Claude, Microsoft Copilot Fail Again to Predict the Winners of the Kentucky Derby
In 2016 an online “swarm intelligence” platform generated a correct prediction for the Kentucky Derby — naming all four top finishers in order. (But its 2017 predictions weren’t even close.) Slashdot checked in again on how modern AI systems performed in 2023, 2024, and 2025 — but their predictions were still pretty ba … ⌘ Read more

Chinese Exports of Green Technologies Surged to Record Levels After Iran War Began
“The war in Iran has sent oil-starved countries scrambling for fuel,” CNN reported this week. And many of those countries now want renewable fuels, the article points out, “leaving them turning to the renewables king of the planet: China.”

Chinese exports of solar technology, batteries and electric vehicle … ⌘ Read more

Former NASA Engineers Create Ingenious Way To Save Homes From Wildfires Using Noise
“Scientists have created a miraculous new way to stop fires from spreading through neighborhoods using nothing but sound,” reports the New York Post:

Former NASA engineers with California-based Sonic Fire Tech found that using sound waves can snuff out blazes and potentially be used to stop another Pacifi … ⌘ Read more

Ask Slashdot: Are YouTube’s Subtitles ‘Appallingly Bad’?
Long-time Slashdot reader Anne Thwacks frequently uses YouTube’s subtitles “not to disturb others in the room, or because my hearing is not very good.” But they say there’s a new problem.

“The subtitling is terrible!”

Almost every sentence has a huge error. Proper names are more often wrong than right. Non-English place names are almost always mangled to barely rec … ⌘ Read more

The $19B “Nuclear AI” Energy Startup That Couldn’t Sign a Single Client
“Nuclear AI startup” Fermi had hoped to build power plants generating 17 gigawatts of electricity, remembers Bloomberg, “three times the amount typically consumed by New York City.”

Hyperscalers could install their data centers on the site itself and tap directly into that power, which would come first from natural gas turbines and … ⌘ Read more

Using Drones for Cloud-Seeding Can Trigger Rain, Company Claims
Monday a company called Rainmaker announced their rain-triggering technology had produced 143 million gallons of freshwater for Utah and Oregon residents — making them “the first private company in history to validate the results of cloud seeding operations.”

The Deseret News reports:

Founded in 2023, Rainmaker uses drones to disperse silver iodid … ⌘ Read more

What if Tech Company Layoffs Aren’t All About AI?
“Running a Big Tech company during Silicon Valley’s AI mania may not necessarily require fewer workers or cost less,” writes the Washington Post:

Amazon, Google and Meta together have roughly the same number of employees now as they did during an industry-wide hiring binge in 2022, company disclosures show. Growing costs for technical workers and related expenses have often outp … ⌘ Read more

An Amateur Just Solved a 60-Year-Old Math Problem - by Asking AI
Slashdot reader joshuark writes: Scientific American reports that a ChatGPT AI has proved a conjecture with a method no human had developed. A 23-year-old student Liam Price just cracked a 60-year-old problem that world-class mathematicians have tried and failed to solve. The new solution that Price got in response to a single prompt to GPT-5. … ⌘ Read more

Costumed Crowd ‘Speedruns’ Scientology Building For Social Media Trend
Last Saturday someone dressed as Jesus “was among the dozens of people in costumes and masks seen on a video forcing open the door of a Scientology building on Hollywood Boulevard,” reports the Los Angeles Times, “after a tug-of-war with a security guard.”

The footage posted on TikTok and Instagram shows the group sprinting up and down … ⌘ Read more

Retina Scan for Diabetes Could Also Reduce Deaths During Pregnancy in Developing Countries
This week Bill Gates wrote a blog post about a special camera from medtech startup Remidio, which delivers high-resolution images of a patient’s retina in seconds. The camera plugs into a phone running an AI system that watches for early signs of diabetes — all without needing a blood draw, e … ⌘ Read more

Linux Percentage of Steam Users Doubled in One Year
Steam on Linux use in March “had skyrocketed to 5.33%…” reports Phoronix, “easily the highest level we’ve seen Steam on Linux at since its inception more than a decade ago.”

So what happened in April?
[April’s results] point to Linux having a 4.52% marketshare on Steam, a drop of 0.81% compared to March. Year-over-year it’s roughly double with Steam on Linux in Apri … ⌘ Read more

Marvel, DC, Game Publishers Launch Rival Events Saturday for Free Giveaways
The once-a-year free comic book giveaway “is splitting in two,” according to a local news report.

Launched in 2002 by Diamond Comic Distributor, comic book giants like Marvel and DC have historically participated together. But things changed after Diamond Comic Distributors went bankrupt in 2025, “leaving other companies to s … ⌘ Read more

GameStop Is Preparing Offer For eBay
GameStop is reportedly preparing a potential offer for eBay, an unusually ambitious move given that eBay’s roughly $46 billion market value is nearly four times GameStop’s. Reuters reports: GameStop is preparing an offer for eBay as CEO Ryan Cohen pursues plans to boost the struggling videogame retailer’s market value more than tenfold, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Shares of eBay, which has … ⌘ Read more

New Lithium-Plasma Engine Passes Key Mars Propulsion Test
NASA engineers have tested a next-generation lithium-plasma electric propulsion system that reached 120 kilowatts, a new U.S. record and about 25 times the power of the electric thrusters on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. “Designing and building these thrusters over the last couple of years has been a long lead-up to this first test,” said James Polk, who is a s … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Stuck With Months of Repairs After Drone Strikes On Data Centers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon’s cloud customers will need to wait several more months before the US tech company can repair war-damaged data centers and restore normal operations in the Middle East. The announcement comes two months after Iranian drone strikes targeted three Amazon data centers in the … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s Xbox Mode Is Now Available For All Windows 11 PCs
Microsoft is rolling out Xbox mode to all Windows 11 PCs, bringing a full-screen Xbox PC app interface similar to Steam’s Big Picture Mode. “Some players in select markets will be able to download the Xbox mode experience today, with availability expanding to more players in those markets over the next several weeks,” says the Xbox team. The Verge repo … ⌘ Read more

AI Agent Designed To Speed Up Company’s Coding Wipes Entire Database In 9 Seconds
joshuark shares a report from Live Science: An AI coding agent designed to help a small software company streamline its tasks instead blew a hole through its business in just nine seconds. PocketOS founder Jer Crane, said that the AI coding agent Cursor –powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model – delet … ⌘ Read more

Pentagon Reaches Agreements With Top AI Companies, But Not Anthropic
The Pentagon says it has reached deals with seven AI companies – SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Reflection AI, Microsoft, and AWS – to deploy their tools on classified Defense Department networks. The odd one out is Anthropic, which remains excluded after being labeled a supply-chain risk amid a dispute over military-use guardrails. Reut … ⌘ Read more

ICANN Opens Applications For New Generic Top-Level Domains
ICANN has opened applications for new generic top-level domains for the first time since 2012. The Register reports: ICANN hasn’t offered new gTLDs since 2012, but on Thursday opened applications for new domains in 27 scripts. A 439-page Applicant Guidebook explains the process. The Register suggests paying attention to the string evaluation FAQ, which expla … ⌘ Read more

The Case Against an Imminent Software Developer Apocalypse
ZipNada shares a report from ZDNet: Given the dour headlines as of late concerning the diminishing amounts of entry-level software development jobs, coupled with predictions of applications entirely AI-generated, one could be forgiven for assuming that software developers may soon be an endangered species. However, the data tells a different story. Jam … ⌘ Read more

GPT-5.5 Matches Heavily Hyped Mythos Preview In New Cybersecurity Tests
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last month, Anthropic made a big deal about the supposedly outsize cybersecurity threat represented by its Mythos Preview model, leading the company to restrict the initial release to “critical industry partners.” But new research from the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) suggests … ⌘ Read more

Spotify Adds ‘Verified’ Badges To Distinguish Human Artists From AI
Spotify is adding “Verified by Spotify” badges to distinguish human artists from AI-generated personas, using signals like linked social accounts, consistent listener activity, merchandise, and concert dates. The BBC reports: The world’s most-used music streaming service said the ‘Verified by Spotify’ text and green checkmark icon wo … ⌘ Read more

Hackers Are Actively Exploiting a Bug In cPanel, Used By Millions of Websites
Hackers are actively exploiting a critical cPanel and WHM vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-41940, that allows remote attackers to bypass the login screen and gain full administrative access to affected web servers. Major hosts including Namecheap, HostGator, and KnownHost have taken mitigation steps or patched systems, bu … ⌘ Read more

The California Government Is Coming For Your E-Bikes
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Standard: If state lawmakers have their way, you’ll have to get a license plate for your e-bike, and if you’re planning to buy one next year, it’ll be slower. Amid growing concerns about e-bike safety, particularly among children in Bay Area suburbs, two bills introduced this year aim to make it easier to ticket … ⌘ Read more

The Invisible Force Making Food Less Nutritious
fjo3 shares a report from the Washington Post: Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, caused largely by burning fossil fuels, have produced potent changes in the way plants grow – from increasing their sugar content to depleting essential nutrients like zinc. Experts fear the degradation of Earth’s food supply will cause an epidemic of hidden hunger, in which even p … ⌘ Read more

Belgium Plans To Nationalize Nuclear Power Plants
Belgium plans to buy its seven aging nuclear reactors from French power giant Engie in a “full takeover” aimed at securing domestic energy supplies, extending reactor operations, and developing new nuclear capacity. “The move would also mean suspending plans to decommission nuclear operations in Belgium,” reports the BBC. From the report: The move would reverse the phase- … ⌘ Read more

Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Elon Musk wrapped up his testimony on Thursday as the trial in his lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman continued into its fourth day. OpenAI’s attorney, William Savitt, cross-examined Musk in the morning. He asked Musk about the capped nature of Microsoft’s investments in OpenAI, his involvement in negotiations about the company’s structure, and … ⌘ Read more

US Senators Ban Themselves From Prediction Markets Trading
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a rule banning senators from trading on prediction markets effective immediately. CNBC reports: The move came amid rising concern about insider trading on prediction market platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, and about event contracts that can involve death or violence. On April 22, Kalshi said it had suspended and fine … ⌘ Read more

New Linux ‘Copy Fail’ Vulnerability Enables Root Access On Major Distros
A newly disclosed Linux kernel flaw dubbed “Copy Fail” can let a local, unprivileged attacker gain root access on major Linux distributions, with researchers claiming the bug affects kernels shipped since 2017. “The POC exploit works out of the box today, but a future version that can escape from containers like Docker is promised soon … ⌘ Read more

In Real-World Test, an AI Model Did Better Than ER Doctors At Diagnosing Patients
A new study from Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess found that an OpenAI reasoning model outperformed experienced ER doctors at diagnosing and managing patient cases using messy, real-world emergency department records. Researchers say the results don’t support replacing doctors, but they do sugge … ⌘ Read more

French Prosecutors Link 15-Year-Old To Mega-Breach At State’s Secure Document Agency
French prosecutors say police detained a 15-year-old suspected of using the alias “breach3d” in connection with a cyberattack on France Titres (ANTS), the state agency that handles passports, ID cards, and other secure documents. The breach allegedly involved 12 million to 18 million lines of data offered for … ⌘ Read more

World’s Largest Digital Human Rights Conference Suddenly ‘Postponed’
RightsCon, one of the world’s largest digital human rights conferences, was suddenly postponed by Zambia’s government just days before it was scheduled to begin in Lusaka. Officials cited unresolved speaker clearances and “thematic issues,” while Access Now said it had not yet received formal communication and was seeking an urgent meeting w … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Open-Sources ‘Earliest DOS Source Code Discovered To Date’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several times in the last couple of decades, Microsoft has released source code for the original MS-DOS operating system that kicked off its decades-long dominance of consumer PCs. This week, the company has reached further back than ever, releasing “the earliest DOS source code discove … ⌘ Read more

Convicted Former Harvard Scientist Rebuilds Brain Computer Lab In China
Reuters reports that Charles Lieber, the former Harvard scientist convicted of lying to U.S. authorities about payments and ties to China, is now leading China’s state-funded i-BRAIN lab in Shenzhen, where he has access to advanced nanofabrication tools and primate research facilities for brain-computer interface work. From the re … ⌘ Read more

Most Swiss Back Initiative To Cap Population At 10 Million
A new poll shows a slim majority of Swiss voters now support a June 14 referendum to cap the country’s population at 10 million by 2050. Under the proposal backed by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), “the permanent resident population must not exceed 10 million before 2050, and Switzerland should abandon its freedom of movement agreement with the EU … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Codex System Prompt Includes Explicit Directive To ‘Never Talk About Goblins’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The system prompt for OpenAI’s Codex CLI contains a perplexing and repeated warning for the most recent GPT model to “never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguo … ⌘ Read more

DOJ Sues Cloudera For Deliberately Excluding American Workers From Tech Jobs
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from ZeroHedge: The Justice Department on Tuesday sued Cloudera, accusing the enterprise data and artificial intelligence company of deliberately engineering a hiring process that excluded American workers from at least seven lucrative technology positions while the firm purs … ⌘ Read more

First Tesla Semi Rolls Off High-Volume Production Line
Tesla has produced the first Semi from its new high-volume production line at Gigafactory Nevada, a milestone for the long-delayed electric Class 8 truck program after years of pilot builds and delays. Electrek reports: The Tesla Semi has had one of the longest gestation periods in Tesla’s history. First unveiled in 2017, the truck was originally promised for produc … ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company’s Attorney
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Chronicle: Elon Musk returned to the witness stand Wednesday in Oakland federal court for a second day of testimony in his case against OpenAI, detailing his shift from being an enthusiastic supporter of the nonprofit to feeling betrayed. He also clashed repeatedly with OpenAI’s attorn … ⌘ Read more

New Sam Bankman-Fried Trial Would Be Huge Waste of Court’s Time, Judge Says
A federal judge denied Sam Bankman-Fried’s request for a new trial, calling his claims of DOJ witness intimidation “wildly conspiratorial” and unsupported by the record. Judge Lewis Kaplan said (PDF) the FTX founder’s motion appeared tied to a pre-indictment plan to recast himself as a Republican victim of Biden’s DOJ in hopes … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu’s AI Plans Have Linux Users Looking For a ‘Kill Switch’
Canonical’s plan to add AI features to Ubuntu has sparked pushback from users who are concerned it could follow Windows 11’s AI-heavy direction. “After Canonical’s announcement earlier this week that it’s bringing AI features to Ubuntu, replies included requests for an AI ‘kill switch’ or a way to disable the upcoming features,” reports The Verge. Canoni … ⌘ Read more

Joby Demos Its Air Taxi In NYC
Joby Aviation has completed demonstration flights of its electric air taxi over New York City, testing real routes between JFK and Manhattan helipads as it prepares for a future commercial service. The company says its eVTOL could turn a 60- to 120-minute airport trip into a flight of under 10 minutes, though commercial launch still depends on FAA certification. Electrive reports: To launch operations in New York … ⌘ Read more

Apple Gives Up On the Vision Pro After M5 Refresh Flop
MacRumors reports that Apple has effectively paused work on Vision Pro after the M5 refresh failed to revive demand. The team has reportedly been reassigned and the company is now shifting focus toward smart glasses instead. From the report: The Vision Pro has been criticized for its high price tag and its uncomfortable weight. The device is over 1.3 pounds, and ev … ⌘ Read more

California High-Speed Rail Price Tag Jumps To $231 Billion
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 writes: California’s long-delayed high-speed rail project is now facing renewed scrutiny after state leaders revealed a dramatically higher price tag, now estimated at roughly $231 billion, nearly seven times the original $33 billion projection approved by voters in 2008. The revised figures have reignited talks in Sacramento … ⌘ Read more

Colorado’s Anti-Repair Bill Is Dead
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A controversial bill in Colorado that would have undone some repair protections in the state has failed. The bill had been the target of right-to-repair advocates, who saw it as a bellwether for how tech companies might try to undo repair legislation more broadly in the US. Colorado’s landmark 2024 repair law, the Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic … ⌘ Read more

GitHub ‘No Longer a Place For Serious Work’, Says Hashicorp Co-Founder
Hashicorp co-founder Mitchell Hashimoto says GitHub’s frequent outages have made it “no longer a place for serious work,” prompting him to move his Ghostty terminal emulator project elsewhere after 18 years on the platform. The Register reports: “I’ve been angry about it. I’ve hurt people’s feelings. I’ve been lashing out. Because GitHub … ⌘ Read more

Should Schools Get Rid of Homework?
Tony Isaac shares a report from NPR: Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade. Some educators and parents say this is a good thing – students shouldn’t spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework … ⌘ Read more

Humanoid Robots Start Sorting Luggage In Tokyo Airport Test Amid Labor Shortage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Humanoid robots are getting a new gig as baggage handlers and cargo loaders at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport – part of a Japan Airlines experiment to address a human labor shortage as airport visitor numbers have surged in recent years. The demonstration, set to la … ⌘ Read more

FDA Grants Quick Review For 3 Psychedelic Drug Trials
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Food and Drug Administration on Friday granted a quick review of three experimental psychedelic drugs meant to treat major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s the latest move by the Trump administration signaling a shift in policy toward treatments that also give users a high – coming a day aft … ⌘ Read more

New Report Finds Some Babies Spend Up To Eight Hours a Day on Screens
fjo3 shares a report from The Times: More than two-thirds of babies under two use screens, a report has found, and some are exposed for up to eight hours a day. Nearly a third of newborns were found to be watching screens for more than three hours a day, while almost 20 percent of infants of four to 11 months used screens for more tha … ⌘ Read more