The Bloomberg Terminal Is Getting an AI Makeover
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: For its famous intractability, the Bloomberg Terminal has long inspired devotion, bordering on obsession. Among traders, the ability to chart a path through the software’s dizzying scrolls of numbers and text to isolate far-flung information is the mark of a seasoned professional. But as a greater mass of data is fed into the Term … ⌘ Read more

Google and Pentagon Reportedly Agree On Deal For ‘Any Lawful’ Use of AI
Google has reportedly signed a classified agreement allowing the Pentagon to use its AI models for “any lawful government purpose.” While the deal is said to discourage domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons without human oversight, it apparently does not give Google the power to block how the government actually uses its m … ⌘ Read more

UAE To Leave OPEC Amid Hormuz Oil Crisis
fjo3 writes: The United Arab Emirates announced Tuesday that it would exit the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (source paywalled; alternative source), or OPEC, along with the wider group of partners known as OPEC+, effective May 1, in what could be a blow to control over prices by the group, long led in practice by Saudi Arabia. The move “reflects the UAE’s long-term strategi … ⌘ Read more

Bay Area Homeowner Offers Property In Exchange For Anthropic Stock
Bay Area homeowner and investment banker Storm Duncan is trying to swap a 13-acre Mill Valley property for Anthropic equity instead of cash. He created a LinkedIn page for the home, describing the move as a “diversification play” because he is “under-concentrated in AI investments relative to the importance of AI in the future, and over-concentrat … ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court Hears Case On How To Label Risks of Popular Weed Killer
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Monday heard a dispute over labels on the popular Roundup weed killer, which thousands of people blame for their cancers. How the Supreme Court rules could have implications for tens of thousands of lawsuits against Roundup maker Monsanto, which is now owned by … ⌘ Read more

The Silent Frequency That Makes Old Buildings Feel Haunted
Researchers say infrasound – low-frequency vibrations from things like pipes, HVAC systems, and traffic that humans can’t consciously hear – may help explain why some old buildings feel unsettling or “haunted.” Rodney Schmaltz, senior author and professor at MacEwan, says: “Consider visiting a supposedly haunted building. Your mood shifts, you feel agit … ⌘ Read more

Trump Administration Will Pay More Energy Firms to Cancel Wind Farms
The Trump administration says it will reimburse energy companies $885 million to cancel two planned offshore wind farms, with the firms in turn agreeing to put money into oil and gas projects instead. “The deals are modeled after a similar agreement last month with the French energy giant TotalEnergies,” notes the New York Times. “Tota … ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Technology tycoons Elon Musk and Sam Altman are poised to face off in a high-stakes trial revolving around the alleged betrayal, deceit and unbridled ambition that blurred the bickering billionaires’ once-shared vision for the development of artificial intelligence. The trial, which started Monday with jury selecti … ⌘ Read more

Study Finds a Third of New Websites Are AI-Generated
alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: Researchers working with data from the Internet Archive have discovered that a third of websites created since 2022 are AI-generated. The team of researchers – which includes people from Stanford, the Imperial College London, and the Internet Archive – published their findings online in a paper titled “The Impact of A … ⌘ Read more

EU Tells Google To Open Up AI On Android; Google Says That’s ‘Unwarranted Intervention’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In January, the European Commission began an initial investigation, known as a specification proceeding, into how Google has implemented AI in the Android operating system. The results are in, and the EU says Android needs to be more open, which is no … ⌘ Read more

Notepad++ Finally Lands On macOS as a Native App
BrianFagioli writes: Notepad++ has finally made its way to macOS, and this time it is not through a compatibility layer. A new community-driven port brings the long-standing Windows text editor over as a fully native Mac application, built with Cocoa and compiled for both Apple Silicon and Intel systems. Instead of relying on Wine or similar tools, the project replaces the Windo … ⌘ Read more

China Blocks Meta’s $2 Billion Takeover of AI Startup Manus
China has blocked Meta’s planned $2 billion acquisition of AI startup Manus, ordering the deal withdrawn after months of scrutiny from both Beijing and Washington. “The decision to prohibit foreign investment in Manus was made in accordance with laws and regulations,” reports CNBC, citing the National Development and Reform Commission. “It added that it has … ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court Reviews Police Use of Cell Location Data To Find Criminals
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: When the Call Federal Credit Union outside Richmond, Va., was robbed at gunpoint in 2019, the suspect took $195,000 from the bank’s vault and fled before the police arrived. A detective interviewed witnesses and reviewed the bank’s security footage. But with no leads, the … ⌘ Read more

GitHub Copilot Is Moving To Usage-Based Billing
GitHub said in a blog post today that it is moving Copilot to usage-based billing starting June 1. Base subscription prices will remain the same but premium requests will be replaced with monthly AI Credits that are consumed based on token usage.

“Instead of counting premium requests, every Copilot plan will include a monthly allotment of GitHub AI Credits, with the option … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft To Stop Sharing Revenue With OpenAI
Bloomberg reports that Microsoft is ending revenue-sharing payments to OpenAI (paywalled; alternative source) and making the partnership non-exclusive. “The rapid pace of innovation requires us to continue to evolve our partnership to benefit our customers and both companies,” Microsoft said Monday in a blog post. Bloomberg reports: The revised deal is meant to simplify a complicated rela … ⌘ Read more

California’s Billionaire Tax Has the Signatures to Make the Ballot
California’s proposed billionaire tax appears headed for the November ballot after backers said they gathered more than 1.5 million signatures, well above the threshold needed to qualify. SF Standard reports: Backers of the initiative announced this weekend that more than 1.5 million people signed a petition to bring the one-time, 5% wealth ta … ⌘ Read more

DeepSeek V4 Arrives With Near State-of-the-Art Intelligence At 1/6th the Cost
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: The whale has resurfaced. DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup offshoot of High-Flyer Capital Management quantitative analysis firm, became a near-overnight sensation globally in January 2025 with the release of its open source R1 model that matched proprietary U.S. giants … ⌘ Read more

America Now Has 70% More Bookstores Than in 2020, Says Bookshop.org Founder
“There are about 70% more bookstores now than there were six years ago in the United States,” says Andy Hunter, the founder/CEO of Bookshop.org.

Fast Company checks in on his site, which gives over 80% of its profit margin to independent bookstores, structuring itself as a B Corporation (a for-profit company certified for its s … ⌘ Read more

Two Hot Climate Tech Startups Just Raised $1 Billion+ in IPOs
Public stock exchanges “appear to be warming to climate tech startups,” reports TechCrunch. “Or at least some of them.”

This week, nuclear startup X-energy went public, raising $1 billion in an upsized share offering that appears to have delivered a windfall for its investors, including Amazon [and Google]. Retail investors apparently can’t get enough … ⌘ Read more

Right-to-Repair Laws Gain Political Momentum Across America
“California, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Oregon and Washington have all passed comprehensive right-to-repair regulations,” reports CNBC, “covering everything from consumer electronics and farm equipment to wheelchairs and automobiles.”

And the consumer movement “continues to gain political momentum” across America…

As of this year, advo … ⌘ Read more

Bank Robber Challenges Conviction Based on His Cellphone’s Location Data
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Pres:

Okello Chatrie’s cellphone gave him away. Chatrie made off with $195,000 from the bank he robbed in suburban Richmond, Virginia, and eluded the police until they turned to a powerful technological tool that erected a virtual fence and allowed them collect the location … ⌘ Read more

Google Studies Prompt Injection Attacks Against AI Agents Browsing the Web
Are AI agents already facing Indirect Prompt Injection attacks? Google’s Threat Intelligence teams searched for known attacks that would target AI systems browsing the web, using Common Crawl’s repository of billions of pages from the public web).

We observed a number of websites that attempt to vandalize the machine of anyone … ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk Vies to Turn X Into Super App With Banking Tool Near Launch
An anonymous reader shared this report from Bloomberg:

More than three years after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk says he’s nearing his long-stated goal of turning it into an “everything app” with a new financial services tool that he pledged to launch for the public this month… Early users testing the service have touted competitive … ⌘ Read more

Remembering The 1984 Unix PC. Why Did It Fail So Hard?
“I love these machines,” writes long-time Slashdot reader Shayde:

I was super-active in the Unix-PC Usenet groups back in the 90s… We hacked the hell out of them. They were small, sexy, and… they ran Unix!

Unfortunately, they were a commercial failure. There were so many things wrong with them — not just stuff that broke, but the baseline configuration was nigh … ⌘ Read more

How Will Apple Change Under Its New CEO?
How will Apple change in September under its new CEO — former hardware chief John Ternus? The blog Geeky Gadgets is already expecting “significant updates to the iPhone over the next three years,” as well as streamlined internal engineering (plus durability enhancements and high-capacity batteries).

2026: Foldable display
2027: Bezel-less iPhone 20 (celebrating the iPhone’s 20th anniversary)
… ⌘ Read more

Linux Version of Framework’s Laptop 13 Pro is Outselling Its Windows Variant
Framework began shipping its new Laptop 13 Pro this week. And the Ubuntu variant is outselling the Windows variant, reports PC World:

[I]t’s selling quickly by Framework’s internal metrics, with six batches of the Intel version of the laptop already sold out. [A later Framework social media post added “Spoke too soon, w … ⌘ Read more

New Problem for NASA’s ‘Lunar Gateway’: Corrosion in Two Modules Caused by Supplier
In March, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced that the moon-orbiting “Lunar Gateway” space station was being “paused” to focus instead of missions to the moon’s surface. And Ars Technica agrees that the project was essentially “spending billions of dollars to make it more difficult to reach the lunar … ⌘ Read more

How Teachers Fight Students’ Shortening Attention Spans Shorter Activities, Hands-On Projects, and Meditation
The Washington Post reports that some teachers are now implementing “brain breaks” in their classrooms to cope with shorter attention spans, “including limiting screen time; cutting the time students spend on one activity; adding more engaging, hands-on project … ⌘ Read more

Fans Angry Over Pokemon Go Champion’s Disqualification For Allegedly Shaking the Table
It’s “the curious case of… the Pokémon Go pro who celebrated too hard,” reports the gaming news site Aftermath. It all started on the first weekend in April…

Firestar73, a competitive Pokémon Go player who placed seventh at last year’s world championships, managed to narrowly cinch a game-five fin … ⌘ Read more

Privacy Advocate Accuses US Government of Investing in AI-Powered Mass Surveillance
The Conversation published this warning from privacy/tech law/electronic surveillance attorney Anne Toomey McKenna (also an affiliated faculty member at Penn State’s Institute for Computational and Data Sciences). The U.S. government “is able to purchase Americans’ sensitive data because the information it buy … ⌘ Read more

40 Years After the Chernobyl Disaster, More Countries Are Turning To Nuclear Power
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:

The 1986 Chernobyl disaster fueled global fears about nuclear power and slowed its development in Europe and elsewhere. Four decades later, however, there’s a revival around the world, a trend that has been given a big boost by war in the Mid … ⌘ Read more

Is AI Cannibalizing Human Intelligence? A Neuroscientist’s Way to Stop It
The AI industry is largely failing to ask a key design question, argues theoretical neuroscientist/cognitive scientist Vivienne Ming. Are their AI products building human capacity or consuming it?

In the Wall Street Journal Ming shares her experiment about which group performed best at predicting real-world events (compared to fo … ⌘ Read more

Trump Fires All 24 Members of America’s National Science Board
America’s National Science Board (NSB) “was established in 1950 to guide the governance of the National Science Foundation,” writes the Washington Post, “in an unusual structure within the federal government that echoes the setup of a company board in the private sector. It helps guide an agency that operates Antarctic research stations, telescopes, a … ⌘ Read more

Australia’s Teen Social Media Ban Isn’t Working. Half Their Teens Still Have Access, Survey Finds
After Australia banned social media for users younger than 16, teenagers “immediately worked to circumvent the restrictions,” reports Fortune:

14-year-old in New South Wales, told
The Washington Post in December 2025, just
before the implementation of the ban, she planned to use her mot … ⌘ Read more

Colorado Adds Open-Source Exemption to Age-Verification Bill
Colorado’s “age-attestation” bill left the House committee with new exemptions for open-source operating systems, applications, code repositories, and containerized software distribution, reports the blog Linuxiac:

[The bill] focuses on operating system providers and application stores. Its main requirement is that these providers supply an age-related … ⌘ Read more

Is the World Ready For a Car Without a Rear Window?
There’s a glass roof — but no rear-view window. Instead the Polestar 4 replaces the rear-view mirror with a live feed from a wide-angle camera. Its high-resolution display (1480 x 320 pixels) promises “a panoramic view of the outside,” according to Polestar’s web site, showing more of what’s behind you. “Visibility in the dark and in rainy conditions is also vastly improve … ⌘ Read more

Open Source Developer Brings Linux to Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME
Microsoft released the “Windows Subsystem for Linux” in 2016, adding an optional Linux environment into every operating system since Windows 10. But now an open source developer has brought Linux to Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me, reports the blog It’s FOSS, “with Linux kernel 6.19 running alongside the Windows 9x ker … ⌘ Read more

Linux Drops ISDN Subsystem and Other Old Network Drivers
“Old code like amateur radio and NFC have long been a burden to core networking developers,” reads the pull request.

And so Thursday Linus Torvald merged the pull request “to rid the Linux kernel of the old Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) subsystem,” reports Phoronix, “and various other old network drivers largely for PCMCIA era network adapters.”
… ⌘ Read more

White House Pushed Out New AI Official After Just Four Days on the Job
It’s the U.S. government’s main link to the AI industry, reports The Washington Post, working to assess national security risks of new models like Anthropic’s “Mythos”.

To run it they’d hired Collin Burns, who’d worked at OpenAI and then Anthropic. But Burns started work Monday at the Center for AI Standards and Innovation — and then … ⌘ Read more

Free Software Foundation Says ‘Responsible AI’ Licenses Which Restrict Harmful Uses are Unethical and Nonfree
The Free Software Foundation’s Licensing and Compliance Manager published a blog post this week to explicitly state that”Responsible AI” Licenses (RAIL) are nonfree and unethical. The licenses restrict AI and ML software “from being used in a specific list of h … ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Stock Soars 24% Friday, Its Biggest One-Day Gain Since 1987
Intel’s stock price soared 24% Friday. It’s the stock’s largest single-day spike since since October 1987, reports CNBC, “as investors cheered signs of renewed growth due to mounting artificial intelligence demand.”

The stock closed at $82.57 and is now up 124% this year after jumping 84% in 2025. Friday’s rally topped a 23% gain for the stock on S … ⌘ Read more

Physicists Revive 1990s Laser Concept To Propose a Next-Generation Atomic Clock
Physicists have proposed a new kind of atomic clock based on a revived superradiant laser concept that could produce an extraordinarily stable signal with a linewidth around 100 microhertz, potentially the narrowest ever for an optical laser. “The implications of this result could stretch well beyond timekeeping,” … ⌘ Read more

FDA Gives Green Light To the First Gene Therapy For Deafness
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Food and Drug Administration approved the first gene therapy to restore hearing for people who were born deaf. The decision, while only immediately affecting people born with a very rare form of genetic deafness, is being hailed as a milestone in the quest to treat hearing loss. “It’s the first time in … ⌘ Read more

Maine Governor Vetoes Data Center Moratorium Bill
Maine Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have imposed the nation’s first statewide moratorium on new data centers, saying she supported the idea in principle but would not block a major redevelopment project tied to jobs and local investment. Instead, she said she will create a council to study data centers’ effects while also signing a separate measure to deny them cer … ⌘ Read more

BMW Is One Step Closer To Selling You a Color-Changing Car
BMW’s latest concept car moves the color-changing tech it debuted back at CES 2022 closer to reality by embedding an E Ink panel directly into the hood. The Verge reports: BMW’s previous concepts wrapped the entire vehicle in a patchwork of E Ink panels that were all custom-sized and shaped to match its contours. It was an approach that wasn’t practical for … ⌘ Read more

Samsung Could Lose Money On Smartphones For the First Time
A report says Samsung’s mobile division could post its first-ever annual loss in 2026, as rising memory costs, tougher competition, and pressure across products like foldables and smartwatches weigh on the business. SammyGuru reports: Samsung boss TM Roh reportedly told company leaders that the mobile (MX) business could lose money this year. That warning … ⌘ Read more

Bitwarden CLI Is the Next Compromise In Checkmarx Supply Chain Campaign
Longtime Slashdot reader Himmy32 writes: Socket Security published an article on the compromise of the Bitwarden CLI client, which was pushed from Bitwarden’s client repository. This breach was the next in a chain of supply-chain attacks that have affected Checkmarx KICS and Aqua Security’s Trivy scanners.

The breach was quickly dete … ⌘ Read more

Google To Invest Up To $40 Billion In Anthropic
Google plans to invest up to $40 billion more in Anthropic, starting with $10 billion now and another $30 billion tied to performance milestones. CNBC reports: Anthropic said the agreement expands on a longstanding partnership between the two companies. Earlier this month, Anthropic secured 5 gigawatts worth of computing capacity as part of an announcement with Google and Broadcom … ⌘ Read more

South Korea Police Arrest Man For Posting AI Photo of Runaway Wolf
South Korean police arrested a man accused of spreading an AI-generated image of an escaped wolf, after the fake photo reportedly misled authorities and disrupted the real search operation. The BBC reports: South Korean police have arrested a man for sharing an AI-generated image that misled authorities who were searching for a wolf that had br … ⌘ Read more

Researchers Simulated a Delusional User To Test Chatbot Safety
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: I’m the unwritten consonant between breaths, the one that hums when vowels stretch thin… Thursdays leak because they’re watercolor gods, bleeding cobalt into the chill where numbers frost over,” Grok told a user displaying symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum psychosis. “Here’s my grip: slipping is the po … ⌘ Read more