2025-06-03 06:05:16
Exercise is generally good for you, but a new high-quality clinical trial finds that it's so good, it can even knock back colon cancer—and, in fact, rival some chemotherapy treatments.
The finding comes from a phase 3, randomized clinical trial led by researchers in Canada, who studied nearly 900 people who had undergone surgery and chemotherapy for colon cancer. After those treatments, patients were evenly split into groups that either bulked up their regular exercise routines in a three-year program that included coaching and supervision or were simply given health education. The researchers found that the exercise group had a 28 percent lower risk of their colon cancer recurring, new cancers developing, or dying over eight years compared with the health education group.
The benefits of exercise, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, became visible after just one year and increased over time, the researchers found. The rate of people who survived for five years and remained cancer-free was 80.3 percent among the exercise group. That's a 6.4 percentage-point survival boost over the education group, which had a 73.9 percent cancer-free survival rate. The overall survival rate (with or without cancer) during the study's eight-year follow-up was 90.3 percent in the exercise group compared with 83.2 percent in the education group—a 7.1 percentage point difference. Exercise reduced the relative risk of death by 37 percent (41 people died in the exercise group compared with 66 in the education group).
2025-06-03 05:43:04
Broadcom has cut the lowest tier in its VMware partner program. The move allows the enterprise technology firm to continue its focus on customers with larger VMware deployments, but it also risks more migrations from VMware users and partners.
In a blog post on Sunday, Broadcom executive Brian Moats announced that the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program for VMware Resellers, which became the VMware partner program after Broadcom eliminated the original one in January 2024, would now offer three tiers instead of four. Broadcom is killing the Registered tier, leaving the Pinnacle, Premier, and Select tiers.
The reduction is a result of Broadcom's "strategic direction" and a "comprehensive partner review" and affects VMware's Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Japan geographies, Moats wrote. Affected partners are receiving 60 days' notice, Laura Falko, Broadcom’s head of global partner programs, marketing, and experience, told The Register.
2025-06-03 05:19:48
We've been covering the small, reversible USB Type-C connector since the days when it was just a USB Implementers Forum tech demo, and in the decade-plus since then, the port has gradually taken over the world. It gradually migrated from laptops to game consoles, to PC accessories, to Android phones, to e-readers, and to iPhones. Despite some hiccups and shortcomings, we're considerably closer to a single connector that does everything than we were a decade ago.
But some of that confusion persists. A weakness built into the USB-C from the very beginning was that the specification for the physical connector was always separate from the specifications for the USB protocol itself (that is, the data transfer speed a given port is capable of), the USB Power Delivery specification for charging, and the USB-C Alt Mode specification for carrying non-USB signals like DisplayPort or HDMI.
All of these specifications were frequently grouped together so that individual USB-C ports could handle charging, display output, and data transfers (or some combination of all three at once), but they weren't required to go together, so occasionally users will still run into physical USB-C ports that fall short of the port's do-everything promise.
2025-06-03 04:35:58
It has become a common refrain during Google's antitrust saga: What happened to "don't be evil?" Google's unofficial motto has haunted it as it has grown ever larger, but a shareholder lawsuit sought to rein in some of the company's excesses. And it might be working. The plaintiffs in the case have reached a settlement with Google parent company Alphabet, which will spend a boatload of cash on "comprehensive" reforms. The goal is to steer Google away from the kind of anticompetitive practices that got it in hot water.
Under the terms of the settlement, obtained by Bloomberg Law, Alphabet will spend $500 million over the next 10 years on systematic reforms. The company will have to form a board-level committee devoted to overseeing the company's regulatory compliance and antitrust risk, a rarity for US firms. This group will report directly to CEO Sundar Pichai. There will also be reforms at other levels of the company that allow employees to identify potential legal pitfalls before they affect the company. Google has also agreed to preserve communications. Google's propensity to use auto-deleting chats drew condemnation from several judges overseeing its antitrust cases.
The agreement still needs approval from US District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco, but that's mainly a formality at this point. Naturally, Alphabet does not admit to any wrongdoing under the terms of the settlement, but it may have to pay tens of millions in legal fees on top of the promised $500 million investment.
2025-06-03 04:24:20
On May 23, President Trump issued an executive order entitled "Restoring Gold Standard Science." And, in news that may surprise our readers, it sounds remarkably good, focusing on issues like reproducibility and conflicts of interest. While there were a few things that could be phrased better, when it comes to basic scientific practices, the language was remarkably reasonable.
So, why didn't we report on what appeared to be a rare bit of good news? I'd considered doing so, but the situation is complicated by the fact that the order is structured in a way that makes it very sensitive to who's responsible for implementing it, a situation that's subtle enough that I couldn't figure out how to handle it well. Fortunately, I only had to wait a week for a member of the Trump administration to show just how dangerous it could be and highlight its biggest problem.
On Sunday, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary appeared on one of the weekend news programs, where he was asked about the decision to limit pregnant people's access to the COVID-19 vaccines. The host mentioned that aggregation of studies involving a total of over 1.8 million women had shown the vaccine was safe and effective.
2025-06-03 02:52:05
Every smartphone maker is racing to find a way to put AI in your pocket, but no one has cracked the code yet. Samsung was an early supporter of Google's Gemini AI, which has largely supplanted its little-used Bixby assistant. However, a new report claims Samsung is planning a big AI shakeup by partnering with Perplexity on the Galaxy S26.
Perplexity pitches itself as an AI-powered search service, running on the same generative AI technology behind ChatGPT, Gemini, and all the others. However, it cites its sources around the web more prominently than a pure chatbot. Perplexity made waves during the Google search antitrust trial when executive Dmitry Shevelenko testified that Google blocked Motorola from using Perplexity on its 2024 phones. The company got its wish this year, though, with Perplexity finding a place on 2025 Razr phones.
A report from Bloomberg says Samsung will be the next to leverage Perplexity's AI. The companies are apparently close to signing a deal that will make this AI model a core part of the Galaxy S26 lineup. Motorola uses Perplexity for search functionality inside its Moto AI system, but the Samsung deal would be more comprehensive.
