Thousands of Rare Concert Recordings Are Landing On the Internet Archive
A Chicago concert superfan Aadam Jacobs who has recorded more than 10,000 shows since the 1980s is working with Internet Archive volunteers to digitize the collection before the cassettes deteriorate. “So far, about 2,500 of these tapes have been posted on the Internet Archive, including some rare gems like a Nirvana performan … ⌘ Read more
Social Media Platforms Need To Stop Never-Ending Scrolling, UK’s Starmer Says
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said social media platforms should remove addictive infinite-scroll features for young users as Britain considers new child-safety measures. “We’re consulting on whether there should be a ban for under 16s,” Starmer told BBC Radio. “But I think equally important, the addictive scrolling mecha … ⌘ Read more
Google Faces Mass Arbitration By Advertisers Seeking Billions
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Alphabet’s Google is facing billions of dollars in potential damage claims as part of mass arbitration tied to the company’s online search and advertising technology businesses, which courts have ruled were illegal monopolies. Advertisers are banding together to seek payouts through mass arbitration pro … ⌘ Read more
A New Computer Chip Could Finally Withstand The Hellscape of Venus
Researchers at the University of Southern California say they’ve developed a memristor memory device that continued operating at 700 degrees Celsius. “And crucially, 700 degrees was not the limit, it was simply as hot as their testing equipment could go,” adds ScienceAlert. “The device showed no signs of failing.” From the report: The devi … ⌘ Read more
Air Force Pushed Out UFO Investigator
J. Allen Hynek started as an Air Force consultant brought in to help explain away early UFO reports, but over time he grew frustrated with what he saw as the government’s effort to minimize unexplained cases rather than seriously investigate them. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an article from Popular Mechanics, in collaboration with Biography.com, that argues Hynek’s shift from ske … ⌘ Read more
WeatherBug Data Says October 8 Is the Real Perfect Date
BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: For years pop culture has treated April 25 as the “perfect date,” thanks to the famous Miss Congeniality line about needing only a light jacket. But new analysis from WeatherBug suggests that idea does not actually hold up when you look at the numbers. After reviewing U.S. weather data from 2018 through today, the compa … ⌘ Read more
Stanford Report Highlights Growing Disconnect Between AI Insiders and Everyone Else
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: AI experts and the public’s opinion on the technology are increasingly diverging, according to Stanford University’s annual report on the AI industry, which was released Monday. In particular, the report noted a growing trend of anxiety around AI and, in the U.S … ⌘ Read more
Apple AI Glasses Will Rival Meta’s With Several Styles, Oval Cameras
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is developing display-free AI smart glasses aimed at rivaling Meta’s Ray-Bans, with multiple frame styles, a distinctive oval camera design, and tight iPhone integration. “The idea is to unveil the product at the end of 2026 or early the following year, with the actual release coming in 2027,” writ … ⌘ Read more
Hollywood Stars Sign Open Letter Protesting Paramount-Warner Bros Merger
More than 1,000 Hollywood figures, including major actors, writers, and directors, signed an open letter opposing Paramount Skydance’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing it would hurt an industry “already under severe strain.” The deal is still under regulatory scrutiny in both the U.S. and U.K., while Paramount says … ⌘ Read more
FBI Raids Texas Home of Man Suspected of Firebombing Sam Altman’s SF Mansion
The FBI searched the Texas home of a 20-year-old man accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s San Francisco residence. Authorities say the suspect also made threats at OpenAI’s headquarters, and reports indicate he had written extensively about fears over AI and opposition to AI executives.
The suspect reporte … ⌘ Read more
Meta Is Warned That Facial Recognition Glasses Will Arm Sexual Predators
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: More than 70 civil liberties, domestic violence, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+, labor, and immigrant advocacy organizations are demanding that Meta abandon plans to deploy face recognition on its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, warning that the feature – reportedly known inside the c … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Released
“The new Linux kernel was released and it’s kind of a big deal,” writes longtime Slashdot reader rexx mainframe. “Here is what you can expect.” Linuxiac reports: A key update in Linux 7.0 is the removal of the experimental label from Rust support. That (of course) does not make Rust a dominant language in kernel development, but it is still an important step in its gradual integration into the project. Another notable security-related c … ⌘ Read more
Booking.com Hit By Data Breach
Booking.com says hackers accessed customer reservation data in a breach that may have exposed booking details, names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and messages shared with accommodations. PCMag reports: On Sunday, users reported receiving emails from Booking.com, warning them that “unauthorized third parties may have been able to access certain booking information associated with your reservation.” The … ⌘ Read more
Mark Zuckerberg Is Reportedly Building an AI Clone To Replace Him In Meetings
According to the Financial Times, Meta is developing an AI avatar of Mark Zuckerberg that could interact with employees using his voice, image, mannerisms, and public statements, “so that employees might feel more connected to the founder through interactions with it.” The Verge reports: Meta may start allowing creators … ⌘ Read more
Maine Set To Become First State With Data Center Ban
Maine is on track to become the first U.S. state to impose a temporary statewide ban on new data center construction. “Lawmakers in Maine greenlit the text of a bill this week to block data centers from being built in the state until November 2027,” reports CNBC. “The measure, which is expected to get final passage in the next few days, also creates a council to suggest … ⌘ Read more
Californians Sue Over AI Tool That Records Doctor Visits
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several Californians sued Sutter Health and MemorialCare this week over allegations that an AI transcription tool was used to record them without their consent, in violation of state and federal law. The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, states that, within the p … ⌘ Read more
Will Some Programmers Become ‘AI Babysitters’?
Will some programmers become “AI babysitters”? asks long-time Slashdot readertheodp. They share some thoughts from a founding member of Code.org and former Director of Education at Google:
“AI may allow anyone to generate code, but only a computer scientist can maintain a system,” explained Google.org Global Head Maggie Johnson in a LinkedIn post. So “As AI-generated code beco … ⌘ Read more
Anthropic Asks Christian Leaders for Help Steering Claude’s Spiritual Development
Anthropic recently “hosted about 15 Christian leaders from Catholic and Protestant churches, academia, and the business world” for a two-day summit , reports the Washington Post:
Anthropic staff sought advice on how to steer Claude’s moral and spiritual development as the chatbot reacts to complex and unpredictable et … ⌘ Read more
Sam Altman’s Home Targeted a Second Time, Two Suspects Arrested
“Early Sunday morning, a car stopped and appears to have fired a gun at the Russian Hill home of OpenAI’s CEO,” reportsThe San Francisco Standard, citing reports from the local police department:
The San Francisco Police Department announced the arrest of two suspects, Amanda Tom, 25, and Muhamad Tarik Hussein, 23, who were booked for negligent disch … ⌘ Read more
Robot Birds Deployed by Park to Attract Real Birds - Built By High School Students
“Robotic bird decoys are being deployed at Grand Teton National Park,” reports Interesting Engineering, “to influence the behavior of real sage grouse and help restore a declining population.”. Robotics mentor Gary Duquette describes the machines as “kind of a Frankenbird.” (SFGate shows one of the robot birds … ⌘ Read more
Has the Rust Programming Language’s Popularity Reached Its Plateau?
“Rust’s rise shows signs of slowing,” argues the CEO of TIOBE.
Back in 2020 Rust first entered the top 20 of his “TIOBE Index,” which ranks programming language popularity using search engine results. Rust “was widely expected to break into the top 10,” he remembers today. But it never happened, and “That was nearly six years ago….”
… ⌘ Read more
How Good is Windows on Arm With Snapdragon X?
A new powerful chipset has arrived to take on x86 CPUs and Apple’s M5, writes Wccftech.
The blog Windows Central writes that “Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 processors are here” — and they run Windows:
Microsoft has done a massive amount of work to improve compatibility and has also convinced developers to embrace Windows 11 on Arm. Users of Windows 11 on Arm PCs spend 90% of their ti … ⌘ Read more
‘Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ and ‘Project Hail Mary’ Combine for Best Box Office in 7 Years
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie “is officially the year’s highest-grossing film to date with $629 million at the global box office,” reports Variety — and it will likely earn over $1 billion. Project Hail Mary now becomes the year’s second highest-grossing movie, with four-week ticket sales over … ⌘ Read more
Hisense’s New Backlit RGB LED TV ‘a Shot Against OLED’s Bow’, and Includes a DP Port
“RGB LED TVs have been the talk of the TV world this year,” argues The Verge, with models coming from all the manufacturers.”
And the first one of 2026 is here — the UR9 from China’s Hisense — “the first look at the viability of the new backlight technology outside of demo rooms.” They call it “a step above … ⌘ Read more
Botched IT Upgrade Ended Liquor Sales for the Entire State of Mississippi
Mississippi has one warehouse — run by a contractor — that sells all the liquor for the entire state of 2.9 million people. “If a restaurant or store anywhere in Mississippi wanted a bottle of Jim Beam, they had to order it from the wholesale warehouse,” reports the Washington Post.
But then Mississippi’s warehouse-managing con … ⌘ Read more
Neuroscientist’ AI-Powered Startup AIms To Transform Human Cognition With Perfect, Infinite Memory
Bloomberg describes him as a “former Harvard Medical School professor whose research has focused on the intersection of AI and neuroscience.”
“For the past 20 years, I studied how the human brain stores and retrieves memories,” Kreiman writes on LinkedIn. And now “My co-founder … ⌘ Read more
DNA-Level Encryption Developed by Researchers to Protect the Secrets of Bioengineered Cells
The biotech industry’s engineered cells could become an $8 trillion market by 2035, notes Phys.org. But how do you keep them from being stolen? Their article notes “an uptick in the theft and smuggling of high-value biological materials, including specially engineered cells.”
In Science Ad … ⌘ Read more
Greg Kroah-Hartman Tests New ‘Clanker T1000’ Fuzzing Tool for Linux Patches
The word clanker — a disparaging term for AI and robots — “has made its way into the Linux kernel,” reports the blog It’s FOSS “thanks to Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux stable kernel maintainer and the closest thing the project has to a second-in-command.”
He’s been quietly running what looks like an AI-assisted fuzzing tool o … ⌘ Read more
Crypto Billionaire Pardoned In Prison By Trump Just Wrote a Memoir
Forbes estimates he’s worth roughly $110 billion, “placing him ahead of Bill Gates.”
And now Changpeng Zhao, the 49-year-old billionaire founder of Binance, “has written a memoir…”
It arrives with the unmistakable timing of a man determined to tell the world his version of his meteoric crypto rise and fall, and foreshadow his comeback. Th … ⌘ Read more
AI That Bankrupted a Vending Machine is Now Running a Store in San Francisco
Remember that AI-powered vending machine that went bankrupt after Wall Street Journal reporters “systematically manipulated the bot into giving away its entire inventory for free”? It was Anthropic’s experiment, with setup handled by a startup named Andon Labs (which also built the hardware and software integration). But for th … ⌘ Read more
Latin America’s Central Banks Establish Digital Payments Used By Hundreds of Millions
175 million people in Brazil now use its instant-payment system “Pix”, developed by the country’s central bank for real-time payments using QR codes or keys, and American Banker notes that the central banks of Argentina and Costa Rica also have developed their own widely used digital systems for instant pa … ⌘ Read more
Judge Pauses Arizona’s Prosecution of Kalshi, Bars Arizona from Regulating Prediction Markets
Arizona state prosecutors allege Kalshi is running an illegal gambling operation, charging the prediction market with 20 “wagering” misdemeanors. But Friday a federal judge “temporarily barred Arizona from enforcing its gambling laws against predictive market operators,” reports the Associated … ⌘ Read more
Oxygen Made From Moon Dust For First Time
“Breathable oxygen has been created from Moon dust,” reports the Telegraph, “in a world first that paves the way for a lunar base.”
Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin ““announced this week that it had developed a reactor that could successfully release oxygen from lunar soil by using an electric current.”
Almost half of Moon dust — the thin layer of rock that blankets the lunar surface — is oxyge … ⌘ Read more
Amazon Luna Ends Its Support for Purchased Games and Third-Party Subscriptions
Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service is making some changes, reports Engadget:
It’s no longer possible to buy Ubisoft+ and Jackbox Games subscriptions or standalone games through Luna. Amazon will automatically cancel any active subscriptions bought through Luna at the end of customers’ next billing cycle. If you have … ⌘ Read more
Researchers Build a Talking Robot Guide Dog to Help Visually Impaired People Navigate
“Only about 2% of visually impaired people in the United States use guide dogs,” notes StudyFinds.com, “partly because breeding and training takes years and fewer than half the dogs in training actually graduate.”
But someday there could be another option:
What if you could ask your guide dog where … ⌘ Read more
Omissions, Deceptions, Lying. The New Yorker Asks: Can Sam Altman Be Trusted?
A 17,000-word expose in the New Yorker reveals “several executives connected to OpenAI have expressed ongoing reservations about Altman’s leadership.” Reporters Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz spoke to “a hundred people with firsthand knowledge of how Altman conducts business,” including current and former OpenAI employees and boa … ⌘ Read more
First US Newsroom Strike For AI Protections Staged by ProPublica’s Journalists
It’s the first time a major U.S. newsroom has gone on strike partly to demand protections from AI-related layoffs, according to a report from Nieman Lab.
They noted that one of the picketer’s signs read “Thoughts not bots,” :
On Wednesday, roughly 150 members of the Propublica Guild, one of the largest nonprofit newsr … ⌘ Read more
The AI RAM Shortage is Also Driving Up SSD Prices
In 2024 the Verge’s consumer tech reporter paid $173 for a WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD. But “now that same SSD costs $649…”
“Like with RAM, demand from the AI industry is swallowing up supply from a limited number of manufacturers, leading to a drastic reduction in the inventory that’s available to consumers” — and skyrocketing prices:
The price on my WD Black drive nearl … ⌘ Read more
Two-Week Social Media ‘Detox’ Erases a Decade Age-Related Decline, Study Finds
Critics say social media is engineered to be as addictive as tobacco or gambling, writes the Washington Post — while adding that “the science has been moving in parallel with the court’s recognition.”
A growing body of research links heavy social media use not only to declines in mental health but to measurable cognitive … ⌘ Read more
Firefox vs. Chrome: Which Performs Better on a Linux Laptop?
Phoronix staged “a showdown” between Firefox and Chrome, testing them both on an Intel Panther Lake laptop running Ubuntu 26.04.
JetStream 3.0 was announced at the end of March as the latest major web browser benchmark. This updated version of JetStream is focused on intensive portions of modern JavaScript and WebAssembly web applications… Google Chrome … ⌘ Read more
The End of ‘Star Trek’? Every Single Series Now Cancelled
“Every single Star Trek series has been canceled…” reports ScreenRant. “There is “no Star Trek in production or greenlit for the first time in nearly a decade.”
While there were five active Star Trek series just a few years ago, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds filmed its fifth and final season in the fall of 2025, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy “wrap … ⌘ Read more
US Demands Reddit Unmask ICE Critic, Summons Firm To Grand Jury
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Trump administration has stepped up an effort to unmask a Reddit user who criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After failing to obtain information through a summons issued (PDF) to Reddit, the government reportedly issued a subpoena demanding that Reddit provide the informati … ⌘ Read more
CPUID Site Hijacked To Serve Malware Instead of HWMonitor Downloads
Attackers briefly hijacked part of CPUID’s backend and swapped legitimate download links on its site with malware-laced ones. “The issue hit tools like HWMonitor and CPU-Z, with users on Reddit and elsewhere starting to notice something wasn’t right when installers tripped antivirus alerts or showed up under odd names,” reports The Register. F … ⌘ Read more
To Fill Air Traffic Controller Shortage, FAA Turns To Gamers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: As the Trump administration seeks to fill a national shortage of air traffic controllers, officials are targeting a new talent pool: gamers. The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday is making a recruiting push aimed at avid players of video games, as the agency strives to fill thousands of … ⌘ Read more
Artemis II Astronauts Splash Down Off California’s Coast
NASA’s Artemis II crew safely splashed down off the California coast after completing a 10-day trip around the moon and back. “This is not just an accomplishment for NASA,” sad NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “This is an accomplishment for humanity, again, a historic mission to the moon and back.” From a report: Isaacman is aboard the USS John. P Murtha Nav … ⌘ Read more
Chimpanzees In Uganda Locked In Vicious ‘Civil War’, Say Researchers
Researchers say the world’s largest known wild chimpanzee community in Uganda fractured into rival factions and has been locked in a vicious “civil war” for the last eight years. “It is not clear exactly why the once close-knit community of Ngogo chimpanzees at Uganda’s Kibale National Park are at loggerheads, but since 2018 the scientist … ⌘ Read more
EU Parliament Fails To Renew Loophole Allowing Tech Firms To Report Abuse
Bruce66423 shares a report from the Guardian: The European parliament has blocked the extension of a law that permits big tech firms to scan for child sexual exploitation on their platforms, creating a legal gap that child safety experts say will lead to crimes going undetected. The law, which was a carve-out of the EU Privacy Ac … ⌘ Read more
Suspect Arrested for Allegedly Throwing Molotov Cocktail at Sam Altman’s Home
San Francisco police arrested a suspect after a Molotov cocktail was allegedly thrown at Sam Altman’s home and threats were later made outside OpenAI’s headquarters. “Thankfully, no one was hurt,” said OpenAI in a statement to WIRED. “We deeply appreciate how quickly SFPD responded and the support from the city in helping k … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Begins Removing Copilot Branding From Windows 11 Apps
Microsoft has started stripping Copilot branding out of Notepad in Windows 11, replacing the old Copilot menu with a more generic “writing tools” label. The AI features themselves aren’t going away, but Microsoft seems to be backing off the heavy-handed Copilot branding and extra entry points. Windows Central reports: As promised, Microsoft is now … ⌘ Read more
FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved In iPhone Notification Data
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The FBI was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device’s push notification database, multiple people present for FBI testimony i … ⌘ Read more