Microsoft has announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will cost $29.99 per month, up from $19.99. The company restructured its subscription service into three tiers ahead of the October 16 launch of two Xbox ROG Ally handheld consoles. The new Essential tier offers 50-plus games for $9.99 monthly. Premium includes 200-plus games for $14.99. Ultimate subscribers gain access to more than 400 games, day-one releases, improved cloud streaming quality, and services including EA Play, Ubisoft+ Classics, and Fortnite Crew.

Game Pass generated nearly $5 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue with 34 million subscribers in 2024. Console hardware prices are also increasing, with the Xbox Series X rising $50 to $649.99 starting October 3.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: People withAlzheimer's disease have lower levels of lithium in their brains, and giving lithium to mice with symptoms of the condition reverses cognitive decline. Together, the findings suggest that lithium deficiency could be a driver of Alzheimer's disease and that low-dose lithium medications could help treat it. [...] [Bruce Yanknerat Harvard University] and his colleagues analyzed levels of 27 metals in the brains of 285 people after they died, 94 of whom were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and 58 of whom had mild cognitive impairment, a precursor of the condition. The other participants showed no signs of cognitive decline at the time of their death.

Lithium levels in the prefrontal cortex -- a brain region crucial for memory and decision-making -- were about 36 percent lower, on average, in people with Alzheimer's disease than in those without any cognitive decline. For those with mild cognitive impairment, lithium levels were about 23 percent lower. "We suspect that's due to a number of environmental factors: dietary intake, genetics and so forth," says Yankner. Yet there seemed to be another reason, too. In those with Alzheimer's disease, clumps of proteins called amyloid plaques contained nearly three times the amount of lithium as plaque-free regions of their brain. "Lithium becomes sequestered in these plaques," says Yankner. "We have two things going on. There is impaired uptake of lithium [in the brain] very early on and then, as the disease progresses, the lithium that is in the brain is further diminished by being bound to amyloid."

To understand how this influences cognition, the team genetically engineered 22 mice to develop Alzheimer's-like symptoms and reduced their lithium intake by 92 percent. After about eight months, the animals performed significantly worse on multiple memory tests compared with 16 mice on a standard diet. It took lithium-deficient mice around 10 seconds longer to find a hidden platform in a water maze, for example, even after six days of training. Their brains also contained nearly two and a half times as many amyloid plaques. Genetic analysis of brain cells from the lithium-deficient mice showed increased activity in genes related to neurodegeneration and Alzheimer's. They also had more brain inflammation and their immune cells were less able to clear away amyloid plaques, changes also seen in people with Alzheimer's disease.

The team then screened different lithium compounds for their ability to bind to amyloid and found that lithium orotate -- a naturally occurring compound in the body formed by combining lithium with orotic acid -- appeared to be the least likely to get trapped within plaques. Nine months of treatment with this compound significantly reduced plaques in mice with Alzheimer's-like symptoms, and they also performed as well on memory tests as normal mice. These results suggest lithium orotate could be a promising treatment for Alzheimer's. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

Without providing specifics, President Trump said on Wednesday that he will impose a 100% tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips, but not for companies that are "building in the United States." CNBC reports: "We're going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors," Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon. "But the good news for companies like Apple is if you're building in the United States or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge," he said. "So in other words, we'll be putting a tariff on of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors. But if you're building in the United States of America, there's no charge." The remarks follow a recently announced commitment by Apple to invest another $100 billion in the U.S. over the next four years to boost manufacturing in the U.S.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's accelerated Android release cycle will soon deliver a new version of the software, and it might look quite different from what you'd expect. Amid rumors of a major UI overhaul, Google seems to have accidentally published a blog post detailing "Material 3 Expressive," which we expect to see revealed at I/O later this month. Google quickly removed the post from its design site, but not before the Internet Archive saved it.

It has been a few years since Google introduced any major changes to its Material theming, but the design team wasn't just sitting idly this whole time. According to the leaked blog post, Google has spent the past three years working on a more emotionally engaging vision for Android design. While the original Material Design did an admirable job of leveraging colors and consistent theming, it could make apps look too similar. The answer to that, apparently, is Material 3 Expressive.

Google says this is "the most-researched update to Google's design system, ever." The effort reportedly included 46 separate studies with hundreds of sample designs. The team showed these designs to more than 18,000 study participants to understand how the user experience would work. In these studies, the design team used a variety of metrics, including the following:
- Eye tracking: Analyzing where users focus their attention
- Surveys and focus groups: Gauging emotional responses to different designs
- Experiments: Gathering sentiment and preferences
- Usability: Seeing how quickly participants could understand and use an interface "The result of all this is an interface that appears much more varied than the previous Material Design," writes Ars.

You can check out 9to5Google's article, which preserved many of the blog post's visuals before they were removed.

The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that a surprising majority of galaxies rotate clockwise, challenging the long-held belief in a directionally uniform universe; this anomaly could suggest either our universe originated inside a rotating black hole or that astronomers have been misinterpreting the universe's expansion due to observational biases. Smithsonian Magazine reports: The problem is that astronomers have long posited that galaxies should be evenly split between rotating in one direction or the other, astronomer Dan Weisz from the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the study, wrote for Astronomy back in 2017. "This stems from the idea that we live in an 'isotropic' universe, which means that the universe looks roughly the same in every direction. By extension, galaxies shouldn't have a preferred direction of spin from our perspective," he added. According to Shamir, there are two strong potential explanations for this discrepancy. One explanation is that the universe came into existence while in rotation. This theory would support what's known as black hole cosmology: the hypothesis that our universe exists within a black hole that exists within another parent universe. In other words, black holes create universes within themselves, meaning that the black holes in our own universe also lead to other baby universes.

"A preferred axis in our universe, inherited by the axis of rotation of its parent black hole, might have influenced the rotation dynamics of galaxies, creating the observed clockwise-counterclockwise asymmetry," Nikodem Poplawski, a theoretical physicist at the University of New Haven who was not involved in the study, tells Space.com's Robert Lea. "The discovery by the JWST that galaxies rotate in a preferred direction would support the theory of black holes creating new universes, and I would be extremely excited if these findings are confirmed."

Another possible explanation involves the Milky Way's rotation. Due to an effect called the Doppler shift, astronomers expect galaxies rotating opposite to the Milky Way's motion to appear brighter, which could explain their overrepresentation in telescopic surveys. "If that is indeed the case, we will need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe," Shamir explains in the statement. "The re-calibration of distance measurements can also explain several other unsolved questions in cosmology such as the differences in the expansion rates of the universe and the large galaxies that according to the existing distance measurements are expected to be older than the universe itself." The findings have been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

With the signing of HB25-1040 on Monday, Colorado now defines nuclear as a "clean energy resource" since it doesn't release large amounts of climate-warming emissions. "The category was previously reserved for renewables like wind, solar and geothermal, which don't carry the radioactive stigma that's hobbled fission power plants following disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima," notes Colorado Public Radio. From the report: In an emailed statement, Ally Sullivan, a spokesperson for the governor's office, said the law doesn't advance any specific nuclear energy project, and no utility has proposed building a nuclear power plant in Colorado. It does, however, allow nuclear energy to potentially serve as one piece of the state's plan to tackle climate change. "If nuclear energy becomes sufficiently cost-competitive, it could potentially become part of Colorado's clean energy future. However, it must be conducted safely, without harming communities, depleting other natural resources or replacing other clean energy sources," Sullivan said.

By redefining nuclear energy as "clean," the law would let future fission-based power plants obtain local grants previously reserved for other carbon-free energy sources, and it would allow those projects to contribute to Colorado's renewable energy goals. It also aligns state law with a push to reshape public opinion of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy proponents promise new reactor designs are smaller and safer than hulking power plants built in the 20th century. By embracing those systems, bill supporters claimed Colorado could meet rising energy demand without abandoning its ambitious climate goals.

"I intend to sue the National Archives," said Joseph diGenova, an 80-year-old former Trump campaign lawyer (and a U.S. Attorney from 1983 to 1988). While releasing 63,000 unredacted pages about the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, the U.S. government erroneously "made public the Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information of potentially hundreds of former congressional staffers and other people," reports USA Today. ("It is virtually impossible to tell the scope of the breach because the National Archives put them online without a way to search them by keyword, some JFK files experts and victims of the information release told USA TODAY...")

Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who represented current and former spies and other officials in cases against the government, told USA Today that he "saw a few names I know and I informed them of the breach... Hundreds were doxxed but of that number I don't know how many are still living." Zaid, who has fought for decades for the JFK records to be made public, said many of the thousands of investigative documents had been made public long ago with everything declassified and unredacted except for the personal information. Releasing that information now, he told USA TODAY, poses significant threats to those whose information is now public, including dates and places of birth, but especially their Social Security numbers. "The purpose of the release was to inform the public about the JFK assassination, not to help permit identity theft of those who actually investigated the events of that day," Zaid said. The Associated Press reported Thursday afternoon that government officials "said they are still screening the records to identify all the Social Security numbers that were released." One of the newly unredacted documents... discloses the Social Security numbers of more than two dozen people seeking security clearances in the 1990s to review JFK-related documents for the Assassination Records Review Board.

Hot on the heels of United Airlines' Starlink announcement, Hawaiian Airlines said it, too, is offering "fast and free Starlink Wi-Fi" across its entire Airbus fleet. CNET reports: Hawaiian Airlines is now the first major carrier to use Elon Musk's satellite internet service, which taps more than 7,000 satellites in low earth orbit to deliver high-speed internet worldwide. "In Starlink's low earth orbit constellation of advanced satellites, the latest of which utilize a revolutionary laser mesh network, we found an ideal solution to ensure reliable, high-speed, low-latency Wi-Fi on transpacific flights," a Hawaiian Airlines representative told CNET. "Working with Starlink has allowed us to offer a fast and consistent in-flight connectivity experience that meets our high standard for guest service."

The company first debuted Starlink on its planes in February on a flight from Honolulu to Long Beach, California. It first struck a deal with Starlink in 2022 and has now completed installation across its entire Airbus fleet, which includes 24 A330 planes and 18 A321neos. Hawaiian Airlines will also deploy the service on its two Boeing 787-9 planes, but not its Boeing 717 aircraft, which are used on shorter flights between the Hawaiian Islands.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld, written by Michael Crider: The latest perpetrator of questionable AI branding? HP. The company is introducing "Print AI," what it calls the "industry's first intelligent print experience for home, office, and large format printing." What does that mean? It's essentially a new beta software driver package for some HP printers. According to the press release, it can deliver "Perfect Output" -- capital P capital O -- a branded tool that reformats the contents of a page in order to more ideally fit it onto physical paper.

Despite my skeptical tone, this is actually a pretty cool idea. "Perfect Output can detect unwanted content like ads and web text, printing only the desired text and images, saving time, paper, and ink." That's neat! If the web page you're printing doesn't offer a built-in print format, the software will make one for you. It'll also serve to better organize printed spreadsheets and images, too. But I don't see anything in this software that's actually AI -- or even machine learning, for that matter. This is applying the same tech (functionally, if not necessarily the same code) as the "reader mode" formatting we've seen in browsers for about a decade now. Take the text and images of a page, strip out everything else that's unnecessary, and present it as efficiently as possible. [...]

The press release does mention that support and formatting tasks can be accomplished with "simple conversational prompts," which at least might be leveraging some of the large language models that have become synonymous with AI as consumers understand it. But based on the description, it's more about selling you something than helping you. "Customers can choose to print or explore a curated list of partners that offer unique photo printing capabilities, gift certificates to be printed on the card, and so much more." Whoopee.

In the days following Brazil's shutdown of X, the decentralized social networking startup Bluesky added over 2 million new users, up from just half a million as of Friday. "This rapid growth led some users to encounter the occasional error that would state there were 'Not Enough Resources' to handle requests, as Bluesky engineers scrambled to keep the servers stable under the influx of new sign-ups," reports TechCrunch's Sarah Perez. From the report: As new users downloaded the app, Bluesky jumped to becoming the app to No. 1 in Brazil over the weekend, ahead of Meta's X competitor, Instagram Threads. According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, Bluesky's total downloads soared by 10,584% this weekend compared to last, and its downloads in Brazil were up by a whopping 1,018,952%. The growth seems to be having a halo effect, as downloads outside Brazil also rose by 584%, the firm noted. In part, this is due to Bluesky receiving downloads in 22 countries where it had barely seen any traction before.

In terms of absolute downloads, countries that saw the most installs outside Brazil included the U.S., Portugal, the U.K., Canada and Spain. Those with the most download growth, however, were Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Romania. Most of the latter group jumped from single-digit growth to growth in the thousands. Bluesky's newcomers have actively engaged on the platform, too, driving up other key metrics.

As one Bluesky engineer remarked, the number of likes on the social network grew to 104.6 million over the past four-day period, up from just 13 million when compared with a similar period just a week ago. Follows also grew from 1.4 million to 100.8 million while reposts grew from 1.3 million to 11 million. As of Monday, Bluesky said it had added 2.11 million users during the past four days, up from 26,000 users it had added in the week-ago period. In addition, the company noted it had seen "significantly more than a 100% [daily active users] increase." On Tuesday, Bluesky told TechCrunch the number is now 2.4 million and continues to grow "by the minute."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: New analyses from the Annenberg Public Policy Center find that public perceptions of scientists' credibility -- measured as their competence, trustworthiness, and the extent to which they are perceived to share an individual's values -- remain high, but their perceived competence and trustworthiness eroded somewhat between 2023 and 2024. The research also found that public perceptions of scientists working in artificial intelligence (AI) differ from those of scientists as a whole. [...] The five factors in Factors Assessing Science's Self-Presentation (FASS) are whether science and scientists are perceived to be credible and prudent, and whether they are perceived to overcome bias, correct error (self-correcting), and whether their work benefits people like the respondent and the country as a whole (beneficial). [...] In the FASS model, perceptions of scientists' credibility are assessed through perceptions of whether scientists are competent, trustworthy, and "share my values." The first two of those values slipped in the most recent survey. In 2024, 70% of those surveyed strongly or somewhat agree that scientists are competent (down from 77% in 2023) and 59% strongly or somewhat agree that scientists are trustworthy (down from 67% in 2023). The survey also found that in 2024, fewer people felt that scientists' findings benefit "the country as a whole" and "benefit people like me." In 2024, 66% strongly or somewhat agreed that findings benefit the country as a whole (down from 75% in 2023). Belief that scientists' findings "benefit people like me," also declined, to 60% from 68%. Taken together, those two questions make up the beneficial factor of FASS. The findings follow sustained attacks on climate and COVID-19-related science, and more recently, public concerns about the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence. Here's what the study found when comparing perceptions of scientists in general with climate and AI scientists: - Credibility: When asked about three factors underlying scientists' credibility, AI scientists have lower credibility in all three values.
- Competent: 0% strongly/somewhat agree that scientists are competent, but only 62% for climate scientists and 49% for AI scientists.
- Trustworthy: 59% agree scientists are trustworthy, 54% agree for climate scientists, 28% for AI scientists.
- Share my values: A higher number (38%) agree that climate scientists share my values than for scientists in general (36%) and AI scientists (15%). More people disagree with this for AI scientists (35%) than for the others.
- Prudence: Asked whether they agree or disagree that science by various groups of scientists "creates unintended consequences and replaces older problems with new ones," over half of those surveyed (59%) agree that AI scientists create unintended consequences and just 9% disagree.
- Overcoming bias: Just 42% of those surveyed agree that scientists "are able to overcome human and political biases," but only 21% feel that way about AI scientists. In fact, 41% disagree that AI scientists are able to overcome human political biases. In another area, just 23% agree that AI scientists provide unbiased conclusions in their area of inquiry and 38% disagree.
- Self-correction: Self-correction, or "organized skepticism expressed in expectations sustaining a culture of critique," as the FASS paper puts it, is considered by some as a "hallmark of science." AI scientists are seen as less likely than scientists or climate scientists to take action to prevent fraud; take responsibility for mistakes; or to have mistakes that are caught by peer review.
- Benefits: Asked about the benefits from scientists' findings, 60% agree that scientists' "findings benefit people like me," though just 44% agree for climate scientists and 35% for AI scientists. Asked about whether findings benefit the country as a whole, 66% agree for scientists, 50% for climate scientists and 41% for AI scientists.
- Your best interest: The survey also asked respondents how much trust they have in scientists to act in the best interest of people like you. (This specific trust measure is not a part of the FASS battery.) Respondents have less trust in AI scientists than in others: 41% have a great deal/a lot of trust in medical scientists; 39% in climate scientists; 36% in scientists; and 12% in AI scientists.

Wells Fargo's co-branded credit card partnership with fintech startup Bilt Technologies is causing the bank to lose up as much as $10 million monthly, according to a WSJ report. The bank agreed to a co-branded program with the fintech startup that most other big banks -- including JPMorgan Chase -- passed on, incorrectly modeled key assumptions and sees no path to profitability. The card, which allows users to pay rent without fees while earning rewards, has attracted many young customers. From the report: There is a reason why credit cards hadn't gained traction in the rent sector until Bilt came along. Most landlords didn't accept them because they refuse to pay card fees that get pocketed by the banks issuing them and often run between 2% and 3%.

Bilt structured the card so landlords won't incur the fees. Wells instead eats much of that. About six months after the credit card was launched, Wells began paying Bilt a fee of about 0.80% of each rent transaction, even though the bank isn't collecting interchange fees from landlords. It appears that the problem for Wells Fargo is that Bilt customers are savvy. They are making the rent payments, but not carrying balances or doing any other transactions through the card.

Europe has more natural gas than it knows what to do with. So much, in fact, that spot prices briefly went negative earlier this week. From a report: For months, officials have warned of an energy crisis this winter as Russia -- once the region's biggest supplier of natural gas -- slashed supplies in retaliation for sanctions Europe imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. Now, EU gas storage facilities are close to full, tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) are lining up at ports, unable to unload their cargoes, and prices are tumbling. The price of benchmark European natural gas futures has dropped 20% since last Thursday, and by more than 70% since hitting a record high in late August. On Monday, Dutch gas spot prices for delivery within an hour -- which reflect real time European market conditions -- dipped below 0 Euro, according to data from the Intercontinental Exchange.

Prices turned negative because of an "oversupplied grid," Tomas Marzec-Manser, head of gas analytics at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS), told CNN Business. It is a hugely surprising turn of events for Europe, where households and businesses have been clobbered by eye-watering rises in the price of one of its most important energy sources over the past year. Massimo Di Odoardo, vice president of gas and LNG research at Wood Mackenzie, says unseasonably mild weather is largely responsible for the dramatic change in fortune. "In countries like Italy, Spain, France, we're seeing temperatures and [gas] consumption closer to August and early September [levels]," he told CNN Business. "Even in countries in the Nordics, the UK and Germany, consumption is way below the average for this time of the year," he added.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, was found by a federal jury in Austin, Texas, to have infringed on two patents held by Voxer, a walkie talkie messaging app founded by a former Army Green Beret. The social media giant was ordered to pay nearly $175 million in damages. Military Times reports: Voxer launched the app in 2011, which was named Best Overall App in the First Annual Silicon Valley Business App Awards in 2013. In 2012, Facebook approached Voxer about a potential collaboration that led to Voxer sharing its patents and proprietary information with the company. "When early meetings did not result in an agreement, Facebook identified Voxer as a competitor although Facebook had no live video or voice product at the time," court filings read. "Facebook revoked Voxer's access to key components of the Facebook platform and launched Facebook Live in 2015 followed by Instagram Live in 2016. Both products incorporate Voxer's technologies and infringe its patents."

The Texas jury found that Facebook Live and Instagram Live incorporated two pieces of Voxer's technologies that involve streaming media over networks. Meta countered in court filings that "Facebook has prioritized live video messaging since the launch of Facebook Live and Instagram Live, with one report identifying Facebook Live as Facebook's 'top priority.'" In a statement to TechCrunch, Meta said the social media company will continue to press the issue through the courts. "We believe the evidence at trial demonstrated that Meta did not infringe Voxer's patents," Meta's spokesperson said in the statement. "We intend to seek further relief, including filing an appeal."