An anonymous reader shares a report: A physicist has cast doubt on a test that underlies a high-profile claim by Microsoft to have created the first 'topological qubits', a long-sought goal of the company's quantum computing effort. The critique comes amid mounting speculation about the validity of Microsoft's claim.

Microsoft announced the breakthrough, which could lead to a quantum computer more resistant to information loss than with other approaches, on 19 February. Without a peer-reviewed paper backing up the claim, some researchers were sceptical. An accompanying paper in Nature described a method to measure the read-out from future topological qubits, but did not offer proof of their existence.

In the latest critique, posted as a preprint, Henry Legg, a theoretical physicist at the University of St Andrews, UK, raises concerns about a test that Microsoft uses to look for Majoranas, so-far undiscovered quasiparticles arising from the collective behaviour of electrons that are needed for the topological qubits to work.

Known as the topological gap protocol (TGP), the test is not mentioned in the 19 February Microsoft announcement. But the company has subsequently indicated to Nature's news team, and in a comment online, that it created the topological qubits using the TGP. "Since the TGP is flawed, the very foundations of the qubit are not there," says Legg. Business Insider, separately reports: On February 19, Microsoft unveiled a new quantum processor called Majorana 1. [...] On the same day, Simone Severini, Amazon's head of quantum technologies, emailed CEO Andy Jassy casting doubt on Microsoft's claims, according to a copy of the email obtained by Business Insider.

Severini wrote that Microsoft's underlying scientific paper, released in Nature, "doesn't actually demonstrate" the claimed achievement and only showed that the new chip "could potentially enable future experiments."

[...] Oskar Painter, Amazon's head of quantum hardware, stressed the need to "push back on BS statements like S. Nadella's," likely in reference to the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's social media post proclaiming major advancements with the Majorana chip. Further reading:
Scientists Question Microsoft's Quantum Computing Claims.

FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver, on the site's demise: Last night, as President Trump delivered his State of the Union address, the Wall Street Journal reported that ABC News would lay off the remaining staff at 538 as part of broader cuts within corporate parent Disney. Having been through several rounds of this before, including two years ago when the staff was cut by more than half and my tenure expired too, I know it's a brutal process for everyone involved. It's also tough being in a business while having a constant anvil over your head, as we had in pretty much every odd-numbered (non-election) year from 2017 onward at 538/FiveThirtyEight. I don't know all of the staffers from the most recent iteration of the site, but the ones I have met or who I overlapped with are all extremely conscientious and hard-working people and were often forced to work double-duty as jobs were cut but frequently not replaced. My heart goes out to them, and I'm happy to provide recommendations for people I worked with there.

[...] The basic issue is that Disney was never particularly interested in running FiveThirtyEight as a business, even though I think it could have been a good business. Although they were generous in maintaining the site for so long and almost never interfered in our editorial process, the sort of muscle memory a media property builds early in its tenure tends to stick. We had an incredibly talented editorial staff, but we never had enough "product" people or strategy people to help the business grow and sustain itself. It's always an uphill battle under those conditions, particularly when it comes to recruiting and retaining staff, who were constantly being poached by outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Earlier this week, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox said the company's upcoming open-source Llama 4 AI will help power AI agents for hundreds of millions of businesses. CNBC reports: The AI agents won't just be responding to prompts. They will be capable of new levels of reasoning and action -- surfing the web and handling many tasks that might be of use to consumers and businesses. And that's where Shih comes in. Meta's AI is already being used by over 700 million consumers, according to Shih, and her job is to bring the same technologies to businesses. "Not every business, especially small businesses, has the ability to hire these large AI teams, and so now we're building business AIs for these small businesses so that even they can benefit from all of this innovation that's happening," she told CNBC's Julia Boorstin in an interview for the CNBC Changemakers Spotlight series.

She expects the uptake among businesses to happen soon, and spread far and wide. "We're quickly coming to a place where every business, from the very large to the very small, they're going to have a business agent representing it and acting on its behalf, in its voice -- the way that businesses today have websites and email addresses," Shih said. While major companies across sectors of the economy are investing millions of dollars to develop customer LLMs, "doing fancy things like fine tuning models," as Shih put it, "If you're a small business -- you own a coffee shop, you own a jewelry shop online, you're distributing through Instagram -- you don't have the resources to hire a big AI team, and so now our dream is that they won't have to."

For both consumers and businesses, the implications of the advances discussed by Cox and Shih will be significant in daily life. For consumers, Shih says, "Their AI assistant [will] do all kinds of things, from researching products to planning trips, planning social outings with their friends." On the business side, Shih pointed to the 200 million small businesses around the world that are already using Meta services and platforms. "They're using WhatsApp, they're using Facebook, they're using Instagram, both to acquire customers, but also engage and deepen each of those relationships. Very soon, each of those businesses are going to have these AIs that can represent them and help automate redundant tasks, help speak in their voice, help them find more customers and provide almost like a concierge service to every single one of their customers, 24/7."

The FCC says it plans to vote next month to explore alternatives to GPS after national security concerns have been raised about relying on a single system crucial to modern life. From a report: "Continuing to rely so heavily on one system leaves us exposed," FCC Chair Brendan Carr said. "We need to develop redundant technologies." There have been reports of a rise in GPS interference around the world, particularly since 2023, known as spoofing raising fears of an increased risk of accidents if planes veer off-course. "Disruptions to GPS have the potential to undermine the nation's economic and national security. And the risks to our current system are only increasing," Carr said, noting President Donald Trump and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have called for action for years.

Google is urging officials at President Donald Trump's Justice Department to back away from a push to break up the search engine company, citing national security concerns, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the discussions. From the report: Representatives for the Alphabet unit asked the government in a meeting last week to take a less aggressive stance as the US looks to end what a judge ruled to be an illegal online search monopoly, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the private deliberations. The Biden administration in November had called for Google to sell its Chrome web browser and make other changes to its business including an end to billions of dollars in exclusivity payments to companies including Apple.

Although Google has previously pushed back on the Biden-era plan, the recent discussions may preview aspects of the company's approach to the case as it continues under the Trump administration. A federal judge is set to rule on how Google must change its practices following hearings scheduled for next month. Both sides are due to file their final proposals to the judge on Friday.

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg said on a podcast he aims to eventually hand over leadership to a single successor rather than "a committee," amid growing calls for him to step down following his legal battle with hosting company WP Engine. On a recent episode of Lenny's Podcast, Mullenweg discussed his succession strategy for Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, WooCommerce and Tumblr. "I want to pass it to someone else who could have a role similar to mine, and really sort of try to be a steward," Mullenweg said, comparing the position to "being like a mayor than a CEO" as the leader would remain accountable to users and contributors.

Citigroup nearly credited about $6 billion to a customer's account in its wealth-management business by accident. From a report: The near-error occurred after a staffer handling the transfer copied and pasted the account number into a field for the dollar figure, which was detected on the next business day, the report added. The wealth division's near-miss was reported to regulators and the company has since set up a tool to help vet large, anomalous payments and transfers, according to the report. The error was related to an attempted transfer of funds between internal accounts, the report said. Last week, the Financial Times reported that Citigroup erroneously credited $81 trillion, instead of $280, to a customer's account and took hours to reverse the transaction.

AmiMoJo shares a report: Europe's biggest battery storage project has entered commercial operation in Scotland [alternative source], promising to soak up surplus wind power and prevent turbines being paid to switch off.

Zenobe said the first phase of its project at Blackhillock, between Inverness and Aberdeen, was now live with capacity to store enough power to supply 200 megawatts of electricity for two hours. It is due to be expanded to 300 megawatts by next year, enough to supply 3.1 million homes, more than every household in Scotland.

The government's Clean Power 2030 action plan sets a target capacity of up to 27 gigawatts of batteries by 2030, a sixfold increase from the 4.5 gigawatts installed today. This huge expansion is seen as critical as Britain builds more renewable wind and solar power, since batteries can store surplus generation for use when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Chipmaker TSMC said that it aims to invest "at least" $100 billion in chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. over the next four years as part of an effort to expand the company's network of semiconductor factories. President Donald Trump announced the news during a press conference Monday. TSMC's cash infusion will fund the construction of several new facilities in Arizona, C. C. Wei, chairman and CEO of TSMC, said during the briefing. "We are going to produce many AI chips to support AI progress," Wei said.

TSMC previously pledged to pour $65 billion into U.S.-based fabrication plants and has received up to $6.6 billion in grants from the CHIPS Act, a major Biden administration-era law that sought to boost domestic semiconductor production. The new investment brings TSMC's total investments in the U.S. chip industry to around $165 billion, Trump said in prepared remarks. [...] TSMC, the world's largest contract chip maker, already has several facilities in the U.S., including a factory in Arizona that began mass production late last year. But the company currently reserves its most sophisticated facilities for its home country of Taiwan.

The world's biggest call center company is using artificial intelligence to "neutralise" Indian accents for Western customers. From a report: Teleperformance said it was applying real-time AI software on phone calls in order to increase "human empathy" between two people on the phone. The French company's customers in the UK include parts of the Government, the NHS, Vodafone and eBay.

Teleperformance has 90,000 employees in India and tens of thousands more in other countries. It is using software from Sanas, an American company that says the system helps "build a more understanding world" and reduces miscommunication. The company's website says it makes call center workers more productive and means customer service calls are resolved more quickly. The company also says it means call center workers are less likely to be abused and customers are less likely to demand to speak to a supervisor. It is already used by companies including Walmart and UPS.

U.S. publishers are increasingly abandoning paperback editions of nonfiction books, eliminating a traditional second chance for authors to reach readers with lower-priced versions of their work. New adult nonfiction paperback titles plummeted 42% between 2019 and 2024 [non-paywalled source] to under 40,000, while hardcover titles fell just 9% during the same period, according to Bowker Books in Print.

"It's profoundly demoralizing that a book that might have taken four years to write and was published with such promise is done after five months," Dan Conaway, a senior literary agent with Writers House, told WSJ. The shift reflects changing consumer habits, the rise of digital formats, and market realities where Amazon sometimes prices hardcovers below paperbacks. Barnes & Noble now promotes just one nonfiction paperback monthly.

Job placement rates have declined at all top U.S. business schools [non-paywalled source] since 2021, leaving MBA graduates anxious about their expensive degrees' return on investment. Harvard Business School, which produced Wall Street titans like Bill Ackman and Ray Dalio, saw the percentage of graduates without job offers three months post-graduation rise from 4% in 2021 to 15% currently.

Similar trends are evident at Stanford, Chicago Booth, MIT Sloan, and Wharton, where 7% of 2024 graduates lacked offers within three months of completing their programs. Industry experts cited in a Bloomberg report attribute the downturn to tepid white-collar job growth, declining private-sector wages, and high-profile layoffs at companies including Meta and JPMorgan.

Nvidia and Broadcom are conducting manufacturing tests using Intel's advanced 18A chip production process, according to Reuters, signaling potential confidence in the struggling chipmaker's contract manufacturing ambitions. The previously unreported tests could lead to significant manufacturing contracts for Intel, whose foundry business has suffered delays and lacks major chip designer customers.

AMD is also evaluating Intel's 18A technology, which competes with Taiwan's dominant TSMC, according to the report. The current tests focus on determining capabilities of Intel's process rather than running complete chip designs. Intel faces additional setbacks, with qualification of critical intellectual property for 18A taking longer than expected, potentially delaying some customer chip production until mid-2026.

Adafruit managing director Phillip Torrone (also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone) shared an interesting blog post. They'd spotted a Reddit post "detailing how someone took a 27-year-old visual basic EXE file, fed it to Claude 3.7, and watched as it reverse-engineered the program and rewrote it in Python." It was an old Visual Basic 4 program they had written in 1997. Running a VB4 exe in 2024 can be a real yak-shaving compatibility nightmare, chasing down outdated DLLs and messy workarounds. So! OP decided to upload the exe to Claude 3.7 with this request:

"Can you tell me how to get this file running? It'd be nice to convert it to Python.">

Claude 3.7 analyzed the binary, extracted the VB 'tokens' (VB is not a fully-machine-code-compiled language which makes this task a lot easier than something from C/C++), identified UI elements, and even extracted sound files. Then, it generated a complete Python equivalent using Pygame. According to the author, the code worked on the first try and the entire process took less than five minutes...
Torrone speculates on what this might mean. "Old business applications and games could be modernized without needing the original source code... Tools like Claude might make decompilation and software archaeology a lot easier: proprietary binaries from dead platforms could get a new life in open-source too."

And maybe Archive.org could even add an LLM "to do this on the fly!"

"Tesla is taking steps to launch a ride-sharing service that could compete directly with Uber, Lyft and Waymo," reports Axios, noting that Tesla "has filed for a transportation charter-party carrier permit from the California Public Utilities Commission, Bloomberg reported Thursday." "That classification means Tesla would own and control the fleet of vehicles," Bloomberg reported... "In its communications with California officials, Tesla discussed driver's license information and drug-testing coordination, suggesting the company intends to use human drivers, at least initially," Bloomberg reported. The company is seeking the same type of permit that Waymo uses to run its robotaxi business.Uber is gearing up to begin offering autonomous vehicle services in partnership with Waymo in Austin and Atlanta later this year.
The article also adds that Musk "told investors in January that 'I'm confident that we will release unsupervised FSD in California this year,' referring to the company's Full Self-Driving system." But "Tesla has yet to apply for a permit to operate driverless vehicles..." notes the EV blog Electrek, adding "This is just a step for Tesla to test ride-hailing services ahead of autonomy."

Reuters also points out that "Earlier in October, Tesla revealed the Cybercab, a robotaxi concept that had no steering wheel or control pedals... He has said the Cybercab will go into production in 2026 and will also be available for customers to buy for less than $30,000."

Autodesk said it would cut 1,350 employees, or about 9% of its workforce, as part of a pivot to the cloud and artificial intelligence. Fast Company reports: Companies across sectors such as architecture, engineering, construction, and product design are making extensive use of Autodesk's 3D design solutions, with the software maker's artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities further driving spending on its products. Autodesk saw a 23% jump in total billings to $2.11 billion in the fourth quarter ended January 31.

The company's international operations have particularly shown strength, while analysts have also noted that the company was outpacing peers in the manufacturing sector, driven by the performance of its "Fusion" design software.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said his firm, San Francisco's largest private employer, does not plan to hire engineers this year because of the success of AI agents created and used by the company. From a report: "My message to CEOs right now is that we are the last generation to manage only humans," Benioff said Wednesday on Salesforce's earnings call, indicating that companies of the future will have hybrid human and digital workforces. Benioff added that Salesforce's mission is to become "the No. 1 digital labor provider, period" to other companies.

Mozilla has denied allegations that its new Firefox browser terms of service allow it to harvest user data for artificial intelligence training, following widespread criticism of the recently updated policy language. The controversy erupted after Firefox introduced terms that grant Mozilla "a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information" when users upload content through the browser, prompting competitor Brave Software's CEO Brendan Eich to suggest a business pivot toward data monetization.

"These changes are not driven by a desire by Mozilla to use people's data for AI or sell it to advertisers," Mozilla spokesperson Kenya Friend-Daniel told TechCrunch. "Our ability to use data is still limited by what we disclose in the Privacy Notice." The company clarified that its AI features operate locally on users' devices and don't send content data to Mozilla. Any data shared with advertisers is provided only on a "de-identified or aggregated basis," according to the spokesperson. Mozilla explained it used specific legal terms -- "nonexclusive," "royalty-free," and "worldwide" -- because Firefox is free, available globally, and allows users to maintain control of their own data.

Google changed its rules around how product-review sites appear in its search engine. In the process, it devastated a once-lucrative corner [non-paywalled source] of the news media world. From a report: Sites including CNN Underscored and Forbes Vetted offer tips on everything from mattresses and knife sets to savings accounts, making money when users click on links and buy products.

They depend on Google to drive much of their traffic, and therefore revenue. But over the past year, Google created stricter rules that dinged certain sites that farm out articles to freelancers, among other things. The goal, Google has said, was to give users higher-quality search results. The outcome was a crisis for some sites. Traffic for Forbes Advisor, a personal-finance recommendation site, fell 83% in January from the same month the year before, according to data firm Similarweb.

CNN Underscored and Buy Side from WSJ, which is operated by Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones, were both down by more than 25% in that period. Time magazine's Time Stamped and the Associated Press's AP Buyline, powered by Taboola Turnkey Commerce, ended their efforts in recent months. Taboola closed the commerce operation.

Citigroup credited a client's account with $81 trillion when it meant to send only $280, an error that could hinder the bank's attempt to persuade regulators that it has fixed long-standing operational issues. Financial Times: The erroneous internal transfer, which occurred last April and has not been previously reported, was missed by both a payments employee and a second official assigned to check the transaction before it was approved to be processed at the start of business the following day.

A third employee detected a problem with the bank's account balances, catching the payment 90 minutes after it was posted. The payment was reversed several hours later, according to an internal account of the event seen by the Financial Times and two people familiar with the event. No funds left Citi, which disclosed the "near miss" to the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to another person with knowledge of the matter.