GrapheneOS, the privacy-focused Android fork once exclusive to Google Pixels, is partnering with a major Android OEM to bring its hardened, de-Googled OS to Snapdragon-powered flagship phones. Android Authority reports: Until now, GrapheneOS has been available only on Pixel phones, making Google’s flagships popular among privacy enthusiasts, journalists, and, as a Spanish police report suggested earlier this year, even organized crime groups in Catalonia. But that Pixel exclusivity may end by 2026 or 2027. GrapheneOS revealed in a Reddit thread that it has been working with a “major Android OEM” since June 2025 to enable official support for “future versions of their existing models.” These devices will reportedly use flagship Snapdragon chips, a notable shift from Google’s in-house Tensor processors.

The project explained that only Pixels have met its strict security and update requirements so far. However, the new partnership suggests that another OEM is finally matching those standards. GrapheneOS also hinted that the mysterious partner’s devices will be “priced similarly to Pixels” and available globally as part of the brand’s standard lineup.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists from Spain and China have successfully repaired the blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer’s-model mice, enabling the brain to naturally clear amyloid-beta plaques and reverse cognitive decline. “After just three drug injections, mice with certain genes that mimic Alzheimer’s showed a reversal of several key pathological features,” adds ScienceAlert. From the report: Within hours of the first injection, the animal brains showed a nearly 45 percent reduction in clumps of amyloid-beta plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. The mice had previously shown signs of cognitive decline, but after all three doses, the animals performed on par with their healthy peers in spatial learning and memory tasks. The benefits lasted at least six months.

These preclinical results don’t guarantee success in humans, but they’re an encouraging start, which the authors say “heralds a new era” in drug research. “The therapeutic implications are profound,” claim the international team of researchers, co-led by scientists at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the West China Hospital Sichuan University (WCHSU). The findings have been published in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Conversation: Sound waves at frequencies above the threshold for human hearing are routinely used in medical care. Also known as ultrasound, these sound waves can help clinicians diagnose and monitor disease, and can also provide first glimpses of your newest family members. And now, patients with conditions ranging from cancer to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s may soon benefit from recent advances in this technology.

I am a biomedical engineer who studies how focused ultrasound — the concentration of sound energy into a specific volume — can be fine-tuned to treat various conditions. Over the past few years, this technology has seen significant growth and use in the clinic. And researchers continue to discover new ways to use focused ultrasound to treat disease. […] Research on focused ultrasound has primarily focused on the most devastating and prevalent diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. However, I believe that further developments in, and increased use of, focused ultrasound in the clinic will eventually benefit patients with rare diseases.

One rare disease of particular interest for my lab is cerebral cavernous malformation, or CCM. CCMs are lesions in the brain that occur when the cells that make up blood vessels undergo uncontrolled growth. While uncommon, when these lesions grow and hemorrhage, they can cause debilitating neurological symptoms. The most common treatment for CCM is surgical removal of the brain lesions; however, some CCMs are located in brain areas that are difficult to access, creating a risk of side effects. Radiation is another treatment option, but it, too, can lead to serious adverse effects.

We found that using focused ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier can improve drug delivery to CCMs. Additionally, we also observed that focused ultrasound treatment itself could stop CCMs from growing in mice, even without administering a drug. While we don’t yet understand how focused ultrasound is stabilizing CCMs, abundant research on the safety of using this technique in patients treated for other conditions has allowed neurosurgeons to begin designing clinical trials testing the use of this technique on people with CCM. With further research and advancements, I am hopeful that focused ultrasound can become a viable treatment option for many devastating rare diseases.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mspohr shares a report from Futurism: Western automotive and green energy executives who visit China are returning humbled — and even terrified. As The Telegraph reports, the executives are warning that the country’s heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind, especially when it comes to electric vehicles. “We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Verge last month. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.” Some companies are giving up on new initiatives altogether, with the founder of mining company Fortescue, Andrew Forrest, claiming that his recent trip to China led to him abandoning attempts to produce EV powertrains in-house. “There are no people — everything is robotic,” he told The Telegraph.

Other executives recalled touring “dark factories” that don’t even need to keep the lights on, as most work is being done around the clock by robots. “You get this sense of a change, where China’s competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad,” British energy supplier Octopus CEO Greg Jackson told the newspaper. According to recent figures by the International Federation of Robotics, China has deployed orders of magnitude more industrial robots than Germany, the US, and the UK.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Norway has effectively achieved its 2025 goal of 100% electric new car sales, prompting the government to declare “mission accomplished” and propose scaling back EV tax exemptions to reflect a mature market. “We have had a goal that all new passenger cars should be electric by 2025, and … we can say that the goal has been achieved,” announced Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg. Electrek reports: With the finish line in sight, the Norwegian government is now fine-tuning its approach. The current incentive program maintains the crucial VAT exemption for EVs, but only up to a purchase price of 500,000 Norwegian kroner (approximately $49,000 USD). This move is designed to target more expensive, luxury EVs, ensuring that the incentive benefits a broader range of consumers.

However, the latest budget proposal aims to reduce the EV tax exemption to vehicles costing 300,000 Norwegian kroner (~30,000 USD). This would apply for 2026, and then the tax exemption would completely end in 2027. Additionally, the government plans to increase taxes on new gasoline and diesel cars, further widening the cost gap between polluting and zero-emission vehicles.

However, the proposal still needs to be adopted by Norway’s government, and there is some opposition. EV associations are advocating for a more extended phase-out period to ensure that the adoption rate doesn’t decline.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boris Johnson’s former adviser claims that China infiltrated a key UK government data-transfer network for years, compromising highly classified materials and prompting a Whitehall cover-up that prioritized Chinese investment over national security. The Times reports: Dominic Cummings, who served as a senior adviser to Boris Johnson, said that he and the then prime minister were informed about the breach in 2020 but that there had subsequently been a cover-up. He said he was warned at the time that disclosing some specific details of the breach would be a criminal offence. He claimed that the breach included some “Strap” material, which is the government term for the highest level of classified information.

The breach, which was confirmed by two other senior Whitehall sources, was said to have been connected to a Chinese-owned company involved in Britain’s critical national infrastructure. Tom Tugendhat, a former Tory security minister, supported Cummings’s account. Cummings said that he and Johnson were informed of the breach in the “bunker” of No 10 — a reference to the secure room in Downing Street.

He told The Times: “The cabinet secretary said, ‘We have to explain something; there’s been a serious problem’, and he talked through what this was. “And it was so bizarre that, not just Boris, a few people in the room were looking around like this — ‘Am I somehow misunderstanding what he’s saying? Because it sounds f***ing crazy.'” He added: “What I’m saying is that some Strap stuff was compromised and vast amounts of data classified as extremely secret and extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control was compromised. “Material from intelligence services. Material from the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. Things the government has to keep secret. If they’re not secret, then there are very, very serious implications for it.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: People in London could be hiring driverless taxis from Waymo next year, after the US autonomous vehicle company announced plans to launch its services there. The UK capital will become the first European city to have an autonomous taxi service of the kind now familiar in San Francisco and four other US cities using Waymo’s technology.

The launch pits an innovation sometimes dubbed the “robotaxi” against London’s famous black cabs, which can trace their history back to the first horse-drawn hackney coaches of the Tudor era. But a representative of the capital’s cab drivers said they were not concerned by the arrival of a “fairground ride” and questioned the reliability of driverless vehicles. Waymo said its cars were now on their way to London and would start driving on the capital’s streets in the coming weeks with “trained human specialists,” or safety drivers, behind the wheel.

The company, originally formed as a spin-off from Google’s self-driving car program, said it would scale up operations and work closely with Transport for London and the Department for Transportto obtain the permits needed to offer fully autonomous rides in 2026. Uber and the UK tech company Wayve have also announced their own plans to trial their driverless taxis in the capital next year, after the British government said it would accelerate rules allowing public trials to take place before legislation enabling self-driving vehicles passes in full.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a flight demonstration of X Control’s Janus-I, a personal dual-blade helicopter that was dubbed the ‘flying suitcase’, presumably in honor of George Jetson’s flying car (which unfolded from his suitcase). The gas-powered helicopter folds up small enough to fit in the back of a truck, weighs only 154-pounds but can carry 440-pounds, has a top speed of around 100MPH, can reach altitudes of ~20,000ft, and can even take off and land on water. What it can’t do is make you feel the least bit safe flying it at any altitude over 10 feet. Especially considering you don’t even need a pilot’s license to fly it, so there’s very little chance you’ll have any idea what you’re doing besides being moments from death.

Mozilla is testing a free, built-in VPN for Firefox that routes traffic through Mozilla-managed servers directly in the browser. The Register reports: According to a staff post on Mozilla Connect, the company’s idea-sharing platform, Firefox VPN is still an experimental feature in the early stages of development, but users will be selected at random to test it “over the next few months.” Moz describes the feature as one that will sit beside the search bar on Firefox, routing web traffic through a Mozilla-managed VPN server, concealing the user’s real IP address while adding a layer of encryption to their communications. Firefox VPN is a different project entirely from Mozilla VPN, a separate, paid-for product. The Firefox version will be free to use and confined to the browser itself, while Mozilla VPN can be used by up to five devices at a time.

The Moz staffer on the product team who announced the feature said of the upcoming beta test: “We’ll start simple, then gradually add new capabilities while learning how it impacts browsing, usage, and overall satisfaction. “Our long-term vision is ambitious: to build the best VPN-integrated browser on the market.” In response to feedback, the staffer noted that while it will be a desktop browser feature first, “mobile is definitely a natural next step.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.