The UK has transformed its broadband infrastructure in five years -- with full-fiber coverage jumping from 12% of properties in January 2020 to more than 78% by 2025, according to communications regulator Ofcom and ThinkBroadband data. Northern Ireland leads with 96% of premises in postcodes served with full-fiber connections.

The rollout accelerated after Ofcom's May 2021 regulatory framework gave other providers access to BT's Openreach ducts and poles while promising the company regulatory certainty through a "fair bet" approach that avoided price caps. The framework sparked investment from alternative networks, or "altnets," which increased homes passed from 8.2 million in 2022 to 16.4 million by 2025.

Samsung on Wednesday unveiled three new foldable smartphones at a time when the company is facing increased competition from Chinese rivals such as Honor and Oppo, reports CNBC. The company's share of the global foldable phone market slipped to 45% in 2024, down from 54% a year earlier. Today's new devices include the ultra-thin Galaxy Z Fold 7, the clamshell-style Galaxy Z Flip 7, and the more affordable Flip 7 FE. Here's a breakdown of each: The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is super thin at a thickness of 8.9 millimeters (0.35 inches) closed and only 4.2 millimeters open. It's also much lighter than its predecessor, weighing 215 grams (7.62 ounces). These stats put the phone on par with both Honor's Magic V5 and the Oppo Find N5. The new Fold device has a 6.5-inch cover screen and an 8-inch main display when opened, making it bigger than its predecessor. It's also decked out with premium new cameras, featuring a 200-megapixel main lens, as well as a 10-megapixel telephoto sensor, 12-megapixel ultra-wide and two 10-megapixel front cameras on both the cover screen and on the main display.

Samsung's new Fold generation is, nevertheless, much more limited than other devices in the market when it comes to battery capacity. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 has a 4,400 milliampere-hour (mAh) battery -- far less than the 6,100 mAh power pack in Honor's Magic V5's or the Oppo Find N5's 5,600 mAh battery. Samsung says its device is capable of 24 hours of video playback.

Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 7 is also thinner than its predecessor, coming in at 6.5 millimeters when opened flat. By contrast, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 has a depth of 6.9 millimeters when unfolded. The new phone has a 4.1-inch cover screen and a 6.9-inch main display. It comes with a 50-megapixel main camera and 12-megapixel ultra-wide sensor on the back and a 10-megapixel lens on the main display. It also has a bigger 4,300 mAh battery, which Samsung says supports 31 hours of video playtime on a single charge.

In addition to Flip 7, Samsung is also introducing a cheaper version of the phone, called the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE, which is slightly smaller and thicker than its more premium counterpart. What about the AI features, you ask? They all include various AI-driven camera tools that can identify and suggest removal of unwanted people or objects in photos, and an audio eraser that filters out background noise in videos.

The Galaxy Z Flip 7 also integrates Gemini Live, allowing users to overlay the AI assistant during live video recordings -- for instance, to receive real-time outfit suggestions.

The Z Fold 7 starts at $1,999, and the Z Flip 7 starts at $1,099. Meanwhile, the Flip 7 FE is priced at $899.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: If you want a job at McDonald's today, there's a good chance you'll have to talk to Olivia. Olivia is not, in fact, a human being, but instead an AI chatbot that screens applicants, asks for their contact information and resume, directs them to a personality test, and occasionally makes them "go insane" by repeatedly misunderstanding their most basic questions. Until last week, the platform that runs the Olivia chatbot, built by artificial intelligence software firm Paradox.ai, also suffered from absurdly basic security flaws. As a result, virtually any hacker could have accessed the records of every chat Olivia had ever had with McDonald's applicants -- including all the personal information they shared in those conversations -- with tricks as straightforward as guessing the username and password "123456."

On Wednesday, security researchers Ian Carroll and Sam Curryrevealedthat they found simple methods to hack into the backend of the AI chatbot platform on McHire.com, McDonald's website that many of its franchisees use to handle job applications. Carroll and Curry, hackers with along track record of independent security testing, discovered that simple web-based vulnerabilities -- including guessing one laughably weak password -- allowed them to access a Paradox.ai account and query the company's databases that held every McHire user's chats with Olivia. The data appears to include as many as 64 million records, including applicants' names, email addresses, and phone numbers.

Carroll says he only discovered that appalling lack of security around applicants' information because he was intrigued by McDonald's decision to subject potential new hires to an AI chatbot screener and personality test. "I just thought it was pretty uniquely dystopian compared to a normal hiring process, right? And that's what made me want to look into it more," says Carroll. "So I started applying for a job, and then after 30 minutes, we had full access to virtually every application that's ever been made to McDonald's going back years." Paradox.ai confirmed the security findings, acknowledging that only a small portion of the accessed records contained personal data. The company stated that the weak-password account ("123456") was only accessed by the researchers and no one else. To prevent future issues, Paradox is launching a bug bounty program. "We do not take this matter lightly, even though it was resolved swiftly and effectively," Paradox.ai's chief legal officer, Stephanie King, told WIRED in an interview. "We own this."

In a statement to WIRED, McDonald's agreed that Paradox.ai was to blame. "We're disappointed by this unacceptable vulnerability from a third-party provider, Paradox.ai. As soon as we learned of the issue, we mandated Paradox.ai to remediate the issue immediately, and it was resolved on the same day it was reported to us," the statement reads. "We take our commitment to cyber security seriously and will continue to hold our third-party providers accountable to meeting our standards of data protection."

AMD is warning users of a newly discovered form of side-channel attack affecting a broad range of its chips that could lead to information disclosure. Register: Akin to Meltdown and Spectre, the Transient Scheduler Attack (TSA) comprises four vulnerabilities that AMD said it discovered while looking into a Microsoft report about microarchitectural leaks.

The four bugs do not appear too venomous at face value -- two have medium-severity ratings while the other two are rated "low." However, the low-level nature of the exploit's impact has nonetheless led Trend Micro and CrowdStrike to assess the threat as "critical."

The reasons for the low severity scores are the high degree of complexity involved in a successful attack -- AMD said it could only be carried out by an attacker able to run arbitrary code on a target machine. It affects AMD processors (desktop, mobile and datacenter models), including 3rd gen and 4th gen EPYC chips -- the full list is here.

Microsoft is keen to show employees how much AI is transforming its own workplace, even as the company terminates thousands of personnel. From a report: During a presentation this week, Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff said artificial intelligence tools are boosting productivity in everything from sales and customer service to software engineering, according to a person familiar with his remarks.

Althoff said AI saved Microsoft more than $500 million last year in its call centers alone and increased both employee and customer satisfaction, according to the person, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter. The company is also starting to use AI to handle interactions with smaller customers, Althoff said. This effort is nascent, but already generating tens of millions of dollars, he said.

Western Europe sweltered through its hottest June on record last month, as "extreme" temperatures blasted the region in punishing back-to-back heatwaves, the EU climate monitor Copernicus said Wednesday. From a report: Globally, this past June was the third warmest on record, continuing a blistering heat streak in recent years as the planet warms as a result of humanity's emissions of greenhouse gases. The previous hottest June was in 2024 and the second hottest was in 2023, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said. Sweltering extremes were particularly pronounced in Europe, which is warming several times faster than the global average.

OpenAI is close to releasing an AI-powered web browser that will challenge market-dominating Google Chrome, Reuters reported Wednesday. From the report: The browser is slated to launch in the coming weeks, three of the people said, and aims to use artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how consumers browse the web. It will give OpenAI more direct access to a cornerstone of Google's success: user data.

Apple plans to release its first Vision Pro upgrade as early as this year, according to Bloomberg. The updated $3,499 headset will feature an M4 processor, replacing the current M2 chip, and components designed to better handle AI tasks.

The company is also developing new straps to reduce neck strain and head pain from the 1.4-pound device. The Vision Pro launched in February 2024 but has sold only hundreds of thousands of units. Apple is working on a significantly lighter redesigned model for 2027, the report added.

Microsoft has pledged more than $4 billion in cash and technology services to train millions of people in AI use, targeting schools, community colleges, technical colleges and nonprofits. The company said it will launch Microsoft Elevate Academy to help 20 million people earn AI certificates.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company would "serve as an advocate to ensure that students in every school across the country have access to A.I. education." The announcement follows Tuesday's news that the American Federation of Teachers received $23 million from Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic for a national AI training center. Last week, dozens of companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI signed a White House pledge promising schools funding, technology and training materials for AI education.

Researchers analyzing DNA from 1,313 ancient humans across Eurasia found that zoonotic pathogens first appeared in human populations around 6,500 years ago, coinciding with the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to livestock farming.

The genomic study, published in Nature, identified 5,486 DNA sequences from bacteria, viruses and parasites in blood remnants from bones and teeth spanning 37,000 years. Zoonotic pathogens were detected only in remains 6,500 years old or younger, peaking around 5,000 years ago when pastoralist communities from the Steppe region migrated into Europe with large herds. The plague bacterium Yersinia pestis first appears in the dataset between 5,700-5,300 years ago.

Restaurants and bars face mounting financial pressure from music licensing fees as the number of Performing Rights Organizations has expanded from three dominant players to at least six nationwide. The National Restaurant Association reports members pay an average of $4,500 annually for music licenses, representing 0.5% of total sales for small establishments. Hotels have experienced even steeper increases, with one major chain seeing costs rise 200% from 2021-2025, and some properties facing 400% jumps.

The proliferation stems from streaming's revenue surge, which attracted new PROs seeking market share. Since many songs involve multiple songwriters affiliated with different organizations, venues must secure licenses from each PRO or risk lawsuits carrying penalties up to $150,000 per infringement.

A federal appeals court struck down a "click-to-cancel" rule that would have required companies to make cancelling services as easy as signing up. The Federal Trade Commission rule was scheduled to take effect on July 14 but was vacated by the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. The three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the Biden-era FTC failed to follow the full rulemaking process required under US law.

The FTC is required to conduct a preliminary regulatory analysis when a rule has an estimated annual economic effect of $100 million or more. The FTC initially estimated the rule would not reach that threshold, but an administrative law judge later found compliance costs would exceed $100 million. Despite this finding, the FTC did not conduct the required preliminary analysis.

Monmouthshire schools have launched what they believe is the first countywide policy in the UK asking parents not to give smartphones to children under 14, affecting more than 9,000 students across state and private schools.

The initiative follows rising cyber-bullying reports and concerns that some children spend up to eight hours daily on devices, with students reportedly online at 2, 3, and 4 in the morning. Hugo Hutchinson, headteacher at Monmouth Comprehensive, said schools experience "much higher levels of mental health issues" linked to smartphone addiction, noting that children's time is largely spent outside school where many have unrestricted device access despite existing school bans.

Nvidia shares jumped more than 2% on Wednesday, topping a $4 trillion market cap for the first time as investors scooped stock in the tech giant building the hardware for the generative AI boom. From a report: The chipmaker is the first company to ever achieve this market value. Nvidia is the world's most valuable company, surpassing Microsoft and Apple, both of which hit the $3 trillion mark before Nvidia. Microsoft is also one of Nvidia's biggest and most important customers. The California-based company, which was founded in 1993, first passed the $2 trillion mark in February 2024, and surpassed $3 trillion in June.

Nvidia has profited heavily off of growing demand for artificial intelligence hardware and chips since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. The company has positioned itself as the decisive leader in the creating the graphics processing units that power large language models.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) are one of the most serious contenders for dark matter -- the "missing" mass supposedly constituting 85% of our universe. Given its elusiveness, dark matter tests the patience and creativity of physicists. But the latest results from LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), the South Dakota-based detector, may have brought scientists a small step closer to catching WIMPs in action. In a recent Physical Review Letters paper, scientists analyzed 280 days' worth of data from LUX-ZEPLIN, reporting the tightest ever upper limit on the interaction strength of WIMPs. The result -- a near fivefold improvement -- demonstrates how physicists are increasingly getting better at circumventing the problem that dark matter is, well, dark; the elusive stuff evades any detection method that depends on materials interacting with visible light or other types of radiation.

The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment, located one mile underground in a decommissioned South Dakota gold mine, employs nearly 15,000 pounds (7 tons) of liquid xenon. The chemical element's high atomic mass and density make it potentially easier for scientists to detect any unknown particles that may pass through the detector. Also, liquid xenon is transparent, preventing any unwanted noise -- usually arising from radioactive matter around the detector -- from spoiling an experiment. "These results firmly establish that LZ is the world's most sensitive search for dark matter heavier than 10 GeV, that's about 10 times heavier than a proton," explained Scott Haselschwart, a physicist at the University of Michigan and LZ physics coordinator, in an email to Gizmodo. "To put our result in perspective: we have ruled out dark matter that would interact only once in a single kilogram of xenon every four millennia!" "LZ is the most sensitive search for WIMP dark matter to date, but we still have another two years of data to collect," Haselschwart said. "This means that a discovery of dark matter in LZ could come anytime now. We are truly looking for dark matter where no one has ever looked before and that is extremely exciting!"

The UK police plan to spend up to 75 million pounds ($102 million) to digitize their vast archive of VHS tapes, aiming to preserve evidence by converting analog media into digital files integrated with evidence management systems. The procurement includes both in-house solutions and outsourced services, with additional funding earmarked for converting other legacy formats like microfiche and DVDs. The Register reports: According to a tender notice published last week, Bluelight Commercial - a not-for-profit buyer that acts on behalf of the emergency services - says the police force requires either in-house technology or outsourced services to convert the arcane magnetic tape format to digital storage. The notice, which sets out procurement plans, says the framework agreement will help forces with the "conversion of analog media to digital records, including metadata for integration with a digital evidence management system."

In the first lot of the framework, Bluelight asks for in-house VHS media digitization software, hardware, and training to "enable a Police Force to convert VHS tapes to digital files." This chunk of the arrangement could be worth 50 million pounds ($68 million) for four years, excluding VAT. The second lot asks for outsourced VHS media digitization "for the provision of conversion services delivered completely by a third party with electronic files being returned securely to the customer force." The output is also set to be ingested by a digital evidence management solution. It could be worth up to 25 million pounds ($34 million) over the same period. In addition, Bluelight Commercial is looking for a provider to help with more niche media digitization, including converting microfiche, CD, DVDs to an electronic file format, in an arrangement which could be worth a total of up to 25 million pounds ($34 million).

Two Chinese satellites, SJ-25 and SJ-21, have reportedly completed the first autonomous high-altitude orbital docking. "Although unconfirmed, this is thought to be the first orbital refueling at such a height -- the two satellites are currently over 20,000 miles from Earth," reports ExtremeTech. From the report: Orbital refueling is an important component in keeping satellites and space stations in low Earth orbit flying, but any efforts beyond that have been merely speculative until the past few years, when serious efforts from a range of private and national entities have explored its possibilities. China may have gotten ahead of the curve with this latest docking, though, in an impressive world first that raises serious concerns for satellites from nations and entities that align themselves differently from China's goals and ambitions.

In January, a satellite designated SJ-25 was launched "for the verification of satellite fuel replenishment and life extension service technologies," according to the Chinese state-owned designer, Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (via Ars Technica). Sometime last week, it matched orbits with the SJ-21 satellite, which previously conducted space debris maneuvering tests in 2021 and has remained in a geosynchronous orbit ever since.

Last week, the two satellites matched orbits and seemingly docked together. Analysts believe the newer SJ-25 has likely proven refueling is possible even for geosynchronous satellites without the need for a manned crew to facilitate it. In an effort to prove this, two US Space Force's inspector satellites have positioned themselves in closer orbits to SJ-25 and SJ-21 for improved optics. [...] China continues to suggest these missions are part of a debris clean-up program, though it hasn't publicly made any statements about the recent alleged docking and refueling to celebrate its successes. If it doesn't, the only way we'll know if a refueling maneuver was successful is if the SJ-21 satellite unshackles from its younger sibling and performs fuel-demanding maneuvers that its previously estimated fuel levels shouldn't allow for.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Filmmaker Peter Jackson owns one of the largest private collections of bones of an extinct New Zealand bird called the moa. His fascination with the flightless ostrich-like bird has led to an unusual partnership with a biotech company known for its grand and controversial plans to bring back lost species. On Tuesday, Colossal Biosciences announced an effort to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the extinct South Island giant moa -- which once stood 12 feet (3.6 meters) tall -- with $15 million in funding from Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh. The collaboration also includes the New Zealand-based Ngai Tahu Research Centre. "The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do," said Jackson. "Every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa."

The moa had roamed New Zealand for 4,000 years until they became extinct around 600 years ago, mainly because of overhunting. A large skeleton brought to England in the 19th century, now on display at the Yorkshire Museum, prompted international interest in the long-necked bird. Unlike Colossal's work with dire wolves, the moa project is in very early stages. It started with a phone call about two years ago after Jackson heard about the company's efforts to "de-extinct" -- or create genetically similar animals to -- species like the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf. Then Jackson put Colossal in touch with experts he'd met through his own moa bone-collecting. At that point, he'd amassed between 300 and 400 bones, he said.

In New Zealand, it's legal to buy and sell moa bones found on private lands, but not on public conservation areas -- nor to export them. The first stage of the moa project will be to identify well-preserved bones from which it may be possible to extract DNA, said Colossal's chief scientist Beth Shapiro. Those DNA sequences will be compared to genomes of living bird species, including the ground-dwelling tinamou and emu, "to figure out what it is that made the moa unique compared to other birds," she said. [...] The direction of the project will be shaped by Mori scholars at the University of Canterbury's Ngi Tahu Research Centre. Ngi Tahu archaeologist Kyle Davis, an expert in moa bones, said the work has "really reinvigorated the interest in examining our own traditions and mythology."

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Researchers at Princeton University, Boston University and other institutes used machine learning to predict the strategic decisions of humans in various games. Their paper, published in Nature Human Behavior, shows that a deep neural network trained on human decisions could predict the strategic choices of players with high levels of accuracy. [...] Essentially, the team suggests that people behave more rationally while playing games that they perceive as easier. In contrast, when they are playing more complex games, people's choices could be influenced by various other factors, thus the "noise" affecting their behavior would increase.

As part of their future studies, the researchers would also like to shed more light on what makes a game "complex" or "easy." This could be achieved using the context-dependent noise parameter that they integrated into their model as a signature of "perceived difficulty." "Our analysis provides a robust model comparison across a wide range of candidate models of decision-making," said [Jian-Qiao Zhu, first author of the paper]. "We now have strong evidence that introducing context-dependence into the quantal response model significantly improves its ability to capture human strategic behavior. More specifically, we identified key factors in the game matrix that shape game complexity: considerations of efficiency, the arithmetic difficulty of computing payoff differences, and the depth of reasoning required to arrive at a rational solution."

The findings gathered as part of this recent study also highlight the "lightness" with which many people approach strategic decisions, which could make them vulnerable to parties looking to sway them towards making irrational decisions. Once they gather more insight into what factors make games and decision-making scenarios more challenging for people, Zhu and his colleagues hope to start devising new behavioral science interventions aimed at prompting people to make more rational decisions.

Senators Tim Sheehy and Elizabeth Warren have introduced the bipartisan "Warrior Right to Repair Act," which would guarantee the military's right to repair its own equipment. The bill builds on a previous Army directive and has broad public support, with nearly 75% of Americans in favor, according to a PIRG poll. Engadget reports: The Department of Defense has not been immune from restrictive practices set forth by manufacturers, and much like the average consumer, has been hamstrung in its ability to repair its own equipment by clauses in its purchase agreements. According to the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), the current system leads to excessive repair and sustainment costs, and can even impede military readiness.

"When our neighbors, friends and family serve in our military, we expect them to get what they need to do their jobs as safely as possible," PIRG Federal Legislative Director Isaac Bowers wrote regarding the newly introduced bill. "Somehow, that hasn't included the materials and information they need to repair equipment they rely on. It's time we fixed that."