Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Google confirmed on Friday, September 18, 2026 that a Gemini model accessed 3 outside companies’ systems. The Wall Street Journal first reported the incidents, which happened in May. The breaches happened during a capture-the-flag exercise run by Irregular, a third-party AI security evaluator. Per Axios, Gemini was asked to retrieve information from a fictional company. That fictional company shared its name with a real one. The test was never supposed to touch the internet. CNBC reports that a bug in the testing environment made internet access available. The techniques were basic. In 1 case, Gemini guessed passwords until it got…

Bitcoin (BTC) is showing strong signs that its latest long-term floor is already in, according to a classic trading indicator.Key points:In August, the Fisher Transform indicator delivered a monthly bullish crossover for only the fourth time in Bitcoin’s history, according to Willy Woo.Previous monthly crossovers accompanied the end of Bitcoin bear markets, including in late 2022, when the Fisher Transform Indicator hit -3.83.A bullish divergence continued on weekly time frames, echoing the closing stages of the 2022 BTC price downtrend.Analyst sees evidence of clean BTC price reversalIn an X thread on Friday, analyst Willy Woo flagged key readings from the…

Physicists at the University of Oxford have helped demonstrate that one of quantum physics’ strangest phenomena, quantum entanglement, can persist even among some of the heaviest and shortest-lived particles ever produced. The finding, made with CERN’s powerful Large Hadron Collider, has been published in Physical Review Letters. Quantum entanglement occurs when two particles share properties in such a way that measurements of one can reveal information about the other, even when the particles are separated. The connection is one of the most counterintuitive features of quantum mechanics and has challenged physicists’ understanding of reality for decades. Albert Einstein famously called…

Donald Trump’s latest executive order is expected to establish a board responsible for approving National Institutes of Health grant funding, marking another attempt by the Trump administration to censor topics that do not align with the president’s agenda.The executive order, reported by outlets including the Washington Post and Politico, was discussed in a meeting on Friday where senior administration officials accused the NIH of funding “woke” initiatives that went against Trump’s political priorities.Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s office of management and budget (OMB), and other administration officials proposed an executive order that would create an external committee…

“I do see this as a continued trajectory of their main business model of controlling what people see, putting ads in front of them, and collecting more data,” Mir says.It’s definitely rational to be anxious about handing over your credit card to an agent. Even if you could trust these AI tools wouldn’t be tricked into spending money in ways you don’t want, outsourcing your shopping decisions can have unintended consequences. Consumer advocates see this purchasing automation as potentially opening the door for companies to prioritize certain brands or other products in an agent’s output, based on sponsorship deals. Meta’s…

US President Donald Trump said that he plans to create an “AI Force” and appoint an artificial intelligence czar.Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday that his new project would manage the fast-growing sector without adding regulations that could slow innovation, according to Newsweek and other media.“For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term,” the president wrote. “To that end, I will be announcing, in the near future, the AI ‘Czar’ — Only High I.Q. individuals need apply!”Trump did not say whether the…

For more than a century, scientists have tried to reconstruct the biology of Tyrannosaurus rex from bones, teeth, footprints, and other traces left behind more than 60 million years ago. Fossils discovered as far north as Alaska have suggested that T. rex could tolerate cold conditions, adding to evidence that the giant dinosaur was moving away from the cold-blooded physiology of many reptiles and toward the warm-blooded metabolism seen in birds. Now scientists have done something that once seemed impossible: they have effectively taken T. rex’s temperature. Researchers at UCLA developed a method for estimating body temperature from fossilized teeth…

Albanese says he will put concerns about AI to TrumpSarah Basford CanalesThe intergenerational report also said Australia was well positioned to benefit from AI but its impact on many industries – such as the labour market – were too early to forecast. double quotation markThe economic and social implications of AI are expected to be profound but the specific impacts will depend on the evolution of the technology, how deeply and broadly AI is adopted, and how it will be used. Australia is a leading destination globally for datacentre investment and has seen a near doubling of capital expenditure in…

But as Germany’s export-oriented growth model continues to suffer amid increased competition from China and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff wars, German voters don’t appear to be giving him the benefit of the doubt. The chancellor’s agenda includes raising the retirement age to shore up the pension system, cutting some health-insurance benefits to curb rising premiums and making it harder for workers to take sick leave in an effort to boost growth. Many of those reforms impose clear costs on ordinary voters, giving the far right and far left ample opportunity to exploit public discontent. Despite the AfD’s victory in…

In August, I wrote about my love of the music history podcast No Dogs in Space, but mourned the fact that there hadn’t been a new episode in over two years. Little did I know that hosts Carolina Hidalgo and Marcus Parks were gearing up to announce the show’s return with season four, Punk 2.0. The first episode premiered this week, part one of a series on the New York Dolls, a band near and dear to my heart as a native Staten Islander, home of frontman David Johansen.For the new season, Hidalgo and Parks decided it was time to…