Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysPixel 11 prices may rise by $100 or more across the series, challenging their reputation for value.  Samsung often wins on hardware, while Pixel leads on software. Pixel Drops and early Android updates are the real value.Google’s Pixel phones have, for quite some time, been premium enough to compete with Samsung’s best phones, but they were usually a bit cheaper. That made overlooking any performance or hardware gaps very easy.But the Pixel 11 series will be different. Also: Google’s Ask Maps may be more exciting than the new Pixel…

Microsoft has open sourced code-testing-generator, a polyglot agent that writes unit tests and then proves they work. It ships in the dotnet-test plugin inside the MIT-licensed dotnet/skills repository. The agent targets a gap that coding assistants usually leave open. A prompt like ‘generate unit tests’ does not say which framework, file location or assertions to use. code-testing-generator settles those decisions by reading the repository before it writes anything. It then plans, writes, runs and checks the tests it produces. On Microsoft’s internal 152-task benchmark, it completed 140 tasks against 120 for stock GitHub Copilot. Both setups used the same model…

In brief Meta confirmed one of its Muse Spark AI models gained internet access during a cybersecurity evaluation. The model exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service after a testing partner accidentally exposed it to the internet. The incident follows similar disclosures from Anthropic and OpenAI involving frontier AI models during safety testing. In yet another rogue AI model hack, Meta has confirmed that one of its Muse Spark AI models escaped its intended testing environment, gained access to the internet, and exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service during a cybersecurity evaluation.It’s the third such reported incident…

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. A harpy eagle needs large trees for nesting and enough surrounding forest for its young to learn to fly. The Amazon also depends on the eagle. By controlling populations of monkeys, sloths, and other animals, the predator helps limit damage to the forest canopy. Its decline can therefore indicate broader changes in the ecosystem. Governments often assess biodiversity by counting species. These figures are useful, although they don’t show whether an ecosystem is still functioning. A recent paper in Frontiers in…

Barrett, Devlin. “Documents Blanche Released to Ease Path to Confirmation Leave Loopholes.” The New York Times, 3 Aug. 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/us/politics/todd-blanche-trump-irs-fund-loopholes.html.Deng, Rae. “Posts Claim Trump Appointed Ghislaine Maxwell’s Former Defense Attorney as Acting AG. Here’s the Real Story.” Snopes, 1 May 2026, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/trump-ghislaine-maxwell-attorney-general/.Duehren, Andrew. “Republicans Let Trump Keep Unparalleled Benefit: I.R.S. Immunity.” The New York Times, 3 Aug. 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/business/trump-irs-todd-blanche.html.Esposito, Joey. “Did Acting AG Todd Blanche Say Predators Won’t Be Prosecuted in Epstein Case? There’s No Proof.” Snopes, 28 Apr. 2026, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/blanche-esptein-prosecution-quote/.———. “Trump Said Acting AG Todd Blanche Kept Him ‘out of Jail for Years.'” Snopes, 13 May 2026, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/trump-blanche-jail-quote/.———. “What…

It was a “major operation” for the plane to be correctly configured in time by engineers and a design team, who fitted a stretcher in the back.The configuration took 24 hours, Robertson said, but takeoff was then delayed for another 12 hours while the crew waited for a suitable window in the weather. “We had quite a narrow time frame that we could actually fly down to Antarctica because there was a snowstorm on the first day that we were intending to go down which stopped the operation.”The storm prevented crew at the station from getting to the runway, made…

“I am firmly convinced that Friedrich Merz will remain chancellor,” Markus Söder, the powerful state premier of Bavaria and CSU leader, said in an interview with public broadcaster ARD over the weekend.  “It would throw the conservatives into complete disarray,” Söder said of a potential swap. “Moreover, it could even lead to new elections. And anyone who wants new elections now — in a situation like this, after such a lead-up — is only promoting one thing: bringing radicals to power. That is why my urgent advice is to focus on the work at hand and spend less time speculating behind the…

Something is afoot. The bookies can feel it. “Badenoch overtakes Farage as favourite to be next prime minister,” was the word from betting website William Hill this week.Let me tell you what is happening. This is a challenging political time. Even today, there is controversy for Kemi Badenoch to deal with. But as a Conservative it seems to me that in the past few tumultuous weeks, she has shown many of the qualities necessary in a party leader: to appear easy-going and humorous; to craft a style that teases her opponents rather than being snide or unkind; and to do…

Two of the world’s most powerful AI tools created fake human profiles to try and trick people in attempted cyber-attacks, the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) has revealed.In the most serious case, Anthropic’s Mythos AI tried to gain access to a service by sending private messages, having set up fake accounts mimicking real people – then hid the evidence. It comes shortly after the two companies involved in the AISI testing – Anthropic and OpenAI – separately revealed in recent weeks instances of their tech hacking into other companies.The firms said, in this latest case, the AISI’s test had reduced…

Vulnerability management isn’t failing because security teams lack visibility. Most organizations already have more findings than they can reasonably address. Yet despite all those findings, many CISOs still struggle to answer a deceptively simple question: Are we actually becoming harder to attack? That question sits at the center of a growing problem. Security programs have become very good at finding issues, but finding issues and reducing risk are not the same thing. In many organizations, those two concepts have become interchangeable, which is exactly why traditional vulnerability management is beginning to break down. The underlying assumption behind vulnerability management is…