What Made Bell Labs So Successful?
Bell Labs “created many of the foundational innovations of the modern age,” writes Jon Gertner, author of The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation — from transistors and telecommunications satellites to Unix and the C programming language.

But what was the secret to its success? he asks in a new article for the Wall Street Journal. Start with its lucky arrival in a “problem-ri … ⌘ Read more

Disney Ends $1B OpenAI Investment After Sora’s Surprise Closure. What’s Next?
Just six days ago — and 30 minutes after a Disney-OpenAI meeting about a project with Sora — Disney’s team was “blindsided” with the news Sora was being discontinued, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, describing OpenAI’s move as “a big rug-pull.”
Even some Sora employees were surprised by the cancellati … ⌘ Read more

Do Emergency Microsoft, Oracle Patches Point to Wider Issues?
“Emergency out-of-band fixes issued by enterprise IT giants Microsoft and Oracle have shone a spotlight on issues around both update cycles and patching,” reports Computer Weekly:

Microsoft’s emergency update, KB5085516, addresses an issue that arose after installing the mandatory cumulative updates pushed live on Patch Tuesday earlier this month. Accordi … ⌘ Read more

MacOS 26.4 Adds Warnings For ClickFix Attacks to Its Terminal App
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: ClickFix attacks are ramping up. These attacks have users copy and paste a string to something that can execute a command line — like the Windows Run dialog, or a shell prompt.

But MacRumors reports that macOS 26.4 Tahoe (updated earlier this week) introduces a new feature to its Terminal app where it will … ⌘ Read more

SystemD Contributor Harassed Over Optional Age Verification Field, Suggests Installer-Level Disabling
It’s FOSS interviewed a software engineer whose long-running open source contributions include Python code for the Arch Linux installer and maintaining packages for NixOS. But “a recent change he made to systemd has pushed him into the spotlight” after he’d added the optiona … ⌘ Read more

IBM Quantum Computer Simulates Real Magnetic Materials and Matches Lab Data
“IBM says its quantum computer can now simulate real magnetic materials and match actual lab experiment results,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, “which is something people have been waiting years to see.”

Instead of just theoretical output, the system reproduced neutron scattering data from a known material, meaning it lin … ⌘ Read more

Sony is Raising PlayStation 5 Prices Again, Between $100 and $150
Memory and storage shortages and price hikes have “steadily rippled outward across all kinds of consumer tech,” reports Ars Technica.

“Today’s bad news comes from Sony, which is raising prices for PlayStation 5 consoles in the US just eight months after their last price hike.”

The drive-less Digital Edition will increase from $500 to $600; the … ⌘ Read more

Thousands of Americans Treated With Psilocybin in 2025
In a new 4,000-word article, CNN tells the story of a retired appellate paralegal and grandmother in her early 70s who was treated for depression with psilocybin. CNN notes there’s now retreats featuring psilocybin in a few countries — and while psilocybin is illegal under United States federal law, “In Oregon, 5,935 clients received psilocybin services through O … ⌘ Read more

Linux Maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman Says AI Tools Now Useful, Finding Real Bugs
Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman tells The Register that AI-driven code review has “really jumped” for Linux. “There must have been some inflection point somewhere with the tools…”

“Something happened a month ago, and the world switched. Now we have real reports.” It’s not just Linux, he continued. “All … ⌘ Read more

NASA’s First Nuclear-Powered Interplanetary Spacecraft Will Send Helicopters to Mars in 2028
After decades of studying, this week NASA announced “a major step forward in bringing nuclear power and propulsion from the lab to space.”
NASA will launch the Space Reactor-1 Freedom, the first nuclear powered interplanetary spacecraft, to Mars before the end of 2028, demonstrating advanc … ⌘ Read more

‘Ads Are Popping Up On the Fridge and It Isn’t Going Over Well’
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Walking into his kitchen, Tim Yoder recoiled at a message on his refrigerator door: “Shop Samsung water filters.” Yoder, a supply-chain manager in Chicago, owns a Samsung Electronics Family Hub fridge. He paid $1,400 for an appliance that came with a 32-inch screen on the door that allows him to control other Samsung gadget … ⌘ Read more

Transporting Antimatter On a Truck Is Tricky…
Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: … but the CERN Project “Antimatter in motion” just did it. For the first time in history researchers at CERN have transported 92 antiprotons on a truck in a specially designed magnetic enclosure. The test-drive went so well that the researchers spontaneously decided to go another round… The purpose of the experiment was to test the f … ⌘ Read more

People are Using AI-Powered Services to Find Lost Pets
A dog missing for two months was found at an animal shelter — and its owner received an email from an artificial intelligence service that identified it, according to the Washington Post.

“As controversial as AI is right now, this is one of those areas where it’s a real win,” according to the chief executive at the nonprofit animal welfare organization Best Friends Anim … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s US Ad Pilot Exceeds $100 Million In Annualized Revenue In Six Weeks
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI’s ChatGPT ads pilot in the United States has crossed the $100 million annualized revenue mark within six weeks of launch, a company spokesperson said on Thursday, pointing to robust early demand for the AI startup’s nascent advertising business. […] While roughly 8 … ⌘ Read more

UK Startup Ignites Plasma Inside Nuclear Fusion Rocket
UK startup Pulsar Fusion says it has achieved the first plasma ignition inside a nuclear fusion rocket engine prototype – a huge step for space travel that could cut missions to Mars “from months-long journeys to just a few weeks,” reports Euronews. From the report: Pulsar Fusion revealed the milestone during a live stream at Amazon’s MARS Conference, hosted by … ⌘ Read more

AV1’s Open, Royalty-Free Promise In Question As Dolby Sues Snapchat Over Codec
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) was invented by a group of technology companies to be an open, royalty-free alternative to other video codecs, like HEVC/H.265. But a lawsuit that Dolby Laboratories Inc. filed this week against Snap Inc. calls all that into question with claims … ⌘ Read more

Google Moves Post-Quantum Encryption Timeline Up To 2029
Google has moved up its post-quantum encryption migration target to 2029. “This new timeline reflects migration needs for the PQC era in light of progress on quantum computing hardware development, quantum error correction, and quantum factoring resource estimates,” said vice president of security engineering Heather Adkins and senior staff cryptology engineer Sop … ⌘ Read more

European Commission Investigating Breach After Amazon Cloud Account Hack
The European Commission is investigating a breach after a threat actor allegedly accessed at least one of its AWS cloud accounts and claimed to have stolen more than 350 GB of data, including databases and employee-related information. AWS says its own services were not breached. BleepingComputer reports: Sources familiar with the i … ⌘ Read more

Windows PCs Crash Three Times As Often As Macs, Report Says
A workplace-device study says Windows PCs crash significantly more often than Macs, lag further behind on patching and encryption in some sectors, and are typically replaced sooner. TechSpot reports: Omnissa’s 2026 State of Digital Workspace report outlines the IT challenges that various organizations face from the growing use of AI and the heterogeneous d … ⌘ Read more

Austria Plans Social Media Ban For Under-14s
Austria plans to restrict under-14s from using social media platforms over concerns about addictive algorithms and harmful content. The government says draft legislation should be ready by the end of June, though details around enforcement and age verification have yet to be finalized. The BBC reports: Announcing the plans, Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler of the Social Democrats said th … ⌘ Read more

Iran-Linked Hackers Breach FBI Director’s Personal Email
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Iran-linked hackers have broken into FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email inbox, publishing photographs of the director and other documents to the internet, the hackers and the bureau said on Friday. On their website, the hacker group Handala Hack Team said Patel “will now find his name among the list of succes … ⌘ Read more

Popular LiteLLM PyPI Package Backdoored To Steal Credentials, Auth Tokens
joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: The TeamPCP hacking group continues its supply-chain rampage, now compromising the massively popular “LiteLLM” Python package on PyPI and claiming to have stolen data from hundreds of thousands of devices during the attack. LiteLLM is an open-source Python library that serves as a gat … ⌘ Read more

Number of AI Chatbots Ignoring Human Instructions Increasing, Study Says
A new study found a sharp rise in real-world cases of AI chatbots and agents ignoring instructions, evading safeguards, and taking unauthorized actions such as deleting emails or delegating forbidden tasks to other agents. According to the Guardian, the study “identified nearly 700 real-world cases of AI scheming and charted a five-fold … ⌘ Read more

California Bill Would Require Parent Bloggers To Delete Content of Minors On Social Media
A California bill would let adults demand the removal of social media posts about them that were created by paid family content creators when they were minors. Supporters say Senate Bill 1247 addresses privacy, dignity, and safety harms caused when parents monetize their children’s lives online. Th … ⌘ Read more

Judge Blocks Pentagon’s Effort To ‘Punish’ Anthropic With Supply Chain Risk Label
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A federal judge in California has indefinitely blocked the Pentagon’s effort to “punish” Anthropic by labeling it a supply chain risk and attempting to sever government ties with the AI company, ruling that those measures ran roughshod over its constitutional rights. “Not … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Abandons ChatGPT’s Erotic Mode
OpenAI has indefinitely paused plans for an erotic mode in ChatGPT as part of a broader strategy shift away from side projects and toward business and coding tools. TechCrunch reports: The proposed “adult mode,” which CEO Sam Altman first floated in October, had inspired considerable controversy from tech watchdog groups as well as from OpenAI’s own staff. In January, a meeting between company executives … ⌘ Read more

CERN To Host Europe’s Flagship Open Access Publishing Platform
CERN has confirmed it will host an expanded version of Open Research Europe, the EU-backed fee-free open access publishing platform that works to “keep knowledge in public hands.” Research Professional News reports: A little over a year ago, 10 European research organizations announced that they would add their support to Open Research Europe, to b … ⌘ Read more

Apple Gives FBI a User’s Real Name Hidden Behind ‘Hide My Email’ Feature
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Apple provided the FBI with the real iCloud email address hidden behind Apple’s ‘Hide My Email’ feature, which lets paying iCloud+ users generate anonymous email addresses, according to a recently filed court record. The move isn’t surprising but still provides uncommon insight into … ⌘ Read more

Apple Discontinues Mac Pro
Apple has discontinued the Mac Pro and says it has no plans for future models. “The ‘buy’ page on Apple’s website for the Mac Pro now redirects to the Mac’s homepage, where all references have been removed,” reports 9to5Mac. From the report: The Mac Pro has lived many lives over the years. Apple released the current Mac Pro industrial design in 2019 alongside the Pro Display XDR (which was also discontinued earlier th … ⌘ Read more

Senators Demand to Know How Much Energy Data Centers Use
Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley are pressing the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to provide better information on how much electricity data centers actually use. In a joint letter sent to the EIA on Thursday, the two senators press the agency to publicly collect “comprehensive, annual energy-use disclosures” on data centers, saying it’s “essential for ac … ⌘ Read more

JPMorgan Starts Monitoring Investment Banker Screen Time To Prevent Burnout
JPMorgan is piloting a system that monitors junior investment bankers to avoid burnout (source paywalled; alternative source). “[T]he bank will seek to match up hours claimed by the bankers with digital activity,” reports Bloomberg. “The tool won’t be used for evaluation purposes, but is designed to provide a better estimate of … ⌘ Read more

Vizio TVs Now Require Walmart Accounts For Smart Features
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Prospective Vizio TV buyers should know there’s a good chance the set won’t work properly without a Walmart account. In an attempt to better serve advertisers, Walmart, which bought Vizio in December 2024, announced this week that select newly purchased Vizio TVs now require a Walmart account for s … ⌘ Read more

Mozilla and Mila Team Up On Open Source AI Push
BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla just teamed up with Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, to push open source AI – and it feels like a direct response to Big Tech tightening its grip on the space. Instead of relying on closed models, the goal here is to build “sovereign AI” that’s more transparent, privacy-focused, and actually under the control of developers and even … ⌘ Read more

Wikipedia Bans Use of Generative AI
Wikipedia has banned the use of generative AI to write or rewrite articles, saying it “often violates several of Wikipedia’s core content policies.” That said, editors may still use it for translation or light refinements as long as a human carefully checks the copy for accuracy. Engadget reports: Editors can use large language models (LLMs) to refine their own writing, but only if the copy is checked f … ⌘ Read more

Tracy Kidder, Author of ‘The Soul of a New Machine’, Dies At 80
Ancient Slashdot reader wiredog writes: Tracy Kidder, author of “The Soul of a New Machine,” has died at the age of 80. “The Soul of a New Machine” is about the people who designed and built the Data General Nova, one of the 32 bit superminis that were released in the 1980’s just before the PC destroyed that industry. It was excerpted in The Atlantic.
… ⌘ Read more

China Reviews $2 Billion Manus Sale To Meta As Founders Barred From Leaving Country
Chinese authorities have barred two Manus executives from leaving the country while investigating whether Meta’s reported $2 billion acquisition of the Singapore-based AI startup violated foreign investment reporting rules. “Manus was founded in China but last year relocated its headquarters and core team to Singapo … ⌘ Read more

Researchers At CERN Transport Antiprotons By Truck In World-First Experiment
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Physics World: Researchers at the CERN particle-physics lab have successfully transported antiprotons in a lorry across the lab’s main site. The feat, the first of its kind, follows a similar test with protons in 2024. CERN says the achievement is “a huge leap” towards being able … ⌘ Read more

Reddit Takes On Bots With ‘Human Verification’ Requirements
Reddit is rolling out human-verification checks for accounts that show signs of bot-like behavior, while also labeling approved automated accounts that provide useful services. The social media company stressed that these checks will only happen if something appears “fishy,” and that it is “not conducting sitewide human verification.” TechCrunch reports: To i … ⌘ Read more

Melania Trump Welcomes Humanoid Robot At White House Summit
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: In Melania and the Robot, the New York Times reports on First Lady Melania Trump’s inaugural Fostering the Future Together Coalition Summit, which brought together international leaders, First Spouses from around the world, tech leaders, educators, and nonprofits to collaborate on practical solutions that expand … ⌘ Read more

Brazil’s UFO Capital Marks 30 Years Since ‘Alien Encounter’
Thirty years after the alleged 1996 “ET of Varginha” encounter, debate continues to rage over the events that happened in Brazil’s self-styled UFO capital. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the Guardian: The skies over this far-flung coffee-growing hub went charcoal black, the heavens opened and one of Brazil’s greatest mysteries was born. “ … ⌘ Read more

Postal Service to Impose Its First-Ever Fuel Surcharge on Packages
The U.S. Postal Service plans to impose its first-ever fuel surcharge on packages (source paywalled; alternative source), adding an 8% fee starting in April as it struggles with rising fuel costs and ongoing financial pressure. The surcharge will not apply to letter mail and is currently expected to remain in place until January 2027. The Wal … ⌘ Read more

Canada’s Immigration Rejected Applicant Based On AI-Invented Job Duties
New submitter haroldbasset writes: Canada’s Immigration Department rejected an applicant because the duties of her current job did not match the Canadian work experience she had claimed, but the Department’s AI assistant had invented that work experience. She has been working in Canada as a health scientist – she has a Ph.D. in the i … ⌘ Read more

Apple Can Create Smaller On-Device AI Models From Google’s Gemini
Apple reportedly has full access to customize Google’s Gemini model, allowing it to distill smaller on-device AI models for Siri and other features that can run locally without an internet connection. MacRumors reports: The Information explains that Apple can ask the main Gemini model to perform a series of tasks that provide high-quality resul … ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court Sides With Internet Provider In Copyright Fight Over Pirated Music
Longtime Slashdot reader JackSpratts writes: The Supreme Court unanimously said on Wednesday that a major internet provider could not be held liable for the piracy of thousands of songs online in a closely watched copyright clash. Music labels and publishers sued Cox Communications in 2018, saying the company had fa … ⌘ Read more

Stephen Colbert To Write Next ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Stephen Colbert already has a new job lined up for when he ends his 11-year run as host of “The Late Show” in May – the comedian and well-known J.R.R. Tolkien superfan announced he will co-write and develop a new film in the blockbuster “Lord of the Rings” franchise. Colbert joined “LOTR” director Peter Jackson … ⌘ Read more

Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case
A jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in a landmark social media addiction case, ruling that addictive design features such as infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations harmed a young user and contributed to her mental health distress. The verdict awards $3 million in compensatory damages so far and could pave the way for … ⌘ Read more

Meta Loses Trial After Arguing Child Exploitation Was ‘Inevitable’
Meta lost a child safety trial in New Mexico after the court found its platforms failed to adequately protect kids from exploitation and misled parents about app safety. According to Ars Technica, the jury on Tuesday “deliberated for only one day before agreeing that Meta should pay $375 million in civil damages…” It’s From the report: The tri … ⌘ Read more

AI Economy Is a ‘Ponzi Scheme,’ Says AI Doc Director
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vanity Fair: Focus Features is releasing The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist in theaters on March 27. If you’re even slightly interested in what’s going on with AI, it’s required viewing: The film touches on all aspects of the technology, from how it’s currently being used to how it will be used in the near future … ⌘ Read more

China Is Mass-Producing Hypersonic Missiles For $99,000
Longtime Slashdot reader cusco writes: A private company in China has developed hypersonic missiles that cost the same as a Tesla Model X. This missile, the YKJ-1000, is being marketed for sale at a reported price of $99,000, and it’s in mass production now after successful tests. That is far below what countries will spend to target and shoot down the missile if it … ⌘ Read more

Chandra Resolves Why Black Holes Hit the Brakes On Growth
alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Astronomers have an answer for a long-running mystery in astrophysics: why is the growth of supermassive black holes so much lower today than in the past? A study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other X-ray telescopes found that supermassive black holes are unable to consume material as rapidly as … ⌘ Read more