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CISA says the Medusa ransomware operation has breached more than 500 U.S. critical infrastructure organizations since 2021, up from more than 300 reported last year. The group has targeted healthcare, government, defense, manufacturing, IT and financial organizations, evolving into a ransomware-as-a-service operation that recruits initial-access brokers and uses stolen data to pressure victims into paying. BleepingComputer reports: The three federal agencies recommended that network defenders secure their networks against the ransomware group's attacks by mitigating security vulnerabilities to protect operating systems, software, and firmware from exploitation attempts. Security teams are also advised to segment networks to block lateral movement after compromise and to block access from untrusted origins to remote services on internal systems. [...] "Medusa developers typically recruit initial access brokers (IABs) in cybercriminal forums and marketplaces to obtain initial access to potential victims," the advisory says. "Potential payments between $100 USD and $1 million USD are offered to these affiliates with the opportunity to work exclusively for Medusa."

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Moderna and Merck say their personalized mRNA melanoma vaccine significantly reduced both cancer recurrence and spread in a late-stage trial. The treatment could reach patients as soon as next year if regulators approve it. Reuters reports: Moderna developed the vaccine with Merck and tested it together with immunotherapy drug Keytruda, a widely used treatment for melanoma. [...] This is the first positive late-stage trial result for an mRNA cancer vaccine, which trains a patient's immune system to fight tumors by targeting specific mutations in those cells and the first such study to show that adding a treatment to Keytruda worked better than that therapy alone. Similar approaches are being tested against lung, breast and pancreatic cancers. [...] The cancer treatment combines Merck's Keytruda with a made-to-order mRNA vaccine from Moderna that is based on an analysis of mutations found in the patients' own tumors. The trial enrolled 1,137 high-risk patients with stage IIB-IV melanoma that had been surgically removed. Volunteers were randomized to receive up to nine doses of Keytruda plus the personalized vaccine or Keytruda alone for about one year. The companies said no new safety signals have emerged in the trial. In January, the companies announced results of a mid-stage trial of the treatment showing that it reduced the risk of recurrence or death by 49% after five years. Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, said the Moderna results could signal a new era for treating solid-tumor cancers. "The positive hit here leads us into truly this next phase in immunotherapy," Knudsen said. "This is an auspicious start -- this is where things begin." Moderna shares more than doubled on the news, adding about $30 billion to its market value.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: X's algorithm learns what you hate and shows you more of it, according to a new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper, titled Value misalignment of X's feed algorithm is a reflection of value tensions in engagement, found that the site's algorithm prioritized engagement above all else when it generated a user's For You Page. It also showed that X serves more ragebait to people who say they are Democrats, although the exact reason for that is unclear. "In 2026 that's maybe not the most surprising headline ever," Ziv Epstein, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, and co-author of the paper, told 404 Media. "So we actually dug in a little deeper to figure out why this is actually happening, and it turns out that X's feed algorithm, like a lot of these social media algorithms, is optimized for engagement [but] it turns out that not all types of engagement are considered equally." The researchers found that X's algorithm can push users toward content that conflicts with their stated values, especially when they reply to posts that anger or provoke them. Although replies accounted for just 6.8% of interactions, they appeared to carry disproportionate weight: "It's this feedback loop of outrage baiting. The algorithm learns that you get outraged and then continues to serve more content in that direction," said Epstein. It's unclear why X seems to serve ragebait to Democrats more often than Republicans. 404 Media speculates that it may be because there's more rightwing content on X overall or that Democrats tend to engage with posts they disagree with more often. "There might be some kind of differential effects on information diets there, or it might be something more psychological about how different you know partisan identities are triggering different kinds of actions and reactions, but ultimately I don't want to speculate too much," said Epstein. X's former product chief Nikita Bier confirmed that the site had been set to favor replies. "This is no longer true," Bier said in a post on X. "The largest contributor of seeing ragebait was the reply predictor and we were aware that angry replies were causing people to see more of that content. So last month, we gave the reply predictor a 15x boost if it's a friend's post -- and it reduced ragebait by [an] order of magnitude."

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A U.S. Army battalion at Fort Stewart is offering soldiers a four-day pass timed to the release of Grand Theft Auto VI if they reenlist for at least two years. The program is limited to one unit for now, but it fits the Army's broader effort to appeal to gamers as a recruiting and retention pool. CBS News reports: Twenty soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia in the Army's 9th Brigade Engineering Battalion, part of the 3rd Infantry Division, have already chosen this incentive as part of their reenlistment, an Army spokesperson told CBS News on Wednesday. "The idea was to have a unique incentives program that connects to what Soldiers are interested in," Lt. Col. Angel Tomko, a spokesperson for the 3rd Infantry Division, said in a statement. "The command team, in conjunction with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited to reenlist." [...] The Army memo, which has circulated online, says any soldier who signs a reenlistment contract between Aug. 1, 2026 and Nov. 14 will be authorized for a special four-day pass designated to coincide with "the highly anticipated release of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6)." About 130 soldiers are currently eligible for the incentive, Tomko said. Eligible soldiers must reenlist for a minimum of two years and up to six years.

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Chinese robotics giant Unitree surged more than 600% in its Shanghai stock market debut, marking the first mainland Chinese listing by a humanoid robot maker and a major milestone for Beijing's robotics ambitions. The BBC reports: Unitree, officially known as Yushu Technology Co Ltd, was founded in 2016 and now plays a key role in Beijing's ambitions to develop advanced technology. It has become a robotics industry leader, selling devices from sensors and automated arms to four-legged and human-like machines. The firm shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots last year as demand for the technology grows. Unitree is one of the few companies in the sector to make money, delivering a net profit of 278 million yuan in 2025. It is a fierce rival to developers in the US as it produces robots with similar features but at lower prices. The company is based in Hangzhou, in eastern China. The region is home to a so-called golden cluster zone of robotics firms, which have benefited from huge government investments. That support helped drive a more than threefold increase in the number of Chinese robotics firms between 2020 and 2024, according to state-run China Daily. [...] Unitree's robot dogs start at $2,700, a fraction of the roughly $70,000 price tag for Boston Dynamics' four-legged device, Spot. "They're not exactly comparable because some of Unitree's dogs are much smaller," [said Harold Soh, a researcher from the National University of Singapore]. "But the price is a big difference." Unitree has been selling humanoid robots since 2023, with its $13,500 child-sized G1 model hitting the market the following year. Meanwhile, major US rivals -- including Elon Musk's Tesla -- have yet to start delivering rival products. [...] Some experts expect Unitree's market debut to be a gauge of investor appetite for the fast-growing humanoid robotics sector. The listing has given the public a rare chance to invest in a humanoid robotics company and could set a benchmark for other manufacturers, said Jack Pearson from investment firm RoboStrategy. The listing also marks a "turning point" for China's robotics industry, as Unitree's success comes even as the US is curbing imports of foreign-made robots, Pearson said.

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A study of more than 64,000 people born around the end of Britain's postwar sugar rationing found that those exposed to less sugar during their first 1,000 days had lower rates of five cancers decades later, including roughly 69% lower liver cancer risk and 36% lower breast cancer risk. They also "showed signs of slower biological aging" and "continued to consume less sugar and had healthier diets overall," according to the authors of a new study published in The Conversation. From the report: After the second world war, sugar remained rationed in Britain for several years. But in September 1953, rationing ended and people started eating a lot more sugar. Consumption nearly doubled. This meant that children born just a few months apart had very different levels of sugar exposure both in the womb and during early childhood. For our study, we used data from over 64,000 people born in Britain between 1951 and 1956. Those born earlier spent a larger share of their first 1,000 days under sugar rationing, while those born later experienced progressively less of it. [...] What is most surprising, however, is not the cancer results or the biological markers of ageing. It's how early-life sugar exposure continued to affect people's diets even 50 years later. We found that people who experienced sugar rationing early in life still consumed less sugar in adulthood, around age 50. They also ate less overall, and their diets were healthier and more diverse. This suggests that the level of sweetness people are exposed to very early in life may shape their taste preferences for a long time.

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alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Optical fibers are already the backbone of global communication systems. Recently, however, physicists have started to explore how their functionality could be boosted further by conveying information via entangled quantum particles -- potentially enabling instantaneous exchanges of information across vast distances. Such a system could eventually be the basis of a future 'quantum internet,' offering a level of security and computing power beyond anything possible today. In new research published in Physical Review Letters, a team led by Xi-Yu Luo at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei has pushed that vision further than ever, entangling two quantum memories across 420 kilometers (261 miles) of optical fiber -- more than four times the previous record.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The release of a new album by Taylor Swift might be a cause for celebration among her fans, but such events have also been linked to a more sombre phenomenon: an increase in fatal car crashes. The team behind a new study say it sheds light on the impact of distracted driving. Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, [Vishal Patel, first author of the study based at Harvard Medical School] and colleagues report how they focused on the release of 10 major albums, launched between 2017 and 2022, selected for having the highest number of Spotify streams over a single day. [...] The team found streaming volume for the top 200 songs in the US was 43% higher on the date of major album releases compared with the days surrounding the releases -- although such data does not reveal whether the music was being streamed in a car. [...] The researchers used data from a population-based registry of fatal US motor vehicle crashes to look at the number of traffic fatalities on the dates these albums were released, as well as for the 10 days either side. After taking into account the day of the week upon which the album was released, as well as federal holidays, and time of year, the researchers found the number of US traffic fatalities showed a relative increase of 15.1% on the date of major album releases, compared with similar days either side. "This is equivalent to approximately 182 fatalities in the US attributable to the release days of the 10 included albums," the team writes. Patel said the release of a new album could distract drivers because accessing music is a search task, not a single button press. "You unlock the phone, open the app, find the release, read down a tracklist, tap the right song. That's several seconds of looking at a screen," he said, adding unfamiliar music also demands more attention, while research has suggested listening to new, high-energy music measurably degrades driving performance. The researchers add the rise in traffic fatalities was greater among certain groups -- such as younger drivers, male drivers, people who were driving alone, and people driving cars with a built-in infotainment platform. The authors say the results suggest that "online music streaming through smartphones may significantly contribute to distracted driving and traffic fatalities."

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Cursor has launched Origin, a GitHub-style code hosting platform built directly into its AI coding environment. The company is initially positioning Origin as a low-risk layer on top of GitHub, keeping GitHub as the "source of truth," but the launch landed just as a major GitHub outage highlighted growing concerns about reliability in the age of AI-generated code. VentureBeat reports: Cursor began rolling out Origin, its own code hosting platform, to paid users on Monday morning. Roughly three and a half hours later, GitHub's status page lit up with what became a six-hour-and-forty-two-minute global degradation -- error rates near 20% across pull requests, issues and the API, and near 50% on archive and raw file downloads, according to GitHub's incident log. Enterprise single sign-on went down with it: SAML, OIDC, SCIM provisioning and Team Sync all failed. So did Copilot. The developer internet did what the developer internet does. "You can now host your repos in Cursor Origin and deploy to Vercel via Cursor Origin which is itself hosted on Vercel," Vercel chief executive Guillermo Rauch posted on X. "And unlike GitHub, it's online [smile emoji]" Asked why he was smiling, Rauch replied: "trying to make light of the situation. We ourselves are stuck because of github rn!" Matt Palmer, who works at Cursor, quote-tweeted his own company's launch with the day's best line: "We were going to ship this earlier, but GitHub was down." A GitHub outage, in other words, delayed the launch of a GitHub competitor. Product launches get locked weeks in advance, and no evidence suggests Cursor timed this one. But the coincidence did the company an enormous favor, because it dramatized the argument Origin exists to make. For eighteen years, choosing where to host your team's source code has been the least interesting decision an engineering organization makes. Cursor is betting that AI agents have made it interesting again -- and for technical decision makers, that is the real news here. Not a new product, but a new procurement question with a governance problem attached.

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Comcast is activating Wi-Fi motion sensing on millions of compatible Xfinity gateways, allowing the routers to detect movement by measuring disruptions in signals between the gateway and connected devices. The free feature, part of Xfinity Shield, can send activity alerts through the Xfinity app and offers Home, Away, and nighttime monitoring modes without requiring separate motion sensors. The Verge reports: Wi-Fi motion sensing is a technology that has been around for a while, but it's only recently that it's become accurate and reliable enough to catch on. Linksys launched a similar service in 2021, but discontinued it a few years later. Lighting company Wiz launched a line of Wi-Fi-sensing smart bulbs in 2023, and more recently Philips Hue deployed a similar radio-frequency sensing technology in its products (using Zigbee rather than Wi-Fi). Comcast's motion sensing pairs with new modes in the Xfinity app -- Home Watch, Away Watch, and Dark Watch (a night/sleep mode) -- allowing you to turn sensing on or off based on your activities.

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Disney and ABC are suing the FCC to block an early review of eight station licenses, arguing the Trump administration is using the agency's regulatory power to punish the network over programming and editorial decisions it dislikes. Reuters reports: In a lawsuit (PDF) filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Disney said the FCC was seeking to coerce and retaliate against "a network that refuses to bow to the administration's demands," calling the agency's actions an "extraordinary assault on free speech." Trump has waged an aggressive series of attacks on the news media and the latest move follows a two-year-long battle between Trump and Disney. Last month, Trump again called for ABC stations to lose their licenses because the network refused to air a prime-time speech on elections. The court case will pose a key test of the free speech rights of media outlets. Disney and ABC asked the court (PDF) to quickly issue a temporary restraining order halting the license renewal proceedings and preventing the FCC from scheduling a hearing. The company said the public comment period ended earlier this month and the FCC could act at any time. The lawsuit alleges that the administration is violating the company's First Amendment free speech rights, saying that the FCC "is using its regulatory power to retaliate against (Disney and ABC) for programming and editorial decisions the administration dislikes." The FCC said the move stemmed from a year-long investigation into whether Disney's diversity policies amounted to unlawful discrimination, an allegation the company denies. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan issued an order on Tuesday directing the company and the FCC to propose a schedule for considering the request for a temporary restraining order and told the agency to notify her if it moves to start the process of revoking the ABC licenses.

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RAM prices have exploded over the past year, with some DDR5 kits approaching 500% year-over-year increases and a 128GB kit now selling for $3,399, which is more than 10 times its previous low. Tom's Hardware reports: Things improve as you step down the memory capacities and speed tiers, but not as much as we'd like. You're still looking at $392 for a memory kit that was just $72 last year. To reinforce the point, I pulled the latest average price data from PCPartPicker, comparing where we are today (August 2026) to exactly one year ago. This data is somewhat approximate, but it should be broadly accurate. [...] A standard 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5-5600 kit that would have cost you under $200 last summer is now demanding over $1,100. It is a 5x multiplier on a component that used to be a fairly boring and predictable line item in a PC build budget. If you plan to just wait it out on an older AM4 or LGA1700 motherboard with DDR4, you'd better hope your memory holds out too, because DDR4 isn't safe from the fallout. With DDR5 entirely out of reach for most builders, the resulting scramble for older platforms running DDR4 memory has created a massive knock-on effect, and as a result, DDR4 kits are up anywhere from 120% to nearly 180% across the board. Nowhere near as bad as DDR5 pricing, but it still stings when a kit that was $105 last year is $281 this year. This phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the US, either. German tech site ComputerBase have also been tracking this global trend, reporting just this week that average RAM prices in Europe have skyrocketed by 345% compared to September 2025. Their data shows the squeeze is bleeding into other components too, with hard drive and SSD prices both climbing over 125% in that same timeframe. In fact, the situation is so severe that hyperscale buyers have reportedly already locked in almost all of the global DRAM production capacity for 2027, handing over advance deposits to guarantee their supply of precious DRAM, which is now among the highest-value commodities in the world by weight; mainstream DRAM chips are worth over half as much per kilogram as solid gold.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Your iPhone, SamsungGalaxy, andGoogle Pixel have a 1-year warranty. Unless you cough up extra dough for an extended service plan, you'll pay a hefty fee if you damage the screen and need a replacement (around $329 for aniPhone 17done directly fromApple). But it doesn't have to be this way. What if you could order the part from the manufacturer and do the repair yourself? That dream is finally being realized for American consumers, thanks to Fairphone. The Dutch company is bringing its repairable and sustainably built Android smartphone -- the Fairphone (Gen 6+) -- to the US. Each one comes with a screwdriver. A replacement screen from Fairphone costs just $90. A new USB-C port is $20. A fresh battery is $40. In all, there are 12 modular elements you can swap yourself. It remains the only smartphone series with a 10/10 repairability scorefrom iFixit, not to mention an unmatched 5-year warranty and software updates through 2033. The new Fairphone (Gen 6+) is a small upgrade over the Gen 6 that the company launched last year. It has a newer Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 processor and double the RAM at 12 GB, but is otherwise largely the same device (hence the "plus" in the name). It now comes in Cobalt Blue, a nod to the miners who extract the cobalt used to make phone batteries, and the company's efforts to improve working conditions in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The new Fairphone is available on Amazon and at Fairphone.com for $650, and it's officially certified to work on T-Mobile and AT&T's networks. While this will mark the U.S. debut of its flagship smartphone, the company first entered the stateside market last year with its repairable earbuds and headphones. It also plans to launch its next-generation Fairbuds 2 wireless earbuds later this year.

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Google has agreed to pay $10 million for a massive trove of anonymized Spirit Airlines data following the carrier's shutdown, including internal communications, spreadsheets, booking and frequent-flyer records, transactions, and employee information. CNN reports: Did you ever fly on Spirit Airlines? Or work there? Or send an email to someone who worked there? Then your information will soon be feeding Google's artificial intelligence model. The discount airline halted all operations in May, and it's been selling off its remaining assets through the bankruptcy process ever since. While most of that is planes, equipment, and real estate, there's other things that are valuable, too. It was disclosed late Monday that the company agreed to sell its data to Google for $10 million. That includes emails and internal communications, spreadsheets, transactions with the public including bookings and frequent flyer information as well as human resources information on its employees. The data has been stripped of anything that would allow individuals to be identified, according to the court filing. But it is still a massive amount of useful intelligence.

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Apple is overhauling its EU App Store fees to settle its Digital Markets Act dispute, simplifying the fee structure and "[resolving] Apple's disagreements with the Commission over business terms and alternative distribution." Developers can sign the new terms starting today, and the changes go into effect on October 1. MacRumors reports: The initial acquisition fee and store services fee are being removed for apps distributed outside of the App Store, and Apple will now charge a 5% Core Technology Commission on digital purchases that replaces the prior per-install Core Technology Fee. Commission rates are changing for App Store apps, alternative payments, and apps distributed through alternative app marketplaces or the web. Developers can offer in-app purchase options alongside alternative payment options in the EU, which is something Apple did not allow before. Apple says there will be presentation requirements so users have a consistent, transparent experience. Developers distributing apps in the EU must select their payment options and maintain those options for 12 months before making changes to "provide consistency and clarity for users." Apple will still use a Notarization process for apps downloadable through the web and through alternative app marketplaces. Apps in the Kids category or being used by children under 13 will not include links to websites to complete transactions. All apps that use alternative payment processing or link to a website for transactions have to include a parental gate if the user is under 18. Apple is relaxing the rules for operating an alternative app marketplace.

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Microsoft MVP Loryan Strant has created the Microsoft Rebrand Registry, cataloging 72 Microsoft products and the 158 names they've had over the years. His analysis finds that Microsoft product names survive an average of two years and eleven months. The site even predicts which products are most likely to get renamed next, "by considering the amount of time the current name has applied, prior names, and the frequency with which Microsoft changes names of products in the same family," reports The Register. "That methodology led him to suggest an 'elevated' likelihood of name changes for the Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database, Azure DevOps, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service." From the report: Readers may remember that Strant has also created the site Let Me Correct That For You, which lists the exact names of Microsoft products -- an effort he told The Register he thinks is useful because Microsoft in its wisdom uses Camel Case for names like PowerPoint but went with conventional capitalization for Copilot. Another of his sites immortalizes Microsoft cloud product logos. He's also created HumbledandHonored.com, a site that generates social media posts MVPs can use to announce they have earned or retained Microsoft's awards. Strant told The Register that the Rebrand Registry came about after some banter between himself and other MVPs, during which the topic of Microsoft's many product name changes came up. He decided to do something about it.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: For most Indians, paying by Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has become almost absurdly routine. Scan a QR code, tap a few buttons and the money moves instantly. There is no card machine, no cash, and -- most importantly -- for the user, no visible fee. That may be about to change. India has paved the way for banks and payment companies to charge merchants a fee on UPI transactions, potentially ending a decade-long experiment in free digital payments. The government has yet to decide the rate or exactly where it will apply, but proposals under discussion include a merchant discount rate (MDR) of 0.3-0.5% -- a small fee paid by a business to the banks and payment companies that process its UPI payments -- on larger transactions at big businesses. The government says consumers and person-to-person UPI payments will remain free. If merchant fees are introduced, they will apply only to some transactions above a set threshold, at a nominal rate, meaning most UPI payments will remain free. The question is whether putting a price on UPI could weaken the network that made it such a success. The stakes are enormous. Launched in 2016, UPI has grown into one of the world's biggest real-time payment networks. According to official data, in July alone, there were 23.6 billion UPI transactions worth 29.87 trillion rupees ($313.5 billion). Fintech apps such as PhonePe and Google Pay account for most UPI payments. In the financial year just ended, the figure was about 241.6 billion transactions -- almost 12,000 times the volume in UPI's first full year. More than 550 million people now use it, and the system is now available in some form for payments in 11 countries outside India. India's UPI became ubiquitous partly because it made digital payments almost frictionless for merchants, including small vendors who can accept payments with little more than a QR code. New research suggests that merchant acceptance was "not just a result of UPI growth, but one of its key drivers." As RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra put it, "Someone will have to pay the cost." The challenge will be making UPI sustainable without weakening the merchant network that helped it take off.

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Bruce66423 shares a report from The Guardian: Sainsbury's has paused the use of AI face scanning in one of its stores after a customer was wrongly identified as a shoplifter and ejected from the shop. "I was embarrassed, mortified even, and felt quite humiliated and powerless," Matt Arnold, 46, said of his ordeal. The comedy promoter was buying supplies in the store in East Dulwich, in south-east London, for a standup event at Dulwich Hamlet football club when, after scanning his items and a Nectar card, he was approached by two managers who told him he could not be served owing to an earlier incident. He was then asked to leave and they tried to escort him from the store. As he left, he saw an overhead CCTV monitor alert with a red circle surrounding his face. He asked the shop staff to keep his shopping in the trolley so his friend could come and pick up the supplies for the comedy night happening soon next door. "I think they were quite confused by this, understandably, but agreed and my colleague Dave went in to pay for and pick up the shop about five minutes later. There was no pause for thought from the staff, no suggestion that they understood this is not how a shoplifter would behave. Just blindly following the machine's orders." Sainsbury's head office apologised to Arnold the next day and has paused use of its AI-assisted Facewatch technology in the store while an investigation takes place. Arnold says the facial recognition tech should be paused in all stores. "Anyone could be falsely accused and at some point that will be someone vulnerable, someone with mental health issues like anxiety. It's inevitable," said Arnold. "Also, I would worry about the confidence-destroying effect of it happening to a younger person or someone less willing or able to stand up for themselves as I have done." A Sainsbury's spokesperson said: "We have contacted Mr Arnold to apologise for his experience at our Dulwich superstore. The incident was caused by human error, not the facial recognition technology. Customers can be reassured that the Facewatch system has a 99.98% accuracy rate, and every match is reviewed by a trained manager." A Facewatch spokesperson said their technology was not at fault in this case. "A correct alert was sent to the retailer, but was subsequently subject to human error in the way it was handled in store," they said.

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AleRunner writes: "Solar has been doing the 'heavy lifting' to help Europe meet its energy needs amid a string of blistering heatwaves," Euronews tells us. Meanwhile, as Europe's energy demands rise with the heat, jellyfish have been causing shutdowns and reduced power output at multiple reactors at French nuclear plants, as we already discussed. Euronews reports: A new analysis from energy think-tank Ember found that solar output in European countries rose by up to 17 percent on heatwave days in June and July. Researchers say that this helped power the grid as electricity demand increased by as much as a quarter on hot days. Heatwaves often trigger a spike in electricity consumption due to the sudden need for cooling, mainly from energy-intensive air conditioning (A/C) units. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that space cooling, which is mostly A/C units and fans, consumed around seven percent of the world's electricity in 2022. Even in countries where A/C ownership is low, countries experience energy demand spikes when scorching temperatures hit. During the early summer heatwaves of 2025, France, for example, recorded an evening electricity peak that was 25 percent above the off-season average due to air conditioning. Ember's analysis found that during the late-June heatwave this summer, daily electricity demand rose byup to 28 percent in Italy, 23 percent in Hungary, 14 percent in France and 13 percent in Spain compared with pre-heatwave days. It says as heatwave-driven demand increased, solar was the only major power source to perform "better than usual." Compared with other days in June and July, average daily solar generation during the heatwaves was 17 percent higher in France and Hungary, five percent higher in Spain and the same in Italy.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Buy now, pay later" loans took off during the pandemic as a way for online shoppers to go on retail splurges without using a credit card. Now, lenders are offering the loans as a means for people to finance basic households needs. The lending apps Flex and Zip allow customers to take out loans to pay for their broadband, electricity, health insurance, mobile phone service, mortgage and water bills. Affirm, one of the most popular pay-later apps, has started providing some tenants loans to extend their monthly rent payment for a few weeks. Many dentists, veterinarians and medical clinics now often offer instant pay-later financing, and Intuit this year started promoting "File Now, Pay Later" loans to TurboTax users who owe money in their tax return. Pay-later loans are becoming the "working capital for the modern middle class," said Karen Webster, the chief executive of Pymnts, a news and market research company for the payments industry. "Consumers are using it more for essential, everyday things." Americans spent $160 billion last year through pay-later loans, according to research released recently by Federal Reserve economists -- nearly twice what consumers spent two years earlier, in 2023. That's still a fraction of the more than $3 trillion U.S. shoppers spend annually on consumer credit cards. But the industry continues to expand by double-digit rates each year. How much of that growth reflects consumer preferences, versus desperation, is a question economists and industry analysts are trying to unravel. The rise in pay-later financing comes as many households are leaning more on debt to keep up with their daily expenses. Paying interest -- to afford basic needs -- adds to the overall cost of living, which has already been rising amid higher medical, housing and fuel costs. For many borrowers, the loans have become their only option: Half of those using them said they could not make ends meet otherwise, according to the latest edition of a survey that LendingTree, a loan marketplace, has compiled for years.

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