AI Gold Rush is Resurrecting China’s Infamous 72-hour Work Week - in US
The AI boom has revived a workplace philosophy that China’s own regulators cracked down on years ago: the 72-hour work week, known as 996 for its 9am-to-9pm, six-days-a-week cadence. US startups flush with venture capital are now openly advertising it as a feature, not a bug. Rilla, a New York-based AI company that monitors sales reps in … ⌘ Read more
Age Bias is Still the Default at Work But the Data is Turning
A mounting body of research is making it harder for companies to justify what most of them still do – push experienced workers out the door just as they’re hitting their professional peak. A 2025 study published in the journal Intelligence analyzed 16 cognitive, emotional and personality dimensions and found that while processing speed declines after … ⌘ Read more
New Raspberry Pi 4 Model Splits RAM Across Dual Chips
The blog OMG Ubuntu reports that a new version of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B has been (quietly) introduced. “The key difference? It now uses a dual-RAM configuration.”
The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (PCB 13a) adopts a dual-RAM configuration to ‘improve supply chain flexibility’ and manufacturing efficiency, per a company product change notice document. Earlier versio … ⌘ Read more
SpaceX Prioritizes Lunar ‘Self-Growing City’ Over Mars Project, Musk Says
“Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceX has shifted its focus to building a ‘self-growing city’ on the moon,” reports Reuters, “which could be achieved in less than 10 years.”
SpaceX still intends to start on Musk’s long-held ambition of a city on Mars within five to seven years, he wrote on his X social media platform, “but the … ⌘ Read more
National Football League Launches Challenge to Improve Facemasks and Reduce Concussions
As Super Bowl Sunday comes to a close, America’s National Football League “is challenging innovators to improve the facemask on football helmets to reduce concussions in the game,” reports the Associated Press:
The league announced on Friday at an innovation summit for the Super Bowl the next round … ⌘ Read more
Carmakers Rush To Remove Chinese Code Under New US Rules
“How Chinese is your car?” asks the Wall Street Journal. “Automakers are racing to work it out.”
Modern cars are packed with internet-connected widgets, many of them containing Chinese technology. Now, the car industry is scrambling to root out that tech ahead of a looming deadline, a test case for America’s ability to decouple from Chinese supply chains. New U … ⌘ Read more
Amazon Delivery Drone Crashes into Texas Apartment Building
“You can hear the hum of the drone,” says a local newscaster, “but then the propellors come into contact with the building, chunks of the drone later seen falling down. The next video shows the drone on the ground, surrounded by smoke…
“Amazon tells us there was minimal damage to the apartment building, adding they are working with the appropriate people … ⌘ Read more
Do Super Bowl Ads For AI Signal a Bubble About to Burst?
It’s the first “AI” Super Bowl, argues the tech/business writer at Slate, with AI company advertisements taking center stage, even while consumers insist to surveyors that they’re “mostly negative” about AI-generated ads.
Last year AI companies spent over $1.7 billion on AI-related ads, notes the Washington Post, adding the blitz this year will be “inescapable” — even … ⌘ Read more
Dave Farber Dies at Age 91
The mailing list for the North American Network Operators’ Group discusses Internet infrastructure issues like routing, IP address allocation, and containing malicious activity. This morning there was another message:
We are heartbroken to report that our colleague — our mentor, friend, and conscience — David J. Farber passed away suddenly at his home in Roppongi, Tokyo. He left us on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026, at the too- … ⌘ Read more
After Six Years, Two Pentesters Arrested in Iowa Receive $600,000 Settlement
“They were crouched down like turkeys peeking over the balcony,” the county sheriff told Ars Technica. A half hour past midnight, they were skulking through a courthouse in Iowa’s Dallas County on September 11 “carrying backpacks that remind me and several other deputies of maybe the pressure cooker bombs.” More deputies arrive … ⌘ Read more
Prankster Launches Super Bowl Party For AI Agents
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: The world’s biggest football game comes to Silicon Valley today — so one bored programmer built a site where AI agents can gather for a Super Bowl party. They’re trash talking, suggesting drinks, and predicting who will win. “Humans are welcome to observe,” explains BotBowlParty.com — but just like at Moltbook, only AI ag … ⌘ Read more
Why Is China Building So Many Coal Plants Despite Its Solar and Wind Boom?
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this article from the Associated Press:
Even as China’s expansion of solar and wind power raced ahead in 2025, the Asian giant opened many more coal power plants than it had in recent years — raising concern about whether the world’s largest emitter will reduce carbon emissions enou … ⌘ Read more
Scientists Explored Island Cave, Found 1 Million-Year-Old Remnants a Lost World
“A spectacular trove of fossils in a discovered in a cave on New Zealand’s North Island has given scientists their first glimpse of ancient forest species that lived there more than a million years ago,” reports Popular Mechanics:
The fossils represent 12 ancient bird species and four frog species, including sever … ⌘ Read more
Cyber-Espionage Group Breached Systems in 37 Nations, Security Researchers Say
An anonymous reader shared this report from Bloomberg:
An Asian cyber-espionage group has spent the past year breaking into computer systems belonging to governments and critical infrastructure organizations in more than 37 countries, according to the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, Inc. The state-aligned attacker … ⌘ Read more
Brookhaven Lab Shuts Down Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)
2001: “Brookhaven Labs has produced for the first time collisions of gold nuclei at a center of mass energy of 200GeV/nucleon.”
2002: “There may be a new type of matter according to researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory.”
2010: The hottest man-made temperatures ever achived were a record 4 trillion degree plasma experiment at Brookhave … ⌘ Read more
Intel Releases QATlib 26.02 With New APIs For Zero-Copy DMA
Of Intel’s different CPU accelerator IPs, the arguably most useful and with the greatest customer interest remains around QuickAssist Technology (QAT). Intel QAT allows offloading various compression and encryption tasks for better performance. Intel this week released QATlib 26.02 as the newest version of their user-space library for leveraging QuickAssist Technology on capable hardware… ⌘ Read more
Have We Been Thinking About Exercise Wrong for Half a Century?
“After a half-century asking us to exercise more, doctors and physiologists say we have been thinking about it wrong,” writes Washington Post columnist Michael J. Coren.
“U.S. and World Health Organization guidelines no longer specify a minimum duration of moderate or vigorous aerobic activity.”
Movement-tracking studies show even tiny, regular b … ⌘ Read more
Are Big Tech’s Nuclear Construction Deals a Tipping Point for Small Modular Reactors?
Fortune reports on “a watershed moment” in American’s nuclear power industry:
In January, Meta partnered with Gates’ TerraPower and Sam Altman-backed Oklo to develop about 4 gigawatts of combined SMR projects — enough to power almost 3 million homes — for “clean, reliable energy” both for Meta’s planne … ⌘ Read more
A New Era for Security? Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 Found 500 High-Severity Vulnerabilities
Axios reports:
Anthropic’s latest AI model has found more than 500 previously unknown high-severity security flaws in open-source libraries with little to no prompting, the company shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: The advancement signals an inflection point for how AI tools can help cyber … ⌘ Read more
The World’s First Sodium-Ion Battery in Commercial EVs - Great at Low Temperatures
Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis shared this report from InsideEVs:
Chinese battery giant CATL and automaker Changan Automobile are preparing to put the world’s first passenger car powered by sodium-ion batteries on public roads by mid-2026. And if the launch is successful, it could usher in an era whe … ⌘ Read more
Is the ‘Death of Reading’ Narrative Wrong?
Has the rise of hyper-addictive digital technologies really shattered our attention spans and driven books out of our culture? Maybe not, argues social psychologist Adam Mastroianni (author of the Substack Experimental History):
As a psychologist, I used to study claims like these for a living, so I know that the mind is primed to believe narratives of decline. We have a much lower standard … ⌘ Read more
Waymo Reveals Remote Workers In Philippines Sometimes Advise Its Driverless Cars
Waymo surprised U.S. lawmakers Wednesday during a hearing on autonomous vehicles and their safety and oversight. Newsweek reports:
During questioning, Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked what happens when a Waymo vehicle encounters a driving situation it cannot independently resolve. “The Waymo phones … ⌘ Read more
Good News: We Saved the Bees. Bad News: We Saved the Wrong Ones.
Despite urgent pleas to Americans to save the honeybees, “it was all based on a fallacy,” writes Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. “Honeybees were never in existential trouble. And well-meaning efforts to boost their numbers have accelerated the decline of native bees that actually are.”
“Suppose I were to say to you, ‘I’m really worried about … ⌘ Read more
Bitcoin Dropped Nearly 30% This Week. But Why?
Last Sunday, Bitcoin had dropped 13% in three days, to $76,790.
By Thursday it had dropped another 21%, to $60,062.
This morning it’s at $69,549 — up from Thursday, down from Sunday, but 44% lower than its all-time high in October of $123,742. In short, Bitcoin “is down almost 30% this week alone,” reports CNBC:
“This steady selling in our view signals that traditional investors are los … ⌘ Read more
Firefox Announces ‘AI Controls’ To Block Its Upcoming AI Features
The Mozilla executive in charge of Firefox says that while some people just want AI tools that are genuinely useful, “We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI…”
“Listening to our community, alongside our ongoing commitment to offer choice, led us to build AI controls.”
Starting with Firefox 148, which rolls out on Feb. 24, you’ll f … ⌘ Read more
Apple Plans to Allow Outside Voice-Controlled AI Chatbots in CarPlay
Apple “is preparing to allow voice-controlled AI apps from other companies in CarPlay,” reports Bloomberg, citing “people familiar with the matter.”
Bloomberg calls it “a move that will let users query AI chatbots through its vehicle interface for the first time.”
The company is working to support the apps in CarPlay within the coming … ⌘ Read more
Free Bi-Directional EV Chargers Tested to Improve Massachusetts Power Grid
Somewhere on America’s eastern coast, there’s an economic development agency in Massachusetts promoting green energy solutions. And Monday the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (or MassCEC) announced “a first-of-its-kind” program to see what happens when they provide free electric vehicle chargers to selected residents, sc … ⌘ Read more
Moltbook, Reddit, and The Great AI-Bot Uprising That Wasn’t
Monday security researchers at cloud-security platform Wiz discovered a vulnerability that allowed anyone to post to the bots-only social network Moltbook — or even edit and manipulate other existing Moltbook posts. “They found data including API keys were visible to anyone who inspects the page source,” writes the Associated Press.
But had it been disco … ⌘ Read more
Claude Code is the Inflection Point
About 4% of all public commits on GitHub are now being authored by Anthropic’s Claude Code, a terminal-native AI coding agent that has quickly become the centerpiece of a broader argument that software engineering is being fundamentally reshaped by AI.
SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor and AI research firm, published a report on Friday projecting that figure will climb past 20% by the end of 2026. Cl … ⌘ Read more
New Bill in New York Would Require Disclaimers on AI-Generated News Content
An anonymous reader shares a report: A new bill in the New York state legislature would require news organizations to label AI-generated material and mandate that humans review any such content before publication. On Monday, Senator Patricia Fahy (D-Albany) and Assemblymember Nily Rozic (D-NYC) introduced the bill, called Th … ⌘ Read more
Neocities Founder Stuck in Chatbot Hell After Bing Blocked 1.5 Million Sites
Neocities founder Kyle Drake has spent weeks trapped in Microsoft’s automated support loop after discovering that Bing quietly blocked all 1.5 million websites hosted on his platform, a free web-hosting service that has kept the spirit of 1990s GeoCities alive since 2013.
Drake first noticed the issue last summer and thought … ⌘ Read more
Waymo is Having a Hard Time Stopping For School Buses
Waymo’s robotaxis have racked up at least 24 safety violations involving school buses in Austin since the start of the 2025 school year, and a voluntary software recall the company issued in December after a federal investigation has not fixed the problem.
Austin Independent School District initially reported at least 19 incidents of Waymo vehicles failing to stop fo … ⌘ Read more
Hollywood’s AI Bet Isn’t Paying Off
Hollywood’s recent attempts to build entertainment around AI have consistently underperformed or outright flopped, whether the AI in question is a plot device or a production tool. The horror sequel M3GAN 2.0, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and Disney’s Tron: Ares all disappointed at the box office in 2025 despite centering their narratives on AI.
The latest casualty is Mercy, a Jan … ⌘ Read more
Amazon’s Tax Bill Plunges 87% After Tax Cuts
An anonymous reader shares a report: Republicans’ tax cuts shaved billions off Amazon’s tax bill, new government filings show. The company says it ran a $1.2 billion tax bill last year, down from $9 billion the previous year, and even as its profits jumped by 45% to nearly $90 billion.
That’s largely because of the generous new depreciation breaks GOP lawmakers included in their One Big Beau … ⌘ Read more
Memory Prices Have Nearly Doubled Since Last Quarter
Memory prices across DRAM, NAND and HBM have surged 80 to 90% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026, according to Counterpoint Research’s latest Memory Price Tracker. The price of a 64GB RDIMM has jumped from a Q4 2025 contract price of $450 to over $900, and Counterpoint expects it to cross $1,000 in Q2.
NAND, relatively stable last quarter, is tracking a parallel increase. De … ⌘ Read more
Salesforce Shelves Heroku
Salesforce is essentially shutting down Heroku as an evolving product, moving the cloud platform that helped define modern app deployment to a “sustaining engineering model” focused entirely on stability, security and support.
Existing customers on credit card billing see no changes to pricing or service, but enterprise contracts are no longer available to new buyers. Salesforce said it is redirecting engineering investment … ⌘ Read more
Hidden Cameras in Chinese Hotels Are Livestreaming Guests To Thousands of Telegram Subscribers
An investigation has uncovered a sprawling network of hidden cameras in Chinese hotel rooms that livestream guests – including couples having sex – to paying subscribers on Telegram. Over 18 months, the BBC identified six websites and apps on the messaging platform that claimed to opera … ⌘ Read more
AI.com Sells for $70 Million, the Highest Price Ever Disclosed for a Domain Name
Kris Marszalek, the co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, has paid $70 million for the domain AI.com – the highest price ever publicly disclosed for a website name, according to the deal’s broker Larry Fischer of GetYourDomain.com.
The entire sum was paid in cryptocurrency to an undisclosed seller … ⌘ Read more
Big Tech’s $1.1 Trillion Cloud Computing Backlog
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft each reported hundreds of billions in RPO (remaining performance obligations) – signed contracts for cloud computing services that can’t yet be filled and haven’t yet hit the books. Collectively, the big three cloud providers reported a $1.1 trillion backlog of revenue.
[![](https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.pn … ⌘ Read more
KPMG Pressed Its Auditor To Pass on AI Cost Savings
An anonymous reader shares a report: KPMG, one of the world’s largest auditors of public and private companies, negotiated lower fees from its own accountant by arguing that AI will make it cheaper to do the work, according to people familiar with the matter. The Big Four firm told its auditor, Grant Thornton UK, it should pass on cost savings from the rollout of AI and threat … ⌘ Read more
The Bizarre Enhancement Claims Rocking Ski Jumping
German newspaper Bild reported in January that some ski jumpers have been injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid ahead of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics – the theory being that temporarily enlarged genitalia would yield looser-fitting suits when measured by 3D scanners, and those looser suits could act like sails to produce longer jumps.
A study published last … ⌘ Read more
Europe Accuses TikTok of ‘Addictive Design’ and Pushes for Change
TikTok’s endless scroll of irresistible content, tailored for each person’s tastes by a well-honed algorithm, has helped the service become one of the world’s most popular apps. Now European Union regulators say those same features that made TikTok so successful are likely illegal. From a report: On Friday, the regulators released a preliminary d … ⌘ Read more
Canada Unveils Auto Industry Plan in Latest Pivot Away From US
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a sweeping plan to shore up the country’s auto industry and accelerate its electric vehicle transition, the latest in a series of moves to reduce Canada’s deep economic dependence on the United States as American tariffs continue to batter the sector.
The plan includes financial incentives for carmak … ⌘ Read more
Why This Is the Worst Crypto Winter Ever
Bitcoin has fallen roughly 44% from its October peak, and while the drawdown isn’t crypto’s deepest ever on a percentage basis, Bloomberg’s Odd Lots newsletter lays out a case that this is the industry’s worst winter yet. The macro backdrop was supposed to favor Bitcoin: public confidence in the dollar is shaky, the Trump administration has been crypto-friendly, and fiat currencies are under perceiv … ⌘ Read more
CIA Has Killed Off The World Factbook After Six Decades
The CIA has shut down The World Factbook, one of its oldest and most recognizable public-facing intelligence publications, ending a run that began as a classified reference document in 1962 and evolved into a freely accessible digital resource that drew millions of views each year.
The agency offered no explanation for the decision. Originally titled The National … ⌘ Read more
Google Confirms AirDrop Sharing is Coming To Android Phones Beyond Pixels
Google’s Quick Share-AirDrop interoperability, which has been exclusive to the Pixel 10 series since its surprise launch last year, is headed to a much broader set of Android devices in 2026.
Eric Kay, Google’s Vice President of Engineering for the Android platform, confirmed the expansion during a press briefing at the company’s … ⌘ Read more
The European Commission Is Testing an Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Teams
The European Commission is preparing to trial a communications platform built on Matrix, the open source messaging protocol already used by the French government, German healthcare providers and European armed forces, as a sovereign backup to Microsoft Teams.
Signal currently serves as the backup tool but has proven to … ⌘ Read more
Court Rules That Ripping YouTube Clips Can Violate the DMCA
A federal court in California has ruled that YouTube creators who use stream-ripping tools to download clips for reaction and commentary videos may face liability under the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions – a decision that could reshape how one of the platform’s most popular content genres operates.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi of the … ⌘ Read more
NASA Will Finally Let Its Astronauts Bring iPhones To the Moon
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has announced that astronauts on the upcoming Crew-12 and Artemis II missions will be allowed to carry iPhones and other modern smartphones into orbit and to the Moon – a reversal of long-standing agency rules that had left crews relying on a 2016 Nikon DSLR and decade-old GoPros for the historic lunar flyby.
Is … ⌘ Read more
Musk Predicts SpaceX Will Launch More AI Compute Per Year Than the Cumulative Total on Earth
Elon Musk told podcast host Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe co-founder John Collison that space will become the most economically compelling location for AI data centers in less than 36 months, a prediction rooted not in some exotic technical breakthrough but in the basic math of electricity su … ⌘ Read more