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Starting with macOS 28, Apple will no longer support encrypted Mac OS Extended, or HFS+, volumes. Users will need to decrypt them or reformat them as APFS to keep using them. 9to5Mac reports: In a new support document, Apple explains that starting with macOS 28, "the Mac OS Extended file system format will be supported only for volumes (disks and other storage devices) that aren't encrypted." In practice, this means users who currently rely on encrypted HFS+ external drives or other encrypted legacy Mac-formatted volumes will need to "either decrypt or reformat any encrypted Mac OS Extended volumes." Apple doesn't explain the reason for the change. Still, the move appears to be another step in Apple's transition to APFS, its file system with built-in encryption support, which replaced Mac OS Extended as the default Mac file system in macOS High Sierra. As a result of this change, Apple says that starting with macOS 26, Macs might notify users when they're using an encrypted Mac OS Extended disk that won't be compatible with macOS 28 or later. According to the support page, "the notification will identify the volume by name." However, Apple says users can manually confirm whether a volume is both using Mac OS Extended format and encrypted by following these steps [...]. Apple adds that "macOS 28 and later will continue to support unencrypted volumes that use Mac OS Extended format," and notes "Mac OS Extended is also known as HFS Plus (or HFS+)."

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The soft, oddly intimate home-chore robot has been given some very tactile hands.

OpenAI has released GPT-Live-1 and GPT-Live-1 mini, "claiming that they sound more natural and can handle turn-taking better," reports TechCrunch. "These are full-duplex models, meaning they can speak and listen at the same time, allowing users to interrupt naturally and enabling features like live translation." TechCrunch reports: The company is also replacing its current Advanced Voice Mode in ChatGPT with GPT-Live-1 mini by default. Users of paid tiers will be able to access the larger GPT-Live-1 model. The previous model combined a speech-to-text model to transcribe speech, a large language model to generate responses, and a text-to-speech model to deliver the final answer. The company said in a press briefing that the new models solve issues like interrupting users while they're talking and not having enough intelligence to answer questions. OpenAI's new models will send the query to its latest text models like GPT-5.5 for search, reasoning, or agentic capabilities while continuing the conversation. OpenAI also showed that the model can stay silent for a long time and absorb the context of the conversation until it's called upon. Plus, as the new voice mode has access to newer GPT models, it can also present some information in a visual format. Other startups like Monogram, which raised $40 million in seed funding from DST and Lux Capital, are also leaning into visual responses to make assistants more interactive. The company said the new voice mode in ChatGPT is designed to have longer conversations. During the briefing, ChatGPT Voice's product lead, Atty Eleti, said he has had 30- to 40-minute-long conversations with the voice feature during walks.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Parents' attachment to screens and smartphones can have negative, long-lasting developmental and psychological effects on their children, according to new research. Caregivers who mismanage their devices can both exacerbate "insecure attachment" and make healthy relationships more anxious and avoidant for children, according to the findings, which were published last month in Frontiers in Psychology, a peer-reviewed journal. The study, which surveyed 600 minors in the US from 12 to 17 years old, found that kids reported feeling marginalized or neglected by parents glued to their screens. "A child with insecure attachment may lack confidence or display a lower sense of self; demonstrate difficulty with interpersonal relationships and intimacy; and possess an unwillingness to take risks necessary to achieve success," reports Bloomberg, citing one of the study's researchers. This type of behavior has become normalized: 2024 Pew data found that nearly half of U.S. teens say their parents are at least sometimes distracted by phones during interactions. "When parents were asked about their own behavior, far fewer said this was an issue," the report adds. "Still, earlier Pew data from 2020 found most parents feel their phones can interfere with quality family time, with 68% reporting being 'at least sometimes' distracted by them.

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The Bezos-backed automaker building America’s cheapest electric truck is teaming up with the crayon company in a bid to brighten its rides. Make ours Razzmatazz.

Provided you have a library of SNES cartridges, the SN Operator is a seamless plug-and-play system for easy ’90s nostalgia.

The Dell 14S represents the new normal of laptop pricing, but it has the quality to back up its cost.

Ofcom has fined a slew of sites it says are failing to prevent children accessing their adult content.

The Amseatec Criss Cross Office Chair gives you room to sit cross-legged, sideways, or however your body actually wants to sit.

Meta will build its first Canadian data center in Alberta, investing $9 billion in a 1-gigawatt facility that can scale to 1.8 gigawatts to support its AI infrastructure needs. The project will rely on new generation and grid infrastructure funded by Meta, including a long-term agreement tied to a new natural gas power facility. The company says it will offset electricity use with clean and renewable energy investments. Reuters reports: Meta has doubled down on AI, pledging hundreds of billions of dollars to build large AI data centers in the U.S. The Alberta announcement represents the company's 33rd data center globally. Executives made the announcement in Calgary alongside Premier Danielle Smith and other Alberta government officials, who have spent several years courting Silicon Valley tech giants with the aim of spurring a large-scale investment in the oil-and-gas province. Alberta's technology minister, Nate Glubish, told reporters there are currently several other gigawatt-scale data center proposals in various stages of development in the province. "This is the first of its kind, the first of its size, the first of its scale, but it won't be the last," Glubish said. Meta, like other tech giants, is facing rapidly expanding power needs due to the growth of AI, and Alberta is rich in natural gas which sells at a significant discount to the U.S. benchmark. The province's cold climate also makes cooling the massive super-computers and related data center infrastructure more cost-efficient. The 20 existing small- to mid-scale data centers in Alberta already pull from the province's energy grid, which is 60% powered by natural gas. The provincial government is giving new proponents the option to build their own power sources to avoid limits on power capacity. Meta said Wednesday it will fully fund new generation and grid infrastructure for its Alberta data center, which will consume about as much electricity as 800,000 homes. Gary Demasi, Meta's vice president for data center development, said the company will offset that electricity use by investing in clean and renewable energy. He also said the data center will use a closed-loop liquid cooling system, meaning its total water use will be less than that of a typical golf course. [...] The company has partnered with Alberta-based Pembina Pipeline , which announced last week it will go ahead with its Greenlight Electricity Centre, a new natural gas-fired power-generation facility in Sturgeon County which will be in service in late 2030 and with which Meta has a long-term tolling agreement. Until that project is operational and for the next decade, Alberta-based power producer Capital Power will provide 250 megawatts of electricity for the site using its existing natural gas-fired fleet. The project will require approximately 150 million cubic feet per day of natural gas, according to Pembina, helping to create demand for Western Canadian natural gas producers.

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With pricing in flux and new models available, here’s which Surface Laptop and Surface Pro to buy.

Battery Ventures general partner Neeraj Agrawal explains why the firm joined a funding round that valued the Cambridge startup at $1.4 billion.

NHTSA administrator Jonathan Morris called reports that self-driving cars had driven into emergency scenes and blocked ambulances and firefighters “unacceptable.”

Stretch seasonal produce, preserve leftovers, and build a pantry that lasts with our favorite food dehydrators for every budget.

Masters Academy International paid $2.3 million for the property in 2024. The brothers spent 10 years developing the program before securing backing from a London-based schools group.

It's too hot. There, we said it. Protect your health and keep your home cool with one of these top-rated air conditioners.

A new study proposes using shoebox-sized detector satellites to sniff out nuclear weapons launched by adversary nations. The idea is aimed at addressing fears that a space-based nuclear detonation could destroy satellites across low Earth orbit and make some orbits unusable for years. Space.com shares the findings from a new paper authored by Areg Danagoulian, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: No reliable way currently exists to detect and defuse a nuclear bomb in space. Danagoulian proposes a constellation of small "9U" cubesats, each one about the size of a large shoebox and each carrying a special detector capable of sensing radiation emitted by unexploded nuclear bombs. He explores a scenario in which Russia launches a suspected space nuke into an orbit with an altitude of 1,200 miles (2,000 km). That number is not random. In 2022, Russia's Kosmos 2553 satellite, orbiting at that exact altitude, triggered suspicions it might be testing components for a future orbital nuclear weapon. Russia claims the satellite just observes Earth. At that altitude, the satellite passes through the Van Allen belt, a region of intense cosmic radiation trapped by Earth's magnetic field. Most of the belt stretches between altitudes of around 600 miles (1,000 km) to tens of thousands of miles, but in some areas the radiation can reach much closer to Earth's surface. The interaction between the fissile material inside the nuke and the energetic particles from the radiation belt would create distinct signatures, Danagoulian said, which could help confirm whether a suspicious satellite carries a nuke or not. "The thermonuclear weapon would contain a significant amount of uranium," Danagoulian said. "The high-energy protons [in the uranium] would break up when another proton is coming in and shred the nuclei. That would knock out a large number of neutrons. This interaction turns that device into a very intense neutron source that otherwise would not be there." he process is known as proton-induced neutron spallation, which essentially means the ejection of fragments from material triggered by impacts of protons. The detector satellite Danagoulian proposes would have to be able to get quite close to the suspect spacecraft -- a few kilometers. The inspector spacecraft would carry a sensor combining two types of detectors. At the heart of the device is a neutron scintillator, which detects all incoming neutrons and protons. Around it is a "cage of diamond" detector that detects only neutrons -- not protons. Such a set-up helps filter out the particles present in the environment naturally, said Danagoulian. In addition, by using two "planes of neutron detectors," the sensor can determine the direction from which the neutrons arrived. "If the external diamond detector triggers and gives a signal, you can ignore the particle, because it's most likely a proton and not a neutron," said Danagoulian. "Once you identify those neutrons, by having those two detections, you can back project and find out where the neutron came from." Danagoulian says such a nuke sniffer would have to be launched into an orbit aligned with that of the suspicious satellite and creep up as close as 2.5 miles (4 km) from it. It would then take about a week to gather enough measurements to confirm whether the object is hiding a nuke or not. A constellation of 10 such satellites could reduce the process to mere hours, Danagoulian said. If a nuke were detected, the military could then try to jam the satellite's communications link from the ground, making it impossible for the adversary to remotely detonate the bomb. There is currently no technology available to safely defuse a nuclear weapon in space. [...] Danagoulian also suggests that high-grade radiation hardening could improve satellites' chances of surviving a nuclear winter in space. The paper has been published in the journal Nature.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The US Food and Drug Administration has rejected a legal petition demanding it set limits on toxic Pfas "forever chemicals" in food, marking another setback for public health advocates' push to limit exposures to the dangerous compounds. The agency is refusing to set limits despite a growing body of science and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finding food is the biggest source of Pfas exposure. Testing has found the levels of Pfas in single servings of some contaminated foods to be equivalent to drinking many glasses of contaminated water. While regulators have focused on reining in Pfas in water, the chemicals are widely used throughout the food system, and there was hope that the agency under Robert F Kennedy Jr would take the threat more seriously. Kennedy leads the "make America healthy again" (Maha) movement, of which eliminating toxic chemicals from food is a cornerstone. [...] The November 2023 petition called on the FDA to check for up to 30 Pfas compounds in a range of produce, fish, eggs, milk and bread. The agency did not respond within the six-month timeframe required by law, but TEJTF scaled back its petition in 2025 to ask the agency to set advisory thresholds for PFOA and Pfos, two of the most common and dangerous Pfas compounds, in seafood and milk. Recent FDA testing found 70% of seafood samples contain the chemicals, while independent milk testing found it in 12% of 50 samples, including extremely high levels in Whole Foods and Kirkland Signature brands. The FDA rejected the revised petition, stating it plans to take action on setting standards for Pfas, and there is "insufficient evidence to support [TEJTF's] request." The agency said it plans to set less non-binding "action levels" that do not require contaminated food to be removed from shelves. "Tolerance levels," or limits, make it illegal to sell food contaminated beyond a set threshold.

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