Comment on Friday biz roundup: Occupy Portland challenges remain; Albertsons bails out of gas business

Although fans of A Song of Ice and Fire might still be hankering for the long-delayed next book in the series, bestselling sci-fi/fantasy author George R. R. Martin has instead added a different item to his long list of publications: a peer-reviewed physics paper just published in the American Journal of Physics that he co-authored.

The UK’s competition watchdog has launched an investigation into Apple's and Google’s mobile platforms, just days after the government forced out its chair as part of a push to cut the regulatory burden on business. The Competition and Markets Authority said on Thursday it would examine whether the creators of the iPhone and Android smartphone operating systems should be subjected to extra scrutiny over how they run their mobile platforms, in its second investigation under the new digital markets regime. The announcement comes just two days after the government ousted Marcus Bokkerink as chair of the CMA, amid concerns the regulator was not sufficiently focused on growth.

Now 11 seasons in, Formula E has come a long way from its sometimes-chaotic early days and those mid-race pitstops to change cars. Car swaps went away a long time ago, but when the series gets back to racing next month in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the mid-race pit stop will be back.

The Cadillac Lyriq was the first of a new breed of General Motors' electric vehicles. Built around a common battery platform (which used to be called Ultium), the midsize SUV has been on sale for about three years now, and for model year 2026, there's a new version available, the first Cadillac EV to wear the V-series badge. "V-Series captures the spirit of Cadillac, embodying our relentless pursuit of engineering excellence through our racing and production vehicles," said John Roth, vice president of Global Cadillac.

Parents, students, teachers, and administrators throughout North America are smarting from what could be the biggest data breach of 2025: an intrusion into the network of a cloud-based service storing detailed data of millions of pupils and school personnel. The hack, which came to light earlier this month, hit PowerSchool, a Folsom, California, firm that provides cloud-based software to some 16,000 K–12 schools worldwide.

Late last month, researchers revealed a finding that’s likely to shock some people and confirm the low expectations of others: Renewable energy facilities throughout Central Europe use unencrypted radio signals to receive commands to feed or ditch power into or from the grid that serves some 450 million people throughout the continent. Fabian Bräunlein and Luca Melette stumbled on their discovery largely by accident while working on what they thought would be a much different sort of hacking project.