The EU Moves To Kill Infinite Scrolling
Doom scrolling is doomed, if the EU gets its way. From a report: The European Commission is for the first time tackling the addictiveness of social media in a fight against TikTok that may set new design standards for the world’s most popular apps. Brussels has told the company to change several key features, including disabling infinite scrolling, setting strict screen time breaks and changing … ⌘ Read more
Israeli Soldiers Accused of Using Polymarket To Bet on Strikes
An anonymous reader shares a report: Israel has arrested several people, including army reservists, for allegedly using classified information to place bets on Israeli military operations on Polymarket. Shin Bet, the country’s internal security agency, said Thursday the suspects used information they had come across during their military service to i … ⌘ Read more
600% Memory Price Surge Threatens Telcos’ Broadband Router, Set-Top Box Supply
Telecom operators planning aggressive fiber and fixed wireless broadband rollouts in 2026 face a serious supply problem – DRAM and NAND memory prices for consumer applications have surged more than 600% over the past year as higher-margin AI server segments absorb available capacity, according to Counterpoint Research.
… ⌘ Read more
Anna’s Archive Quietly ‘Releases’ Millions of Spotify Tracks, Despite Legal Pushback
Anna’s Archive, the shadow library that announced last December it had scraped Spotify’s entire catalog, has quietly begun distributing the actual music files despite a federal preliminary injunction signed by Judge Jed Rakoff on January 16 that explicitly barred the site from hosting or distributing the copyrigh … ⌘ Read more
Detroit Automakers Take $50 Billion Hit
The Detroit Big Three – General Motors, Ford and Stellantis – have collectively announced more than $50 billion in write-downs on their electric-vehicle businesses after years of aggressive investment into a transition that, even before Republican lawmakers abolished a $7,500 federal tax credit last fall, was already running below expectations.
U.S. EV sales fell more than 30% in the fourth qua … ⌘ Read more
Meta’s New Patent: an AI That Likes, Comments and Messages For You When You’re Dead
Meta was granted a patent in late December that describes how a large language model could be trained on a deceased user’s historical activity – their comments, likes, and posted content – to keep their social media accounts active after they’re gone.
Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s CTO, is listed as the primary autho … ⌘ Read more
Google Warns EU Risks Undermining Own Competitiveness With Tech Sovereignty Push
Europe risks undermining its own competitiveness drive by restricting access to foreign technology, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer Kent Walker told the Financial Times, as Brussels accelerates efforts to reduce reliance on U.S. tech giants. Walker said the EU faces a “competitive parad … ⌘ Read more
Spotify Says Its Best Developers Haven’t Written a Line of Code Since December, Thanks To AI
Spotify’s best developers have stopped writing code manually since December and now rely on an internal AI system called Honk that enables remote, real-time code deployment through Claude Code, the company’s co-CEO Gustav Soderstrom said during a fourth-quarter earnings call this week.
… ⌘ Read more
FTC Ratchets Up Microsoft Probe, Queries Rivals on Cloud, AI
The US Federal Trade Commission is accelerating scrutiny of Microsoft as part of an ongoing probe into whether the company illegally monopolizes large swaths of the enterprise computing market with its cloud software and AI offerings, including Copilot. From a report: The agency has issued civil investigative demands in recent weeks to companies that compete wi … ⌘ Read more
EPA Reverses Long-Standing Climate Change Finding, Stripping Its Own Ability To Regulate Emissions
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding the legal finding that it has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries and factories. From a report: The … ⌘ Read more
OpenAI Claims DeepSeek Distilled US Models To Gain an Edge
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US AI models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News.
In the memo, sent Thursday to the House Select Committe … ⌘ Read more
Waymo is Asking DoorDash Drivers To Shut the Doors of Its Self-Driving Cars
Waymo’s autonomous vehicles can transport passengers across six cities without a human driver, but the Alphabet-owned company has discovered that its cars become completely inert if a passenger accidentally leaves a door open. The company confirmed that it is now paying DoorDash drivers in Atlanta to close these doors as par … ⌘ Read more
Bill Introduced To Replace West Virginia’s New CS Course Graduation Requirement With Computer Literacy Proficiency
theodp writes: West Virginia lawmakers on Tuesday introduced House Bill 5387 (PDF), which would repeal the state’s recently enacted mandatory stand-alone computer science graduation requirement and replace it with a new computer literacy proficiency … ⌘ Read more
Meta Plans To Let Smart Glasses Identify People Through AI-Powered Facial Recognition
Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as soon as this year, New York Times reported Friday, five years after the social giant shut down facial recognition on Facebook and promised to find “the right balance” for the controversial technology.
The feature, internally … ⌘ Read more
Ring Cancels Its Partnership With Flock Safety After Surveillance Backlash
Following intense backlash to its partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that works with law enforcement agencies, Ring has announced it is canceling the integration. From a report: In a statement published on Ring’s blog and provided to The Verge ahead of publication, the company said: “Following a co … ⌘ Read more
Russia Fully Blocks WhatsApp
An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. messenger app WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms, has been completely blocked in Russia for failing to comply with local law, the Kremlin said on Thursday, suggesting Russians turn to a state-backed “national messenger” instead. “Due to Meta’s unwillingness to comply with Russian law, such a decision was indeed taken and implemented,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told report … ⌘ 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
Framework 13 To See Fan Target & Fan Temperature Thresholds Support With Linux 7.0
For newer Framework devices like the Framework 13 AMD that make use of the ChromeOS Embedded Controller (EC), the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel is adding fan target support as well as fan temperature threshold handling… ⌘ Read more
Android’s Full Desktop Mode Surfaces in Accidental Chromium Leak
A bug report filed on the Chromium Issue Tracker inadvertently exposed Google’s desktop Android interface for the first time, revealing a system codenamed “Aluminum OS” running on existing Chromebook hardware. The report, ostensibly about Chrome Incognito tabs, included screen captures from an HP Elite Dragonfly 13.5 Chromebook running Android 16.
The … ⌘ Read more
Solar and Wind Overtake Fossil Fuels in the EU
Wind and solar power overtook fossil fuels last year as a source of electricity in the EU for the first time, a new report found. Semafor adds: The milestone was hit largely thanks to a rise in solar power, which generated a record 13% of electricity in the EU, according to Ember. Together, wind and solar hit 30% of EU electricity generation, edging out fossil fuels at 29%.
The … ⌘ Read more
Synex Server: A New Debian Based Linux Distro With Native ZFS Installation Support
Synex is a Linux distribution that’s been around for some months as a Debian-based, minimalistic Linux distribution out of Argentina focused on the needs of small and medium businesses. Making it a bit more intriguing for some now is that with their new release based on Debian 13 is a server edition and they have added native OpenZFS file-system support for new installations… ⌘ Read more
‘Star Wars’ Boss Kathleen Kennedy Steps Down From Lucasfilm
After more than 13 years leading Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down. “When George Lucas asked me to take over Lucasfilm upon his retirement, I couldn’t have imagined what lay ahead,” said Kennedy. “It has been a true privilege to spend more than a decade working alongside the extraordinary talent at Lucasfilm.” The Associated Press reports … ⌘ Read more
Pentagon Device Linked To Havana Syndrome
“Since the United States reopened its embassy in Cuba in 2015, a number of personnel have reported a series of debilitating medical ailments which include dizziness, fatigue, problems with memory, and impaired vision,” writes longtime Slashdot reader smooth wombat. “For ten years, these sudden and unexplained onsets have been studied with no conclusive evidence one way or the other. Now comes … ⌘ Read more
Meta Closes Three VR Studios As Part of Its Metaverse Cuts
Meta is shutting down three acquired VR studios as part of Reality Labs layoffs and a strategic pivot away from VR content toward AI-powered smart glasses. UploadVR reports: Meta shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR). […] Twisted Pixel Games was founded in 2006 and mostly ma … ⌘ Read more
Senate Passes a Bill That Would Let Nonconsensual Deepfake Victims Sue
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act (DEFIANCE Act), giving victims of sexually explicit AI deepfakes the right to sue the individuals who created them. The Verge reports: The bill passed with unanimous consent – meaning there was no roll-call vote, and no Senator objected … ⌘ Read more
Global Tech-Sector Layoffs Surpass 244,000 In 2025
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: The global technology sector eliminated some 244,851 jobs in 2025, according to a report from RationalFX. The U.K.-based financial services company says the worldwide downsizing reflects how companies in 2025 restructured their operations to focus on efficiency, profitability, and AI-driven productivity. The RationalFX … ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.0 Released
BrianFagioli writes: Wine 11.0 has officially landed, wrapping up a year of development with more than 6,000 code changes and a broad set of upgrades that touch gaming, desktop behavior, and long-standing architectural work. The biggest milestone is the completion of the new WoW64 model, which is now considered fully supported and allows 32-bit and even 16-bit applications to run in a cleaner way inside 64-bit prefixes. Wine also gains s … ⌘ Read more
JPEG-XL Image Support Returns To Latest Chrome/Chromium Code
After widespread backlash over its 2022 decision to remove JPEG-XL support, Google has quietly restored the image format in the latest Chrome/Chromium codebase. Phoronix reports: Back in December they merged jxl-rs as a pure Rust-based JPEG-XL image decoder from the official libjxl organization. At the end of December they did more JPEG-XL plumbing with the en … ⌘ 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
Taiwan Issues Arrest Warrant for OnePlus CEO for China Hires
Prosecutors in Taiwan issued an arrest warrant [non-paywalled source] for the chief executive officer of the Chinese smartphone company OnePlus, stepping up the island’s efforts to block China’s tech players from recruiting Taiwanese talent. From a report: The Shilin district prosecutors office issued the warrant for CEO and co-founder Pete Lau and indicted … ⌘ Read more
EV Roadside Repairs Easier Than Petrol or Diesel, New Data Suggests
Electric vehicles are more likely to be fixed at the roadside than petrol or diesel cars despite public fears to the contrary, according to new breakdown data from the AA. From a report: New research from Autotrader and the AA, carried out in December among more than 2,000 consumers, found 44% of respondents are concerned about the risk of b … ⌘ Read more
Apple: You (Still) Don’t Understand the Vision Pro
Analyst Ben Thompson, sharing the experience of watching an NBA game on the Vision Pro: When I started the broadcast [on Apple Vision Pro’s immersive view of the Bucks vs. Lakers NBA game] I had, surprise surprise, a studio show, specially tailored for the Apple Vision Pro. In other words, there was a dedicated camera, a dedicated presenter, a dedicated graphics team, etc. Th … ⌘ Read more
Mercedes Temporarily Scraps Its Level 3 ‘Eyes-off’ Driving Feature
Mercedes-Benz is pausing the roll-out of Drive Pilot, an “eyes off” conditionally automated driving feature that was available in Europe and the US. From a report: As first reported by German publication Handelsblatt, the revised S-Class will not have the Level 3 system when it arrives at the end of this month. Mercedes was one of the first auto … ⌘ Read more
Verizon To Stop Automatic Unlocking of Phones as FCC Ends 60-Day Unlock Rule
The Federal Communications Commission is letting Verizon lock phones to its network for longer periods, eliminating a requirement to unlock handsets 60 days after they are activated on its network. From a report: The change will make it harder for people to switch from Verizon to other carriers. The FCC today granted Verizon’s … ⌘ Read more
America’s Biggest Power Grid Operator Has an AI Problem - Too Many Data Centers
America’s largest power-grid operator, PJM, which delivers electricity to 67 million people across a 13-state region from New Jersey to Kentucky, is approaching a supply crisis as AI data centers in Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” consume electricity at an unprecedented rate.
The nonprofit expects demand … ⌘ Read more
Anthropic Invests $1.5 Million in the Python Software Foundation and Open Source Security
Python Software Foundation: We are thrilled to announce that Anthropic has entered into a two-year partnership with the Python Software Foundation (PSF) to contribute a landmark total of $1.5 million to support the foundation’s work, with an emphasis on Python ecosystem security. This investme … ⌘ Read more
Scott Adams, Creator of the ‘Dilbert’ Comic Strip, Dies at 68
Scott Adams, who kept cubicle denizens laughing for more than three decades with Dilbert, the bitingly funny comic strip that poked fun at the absurdity of corporate life, died Tuesday. He was 68. From a report: His death was tearfully revealed by his first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, at the start of Real Coffee With Scott Adams. In May, he said on the podcast … ⌘ Read more
JPMorgan Warns 10% Credit Card Rate Cap Would Backfire on Consumers and Economy
JPMorgan Chase’s chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum pushed back hard on Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s proposed 10% cap on credit card interest rates, calling the measure “very bad for consumers” and “very bad for the economy” during a call with reporters.
The proposed one-year cap, which Trump has said he wan … ⌘ Read more
Signal Creator Marlinspike Wants To Do For AI What He Did For Messaging
Moxie Marlinspike, the engineer who created Signal Messenger and set a new standard for private communications, is now trialing Confer, an open source AI assistant designed to make user data unreadable to platform operators, hackers, and law enforcement alike. Confer relies on two core technologies: passkeys that generate a 32-byte encry … ⌘ Read more
Debian Libre Live 13.3 Images Released For Avoiding Non-Free Firmware
Building off this past weekend’s Debian 13.3 release is now Debian Libre Live 13.3 images for this derivative that ships the install/live media without any of the non-free firmware assets to remain a free software blessed image… ⌘ Read more
Meta Begins Job Cuts as It Shifts From Metaverse to AI Devices
Meta has begun laying off more than 1,000 employees from its Reality Labs division as the company redirects resources away from virtual reality and metaverse products toward AI wearables and smartphone features. The cuts amount to roughly 10% of Reality Labs’ 15,000-person workforce, according to an internal post from CTO Andrew Bosworth reviewed by … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Pledges Full Power Costs, No Tax Breaks in Response To AI Data Center Backlash
Microsoft announced Tuesday what it calls a “community first” initiative for its AI data centers, pledging to pay full electricity costs and reject local property tax breaks following months of growing opposition from residents facing higher power bills. The announcement in Washington, D.C. marks a clea … ⌘ Read more
Trump Says Microsoft To Make Changes To Curb Data Center Power Costs For Americans
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Monday that Microsoft will announce changes to ensure that Americans won’t see rising utility bills as the company builds more data centers to meet rising artificial intelligence demand. “I never want Americ … ⌘ Read more
Researchers Beam Power From a Moving Airplane
Researchers from the startup Overview Energy have successfully demonstrated beaming power from a moving airplane to the ground using near-infrared light. It marks the first step toward space-based solar power satellites that could someday transmit energy from orbit to existing solar farms on Earth. IEEE Spectrum reports: Overview’s test transferred only a sprinkling of power, but it … ⌘ Read more
You Can Now Reserve a Hotel Room On the Moon For $250,000
A newly founded startup called GRU Space is taking deposits of up to $1 million to eventually build inflatable hotels on the Moon. The bet is that space needs destinations, not just rockets, even if the first customers are essentially early adopters of sci-fi optimism. Ars Technica reports: It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late Dec … ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.0 Planned For Release Tomorrow With NTSync Support, Better WoW64
Wine project leader Alexandre Julliard relayed on the mailing list today that the plan is to release Wine 11.0 stable tomorrow, 13 January… ⌘ Read more
Debian 13.3 Released With Many Security & Bug Fixes
Debian 13.3 is out today as the newest stable point release for Debian Trixie… ⌘ Read more
TrixiePup64 2601 Released For Debian 13 Powered Puppy Linux In Wayland & X11 Flavors
For those with fond memories of Puppy Linux as a very lightweight Linux distribution, released last month was a new TrixiePup64 for continuing the Puppy Linux spirit atop Debian. The new TrixiePup64 is based on Debian 13 components while shipping in both X11 and Wayland flavors. Out now is TrixiePup64 2601 as the latest iteration of this lightweight Linux distribution… ⌘ Read more
Linux’s Hung Task Detector Will Be Able To Be Reset For Easing System Administration
Worked on back in 2024 for the Linux kernel was a built-in counter to keep track of the number of hung tasks since boot. That feature for keeping track of the number of hung tasks since boot was merged in Linux 6.13 and exposed via /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_detect_count. For helping ease use around it, new code working its way to the kernel will allow resetting that “hung_task_detect_count” counter… ⌘ Read more