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China successfully recovered an orbital rocket booster for the first time, landing the Long March 10B's first stage into a net-equipped sea platform after its maiden launch. "This mission marks my country's first successful controlled recovery of a launch vehicle and the world's first network-based recovery of a launch vehicle," the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced via social media shortly after the launch. (Translation by Google.) "It signifies a historic bre…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Apple on Friday accused OpenAI of stealing secrets about products still in development, setting up a legal face-off between two of the world's biggest tech companies. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the consumer tech giant said that OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence that has a new hardware business, had asked job candidates from Apple to share details about secret projects a…

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Inside Higher Ed: For the first time since he started teaching Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory nearly two decades ago, Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano gave his students a take-home midterm this spring. Quite a few students had expressed anxiety about being in a classroom after a gunman killed two students and injured nine in a December mass shooting at Brown, and so "it was appropriate," he said, to allow stud…

Dutch intelligence agencies say Russian hackers have been hijacking unsecured internet-connected cameras, including likely doorbell and security cameras, to spy on NATO military bases and transport routes used to move weapons to Ukraine. "Organisations with IP [internet protocol] cameras on these routes have now been warned so that they could take action," said the AIVD domestic security and MIVD military intelligence agencies. Targeted NATO member states include the Netherlands and Ukraine. Th…

NHTSA is ordering autonomous vehicle developers to explain by the end of the month how they will stop driverless cars from interfering with police, firefighters, and paramedics. TechCrunch reports: [NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison] noted in the letter (PDF) that the agency has "identified a clear pattern of driverless AVs interfering with law enforcement and other first responders," citing instances in which these vehicles drove into active emergency scenes, blocked the paths of ambulance…

On October 1st, New York City will become the first U.S. city to ban deceptive subscription practices, requiring companies to offer simple cancellation options or face fines of $525 per user subscription, back fees, and additional penalties. The Mamdani administration is also proposing a junk-fee rule requiring sellers, landlords, hotels, and other businesses to "advertise the total price for any good or service, including all mandatory additional charges and fees, up front." The Guardian repor…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The European Union is ramping up pressure on Meta to make big changes to Facebook and Instagram after the European Commission preliminarily found that features like autoplay, infinite scroll, and highly personalized content recommendations were addictive. On Thursday, the EC said its investigation indicated that "Meta did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design on the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors …

Disney is exploring a free tier for Disney+ that would make some content available without a subscription. According to Nielsen data, the three largest free streamers accounted for 18.7% of watch time on U.S. TVs in April, up from 16.8% a year earlier and 12.7% in April 2024. Business Insider reports: Product and tech chief Adam Smith spoke about enabling free-tier content during a streaming town hall on Thursday afternoon, one staffer said. Smith didn't share a timeline for this initiative or …

OpenAI is retiring its ChatGPT Atlas browser less than a year after launch. Going forward, its browsing features will be shifted into a redesigned ChatGPT desktop app that also combines Codex, a built-in browser, and "ChatGPT Work" for acting across apps and files. PCMag reports: OpenAI disclosed Atlas's retirement in a Thursday post introducing a more powerful ChatGPT desktop app, following reports that the company planned on turning it into a "superapp." [...] In a tweet, OpenAI product staff…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The European Commission has ended an investigation into possible anticompetitive practices after SAP agreed to abolish reinstatement fees and reduce back-maintenance fees. The move could reduce barriers for customers considering third-party support for products nearing the end of their vendor support terms, including thousands of large businesses that rely on SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) to run their business operations. SAP's mainstream…

OpenAI's CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, is stepping down from her full-time role and becoming a part-time adviser after taking extended medical leave for a chronic neuroimmune condition. "Three months ago, I had to go on medical leave after a severe exacerbation of a chronic illness I've lived with for seven years," Simo wrote in a post Thursday on X. "During that time, it became clear that the road to recovery would be much longer and more complex than I had anticipated -- and that I neede…

Microsoft plans to disable and remove OWA Light, the lightweight Outlook Web Access client for Exchange Server, in an upcoming update expected in August 2026. The company says retiring the two-decade-old legacy interface will reduce attack surface and engineering complexity, pushing users to the modern Outlook on the web experience instead. BleepingComputer reports: "OWA Light was an important compatibility experience when the web needed it. Today, the full Outlook on the web experience is the …

Nobel-winning chemist Omar Yaghi is leaving UC Berkeley for China's Tsinghua University, where he will lead a new AI institute focused on accelerating the discovery of advanced materials. "Last week, Tsinghua University in Beijing welcomed Dr. Yaghi in an appointment ceremony, calling him one of the world's foremost chemists," reports The New York Times. "The university said he saw his new post as an opportunity 'not to slow down, not to repeat what has already been done, but to do science with…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Humanoid robots have surgically removed the gallbladders from living animals in an unprecedented medical experiment -- but not as autonomous machines capable of replacing human doctors. Instead, skilled human surgeons remotely controlled the robots' movements in a new example of human-robot teamups. The teleoperated humanoid robots completed two minimally invasive surgeries by removing gallbladders from live pigs during a preclinical trial …

U.S. lawmakers are probing the growing use of Chinese AI models by American companies, citing concerns over censorship, security risks, and whether U.S. firms are turning to cheaper foreign models because domestic alternatives are too costly or restricted. The investigation is specifically looking at companies such as Cursor and Airbnb. "The growing use of Chinese AI models by U.S. companies raises serious concerns," a State Department spokesperson told CNBC. Those "AI models are designed to ad…