“Media headlines suggesting some slowdown in EV sales are simply incorrect,” writes the site Electrek, “and leave out the bigger picture that gas car sales actually are dropping…”

Over the course of
the last two years or so, sales of battery electric vehicles, while
continuing to grow, have posted lower year-over-year percentage
growth rates than they had in years prior. EV sales used to grow at
50%+ per year, but for the last couple years, they have grown closer
to ~25% per year. This alone is not particularly remarkable — it
is inevitable that any growing product or category will show slower
percentage growth rates as sales rise, particularly one that has been
growing at such a fast rate for so long. In some recent years, we
had even seen year-over-year
doublings in EV market share (though one of those was 2020->2021,
which was anomalous). To expect improvement at that level perpetually
would be close to impossible — after 3 years of doubling
market share from 2023’s 18% number, EVs would account for more
than 100% of the global automotive market, which cannot happen…

We have seen a global EV sales growth rate of 23% in the first 10
months of this year, according to a report just released by Rho
Motion (recently acquired by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence). That
includes a +32% bump in Europe, +22% bump in China, +4% in North
America, and a big +48% bump in the “rest of the world.” Notably,
this 23% global growth rate is higher than last year’s YTD growth
rate, which was 22%
at this time…

In covering these trends, some journalists have attempted to use
the less-wrong phrase “slower growth,” showing that EV sales are
still growing, but at a lower percentage change than previously seen.
But for the first ten months of this year, that isn’t true — EV
sales are up more in 2025 than in 2024 by a percentage basis. They
are also up in raw sales numbers — in 2024, EV
sales grew by a larger number than in 2023. And the same is true
so far in 2025. Going back to 2023, 10.7 million EVs were sold
globally in the first 10 months. Then in 2024, 13.3 million were
sold, a difference of 2.6 million. And so far in 2025, 16.5 million
EVs have sold, a difference of 3.2 million. Not only are the numbers
getting bigger, but the growth in unit sales is getting bigger as
well.

Even in America, the
EV market “has increased so far this year, with 11.7%
US EV sales growth YTD.”

In terms of US hybrid sales, much has been made of customers
“shifting from EVs to hybrids,” which is also not the case.
Conventional gas-hybrid sales are
indeed up and plug-in hybrids, which have grown more slowly
than gas-hybrids/BEVs, have also shown some growth lately. But
gas-hybrid sales have not come at the cost of EV sales, rather at the
cost of gas-only car sales.

Because that’s
just the thing: the number of gas-only vehicles
being sold worldwide is a number that actually is falling.
That number continues to go down year over year. Sales of new
gas-powered cars are down by about
a quarter from their peak in 2017, and show no signs of
recovering… And yet, somehow, virtually every headline you read is
about the “EV sales slump,” rather than the “gas-car sales
slump.” The one you keep hearing about isn’t happening,
but the one you rarely hear about is happening… No matter
what region of the world you’re in, EV sales were up in the first
10 months of this year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the personal blog of interface expert Bruce Ediger:

Early in March 2025, I noticed that a web crawler with a user
agent string of

meta-externalagent/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler)

was hitting my blog’s machine at an unreasonable rate.

I followed the URL and discovered this is what Meta uses to gather premium,
human-generated content to train its LLMs. I found the rate of
requests to be annoying.

I already have a PHP program that creates the illusion of an infinite website. I decided to answer any HTTP request that had
“meta-externalagent” in its user agent string with the contents
of a bork.php generated file…

This worked
brilliantly. Meta ramped up to requesting 270,000 URLs on May 30 and
31, 2025…

After about 3 months, I got scared that Meta’s insatiable
consumption of Super Great Pages about condiments, underwear and
circa 2010 C-List celebs would start costing me money. So I switched
to giving “meta-externalagent” a 404 status code. I decided to
see how long it would take one of the highest valued companies in the
world to decide to go away.

The answer is 5 months.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a longstanding and complicated legal battle between Apple and Masimo, a recent ruling from a California jury may be the first step towards a certain conclusion. As reported by Reuters, a federal jury sided with Masimo, a medical tech company known for its patient monitoring devices, when it said that Apple infringed on the company’s patent for technology that tracks blood-oxygen levels.

The case revolves around whether Apple violated Masimo’s patent related to blood-oxygen sensors, which the jury claimed can be seen with the Apple Watch’s Workout and Heart Rate apps. According to Reuters, Apple disagreed with the verdict, adding that “the single patent in this case expired in 2022, and is specific to historic patient monitoring technology from decades ago.” The tech giant is reportedly planning to appeal the decision. 

While there may be some closure with this California lawsuit, Apple and Masimo are entangled in a web of related but separate lawsuits. Masimo first accused Apple of infringing on its pulse oximeter patents, leading to Apple temporarily halting sales of its Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatches. In August, Apple redesigned its blood-oxygen monitoring feature and rolled it out to the Series 9, Series 10 and Ultra 2. The redesign was approved by the US Customs and Border Protection, but Masimo filed a suit against the agency for overstepping its authority by allowing the sale of these updated Apple Watches without input from Masimo.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/a-federal-jury-ruled-that-apple-has-to-pay-634-million-for-infringing-smartwatch-patents-202846266.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader shared this post from the gaming news site Aftermath:

Concord, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Firewalk Studios’ Overwatch-like shooter, was live for just two weeks before it was pulled offline. Though Concord certainly had some dedicated players, it didn’t have many — which is why it may be surprising to hear that a group of players are reverse-engineering the game and its servers to bring it back to life.

Publisher Sony removed Concord from stores and digital marketplaces, automatically refunded some, and, later, shut down Firewalk Studios. Two hundred or so people were laid off, and any hopes of Concord’s return were dashed. Poor sales — estimated to be under 25,000 copies sold — and low player numbers marred the release. Firewalk Studios’ game director Ryan Ellis said in a blog post that pieces of the game “resonated with players,” but “other aspects of the game and [Concord’s] initial launch didn’t land the way [Firewalk Studios] intended.”

Concord wasn’t a bad game, but it just didn’t generate enough interest with enough players. Now, a group of three hobbyist reverse-engineers, who go by real, Red, and gwog online, are trying to make it playable again… “Sometimes there’s enough of the server left in the game, that we can ‘activate’ that code and make the game believe it’s a server,” Red said. “We do pretty much always need to fill in the gaps though…” Concord used an anti-tamper software to keep people from cheating, which also creates a problem for people reverse engineering. It’s “nearly impossible” to crack, Red said, so the group didn’t — they found an exploit to “forcefully decrypt the game’s code” to “restore the game and start working on servers….”

It’s not open to the public, but people can sign up for future tests. Even former Firewalk Studios employees have joined the server. They’re excited to see Concord come back to life, too, the developers said.

“Friday morning, a video of the playtest was posted to the Concord Reddit page,” according to the article. (Though ironically by Friday night YouTube had had removed the video “due to a copyright claim by MarkScan Enforcement.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a Substack post by economist/entrepreneur Skander Garroum:

You know that feeling when you’re waiting for the cable guy, and they said ‘between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up? Now imagine that, except the cable guy is ‘electricity,’ the day is ’50 years,’ and you’re one of 600 million people. At some point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself.

What’s happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it’s not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It’s being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it’s working. Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.
And if you understand what’s happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google may have to fork over 572 million euros, or nearly $665 million, to two German companies for “market abuse,” according to a recent ruling from a Berlin court. First reported by Reuters, the tech giant was ordered to pay approximately 465 million euros, or approximately $540 million, to Idealo and another 107 million euros, or roughly $124 million, to Producto, both of which are price comparison platforms based in Germany. According to the ruling, Google abused its dominant market position by favoring Google Shopping in its own search results.

Idealo pursued legal action against Google, claiming that the Alphabet subsidiary was “self-preferencing” its own platforms, which led to unfair market advantages that hindered competitors. The company first demanded at least 3.3 billion euros, or more than $3.8 billion, in damages in February 2025. To counter, Google said it made changes in 2017 that allowed competing shopping platforms the same opportunity as Google Shopping to display ads through Google Search.

Idealo said in a press release that it will continue the legal pressure on Google, claiming that “the amount awarded reflects only a fraction of the actual damage.” Albrecht von Sonntag, co-founder and member of Idealo’s advisory board, added in a press release that “abuse of dominance must have consequences and must not be a profitable business model that pays off despite fines and damages.”

It’s not the first time Google has found itself in legal trouble in Europe. Beyond Google Shopping, Google was accused of favoring its own Google Flights and Google Hotels in search results, leading the European Union to threaten massive fines for violating its Digital Markets Act. A month prior, the European Commission fined Google nearly 3 billion euros, or more than $3.4 billion, for its anticompetitive practices in the advertising tech industry.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-ordered-to-pay-665-million-for-anticompetitive-practices-in-germany-184505191.html?src=rss

According to the Financial Times, Tim Cook may be ready to leave his position as soon as next year, and Apple’s board and senior executives have ramped up their preparations to secure his replacement.

Cook, who has been at the helm of Apple for more than 14 years, succeeded Steve Jobs and led the company to a market cap of more than $4 trillion. Cook’s tenure since 2011 has overseen the introduction of hardware, including Apple Watch, AirPods and Vision Pro, but also services like Apple Arcade and Apple TV+. According to the Financial Times‘s sources, Apple’s senior vice president of engineering, John Ternus, will most likely take on the CEO role, but this decision hasn’t been finalized yet. Ternus has been with Apple since 2001 as part of its Product Design team and eventually stepped into a vice president role within the Hardware Engineering division, where he played a heavy role in the company’s transition to Apple silicon.

According to the Financial Times, Apple isn’t planning to announce the new CEO before its January earnings report. However, the report also noted that this announcement would come earlier in the year to allow the leadership team to transition smoothly in time for all of Apple’s annual events. Earlier this year, Apple also announced Sabih Khan as the new chief operating officer, taking over for Jeff Williams.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-is-reportedly-getting-ready-to-replace-tim-cook-as-early-as-next-year-171407974.html?src=rss

It was the first allegation of a crime committed in space — back in 2019. But by 2020 it had led to
charges of lying to federal authorities.

And now a former Air Force intelligence officer “has pleaded guilty to lying to a federal agent,” reports CNBC, “by falsely claiming that her estranged astronaut wife illegally accessed her bank account while aboard the International Space Station for six months, prosecutors in Houston, Texas, said Friday.”

The guilty plea by Summer Worden, 50, on Thursday comes more than five years after she was indicted in the space case for lying about actions by her wife, Anne McClain, a U.S. Army colonel, West Point graduate and Iraq war combat veteran, while they were in the midst of a divorce. The claim came at a time when Worden said that the couple was engaged in a custody battle over what Worden’s then-6-year-old son, who had been conceived through in vitro fertilizationand carried by a surrogate…

McClain was aboard the Space Station from December 2018 through June 2019. She recently commanded the SpaceX Crew-10 crew mission to the Space Station from March this year until August.

Worden, who remains free on bond, is scheduled to be sentenced on February 12. She faces a maximum possible sentence of up to five years in prison.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.