I built Audiofern to make it simple to turn PDFs into audiobooks. Upload a document, get clean, chapterized narration with natural voices, and share it via a hosted player—or download M4A/M4B and keep it forever. Files are private by default, and pricing is transparent: pay once by audio hour or subscribe to build a listening library.
Experimental Linux Code For 1GB PUD-Level THPs Shows 34% Faster Memory Access Times
Early, experimental code for implementing 1GB PUD-level THPs in the Linux kernel are showing positive benchmark results but other upstream stakeholders were surprised by this patch series appearing and it looking like it could be a while until if/when the patches are mainlined for helping to reduce translaction lookaside buffer (TLB) pressure without resorting to Hugetlbfs… ⌘ Read more
Belkin’s Wemo Smart Devices Will Go Offline On Saturday
Belkin is shutting down cloud support for most Wemo smart home devices on January 31, leaving only Thread-based models and devices already set up in Apple HomeKit functional. Everything else will lose remote access, voice assistant integrations, and future app updates. The Verge reports: The shut down was first announced in July and impacts most Wemo devices, ran … ⌘ Read more
Nobel Hacking Likely Leaked Peace Prize Winner Name, Probe Finds
An anonymous reader shares a report: A hacking of the Nobel organization’s computer systems is the most likely cause of last year’s leak of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado’s name, according to the results of an investigation [non-paywalled source]. An individual or a state actor may have illegally gained access in a cyber breach, … ⌘ Read more
Do Markets Make Us Moral?
A new study [PDF] examining the United States between 1850 and 1920 found that expanded market access – driven largely by railroad expansion – made Americans more trusting of strangers and more outward-looking, but weakened family-based care for the vulnerable.
Researchers Max Posch of the University of Exeter and Itzchak Tzachi Raz of Hebrew University compared places and people gaining different levels of commercial conne … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft is Experimenting With a Top Menu Bar for Windows 11
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft’s PowerToys team is contemplating building a top menu bar for Windows 11, much like Linux, macOS, or older versions of Windows. The menu bar, or Command Palette Dock as Microsoft calls it, would be a new optional UI that provides quick access to tools, monitoring of system resources, and much more.
Micros … ⌘ Read more
Cory Doctorow On Tariffs and the DMCA In Canada
Longtime Slashdot reader devnulljapan writes: In 2012, Canada passed anti-circumvention law Bill C-11, cut-and-pasted from the U.S. DMCA, in return for access to U.S. markets without tariffs. Trump has tariffed Canada anyway, so Cory Doctorow suggests it sounds like like a good idea to ditch Bill C-11 and turn Canada into a “Disenshittification Nation” and go into the business of … ⌘ Read more
Nvidia GeForce NOW Is Now Available Natively On Linux
NVIDIA has officially launched a native GeForce NOW client for Linux as a Flatpak, giving Linux gamers access to cloud-rendered RTX gaming. Phoronix reports: While confined to a Flatpak, for now NVIDIA is just “officially” supporting it on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. Granted, thanks to Flatpak it should run on other non-Ubuntu distributions too but in terms of the of … ⌘ Read more
French Lawmakers Vote To Ban Social Media Use By Under-15s
French lawmakers have voted to ban social media access for children under 15 and prohibit mobile phones in high schools, positioning France as the second country after Australia to impose sweeping age-based digital restrictions. The Guardian reports: The lower national assembly adopted the text by a vote of 130 to 21 in a lengthy overnight session from Mon … ⌘ Read more
SoundCloud Data Breach Impacts 29.8 Million Accounts
A data breach at SoundCloud exposed information tied to 29.8 million user accounts, according to Have I Been Pwned. While SoundCloud says no passwords or financial data were accessed, attackers mapped email addresses to public profile data and later attempted extortion. BleepingComputer reports: The company confirmed the breach on December 15, following widespread reports … ⌘ Read more
Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp To Test Premium Subscriptions
An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta plans to test new subscriptions that give people access to exclusive features on its apps, the company told TechCrunch on Monday. The tech giant said the new subscriptions will unlock more productivity and creativity, along with expanded AI capabilities.
In the coming months, Meta said it will offer a premium … ⌘ Read more
A Game Studio’s Fired Co-Founder Hijacked Its Domain Name, a New Lawsuit Alleges
Three co-founders of the game studio That’s No Moon “are suing another co-founder for allegedly hijacking the company’s website domain name,” reports the gaming news site Aftermath, “taking the website offline and disabling employee access to email accounts, according to a new lawsuit.”
Tina Kowalewski, Taylor Kuro … ⌘ Read more
Moderna Curbing Investments in Vaccine Trials Due To US Backlash, CEO Says
An anonymous reader shares a report: Moderna does not plan to invest in new late-stage vaccine trials because of growing opposition to immunizations from U.S. officials, CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday. “You cannot make a return on investment if you don’t have access to the U.S. market, … ⌘ Read more
Nvidia Allegedly Sought ‘High-Speed Access’ To Pirated Book Library for AI Training
An expanded class-action lawsuit filed last Friday alleges that a member of Nvidia’s data strategy team directly contacted Anna’s Archive – the sprawling shadow library hosting millions of pirated books – to explore “including Anna’s Archive in pre-training data for our LLMs.”
Internal documents cited in the … ⌘ Read more
Ireland Wants To Give Its Cops Spyware, Ability To Crack Encrypted Messages
The Irish government is planning to bolster its police’s ability to intercept communications, including encrypted messages, and provide a legal basis for spyware use. From a report: The Communications (Interception and Lawful Access) Bill is being framed as a replacement for the current legislation that governs digital communic … ⌘ Read more
UK Mulls Australia-Like Social Media Ban For Users Under 16
The UK government has launched a public consultation on whether to ban social media use for children under 16, drawing inspiration from Australia’s recently enacted age-based restrictions. “It would also explore how to enforce that limit, how to limit tech companies from being able to access children’s data and how to limit ‘infinite scrolling,’ as well as … ⌘ Read more
AI Agents ‘Perilous’ for Secure Apps Such as Signal, Whittaker Says
Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker warned that AI agents that autonomously carry out tasks pose a threat to encrypted messaging apps [non-paywalled source] because they require broad access to data stored across a device and can be hijacked if given root permissions.
Speaking at Davos on Tuesday, Whittaker said the deeper integrat … ⌘ Read more
Nvidia Contacted Anna’s Archive To Secure Access To Millions of Pirated Books
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: NVIDIA executives allegedly authorized the use of millions of pirated books from Anna’s Archive to fuel its AI training. In an expanded class-action lawsuit that cites internal NVIDIA documents, several book authors claim (PDF) that the trillion-dollar company directly … ⌘ Read more
NYSE Eyes 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading With Weekend Access and Same-Day Settlement
BrianFagioli writes: The New York Stock Exchange, owned by Intercontinental Exchange, is developing a platform for trading tokenized versions of U.S. listed stocks and ETFs around the clock, pending regulatory approval. The system would combine the NYSE’s existing matching engine with blockchain-based settlement … ⌘ Read more
Iran’s Internet Shutdown Is Now One of the Longest Ever
Iran has imposed one of the longest nationwide internet shutdowns in its history, cutting more than 92 million people off from connectivity for over a week as mass anti-government protests continue. TechCrunch reports: As of this writing, Iranians have not been able to access the internet for more than 170 hours. The previous longest shutdowns in the country lasted … ⌘ Read more
Wikipedia Signs AI Licensing Deals On Its 25th Birthday
Wikipedia turns 25 today, and the online encyclopedia is celebrating that with an announcement that it has signed new licensing deals with a slate of major AI companies – Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Perplexity and Mistral AI. The deals allow these companies to access Wikipedia content “at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs.” The Wikim … ⌘ Read more
Iran Shuts Down Musk’s Starlink For First Time
Thelasko shares a report from Forbes: We have not seen this before. Iran’s digital blackout has now deployed military jammers, reportedly supplied by Russia, to shut down access to Starlink Internet. This is a game-changer for the Plan-B connectivity frequently used by protesters and anti-regime activists when ordinary access to the internet is stopped. “Despite reports that tens of … ⌘ Read more
Apple Bundles Creative Apps Into a Single Subscription
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple today introduced a new Apple Creator Studio bundle that offers access to six creative apps, as well as exclusive AI features and content, as part of a single subscription. In the U.S., pricing is set at $12.99 per month or $129 per year. Here are the six apps included with an Apple Creator Studio subscription … ⌘ Read more
TrueNAS WebShare: ZFS-Backed, Enterprise-Grade File Sharing From The Web Browser
For situations where Samba (SMB) or NFS usage aren’t appropriate or desiring the convenience of accessing files from a web browser on any device, TrueNAS is introducing TrueNAS WebShare as an easy-to-use solution for enterprise-grade file sharing in the web browser… ⌘ Read more
Illinois Health Department Exposed Over 700,000 Residents’ Personal Data For Years
Illinois Department of Human Services disclosed that a misconfigured internal mapping website exposed sensitive personal data for more than 700,000 Illinois residents for over four years, from April 2021 to September 2025. Officials say they can’t confirm whether the publicly accessible data was ever viewed. TechC … ⌘ Read more
Iran in ‘Digital Blackout’ as Tehran Throttles Mobile Internet Access
An anonymous reader shares a report: Internet access available through mobile devices in Iran appears to be limited, according to several social media accounts that routinely track such developments. Cloudflare Radar, which monitors internet traffic on behalf of the internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare, said on Thursday that IPv6 (Inte … ⌘ Read more
China Hacked Email Systems of US Congressional Committee Staff
China has hacked the emails used by congressional staff on powerful committees in the US House of Representatives, as part of a massive cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon. An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese intelligence accessed email systems used by some staffers [non-paywalled source] on the House China committee in addition … ⌘ Read more
‘Everyone Hates OneDrive, Microsoft’s Cloud App That Steals Then Deletes All Your Files’
Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage service has drawn renewed criticism for a particularly frustrating behavior pattern that can leave users without access to their local files after the service automatically activates during Windows updates.
Author Jason Pargin recently outlined the problem: Windows updat … ⌘ Read more
Anna’s Archive Loses .Org Domain After Surprise Suspension
Anna’s Archive lost control of its primary .org domain after it was placed on registry-level serverHold – “an action that’s typically taken by the domain name registry,” reports TorrentFreak. Despite mounting legal pressure and speculation tied to its Spotify backup, the site remains accessible via multiple alternative domains, underscoring t … ⌘ Read more
Amazon’s AI Assistant Comes To the Web With Alexa.com
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon’s AI-powered overhaul of its digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is coming to the web. On Monday, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the official launch of a new website, Alexa.com, which is now rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow c … ⌘ Read more
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
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
Italy Tells Meta To Suspend Its Policy That Bans Rival AI Chatbots From WhatsApp
Italy’s antitrust regulator Italian Competition Authority ordered Meta to suspend a policy that blocks rival AI chatbots from using WhatsApp’s business APIs, citing potential abuse of market dominance. “Meta’s conduct appears to constitute an abuse, since it may limit production, market access, or technical developm … ⌘ Read more
Spotify Says ‘Anti-Copyright Extremists’ Scraped Its Library
A group of activists has scraped Spotify’s entire library, accessing 256 million rows of track metadata and 86 million audio files totaling roughly 300TB of data. The metadata has been released via Anna’s Archive, a search engine for “shadow libraries” that previously focused on books.
Spotify described the activists as “anti-copyright extremists … ⌘ Read more
ACM To Make Its Entire Digital Library Open Access Starting January 2026
The Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of computing professionals, announced that all publications and related artifacts in the ACM Digital Library will become freely available to everyone starting January 2026. Authors will retain full copyright to their published work under the new arrangement, and A … ⌘ Read more
Google Releases Gemini 3 Flash, Promising Improved Intelligence and Efficiency
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google began its transition to Gemini 3 a few weeks ago with the launch of the Pro model, and the arrival of Gemini 3 Flash kicks it into high gear. The new, faster Gemini 3 model is coming to the Gemini app and search, and developers will be able to access it immed … ⌘ Read more
Breach At South Korea’s Equivalent of Amazon Exposed Data of Almost Every Adult
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: The alleged perpetrator had improper access to virtually every South Korean adult’s personal information: names, phone numbers and even the keycode to enter residential buildings. It was one of the biggest data breaches of recent years and it has sent the … ⌘ Read more
SoundCloud Confirms Breach After Member Data Stolen, VPN Access Disrupted
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Audio streaming platform SoundCloud has confirmed that outages and VPN connection issues over the past few days were caused by a security breach in which threat actors stole a database containing user information. The disclosure follows widespread reports over the past four … ⌘ Read more
Like Australia, Denmark Plans to Severely Restrict Social Media Use for Teenagers
“As Australia began enforcing a world-first social media ban for children under 16 years old this week, Denmark is planning to follow its lead,” reports the Associated Press, “and severely restrict social media access for young people.”
The Danish government announced last month that it had secured an agreement b … ⌘ Read more
The Data Breach That Hit Two-Thirds of a Country
Online retailer Coupang, often called South Korea’s Amazon, is dealing with the fallout from a breach that exposed the personal information of more than 33 million accounts – roughly two-thirds of the country’s population – after a former contractor allegedly used credentials that remained active months after his departure to access customer data through the company’s overseas … ⌘ Read more
97% of Buildings On Earth 3D-Mapped
Longtime Slashdot reader Gilmoure shares a report from Nature: Scientists have produced the most detailed 3D map of almost all buildings in the world. The map, called GlobalBuildingAtlas, combines satellite imagery and machine learning to generate 3D models for 97% of buildings on Earth. The dataset, published in the open-access journal Earth System Science Data on December 1, covers 2.75 billion buildin … ⌘ Read more
Opera Wants You To Pay $20 a Month For Its AI Browser
Opera has opened its AI-powered browser Neon to the public after a couple of months of testing, and anyone interested in trying it will need to pay $19.90 per month. The Norway-based company first unveiled Neon in May and launched it in early access to select users in October. Like Perplexity’s Comet, OpenAI’s Atlas, and The Browser Company’s Dia, Neon bakes an AI chat … ⌘ Read more
India Proposes Charging OpenAI, Google For Training AI On Copyrighted Content
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On Tuesday, India’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade released a proposed framework that would give AI companies access to all copyrighted works for training in exchange for paying royalties to a new collecting body composed of rights-holding organ … ⌘ Read more
Australia’s social media ban faces challenges and criticism on day one
As Australian teenagers lose access to social media, observers say there are still many unknown questions about the ban, which came into force on 10 December ⌘ Read more
Climate crisis threatens disabled Australians’ access to nature
From bushfires and decreasing air quality to flooding and erosion, climate change is threatening our relationship with nature, and people with disability are being disproportionately impacted. ⌘ Read more
Day one of the social media ban sees some under-16s retain access
It’s day one of the social media ban, but dozens of parents have told the ABC their children have already been able to get around the restrictions. ⌘ Read more
Millions of Australian Teens Lose Access To Social Media As Ban Takes Effect
Australia’s world-first ban blocking under-16s from major social platforms has come into effect. The BBC is live reporting the reactions “both from within Australia and outside it.” From the report: I’ve been speaking to 12-year-old Paloma, who lives in Sydney and says she is “sad” about the ban. She spends between 30 minu … ⌘ Read more
Residents wait for only access road to bushfire-ravaged town to reopen
Residents and shack owners are waiting to assess the damage to properties at Dolphin Sands on Tasmania’s east coast, were police say 19 homes have been destroyed. ⌘ Read more
Firefox 146 Now Available With Native Fractional Scaling On Wayland
Firefox 146 has been released with native fractional scaling support on Wayland – finally giving Linux users crisp UI rendering. Other new additions include GPU process improvements on macOS, developer-focused CSS features, and broader access to Firefox Labs. Phoronix reports: Firefox 146 also now makes Firefox Labs available to all users, … ⌘ Read more
Gearing up for the school holidays? Here’s how to survive them without social media
These school holidays, children under 16 will find themselves with less social media access as a ban comes into place. We asked the experts how parents can best support their kids with the transition. ⌘ Read more