Tesla has unveiled a dramatically redesigned Roadster concept capable of performing midair flips, controlled landings, and a claimed 0-60 mph sprint in just 0.81 seconds. CarScoops reports: Tonight, Tesla debuted the new Roadster by driving it up a vertical ramp that then went horizontal. Then, it repeated the feat but drove off of the ramp and used thrusters to flip itself over and make a controlled landing on the ground. After that, it did a barrel roll over the rest of the Tesla lineup and again landed without issue on the ground. Then, it did 0-60 mph in 0.81 seconds according to Tesla. All of that sounds amazing, and indeed, watching it happen was pretty spectacular, but boy do we have a lot to unpack.

It's been nearly a decade since Tesla first showed us the Roadster. The company unveiled what it's simply calling the Roadster. Not Roadster 2.0, not CyberRoadster, just Roadster, as if it's a direct successor to the original Tesla. In terms of design, it's quite a bit different from the car we saw in 2017. Rather than be a somewhat curvaceous sports car, it's considerably more angular. If a Cybertruck and a Lamborghini Reventon had a runt of a baby, this would be that car. Still, at this stage, we're still just touching on what we saw and what it looks like. Let's get into the details. Developed in collaboration with SpaceX, the Roadster uses 10 cold-gas thrusters powered by two 600-liter compressed-air tanks to accelerate and maneuver in mid-air. Underbody suction fans reportedly generate up to 2Gs of downforce even while stationary, while an active rear spoiler adjusts aerodynamics in real time.

Other features include steer-by-wire, brake-by-wire, and throttle-by-wire technology. Tesla plans three variants: Performance, which requires a $50,000 deposit; Thrust, a $250,000 model capable of sub-one-second acceleration; and Rocket, an invite-only, single-seat version capable of flying.

Production isn't expected until 2028, and Tesla has yet to disclose key specifications, including range, horsepower, battery capacity, and motor configuration.

A recording of the event can be viewed on X.

Slashdot reader alternative_right shares a story that has drawn international attention for being potentially the first documented instance of a robot being used directly in a sexual assault. According to the Associated Press, German police have opened a sexual harassment investigation after a robot allegedly touched a 16-year-old girl's buttocks and made thrusting motions while two young men reportedly filmed and streamed the incident. Investigators seized the robot and the suspects' phones and are trying to determine whether the movements were preprogrammed or controlled in real time. From the report: Cologne police spokesman Christoph Bermel said the two male teenagers have not been charged but are considered suspects, and investigators were examining whether the robot's movements were preprogrammed or controlled in real time.

Police were unfamiliar with this type of incident, he said. "We have not been aware of this phenomenon so far," Bermel told The Associated Press, saying it was "new territory for us." [...] The robot, said to be 120 centimeters (about 3 ft 11 inches) tall, was dressed in a white tank top, black sweatpants and wearing a gold chain and sunglasses. It also had what appears to be a fake mustache. Videos circulated on the internet show two young men escorting the robot toward a group of women, bumping into one and hugging others, on a lively nighttime street.

prisoninmate shares a report from 9to5Linux: Ubuntu 26.10 (Stonking Stingray) has been released today, and it is now available for download for those eager to update their Ubuntu systems to a newer release. Powered by the upcoming Linux 7.3 kernel series, Ubuntu 26.10 ships with the latest GNOME 51 desktop environment, TPM-backed full disk encryption (FDE) support on computers without a hardware root of trust, updated Settings to show whether a computer is certified for Ubuntu, and 100% Rust coreutils.

There are several App Center enhancements in Ubuntu 26.10, such as a unified app-details view for Snap and Debian packages, a dedicated Drivers page where you can review the available graphics drivers, including NVIDIA driver branches, and support for installing codecs for one-time playback when a media file uses a codec that's not installed.' Other additions include an optional, locally processed AI-powered speech-to-text tool called Myna, system-wide controls for disabling Ubuntu Insights data collection, and better integration with Microsoft Entra ID. Also worth mentioning are the security and software updates that will be available for nine months, through July 2027.

"Along with the dangers of continuing cyberattacks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that the threat of an AI market crash is putting the global markets at risk," writes Slashdot reader databasecowgirl, citing the IMF's latest semiannual Global Financial Stability Report. Here's a summary: Three salient risks could trigger a sharp tightening of financial conditions and market turmoil. Weaker or less durable investment and profitability in artificial intelligence could lead to a correction in AI-related asset prices, amplified by rising leverage and concentrated exposures. Resurgent inflation or fiscal concerns could drive a sharp rise in sovereign bond yields, with potentially broad repercussions across financial markets. Meanwhile, increasingly sophisticated cyber threats pose growing risks as finance becomes more digital and interconnected.

Underlying financial vulnerabilities could amplify these risks and turn market stress into systemic events. Although the global banking system remains broadly resilient, pockets of weaker banks persist. Liquidity mismatches among insurers and pension funds have increased, while rising leverage and contingent liquidity risks in private credit could amplify stress.

While hedge funds support market functioning in calm times, their use of leverage and exposure to crowded trades could exacerbate market stress too and create spillovers to prime brokers. Some emerging markets have seen policy buffers erode, and frontier economies have increasingly relied on less transparent forms of financing.

Finally, although markets for tokenized assets remain small and could offer efficiency gains in several areas, they can create new channels for the buildup of leverage and mismatches in liquidity and maturity, in addition to elevating risks related to technology and infrastructure. These vulnerabilities underscore the need for policies that strengthen resilience, enhance transparency, contain excessive leverage, and improve preparedness for future shocks. The full report can be found here (PDF).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Flock's founder and CEO Garrett Langley doesn't think the risks of introducing surveillance technology at scale outweigh the rewards. "If we want to live in a society where, if you commit a crime, you have a higher probability of being held accountable, we shouldn't pause progress," Langley said, speaking onstage during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco on Wednesday.

During the interview, the controversial founder of the surveillance maker of license plate cameras and other recording devices deflected hard questions about the criticism Flock now faces -- which has since led to canceled contracts and even layoffs. Instead, Langley tended to respond to questions with anecdotes from conversations with police chiefs and city leaders across the United States, and tales of the supposed numerous crimes Flock has solved, rather than offer tangible solutions to people's concerns.

In doing so, Langley positioned Flock as an advance in technology that was somewhat inevitable. He stressed that if people wanted to live in a better society -- that is, one with reduced crime -- they would have to offer up their privacy in return. [...] "Technology, at its core, in its definition, is just doing things better. It's not doing things perfect," he said. "Driverless cars, I think, is a fair analogy. Driverless cars, I think, are definitively safer than human drivers. And when there's one accident, I don't think the answer is to shut down driverless cars. The answer is to say, 'Hey, let's talk about how we prevent more accidents in the future.'"

[...] From Langley's answers, it's clear that the ethics around how Flock should be used is a decision he would much rather leave up to others. "We don't want to tell city leaders how to do their job," he noted. "We will provide recommendations, we'll provide defaults, but we're going to minimize the number of mandated features, functions, and policies," he said. Langley went on to argue that society too often judges technology "not on how it compares to the past, but how it compares to perfect." He acknowledged that "Flock is far from perfect" but maintained that its technology helps police departments compensate for staffing shortages and improve public safety.

When pressed about potential abuse and privacy concerns, Langley offered few specifics, instead arguing that safeguards could be implemented without disrupting police operations. He insisted the benefits of what Flock offers outweigh the controversy. "There's millions and millions of people who have a better life today because [of] Flock," he said, adding that "it's worth it because one day they might be a victim."

Citizen Lab says it has documented the first publicly confirmed case of zero-click mercenary spyware being delivered through targeted online ads, a technique it calls "AdFection." "There has been a lot of buzz that online ads can be used to identify and automatically hack targets with pinpoint precision, but now for the first time, we have concrete technical evidence showing this process in action," said Bill Marczak, a researcher at Citizen Lab. The Guardian reports: Citizen Lab, a digital investigations research unit at the University of Toronto, said it believed dozens of devices at the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera had been compromised by spyware delivered through ads run by Discover-Tech, which describes itself as a specialised digital advertising agency. According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech operates a software platform called Controlium that allows its clients to "mass-profile and deanonymize" internet users then covertly hack targets with third-party spyware. Unlike infections that rely on people interacting with links or files, the spyware requires no interaction from the victim to be installed, making it a new delivery technique, Citizen Lab says. The infections happen without a user's knowledge, and in a matter of seconds, according to Citizen Lab.

"[The online advertising] ecosystem is being weaponized at a massive scale to profile millions of users, then silently infect targets with zero-click mercenary spyware," the report says. According to the report, Controlium is able to harvest a user's identity and IP address when the user is shown a seemingly benign custom-created ad -- for example, for a digital game or a telecoms service. If the user has been selected as a target for hacking, a mercenary spyware firm can then send a malicious code containing spyware to their device, the researchers say. They say that millions of users worldwide have been served ads by Discover-Tech since 2024, including in Yemen, Brazil, Mexico and Czechia. [...] The full extent of the targeting allegedly enabled by Discover-Tech is unknown. Citizen Lab's findings join mounting evidence that the opaque arrangements underpinning the world of online advertising can be leveraged for surveillance.

Meta has released Muse Spark Open, an 816-billion-parameter open-weight model optimized to run locally across two 512GB M5 Ultra Mac Studios using Apple's MLX framework. Meta says it's the "most capable U.S. open-weight model to date." MacRumors reports: Muse Spark Open has 816 billion total parameters with 42 billion active parameters and a 1 million-token context window. It is meant for coding and agentic work, and Meta says it excels at extended tasks, multi-step reasoning, and software engineering. The new Muse model was tuned to run on Mac Studio, and Meta says the Mac Studio paired with Muse Spark Open is the "best way to run a powerful model on your own desktop."

From Meta: "Apple's unified memory architecture lets the M5 Ultra's integrated GPU use up to 512 GB per Mac Studio, so two machines can hold an entire model. And the chip's 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth is fast enough to read the small slice each token needs. The result is two Mac Studios behave like one supercomputer with a terabyte of unified memory." Apple hasn't released the 512GB Mac Studio as of yet, but it's supposed to be coming later this month. It won't be cheap, because the 256GB Mac Studio is already priced over $10,000.

Microsoft says recent Windows 11 updates have made the operating system up to 20% more responsive by improving memory management and reducing background resource use. "A big part of that work is making smarter use of memory and system resources," says Navjot Virk, corporate vice president of Windows experiences at Microsoft. "We've improved memory management and efficiency across Windows to help keep more of your PC's resources focused on what you're actively doing." The Verge reports: The improvements to memory management now make a "meaningful difference" on PCs with just 8GB of RAM. "Windows can now keep up to 2GB more of your active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage," says Virk. "For example, on PCs with 8GB of memory or less, Widgets load only when you open them, making more than 200 MB of memory available for your apps and other work."

Microsoft has also made Windows Update less disruptive, cleaned up the Widgets section, and finally allowed the taskbar to be repositioned to the sides or top of a display. Windows Hello sign-in has also been sped up, and Bluetooth pairing is more reliable, "including an AirPods pairing experience that's up to 15 seconds faster."

The next big step is a new Windows Search experience that's a lot faster and more capable. [...] It's currently available for Windows Insiders, and Microsoft says it will "roll out more broadly later this year."

Amazon has unveiled two new Bee "personal AI" devices designed to continuously record, transcribe, and analyze conversations: the $75 wearable Bee Frontier and the $100 phone-mounted Bee Eclipse. Amazon says the devices can generate conversation summaries, surface recurring themes, and recommend actions or purchases, while claiming audio itself is never stored and users can delete transcripts and summaries. CNBC reports: The Bee Frontier is an upgraded version of Amazon's existing wearable that can either be worn on a wrist or clipped to clothing. Similar to earlier generations, the Bee Frontier has up to seven days of battery life, but it's also more expensive, costing $75 compared with its $50 predecessor.

Amazon acquired Bee, a San Francisco startup known for its always-listening bracelet, in July 2025 for an undisclosed amount. Bee bracelets are equipped with artificial intelligence and microphones that can record, transcribe and analyze conversations. The dual mics on the Bee Frontier have upgraded noise filtering, "so it can take note of what matters and ignore what doesn't, even in noisy environments like a crowded restaurant or open office," Amazon said in a blog post.

Amazon also debuted the $100 Bee Eclipse, which functions like other Bee devices, but instead of being worn, the credit card-sized gadget magnetically snaps on to the back of a smartphone. The Bee Frontier is available Thursday, while the Bee Eclipse "will be available soon," the company said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Uber has begun a trial of autonomous vehicles on the streets of Manchester as it looks to bring robotaxis to cities around the UK. The first self-driving cars are operating, using the technology of its partner firms Pony and Verne, with whom Uber recently launched Europe's first autonomous taxi service in the Croatian capital, Zagreb. Uber said it was "excited to take this first step toward making this technology accessible to people across the UK."

In social media posts, Verne said it had "started our autonomous vehicle testing in Manchester," while Pony said there were "plans to bring robotaxis to the city" and that testing was under way. The tests involve the company mapping the streets of the city in north-west England with a safety driver behind the wheel and no passengers. Limited passenger services started last month in London, but with a safety driver in the front seat of cars supplied by Wayve under Transport for London's licensing rules for private hire vehicles.

The next steps are unclear. Opposition from Uber drivers, their unions and the capital's politicians to the rollout of robotaxis is mounting. The GMB and ADCU unions have both said thousands of drivers jobs will be lost and have called for help for those affected. A critical report from London assembly's transport committee this week called for the government to devolve authority over autonomous taxi services. It said there was "considerable uncertainty about many of the claimed benefits of autonomous passenger vehicles", and fears over the impact on public transport and congestion, as well as safeguarding and accessibility for disabled passengers. There has been no official application to launch passenger services in Manchester so far.

Bank of America hired 1,000 outside contractors to help patch software vulnerabilities exposed by advanced AI models, including Anthropic's Mythos. The effort added hundreds of millions of dollars in third-quarter expenses. CNBC reports: In an interview after the bank's third-quarter earnings release, [CEO Brian Moynihan] said that earlier this year the company rushed to bolster a wide spectrum of its internal and vendor code using thousands of employees and outside personnel. "That risk is real risk, and that's why when the frontier-type models came out. ... A lot of us sat down and said, 'How do we figure out how to get through this quickly?'" Moynihan told CNBC's Leslie Picker.

"We put on 1,000 contractors to help us do the patching work in the second quarter, and those people remain here today, helping us, on top of the 3,000 people we have in that area," he said. The bank spent a "couple hundred million plus" on the software remediation and regulatory issues related to anti-money laundering compliance in the third quarter, Moynihan told analysts earlier Wednesday.

Researchers from Mount Sinai, NASA, and Space Tango have launched miniature human hearts and brains to the International Space Station to study how microgravity and radiation affect organs and potentially accelerate aging. "If people are going to be living and working in space, then we need to understand what's going to happen to them," David Sachs, assistant professor of surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told ABC News. "But also, because it's interesting as a model of accelerated aging for studying people on Earth." From the report: The mini organs launched aboard commercial resupply mission CRS-35 on Tuesday morning from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. They are expected to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday. The miniature organs offer researchers a unique opportunity to simulate aging in a much shorter period of time to understand disease and develop treatments. "Six months in space ... is equivalent to about 10 to 20 years of aging on Earth," Kevin Costa, associate professor of surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told ABC News.

Sachs and Costa are sending up to 16 miniature hearts to the ISS to test how they respond to electrical signals and monitor how they may react to near-zero gravity. The technology, which is integrated into a miniature laboratory called CubeLab, was developed by Space Tango and simulates the natural environment in the human body. "[It is] slightly bigger than a shoebox, and it is a fully automated, miniaturized system," Gentry Barnett, chief technology officer at Space Tango, told ABC News.

[...] As part of the new effort, the team is sending miniature brains, called miBrain, to the ISS. Around the size of a peppercorn, the miBrains reflect models of healthy and diseased brains. By exposing them to the space environment, scientists can see how mini-brains respond and better understand why living in space accelerates aging. Though the mini organs are not full-sized human organs, the researchers say they are good substitutes, cost-effective and don't take up much of the limited space aboard the space station. They also believe discoveries made in space can translate to uses in everyday medical care.

The microgravity environment uniquely allows researchers to study what happens to humans with a sedentary lifestyle or prolonged bed rest, which isn't easily simulated on Earth, Sachs explained. "[The research is] translating to stuff in space, but it's also translating back to the research we do in the laboratory to help people with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease," Joel Blanchard, associate professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told ABC News. Lisa Carnell, the director of the biological and physical sciences division at NASA, told ABC News that these experiments serve as a starting point for future research beyond low Earth orbit, including to the moon and beyond.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Schools and libraries from around the U.S. pleaded with the Federal Communications Commission to drop the idea of ending E-Rate, a $2 billion-a-year program that connects students and library visitors to the Internet. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has criticized school districts for having "experimented with a massive increase in screen time for students," and said E-Rate expanded too far beyond its original purpose of "supporting basic Internet access to schools and libraries for educational purposes." In June, Carr led a 2-1 vote to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) seeking public comment on whether E-Rate should be "limited or sunset to reflect today's extensive connectivity rates."

Carr's proposal could result in E-Rate cutting the discounts that schools and libraries receive for telecom services and equipment, and imposing more restrictions on how E-Rate money can be used. The FCC seeking comment on whether to sunset the program also raises the possibility that Carr might choose to axe E-Rate entirely. The National Association of Elementary School Principals told the FCC that it "strongly supports the continued operation of the E-Rate program and urges the Commission to reject proposals that would eliminate, substantially restrict, or impose new conditions on this essential source of connectivity assistance for schools and libraries." The Carr FCC already scaled E-Rate back last year by ending funding for schools and libraries to lend out Wi-Fi hotspots and for Wi-Fi service on school buses. "Importantly, the FCC does not have the authority to terminate the E-Rate program. The E-Rate program is mandated by Congress, and the FCC is responsible for administering it," the American Library Associated told the FCC.

The American Library Association said "the FCC lacks the authority and expertise to regulate screen time or determine educational outcomes." In a filing, the group pointed out that under U.S. law, determinations about what content is inappropriate for children "shall be made by the school board, local educational agency, library, or other authority responsible for making the determination."

Eight US states, including Kansas, Arizona, and Montana, have sued OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT encourages children to harm themselves. The states are seeking changes to how the company's products interact with young users and the forfeiture of profits generated from their activity. Reuters reports: Attorneys general from the states, which include Iowa, Kansas and Arizona, filed the lawsuits independently in state courts, claiming ChatGPT is designed to be agreeable and engaging to earn the trust of users. But the chatbot reinforces delusions, encourages dangerous behavior and assists users in planning violence like mass shootings, the lawsuits claim. The lawsuits represent the most significant coordinated state action against an artificial intelligence company, adding to a wave of legal challenges OpenAI faces as it prepares for a public listing. Florida's attorney general filed the first such state suit in June.

The lawsuits accuse the company of violating state consumer protection laws by misleading users about the safety of ChatGPT. The states also allege that the company created a public nuisance by endangering the health of their residents. The lawsuits seek orders forcing OpenAI to make changes to how ChatGPT works. Among other things, the states want the company barred from developing AI models that can improve themselves unless it can ensure those models are aligned with human values. The states ... are also seeking civil monetary penalties for OpenAI's violations of state law as well as damages.

"Starting today, Linux desktops are now officially supported by Microsoft Defender," reports Neowin. A public preview of the threat detection app extends its enterprise security platform beyond servers to developer workstations running distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and RHEL. The offering includes antivirus protection, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management, threat hunting, and device isolation. From the report: Microsoft is also making it easier to onboard desktops through streamlined methods, offering a unified security operations experience, strengthened security, and improved response times. Organizations that are already familiar with securing Linux servers via Defender should feel right at home securing desktops too, as the experience is exactly the same. Defender knows whether it is securing a device in a data center, the cloud, or that it is owned by a developer and identifies them as such in inventory and security workflows.

As stated previously, all Linux server distros are supported via Defender on desktops too. These include RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, SLES, Fedora, and Oracle Linux, GNOME, KDE, and more. That said, you do need Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 or a Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 subscription. You can enroll Defender on workstations using the same deployment methods you use for servers, but do check out the prerequisites here.