Now Google’s threat intelligence group has revealed that during a key moment of TeamPCP’s rampage, the company’s own undercover researcher had infiltrated the group—allowing Google to monitor the hacking spree from the inside, warn breach targets, and even help disrupt the group’s attempts to exploit those victims.

In a talk at security firm SentinelOne's LABScon research conference today, Google Threat Intelligence Group researcher Austin Larsen will present details on the company’s investigation—and infiltration—of TeamPCP amidst the group’s unprecedented, chaotic supply-chain hacking campaign. According to Larsen, Google eventually followed a trail of operational security mistakes allegedly made by one of the two Australians now accused of being leading members of the hacker group and passed on key identifying details to law enforcement. The company also received intelligence from ShinyHunters, another infamous cybercriminal group that TeamPCP partnered with, but which later turned on the supply-chain hackers. And perhaps most surprisingly, Larsen says that Google’s security subsidiary Mandiant had an undercover analyst—not himself—within the group’s inner circle from almost the beginning of TeamPCP’s time in the spotlight.

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For one thing, there is an extra pair of doors, rear-hinged ones that provide direct access to the pair of rear bucket seats. There’s still a rear hatch, so this is technically a five-door. But there’s an immovable firewall between the cargo area and the passenger cabin, and the rear seats do not fold flat. So unlike the 21st century breadvans we have previously reviewed, a Costco run in the Purosangue might be possible, but you’re probably going to want a roof rack if you plan to go skiing, cycling, or anything else that requires bulky equipment. It’s also probably accurate that Ferrari says the Purosangue is not an SUV but an FUV—a Ferrari Utility Vehicle.

Underneath that long hood lives a 6.5 L naturally aspirated V12, but mounted back in the chassis such that this is technically a front-mid engined layout. That contributes to the 49:51 front-to-rear weight ratio, as does the use of a transaxle gearbox for the rear wheels (an eight-speed, dual-clutch box); a separate power transfer unit at the front of the engine drives the front wheels, for this is an all-wheel drive Ferrari. But make no mistake, it’s a substantial one, too, befitting that massive 715 hp (533 kW), 528 lb-ft (716 Nm) engine: 195.8 inches (4,973 mm) long, 79.8 inches (2,028 mm) wide, 62.6 inches (1,589 mm) tall, with a 118.1-inch (3,018 mm) wheelbase and a 4,784 lbs (2,170 kg) curb weight.

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A team of researchers led by Randon J. Flores and Robert A. Eagle, geochemists at the University of California, Los Angeles, has measured the T. rex body temperature by analyzing its teeth. This dental thermometer read about 36° Celsius—roughly the body temperature of a modern elephant.

Dental thermometry

Paleontologists have long argued about dinosaur physiology based on indirect evidence like bone microstructure, growth rates, and where fossils turn up on the map. Some studies suggested many dinosaurs were endotherms, generating their own body heat like birds and mammals. Others argued that each lineage may have had its own thermal strategy.

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Could all this mental activity also help keep an aging brain healthier? Research suggests it can.

Concerns about memory and dementia can send aging adults looking for ways to exercise their brain and maintain cognitive function, whether it is solving crossword puzzles or playing a musical instrument. Language learning might not seem like the same kind of brain exercise, but it is a complex activity that engages several mental processes at once.

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In a recent study, Santos-Sanz and his colleagues used the James Webb Space Telescope to watch the same body, now known as Chariklo, pass in front of a background star again. They found one of its rings had grown denser and the other had almost vanished. We don’t know exactly why.

Shadowing a star

The technique behind the observation is simple. “We predict when a Solar System object passes in front of a star,” Santos-Sanz said. The starlight dims for a moment, and the shape of that dip reveals the size, shape, and surroundings of the object that caused it. “This is particularly challenging for minor bodies, and more challenging for distant minor bodies,” he said.

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That erroneous intelligence, submitted by a US Special Operations Command analyst, suggested the Chinese ship was transporting nuclear arms program components through the Middle East, according to "four sources familiar with the episode" cited by CNN. The US military was preparing to intercept and board the ship, with air support, before officials discovered a chatbot used in generating the report had "inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying."

One source told CNN the AI-powered fiasco "almost started a war."

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The FAA describes the SMART system as using AI models to predict air traffic flows and identify potential conflicts based on operational factors like airline schedules, weather, airport capacity, and airspace conditions. US government and industry officials told The Wall Street Journal that SMART could debut for the three major airports in the Washington, DC, area as soon as Monday, September 21.

The decision to launch SMART in a limited scope before going nationwide is the “right call,” said Philip Mann, principal consultant at Vector Strategic Consulting LLC, where he advises on aviation safety and AI governance. Mann previously worked at the FAA in multiple roles for 17 years.

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Under US law, companies with licenses to run broadcast stations need FCC approval to have direct or indirect foreign ownership exceeding 25 percent of the company's stock. Paramount says its indirect foreign ownership will reach 49.5 percent after it receives investments from the sovereign wealth funds and filed a petition asking the FCC to waive the foreign ownership limit.

Paramount, the owner of CBS, holds FCC licenses for the 28 local CBS stations that it owns and operates. Paramount is buying Warner Bros. Discovery in a $111 billion deal that is being partially financed with foreign investment but hasn't completed the acquisition because US states filed a lawsuit that aims to block the merger. Trump's Department of Justice approved the merger.

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The cortex is where the slow rhythms of deep sleep can be seen, but researchers assumed the signals that triggered them originated elsewhere. In a recent Nature study, Terral and Renata Batista-Brito, who runs the lab, report a population of cortical cells that challenges that assumption.

These cortical cells make up only around one percent of the cortex's inhibitory neurons, and switching them on in a mouse puts the animal to sleep. “What our work shows is that the cortex can not only see this rhythm but also initiate it by itself, and this is sufficient to promote sleep,” Terral said.

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The change came after social media users noticed an apparent contradiction: The National Archives was using one of Alibaba’s Qwen AI models, even as top US law enforcement claimed that such models illegally copy US frontier models. Earlier this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) named Alibaba among six leading Chinese firms allegedly conducting “industrial-scale distillation” that the agency says is helping America’s biggest competitor cut costs and development time in the race for global AI leadership.

It’s unclear when exactly the National Archives, which runs the Federal Register website, began offering visitors the option to use a Qwen model to search public comments on proposed regulations. So far, the independent agency tasked with increasing public access to federal government documents has not commented on the removal and did not respond to Ars’ request for comment. The White House and the FBI have also not commented.

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A Chinese optical engineer is the winner of this year's Small World in Motion competition, sponsored by Nikon. Ning Xu of Tsinghua University in Beijing beat out 346 other video entries from 40 different countries with his super-resolution video (above) of the abnormal beating of cilia in the airways of a child with a rare genetic respiratory disorder.

Founded in 2011, the Nikon Small World in Motion competition is a spinoff of the company's Small World Photomicrography Competition, which has been around since 1974. Both are meant "to showcase the beauty and complexity of things seen through the light microscope"—one through still photographs, the other through photovideography, taking advantage of all the technological advances that now allow users to make movies or time-lapse images through the microscope.

Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a genetic disorder that adversely affects the tiny hairlike structures that line the lungs, among other areas. Their wavelike motion helps move around germs, mucus, dust, and other irritants so the body can dispel them via coughing or sneezing. In people born with PCD, there is something wrong with those cilia, so those irritants build up, causing respiratory infections, among other complications. The cilia might be the wrong size, the wrong shape, or missing altogether. They might move abnormally or not move at all.

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A small cyber security group gained access to an OpenAI employee’s ChatGPT account, which permitted them to read private software information and suggest changes.

The researchers had been given access to an Anthropic tool specifically designed for security professionals, and were paid for the work as part of a program to find vulnerabilities before they could be exploited by bad actors.

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As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Avio seeks to cash in on Falcon 9 retreat. Italian launch services provider Avio has seen an influx of customers who were unable to secure launch opportunities with SpaceX, European Spaceflight reports. “I can tell you SpaceX has already gone captive because we have a whole bunch of customers coming to us and saying, 'Oh my God, can you fly us?'” Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo said during the company’s September 10 earnings call. In recent months, SpaceX told multiple prospective customers that it was no longer accepting new orders for commercial Falcon 9 launches.

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Recommendations from the panel—the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)—don't simply provide guidance for Americans; they also determine access. The USPSTF is supposed to use a rigorous, transparent framework for evaluating evidence and sets graded recommendations on an A to D scale. Health insurance providers are required to cover, at no cost, all preventive services that are given recommendations of an A or B grade.

Kennedy has sidelined the USPSTF for more than a year, canceling its meetings and refusing to appoint new members as terms expired and members left. In May, Kennedy also fired two leaders, sparking outcry and exacerbating fears that he would corrupt the nonpartisan independent panel by stacking it with unqualified ideological allies—which he did with an influence vaccine advisory committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The company, Scaleout Systems, was originally founded by researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden in 2018, and initially focused on training and deploying machine learning models directly on the hardware available in commercial trucks and other vehicles. But once Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the company pivoted toward defense applications.

“With the war in Ukraine and a shifting world, we realized that this technology can be very important to operationalize edge data and sensor data for machine learning to make sure that NATO allies have found that strategic advantage,” Andreas Hellander, cofounder and CEO of Scaleout Systems, told Ars.

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CC is an evolution of something that Google announced in 2025. The original CC eventually became Gemini's Daily Brief, which churns through the data in your Google account to offer daily action items and suggestions. The new CC has a similar goal, but it's designed to be a shared resource for up to six users in a family.

Google says that CC has its own Google account, allowing each family member to interact with it (or not) as they choose. For example, CC only sees emails from its connected users if they are explicitly shared. You can do that by designating certain addresses as always available to the agent—something like school scheduling emails. You can also send content to CC via email or Google Chat. The agent can even monitor a shared Google Drive folder, into which you can dump invitations, documents, and other content.

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However, now the details that should never have been marked confidential are starting to leak. In a motion for summary judgment that was unsealed Thursday from news plaintiffs led by The New York Times, internal documents are exposed that news groups alleged show exactly how Microsoft and OpenAI viewed the threat to news before unleashing new AI products like ChatGPT and Copilot.

Perhaps most explosively, Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht repeatedly warned in documents that scraping news for AI training was “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” calling it perhaps the “largest theft of labor in human history,” news orgs said. In another document, Hecht contradicted Microsoft and OpenAI’s argument that training AI on news content is fair use, suggesting that the plan to widely scrape news made “a complete mockery of the idea of ‘fair use.’”

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Issa, who is retiring from the House at the end of this year, is the latest in a string of Republican and Democratic lawmakers to propose a site-blocking regime that's been sought by the Motion Picture Association (MPA). He submitted the bill this week, after indicating in a June 30 hearing that he planned to introduce site-blocking legislation.

"While millions of listings for copyright-infringing content are removed every day under [the] notice-and-takedown process set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, right-holders have raised concerns with the speed," Issa said at the hearing. Issa asked, "Can we do it at the speed of sound? Can we do it at the speed of light? More importantly, in a 45-minute or sometimes a fraction of that live sports broadcast, can we do it soon enough to make it no longer profitable for those who pop up and sell their clandestine wares?"

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New research shows that SynthID-Text can change not just word selection but also the tools a model invokes and the chances it will adhere to or disregard safety guardrails it has been trained to follow. The threat can become greater in the face of an adversarial prompt, in which an attacker attempts to cause a model to carry out a harmful action, such as revealing a password or other sensitive information. Instructions that normally wouldn’t be followed will, in some cases, be performed once the watermarking is deployed. The finding underscores the need for developers to thoroughly test how their LLMs and agents behave when watermarking is in place.

Changing safety behavior

“As compared to the same models without watermarking, it is definitely going to change their behavior, especially when we place it under adversarial conditions, or we make these models call tools when they’re powering an agent,” Andrea Siposova, an AI security researcher at Lasso Security, told Ars. “Watermarking is made to not be perceptible to a reader, but we know that when we are changing anything about what the model is generating, it is going to cause some tradeoffs, it’s going to show up somewhere.”

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The people had received IV drips containing glutathione, which is sold—without evidence—for purposes like detoxification, immune support, increased energy, and skin brightening. Glutathione is an antioxidant that's found naturally in the body. It has been studied as a potential treatment for various ailments, but so far there is little to no evidence-backed use for the tripeptide; there are no FDA-approved glutathione products in the US.

Nevertheless, it's commonly used as a supplement and promoted as having various benefits. It's most often used in supplement pills, taken by mouth. But popular wellness clinics offering IV drips of vitamins and other supplements have also been offering glutathione. According to the CDC and FDA, the problem is that specialty drug makers, called compounding pharmacies, are making these IV drips using glutathione powders that are graded for dietary supplements taken orally. This grading is critically different from that of purified products graded for use in sterile injectable drugs.

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