Fan Fiction Website AO3 Exits Beta After 17 Years
Archive of Our Own (AO3) is officially dropping its “beta” label after 17 years. The Organization for Transformative Works, the nonprofit behind the fanfiction site, said the site will keep evolving with new improvements even though it’s no longer technically in beta.

“As the AO3 software has been stable for a long time, the change is mostly cosmetic and does not indicate th … ⌘ Read more

Tech Companies Are Trying To Neuter Colorado’s Landmark Right-to-Repair Law
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Today at a hearing of the Colorado Senate Business, Labor, and Technology committee, lawmakers voted unanimously to move Colorado state bill SB26-090 – titled Exempt Critical Infrastructure from Right to Repair – out of committee and into the state senate and house for a vote. … ⌘ Read more

College Student, Cat Meme Helped Crack Massive Botnet Case
The Wall Street Journal shares the “wild behind-the-scenes story” of how the world’s largest and most destructive botnet was uncovered and taken down, writes Slashdot reader sturgeon. “At times, the network known as Kimwolf included more than a million compromised home Android devices and digital photo frames – enough DDoS firepower to disrupt internet traffic … ⌘ Read more

Penalties Stack Up As AI Spreads Through the Legal System
Tony Isaac shares a report from NPR: When it comes to using AI, it seems some lawyers just can’t help themselves. Last year saw a rapid increase in court sanctions against attorneys for filing briefs containing errors generated by artificial intelligence tools. The most prominent case was that of the lawyers for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who were fined $3,000 … ⌘ Read more

Half of Planned US Data Center Builds Have Been Delayed or Canceled
Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, nearly half of planned U.S. data center projects are being delayed or canceled. “One major reason behind these setbacks is the availability of key electrical components – such as transformers, switchgear, and batteries – that are used both at data center sites and outside of them, … ⌘ Read more

Perplexity’s ‘Incognito Mode’ Is a ‘Sham,’ Lawsuit Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity’s AI search engine encourages users to go deeper with their prompts by engaging in chat sessions that a lawsuit has alleged are often shared in their entirety with Google and Meta without users’ knowledge or consent. “This happened to every user regardless of whether or not they signed up for a Perplexity … ⌘ Read more

Python Blood Could Hold the Secret To Healthy Weight Loss
Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot writes: CU Boulder researchers are reporting that they have discovered an appetite-suppressing compound in python blood that helps the snakes consume enormous meals and go months without eating yet remain metabolically healthy. The findings were published in the journal Natural Metabolism on March 19, 2026.

Pythons can … ⌘ Read more

Renewables Reached Nearly 50% of Global Electricity Capacity Last Year
Renewables made up nearly half of global installed electricity capacity by the end of 2025, “accounting for 85.6% of global capacity expansion,” reports the Register, citing the International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) 2026 Renewable Capacity Statistics report. “Per IRENA’s data, that aforementioned 85.6 percent share of new … ⌘ Read more

EPA Flags Microplastics, Pharmaceuticals As Contaminants In Drinking Water
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Responding to public health concerns about microplastics and pharmaceuticals in the nation’s drinking water, the Trump administration for the first time has placed them on a draft list of contaminants maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA announced the move Thurs … ⌘ Read more

Mount Everest Climbers ‘Poisoned’ By Guides In Insurance Fraud Scheme
schwit1 shares a report from the Kathmandu Post: In Nepal, helicopter rescue on high altitude is, by any measure, a genuine lifesaving operation. At high altitude, where oxygen thins and weather changes without warning, the ability to airlift a stricken trekker to Kathmandu within hours has saved countless lives. But threaded through that … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Acquires Popular Tech-Industry Talk Show TBPN
OpenAI is acquiring tech news podcast TBPN, a fast-growing daily show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays. OpenAI says TBPN will keep its editorial independence, even though the acquisition is widely viewed as part of a broader effort to influence public discourse around AI. CNBC reports: In the announcement, OpenAI CEO of AGI Deployment Fidji Simo wrote that their miss … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Imposes 3.5% Fuel Surcharge For Many Online Merchants
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Amazon will start charging sellers who use its shipping services a 3.5% “fuel and logistics” surcharge later this month, joining the ranks of shipping companies raising prices as the war in Iran pushes oil prices higher. The fees take effect on April 17 for customers of the company’s Fulfillment by Amazon … ⌘ Read more

IBM Teams Up With Arm To Run Arm Workloads On IBM Z Mainframes
IBM and Arm are teaming up to let Arm-based software run on IBM Z mainframes. Network World reports: The two companies plan to work on three things: building virtualization tools so Arm software can run on IBM platforms; making sure Arm applications meet the security and data residency rules that regulated industries must follow; and creating common techn … ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi 4 3GB Launches, Raspberry Pi Prices Go Up Again Due To RAM
AmiMoJo shares a report from Phoronix: Raspberry Pi prices are going up yet again due to the continued memory squeeze on the industry. To help offset the memory prices for some use-cases, Raspberry Pi also announced the introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 3GB model at $83 to help fill the void between the 2GB and 4GB options.

The … ⌘ Read more

Google Announces Gemma 4 Open AI Models, Switches To Apache 2.0 License
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google’s Gemini AI models have improved by leaps and bounds over the past year, but you can only use Gemini on Google’s terms. The company’s Gemma open-weight models have provided more freedom, but Gemma 3, which launched over a year ago, is getting a bit long in the tooth. Starti … ⌘ Read more

Artemis II Astronauts Have ‘Two Microsoft Outlooks’ and Neither Work
Even on NASA’s Artemis II mission around the moon, astronauts apparently still have to deal with broken Microsoft Outlook. One of the crew members, Reid Wiseman, jokingly reported that he had “two Microsoft Outlooks” and neither worked. 404 Media reports: On April 1, four astronauts from the U.S. and Canada embarked on a 10-day flight to … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Rolls Out Its Fix For PC Gaming’s ‘Compiling Shaders’ Wait Times
Nvidia has begun rolling out a beta feature that automatically compiles game shaders while a PC is idle. It won’t eliminate shader compilation the first time a game runs, but Ars Technica reports it could help reduce those repeated wait times. From the report: Nvidia’s new Auto Shader Compilation system promises to “reduc[e] the frequ … ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% In March
Valve’s March 2026 Steam Survey shows Linux gaming usage jumping to a record 5.33% share – more than double macOS’s 2.35%. Phoronix reports: Steam on Linux was never above 5% and easily an all-time high for the Linux gaming marketshare, especially in absolute numbers. It was a massive 3.1% spike in March while macOS also jumped surprisingly by 1.19% to 2.35%. The Steam Survey … ⌘ Read more

AMD Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” Enjoys Great Performance Gains With Latest Linux Software
With the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out in three weeks, I have been re-testing a number of different devices on this newest Ubuntu release. One of the most significant improvements to note was when running the Framework Desktop with Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” and quantifying the performance gains of the Radeon 8060S Graphics since launch last year. Here’s a look at how the Vulkan and OpenGL performance has evolved for the Ryz … ⌘ Read more

AMD Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” Enjoys Great Performance Gains With Latest Linux Software
With the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out in three weeks, I have been re-testing a number of different devices on this newest Ubuntu release. One of the most significant improvements to note was when running the Framework Desktop with Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” and quantifying the performance gains of the Radeon 8060S Graphics since launch last year. Here’s a look at how the Vulkan and OpenGL performance has evolved for the Ryz … ⌘ Read more

Group Pushing Age Verification Requirements For AI Sneakily Backed By OpenAI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: OpenAI hasn’t been shy about spending money lobbying for favorable laws and regulations. But when it comes to its involvement with child safety advocacy groups, the company has apparently decided it’s best to stay in the shadows – even if it means hiding from the people ac … ⌘ Read more

Rapid Snow Melt-Off In American West Stuns Scientists
Scientists say extreme March heat caused an unusually rapid collapse of snowpack across the American West that’s leaving major basins at record or near-record lows. “This year is on a whole other level,” said Dr Russ Schumacher, a Colorado State University climatologist. “Seeing this year so far below any of the other years we have data for is very concerning.” The Gu … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Files To Go Public
Reuters reports that SpaceX has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO, reportedly targeting a valuation above $1.75 trillion. Reuters reports: SpaceX puts more rockets in space than any other company and promises a chance to invest in humanity’s return to the moon and attempt to colonize Mars. The company aspires to put artificial intelligence data centers in space, while running a lucrative satellite communications system that o … ⌘ Read more

NASA Launches Artemis II Astronauts Around the Moon
NASA’s Artemis II mission has launched four astronauts around the moon and back, marking humanity’s first crewed lunar voyage in 53 years and the first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) with people on board. Five minutes into the flight, Commander Reid Wiseman saw the team’s target: “We have a beautiful moonrise, we’re headed right at it … ⌘ Read more

UFC-Que Choisir Takes Ubisoft To French Court Over the Crew Shutdown
Longtime Slashdot reader Elektroschock writes: When Ubisoft pulled the plug on The Crew’s servers without warning, players were left with a worthless game they’d already paid for. Now, consumer watchdog UFC-Que Choisir is fighting back, demanding gamers’ right to play regardless of publisher whims. Supported by the “Stop Killing Games” mov … ⌘ Read more

AI Can Clone Open-Source Software In Minutes
ZipNada writes: Two software researchers recently demonstrated how modern AI tools can reproduce entire open-source projects, creating proprietary versions that appear both functional and legally distinct. The partly-satirical demonstration shows how quickly artificial intelligence can blur long-standing boundaries between coding innovation, copyright law, and the open-source principles … ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Announces EmDash As Open-Source ‘Spiritual Successor’ To WordPress
In classic Cloudflare fashion, the CDN provider used April Fool’s Day to unveil an actual, “not a joke” product. Today, the company announced EmDash – an open-source “spiritual successor” to WordPress that aims to solve plugin security. Phoronix reports: With the help of AI coding agents, Cloudflare engineers have been re … ⌘ Read more

Sweden Swaps Screens For Books In the Classroom
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In 2023, the Swedish government announced that the country’s schools would be going back to basics, emphasizing skills such as reading and writing, particularly in early grades. After mostly being sidelined, physical books are now being reintroduced into classrooms, and students are learning to write the old-fashioned way: by … ⌘ Read more

OnlyOffice Suspends Nextcloud Partnership For Forking Its Project Without Approval
darwinmac writes: OnlyOffice has suspended its partnership with Nextcloud after the latter forked its editors into a new project called Euro-Office, according to a report from Neowin. The move comes just days after Nextcloud and partners like IONOS announced the fork as part of a broader push for European digit … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Issues Copyright Takedown Requests To Remove 8,000+ Copies of Claude Code Source Code
Anthropic is using copyright takedown notices to try to contain an accidental leak of the underlying instructions for its Claude Code AI agent. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Anthropic representatives had used a copyright takedown request to force the removal of more than 8, … ⌘ Read more

CEO of America’s Largest Public Hospital System Says He’s Ready To Replace Radiologists With AI
Mitchell H. Katz, MD, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, said hospitals could already replace many radiologists with AI for some imaging tasks – if regulators allowed it. He argued the technology presents an opportunity to simultaneously cut costs and expand access. Radiology Busin … ⌘ Read more

Robotaxi Outage In China Leaves Passengers Stranded On Highways
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: An unknown technical problem caused a number of robotaxis owned by the Chinese tech giant Baidu to freeze on Tuesday in the middle of traffic, trapping some passengers in the vehicles for more than an hour. In Wuhan, a city in central China where Baidu has deployed hundreds of its Apollo Go self-drivin … ⌘ Read more

Startup Pitches ‘Brainless Clones’ To Serve the Role of Backup Human Bodies
MIT Technology Review discovered that startup R3 Bio has pitched an ethically and scientifically explosive long-term vision beyond its public work on non-sentient monkey “organ sacks”: creating human “brainless clones” or replacement bodies for organs as part of an extreme life-extension agenda. From the report: Imagine it … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Starlink Satellite Suffers Mysterious ‘Anomaly’ In Orbit
A Starlink satellite broke apart in orbit after suffering an unexplained “anomaly,” apparently due to an “internal energetic source” rather than a collision. “The incident appears to have created some debris, with fragments likely to fall to Earth over the next few weeks,” reports Scientific American. From the report: The satellite lost communication … ⌘ Read more

Russia Goes After VPNs As ‘Great Crackdown’ Gathers Pace
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Russia is going to further clamp down Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which are used by millions of Russians to get around internet controls and censorship, Russia’s digital minister said. In what has been cast by diplomats as Russia’s “great crackdown,” the authorities have repeatedly blocked mobile internet and … ⌘ Read more

Volvo Shifts Polestar 3 Production Entirely To the US
Polestar and Volvo are ending Polestar 3 production in Chengdu, China, and consolidating all output of the electric SUV at Volvo’s plant in South Carolina. “The move to consolidate global Polestar 3 production in Charleston help[s] generate efficiencies for both companies, whilst also underscoring our confidence in the plant and the role it plays in our manufacturin … ⌘ Read more

Oracle Cuts Thousands of Jobs Across Sales, Engineering, Security
bobthesungeek76036 shares a report from the Register: Oracle laid off thousands of employees on Tuesday as it ramps spending on AI infrastructure projects internally and with major technology partners. The layoffs were carried out via email, according to copies of the message viewed by Business Insider. The email told affected workers they … ⌘ Read more

Top Brussels Official Urges Europeans To Work From Home, Drive Less As Energy Crisis Deepens
A top EU official is urging Europeans to work from home, drive less, and cut air travel as the bloc braces for a prolonged energy crisis triggered by the Gulf conflict. The European Commission is also pushing member states to accelerate renewables and other energy-security measures as oil and … ⌘ Read more

Google Now Lets You Change Your Gmail Address
Google is rolling out a feature in the U.S. that lets some users change their Gmail address without creating a new account or losing their data. TechCrunch reports: Users who have access to this feature can go to their Google Account settings, navigate to Personal info > Email > Google Account email option. Tap on the “Change Google Account email” button to start the process of chang … ⌘ Read more

Global Ban On Digital Duties Expires After Stalled Talks At WTO Meeting
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A global ban on taxing digital streaming and downloads across national borders expired on Monday, after members of the World Trade Organization concluded an annual meeting without agreeing to extend it. U.S. representatives had pushed to extend the ban, which prevents the … ⌘ Read more

Australia Readies Social Media Court Action Citing Teen Ban Breaches
Australia is preparing possible court action against major social media platforms that are failing to enforce the country’s social media ban on under-16s. “Three months after the ban came into effect, the eSafety Commissioner said it was probing Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok for possible breaches of t … ⌘ Read more

Claude Code’s Source Code Leaks Via npm Source Maps
Grady Martin writes: A security researcher has leaked a complete repository of source code for Anthropic’s flagship command-line tool. The file listing was exposed via a Node Package Manager (npm) mapping, with every target publicly accessible on a Cloudflare R2 storage bucket. $ du -hs .35M .$ find -type f | sed ’s/^.*\.//’ | sort | uniq -c | sort -bVr 1332 ts … ⌘ Read more

Euro-Office Wants To Replace Google Docs and Microsoft Office
Euro-Office is a new open-source project supported by several European companies that aims to offer a “truly open, transparent and sovereign solution for collaborate document editing,” using OnlyOffice as a starting point. The project is positioned around European digital independence and familiar Office-style editing, though it has already drawn pushback f … ⌘ Read more

US Paves Way For Private Assets To Be Included In 401(k) Retirement Plans
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Trump administration on Monday issued a long-awaited proposed rule to open up retirement plans to alternative assets, paving the way for private equity and cryptocurrencies to be added to 401(k) accounts. The measure, announced by the U.S. Department of Labor, is intended to eas … ⌘ Read more

Quadratic Gravity Theory Reshapes Quantum View of Big Bang
Researchers at the University of Waterloo say a new “quadratic quantum gravity” framework could explain the universe’s rapid early expansion without adding extra ingredients to Einstein’s theory by hand. The idea is especially notable because it makes testable predictions, including a minimum level of primordial gravitational waves that future experiments … ⌘ Read more

The Integrated ROCm Story For Ubuntu 26.04 Still Playing Out
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is just three weeks out for release with many great features in tow from the GNOME 50 desktop to the very leading-edge Linux 7.0 kernel and many other package updates. One feature that many had been looking forward to is Canonical’s plans to ship AMD ROCm directly in the Ubuntu archive for a much cleaner experience for those wanting to make use of AMD’s open-source GPU compute stack. As a common question in recent weeks from readers, it … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Shocked To Find Lab Gloves May Be Skewing Microplastics Data
Researchers found that common nitrile and latex lab gloves can shed stearate particles that closely resemble microplastics, potentially “increasing the risk of false positives when studying microplastic pollution,” reports ScienceDaily.

“We may be overestimating microplastics, but there should be none,” said Anne McNeil, senior … ⌘ Read more

AI Data Centers Can Warm Surrounding Areas By Up To 9.1C
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: Andrea Marinoni at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues saw that the amount of energy needed to run a data centre had been steadily increasing of late and was likely to “explode” in the coming years, so wanted to quantify the impact. The researchers took satellite measurements of land su … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Plans To Build 100% Native Apps For Windows 11
Microsoft is reportedly shifting Windows 11 app development back toward fully native apps. Rudy Huyn, a Partner Architect at Microsoft working on the Store and File Explorer, said in a post on X that he is building a new team to work on Windows apps. “You don’t need prior experience with the platform.. what matters most is strong product thinking and a deep focus … ⌘ Read more

After 16 Years and $8 Billion, the Military’s New GPS Software Still Doesn’t Work
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last year, just before the Fourth of July holiday, the US Space Force officially took ownership of a new operating system for the GPS navigation network, raising hopes that one of the military’s most troubled space programs might finally bear fruit. The GPS Next- … ⌘ Read more