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Category: policy
Apple pushes first Background Security Improvements update to fix WebKit flaw
Apple has released its first Background Security Improvements update to fix a WebKit flaw tracked as CVE-2026–20643 on iPhones, iPads, and Macs without requiring a full operating system upgrade.
The CVE-2026–20643 flaw allows malicious web content to bypass the browser’s Same Origin Policy.
Apple says the flaw is a cross-origin issue in the Navigation API that was addressed with improved input validation.
Nonlinear photonic neuromorphic chips for spiking reinforcement learning
Photonic computing chips have made significant progress in accelerating linear computations, but nonlinear computations are usually implemented in the digital domain, which introduces additional system latency and power consumption, and hinders the implementation of fully functional photonic neural network chips. Here, we propose and fabricate a 16-channel programmable incoherent photonic neuromorphic computing chip by co-designing a simplified Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) mesh and distributed feedback lasers with saturable absorber (DFBs-SA) array using different materials, enabling implementation of both linear and nonlinear spike computations in the optical domain through two separate chips. Furthermore, previous studies mainly focused on supervised learning and simple image classification tasks. Here, we propose a photonic spiking reinforcement learning (RL) architecture for the first, to our knowledge, time, and develop a software–hardware collaborative training-inference framework (in situ photonic training and hardware-aware fine-tuning) to address the challenge of training spiking RL models. We achieve large-scale, energy-efficient (photonic linear computation: 1.39 TOPS/W, photonic nonlinear computation: 987.65 GOPS/W), and low-latency (on-chip 320 ps) deployment of an entire layer of photonic spiking RL. Two RL benchmarks including the discrete CartPole task and the continuous Pendulum task are demonstrated experimentally based on the spiking proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm. The hardware–software collaborative computing reward value converges to 200 (−250) for the CartPole (Pendulum) tasks, respectively, comparable to that of a traditional PPO algorithm. This experimental demonstration addresses the challenge of the absence of large-scale on-chip photonic nonlinear spike computation and spiking RL training difficulty, and presents a high-speed and low-latency photonic spiking RL solution with promising application prospects in fields such as robot control, autonomous driving, and embodied intelligence.
Weaponising the Mind: Rethinking Trust in Times of Cognitive Warfare
🧠 Cognitive warfare is real and it’s here already.
That is why the Konrad Adenauer Foundation is putting the topic on the agenda at the Munich Security Conference.
From now on, the focus will be on the following key issues: • Cognitive warfare as a security policy reality • Resilience instead of alarmism • Strategic advantage through the ability to act • Protection of democratic decision-making processes.
Cognitive warfare is changing the logic of modern conflicts. It does not target infrastructure or territory, but rather perception, trust and decision-making ability, thereby blurring the line between war and peace.
More about #MSC2026: https://www.kas.de/de/veranstaltungsberichte/detail/-/conten…t-begonnen.
#munichsecurityconference
The End of Work: Vinod Khosla’s Bold AI Prediction
What if AI made your paycheck optional? Vinod Khosla, one of the world’s greatest venture capitalists and an early backer of AI, believes the technology will take over 80% of labor, freeing humans to live on passion instead.
His track record backs up the boldness, as early bets on OpenAI, DoorDash, Instacart, and Square have made him one of the most consequential investors of our time.
In this episode of Titans, Khosla sits down with Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell to unpack his abundant vision for the AI future, what government policy should tackle for a more equitable 2040, and what the U.S. needs to do to win the global AI race.
Introduction: The Parkinson’s pandemic: prioritizing environmental policy and biological resilience
Via the gut.
Bianca Palushaj & Robin M Voigt puts forward a strategy for altering the trajectory of this modern epidemic.
1Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
2Rush Center for Integrated Microbiome and Chronobiology Research.
3Department of Internal Medicine, and.
4Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Power producers have financial incentives to block market integration despite cost savings, says study
Renewable energy is lowering electricity costs in some parts of the country, but those benefits aren’t being seen by consumers everywhere because they’re typically placed far away from demand centers. Better integrating electricity transmission networks across regions could significantly reduce generation costs, new research from the University of Michigan shows—at the expense of generation companies’ profits. The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Economist Catherine Hausman, associate professor at the Ford School of Public Policy, and colleagues found that improving interregional connectivity could have saved anywhere from $5.8 billion to $7.1 billion in electricity generation costs in 2022, and $3.4 billion to $5 billion in 2023.
At the same time, investing in regional connectivity could cost some power plants over $20 million in annual net revenue—giving them financial incentives to block or delay transmission network improvements.
Microsoft testing Windows 11 batch file security improvements
Microsoft is rolling out new Windows 11 Insider Preview builds that improve security and performance during batch file or CMD script execution.
As Microsoft explained today, IT administrators can now enable a more secure processing mode that prevents batch files from being modified while they run by adding the LockBatchFilesInUse registry value under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor.
Policy authors can also enable this mode using the LockBatchFilesWhenInUse application manifest control.
Is artificial general intelligence already here? A new case that today’s LLMs meet key tests
Will artificial intelligence ever be able to reason, learn, and solve problems at levels comparable to humans? Experts at the University of California San Diego believe the answer is yes—and that such artificial general intelligence has already arrived. This debate is tackled by four faculty members spanning humanities, social sciences, and data science in a recently published Comment invited by Nature.
Computer scientist Alan Turing first posed this question in his landmark 1950 paper, though he didn’t use the term artificial general intelligence (AGI). His “imitation game,” now known as the Turing Test, asked whether a machine could pass as human in text-based conversation with humans. Seventy-five years later, that future is here.
Over the past year, Associate Professor of Philosophy Eddy Keming Chen, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Computer Science Mikhail Belkin, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Computer Science Leon Bergen, and Professor of Data Science, Philosophy and Policy David Danks engaged in extensive dialogue on this question. These discussions happened as another set of researchers at UC San Diego found in March 2025 that the large language model GPT-4.5 was judged to be human 73% of the time in a Turing test—much more often than actual humans.
Google blocked over 1.75 million Play Store app submissions in 2025
Google says that through 2025, it blocked more than 255,000 Android apps from obtaining excessive access to sensitive user data and rejected over 1.75 million apps from being published on Google Play due to policy violations.
The tech giant’s annual review of Android and Google Play security reveals how effective the implemented protection measures were in maintaining an ecosystem with honest developers and compliant apps.
“We’re constantly improving our policies and protections to encourage safe, high-quality apps on Google Play and stop bad actors before they cause harm,” Google says.