Trump Signs Defense Bill Prohibiting China-Based Engineers in Pentagon IT Work
President Donald Trump signed into law this month a measure that prohibits anyone based in China and other adversarial countries from accessing the Pentagon’s cloud computing systems. From a report: The ban, which is tucked inside the $900 billion defense policy law, was enacted in response to a ProPublica investigation … ⌘ Read more

AMD Closes in on Intel in Latest Steam Hardware Survey
AMD’s share of processors among Steam users climbed to 47.27% in December 2025, a 4.66% jump in a single month that continues the company’s steady encroachment on Intel’s once-dominant position in the gaming CPU market. Intel held roughly 77% of the Steam Hardware Survey five years ago, and that lead has eroded considerably as AMD broke the 40% threshold in the third qua … ⌘ Read more

Reading is a Vice
The International Publishers Association spent the past year promoting the slogan “Democracy depends on reading,” but Atlantic senior editor Adam Kirsch argues that this utilitarian pitch fundamentally misunderstands why people become readers in the first place.

The most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that less than half of Americans read a single book in 2022, and only 38% read a novel or short story. A Universi … ⌘ Read more

A Decade of BBC Question Time Data Reveals Imbalance in Journalist Guests
A new study [PDF] from Cardiff University analyzing a decade of the popular topical debate programme BBC Question Time found that the broadcaster’s flagship political debate show relies disproportionately on journalists and pundits from right-wing media outlets, particularly those connected to The Spectator magazine.

Research … ⌘ Read more

‘Results Were Fudged’: Departing Meta AI Chief Confirms Llama 4 Benchmark Manipulation
Yann LeCun, Meta’s outgoing chief AI scientist and one of the pioneers credited with laying the groundwork for modern AI, has acknowledged that the company’s Llama 4 language model had its benchmark results manipulated before its April 2025 release. In an interview with the Financial Times, LeCun said the … ⌘ Read more

Ghana Tries To Regulate Online Prophecies
Ghana has decided to deal with the viral spread of prophetic content on social media by setting up an official reporting mechanism for sensitive predictions, a move triggered by the August 2025 helicopter crash that killed the country’s defence and environment ministers along with six others.

After the accident, TikTok clips circulated showing pastors who claimed to have foreseen the disast … ⌘ Read more

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Prints Final Newspaper, Shifts To All-Digital Format
CBS News: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has printed its final newspaper, marking the end of a 157-year chapter in Georgia history and officially transitioning the longtime publication into a fully digital news outlet.

The front-page story of the final print edition asks a fitting question: “What is the … ⌘ Read more

How Nokia Went From iPhone Victim To $1 Billion Nvidia Deal
Nokia, the Finnish company whose iconic ringtone was played an estimated 1.8 billion times daily at the height of its mobile phone dominance and whose 3310 “brick” sold 126 million units, has reinvented itself again – this time as a key piece of AI infrastructure. In October, Nvidia announced a $1 billion investment in Nokia and a strategic partnership to incorp … ⌘ Read more

ASUS Announces Price Hikes Starting January 5
ASUS has informed its partners that prices on certain products will increase starting January 5, just days before the company is expected to unveil new hardware at CES. In a letter dated December 30 and obtained by Digitimes, the Taiwanese manufacturer pointed to rising costs for memory and storage components as the primary driver behind the adjustment.

The company specifically called … ⌘ Read more

Australia’s Biggest Pension Fund To Cut Global Stocks Allocation on AI Concerns
Australia’s largest pension fund is planning to reduce its allocation to global equities this year, amid signs that the AI boom in the US stock market could be running out of steam. Financial Times: John Normand, head of investment strategy at the A$400bn (US$264bn) AustralianSuper, told the Financial Times that not only d … ⌘ Read more

No Standard iPhone 18 Launch This Year, Reports Suggest
MacRumors: Apple is not expected to release a standard iPhone 18 model this year, according to a growing number of reports that suggest the company is planning a significant change to its long-standing annual iPhone launch cycle.

Despite the immense success of the iPhone 17 in 2025, the iPhone 18 is not expected to arrive until the spring of 2027, leaving the iP … ⌘ Read more

IDC Estimates Apple Shipped Just 45,000 Vision Pros Last Quarter
Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner Luxshare halted production of the Vision Pro headset at the start of 2025, according to market research firm IDC, after the device shipped 390,000 units during its 2024 launch year. The $3,499 headset has also seen its digital advertising budget cut by more than 95% year to date in the US and UK, according to … ⌘ Read more

Some of Your Cells Are Not Genetically Yours
Every human body contains a small population of cells that are not genetically its own – cells that crossed the placenta during pregnancy and that persist for decades after birth. These “microchimeric” cells, named after the lion-goat-serpent hybrid of Greek mythology, have been found in every organ studied so far, though they are exceedingly rare: one such cell exists for every 10 … ⌘ Read more

‘The Cult of Costco’
Costco’s consistency – from its $1.50 hot dog and drink combo to its functional shopping carts and satisfied employees – has produced what The Atlantic calls a “cultlike loyalty” among members at more than 600 locations across the U.S.

Its annual membership costs $65. The model traces back to Fedco, a nonprofit wholesale collective for federal employees founded in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Costco’s private label Kirkland Signature has b … ⌘ Read more

Iran Offers To Sell Advanced Weapons Systems For Crypto
Iran is offering to sell advanced weapons systems including ballistic missiles, drones and warships to foreign governments for cryptocurrency, in a bid to use digital assets to bypass western financial controls. From a report: Iran’s Ministry of Defence Export Center, known as Mindex, says it is prepared to negotiate military contracts that allow payment in digita … ⌘ Read more

‘IPv6 Just Turned 30 and Still Hasn’t Taken Over the World, But Don’t Call It a Failure’
Three decades after RFC 1883 promised to future-proof the internet by expanding the available pool of IP addresses from around 4.3 billion to over 340 undecillion, IPv6 has yet to achieve the dominance its creators envisioned. Data from Google, APNIC and Cloudflare analyzed by The Register shows less tha … ⌘ Read more

DHS Says REAL ID, Which DHS Certifies, Is Too Unreliable To Confirm US Citizenship
An anonymous reader shares a report: Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn’t even work as a national ID. But that’s what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers un … ⌘ Read more

Public Domain Day 2026 Brings Betty Boop, Nancy Drew and ‘I Got Rhythm’ Into the Commons
As the calendar flips to January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 are entering the US public domain alongside sound recordings from 1925, making them free to copy, share, remix and build upon without permission or licensing fees. The literary haul includes William Faulkner’s As I Lay D … ⌘ Read more

European Space Agency Acknowledges Another Breach as Criminals Claim 200 GB Data Haul
The European Space Agency has acknowledged yet another security incident after a cybercriminal posted an offer on BreachForums the day after Christmas claiming to have stolen over 20GB of data including source code, confidential documents, API tokens and credentials.

The attacker claims they gained access … ⌘ Read more

The Man Taking Over the Large Hadron Collider
Mark Thomson, a professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Cambridge, takes over as CERN’s director general this week, and one of his first major decisions during his five-year tenure will be shutting down the Large Hadron Collider for an extended upgrade. The shutdown starts in June to make way for the high-luminosity LHC – a major overhaul involving powerfu … ⌘ Read more

You Can’t Trust Your Eyes To Tell You What’s Real Anymore, Says Instagram Head
Instagram head Adam Mosseri closed out 2025 by acknowledging what many have long suspected: the era of trusting photographs as accurate records of reality is over, and the platform he runs will need to fundamentally adapt to an age of “infinite synthetic content.”

In a slideshow posted to Instagram, Mosseri wrote that fo … ⌘ Read more

Waymos Are Now Coming For Your Coveted San Francisco Parking Spots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Chronicle: A long stretch of curb in San Francisco’s Mission District might contain a whole menagerie of parked vehicles: hatchbacks, SUVs, dusty pick-ups, chic Teslas. And recently, Waymo robotaxis. That’s what Kyle Grochmal saw walking through the northeast Mission District on Monda … ⌘ Read more

UK Company Sends Factory With 1,000C Furnace Into Space
A UK-based company has successfully powered up a microwave-sized space factory in orbit, proving it can run a 1,000C furnace to manufacture ultra-pure semiconductor materials in microgravity. “The work that we’re doing now is allowing us to create semiconductors up to 4,000 times purer in space than we can currently make here today,” says Josh Western, CEO of Space … ⌘ Read more

NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts
NASA is closing its largest research library at the Goddard Space Flight Center amid budget cuts and campus consolidation, putting tens of thousands of largely non-digitized historical and scientific documents at risk of being warehoused or discarded. The New York Times reports: Jacob Richmond, a NASA spokesman, said the agency would review the library holdings … ⌘ Read more

Heart Association Revives Theory That Light Drinking May Be Good For You
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For a while, it seemed the notion that light drinking was good for the heart had gone by the wayside, debunked by new studies and overshadowed by warnings that alcohol causes cancer. Now the American Heart Association has revived the idea in a scientific review that i … ⌘ Read more

Warren Buffett Retires As Berkshire Hathaway CEO After 55 Years
Warren Buffett is retiring as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at age 95, ending a 55-year run that reshaped how generations of Americans think about investing. “The 95-year-old, often referred to as the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ and the ‘billionaire next door,’ will relinquish the title after a career that saw him turn a failing textile firm into one of the most … ⌘ Read more

Stewart Cheifet, Computer Chronicles Host, Dies At 87
Pibroch(CiH) writes: According to the obituary linked, Stewart Cheifet of Computer Chronicles fame has died. The obituary states he passed Dec 28, 2025. Cheifet and Digital Research founder Gary Kildall hosted the public television show The Computer Chronicles starting in 1984, and Stewart continued to host the show well into the 1990s. He was well-known for his aff … ⌘ Read more

Tech Startups Are Handing Out Free Nicotine Pouches to Boost Productivity
The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing number of tech startups are stocking offices with free nicotine pouches as founders and employees chase sharper focus and stamina in hyper-competitive AI-era work environments. The Wall Street Journal reports: Earlier this year, two nicotine startups – Lucy Nicotine and Sesh – mad … ⌘ Read more

DarkSpectre Hackers Spread Malware To 8.8 Million Chrome, Edge, and Firefox Users
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cyber Press: A newly uncovered Chinese threat group, DarkSpectre, has been linked to one of the most widespread browser-extension malware operations to date, compromising more than 8.8 million users of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera over the past seven years. According to res … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Is Paying Employees More Than Any Major Tech Startup in History
OpenAI is paying employees more than any major tech startup in history, with average stock-based compensation hitting roughly $1.5 million per worker in 2025. “That is more than seven times higher than the stock-based pay Google disclosed in 2003, before it filed for an initial public offering in 2004,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The … ⌘ Read more

Trump Administration Removes Three Spyware-Linked Execs From Sanctions List
Reuters reports that the United States Department of the Treasury under the Donald Trump administration has lifted sanctions on three executives linked to the spyware firm Intellexa. Reuters reports: The move partially reverses the imposition of sanctions last year by then-President Joe Biden’s administration on seven people … ⌘ Read more

France Targets Australia-Style Social Media Ban For Children Next Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: France intends to follow Australia and ban social media platforms for children from the start of the 2026 academic year. A draft bill preventing under-15s from using social media will be submitted for legal checks and is expected to be debated in parliament early in the new year. … ⌘ Read more

NJ’s Answer To Flooding: It Has Bought Out and Demolished 1,200 Properties
New Jersey has found its answer to the relentless flooding that has plagued the state’s coastal and inland communities for decades: buy the homes, demolish them and turn the land back into open space permanently. The state’s Blue Acres program has acquired some 1,200 properties since 1995, spending more than $234 million in feder … ⌘ Read more

NASA Craft To Face Heat-Shield Test on Its First Astronaut Flight Next Year
An anonymous reader shares a report: Getting to space is hard. In many ways, getting back is even harder. NASA soon aims to pull off the kind of re-entry it last conducted more than 50 years ago: safely returning astronauts to Earth after they fly to the moon and back. The mission is a big moment for NASA, which will put … ⌘ Read more

JPMorgan Says Javice Firms Billed Millions Just for ‘Attendance’
JPMorgan Chase is now fighting to avoid paying $10.2 million in disputed legal charges racked up by Charlie Javice, the convicted founder of student-finance startup Frank, after court filings revealed her defense team billed more than $5 million simply for attending her fraud trial – including on days when court wasn’t even in session.

A previously se … ⌘ Read more

Net Neutrality Was Back, Until It Wasn’t
The fight over net neutrality saw another turbulent year in 2025, as federal protections that seemed poised for a comeback in 2024 were first struck down by a court and then preemptively removed by the Trump administration’s FCC without a chance for public comment.

The removal, The Verge summarizes in a report, was part of Chairman Brendan Carr’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative targeting wh … ⌘ Read more

Poor Sleep Quality Accelerates Brain Aging
A large-scale study tracking more than 27,500 middle-aged and elderly people over roughly nine years has found that poor sleep quality is associated with accelerated brain aging, and chronic inflammation appears to be one of the key mechanisms driving this effect.

Researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute assessed participants’ sleep across five dimensions – chronotype, duration, i … ⌘ Read more

Slashdot Asks: Your Favorite 2025 Movies, TV Shows and Books?
Another year wraps up, and with it comes the annual ritual of taking stock. What were the movies, TV shows and books from this year that stood out to you? Not necessarily the ones that dominated conversation or topped charts, but the ones you found yourself recommending to friends, or returning to for a second watch or read.

Share your picks and, if you’r … ⌘ Read more

Can Colossal’s Genetically Engineered Animals Ever Be the Real Thing?
Colossal Biosciences, the Texas-based startup now valued at more than $10 billion that has attracted investments from Paris Hilton, Peter Jackson and Tom Brady, claimed earlier this year to have resurrected the dire wolf – an animal that disappeared at the end of the last ice age – but a group of leading canid experts concluded the c … ⌘ Read more

California To Require All School Districts To Restrict Student Smartphone Use by 2026
Starting in July 2026, every public school district in California will be required to have policies on the books that restrict or prohibit students from using smartphones during the school day, thanks to Assembly Bill 3216 that Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law back in 2024.

The legislation also mand … ⌘ Read more

Finland Seizes Ship Suspected of Severing Undersea Cable To Estonia
Finnish authorities on Wednesday seized a vessel suspected of severing an undersea telecommunications cable that connects Helsinki to Tallinn by dragging its anchor across the Gulf of Finland, the latest in a string of infrastructure incidents that have put Baltic Sea nations on edge since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Police are inves … ⌘ Read more

China Demands Netherlands ‘Correct Mistakes’ Over Seized Chipmaker as Auto Supply Crunch Deepens
China’s Commerce Ministry on Wednesday demanded that the Netherlands “immediately correct its mistakes” over chipmaker Nexperia, escalating a standoff that has disrupted global semiconductor supply chains and triggered warnings from automakers about component shortages. The Dutch government … ⌘ Read more

US Measles Cases Surpass 2,000, Highest in 30 Years: CDC
The U.S. has surpassed 2,000 measles cases for the first time in more than 30 years, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From a report: As of Dec. 23, a total of 2,012 cases have been reported in the U.S. Of those cases, 24 were reported among international visitors to the U.S.

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NYC Inauguration Bans Raspberry Pi, Flipper Zero Devices
Longtime Slashdot reader ptorrone writes: The January 1, 2026, NYC mayoral inauguration prohibits attendees from bringing specific brand-name devices, explicitly banning Raspberry Pi single-board computers and the Flipper Zero, listed alongside weapons, explosives, and drones. Rather than restricting behaviors or capabilities like signal interference or unauth … ⌘ Read more

Denmark’s Main Postal Carrier Ends Letter Delivery
PostNord is ending letter delivery in Denmark after a 90%+ collapse in mail volume. It marks the first known case of a national postal carrier abandoning letters entirely – a symbolic milestone of a fully digitized society that’s sparking nostalgia even among people who stopped sending mail years ago. The New York Times reports: Denmark has had a postal service for more than … ⌘ Read more

Israel Deploys World’s First Drone Defense Laser
Israel has operationally deployed Iron Beam, a 100,000-watt laser air-defense system capable of shooting down drones, rockets, and mortars at negligible per-shot cost. According to Tom’s Hardware, it marks the first real-world deployment of a high-energy laser as part of a modern, multi-layered missile defense network. From the report: The Iron Beam is a short-range line-of-sigh … ⌘ Read more

Cheap Solar Is Transforming Lives and Economies Across Africa
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: South Africans … have found a remedy for power cuts that have plagued people in the developing world for years. Thanks to swiftly falling prices of Chinese made solar panels and batteries, they now draw their power from the sun. These aren’t the tiny, old-school solar lanterns that once … ⌘ Read more

‘Foreign Tech Workers Are Avoiding Travel To the US’
In an opinion piece for Computerworld, columnist Steven Vaughan-Nichols argues that restrictive visa policies and a hostile border climate under the Trump administration are driving foreign tech workers, researchers, and conference speakers away from the U.S. The result, he says, is a gradual shift of talent, events, and long-term innovation toward more welcoming regions … ⌘ Read more

First Gaming Handheld With a Folding Screen
One-Netbook has unveiled the OneXSugar Wallet, the first gaming handheld with a folding OLED display. The Verge reports: The OneXSugar Wallet was announced on China’s Weibo yesterday, but with few details about its features and capabilities. That folding OLED screen has a resolution of 2480 x 1860 pixels, and the handheld will be powered by an unspecified “Qualcomm gaming platform flag … ⌘ Read more

‘2025 Was the Year of Creative Bankruptcy’
PC Gamer argues that 2025 was a year full of high-profile AI embarrassments across games and entertainment, with Disney and Lucasfilm serving as the “opening salvo.” From the report: At a TED talk back in April, Lucasfilm senior vice president of creative innovation Rob Bredow presented a demonstration of what he called “a new era of technology.” Across 50 years of legendary innovat … ⌘ Read more