Across Europe, telecom prices are taking a nosedive, and Italy is leading the pack. According to AGCOM’s 2025 survey, Italians are paying 30% less for telecom services than they did a decade ago. France isn’t far behind with a 26% reduction, and even the broader EU27 bloc has seen prices fall by nearly 10%. It’s a consumer’s dream, right?

Well, not so fast. While we’re all enjoying cheaper broadband, the telecom sector is facing a major challenge. Prices are shrinking just as the need for investment in 5G, fiber expansions, and future infrastructure is skyrocketing. If telecom services have effectively halved in real terms, what incentive is there for operators to fund these upgrades?

Telecom: The Odd One Out
While other essential utilities like gas, power, and water have all increased in price over the past four years, telecom services have bucked the trend. In Italy, for instance, gas prices climbed by 76%, power by 64.5%, and even water and waste services saw increases. Meanwhile, the cost of a large basket of communications services fell by almost 11%. Telecom has made itself the exception, but at what cost?

Investment vs. Revenue: A Widening Gap
Despite a decade of heavy investment, telecom revenues aren’t keeping pace. From 2015 to 2022, global telco capital expenditure remained above $300 billion per year, with peaks driven by 5G rollouts and fiber expansions. But global telecom service revenues are only expected to grow from $1.14 trillion in 2023 to $1.3 trillion by 2028 – a growth rate below expected inflation.

So, while networks are getting stronger, the financial foundation beneath them is growing weaker. And regional differences complicate the picture: while China invested $58.3 billion in telecom capex in 2022 alone, many Western markets pulled back.

Leaner Workforces, Outsourced Expertise
To cope with these challenges, many telecom companies have been streamlining their operations and increasing profitability. This has led to a significant reduction in overall telecom employment over the past decade. The combined workforce of the top 20 global operators fell from 1.8 million employees in 2015 to 1.3 million in 2024.

Thousands of jobs once central to national operators are now absorbed into shared-service models, tower companies, or managed service providers owned by external companies. While this model lowers costs and provides access to specialized expertise, it also erodes institutional knowledge and internal career pathways.

The AI Factor
The promise of AI to simplify workflows has further accelerated these changes. An estimated 52,000 jobs have been ‘lost’ to AI in just the past year, with British Telecom alone announcing plans to cut 10,000 positions over seven years, much of it stemming from AI and automation initiatives.

Finding Balance
The paths forward are many, but none are simple checklists. Operators will need to gradually shift competition away from pure price, potentially through deeper bundling of services or focusing more on enterprise services. Policymakers also have a part to play, with regulation that encourages long-term investment rather than reinforcing price wars.

Telecoms can’t remain the lone deflationary utility forever. Whether through smarter collaboration, regulatory foresight, or innovation in services, sustainability must become the sector’s guiding principle. Only then can cheaper today also mean better tomorrow.

Hold onto your seats, tech enthusiasts! The internet’s buzzing with signs that Google’s about to drop VEO 3.1, and it’s looking like a game-changer for video generation. Here’s the lowdown:

🌟 What’s the buzz about?
A sneaky disclaimer in the Gemini app and a tweet from Google’s AI bigwig, Logan Kilpatrick, are hinting that VEO 3.1 is almost here. And guess where it’s landing? Right in the heart of Gemini, Google’s AI playground!

🎬 What’s new in VEO 3.1?
The big question on everyone’s lips is: how long will these new videos be? Rumors are swirling about a jump from 8-second clips to a whopping 30 seconds! Plus, leaks suggest we’ll see two versions: a speedy, lower-quality one, and a high-fidelity standard mode for top-notch visuals and storytelling.

🧪 How’s Google rolling this out?
In true Google style, they’re giving businesses a sneak peek on Vertex AI, while the rest of us will get to play with it in the Gemini app. This way, they get valuable feedback from developers and maximize public adoption. Clever, huh?

📈 Why should you care?
Well, if you’re into creating videos or just love seeing what AI can do, VEO 3.1 is shaping up to be a must-try. With improved audio and visuals, it’s already giving competitors a run for their money. So, keep your eyes peeled – the VEO 3.1 party might start any day now!

🎶 It’s been 90 years since the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Aaron Presley, took his first breath, and two audio giants are celebrating his legacy in style! 🎸

Pro-Ject’s Elvis-inspired T2 turntable is a true treasure for fans. This beauty boasts a CNC-machined plinth with integrated, dimmable LED lighting that spells out ‘ELVIS’ – just like the iconic sign from his ’68 Comeback Special. Beneath the glow, you’ll find a precision 9-inch aluminium tonearm, adjustable spring-based anti-skating system, and a factory-fitted Sumiko Rainier cartridge. Plus, it’s got a 10mm, 1.7kg glass platter and an electronically regulated motor for easy switching between 33 and 45 RPM. Priced at £1,199 / €1,399 (around $1,590 or AU$2,465), it’s a investment that’ll make you feel like you’re walking in Memphis every time you spin a record.

But wait, there’s more! 🎁 We Are Rewind’s limited-edition WE ARE REWIND x Elvis Presley Box Set is here to make you feel like you’re all shook up! This isn’t your average Walkman – it’s a portable cassette player that’s perfect for taking The King’s tunes on the go. With only 1,957 units worldwide, this box set includes the specially designed player and an exclusive reissue of Elvis’ Christmas Album on cassette. And get this, it’s got a rechargeable battery for up to 12 hours of playtime and Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity for wireless listening. You can pre-order yours for $199 / €179 (around £150 or AU$309) starting today, October 15, 2025.

So, whether you’re a die-hard Elvis fan or just love great music, these two amazing products are a must-have. They’re not just audio gear; they’re a tribute to the man who changed the world with his voice. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some Elvis tunes to listen to… 🎵🎸

Ever felt like you need a humongous VLM to get the job done? Alibaba’s Qwen team has news for you: enter the dense Qwen3-VL 4B/8B (Instruct & Thinking) with FP8 checkpoints! These new models run smoothly on low VRAM, yet retain a whopping 256K to 1M context length and a full capability surface. Here’s what you need to know:

What’s New?
– Models Galore: Qwen3-VL-4B and Qwen3-VL-8B, each in Instruct and Thinking flavors, plus FP8 versions of these checkpoints. They’re compact, dense, and ready for action.
– Same Capabilities, Smaller Size: These newbies understand images/videos, OCR in 32 languages, spatial grounding, and control GUIs on desktops and mobile. No compromises here!
– Under the Hood: They’ve got Interleaved-MRoPE, DeepStack, and Text–Timestamp Alignment for robust video understanding. It’s all in the model cards.

FP8: The Game Changer
– Fine-Grained and Powerful: FP8 quantization with a block size of 128, nearly matching BF16 performance. No more re-quantization headaches!
– Tooling Up: Transformers doesn’t load these FP8 weights directly yet, but vLLM or SGLang can handle it. Plus, vLLM loves FP8 for H100 memory efficiency.

Why You Should Care
– Qwen’s new 4B/8B models come in both Instruct and Thinking variants, with FP8 checkpoints for low-VRAM deployment.
– They retain the full capability surface, making them perfect for single-GPU or edge budgets.

Join the Qwen Community
– Check out the model on Hugging Face.
– Explore tutorials, codes, and notebooks on our GitHub page.
– Follow us on Twitter, join our ML SubReddit, subscribe to our newsletter, and even join us on Telegram!

Mark your calendars, horror and shooter fans! Tencent Games has just unveiled ‘Rules of Engagement: The Grey State’, an upcoming tactical extraction shooter with a chilling twist. This free-to-play PC game is set to release in 2026, promising a spine-tingling experience that blends PvP and PvE elements.

Developed by Grey State Studio, the team behind Ring of Elysium, this new game takes the best of its predecessor’s tactical combat and extraction mechanics and adds a heaping helping of horror. Set in the eerie, newly discovered dimension of the Grey State, you’ll play as a Strider, an elite soldier on a mission to retrieve a valuable artifact while battling nightmarish creatures and other players.

The game draws inspiration from a wide range of horror sources, so expect a varied and terrifying experience. Plus, with a deep class-based progression system and massive skill trees, you’ll have plenty of ways to customize your gameplay.

But here’s the best part: ‘Rules of Engagement: The Grey State’ will be free-to-play with no pay-to-win monetization. That’s right, you can expect only cosmetic in-game purchases like weapon skins and battle passes.

At launch, you’ll have three classes to choose from, with more planned for the future. The game will go through alpha playtests earlier in 2026 before its full release, so keep an eye out for those if you’re eager to get a taste of the action.

So, are you ready to face your fears and fight for survival in ‘Rules of Engagement: The Grey State’? Stay tuned for more updates!

🚀 Attention, AI enthusiasts! Andrej Karpathy has just dropped a game-changer: ‘nanochat’, a compact, easy-to-use pipeline that lets you train your own ChatGPT-style model in just 4 hours for around $100! 🤯

💻 What’s under the hood?
– A single script, ‘speedrun.sh’, that guides you through the entire process: tokenization, base pretraining, mid-training on chat/multiple-choice/tool-use data, Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), optional RL on GSM8K, evaluation, and serving (CLI + ChatGPT-like web UI).
– A recommended setup of an 8×H100 node, costing around $24/hour, making the 4-hour speedrun land near $100.
– A post-run report.md that summarizes metrics on CORE, ARC-E/C, MMLU, GSM8K, HumanEval, and ChatCORE.

🌟 Key Features:
– Tokenizer: Custom Rust BPE with a 65,536-token vocab.
– Model: A depth-20 Transformer with ≈560M params, trained for ~11.2B tokens.
– Mid-training & SFT: Adapts the base model to conversations, teaches multiple-choice behavior, and improves with higher-quality conversations.
– Tool use: End-to-end wired with a simple Python interpreter sandbox.
– Optional RL on GSM8K: A simplified GRPO loop for reinforcement learning.

💥 Scaling Up:
– Karpathy sketches two larger targets: a ~$300 tier (d=26, ~12 hours) that slightly outperforms GPT-2 CORE, and a ~$1,000 tier (~41.6 hours) for materially better coherence and reasoning.
– Previous experimental runs showed a d=30 model reaching impressive scores on MMLU, ARC-Easy, and GSM8K.

📈 Example Metrics (speedrun tier):
– CORE: 0.2219 (base) → 0.2219 (after mid-training/SFT)
– ARC-E: 0.3561 → 0.3876
– ARC-C: ~0.2875 → 0.2807
– MMLU: 0.3111 → 0.3151
– GSM8K: 0.0250 → 0.0455
– HumanEval: 0.0671 → 0.0854
– ChatCORE: 0.0730 → 0.0884
– Wall-clock time: 3h51m

💬 Karpathy’s Words:
“nanochat is a minimal, end-to-end ChatGPT-style stack (~8K LOC) that runs via a single speedrun.sh on one 8×H100 node (~4h ≈ $100). It’s among the most unhinged repos I’ve written.” – Andrej Karpathy

🎉 Get Started!
– Check out the [Technical details and Codes](https://github.com/karpathy/nanochat).
– Follow Karpathy on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/karpathy) and join our [100k+ ML SubReddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/).
– Subscribe to our Newsletter and join us on [Telegram](https://t.me/MarkTechPost).

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to train your own ChatGPT-style model! 🤖💻🚀

Stream Latvia vs England on ITVX (FREE)

🕒 Kick-Off: 7.45pm BST / 2.45pm ET

🌎 Use NordVPN to unblock free ITV stream

🦁 England on Fire: Thomas Tuchel’s men are on a roll, winning all five qualifying matches and keeping a clean sheet. A win against Latvia will secure their spot in the 2026 World Cup. They’re eager to make amends after a disappointing earlier encounter with the Latvians.

🇱🇻 Latvia’s Last Chance: The 11 Vilki are hanging on by a thread. They need to win both remaining matches and overturn a significant goal deficit to keep their qualifying hopes alive.

💥 How to Watch for FREE:

Latvia vs England has plenty of streaming options worldwide, but one of the best free options is ITVX in the UK.

🟩 Stream Latvia vs England for free on ITVX:

– First-timer? Register for a free account or download the app.
– Outside the UK? Use NordVPN to unlock your ITVX stream from anywhere.

🌍 How to Watch from Anywhere:

ITVX’s free coverage is exclusive to UK residents. Here’s how to access it from abroad:

1. Install NordVPN (our top pick for reliability and speed).
2. Connect to a UK server.
3. Enjoy Latvia vs England for free on ITVX.

🌐 Other Streaming Options:

– 🇺🇸 Fox Sports 2 via FOX One
– 🇨🇦 DAZN
– 🇦🇺 Stan Sport

📝 Remember: If you’re outside the UK, use NordVPN to access your free ITVX stream.

🔒 Legal Note: We only endorse using VPNs for legal purposes, such as accessing geo-restricted content like free ITVX streams. We do not support or condone illegal activities.

Kick-off: 7:45 PM BST / 2:45 PM ET, Tuesday, October 14.

Stream for FREE:
– Portugal: RTP Play
– Hungary: M4 Sport

Paid Streaming Options:
– UK: Prime Video (Start a 7-day free trial)
– Canada: DAZN (Get a 30-day free trial)
– Australia: Stan Sport (AU$20/month on top of Stan subscription)

VPN Access:
– NordVPN (Save 70% today, plus 3 months extra free)

Preview:
Roberto Martinez, Portugal’s manager since 2020, has already guided his side to Nations League glory. With an unbeaten streak of six games, including a dramatic stoppage-time winner against Ireland, Portugal leads Group F with a perfect 9 points. However, they’ve struggled to find their identity in major tournaments despite their star-studded squad. With the 2026 World Cup approaching and potentially Cristiano Ronaldo’s last major tournament, the pressure is on Portugal to deliver.

Marco Rossi’s Hungary, a sleeping giant in football, has been causing upsets under his eight-year reign. With recent wins against England, Germany, and Croatia, Hungary sits second in Group F with 4 points. They’ll be looking for revenge after a 3-2 loss to Portugal in September.

How to Watch:
– Free: Tune in via RTP Play (Portugal) or M4 Sport (Hungary).
– Paid: Subscribe to Prime Video (UK), DAZN (Canada), or Stan Sport (Australia).
– Outside your home country: Use a VPN like NordVPN to access your usual streaming services.

Don’t miss this thrilling clash between Portugal and Hungary as they battle for World Cup qualification. With free streaming options and easy-to-use VPNs, you can catch all the action from anywhere in the world!

🚀 Ready to supercharge your Python testing? Let’s dive into an engaging tutorial that transforms PyTest from a simple test runner into a powerful, customizable powerhouse! 💪

🌟 What you’ll learn:
– Set up a project structure for organized testing.
– Configure PyTest with plugins, fixtures, and markers.
– Write tests for custom objects, logic, and side effects.
– Control and run tests with custom options.
– Generate JSON reports for easy integration with CI/CD pipelines.

💻 Let’s get started!

1. Set up your environment and project structure:
– Install the latest PyTest and create a clean project folder with `calc`, `app`, and `tests` subfolders.

2. Configure PyTest:
– In `pytest.ini`, define markers, default options, and test paths.
– In `conftest.py`, create a custom plugin that tracks test results, adds a `–runslow` option, and provides fixtures for reusable test resources.

3. Build your core calculation module:
– In the `calc` package, define simple mathematical utilities and a custom `Vector` class for testing.

4. Add app utilities and write tests:
– Create lightweight app utilities for JSON I/O and a mocked API.
– Write focused tests using parametrization, xfail, markers, tmp_path, capsys, and monkeypatch.

5. Run and summarize test results:
– Run the test suite twice: once with the default configuration and once with the `–runslow` flag.
– Generate a JSON summary containing test outcomes, the total number of test files, and a sample event log.

🎉 By the end of this tutorial, you’ll understand not just how to write tests, but how to control and customize PyTest’s behavior to fit any project’s needs. You’ll be ready to extend PyTest further with coverage, benchmarking, or parallel execution for large-scale, professional-grade testing.

🌐 Check out the full codes here and explore our GitHub page for more tutorials, codes, and notebooks. Follow us on Twitter, join our 100k+ ML SubReddit, subscribe to our newsletter, and even join us on Telegram for more tech goodness! 🤖🚀

Happy testing! 🎉

Bluepoint Games, the studio behind the critically acclaimed Demon’s Souls remake, has just posted a job listing that’s got fans buzzing with speculation. They’re hiring for a ‘Senior Combat Designer’, and the qualifications hint at something big.

The job description calls for someone with experience in combat design, especially for third-person melee action games. It also mentions working on AI gameplay, character balance, and high-level character design intent. These details suggest that combat will be a significant focus in their next project.

Given Bluepoint’s history with the Dark Souls series and the recent success of the Demon’s Souls remake, it’s not a stretch to start dreaming of a Bloodborne remake or sequel. After all, Bloodborne is another FromSoftware title known for its challenging, melee-focused combat.

Bluepoint’s last announced project was a live-service game, rumored to be a God of War title, but it was unfortunately canceled earlier this year. Now, it seems they’re moving on to something new, and fans can’t help but hope it’s a return to the dark, gothic world of Yharnam.

While we wait for official announcements, why not check out our list of the best RPGs of 2025 to keep your gaming fix satisfied? And if you’re a Switch fan, you might want to keep an eye out for FromSoftware’s latest announcement, The Duskborns, a brand new Switch 2 exclusive. Stay tuned for more gaming news and updates!