Tech News
Real Estate Is Entering Its AI Slop Era
slashdot - Posted On:2025-10-27 18:30:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: As you're hunting through real estate listings for a new home in Franklin, Tennessee, you come across a vertical video showing off expansive rooms featuring a four-poster bed, a fully stocked wine cellar, and a soaking tub. In the corner of the video, a smiling real estate agent narrates the walk-through of your dream home in a soothing tone. It looks perfect -- maybe a little too perfect. The catch? Everything in the video isAI-generated. The real property is completely empty, and the luxury furniture is a product of virtual staging. The realtor's voice-over and expressions were born from text prompts. Even the camera's slow pan over each room is orchestrated by AI, because there was no actual video camera involved. Any real estate agent can create "exactly that, at home, in minutes," says Alok Gupta, a former product manager at Facebook and software engineer at Snapchat who cofounded AutoReel, an app that allows realtors to turn images from their property listings into videos. He said that between 500 and 1,000 new listing videos are being created with AutoReel every day, with realtors across the US and even in New Zealand and India using the technology to market thousands of properties. This is one of many AI tools, including more familiar ones like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, that are quickly reshaping the real estate industry into something that isn't necessarily, well, real. "People that want to buy a house, they're going to make the largest investment of their lifetime," said Nathan Cool, a real estate photographer who runs an educational YouTube channel. "They don't want to be fooled before they ever arrive." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
'AI Sets Up Kodak Moment For Global Consultants'
slashdot - Posted On:2025-10-27 17:45:00 Source: slashdot
An anonymous reader shares a column: As the AI boom develops, consultants are in a tricky spot. The pandemic, inflation and economic uncertainty have encouraged many of their big clients to tighten expenditure. The U.S. government, one of the biggest spenders, has been cancelling multiple billion-dollar contracts in an effort to conserve cash. In March, 10 of the largest consultants including Deloitte, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM and Guidehouse were targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency to justify their fees. As a result, the largest listed players' shares have collapsed by up to 30% in the past two years, against the S&P 500's 50% jump. AI is, in some respects, a boon. In September, Accenture said it had helped it cut 11,000 jobs, and CEO Julie Sweet is set to augment that with staff that cannot be retrained. Salesforce recently laid off 4000 customer support workers. Microsoft has halted hiring in its consulting business. Unfortunately, big clients are cottoning on to the advantages too. One finance chief of a large UK company outlined the issue for Breakingviews via an illustrative example. Say an outsourced project costs the client $1 million to do themselves, and Accenture and the like have historically been able to do the same job for $200,000. With the advent of machine learning, companies can do the same work for just $10,000. This gives clients considerable leverage. If consultants won't lower their prices to near the relevant level, the client can find one who will. Or just do the job itself. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Companies Battle Wave of AI-Generated Fake Expense Receipts
slashdot - Posted On:2025-10-27 17:00:00 Source: slashdot
Employees are using AI to generate fake expense receipts. Leading expense software platforms report a sharp increase in AI-created fraudulent documents following the launch of improved image generation models by OpenAI and Google. AppZen said fake AI receipts accounted for 14% of fraudulent documents submitted in September compared with none last year. Ramp flagged more than one million dollars in fraudulent invoices within 90 days. About 30% of financial professionals in the US and UK surveyed by Medius reported seeing a rise in falsified receipts after OpenAI released GPT-4o last year. SAP Concur processes more than 80 million compliance checks monthly and now warns customers to not trust their eyes. The receipts include wrinkles in paper, detailed itemization matching real menus and signatures. Creating fraudulent documents previously required photo editing skills or paying for such services. Free and accessible image generation software has made it possible for anyone to falsify receipts in seconds by writing simple text instructions to chatbots. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
25 years, one website: ISS in Real Time captures quarter-century on space station
Space - Posted On:2025-10-27 16:30:00 Source: arstechnica
With the milestone just days away, you are likely to hear this week that there has now been a continuous human presence on the International Space Station (ISS) for the past 25 years. But what does that quarter of a century actually encompass?
If only there was a way to see, hear, and experience each of those 9,131 days.
Fortunately, the astronauts and cosmonauts on the space station have devoted some of their work time and a lot of their free time to taking photos, filming videos, and calling down to Earth. Much of that data has been made available to the public, but in separate repositories, with no real way to correlate or connect it with the timeline on which it was all created.
AT&T ad congratulating itself for its ethics violated an ad-industry rule
Policy - Posted On:2025-10-27 16:30:00 Source: arstechnica
AT&T committed a big no-no in its latest advertising campaign against T-Mobile, according to the organization that runs the ad industry’s self-regulatory system.
BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division said Friday that AT&T “violated Section 2.1(I) of the National Advertising Division (NAD)/National Advertising Review Board (NARB) Procedures for the US advertising industry’s process of self-regulation by issuing a video advertisement and press release that use the NAD process and its findings for promotional purposes. NAD has demanded that AT&T immediately remove such violative promotional materials and cease all future dissemination.”
The NAD said that AT&T’s action threatens the “integrity and success of the self-regulatory forum,” and “undermines NAD’s mission to promote truth and accuracy of advertising claims and foster consumer trust in the marketplace.”
AI-powered search engines rely on “less popular” sources, researchers find
AI - Posted On:2025-10-27 16:30:00 Source: arstechnica
Since last year’s disastrous rollout of Google’s AI Overviews, the world at large has been aware of how AI-powered search results can differ wildly from the traditional list of links search engines have generated for decades. Now, new research helps quantify that difference, showing that AI search engines tend to cite less popular websites and ones that wouldn’t even appear in the Top 100 links listed in an “organic” Google search.
In the pre-print paper “Characterizing Web Search in The Age of Generative AI,” researchers from Ruhr University in Bochum and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems compared traditional link results from Google’s search engine to its AI Overviews and Gemini-2.5-Flash. The researchers also looked at GPT-4o’s web search mode and the separate “GPT-4o with Search Tool,” which resorts to searching the web only when the LLM decides it needs information found outside its own pre-trained data.
The researchers drew test queries from a number of sources, including specific questions submitted to ChatGPT in the WildChat dataset, general political topics listed on AllSides, and products included in the 100 most-searched Amazon products list.
Microsoft's Next Xbox Will Run Full Windows and Eliminate Multiplayer Paywall, Report Says
games - Posted On:2025-10-27 16:30:00 Source: slashdot
Microsoft's next Xbox console will run full Windows and allow users to exit the Xbox interface to access Steam, Epic Games Store, Battle.net, and other PC storefronts, according to Windows Central. The device will launch without a multiplayer paywall. Xbox CEO Phil Spencer told users last week to look at the Xbox Ally handheld for an indication of where Xbox is headed. The company has been using the Ally as a beta test to gather feedback on the experience that will power its next wave of console hardware. The new Xbox will include the entire Xbox console library spanning original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S titles. These games will run natively and launch through the Xbox launcher's library. Users staying within the Xbox ecosystem will encounter an onboarding experience similar to current consoles. Those who choose to access Windows will be able to install PlayStation PC titles like God of War and Spider-Man purchased through Steam or Epic Games. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
4K or 8K TVs Offer No Distinguishable Benefit Over Similarly Sized 2K Screen in Average Living Room, Scientists Say
entertainment - Posted On:2025-10-27 15:45:00 Source: slashdot
Many modern living rooms are now dominated by a huge television, but researchers say there might be little point in plumping for an ultra-high-definition model. From a report: Scientists at the University of Cambridge and Meta, the company that owns Facebook, have found that for an average-sized living room a 4K or 8K screen offers no noticeable benefit over a similarly sized 2K screen of the sort often used in computer monitors and laptops. In other words, there is no tangible difference when it comes to how sharp an image appears to our eyes. "At a certain viewing distance, it doesn't matter how many pixels you add. It's just, I suppose, wasteful because your eye can't really detect it," said Dr Maliha Ashraf, the first author of the study from the University of Cambridge. Ashraf and colleagues, writing in the journal Nature Communications, report how they set about determining the resolution limit of the human eye, noting that while 20/20 vision implies the eye can distinguish 60 pixels per degree (PPD), most people with normal or corrected vision can see better than that. "If you design or judge display resolution based only on 20/20 vision, you'll underestimate what people can really see," Ashraf said. "That's why we directly measured how many pixels people can actually distinguish." The team used a 27in, 4K monitor mounted on a mobile cage that enabled it to be moved towards or away from the viewer. At each distance, 18 participants with normal vision, or vision corrected to be normal, were shown two types of image in a random order. One type of image had one-pixel-wide vertical lines in black and white, red and green or yellow and violet, while the other was just a plain grey block. Participants were then asked to indicate which of the two images contained the lines. "When the lines become too fine or the screen resolution too high, the pattern looks no different from a plain grey image," Ashraf said. "We measured the point where people could just barely tell them apart. That's what we call the resolution limit." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon Plans To Cut As Many As 30,000 Corporate Jobs Beginning Tomorrow
slashdot - Posted On:2025-10-27 15:00:00 Source: slashdot
Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning Tuesday, as the company works to pare expenses and compensate for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, Reuters reported Monday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon's 1.55 million total employees, but nearly 10% of the company's roughly 350,000 corporate employees. This would represent the largest job cut at Amazon since around 27,000 jobs were eliminated starting in late 2022. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
First Shape Found That Can't Pass Through Itself
science - Posted On:2025-10-27 14:30:00 Source: slashdot
Mathematicians have identified the first shape that cannot pass through itself. Jakob Steininger and Sergey Yurkevich described the Noperthedron in a paper posted online in August. The shape has 90 vertices and 152 faces. The discovery resolves a question that began in the late 1600s when Prince Rupert of the Rhine won a bet by proving one cube could slide through a tunnel bored through another. Mathematician John Wallis confirmed this mathematically in 1693. The property became known as the Rupert property. In 1968, Christoph Scriba proved the tetrahedron and octahedron also possess this quality. Over the past decade, researchers found Rupert tunnels through many symmetric polyhedra, including the dodecahedron and icosahedron. Mathematicians had conjectured every convex polyhedron would have the Rupert property. Steininger and Yurkevich divided the space of possible orientations into approximately 18 million blocks and tested each. None produced a passage. The Noperthedron consists of 150 triangles and two regular 15-sided polygons. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple Moving Ahead With Plans To Bring Ads in Maps App, Report Says
apple - Posted On:2025-10-27 14:00:00 Source: slashdot
Apple is moving ahead with plans to bring advertising to its Maps app. Starting next year, businesses will be able to pay for more prominent placement within search results, according to Bloomberg [non-paywalled source]. The approach mirrors Search Ads in the App Store, where developers purchase promoted slots based on user queries. Apple has said the sponsored results will remain relevant to searches. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Finnish Fertility Rate Drops by a Third Since 2010
news - Posted On:2025-10-27 13:15:01 Source: slashdot
Finland's fertility rate has dropped below 1.3 children per woman, the lowest among Nordic countries and far beneath the 2.1 replacement level needed to maintain a steady population. The rate has declined by a third since 2010. Kela, Finland's social insurance agency, started distributing 2025 "baby boxes" -- filled with clothing and other infant supplies -- in August instead of spring because so many 2024 boxes remained unclaimed. More parents now choose cash payments over the traditional boxes filled with infant supplies. The decline puzzles researchers because Finland offers paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers, subsidized childcare and national healthcare. Anneli Miettinen, Kela's research manager, said that good family policies no longer explain birth rates in Nordic countries. Immigration has offset some population loss, but officials worry about workforce shrinkage and pension system strain. Anna Rotkirch, who authored a government-commissioned report, found that many 17-year-olds describe wanting a house, garden, spouse and three children. Her research suggests young people struggle to form relationships, focus on education and careers, and delay childbearing. Some researchers attribute relationship difficulties to technology reducing physical interactions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Why imperfection could be key to Turing patterns in nature
Science - Posted On:2025-10-27 13:00:00 Source: arstechnica
A zebra’s distinctive black-and-white stripes, or a leopard’s spots, are both examples of “Turing patterns,” after mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, who proposed an intriguing hypothetical mechanism for how such complex, irregular patterns might emerge in nature. But Turing’s original proposal proved too simplified to fully recreate those natural patterns. Scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB) have devised a new modeling approach that achieves much more accurate final patterns by introducing deliberate imperfections, according to a new paper published in the journal Matter.
Turing focused on chemicals known as morphogens in his seminal 1952 paper. He devised a mechanism involving the interaction between an activator chemical that expresses a unique characteristic (like a tiger’s stripe) and an inhibitor chemical that periodically kicks in to shut down the activator’s expression. Both activator and inhibitor diffuse throughout a system, much like gas atoms will do in an enclosed box. It’s a bit like injecting a drop of black ink into a beaker of water. Normally, this would stabilize a system, and the water would gradually turn a uniform gray. But if the inhibitor diffuses at a faster rate than the activator, the process is destabilized. That mechanism will produce spots or stripes.
Scientists have tried to apply this basic concept to many different kinds of systems. For instance, neurons in the brain could serve as activators and inhibitors, depending on whether they amplify or dampen the firing of other nearby neurons—possibly the reason why we see certain patterns when we hallucinate. There is evidence for Turing mechanisms at work in zebra-fish stripes, the spacing between hair follicles in mice, feather buds on a bird’s skin, the ridges on a mouse’s palate, and the digits on a mouse’s paw.
F1 in Mexico City: We have a new championship leader
Cars - Posted On:2025-10-27 13:00:00 Source: arstechnica
Mexico City is one of the more unusual places that Formula 1 races, and it’s all thanks to altitude. The city sits at than 7,350 feet (2,240 m) above sea level, which makes the air noticeably thin compared to the average Grand Prix held at sea level. Like humans, F1 cars need air.
Oxygen is necessary if you want any internal combustion to happen inside the turbocharged 1.6 L V6 engine. A good flow of air across the various radiators and heat exchangers in the car is vital if you want to make it to the end of the race. And the downforce-generating wings and underbody only generate downforce by creating differences in air pressure above and below the car.
At over a mile above sea level, there’s about 20 percent less air, and therefore less power created by combustion, less efficient cooling of the cars, and less downforce able to be generated.
Australia Sues Microsoft Over AI-linked Subscription Price Hikes
yro - Posted On:2025-10-27 12:30:00 Source: slashdot
Australia's competition regulator sued Microsoft today, accusing it of misleading millions of customers into paying higher prices for its Microsoft 365 software after bundling it with AI tool Copilot. From a report: The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleged that from October 2024, the technology giant misled about 2.7 million customers by suggesting they had to move to higher-priced Microsoft 365 personal and family plans that included Copilot. After the integration of Copilot, the annual subscription price of the Microsoft 365 personal plan increased by 45% to A$159 ($103.32) and the price of the family plan increased by 29% to A$179, the ACCC said. The regulator said Microsoft failed to clearly tell users that a cheaper "classic" plan without Copilot was still available. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New image-generating AIs are being used for fake expense reports
AI - Posted On:2025-10-27 11:45:00 Source: arstechnica
Businesses are increasingly being deceived by employees using artificial intelligence for an age-old scam: faking expense receipts.
The launch of new image-generation models by top AI groups such as OpenAI and Google in recent months has sparked an influx of AI-generated receipts submitted internally within companies, according to leading expense software platforms.
Software provider AppZen said fake AI receipts accounted for about 14 percent of fraudulent documents submitted in September, compared with none last year. Fintech group Ramp said its new software flagged more than $1 million in fraudulent invoices within 90 days.
Melissa set to be the strongest hurricane to ever strike Jamaica
Science - Posted On:2025-10-27 11:45:00 Source: arstechnica
Hurricane Melissa will make landfall in southern Jamaica less than 24 hours from now, and it is likely to be the most catastrophic storm in the Caribbean island’s history.
As it crawled across the northern Caribbean Sea on Monday morning, Melissa officially became a Category 5 hurricane with 160 mph winds, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The hurricane will likely fluctuate in intensity over the next day or so, perhaps undergoing an eyewall replacement cycle. But the background conditions, including very warm Caribbean waters and low wind shear, will support a very powerful hurricane and the potential for further strengthening.
US Department of Energy Forms $1 Billion Supercomputer and AI Partnership With AMD
news - Posted On:2025-10-27 11:45:00 Source: slashdot
The U.S. has formed a $1 billion partnership with AMD to construct two supercomputers that will tackle large scientific problems ranging from nuclear power to cancer treatments to national security, said Energy Secretary Chris Wright and AMD CEO Lisa Su. From a report: The U.S. is building the two machines to ensure the country has enough supercomputers to run increasingly complex experiments that require harnessing enormous amounts of data-crunching capability. The machines can accelerate the process of making scientific discoveries in areas the U.S. is focused on. Energy Secretary Wright said the systems would "supercharge" advances in nuclear power and fusion energy, technologies for defense and national security, and the development of drugs. Scientists and companies are trying to replicate fusion, the reaction that fuels the sun, by jamming light atoms in a plasma gas under intense heat and pressure to release massive amounts of energy. "We've made great progress, but plasmas are unstable, and we need to recreate the center of the sun on Earth," Wright told Reuters. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More Than 60 UN Members Sign Cybercrime Treaty Opposed By Rights Groups
it - Posted On:2025-10-27 11:30:00 Source: slashdot
Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi on Saturday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. From a report: The new global legal framework aims to strengthen international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries were seen to sign the declaration Saturday, which means it will go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an "important milestone", but that it was "only the beginning". "Every day, sophisticated scams, destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy... We need a strong, connected global response," he said at the opening ceremony in Vietnam's capital on Saturday. The UN Convention against Cybercrime was first proposed by Russian diplomats in 2017, and approved by consensus last year after lengthy negotiations. Critics say its broad language could lead to abuses of power and enable the cross-border repression of government critics. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Electronic Arts' AI Tools Are Creating More Work Than They Save
games - Posted On:2025-10-27 10:15:00 Source: slashdot
Electronic Arts has spent the past year pushing its nearly 15,000 employees to use AI for everything from code generation to scripting difficult conversations about pay. Employees in some areas must complete multiple AI training courses and use tools like the company's in-house chatbot ReefGPT daily. The tools produce flawed code and hallucinations that employees then spend time correcting. Staff say the AI creates more work rather than less, according to Business Insider. They fix mistakes while simultaneously training the programs on their own work. Creative employees fear the technology will eventually eliminate demand for character artists and level designers. One recently laid-off senior quality-assurance designer says AI performed a key part of his job -- reviewing and summarizing feedback from hundreds of play testers. He suspects this contributed to his termination when about 100 colleagues were let go this past spring from the company's Respawn Entertainment studio. Read more of this story at Slashdot.