Lyft is teaming up with Tensor Auto to launch hundreds of AI-powered “Robocars” across Europe and North America starting in 2027. Bloomberg reports: Tensor Robocars, the first deliveries of which are planned in late 2026, have more than 100 sensors including cameras, lidars and radars, and processes sensor data with artificial intelligence technology powered by Nvidia Corp. chips on board. The vehicles will come from the manufacturer with Lyft’s platform installed, which will allow owners to make money on the rideshare network in markets where level 4 autonomous technology is available, according to the joint statement. Lyft has reserved hundreds of Robocars via its affiliates for its own fleet operations, subject to regulatory approvals.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CSO Online: On Sept. 17, security vendor SonicWall announced that cybercriminals had stolen backup files configured for cloud backup. At the time, the company claimed the incident was limited to “less than five percent” of its customers. Now, the firewall provider has admitted that “all customers” using the MySonicWall cloud backup feature were affected. According to the company, the stolen files contain encrypted credentials and configuration data. “[W]hile encryption remains in place, possession of these files could increase the risk of targeted attacks,” SonicWall warns in its press release.

Security specialist Arctic Wolf also warns of the consequences of the incident. “Firewall configuration files store sensitive information that can be leveraged by threat actors to exploit and gain access to an organization’s network,” explains Stefan Hostetler, threat intelligence researcher at Arctic Wolf. “These files can provide threat actors with critical information such as user, group, and domain settings, DNS and log settings, and certificates,” he adds. Arctic Wolf has previously observed threat actors, including nation-state and ransomware groups, exfiltrating firewall configuration files to use for future attacks. SonicWall urges all customers and partners to regularly check their devices for updates. Admins can find additional information here.

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Instagram head Adam Mosseri has announced that as part of a test, some Instagram users will be able to try a new menu bar in the app with a different arrangement of tabs. Notably, the new menu bar has dedicated tabs for both Reels and DMs, two of the app’s most popular features.

If you opt-in to the test, Instagram’s current tabs for your feed, search, creating a new post, Reels and your profile page will be replaced by a new layout that swaps search and Reels, and switches the dedicated tab for creating a post with a new one for DMs. Meta’s test also makes it possible to swipe between tabs.

Mosseri’s post announcing the test acknowledges that these kinds of changes “can take time to get used to,” which is why the new layout is optional for now. Based on recent announcements though, it’s clear Meta has wanted to move in this direction for a bit. Setting aside the long-awaited iPad version of Instagram defaulting to Reels, the company has also said publicly it plans to prioritize messaging and short-form videos moving forward. It even tested a similar Instagram tab redesign with Indian users in early October, where the default tab was Reels and the second tab was DMs.

“Reels and DMs have driven most all our growth at Instagram over the last few years, so we are exploring making them the first two tabs,” Mosseri said at the time. Users who joined Instagram when it was an app for sharing photos might be uncomfortable with its slow drift away from photography, but the shift is reflective of Meta’s decision to chase larger social media trends.

As posting has become more professionalized, chatting and sharing privately has become more popular. If you take Meta at its word, Instagram is increasingly an app for consuming content made by people you don’t know, and then talking about it in private group chats with friends. This test just reflects that reality more accurately.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-tests-new-layout-that-puts-the-spotlight-on-reels-and-dms-215407062.html?src=rss

An unknown number of federal health employees received termination notifications Friday afternoon as part of a mass reduction in force by the Trump administration that senior officials and federal employment lawyers say is almost certainly illegal.

The Department of Health and Human Services has taken heavy hits since Trump came to office. Early in the year, the Trump administration pushed out 10,000 employees through early retirements, deferred resignations, and other efforts while laying off 10,000 more, slashing the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 in all. In the current government shutdown—which hinges on a dispute over Affordable Care Act tax credits that 80 percent of Americans support—more than 32,000 HHS employees are furloughed.

In an emailed statement to Ars Technica, HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said that HHS employees “across multiple divisions” have received termination notices.

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This is a video of Tom BetGeorge’s full 2025 Halloween Light Show (previous Halloween and Christmas shows HERE). This year’s show features Alien Ant Farm’s “Smooth Criminal”, The Cranberries’ “Zombie” remix by Zombic & Felix Schorn, “The Kill” by Thirty Seconds to Mars, a KPop Demon Hunters compilation, and “Defying Gravity” from Wicked. Now, have we confirmed whether Tom hands out full-size candy bars or not? Because if you spends thousands of dollars in light show and are handing out loose Twizzlers clearly something ain’t right. I know a house like that in my neighborhood. Now I’m not saying I’m going to egg or toilet paper that house, but only because eggs are expensive and I need all my toilet paper.

smooth wombat writes: At one point in technology history, floppy disks reigned supreme. Files, pictures, games, everything was put on a floppy disk. But technology doesn’t stand still and as time went on disks were replaced by CDs, DVDs, thumb drives, and now cloud storage. Despite these changes, floppy disks are still found in long forgotten corners of businesses or stuffed in boxs in the attic. What is on these disks is anyone’s guess, but Cambridge University Library is racing against time to preserve the data. However, lack of hardware and software to read the disks, if they’re readable at all, poses unique challenges.

Some of the world’s most treasured documents can be found deep in the archives of Cambridge University Library. There are letters from Sir Isaac Newton, notebooks belonging to Charles Darwin, rare Islamic texts and the Nash Papyrus — fragments of a sheet from 200BC containing the Ten Commandments written in Hebrew.

These rare, and often unique, manuscripts are safely stored in climate-controlled environments while staff tenderly care for them to prevent the delicate pages from crumbling and ink from flaking away.

But when the library received 113 boxes of papers and mementoes from the office of physicist Stephen Hawking, it found itself with an unusual challenge. Tucked alongside the letters, photographs and thousands of pages relating to Hawking’s work on theoretical physics, were items now not commonly seen in modern offices — floppy disks.

They were the result of Hawking’s early adoption of the personal computer, which he was able to use despite having a form of motor neurone disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, thanks to modifications and software. Locked inside these disks could be all kinds of forgotten information or previously unknown insights into the scientists’ life. The archivists’ minds boggled.

These disks are now part of a project at Cambridge University Library to rescue hidden knowledge trapped on floppy disks. The Future Nostalgia project reflects a larger trend in the information flooding into archives and libraries around the world.

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These are tough times for Russia’s civilian space program. In the last few years, Russia has cut back on the number of Soyuz crew missions it is sending to the International Space Station, and a replacement for the nearly 60-year-old Soyuz spacecraft remains elusive.

While the United States and China are launching more space missions than ever before, Russia’s once-dominant launch cadence is on a downhill slide.

Russia’s access to global markets dried up after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The fallout from the invasion killed several key space partnership between Russia and Europe. Russia’s capacity to do new things in space seems to be focused on military programs like anti-satellite weapons.

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Amazon Echo Show owners are reporting an uptick in advertisements on their smart displays.

The company’s Echo Show smart displays have previously shown ads through the company’s Shopping Lists feature, as well as advertising for Alexa skills. Additionally, Echo Shows may play audio ads when users listen to Amazon Music on Alexa.

However, reports on Reddit (examples here, here, and here) and from The Verge’s Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who owns more than one Echo Show, suggest that Amazon has increased the amount of ads it shows on its smart displays’ home screens. The Echo Show’s apparent increase in ads is pushing people to stop using or even return their Echo Shows.

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Australia’s Queensland state government said on Friday it would run coal power plants at least into the 2040s, reversing a previous plan to pivot rapidly to renewables and in turn making national emissions reduction targets harder to achieve. From a report: The centre-right Liberal National Party won last year’s election in Queensland, a huge chunk of land in Australia’s northeast where more than 60% of electricity comes from coal-fired plants that are mostly owned by the state.

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This is a video of Neil Cheng Le and his pet Peruvian Giant Yellow-Leg Centipede (Scolopendra gigantea). Just look at that thing! I thought it was AI at first, but now I’m only wishing it was. Neil’s leggy (and venomous!) pet measures over 16″ long and eats wet cat food. I too have eaten wet cat food. It’s really not that bad if you pretend it’s a cold, overly-salted burger steak with gravy. If you can’t pretend that though it’s pretty bad.

A new book, by Wall Street Journal reporter Saabira Chaudhuri, traces how disposability became a deliberate business strategy rather than an accidental consequence of modern commerce. The book, titled “Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic,” emerged from her reporting on how plastic bottles transformed bottled water from an occasional restaurant treat into an everyday staple.

Excerpts from a Bloomberg story: After World War II, the plastics industry made a conscious pivot. Lloyd Stouffer, an industry figure, openly said plastics should move from durable goods to disposables because companies make more money selling something a thousand times than once. The industry sold consumers on hygiene, convenience, modernity and easier household management. McDonald’s dropped polystyrene clamshells in the late 1980s under activist pressure but simply swapped one single-use product for another.

Paper containers still cannot be recycled well once food soaks in. The old diaper-service model disappeared. Companies collected, washed and returned cloth diapers like the milkman, but plastics helped kill that business model. Chaudhuri argues companies built their businesses on disposability and will not change unless regulation forces everyone to move together. Executives admit that if they launch a reusable product but competitors do not, they lose market share and face shareholder backlash. Packaging standardization would improve recycling economics. Colored plastics like red shampoo bottles cannot be recycled in a closed loop and are down-cycled into gray products like pipes.

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Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

On Friday, Oct. 3, Discord announced that a third-party service provider it uses for customer service efforts suffered a breach. It warned a “limited number of users” who had communications with certain Discord teams were affected, though the “unauthorized party” did not gain access to any Discord networks directly.

In that initial announcement, Discord said a number of user data types might have been stolen. That included their names, usernames, email addresses, billing information, last four digits of credit cards, purchase histories, IP addresses, messages with Discord service agents, and “limited corporate data,” such as training materials and internal presentations.

While all of this information is sensitive, it unfortunately isn’t surprising to see as part of a breach like this. However, Discord also revealed that the hackers may have also gained access to a “small number” of government ID images, including driver’s licenses and passports. As it turns out, that “small number” turned out to be 70,000. Discord confirmed as much to The Verge on Wednesday. If you were among these affected users, Discord will have reached out to you via email.

Age verification is a privacy nightmare

Why did a Discord affiliate even have these users’ government IDs to begin with? Age verification. Like many other companies, Discord now restricts certain content to minors. If you are incorrectly identified as underage, you’re allowed to appeal and prove that you are at least 18 years old. To do so, you need to take a photo of yourself holding either a photo ID with your date of birth, or a piece of paper with your full Discord username. Discord outsources this work to a third-party, which hackers targeted in this data breach.

As 404 Media reports, hackers suggest they’ve taken even more data than Discord has acknowledged. That includes data on whether users were verified or not; users’ home towns, states or counties, and countries; info on whether they had multi-factor authentication turned on for their account; and the last time they were online on Discord.

This event demonstrates the risks of companies requiring users to verify their ages by uploading government IDs. Users in Texas must verify their ages before they can download apps on their phones, while a number of states require the same before accessing adult websites. No matter where you live, YouTube will use AI to guess your age, and, if it gets it wrong, you’ll need to prove your age yourself.

The goal is to protect children and underage users from accessing content they shouldn’t be seeing, but by doing it this way, companies are putting users at risk: They’re asking you to trust them with your government IDs, credit cards, even selfies; or, if not them, a third-party affiliate. As we can see with this case, a lapse in security means tens of thousands of Discord users who were just trying to prove their age now have exposed government IDs. What happens when an entire state’s population faces the same? Or a whole country’s?