United Launch Alliance announced Wednesday it plans to return its Vulcan rocket to service on November 13, nine months after a solid rocket booster anomaly threw the company’s 2026 launch schedule into oblivion.

The return-to-flight mission will launch 40 satellites for the Amazon Leo broadband constellation, the first of 38 Vulcan flights Amazon has booked to deploy the bulk of its network. The mission will lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and ULA said the launch date is pending range approval.

The launch is critical for ULA after its new flagship rocket suffered nozzle failures on its solid rocket boosters on two of its first four missions, most recently during a flight in February. In both cases, the rocket overcame the nozzle failure and completed its mission, but officials at the US Space Force, ULA’s primary customer, lost confidence in Vulcan.

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The European Union plans to create the first subsea Internet cable directly connecting Europe to Greenland. The Pan-Arctic Cable project could also extend to Canada and eventually link with Japan and South Korea, notably bypassing the United States.

The Pan-Arctic Cable is described as a European Union flagship project in a European Commission joint communication published on October 20, 2026. The policy document describes a new European strategy for the Arctic that supports “a sovereign, secure and resilient submarine cable connection linking Greenland directly to the EU,” while also suggesting that “like-minded partners like Canada” could provide a stepping stone for future cable expansion toward Asia.

“It is interesting that this project is even being considered, because five years ago it would have seemed like not a particularly commercially attractive proposition,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who leads the Threats to the Global Maritime Order Initiative, told Ars. “But the fact that it’s being considered is very much on trend and a sign of our times.”

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Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has unilaterally passed a rule that will allow specialty pharmacies to sell six specific peptide drugs, overruling scientists at the Food and Drug Administration.

The peptides are popular among members of Kennedy’s Make America Health Again movement and many prominent MAHA figures and Kennedy allies sell them. Kennedy said he uses some of the peptides and called himself a “big fan.” But FDA scientists continue to say there is insufficient evidence to show if they’re effective and they are potentially dangerous. In 2023, the safety concerns led the FDA to remove the six peptides from a list of drugs that can be made by specialty pharmacies called compounding pharmacies—which make customized formulations of drugs for patients, or, in cases such as this, specialty drugs in bulk.

Kennedy’s new rule sidesteps the need to formally undo that FDA action. The rule is titled “Enforcement Discretion Policy Regarding 503A Compounding Using Certain Peptide Bulk Drug Substances” and was made available Wednesday on the Federal Register, with the final publication data set for October 30. The rule does not change the regulatory status of the peptide; instead, it states the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will no longer take enforcement action against compounding pharmacies for making the peptides, essentially giving them a green light to freely produce and sell them. Kennedy had quietly proposed this rule earlier this month.

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An Anthropic engineering manager says he has stopped using traditional coding interviews because AI can now outperform candidates on the kinds of programming challenges they typically contain. “There’s no more point in giving you a little React challenge than there is in quizzing people about assembly; Claude is now better at both,” said Felix Rieseberg in a blog post. “Our most impactful builders are successful regardless of how good they are at these tests.” The Register reports: “I don’t think the coding interview is going to come back,” said Rieseberg. “It’s easy to get sentimental given how many copies of ‘Algorithms and Data Structures’ were bought in hopes of unlocking good jobs and a better future — or how the death of the coding interview is another milestone in software engineering reaching a new level of abstraction.”

At the same time, he’s not certain what will replace it. “I’m probably not the only manager trying to figure out how to interview for people who build well with AI,” Rieseberg wrote. “I haven’t quite gotten there yet — but I’m scanning resumes and portfolios for little prototypes that exhibit taste, empathy, and principled thinking. If you have figured out something better, I’d love to hear how.”
In a response posted to social media, Jaana Dogan, principal engineer at Google, said: “I’m not doing a ton of coding interviews nowadays but I’d be interested to interview how people use coding agents,” she wrote. “That itself gives me more signals about candidates’ coding skills.”

“We are not seeing tech companies abandon skills assessments widely across the industry — at least not yet,” added Nicole Bachaud, labor economist at ZipRecruiter. “In fact, based on our October 2026 Employer Survey of 1,500 employers, we see the tech industry (Information sector specifically) is actually the most likely to test for skills, with 62.5 percent of employers requiring formal skill tests on initial applications.”

“The change at Anthropic might be reflecting a shift away from technical skills towards more human, soft skills,” said Bachaud. “As AI becomes fully capable of writing code, tech employers may be pivoting away from rote technical testing and heavily toward human-centric soft skills.” She argues that while AI may be able to code well, it can’t replace critical thinking. “A staggering 61.5 percent of Information employers now report that ‘critical thinking’ is a primary skill lacking in today’s candidate pool,” she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Because what are we without synergy, Dustin Ballard of There I Ruined It created ‘LinkedIn Park’, a remake of Linkin Park’s ‘In The End’ with lyrics made from corporate jargon pulled directly from people’s LinkedIn profiles. Is it sad I could already sing along the first time I heard it? I feel like I’ve been living this song for years. The man is crushing my soul! “I thought you sold that.” Shhhhhhh — don’t tell the devil but I signed a friend’s name with my blood. Plus I only pretended to cut myself and used Heinz instead, so Dave will probably be fine anyways.

The agency will vote next month on relaxing its long-standing opposition to jammers.

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The Fitbit Edge really hits a sweet spot for anyone who wants a minimalist fitness tracker but still wants a screen to tell the time and display workout data. Here are my tips on how to get the most out of it, including hidden features and surprising ways to use the device. 

Set up a watch face wardrobe from your phone

It’s not very obvious from the watch or the app, but you can switch watch faces—and if you use the app on your phone, you can change color schemes and sometimes even complications. 

On the watch, long-press the middle of the watch face. This brings up a carousel of the faces you’ve selected in the app. The last screen in the carousel gives you a button to bring up the watch face library on your phone. This is the quickest way to open it, but you can also go to your device settings in the app. 

From here, tap All Clocks and browse the available faces. Once you’ve installed a face you like, tap Customize to choose a color scheme and select which complications appear (like your steps for the day, or the weather). Sadly, the share button doesn’t seem to work—it sends a broken link to the old Fitbit website—but it’s a nice idea. 

Flip it around so you don’t press the button accidentally

The Fitbit Edge is built with the assumption that you’ll want the side button on the right. But if you wear other jewelry or watches with it, or if you wear it low on your wrist and find that flexing your hand pushes the button, you can change this. 

Just go into your device settings in the Google Health app, tap Device preferences, and then change Tracker orientation to put the button on the left instead of the right. This turns the display upside down, so take off your watch and turn it around so you can see it properly again. 

Turn off the AI insights

The AI-powered Health Coach is both the best and the worst thing about the Google Health app. Fortunately, you can turn it off. What’s better, Google added a feature that lets you turn off the unprompted insights while still having the AI available when you need it. 

Tap your profile picture in the app, then Google Health Settings, then Coaching, and select No Coach Insights. The chatty summaries (and notifications) will stop popping up throughout the day, but you can always hit the Ask Coach button if you have a question or if you want to use AI-powered food logging or workout logging. 

Broadcast your heart rate to Strava for laps and maps

The workout app on the Fitbit Edge is pretty minimal and can’t be customized, but it is possible to get more information during your workouts. Swipe down from the top of your Fitbit Edge screen, and tap the icon that looks like a wifi heart. This turns on heart-rate broadcasting. 

Then go into the Strava app, hit Record to start a workout, and swipe up from the bottom of the screen to see workout options. Select the Fitbit Edge as your heart rate sensor, and now your phone can track your workout using heart rate data from the Fitbit. The Strava app gives you a lap button and can show you the time for your previous laps; it also shows you a map of where you are and where you’ve been.

Make it stop overcounting your steps

Fitbit devices have always been a little over-enthusiastic about counting steps compared to other wearables, and they know it. Hand and arm movements can mistakenly contribute to your step count, but there’s a way to adjust the device’s sensitivity. If you wear the device on your dominant hand (say, on your right hand if you’re right-handed), go into Device preferences on the phone app and set your Wrist preference to dominant. 

If you already wear the device on your non-dominant hand, you may still want to use this hack. Wear it on your left hand (if you’re right-handed) and still change your preference to dominant. This will tell the Fitbit to slightly undercount your steps. 

Save battery by changing your GPS settings

The Fitbit Edge can use its own built-in GPS, or it can use the GPS that is built into your phone. By default, it will switch sources automatically based on what it thinks the best option will be. 

But you can change this. Go into Device preferences again, and choose GPS settings. If you always carry your phone with you, and you’d prefer to save battery on your Fitbit, tell the device to always use your phone’s GPS. On the other hand, if you want the Fitbit to handle its own GPS without piggybacking on your phone all the time, tell it to use the built-in GPS instead. 

If your phone is an older one, switching to the built-in GPS will probably give you more accurate distance and pace than using the default switching. If your phone is newer, choose based on which device you want to preserve battery. 

Swap with the Fitbit Air

At the same time as the Fitbit Edge came out, Google made it so that the app can work with multiple Fitbits. If you sometimes like to have a screen on your wrist, but sometimes you don’t, you can swap seamlessly back and forth between the Edge and the Air (and a Pixel watch, should you happen to have one of those as well). No extra steps are necessary—just set up both of them, and wear whichever you feel like at any given moment.

Set up magnification so you can see what’s on that tiny screen

Small screens can mean less visibility, but there is a setting that helps. In Device preferences, select Magnification and toggle it on. Now, triple-tapping the screen (three quick taps with one finger) enlarges what you’re looking at. You can use your finger to move the image around the screen to see different parts—for example, to get a better look at the number under the step count complication on some watch faces. 

In this part of the app, you can also choose whether the magnification gesture gives you a 2x or a 3x zoom. To zoom out, just triple-tap the screen again.

Charge it for five minutes a day

The charger for the Fitbit Edge (like that for the Pixel Watch) is incredibly fast. If your watch is running low on charge and you don’t have time to wait for it to charge, just put it on the charger for five minutes. Google says this gives it enough juice for a full day, and that matches my experience. Just now, three minutes of charging brought the device from 31% up to 41%.

If your Fitbit Edge tends to last about a week, you’ll need about 15% to get through a full day. I like to use the always-on display (AOD), so I only get about three days per charge. If you’re using the five-minute trick because you’re low on battery, turn off the AOD if you have it enabled, and you’ll get through the rest of the day. But if you always have the AOD enabled, you may be able to get into the habit of charging your Fitbit for about five minutes every day—maybe 10 every now and then—and never have to walk away from it for an hour like you would with most wearables.

Show offline workouts to your “Coach”

I don’t follow the workouts the AI coach gives me, but it can be nice to have a record of what I did. So I’ll take a screenshot of my workout in Hevy, or a photo of my training journal, and show it to the Coach. 

You can do this from the Ask Coach button in the bottom right corner of the app. Tell it which workout it should attach the exercises to (for example, “log this for my strength training session from last night”), and it will fill in the exercises in that workout summary. You can view past workouts in the Fitness tab.

A massive leak has exposed records tied to more than 41,000 DHS employees and contractors, including roughly 10,000 ICE personnel. The data, reportedly taken from DHS’s Okta login system, reveals phone numbers, email and office addresses, reporting relationships, and permission groups associated with undercover operations, wiretapping and surveillance tools. Wired reports: In all, the leak provides a map of how DHS is organized and how it operates. The records, which span DHS itself as well as seven component agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection, were last updated on August 19, 2026.

The transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets and cybersecurity researcher and journalist maia arson crimew previewed the data to WIRED, which they say they obtained from a group calling itself the Department of Peace. DDoSecrets published the archive, which it calls “Icepick,” on Wednesday. In a press release, DDoSecrets says the data is from DHS’s Okta login system. In a note with the files, the hackers wrote, “They have our information, so it’s only fair that we have theirs.” An Okta spokesperson tells WIRED that it is unaware of any breach of its systems. “We are aware of this report. Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised,” the spokesperson says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has added a camera to its Echo Studio speaker, allowing Alexa to visually identify objects, help with tasks and remotely monitor a room. For those concerned about privacy, Amazon is keeping a camera-free version available. The Next Web reports: The camera speaker ships today for $249.99. Hold up a board game box and Alexa can explain the rules, or show it a box of cereal and it can help you reorder it, according to Amazon. Owners can also check in on the room from the Alexa app while they are away. The Echo Studio without a camera stays on sale at $219.99.

A dedicated button turns off the microphones and any camera, and a visual indicator shows when a camera streams images or video to the cloud, Amazon said. Certain features require Alexa+, which is included with a Prime membership. Other devices Amazon unveiled today include an Echo Time alarm clock, an Alexa Photo Frame and the Echo Show 16.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Trump administration is trying to stop Utah from enforcing its gambling ban against Kalshi, making Utah the 10th state sued by the US government agency that regulates prediction markets.

Utah, which prohibits gambling, sued Kalshi in a state court last week. Utah’s lawsuit seeks an order prohibiting Kalshi from offering bets on sports, elections, politics, and other events.

“Kalshi runs an online casino in Utah and calls it a prediction market. That violates Utah law,” Utah Attorney General Derek Brown, a Republican, said last week. “Not only do our state laws ban gambling but Utah is one of only two states where gambling is also prohibited under the state constitution. For 130 years, Utah has been clear: gambling has no place here, and we will enforce our laws.”

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The private space tourism era looked so very promising five years ago. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic had begun flying customers—real people with zero space experience—on suborbital missions. And at about the same time, private citizens were going to orbit for days at a time aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

But that was then. Consider the state of play today:

• It has been 10 months since Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft flew its last mission in January. The program was subsequently “paused,” but let’s be real. Blue Origin has moved on. New Shepard’s engineering teams are now supporting the New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lander programs.
• SpaceX flew its final free-flyer mission on Dragon, Fram2, in April 2025. A handful of non-NASA missions bound for space stations remain on the spacecraft’s manifest, but all are likely to carry at least one government astronaut. Then Dragon will be retired. There is no credible timeline for SpaceX’s Starship to fly humans into space from Earth.
• As for Virgin Galactic, the company flew its final suborbital mission on the VSS Unity spacecraft more than two years ago, in June 2024.

So we are now 10 months, and counting, without a space tourism mission in the United States.

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LOS ANGELES—For about five minutes on an extremely crowded showroom floor, I got to take pictures of the new MacBook Pro and test out some of its new features. First impressions: It’s not as much of a departure from the previous design as I expected, but the outstanding OLED display steals the show regardless.

The first thing I noticed was that it’s lighter. My daily driver is a 14-inch MacBook Pro (M1 Max), and it’s a bit weighty for a 14-incher. Picking up the new model, I could immediately tell it was lighter. It’s not like it’s in a different general weight class, but it’s a noticeable difference.

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It’s almost like Google’s got something to prove after taking a break from releasing new frontier AI models earlier this year. Just two weeks after rolling out Gemini 4 Argon, Google has announced Gemini 4 Carbon. This isn’t the Flash model equivalent we’ve been waiting for but, rather, is an improvement on Argon, and like that model, Google is working on a staged release that could take a while.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Google says its latest AI model reaches a new threshold in coding, agentic tasks, and scientific analysis. It’s so capable, in fact, that Google can’t let you use it just yet.

Gemini 4 Carbon reportedly makes big gains in cybersecurity applications. Google says the model shows a “significant leap” in vulnerability detection, validation, and remediation. Carbon is also apparently twice as likely to generate code that is free of vulnerabilities versus Argon. Meanwhile, the Chrome team claims that Carbon is 10 times better at generating “high-quality” patches compared to non-Google models. Google also notes that Carbon has increased its score by 89 points on WebDev Arena, now ranking at number four on the leaderboard.

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