Universal Basic Income Could Be Used To Soften Hit From AI Job Losses In UK, Minister Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The UK could introduce a universal basic income (UBI) to protect workers in industries that are being disrupted by AI, the investment minister Jason Stockwood has said. “Bumpy” changes to society caused by the introduction of the technology w … ⌘ Read more

Comcast Keeps Losing Customers Despite Price Guarantee, Unlimited Data
Comcast’s attempt to slow broadband customer losses still isn’t stopping the bleeding as fiber and fixed wireless competition intensifies. In Q4 2025 alone, Comcast lost 181,000 broadband subscribers, even as it leans harder into wireless bundling and other business lines like Peacock and theme parks. Ars Technica reports: The Q4 net l … ⌘ Read more

Cory Doctorow On Tariffs and the DMCA In Canada
Longtime Slashdot reader devnulljapan writes: In 2012, Canada passed anti-circumvention law Bill C-11, cut-and-pasted from the U.S. DMCA, in return for access to U.S. markets without tariffs. Trump has tariffed Canada anyway, so Cory Doctorow suggests it sounds like like a good idea to ditch Bill C-11 and turn Canada into a “Disenshittification Nation” and go into the business of … ⌘ Read more

Linux Gaming Developers Join Forces To Form the Open Gaming Collective
A group of Linux gaming-focused distros and developers have formed the Open Gaming Collective to pool work on shared components like kernels, input systems, and Valve tooling. The Verge reports: Universal Blue, developer of the gaming-focused Linux distribution Bazzite, announced on Wednesday that its helping to form the OGC with sev … ⌘ Read more

An AI Toy Exposed 50K Logs of Its Chats With Kids To Anyone With a Gmail Account
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Earlier this month, Joseph Thacker’s neighbor mentioned to him that she’d preordered a couple of stuffed dinosaur toys for her children. She’d chosen the toys, called Bondus, because they offered an AI chat feature that lets children talk to the toy like a kind of machi … ⌘ Read more

Google’s Project Genie Lets You Generate Your Own Interactive Worlds
Google is letting outsiders experiment with DeepMind’s Genie 3 “world model” via Project Genie, a tool for generating short, interactive AI worlds. The caveat: it requires a $250/month AI Ultra subscription, is U.S.-only, and has tight limits that make it more of a tech demo than a game engine. Engadget reports: At launch, Project Genie o … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia GeForce NOW Is Now Available Natively On Linux
NVIDIA has officially launched a native GeForce NOW client for Linux as a Flatpak, giving Linux gamers access to cloud-rendered RTX gaming. Phoronix reports: While confined to a Flatpak, for now NVIDIA is just “officially” supporting it on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. Granted, thanks to Flatpak it should run on other non-Ubuntu distributions too but in terms of the of … ⌘ Read more

County Pays $600,000 To Pentesters It Arrested For Assessing Courthouse Security
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Dan Goodin: Two security professionals who were arrested in 2019 after performing an authorized security assessment of a county courthouse in Iowa will receive $600,000 to settle a lawsuit they brought alleging wrongful arrest and defamation. The case wa … ⌘ Read more

ArXiv Will Require English Submissions - and Says AI Translators Are Fair Game
The preprint repository arXiv will require all submissions to be written in English or accompanied by a full English translation starting February 11, a policy change that explicitly permits the use of AI translators even as research suggests large language models remain inconsistent at the task.

Until now, authors … ⌘ Read more

US Leads Record Global Surge in Gas-Fired Power Driven by AI Demands
An anonymous reader shares a report: The US is leading a huge global surge in new gas-fired power generation that will cause a major leap in planet-heating emissions, with this record boom driven by the expansion of energy-hungry datacenters to service AI, according to a new forecast.

This year is set to shatter the annual record for new … ⌘ Read more

US Life Expectancy Jumps To a Record 79 Years
An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. life expectancy rose to a record high of 79 years in 2024, an increase of six months from the previous year, reflecting a sharp decline in deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

According to a report from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy improve … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026
Microsoft wants you to know that it knows that Windows 11, now used by a billion users, has been testing your patience and announced that its engineers are being redirected to urgently address the operating system’s performance and reliability problems through an internal process the company calls “swarming.”

” … ⌘ Read more

Why Private Equity Is Suddenly Awash With Zombie Firms
The private equity industry is experiencing a quiet reckoning as hundreds of midsize firms find themselves trapped between investors who have lost patience and portfolios of companies they cannot sell at acceptable prices.

“There is existential risk for a number [of funds] because of the fundraising environment,” said Sunaina Sinha Haldea, global head of private … ⌘ Read more

Apple’s Second-Biggest Acquisition Ever Is a Startup That Interprets Silent Speech
Apple has acquired Q.AI, a secretive Israeli startup whose technology can analyze facial skin micro-movements to interpret “silent speech,” in a deal valued at close to $2 billion that marks the iPhone maker’s second-largest acquisition ever, according to backer GV (formerly Google Ventures).

The four-year-old … ⌘ Read more

Massive AI Chat App Leaked Millions of Users Private Conversations
An anonymous reader shares a report: Chat & Ask AI, one of the most popular AI apps on the Google Play and Apple App stores that claims more than 50 million users, left hundreds of millions of those users’ private messages with the app’s chatbot exposed, according to an independent security researcher and emails viewed by 404 Media. The expose … ⌘ Read more

Xbox Hardware Revenue Craters 32%
Microsoft’s Xbox hardware revenue fell 32% in the final quarter of 2025 and overall gaming revenue declined 9% year-over-year, according to the company’s latest quarterly earnings, released as part of results showing Microsoft’s total revenue exceeded $80 billion.

Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Game Pass, dropped 5%.

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Windows 11 Has Reached 1 Billion Users Faster Than Windows 10
An anonymous reader shares a report: Windows 11 now has one billion users. Microsoft hit the milestone during the recent holiday quarter, meaning Windows 11 has managed to reach one billion users faster than Windows 10 did nearly six years ago.

“Windows reached a big milestone, 1 billion Windows 11 users,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the compa … ⌘ Read more

Waymo Robotaxi Hits a Child Near an Elementary School in Santa Monica
A Waymo robotaxi struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica on January 23, according to the company. Waymo told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that the child – whose age and identity are not currently public – sustained minor injuries. TechCrunch: The NHTSA has opened an investigation into the … ⌘ Read more

Seven of the World’s Ten Best-Selling Smartphones in 2025 Were iPhones
Apple sold seven of the ten best-selling smartphones globally in 2025, a lopsided dominance that underscores how thoroughly the company controls the premium end of the mobile market.

The iPhone 16 was the single best-selling phone worldwide, and Apple’s presence extended all the way down to the tenth spot where the iPhone 16e – its … ⌘ Read more

Nothing CEO Says Company Won’t Launch New Flagship Smartphone Every Year ‘For the Sake of It’
Android smartphone maker Nothing won’t release a Phone 4 this year, the company’s founder and chief executive said, and that the 2025 Phone 3 will remain the brand’s flagship device throughout 2026.

“We’re not just going to churn out a new flagship every year for the sake of it, we want ev … ⌘ Read more

‘Hundreds’ of Gatik Robot Delivery Trucks Headed For US Roads
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Gatik, a Silicon Valley startup developing self-driving delivery trucks, says its commercial operations are about to scale up dramatically, from fewer than a dozen driverless units running in multiple U.S. states now to hundreds of box trucks by the end of the year. CEO Gautam Narang said it’s also booked … ⌘ Read more

FBI Seizes RAMP Cybercrime Forum Used By Ransomware Gangs
joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: The FBI has seized the notorious RAMP cybercrime forum, a platform used to advertise a wide range of malware and hacking services, and one of the few remaining forums that openly allowed the promotion of ransomware operations. Both the forum’s Tor site and its clearnet domain, ramp4u[.]io, now display a seizure … ⌘ Read more

Brandon Sanderson’s Literary Fantasy Universe ‘Cosmere’ Picked Up by Apple TV
Apple TV+ has landed the screen rights to Cosmere, the sprawling literary universe created by Brandon Sanderson. “The first titles being eyed for adaptation are the Mistborn series, for features, and The Stormlight Archive series, for television,” reports the Hollywood Reporter. From the report: The deal is rare on … ⌘ Read more

Extremophile Molds Are Invading Art Museums
Scientific American’s Elizabeth Anne Brown recently “polled the great art houses of Europe” about whether they’d had any recent experiences with mold in their collections. Despite the stigma that keeps many institutions silent, she found that extremophile “xerophilic” molds are quietly spreading through museums and archives, thriving in low-humidity, tightly sealed storage and damagin … ⌘ Read more

Fully Electric Vehicle Sales In EU Overtake Petrol For First Time In December
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Reuters: Fully electric car sales in December overtook petrol for the first time in the European Union, even as policymakers proposed to loosen emissions regulations, data showed on Tuesday. U.S. battery-electric brand Tesla continued to lose market share to competito … ⌘ Read more

Kernel Community Drafts a Plan For Replacing Linus Torvalds
The Linux kernel community has formalized a continuity plan for the day Linus Torvalds eventually steps aside, defining how the process would work to replace him as the top-level maintainer. ZDNet’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: The new “plan for a plan,” drafted by longtime kernel contributor Dan Williams, was discussed at the latest Linux Kernel Maint … ⌘ Read more

French Lawmakers Vote To Ban Social Media Use By Under-15s
French lawmakers have voted to ban social media access for children under 15 and prohibit mobile phones in high schools, positioning France as the second country after Australia to impose sweeping age-based digital restrictions. The Guardian reports: The lower national assembly adopted the text by a vote of 130 to 21 in a lengthy overnight session from Mon … ⌘ Read more

Software Company Bonds Drop As Investors’ AI Worries Mount
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Investors are souring on the bonds of software companies that service industries ranging from automotive to finance as fast-paced artificial intelligence innovations threaten to upend their business models. […] Bond prices tumbled as advances in artificial intelligence rack up. Google announced plans to … ⌘ Read more

Apple Tells Patreon To Move Creators To In-App Purchase For Subscriptions
Apple is forcing Patreon to move all remaining creators onto Apple’s in-app purchase subscription system by November 2026 “or else Patreon would risk removal from the App Store,” reports TechCrunch. “Apple made this decision because Patreon was managing the billing for some percentage of creators’ subscriptions, and the tech gia … ⌘ Read more

Google Says AI Agent Can Now Browse on Users’ Behalf
Google is rolling out an “auto browse” AI agent in Chrome that can navigate websites, fill out forms, compare prices, and handle tedious online tasks on a user’s behalf. Bloomberg reports: The feature, called auto browse, will allow users to ask an assistant powered by Gemini to complete tasks such as shopping for them without leaving Chrome, said Charmaine D’Silva, a di … ⌘ Read more

US Cyber Defense Chief Uploaded Sensitive Files Into a Public Version of ChatGPT
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The interim head of the country’s cyber defense agency uploaded sensitive contracting documents into a public version of ChatGPT last summer, triggering multiple automated security warnings that are meant to stop the theft or unintentional disclosure of government m … ⌘ Read more

Amazon is Ending Its Palm ID System for Retail, Amazon One, as It Closes Physical Stores
Amazon is discontinuing its Amazon One palm recognition ID system for stores later this year, the company informed users. From a report: The company will discontinue Amazon One services at retail businesses on June 3, 2026, according to a support page for the service and email messages to customers. “I … ⌘ Read more

Urban Expansion in the Age of Liberalism
The housing shortages plaguing Western cities today stem partly from the abandonment of a 19th century urban governance model that enabled cities like Berlin, New York and Chicago to expand rapidly while keeping real house prices flat and homes increasingly affordable.

A new analysis by Works in Progress argues that Victorian-era urban management wasn’t laissez-faire but rather a system carefully … ⌘ Read more

Cancer Might Protect Against Alzheimer’s
For decades, researchers have noted that cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are rarely found in the same person, fuelling speculation that one condition might offer some degree of protection from the other. Nature: Now, a study in mice provides a possible molecular solution to the medical mystery: a protein produced by cancer cells seems to infiltrate the brain, where it helps to break apart clu … ⌘ Read more

Experian’s Tech Chief Defends Credit Scores: ‘We’re Not Palantir’
When asked directly whether people actually like Experian, Alex Lintner, the credit bureau’s CEO of Software and Technology, offered an unusual defense in an interview: “First of all, we’re not Palantir, so we don’t do reputation scores.” Speaking on The Verge’s podcast, Lintner conceded that consumers who have poor credit scores through “life’s circ … ⌘ Read more

There’s a Rash of Scam Spam Coming From a Real Microsoft Address
There are reports that a legitimate Microsoft email address – which Microsoft explicitly says customers should add to their allow list – is delivering scam spam. ArsTechnica: The emails originate from no-reply-powerbi@microsoft.com, an address tied to Power BI. The Microsoft platform provides analytics and business intelligence from various source … ⌘ Read more

Apple Sued by App Developer Over its Continuity Camera
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is being sued by Reincubate, which makes the Camo smartphone webcam app. It has filed a lawsuit against Apple in a U.S. federal court in New Jersey, accusing the company of anticompetitive conduct and patent infringement. The suit alleges that Apple copied Camo’s technology, integrated similar features into iOS, and used co … ⌘ Read more

Tim Berners-Lee Wants Us To Take Back the Internet
mspohr shares a report: When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free. Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people – and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.

Since Berner … ⌘ Read more

What’s the ‘Best’ Month for New Movies and Music? A Statistical Analysis
An analysis of film and music release patterns has found that summer and late fall are the optimal windows for movie premieres, while the music industry has no clear “best” month – only a worst one, December, which the report’s author dubbed “Dump-cember.”

For films, the calendar splits into distinct strategic zones. Summer … ⌘ Read more

430,000-Year-Old Wooden Tools Are the Oldest Ever Found
Early hominins in Europe were creating tools from raw materials hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens arrived there, two new studies indicate, pushing back the established time for such activity. From a report: The evidence includes a 500,000-year-old hammer made of elephant or mammoth bone, excavated in southern England, and 430,000-year-old wooden … ⌘ Read more

30,000 More UPS Jobs On the Chopping Block as Amazon Era Ends
UPS said today it plans to eliminate an additional 30,000 operational jobs this year as the shipping giant continues to wind down its partnership with Amazon – previously its largest customer – and push forward a broader turnaround strategy under CEO Carol Tome.

CFO Brian Dykes said on an earnings call that the cuts will be accomplished through attrition … ⌘ Read more

Android’s Full Desktop Mode Surfaces in Accidental Chromium Leak
A bug report filed on the Chromium Issue Tracker inadvertently exposed Google’s desktop Android interface for the first time, revealing a system codenamed “Aluminum OS” running on existing Chromebook hardware. The report, ostensibly about Chrome Incognito tabs, included screen captures from an HP Elite Dragonfly 13.5 Chromebook running Android 16.

The … ⌘ Read more

‘Clawdbot’ Has AI Techies Buying Mac Minis
An open-source AI agent originally called Clawdbot (now renamed Moltbot) is gaining cult popularity among developers for running locally, 24/7, and wiring itself into calendars, messages, and other personal workflows. The hype has gone so far that some users are buying Mac Minis just to host the agent full-time, even as its creator warns that’s unnecessary. Business Insider reports: Founded … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Cuts Another 16,000 Jobs
Amazon announced on Wednesday that it is eliminating approximately 16,000 roles across the company as part of organizational changes that began in October 2025 and are only now being finalized by certain teams. Senior Vice President Beth Galetti shared the news in a memo to employees, framing the reductions as an effort to reduce layers, increase ownership, and remove bureaucracy. The memo follows another memo that t … ⌘ Read more

Asteroid 2024 YR4 Has a 4% Chance of Hitting the Moon
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Universe Today: There’s a bright side to every situation. In 2032, the Moon itself might have a particularly bright side if it is blasted by a 60-meter-wide asteroid. The chances of such an event are still relatively small (only around 4%), but non-negligible. And scientists are starting to prepare both for the bad (massive r … ⌘ Read more

Ancient Martian Beach Discovered, Providing New Clues To Planet’s Habitability
alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: New findings from NASA’s Perseverance rover have revealed evidence of wave-formed beaches and rocks altered by subsurface water in a Martian crater that once held a vast lake – considerably expanding the timeline for potential habitability at this ancient site. In an i … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Inadvertently Announces Cloud Unit Layoffs In Email To Employees
Amazon appears to have prematurely acknowledged layoffs inside AWS after an internal email referencing “organizational changes” and “impacted colleagues” was mistakenly sent to cloud employees. CNBC reports: “Changes like this are hard on everyone,” Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at Amazon Web Services, wro … ⌘ Read more

US Government Lost More Than 10,000 STEM PhDs Last Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science.org: Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce. That exodus was only 3% of the 335,192 federal workers who exited last year but represents 14% of the total number of Ph.D.s in science, technol … ⌘ Read more

Apple Updates iOS 12 For the First Time Since 2023
Apple quietly released its first update to iOS 12 since 2023 to keep iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation working on older hardware through January 2027. The update applies to legacy devices like the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6/6 Plus, and 2013-era iPads. Macworld reports: The update appears to be related to a specific issue. According to Apple’s “About iOS 12 Updates” page, … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Launch AI DinoTracker App That Identifies Dinosaur Footprints
Scientists have released DinoTracker, a free AI-powered app that identifies dinosaur footprints by analyzing shape patterns rather than relying on potentially flawed historical labels. “When we find a dinosaur footprint, we try to do the Cinderella thing and find the foot that matches the slipper,” said Prof Steve Brusatte, a c … ⌘ Read more