The Slow Transformation of Notepad Into Something Else Entirely Continues
Microsoft is rolling out yet another update to Notepad for Windows 11 Insiders that adds table support and faster AI-generated responses, continuing a transformation of the once-minimal text editor that has drawn sustained criticism from users who preferred its original simplicity. The update, version 11.2510.6.0, lets users inser … ⌘ Read more

Lenovo Stockpiling PC Memory Due To ‘Unprecedented’ AI Squeeze
Lenovo is stockpiling memory and other critical components to navigate a supply crunch brought on by the boom in AI. From a report: The world’s biggest PC maker is holding on to component inventories that are roughly 50% higher than usual, [non-paywalled source] Chief Financial Officer Winston Cheng told Bloomberg TV on Monday. The frenzy to build and f … ⌘ Read more

Apple iOS 27 to Be No-Frills ‘Snow Leopard’ Update, Other Than New AI
Apple’s next major iPhone software update will prioritize stability and performance over flashy new features, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who reports that iOS 27 is being developed as a “Snow Leopard-style” release [non-paywalled source] focused on fixing bugs, removing bloat and improving underlying code after this year’s swe … ⌘ Read more

Ubisoft Shows Off New AI-Powered FPS And Hopes You’ve Forgotten About Its Failed NFTs
Ubisoft has revealed Teammates, a first-person shooter built around AI-powered squadmates that the company is calling its “first playable generative AI research project” – not long after the publisher went all-in on NFTs and the metaverse only to largely move on from both. Built in the Snowdrop Engine th … ⌘ Read more

How Google Finally Leapfrogged Rivals With New Gemini Rollout
An anonymous reader shares a report: With the release of its third version last week, Google’s Gemini large language model surged past ChatGPT and other competitors to become the most capable AI chatbot, as determined by consensus industry-benchmark tests. […] Aaron Levie, chief executive of the cloud content management company Box, got early access … ⌘ Read more

New Mars Orbiter Manuever Challenges Theory: That May Not Be an Underground Lake on Mars
In 2018 researchers claimed evidence of a lake beneath the surface of Mars, detected by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument (or Marsis for short).

But new Mars observations “are not consistent with the presence of liquid water in this location and an alternat … ⌘ Read more

How An MIT Student Awed Top Economists With His AI Study - Until It All Fell Apart
In May MIT announced “no confidence” in a preprint paper on how AI increased scientific discovery, asking arXiv to withdraw it. The paper, authored by 27-year-old grad student Aidan Toner-Rodgers, had claimed an AI-driven materials discovery tool helped 1,018 scientists at a U.S. R&D lab.

But within weeks his … ⌘ Read more

‘We Could’ve Asked ChatGPT’: UK Students Fight Back Over Course Taught By AI
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian:

James and Owen were among 41 students who took a coding module at the University of Staffordshire last year, hoping to change careers through a government-funded apprenticeship programme designed to help them become cybersecurity experts or software engineers. But afte … ⌘ Read more

Napster Said It Raised $3 Billion From a Mystery Investor. But Now the ‘Investor’ and ‘Money’ Are Gone
An anonymous reader shared this report from Forbes:

On November 20, at approximately 4 p.m. Eastern time, Napster held an online meeting for its shareholders; an estimated 700 of roughly 1,500 including employees, former employees and individual investors tuned in. Th … ⌘ Read more

New Research Finds America’s Top Social Media Sites: YouTube (84%) Facebook (71%), Instagram (50%)
Pew Research surveyed 5,022 Americans this year (between February 5 and June 18), asking them
“do you ever use” YouTube, Facebook, and nine of the other top social media platforms. The results?

YouTube 84%

Facebook 71%

Instagram 50%

TikTok 37%

WhatsApp 32%

Reddit 26%

Snapchat 2 … ⌘ Read more

Was the Moon-Forming Protoplanet ‘Theia’ a Neighbor of Earth?
Theia crashed into earth and formed the moon, the theory goes. But then where did Theia come from? The lead author on a new study says “The most convincing scenario is that most of the building blocks of Earth and Theia originated in the inner Solar System. Earth and Theia are likely to have been neighbors.”

Though Theia was completely destroyed in th … ⌘ Read more

Cryptologist DJB Criticizes Push to Finalize Non-Hybrid Security for Post-Quantum Cryptography
In October cryptologist/CS professor Daniel J. Bernstein alleged that America’s National Security
Agency (and its UK counterpart GCHQ) were attempting to influence NIST to adopt weaker post-quantum cryptography
standards without a “hybrid” approach that would’ve also included pre-quantum EC … ⌘ Read more

Google Revisits JPEG XL in Chromium After Earlier Removal
“Three years ago, Google removed JPEG XL support from Chrome, stating there wasn’t enough interest at the time,” writes the blog Windows Report. “That position has now changed.”

In a recent note to developers, a Chrome team representative confirmed that work has restarted to bring JPEG XL to Chromium and said Google “would ship it in Chrome” once long-term ma … ⌘ Read more

Mozilla Announces ‘TABS API’ For Developers Building AI Agents
“Fresh from announcing it is building an AI browsing mode in Firefox and laying the groundwork for agentic interactions in the Firefox 145 release, the corp arm of Mozilla is now flexing its AI muscles in the direction of those more likely to care,” writes the blog OMG Ubuntu:

If you’re a developer building AI agents, you can sign up to get early acces … ⌘ Read more

One Company’s Plan to Sink Nuclear Reactors Deep Underground
Long-time Slashdot reader jenningsthecat shared this article from IEEE Spectrum:

By dropping a nuclear reactor 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) underground, Deep Fission aims to use the weight of a billion tons of rock and water as a natural containment system comparable to concrete domes and cooling towers. With the fission reaction occurring far below the s … ⌘ Read more

Could High-Speed Trains Shorten US Travel Times While Reducing Emissions?
With some animated graphics, CNN “reimagined” what three of America’s busiest air and road travel routes would look like with high-speed trains, for “a glimpse into a faster, more connected future.”

The journey from New York City to Chicago could take just over six hours by high-speed train at an average speed of 160 mph, cutting … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft and GitHub Preview New Tool That Identifies, Prioritizes, and Fixes Vulnerabilities With AI
“Security, development, and AI now move as one,” says Microsoft’s director of cloud/AI security
product marketing.

Microsoft and GitHub “have launched a native integration between Microsoft Defender for Cloud and GitHub Advanced Security that aims to address what one e … ⌘ Read more

Engineers are Building the Hottest Geothermal Power Plant on Earth - Next to a US Volcano
“On the slopes of an Oregon volcano, engineers are building the hottest geothermal power plant on Earth,” reports the Washington Post:

The plant will tap into the infernal energy of Newberry Volcano, “one of the largest and most hazardous active volcanoes in the United States,” according to t … ⌘ Read more

How the Internet Rewired Work - and What That Tells Us About AI’s Likely Impact
“The internet did transform work — but not the way 1998 thought…” argues the Wall Street Journal. “The internet slipped inside almost every job and rewired how work got done.”

So while the number of single-task jobs like travel agent dropped, most jobs “are bundles of judgment, coordination and hands-on work,” and in … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Warns Its Windows AI Feature Brings Data Theft and Malware Risks, and ‘Occasionally May Hallucinate’
“Copilot Actions on Windows 11” is currently available in Insider builds (version 26220.7262) as part of Copilot Labs, according to a recent report, “and is off by default, requiring admin access to set it up.”

But maybe it’s off for a good reason…besides t … ⌘ Read more

Amazon’s AI-Powered IDE Kiro Helps Vibe Coders with ‘Spec Mode’
A promotional video for Amazon’s Kiro software development system took a unique approach, writes GeekWire. “Instead of product diagrams or keynote slides, a crew from Seattle’s Packrat creative studio used action figures on a miniature set to create a stop-motion sequence…”

“Can the software development hero conquer the ‘AI Slop Monster’ to u … ⌘ Read more

Did Bitcoin Play a Role in Thursday’s Stock Sell-Off?
A week ago Bitcoin was at $93,714. Saturday it dropped to $85,300.

Late Thursday, market researcher Ed Yardeni blamed some of Thursday’s stock market sell-off on “the ongoing plunge in bitcoin’s price,” reports Fortune:

“There has been a strong correlation between it and the price of TQQQ, an ETF that seeks to achieve daily investment results that correspond to three … ⌘ Read more

PHP 8.5 Brings Long-Awaited Pipe Operator, Adds New URI Tools
“PHP 8.5 landed on Thursday with a long-awaited pipe operator and a new standards-compliant URI parser,” reports the Register, “marking one of the scripting language’s more substantial updates… “

The pipe operator allows function calls to be chained together, which avoids the
extraneous variables and nested statements that might otherwise be
inv … ⌘ Read more

‘The Strange and Totally Real Plan to Blot Out the Sun and Reverse Global Warming’
In a 2023 pitch to investors, a “well-financed, highly credentialed” startup named Stardust aimed for a “gradual temperature reduction demonstration” in 2027, according to a massive new 9,600-word article from Politico. (“Annually dispersing ~1 million tons of sun-reflecting particles,” says one slide. “Equivalen … ⌘ Read more

Meta Plans New AI-Powered ‘Morning Brief’ Drawn From Facebook and ‘External Sources’
Meta “is testing a new product that would give Facebook users a personalized daily briefing powered by the company’s generative AI technology” reports the Washington Post. They cite records they’ve reviwed showing that Meta “would analyze Facebook content and external sources to push custom updates to its users. … ⌘ Read more

Are Astronomers Wrong About Dark Energy?
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:

The universe’s expansion might not be accelerating but slowing down, a new study suggests. If confirmed, the finding would upend decades of established astronomical assumptions and rewrite our understanding of dark energy, the elusive force that counters the inward pull of gravity in our universe…

Last year, a consortium of hundreds of res … ⌘ Read more

Britain Sets New Record, Generating Enough Wind Power for 22 Million Homes
An anonymous reader shared this report from Sky News:

A new wind record has been set for Britain, with enough electricity generated from turbines to power 22 million homes, the system operator has said.

The mark of 22,711 megawatts (MW) was set at 7.30pm on 11 November… enough to keep around three-quarters of British homes … ⌘ Read more

Analyzing 47,000 ChatGPT Conversations Shows Echo Chambers, Sensitive Data - and Unpredictable Medical Advice
For nearly three years OpenAI has touted ChatGPT as a “revolutionary” (and work-transforming) productivity tool, reports the Washington Post.

But after analyzing 47,000 ChatGPT conversations, the Post found that users “are overwhelmingly turning to the chatbot for … ⌘ Read more

780,000 Windows Users Downloaded Linux Distro Zorin OS in the Last 5 Weeks
In October Zorin OS claimed it had 100,000 downloads in a little over two days in the days following Microsoft’s end of support for Windows 10.

And one month later, Zorin OS developers now claim that 780,000 people downloaded it from a Windows computer in the space of a month, according to the tech news site XDA Developers.

… ⌘ Read more

Physicists Reveal a New Quantum State Where Electrons Run Wild
ScienceDaily reports:

Electrons can freeze into strange geometric crystals and then melt back into liquid-like motion under the right quantum conditions. Researchers identified how to tune these transitions and even discovered a bizarre “pinball” state where some electrons stay locked in place while others dart around freely. Their simulations hel … ⌘ Read more

Tiny ‘Micro-Robots’ in your Bloodstream Could Deliver Drugs with Greater Precision
The Washington Post reports:

Scientists in Switzerland have created a robot the size of a grain of sand that is controlled by magnets and can deliver drugs to a precise location in the human body, a breakthrough aimed at reducing the severe side effects that stop many medicines from advancing in clinical tria … ⌘ Read more

Court Ends Dragnet Electricity Surveillance Program in Sacramento
A California judge has shut down a decade-long surveillance program in which Sacramento’s utility provider shared granular smart-meter data on 650,000 residents with police to hunt for cannabis grows. The EFF reports: The Sacramento County Superior Court ruled that the surveillance program run by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) … ⌘ Read more

Ukraine Is Jamming Russia’s ‘Superweapon’ With a Song
Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from 404 Media: The Ukrainian Army is knocking a once-hyped Russian superweapon out of the sky by jamming it with a song and tricking it into thinking it’s in Lima, Peru. The Kremlin once called its Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missiles “invincible.” Joe Biden said the missile was “almost impossible to stop.” Now Ukrainian … ⌘ Read more

Magician Forgets Password To His Own Hand After RFID Chip Implant
A magician who implanted an RFID chip in his hand lost access to it after forgetting the password, leaving him effectively locked out of the tech embedded in his own body. The Register reports: “It turns out,” said [said magician Zi Teng Wang], “that pressing someone else’s phone to my hand repeatedly, trying to figure out where their phone’s … ⌘ Read more

Iran’s Capital Is Moving. The Reason Is an Ecological Catastrophe
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Amid a deepening ecological crisis and acute water shortage, Tehran can no longer remain the capital of Iran, the country’s president has said. The situation in Tehran is the result of “a perfect storm of climate change and corruption,” says Michael Rubin, a political analyst at the Am … ⌘ Read more

Cryptographers Cancel Election Results After Losing Decryption Key
The International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR) was forced to cancel its leadership election after a trustee lost their portion of the Helios voting system’s decryption key, making it impossible to reveal or verify the final results. Ars Technica reports: The IACR said Friday that the votes were submitted and tallied using Helios, … ⌘ Read more

Google Starts Testing Ads In AI Mode
Google has begun testing sponsored ads inside its Gemini-powered AI Mode, placing labeled “sponsored” links at the bottom of AI-generated responses. Engadget reports: [A] Google spokesperson says the result shown is akin to similar tests it’s been running this year. “People seeing ads in AI Mode in the wild is simply part of Google’s ongoing tests, which we’ve been running for several months,” the … ⌘ Read more

SEC Dismisses Case Against SolarWinds, Top Security Officer
The SEC has officially dismissed its high-profile case against SolarWinds and its CISO that was tied to a Russia-linked cyberattack involving the software company. Reuters reports: The landmark case, which SEC brought in late 2023, rattled the cybersecurity community and later faced scrutiny from a judge who dismissed many of the charges. The SEC had said So … ⌘ Read more

Malaysia’s Palm Oil Estates Are Turning Into Data Centers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Malaysia’s palm oil giants, long-blamed for razing rainforests, fueling toxic haze and driving orangutans to the brink of extinction, are recasting themselves as unlikely champions in a different, potentially greener race: the quest to lure the world’s AI data centers to the Southeast Asian country (source paywalle … ⌘ Read more

Firefox 147 Will Support The XDG Base Directory Specification
Phoronix’s Michael Larabel reports: A 21 year old bug report requesting support of the XDG Base Directory specification is finally being addressed by Firefox. The Firefox 147 release should respect this XDG specification around where files should be positioned within Linux users’ home directory.

The XDG Base Directory specification lays out where applic … ⌘ Read more

Google Must Double AI Serving Capacity Every 6 Months To Meet Demand
Google’s AI infrastructure chief told employees the company must double its AI serving capacity every six months in order to meet demand. In a presentation earlier this month, Amin Vahdat, a vice president at Google Cloud, gave a presentation titled “AI Infrastructure.” It included a slide on “AI compute demand” that said: “Now we must dou … ⌘ Read more

Tech Company CTO and Others Indicted For Exporting Nvidia Chips To China
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The US crackdown on chip exports to China has continued with the arrests of four people accused of a conspiracy to illegally export Nvidia chips. Two US citizens and two nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all of whom live in the US, were charged in an indictment … ⌘ Read more

British Army Will Use Call of Duty To Train Soldiers
British soldiers are using computer games such as Call of Duty to sharpen their “war-fighting readiness,” an Army chief has said. From a report: General Sir Tom Copinger-Symes, the deputy commander of Cyber and Specialist Operations Command, said the war in Ukraine, where remote-operated drones have become crucial on the battlefield, proved the worth of having soldiers s … ⌘ Read more

Japan Says World’s Largest Nuclear Plant To Restart
The Japanese government said that the world’s biggest nuclear plant would restart operations. Semafor: The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa site closed in 2012, as Japan – which previously generated 30% of its electricity from nuclear power – shuttered most of its fleet in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown. But like much of the world, it is looking once again to nuclear power for reliable … ⌘ Read more

Google Says Hackers Stole Data From Over 200 Companies Following Gainsight Breach
Google confirmed in a statement Friday that hackers have stolen the Salesforce-stored data of more than 200 companies in a large-scale supply chain hack. TechCrunch reports: On Thursday, Salesforce disclosed a breach of “certain customers’ Salesforce data” – without naming affected companies – that was stolen v … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Finally Admits Almost All Major Windows 11 Core Features Are Broken
Microsoft has acknowledged in a support article that major Windows 11 core features including the Start Menu, Taskbar, File Explorer and System Settings break after applying monthly cumulative updates released on or after July 2025.

The problems stem from XAML component issues that affect updates beginning with July’s P … ⌘ Read more

Thunderbird Pro Enters Production Testing Ahead of $9/Month Launch
Thunderbird Pro has moved its Thundermail email service into production testing as the open-source email client’s subscription bundle of additional services prepares for an Early Bird beta launch at $9 per month that will include email hosting, encrypted file sharing through Send, and scheduling via Appointment.

Internal team members are now tes … ⌘ Read more

How Two Janitors Made One of the Year’s Most Charming RPGs
Adam Marshall spent more than a decade developing Kingdoms of the Dump while working as a custodian at a school in suburban Philadelphia, cleaning floors and hauling trash bags from 3 PM to 11 PM before coming home to work on his turn-based role-playing game until 5 or 6 AM. The game, which Bloomberg has called “one of the year’s most charming RPGs,” came out … ⌘ Read more

AI Nutrition Tracking Stinks
AI nutrition tracking features in popular fitness apps are producing wildly inaccurate calorie and macro counts despite promises to simplify food logging through automated photo analysis. The Verge tested AI-powered nutrition tools in Ladder, Oura Advisor, January and MyFitnessPal. Ladder’s AI estimated the outlet’s carefully measured 355-calorie breakfast at 780 calories and got the macro breakdown wrong even after the r … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Cut Thousands of Engineers in Its Record Layoffs, Despite Saying It Needs To Innovate Faster
Amazon’s 14,000-plus layoffs announced last month touched almost every piece of the company’s sprawling business, from cloud computing and devices to advertising, retail and grocery stores. But one job category bore the brunt of cuts more than others: engineers. CNBC: Documents filed … ⌘ Read more