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hubie writes:

Scientists warn that insect losses will have major knock-on impacts for wildlife and ecosystems:

From grizzly bears and chimpanzees to geckos and poison dart frogs, the lives of tens of thousands of animal species depend on insects and other invertebrates not just for food. They provide, homes, medicines, sanitation and chemical self-defence, often living alongside each other in mutually beneficial relationships.

Scientists are now warning that widespread insect declines will therefore have far-reaching impacts on other species. An international research team carried out the most comprehensive global scientific analysis to date of the impacts of insects on wildlife, led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and Binghamton University, USA.

The scientists reviewed evidence from almost 300 studies published over the past 75 years relating to land and freshwater wildlife, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish. It found nearly three-quarters of studied wildlife species eat invertebrates – mainly insects – and over two-fifths exclusively so.

Many animals also rely on foods that exist only because insects pollinate plants or disperse seeds. Some species have developed remarkable adaptations for capturing them, from the projectile tongues of amphibians and chameleons to birds that have learnt to remove bee stings before eating them.

[...] Some species of wildlife live alongside insects in mutually beneficial relationships. Moths have been found in owl and kingfisher nests, where they decompose fur, crushed feathers, pellets and faeces. They also live on the backs of brown-throated sloths where they deposit nitrogen in their fur and spur algal growth, a key food source for their hosts.

The study does, though, also point out the negative impacts. Although insects generally do not eat other animals, it does occur, such as dragonfly nymphs eating tadpoles and small fish and mantids sometimes capturing hummingbirds and other small birds. Ants and wasps have been reported to attack lizards, birds and mammals.

Meanwhile, different species of mosquitoes transmit avian malaria and West Nile virus to birds, or fungus to frogs, and fleas pass on pathogens to mammals.

Dr Eliza Grames of Binghamton University, co-lead author of the paper, concluded: "Changes in insects can have massive consequences for food webs and ecosystems. Declines in insect populations could risk destabilizing some of the most fundamental processes that the natural world depends on."

Journal Reference: Cooke, Grames et al. 2026. The importance of insect biodiversity for vertebrates. Nature Reviews Biodiversity. DOI: 10.1038/s44358-026-00201-w

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

A Delaware proposal to let companies be operated by AI agents would help the firms' human owners evade legal responsibility for reckless and harmful actions taken by the AI, US Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Delaware Governor Matt Meyer in a letter yesterday.

Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, told Meyer that the committee "seeks assistance obtaining documents related to your state administration's efforts to establish a new form of corporate entity to be known as an Artificial Intelligence Company (AIC)."

Comer said the proposal is ripe for abuse. "We are concerned that Delaware's AIC proposal could be used to protect powerful AI companies and their investors from responsibility for reckless harmful actions, while also protecting non-transparent forces seeking anticompetitive regulatory capture behind state AI initiatives," Comer's letter said.

[Source]: Ars Technica

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/cxo/2026/10/26/microsoft-offers-parachutes-to-60k-employees-if-they-jump-by-the-end-of-the-year/5305538

Microsoft, on Monday, announced a voluntary exit offer open to about one quarter of its employees. 

The company's HR chief, Amy Coleman, explained the deal in a letter later posted to Redmond's corporate blog. While scant on specifics, Coleman's note dangles an opportunity for anyone considering a move to get out while the getting's good. 

Eligible employees in participating organizations "who may be considering a future outside the company," Coleman wrote, can seize "the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources."

Microsoft tells us that 60,000 of its employees in the UK, US, Canada, and India are being given the opportunity to take the VEO. Microsoft told us it isn't classifying the deal as a buyout since no one is being incentivized to leave. We're told that the offer is akin to a standard severance deal in terms of monetary and career assistance bonuses. Some employees will also be given the option for extended healthcare and stock shares. 

The company declined to get specific on which roles or teams are up for the exit offer, but Coleman's note does state that employees in those four markets up to employment level 70 will be eligible, which translates to everyone at or below the VP level. 

"Some organizations are providing the Voluntary Exit Offer, and some are not," Coleman's note stated. "Participation varies based on each business's priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs."

Microsoft employed around 223,000 people as of June, 2026 when it issued its last annual report, and since then has eliminated around 4,800 roles. By that count, the VEO is being offered to around a quarter of Microsoft's remaining employees, though Microsoft tells us it doesn't expect everyone to take the offer. 

Microsoft said it doesn't have a target number for the VEO. Google, which made a similar offer to employees in 2025, saw between three and five percent of those eligible take the offer.

If that holds in Microsoft's case, anywhere between 1,800 and 3,000 employees could accept the deal before the window closes on December 31.

It would be easy to blame increasing automation for the plans to reduce staff, but Microsoft insisted otherwise in our conversation. The verbiage about "changing needs" isn't a euphemism for AI, in other words.

Rather, we're told, the deal reflects the success of a previous early retirement offer from April, which saw Microsoft extend a voluntary buyout to employees whose age plus years of employment at Microsoft exceeded 70. 

The April offer only applied to around 9,000 employees, and Microsoft said it received feedback from others who would've taken it if it had been available to them.

What could Redmond do but acquiesce? Especially given those recent earnings that saw Microsoft make serious bank across its portfolio. As we well know from watching the tech industry over the years, big earnings is the perfect time to shave off some headcount to keep the line going up.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/boston-dynamics-employees-want-to-block-sale-of-robot-dogs-to-ice/

Hundreds of employees at the US robotics firm Boston Dynamics signed a petition calling for executives to halt a sale of the company's robot dogs to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—but executives stood by the deal, while saying the robots would not be weaponized.

On September 25, the Department of Homeland Security contract awarded $1.3 million to a Connecticut company called Radeco to provide ICE with modified versions of Boston Dynamics' quadruped robots. But Boston Dynamics workers sent the petition letter with more than 300 signatures—half of them anonymous—to the company's executives in early September and shared copies with The Boston Globe and WBUR public radio station.

"Many of us have gotten messages from friends and family, asking us in disbelief and horror if this news is true, and how we can live with ourselves if it is," according to the petition. "The risk for Boston Dynamics is simply too great to continue with this deal."

The petition described the signatories as employees who normally "love showing off what we do to our friends, family and the world" and who "love challenging ourselves to innovate and change the perception of what robots can do." The 300 signatures come out of a total Boston Dynamics workforce of approximately 1,400 people.

The ICE contract covers the purchase of four Boston Dynamics Spot robots that were modified by Radeco to be marketed as a robot platform named Cerberus. The contract describes these Cerberus robots as being intended to "detect radiation, toxic gas leaks and explosive threats in urban environments or disaster zones," along with enabling other remote observation and inspection missions.

A centerpiece of the upgraded robot is an oxygen sensor that is intended to "ensure the air quality is breathable when personnel are placed in confined spaces such as tunnels." The Cerberus robot dog also has a camera equipped with 30-times zoom capability, 360-degree cameras, and infrared thermal imaging.

The Cerberus robot dog would come with an optional Spot robotic arm that enables it to manipulate objects and open doors, along with providing additional camera views when extended. The ICE contract describes the robot as being generally capable of navigating complex industrial environments on its own and executing "repeatable autonomous missions with minimal human intervention."

Such a purchase was justified in the ICE contract as supporting the Homeland Security Task Forces' mission to carry out "counter-illicit cross-border tunnel operations" and dismantling "cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks" being conducted by "criminal cartels, foreign gangs and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States."

"Spot robots are tools that help keep people out of harm's way," a Boston Dynamics spokesperson told Ars in a statement. "Regardless of any political implications or personal feelings about the organizations involved, if our robot can help keep people safe, we believe it should."

Boston Dynamics has also emphasized that the robots would primarily be used by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit that is focused on combating transnational criminal organizations, according to WBUR.

However, the Brennan Center for Justice has documented the Homeland Security Investigations unit as frequently being involved in deporting undocumented workers and conducting workplace raids during the first administration of President Donald Trump. These operations occurred between 2018 and 2021, before being halted by US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas early in the term of President Joe Biden.

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/10/27/ibm-admits-mainframes-need-to-be-modernized-and-will-use-ai-to-do-the-job/5305618

IBM touts its Z series mainframes as the most reliable and cost-effective environments for certain workloads, but on Monday also acknowledged that the platform can drift towards hard-to-manage complexity that reduces resilience and therefore needs some help from AI.

Big Blue admitted that not all mainframe estates exist in a state of perfect bliss in a Statement of Direction for a forthcoming product called "IBM Z Atlas" that the document describes as "an AI-native solution that uses system intelligence to ground AI skills and agents in the context of key workflows like planning and validating changes or modernizing applications and infrastructure."

"It intends to map a client's entire z/OS stack across infrastructure, middleware, and applications, and then use that system intelligence to reduce the manual effort of tasks like patch management, regulatory response, and sharing knowledge across every team, from systems programmers to application developers."

Big Blue also hopes the tool helps mainframe techs and ops teams "better understand how components connect, interact, and depend on one another."

"IBM Z Atlas intends to eliminate the leading cause of unplanned z/OS outages – changes that aren't proven to be safe – by mapping how a change impacts the z/OS stack, testing it, and validating it," the Statement of Direction adds. "This design accelerates clients' modernization efforts by keeping experts in control and giving every practitioner, in operations or development, the same shared Z system visibility to reduce risk."

IBM reckons Z Atlas will help mainframe shops do four things:

• Understand systems and dependencies before making decisions or initiating changes

• Assess potential impacts, risks, and operational considerations

• Accelerate planning for modernization, deployment, and provisioning

• Provide trusted context for AI-native experiences and automation

While IBM clearly sees AI has a role in helping its customers to manage mainframes, it appears not to be going all-in on AIOps – the emerging practice of allowing agents to either keep tech infrastructure humming, or autonomously find issues and develop proposed fixes.

"IBM intends for AI-assisted insights and recommendations to preserve appropriate human review and decision authority," the Statement of Direction reads.

The multiple mentions of modernization caught your correspondent's eye, because IBM's many rivals often suggest the best way to modernize mainframes is by trashing them and moving the applications they run to another platform. In recent years, vendors have suggested using generative AI to rewrite mainframe apps in other languages, an idea that analyst firm Gartner thinks is highly overrated.

IBM clearly wants modernization to mean making mainframes easier to live with so that customers persist with the platform, a critical outcome as the company's revenue spikes when each new generation of Z-series machines hits the market. Indeed, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna last week said the current Z17 generation of mainframes has outsold all others by $1 billion.

That kind of result well and truly puts to bed the "death of the mainframe" narrative that, like next year becoming the Year of Linux on the Desktop, is a prediction that never goes away and never comes to fruition. With Z Atlas, IBM seems to be trying to ensure rumors of the mainframe's demise are even more exaggeratedly false.

Original Submission

Ingar writes:

On October 22, an attacker gained unauthorized access to Luanti's ContentDB's servers, including emails, hashed passwords, and uploads. ContentDB is the official source to download content such as mods, games and texture packs (collectively referred to as "packages") that have been developed by the Luanti community, for the game formerly known as Minetest.

Users are asked to take the necessary actions.

Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Payload blobs measuring 12.9 to 13.7 MB were large enough to evade GitHub code search:

A new Miasma-family npm worm, originally believed to be just a test with no victims, secretly armed 42 real GitHub repositories from 11 owners, hijacking accounts as early as July and using a stealthy payload built to stay hidden from GitHub and automated scanners, according to JFrog researchers.

Threat hunters at SafeDep, an open source supply chain security firm, first spotted the "testmetest" npm campaign last week, identifying 18 packages linked to the same operator between October 19 and October 25, including releases containing credential-stealing malware. As with earlier npm worms, the malware is self-replicating, steals credentials, and installs a wiper that deletes the home directory when the victim revokes the stolen GitHub token, the security researchers noted. 

The new npm worm shares code with June's Miasma Phantom Gyp worm, and adds Mini Shai-Hulud's token-revocation wiper. 

As of October 22, however, SafeDep had found no compromised third-party packages or victims. "All observed activity belongs to the operator's own test accounts," the team wrote. 

As with most happy-ending security stories, that proved too good to be true.

In a Monday report, supply chain security company JFrog said its analysis proved otherwise, and found the testmetest campaign operator "had already armed real repositories belonging to established developers and organizations." 

This isn't just about timing, either, according to JFrog researchers Guy Korolevski and Yair Benamou. "The payload blobs were large enough to evade the GitHub search and API paths normally used to find this kind of compromise," they wrote.

looorg writes:

Harddrives and storage are getting so expensive in the age of AI that companies are looking for old, reliable and working solutions. Solution --> Magnetic tapes. They never really went away but are now in for a resurgence.

Fujifilm's magnetic tape investment targets fivefold output by 2028

Advanced tapes will offer capacities reaching 100 TB.
Tape storage can cost one-quarter as much as HDD storage.

Will we see the return of other old tech to cover the gaps? Eco friendly giant punch-cards?

https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2026/10/28/fujifilm-magnetic-tape-investment/
https://vgtimes.com/tech-and-hardware/172697-fujifilm-plans-fivefold-magnetic-tape-output-increase-as-ai-demand-grows.html
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/artificial-intelligence/as-ai-revives-magnetic-tape-fujifilm-plans-biggest-buildup-in-two-decades

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Two US senators say the Trump administration is breaking the law by withholding the FISA court decision while it presses Congress to renew America's most sweeping surveillance program.

Congress is being asked to renew one of the most expansive surveillance authorities in US law. The administration, reportedly, just won't say what the court overseeing it actually found.

That is the situation senators Ron Wyden and Adam Schiff described publicly on October 26, alleging the Trump administration missed a legally required deadline to release a significant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion concerning how intelligence agencies handle Americans' communications intercepted under Section 702.

The deadline passed September 13. No opinion appeared. No waiver. No public explanation.

[Source]: GADGET REVIEW

[Also Covered By]: WIRED

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/emulate-apple-ii-on-raspberry-pi/

The Apple II was not the first personal or home computer, but it was part of the iconic 'trinity' of computers that came out in 1977: Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80.
[...]
In designing the Apple II, Steve Wozniak took inspiration from his work on the Breakout arcade game during his time at Atari. It's why the Apple II has colour graphics, support for paddle controllers, and even audio.
[...]
The Apple II included a version of the BASIC language that only supported integer numeric data types: by eschewing floating-point numbers, Wozniak's Integer BASIC, as it was called, processed numbers extremely fast. This made it less than ideal for certain programming tasks, but it was fantastic for video games.
[...]
For Apple II emulation on Raspberry Pi, we are using the LinApple emulator. It's a fork of the AppleWin emulator which was originally created by Mike O'Brien. David Baucum (maxolasersquad) and several other contributors got it running on Linux. You may also want to have a look at audetto's fork of the AppleWin emulator. Because audetto's fork is regularly synchronised with the original AppleWin GitHub repository, it tracks AppleWin features more closely.
[...]
Here's a little BASIC program you can try running. You can either type it into the emulator, or you can find the program in the ch03/AppleIIBasicPrograms.dsk file in the GitHub repository.
[...]
This will draw a small square on screen. Use the W, A, S, and D keys to move it around the screen. The program is quite simple.
[...]
After you run a graphical program, you'll only have a small text area below the graphics mode portion of the emulator screen. You can type the TEXT command and press ENTER to return to text-only mode. You'll also find these commands helpful:

        LIST — lists all the lines of the current BASIC program.
        RUN — runs the current program.
        NEW — erases the current program and lets you start afresh.
        CATALOG — lists all files on the disk image.
        SAVE NAME — saves the current BASIC program under whatever file name you specify.
        LOAD NAME — loads the program with the specified file name.
        CTRL+C — use this key combination to stop a running BASIC program.

Apart from CATALOG, these commands only apply to BASIC programs. Many games are binary executable files that don't include BASIC source.

You can find some fun type-in programs in Lee Fastenau's collection of short programs.
[...]
This tutorial is part of a series of emulation guides in The Raspberry Pi Guide to Retro Gaming — a definitive guide on how to play your favourite games of yesteryear on a Raspberry Pi. You can also find it in the latest issue of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

The findings suggest possible surveillance interest in countries where Starlink is banned or restricted.

Discover-Tech, an Israeli advertising firm previously linked to the delivery of zero-click spyware, is the top bidder for Starlink ad impressions in 105 countries, according to a new report from Reuters. Researchers say it all points to a large-scale tracking effort aimed at users of SpaceX's satellite internet service.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, posted on X that data from TrendAI suggest the existence of a "worldwide surveillance op targeting @Starlink users."

Discover-Tech was previously named in Citizen Lab's October 15th report as the buyer of ordinary-looking ads that delivered Candiru spyware to devices at Al Jazeera without any user interaction. Candiru is an Israeli mercenary spyware vendor (now rebranded as Integrity Labs) that develops tools capable of silently compromising phones and computers. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security added Candiru to their trade restriction list, known as the Entity List, over concerns it supplied surveillance technology used against journalists, activists, and government officials.

[Source]: GIZMODO

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.engadget.com/2295033/warhound-genetically-engineering-dogs-military/

Warhound, a new startup that has just raised $200 million in funding, aims to genetically engineer war dogs for the US military and fit them with high-tech gear. It's a project by Colossal Biosciences' Ben Lamm and Anduril's Palmer Luckey. Lamm has told Wired that Warhound has already started editing genes of the cell samples taken from its first batch of donor dogs. Specifically, the startup collected samples from top-performing military, police and first responder dog breeds in the US, mostly Belgian Malinois, some labradors and some shepherds. The goal is to clone them after scientists working for Colossal have tweaked their genes.

Those scientists will initially focus on making them less likely to develop health conditions that commonly affect their breeds, such as hip dysplasia and certain cancers. In the future, Lamm thinks the dogs could be enhanced further. Scientist could incorporate more genetic changes to make them faster and more agile or to enhance their sense of smell, Lamm told TechCrunch.

Luckey, if you'll recall, founded Oculus VR and designed the Oculus Rift headset. His company Anduril teamed up with OpenAI in 2024 to develop AI for the Pentagon. More recently, it secured a contract with the US Army to create its next-gen battlefield intelligence system alongside Palantir. Meanwhile, Lamm's biotech company is behind several "de-extinction" initiatives, including one that claims to have revived the dire wolf and another that aims to bring back the woolly mammoth.

So where does Luckey's Anduril come in? Warhound doesn't seem to have plans to create cyborg dogs — for now. Anduril will be designing tools and the software powering them, which will help protect the dogs while they work. Think goggles, vests and body armor. Luckey is a partner in the business, but neither he nor Anduril has a stake in the startup. Colossal Biosciences has equity in the company, and Lamm is on its board. David Spirk, who most recently worked at Palantir, now serves the startsup's CEO.

Warhound expects its first batch of genetically engineered dogs to be born in early 2027. They will be trained to perform various tasks working dogs do, such as detect bombs and aid in search-and-rescue operations.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/from-cheap-tool-to-premium-subscription-when-a-beloved-apps-price-skyrockets/

How much are you willing to pay to keep using your favorite app?

Maybe you've used it for years. Perhaps it performs a function so essential and specific that you couldn't imagine what you'd do without it.
[...]
Earlier this year, Evernote, a note-taking app, changed its subscription tiers, forcing some users to go from paying $130 per year to $250.
[...]
10 times more than what Evernote charged for annual subscriptions from its 2008 launch until 2016.
[...]
When Bending Spoons bought Evernote in 2023, the app had a sizable customer base. In a June SEC filing, Bending Spoons explained that it was attracted to Evernote's 200 million accounts and high user engagement.
[...]
Although price hikes risk eroding customer loyalty, Bending Spoons investigated how much change in pricing and subscription tiers Evernote users would tolerate.
[...]
Shortly after the acquisition, Evernote prices increased (from $8 per month to $15/month, or from $70/year to $130/year). The new prices aimed to better align "with how different customer segments... engage with" Evernote, and, in combination with product improvements, led to "average revenue per monthly active user being 2.5 times as high in 2025 as in 2022," Bending Spoons said.
[...]
Evernote released over 150 product updates in 2025, the filing says. Evernote v11, a huge update, came out in 2026.

While issuing layoffs in July 2023, Bending Spoons said Evernote had been "unprofitable for years." By November 2024, the app had reportedly reached record levels of profitability.
[...]
Comments from Inkdrop's developer also help explain steep price hikes imposed on longtime app users.

In 2024, the Markdown note-taking app's price doubled from $5/month to $10/month or $50/year to $100/year. At the time, Inkdrop's creator, Takuya Matsuyama, wrote a blog post
[...]
Inkdrop's developer was less concerned about growing its customer base and more interested in extracting additional revenue from current users.
[...]
Mature apps with longtime subscribers, initially drawn in through low prices and reliable features, face a predicament. Those loyal users are good for business, but they're often content with software that functions as it always has—and don't expect to pay more for it.

But stagnant growth doesn't mix well with inflation or stockholder expectations.
[...]
prices apps launch with aren't sustainable in the long term, as Plex has said about its lifetime pass, which has seen its price increase by 525 percent over two price hikes since March 2024. We've seen a similar pattern with streaming apps.
[...]
when price hikes are unavoidable, giving customers advance warning can go a long way toward showing loyal users they're valued.

Another option is to offer more subscription tiers in general. Developers often cite new features to justify higher subscription prices, but not all users want those features.
[...]
Sometimes, various internal and external factors make higher prices inevitable. When that happens, users would be wise to reexamine whether that beloved app is still the best option after all these years.

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Original Submission

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

https://www.engadget.com/2295216/most-popular-streaming-platforms-united-states-not-what-you-think/

These numbers come from Nielsen's The Gauge, which tracks viewing time on TV, not subscriber numbers, app downloads or viewing on a phone. In July 2026, 49 percent of all TV time was spent on streaming. Live channels watched via YouTube TV count toward broadcast or cable viewing, so the standalone pay TV service doesn't inflate YouTube's streaming share. It's interesting that the platform most focused on individual creators beat core streaming services so handily, especially when this is TV-only and thus doesn't include people looking up tutorials on their phones.

Disney, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery each have several services grouped together, while The Roku Channel and Tubi are counted individually. These numbers are for July, before Paramount (now Skydance) acquired Warner Bros. Discovery on October 6.

Despite its lower position, Peacock had a good month, with TV viewing up 15 percent from June. World Cup coverage gave it a boost, and Love Island USA had 4.9 billion viewing minutes in July. Nielsen said it was still evaluating the impact of a June change to how it measures Tubi.

YouTube reported more than 700 million hours of podcasts watched on living-room devices in October 2025, up from 400 million a year earlier. Its regular videos are free with ads, but it has no shortage of ways to take your money. You can rent or buy movies, subscribe to YouTube Premium or pay for individual creator memberships. Netflix primarily relies on recurring plans, while Prime Video offers rentals and add-on channel subscriptions.

Fox already owns Tubi and agreed to acquire Roku in a deal valued at approximately $22 billion in June. Roku confirmed on October 19 that the transaction was still pending.

Original Submission