Africa Finally Has Its Own Drug-Regulation Agency
After more than a decade of planning, the launch of the African Medicines Agency (AMA) is being celebrated in Mombasa, Kenya, this week at the Seventh Biennial Scientific Conference on Medical Products Regulation in Africa. From a report: The agency’s establishment marks a pivotal moment in Africa’s public health, at a time when the need for biomedical research conducted i … ⌘ Read more

The Algorithm Failed Music
An anonymous reader shares a report: Spotify is the most popular music streaming service in the world. While its algorithmic recommendations aren’t necessarily the reason, its reach has meant that hundreds of millions of people are being fed a steady diet of music curated by a machine. Spotify’s goal is to keep you listening no matter what. In her book Mood Machine, journalist Liz Pelly recounts a story told to … ⌘ Read more

Data Centers in Nvidia’s Hometown Stand Empty Awaiting Power
Two of the world’s biggest data center developers have projects in Nvidia’s hometown that may sit empty for years because the local utility isn’t ready to supply electricity. From a report: In Santa Clara, California, where the world’s biggest supplier of artificial-intelligence chips is based, Digital Realty Trust applied in 2019 to build a data cent … ⌘ Read more

Tim Berners-Lee Says AI Will Not Destroy the Web
Tim Berners-Lee thinks AI will help the web, not destroy it. The inventor of the World Wide Web has spent years warning about platform concentration and social media’s corrosive effects, but he views AI differently. AI has accomplished what his Semantic Web project could not. The technology extracts structured data from websites regardless of how the information was formatted. … ⌘ Read more

Subsea Cable Investment Set To Double As Tech Giants Accelerate AI Buildout
Investment in subsea cable projects is expected to reach around $13 billion between 2025 and 2027, almost twice the amount invested between 2022 and 2024, according to telecommunications data provider TeleGeography. Tech giants Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft now represent about 50% of the overall market, up from a neglig … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Bets on Influencers To Close the Gap With ChatGPT
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft, eager to boost downloads of its Copilot chatbot, has recruited some of the most popular influencers in America to push a message to young consumers that might be summed up as: Our AI assistant is as cool as ChatGPT. Microsoft could use the help. The company recently said its family of Copilot assistants attracts 1 … ⌘ Read more

Visa and Mastercard Near Deal With Merchants That Would Change Rewards Landscape
Visa and Mastercard are nearing a settlement with merchants that aims to end a 20-year-old legal dispute by lowering fees stores pay and giving them more power to reject certain credit cards, WSJ reports, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Under terms being discussed, Visa and Mastercard would lowe … ⌘ Read more

What’s the Best Ways for Humans to Explore Space?
Should we leave space exploration to robots — or prioritize human spaceflight, making us a multiplanetary species?

Harvard professor Robin Wordsworth, who’s researched the evolution and habitability of terrestrial-type planets, shares his thoughts:

In space, as on Earth, industrial structures degrade with time, and a truly sustainable life support system must have the capa … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Connects AI GPUs to Early Quantum Processors
“Quantum computing is still years away, but Nvidia just built the bridge that will bring it closer…” argues investment site The Motley Fool, “by linking today’s fastest AI GPUs with early quantum processors…”

NVIDIA’s new hybrid system strengthens communication at microsecond speeds — orders of magnitude faster than before — “allowing AI to stabilize and train qu … ⌘ Read more

Rust Foundation Announces ‘Maintainers Fund’ to Ensure Continuity and Support Long-Term Roles
The Rust Foundation has a responsibility to “shed light on the impact of supporting the often unseen work” that keeps the Rust Project running. So this week they announced a new initiative “to provide consistent, transparent, and long term support for the developers who make the Rust p … ⌘ Read more

Nonprofit Releases Thousands of Rare American Music Recordings Online
The nonprofit Dust-to-Digital Foundation is making thousands of historic songs accessible to the public for free through a new partnership with the University of California, Santa Barbara. The songs represent “some of the rarest and most uniquely American music borne from the Jazz Age and the Great Depression,” according to the … ⌘ Read more

What Happens When Humans Start Writing for AI?
The literary magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa society argues “the replacement of human readers by AI has lately become a real possibility.

“In fact, there are good reasons to think that we will soon inhabit a world in which humans still write, but do so mostly for AI.”

“I write about artificial intelligence a lot, and lately I have begun to think of myself as writing for Al as well, … ⌘ Read more

Apple Explores New Satellite Features for Future iPhones
In 2022 the iPhone 14 featured emergency satellite service, and there’s now support for roadside assistance and the ability to send and receive text messages.

But for future iPhones, Apple is now reportedly working on five new satellite features, reports LiveMint:

As per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is building an API that would allow developers to add sat … ⌘ Read more

Genetically Engineered Babies Are Banned in the US. But Tech Titans Are Trying to Make One Anyway
“For months, a small company in San Francisco has been pursuing a secretive project: the birth of a genetically engineered baby,” reports the Wall Street Journal:

Backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and his husband, along with Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, … ⌘ Read more

Python Foundation Donations Surge After Rejecting Grant - But Sponsorships Still Needed
After the Python Software Foundation rejected a $1.5 million grant because it restricted DEI activity, “a flood of new donations followed,” according to a new report. By Friday they’d raised over $157,000, including 295 new Supporting Members paying an annual $99 membership fee, says PSF executi … ⌘ Read more

Blue Origin Livestreams Attempt to Launch Unique “EscaPADE’ Mission to Mars
Blue Origin is livestreaming the launch of its New Glenn rocketreports CNN, “where they will investigate why the barren red planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago.” By observing two Mars locations simultaneously, this mission can measure how Mars responds to space weather in real time — and how the Marti … ⌘ Read more

‘AI Slop’ in Court Filings: Lawyers Keep Citing Fake AI-Hallucinated Cases
“According to court filings and interviews with lawyers and scholars, the legal profession in recent months has increasingly become a hotbed for AI blunders,” reports the New York Times:

Earlier this year, a lawyer filed a motion in a Texas bankruptcy court that cited a 1985 case called Brasher v. Stewart. Only the case doesn’t e … ⌘ Read more

Lost Unix v4 Possibly Recovered on a Forgotten Bell Labs Tape From 1973
“A tape-based piece of unique Unix history may have been lying quietly in storage at the University of Utah for 50+ years,” reports The Register. And the software librarian at Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum, Al Kossow of Bitsavers, believes the tape “has a pretty good chance of being recoverable.”

Long-time Slashdot reade … ⌘ Read more

Neurodiverse Professionals 25% More Satisfied With AI Tools and Agents
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:

Neurodiverse professionals may see unique benefits from artificial intelligence tools and agents, research suggests. With AI agent creation booming in 2025, people with conditions like ADHD, autism, dyslexia and more report a more level playing field in the workplace thanks to generative … ⌘ Read more

America’s FAA Grounds MD-11s After Tuesday’s Crash in Kentucky
UPDATE (11/9): America’s Federal Aviation Administration has now grounded all U.S. MD-11 and MD-11F aircrafts after Tuesday’s crash “because the agency has determined the unsafe condition is likely to exist or develop in other products of the same type design,” according to an emergency airworthiness directive obtained by CBS News.

American multinatio … ⌘ Read more

Rust Is Coming To Debian’s APT Package Manager
A maintainer of Debian’s Advanced Package Tool (APT) “has announced plans to introduce hard Rust dependencies into APT starting May 2026,” reports the blog It’s FOSS.

The integration targets critical areas like parsing .deb, .ar, and tar files plus HTTP signature verification using Sequoia. [APT maintainer Julian Andres Klode] said these components “would strongly benefit from m … ⌘ Read more

Hilarious Unused Audio From 2003 Baseball Game Rediscovered by Video Game History Foundation
After popular arcade games like Mortal Kombat and Spy Hunter, Midway Games jumped into the home console market, and in 2003 launched their baseball game franchise “MLB Slugfest” for Xbox, PS2, and GameCube. But at times it was almost a parody of baseball, including announcers filling the lo … ⌘ Read more

Did ChatGPT Conversations Leak… Into Google Search Console Results?
“For months, extremely personal and sensitive ChatGPT conversations have been leaking into an unexpected destination,” reports Ars Technica: the search-traffic tool for webmasters , Google Search Console.

Though it normally shows the short phrases or keywords typed into Google which led someone to their site, “starting this September, odd q … ⌘ Read more

‘Breaking Bad’ Creator Hates AI, Promises New Show ‘Pluribus’ Was ‘Made By Humans’
The new series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, Pluribus, was emphatically made by humans, not AI, reports TechCrunch:

If you watched all the way to the end of the new Apple TV show “Pluribus,” you may have noticed an unusual disclaimer in the credits: “This show was made by humans.” That terse messa … ⌘ Read more

New Firefox Mascot ‘Kit’ Unveiled On New Web Page
“The Firefox brand is getting a refresh and you get the first look,” says a new web page at Firefox.com. “Kit’s our new mascot and your new companion through an internet that’s private, open and actually yours.”

Slashdot reader BrianFagioli believes the new mascot “is meant to communicate that message in a warmer, more relatable way.”

And Firefox is already selling shirts wit … ⌘ Read more

Common Crawl Criticized for ‘Quietly Funneling Paywalled Articles to AI Developers’
For more than a decade, the nonprofit Common Crawl “has been scraping billions of webpages to build a massive archive of the internet,” notes the Atlantic, making it freely available for research.
“In recent years, however, this archive has been put to a controversial purpose: AI companies including OpenAI, Goo … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Edit Gene in 15 Patients That May Permanently Reduce High Cholesterol
A CRISPR-based drug given to study participants by infusion is raising hopes for a much easier way to lower cholesterol, reports CNN:

With a snip of a gene, doctors may one day permanently lower dangerously high cholesterol, possibly removing the need for medication, according to a new pilot study published Sat … ⌘ Read more

Bank of America Faces Lawsuit Over Alleged Unpaid Time for Windows Bootup, Logins, and Security Token Requests
A former Business Analyst reportedly filed a class action lawsuit claiming that for years, hundreds of remote employees at Bank of America first had to boot up complex computer systems before their paid work began, reports Human Resources Director magazine:
… ⌘ Read more

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Shifts Bulk of Philanthropy, ‘Going All In on AI-Powered Biology’
The Associated Press reports that “For the past decade, Dr. Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg have focused part of their philanthropy on a lofty goal — ‘to cure, prevent or manage all disease’ — if not in their lifetime, then in their children’s.”

During that decade they also f … ⌘ Read more

World’s Largest Cargo Sailboat Completes Historic First Atlantic Crossing
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from Marine Insight:

The world’s largest cargo sailboat, Neoliner Origin, completed its first transatlantic voyage on 30 October despite damage to one of its sails during the journey. The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail af … ⌘ Read more

Bombshell Report Exposes How Meta Relied On Scam Ad Profits To Fund AI
“Internal documents have revealed that Meta has projected it earns billions from ignoring scam ads that its platforms then targeted to users most likely to click on them,” writes Ars Technica, citing a lengthy report from Reuters.

Reuters reports that Meta “for at least three years failed to identify and stop an avalanche of ads that … ⌘ Read more

Japanese Volunteer Translators Quit After Mozilla Begins Using Translation Bot
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from Linuxiac:

The Japanese branch of Mozilla’s Support Mozilla (SUMO) community — responsible for localizing and maintaining Japanese-language support documentation for Firefox and other Mozilla products (consisting of Japanese native speakers) — has officially dis … ⌘ Read more

UPS (and FedEx) Ground Dozens of MD-11 Aircraft After Tuesday’s Crash in Kentucky
American multinational freight company UPS “has grounded its fleet of MD-11 aircraft,” reports the Guardian, “days after a cargo plane crash that killed at least 13 people in Kentucky. The grounded MD-11s are the same type of plane involved in Tuesday’s crash in Louisville. They were originally built by McDonnell Do … ⌘ Read more

‘Stratospheric’ AI Spending By Four Wealthy Companies Reaches $360B Just For Data Centers
“Maybe you’ve heard that artificial intelligence is a bubble poised to burst,” writes a Washington Post technology columnist. “Maybe you have heard that it isn’t. (No one really knows either way, but that won’t stop the bros from jabbering about it constantly.)”

“But I can confidently tell you that the m … ⌘ Read more

Facebook Dating Is a Surprise Hit For the Social Network
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Facebook Dating, which debuted in 2019, has become a surprise hit for the company. It lets people create a dating profile free in the app, where they can swipe and match with other eligible singles. It has more than 21 million daily users, quietly making it one of the most popular online dating service … ⌘ Read more

Unesco Adopts Global Standards On ‘Wild West’ Field of Neurotechnology
Unesco has adopted the first global ethical standards for neurotechnology, defining “neural data” and outlining more than 100 recommendations aimed at safeguarding mental privacy. “There is no control,” said Unesco’s chief of bioethics, Dafna Feinholz. “We have to inform the people about the risks, the potential benefits, the alterna … ⌘ Read more

Lego Unveils First-Ever Star Trek Set
New submitter semper_statisticum shares a report from the Independent: Lego is releasing its first-ever Star Trek-inspired model – with an incredible recreation of the signature ship from the ‘80s TV series. Made from 3,600 pieces, the [first-ever] Star Trek inspired Lego set is of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, the spaceship that serves as the main setting of Star Trek: The Next Generation … ⌘ Read more

The First New Subsea Habitat In 40 Years Is About To Launch
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Vanguard feels and smells like a new RV. It has long, gray banquettes that convert into bunks, a microwave cleverly hidden under a counter, a functional steel sink with a French press and crockery above. A weird little toilet hides behind a curtain. But some clues hint that you can’t just f … ⌘ Read more

‘Vibe Coding’ Named Word of the Year By Collins Dictionary
Collins Dictionary has named “vibe coding” its 2025 word of the year – a term coined by Andrej Karpathy for when a user makes an app or website by describing it to AI rather than writing programming code manually. The term, which is confusingly made up of two words, was “one of 10 words on a shortlist to reflect the mood, language and preoccupations of 2025,” repo … ⌘ Read more

James D. Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead At 97
ole_timer shares a report from the New York Times: James D. Watson, who entered the pantheon of science at age 25 when he joined in the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of the most momentous breakthroughs in the history of science, died on Thursday in East Northport, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 97. His death, in a hospice, was c … ⌘ Read more

‘Nintendo Has Too Many Apps’
The Verge’s Ash Parrish writes: Nintendo has released a new store app on Android and iOS giving users the ability to purchase hardware, accessories, and games for the Switch and Switch 2. When I open my phone and scroll down to the N’s, I get a neat, full row dedicated entirely to Nintendo. That’s four apps: the Switch app, the music app, the Nintendo Today news app, and now the store. (The tally increases to five if … ⌘ Read more

You Can’t Leave Unless You Buy Something
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: At the Safeway on San Francisco’s King Street, you now can’t leave the store unless you buy something. The Mission Bay grocery store recently installed new anti-theft measures at the entrance and exit. New gates at the entrance automatically swing open when customers walk in, but they’re set to trigger an alarm if someone attempts to back out. And … ⌘ Read more

Texas Sues Roblox For Allegedly Failing To Protect Children On Its Platform
Texas is suing Roblox, alleging the company misled parents about safety, ignored online-protection laws, and allowed an environment where predators could target children. Texas AG Ken Paxton said the online game platform is “putting pixel pedophiles and profits over the safety of Texas children,” alleging that it is “flagrantl … ⌘ Read more

Gemini Starts Rolling Out On Android Auto
Gemini is (finally) rolling out on Android Auto, replacing Google Assistant while keeping “Hey Google,” adding Gemini Live (“let’s talk live”), message auto-translation, and new privacy toggles. “One feature lost between Assistant and Gemini, though, is the ability to use nicknames for contacts,” notes 9to5Google. From the report: Over the past 24 hours, Google has quietly started the rollou … ⌘ Read more

Denmark’s Government Aims To Ban Access To Social Media For Children Under 15
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Denmark’s government on Friday announced an agreement to ban access to social media for anyone under 15, ratcheting up pressure on Big Tech platforms as concerns grow that kids are getting too swept up in a digitized world of harmful content and commercial int … ⌘ Read more

States Seek Extension of Ecommerce Tariff Moratorium at WTO
An anonymous reader shares a report: A group of states is seeking to extend a World Trade Organization agreement to refrain from placing customs duties on digital transmissions, a World Trade Organization document showed on Thursday. The proposal submitted by Barbados on behalf of a group of African, Caribbean and Pacific states proposed to extend the current m … ⌘ Read more

Nintendo Won’t Shy Away From Continuing To ‘Try Anything’
An anonymous reader shares a report: Nintendo has always been a company willing to try just about anything. Cardboard cutout toys that mesh with games? Done. A console called the Wii with a remote-shaped controller? Massive success. Legendary game designer and Nintendo executive Shigeru Miyamoto offered more insight into how the company operates in a recent fina … ⌘ Read more

Direct File Won’t Happen in 2026, IRS Tells States
NextGov: The IRS has notified states that offered the free, government tax filing service known as Direct File in 2025 that the program won’t be available next filing season. In an email sent from the IRS to 25 states, the tax agency thanked them for collaborating and noted that “no launch date has been set for the future.”

“IRS Direct File will not be available in Filing Se … ⌘ Read more

Video Games’ Hottest New Platform is an Old One
Web-based video games are experiencing an unexpected revival as the broader $189 billion industry stagnates. Sales for browser-based titles like GeoGuessr and chess were expected to triple from 2021 to 2028, reaching $3.09 billion, according to Google and Kantar. Playgama hosted more than 15,000 new web games in the first half of 2025, exceeding the combined total from 2021 throug … ⌘ Read more

macOS Tahoe’s Terrible Icons
An anonymous reader shares a report: On the new MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple has mandated that all application icons fit into their prescribed squircle. No longer can icons have distinct shapes, nor even any fun frame-breaking accessories. Should an icon be so foolish as to try to have a bit of personality, it will find itself stuffed into a dingy gray icon jail.

[…] While Apple had previously urged developers to use … ⌘ Read more