Feed aggregator

Google has made Android's phone-number verification opt-out, automatically verifying and associating a device's phone number with every Google account signed in on that phone, including secondary and work accounts. Android Authority reports: As spotted in a recent Reddit thread, users report receiving confirmation emails out of the blue from "noreply-phone-verification@google.com" stating that their phone number has been verified. The feature, known in Google settings as "Phone number verification," links your active phone number across all Google accounts signed in on the same phone, including secondary profiles, work accounts, and throwaway handles. Google's support documentation has long noted that it periodically re-verifies your device's phone number to keep communication and recovery features up to date. However, this support page was updated sometime between August and October 2025 to add this rather aggressive behavior of turning on phone number verification by default, as well as adding all phone numbers to all Google accounts signed in on the device. To disable automatic phone number verification on Android, open your phone's Settings app, tap Google, and select the All Services tab. Under Privacy & Security, find Phone number verification and turn off Verify phone numbers automatically. "[T]urning off the phone number verification toggle only prevents future linking," notes the report. "If Google has already attached your number across secondary accounts, you will need to open your Google Account Personal Info page, head to Contact info > Phone, and manually remove the number from each profile where it doesn't belong." Is this conversation helpful so far?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AI company Anthropic is warning that advances in small AI models could soon usher in a new era of self-replicating malware that's capable of infecting smart fridges, vacuum cleaners, and a wide range of other Internet-of-things devices and is more resistant to takedown. By next year, smaller AI models may be able to autonomously self-replicate on all kinds of IoT devices, the company said. Eventually, the capability could enable computer worms, which propagate without requiring human interaction and are capable of infecting unfamiliar IoT devices. An experiment the company performed recently revealed significant challenges in bringing such an AI malware replicator to fruition, so the finding is necessarily tempered. Still, the results do raise concerns about the possibility of new forms of computer worms. Anthropic further warned not only about the new potential malware, but also that it could be difficult to stop. In its blog post, it wrote that "a replicator like this would be challenging to shut down, since there's no centralized point to shut off -- though it may be slow (with a doubling time of days). Unlike non-AI malware, it could also figure out unfamiliar devices on its own." Smaller AI models require much less powerful hardware to run than do frontier models. Anthropic ran small open-weight models on real or simulated low-cost, off-brand Android TV boxes and other types of IoT hardware. Company researchers found that by using quantization to represent the models using fewer bits and splitting the workloads into "shards" running on each device, the models were able to establish inference, meaning that the model weights loaded and could generate output. [...] This finding was the starting point for further research that asked: Would it be possible for small models to create self-replicating infections that run themselves on IoT devices the way traditional IoT worms, like Mirai, install DDoS code and other payloads? Unlike Mirai, these AI worms could pose a much higher threat, since the models could tailor exploits and payloads dynamically, depending on the target. Once such an infection chain began, it might also be harder for defenders to stop it. "Such an 'AI worm' could carry its model weights with it as it reproduces (or re-download them from a public hub), and then run inference directly on compromised hardware," Anthropic said. "Effectively, the weights would become part of the malware payload." Further reading: Anthropic Bans Cruelty Toward Claude

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Portland-based Developers Collaborative will help the city reimagine uses for the former middle school building.

Google Play is adding support for private personal Android apps, allowing users to build an app with tools like Google AI Studio and run it on their own devices without publishing it publicly to the Play Store. "These personal apps won't show up in Google Play's search or listing pages, and won't be shared with anyone except for the app's creator," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The idea comes as more people are experimenting with building their own applications via AI for specific, personal needs. However, being able to use that app on their own Android device has meant publishing to Google Play, making it accessible to the Play Store's some 3 billion users. That led many to limit their vibe-coding efforts to web apps that could run on any device instead of something built natively for Android. Now, Google says Android device owners can vibe-code an app using Google AI Studio, then launch it for their own use. These apps are still required to comply with Google Play's existing policies but allow users to experiment more directly with building apps for Android. Initially, the feature will be available to users in the U.S., age 18 and up. [...] In the months ahead, the company said that users will be able to share their vibe-coded creations with a network of trusted friends. That means the apps you built for family or friends, or maybe your child's T-ball league, could be used with a small group of people, without having to go public on the Play Store. And if the app ever really becomes popular, there will be a way to shift the personal app to one that's published on the Google Play Store for everyone to try, after completing the trust and safety reviews.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix is laying off about 1,000 employees, or 6% of its workforce, in its largest round of cuts since 2022. The company says its business remains strong, but it is facing growing pressure from YouTube, TikTok, and other rivals. Reuters reports: The bulk of the job cuts would be in Netflix's product, tech, legal and human-resources teams, the email Co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos sent to employees on Wednesday showed. "Our mission -- to entertain the world -- is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people âand resources," they said in the memo. "Our business is strong and growing, and we remain on track to deliver our full-year forecast."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Abdulrahman Alfozan had worked for the AI giant for more than a year before he was arrested by the FBI.

Landry Woods, an apartment building geared to seniors, is complete.

The new venue would seat more than 10 times as many customers inside.

The increase is a drop in the bucket, many older adults say, thanks to worsening inflation.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The Netherlands' Tax and Customs Administration has abandoned its planned Microsoft 365 public-cloud rollout. Why? The reasons were clear at the Open Source Summit Europe conference, where the Linux Foundation (LF) released the 2026 State of Open Source in Europe. In it, the nonprofit, pro-open-source organization revealed that 94% of European Union (EU) organizations say digital sovereignty is important, with 61% considering it very important. As Thierry Carrez, the Linux Foundation Europe GM, said in his keynote, "Europe has clearly heard the message on digital sovereignty." In an interview onstage at the summit, Nithya Ruff, chair of the LF board, added that it's not just Europe: "Digital sovereignty is a need that the entire world feels, whether it's Sierra Leone or the US or China." It's not just the Dutch tax collectors, though. The Netherlands is also exploring switching from Windows and proprietary software to Linux and open-source programs across the board. [...] The Netherlands had planned to switch to Microsoft 365 in 2025. The idea then was to complete the rollout by the end of 2026. About 5,000 employees had already migrated when the Dutch Advisory Council on ICT Assessment recommended reversing the public-cloud rollout in June. The government paused the plan in July; the latest announcement replaces that rollout with an on-premises/open-source approach. The Tax and Customs Administration isn't replacing all of Microsoft Office with a single open-source suite, at least not yet. Instead, the government will keep the existing Microsoft software for now. Looking ahead, State Secretary for Finance Eelco Eerenberg set out the replacement timetable in a letter to Parliament: "In 2027, the provision for mail and calendar will be realized on-premises. Later in 2027 and 2028, European open-source solutions for personal storage and collaboration will follow. This allows us to work toward a sustainable and more autonomous solution for these functionalities." [...] For now, the on-premises email/calendar environment will still use Microsoft software, including Outlook. The open-source portion concerns personal storage and collaboration, not a wholesale replacement of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or the entire desktop environment. As for why the Netherlands pulled back, the ICT assessment found serious concerns over "information security, information processing and future-proofing." Key issues included routing confidential documents through American servers, relying on standard Microsoft encryption rather than Double Key Encryption, and inadequate end-to-end encryption for Teams calls. The assessment also identified "vendor lock-in, reduced flexibility, concerns about digital sovereignty, and the absence of an adequate exit strategy" as dealbreakers. ZDNet notes that other Dutch government agencies are developing an open-source alternative called DAWO (Digital Autonomous Work Environment for Government), which would begin by replacing Windows with the Linux distribution NixOS.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Form Studio 1 is a $699 desktop-sized printer that fits on a desk and only stinks a little bit.

The second iteration of the viral Friend AI necklace is louder and less interesting.

The Breville Eye Q uses optical sensors to measure the darkness of your toast. Cool tech, but the toasting quality needs improvement.

Anthropic says Claude-generated code has scaled so quickly that its existing Git-based infrastructure could not keep up. In response, the company built a custom centralized source-control system called Scion, along with AI-assisted review and search tools. The Register reports: "In May 2026, Anthropic averaged around 2,500 code changes merged per day; as of September, we merged over 30,000 per day," the biz said in a blog post on Tuesday. "We don't expect this rate of growth to slow down anytime soon; the latent demand for merging code is practically infinite, and every bottleneck we remove immediately leads to a further increase in the amount of code we produce." After several months of model prompting and five months of migration, the result is a homemade version control system called Scion, a monorepo scheme that sounds a bit like Subversion, Apache's centralized version control system. [...] Scion has been designed to meet the needs of AI agents, so the client leaves much of the work to the server; the source control queries are exposed via API so internal tools can respond without needing a local repo, and there's less synchronization but more need for server speed. "In Scion, the unit of work is a 'changeset,' an entry in a write-ahead log," Anthropic explains. "A changeset stores most of what you'd expect from a commit in git. But where a git commit stores a pointer to the tree, a changeset stores a list of the files that changed relative to its first parent, along with content-addressed pointers to the compressed file contents in blob storage." [...] Anthropic says its bespoke system isn't right for general use. There will be no open source release. Nonetheless, the company contends that its own code scaling problems will become commonplace in other organizations over the next few months, so it wanted to share its approach -- having ample funding to pay for writing custom infrastructure tools.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This compact, plucky ride is the cargo ebike for people who don’t want a cargo ebike. It’s even fun to ride.

Nothing’s best headphones yet double down on design, comfort, sound quality, and highly adjustable EQ settings.

The future is here, and it is jacked up on B vitamins, red dye, and taurine. These are the best energy drinks to get from tired to wired.

Nine years after its reveal, the overdue Roadster is set to debut on Thursday to an EV market that has grown skeptical of electric hypercars.

Discovery+ has raised prices for new subscribers, increasing its ad-free plan from $10 to $12 per month and its ad-supported plan from $6 to $7. The hike comes shortly after Paramount Skydance acquired Warner Bros. Discovery. Ars Technica reports: The new prices take effect for new subscribers immediately. Current subscribers to the streaming service, which primarily features unscripted content, like reality shows and documentaries, will receive 30 days' notice before the new prices take effect, starting with bills issued as of November 12. [...] However, a Skydance spokesperson told Ars Technica that the pricing changes were in the works before Discovery+ knew about the merger's closing date and were not planned in anticipation of a merger. The spokesperson said that Discovery+'s prices are regularly evaluated to ensure that they are in line with the content and experience that the service offers, and the new prices reflect that. Discovery+ has increased its prices three times since launching in 2012. Before today, the most recent price hike occurred in January 2025, when ad-based monthly subscriptions increased from $5 to $6, and ad-free plans went from $9 to $10.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Preserving your memories doesn't have to be expensive. Use a verified Walgreens coupon code for discounts of up to 70% off premium wall decor, stationery, and personalized gifts, as well as beauty, lenses, and health products this fall.