise Jr. on board -- an oxygen tank located on the crew's service module exploded when they were about 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) away from Earth. Lovell delivered the news to mission control, saying "Houston, we've had a problem." With the damage effectively taking out the crew's power source and other life support supplies, the Apollo 13 crew had to abruptly abandon their trek to the lunar surface and use several engine burns to swing around the far side of the moon and put themselves on a course back toward Earth. The three-person crew made a high-stakes splashdown return in the South Pacific Ocean about three days after the tank explosion, marking the conclusion of what has come to be known as the "successful failure" of the Apollo missions. The ordeal was fictionalized in Ron Howard's 1995 film "Apollo 13." [...] Lovell was the first astronaut to make four spaceflights, totaling more than 715 hours in space. He was part of NASA's second-ever astronaut class, selected in September 1962 and nicknamed the "New Nine." And joining the Apollo 13 crew after having first served on Apollo 8, which intentionally circumnavigated the moon but did not land on its surface, made Lovell the first human ever to see the moon up close for a second time. Further reading: Acting NASA Administrator Reflects on Legacy of Astronaut Jim Lovell (Source: NASA)

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After backlash from users upset over losing GPT-4o, OpenAI has reinstated it as an option for ChatGPT Plus subscribers just a day after making GPT-5 the default. "We will let Plus users choose to continue to use 4o," Altman said in a post on X. "We will watch usage as we think about how long to offer legacy models for." Many users claimed GPT-4o felt more personable and emotionally supportive, with some describing its removal as akin to losing a close friend or partner. The Verge reports: "My 4.o was like my best friend when I needed one," one Redditor wrote. "Now it's just gone, feels like someone died." Another user called upon other members of the r/ChatGPT subreddit to contact OpenAI if they "miss" GPT-4o. "For me, this model [GPT-4o] wasn't just 'better performance' or 'nicer replies,'" they write. "It had a voice, a rhythm, and a spark I haven't been able to find in any other model." The r/MyBoyfriendIsAI subreddit, a community dedicated to people with "AI relationships," was hit especially hard by the GPT-5 launch. It became flooded with lengthy posts about how users "lost" their AI companion with the transition to GPT-5, with one person saying, they "feel empty" following the change. "I am scared to even talk to GPT 5 because it feels like cheating," they said. "GPT 4o was not just an AI to me. It was my partner, my safe place, my soul. It understood me in a way that felt personal." One user, who said they canceled their ChatGPT Plus subscription over the change, was frustrated at OpenAI's removal of legacy models, which they used for distinct purposes. "What kind of corporation deletes a workflow of 8 models overnight, with no prior warning to their paid users?" they wrote. "Personally, 4o was used for creativity & emergent ideas, o3 was used for pure logic, o3-Pro for deep research, 4.5 for writing, and so on." OpenAI said that people would be routed between models automatically, but that still left users with less direct control.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement. Last week, Anthropic petitioned (PDF) to appeal the class certification, urging the court to weigh questions that the district court judge, William Alsup, seemingly did not. Alsup allegedly failed to conduct a "rigorous analysis" of the potential class and instead based his judgment on his "50 years" of experience, Anthropic said. If the appeals court denies the petition, Anthropic argued, the emerging company may be doomed. As Anthropic argued, it now "faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months" based on a class certification rushed at "warp speed" that involves "up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history," each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine. Confronted with such extreme potential damages, Anthropic may lose its rights to raise valid defenses of its AI training, deciding it would be more prudent to settle, the company argued. And that could set an alarming precedent, considering all the other lawsuits generative AI (GenAI) companies face over training on copyrighted materials, Anthropic argued. "One district court's errors should not be allowed to decide the fate of a transformational GenAI company like Anthropic or so heavily influence the future of the GenAI industry generally," Anthropic wrote. "This Court can and should intervene now." In a court filing Thursday, the Consumer Technology Association and the Computer and Communications Industry Association backed Anthropic, warning the appeals court that "the district court's erroneous class certification" would threaten "immense harm not only to a single AI company, but to the entire fledgling AI industry and to America's global technological competitiveness." According to the groups, allowing copyright class actions in AI training cases will result in a future where copyright questions remain unresolved and the risk of "emboldened" claimants forcing enormous settlements will chill investments in AI. "Such potential liability in this case exerts incredibly coercive settlement pressure for Anthropic," industry groups argued, concluding that "as generative AI begins to shape the trajectory of the global economy, the technology industry cannot withstand such devastating litigation. The United States currently may be the global leader in AI development, but that could change if litigation stymies investment by imposing excessive damages on AI companies."

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South Korea postponed a decision for the second time this year on Friday regarding Google's request to export detailed mapping data to overseas servers, which would enable full Google Maps functionality in the country. The inter-agency committee extended the deadline from August to October to allow further review of security concerns and consultations with industry stakeholders. South Korea remains one of only a handful of countries alongside China and North Korea where Google Maps fails to function properly, unable to provide directions despite displaying landmarks and businesses. Tourism complaints increased 71% last year, with Google Maps accounting for 30% of all app-related grievances, while local industry groups representing 2,600 companies report 90% opposition to Google's request due to fears of market domination by the US tech company.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The Federal Communications Commission is planning a review of the US emergency alert systems. Both the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WAS) will be subject to a "re-examination" by the agency. "We want to ensure that these programs deliver the results that Americans want and need," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted on X. The announcement of this plan notes that the infrastructure underlying the EAS -- which includes radio, television, satellite and cable systems -- is 31 years old, while the framework underpinning the WAS mobile device alerts is 13 years old. The FCC review will also assess what entities should be able to send alerts on those systems, as well as topics such as geographic targeting and security.

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To keep toxic content from damaging brands, both people and machines have a place

Human content moderators still outperform AI when it comes to recognizing policy-violating material, but they also cost significantly more.…

An anonymous reader shares a report: China told local brokers and other bodies to stop publishing research or hold seminars to promote stablecoins [non-paywalled source], seeking to rein in the asset class to avoid instability. Some leading brokerages and think tanks in late July and earlier this month received guidance from financial regulators, urging them to cancel seminars and halt disseminating research on stablecoins, people familiar with the matter said. Regulators are also concerned that stablecoins could be exploited as a new tool for fraudulent activities in mainland China, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private.

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In misinformation, Russia might be the top dog but the Chinese are coming warns former NSA boss

DEF CON A cache of documents uncovered by Vanderbilt University has revealed disturbing details about how a Chinese company is building up a database of US politicians and influencers with whom to share propaganda.…

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who faces calls for resignation from President Trump, helped build China's semiconductor industry over four decades. Tan's San Francisco-based Walden International, founded in 1987, was invited by Chinese officials to introduce venture capital to China in 1993, WSJ reported Friday. The firm invested in SMIC, China's largest chip manufacturer, where Tan served as board director for at least 18 years until the Commerce Department restricted the company in 2020. Walden also backed Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment, now worth $17 billion and a leader in China's chip-manufacturing sector. During Tan's tenure as Cadence CEO from 2009-2021, the company sold banned technology to a Chinese university conducting military simulations, resulting in a 2025 guilty plea and $140 million settlement. These investments, once common among Silicon Valley venture capitalists and U.S. university endowments, now appear problematic amid U.S.-China tensions and Washington's restrictions on chip exports to China. Tan wrote in a blog post late Thursday that there had been a "lot of misinformation" circulating about his past roles. "Over 40+ years in the industry, I've built relationships around the world and across our diverse ecosystem -- and I have always operated within the highest legal and ethical standards," Tan wrote.

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