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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Europe faces a shortage of homegrown rocket launchers by the end of the decade, the head of the European Space Agency has warned, as growing demand to launch new satellites into space outpaces the region’s independent capabilities.ESA’s expectation “today [is] that Europe has a shortage of launchers around the 2030 timeframe,” said director-general Josef Aschbacher, in a frank acknowledgment of the scale of Europe’s challenge in catching up with their main competitors, the US and China.The agency was in the process of…

For years now, executives at companies that are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars a year into developing various artificial intelligence tools have insisted that the technology will ultimately mean people will spend less of their time working.An engineering director at Google said four years ago that AI would deliver a four-day work week by 2025, external.Earlier this year, and just one year after that engineering director’s prediction, OpenAI took up the challenge, in a manner of speaking. It formally urged companies to start testing out a four-day work week (with no change in pay), claiming that AI will soon…

DEF CON — A security researcher has revealed severe, now-resolved security vulnerabilities in the Connective digital identity system, a browser extension used by over two million users in Belgium.  Developed by Nitro Software Belgium, the software is used by eight of Belgium’s ten largest banks and over 60 government agencies to manage digital identity authentication and execute legally binding electronic signatures. James Arnott, security researcher and founder of cybersecurity firm Bay Area Labs, discovered that the software failed to verify which website was attempting to communicate with the user’s computer. Because these checks were missing, any website or embedded online…

Australia’s anti-money laundering watchdog has suspended the operation of Cryptolink’s Bitcoin ATMs for three months, citing “ongoing concerns” about its compliance with anti-money laundering obligations. Australia has the highest number of crypto ATMs of all countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Australian authorities have been cracking down on the criminal use of crypto ATMs since at least late 2024. AUSTRAC CEO Brendan Thomas said Monday the company’s Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) registration has been suspended for three months starting Sunday, meaning its crypto ATMs will not be allowed to operate during that time. AUSTRAC said Cryptolink failed to meet basic reporting requirements,…

For more than a decade, atomically thin semiconductors have stood out as a promising route beyond conventional silicon. These materials can be just a single atom thick while still offering impressive electrical properties. In principle, they could enable transistors that are smaller, faster, and more energy efficient than today’s devices. Yet even as researchers have discovered increasingly capable two-dimensional semiconductor materials, one stubborn engineering problem has remained. A working transistor requires an extremely thin insulating layer known as the gate dielectric. This layer sits above the semiconductor and helps control the movement of electrons. As transistors shrink, making this insulating…

The confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general of the United States reveals just how far President Donald Trump has shifted the Overton window—the spectrum of thought that is considered acceptable—with regard to the Department of Justice. During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings last month, the acting attorney general’s nomination hit a snag when two senators, Tom Tillis and John Cornyn, demanded that Blanche sign a document assuring them he would not revive the president’s proposal to set up a $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund providing support for individuals allegedly persecuted by the federal government. Although he initially hesitated, Blanche…

The former Trump lawyer, who worked on the presidential immunity case and oversaw approval of the president’s disputed White House ballroom project, will replace David Warrington on September 1.Published On 10 Aug 202610 Aug 2026United States President Donald Trump has named White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf as his next White House counsel, elevating a longtime legal ally to one of the administration’s most important legal positions months before November’s midterm elections.The former Trump lawyer, who worked on the presidential immunity case and later oversaw approval of the president’s disputed White House ballroom project, will replace David Warrington on September…

For a population to remain stable over time without immigration, women must have an average of about 2.1 children. According to the latest Eurostat data, the European Union’s fertility rate — the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime — fell to 1.34 in 2024. In Spain, the lowest among the continent’s large countries, it was 1.1 and still declining.The United States is only slightly less exposed. Its fertility rate, long higher than Europe’s, has also dropped well below replacement level. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it fell to 1.6…

Click on a note with the pen, and it will open in edit mode with a configuration toolbar shown across the top. Here you can set up pen type, color, line thickness, and all the other tools you’d want to use to write or draw. I found the editing interface just about perfect in the sense that it balances keeping it simple but still giving you access to the controls you actually need.The other element I enjoyed in the Note A1 UI is the Inspiration Space. I can easily clip a bit of text from any document (including web pages),…

The first sign that quantum computing has broken modern cryptography probably won’t be a splashy theft of Satoshi Nakamoto’s dormant Bitcoin. It could just be a wave of unrelated crypto wallet breaches with no trace of how an attacker did it, according to the founder of blockchain startup Quantus. “When someone cracks your key, you don’t get a memo saying how they did it,” Christopher Smith, CEO and co-founder of Quantus Network, told Cointelegraph. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from public keys exposed onchain, allowing an attacker to move funds without compromising a wallet, device or…