If you use Proton Mail on your phone, things are about to pick up. The company is rolling out new apps for Android and iOS. The updated mobile applications are rebuilt from the ground up with a “cleaner, faster and more private experience.” Proton first announced in April that it was working on the revamp.

The company says the new Proton Mail lets you scroll, archive and reply twice as fast as before. It also now supports an offline mode, allowing you to read, write and organize messages while away from the internet. A redesigned interface aims for simpler navigation, with areas like the composer button now sitting within easier reach.

The iOS and Android apps, while still native to their respective platforms, now share a common codebase. Proton says they share 80 percent of their code. This should enable faster development and near-simultaneous future updates.

Proton

Product lead Anant Vijay Singh credited the update to Proton’s community and business model. “The new Proton Mail mobile apps reflect this feedback and show what is possible if you build an email app without the constraints imposed by trying to monetize user data, allowing for a cleaner, faster, and more private experience,” he said.

Proton has had a full plate lately. The company is working on an upcoming overhaul of Proton Calendar with similar user experience upgrades. This summer, it even joined the chatbot fracas with Lumo, which it believes can carve a niche as a more ethical AI assistant.

The Proton Mail updates begin rolling out today in the App Store and Play Store.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/proton-mails-redesigned-mobile-app-is-built-for-speed-100042054.html?src=rss

The Japanese city of Toyoake has passed (PDF) a symbolic ordinance limiting recreational smartphone use to two hours a day, aiming to improve citizens’ sleep — especially for students after summer vacation. The Register reports: “The primary purpose of this ordinance is to ensure that all citizens receive adequate sleep,” states a Council information page, which explains that many Japanese people ignore Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare recommendations to spend six to eight hours a day dozing. An accompanying FAQ [PDF] explains that Council passed the ordinance because students who return to school after summer vacations sometimes need a nudge the re-establish an appropriate daily regime.

The ordinance also points out “Excessive phone users and their families are facing difficulties in their daily and social lives,” and suggests the two-hours-a-day guidance might help. Council’s documents point out that smartphones have myriad uses beyond recreation, and that the ordinance should not be taken as a suggestion to reduce overall use of the devices. Toyoake is part of the Nagoya megalopolis and is home to around 70,000 people. The town’s government plans to survey residents about the ordinance, and the FAQ also mentions it wants to tackle other digital menaces, among them harmful effects of using smartphones while walking.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm has unveiled its new Snapdragon X Series chips for laptops, in addition to its new system-on-a-chip for flagship phones. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip meant for “ultra-premium” Windows 11 laptops are designed to handle “complex, expert-level workloads” and to enable fast AI processing, as well as a multi-day battery life. Meanwhile, the Snapdragon X2 Elite chips come in two variants, one with 18 total cores and one with 12. Qualcomm claims that these processors are the “fastest, most powerful and efficient processors for Windows PCs.”

The company launched the first Snapdragon X Elite chip in 2023 as its successor to the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 line of laptop processors. Qualcomm changed its name back then to reflect the huge leap in performance. Microsoft released a lineup of Copilot+ PCs with the new Snapdragon chip in 2024. And then earlier this year, at CES, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon X for Copilot+ PCs priced $600 and under. 

Qualcomm says that the new Elite Extreme chip can power laptops for scientists and professional creators who handle “computationally intense data analytics, professional media editing and scientific research.” It features the company’s third-gen Oryon CPU that can apparently run at up to 75 percent faster than competitors. The chip also comes equipped with Qualcomm’s Hexagon NPU, which it says is the “fastest NPU for laptops,” to enable simultaneous AI tools and experiences on Copilot+ PCs.

The lower tier Elite chips can still run at up to 31 percent faster and use 43 percent less energy than the previous generation. While they’re obviously meant for users who don’t handle more resource-intensive workloads, Qualcomm says they also enable simultaneous AI experiences. The first laptops powered by the Snapdragon X2 Elite processors will be available in the first half of 2026. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/qualcomm-says-its-new-snapdragon-chips-are-the-fastest-and-most-efficient-for-windows-pcs-084535090.html?src=rss

Doctors report the first successful treatment for Huntington’s disease using a new type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery. The BBC reports: An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients. It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of “good quality life”, Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News. The first symptoms of Huntington’s disease tend to appear in your 30s or 40s and is normally fatal within two decades — opening the possibility that earlier treatment could prevent symptoms from ever emerging. None of the patients who have been treated are being identified, but one was medically retired and has returned to work. Others in the trial are still walking despite being expected to need a wheelchair. Treatment is likely to be very expensive. However, this is a moment of real hope in a disease that hits people in their prime and devastates families. […]

It starts with a safe virus that has been altered to contain a specially designed sequence of DNA. This is infused deep into the brain using real-time MRI scanning to guide a microcatheter to two brain regions – the caudate nucleus and the putamen. This takes 12 to 18 hours of neurosurgery. The virus then acts like a microscopic postman — delivering the new piece of DNA inside brain cells, where it becomes active. This turns the neurons into a factory for making the therapy to avert their own death. The cells produce a small fragment of genetic material (called microRNA) that is designed to intercept and disable the instructions (called messenger RNA) being sent from the cells’ DNA for building mutant huntingtin. This results in lower levels of mutant huntingtin in the brain. […]

The data showed that three years after surgery there was an average 75% slowing of the disease based on a measure which combines cognition, motor function and the ability to manage in daily life. The data also shows the treatment is saving brain cells. Levels of neurofilaments in spinal fluid — a clear sign of brain cells dying — should have increased by a third if the disease continued to progress, but was actually lower than at the start of the trial.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm has launched the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which the company claims is the “world’s faster mobile system-on-a-chip.” It was designed for flagship devices for manufacturers and smartphone brands that don’t make their own mobile platforms, with the first devices equipped with the SoC launching in the coming days. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is powered by the company’s third-generation Oryon CPU, which Qualcomm says “improves performance by 20 percent and CPU power efficiency by 35 percent.” Overall, the company is claiming that the platform has a 16 percent lower power draw, making it more efficient and enabling longer “sustained performance.”

Qualcomm

The new platform promises “lightning-fast” app launches and app switching for better multitasking. Qualcomm’s AI Engine allows on-device AI processing, as well, made possible by the company’s upgraded Hexagon NPU that’s apparently 37 percent than its predecessor. “With Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, you are at the center of your mobile experience,” said Chris Patrick, the SVP and generation manager for mobile at Qualcomm. “It enables personalized AI agents to see what you see, hear what you hear and think with you in real time.”

In addition, Qualcomm says the new SoC is the first mobile platform to enable recording in Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec, giving creators the ability to film on their phones for professional-level productions. Several smartphone brands have already committed to using the new platform for their flagship devices, including Samsung, OnePlus, OPPO, Honor, iQOO, Nubia, POCO, realme, REDMI, RedMagic, ROG, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/qualcomms-new-flagship-mobile-platform-is-the-snapdragon-8-elite-gen-5-060427445.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world’s oceans have failed a key planetary health check for the first time, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, a report has shown. In its latest annual assessment, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said ocean acidity had crossed a critical threshold for marine life. This makes it the seventh of nine planetary boundaries to be transgressed, prompting scientists to call for a renewed global effort to curb fossil fuels, deforestation and other human-driven pressures that are tilting the Earth out of a habitable equilibrium. The report, which follows earlier warnings about ocean acidity, comes at a time of recordbreaking ocean heat and mass coral bleaching.

Oceans cover 71% of the Earth’s surface and play an essential role as a climate stabilizer. The new report calls them an “unsung guardian of planetary health”, but says their vital functions are threatened. The 2025 Planetary Health Check noted that since the start of the industrial era, oceans’ surface pH has fallen by about 0.1 units, a 30-40% increase in acidity, pushing marine ecosystems beyond safe limits. Cold-water corals, tropical coral reefs and Arctic marine life are especially at risk. This is primarily due to the human-caused climate crisis. When carbon dioxide from oil, coal and gas burning enters the sea, it forms carbonic acid. This reduces the availability of calcium carbonate, which many marine organisms depend upon to grow coral, shells or skeletons.

Near the bottom of the food chain, this directly affects species like oysters, molluscs and clams. Indirectly, it harms salmon, whales and other sea life that eat smaller organisms. Ultimately, this is a risk for human food security and coastal economies. Scientists are concerned that it could also weaken the ocean’s role as the planet’s most important heat absorber and its capacity to draw down 25-30% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Marine life plays an important role in this process, acting as a “biotic bump” to sequester carbon in the depths. In the report, all of the other six breached boundaries — climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, and novel entities — showed a worsening trend. But the authors said the addition of the only solely ocean-centerd category was a alarming development because of its scale and importance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel has approached Apple about a possible investment and closer collaboration, following recent multibillion-dollar deals with Nvidia, the U.S. government, and SoftBank to stabilize the struggling chipmaker. Reuters reports: The iPhone maker and Intel have also discussed how to work more closely together, the report said, adding that the talks are at an early stage and may not lead to an agreement. Shares of Intel closed 6% higher after the news. […] Striking lucrative partnerships and persuading outside clients to use Intel’s factories remain key to its future. Intel has also reached out to other companies about possible investments and partnerships, according to the Bloomberg News report. The reported investment from Apple would come as another vote of confidence for Intel – Apple had been a longtime customer of Intel before it transitioned to using its own custom-designed silicon chips in 2020.

For Apple, which relies heavily on Intel’s rival TSMC to manufacture its chips, the new partnership would allow it to diversify its chipmaking supplier base – a move that would be valuable if geopolitical risks in Taiwan worsen due to China’s role in the region. It would also help Apple improve its relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, by showing that it is investing in the United States – while much of Apple’s supply chain remains international, the company has committed about $600 billion to domestic initiatives over the next four years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a video of the DD Squad successfully launching a human dart 40 feet to a velcro wall dangling 30 feet above water. That’s fun, I would do that. And by that I mean push the button to launch somebody else before they were ready.