An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: US scientists have, for the first time, made early-stage human embryos by manipulating DNA taken from people's skin cells and then fertilizing it with sperm. The technique could overcome infertility due to old age or disease, by using almost any cell in the body as the starting point for life. It could even allow same-sex couples to have a genetically related child. [...] The Oregon Health and Science University research team's technique takes the nucleus -- which houses a copy of the entire genetic code needed to build the body -- out of a skin cell. This is then placed inside a donor egg that has been stripped of its genetic instructions. So far, the technique is like the one used to create Dolly the Sheep -- the world's first cloned mammal -- born back in 1996. However, this egg is not ready to be fertilized by sperm as it already contains a full suite of chromosomes. You inherit 23 of these bundles of DNA from each of your parents for a total of 46, which the egg already has. So the next stage is to persuade the egg to discard half of its chromosomes in a process the researchers have termed "mitomeiosis" (the word is a fusion of mitosis and meiosis, the two ways cells divide). The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, showed 82 functional eggs were made. These were fertilized with sperm and some progressed onto the early stages of embryos development. None were developed beyond the six-day-stage. The technique is far from polished as the egg randomly chooses which chromosomes to discard. It needs to end up with one of each of the 23 types to prevent disease, but ends up with two of some and none of others. There is also a poor success rate (around 9%) and the chromosomes miss an important process where they rearrange their DNA, called crossing over. Prof Mitalipov, a world-renowned pioneer in the field, told me: "We have to perfect it. "Eventually, I think that's where the future will go because there are more and more patients that cannot have children."

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Charlie Javice, founder of college financial-aid startup Frank, was sentenced to over seven years in prison for defrauding JPMorgan by inflating user numbers before the bank's $175 million acquisition. CNN reports: Javice, 33, was convicted in March of duping the banking giant when it bought her company, called Frank, in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem like Frank had over 4 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000. Addressing the court before she was sentenced, Javice, who was in her mid-20s when she founded the company, said she was "haunted that my failure has transformed something meaningful into something infamous." Sometimes speaking through tears, she said she "made a choice that I will spend my entire life regretting." Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein largely dismissed arguments by Javice's lawyer, Ronald Sullivan, that he should be lenient because the negotiations that led to Frank's sale pitted "a 28-year-old versus 300 investment bankers from the largest bank in the world." Still, the judge criticized the bank, saying "they have a lot to blame themselves" for after failing to do adequate due diligence. He quickly added, though, that he was "punishing her conduct and not JPMorgan's stupidity." Javice was among a number of young tech executives who vaulted to fame with supposedly disruptive or transformative companies, only to see them collapse amid questions about whether they had engaged in puffery and fraud while dealing with investors.

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Spotify founder Daniel Ek will step down as CEO by year's end, transitioning to executive chairman after nearly two decades at the helm. In his place will be Gustav Soderstrom and Alex Norstrom as co-CEOs. TechCrunch reports: "Over the last few years, I've turned over a large part of the day-to-day management and strategic direction of Spotify to Alex and Gustav -- who have shaped the company from our earliest days and are now more than ready to guide our next phase," Ek said in a statement. "This change simply matches titles to how we already operate. In my role as Executive Chairman, I will focus on the long arc of the company and keep the Board and our co-CEOs deeply connected through my engagement." In a post on X, Ek also mentioned that Spotify has been profitable for over a year. Ek has served as Spotify's CEO since he founded it in 2006, so this is a big change in leadership for the streaming giant.

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Amazon is replacing Android on new Fire TV hardware with its own Vega OS, debuting on the Fire TV Stick 4K Select. While major streaming apps are supported, sideloading is gone "because, well, this isn't Android anymore," notes 9to5Google. The company says "only apps from the Amazon Appstore are available for download." From the report: The company hasn't fully detailed all of the ins and outs of Vega, but Amazon hints that this is a move in the interest of performance. In a post, Amazon touches on Vega being "remarkably fast" despite the low-end hardware of its new Fire TV Stick 4K Select: "Our newest Fire TV Stick, the 4K Select, helps you maximize every pixel of your 4K TVs at an incredible value. It delivers vibrant 4K picture quality with HDR10+ support and apps that launch remarkably fast. The performance comes from our new operating system, Vega, which is responsive and highly efficient. Everything you need is right in the box -- it works with your favorite streaming services, and will soon support Xbox Gaming, Luna, and Alexa+." As pointed out by AFTVNews, the Fire TV 4K Select offers a mere 1GB of RAM, which is half as much as prior generations. So, in a way, that does speak to how lightweight this new platform is. But the bigger question is around apps. Amazon says that "your favorite streaming services" still work with Vega, and that Xbox, Luna, and Alexa+ will be coming "soon" (though they're already supported on existing Android-based Fire TV devices).

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A Chinese national has been convicted following an international fraud investigation which resulted in what's believed to be the single largest cryptocurrency seizure in the world. The Metropolitan Police says it recovered 61,000 bitcoin worth more than $6.7 billion in current prices. Zhimin Qian, also known as Yadi Zhang, pleaded guilty on Monday at Southwark Crown Court of illegally acquiring and possessing the cryptocurrency. A second person appeared in court on Tuesday to admit to their role in the scheme. Malaysian national Seng Hok Ling, of Matlock, Derbyshire, pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court of entering into a money laundering arrangement on or before April 23, 2024. According to the charge, he had been dealing in cryptocurrency on Qian's behalf, "knowing or suspecting his actions would facilitate the acquisition or control of criminal property by another." Between 2014 and 2017 Qian led a large-scale scam in China which involved cheating more than 128,000 victims and storing the stolen funds in bitcoin assets, the Met said in a statement. It said the 47-year-old's guilty plea followed a seven-year probe into a global money laundering web which began when it got a tipoff about the transfer of criminal assets. Qian had been "evading justice" for five years up to her arrest, which required a complex investigation involving multiple jurisdictions, said Detective Sergeant Isabella Grotto, who led the Met's investigation. She fled China using false documents and entered the UK, where she attempted to launder the stolen money by buying property, said the Met. "By pleading guilty today, Ms Zhang hopes to bring some comfort to investors who have waited since 2017 for compensation, and to reassure them that the significant rise in cryptocurrency values means there are more than sufficient funds available to repay their losses," said Qian's solicitor Roger Sahota, of Berkeley Square Solicitors. "Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used by organised criminals to disguise and transfer assets, so that fraudsters may enjoy the benefits of their criminal conduct," added deputy chief Crown prosecutor, Robin Weyell. "This case, involving the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the UK, illustrates the scale of criminal proceeds available to those fraudsters."

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Alongside its updated Sora 2 AI video generator, OpenAI has launched an iPhone-only social app called Sora that lets users consent to have friends create deepfake-style cameos of them. The invite-only app works a lot like TikTok with short remixable videos but enforces restrictions on public figures and explicit content. The Verge reports: In a briefing with reporters on Monday, employees called it the potential "ChatGPT moment for video generation." The Sora app is currently only available to US and Canada users, with other countries set to follow, and when someone receives access, they also get four additional invites to share with friends. There's no word on when an Android version might be released. Sora users can give their friends -- or, if they're feeling bold, everyone -- permission to create "cameos" with their own likeness using the new video model, which is dubbed Sora 2. The person whose likeness is being generated is a "co-owner" of that end result, OpenAI employees said, and they can delete it or revoke access to others at any time. Like TikTok, OpenAI's Sora app allows you to interact with other videos and trends using a "Remix" feature, but it only allows for the generation of 10-second videos for now.

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Starting in November, Venmo and PayPal users will finally be able to send money directly to each other, ending years of workarounds despite Venmo being owned by PayPal. TechCrunch reports: This change means that PayPal users will now be able to find Venmo users by inputting their phone numbers, and later, their email addresses. If you don't want PayPal users to be able to find you, you can update your settings in the Venmo app by navigating to Settings - Privacy - Find me... and while you're at it, you might as well default your Venmo transactions to private via Settings > Privacy. You'll thank me in the long run. PayPal announced that it would broaden its network of payment systems in July, starting with Venmo, but the companies did not confirm the date of the update until now. This collection of partnerships, which PayPal has named PayPal World, will also work with Mercado Pago, NPCI International Payments Limited, and Tenpay Global. This will help users send money internationally without barriers and fees. Combined, Venmo and PayPal have 2 billion global users, according to PayPal.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted on Tuesday to consider whether to lift the long-standing prohibition on a merger between any of the largest four broadcast networks and to consider relaxing other media ownership rules. The FCC said it would consider public comments before deciding whether to reverse the rule that bars a merger among the "Big Four" networks: NBC, owned by Comcast, Walt Disney Co's ABC, Paramount Skydance's CBS or Fox. The FCC also said it was seeking public comment on whether to eliminate or revise a rule that limits a single entity from owning more than two of the four largest television stations in the same local market and a rule that limits the total number of local radio stations that may be owned in a single market. Previously, the FCC noted that a version of the rule barring dual ownership of networks has existed since the 1940s. A 2018 media ownership review concluded the bar should be upheld "because it advances the agency's core policy objectives of competition and localism. "We intend to take a fresh approach to competition by examining the broader media marketplace, rather than treating broadcast radio and television as isolated markets," FCC Chair Brendan Carr said. "If we determine that any rule no longer serves the public interest, we will fulfill our statutory duty to modify or eliminate those rules."

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Microsoft began rolling out Windows 11 version 25H2 today, delivering the annual update as a compact enablement package to users who enable the "get the latest updates as soon as they're available" toggle in Windows Update. The company tested the release in its Windows Insider Release Preview ring during the previous month before the broader rollout.Version 25H2 shares its code base and servicing branch with the existing 24H2 release. Both versions will receive identical monthly feature updates going forward. The update removes PowerShell 2.0 and the Windows Management Instrumentation command-line tool to reduce the operating system's footprint. John Cable, vice president of program management for Windows servicing and delivery, said the release includes advancements in build and runtime vulnerability detection paired with AI-assisted secure coding. Microsoft designed the version to address security threats under its security development lifecycle policy requirements. The company plans to expand availability over the coming months and will document known compatibility issues on its Windows release health hub. Devices with detected application or driver incompatibilities will receive safeguard holds that delay the update until resolution.

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Imgur, a popular image hosting platform with more than 130 million users, has stopped being available in the UK after regulators signalled their intention to impose penalties over concerns around children's data. From a report: The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said that it has reached provisional findings in an investigation in the parent company of image hosting site, Imgur. Its probe was launched earlier this year, as part of the regulator's Children's Code strategy, which is intended to set the standards for how online services handle the personal information of young people. BBC adds: The UK's data watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), said it recently notified the platform's parent company, MediaLab AI, of plans to fine Imgur after probing its approach to age checks and use of children's personal data.

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Chinese hackers breached email servers of foreign ministers as part of a years-long effort targeting the communications of diplomats around the world, according to researchers at the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks. From a report: Attackers accessed Microsoft Exchange email servers, gaining the ability to search for information at some foreign ministries, said the team at Unit 42, the threat intelligence division of Palo Alto Networks, which has been tracking the group for nearly three years. Hackers specifically searched in the email servers for key terms related to a China-Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2022, said Lior Rochberger, senior researcher at the company. They also searched for names such as including Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, in the context of that summit, the researchers said. The researchers declined to specifically identify which countries had their systems breached in the hacking campaign, but wrote in the report that the group's targeting patterns "align consistently with the People's Republic of China (PRC) economic and geopolitical interests."

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Cancer rates among people aged 15 to 49 have increased 10% since 2000 even as rates have fallen among older populations. Young women face an 83% higher cancer rate than men in the same age range. A 150,000-person study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting found millennials appear to be aging biologically faster than previous generations based on blood biomarkers. That acceleration was associated with up to 42% increased risk for certain cancers including lung, gastrointestinal and uterine malignancies. Researchers are examining the "exposome" -- the full range of environmental exposures across a person's life. Studies have linked early-onset cancers to medications taken during pregnancy, ultra-processed foods that now account for more than half of daily calorie intake in the United States, circadian rhythm disruption from artificial light and shift work, and chemical exposures. Gary Patti at Washington University is using zebrafish exposed to known and suspected carcinogens to track tumor development. His lab has developed systems to scan blood samples for tens of thousands of chemicals simultaneously to identify signatures appearing more frequently in early-onset cancer patients.

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Amazon today announced three new Kindle Scribe models, its e ink-featuring tables designed for note-taking and reading. The lineup includes the standard Kindle Scribe and a version without a front light alongside the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. The new devices feature an 11-inch glare-free E Ink screen compared to the 10.2-inch display on previous models. Amazon has reduced the weight to 400 grams from 433 grams and made the devices 5.4mm thin. The company added a quad-core processor and additional memory to deliver writing and page turns that are 40% faster than earlier versions. The Colorsoft model uses custom-built display technology to offer 10 pen colors and five highlighter colors. Amazon redesigned the software to include AI-powered notebook search and summaries. The devices will support Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive for document access and allow users to export notes as editable text to OneNote. The standard Kindle Scribe will start at $499.99 and the Colorsoft at $629.99 when they become available later this year. The version without a front light will cost $429.99 and arrive early next year.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Boeing is planning a new single-aisle airplane that would succeed the 737 MAX, according to people familiar with the matter, a long-term bid to recover business lost to rival Airbus during its series of safety and quality problems. Earlier this year, Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg met with officials from Rolls-Royce in the U.K., two of the people said, where they discussed a new engine for the aircraft. Ortberg appointed a new senior product chief in Boeing's commercial plane business, whose prior role was developing a new type of aircraft. Boeing has also been designing the flight deck of a new narrow-body aircraft, according to a person familiar with the plans. This new aircraft is in early-stage development and plans are still taking shape, some of the people said. Boeing's plans represent a shift for the company, which had put some new aircraft development work on the back burner while it navigated multiple challenges. They are also a sign that the company is betting that a cutting-edge plane design could power its business for the next few decades.

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Trust in America's elite universities has declined sharply over the past decade [non-paywalled source]. A Manhattan Institute survey conducted in June 2025 found that only 42% of Americans have significant trust in higher education, down 15 percentage points from a decade earlier. Trust in Ivy League institutions stands at just 15%. Harvard is considering building trade schools as part of a settlement with the Trump administration. The proposal comes as elite universities face criticism for shifting focus from academic excellence to shaping students' political and moral values. Princeton changed its informal motto in 2016 to "In the Nation's Service and the Service of Humanity." Grade inflation has become prevalent at elite schools. A Bloomberg column argues universities should adopt more objective admissions criteria, reduce grade inflation, and make education their primary mission again rather than attempting to fix societal problems.

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Camembert writes: In a move that is sure to make Ripple nervous, traditional financial network Swift announced yesterday that it is partnering with Consensys and more than 30 global banks to build a blockchain based network that will run in parallel with its traditional network. Interestingly, unlike XRP, there is no native coin, rather it aims for interoperability (probably using Chainlink with whom the company did case studies for a few years already). There is also a strong focus on regulatory compliance. There are several news articles and opinion pieces on this event; I linked the Reuters article.

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BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: NASA has awarded Solstar Space a $150,000 SBIR Phase I contract to develop a Lunar Wi-Fi Access Point (LWIFI-AP). The system is designed to provide wireless connectivity for astronauts, rovers, and orbiting spacecraft as part of the Artemis and Commercial Lunar Payload Services programs. Solstar's goal is to build a space-rated, multi-band, multi-protocol access point that can survive radiation, extreme lunar temperatures, and other harsh conditions. NASA has identified Wi-Fi and 3GPP standards as core communication needs across mission systems ranging from the Human Landing System and Lunar Terrain Vehicle to the Lunar Gateway. Although this is only an early-stage contract, Solstar's proposal addresses a clear gap in space-qualified networking hardware. The company says that just as Wi-Fi transformed daily life on Earth, it will be equally important for living and working on the Moon. If the project advances, astronauts could soon be relying on familiar wireless technology that has been adapted for one of the most challenging environments in existence.

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Sen. Mark Kelly and three Democratic colleagues urged appropriations leaders to block funding for moving space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Houston, arguing the transfer would waste taxpayer money, risk permanent damage, and restrict public access. The relocation, pushed by Texas senators Cornyn and Cruz under a new law, carries an estimated cost of nearly $400 million. Ars Technica reports: "Why should hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars be spent just to jeopardize a piece of American history that's already protected and on display?" wrote Kelly in a social media post on Friday. "Space Shuttle Discovery belongs at the Smithsonian, where millions of people, including students and veterans, go to see it for free." In a letter sent on the same day to the leadership of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Kelly and his three colleagues cautioned that any effort to transfer the winged orbiter would "waste taxpayer dollars, risk permanent damage to the shuttle, and mean fewer visitors would be able to visit it." "It is worth noting that there is little evidence of broad public demand for such a move," wrote Kelly, Warner, Kaine, and Durbin. In the letter, the senators asked that committee chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and vice chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) block funding for Discovery's relocation in both the fiscal year 2026 Interior-Environment appropriations bill and FY26 Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill. [...] "Houston's disappointment in not being selected is wholly understandable," the four senators wrote, "but removing an item from the National Collection is not a viable solution." [...] "There are also profound financial challenges associated with this transfer," wrote Kelly. Warner, Kaine, and Durbin. "The Smithsonian estimates that transporting Discovery from Virginia to Houston could cost more than $50 million, with another $325 million needed for planning, exhibit reconstruction, and new facilities." "Dedicating hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to move an artifact that is already housed, displayed, and preserved in a world-class facility is both inefficient and unjustifiable," the senators wrote. Then there are the logistical challenges with relocating Discovery, which could result in damaging it, "permanently diminishing its historical and cultural value for future generations." "Moving Discovery by barge or road would be far more complex [than previous shuttle moves], exposing it to saltwater, weather, and collision risks across a journey several times longer," the letter reads. "As a one-of-a-kind artifact that has already endured the stresses of spaceflight, Discovery is uniquely vulnerable to these hazards. The heat tiles that enabled repeated shuttle missions become more fragile with age, and they are irreplaceable." Kelly, who previously lived in Houston when he was part of the space program, agrees that the city is central to NASA's human spaceflight efforts, but, along with Warner, Kaine, and Durbin, points out that displaying Discovery would come with another cost: an admission fee, limiting public access to the shuttle. "The Smithsonian is unique among museums for providing visitors with access to a national treasure meant to inspire the American public without placing economic barriers," wrote the senators.

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Calendars today may be controlled by a standards body, but that's hardly an inherent fact of timekeeping. Dates and times are arbitrary and we structure them to our convenience.

If we rewind to ancient Rome, you had the role of Pontifex Maximus. This was the religious leader of Rome, and since honoring the correct feasts and festivals at the right time was part of the job, it was also the standards body which kept the calendar. It was, ostensibly, not a political position, but there was also no rule that an aspiring politician couldn't hold both that post and a political post, like consul. This was a loophole Julius Caesar ruthlessly exploited; if his political opposition wanted to have an important meeting on a given day, whoops! The signs and portents tell us that we need to have a festival and no work should be done!

There's no evidence to prove it, but Julius Caesar is exactly the kind of petty that he probably skipped Pompey's birthday every year.

Julius messed around with the calendar a fair bit for political advantage, but the final version of it was the Julian calendar and that was our core calendar for the next 1500 years or so (and in some places, still is the preferred calendar). At that point Pope Gregory came in, did a little refactoring and fixed the leap year calculations, and recalibrated the calendar to the seasons. The down side of that: he had to skip 13 days to get things back in sync.

The point of this historical digression is that there really is no point in history when dates made sense. That still doesn't excuse today's Java code, sent to us by Bernard.

GregorianCalendar gregorianCalendar = getGregorianCalendar(); XMLGregorianCalendar xmlVersion = DatatypeFactory.newInstance().newXMLGregorianCalendar(gregorianCalendar); return gregorianCalendar.equals(xmlVersion .toGregorianCalendar());

Indenting as per the original.

The GregorianCalendar is more or less what it sounds like, a calendar type in the Gregorian system, though it's worth noting that it's technically a "combined" calendar that also supports Julian dates prior to 15-OCT-1582 (with a discontinuity- it's preceeded by 04-OCT-1582). To confuse things even farther, this is a bit of fun in the Javadocs:

Prior to the institution of the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Day was March 25. To avoid confusion, this calendar always uses January 1. A manual adjustment may be made if desired for dates that are prior to the Gregorian changeover and which fall between January 1 and March 24.

"To avoid confusion." As if confusion is avoidable when crossing between two date systems.

None of that has anything to do with our code sample, it's just interesting. Let's dig into the code.

We start by fetching a GregorianCalendar object. We then construct an XMLGregorianCalendar object off of the original GregorianCalendar. Then we convert the XMLGregorianCalendar back into a GregorianCalendar and compare them. You might think that this then is a function which always returns true, but Java's got a surprise for you: converting to XMLGregorianCalendar is lossy so this function always returns false.

Bernard didn't have an explanation for why this code exists. I don't have an explanation either, besides human frailty. No matter if the original developer expected this to be true or false at any given time, why are we even doing this check? What do we hope to learn from it?

[Advertisement] Picking up NuGet is easy. Getting good at it takes time. Download our guide to learn the best practice of NuGet for the Enterprise.

Researchers in Texas confirmed the first documented wild hybrid between a blue jay and a green jay -- a rare pairing that is likely a result of climate change and habitat shifts. Slashdot reader fjo3 shares a report from CNN: "We think it's the first observed vertebrate that's hybridized as a result of two species both expanding their ranges due, at least in part, to climate change," said Brian Stokes, a doctoral student of biology at the University of Texas at Austin and first author of the study published September 10 in the journal Ecology and Evolution. The vividly colored green jay is found in parts of South and Central America, Mexico and a limited portion of southern Texas. But since 2000, the tropical bird's territory has expanded north by hundreds of kilometers -- more than 100 miles and about 2 degrees of latitude -- along the Rio Grande and up toward San Antonio, said study coauthor Timothy Keitt. Avid birders across Central Texas have taken note, sharing sightings of the emerald birds on social media and apps like eBird. Keitt, a professor of integrative biology at UT Austin, has been keeping tabs on their rapid northward creep since 2018. "They're pretty unmistakable in the field," he told CNN. "You see a green jay and you absolutely know that it's a green jay." Stokes joined Keitt's project a few years later, trapping birds to take blood samples for genetic analysis and releasing them back into the wild. While monitoring social media for green jay sightings in May 2023, Stokes came across an intriguing post on a Facebook group called Texbirds. A woman in a suburb of San Antonio shared a photo of an unusual bird that didn't look like any jay Stokes or Keitt had ever seen. "He happened to notice that this person posted a picture of this odd jay, and immediately told me, and we got in the car and drove down to find it right away," Keitt said. He and Stokes described their finding as one of the "increasingly unexpected outcomes" that arise when global warming and land development converge to drive animal populations to new habitat ranges. This, they wrote, can lead to unpredictable animal interactions -- in this case, between a tropical species and a temperate one -- and create never-before-seen ecological communities.

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