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fjo3 shares a report from TheWrap: There are already at least 175,000 AI-generated podcast episodes on platforms like Spotify and Apple. That's thanks to Inception Point AI, a startup with just eight employees cranking out 3,000 episodes a week covering everything from localized weather reports and pollen trackers to a detailed account of Charlie Kirk's assassination and its cultural impact, to a biography series on Anna Wintour. Its podcasting network Quiet Please has generated 12 million lifetime episode downloads and amassed 400,000 subscribers -- so, yes, people are really listening to AI podcasts. Inception Point CEO Jeanine Wright believes the tool is proof that automation can make podcasting scalable, profitable and accessible without human writers, editors or hosts. "The price is now so inexpensive that you can take a lot of risks,a Wright told TheWrap. aoeYou can make a lot of content and a lot of different genres that were never commercially viable before and serve huge audiences that have really never had content made for them." At a cost of $1 an episode, Wright takes a quantity-over-quality approach. "I think very quickly we get to a place where AI is a default way that content is made, not just across audio, but across television and film and commercials and imagery, and everything. And then we will disclose when things are not made with AI instead of that they were made with AI," Wright said. "But for now, we are perfectly happy leading the way."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NetChoice is suing Virginia to block a new law that limits kids under 16 to one hour of daily social media use unless parents approve more time, arguing the rule violates the First Amendment and introduces serious privacy risks through mandatory age-verification. The Verge reports: In addition to restricting access to legal speech, NetChoice alleges that Virginia's incoming law (SB 854) will require platforms to verify user ages in ways that would pose privacy and security risks. The law requires platforms to use "commercially reasonable methods," which it says include a screen that prompts the user to enter a birth date. However, NetChoice argues that Virginia could go beyond this requirement, citing a post from Governor Youngkin on X, stating "platforms must verify age," potentially referring to stricter methods, like having users submit a government ID or other personal information. NetChoice, which is backed by tech giants like Meta, Google, Amazon, Reddit, and Discord, alleges that the law puts a burden on minors' ability to engage or consume speech online. "The First Amendment prohibits the government from placing these types of restrictions on accessing lawful and valuable speech, just in the same way that the government can't tell you how long you could spend reading a book, watching a television program, or consuming a documentary," Paul Taske, the co-director of the Netchoice Litigation Center, tells The Verge. "Virginia must leave the parenting decisions where they belong: with parents," Taske says. "By asserting that authority for itself, Virginia not only violates its citizens' rights to free speech but also exposes them to increased risk of privacy and security breaches."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft's Azure, and Alphabet's Google Cloud risk being dragged into the scope of the European Union's crackdown on Big Tech as antitrust watchdogs prepare to study the platforms' market power. The European Commission wants to decide if any of the trio should face a raft of new restrictions under the bloc's Digital Markets Act (source paywalled; alternative source), according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. The plan for a market probe follows several major outages in the cloud industry that wrought havoc across global services, highlighting the risks of relying on a mere handful of players. To date, the world's largest cloud providers have avoided the DMA because a large part of their business comes via enterprise contracts, making it difficult to count the number of individual users, one of the EU's main benchmarks for earmarking Silicon Valley services for extra oversight. Under the investigation's remit, regulators will asses whether the top cloud operators -- regardless of the challenge of counting user numbers -- should be forced to contend with a raft of fresh obligations including increased interoperability with rival software and better data portability for users, as well as restrictions on tying and bundling.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Nigel Morris tells you he's worried about the economy, you listen. As industry observers know, Morris co-founded Capital One and pioneered lending to subprime borrowers, building an empire on understanding exactly how much financial stress the average American can handle. Now, as an early investor in Klarna and other buy-now-pay-later companies like Aplazo in Mexico, he's watching something that makes him deeply uncomfortable. "To see that people are using [BNPL services] to buy something as basic and fundamental as groceries," Morris told me on stage at Web Summit in Lisbon this week, "I think is a pretty clear indication that a lot of people are struggling." The statistics back up his unease. Buy-now-pay-later services have exploded to 91.5 million users in the United States, according to the financial services firm Empower, with 25% using the services to finance their groceries as of earlier this year, according to survey data released in late October by lending marketplace Lending Tree. These aren't discretionary purchases -- the designer bags and latest Apple headphones that BNPL was marketed for originally. Borrowers aren't paying it all back, either. According to Lending Tree, default rates are accelerating: 42% of BNPL users made at least one late payment in 2025, up from 39% in 2024 and 34% in 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Harvard is ramping up its holdings in cryptocurrency. The nation's oldest university reported a $443 million investment in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust in the third quarter. The school now holds 6.8 million shares of the exchange-traded fund, up from 1.9 million in the second quarter. The digital currency amounts to a little less than 1% of the school's $57 billion endowment. Other schools are bullish on crypto as well. Brown University reported holding $13 million of the BlackRock bitcoin ETF in the second quarter and Emory University reported holding $20 million of Grayscale's Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF as of March.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Abstract of a paper on NBER: This paper documents video consumption among school-aged children in the U.S. and explores its impact on human capital development. Video watching is common across all segments of society, yet surprisingly little is known about its developmental consequences. With a bunching identification strategy, we find that an additional hour of daily video consumption has a negative impact on children's noncognitive skills, with harmful effects on both internalizing behaviors (e.g., depression) and externalizing behaviors (e.g., social difficulties). We find a positive effect on math skills, though the effect on an aggregate measure of cognitive skills is smaller and not statistically significant. These findings are robust and largely stable across most demographics and different ways of measuring skills and video watching. We find evidence that for Hispanic children, video watching has positive effects on both cognitive and noncognitive skills -- potentially reflecting its role in supporting cultural assimilation. Interestingly, the marginal effects of video watching remain relatively stable regardless of how much time children spend on the activity, with similar incremental impacts observed among those who watch very little and those who watch for many hours.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Authorities in Iran have sprayed clouds with chemicals to induce rain, in an attempt to combat the country's worst drought in decades. From a report: Known as cloud-seeding, the process was conducted over the Urmia lake basin on Saturday, Iran's official news agency Irna reported. Urmia is Iran's largest lake, but has largely dried out leaving a vast salt bed. Further operations will be carried out in east and west Azerbaijan, the agency said. Rainfall is at record lows and reservoirs are nearly empty. Last week President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that if there is not enough rainfall soon, Tehran's water supply could be rationed and people may be evacuated from the capital. Cloud seeding involves injecting chemical salts including silver or potassium iodide into clouds via aircraft or through generators on the ground. Water vapour can then condense more easily and turn into rain. The technique has been around for decades, and the UAE has used it in recent years to help address water shortages. Iran's meteorological organisation said rainfall had decreased by about 89% this year compared with the long-term average, Irna reported.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The use of AI in the latest Call of Duty has prompted a US lawmaker to call for regulations to prevent artificial intelligence from taking jobs away from human workers. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents a large swathe of Silicon Valley, took aim at Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 after buyers noticed the popular shooter contains a significant amount of AI-generated icons, posters, and achievements. Gamers are criticizing it as filled with "AI slop." On Friday, Khanna tweeted: "We need regulations that prevent companies from using AI to eliminate jobs to extract greater profits." He added, "Artists at these companies need to have a say in how AI is deployed. They should share in the profits. And there should be a tax on mass displacement."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive, which operates publishing labels including GTA-maker Rockstar Games and 2K, said on Monday that although gaming consoles are not going away, the industry is moving toward PCs in the next decade. From a report: "I think it's moving towards PC and business is moving towards open rather than closed," Zelnick told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "But if you define console as the property, not the system, then the notion of a very rich game that you engage in for many hours that you play on a big screen -- that's never going away." Zelnick said the current split between console and mobile is about even in the market, but mobile is growing more rapidly than consoles.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK government has been warned that its plan to ban operators of critical national infrastructure from paying ransoms to hackers is unlikely to stop cyber attacks and could result in essential services collapsing. From a report: The proposal, announced by the Home Office in July, is designed to deter cyber criminals by making it clear any attempt to blackmail regulated companies such as hospitals, airports and telecoms groups will not succeed. If enacted, the UK would be the first country to implement such a ban. But companies and cyber groups have told government officials that making paying ransoms illegal would remove a valuable tool in negotiations where highly sensitive data or essential services could be compromised, according to two people familiar with the matter. "An outright ban on payments sounds tough on crime, but in reality it could turn a solvable crisis into a catastrophic one," said Greg Palmer, a partner at law firm Linklaters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Global internet freedom declined for a 15th consecutive year, according to Freedom House's annual report. Semafor: "Always grim reading," this year's is particularly sobering, Tech Policy Press noted, with the lowest-ever portion of users living in countries categorized as "free." Conditions declined in 27 of the 72 countries assessed, with those in Kenya -- where anti-corruption protests were quelled, in part, by a seven-hour internet shutdown -- deteriorating the most. China and Myanmar tied for least-free, and the US' ranking dropped, while Iceland retained its top spot for the freest digital environment. Bangladesh improved the most. The most consistent trend observed over 15 years, Freedom House noted, is the growing digital influence of state actors: "Online spaces are more manipulated than ever."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hotel cancellation policies have transformed over the past seven years. Travelers once could cancel reservations up until the day before check-in without penalty. That flexibility has largely vanished. The shift began around 2018 when third-party travel-booking sites deployed "cancel-rebook" strategies, the Atlantic writes. These platforms would monitor hotel rates after securing initial reservations. When prices dropped, the sites automatically canceled existing bookings and rebooked customers at lower rates. Hotels lost already-booked revenue whenever they reduced prices to fill empty rooms. Hotels responded by introducing tiered pricing structures. Travelers now encounter prepaid non-refundable rates at the lowest price point, mid-range rates with two- or three-day cancellation deadlines, and higher rates for same-day cancellation flexibility. The cancel-rebook sites could still swap reservations until deadlines arrived, but the damage to hotels diminished. Christopher Anderson, a professor at Cornell University's Nolan School of Hotel Administration, told the outlet that hotel cancellations differ from airline cancellations. Most hotels operate as franchises rather than centrally-owned properties. A canceled Ithaca Marriott reservation cannot be converted to credit at a New York Marriott Marquis because different owners operate each location. Anderson suggests travelers call hotels directly to request exceptions. Hilton confirmed it evaluates cancellation waivers case-by-case and extends broad waivers during natural disasters or major disruptions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says he's uneasy about how much power a handful of tech leaders -- including himself -- have over the future of artificial intelligence. From a report: "I think I'm deeply uncomfortable with these decisions being made by a few companies, by a few people," Amodei told Anderson Cooper in a "60 Minutes" episode that aired Sunday. "Like who elected you and Sam Altman?" asked Anderson. "No one. Honestly, no one," Amodei replied.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Elementary-school students would have to learn how to write in cursive, under a bill set to be vetted by a House committee next week. Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, filed a similar proposal (SB 444) on Monday. The House Student Academic Success Subcommittee is set to review the measure (HB 127) on Nov. 18. Sponsored by Rep. Toby Overdorf, R-Palm City, the bill would require cursive instruction in second through fifth grades. The proposal, filed for consideration for the legislative session that begins Jan. 13, also would require students to demonstrate proficiency in cursive by the end of fifth grade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeff Bezos has founded an AI startup called Project Prometheus and will serve as its co-chief executive. This is his first formal operational role since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in July 2021. The company has raised $6.2 billion in funding, The New York Times reports, partly from Bezos. The funding makes Project Prometheus one of the most well-financed early-stage startups in the world. Bezos's co-founder and co-chief executive is Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist who worked closely with Google co-founder Sergey Brin at Google X. Dr. Bajaj was among the founders of Verily in 2015 and co-founded Foresite Labs in 2018. He recently left that position to focus on Project Prometheus. The company is focusing on AI for engineering and manufacturing in computers, aerospace, and automobiles. The startup has already hired nearly 100 employees, the report said. Researchers from OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta are among the hires. Project Prometheus is building AI systems that learn from physical experiments rather than just analyzing digital text.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux kernel maintainers "are grappling with how to integrate AI-generated contributions without compromising the project's integrity," reports WebProNews:The latest push comes from a proposal by Sasha Levin, a prominent kernel developer at NVIDIA, who has outlined guidelines for tool-generated submissions. Posted to the kernel mailing list, these guidelines aim to standardize how AI-assisted patches are handled. According to Phoronix, the v3 iteration of the proposal [posted by Intel engineer Dave Hansen] emphasizes transparency and accountability, requiring developers to disclose AI involvement in their contributions. This move reflects broader industry concerns about the quality and copyright implications of machine-generated code. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has weighed in on the debate, advocating for treating AI tools no differently than traditional coding aids. As reported by heise online, Torvalds sees no need for special copyright treatment for AI contributions, stating that they should be viewed as extensions of the developer's work. This perspective aligns with the kernel's pragmatic approach to innovation. The proposal, initially put forward by Levin in July 2025, includes a 'Co-developed-by' tag for AI-assisted patches, ensuring credit and traceability. OSTechNix details how tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude are specifically addressed, with configurations to guide their use in kernel development... ZDNET warns that without official policy, AI could 'creep' into the kernel and cause chaos... The New Stack provides insight into how AI is already assisting kernel maintainers with mundane tasks. According to The New Stack, large language models (LLMs) are being used like 'novice interns' for drudgery work, freeing up experienced developers for complex problems... The Linux kernel's approach could set precedents for other open-source projects. With AI integration accelerating, projects like those in the Linux Foundation are watching closely... Recent kernel releases, such as 6.17.7, include performance improvements that indirectly support AI applications, as noted in Linux Compatible.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

655"Just a little more than a month after reaching an all-time high, Bitcoin has erased the more than 30% gain registered since the start of the year..." reports Bloomberg:The dominant cryptocurrency fell below US$93,714 on Sunday, pushing the price beneath the closing level reached at the end of last year, when financial markets were rallying following President Donald Trump's election victory. Bitcoin soared to a record US$126,251 on Oct 6, only to begin tumbling four days later after unexpected comments on tariffs by Trump sent markets into a tailspin worldwide. "The general market is risk-off," said Matthew Hougan, the San Francisco-based chief investment officer for Bitwise Asset Management. "Crypto was the canary in the coal mine for that, it was the first to flinch." Over the past month, many of the biggest buyers - from exchange-traded fund allocators to corporate treasuries - have quietly stepped back, depriving the market of the flow-driven support that helped propel the token to records earlier this year. For much of the year, institutions were the backbone of Bitcoin's legitimacy and its price. ETFs as a cohort took in more than US$25 billion, according to Bloomberg data, pushing assets as high as roughly US$169 billion. Their steady allocation flows helped reframe the asset as a portfolio diversifier - a hedge against inflation, monetary debasement and political disarray. But that narrative - always tenuous - is fraying afresh, leaving the market exposed to something quieter but no less destabilising: disengagement. "The selloff is a confluence of profit-taking by LTHs, institutional outflows, macro uncertainty, and leveraged longs getting wiped out," said Jake Kennis, senior research analyst at Nansen. "What is clear is that the market has temporarily chosen a downward direction after a long period of consolidation/ranging..." Boom and bust cycles have been a constant since Bitcoin burst into the mainstream consciousness with a more than 13,000% surge in 2017, only to be followed by a plunge of almost 75% the following year... Bitcoin has whipsawed investors through the year, dropping to as low as US$74,400 in April as Trump unveiled his tariffs, before rebounding to record highs ahead of the latest retreat... The market downturn has been even tougher on smaller, less liquid tokens that traders often gravitate toward because of their higher volatility and typical outperformance during rallies. A MarketVector index tracking the bottom half of the largest 100 digital assets is down around 60% this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"To be clear, the current economics of space-based data centers don't make sense," writes the Wall Street Journal. "But they could in the future, perhaps as soon as a decade or so from now, according to an analysis by Phil Metzger, a research professor at the University of Central Florida and formerly of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.""Space enthusiasts (comme moi) have long sought a business case to enable human migration beyond our home world," he posted on X amid the new hype. "I think AI servers in space is the first real business case that will lead to many more...." The argument essentially boils down to the belief that AI's needs are eventually going to grow so great that we need to move to outer space. There the sun's power can be more efficiently harvested. In space, the sun's rays can be direct and constant for solar panels to collect - no clouds, no rainstorms, no nighttime. Demands for cooling could also be cut because of the vacuum of space. Plus, there aren't those pesky regulations that executives like to complain about, slowing construction of new power plants to meet the data-center needs. In space, no one can hear the Nimbys scream."We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centers in space in the next couple of decades," Bezos said at a tech conference last month. "Space will end up being one of the places that keeps making Earth better." It's still early days. At Alphabet, Google's plans sound almost conservative. The search-engine company in recent days announced Project Suncatcher, which it describes as a moonshot project to scale machine learning in space. It plans to launch two prototype satellites by early 2027 to test its hardware in orbit. "Like any moonshot, it's going to require us to solve a lot of complex engineering challenges," Pichai posted on social media. Nvidia, too, has announced a partnership with startup Starcloud to work on space-based data centers. Not to be outdone, Elon Musk has been painting his own updated vision for the heavens... in recent weeks he has been talking more about how he can use his spaceships to deploy new versions of his solar-powered Starlink satellites equipped with high-speed lasers to build out in-space data centers. On Friday, Musk further reiterated how those AI satellites would be able to generate 100 gigawatts of annual solar power - or, what he said, would be roughly a quarter of what the U.S. consumes on average in a year. "We have a plan mapped out to do it," he told investor Ron Baron during an event. "It gets crazy." Previously, he has suggested he was four to five years away from that ability. He's also touted even wilder ideas, saying on X that 100 terawatts a year "is possible from a lunar base producing solar-powered AI satellites locally and accelerating them to escape velocity with a mass driver." Simply put, he's suggesting a moon base will crank out satellites and throw them into orbit with a catapult. And those satellites' solar panels would generate 100,000 gigawatts a year. "I think we'll see intelligence continue to scale all the way up to where...most of the power of the sun is harnessed for compute," Musk told a tech conference in September.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Windows is evolving into an agentic OS," Microsoft's president of Windows Pavan Davuluri posted on X.com, "connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere." But former Uber software engineer and engineering manager Gergely Orosz was unimpressed. "Can't see any reason for software engineers to choose Windows with this weird direction they are doubling down on. So odd because Microsoft has building dev tools in their DNA... their OS doesn't look like anything a builder who wants OS control could choose. Mac or Linux it is for devs." Davuluri "has since disabled replies on his original post..." notes the blog Windows Central, "which some people viewed as an attempt to shut out negative feedback." But he also replied to that comment...Davuluri says "we care deeply about developers. We know we have work to do on the experience, both on the everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences. When we meet as a team, we discuss these pain points and others in detail, because we want developers to choose Windows..." The good news is Davuluri has confirmed that Microsoft is listening, and is aware of the backlash it's receiving over the company's obsession with AI in Windows 11. That doesn't mean the company is going to stop with adding AI to Windows, but it does mean we can also expect Microsoft to focus on the other things that matter too, such as stability and power user enhancements. Elsewhere on X.com, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shared his own thoughts on "the net benefit of the AI platform wave ." The Times of India reports:Nadella said tech companies should focus on building AI systems that create more value for the people and businesses using them, not just for the companies that make the technology. He cited Bill Gates to emphasize the same: "A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it exceeds the value of the company that creates it."Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to Nadella's post with a facepalm emoji. Nadella said this idea matters even more during the current AI boom, where many firms risk giving away too much of their own value to big tech platforms. "The real question is how to empower every company out there to build their own AI-native capabilities," he wrote. Nadella says Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI is an example of zero-sum mindset industry... [He also cited Microsoft's "work to bring AMD into the fleet."] More from Satya Nadella's post:Thanks to AI, the [coding] category itself has expanded and may ultimately become one of the largest software categories. I don't ever recall any analyst ever asking me about how much revenue Visual Studio makes! But now everyone is excited about AI coding tools. This is another aspect of positive sum, when the category itself is redefined and the pie becomes 10x what it was! With GitHub Copilot we compete for our share and with GitHub and Agent HQ we also provide a platform for others. Of course, the real test of this era won't be when another tech company breaks a valuation record. It will be when the overall economy and society themselves reach new heights. When a pharma company uses AI in silico to bring a new therapy to market in one year instead of twelve. When a manufacturer uses AI to redesign a supply chain overnight. When a teacher personalizes lessons for every student. When a farmer predicts and prevents crop failure.That's when we'll know the system is working. Let us move beyond zero-sum thinking and the winner-take-all hype and focus instead on building broad capabilities that harness the power of this technology to achieve local success in each firm, which then leads to broad economic growth and societal benefits. And every firm needs to make sure they have control of their own destiny and sovereignty vs just a press release with a Tech/AI company or worse leak all their value through what may seem like a partnership, except it's extractive in terms of value exchange in the long run.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Three Chinese astronauts returned from their nation's space station Friday," reports the Associated Press, "after more than a week's delay because the return capsule they had planned to use was damaged, likely from being hit by space debris."The team left their Shenzhou-20 spacecraft in orbit and came back using the recently arrived Shenzhou-21, which had ferried a three-person replacement crew to the station, China's Manned Space Agency said.The original return plan was scrapped because a window in the Shenzhou-20 capsule had tiny cracks, most likely caused by impact from space debris, the space agency said Friday... Their return was delayed for nine days, and their 204-day stay in space was the longest for any astronaut at China's space station... China developed the Tiangong space station after the country was excluded from the International Space Station over U.S. national security concerns. China's space program is controlled by its military.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Android's security team published a blog post this week about their experience using Rust. Its title? "Move fast and fix things."Last year, we wrote about why a memory safety strategy that focuses on vulnerability prevention in new code quickly yields durable and compounding gains. This year we look at how this approach isn't just fixing things, but helping us move faster. The 2025 data continues to validate the approach, with memory safety vulnerabilities falling below 20% of total vulnerabilities for the first time. We adopted Rust for its security and are seeing a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density compared to Android's C and C++ code. But the biggest surprise was Rust's impact on software delivery. With Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review, the safer path is now also the faster one... Data shows that Rust code requires fewer revisions. This trend has been consistent since 2023. Rust changes of a similar size need about 20% fewer revisions than their C++ counterparts... In a self-reported survey from 2022, Google software engineers reported that Rust is both easier to review and more likely to be correct. The hard data on rollback rates and review times validates those impressions. Historically, security improvements often came at a cost. More security meant more process, slower performance, or delayed features, forcing trade-offs between security and other product goals. The shift to Rust is different: we are significantly improving security and key development efficiency and product stability metrics. With Rust support now mature for building Android system services and libraries, we are focused on bringing its security and productivity advantages elsewhere. Android's 6.12 Linux kernel is our first kernel with Rust support enabled and our first production Rust driver. More exciting projects are underway, such as our ongoing collaboration with Arm and Collabora on a Rust-based kernel-mode GPU driver. [They've also been deploying Rust in firmware for years, and Rust "is ensuring memory safety from the ground up in several security-critical Google applications," including Chromium's parsers for PNG, JSON, and web fonts.] 2025 was the first year more lines of Rust code were added to Android than lines of C++ code...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:[T]he computing power of crypto mining generates a lot ofheat, most which just ends up vented into the air. According todigital assets brokerage, K33, the bitcoin mining industry generates about 100 TWh of heat annually - enough to heat all ofFinland.This energy waste within a very energy-intenseindustry is leading entrepreneurs to look for ways to repurposethe heat for homes, offices, or other locations, especially in colderweather months. During a frigid snap earlier this year, TheNew York Times reviewed HeatTrio, a $900 space heater that alsodoubles as a bitcoin mining rig. Others use the heat from their ownin-home cryptocurrency mining to spread warmth throughout theirhouse. "I've seen bitcoin rigs running quietly in attics, withthe heat they generate rerouted through the home's ventilationsystem to offset heating costs. It's a clever use of what wouldotherwise be wasted energy," said Jill Ford, CEO of BitfordDigital, a sustainable bitcoin mining company based in Dallas..."Same price as heating the house, but the perk is that you aremining bitcoin," Ford said... The crypto-heated future may be unfolding in the town of Challis,Idaho, where Cade Peterson's company, Softwarm, is repurposingbitcoin heat to ward off the winter. Several shops and businesses intown are experimenting with Softwarm's rigs to mine and heat. At TCCar, Truck and RV Wash, Peterson says, the owner was spending $25 aday to heat his wash bays to melt snow and warm up the water."Traditional heaters would consume energy with no returns. Theyinstalled bitcoin miners and it produces more money in bitcoin thanit costs to run," Peterson said. Meanwhile, an industrial concretecompany is offsetting its $1,000 a month bill to heat its2,500-gallon water tank by heating it with bitcoin. Peterson hasheated his own home for two-and-a-half years using bitcoin miningequipment and believes that heat will power almost everything in thefuture. "You will go to Home Depot in a few years and buy a waterheater with a data port on it and your water will be heated withbitcoin," Peterson said. Derek Mohr, clinical associate professor at the University ofRochester Simon School of Business, remains skeptical.Bitcoin mining is so specialized now that a home computer, or evennetwork of home computers, would have almost zero chance of beinghelpful in mining a block of bitcoin, according to Mohr, with miningfarms use of specialized chips that are created to mine bitcoin muchfaster than a home computer... "The bitcoin heat devices I haveseen appear to be simple space heaters that use your own electricityto heat the room..." CNBC also spoke to Andrew Sobko, founder of Argentum AI (which isbuilding a marketplace for sharing computing power), who says theidea makes the most sense in larger settings. "We're workingwith partners who are already redirecting compute heat into buildingheating systems and even agricultural greenhouse warming. That'swhere the economics and environmental benefits make real sense.Instead of trying to move the heat physically, you move the computecloser to where that heat provides value."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the Business Standard:Apple has accelerated its succession plans as the company prepares for Chief Executive Tim Cook to potentially step down as early as next year, Financial Times reported. Apple's board and senior leaders have recently increased their focus on a smooth leadership transition after Cook's more than 14 years at the helm of the $4 trillion tech giant, the news report said. John Ternus, senior Vice-President of hardware engineering, is seen by many inside Apple as the top contender to become the next CEO. However, no final decision has been made yet. The leadership shift has been in the works for years and is not connected to its present performance, the news report said. Apple expects a strong year-end sales season, especially for the iPhone... Cook, who turned 65 this month, became Apple's CEO in 2011 after the passing of co-founder Steve Jobs. Under his leadership, Apple's market value has grown from around $350 billion in 2011 to $4 trillion today. Apple's stock is near a record high following strong results last month. Apple "is unlikely to introduce a new CEO before its earnings report in late January, which covers the crucial holiday quarter," the article points out. "An early-year announcement would allow the next leadership team time to settle before Apple's major annual events - the Worldwide Developers Conference in June and the iPhone launch in September..." Slashdot reader BrianFagioli points out that top-contenderTernus "is deeply technical and has been central to Apple Silicon and the hardware comeback in the Mac line."If Apple elevates him, that would be an unmistakable signal that the board wants a return to stronger, more grounded hardware leadership. The company may finally realize that accessories aren't enough to keep Apple fans excited, and that expensive experiments are not a substitute for devices people can actually use and afford... Financial success can only hide hardware misfires for so long. Apple needs a leader who can reconnect the company with its reputation for creating devices people can't live without, not ones people return or ignore. Tech blogger John Gruber "absolutely loves" the idea of Cook's successor "being a product person like Ternus, and Ternus is young enough -- the same age Cook was in 2011 when he took the reins from Steve Job -- to hold the job for a long stretch."Ternus took over iPhone hardware engineering in 2020, and was promoted to senior vice president of hardware engineering in January 2021, when Dan Riccio stepped aside. Apple's hardware, across all product lines and including silicon, has been exemplary under Ternus's leadership. And Ternus clearly loves and understands the Mac. I would also bet that Cook moves into the role of executive chairman, and will still play a significant, if not leading, role for the company. And Gruber makes another observation about that Financial Times article."That 'several people' spoke to the FT about this says to me that those sources (members of the board?) did so with Cook's blessing, and they want this announcement to be no more than a little surprising."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian:The number of deaths linked to superbugs that do not respond to frontline antibiotics increased by 17% in England last year, according to official figures that raise concerns about the ongoing increase in antimicrobial resistance. The figures, released by the UK Health Security Agency, also revealed a large rise in private prescriptions for antibiotics, with 22% dispensed through the private sector in 2024. The increase in private prescribing is partly explained by the Pharmacy First scheme, a flagship policy of Rishi Sunak's government that allows patients to be prescribed antibiotics for common illnesses without seeing a GP, raising questions about whether the shift in prescribing patterns risks contributing to the rise in resistance. "Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest health threats we face," said the UKHSA's chief executive, Prof Susan Hopkins. "More people than ever are acquiring infections that cannot be effectively treated by antibiotics. This puts them at greater risk of serious illness and even death, with our poorest communities hit the hardest... It's positive that we've seen antibiotic use fall in England within the NHS but we need to go further, faster," said Hopkins. "Please remember to only take antibiotics if you have been told to do so by a healthcare professional. Do not save some for later or share them with friends and family. If you have leftover antibiotics, please bring them to a pharmacy for appropriate disposal."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNN profiled the non-profit Internet Archive today - and included this tidbit about how they archive parts of the internet that are now "tucked in conversations with AI chatbots."The rise of artificial intelligence and AI chatbots means the Internet Archive is changing how it records the history of the internet. In addition to web pages, the Internet Archive now captures AI-generated content, like ChatGPT answers and those summaries that appear at the top of Google search results. The Internet Archive team, which is made up of librarians and software engineers, are experimenting with ways to preserve how people get their news from chatbots by coming up with hundreds of questions and prompts each day based on the news, and recording both the queries and outputs, [says Wayback Machine Director Mark Graham]. It sounds like a fun place to work...Archivists use bespoke machines to digitize books page by page, livestreaming their work on YouTube for all to see (alongside some lo-fi music). Record players churn out vintage tunes from 1920s and 1940s, and the building houses every type of media console for any type of content imaginable, from microfilm, to CDs and satellite television. (The Internet Archive preserves music, television, books and video games, too)... "There are a lot of people that are just passionate about the cause. There's a cyberpunk atmosphere," Annie Rauwerda, a Wikipedia editor and social media influencer, said at a party thrown at the Internet Archive's headquarters to celebrate reaching a trillion pages "The internet (feels) quite corporate when I use it a lot these days, but you wouldn't know from the people here."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech entrepreneur/blogger Anil Dash has been critical of AI browsers like ChatGPT Atlas. (He's written that Atlas "substitutes its own AI-generated content for the web, but it looks like it's showing you the web," while its prompt-based/command-line interface resembles a clunky text adventure, and it's true purpose seems to be ingesting more training data.) And at the Mozilla Festival in Spain, "Virtually everyone shared some version of what I'd articulated as the majority view on AI, which is approximately that LLMs can be interesting as a technology, but that Big Tech, and especially Big AI, are decidedly awful and people are very motivated to stop them from committing their worst harms upon the vulnerable." But...Another reality that people were a little more quiet in acknowledging, and sometimes reluctant to engage with out loud, is the reality that hundreds of millions of people are using the major AI tools every day... I don't know why today's Firefox users, even if they're the most rabid anti-AI zealots in the world, don't say, "well, even if I hate AI, I want to make sure Firefox is good at protecting the privacy of AI users so I can recommend it to my friends and family who use AI"... My personal wishlist would be pretty simple: * Just give people the "shut off all AI features" button. It's a tiny percentage of people who want it, but they're never going to shut up about it, and they're convinced they're the whole world and they can't distinguish between being mad at big companies and being mad at a technology so give them a toggle switch and write up a blog post explaining how extraordinarily expensive it is to maintain a configuration option over the lifespan of a global product. * Market Firefox as "The best AI browser for people who hate Big AI". Regular users have no idea how creepy the Big AI companies are - they've just heard their local news talk about how AI is the inevitable future. If Mozilla can warn me how to protect my privacy from ChatGPT, then it can also mention that ChatGPT tells children how to self-harm, and should be aggressive in engaging with the community on how to build tools that help mitigate those kinds of harms - how do we catalyze that innovation? * Remind people that there isn't "a Firefox" - everyone is Firefox. Whether it's Zen, or your custom build of Firefox with your favorite extensions and skins, it's all part of the same story. Got a local LLM that runs entirely as a Firefox extension? Great! That should be one of the many Firefoxes, too. Right now, so much of the drama and heightened emotions and tension are coming from people's (well... dudes') egos about there being One True Firefox, and wanting to be the one who controls what's in that version, as an expression of one set of values. This isn't some blood-feud fork, there can just be a lot of different choices for different situations. Make it all work.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Residential utility bills in America "rose 6% on average nationwide in August compared with the same period in the previous year," reports CNBC, citing statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration:The reasons for price increases are often complex and vary by region. But in at least three states with high concentrations of data centers, electric bills climbed much faster than the national average during that period. Prices, for example, surged by 13% in Virginia, 16% in Illinois and 12% in Ohio. The tech companies and AI labs are building data centers that consume a gigawatt or more of electricity in some cases, equivalent to more than 800,000 homes, the size of a city essentially... "The techlash is real," said Abraham Silverman, who served as general counsel for New Jersey's public utility board from 2019 until 2023 under outgoing Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. "Data centers aren't always great neighbors," said Silverman, now a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. "They tend to be loud, they can be dirty and there's a number of communities, particularly in places with really high concentrations of data centers, that just don't want more data centers..." [C]apacity prices get passed down to consumers in their utility bills, Silverman said. The data center load in PJM [America's largest grid, serving 13 states] is also impacting prices in states that are not industry leaders such as New Jersey, where prices jumped about 20% year over year... There are other reasons for rising electricity prices, Silverman said. The aging electric grid needs upgrades at a time of broad inflation and the cost of building new transmission lines has gone up by double digits, he said. The utilities also point to rising demand from the expansion of domestic manufacturing and the broader electrification of the economy, such as electric vehicles and the adoption of electric heat pumps in some regions... In other states, however, the relationship between rising electricity prices and data centers is less clear. Texas, for example, is second only to Virginia with more than 400 data centers. But prices in the Lone Star state increased about 4% year over year in August, lower than the national average. Texas operates its own grid, ERCOT, with a relatively fast process that can connect new electric supply to the grid in around three years, according to a February 2024 report from the Brattle Group. California, meanwhile, has the third most data centers in the nation and the second highest residential electricity prices, nearly 80% above the national average. But prices in the Golden State increased about 1% in August 2024 over the prior year period, far below the average hike nationwide. One of the reasons California's electricity rates are so much higher than most of the country is the costs associated with preventing wildfires.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from The Register:Yet another supply chain attack has hit the npm registry in what Amazon describes as "one of the largest package flooding incidents in open source registry history" - but with a twist. Instead of injecting credential-stealing code or ransomware into the packages, this one is a token farming campaign. Amazon Inspector security researchers, using a new detection rule and AI assistance, originally spotted the suspicious npm packages in late October, and, by November 7, the team had flagged thousands. By November 12, they had uncovered more than 150,000 malicious packages across "multiple" developer accounts. These were all linked to a coordinated tea.xyz token farming campaign, we're told. This is a decentralized protocol designed to reward open-source developers for their contributions using the TEA token, a utility asset used within the tea ecosystem for incentives, staking, and governance. Unlike the spate of package poisoning incidents over recent months, this one didn't inject traditional malware into the open source code. Instead, the miscreants created a self-replicating attack, infecting the packages with code to automatically generate and publish, thus earning cryptocurrency rewards on the backs of legitimate open source developers. The code also included tea.yaml files that linked these packages to attacker-controlled blockchain wallet addresses. At the moment, Tea tokens have no value, points out CSO Online. "But it is suspected that the threat actors are positioning themselves to receive real cryptocurrency tokens when the Tea Protocol launches its Mainnet, where Tea tokens will have actual monetary value and can be traded..."In an interview on Friday, an executive at software supply chain management provider Sonatype, which wrote about the campaign in April 2024, told CSO that number has now grown to 153,000. "It's unfortunate that the worm isn't under control yet," said Sonatype CTO Brian Fox. And while this payload merely steals tokens, other threat actors are paying attention, he predicted. "I'm sure somebody out there in the world is looking at this massively replicating worm and wondering if they can ride that, not just to get the Tea tokens but to put some actual malware in there, because if it's replicating that fast, why wouldn't you?" When Sonatype wrote about the campaign just over a year ago, it found a mere 15,000 packages that appeared to come from a single person. With the swollen numbers reported this week, Amazon researchers wrote that it's "one of the largest package flooding incidents in open source registry history, and represents a defining moment in supply chain security...." For now, says Sonatype's Fox, the scheme wastes the time of npm administrators, who are trying to expel over 100,000 packages. But Fox and Amazon point out the scheme could inspire others to take advantage of other reward-based systems for financial gain, or to deliver malware. After deplooying a new detection rule "paired with AI", Amazon'ssecurity researchers' write, "within days, the system began flagging packages linked to the tea.xyz protocol...By November 7, the researchers flagged thousands of packages and began investigating what appeared to be a coordinated campaign. The next day, after validating the evaluation results and analyzing the patterns, they reached out to OpenSSF to share their findings and coordinate a response. Their blog post thanks the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) for rapid collaboration, while calling the incident "a defining moment in supply chain security..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Electrek:Solar and wind are growing fast enough to meet all new electricity demand worldwide for the first three quarters of 2025, according to new data from energy think tank Ember. The group now expects fossil power to stay flat for the full year, marking the first time since the pandemic that fossil generation won't increase. Solar and wind aren't just expanding; they're outpacing global electricity demand itself. Solar generation jumped 498 TWh (+31%) compared to the same period last year, already topping all the solar power produced in 2024. Wind added another 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they supplied 635 TWh of new clean electricity, beating out the 603 TWh rise in global demand (+2.7%). That lifted solar and wind to 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of the year, up from 15.2% year-over-year. That brought the total share of renewables in global electricity -solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy, and geothermal - to 43%. Fossil fuels slid to 57.1%, down from 58.7%. For the first time in 2025, renewables collectively generated more electricity than coal. And fossil generation as a whole has stalled. Fossil output slipped slightly by 0.1% (-17 TWh) through the end of Q3. Ember expects no fossil-fuel growth for the full year, driven by clean power growth outpacing demand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from PC World: It won't whip the llama's ass, but Opera has added a Spotify visualizer to its latest iteration of its free Opera One browser. Known as Sonic, the visualizer will be part of Opera's Dynamic Themes, which use the WebGPU standard to employ a dynamic theme that runs in the background of the browser. It's essentially a shader, which uses your PC's graphics engine to generate the moving background. The browser also comes with a music player, which is set to Spotify by default. Users will have an opportunity to upgrade to Spotify Premium as part of the browser upgrade, Opera said. Opera's Sonic theme... takes the Spotify input and transforms it into a dynamic background. "As any old tech head knows, the original visualizer was found in Winamp, which would sync visualizations to the beat and flow of music being played," the article points out. And 27 years later, WinAmp arrived as an app in Apple's App Store and Google Play and in April of 2024. (The latest version was apparently released this May - and you can also download it to your desktop...) Somewhere along the way, Winamp also announced "Winamp for Creators," which they're describing as a dedicated platform for music artists with monetization and promotion tools, music management services, and other essential resources "to help creators take control of their careers" (including "a powerful social media publishing tool that lets users write a single post and push it to all their social media channels simultaneously.")Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been trying to measure the popularity of programming languages since 2000 using metrics like the number of engineers, courses, and third-party vendors. And "The November 2025 TIOBE Index brings another twist below Python's familiar lead," writes TechRepublic. "C solidifies its position as runner-up, C++ and Java lose some ground, and C# moves sharply upward, narrowing the gap with Java to less than a percentage point..." TIO CEO Paul Jansen said this month that "Instead of Python, programming language C# is now the fastest rising language,"How did C# achieve this? Java and C# are battling for a long time in the same areas. Right now it seems like C# has removed every reason why not to use C# instead of Java: it is cross platform nowadays, it is open source and it contains all new language features a developer wants. While the financial world is still dominated by Java, all other terrains show equal shares between Java and C#. Besides this, Microsoft is going strong and C# is still their most backed programming language. Interesting note: C# has never been higher than Java in the TIOBE index. Currently the difference between the two rivals is less than 1%. There are exciting times ahead of us. Is C# going to surpass Java for the first time in the TIOBE index history? "The fact that C# has been in the news for the successive betas and pre-release candidates prior to the release of C# 14 may have bumped up its percentage share in the last few months," notes a post on the site i-Programmer. But they also point out that by TIOBE's reckoning, Java - having been overtaken by Python in 2021 - "has been in decline ever since." TechRepublic summarizes the rest of the Top Ten:JavaScript stays in sixth place at 3.42%, and Visual Basic edges up to seventh with 3.31%. Delphi/Object Pascal nudges upward to eighth at 2.06%, while Perl returns to the top 10 in ninth at 1.84% after a sharp year-over-year climb. SQL rounds out the list at tenth with 1.80%, maintaining a foothold that shows the enduring centrality of relational databases. Go, which held eighth place in October, slips out of the top 10 entirely. Here's how TIOBE's methodology ranks programming language popularity in November:PythonCC++JavaC#JavaScriptVisual BasicDelphi/Object PascalPerlSQLRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader spatwei writes: It is now more common for data to leave companies through copying and pasting than through file transfers and uploads, LayerX revealed in its Browser Security Report 2025. This shift is largely due to generative AI (genAI), with 77% of employees pasting data into AI prompts, and 32% of all copy-pastes from corporate accounts to non-corporate accounts occurring within genAI tools. 'Traditional governance built for email, file-sharing, and sanctioned SaaS didn't anticipate that copy/paste into a browser prompt would become the dominant leak vector,' LayerX CEO Or Eshed wrote in a blog post summarizing the report. "GenAI now accounts for 11% of enterprise application usage," notes this article from SC World, "with adoption rising faster than many data loss protection (DLP) controls can keep up. Overall, 45% of employees actively use AI tools, with 67% of these tools being accessed via personal accounts and ChatGPT making up 92% of all use..." "With the rise of AI-driven browsers such as OpenAI's Atlas and Perplexity's Comet, governance of AI tools' access to corporate data becomes even more urgent, the LayerX report notes."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Google is going to court to help put an end to, or at least limit, the prevalence of phishing scams over text message," reports BGR:Google said it's bringing suit against Lighthouse, an impressively large operation that allegedly provides tools customers can buy to set up their own specialized phishing scams. All told, Google estimates that Lighthouse-affiliated scams in the U.S. have stolen anywhere between 12.7 million and 115 million credit cards. "Bad actors built Lighthouse as a phishing-as-a-service kit to generate and deploy massive SMS phishing attacks," Google notes. "These attacks exploit established brands like E-Z Pass to steal people's financial information." Google's legal action is comprehensive and is intent on completely dismantling Lighthouse's operations. The search giant is bringing claims under RICO, the Lanham Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). RICO, which often comes up in movies and television shows, allows authorities to treat Lighthouse's phishing operation as a broad criminal enterprise as opposed to isolated scams. By using RICO, Google also expands the list of individuals who can be found liable, whether it be the people who started Lighthouse, the people who run it, or even unaffiliated customers who used the company's services. The Lanham Act, for those unaware, targets malicious actors who misappropriate well-known company trademarks in order to confuse consumers. This Lanham Act comes into play because many phishing scams masquerade as legitimate messages from companies like Amazon and FedEx. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, meanwhile, is relevant because scammers typically use stolen credentials to gain unauthorized access to financial systems, something the CFAA is designed to target... The fact that Google is invoking all three of the acts above underscores how serious the company is about putting a stop to SMS-based scams. By using all three, Google's legal attack is more potent and also expands the range of available remedies to include civil damages and criminal penalties. In short, Google isn't merely trying to win a legal case; it's aiming to emphatically and permanently stop Lighthouse in its tracks. Getting even more aggressive, Google says it's also working with the U.S. Congress to pass new anti-scammer legislation, and endorsed these three new bipartisan bills:The Scam Compound Accountability and Mobilization (SCAM) Act "would develop a national strategy to counter scam compounds, enhance sanctions and support survivors of human trafficking within these compounds."The Foreign Robocall Elimination Act "would establish a taskforce focused on how to best block foreign-originated illegal robocalls before they ever reach American consumers."The Guarding Unprotected Aging Retirees from Deception (GUARD) Act "would empower state and local law enforcement by enabling them to utilize federal grant funding to investigate financial fraud and scams specifically targeting retirees. "Thanks to Slashdot reader anderzole for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The dream of quantum computers has been hampered by the challenge of error correction, writes the Harvard Gazette, since qubits "are inherently susceptible to slipping out of their quantum states and losing their encoded information." But in a newly-published paper, a research team "combined various methods to create complex circuits with dozens of error correction layers" that "suppresses errors below a critical threshold - the point where adding qubits further reduces errors rather than increasing them.""For the first time, we combined all essential elements for a scalable, error-corrected quantum computation in an integrated architecture," said Mikhail Lukin, co-director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative, Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor, and senior author of the new paper. "These experiments - by several measures the most advanced that have been done on any quantum platform to date - create the scientific foundation for practical large-scale quantum computation..." "There are still a lot of technical challenges remaining to get to very large-scale computer with millions of qubits, but this is the first time we have an architecture that is conceptually scalable," said lead author Dolev Bluvstein, Ph.D. '25, who did the research during his graduate studies at Harvard and is now an assistant professor at Caltech. "It's going to take a lot of effort and technical development, but it's becoming clear that we can build fault-tolerant quantum computers...." Hartmut Neven, vice president of engineering at the Google Quantum AI team, said the new paper came amid an "incredibly exciting" race between qubit platforms. "This work represents a significant advance toward our shared goal of building a large-scale, useful quantum computer," he said... With recent advances, Lukin believes the core elements for building quantum computers are falling into place. "This big dream that many of us had for several decades, for the first time, is really in direct sight," he said. "In theory, a system of 300 quantum bits can store more information than the number of particles in the known universe..." the article points out. "The new paper represents an important advance in a three-decade pursuit of quantum error correction." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new "cold war" between America and China is "pushing leaders to sideline concerns about the dangers of powerful AI models," reports the Wall Street Journal, "including the spread of disinformation and other harmful content, and the development of superintelligent AI systems misaligned with human values..." "Both countries are driven as much by fear as by hope of progress. "In Washington and Silicon Valley, warnings abound that China's"authoritarian AI," left unchecked, will erode American techsupremacy. Beijing is gripped by the conviction that a failure tokeeppace in AI will make it easier for the U.S. to cut short China'sresurgence as a global power. Both countries believe market sharefor their companies across the world is up for grabs - and with it,the potential to influence large swaths of the global population. The U.S. still has a clear lead, producing the most powerful AImodels. China can't match it in advancedchips and has no answer for the financial firepower of privateAmerican investors, who funded AI startups to the tune of $104billion in the first half of 2025, and are gearingup for more. But it has a massive population of capableengineers, lower costs and a state-led development model that oftenmoves faster than the U.S., all of which Beijing is working toharness to tip the contest in its direction. A new "whole ofsociety" campaign looks to accelerate the construction of computingclusters in areas like Inner Mongolia, where vast solar and windfarms provide plentiful cheap energy, and connect hundreds of datacenters to create a shared compute pool - some describe it as a"national cloud" - by 2028. China is also funneling hundreds ofbillions of dollars into its power grid to support AI training andadoption... "Our lead is probably in the 'months but not years' realm,"said Chris McGuire, who helped design U.S. export controls on AIchips while serving on the National Security Council under the Bidenadministration. Chinese AI models currently rank at or near the topin every task from coding to video generation, with the exception ofsearch, according to Chatbot Arena, a popular crowdsourced rankingplatform. China's manufacturing sector, meanwhile, is rocketingpast the U.S. in bringingAI into the physical world through robotaxis, autonomous dronesand humanoidrobots. Given China's progress, McGuire said, the U.S. is"very lucky" to have its advantage in chips... If AI surpasses human intelligence and acquires the ability toimprove itself, it could confer unshakable scientific, economic andmilitary superiority on the country that controls it. Short of that,AI's ability to automate tedious tasks and process vast amounts ofdata quickly promises to supercharge everything from cancer diagnosesto missile defense. With so much at stake, hacking and cyberespionage are likely to get worse, as AI gives hackers more powerfultools, while increasing incentives for state-backed groups to try tosteal AI-related intellectual property. As distrust grows, Washingtonand Beijing will also find it hard, if not impossible, to cooperatein areas like preventing extremist groups from using AI indestructive ways, such as building bioweapons. "The costs of theAI Cold War are already high and will go much higher," said PaulTriolo, a former U.S. government analyst and current technologypolicy lead at business consulting firm DGA-Albright StonebridgeGroup. "A U.S.-China AI arms race becomes a self-fulfillingprophecy, with neither side able to trust that the other wouldobserve any restrictions on advanced AI capability development...." The article includes an interesting observation from Helen Toner, director of strategy for Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former OpenAI board member. Toner points out "We don't actually know" if boosting computing power with better chips will continue producing more-powerful AI models. So "If performance plateaus," the Journal writes, "despite all the spending by OpenAI and others - a growing concern in Silicon Valley - China has a chance to compete."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Media headlines suggesting some slowdown in EV sales are simply incorrect," writes the site Electrek, "and leave out the bigger picture that gas car sales actually are dropping..."Over the course ofthe last two years or so, sales of battery electric vehicles, whilecontinuing to grow, have posted lower year-over-year percentagegrowth rates than they had in years prior. EV sales used to grow at50%+ per year, but for the last couple years, they have grown closerto ~25% per year. This alone is not particularly remarkable - itis inevitable that any growing product or category will show slowerpercentage growth rates as sales rise, particularly one that has beengrowing at such a fast rate for so long. In some recent years, wehad even seen year-over-yeardoublings in EV market share (though one of those was 2020->2021,which was anomalous). To expect improvement at that level perpetuallywould be close to impossible - after 3 years of doublingmarket share from 2023's 18% number, EVs would account for morethan 100% of the global automotive market, which cannot happen... We have seen a global EV sales growth rate of 23% in the first 10months of this year, according to a report just released by RhoMotion (recently acquired by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence). Thatincludes a +32% bump in Europe, +22% bump in China, +4% in NorthAmerica, and a big +48% bump in the "rest of the world." Notably,this 23% global growth rate is higher than last year's YTD growthrate, which was 22%at this time... In covering these trends, some journalists have attempted to usethe less-wrong phrase "slower growth," showing that EV sales arestill growing, but at a lower percentage change than previously seen. But for the first ten months of this year, that isn't true - EVsales are up more in 2025 than in 2024 by a percentage basis. Theyare also up in raw sales numbers - in 2024, EVsales grew by a larger number than in 2023. And the same is trueso far in 2025. Going back to 2023, 10.7 million EVs were soldglobally in the first 10 months. Then in 2024, 13.3 million weresold, a difference of 2.6 million. And so far in 2025, 16.5 millionEVs have sold, a difference of 3.2 million. Not only are the numbersgetting bigger, but the growth in unit sales is getting bigger aswell. Even in America, theEV market "has increased so far this year, with 11.7%US EV sales growth YTD."In terms of US hybrid sales, much has been made of customers"shifting from EVs to hybrids," which is also not the case.Conventional gas-hybrid sales areindeed up and plug-in hybrids, which have grown more slowlythan gas-hybrids/BEVs, have also shown some growth lately. Butgas-hybrid sales have not come at the cost of EV sales, rather at thecost of gas-only car sales. Because that'sjust the thing: the number of gas-only vehiclesbeing sold worldwide is a number that actually is falling.That number continues to go down year over year. Sales of newgas-powered cars are down by abouta quarter from their peak in 2017, and show no signs ofrecovering... And yet, somehow, virtually every headline you read isabout the "EV sales slump," rather than the "gas-car salesslump." The one you keep hearing about isn't happening,but the one you rarely hear about is happening... No matterwhat region of the world you're in, EV sales were up in the first10 months of this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the personal blog of interface expert Bruce Ediger:Early in March 2025, I noticed that a web crawler with a useragent string of meta-externalagent/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler) was hitting my blog's machine at an unreasonable rate. I followed the URL and discovered this is what Meta uses to gather premium,human-generated content to train its LLMs. I found the rate ofrequests to be annoying. I already have a PHP program that creates the illusion of an infinite website. I decided to answer any HTTP request that had"meta-externalagent" in its user agent string with the contentsof a bork.php generated file... This workedbrilliantly. Meta ramped up to requesting 270,000 URLs on May 30 and31, 2025...After about 3 months, I got scared that Meta's insatiableconsumption of Super Great Pages about condiments, underwear andcirca 2010 C-List celebs would start costing me money. So I switchedto giving "meta-externalagent" a 404 status code. I decided tosee how long it would take one of the highest valued companies in theworld to decide to go away.The answer is 5 months.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this post from the gaming news site Aftermath: Concord, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Firewalk Studios' Overwatch-like shooter, was live for just two weeks before it was pulled offline. Though Concord certainly had some dedicated players, it didn't have many - which is why it may be surprising to hear that a group of players are reverse-engineering the game and its servers to bring it back to life. Publisher Sony removed Concord from stores and digital marketplaces, automatically refunded some, and, later, shut down Firewalk Studios. Two hundred or so people were laid off, and any hopes of Concord's return were dashed. Poor sales - estimated to be under 25,000 copies sold - and low player numbers marred the release. Firewalk Studios' game director Ryan Ellis said in a blog post that pieces of the game "resonated with players," but "other aspects of the game and [Concord's] initial launch didn't land the way [Firewalk Studios] intended." Concord wasn't a bad game, but it just didn't generate enough interest with enough players. Now, a group of three hobbyist reverse-engineers, who go by real, Red, and gwog online, are trying to make it playable again... "Sometimes there's enough of the server left in the game, that we can 'activate' that code and make the game believe it's a server," Red said. "We do pretty much always need to fill in the gaps though..." Concord used an anti-tamper software to keep people from cheating, which also creates a problem for people reverse engineering. It's "nearly impossible" to crack, Red said, so the group didn't - they found an exploit to "forcefully decrypt the game's code" to "restore the game and start working on servers...." It's not open to the public, but people can sign up for future tests. Even former Firewalk Studios employees have joined the server. They're excited to see Concord come back to life, too, the developers said. "Friday morning, a video of the playtest was posted to the Concord Reddit page," according to the article. (Though ironically by Friday night YouTube had had removed the video "due to a copyright claim by MarkScan Enforcement."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a Substack post by economist/entrepreneur Skander Garroum:You know that feeling when you're waiting for the cable guy, and they said 'between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up? Now imagine that, except the cable guy is 'electricity,' the day is '50 years,' and you're one of 600 million people. At some point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself. What's happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it's not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It's being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it's working. Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn't exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day. And if you understand what's happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It was the first allegation of a crime committed in space - back in 2019. But by 2020 it had led tocharges of lying to federal authorities.And now a former Air Force intelligence officer "has pleaded guilty to lying to a federal agent," reports CNBC, "by falsely claiming that her estranged astronaut wife illegally accessed her bank account while aboard the International Space Station for six months, prosecutors in Houston, Texas, said Friday."The guilty plea by Summer Worden, 50, on Thursday comes more than five years after she was indicted in the space case for lying about actions by her wife, Anne McClain, a U.S. Army colonel, West Point graduate and Iraq war combat veteran, while they were in the midst of a divorce. The claim came at a time when Worden said that the couple was engaged in a custody battle over what Worden's then-6-year-old son, who had been conceived through in vitro fertilizationand carried by a surrogate... McClain was aboard the Space Station from December 2018 through June 2019. She recently commanded the SpaceX Crew-10 crew mission to the Space Station from March this year until August. Worden, who remains free on bond, is scheduled to be sentenced on February 12. She faces a maximum possible sentence of up to five years in prison.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The International Energy Agency's latest outlook signals that oil demand could keep growing through to the middle of the century," reports CNBC, "reflecting a sharp tonal shift from the world's energy watchdog and raising further questions about the future of fossil fuels."In its flagship World Energy Outlook, the Paris-based agency on Wednesday laid out a scenario in which demand for oil climbs to 113 million barrels per day by 2050, up 13% from 2024 levels. The IEA had previously estimated a peak in global fossil fuel demand before the end of this decade and said that, in order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, there should be no new investments in coal, oil and gas projects... The IEA's end-of-decade peak oil forecast kick-started a long-running war of words with OPEC, an influential group of oil exporting countries, which accused the IEA of fearmongering and risking the destabilization of the global economy. The IEA's latest forecast of increasing oil demand was outlined in its "Current Policies Scenario" - one of a number of scenarios outlined by the IEA. This one assumes no new policies or regulations beyond those already in place. The CPS was dropped five years ago amid energy market turmoil during the coronavirus pandemic, and its reintroduction follows pressure from the Trump administration... Gregory Brew, an analyst at Eurasia Group's Energy, Climate and Resources team, said the IEA's retreat on peak oil demand signified "a major shift" from the group's position over the last five years. "The justifications offered for the shift include policy changes in the U.S., where slow EV penetration indicates robust oil [consumption], but is also tied to expected increases in petrochemical and aviation fuel in East and Southeast Asia," Brew told CNBC by email. "It's unlikely the agency is adjusting based on political pressure - though there has been some of that, with the Trump administration criticizing the group's supposed bias in favor of renewable energy - and the shift reflects a broader skepticism that oil demand is set to peak any time soon," he added... Alongside its CPS, the IEA also laid out projections under its so-called "Stated Policies Scenario" (STEPS), which reflects the prevailing direction of travel for the global energy system. In this assumption, the IEA said it expects oil demand to peak at 102 million barrels per day around 2030, before gradually declining. Global electric car sales are much stronger under this scenario compared to the CPS. The IEA said its multiple scenarios explore a range of consequences from various policy choices and should not be considered forecasts. Thanks to Slashdot reader magzteel for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report from the Business Times: General Motors (GM) has directed several thousand of its suppliers to scrub their supply chains of parts from China, four people familiar with the matter said, reflecting automakers' growing frustration over geopolitical disruptions to their operations. GM executives have been telling suppliers they should find alternatives to China for their raw materials and parts, with the goal of eventually moving their supply chains out of the country entirely, the people said. The automaker has set a 2027 deadline for some suppliers to dissolve their China sourcing ties, some of the sources said. GM approached some suppliers with the directive in late 2024, but the effort took on fresh urgency this past spring, during the early days of an escalating US-China trade battle, the sources said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron. To figure it out once and for all, [astronomer Arthur Briaud of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in France] and his colleagues collected data from space missions and lunar laser-ranging experiments to compile a profile of various lunar characteristics. These include the degree of its deformation by its gravitational interaction with Earth, the variation in its distance from Earth, and its density. ... they found that the lunar core is very similar to that of Earth a" with an outer fluid layer and a solid inner core. According to their modeling, the outer core has a radius of about 362 kilometers (225 miles), and the inner core has a radius of about 258 kilometers (160 miles). That's about 15 percent of the entire radius of the Moon. The inner core, the team found, also has a density of about 7,822 kilograms per cubic meter. That's very close to the density of iron. [...] The research has been published in Nature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Winning the lottery isn't what brought Carrie Edwards her 15 minutes of fame. It was giving it all away. Standing alone in her kitchen one day in September, the Virginia woman was thunderstruck to discover she had won $150,000 in a Powerball drawing. As she was absorbing her windfall, she said, "I just heard as loud as you can hear God or whoever you believe in the universe just say, this is -- it's not your money." Then came a decision: She would donate it all to her three most cherished charities (source paywalled; alternative source). [...] Her journey to the lucky prize started when she walked into a 7-Eleven with a friend who wanted to buy two Powerball tickets. The jackpot for the Sept. 6 drawing was topping $1.7 billion, the second-largest amount ever. Edwards, 68, hardly ever played the lottery, but her friend was an active player who gave her two pieces of advice: Always buy a paper ticket, rather than getting them online. And the Powerball multiplier is a scam, don't do it. She ignored him on both accounts. She created a Virginia Lottery account on her phone. Then, instead of the typical strategies of using family birthdays and lucky numbers, she went to ChatGPT -- which she had only recently started using for research -- and asked, "Do you have any winning numbers for me?" "Luck is luck," replied the chatbot. Then it gave numbers that she plugged in -- paying the extra dollar for the Power Play to multiply anything she might win. She initially thought luck wasn't on her side when she didn't win the massive jackpot. But what she didn't realize is that she'd picked the "draw two" option, meaning her numbers were reentered for the next drawing. When she got a notification on her phone that she had won, she said, she thought it was a scam, or maybe she'd won something small, like $10. Just to satisfy her curiosity, she logged into her account and saw that she had matched four of the five numbers plus the Powerball in that second drawing. It would have been a $50,000 payout, but the multiplier tripled her winnings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube TV and Disney have ended their two-week carriage standoff, restoring ESPN, ABC, and other Disney networks under a new multiyear deal. Variety reports: Under the new agreement, ESPN's full lineup of sports -- including content from ESPN Unlimited -- will be made available on YouTube TV to base-plan subscribers at no additional cost by the end of 2026. In addition, access to a selection of live and on-demand programming from ESPN Unlimited will be available inside YouTube TV. The deal also lets YouTube include the Disney+ and Hulu bundle as part of "select YouTube offerings." According to Disney, "select networks" will be included in various genre-specific packages that YouTube TV expects to launch in the future. [...] The deal supersedes their prior distribution agreement, inked in December 2021 after a two-day blackout.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's limited-edition "iPhone Pocket" sold out almost instantly worldwide despite its $150-$230 price tag. Appleinsider reports: Longtime Apple users immediately saw the resemblance with the old iPod socks, and everyone saw the price. Apple and Japan's Issey Miyake fashion house partnered to create a limited edition iPhone Pocket, a stretched sock-like bag or shoulder strap. There was no denying that an iPhone in this Pocket looked snuggly. There was definitely no denying that the accessory was well designed. There's also no question that it was about as goofy as the iPod Sock from back the in the day. But there was every denying of the price. The iPhone Pocket came in a short version for $150, and a longer one for $230. For comparison, the Apple Watch SE starts at $250. As ever, though, if you liked it, if you had a use for it, and if you had the budget, there was no reason left not to buy. But if you have hesitated because of the cost, you are now out of luck. There are none left in the US.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Within the past year, stories have been posted on Slashdot about people helping North Koreans get remote IT jobs at U.S. corporations, companies knowingly assisting them, how not to hire a North Korean for a remote IT job, and how a simple question tripped up a North Korean applying for a remote IT job," writes longtime Slashdot reader smooth wombat. "The FBI is even warning companies that North Koreans working remotely can steal source code and extort money from the company -- money that goes to fund the North Korean government. Now, five more people have plead guilty to knowingly helping North Koreans infiltrate U.S. companies as remote IT workers." TechCrunch reports: The five people are accused of working as "facilitators" who helped North Koreans get jobs by providing their own real identities, or false and stolen identities of more than a dozen U.S. nationals. The facilitators also hosted company-provided laptops in their homes across the U.S. to make it look like the North Korean workers lived locally, according to the DOJ press release. These actions affected 136 U.S. companies and netted Kim Jong Un's regime $2.2 million in revenue, said the DOJ. Three of the people -- U.S. nationals Audricus Phagnasay, Jason Salazar, and Alexander Paul Travis -- each pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy. Prosecutors accused the three of helping North Koreans posing as legitimate IT workers, whom they knew worked outside of the United States, to use their own identities to obtain employment, helped them remotely access their company-issued laptops set up in their homes, and also helped the North Koreans pass vetting procedures, such as drug tests. The fourth U.S. national who pleaded guilty is Erick Ntekereze Prince, who ran a company called Taggcar, which supplied to U.S. companies allegedly "certified" IT workers but whom he knew worked outside of the country and were using stolen or fake identities. Prince also hosted laptops with remote access software at several residences in Florida, and earned more than $89,000 for his work, the DOJ said. Another participant in the scheme who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy and another count of aggravated identity theft is Ukrainian national Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors accuse of stealing U.S. citizens' identities and selling them to North Koreans so they could get jobs at more than 40 U.S. companies. According to the press release, Didenko earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for this service. Didenko agreed to forfeit $1.4 million as part of his guilty plea. The DOJ also announced that it had frozen and seized more than $15 million in cryptocurrency stolen in 2023 by North Korean hackers from several crypto platforms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: Russian telecom operators have begun cutting mobile internet access for 24 hours for citizens returning to the country from abroad, in what officials say is an effort to prevent Ukrainian drones from using domestic SIM cards for navigation. "When a SIM card enters Russia from abroad, the user has to confirm that it's being used by a person -- not installed in a drone," the Digital Development Ministry said in a statement earlier this week. Users can restore access sooner by solving a captcha or calling their operator for identification. Authorities said the temporary blackout is meant to "ensure the safety of Russian citizens" and prevent SIM cards from being embedded in "enemy drones." The new rule has led to unexpected outages for residents in border regions, whose phones can automatically connect to foreign carriers. Officials advised users to switch to manual network selection to avoid being cut off.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli writes: Logitech has confirmed a cybersecurity breach after an intruder exploited a zero-day in a third-party software platform and copied internal data. The company says the incident did not affect its products, manufacturing or business operations, and it does not believe sensitive personal information like national ID numbers or credit card data were stored in the impacted system. The attacker still managed to pull limited information tied to employees, consumers, customers and suppliers, raising fair questions about how long the zero-day existed before being patched. Logitech brought in outside cybersecurity firms, notified regulators and says the incident will not materially affect its financial results. The company expects its cybersecurity insurance policy to cover investigation costs and any potential legal or regulatory issues. Still, with zero-day attacks increasing across the tech world, even established hardware brands are being forced to acknowledge uncomfortable weaknesses in their internal systems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to CNBC, JPMorgan Chase has secured deals ensuring it will get paid by the fintech firms responsible for nearly all the data requests made by third-party apps connected to customer bank accounts. From the report: The bank has signed updated contracts with the fintech middlemen that make up more than 95% of the data pulls on its systems, including Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya, according to JPMorgan spokesman Drew Pusateri. "We've come to agreements that will make the open banking ecosystem safer and more sustainable and allow customers to continue reliably and securely accessing their favorite financial products," Pusateri said in a statement. "The free market worked." The milestone is the latest twist in a long-running dispute between traditional banks and the fintech industry over access to customer accounts. For years, middlemen like Plaid paid nothing to tap bank systems when a customer wanted to use a fintech app like Robinhood to draw funds or check balances. [...] After weeks of negotiations between JPMorgan and the middlemen, the bank agreed to lower pricing than it originally proposed, and the fintech middlemen won concessions regarding the servicing of data requests, according to people with knowledge of the talks. Fintech firms preferred the certainty of locking in data-sharing rates because it is unclear whether the current CFPB, which is in the process of revising the open-banking rule, will favor banks or fintech companies, according to a venture capital investor who asked for anonymity to discuss his portfolio companies. The bank and the fintech firms declined to disclose details about their contracts, including how much the middlemen agreed to pay and how long the deals are in force.Read more of this story at Slashdot.