The U.S. company Meteomatics has created an automated weather-monitoring system that uses drones to collect atmospheric data at multiple altitudes before returning to recharge and upload their findings. The so-called Meteobase, which consists of a base station on the ground with a drone that can be launched and recovered automatically, "is highly weather resistant and keeps the drone at a comfortable temperature," reports The Guardian. "It can send out one data-gathering mission a day, or multiple flights to monitor fog, icing, an advancing weather front, or other fast-changing conditions." The report says the reusable drones could offer a cheaper, more controllable alternative to helium weather balloons, especially for tracking rapidly changing conditions.

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"Space.com and The Guardian are reporting that the Falcon 9 upper stage leftover from the launch of the Firefly Blue Ghost-1 lander on Jan. 15, 2025 is due to impact the Moon on Aug. 5, 2026," writes longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot. From a report: Onboard the same flight was the Hakuto-R Mission 2, called Resilience, a robotic lunar lander developed by the Japanese company ispace. According to a new study by an international team, the resulting impact plume may briefly be bright enough to see against the dark sky near the moon's edge. That means it might be visible to moongazers with sufficiently sensitive telescopes. This head-on collision of the errant stage is expected to occur near the Einstein and Bell craters near the western lunar limb. It may well be visible to ground and space-based assets. Using special physics simulations to model the impact, William Jo, a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas, Austin and colleagues predict the debris plume from the impact will have the central ejecta spike reaching roughly 47 miles to over 60 miles (75 kilometers to 100 kilometers) altitude. "Our calculations suggest the plume should be several orders of magnitude brighter than the dark-sky background for the first few minutes after impact," Jo told Space.com. "So the plume should be visible, though I'd stress this is a single nominal case. The real one will look different, and the numbers are on the optimistic side. But the point worth making is that the flash isn't really the story here." Jo emphasized that there's great slam-dunk science to be had. "Watching this one gives us a rare chance to open up ejecta-plume science and calibrate those models against a real event, which matters for every future thing we deliver to the moon," Jo said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI has discovered other instances in which autonomous agents have escaped containment as the company expands its investigation of the hacking incident at tech firm Hugging Face that drew global attention this month, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The new breakouts were uncovered during the company's publicly announced investigation into how one of its agents escaped what was meant to be a contained testing environment this month, the two people said, and OpenAI is now looking into those instances as well. One of the sources said that the escapes were limited in nature and that none of the agents were thought to have left OpenAI's network. An OpenAI spokesperson referred to a statement issued by the company on Tuesday that said it was reviewing "broader activity from our models" in addition to the Hugging Face intrusion. The discovery of additional rogue behavior at OpenAI, even if limited in nature, could feed growing appetite for regulation coming out of the White House and elsewhere. The expanded investigation by OpenAI was launched shortly before its primary rival, Anthropic, disclosed that its models were also responsible for a series of break-ins that led to breaches at three other companies dating back to April, according to the two sources and a third source familiar with the matter. The recent discovery of other past breakouts at OpenAI has not previously been reported. AI safety experts said the new disclosures paint a portrait of a group of cutting-edge labs whose ability to develop dangerous autonomous hacking agents outstrips their ability to keep them under control. "We have a whole industry where the people designing, developing and putting out these tools aren't keeping up themselves to responsibly develop these things and keep them safe," said Maurice Chiodo, a mathematician who works at Cambridge University's Center for the Study of Existential Risk. Reuters could not establish exactly how many incidents OpenAI investigators found or the timings or circumstances under which they occurred. The three sources said OpenAI and outside experts were examining log data from earlier in the year in a bid to understand what took place.

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Major record labels including Universal, Sony, and Warner have proposed excluding AI-generated songs from official charts unless they are "substantially human made," properly labeled, legally produced, and free from manipulation concerns. The Verge reports: The proposal goes quite a bit further than a labeling proposal put forth by the RIAA, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), SAG-AFTRA, and others. That would create a set of standardized labels for AI-generated and AI-assisted music. The labels' proposal would require songs be clearly labeled, but it would also keep them off international charts unless they met specific criteria, including being "substantially human made." To be eligible, the songs would also have to respect the terms of service of whatever AI service was used, the model would have to have the rights to any data it was trained on, and "not raise stream or chart manipulation concerns." What sort of concerns and what constitutes "substantially human made" are currently vague. Sony Music, UMG, and Mom+Pop Music did not immediately respond to a request for clarification. The IFPI has thrown its weight behind the labels' proposal, though no charting organization has signaled any immediate plan to adopt the rules [...].

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More than 81% of Australian children ages 10 to 15 were still using social media three months after the country's under-16 ban took effect, with roughly half saying platforms never checked their age. Reuters reports: In a study published on Friday, eSafety also found most children aged between 10 and 15 were using social media just as frequently in March as they had before the ban came into force on December 10 last year, while parental awareness of their habits decreased. Children's continued social media use took place even as account ownership declined to 42% from 52%, with "statistically significant" reductions across YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok in particular, the report said. "Most under-16s who had social media accounts before commencement were able to either retain them or create new ones at the three-month mark, with social media platforms' failure to implement effective age assurance measures cited as the main reason," eSafety said in a statement [...] Before the ban, nearly 86% of children surveyed reported using at least one age-restricted platform. Three months later, that figure remained above 81%, the report said. About 58% of teenagers reported using social media daily or more often, barely down from roughly 60% before the ban, it found. The report showed minimal change in "sports and physical activity, arts and music, spending time with friends and family, and attendance at community events." Around half the children who retained their accounts said platforms had not checked their age, the most common reason they were able to stay on the services. Others said their accounts listed them as aged 16 or older or that age-checking systems had incorrectly determined they were older. The findings broadly matched snapshot data eSafety published in late March.

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Sony says it will proceed with ending PlayStation disc sales in January 2028 despite petitions, boycott threats, and concerns about digital ownership and the disappearance of the secondhand market. PCMag reports: After Sony's recent earnings call, an investor Q&A session saw analysts ask about its controversial decision to end disc production across all of its consoles. The company hadn't publicly commented since its announcement and had reduced activity on social accounts and other marketing channels. Sony's chief financial officer, Lin Tao, broke that silence during the Q&A. "There are various reasons we made this decision," she said through an interpreter. "The biggest being that the digitalization of content overall has been progressing. That's the big factor. It's not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of content, digitalization is progressing. "And so when we think about the future, and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this, and we came to this conclusion, and we're going to cautiously move this forward," Tao said. "We have received various opinions, and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us," said Tao. [...] Tao says Sony wants to "consider" the emotions of disgruntled customers, especially as titles are "connected to people's fond memories in many cases." Tao also alluded to the possibility of future measures to lessen the blow for anyone unhappy with the decision, but it appears Sony hasn't yet finalized what those may be. "In the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore," she said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Cyberattacks targeting municipal water systems have been reported in at least seven states this week, prompting the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency to warn utilities nationwide that hackers are trying to disrupt critical water infrastructure. In a public service announcement Thursday, the agencies said water and wastewater utilities have reported incidents to the FBI, with some malicious activity degrading water operations. The announcement does not name the states. The warning comes after hackers targeted more than 30 municipal water facilities in Minnesota in an attack that had hallmarks of Iranian meddling, according to a law enforcement official. It is still under investigation. A spokesperson for Minnesota's information technology services agency said Thursday there was no indication the breaches contaminated any municipal water supplies. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a separate alert that some larger attacks on water infrastructure had "resulted in boil water notices and sustained manual operations," though it did not say where. [...] The federal advisory said the malicious cyber actors, or MCAs, targeted specific brands of control systems used by municipal water utilities, though the FBI and the EPA urged operators of all systems to take precautions. [...] The agencies said the hackers remotely accessed internet-facing devices, changed IP addresses and passwords, and caused utilities to lose monitoring and control capabilities. The federal advisory calls on system operators to remove programmable logical controllers, or PLCs, from direct internet exposure by putting them behind secure gateways and firewalls; use strong passwords; and limit communications between authorized control system devices through access control lists.

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Google has integrated its Nano Banana 2 image generator into Google Earth, allowing users to place AI-generated events and objects onto real satellite imagery. The company says its AI-generated images contain invisible watermarks detectable through Gemini or Lens, but the BBC found those safeguards and some third-party detection tools can be fooled into labeling manipulated Google Earth images as real. From the report: A collapsed Eiffel Tower, a sinkhole swallowing the Great Pyramid of Giza and Russian tanks in Ukraine's capital were among the images BBC Verify was able to create when testing the feature, which was rolled out on Thursday. Google has not yet responded to questions based on BBC Verify's tests, but in a social media post the company said they "take misinformation seriously" and that "we prevent image creation on harmful topics and are continually updating our protections." AI and misinformation expert Henk van Ess has highlighted the risks this feature poses, creating fake images of a non-existent nuclear power plant in Iran, a refugee camp on the US-Mexico border and a fake hospital in Gaza with a bomb crater next to it. He said Google was allowing "invented" imagery to be "welded to genuine coordinates, drawn on genuine imagery." "The forgery does not have to look convincing on its own. It inherits the credibility of the map it was born on," van Ess added. UPDATE 7/31/26 10:54 AM: Google is rolling back the image generation inside of Google Earth: "We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world. We've seen geospatial professionals using this feature for a range of useful purposes, however we've also seen people sharing screenshots of generated imagery that appear to violate our policies. So we're rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails. It's important to note that generated images didn't appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI generated."

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alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Google has basically stopped sending people to websites (including our site) for answers and information. Instead, it's using AI to answer them on its platform, in its words. Chartbeat data shared with Axios shows Google Search traffic to publishers fell 34% over the past year. That pain is regressive. Over the past two years, small publishers lost 60% of referrals from search overall, medium publishers 47%, large publishers 22%.

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New York has sued prediction-market platform Kalshi, alleging it operates an "illegal gambling operation" without state authorization. "No matter what they call themselves, prediction markets like Kalshi are gambling platforms, plain and simple," said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a press release announcing the lawsuit. "By ignoring our laws, Kalshi is running an illegal operation and harming New Yorkers in the process." CNBC reports: In a case filed in a Manhattan state court (PDF), the lawsuit claims that Kalshi accepts wagers as a gambling business in disregard for the state's constitution and laws by not being registered with the New York State Gaming Commission. Governor Kathy Hochul in the press release said the state is taking the action to stop what it views as illegal behavior and bring the company into compliance with New York law. The lawsuit is seeking a permanent injunction against Kalshi. The suit by the state is also seeking a total restitution to users who have placed trades on the platform, a $100,000 penalty for each attempt to offer sports wagering, and another penalty three times the amount the company has gained while allegedly operating in violation of New York law. The state estimates that could total $36 billion.

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Google says AI-assisted workflows helped Chrome fix 1,072 security bugs across versions 149 and 150, more than the previous 23 releases combined. The company is also testing twice-weekly security updates and "dynamic patching," which could apply most fixes without requiring users to restart the entire browser. "By leveraging Chrome's multi-process architecture, dynamic patching sequentially replaces background child processes (like the Renderer and GPU) with updated binaries on the fly," says Google in a blog post. PiunikaWeb reports: Alongside dynamic patching, Google is rolling out smarter background updates during periods of minimal user disruption. Starting with Chrome 150 on macOS, the browser takes advantage of the operating system's windowless state. If all Chrome windows are closed but the app remains running in the background, the browser will quietly auto-restart to apply pending updates. For enterprise environments, IT admins can continue to manage fleet-wide deployments through Chrome Enterprise Core or enforce update prompts using the RelaunchNotification policy. Google's long-term vision is a browser that remains continuously protected in the background without interrupting your daily browsing session. In the meantime, you can manually trigger pending updates by clicking the update prompt in the top-right corner of Chrome.

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