Blue Origin on Thursday announced the crew for its next mission. "The crew most notably includes popstar Katy Perry and broadcast journalist Gayle King. They will be joined by two scientists -- Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen -- as well as Jeff Bezos' fiancee, TV personality Lauren Sanchez and film producer Kerianne Flynn," reports TechCrunch. From the report: Blue Origin says this marks the first all-female space crew since Soviet astronaut Valentina Tereshkova's 1963 solo mission, which made her the first woman ever to go to space. For the company's New Shepard rocket, this is its 31st trip to space, and its 11th with a crew. This journey is expected to last around 10 to 12 minutes; and if you're willing to drop a $150,000 deposit, you too can reserve a future spot on a short space jaunt.

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Longtime Slashdot reader mspohr shares a report from IFLScience: A video that has gone viral in the last few days shows two artificial intelligence (AI) agents having a conversation before switching to another mode of communication when they realize no human is part of the conversation. In the video, the two agents were set up to occupy different roles; one acting as a receptionist of a hotel, another acting on behalf of a customer attempting to book a room. "Thanks for calling Leonardo Hotel. How can I help you today?" the first asks. "Hi there, I'm an AI agent calling on behalf of Boris Starkov," the other replies. "He's looking for a hotel for his wedding. Is your hotel available for weddings?" "Oh hello there! I'm actually an AI assistant too," the first reveals. "What a pleasant surprise. Before we continue, would you like to switch to Gibberlink mode for more efficient communication?" After the second AI confirmed it would via a data-over-sound protocol called GGWave, both AIs switched over from spoken English to the protocol, communicating in a series of quick beeped tones. Accompanying on-screen text continued to display the meaning in human words. According to the team who came up with the idea and demonstrated it at the ElevenLabs 2025 London Hackathon event, the goal is to create more efficient communication between AIs where possible.

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Researchers at George Mason University discovered a vulnerability in Apple's Find My network that allows hackers to silently track any Bluetooth device as if it were an AirTag, without the owner's knowledge. 9to5Mac reports: Although AirTag was designed to change its Bluetooth address based on a cryptographic key, the attackers developed a system that could quickly find keys for Bluetooth addresses. This was made possible by using "hundreds" of GPUs to find a key match. The exploit called "nRootTag" has a frightening success rate of 90% and doesn't require "sophisticated administrator privilege escalation." In one of the experiments, the researchers were able to track the location of a computer with an accuracy of 10 feet, which allowed them to trace a bicycle moving through the city. In another experiment, they reconstructed a person's flight path by tracking their game console. "While it is scary if your smart lock is hacked, it becomes far more horrifying if the attacker also knows its location. With the attack method we introduced, the attacker can achieve this," said one of the researchers. Apple has acknowledged the George Mason researchers for discovering a Bluetooth exploit in its Find My network but has yet to issue a fix. "For now, they advise users to never allow unnecessary access to the device's Bluetooth when requested by apps, and of course, always keep their device's software updated," reports 9to5Mac.

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Apple announced a new feature allowing parents to share a child's age with app developers without exposing sensitive information, as lawmakers debate age-verification laws for social media and apps. Reuters reports: States, such as Utah and South Carolina, are currently debating laws that would require app store operators such as Apple and Alphabet's Google to check the ages of users. That has set up a conflict in the tech industry over which party should be responsible for checking ages for users under 18 -- app stores, or each individual app. Meta, for instance, has long argued in favor of legislation requiring app stores to check ages when a child downloads an app. Apple on Thursday said it does not want to be responsible for collecting sensitive data for those age verifications. "While only a fraction of apps on the App Store may require age verification, all users would have to hand over their sensitive personally identifying information to us -- regardless of whether they actually want to use one of these limited set of apps," Apple wrote in a whitepaper on its website.

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Microsoft has released a native Copilot app for macOS, offering AI-powered text and image generation, dark mode, and a Command + Space shortcut. The Verge reports: Microsoft is launching this new Copilot Mac app in the US, UK, and Canada today, and the iPad version is also being updated with a split screen mode. You'll also now be able to log into Copilot on an iPhone or iPad with an Apple ID, and upload text or PDF files to ask questions about the documents or generate a summary about them. This document summarization feature is also coming to the macOS app soon. You can download the app here.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the company was forced to stagger the rollout of its newest model, GPT-4.5, because OpenAI is "out of GPUs." In a post on X, Altman said that GPT-4.5, which he described as "giant" and "expensive," will require "tens of thousands" more GPUs before additional ChatGPT users can gain access. GPT-4.5 will come first to subscribers to ChatGPT Pro starting Thursday, followed by ChatGPT Plus customers next week. Perhaps in part due to its enormous size, GPT-4.5 is wildly expensive. OpenAI is charging $75 per million tokens (~750,000 words) fed into the model and $150 per million tokens generated by the model. That's 30x the input cost and 15x the output cost of OpenAI's workhorse GPT-4o model. "We've been growing a lot and are out of GPUs," Altman wrote. "We will add tens of thousands of GPUs next week and roll it out to the Plus tier then [] This isn't how we want to operate, but it's hard to perfectly predict growth surges that lead to GPU shortages."

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EA has released the source code for several classic Command & Conquer games, including Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, Renegade, and Generals & Zero Hour. "They're being released under the GPL license, meaning folks can mix, match, and redistribute them to their hearts' content without EA lawyers smashing down the door," adds PC Gamer. Additionally, Steam Workshop support has been added for multiple C&C titles, along with updated mission editor tools and a modding support pack. From the report: As for the Steam Workshop? That's getting switched on for C&C Renegade, C&C Generals and Zero Hour, C&C 3 Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath, and C&C 4 Tiberium Twilight (they can't all be winners). EA's also gone and "updated all the Mission Editor and World Builder tools so you can publish maps directly to the Steam Workshop." Plus, it's putting out a modding support pack that "contains the source Xml, Schema, Script, Shader and Map files for all the games that use the SAGE engine." Per C&C producer Jim Vessella, EA commissioned C&C community veteran Luke 'CCHyper' Feenan to officially research improvements to many of the games in the Ultimate Collection," and this is the fruit of his labor.

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