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Chemical pollution is "a threat to the thriving of humans and nature of a similar order as climate change" but decades behind global heating in terms of public awareness and action, a report has warned. The Guardian: The industrial economy has created more than 100 million "novel entities," or chemicals not found in nature, with somewhere between 40,000 and 350,000 in commercial use and production, the report says. But the environmental and human health effects of this widespread contamination of the biosphere are not widely appreciated, in spite of a growing body of evidence linking chemical toxicity with effects ranging from ADHD to infertility to cancer. "I suppose that's the biggest surprise for some people," Harry Macpherson, senior climate associate at Deep Science Ventures (DSV), which carried out the research, told the Guardian. "Maybe people think that when you walk down the street breathing the air; you drink your water, you eat your food; you use your personal care products, your shampoo, cleaning products for your house, the furniture in your house; a lot of people assume that there's really great knowledge and huge due diligence on the chemical safety of these things. But it really isn't the case."

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Parts of the Great Barrier Reef have suffered the largest annual decline in coral cover since records began nearly 40 years ago, according to a new report. BBC: Northern and southern branches of the sprawling Australian reef both suffered their most widespread coral bleaching, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) found. Reefs have been battered in recent months by tropical cyclones and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish that feast on coral, but heat stress driven by climate change is the predominant reason, AIMS said. AIMS warns the habitat may reach a tipping point where coral cannot recover fast enough between catastrophic events and faces a "volatile" future. AIMS surveyed the health of 124 coral reefs between August 2024 and May 2025. It has been performing surveys since 1986. Often dubbed the world's largest living structure, the Great Barrier Reef is a 2,300km (1,429-mile) expanse of tropical corals that houses a stunning array of biodiversity. Repeated bleaching events are turning vast swaths of once-vibrant coral white. Australia's second largest reef, Ningaloo -- on Australia's western coast -- has also experienced repeated bleaching, and this year both major reefs simultaneously turned white for the first time ever. Coral is vital to the planet. Nicknamed the sea's architect, it builds vast structures that house an estimated 25% of all marine species.

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Two fundamentally different methods for measuring the universe's expansion rate continue to produce incompatible results -- with direct observations of receding galaxies yielding approximately 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec and cosmic microwave background radiation analysis producing closer to 67 km/s/mpc. The discrepancy, known as the Hubble tension, has strengthened annually for the past decadem, according to Duke University astronomer Dan Scolnic. The persistent disagreement prevents calculation of the universe's precise age or size. The Lambda-CDM model, which holds that dark energy and dark matter comprise 95% of the universe while visible matter constitutes just 5%, assumes dark energy's nature has remained constant since the Big Bang. Some theorists propose dark energy's potency changes over time, while others suggest the Milky Way sits within a comparatively empty region of space. A June study using gravitational lensing of quasar light, bypassing traditional distance measurements, matched the higher value. New telescopes including the Vera Rubin Observatory and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope may provide additional data. Past improvements in measurement precision have only reinforced rather than resolved the tension.

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A new War of the Worlds adaptation starring Ice Cube has achieved a 0% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes after arriving on Prime Video in late July. The science fiction film, produced by Universal Pictures during the 2020 pandemic using actors filming separately through video calls, features alien tripods emerging from meteors to attack Earth. The movie sat unreleased for approximately five years before streaming debut. Critics cite poor visual effects that "wouldn't pass muster on a whimsical Snickers ad" and performances where actors appear to be "performing in a Zoom-style vacuum." The film was shot using screenlife format with most action unfolding on computer screens.

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Google says total organic click volume from its search engine to websites has remained ""relatively stable year-over-year" despite the introduction of AI Overviews, contradicting third-party reports of dramatic traffic declines. The company reports average click quality has increased, with users less likely to immediately return to search results after clicking through to websites. Google attributes stable traffic patterns to users conducting more searches and asking longer, more complex questions since AI features launched, while AI Overviews display more links per page than traditional results.

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Activision will require PC players of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 to enable Trusted Platform Module 2.0 and Windows Secure Boot when the game launches later this year. The company begins testing these anti-cheat measures with Black Ops 6's Season 5 on Thursday without enforcement. TPM 2.0 verifies untampered boot processes while Secure Boot ensures Windows loads only trusted software at startup. Both features perform checks during system and game startup but remain inactive during gameplay. Activision has also pursued legal action against 22 individuals who developed and sold cheats.

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A Manhattan jury convicted Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm on Wednesday of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transfer business, though jurors deadlocked on charges of money laundering conspiracy and sanctions violations after three days of deliberation. Federal prosecutors alleged Storm helped cybercriminals launder more than $1 billion through the cryptocurrency mixing platform, which launched in 2019 as a decentralized protocol designed to obscure transaction origins by pooling and redistributing funds through smart contracts.

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Universal Pictures is taking a new approach to combat mass theft of its movies to teach AI systems. From a report: Starting in June with How to Train Your Dragon, the studio has attached a legal warning at the end credits of its films stating that their titles "may not be used to train AI." It's also appeared on Jurassic World Rebirth and Bad Guys 2. "This motion picture is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries," the warning reads. "Unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution."

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Google is the latest company to suffer a data breach in an ongoing wave of Salesforce CRM data theft attacks conducted by the ShinyHunters extortion group. BleepingComputer: In June, Google warned that a threat actor they classify as 'UNC6040' is targeting companies' employees in voice phishing (vishing) social engineering attacks to breach Salesforce instances and download customer data. This data is then used to extort companies into paying a ransom to prevent the data from being leaked. In a brief update to the article last night, Google said that it too fell victim to the same attack in June after one of its Salesforce CRM instances was breached and customer data was stolen. "In June, one of Google's corporate Salesforce instances was impacted by similar UNC6040 activity described in this post. Google responded to the activity, performed an impact analysis and began mitigations," reads Google's update.

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OpenAI will provide ChatGPT access to US federal agencies for $1 annually through the General Services Administration's new AI marketplace that also includes Google and Anthropic as approved vendors. The nominal pricing represents the deepest discount GSA has negotiated with software providers, surpassing previous deals with Adobe and Salesforce. OpenAI said it will not use federal worker data to train its models and agencies face no renewal requirements. The $1 rate applies only to the ChatGPT chatbot interface, not OpenAI's API for custom software development.

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President Trump and Apple are expected to announce a new $100 billion commitment by Apple to boost manufacturing in the U.S. CBS News: The new investment would increase Apple's commitment to U.S. manufacturing to $600 billion over the next four years, according to a White House official. And it's expected to include a new "American Manufacturing Program" focused on bringing more of Apple's supply chain and advanced manufacturing to the U.S. [...] In May, the president threatened to impose a 25% tariff on iPhones made outside the U.S., writing on Truth Social that he told Cook that he expects that iPhones that will be sold in the U.S. "will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else."

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Nvidia's chief security officer has published a blog post insisting that its GPUs "do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors." From a report: It comes amid pressure from both sides of the Pacific, with some US lawmakers pushing Nvidia to grant the government backdoors to AI chips, while Chinese officials have alleged that they already exist. David Reber Jr.'s post seems pointedly directed at US lawmakers. In May a bipartisan group introduced the Chip Security Act, a bill that would require Nvidia and other manufacturers to include tracking technology to identify when chips are illegally transported internationally, and leaves the door open for further security measures including remote kill switches. While Nvidia is expecting to be granted permits to once again sell certain AI chips in China, its most powerful hardware is still under strict US export controls there and elsewhere.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: China's automakers have teamed up with software companies togo global with their driverless cars, which are poised to claim a big share of a growing market as Western manufacturers are still preparing to compete. The industry in China is expanding despite tariffs imposed last year by the European Union on electric cars, and despite some worries in Europe about the security implications of relying on Chinese suppliers. Baidu, one of China's biggest software companies, said on Monday that it would supply Lyft, an American ride-hailing service, with self-driving cars assembled by Jiangling Motors of China (source paywalled; alternative source). Lyft is expected to begin operating them next year in Germany and Britain, subject to regulatory approval, the companies said. The announcement comes three months after Uber and Momenta, a Chinese autonomous driving company, announced their own plans to begin offering self-driving cars in an unspecified European city early next year. Momenta will soon provide assisted driving technology to the Chinese company IM Motors for its cars sold in Britain. While Momenta has not specified the model that Uber will be using, it has already signaled it will choose a Chinese model. In China, "the pace of development and the pressure to deliver at scale push companies to improve quickly," said Gerhard Steiger, the chairman of Momenta Europe. China's state-controlled banking system has been lending money at low interest rates to the country's electric car industry in a bid for global leadership. [...] Expanding robotaxi services to new cities, not to mention new countries, is not easy. While the individual cars do not have drivers, they typically require one controller for every several cars to handle difficulties and answer questions from users. And the cars often need to be specially programmed for traffic conditions unique to each city. Lyft and Baidu nonetheless said that they had plans for "the fleet scaling to thousands of vehicles across Europe in the following years."

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A San Francisco jury ruled that Meta violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act by collecting sensitive data from users of the Flo period-tracking app without consent. "The plaintiff's lawyers who sued Meta are calling this a 'landmark' victory -- the tech company contends that the jury got it all wrong," reports SFGATE. From the report: The case goes back to 2021, when eight women sued Flo and a group of other tech companies, including Google and Facebook, now known as Meta. The stakes were extremely personal. Flo asked users about their sex lives, mental health and diets, and guided them through menstruation and pregnancy. Then, the women alleged, Flo shared pieces of that data with other companies. The claims were largely based on a 2019 Wall Street Journal story and a 2021 Federal Trade Commission investigation. Google, Flo and the analytics company Flurry, which was also part of the lawsuit, reached settlements with the plaintiffs, as is common in class action lawsuits about tech privacy. But Meta stuck it out through the entire trial and lost. The case against Meta focused on its Facebook software development kit, which Flo added to its app and which is generally used for analytics and advertising services. The women alleged that between June 2016 and February 2019, Flo sent Facebook, through that kit, various records of "Custom App Events" -- such as a user clicking a particular button in the "wanting to get pregnant" section of the app. Their complaint also pointed to Facebook's terms for its business tools, which said the company used so-called "event data" to personalize ads and content. In a 2022 filing (PDF), the tech giant admitted that Flo used Facebook's kit during this period and that the app sent data connected to "App Events." But Meta denied receiving intimate information about users' health. Nonetheless, the jury ruled (PDF) against Meta. Along with the eavesdropping decision, the group determined that Flo's users had a reasonable expectation they weren't being overheard or recorded, as well as ruling that Meta didn't have consent to eavesdrop or record. The unanimous verdict was that the massive company violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act. The jury's ruling could impact over 3.7 million U.S. users who registered between November 2016 and February 2019, with updates to be shared via email and a case website. The exact compensation from the trial or potential settlements remains uncertain.

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The Trump administration has reportedly directed NASA to draw up plans to shut down its Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite missions, which provide vital climate and agricultural data for scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. As NPR reports, the satellites are "the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases." From the report: It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions. The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years, according to scientists who worked on the missions. An official review by NASA in 2023 found that "the data are of exceptionally high quality" and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years. Both missions, known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, measure carbon dioxide and plant growth around the globe. They use identical measurement devices, but one device is attached to a stand-alone satellite while the other is attached to the International Space Station. The standalone satellite would burn up in the atmosphere if NASA pursued plans to terminate the mission. NASA employees who work on the two missions are making what the agency calls Phase F plans for both carbon-monitoring missions, according to David Crisp, a longtime NASA scientist who designed the instruments and managed the missions until he retired in 2022. Phase F plans lay out options for terminating NASA missions. The OCO missions would lose funding under the Trump Administration's budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2026, which begins Oct. 1 but has yet to pass. "Presidential budget proposals are wish lists that often bear little resemblance to final congressional budgets," notes NPR. "The Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions have already received funding from Congress through the end of the 2025 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30." "Draft budgets that Congress is currently considering for next year keep NASA funding basically flat. But it's not clear whether these specific missions will receive funding again, or if Congress will pass a budget before current funding expires on Sept. 30."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple released a new developer beta build of macOS 26 Tahoe today, and it came with another big update for a familiar icon. The old Macintosh HD hard drive icon, for years represented by a facsimile of an old spinning hard drive, has been replaced with something clearly intended to resemble a solid-state drive (the SSD in your Mac actually looks like a handful of chips soldered to a circuit board, but we'll forgive the creative license). The Macintosh HD icon became less visible a few years back, when new macOS installs stopped showing your internal disk on the desktop by default. It has also been many years since Apple shifted to SSDs as the primary boot media for new Macs. It's not clear why the icon is being replaced now, instead of years ago -- maybe the icon had started clicking, and Apple just wanted to replace it before it suffered from catastrophic icon failure -- but regardless, the switch is logical (this is a computer storage pun). Apple's iconic Macintosh HD hard drive icon was first introduced in a 2000 Mac OS X beta and remained largely unchanged for over two decades, with only subtle updates in 2012 and 2014. The first SSD-equipped Mac was in 2008, "when the original MacBook Air came out," notes Ars. "By the time 'Retina' Macs began arriving in the early 2010s, SSDs had become the primary boot disk for most of them; laptops tended to be all-SSD, while desktops could be configured with an SSD or a hybrid Fusion Drive that used an SSD as boot media and an HDD for mass storage. Apple stopped shipping spinning hard drives entirely when the last of the Intel iMacs went away."

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Jim Acosta, the former CNN chief White House correspondent who now hosts an independent show on YouTube, has interviewed an AI-generated avatar of Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver. The late teen's parents created the avatar to preserve his voice and advocate for gun reform. Oliver's parents "granted Acosta the first 'interview' with the recreated version of their son on what would have been his 25th birthday," notes Variety. "Oliver was one of 17 people killed in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School." From the report: Acosta asked AI Oliver about his solution for gun violence, to which the avatar responded: "I believe in a mix of stronger gun control laws, mental health support and community engagement. We need to create safe spaces for conversations and connections, making sure everyone feels seen and heard. It's about building a culture of kindness and understanding." The avatar added, "Though my life was cut short, I want to keep inspiring others to connect and advocate for change." Acosta then asked AI Oliver about his personal life, such as his favorite sport and favorite basketball team. The two discussed the movie "Remember the Titans" and their favorite "Star Wars" moments. After a five-minute chat with the AI, Acosta then connected with Oliver's father, Manuel Oliver. "I'm kind of speechless as to the technology there," Acosta said. "It was so insightful. I really felt like I was speaking with Joaquin. It's just a beautiful thing." Manuel, who has been an outspoken voice in the push for gun control, said he believed bringing "AI Joaquin to life" would "create more impact." According to Manuel, the avatar is trained on information on the internet as well as things Oliver wrote, said and posted online. He said he wanted to make it clear to viewers that he is under no illusions about reviving his son. "I understand that this is AI. I don't want anyone to think that I am, in some way, trying to bring my son back," he said. "Sadly, I can't, right? I wish I could. However, the technology is out there." [...] Manuel said he is excited about the future of the project and what it means for his son's legacy. "What's amazing about this is that we've heard from the parents, we've heard from the politicians. Now we're hearing from one of the kids," Acosta said. "That's important. That hasn't happened." Manuel said he plans to have AI Oliver "on stage in the middle of a debate," and that "his knowledge is unlimited." You can watch the full interview on YouTube.

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In a report published Monday, Cloudflare accused Perplexity of deploying undeclared web crawlers that masquerade as regular Chrome browsers to access content from websites that have explicitly blocked its official bots. Since then, Perplexity has publicly and loudly announced that Cloudflare's claims are baseless and technically flawed. "This controversy reveals that Cloudflare's systems are fundamentally inadequate for distinguishing between legitimate AI assistants and actual threats," says Perplexity in a blog post. "If you can't tell a helpful digital assistant from a malicious scraper, then you probably shouldn't be making decisions about what constitutes legitimate web traffic." Perplexity continues: "Technical errors in Cloudflare's analysis aren't just embarrassing -- they're disqualifying. When you misattribute millions of requests, publish completely inaccurate technical diagrams, and demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern AI assistants work, you've forfeited any claim to expertise in this space."

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Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has come under fire after admitting that he frequently uses AI tools like ChatGPT for second opinions on political matters. The Guardian reports: ... Kristersson, whose Moderate party leads Sweden's center-right coalition government, said he used tools including ChatGPT and the French service LeChat. His colleagues also used AI in their daily work, he said. Kristersson told the Swedish business newspaper Dagens industri: "I use it myself quite often. If for nothing else than for a second opinion. What have others done? And should we think the complete opposite? Those types of questions." Tech experts, however, have raised concerns about politicians using AI tools in such a way, and the Aftonbladet newspaper accused Kristersson in a editorial of having "fallen for the oligarchs' AI psychosis." Kristersson's spokesperson, Tom Samuelsson, later said the prime minister did not take risks in his use of AI. "Naturally it is not security sensitive information that ends up there. It is used more as a ballpark," he said. But Virginia Dignum, a professor of responsible artificial intelligence at Umea University, said AI was not capable of giving a meaningful opinion on political ideas, and that it simply reflects the views of those who built it. "The more he relies on AI for simple things, the bigger the risk of an overconfidence in the system. It is a slippery slope," she told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. "We must demand that reliability can be guaranteed. We didn't vote for ChatGPT."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: OpenAI is preparing to raise what could be its final defense to stop The New York Times from digging through a spectacularly broad range of ChatGPT logs to hunt for any copyright-infringing outputs that could become the most damning evidence in the hotly watched case. In a joint letter (PDF) Thursday, both sides requested to hold a confidential settlement conference on August 7. Ars confirmed with the NYT's legal team that the conference is not about settling the case but instead was scheduled to settle one of the most disputed aspects of the case: news plaintiffs searching through millions of ChatGPT logs. That means it's possible that this week, ChatGPT users will have a much clearer understanding of whether their private chats might be accessed in the lawsuit. In the meantime, OpenAI has broken down (PDF) the "highly complex" process required to make deleted chats searchable in order to block the NYT's request for broader access. Previously, OpenAI had vowed to stop what it deemed was the NYT's attempt to conduct "mass surveillance" of ChatGPT users. But ultimately, OpenAI lost its fight to keep news plaintiffs away from all ChatGPT logs. After that loss, OpenAI appears to have pivoted and is now doing everything in its power to limit the number of logs accessed in the case -- short of settling -- as its customers fretted over serious privacy concerns. For the most vulnerable users, the lawsuit threatened to expose ChatGPT outputs from sensitive chats that OpenAI had previously promised would be deleted. Most recently, OpenAI floated a compromise, asking the court to agree that news organizations didn't need to search all ChatGPT logs. The AI company cited the "only expert" who has so far weighed in on what could be a statistically relevant, appropriate sample size -- computer science researcher Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick. He suggested that a sample of 20 million logs would be sufficient to determine how frequently ChatGPT users may be using the chatbot to regurgitate articles and circumvent news sites' paywalls. But the NYT and other news organizations rejected the compromise, OpenAI said in a filing (PDF) yesterday. Instead, news plaintiffs have made what OpenAI said was an "extraordinary request that OpenAI produce the individual log files of 120 million ChatGPT consumer conversations." That's six times more data than Berg-Kirkpatrick recommended, OpenAI argued. Complying with the request threatens to "increase the scope of user privacy concerns" by delaying the outcome of the case "by months," OpenAI argued. If the request is granted, it would likely trouble many users by extending the amount of time that users' deleted chats will be stored and potentially making them vulnerable to a breach or leak. As negotiations potentially end this week, OpenAI's co-defendant, Microsoft, has picked its own fight with the NYT over its internal ChatGPT equivalent tool that could potentially push the NYT to settle the disputes over ChatGPT logs.

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