Google announced Wednesday that its quantum computer achieved the first verifiable quantum advantage, running a new algorithm 13,000 times faster than a top supercomputer. The algorithm, called Quantum Echoes, was published in the journal Nature. The results can be replicated on another quantum computer of similar quality, something Google had not demonstrated before. The quantum computer uses a chip called Willow, which was announced in December 2024. Hartmut Neven, head of Google's Quantum AI research lab, called the work a demonstration of the first algorithm with verifiable quantum advantage and a milestone on the software track.

Michel H. Devoret, who won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics and joined Google in 2023, said future quantum computers will run calculations impossible with classical algorithms. Google stopped short of claiming the work would have practical uses on its own. Instead, the company said Quantum Echoes demonstrated a technique that could be applied to other algorithms in drug discovery and materials science.

A second paper published Wednesday on arXiv showed how the method could be applied to nuclear magnetic resonance. The experiment involved a relatively small quantum system that fell short of full practical quantum advantage because it was not able to work faster than a traditional computer. Google exhaustively red-teamed the research, putting some researchers to work trying to disprove its own results.

Prineha Narang, a professor at UCLA, called the advance meaningful. The quantum computer tested two molecules, one with 15 atoms and another with 28 atoms. Results on the quantum computer matched traditional NMR and revealed information not usually available from NMR. Google's research competes against Microsoft, IBM, universities and efforts in China. The Chinese government has committed more than $15.2 billion to quantum research. Previous claims of quantum advantage have been met with skepticism.

Early Monday, an Amazon Web Services outage disrupted banks, games, and Peloton classes. Eight Sleep customers faced a different problem. Their internet-enabled mattresses malfunctioned. People woke to beds locked in upright positions, excessive heat, flashing lights, and unexpected alarms. Matteo Franceschetti, the company's chief executive, apologized and said engineers were building an outage-proof mode. By Monday evening, all devices functioned again, though some experienced data processing delays. The mattresses adjust temperature between 55 and 110 degrees and elevate bodies into different positions. They activate soundscapes and vibrational alarms. The advanced models cost over $5,000. A yearly subscription of $199 to $399 is required for temperature controls.

General Motors is ending production of its Chevy BrightDrop electric delivery vans after sluggish demand and the expiration of key EV tax credits. "This is not a decision we made lightly because of the impact on our employees," GM CEO Mary Barra said during the company's third quarter earnings call Tuesday. "However the commercial electric van market has been developing much slower than expected, and changes to the regulatory framework and fleet incentives has made the business even more challenging." The Verge reports: Brightdrop first launched in 2021 as GM's effort to capture a large portion of the commercial EV market, starting with a pair of electric vans, as well as fleet management software and electric-powered carts for goods delivery. The automaker made deals with Walmart, FedEx, and other major retailers to add the van to their delivery fleets. But after trying to make a go of it as a standalone brand, GM reabsorbed BrightDrop in 2023, and then later assigned it to Chevy in order to tap into the brand's sales and service dealer network.

Now the van will stand as yet another casualty of the expiration of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which ended on September 30th. In addition to the consumer credit, there was also a $7,500 discount for commercial EVs under 18,000 lbs -- which Brightdrop was eligible for. The van was a range leader, but also was more expensive than its most prominent competitor. Brightdrop's vans started at $74,000, while Ford's E-Transit van with extended battery range sold for $51,600.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called the company's Tumblr acquisition his biggest failure -- but one he hasn't given up on yet. The comments were made at the recent WordCamp Canada 2025 conference, where Mullenweg went live for a Town Hall session to connect with the open source-focused WordPress community.

The exec noted that Tumblr was still on a different technical stack than WordPress -- something he had intended to correct by migrating the back end to WordPress infrastructure. However, that massive undertaking was put on hold earlier this year, as the cost to move Tumblr's half-billion blogs would be difficult given that the blogging platform wasn't profitable and continues to be sustained by the profits of other Automattic products.

The company has tried to trim costs with layoffs and the reallocation of Tumblr resources to more profitable parts of the business, but those efforts have yet to pay off. Mullenweg acknowledged these concerns at his Town Hall session, saying, "I need to switch [Tumblr] over to WordPress, but it's a big lift. It's over 500 million blogs, actually, and, as a business, it's costing so much more to run than it generates in revenue." As a result, Automattic had to prioritize other projects to make Tumblr sustainable, he said. "It's probably my biggest failure or missed opportunity right now, but we're still working on it," he added.

alternative_right shares a report from the Internet Archive: This October, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine is projected to hit a once-in-a-generation milestone: 1 trillion web pages archived. That's one trillion memories, moments, and movements -- preserved for the public and available to access via the Wayback Machine.

We'll be commemorating this historic achievement on October 22, 2025, with a global event: a party at our San Francisco headquarters and a livestream for friends and supporters around the world. More than a celebration, it's a tribute to what we've built together: a free and open digital library of the web.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AI content has proliferated across the Internet over the past few years, but those early confabulations with mutated hands have evolved into synthetic images and videos that can be hard to differentiate from reality. Having helped to create this problem, Google has some responsibility to keep AI video in check on YouTube. To that end, the company has started rolling out its promised likeness detection system for creators. [...] The likeness detection tool, which is similar to the site's copyright detection system, has now expanded beyond the initial small group of testers. YouTube says the first batch of eligible creators have been notified that they can use likeness detection, but interested parties will need to hand Google even more personal information to get protection from AI fakes.

Currently, likeness detection is a beta feature in limited testing, so not all creators will see it as an option in YouTube Studio. When it does appear, it will be tucked into the existing "Content detection" menu. In YouTube's demo video, the setup flow appears to assume the channel has only a single host whose likeness needs protection. That person must verify their identity, which requires a photo of a government ID and a video of their face. It's unclear why YouTube needs this data in addition to the videos people have already posted with their oh-so stealable faces, but rules are rules.

After signing up, YouTube will flag videos from other channels that appear to have the user's face. YouTube's algorithm can't know for sure what is and is not an AI video. So some of the face match results may be false positives from channels that have used a short clip under fair use guidelines. If creators do spot an AI fake, they can add some details and submit a report in a few minutes. If the video includes content copied from the creator's channel that does not adhere to fair use guidelines, YouTube suggests also submitting a copyright removal request. However, just because a person's likeness appears in an AI video does not necessarily mean YouTube will remove it.

U.S. regulators have opened a new investigation into about 2,000 Waymo self-driving cars after reports that one of the company's robotaxis illegally passed a stopped school bus with flashing lights and children disembarking.

Waymo says it's "already developed and implemented improvements related to stopping for school buses and will land additional software updates in our next software release." The company added "driving safely around children has always been one of Waymo's highest priorities. ... [Waymo] approached the school bus from an angle where the flashing lights and stop sign were not visible and drove slowly around the front of the bus before driving past it, keeping a safe distance from children." Reuters reports: NHTSA opened the investigation after a recent media report aired video of an incident in Georgia in which a Waymo did not remain stationary when approaching a school bus with its red lights flashing and stop arm deployed. The report said the Waymo vehicle initially stopped then maneuvered around the bus, passing the extended stop arm while students were disembarking. Waymo's automated driving system surpassed 100 million miles of driving in July and is logging 2 million miles per week, the agency said. "Based on NHTSA's engagement with Waymo on this incident and the accumulation of operational miles, the likelihood of other prior similar incidents is high," the agency said. NHTSA said the vehicle involved was equipped with Waymo's fifth-generation Automated Driving System and was operating without a human safety driver at the time of the incident.

The German Koblenz Regional Court has banned the internet service provider 1&1 from marketing its fiber-to-the-curb service as fiber-optic DSL. The court found that the company misled customers because its network uses copper cables for the final stage of connections, sometimes extending up to a mile from the distribution box to subscribers' homes.

Customers who visited the ISP's website and checked connection availability received a notification stating that a "1&1 fiber optic DSL connection" was available, even though fiber optic cables terminate at street-level distribution boxes or building service rooms. The company pairs the copper lines with vectoring technology to boost DSL speeds to 100 megabits per second. The Federation of German Consumer Organizations filed the lawsuit. Ramona Pop, the organization's chairperson, said that anyone who promises fiber optics but delivers only DSL is deceiving customers.

TikTok changed its policies earlier this year on sharing user data with governments as the company negotiated with the Trump Administration to continue operating in the United States. The company added language allowing data sharing with "regulatory authorities, where relevant" beyond law enforcement. Until April 25, 2025, TikTok's website stated the company would notify users before disclosing their data to law enforcement. The policy now says TikTok will inform users only where required by law and changed the timing from before disclosure to if disclosure occurs. The company also softened its language from stating it "rejects data requests from law enforcement authorities" to saying it "may reject" such requests. TikTok declined to answer repeated questions from Forbes about whether it has shared or is sharing private user information with the Department of Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The timing difference prevents users from challenging subpoenas before their data is handed over.

"Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems," writes longtime Slashdot reader jrepin. "Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.5." From the announcement: This fresh new release is all about fine-tuning, fresh features, and a making everything smooth and sleek for everyone. The new version brings automatic light-to-dark theme switching based on the time of day. You can configure which global themes it switches between. You can also configure whether you want the wallpaper to switch between its light and dark versions based on the color scheme, the time of day, or be always light or dark.

Next up is a "Pinned clipboard items" feature, which lets you save text you use regularly into the clipboard. Breeze-themed windows will now have the same level of roundness in all four corners, even the bottom one. Flatpak Permissions page has been transformed into a general Application Permissions page, where you can configure applications' ability to do things like take screenshots and accept remote control requests. The utility that reads the level of ink or toner from your printer now informs you when it's running low or empty.

For the gamers out there, you can now see more relevant info about game controllers on System Settings' Game Controller page. Artists among you can now configure any rotary dials and touch rings on your drawing tablet. Users sensitive to color can now make use of a grayscale color filter, which desaturates or removes color systemwide.

Plasma 6.5 implements support for an experimental version of the Wayland picture-in-picture protocol that promises to allow apps like Firefox to eventually display proper PiP windows that stay above others automatically. Support for "overlay planes" was added, which can reduce CPU usage and power draw when displaying full-screen content using a compatible GPU. You can read more about these and many other new features in the Plasma 6.5 release announcement and complete changelog.

OpenAI released ChatGPT Atlas on Tuesday, an AI-powered web browser that CEO Sam Altman described as "smooth" and "quick" during a livestream announcement. The browser is available globally on macOS while versions for Windows, iOS, and Android are expected soon. Atlas includes memory features that personalize the browsing experience and an agent mode that allows ChatGPT to perform tasks such as booking reservations and flights or editing documents.

Users can manage these stored memories through the browser's settings and can open incognito windows. The browser displays a split-screen view by default when users click links from search results. The view shows both the webpage and the ChatGPT transcript simultaneously. Atlas also offers webpage summarization and a feature called "cursor chat" that allows users to select text and have ChatGPT revise it inline.

SpaceX surpassed the 10,000-satellite milestone for its Starlink constellation after two Falcon 9 launches on Oct. 19 added 56 more satellites to orbit. The company now operates about two-thirds of all active satellites worldwide and continues to break reuse records. Space.com reports: A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink internet satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 3:24 p.m. EDT (1924 GMT; 12:24 p.m. local California time). Those 28 included the 10,000th Starlink spacecraft ever to reach orbit, which a SpaceX employee noted on the company's launch webcast: "From Tintin to 10,000! Go Starlink, go Falcon, go SpaceX!"

It was also the 132nd Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, equaling the mark set by the rocket last year -- and there are still nearly 2.5 months to go in 2025. [...] This launch was the second of the day for SpaceX; less than two hours earlier, another Falcon 9 sent 28 more Starlink satellites up from Florida's Space Coast. That earlier liftoff was the 31st for that Falcon 9's first stage, setting a new reuse record.

Kohler has launched the Dekoda, a $599 smart toilet camera that analyzes users' waste to track hydration, gut health, and detect potential issues like blood. "It also comes with a rechargeable battery, a USB connection, and a fingerprint sensor to identify who's using the toilet," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The Dekoda is currently available for preorder, with shipments scheduled to begin on October 21. In addition to the hardware purchase fee, customers will need to pay between $70 and $156 per year for a subscription. If you're uneasy about the privacy implications of putting a camera right below your private parts, the company says, "Dekoda's sensors see down into your toilet and nowhere else." It also notes that the resulting data is secured via end-to-end encryption.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says his company has lost all access to China's market after U.S. export restrictions eliminated what was once a 95% share. Speaking in an interview with Citadel Securities, Huang questioned the wisdom of policies that cost America one of the world's largest markets.

The Biden Administration imposed rules in 2022 to restrict exports of Nvidia's most advanced AI chips to China. The Trump Administration blocked additional chip sales in April and later granted export licenses for certain Nvidia and AMD chips in exchange for 15% of revenues. Chinese regulators responded by telling domestic tech companies to avoid Nvidia chips designed to meet U.S. export requirements. Beijing also placed strict limits on exports of rare earths. Huang noted that about half the world's AI researchers are in China and called it a mistake not to have them build AI on American technology.

Google plans to let Pixel smartphone enthusiasts test out the company's next handset ahead of its public introduction. From a report: Google has invited members of its "Superfans" group to apply to test future Pixel hardware, asking entrants to profess their knowledge and passion for the brand in hopes of being able to beta test forthcoming products.

Consumer tech companies often let small groups of customers try out unreleased products under strict secrecy to gather feedback during development. But it's incredibly rare for a company of Google's size to do it with something as high-profile as the Pixel lineup.

The search giant will select 15 people from the pool of entrants, and winners must all sign a non-disclosure agreement to receive devices, according to official rules for the contest reviewed by Bloomberg News. "The Trusted Tester program is an opportunity to provide feedback and help shape a Pixel phone currently in development," the document reads.

AWS experienced a three-hour outage early Monday morning that disrupted thousands of websites and applications across the globe. The cloud computing provider reported DNS problems with DynamoDB in its US-EAST-1 region in northern Virginia starting at 12:11 a.m. Pacific time. Over 4 million users reported issues, according to Downdetector. Snapchat saw reports spike from more than 22,000 to around 4,000 as systems recovered. Roblox dropped from over 12,600 complaints to fewer than 500. Reddit and the financial platform Chime remained affected longer. Perplexity, Coinbase and Robinhood attributed their platform disruptions directly to AWS.

Gaming platforms including Fortnite, Clash Royale and Clash of Clans went offline. Signal confirmed the messaging app was down. In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland, Vodafone, BT, and the HMRC website faced problems. United Airlines reported disrupted access to its app and website overnight. Some internal systems were temporarily affected. Delta experienced a small number of minor flight delays. By 3:35 a.m. Pacific time, AWS said the issue had been fully mitigated. Most service operations were succeeding normally though some requests faced throttling during final resolution. AWS holds roughly one-third of the cloud infrastructure market ahead of Microsoft and Google.

"Windows Recovery Environment (RE), as the name suggests, is a built-in set of tools inside Windows that allow you to troubleshoot your computer, including booting into the BIOS, or starting the computer in safe mode," writes Tom's Hardware.

"It's a crucial piece of software that has now, unfortunately, been rendered useless (for many) as part of the latest Windows update." A new bug discovered in Windows 11's October build, KB5066835, makes it so that your USB keyboard and mouse stop working entirely, so you cannot interact with the recovery UI at all.

This problem has already been recognized and highlighted by Microsoft, who clarified that a fix is on its way to address this issue. Any plugged-in peripherals will continue to work just fine inside the actual operating system, but as soon as you go into Windows RE, your USB keyboard and mouse will become unresponsive. It's important to note that if your PC fails to start-up for any reason, it defaults to the recovery environment to, you know, recover and diagnose any issues that might've been preventing it from booting normally.

Note that those hanging onto old PS/2-connector equipped keyboards and mice seem to be unaffected by this latest Windows software gaffe.

Readers in 2025 "may struggle to remember the optimism of the aughts, when the internet seemed to offer endless possibilities for virtual art and writing that was free..." argues a new review at Bookforum. "The content we do create online, if we still create, often feels unreflectively automatic: predictable quote-tweet dunks, prefabricated poses on Instagram, TikTok dances that hit their beats like clockwork, to say nothing of what's literally thoughtlessly churned out by LLM-powered bots."

They write that author Joanna Walsh "wants us to remember how truly creative, and human, the internet once was," in the golden age of user-generated content — and funny cat picture sites like I Can Has Cheezburger: I Can Has Cheezburger... was an amateur project, an outlet for tech professionals who wanted an easier way to exchange cute cat pics after a hard day at work. In Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters, Walsh documents how unpaid creative labor is the basis for almost everything that's good (and much that's bad) online, including the open-source code Linux, developed by Linus Torvalds when he was still in school ("just as a hobby, won't be big and professional"), and even, in Walsh's account, the World Wide Web itself. The platforms that emerged in the 2000s as "Web 2.0," including Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, allowed anyone to experiment in a space that had been reserved for coders and hackers, making the internet interactive even for the inexpert and virtually unlimited in potential audience. The explosion in amateur creativity that followed took many forms, from memes to tweeted one-liners to diaristic blogs to durational digital performances to sloppy Photoshops to the formal and informal taxonomic structures — wikis, neologisms, digitally native dialects...

[U]ser-generated content was also, at bottom, about the bottom line, a business model sold to us under the guise of artistic empowerment. Even referring to an anonymous amateur as a "user," Walsh argues, cedes ground: these platforms are populated by producers, but their owners see us as, and turn us into, "helpless addicts." For some, online amateurism translated to professional success, a viral post earning an author a book deal, or a reputation as a top commenter leading to a staff writing job on a web publication... But for most, these days, participation in the online attention economy feels like a tax, or maybe a trickle of revenue, rather than free fun or a ticket to fame. The few remaining professionals in the arts and letters have felt pressured to supplement their full-time jobs with social media self-promotion, subscription newsletters, podcasts, and short-form video. On what was once called Twitter, users can pay, and sometimes get paid, to post with greater reach...

The chapters are bookended by an introduction on the early promise of 2004 and a coda on the defeat of 2025 and supplemented by an appendix with a straightforward timeline of the major events and publications that serve as the book's touchstones... The online spaces where amateur content creators once "created and steered online culture" have been hollowed out and replaced by slop, but what really hurts is that the slop is being produced by bots trained on precisely that amateur content.

Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: GIMP has officially launched its own Snap package for Linux, finally taking over from the community-maintained Snapcrafters project. The move means all future GIMP releases will now be built directly from the team's CI pipeline, ensuring faster, more consistent updates across distributions. The developers also introduced a new "gimp-plugins" interface to support external plugins while maintaining Snap's security confinement, with GMIC and OpenVINO already supported.

This marks another major step in GIMP's cross-platform packaging efforts, joining Flatpak and MSIX distribution options. The first officially maintained version, Version 3.0.6GIMP 3.0.6, is available now on the "latest/stable" Snap channel, with preview builds rolling out for testers.

"This is an attempt to stop Waymo cars from driving into the dead end," complains a home-made sign in San Francisco, "where they are forced to reverse and adversely affect the lives of the residents."

On an orange traffic post, the home-made sign declares "NO WAYMO — 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m," with an explanation for the rest of the neighborhood. "Waymo comes at all hours of the night and up to 7 times per hour with flashing lights and screaming reverse sounds, waking people up and destroying the quality of life."

SFGate reports that 1,400 people on Reddit upvoted a photo of the sign's text: It delves into the bureaucratic mess — multiple requests to Waymo, conversations with engineers, and 311 [municipal services] tickets, which had all apparently gone ignored — before finally providing instructions for human drivers. "Please move [the cones] back after you have entered so we can continue to try to block the Waymo cars from entering and disrupting the lives of residents."

This isn't the first time Waymo's autonomous vehicles have disrupted San Francisco residents' peace. Last year, a fleet of the robotaxis created another sleepless fiasco in the city's SoMa neighborhood, honking at each other for hours throughout the night for two and a half weeks.
Other on Reddit shared the concern. "I live at an dead end street in Noe Valley, and these Waymos always stuck there," another commenter posted. "It's been bad for more than a year," agreed another comment. "People on the Internet think you're just a hater but it's a real issue with Waymos."

On Thursday "the sign remained at the corner of Lake Street and Second Avenue," notes SFGate. And yet "something appeared to have shifted. "Waymo vehicles weren't allowing drop-offs or pickups on the street, though whether this was due to the home-printed plea, the cone blockage, or simply updating routes remains unclear."