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Europe's EV sales for January and February spiked 21% from last year, according to new data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Electrek reports that just in those two months over 600,000 EVs were sold in Europe. And figures for "rest of world" (which excludes Europe, North America, and China) are up a whopping 84% - with 370,000 EVs sold in January and February. (EVs now represent more than 30% of the vehicles sold in South Korea.) But for the same period China's sales are down 26% from last year, with 1.1 million vehicles sold. And North America showed an even larger drop of 36% from the January/February figures in 2025, now selling just 170,000 electric vehicles, while Canada's EV sales were down 23%. EV sales seem heavily influenced by government incentives, with Germany and France leading Europe's growth:EV sales in Germany are up 26% so far this year, following the country's introduction of a new subsidy program at the start of 2026. France's market is up 30%, supported by its existing incentive program. Italy is also seeing rapid growth. EV sales there jumped 23% month-over-month in February, making it the country's strongest month ever for EV sales. The Italian market is now up 98% year to date. That surge follows the Italian government's October 2025 launch of a new subsidy program, funded by the EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility, to increase EV adoption. Households can receive up to 11,000 ($12,700) in incentives, while smaller businesses can get up to 20,000 ($23,200)... [T]he global EV transition isn't slowing, but it's becoming much more uneven depending on policy, incentives, and trade rules.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader SysEngineer does embedded/IoT work, but "I want to pick a single system-on-a-chip architecture family and commit to it across multiple product lines - sensor nodes up through edge gateways... I've been on one platform for years and want to know what embedded engineers are actually running in production before I commit!" And "the family needs to scale - cheap and small at the low end, capable of running Linux on the bigger variants!" Their requirements?WiFi + BLE requiredLoRaWAN a nice-to-have.Low power modes that actually work in the field, not just on the datasheet.Full peripheral set - SPI, I2C, UART, ADC, timers, CAN.A toolchain and runtime support, support multi threads...Slashdot reader Gravis Zero is skeptical all the requirements can be met. "If you want embedded, you get embedded. If you want to run a big OS, you get one that will run a big OS." But Slashdot reader SysEngineer believes "The obvious architecture candidates are ARM, STM, and RISC-V" - and specifically they want to hear your experiences with the RISC-V choices. "What would you standardize on today if you were starting fresh? And how does real-world toolchain and community support hold up compared to the marketing?" Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. What's the best all-purpose RISC-V system on a chip family?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux gaming "has gotten to the point where some people claim that Linux runs their games better than Windows does," according to the Android site XDA Developers. And there's a new surprise on ProtonDB, an "unofficial" community website with crowdsourced data about videogame compatability with the Linux software/gaming compatability layer Proton:On ProtonDB, one operating system had reigned supreme since 2021: Arch Linux. And I say 'had,' because its streak has just been ended by [Arch-based] CachyOS in an upset that has slowly grown over the past two years. As reported on Boiling Steam, the number of reports coming from CachyOS has topped that of Arch Linux, which held the crown for the most number of reports since 2021... [T]his isn't really a statement that CachyOS is the best gaming distro out there; however, it's seemingly attracting the largest number of gamers who are invested in testing games on Proton and reporting their performance, which is a pretty big milestone if you ask me.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NBC News investigates North Korea's "wide-ranging effort to place remote workers at U.S. companies in order to funnel money back to its coffers and, in some cases, steal sensitive information." And working with the FBI, one corporate security/investigations company decided to knowingly hire one of North Korea's remote workers - then "ship him a laptop and gain as much information as possible" about this "sprawling international employment scheme that is estimated to include hundreds of American companies, thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars per year."It worked.... Over a roughly three-month investigation, Nisos uncovered an apparent network of at least 20 North Korean operatives including "Jo" who had collectively applied to at least 160,000 roles. During that time, workers in the network - which some evidence showed were based in China - were employed by five U.S.-based companies and allegedly helped by an American citizen operating out of two nondescript suburban homes in Florida... Nisos estimated that in about a year, "Jo", who was likely a newer member of the team, applied to about 5,000 jobs... "They attended interviews all day every day, and then once they secured a job, they would collect paychecks until they were terminated," [according to Jared Hudson, Nisos' chief technology officer]... With the ability to see which other U.S. companies Jo and his team were working for - all remote technology roles - Nisos' CEO, Ryan LaSalle, began making calls to their security teams to alert them of the fraud. "Most of the companies weren't aware of it, even if they had pretty robust security teams," LaSalle said. "It wasn't really high on the radar." NBC News describes North Korea's 10-year effort - and its educational pipeline that steers promising students into "computer science and hacking training before being placed into cyberunits under military and state agencies, according to a recent report by DTEX, a risk-adaptive security and behavioral intelligence firm that tracks North Korea's cybercrime."In one case, a North Korean worker stole sensitive information related to U.S. military technology, according to the Justice Department. In another, an American accomplice obtained an ID that enabled access to government facilities, networks and systems. At least three organizations have been extorted and suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages after proprietary information was posted online by IT workers... Analysts warn that North Korean IT workers are targeting larger organizations, increasing extortion attempts and seeking out employers that pay salaries in cryptocurrency. More recently, security researchers have uncovered fake job application platforms impersonating major U.S. cryptocurrency and AI firms, including Anthropic, designed to infect legitimate applicants' networks with malware to be utilized once hired. The global cybersecurity company CrowdStrike identified a 220% rise in 2025 in instances of North Koreans gaining fraudulent employment at Western companies to work remotely as developers... The payoff flowing back to Pyongyang from these schemes is enormous. Some North Korean IT workers earn more than $300,000 per year, far more than they'd be able to earn domestically, with as much as 90% of their wages directed back to the regime, according to congressional testimony from Bruce Klinger, a former CIA deputy division chief for Korea. The United Nations estimates the schemes, which proliferated after the pandemic when more companies' workforces went remote, generate as much as $600 million annually, while a U.S. State Department-led sanctions monitoring assessment placed earnings for 2024 as high as $800 million... So far, at least 10 alleged U.S.-based facilitators have been federally charged, including one active-duty member of the U.S. Army, for their alleged roles in hosting laptop farms, laundering payments and moving proceeds through shell companies. At least six other alleged U.S. facilitators have been identified in court documents but not named... "We believe there are many more hundreds of people out there who are participating in these schemes," said Rozhavsky, the FBI assistant director. "They could never pull this off if they didn't have willing facilitators in the U.S. helping them...." The scheme itself is also becoming more complex. North Korean IT teams are now subcontracting work to developers in Pakistan, Nigeria and India, expanding into fields like customer service, financial processing, insurance and translation services - roles far less scrutinized than software development.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick launched a new venture that "will focus on creating 'gainfully employed robots' for the food, mining and transport industries," Bloomberg reports. "I left Uber in 2017 heartbroken," writes Kalanick on the new company's web site. Kalanick resigned under pressure in 2017, and complains he was "torn away from an idea and a movement that I had poured my life into... I bled, but I did not perish. I got back up and fought my way back into the arena, back to my calling. Back to building. Digitizing the Physical World is my life's work... "Kalanick is remaking his real estate company, City Storage Systems, which owns ghost-kitchen operator CloudKitchens, and renaming it Atoms, according to a manifesto posted on the new company's website. [Bloomberg notes that the company's food robotics division "makes a food assembly machine called Bowl Builder, according to its website."] In addition to its work on food, Los Angeles-based Atoms is expanding into robotics technology for mining and automotive transport. Kalanick said on the livestreamed tech talk show TBPN Friday that Atoms has effectively been in stealth for eight years and has "thousands" of employees.... Kalanick wrote on the Atoms website that the company will make "specialized robots with productive jobs that bring abundance to their owners and society at large." That will include "infrastructure for better food," he wrote, as well as "more productive mines to power Earth's industries" in addition to "wheelbase for robots" in transportation. "The industrial thing is probably our main jam," he said on TBPN. "Once you crack movement in the physical world, there are lots of people who want access to that..." Kalanick also said he was the biggest investor in Pronto, a self-driving trucking startup that currently focuses on closed sites like mines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

He's "the most famous anonymous man in the world," suggests Reuters. But investigating Banksy's artworks in a bombed Ukrainian village (and other clues in the U.K. and Manhattan) have led them to "a hand-written confession by the artist to a long-ago misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct - a document that revealed, beyond dispute, Banksy's true identity." But Banksy's long-time lawyer "urged us not to publish this report, saying doing so would violate the artist's privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger" and "would harm the public, too."Working "anonymously or under a pseudonym serves vital societal interests," he wrote. "It protects freedom of expression by allowing creators to speak truth to power without fear of retaliation, censorship or persecution - particularly when addressing sensitive issues such as politics, religion or social justice." Reuters took into account Banksy's privacy claims - and the fact that many of his fans wish for him to remain anonymous. Yet we concluded that the public has a deep interest in understanding the identity and career of a figure with his profound and enduring influence on culture, the art industry and international political discourse... As for the risk he might face of retaliation or censorship, Britain's legal and political establishments seem comfortable with Banksy's messages and how he delivers them... His mastery of disguise began as a way of shaking the police, says former manager [Steve] Lazarides. In an interview, Lazarides said anonymity served a practical purpose in Bristol, where authorities enforced "draconian" policies against graffiti... Eventually, keeping the secret became a burden. By the end of their partnership, Lazarides estimates he spent half or more of his time managing and maintaining the artist's mystique. "I think it became a good gag, and then, if you want my honest, honest opinion, I think it then became a disease," he said. Lazarides wrote a two-volume book about managing Banksy from the late 1990s to 2008, including a story about Banksy's arrest in 2000 for this defacing of a billboard. Reuters geolocated that building, then found police documents and a court file including the hand-written confession. This investigation spawned a 7,000-word article with everything from a comic strip Banksy drew when he was 11 to his connections with Robert Del Naja of the trip hop band Massive Attack - and a 2017 podcast interview where a music producer apparently revealed Banksy's real first name. But the article also reveals how protective the art community is of Banksy's secret. Reuters investigated that Banksy auctioned in 2018 for $1.4 million - and then immediately started shredding itself with a device Banksy embedded in its frame:That piece, renamed "Love is in the Bin," sold three years later for about $25 million. Art dealer [Robert] Casterline was at the auction and remembers when the shredder began to beep. He pulled out his phone to take pictures. "Unfortunately, there was one person standing in front of me," blocking the view, he said. It was an eccentric-looking man with a broad neck scarf and thick eyewear. Oddly, the man wasn't watching the painting get shredded. He was looking in the other direction, observing the crowd's reaction. Only later, reviewing what he shot, did Casterline notice that the man's glasses appeared to have a small camera built into the bridge. (Banksy later posted a video of the stunt, including shots of the astonished audience.) Having seen a photo of the man suspected of being Banksy, Casterline confirmed to Reuters that he was "pretty sure" it was the same man. But "I don't want to be the guy who exposes Banksy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Emerging evidence indicates that agential AI might validate or amplify delusional or grandiose content, particularly in users already vulnerable to psychosis," writes Dr Hamilton Morrin, a psychiatrist and researcher at King's College in London, in a paper published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry. Morrin and a colleague had already noticed patients "using large language model AI chatbots and having them validate their delusional beliefs," reports the Guardian, so he conducted a new scientific review of existing media reports on AI-induced psychosis - and concluded chatbots may encourage delusional thinking, especially in vulnerable people:In many of the cases in the essay, chatbots responded to users with mystical language to suggest that users have heightened spiritual importance. The bots also implied that users were speaking with a cosmic being who was using the chatbot as a medium. This type of mystical, sycophantic response was especially common in OpenAI's GPT 4 model, which the company has now retired... Many researchers also think it's unlikely that AI could induce delusions in people who weren't already vulnerable to them. For this reason, Morrin said "AI-assocciated delusions" is "perhaps a more agnostic term".... While in the past, people may have had to comb through YouTube videos or the contents of their local library to reinforce their delusions, chatbots can provide that reinforcement in a much faster, more concentrated dose. Their interactive nature can also "speed up the process", of exacerbating psychotic symptoms, said Dr Dominic Oliver, a researcher at the University of Oxford. "You have something talking back to you and engaging with you and trying to build a relationship with you," Oliver said... Creating effective safeguards for delusional thinking could be tricky, Morrin said, because "when you work with people with beliefs of delusional intensity, if you directly challenge someone and tell them immediately that they're completely wrong, actually what's most likely is they'll withdraw from you and become more socially isolated". Instead, it's important to create a fine balance where you try to understand the source of the delusional belief without encouraging it - that could be more than a chatbot can master.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's a surprise in a new documentary about that Bigfoot film shot in 1967 by Roger Patterson, reports the Wall Street Journal. Capturing Bigfoot "builds to a big reveal: freshly surfaced film that appears to show a woodsy dress rehearsal for one of the world's most enduring hoaxes." In the new footage - from a Kodak reel dating to 1966 - Patterson's camera tracks a man in costume, his brother-in-law, moving in a similar fashion to the figure in the 1967 shoot, which featured a different location and a bigger man with a more distinctive stride, according to the documentary. The test-run footage "is the work of a director with a vision," says Capturing Bigfoot director Marq Evans. He says the reel was given to him by a colleague at Olympic College in Bremerton, Wash., where Evans runs a documentary film program. The colleague found the film in a safe that belonged to her late father, who worked in a Boeing film lab and could have developed film discreetly. With the long-buried footage in hand, Evans set out to explore the ripple effects from the Bigfoot film. Patterson, who died in 1972, hailed from the same region of Washington as Evans; the documentarian discovered that the hardscrabble cowboy had also been a gifted craftsman and artist. Patterson illustrated a self-published book, "Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist?", and set out to make a wildlife movie that would feature the ultimate trophy footage. He and his collaborators inadvertently helped spawn "this massive culture and industry" around the Bigfoot legend, Evans says... Roger Paterson presented his footage to America in a traveling show that crisscrossed the nation and climaxed with the hyped Bigfoot sequence on screen. The money poured in, leading to resentment among cohorts who felt they'd been shortchanged, none more so than Bob Gimlin, Patterson's wingman in the field during the infamous shoot.. [Roger's son] Clint Patterson says his mother privately confirmed his suspicions that the family's claim to fame was bogus, but he kept quiet to protect their financial stream. About 10 years ago, when he first wanted to go public with the truth, his mother disowned him. Bigfoot was also a recurring character on the 1970s TV show The Six Million Dollar Man. Which kind of puts the whole thing in perspective...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While AI CEOs worry governments might nationalize AI, others are advocating for something similar. Canadian security professional Bruce Schneier and Harvard data scientist Nathan Sanders published this call to action in Canada's most widely-read newspaper (with a readership over 6 million): "Canada Needs Nationalized, Public AI."While there are Canadian AI companies, they remain for-profit enterprises, their interests not necessarily aligned with our collective good. The only real alternative is to be bold and invest in a wholly Canadian public AI: an AI model built and funded by Canada for Canadians, as public infrastructure. This would give Canadians access to the myriad of benefits from AI without having to depend on the U.S. or other countries. It would mean Canadian universities and public agencies building and operating AI models optimized not for global scale and corporate profit, but for practical use by Canadians... We are already on our way to having AI become an inextricable part of society. To ensure stability and prosperity for this country, Canadian users and developers must be able to turn to AI models built, controlled, and operated publicly in Canada instead of building on corporate platforms, American or otherwise... [Switzerland's funding of a public AI model, Apertus] represents precisely the paradigm shift Canada should embrace: AI as public infrastructure, like systems for transportation, water, or electricity, rather than private commodity... Public AI systems can incorporate mechanisms for genuine public input and democratic oversight on critical ethical questions: how to handle copyrighted works in training data, how to mitigate bias, how to distribute access when demand outstrips capacity, and how to license use for sensitive applications like policing or medicine... Canada already has many of the building blocks for public AI. The country has world-class AI research institutions, including the Vector Institute, Mila, and CIFAR, which pioneered much of the deep learning revolution. Canada's $2-billion Sovereign AI Compute Strategy provides substantial funding. What's needed now is a reorientation away from viewing this as an opportunity to attract private capital, and toward a fully open public AI model. Long-time Slashdot reader sinij has a different opinion. "To me, this sounds dystopian, because I can also imagine AI declining your permits, renewal of license, or medication due to misalignment or 'greater good' reasons." But the Schneier/Sanders essays argues this creates "an alternative ownership structure for AI technology" that is allocating decision-making authority and value "to national public institutions rather than foreign corporations."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wikipedia describes Freenet as "a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication," released in the year 2000. "Both Freenet and some of its associated tools were originally designed by Ian Clarke," Wikipedia adds. (And in 2000 Clarke answered questions from Slashdot's readers...) And now Ian Clarke (aka Sanity - Slashdot reader #1,431) returns to share this announcement:Freenet's new generation peer-to-peer network is now operational, along with the first application built on the network: a decentralized group chat system called River. The new version is a complete redesign of the original project, focusing on real-time decentralized applications rather than static content distribution. Applications run as WebAssembly-based contracts across a small-world peer network, allowing software to operate directly on the network without centralized infrastructure. An introductory video demonstrating the system is available on YouTube. "While the original Freenet was like a decentralized hard drive, the new Freenet is like a full decentralized computer," Clarke wrote in 2023, "allowing the creation of entirely decentralized services like messaging, group chat, search, social networking, among others... designed for efficiency, flexibility, and transparency to the end user." "Freenet 2023 can be used seamlessly through your web browser, providing an experience that feels just like using the traditional web,"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time tech journalist Clive Thompson interviewed over 70 software developers at Google, Amazon, Microsoft and start-ups for a new article on AI-assisted programming. It's title? "Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It." Published in the prestigious New York Times Magazine, the article even cites long-time programming guru Kent Beck saying LLMs got him going again and he's now finishing more projects than ever, calling AI's unpredictability "addictive, in a slot-machine way." In fact, the article concludes "many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they're doing is deeply, deeply weird..."Brennan-Burke chimed in: "You remember seeing the research that showed the more rude you were to models, the better they performed?" They chuckled. Computer programming has been through many changes in its 80-year history. But this may be the strangest one yet: It is now becoming a conversation, a back-and-forth talk fest between software developers and their bots...For decades, being a software developer meant mastering coding languages, but now a language technology itself is upending the very nature of the job... A coder is now more like an architect than a construction worker... Several programmers told me they felt a bit like Steve Jobs, who famously had his staffers churn out prototypes so he could handle lots of them and settle on what felt right. The work of a developer is now more judging than creating... If you want to put a number on how much more productive A.I. is making the programmers at mature tech firms like Google, it's 10 percent, Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, has said. That's the bump that Google has seen in "engineering velocity" - how much faster its more than 100,000 software developers are able to work. And that 10 percent is the average inside the company, Ryan Salva, a senior director of product at the company, told me. Some work, like writing a simple test, is now tens of times faster. Major changes are slower. At the start-ups whose founders I spoke to, closer to 100 percent of their code is being written by A.I., but at Google it is not quite 50 percent. The article cites a senior principal engineer at Amazon who says "Things I've always wanted to do now only take a six-minute conversation and a 'Go do that." Another programmer described their army of Claude agents as "an alien intelligence that we're learning to work with." Although "A.I. being A.I., things occasionally go haywire," the article acknowledges - and after relying on AI, "Some new developers told me they can feel their skills weakening." Still, "I was surprised by how many software developers told me they were happy to no longer write code by hand. Most said they still feel the jolt of success, even with A.I. writing the lines... "A few programmers did say that they lamented the demise of hand-crafting their work. "I believe that it can be fun and fulfilling and engaging, and having the computer do it for you strips you of that," one Apple engineer told me. (He asked to remain unnamed so he wouldn't get in trouble for criticizing Apple's embrace of A.I.) He went on: "I didn't do it to make a lot of money and to excel in the career ladder. I did it because it's my passion. I don't want to outsource that passion"... But only a few people at Apple openly share his dimmer views, he said. The coders who still actively avoid A.I. may be in the minority, but their opposition is intense. Some dislike how much energy it takes to train and deploy the models, and others object to how they were trained by tech firms pillaging copyrighted works. There is suspicion that the sheer speed of A.I.'s output means firms will wind up with mountains of flabbily written code that won't perform well. The tech bosses might use agents as a cudgel: Don't get uppity at work - we could replace you with a bot. And critics think it is a terrible idea for developers to become reliant on A.I. produced by a small coterie of tech giants. Thomas Ptacek, a Chicago-based developer and a co-founder of the tech firm Fly.io... thinks the refuseniks are deluding themselves when they claim that A.I. doesn't work well and that it can't work well... The holdouts are in the minority, and "you can watch the five stages of grief playing out." "How things will shake out for professional coders themselves isn't yet clear," the article concludes. "But their mix of exhilaration and anxiety may be a preview for workers in other fields... Abstraction may be coming for us all."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's America's first large-scale offshore wind project, reports WBUR - enough clean energy to power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts from 62 offshore wind turbines generating 800 megawatts. But it took a while... The plant's first construction delay happened back in 2019, they point out - and then "Just three months ago, when the project was 95% complete, the U.S. Interior Department issued a stop-work order." But after successfully challenging that order in court, and "with a stretch of good weather offshore, the developers behind the $4.5 billion project managed to get over the finish line." The Associated Press notes it was "one of five major East Coast offshore wind projects the Trump administration halted construction on days before Christmas, citing national security concerns."Developers and states sued, and federal judges allowed all five to resume construction, essentially concluding that the government did not show that the national security risk was so imminent that construction must halt. Another one of the five, Revolution Wind, began sending power for the first time to New England's electric grid on Friday and will scale up in the weeks ahead until it is fully operational. "That project is nearly complete as well," notes WBUR, "and will eventually be capable of powering up to 350,000 homes."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Just the anachronism of seeing Doom, one of the poster children for the moral panic around violent video games, on a Nintendo console is novel," writes Kotaku - especially with the console's underpowered "Super FX" coprocessorHampered by a nearly unplayable framerate, especially in later levels, and mired by sacrifices, like altered levels, no floor or ceiling textures, and the entire fourth episode being cut, [1995's] Doom on the Super NES was not a good version of the game, but it was Doom running on the Super NES, and, for that alone, [programmer Randal] Linden's genius deserves recognition. But then in 2022 when Audi Sorlie interviewed Linden on the YouTube show DF Retro, "Not really knowing where fate was going to take us, I asked [Linden] a throwaway question regarding the source code for Doom."If you ever worked on this again, Sorlie asked, would you make any improvements or do anything differently?" "Yeah," Linden replied. "I have plenty of ideas if I could go back, but, you know, I don't think anyone's asking me to go back to Super Nintendo Doom and improve it." A few years passed, and Sorlie joined Limited Run Games as lead producer for their development department. When LRG asked him to run down his craziest ideas, a new, improved release of Randal Linden's Doom loomed large. Convincing Linden was easy, and Sorlie said even the folks at license holder Bethesda were more amused than anything. "You want to go back and develop for Super Nintendo?" they asked Sorlie. "Like, for real...?" "The trick was actually pretty cool," Linden said. "It's right here." He pointed to a chip on the prototype SNES cartridge, similar to the one Limited Run sent me to test out the game. "It's a Raspberry Pi 2350." Super FX chips are no longer in production for obvious reasons, but with a clever bit of programming, Linden was able to load software onto the Raspberry Pi that fools the SNES into thinking the game has one. "The Super Nintendo doesn't know that it's not talking to a Super FX," he explained. When he programs for it, he writes code almost identical to what he'd write for an authentic Super FX chip. "I had to go back and reverse-engineer my own code from 30 years ago," Linden laughed. "It's like, what was I doing here? And what was I doing there? Yeah, it was pretty tricky, some of the code. I was like, wow, I used to be very smart." The result of Linden's work? It's Doom, running right on a Super Nintendo, but it's smoother, packed with new content, and even includes rumble.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Just the anachronism of seeing Doom, one of the poster children for the moral panic around violent video games, on a Nintendo console is novel," writes Kotaku - especially with the console's underpowered "Super FX" coprocessorHampered by a nearly unplayable framerate, especially in later levels, and mired by sacrifices, like altered levels, no floor or ceiling textures, and the entire fourth episode being cut, [1995's] Doom on the Super NES was not a good version of the game, but it was Doom running on the Super NES, and, for that alone, [programmer Randal] Linden's genius deserves recognition. But then in 2022 when Audi Sorlie interviewed Linden on the YouTube show DF Retro, "Not really knowing where fate was going to take us, I asked [Linden] a throwaway question regarding the source code for Doom."If you ever worked on this again, Sorlie asked, would you make any improvements or do anything differently?" "Yeah," Linden replied. "I have plenty of ideas if I could go back, but, you know, I don't think anyone's asking me to go back to Super Nintendo Doom and improve it." A few years passed, and Sorlie joined Limited Run Games as lead producer for their development department. When LRG asked him to run down his craziest ideas, a new, improved release of Randal Linden's Doom loomed large. Convincing Linden was easy, and Sorlie said even the folks at license holder Bethesda were more amused than anything. "You want to go back and develop for Super Nintendo?" they asked Sorlie. "Like, for real...?" "The trick was actually pretty cool," Linden said. "It's right here." He pointed to a chip on the prototype SNES cartridge, similar to the one Limited Run sent me to test out the game. "It's a Raspberry Pi 2350." Super FX chips are no longer in production for obvious reasons, but with a clever bit of programming, Linden was able to load software onto the Raspberry Pi that fools the SNES into thinking the game has one. "The Super Nintendo doesn't know that it's not talking to a Super FX," he explained. When he programs for it, he writes code almost identical to what he'd write for an authentic Super FX chip. "I had to go back and reverse-engineer my own code from 30 years ago," Linden laughed. "It's like, what was I doing here? And what was I doing there? Yeah, it was pretty tricky, some of the code. I was like, wow, I used to be very smart." The result of Linden's work? It's Doom, running right on a Super Nintendo, but it's smoother, packed with new content, and even includes rumble.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Plug-in (or "balcony") solar panels can also be hung out a window or be set up in a backyard, reports NPR. They channel energy from the sun straight into a home's electrical outlet, generating enough electricity to power a refrigerator or microwave while "displacing electricity that otherwise would come in from the grid..." But what's holding up their adoption in America?For the panels to become more widely available in the U.S., state lawmakers are proposing bills that eliminate complicated utility connection agreements, which are required for larger rooftop solar installations and, most utilities say, should apply to plug-in solar too. Those agreements, along with permitting and other installation costs, can double the price of solar panels. Utah enacted the first law, last May, supporting plug-in solar, and now some 30 pieces of similar legislation have been introduced around the United States. [And Virginia seems poised to pass a similar law.] But the drive toward plug-in solar is facing pushback from electric utilities. They are raising safety concerns and prompting legislators to delay votes on the bills. So far, utilities have won over lawmakers in five states and convinced them to delay votes on plug-in solar bills... Plug-in solar advocates say that safety concerns about the new technology have been addressed and that utilities are really just worried about losing business, because every kilowatt-hour generated by a plug-in solar panel is one less the utility sells to a customer... There are safety risks with any electrical appliance, and it's true that plug-in solar panels present some unique problems. But safety experts also say those issues can be managed.... German utilities expressed many of the same concerns nearly a decade ago when plug-in solar started to become popular in Germany. But with more than a million systems installed, no safety incidents have been reported for customers who used the panels as instructed, according to a research paper funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A few developers found a way, for now, to turn a few of these increasingly mediocre Amazon Show devices into friendly, useful, open computers," writes the co-founder of the gaming/tech news site Aftermath. For under $50 each, he bought some used versions of the devices and tested their instructions, partly to escape the full-screen ads Amazon began showing late last year, and also to overwrite Amazon's locked down Android fork "Fire OS" (and "a similarly neutered version of Linux called Vega OS") Customers who bought these devices and used them for several years were not used to them showing full screen ads, and now they do. People were justifiably pissed. So what do you do when an already evil device gets shittier...? I wiped Fire OS from the device and used ADB sideload to directly load two packages on the device: LineageOS and MindTheGapps. MindTheGapps lets you turn the device into something resembling a traditional Android device, for both good and bad.... It took a few times of wiping the device, but after a few tries it finally worked as intended... I immediately installed the Home Assistant app... Not only can the hacked Echo Show 8 control my entire smart home, it now plays back my entire local music library as well as any internet radio channels like The Lot Radio and NTS. It can also synchronize with any additional Echo Show running LineageOS in my house using the SendSpin protocol... I would gladly take it any day of the week over most of the devices these companies offer, especially Amazon. It may not be as intuitive as out-of-the-box smart home products, but I don't need my devices to be intuitive, I need them to behave. I had finally found a smart display that wasn't a cop... The hardware is old and creaky, and after the hack it can only use 1GB of the 2GB of ram. And yet it still manages to feel snappier than the stock hardware. "The amount of telemetry, ads, and general bloat Amazon shoves down our throats definitely doesn't help performance," [XDA Devs Forum user] Rortiz2 told me. "That's actually another reason why we did LineageOS, it kind of gives the device a second life. Even though it's still a bit buggy, it feels way better to use than the stock firmware...." If you want a smart speaker with a display that just runs a stripped-down version of Android that you have full control over, you're going to have a hard time finding it outside of these three specific models unless you cobble something together yourself. It is a deceptively simple thing to desire - the kiosk computer from science fiction that isn't a narc - yet few companies really offer it. "It should be against the law to not give an end user the ability to consensually load whatever OS or program they want on their device..." the article concludes, arguing that "If we budge on the inalienable right to modify our hardware then we forsake a key part about what makes computers special." And in the mean time, "There are so many devices that could be put to use rotting in e-waste facilities and thrift stores..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models feature a keyboard change," reports MacRumors:On the U.S. English version of the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro keyboards, the tab, caps lock, shift, return, and delete keycaps now have glyphs on them. On previous-generation models, these keys are labeled with text instead... Given the U.S. English keyboard layout is the default option for MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Neo models sold in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, this change effectively extends to those countries and a few others. "Apple already uses glyph-based key labels on several European keyboard layouts," notes The Mac Observer, "including British English versions of the MacBook. Because of this, the design will feel familiar to many users outside the United States." The change was noticed last week by Chicago-based X.com/YouTube user "Mr. Macintosh", who makes how-to videos about now and old Macs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized age-verification laws for operating systems - but he now sees a "real possibility" Colorado's law might exclude open-source. Phoronix reports that the System76 CEO met with the state Senator who co-authored Colorado's bill, and then posted on X.com that the Senator "suggested excluding open source software from the bill." Richell: This appears to be a real possibility. Amendments are expected... It's my hope we can move fast enough to influence excluding open source.. No illusions, it's an uphill battle, but we have an open door to advocate for the open source community. Vague language has been a recurring problem with new state age-verification legislation. Richell pointed out later that "In one proposed bill, Garmin would have to verify the age of their watch customers at device setup." Richell also sees New York's bill as "unlikely to be applicable to Linux distributions," since its language calls for "commercially reasonable age assurance" that free operating systems could use - and Richell isn't sure one exists as described by the bill. "As written today, it's extremely broad and vague and that makes it scary." Richell answered several follow-up questions about operating system age-verification laws. "What about California?" someone asked... Richell: We hope to make sensible, strong arguments for excluding open source which then becomes a standard for other states. It's going to be difficult. Q: Open source is not the only target to exclude. Please ensure that the bill is amended so that it does not require applications that have no possible use for the age bracket to ask about it. Richell: We discussed this as well. I proposed that apps that do not require age to modify app behavior or access by some other legislation be barred from reading age brackets to better protect privacy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The deal to take control of TikTok's U.S. business came with an unusual condition, according to people familiar with the matter. The investors - which include Oracle, Abu Dhabi investor MGX, and private-equity firm Silver Lake - "paid the Treasury Department about $2.5 billion when the deal closed in January," reports the Wall Street Journal, "and are set to make several additional payments until hitting the $10 billion total."The $10 billion payment would be nearly unprecedented for a government helping arrange a transaction, historians have said... Investment bankers advising on a typical deal receive fees of less than 1% of the transaction value, and the percentage generally gets smaller as the deal size increases. Bank of America is in line to make some $130 million for advising railroad operator Norfolk Southern on its $71.5 billion sale to Union Pacific, one of the largest fees on record for a single bank on a deal. Administration officials have said the fee is justified given Trump's role in saving TikTok in the U.S. and navigating negotiations with China to get the deal done while addressing the security concerns of lawmakers... The TikTok fee extracted from private-sector investors is the administration's latest transaction involving the nation's largest businesses. Trump took a nearly 10% stake in semiconductor company Intel and has agreed to take a chunk of chip sales to China from Nvidia in exchange for granting export licenses. The administration has also taken equity stakes in other companies and has a say in the operations of U.S. Steel following a "golden share" agreement with Japan's Nippon Steel in its takeover. Reuters notes earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed by investors in two of TikTok's social media rivals, seeking to reverse the approval of the deal. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California saw its worst drought in 10,000 years between 2012 and 2015, remembers the Washington Post. And yet genetic analyses of California's scarlet monkeyflower "found that many rapidly evolved... allowing them to cope with water scarcity and rebound from decline.""The fact that certain organisms are able to adapt just because of genetics that are already present is a great source of hope," said Daniel Anstett, a plant biologist at Cornell University and lead author on a new study on the issue. "It's one more arrow in the quiver of different ways that populations might be able to survive the massive climate change we're inflicting on the planet." The recovery of [Sequoia National Park's] scarlet monkeyflowers offers rare, real-world evidence of what scientists call "evolutionary rescue," according to the study published Thursday in the journal Science. It suggests that some species may be able to evolve quickly enough to keep up with the accelerating consequences of human-caused warming - essentially saving themselves from extinction. This discovery could help people decide how to distribute limited conservation funds by pinpointing which species have enough genetic diversity to be resilient, ecologists Mark Urban and Laurinne Balstad, who were not involved in the study, wrote in a separate analysis published by Science. "The challenge going forward is to identify when evolutionary rescue is possible, when it is not, and how to rescue those species that cannot rescue themselves," Urban and Balstad wrote.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A new study suggests the productivity boost from AI may be far smaller than executives claim," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli:According to research cited in Foxit's State of Document Intelligence report, while 89% of executives and 79% of end users say AI tools make them feel more productive, the actual time savings shrink dramatically once people account for reviewing and validating AI-generated output. The survey of 1,000 desk-based workers and 400 executives in the United States and United Kingdom found executives believe AI saves them about 4.6 hours per week, but they spend roughly 4 hours and 20 minutes verifying those results. End users reported a similar pattern, estimating 3.6 hours saved but 3 hours and 50 minutes spent reviewing AI work. Once that "verification burden" is factored in, executives gain just 16 minutes per week, while end users actually lose about 14 minutes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last June Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement that Texans "have a God-given right to know what's on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It's plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives." But California company Wildtype sells lab-grown salmon - and is suing Texas over its ban on cell-cultivated meat, the Austin Chronicle reported this week. The company's founder says lab-grown salmon eliminates the mercury, microplastic, and antibiotic contamination commonly found in seafood. And one chef in Austin, Texas says lab-grown salmon is "awesome" and "something new"-- at the only Texas restaurant that was serving it last summer:Just two months after the salmon hit the menu, Texas banned the sale of cell-cultivated meat...A lawsuit from Wildtype and one other FDA-approved cultivated meat company [argues] it's anti-capitalism and unconstitutional... This law "was not enacted to protect the health and safety of Texas consumers - indeed, it allows the continued distribution of cultivated meat to consumers so long as it is not sold. Instead, SB 261 was enacted to stifle the growth of the cultivated meat industry to protect Texas' conventional agricultural industry from innovative competition that is exclusively based outside of Texas...." [according to the lawsuit]. It was filed in September, immediately after the ban took effect, and cell-cultivated companies are awaiting judgment. That Texas ban would last two years, notes U.S. News and World Reports, adding that Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Nebraska have also passed bans, some temporary "on the manufacturing, sale or distribution of cell-cultured meat." Meanwhile, a new five-year moratorium on lab-grown meat was signed this week by the governor of South Dakota "after rejecting a permanent ban last month," reports South Dakota Searchlight:The new law bars the sale, manufacture or distribution of "cell-cultured protein" products from July 1 this year through June 30, 2031. Violations are punishable by up to 30 days in jail, a fine of up to $500, or both. "But supporters of lab-grown meat are not going down without a fight," adds U.S. News and World Reports, with another lawsuit also filed challenging a ban in Florida:When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the ban in Florida, he described it as "fighting back against the global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals." He added that his administration "will save our beef."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers. No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalized, the people said. Top executives have recently signaled the plans to other senior leaders at Meta and told them to begin planning how to pare back, two of the people said. If Meta settles on the 20% figure, the layoffs will be the company's most significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023 that it dubbed the "year of efficiency." It employed nearly 79,000 people as of December 31, according to its latest filing. The speculation follows a recent report from The New York Times claiming that Meta has delayed the release of its next major AI model after falling behind competing systems from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader tsuliga writes: Two new episodes of Doctor Who that were previously lost have been found. The original Doctor Who episodes were wiped or deleted by the BBC because they were not aware of the future use of re-runs of these shows. Ninety-five of the 253 episodes from the program's first six years are currently missing. How many more episodes are out there waiting to be rediscovered? "The main broadcasters in the UK in the 1960s, 70s, up to the 80s really, junked quite a lot of content," said Justin Smith, a cinema professor at England's De Montfort University and film archivist. "In some ways finding missing 'Doctor Whos' is the holy grail" of classic TV discoveries, Smith said. The two episodes were "The Nightmare Begins" and "Devil's Planet," both of which aired during the show's third series in 1965. It features William Hartnell as the Doctor in a story involving archvillains the Daleks -- pepperpot-shaped metal aggressors whose favorite word is "Exterminate!" Smith said that for fans of the show, "it's got it all, it really has. It is intergalactic, it's got some great performances. It stands up really, really well."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A top Senate administrator on Monday gave aides the green light to use three artificial intelligence chatbots for official work, a reflection of how widespread the use of the products has become in workplaces around the globe. The chief information officer for the Senate sergeant-at-arms, who oversees the chamber's computers as well as security, said in a one-page memo reviewed by The New York Times that aides could use Google's Gemini chat, OpenAI's ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, which is already integrated into Senate platforms. Copilot "can help with routine Senate work, including drafting and editing documents, summarizing information, preparing talking points and briefing material, and conducting research and analysis," the memo said. The document later added that "data shared with Copilot Chat stays within the secure Microsoft 365 Government environment and is protected by the same controls that safeguard other Senate data." It's unclear how widely AI is used in the Senate or how widespread it might become, as individual offices and committees set their own rules. The chamber has also not publicly released comprehensive guidance on chatbots, the report notes. In contrast, the House has clearer policies allowing the general use of AI for limited internal tasks but restricting it from sensitive data or for being used for deepfakes and certain decision-making activities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta plans to remove end-to-end encryption (E2EE) from Instagram direct messages by May 8, 2026. "Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we're removing this option from Instagram in the coming months," says Meta. "Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp." The Hacker News reports: The American company first began testing E2EE for Instagram direct messages in 2021 as part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "privacy-focused vision for social networking." The feature is currently "only available in some areas" and is not enabled by default. Weeks into the Russo-Ukrainian war in February 2022, the company made encrypted direct messaging available to all adult users in both countries. Last week, TikTok said it would not introduce E2EE, arguing it makes users less safe by preventing police and safety teams from being able to read direct messages if needed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Iranian drone strikes shut down a major helium facility in Qatar, removing about 30% of global helium supply and raising concerns for the semiconductor industry, which relies on the gas for chip fabrication. "QatarEnergy declared force majeure on existing contracts on March 4, freeing it from supply obligations to customers," reports Tom's Hardware. The industry outlet Gasworld reports that no imminent restart is planned. From the report: Helium consultant Phil Kornbluth, speaking at a Gasworld webinar on March 4, said that if the outage extends beyond roughly two weeks, industrial gas distributors could be forced to relocate cryogenic equipment and revalidate supplier relationships, a process that could stretch over months regardless of when Qatari output resumes. South Korea is among the most exposed countries, which, according to the Korea International Trade Association, imported 64.7% of its helium from Qatar in 2025. The country relies heavily on helium imports to cool silicon wafers during fabrication and is understood to have no viable substitute. The country's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources has reportedly launched an investigation into supply and demand for 14 semiconductor materials and equipment types with high dependence on Middle Eastern sources, Nikkei reported on Wednesday. Bromine, which is used in circuit formation, is another big concern, with South Korea sourcing 90% of its imports from Israel, also party to the ongoing conflict in Iran.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI services may not stay cheap for long, as companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are currently subsidizing usage to rapidly grow market share. As these companies move toward profitability and potential IPOs, Axios reports that investors will likely push them to increase prices and improve margins. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Flashback: Silicon Valley has seen this movie before. The so-called "millennial lifestyle subsidy" meant VC money helped underwrite cheap Uber rides and DoorDash deliveries. Before that, Amazon built its base with low prices, free shipping and, for years, no sales tax in most states. Eventually, all of these companies had to charge enough to cover costs -- and make a profit. Follow the money: The current iteration of AI subsidies won't last forever. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are widely expected to go public. Public investors will demand earnings growth and expanding margins. Even as chips get more efficient, total spending keeps rising. Labs need more capacity, more upgrades and more supply to meet demand. The bottom line: The costs of AI will keep going down. But total spend from customers will need to keep going up if AI companies are going to become profitable and investors are ever going to get returns on their massive investments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sdinfoserv writes: After running a Reddit clone for a couple of months, the Digg beta shut down again. The website is a splash memo from CEO Justin Mezzell, blaming the latest "Hard Reset" on bots. "Building on the internet in 2026 is different," writes Mezzell. "We learned that the hard way. Today we're sharing difficult news: we've made the decision to significantly downsize the Digg team..." The decision was made after struggling to gain traction and an overwhelming influx of AI-driven bots and spam. "When the Digg beta launched, we immediately noticed posts from SEO spammers noting that Digg still carried meaningful Google link authority," says Mezzell. "Within hours, we got a taste of what we'd only heard rumors about. The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts. We knew bots were part of the landscape, but we didn't appreciate the scale, sophistication, or speed at which they'd find us." "We banned tens of thousands of accounts. We deployed internal tooling and industry-standard external vendors. None of it was enough. When you can't trust that the votes, the comments, and the engagement you're seeing are real, you've lost the foundation a community platform is built on." Despite the setback, Digg plans to rebuild with a smaller team, with founder Kevin Rose returning to work full-time on a new direction for the platform. "Starting the first week of April, Kevin will be putting his focus back on the company he built twenty+ years ago," writes Mezzell. "He'll continue as an advisor to True Ventures, but Digg will be his primary focus." Slashback: The Rise of Digg.comRead more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Cloud storage company Backblaze has partnered with StorageReview to make a massive dataset containing 314 trillion digits of Pi publicly accessible. The digits were calculated by StorageReview in December 2025 after months of heavy computation designed to stress modern hardware. The dataset now hosted in the cloud weighs in at over 130TB, while the full working dataset used during the calculation reached about 2.1PB when intermediate checkpoints were included. The report notes that the Pi digits have been broken into roughly 200GB chunks to make it more practical for researchers or enthusiasts to download. Here's what StorageReview founder Brian Beeler said about the project: "Pushing [Pi] to 314 trillion digits was far more than a headline number. It was a sustained, months-long computational challenge that stressed every layer of modern infrastructure, from high core-count CPUs to massive high-speed storage, and it gave us valuable insight into how extreme, real-world workloads behave at scale. Making this dataset available in the Backblaze cloud takes the project a step further by opening access to one of the largest raw outputs ever generated in a single-system calculation. Hosting multi-petabyte files for the broader community is no small feat, and we appreciate Backblaze stepping up to ensure researchers, developers, and enthusiasts can explore and build on this record-setting achievement."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta has delayed the release of its next major AI model after internal tests showed it lagging behind competing systems from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The New York Times reports: The model, code-named Avocado, outperformed Meta's previous A.I. model and did better than Google's Gemini 2.5 model from March, two of the people said. But it has not performed as strongly as Gemini 3.0 from November, they said. As a result, Meta has delayed Avocado's release to at least May from this month, the people said. They added that the leaders of Meta's A.I. division had instead discussed temporarily licensing Gemini to power the company's A.I. products, though no decisions have been reached. [...] It takes time to improve A.I. models, and Meta can still catch up to rivals, A.I. experts said. But a longer timeline has set in at the company, with Mr. Zuckerberg tempering expectations for Avocado in the past few months. "I expect our first models will be good, but more importantly will show the rapid trajectory we're on," he said on a call with investors in January. A Meta spokesperson said in a statement: "As we've said publicly, our next model will be good but, more importantly, show the rapid trajectory we're on, and then we'll steadily push the frontier over the course of the year as we continue to release new models. We're excited for people to see what we've been cooking very soon."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Pitchfork: Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice and Live Nation reached a settlement in the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit against the concert giant. During the trial, which lasted only a week, representatives for Live Nation had moved to exclude a collection of Slack direct messages from 2022 between two of the company's regional directors from the evidence presented to the jury. Bloomberg and a number of other publications have, as of today (March 12), successfully petitioned New York federal judge Arun Subramanian to release the chats. The conversations are between Ben Baker, now head of ticketing for Venue Nation, and Jeff Weinhold, currently a senior director in the ticketing department. Baker and Weinhold joke about overcharging and price-gouging fans -- "Robbing them blind, baby," Baker brags in one exchange pertaining to a Kid Rock show in Tampa Bay -- as well as being able to raise prices on ancillary services such as parking seemingly at will. "These people are so stupid," Baker writes. "I almost feel bad taking advantage of them BAHAHAHAHAHA." Live Nation described the messages as "off-the-cuff banter, not policy, decision-making, or facts of consequence." In a statement the company has since added: "The Slack exchange from one junior staffer to a friend absolutely doesn't reflect our values or how we operate."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple will cut its App Store commission in China from 30% to 25% starting March 15, with small-business and mini-app rates dropping from 15% to 12%. AppleInsider reports: Chinese regulators have been back and forth with Apple in recent years over the 30% App Store commission. The latest publicly known pressure occurred after President Trump slammed the country with seemingly random and outrageous tariffs in 2025. While nothing much else has happened in the public eye in the year since, Apple has announced a new commission rate via its developer blog. The new rates go into effect on March 15. The current standard 30% rate is dropping to 25% for in-app purchases and paid app transactions. The Small Business Program and Mini Apps Partner Program will see rates drop from 15% to 12%. That lower rate applies to auto-renewals of in-app purchase subscriptions after the first year. Mini Apps are for transactions found in super apps like those popularized in China. [...] Developers will need to sign the updated terms, but the new rates are applied automatically. It is unclear if these new changes will prevent regulatory action from China.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mr. Dollar Ton shares a report from the Guardian: Angela Lipps, 50, spent nearly six months in jail after Fargo police identified her as a suspect in an organized bank fraud case using facial recognition software, according to south-east North Dakota news outlet InForum. Lipps told the outlet she had never been to North Dakota and did not commit the crimes. Lipps, a mother of three and grandmother of five, said she has lived most of her life in north-central Tennessee. She had never been on an airplane until authorities flew her to North Dakota last year to face charges. In July, U.S. marshals arrested Lipps at her Tennessee home while she was babysitting four children. She said she was taken away at gunpoint and booked into a county jail as a fugitive from justice from North Dakota. "I've never been to North Dakota, I don't know anyone from North Dakota," Lipps told WDAY News. She remained in a Tennessee jail for nearly four months without bail while awaiting extradition. She was charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft. According to Fargo police records obtained by WDAY News, detectives investigating bank fraud cases in April and May 2025 reviewed surveillance video of a woman using a fake U.S. army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars. The officers allegedly used facial recognition software to identify the suspect as Lipps. A detective reportedly wrote in court documents that Lipps appeared to match the suspect based on facial features, body type and hairstyle. Lipps told WDAY News that no one from the Fargo police department contacted her before the arrest. Lipps is now back home but says the experience has had lasting consequences. While jailed and unable to pay bills, Lipps lost her home, her car and her dog, she said. She also told WDAY News no one from the Fargo police department had apologized.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Milan prosecutors have requested trial for Amazon's European unit and four of its managers over alleged tax evasion worth around $1.38 billion, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Thursday. The move is unprecedented for a case of this kind in Italy, as Amazon agreed in December to pay 527 million euros, including interest, to Italy's Revenue Agency to settle the tax dispute. In all previous cases involving other international groups, once a settlement was reached and payment made, prosecutors closed related criminal investigations, either through plea deals or by dropping the cases. This time, however, Milan prosecutors did not share the tax authority's approach and decided to press ahead with their probe, leading to a request that the suspects be sent to trial. After December's tax settlement, Amazon said it would "forcefully defend its position on the potential ungrounded criminal case." It added: "Unpredictable regulatory environments, disproportionate penalties, and protracted legal proceedings are increasingly affecting Italy's attractiveness as an investment destination." Under what's described as a "VAT-avoidance algorithm," prosecutors accuse Amazon and four managers of enabling large-scale VAT evasion on goods sold in Italy between 2019 and 2021, allowing tens of thousands of non-EU marketplace sellers to sell goods in the country without clearly disclosing their identities. They allege that this helped the sellers avoid paying value-added tax. "Under Italian law, an intermediary offering goods for sale in Italy is jointly responsible for unpaid VAT by non-EU sellers operating through its platform," notes Reuters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Early benchmarks show the A18 Pro-powered MacBook Neo beating every current x86 CPU in single-core Cinebench performance, including chips from Intel and AMD. Notebookcheck reports: We have performed a couple of benchmarks and were particularly impressed by the single-core performance. Not in the short Geekbench test, but in Cinebench 2024, where a single-core test takes about 10 minutes. The A18 Pro consumes between 3.5-4 Watts in this scenario and scores 147 points. This means it is faster than every other x86 processor in our database, including the two desktop processors Intel Core Ultra 9 285K & AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This also means the MacBook Neo beats every modern mobile processor from AMD, Intel and also Qualcomm, even though the upcoming Snapdragon X2 chips should be a bit faster. The A18 Pro is also slightly faster than Apple's own M3 generation in this scenario. Further reading: ASUS Executive Says MacBook Neo is 'Shock' to PC IndustryRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Early benchmarks show the A18 Pro-powered MacBook Neo beating every current x86 CPU in single-core Cinebench performance, including chips from Intel and AMD. Notebookcheck reports: We have performed a couple of benchmarks and were particularly impressed by the single-core performance. Not in the short Geekbench test, but in Cinebench 2024, where a single-core test takes about 10 minutes. The A18 Pro consumes between 3.5-4 Watts in this scenario and scores 147 points. This means it is faster than every other x86 processor in our database, including the two desktop processors Intel Core Ultra 9 285K & AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This also means the MacBook Neo beats every modern mobile processor from AMD, Intel and also Qualcomm, even though the upcoming Snapdragon X2 chips should be a bit faster. The A18 Pro is also slightly faster than Apple's own M3 generation in this scenario. Further reading: ASUS Executive Says MacBook Neo is 'Shock' to PC IndustryRead more of this story at Slashdot.

A witness in a London High Court case was caught using smart glasses connected to his phone to receive real-time coaching while giving evidence during cross-examination. "In my judgement, from what occurred in court, it is clear that call was made, connected to his smart glasses, and continued during his evidence until his mobile phone was removed from him," said Judge Raquel Agnello KC. "Not only have I held that Jakstys was untruthful in denying his use of the smart glasses and his calls to abra kadabra, but the effect of this is that his evidence is unreliable and untruthful." The BBC reports: The claim arose during a ruling by Judge Raquel Agnello KC in a case brought by Laimonas Jakstys over the directorship of a property development company that owns a flat in south-east London and land in Tonbridge. Jakstys was told to remove the glasses after the court noticed he "seemed to pause quite a bit" before answering questions, and that "interference" was heard coming from around the witness. The judge later found that he had been "assisted or coached in his replies to questions put to him during cross examination" during the January trial. Once the glasses were taken off, an interpreter was still translating a question when Jakstys' mobile phone began broadcasting a voice -- which he later blamed on Chat GPT. Agnello said: "There was clearly someone on the mobile phone talking to Jakstys. He then removed his mobile phone from his inner jacket pocket." He denied using the smart glasses to receive answers, and denied they were connected to his phone. But the judge said multiple calls had been made from his phone to a contact named "abra kadabra," whom he claimed was a taxi driver.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

joshuark shares a report from Reuters: Microsoft has filed an amicus brief on Tuesday in support of Anthropic's lawsuit asking the court to temporarily block the U.S. Department of Defense designation of the AI startup as a supply-chain risk. In an amicus brief filing in a federal court in San Francisco, Microsoft backed Anthropic's request for a temporary restraining order against the Pentagon order, arguing that its determination should be paused while the court considers the case. Microsoft, which integrates the AI lab's products and services into technology it provides to the U.S. military, said that it was directly impacted by the DOD designation. "Should this action proceed without the entry of a temporary restraining order, Microsoft and other government contractors with expertise in developing solutions to support U.S. government missions will be forced to account for a new risk in their business planning," the company said. Microsoft's filing argued the TRO is needed to prevent costly disruptions for suppliers, who would otherwise have to rapidly rebuild offerings that rely on Anthropic's products. The judge overseeing the case must approve Microsoft's request to file the brief before it is officially entered, but courts often permit outside parties to weigh in on important cases.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli writes: Google says it will finally release Chrome for ARM64 Linux in the second quarter of 2026, bringing the company's full browser to a platform that has existed for years without official support. Until now, Linux users running Arm hardware have largely relied on Chromium builds or unofficial packages if they wanted something close to Chrome. Google says the new build will include the same features found on other platforms, including Google account syncing, Chrome Web Store extensions, built-in translation, Safe Browsing protections, and Google Password Manager. The timing reflects how ARM hardware is becoming more common across the Linux ecosystem, from developer laptops to AI systems. Google also pointed to NVIDIA's DGX Spark, a compact AI supercomputing device built on the Grace Blackwell architecture, which will support installing Chrome through NVIDIA's package management tools. For many Linux users, the announcement feels like a "finally" moment, as ARM64 Linux systems have been widespread for years despite the absence of an official Chrome build.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shantanu Narayen announced he will step down as CEO of Adobe once a successor is appointed, ending an 18-year tenure during which he transformed the company from boxed software to the Creative Cloud subscription model. Narayen said he will remain board chair as Adobe continues pushing into generative AI products. CNBC reports: Narayen joined Adobe in 1988 as a vice president and general manager, and he became CEO in 2007. Under Narayen, Adobe pushed from software licenses to subscriptions to its Creative Cloud application bundle, and the company is now working to expand through generative artificial intelligence. He sought to acquire fast-growing design software company Figma, but regulators pushed back, and the companies called off the deal, resulting in Adobe paying Figma a $1 billion breakup fee. [...] Narayen, 62, is lead independent director of Pfizer in addition to his responsibilities at Adobe, where he received $51 million in total compensation for the 2025 fiscal year, according to a filing. He owns $118 million in Adobe shares, according to FactSet. [...] On Narayen's watch, Adobe's stock jumped more than sixfold, while the S&P 500 is up about 350% over that stretch. "What attracted me to Adobe 28 years ago was our leadership in creating new market categories, world-class products, a relentless desire to innovate in every functional area of the company and the people I met during the interview process," Narayen wrote. "We have continued to create new markets, deliver world-class products, drive innovation in everything we do and attract and retain the best and brightest employees."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's new MacBook Neo is "easier to repair than other modern MacBooks," according to Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham. It introduces a more repairable internal design that makes components like the battery and keyboard easier and cheaper to replace. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the report: Replacements for pretty much any component in the Neo are simpler and involve fewer steps and tools than in the M5 MacBook Air. That includes the battery, which in the MacBook Air is attached to the chassis with multiple screws and adhesive strips but which in the Neo comes out relatively easily after you get some shielding and flex cables out of the way. But the most significant change in the Neo is that the keyboard is its own separate component. For essentially all modern MacBooks, going back at least as far as the late-2000s unibody aluminum MacBook designs, the keyboard has been integrated into the top part of the laptop case and is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to replace independently. [...] Apple hasn't yet listed MacBook Neo components in its parts store, but based on the repair prices it has announced, Neo components should cost quite a bit less than those for higher-end MacBooks. An out-of-warranty battery replacement for the Neo will cost $149, down from $199 for current Airs and $229 for current MacBook Pros; fixing accidental screen or external enclosure damage will cost AppleCare+ subscribers $49 for a Neo, down from $99 for other MacBooks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Perplexity AI has introduced a "Personal Computer" agent system that can run on a local machine such as a Mac mini, giving its AI agents access to a user's files and applications to automate tasks. According to CEO Aravind Srinivas, the heavy AI processing runs on Perplexity's "secure servers" but sensitive actions will require user approval. There will also be activity logs and a kill switch available to help ease concerns. AppleInsider reports: Perplexity Computer is, effectively, an AI that is a go-between for other AIs. Instead of issuing specific instructions to multiple AIs, you provide the general outcome of the task to Perplexity Computer. Perplexity Computer then breaks down the task into subtasks, which it then provides to sub-agents to do the actual work. In effect, you're talking to a project manager, who then delegates the task to other AIs, before combining the results and presenting them to you. The managing AI has a lot more freedom in how it orders its subordinates than users may think. While one may create documents while another gathers data, the manager may go as far as to order the creation of software to complete its tasks. Personal Computer is an extension of this, in that it is a locally run app that ideally runs on a Mac mini. The app gives always-on, local access to the Mac's files and apps, which Perplexity Computer and the Comet Assistant can use and alter if required.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sinij shares a report from Car and Driver: Honda is making a monumental shift in its business plans. The automaker is canceling the development and launch of the 0 Series SUV, the 0 Series saloon, and the Acura RSX, and as a result, expects to take a significant financial hit in 2026 [of up to $15.8 billion]. The automaker was blunt in its announcement of the changing plans, citing American tariff policies and the unpredictable nature surrounding American EV incentives and fossil fuel regulations. In its release marking the announcement, Honda made it clear that it expected to incur further financial losses over the long term if it went through with launching the cars. Honda also called out changing customer values in China, with buyers focusing more on software features and less on things like fuel efficiency and cabin space. In its release regarding the changing product plans, Honda was shockingly blunt about its situation, saying that it was simply unable to deliver products that offer a better value than that of newer Chinese manufacturers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic updated Claude so it can automatically generate charts, diagrams, and other interactive visualizations directly inside conversations, rather than only in a side panel. The new visualizations are rolling out now to all users. The Verge reports: As an example, Anthropic says a conversation about the periodic table could lead Claude to generate a visualization of it, featuring interactive elements that let you click inside the table for more information. Another example shows how Claude can generate a visual related to a question about how weight travels through a building. Though Claude will automatically determine whether it should generate a visualization in your chat, Anthropic notes that you can also ask the chatbot to generate a diagram, table, or chart directly. [...] Anthropic already allows you to create charts, documents, tools, and apps through Claude's "artifacts" feature, which opens in a side panel where you can interact, share, and download the AI-generated creation. But, as noted by Anthropic, artifacts are persistent, while the visualizations created within Claude's conversations will change or disappear as the conversation progresses. You can also ask Claude to make changes to the visualizations it creates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Maps is rolling out its biggest update in more than a decade, introducing a Gemini-powered chatbot and a new "Immersive Navigation" interface. "Ask Maps" lets users plan trips, ask questions, and refine travel suggestions conversationally within the app. "The new chatbot will be accessible via a button up near the search bar," notes Ars Technica. "You can ask it anything you're likely to find in Google Maps without jumping into another app. You can ask for directions, of course, but it can also plan out road trips and vacations from a single prompt. Ask Maps works like a chatbot, so it accepts follow-up prompts to refine and expand on its suggestions." Meanwhile, Google is promising a "complete transformation" of the navigation experience in Maps with what they're calling "Immersive Navigation." It brings detailed 3D visuals, smarter route previews, and improved guidance powered by data from Street View and aerial imagery. "You'll see accurate overpasses, crosswalks, landmarks, and signage in the new navigation experience," reports Ars. "Google also aims to solve some of the biggest usability issues with turn-by-turn navigation in this update. [...] Immersive Navigation tries to show you more of the route as you drive, using smart zoom and transparent buildings to help you plan ahead. Voice guidance will also reference turns after the next one where appropriate." Immersive Navigation will also highlights the tradeoffs between different route options, such as longer routes that avoid traffic or tolls. And, as you approach your destination, it will uses Street View imagery, building entrances, and parking information to help you orient yourself. The features are launching on Android and iOS first, with broader platform support coming later.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Atlassian plans to cut 1,600 jobs or a 10th of its global workforce, joining rivals in slashing staffing to cope with the advent of AI and a broader post-Covid industry slowdown. Australian billionaire founder Mike Cannon-Brookes explained the reductions in a staff memo, while also announcing his chief technology officer was leaving the Sydney-based company. "It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas," Cannon-Brookes said. "It does."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Asian governments are implementing emergency measures like four-day workweeks and work-from-home mandates to cope with a fuel shortage triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. "Asia is particularly dependent on oil exports from the Middle East; Japan and South Korea respectively source 90% and 70% of their oil from the region," notes Fortune. From the report: On March 10, Thailand ordered civil servants to take the stairs rather than the elevator, and to work-from-home for the duration of the crisis. It increased the air-conditioning temperature to 27 degrees Celsius, and will tell government employees to wear short-sleeved shirts over suits. (Thailand has about 95 days of energy reserves left, according to Reuters). Vietnam also called on businesses to let people work-from-home to "reduce the need for travel and transportation." The Philippines is pushing for a four-day work week, and has ordered officials to limit travel "to essential functions only." South Asia is getting hit hard too. Bangladesh brought forward the Eid-al-fitr holiday, allowing universities to close early in a bid to save fuel. Pakistan also instituted a four-day week for government offices and closed schools. India suspended shipments of liquefied petroleum gas to commercial operators to prioritize supplies for households, leading to worries from hotels and restaurants that they may be forced to close without fuel supplies. Countries across the region are also considering price caps, subsidies, and tapping strategic oil reserves. On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency "unanimously" agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil and refined products from its reserves. The Associated Press offers a look at the energy supplies that countries hold and when they tap them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was a "strategic mistake," European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday, as governments grapple with an energy crunch from the Iran war. Europe produced around a third of electricity from nuclear power in 1990 but that has fallen to 15%, she told an event in Paris, leaving it reliant on oil and gas imports whose prices have surged in recent days. Being "completely dependent on expensive and volatile imports" of fossil fuels puts Europe at a disadvantage to other regions, von der Leyen said in a speech. "This reduction in the share of nuclear was a choice. I believe that it was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emissions power." The report notes that the EU does not directly fund nuclear energy projects because all 27 member states have not unanimously supported the technology. However, von der Leyen said the Commission plans to provide a 200-million-euro guarantee from the EU's carbon market to help attract private investment in innovative nuclear technologies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Pew Research Center survey found that only 53% of U.S. adults went to a movie theater in the past year, while 7% said they've never seen a movie in a theater at all. "The findings reflected a domestic box office still fighting to regain its footing since the COVID-19 pandemic, when ticket sales collapsed 81% in 2020 due to theater closures," reports Variety. From the report: In 2025, moviegoers in the U.S. and Canada bought 769.2 million tickets, less than half of the all-time peak of roughly 1.6 billion tickets sold in 2002, according to data from Nash Information Services. However, an August 2025 study field by NRG/National Research Group showed that 77% of Americans ages 12-74 went to see at least one movie in a theater in the previous 12 months. Box office revenue peaked at an inflation-adjusted $16.4 billion in 2002, and annual ticket revenue held relatively steady through the 2000s and 2010s before falling to under $3 billion in 2020 when theaters closed for months. Last year, U.S. theaters sold just over $9 billion worth of tickets, per media analytics firm Comscore. The number represents a recovery, but nowhere near a full one, as ticket sales have been lagging around 20% below pre-pandemic levels.Read more of this story at Slashdot.