Wi-Fi 8 (also known as IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability) is expected to arrive around 2028, prioritizing an enhanced user experience over speed by optimizing interactions between devices and access points. While it retains similar bandwidth specifications as the previous standard, Wi-Fi 8 aims to improve network efficiency, reducing interference and congestion for a more reliable and adaptive connection. PCWorld's Mark Hachman reports: As of Nov. 2024, MediaTek believes that Wi-Fi 8 will look virtually identical to Wi-Fi 7 in several key areas: The maximum physical layer (PHY) rate will be the same at 2,880Mbps x 8, or 23Gbits/s. It will also use the same four frequency bands (2, 4, 5, and 6GHz) and the same 4096 QAM modulation across a maximum channel bandwidth of 320MHz. (A Wi-Fi 8 router won't get 23Gbps of bandwidth, of course. According to MediaTek, the actual peak throughput in a "clean," or laboratory, environment is just 80 percent or so of the hypothetical peak throughput, and actual, real-world results can be far less.)

Still, put simply, Wi-Fi 8 should deliver the same wireless bandwidth as Wi-Fi 7, using the same channels and the same modulation. Every Wi-Fi standard has also been backwards-compatible with its predecessors, too. What Wi-Fi 8 will do, though, is change how your client device, such as a PC or a phone, interacts with multiple access points. Think of this as an evolution of how your laptop talks to your home's networking equipment. Over time, Wi-Fi has evolved from communications between one laptop and a router, across a single channel. Channel hopping routed different clients to different bands. When Wi-Fi 6 was developed, a dedicated 6GHz channel was added, sometimes as a dedicated "backhaul" between your home's access points. Now, mesh networks are more common, giving your laptop a variety of access points, channels, and frequencies to select between. For a detailed breakdown of the upcoming advancements coming to Wi-Fi 8, including Coordinated Spatial Reuse, Coordinated Beamforming, and Dynamic Sub-Channel Operation, read the full article.

Android Authority's Rita El Khoury argues that the decline in punctuation use and capitalization in social media writing, especially among younger generations, can largely be attributed to the iPhone keyboard. "By hiding the comma and period behind a symbol switch, the iPhone keyboard encourages the biggest grammar fiends to be lazy and skip punctuation," writes El Khoury. She continues: Pundits will say that it's just an extra tap to add a period (double-tap the space bar) or a comma (switch to the characters layout and tap comma), but it's one extra tap too many. When you're firing off replies and messages at a rapid rate, the jarring pause while the keyboard switches to symbols and then switches back to letters is just too annoying, especially if you're doing it multiple times in one message. I hate pausing mid-sentence so much that I will sacrifice a comma at the altar of speed. [...]

The real problem, at the end of the day, is that iPhones -- not Android phones -- are popular among Gen Z buyers, especially in the US -- a market with a huge online presence and influence. Add that most smartphone users tend to stick to default apps on their phones, so most of them end up with the default iPhone keyboard instead of looking at better (albeit often even slower) alternatives. And it's that same keyboard that's encouraging them to be lazy instead of making it easier to add punctuation.

So yes, I blame the iPhone for killing the period and slaughtering the comma, and I think both of those are great offenders in the death of the capital letter. But trends are cyclical, and if the cassette player can make a comeback, so can the comma. Who knows, maybe in a year or two, writing like a five-year-old will be passe, too, and it'll be trendy to use proper grammar again.

Law enforcement officers are warning other officials and forensic experts that iPhones which have been stored securely for forensic examination are somehow rebooting themselves, returning the devices to a state that makes them much harder to unlock, 404 Media is reporting, citing a law enforcement document it obtained. From the report: The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time. After being rebooted, iPhones are generally more secure against tools that aim to crack the password of and take data from the phone.

"The purpose of this notice is to spread awareness of a situation involving iPhones, which is causing iPhone devices to reboot in a short amount of time (observations are possibly within 24 hours) when removed from a cellular network," the document reads. Apple did not provide a response on whether it introduced such an update in time for publication.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: It's been two long years since the launch of Matter -- the one smart home standard designed to rule them all -- and there's been a fair amount of disappointment around a sometimes buggy rollout, slow adoption by companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google, and frustrating setup experiences. However, the launch of the Matter 1.4 specification this week shows some signs that the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the organization behind Matter) is using more sticks and fewer carrots to get the smart home industry coalition to cooperate.

The new spec introduces 'enhanced multi-admin,' an improvement on multi-admin -- the much-touted interoperability feature that means your Matter smart light can work in multiple ecosystems simultaneously. It brings a solution for making Thread border routers from different companies play nicely together and introduces a potentially easier way to add Matter infrastructure to homes through Wi-Fi routers and access points. Matter 1.4 also brings some big updates to energy management support, including adding heat pumps, home batteries, and solar panels as Matter device types.

U.S. Cellular has agreed to sell $1.02 billion worth of spectrum licenses to AT&T as part of its strategy to monetize its spectrum assets that were not included in an earlier $4.4 billion deal with T-Mobile. Reuters reports: Last month, U.S. Cellular agreed to sell select spectrum licenses for $1 billion to Verizon. It also signed deals with two other mobile network operators, but did not disclose the details. The latest agreement "adds a fourth mobile network operator, in addition to T-Mobile, to the list of those whose subscribers will benefit from the sale of our spectrum licenses," U.S. Cellular CEO Laurent Therivel said on Thursday. From a press release: Following this transaction, as well as those previously announced, UScellular will have reached definitive agreements to monetize approximately 55%, measured on a MHz-Pops basis, of the spectrum holdings (excluding mmWave) that were excluded from the proposed sale to T-Mobile, for a total consideration of approximately $2.02 billion. Including the proposed T-Mobile transaction, UScellular will have reached agreements to monetize approximately 70% of its total spectrum holdings (excluding mmWave), measured on a MHz-Pops basis.

"After our proposed sales, we will be left with 1.86 billion MHz-Pops of low and mid-band spectrum, as well as 17.2 billion MHz-Pops of mmWave spectrum, with the substantial majority of retained value in the C-band spectrum," [said Laurent C. Therivel, President and CEO]. "The C-band licenses have a number of attributes that we believe are favorable to their long-term value. First, our C-band licenses are positioned in an attractive mid-band frequency that can deliver outstanding speed and capacity. Second, there is a substantial 5G ecosystem of equipment vendors and existing infrastructure that uses C-band. Finally, they have a lengthy build-out timeline, with first and second build-out dates of 2029 and 2033, respectively. This provides ample time and optionality for us to either monetize or deploy the spectrum in the future. We will continue to look for ways to opportunistically monetize the C-band, as well as the other remaining spectrum."

Apple has warned investors that future products may never be as profitable as its iPhone business, as it pushes into unproven new markets such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality headsets. From a report: The iPhone maker added the new warning on growth and profit margins to its latest annual report, in the list of "risk factors" facing the tech group's business.

"New products, services and technologies may replace or supersede existing offerings and may produce lower revenues and lower profit margins," Apple said, "which can materially adversely impact the company's business, results of operations and financial condition." Apple routinely warns investors in its annual reports that competition, foreign exchange, supply chain issues and other factors can put "volatility and downward pressure" on its margins. The same 10-K regulatory filing in previous years suggested that new product introductions could have "higher cost structures." But until now, Apple has not been so direct in addressing the financial profile of its future products.

The Atlantic complains that our chaos of different plug types "was supposed to end, with USB-C as our savior." But part of the problem is what they call "the second circle of our cable hell: My USB-C may not be the same as yours. And the USB-C you bought two years ago may not be the same as the one you got today. And that means it might not do what you now assume it can." A lack of standardization is not the problem here. The industry has designed, named, and rolled out a parade of standards that pertain to USB and all its cousins. Some of those standards live inside other standards. For example, USB 3.2 Gen 1 is also known as USB 3.0, even though it's numbered 3.2. (What? Yes.) And both of these might be applied to cables with USB-A connectors, or USB-B, or USB-Micro B, or — why not? — USB-C. The variations stretch on and on toward the horizon.

Hope persists that someday, eventually, this hell can be escaped — and that, given sufficient standardization, regulatory intervention, and consumer demand, a winner will emerge in the battle of the plugs. But the dream of having a universal cable is always and forever doomed, because cables, like humankind itself, are subject to the curse of time, the most brutal standard of them all. At any given moment, people use devices they bought last week alongside those they've owned for years; they use the old plugs in rental cars or airport-gate-lounge seats; they buy new gadgets with even better capabilities that demand new and different (if similar-looking) cables. Even if Apple puts a USB-C port in every new device, and so does every other manufacturer, that doesn't mean that they will do everything you will expect cables to do in the future. Inevitably, you will find yourself needing new ones.

Back in 1998, the New York Times told me, "If you make your move to U.S.B. now, you can be sure that your new devices will have a port to plug into." I was ready! I'm still ready. But alas, a port to plug into has never been enough.
Obligatory XKCD.

Millions of U.S. cellphone users could be vulnerable to Chinese government surveillance, warns a Washington Post columnist, "on the networks of at least three major U.S. carriers."

They cite six current or former senior U.S. officials, all of whom were briefed about the attack by the U.S. intelligence community. The Chinese hackers, who the United States believes are linked to Beijing's Ministry of State Security, have burrowed inside the private wiretapping and surveillance system that American telecom companies built for the exclusive use of U.S. federal law enforcement agencies — and the U.S. government believes they likely continue to have access to the system.... The U.S. government and the telecom companies that are dealing with the breach have said very little publicly about it since it was first detected in August, leaving the public to rely on details trickling out through leaks...

The so-called lawful-access system breached by the Salt Typhoon hackers was established by telecom carriers after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to allow federal law enforcement officials to execute legal warrants for records of Americans' phone activity or to wiretap them in real time, depending on the warrant. Many of these cases are authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is used to investigate foreign spying that involves contact with U.S. citizens. The system is also used for legal wiretaps related to domestic crimes.

It is unknown whether hackers were able to access records about classified wiretapping operations, which could compromise federal criminal investigations and U.S. intelligence operations around the world, multiple officials told me. But they confirmed the previous reporting that hackers were able to both listen in on phone calls and monitor text messages. "Right now, China has the ability to listen to any phone call in the United States, whether you are the president or a regular Joe, it makes no difference," one of the hack victims briefed by the FBI told me. "This has compromised the entire telecommunications infrastructure of this country."

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Oct. 5 that China-based hackers had penetrated the networks of U.S. telecom providers and might have penetrated the system that telecom companies operate to allow lawful access to wiretapping capabilities by federal agencies... [After releasing a short statement], the FBI notified 40 victims of Salt Typhoon, according to multiple officials. The FBI informed one person who had been compromised that the initial group of identified targets included six affiliated with the Trump campaign, this person said, and that the hackers had been monitoring them as recently as last week... "They had live audio from the president, from JD, from Jared," the person told me. "There were no device compromises, these were all real-time interceptions...." [T]he duration of the surveillance is believed to date back to last year.
Several officials told the columnist that the cyberattack also targetted senior U.S. government officials and top business leaders — and that even more compromised targets are being discovered. At this point, "Multiple officials briefed by the investigators told me the U.S. government does not know how many people were targeted, how many were actively surveilled, how long the Chinese hackers have been in the system, or how to get them out."

But the article does include this quote from U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Mark Warner. "It is much more serious and much worse than even what you all presume at this point."

One U.S. representative suggested Americans rely more on encrypted apps. The U.S. is already investigating — but while researching the article, the columnist writes, "The National Security Council declined to comment, and the FBI did not respond to a request for comment..." They end with this recommendation.

"If millions of Americans are vulnerable to Chinese surveillance, they have a right to know now."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: A few weeks ago, analysts at a specialized technological lab put a microchip from China under a powerful microscope. Something didn't look right... The microscopic proof was there that a chunk of the electronic components from Chinese high-tech champion Huawei Technologies had been produced by the world's most advanced chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

That was a problem because two U.S. administrations in succession had taken actions to assure that didn't happen. The news of the breach of U.S. export controls, first reported in October by the tech news site the Information, has sent a wave of concern through Washington... The chips were routed to Huawei through Sophgo Technologies, the AI venture of a Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire, according to two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic... "It raises some fundamental questions about how well we can actually enforce these rules," said Emily Kilcrease, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington... Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs confirmed that TSMC recently halted shipments to a "certain customer" and notified the United States after suspecting that customer might have directed its products to Huawei...

There's been much intrigue in recent days in the industry over how the crypto billionaire's TSMC-made chips reportedly ended up at Huawei. Critics accuse Sophgo of working to help Huawei evade the export controls, but it is also possible that they were sold through an intermediary, which would align with Sophgo's denial of having any business relationship with Huawei... While export controls are often hard to enforce, semiconductors are especially hard to manage due to the large and open nature of the global chip trade. Since the Biden administration implemented sweeping controls in 2022, there have been reports of widespread chip smuggling and semiconductor black markets allowing Chinese companies to access necessary chips...

Paul Triolo, technology policy lead at Albright Stonebridge Group, said companies were trying to figure out what lengths they had to go to for due diligence: "The guidelines are murky."

Google is rolling out a dedicated weather app on Pixel phones (model 6 and newer with Android 15) that integrates AI-generated summaries and customizable widgets. Ars Technica reports: There's a prominent "AI generated weather report" on top of the weather stack, which is a combination of summary and familiarity. "Cold and rainy day, bring your umbrella and hold onto your hat!" is Google's example; I can't provide another one, because an update to "Gemini Nano" is pending. You can see weather radar for your location, along with forecasted precipitation movement. The app offers "Nowcasting" precipitation guesses, like "Rain continuing for 2 hours" or "Light rain in 10 minutes."

The best feature, one seen on the version of Weather that shipped to the Pixel Tablet and Fold, is that you can rearrange the order of data shown on your weather screen. I moved the UV index, humidity, sunrise/sunset, and wind conditions as high as they could go on my setup. It's a trade-off, because the Weather app's data widgets are so big as to require scrolling to get the full picture of a day, and you can't move the AI summary or 10-day forecast off the top. But if you only need a few numbers and like a verbal summary, it's handy. Sadly, if you're an allergy sufferer and you're not in the UK, Germany, France, or Italy, Google can't offer you any pollen data or forecasts. There is also, I am sad to say, no frog. You can download the app here.

Nintendo has announced a mobile app called Nintendo Music, which lets users listen to classic video game soundtracks from Nintendo games spanning the last few decades, including Splatoon, Animal Crossing, and The Legend of Zelda. According to The Verge, the app is available on iOS and Android but only Switch Online subscribers will be able to stream the tunes. From the report: The app features curated playlists themed around games, moments, moods, or characters, though you can also build your own. It also supports streaming as well as downloading tracks for offline listening. Curiously, it includes a spoiler feature that lets you filter out tracks that, somehow, might spoil a game you haven't played or finished yet. And if you just want some Hyrule white noise, the app also lets you "loop songs or extend select tracks to 15, 30, or 60 minutes for uninterrupted listening." Here's a list of all the regions the app will be available in.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple's AI features are finally starting to appear. Apple Intelligence is launching today on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, offering features like generative AI-powered writing tools, notification summaries, and a cleanup tool to take distractions out of photos. It's Apple's first official step into the AI era, but it'll be far from its last. Apple Intelligence has been available in developer and public beta builds of Apple's operating systems for the past few months, but today marks the first time it'll be available in the full public OS releases. Even so, the features will still be marked as "beta," and Apple Intelligence will very much remain a work in progress. (You'll have to get on a waitlist to try Apple Intelligence, too.) Siri gets a new look, but its most consequential new features -- like the ability to take action in apps -- probably won't arrive until well into 2025.

In the meantime, Apple has released a very "AI starter kit" set of features. "Writing Tools" will help you summarize notes, change the tone of your messages to make them friendlier or more professional, and turn a wall of text into a list or table. You'll see AI summaries in notifications and emails, along with a new focus mode that aims to filter out unimportant alerts. The updated Siri is signified by a glowing border around the screen, and it now allows for text input by double-tapping the bottom of the screen. It's helpful stuff, but we've seen a lot of this before, and it'll hardly represent a seismic shift in how you use your iPhone. Apple says that more Apple Intelligence features will arrive in December. [...] Availability will expand in December to Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK, with additional languages coming in April. Despite Apple's previous claim that Apple Intelligence wouldn't be available in the European Union due to the Digital Markets Act, the features will, in fact, be coming to Europe in April of next year.

Further reading: Apple Updates the iMac With M4 Chip

Slashdot reader samleecole writes: Privacy advocates gained access to a powerful tool bought by U.S. law enforcement agencies that can track smartphone locations around the world. Abortion clinics, places of worship, and individual people can all be monitored without a warrant.

An investigation into tracking tool Locate X shows in the starkest terms yet how it and others — based on smartphone location data sold to various U.S. government law enforcement agencies, including state entities — could be used to monitor abortion clinic patients. This comes as more states contemplate stricter or outright bans on abortion...

An anonymous reader writes: T-Mobile and AT&T say US regulators should drop a plan to require unlocking of phones within 60 days of activation, claiming that locking phones to a carrier's network makes it possible to provide cheaper handsets to consumers. "If the Commission mandates a uniform unlocking policy, it is consumers -- not providers -- who stand to lose the most," T-Mobile alleged in an October 17 filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The proposed rule has support from consumer advocacy groups who say it will give users more choice and lower their costs.

T-Mobile has been criticized for locking phones for up to a year, which makes it impossible to use a phone on a rival's network. T-Mobile claims that with a 60-day unlocking rule, "consumers risk losing access to the benefits of free or heavily subsidized handsets because the proposal would force providers to reduce the line-up of their most compelling handset offers." If the proposed rule is enacted, "T-Mobile estimates that its prepaid customers, for example, would see subsidies reduced by 40 percent to 70 percent for both its lower and higher-end devices, such as the Moto G, Samsung A15, and iPhone 12," the carrier said. "A handset unlocking mandate would also leave providers little choice but to limit their handset offers to lower cost and often lesser performing handsets." In July, the FCC approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the unlocking policy in a 5-0 vote.

The FCC is proposing "to require all mobile wireless service providers to unlock handsets 60 days after a consumer's handset is activated with the provider, unless within the 60-day period the service provider determines the handset was purchased through fraud."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Brandon Barrett arrived here two weeks ago, sick but hopeful, like dozens before him. Just a few years back, he could dead lift 660 pounds. After an injury while training to be a professional dirt-bike rider, he opened a motorcycle shop just north of Buffalo. When he wasn't working, he would cleanse his mind through rigorous meditation. In 2019, he began getting sick. And then sicker. Brain fog. Memory issues. Difficulty focusing. Depression. Anxiety. Fatigue. Brandon was pretty sure he knew why: the cell tower a quarter-mile behind his shop and all the electromagnetic radiation it produces, that cellphones produce, that WiFi routers produce, that Bluetooth produces, that the whole damn world produces. He thought about the invisible waves that zip through our airspace -- maybe they pollute our bodies, somehow? [...]

Then Brandon read about Green Bank, an unincorporated speck on the West Virginia map, hidden in the Allegheny Mountains, about a four-hour drive southwest of D.C. There are no cell towers there, by design. He read that other sick people had moved here and gotten better, that the area's electromagnetic quietude is protected by the federal government. Perhaps it could protect Brandon. It's quiet here so that scientists can listen to corners of the universe, billions of light-years away. In the 1950s, the federal government snatched up farmland to build the Green Bank Observatory. It's now home to the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope, the largest steerable telescope in the world at 7,600 metric tons and a height of 485 feet. Its 2.3-acre dish can study quasars and pulsars, map asteroids and planets, and search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

The observatory's machines are so sensitive that terrestrial radio waves would interfere with their astronomical exploration, like a shout (a bunch of WiFi signals) drowning out a whisper (signals from the clouds of hydrogen hanging out between galaxies). So in 1958, the Federal Communications Commission created the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area encompassing wedges of both Virginia and West Virginia, where radio transmissions are restricted to varying degrees. At its center is a 10-mile zone around the observatory where WiFi, cellphones and cordless phones -- among many other types of wave-emitting equipment -- are outlawed. Wired internet is okay, as are televisions -- though you must have a cable or satellite provider. It's not a place out of 100 years ago. More like 30. If you want to make plans to meet someone, you make them in person. Some people move here to work at the observatory. Others come because they feel like they have to. These are the 'electrosensitives,' as they often refer to themselves. They are ill, and Green Bank is their Lourdes. The electrosensitives guess that they number at least 75 in Pocahontas County, which has a population of roughly 7,500. Literary Hub, the BBC, Slate, and the Washingtonian have non-paywalled articles about Green Bank and the "wi-fi refugees" that shelter there.