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Amazon Hit with $2.5 Billion Penalty for Deceptive Prime Subscriptions

2025-09-25

Amazon Hit with $2.5 Billion Penalty for Deceptive Prime Subscriptions

The FTC has ordered Amazon to pay a record-breaking $2.5 billion – $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in refunds – for deceptively enrolling millions in Amazon Prime without consent and making cancellations difficult. The FTC alleged Amazon used manipulative user interfaces and deliberately complicated the cancellation process. This settlement marks a significant win for consumer protection and sets a precedent for combating deceptive subscription practices.

(www.ftc.gov)

Tech

Element Web & Desktop Get a Major UI Overhaul: Redesigned Room Lists

2025-09-25

Element Web & Desktop Get a Major UI Overhaul: Redesigned Room Lists

Element's Web and Desktop apps have received a significant update, completely revamping their room lists. Inspired by the Element X mobile design, this update delivers a sleeker, more intuitive experience. This is the first step in a larger evolution, aiming for cross-platform consistency, improved accessibility, and a more robust technical foundation. The result? A simpler, faster, and better experience for all users. New filters help manage busy room lists, clearly displaying unread messages, mentions, and recent activity. Accessibility improvements and underlying architecture upgrades (like MVVM and Sliding Sync) promise better reliability, faster load times, and quicker future updates.

(element.io)

Development

Cheap Batteries: X-ray CT Scan Reveals Shocking Defects

2025-09-25

Cheap Batteries: X-ray CT Scan Reveals Shocking Defects

Lumafield used X-ray CT scanning to analyze over 1,000 lithium-ion batteries, revealing dangerous manufacturing defects in low-cost and counterfeit batteries sold on platforms like Amazon and Temu. A defect called 'negative anode overhang' significantly increases the risk of fire and short circuits. While name-brand batteries from Samsung and Panasonic showed no issues, low-cost batteries had an 8% defect rate, with some counterfeit brands exceeding 15%. This highlights the risks of prioritizing price over safety when purchasing batteries for devices.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech CT scan

Musk's Federal Workforce Purge: The Valentine's Day Massacre and the Absurd Email

2025-09-25

Musk's Federal Workforce Purge: The Valentine's Day Massacre and the Absurd Email

Elon Musk's mass layoff of federal workers has caused a major uproar, with tens of thousands losing their jobs in what became known as the "Valentine's Day Massacre." The process was chaotic and unprofessional, with many employees facing unfair treatment and public humiliation. Following the layoffs, Musk demanded weekly progress reports from all remaining employees, prompting widespread resentment. Employees responded in various creative and defiant ways, including using different languages, citing the Constitution, and even detailing childcare responsibilities. The incident highlights the absurdity of the decision-making process and the disregard for employee dignity, sparking a broader conversation about government efficiency and employee rights, and exposing the controversial nature of Musk's management style.

(www.wired.com)

Tech

A Mathematical Theory of GPU Layouts: Applying Category Theory and Operads

2025-09-25

A Mathematical Theory of GPU Layouts: Applying Category Theory and Operads

This paper introduces CuTe, a novel approach to GPU memory layouts, and delves into the underlying mathematical theory. CuTe layouts leverage category theory and operads, employing diagrammatic computation and standard representations to solve the problem of mapping multi-dimensional data to one-dimensional GPU memory. This provides a theoretical foundation for optimizing memory access patterns and utilizing specialized hardware instructions like tensor cores. The paper focuses on the concept of tractable layouts, layout functions, and layout operations such as coalesce, complement, and composition, demonstrating how a category-theoretic framework efficiently computes layout composition.

(research.colfax-intl.com)

Development

Optimizing JS Config Objects with BigInts: An Experiment

2025-09-25

Optimizing JS Config Objects with BigInts: An Experiment

To optimize serialization, comparison, and update operations on a large number of configuration objects, the author experimented with using JavaScript's BigInt type to store configuration data. By packing multiple configuration fields into a single BigInt and using bitwise operations for efficient read and write operations, the author achieved a compact memory representation and fast serialization/deserialization. However, this approach also has some drawbacks, such as the need to manually manage field bit widths and offsets, and the performance issues of BigInt bitwise operations. The author is currently still evaluating the practical effect of this method and plans to update the article in the future.

(jonathan-frere.com)

Development

Radiology's AI Paradox: Better Machines, Busier Doctors

2025-09-25

Radiology's AI Paradox: Better Machines, Busier Doctors

Since CheXNet's 2017 debut, AI has shown potential to surpass human radiologists in accuracy. However, despite advancements, AI's real-world application faces hurdles: generalization limitations, stringent regulations, and AI's replacement of only a fraction of a radiologist's tasks. Counterintuitively, demand for radiologists remains high, with salaries soaring. This is due to AI's poor performance outside standardized conditions, regulatory barriers, and the multifaceted nature of a radiologist's job. The article concludes that widespread AI adoption necessitates adapting societal rules, AI will boost productivity, but complete human replacement isn't imminent.

(www.worksinprogress.news)

AI AI radiology medical AI healthcare AI

Critical: 2 Million Cisco Devices Vulnerable to Actively Exploited Zero-Day

2025-09-25

Critical: 2 Million Cisco Devices Vulnerable to Actively Exploited Zero-Day

A critical zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2025-20352) affecting up to 2 million Cisco devices is actively being exploited. The vulnerability, present in all supported versions of Cisco IOS and IOS XE, allows remote attackers to crash devices or execute arbitrary code. Exploitation leverages a stack overflow in the SNMP component, requiring a read-only community string and system privileges. Cisco urges immediate upgrades to patched software releases.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech Cisco

Facebook's Misinformation Problem: A Race Against Time

2025-09-25

Facebook's Misinformation Problem: A Race Against Time

An analysis of Facebook posts from Australia's top 25 news outlets reveals the persistent spread of misinformation, including false claims about hydroxychloroquine and election fraud conspiracies. The study shows significant real-world consequences, including health damage and declining public trust. Despite fact-checking efforts, misinformation proves 'sticky,' resurfacing regularly during elections. High-profile figures amplify the problem. The research highlights the need for a multi-pronged approach to combat misinformation, encompassing counter-messaging from trusted leaders, media engagement, and digital literacy campaigns.

(theconversation.com)

Tech

Say Goodbye to Confusing Data Viz Color Schemes: Introducing a New Palette Generator

2025-09-25

Say Goodbye to Confusing Data Viz Color Schemes: Introducing a New Palette Generator

Tired of struggling with data visualization color schemes? This new palette generator lets you easily create a series of visually equidistant colors, eliminating those confusing and hard-to-distinguish color palettes. It supports custom endpoint colors and can even incorporate your brand colors, making your charts both beautiful and professional. Whether it's pie charts, grouped bar charts, or maps, it handles them all with ease. No more dealing with frustrating color schemes like those in Google Analytics!

(www.learnui.design)

Design color schemes palette generator

Resurrecting the Old Web: Blogs and RSS Feeds Make a Comeback

2025-09-25

Resurrecting the Old Web: Blogs and RSS Feeds Make a Comeback

A Maine news story about middle schoolers using landlines sparked a reflection on the current state of social media. The author argues that social media has become an addictive noise machine, and people long for the simpler, purer connection of the early internet. To address this, the author advocates a return to blogs and RSS feeds, creating a 'bear blog' platform to share thoughts and connect with other blogs via links, mimicking the simpler networking of the old web. The author calls for breaking free from the social media dopamine loop and collectively building a purer online experience.

(stevedylandev.bearblog.dev)

Misc

California Bill Aims to Simplify CCPA Compliance: A.B. 566 Seeks Governor's Approval

2025-09-25

California Bill Aims to Simplify CCPA Compliance: A.B. 566 Seeks Governor's Approval

California's CCPA grants consumers data privacy rights, but exercising them is difficult. A.B. 566 simplifies this by requiring browsers to offer users an easy way to tell companies not to sell or share their data. This makes CCPA more user-friendly, empowering consumers and balancing the power dynamic. Despite industry opposition, the bill is seen as pro-consumer and non-restrictive to innovation.

(www.eff.org)

Tech A.B. 566

Flix: Gracefully Handling Print Debugging

2025-09-25

Flix's designers faced a dilemma: how to enable efficient compiler optimizations while allowing developers to easily use print debugging? Directly using `println` breaks the type and effect system, causing compilation errors. The article explores two solutions: the first uses `unchecked_cast` to bypass effect system checks but results in code being optimized away; the second introduces a `Debug` effect, permitting debugging prints without modifying function signatures, and disabling the `Debug` effect in production. The final solution balances compiler optimization and developer experience.

(blog.flix.dev)

Development effect system

The Bundler Trademark Dispute: A Fight for Community Ownership

2025-09-25

For 15 years, the author has maintained Bundler, the Ruby dependency manager. From initial involvement to founding Ruby Together to fund maintenance, and finally a merger dispute with Ruby Central, the author registered the Bundler trademark to protect the community's interests. He pledges to transfer the trademark to an organization accountable to maintainers and the community, ensuring Bundler truly belongs to the Ruby community.

(andre.arko.net)

Development

The Mystery of 'Goat-Time': A Machine Translation Enigma

2025-09-25

A Japanese user, employing machine translation, sought help for a runtime error dubbed 'Goat-Time'. The error message is bizarre, featuring terms like 'vomit', 'wind, pole, and dragon', leaving everyone puzzled. Analysis suggests 'vomit' might refer to exceptions, 'lumber' to logs, and 'Goat-Time' to the runtime environment. 'Spank' is speculated to be a mistranslation of 'execute', and 'skill' of 'experience'. 'Insult to father's stones' might allude to software dependencies. The 'wind, pole, and dragon' remain a mystery. This is a machine translation-induced enigma waiting for more information to unravel.

(entropicthoughts.com)

Development machine translation software error technical puzzle

The Play of Pull Requests: Crafting Reviewable Code Changes

2025-09-25

Saša Jurić's talk at Goatmire Elixir Conf transformed code review into a compelling narrative. He highlighted the common problem of unwieldy pull requests (PRs), leading to superficial reviews, security risks, and unmaintainable codebases. The key takeaway: reviewable PRs should ideally take 5-10 minutes to review, ideally under 300 lines of code. This is achieved by crafting concise, story-telling commit messages that clearly explain the rationale and steps of each change. Breaking down large features into smaller PRs and utilizing tools like `git fixup` to maintain a clean commit history are crucial for efficient code review and higher quality code. The talk emphasized that saying "I don't understand" is better than a meaningless "LGTM."

(meks.quest)

Development

Random Mosaic: Securing Hardware with Beans, Lentils, and Rice

2025-09-25

This paper introduces Random Mosaic, a novel physical security method. Traditional tamper-evident techniques are easily bypassed. The authors explore threats like supply chain attacks and Evil Maid attacks, analyzing existing methods (tamper-evident seals, glitter nail polish). They propose a new approach using colored beans, rice, etc., to create a unique, easily-verifiable mosaic pattern that detects unauthorized access. This simple, inexpensive method, combined with vacuum sealing, is suitable for short-term and long-term storage and shipping. The paper also introduces the Blink Comparison app for image comparison.

(dys2p.com)

Tech physical security tamper evidence

Strange Traffic on IXPs: An Admin's Observations

2025-09-25

Strange Traffic on IXPs: An Admin's Observations

The author, operating one of the largest IXP networks on the internet, uses bgp.tools to monitor and reveal a surprising amount of unexpected traffic on IXPs. This includes various routing protocols (OSPF, IS-IS, RIP), auto-addressing protocols (DHCP, IPv6 RA), and vendor-specific protocols (LLDP, CDP, MNDP), all posing security risks like information disclosure and traffic hijacking, even causing outages. The author also highlights bizarre traffic like home networking protocols (UPnP), printer discovery protocols (MDNS), and erroneous broadcast DNS queries stemming from misconfigurations. The author calls for increased traffic monitoring and access controls on IXPs to enhance network security.

(blog.benjojo.co.uk)

Tech traffic monitoring

Japanese City Limits Recreational Smartphone Use to Two Hours a Day

2025-09-25

Japanese City Limits Recreational Smartphone Use to Two Hours a Day

The city council of Toyoake, Japan, has passed an ordinance symbolically limiting recreational smartphone use to two hours daily. The aim is to promote better sleep, particularly for students returning to school after summer break. While not legally binding, the ordinance encourages healthier sleep habits and addresses concerns about excessive smartphone use impacting daily life. The city plans to survey residents on the ordinance's effectiveness and explore addressing other smartphone-related issues.

(www.theregister.com)

Misc smartphone use sleep deprivation public policy

Python-style kwargs in TypeScript: A Neat Trick for Improved Readability

2025-09-25

Python-style kwargs in TypeScript: A Neat Trick for Improved Readability

This article presents a clever technique to mimic Python's keyword arguments (kwargs) in TypeScript, addressing the readability and maintainability challenges posed by functions with numerous optional parameters. By using an object containing optional parameters as a function argument, developers can clearly specify which parameters to modify without a chain of `undefined` values. This improves code readability and debuggability while preserving TypeScript's type safety. While changes to parameter names might break compatibility, using this within internal functions significantly simplifies code.

(xavd.id)

Development kwargs

GoAnywhere MFT Vulnerability CVE-2025-10035: A CVSS 10.0 Mystery

2025-09-25

GoAnywhere MFT Vulnerability CVE-2025-10035: A CVSS 10.0 Mystery

watchTowr Labs dissected CVE-2025-10035, a critical vulnerability in Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT with a perfect CVSS score of 10.0. This deserialization vulnerability allows an attacker with a forged license response signature to deserialize arbitrary objects, potentially leading to command injection. While exploitation requires internet exposure, watchTowr Labs discovered an unauthenticated method to obtain a license request token, bypassing authentication. However, a signature verification hurdle remains. The analysis details the exploitation process, raising questions about potential undiscovered signature bypasses or leaked private keys. A detection tool is provided to help users identify vulnerable instances.

(labs.watchtowr.com)

Tech deserialization

Microsoft's Mandatory RTO: A Management Fail?

2025-09-25

Microsoft's Mandatory RTO: A Management Fail?

Microsoft's announcement of a mandatory return-to-office (RTO) policy for employees within 50 miles of its Redmond headquarters, starting February 2026, has sparked controversy. While the company denies it's a cost-cutting measure, many see it as a symptom of poor management, ignoring the success of remote work and employee well-being. The article criticizes the motivations behind the decision, suggesting it stems from distrust, misconceptions about remote work efficiency, and a desire for control. Mandatory RTO imposes additional burdens on employees (commute, childcare, etc.), negatively impacts mental health, and could lead to the loss of valuable employees.

(wordsrightman.beehiiv.com)

Tech

Improving Newton's Method for the Mollweide Projection Equation

2025-09-25

This article explores using Newton's method to solve a crucial equation in the Mollweide map projection. Near high latitudes (approaching π/2), the equation presents a double root, causing Newton's method to slow down or diverge. The article proposes a modified Newton's method, adjusting parameter 'm' to improve convergence speed and accuracy near the double root. However, challenges remain very close to the double root, leading the author to suggest combining it with other methods like power series inversion for a complete solution.

(www.johndcook.com)

Development Mollweide projection

DE25-Nano: Pocket-Sized FPGA Dev Board with a Performance Boost

2025-09-25

DE25-Nano: Pocket-Sized FPGA Dev Board with a Performance Boost

Terasic introduces the DE25-Nano, a next-gen FPGA development board packing Agilex™ 5 performance into a compact form factor. A significant upgrade from the DE10-Nano, it boasts a 138K-LE Agilex™ 5 FPGA, 2GB LPDDR4, USB-Blaster III, and an enhanced dual-cluster ARM Cortex-A76/A55 HPS architecture. Its versatile I/O (HDMI, MIPI, ADC, GPIO, shared HPS/FPGA memory) makes it ideal for rapid prototyping of AI models, vision pipelines, and control systems, while its production-ready design enables deployment in real-world applications like embedded vision, robotics, and edge analytics. Terasic's ecosystem of daughter cards further enhances its scalability and ease of use.

(www.terasic.com.tw)

Hardware

Pocket Casts' Ad Bug Angers Lifetime Subscribers

2025-09-25

Pocket Casts' Ad Bug Angers Lifetime Subscribers

Podcast app Pocket Casts is facing backlash after showing ads to legacy users who paid for ad-free lifetime access. Originally a one-time purchase app (2010), it switched to a subscription model in 2019. While Automattic, the parent company, promised ad-free access to early payers under the 'Pocket Casts Champion' program, some users are now seeing ads. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg attributed this to a bug and stated that all paid users shouldn't see ads. The incident highlights challenges in maintaining 'lifetime' promises during business model shifts. Only a few thousand users are affected.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech advertising controversy lifetime subscriptions

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite: A Legendary Leap for Windows on Arm?

2025-09-25

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite: A Legendary Leap for Windows on Arm?

Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme, its second-generation Windows on Arm chips, boasting significant performance gains. Built on a 3nm process, they promise up to a 31% CPU performance boost and a 2.3x GPU performance-per-watt improvement over the previous generation. The X2 Elite Extreme even claims a 75% faster CPU performance than competitors at the same power level. Featuring an 80 TOPS Hexagon NPU, these chips target improved AI capabilities. While promising multi-day battery life, laptops using these chips aren't expected until the first half of 2026. The announcement also hinted at potential implications for Google's Android on PC project.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Slate AI Agent: Automating the Port of a Python Project to TypeScript

2025-09-25

Slate is a highly autonomous AI agent designed to handle long and complex tasks. This post details how Slate successfully ported the open-source Python project Browser Use (70.3k stars), a browser automation library for LLMs, to TypeScript in under two hours for less than $60. Slate automated the majority of the process requiring minimal user input. The process showcased Slate's powerful planning and execution capabilities, as well as its ability to autonomously troubleshoot problems, ultimately resulting in a fully functional TypeScript version.

(randomlabs.ai)

Development code conversion automated programming

Microsoft Extends Windows 10 Security Updates: Free and Paid Options Available

2025-09-25

Microsoft Extends Windows 10 Security Updates: Free and Paid Options Available

Facing criticism and user concerns, Microsoft announced new options for US and European users to extend Windows 10 security updates for free, just days before ending support on October 14th. US users can choose a free option involving profile backup for a year of updates, or pay $30 or redeem 1000 Microsoft Rewards points. European users can get a free year of updates by logging in with a Microsoft account. This follows pressure from European advocacy groups and widespread worries about upgrading to Windows 11.

(www.straitstimes.com)

Tech

Tech Giants Embrace AI, Leading to Job Cuts: Efficiency Gains or Unemployment Crisis?

2025-09-25

Tech Giants Embrace AI, Leading to Job Cuts: Efficiency Gains or Unemployment Crisis?

Tech giants like SAP, Amazon, and Salesforce are aggressively adopting AI to boost efficiency and reduce costs. However, this trend is resulting in significant job cuts. SAP's CFO anticipates fewer engineers will be needed due to automation; the CEO estimates that 60-70% of jobs could be digitized. Amazon's CEO also stated that AI will lead to a reduction in the company's overall workforce. While some new roles are emerging, low-wage workers are expected to be disproportionately affected. Is this AI-driven efficiency gain paving the way for a larger unemployment crisis?

(fortune.com)

Tech

EU Eyes Cookie Consent Overhaul: The End of Annoying Pop-ups?

2025-09-25

EU Eyes Cookie Consent Overhaul: The End of Annoying Pop-ups?

The 2009 e-Privacy Directive requiring websites to obtain user consent for cookies has led to a deluge of consent banners, prompting user fatigue. The EU Commission plans a December “omnibus” regulation simplifying digital company oversight, potentially easing cookie rules. This might include allowing one-time cookie preference settings or exempting cookies for technically necessary functions and simple statistics. Denmark has proposed similar changes. However, the upcoming Digital Fairness Act focusing on advertising suggests further battles over cookie regulation are on the horizon.

(www.politico.eu)

Tech

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