SpaceX Acquires xAI in $1.25 Trillion All-Stock Deal
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has acquired his AI startup xAI in an all-stock deal that values the combined entity at $1.25 trillion, ahead of what would be the largest initial public offering in history. SpaceX pegged its own valuation at $1 trillion – a markup from the $800 billion it commanded in a December secondary stock sale – and priced xAI at $250 billion based on a recent $20 … ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court To Decide How 1988 Videotape Privacy Law Applies To Online Video
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court is taking up a case on whether Paramount violated the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by disclosing a user’s viewing history to Facebook. The case, Michael Salazar v. Paramount Global, hinges on the law’s definition of the word “consumer.” … ⌘ Read more

Has a bit of a long history story behind this, where last year at work we were reading this book called Engineering a Safer World and initially came across a service called Speech Reply that allowed me to upload a PDF copy of the book and start to read it, but unfortunately, the free trial right now before I can finish reading it turns out that Speech Reply service cost a whopping US$30 a month and expected me to pay a full year upfront, which was well over US$300 just for one fucking book! So I sent their sales and support staff a message kindly asking if it were possible to just pay for the audio transcription of just a single book or to change to a monthly subscription fee, to which they refused, so basically in the end I got very angry and told them to go fuck themselves and built my own service. A year later here we are :-)

The Fastest Human Spaceflight Mission In History Crawls Closer To Liftoff
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad. The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle … ⌘ 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

Dell Tells Staff To Get Ready For the ‘Biggest Transformation in Company History’
Dell’s chief operating officer Jeff Clarke has informed employees that the company is preparing for what he calls the “biggest transformation in company history,” a sweeping systems overhaul scheduled to launch on May 3 that will standardize processes across nearly every major division.

The initiative, dubbed One D … ⌘ Read more

How Long Does It Take to Fix Linux Kernel Bugs?
An anonymous reader shared this report from It’s FOSS:

Jenny Guanni Qu, a researcher at [VC fund] Pebblebed, analyzed 125,183 bugs from 20 years of Linux kernel development history (on Git). The findings show that the average bug takes 2.1 years to find. [Though the median is 0.7 years, with the average possibly skewed by “outliers” discovered after years of hiding.] The longes … ⌘ Read more

That Bell Labs ‘Unix’ Tape from 1974: From a Closet to Computing History
Remember that re-discovered computer tape with one of the earliest versions of Unix from the early 1970s? This week several local news outlets in Utah reported on the find, with KSL creating a video report with shots of the tape arriving at Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum, the closet where it was found, and even its handwrit … ⌘ Read more

Medical Evacuation from Space Station Next Week for Astronaut in Stable Condition
It will be the first medical evacuation from the International space station in its 25-year history. The Guardian reports:

An astronaut in the orbital laboratory reportedly fell ill with a “serious” but undisclosed issue. Nasa also had to cancel its first spacewalk of the year… The agency did not identify th … ⌘ Read more

Stack Overflow Went From 200,000 Monthly Questions To Nearly Zero
Stack Overflow’s monthly question volume has collapsed about 300 – levels not seen since the site launched in 2009, according to data from the Stack Overflow Data Explorer that tracks the platform’s activity over its sixteen-year history.

Questions peaked around 2014 at roughly 200,000 per month, then began a gradual decline that acceler … ⌘ 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

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

Bell Labs ‘Unix’ Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball
Archive.org now has a page with “the raw analog waveform and the reconstructed digital tape image (analog.tap), read at the Computer History Museum’s Shustek Research Archives on 19 December 2025 by Al Kossow using a modified tape reader and analyzed with Len Shustek’s readtape tool.” A Berlin-based retrocomputing enthusiast has created a page with … ⌘ Read more

‘How Lina Khan Killed iRobot’
iRobot, the Bedford, Massachusetts-based company that brought the Roomba vacuum cleaner into American homes over its 35-year history, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday and will be acquired by Picea, its Chinese contract manufacturer that also produces competing household devices.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board placed blame for the company’s demise on the Federal Trade Commission under Chair Lina Khan, which oppos … ⌘ Read more

Volkswagen To End Production At German Plant, a First In Company History
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The last vehicle will roll off the assembly line at Volkswagen’s plant in Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday, marking the first time in the automaker’s 88-year history that it has closed a plant in its home country. Volkswagen warned of potential production cuts last year, as i … ⌘ Read more

US Could Ask Foreign Tourists For Five-Year Social Media History Before Entry
Tourists from dozens of countries including the UK could be asked to provide a five-year social media history as a condition of entry to the United States, under a new proposal unveiled by American officials. From a report: The new condition would affect people from dozens of countries who are eligible to visit the US for … ⌘ Read more

A Kim Kardashian deepfake appears in new exhibition exploring art and AI
Can you tell what’s real and what’s fake online? Data Dreams: Art and AI at the MCA looks at truth, art and history in the AI age. ⌘ Read more

A rare brain illness couldn’t stop Milly from making country netball history
A rare brain illness left Milly Brock unable to walk or speak, but eight months later, she was back leading her regional netball club on grand final day. ⌘ Read more

How Peter Jackson fought for his Middle-earth dream, armed with a VHS tape
Peter Jackson’s life wouldn’t be the same after that red carpet event on December 10, 2001, but it’s fair to say cinema, and New Zealand, wouldn’t be the same either. ⌘ Read more

Ashes history offers little statistical hope for England - Zaltzman
Comedian and BBC cricket statistician Andy Zaltzman looks at how stats suggest England have little chance of winning this Ashes - but also offers some straws to clutch. ⌘ Read more

Idaho Lab Produces World’s First Molten Salt Fuel for Nuclear Reactors
America’s Energy Department runs a research lab in Idaho — and this week announced successful results from a ground-breaking experiment. “This is the first time in history that chloride-based molten salt fuel has been produced for a fast reactor,” says Bill Phillips, the lab’s technical lead for salt synthesis. He calls it “a major … ⌘ Read more

Trump makes history hosting Kennedy Center Honors — here’s how we got here
Donald Trump has made the Kennedy Center a touchstone in a broader attack against what he claims is “woke”, anti-American culture. ⌘ Read more

Quiz: How well do you remember your December history?
From the world’s first traffic lights to a Sesame Street legend — how well will you do on our history quiz? ⌘ Read more

How one man’s method became the death penalty standard
On this day in history, the US carried out its first execution by lethal injection — a method thought up by one doctor. ⌘ Read more

How a gold toilet became a symbol of Ukraine’s endemic corruption
Ukraine has a history of corruption issues, but the latest allegations include close confidants of the president and many people want answers from Volodymyr Zelenskyy. ⌘ Read more

‘No-one expected what we found’: Martian discovery got us closer to finding life
Scientists said at the time that the flow of water would have filled multiple swimming pools. ⌘ Read more

How Oscar Piastri went from ‘dead last’ to the brink of F1 glory
After finishing dead last in his first ever race, Oscar Piastri has risen from humble beginnings to the brink of Australian sporting history as he chases his first F1 world title. ⌘ Read more

RoboCop Statue Rises In Detroit
alternative_right quotes a report from the Guardian: The statue looms and glints at more than 11 feet tall and weighing 3,500 pounds, looking out at the city with, how to put it … a characteristically stern expression? Despite its daunting appearance and history as a crimefighter of last resort, the giant new bronze figure of the movie character RoboCop is being seen as a symbol of hope, drawing fan … ⌘ Read more

Bootleggers, gangsters and a massacre: Why America’s Prohibition backfired
Prohibition was officially repealed on December 5, 1933. But the beginning of its end can be traced back years earlier — to a highly-publicised massacre by firing squad. ⌘ Read more

History made as Wallabies and All Blacks drawn into same World Cup group
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt says he is unlikely to be coaching the All Blacks at the World Cup, as Australia and New Zealand are drawn into the same group. ⌘ Read more

South Africa chase record 359 to beat India
South Africa complete the joint highest chase in the history of one-day internationals in India as they passed a target of 359 to win by four wickets in Naya Raipur. ⌘ Read more

Forming moon may have taken three big impacts early in Earth’s history
Conventionally, the moon is thought to have formed during one big impact, but a three-impact model might make more sense ⌘ Read more

How a gas cloud killed thousands in world’s worst industrial disaster
It started with a cloud of gas in the dead of night, silently submerging the city in a toxic soup. By morning on December 3, 1984, an Indian city awoke to a nightmare. ⌘ Read more

The mostly unsuccessful history of breakaway leagues as R360 postponed
R360’s announcement it is not going to be ready in 2026 brings back memories of previous attempts to set up rebel sporting competitions, almost all of which have failed. ⌘ Read more

A phone call. A manhunt. A gunshot: Inside Pablo Escobar’s last day
More than three decades since his death in a rooftop shootout with police, the legacy of cocaine king Pablo Escobar continues to affect Colombia. ⌘ Read more

‘Spine-tingling’: Strangers find Tasmanian convict connection
A  Victorian tourist has been “blown away” after discovering a connection with a volunteer at the Hobart Penitentiary, with the volunteer noting people seem more open to discussing their convict histories. ⌘ Read more

Archaeologists bring 170yo Aboriginal artefacts to surface in the outback
A stash of Aboriginal artefacts, dating back about 170 years, is unearthed from the red dirt of outback Queensland, bringing history to life for the local Pitta Pitta people. ⌘ Read more

The first ever Ashes Test in Brisbane was ‘disastrous’ for Australia
Australia’s Ashes domination in Brisbane is almost total, with England winless at the Gabba since 1986. It wasn’t always like this though, with the first visit to Brisbane resulting in the heaviest defeat in cricket history. ⌘ Read more

The last man on the moon: Can you ace this week’s history quiz?
From reality TV and heist movie remakes to man’s last step on the moon — how well do you know this week in history? ⌘ Read more

Lions ‘threw the kitchen sink’ but nothing could halt Roos’ perfect season
Creating history by winning consecutive premierships and completing an unbeaten season is just reward for North Melbourne’s boundary-pushing AFLW program. ⌘ Read more

Why tiny Barbados said good by to the royal family
With countries like Australia still debating whether or not the time has come to become a republic, what prompted tiny Barbados with its population of less than 300,000, to take the leap? ⌘ Read more

Kangaroos make history in the books and on the field in flag defence
North Melbourne proves to be ground breakers and history makers as it extend its match-winning streak to 27 games in a comprehensive win over Brisbane. ⌘ Read more

Live: Kangaroos and Lions meet in blockbuster AFLW grand final trilogy
North Melbourne carries a 26-game winning streak into the AFLW grand final in a bid to become the first club in league history to win consecutive premierships. Follow live. ⌘ Read more

Albanese and Haydon have wed in a ceremony that will go down in history
Anthony Albanese and Jodie Haydon can trace their relationship back five years, but the historic nature of their secretly planned wedding at The Lodge runs far deeper. ⌘ Read more

Scientists Think They’ve Solved Why One of History’s Most Advanced Civilizations Vanished
A new study published in Communications Earth & Environment has reconstructed the climate conditions of the ancient Indus River Valley civilization between 3000 and 1000 B.C., finding that four intense droughts – each lasting more than 85 years – likely drove the gradual decline of one of the w … ⌘ Read more

Former premier says Tasmania’s stadium proposal has been ‘poorly’ sold
Peter Gutwein initiated the push for a stadium in Hobart, but he has had to watch the drama unfold from the sidelines. He says rejecting the proposal would be the biggest “lost opportunity” in the state’s history. ⌘ Read more

Australia’s first car was a rust bucket, but it was our rust bucket
The first fully Australian-made car rolled off the Holden production line in Melbourne on this day in 1948. The man who dreamt it up wasn’t there to see it unveiled. ⌘ Read more

AWS Introduces DNS Failover Feature for Its Notoriously Unreliable US East Region
Amazon Web Services has rolled out a DNS resilience feature that allows customers to make domain name system changes within 60 minutes of a service disruption in its US East region, a direct response to the long history of outages at the cloud giant’s most troubled infrastructure.

AWS said customers in regulated i … ⌘ Read more

Discovery of near century-old scrapbooks reveals seaweed secrets
The State Library of WA is running an appeal to save a set of seaweed scrapbooks made nearly 100 years ago by a renowned Kalgoorlie-born naturalist. ⌘ Read more

How decades of flashpoints could see Trump soon attack this nation
Tensions between Donald Trump and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros have been escalating after months of launching lethal air strikes on vessels accused of shipping deadly drugs north to the US. ⌘ Read more