High Altitude Cooking Instructions
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Up Next for Arduino After Qualcomm Acquisition: High-Performance Computing
Even after its acquisition by Qualcomm, the EFF believes Arduino “isn’t imposing any new bans on tinkering with or reverse engineering Arduino boards,” (according to Mitch Stoltz, EFF director for competition and IP litigation). While Adafruit’s managing editor Phillip Torrone had claimed to 36,000+ followers on LinkedIn that A … ⌘ Read more

Waymo Updates Vehicles to Better Handle Power Outages - But Still Faces Criticism
Waymo explained this week that its self-driving car technology is already “designed to handle dark traffic signals,” and successfully handled over 7,000 last Saturday during San Francisco’s long power outage, properly treating those intersections as four-way stops. But while during the long outage their cars some … ⌘ Read more

Free Software Foundation Receives ‘Historic’ Donations Worth Nearly $900K - in Monero
On Wednesday (Christmas Eve), the Free Software Foundation announced it had received two major contributions totaling around $900,000 USD — in the cryptocurrency Monero.

The two donations “are among some of the largest private gifts ever made to the organization,” the FSF said in a statement.

“The donors wi … ⌘ Read more

Apple’s App Course Runs $20,000 a Student. Is It Really Worth It?
Apple’s Developer Academy in Detroit has spent roughly $30 million over four years training hundreds of people to build iPhone apps, but not everyone lands coding jobs right away, according to a WIRED story published this week.

The program launched in 2021 as part of Apple’s $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and costs an esti … ⌘ Read more

Apple’s App Course Runs $20,000 a Student. Is It Really Worth It?
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Two years ago, Lizmary Fernandez took a detour from studying to be an immigration attorney to join a free Apple course for making iPhone apps. The Apple Developer Academy in Detroit launched as part of the company’s $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and aims to expand oppor … ⌘ Read more

Google Launches CO2 Battery Plants for Long-Duration Storage of Renewable Energy
In July Google promised to scale the CO2 batteries of “Energy Dome” as a long-duration energy storage solution. Now IEEE Spectrum visits its first plant in Sardinia, where 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide power a turbine generating 20 MW over 10 hours — storing “large amounts of excess renewable energy until it’s … ⌘ Read more

Trump Admin to Hire 1,000 for New ‘Tech Force’ to Build AI Infrastructure
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:

The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a new initiative dubbed the “U.S. Tech Force,” comprising about 1,000 engineers and other specialists who will work on artificial intelligence infrastructure and other technology projects throughout the federal government.

Participants wi … ⌘ Read more

Is America’s Tech Industry Already Facing a Recession?
America’s unemployment rate for tech jobs rose to 4% in November, and “has been steadily rising since May,” reports the Washington Post (citing data from the IT training/certifications company CompTIA).

Between October and November, the number of technology workers across different industries fell 134,000, while the number of people working in the tech industry decline … ⌘ Read more

James Webb Space Telescope Confirms 1st ‘Runaway’ Supermassive Black Hole
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second). That not … ⌘ Read more

FTC: Instacart To Refund $60M Over Deceptive Subscription Tactics
alternative_right writes: Grocery delivery service Instacart will refund $60 million to settle FTC claims that it misled customers with false advertising and unlawfully enrolled them in paid subscriptions. Instacart partners with over 1,800 retailers to provide online shopping, delivery, and pickup services from nearly 100,000 stores across Nort … ⌘ Read more

2025 Was the Beginning of the End of the TV Brightness War
The television industry’s brightness war may have hit its inflection point in 2025, the year TCL and Hisense released the first consumer TVs capable of 5,000 nits under specific settings – a figure that would have seemed absurd not long ago when manufacturers struggled to reach 2,000 nits. LG introduced Primary RGB Tandem OLED technology, moving fr … ⌘ Read more

Mass Hacking of IP Cameras Leave Koreans Feeling Vulnerable in Homes, Businesses
Hackers breached approximately 120,000 IP cameras across South Korea and allegedly sold footage captured from private homes, gynecology offices, breastfeeding rooms and massage parlors to an overseas pornography website, prompting an interagency government task force to announce sweeping reforms on December 7.

Polic … ⌘ Read more

World-Beating 55,000% Surge in India AI Stock Fuels Bubble Fears
The world’s best-performing stock is turning into a cautionary tale for investors chasing outsized returns from the AI boom. From a report: Little-known until recently even within its home market of India, RRP Semiconductor Ltd. became a social-media obsession as its shares surged more than 55,000% in the 20 months through Dec. 17 – by far the big … ⌘ Read more

How We Ingest Plastic Chemicals While Consuming Food
A comprehensive database built by scientists in Switzerland and Norway has catalogued 16,000 chemicals linked to plastic materials, and the findings paint a troubling picture of what Americans are actually eating when they prepare food in their kitchens. Of those 16,000 chemicals, more than 5,400 are considered hazardous to human health by government and industry sta … ⌘ Read more

Racks of AI Chips Are Too Damn Heavy
The weight of AI server racks has reached a point where legacy data centers cannot accommodate them even with significant retrofitting efforts, The Verge reports. Chris Brown, chief technical officer at Uptime Institute, said most retrofitting attempts would require “bulldozing the building and starting over from scratch.”

AI racks are projected to reach 5,000 pounds compared to the 400 to 600 pounds … ⌘ Read more

US Tech Force Aims To Recruit 1,000 Technologists
The Trump administration announced Monday the United States Tech Force, a new program to recruit around 1,000 technologists for two-year government stints starting as soon as March – less than a year after dismantling several federal technology teams and driving thousands of tech workers out of their jobs.

The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers an … ⌘ Read more

Firefox Survey Finds Only 16% Feel In Control of Their Privacy Choices Online
Choosing your browser “is one of the most important digital decisions you can make, shaping how you experience the web, protect your data, and express yourself online,” says the Firefox blog. They’ve urged readers to “take a stand for independence and control in your digital life.”

But they also recently polled 8,000 adu … ⌘ Read more

The Immediate Post-College Transition and its Role in Socioeconomic Earnings Gaps
A new study of roughly 80,000 bachelor’s degree recipients from a large urban public college system finds that characteristics of a graduate’s first job can explain nearly two-thirds of the otherwise-unexplained earnings gap between students from low-income and high-income families five years after graduation.

T … ⌘ Read more

Over 10,000 Docker Hub Images Found Leaking Credentials, Auth Keys
joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: More than 10,000 Docker Hub container images expose data that should be protected, including live credentials to production systems, CI/CD databases, or LLM model keys. After scanning container images uploaded to Docker Hub in November, security researchers at threat intelligence company Flare foun … ⌘ Read more

We may finally know what a healthy gut microbiome looks like
Our gut microbiome has a huge influence on our overall health, but we haven’t been clear on the specific bacteria with good versus bad effects. Now, a study of more than 34,000 people is shedding light on what a healthy gut microbiome actually consists of ⌘ Read more

Oldest evidence of fire-lighting comes from early humans in Britain
An excavation in Suffolk, UK, has uncovered pyrite and flint that appear to have been used by ancient humans to light fires some 400,000 years ago ⌘ Read more

Christmas cards remind prisoners they are ‘not forgotten’ over the holidays
Two Adelaide women have made it their mission to collect 2,000 Christmas cards for prisoners who’ll spend this year’s festive season behind bars. ⌘ Read more

Thousands forced to flee as Thailand-Cambodia border clashes spread
More than 140,000 civilians have been evacuated from border regions since fresh fighting between Thailand and Cambodia began on Sunday, officials said. ⌘ Read more

India’s Aviation Crisis Is All About Too Big to Tame
India’s dominant airline IndiGo has cancelled roughly 3,000 flights since last week after new pilot fatigue regulations collided with technical issues and the seasonal schedule shift, stranding more than half a million passengers and forcing aviation authorities to reverse course on the safety rules they had just implemented.

InterGlobe Aviation, IndiGo’s parent company, … ⌘ Read more

Senators accuse telcos of Triple Zero ‘cover-up’ over system failures
Almost 100,000 Samsung phones still can’t reliably call Triple Zero, and the inquiry into the system has revealed dysfunctional communications between telcos, regulators and the federal government. ⌘ Read more

Amazon Pitches AI Tools as Co-Workers While Axing Jobs
Amazon used its annual re:Invent cloud conference in Las Vegas to pitch a vision of the workplace where AI agents serve not as tools but as “co-workers” and “teammates,” even as the company proceeds with eliminating roughly 14,000 corporate jobs in its second major workforce reduction in recent years.

AWS CEO Matt Garman predicted on stage that autonomous “frontier agent … ⌘ Read more

50,000 new apprenticeships promised in youth employment push
Funding will be used to help employ young people in sectors including AI, hospitality and engineering. ⌘ Read more

50,000 new apprenticeships promised to tackle youth unemployment
Funding will be used to help employ young people in sectors including AI, hospitality and engineering. ⌘ Read more

50,000 new apprenticeships promised in youth employment push
Funding will be used to help employ young people in sectors including AI, hospitality and engineering. ⌘ Read more

Woman who blackmailed Son Heung-min gets four years in jail
The woman claiming she was carrying the ex-Tottenham captain’s child and extorted $200,000 from him. ⌘ Read more

College Students Flock To A New Major: AI
AI is the second-largest major at M.I.T. after computer science, reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) Though that includes students interested in applying AI in biology and health care — it’s just the beginning:

This semester, more than 3,000 students enrolled in a new college of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
At the Unive … ⌘ Read more

Government promises 50,000 new apprenticeships in youth employment push
Funding will be used to help employ young people in sectors including AI, hospitality and engineering. ⌘ Read more

Young people to lose benefits if they turn down work, says minister
Pat McFadden says they would need a “good reason” to decline one of 55,000 new work placements. ⌘ Read more

Young people on benefits to be offered construction and hospitality work
The government says it will fund training and work experience for 350,000 not in work or education. ⌘ Read more

Young people on benefits to be offered construction and hospitality work
The government says it will fund training and work experience for 350,000 not in work or education. ⌘ Read more

Prime minister’s office approved Wells’s almost-$100,000 flights
The furore over Communications Minister Anika Wells’s expenses continues, with just three days until the government’s much-anticipated social media ban for under 16s comes into force. ⌘ Read more

Beloved by Instagrammers, walk closed to preserve paperbark forest
Bush Heritage Australia says it is still considering how to safely reopen the walk, which prior to closure was being visited by 100,000 people a year. ⌘ Read more

Porridge is on the menu but budget politics is about to get spicier
How does a treasurer tell households the government will no longer continue a $300 energy rebate when it’s happy to blow $100,000 on three flights? ⌘ Read more

Officer’s claim about search for woman killed by partner tested at watchdog hearing
A Law Enforcement Conduct Commission is examining why it took police officers nearly an hour to respond to a Triple Zero (000) call about an assault which left Lindy Lucena dead at the hands of her partner. ⌘ Read more

Does working from home impact mental health? Here’s what 16,000 people say
Working from home can positively impact the mental health of Australian men and women in different ways, according to a new study of more than 16,000 people. ⌘ Read more

Cricket fanatic crisscrossing Australia on Vespa to attend every Ashes Test
One man, one little yellow Vespa and a 12,000-kilometre road trip to attend every Ashes Test. ⌘ Read more

Victoria to cut 1,000 public service jobs
The job cuts come after top bureaucrat Helen Silver was given the task of streamlining Victoria’s public service. ⌘ Read more

Was your car one of 40,000 damaged in hailstorms? Here’s what to do next
Insurers are urging those with damaged cars to make their claims as soon as possible in the aftermath of hailstorms across Queensland and parts of New South Wales. ⌘ Read more

Fresh probe into Lisa Lynn’s death stalls over $9,000 bill, family says
The family of the late first wife of High Country killer Greg Lynn says a fresh investigation into her death has stalled because police won’t pay for an expert report. ⌘ Read more

Brisbane block sizes slashed to 120 square metres under proposed changes
The proposed changes, including to block sizes and car parking requirements, are intended to add an additional 6,000 homes by 2032. ⌘ Read more

Tasmania to pay $650,000 for Foo Fighters concert in Launceston
Tasmania’s “biggest concert ever” will take place at Launceston’s York Park next month when American rock band Foo Fighters play their only Australian show. ⌘ Read more

Ancient human artefacts found near caves in Arabian desert
Today, the deserts of the Arabian peninsula are inhospitable – but 100,000 years ago, the area was full of animals and ancient humans ⌘ Read more

New NAPLAN results released as parents warned against raw comparisons
Parents can check the latest NAPLAN scores for 10,000 schools across the country on the MySchool website. ⌘ Read more

Canberra man who performed Nazi salute jailed over road rage incidents
A Canberra man has been jailed over a string of road rage attacks committed “for trivial reasons”, and fined $10,000 for performing a Nazi salute outside a Queensland synagogue. ⌘ Read more