China’s CO2 Emissions Have Been Flat Or Falling For Past 18 Months, Analysis Finds
China’s CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, “adding evidence to the hope that the world’s biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO2 emissions well ahead of schedule,” reports the Guardian. From the report: Rapid increases in the deployment of solar and wind power generation – … ⌘ Read more

Saudi Arabia’s Dystopian Futuristic City Project Is Crashing and Burning
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: It appears that Neom – Saudi Arabia’s hugely expensive, architecturally bizarre urban development project – is floundering and close to collapse. A new report from the Financial Times cites high-level sources within the project to paint a picture of dysfunction and failure at the h … ⌘ Read more

A Jailed Hacking Kingpin Reveals All About Cybercrime Gang
Slashdot reader alternative_right shares an exclusive BBC interview with Vyacheslav “Tank” Penchukov, once a top-tier cyber-crime boss behind Jabber Zeus, IcedID, and major ransomware campaigns. His story traces the evolution of modern cybercrime from early bank-theft malware to today’s lucrative ransomware ecosystem, marked by shifting alliances, Russian sec … ⌘ Read more

EU Eyes Banning Huawei, ZTE Corp From Mobile Networks of Member Countries
The European Commission is considering turning its non-binding 2020 guidance on “high-risk vendors” into a legal requirement that would effectively force EU member states to phase out Huawei and ZTE from mobile and fixed-line networks. Bloomberg reports: Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen wants to convert the European Co … ⌘ Read more

The Linux Kernel Looks To ‘Bite the Bullet’ In Enabling Microsoft C Extensions
Linux kernel developers are moving toward enabling Microsoft C Extensions (-fms-extensions) by default in Linux 6.19, with Linus Torvalds signaling no objection. While some dislike relying on Microsoft-style behavior, the patches in kbuild-next suggest the project is ready to “bite the bullet” and adopt the extensi … ⌘ Read more

Critics Call Proposed Changes To Landmark EU Privacy Law ‘Death By a Thousand Cuts’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Privacy activists say proposed changes to Europe’s landmark privacy law, including making it easier for Big Tech to harvest Europeans’ personal data for AI training, would flout EU case law and gut the legislation. The changes proposed by the European Commission … ⌘ Read more

PDF Will Support JPEG XL Format As ‘Preferred Solution’
The PDF Association is adding JPEG XL (JXL) support to the PDF specification, giving the advanced image format a new path to relevance despite Google’s decision to declare it obsolete and remove it from Chromium. The Register reports: Peter Wyatt, CTO of the PDF Association, said: “We need to adopt a new image [format] that can support HDR [High Dynamic Range] c … ⌘ Read more

Meta Is Killing Off the External Facebook Like Button
Meta is retiring Facebook’s external Like and Share buttons for third-party websites on February 10, 2026, officially closing the book on a once-dominant traffic driver as usage declines and Facebook’s role within Meta continues to shrink.Engadget reports: The blog post from Meta explains that site admins shouldn’t have to take any additional steps as a result of the … ⌘ Read more

New Project Brings Strong Linux Compatibility To More Classic Windows Games
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For years now, Valve has been slowly improving the capabilities of the Proton compatibility layer that lets thousands of Windows games work seamlessly on the Linux-based SteamOS. But Valve’s Windows-to-Linux compatibility layer generally only extends back to games writt … ⌘ Read more

Wikipedia Urges AI Companies To Use Its Paid API, and Stop Scraping
Wikipedia on Monday laid out a simple plan to ensure its website continues to be supported in the AI era, despite its declining traffic. From a report: In a blog post, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs the popular online encyclopedia, called on AI developers to use its content “responsibly” by ensuring its contributions are … ⌘ Read more

The PHP Foundation Is Seeking a New Executive Director
New submitter benramsey writes: The PHP Foundation has launched a search for its next executive director.

The Executive Director serves as the operational leader of the PHP Foundation, defining its strategic vision and translating it into reality while managing day-to-day operations and serving as the primary bridge between the Board, staff, community, and sp … ⌘ Read more

World’s First Green Fuel Levy To Add Almost $32 To Air Fares
Air passengers departing Singapore will pay a green fuel levy of as much as S$41.60 ($31.95) from next year as the city-state locks in a key step in its effort to cut the aviation industry’s emissions. From a report: Travelers flying in economy and premium economy, as well as those on short-haul routes, will be charged far less. Those customers will pay an … ⌘ Read more

Apple Delays Release of Next iPhone Air Amid Weak Sales
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is delaying the release of next year’s version of the iPhone Air, its thinnest smartphone, after the first model sold below expectations, according to three people involved in the project.

Although the length of the delay remains uncertain, the product won’t be released in fall 2026 as previously planned, they said. App … ⌘ Read more

How HR Took Over the World
Human-resources departments in American companies employed 1.3 million professionals in 2024, a 64% increase over ten years. Overall employment grew 14% in the same period. Professional-services and technology firms saw the number of HR workers double since 2014. Similar patterns have emerged in Australia, Britain and Germany.

Chief human-resources officers also gained ground financially. Their total compensation, which stoo … ⌘ Read more

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