Software Poses ‘All-Time’ Risk To Speculative Credit, Deutsche Bank Warns
The software and technology sectors pose one of the all-time great concentration risks to the speculative-grade credit market, according to Deutsche Bank AG analysts. Bloomberg: They comprise $597 billion and $681 billion of the speculative-grade credit universe, or about 14% and 16% respectively, analysts led by Steve Caprio wrote … ⌘ Read more

2 To 3 Cups of Coffee a Day May Reduce Dementia Risk. But Not if It’s Decaf.
If you think your daily doses of espresso or Earl Grey sharpen your mind, you just might be right, new science suggests. The New York Times: A large new study provides evidence of cognitive benefits from coffee and tea – if it’s caffeinated and consumed in moderation: two to three cups of coffee or one to two cups of tea … ⌘ Read more

Deepfake Fraud Taking Place On an Industrial Scale, Study Finds
Deepfake fraud has gone “industrial,” an analysis published by AI experts has said. From a report: Tools to create tailored, even personalised, scams – leveraging, for example, deepfake videos of Swedish journalists or the president of Cyprus – are no longer niche, but inexpensive and easy to deploy at scale, said the analysis from the AI Incident … ⌘ Read more

Electric Cars Are Making It Easier To Breathe, Study Finds
An anonymous reader shares a report: It turns out that when fewer cars spew exhaust as they drive along, air quality improves. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health that looked at the effect of increased numbers of both EVs and plug-in hybrids on air pollution in California. The Golden State has by far the largest number … ⌘ Read more

Kalshi Prediction Markets Match or Beat Traditional Forecasting Tools For Macro Indicators, NBER Study Finds
A new NBER working paper from researchers at the Federal Reserve, Northwestern’s Kellogg School and Johns Hopkins finds that Kalshi – the largest federally regulated prediction market in the U.S., overseen by the CFTC – produces macroeconomic forecasts that match … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Kernel Confirmed By Linus Torvalds, Expected In Mid-April 2026
An anonymous reader writes: Linus Torvalds has confirmed the next major kernel series as Linux 7.0, reports Linux news website 9to5Linux.com: “So there you have it, the Linux 6.x era has ended with today’s Linux 6.19 kernel release, and a new one will begin with Linux 7.0, which is expected in mid-April 2026. The merge window for L … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Starts Running Ads in ChatGPT
OpenAI has started testing ads inside ChatGPT for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go subscription tiers in the United States, the company said. The Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education tiers remain ad-free. Ads are matched to users based on conversation topics, past chats, and prior ad interactions, and appear clearly labeled as “sponsored” and visually separated from ChatGPT’s organic respo … ⌘ Read more

Sixteen AI Agents Built a C Compiler From Scratch
Anthropic researcher Nicholas Carlini set 16 instances of Claude Opus 4.6 loose on a shared codebase over two weeks to build a C compiler from scratch, and the AI agents produced a 100,000-line Rust-based compiler capable of building a bootable Linux 6.9 kernel on x86, ARM and RISC-V architectures.

The project ran through nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and cost abou … ⌘ Read more

Romance Publishing Has an AI Problem and Most Readers Don’t Know It Yet
The romance genre – long the publishing industry’s earliest adopter of technological shifts, from e-books to self-publishing to serial releases – has become the front line for AI-generated fiction, and the results as you can imagine are messy. Coral Hart, a Cape Town-based novelist previously published by Harlequin and Mills & Boon, … ⌘ Read more

Autodesk Takes Google To Court Over AI Movie Software Named ‘Flow’
Autodesk has sued Google in San Francisco federal court, alleging the search giant infringed its “Flow” trademark by launching competing AI-powered software for movie, TV and video game production in May 2025.

Autodesk says it has used the Flow name since September 2022 and that Google assured it would not commercialize a product under the sam … ⌘ Read more

Google Lines Up 100-Year Sterling Bond Sale
Alphabet has lined up banks to sell a rare 100-year bond, stepping up a borrowing spree by Big Tech companies racing to fund their vast investments in AI this year. From a report: The so-called century bond will form part of a debut sterling issuance this week by Google’s parent company, according to people familiar with the matter. Alphabet was also selling $15bn of dollar bonds on Mond … ⌘ Read more

Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance For Intel Core Ultra X7 Panther Lake
Last week I began publishing the many exciting Panther Lake benchmarks under Linux from the interesting CPU performance and efficiency to the much anticipated Xe3 graphics with the Intel Arc B390 graphics. Up today is a look at how the out-of-the-box performance for the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H compares under Microsoft Windows 11 and the current Ubuntu Linux 26.04 development state. ⌘ Read more

Discord Will Require a Face Scan or ID for Full Access Next Month
Discord said today it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults. From a report: Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won … ⌘ Read more

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

Mesa 25.3.5 Brings Vulkan Driver Fixes & Other Minor Changes – Even For Old The R600g
While Mesa 26.0 stable will be out soon, the belated Mesa 25.3.5 point release is now available for serving as the current latest stable point release… ⌘ 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