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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad. The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At the end of its nearly 10-day tour through cislunar space, the Orion capsule on top of the rocket will exceed 25,000 mph as it plunges into the atmosphere to bring its four-person crew back to Earth. "This is the start of a very long journey," said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. "We ended our last human exploration of the moon on Apollo 17." [...] "We really are ready to go," said Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, during Saturday's rollout to the launch pad. "We were in a sim [in Houston] for about 10 hours yesterday doing our final capstone entry and landing sim. We got in T-38s last night and we flew to the Cape to be here for this momentous occasion." The rollout began around sunrise Saturday, with NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule riding a mobile launch platform and a diesel-powered crawler transporter along a throughway paved with crushed Alabama river rock. Employees, VIPs, and guests gathered along the crawlerway to watch the 11 million-pound stack inch toward the launch pad. The rollout concluded about an hour after sunset, when the crawler transporter's jacking system lowered the mobile launch platform onto pedestals at Pad 39B. The rollout keeps the Artemis II mission on track for liftoff as soon as next month, when NASA has a handful of launch opportunities on February 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11. The big milestone leading up to launch day will be a practice countdown or Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR), currently slated for around February 2, when NASA's launch team will pump more than 750,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket. NASA had trouble keeping the cryogenic fluids at the proper temperature, then encountered hydrogen leaks when the launch team first tried to fill the rocket for the unpiloted Artemis I mission in 2022. Engineers implemented the same fixes on Artemis II that they used to finally get over the hump with propellant loading on Artemis I. [...] If the launch does not happen in February, NASA has a slate of backup launch dates in early March.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: It all started in 1927, when physicist Thomas Parnell at the University of Queensland in Australia filled a closed funnel with the world's thickest known fluid: pitch, a derivative of tar that was once used to seal ships against the seas. Three years later, in 1930, Parnell cut the funnel's stem, like a ribbon at an event, heralding the start of the Pitch Drop Experiment. From then on, the black substance began to flow. At least, that is, in a manner of speaking. At room temperature pitch might look solid, but it is actually a fluid 100 billion times more viscous than water. It took eight years for the first droplet to finally hit the beaker below. Then, they dripped at a cadence of once every eight years or so, slowing down only after air conditioning was installed in the building in the 1980s. Today, 96 years after the funnel was cut, only nine drops in total have seeped out. The last was in 2014. Scientists expect another will fall sometime in the 2020s, but they are still waiting. No one has ever actually seen a droplet fall directly, despite all the watchful eyes. The experiment is now live-streamed, but various glitches in the past meant that each fateful moment has slipped us by.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Germany is reinstating EV subsidies after a sharp sales drop, rolling out a 3 billion-euro program offering 1,500-6,000 euros per buyer starting in May and running through 2029. Unlike some neighboring countries, the incentives are open to all manufacturers with a focus on low- and middle-income households. From a report: "I cannot see any evidence of this postulated major influx of Chinese car manufacturers in Germany, either in the figures or on the roads -- and that is why we are facing up to the competition and not imposing any restrictions," German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider said at a Monday press conference. The decision is a major boon for affordable Chinese automakers like BYD that are steadily gaining ground in the European market, [Bloomberg noted]. Germany's green-light for Chinese EVs stands in stark contrast to other nations' approaches. In the UK, subsidies introduced last year effectively excluded Chinese battery-powered vehicles, while France's so-called social leasing scheme includes similar restrictions. [...] Germany maintains strong diplomatic ties with China. German automakers are among the most significant players in China's automotive industry. Over the past years, China's policies -- including purchase subsidies and purchase tax reductions -- have not excluded models or automakers from specific countries. Whether German automakers like Volkswagen or American automakers like Tesla, all enjoy national-level purchase incentive policies in China on par with domestic automakers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sphere Entertainment plans to build a second U.S. Sphere near Washington, D.C., with a smaller 6,000-seat "mini-Sphere" proposed for National Harbor in Maryland. The venue would retain the signature LED exterior and immersive 4D tech of the Las Vegas Sphere, just at a more compact scale. The Verge reports: The second US sphere would be built in an area known as National Harbor in Prince George's County, Maryland. Located along the Potomac River, National Harbor currently features a convention center, multiple hotels, restaurants, and shops. While Abu Dhabi plans to build a sphere as large as the one in Las Vegas, the National Harbor venue would be one of the first mini-Sphere venues announced last March. Its capacity would be limited to 6,000 seats instead of over 17,000. But the smaller Sphere would still be hard to miss with an exterior LED exosphere for showcasing the "artistic and branded content" that helped make the original sphere a unique part of the Las Vegas skyline. The inside of the mini-Sphere will feature a high-resolution 16,000 by 16,000 pixel wrap-around screen, the company's immersive sound technology, haptic seating, and "4D environmental effects." For the AI-enhanced version of The Wizard of Oz currently playing in Las Vegas, audiences experience effects like wind, fog, smells, and apples falling from the ceiling.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: NVIDIA executives allegedly authorized the use of millions of pirated books from Anna's Archive to fuel its AI training. In an expanded class-action lawsuit that cites internal NVIDIA documents, several book authors claim (PDF) that the trillion-dollar company directly reached out to Anna's Archive, seeking high-speed access to the shadow library data. [...] Last Friday, the authors filed an amended complaint that significantly expands the scope of the lawsuit. In addition to adding more books, authors, and AI models, it also includes broader "shadow library" claims and allegations. The authors, including Abdi Nazemian, now cite various internal Nvidia emails and documents, suggesting that the company willingly downloaded millions of copyrighted books. The new complaint alleges that "competitive pressures drove NVIDIA to piracy," which allegedly included collaborating with the controversial Anna's Archive library. According to the amended complaint, a member of Nvidia's data strategy team reached out to Anna's Archive to find out what the pirate library could offer the trillion-dollar company "Desperate for books, NVIDIA contacted Anna's Archive -- the largest and most brazen of the remaining shadow libraries -- about acquiring its millions of pirated materials and 'including Anna's Archive in pre-training data for our LLMs,'" the complaint notes. "Because Anna's Archive charged tens of thousands of dollars for 'high-speed access' to its pirated collections [] NVIDIA sought to find out what "high-speed access" to the data would look like." According to the complaint, Anna's Archive then warned Nvidia that its library was illegally acquired and maintained. Because the site previously wasted time on other AI companies, the pirate library asked NVIDIA executives if they had internal permission to move forward. This permission was allegedly granted within a week, after which Anna's Archive provided the chip giant with access to its pirated books. "Within a week of contacting Anna's Archive, and days after being warned by Anna's Archive of the illegal nature of their collections, NVIDIA management gave 'the green light' to proceed with the piracy. Anna's Archive offered NVIDIA millions of pirated copyrighted books." The complaint states that Anna's Archive promised to provide NVIDIA with access to roughly 500 terabytes of data. This included millions of books that are usually only accessible through Internet Archive's digital lending system, which itself has been targeted in court. The complaint does not explicitly mention whether NVIDIA ended up paying Anna's Archive for access to the data. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that NVIDIA also stands accused of using other pirated sources. In addition to the previously included Books3 database, the new complaint also alleges that the company downloaded books from LibGen, Sci-Hub, and Z-Library. In addition to downloading and using pirated books for its own AI training, the authors allege NVIDIA distributed scripts and tools that allowed its corporate customers to automatically download "The Pile", which contains the Books3 pirated dataset.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to CFO Sarah Friar, OpenAI's annualized revenue surpassed $20 billion in 2025, up from $6 billion a year earlier with growth closely tracking an expansion in computing capacity. Reuters reports: OpenAI's computing capacity rose to 1.9 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 from 0.6 GW in 2024, Friar said in the blog, adding that Microsoft-backed OpenAI's weekly and daily active users figures continue to produce all-time highs. OpenAI last week said it would start showing ads in ChatGPT to some U.S. users, ramping up efforts to generate revenue from the AI chatbot to fund the high costs of developing the technology. Separately, Axios reported on Monday that OpenAI's policy chief Chris Lehane said that the company is "on track" to unveil its first device in the second half of 2026. Friar said OpenAI's platform spans text, images, voice, code and APIs, and the next phase will focus on agents and workflow automation that run continuously, carry context over time, and take action across tools. For 2026, the company will prioritize "practical adoption," particularly in health, science and enterprise, she said. Friar said the company is keeping a "light" balance sheet by partnering rather than owning and structuring contracts with flexibility across providers and hardware types.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New data from Similarweb shows Threads has overtaken X in daily mobile users. However, X still dominates on the web with around 150 million daily web visits compared to Threads' 8.5 million daily visits. TechCrunch reports: Similarweb's data shows that Threads had 141.5 million daily active users on iOS and Android as of January 7, 2026, after months of growth, while X has 125 million daily active users on mobile devices. This appears to be the result of longer-term trends, rather than a reaction to the recent X controversies [...]. Instead, Threads' boost in daily mobile usage may be driven by other factors, including cross-promotions from Meta's larger social apps like Facebook and Instagram (where Threads is regularly advertised to existing users), its focus on creators, and the rapid rollout of new features. Over the past year, Threads has added features like interest-based communities, better filters, DMs, long-form text, disappearing posts, and has recently been spotted testing games. Combined, the daily active user increases suggest that more people are using Threads on mobile as a more regular habit. Further reading: Threads Now Has More Than 400 Million Monthly Active UsersRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing [Friday] on "examining the effect of technology on America's youth." Witnesses warned about "addictive" online content, mental health, and kids spending too much time buried in screen. At the center of the debate is a bill from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) called the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA), which they say will protect children and "empower parents." That's a reasonable goal, especially at a time when many parents feel overwhelmed and nervous about how much time their kids spend on screens. But while the bill's press release contains soothing language, KOSMA doesn't actually give parents more control. Instead of respecting how most parents guide their kids towards healthy and educational content, KOSMA hands the control panel to Big Tech. That's right -- this bill would take power away from parents, and hand it over to the companies that lawmakers say are the problem. [...] This bill doesn't just set an age rule. It creates a legal duty for platforms to police families. Section 103(b) of the bill is blunt: if a platform knows a user is under 13, it "shall terminate any existing account or profile" belonging to that user. And "knows" doesn't just mean someone admits their age. The bill defines knowledge to include what is "fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances" -- in other words, what a reasonable person would conclude from how the account is being used. The reality of how services would comply with KOSMA is clear: rather than risk liability for how they should have known a user was under 13, they will require all users to prove their age to ensure that they block anyone under 13. KOSMA contains no exceptions for parental consent, for family accounts, or for educational or supervised use. The vast majority of people policed by this bill won't be kids sneaking around -- it will be minors who are following their parents' guidance, and the parents themselves. Imagine a child using their parent's YouTube account to watch science videos about how a volcano works. If they were to leave a comment saying, "Cool video -- I'll show this to my 6th grade teacher!" and YouTube becomes aware of the comment, the platform now has clear signals that a child is using that account. It doesn't matter whether the parent gave permission. Under KOSMA, the company is legally required to act. To avoid violating KOSMA, it would likely lock, suspend, or terminate the account, or demand proof it belongs to an adult. That proof would likely mean asking for a scan of a government ID, biometric data, or some other form of intrusive verification, all to keep what is essentially a "family" account from being shut down. Violations of KOSMA are enforced by the FTC and state attorneys general. That's more than enough legal risk to make platforms err on the side of cutting people off. Platforms have no way to remove "just the kid" from a shared account. Their tools are blunt: freeze it, verify it, or delete it. Which means that even when a parent has explicitly approved and supervised their child's use, KOSMA forces Big Tech to override that family decision. [...] These companies don't know your family or your rules. They only know what their algorithms infer. Under KOSMA, those inferences carry the force of law. Rather than parents or teachers, decisions about who can be online, and for what purpose, will be made by corporate compliance teams and automated detection systems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rackspace's new pricing for its email hosting services is "devastating," according to a partner that has been using Rackspace as its email provider since 1999. From a report: In recent weeks, Rackspace updated its email hosting pricing. Its standard plan is now $10 per mailbox per month. Businesses can also pay for the Rackspace Email Plus add-on for an extra $2/mailbox/month (for "file storage, mobile sync, Office-compatible apps, and messaging"), and the Archiving add-on for an extra $6/mailbox/month (for unlimited storage). As recently as November 2025, Rackspace charged $3/mailbox/month for its Standard plan, and an extra $1/mailbox/month for the Email Plus add-on, and an additional $3/mailbox/month for the Archival add-on, according to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Rackspace's reseller partners have been especially vocal about the impacts of the new pricing. In a blog post on Thursday, web hosting service provider and Rackspace reseller Laughing Squid said Rackspace is "increasing our email pricing by an astronomical 706 percent, with only a month-and-a half's notice." Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale told Ars Technica that he received the "devastating" news via email on Wednesday. The last time Rackspace increased Laughing Squid's email prices was by 55 percent in 2019, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The American monoculture -- the era when three television networks, seven movie studios, and a handful of record labels determined virtually everything the country watched and heard -- is collapsing under the weight of algorithmic recommendation engines and infinite streaming options. An estimated 200 million tickets were sold for "Gone With the Wind" in 1939 when the U.S. population was 130 million; more than 100 million people watched the MAS*H finale in 1983. Only three American productions grossed more than $1 billion in 2025, down from nine in 2019. "That broad experience has become a more difficult thing for us studio people to manufacture," said Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment. "The audience wants a much better value for their money." YouTube became the most popular video platform on televisions not by having the hottest shows but by having something for everyone. The internet broke Hollywood's hold on distribution; anyone can now stream to the same devices Disney and Netflix use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Asus won't release any new smartphones this year, and that may signal the brand's exit from the Android space altogether. From a report: Asus Chairman Jonney Shih confirmed the news at an event in Taiwan on Jan. 16. According to a machine-translated version of quotes reported by Inside, Shih said, "Asus will no longer add new mobile phone models in the future." Shih said Asus will continue to support existing smartphone users with software updates and warranty assistance. This matches a previous report from DigiTimes earlier this month that said Asus wouldn't introduce new models in 2026. The big question is whether that means stepping back altogether or a temporary pause. In his speech, Shih alluded to the possibility that Asus may return to smartphones, but did not confirm it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A British painter who argued that her ex-husband had signed over their $2 million north London home through WhatsApp messages has lost her High Court appeal after the judge ruled that the sender's name appearing in a chat header does not constitute a legal signature. Hsiao-mei Lin, 54, presented messages from her former husband Audun Mar Gudmundsson, a financier, in which he stated he would transfer his share of their Tufnell Park property to her. Lin's lawyers argued that because Gudmundsson's name appeared in the message header on her phone, the messages should be considered signed. Mr Justice Cawson disagreed, finding that the header identifying a sender is analogous to an email address added by a service provider -- a mechanism for identification rather than part of the message itself. The judge also found the content of the messages did not actually amount to Gudmundsson relinquishing his share.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft appears to be preparing an ad-supported tier for Xbox Cloud Gaming that would let players stream games they've purchased digitally without needing a Game Pass subscription, according to a Windows Central report citing sources familiar with the plans. Users last week began noticing a new message pop up while launching cloud games that referenced "1 hour of ad supported play time per session," though no such tier currently exists. The ad-supported option, expected to launch sometime this year, would specifically target the hundreds of games available for digital purchase through Xbox Cloud Gaming -- titles that currently require at least one tier of Game Pass to stream despite being owned outright by the player.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seven out of ten C-suite executives believe traditional enterprise resource planning software has seen its best days, though the category remains firmly entrenched in corporate IT and opinion is sharply divided on what comes next. A survey of 4,295 CFOs, CISOs, CIOs and CEOs worldwide found 36% expect ERP to give way to composable, API-driven best-of-breed systems, while 33% see the future in "agentic ERP" featuring autonomous AI-driven decision-making. The research was commissioned by Rimini Street, a third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP. Despite the pessimism, 97% said their current systems met business requirements. Vendor lock-in remains a sore point: 35% cited limited flexibility and forced upgrades as frustrations. Kingfisher, operator of 2,000 European retail stores including Screwfix and B&Q, recently eschewed an SAP upgrade in favor of using third-party support to shift its existing application to the cloud. Gartner analyst Dixie John cautioned that while third-party support may work in the short or medium term, organizations will eventually need to upgrade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Valve has substantially overhauled its guidelines for how game developers must disclose the use of generative AI on Steam, making explicit that tools like code assistants and other development aids do not fall under the disclosure requirement. The updated rules clarify that Valve's focus is not on "efficiency gains through the use of AI-powered dev tools." Developers must still disclose two specific categories: AI used to generate in-game content, store page assets, or marketing materials, and AI that creates content like images, audio, or text during gameplay itself. Steam has required AI disclosures since 2024, and an analysis from July 2025 found nearly 8,000 titles released in the first half of that year had disclosed generative AI use, compared to roughly 1,000 for all of 2024. The disclosures remain voluntary, so actual usage is likely higher.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix has begun asking filmmakers to adjust their storytelling approach to account for viewers who are scrolling through their phones while watching, according to Matt Damon. The traditional action movie formula involves three major set pieces distributed across the first, second, and third acts. Netflix now wants a large action sequence in the opening five minutes to hook viewers. The streamer has also suggested that filmmakers reiterate plot points "three or four times in the dialogue" to accommodate distracted audiences, he said. "It's going to really start to infringe on how we're telling these stories," Damon said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The growing enthusiasm among Gen Z for ditching smartphones in favor of basic "dumbphones" may be overlooking a significant cognitive reality, according to a WIRED essay that draws on the 1998 "extended mind hypothesis" by philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers. The hypothesis argues that external tools can extend the biological brain in an all but physical way, meaning your phone isn't just a device -- it's part of a single cognitive system composed of both the tool and your brain. "Interference with my phone is like giving me some brain damage," Clark told Wired. He expressed concern about the dumbphone movement, calling it "generally a retrograde step" and warning that as smartphone enmeshment becomes the societal norm, those who opt out risk becoming "effectively disabled within that society." Clark described this as "the creation of a disempowered class." 98% of Americans between 18 and 29 own a smartphone, dropping only to 97% for those aged 30 to 49. Even committed dumbphone users struggle. One user profiled in the piece still carries an "emergency iPhone" for work requirements and admits long-distance friendships have become "nearly impossible to maintain."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli writes: The New York Stock Exchange, owned by Intercontinental Exchange, is developing a platform for trading tokenized versions of U.S. listed stocks and ETFs around the clock, pending regulatory approval. The system would combine the NYSE's existing matching engine with blockchain-based settlement, enabling 24x7 trading, instant settlement, and fractional share purchases priced in dollar amounts. Shares would remain fully regulated securities, with dividends and voting rights intact, rather than cryptocurrencies, even though the backend would run on blockchain-style infrastructure.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The "surprisingly resilient" global economy is at risk of being disrupted by a sharp reversal in the AI boom, the IMF warned on Monday, as world leaders prepared for talks in the Swiss resort of Davos. From a report: Risks to global economic expansion were "tilted to the downside," the fund said in an update to its World Economic Outlook, arguing that growth was reliant on a narrow range of drivers, notably the US technology sector and the associated equity boom. Nonetheless, it predicted US growth would strongly outpace the rest of the G7 this year, forecasting an expansion of 2.4 per cent in 2026 and 2 per cent in 2027. Tech investment had surged to its highest share of US economic output since 2001, helping drive growth, the IMF found. "There is a risk of a correction, a market correction, if expectations about AI gains in productivity and profitability are not realised," said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, IMF chief economist. "We're not yet at the levels of market frothiness, if you want, that we saw in the dotcom period," he added. "But nevertheless there are reasons to be somewhat concerned."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's birth rate fell to 5.6 per 1,000 people in 2025, the lowest figure since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, and the country's total population contracted by 3.39 million, the sharpest decline since the Mao Zedong era. The drop marks the fourth straight year of population decline and comes despite government efforts to encourage childbearing, including subsidies of about $500 annually per child born on or after January 1, 2025. Beijing has also imposed a 13% value-added tax on contraceptives this year. The government is betting on automation and productivity to offset the shrinking workforce -- China already leads the world in robot installations -- and President Xi Jinping has written that population policy must transition "from being mainly about regulating quantity to improving quality."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader hackingbear summarizes this report from Bloomberg: China consumed totally 10.4 trillion kilowatt hours (10.4 petaWh) in 2025 according to data from the National Energy Administration. That's the highest annual electricity use ever recorded by a single country, and doubled the amount used by the US and surpassed the combined annual total of the EU, Russia, India and Japan. The surge in demand for power are results of growth in data centers for artificial intelligence (+17% over 2024) and use of electric vehicles (+48.8%)... However, on a per-capita basis, China uses about 7,300 kWh per person vs about 13,000 kWh per American. More details from Reuters:China's mostly coal-based thermal power generation fell in 2025 for the first time in 10 years, government data showed on Monday, as growing renewable generation met growth in electricity demand even as overall power usage hit a record. The data is a positive signal for the decarbonisation of China's power sector as China sets a course for carbon emissions to peak by 2030... Thermal electricity, generated mostly by coal-fired capacity with a small amount from natural gas, fell 1% in 2025 to 6.29 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh), according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). It fell more sharply in December, down by 3.2%, from a year earlier, the data showed... [Though the article notes that coal output still edged up to a record high last year.] Hydropower grew at a steady pace, up 4.1% in December and rising 2.8 % for the full year, the NBS data showed. Nuclear power output rose 3.1 in December and 7.7% in 2025, respectively.Thermal power generation is unlikely to accelerate in 2026 as renewables growth continues apace.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:Led by Texas and New Hampshire, U.S. states across the national map, both red and blue in political stripes, are developing bitcoin strategic reserves and bringing cryptocurrencies onto their books through additional state finance and budgeting measures. Texas recently became the first state to purchase bitcoin after a legislative effort that began in 2024, but numerous states have joined the "Reserve Race" to pass legislation that will allow them to ultimately buy cryptocurrencies. NewHampshire passed its crypto strategic reserve law last May, even before Texas, giving the state treasurer the authority to invest up to 5% of the state funds in crypto ETFs, though precious metals such as gold are also authorized for purchase. Arizonapassed similar legislation, while Massachusetts,Ohio,and SouthDakota have legislation at various stages of committee review... Similarities in the actions taken across states to date includeinclude authorizing the state treasurer or other investment officialto allow the investment of a limited amount of public funds in cryptoand building out the governance structure needed to invest incrypto... [New Hampshire] became the first state to approve theissuance of a bitcoin-backed municipal bond last November, a $100 million issuance that would mark the first time cryptocurrency is used as collateral in the U.S. municipal bond market. The deal has not taken place yet, though plans are for the issuance to occur this year... "What's different here is it's bitcoin rather than taxpayer dollars as the collateral," [said University of Chicago public policy professor Justin Marlowe]. In numerous states, including, Colorada,Utah, and Louisiana,crypto is now accepted as payment for taxes and other statebusiness... "For many in the state/local investing industry, crypto-backed assets are still far too speculative and volatile for public money," Marlowe said. "But others, and I think there's a sort of generational shift in the works, see it as a reasonable store of value that is actually stronger on many other public sector values like transparency and asset integrity," he added. Public policy professor Marlowe "sees the state-level trend as largely one of signaling at present," according to the article. (Marlowe says "If you're a governor and you want to broadcast that you are amenable to innovative business development in the digital economy, these are relatively low-cost, low-risk ways to send that signal.") But the bigger steps may reflect how crypto advocates have increasing political power in the states. The article notes that the cryptocurrency industry was the largest corporate donor in a U.S. election cycle in 2024, "with support given to candidates on both sides." "It is already amassing a war chest for the 2026 midterms."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week Noema magazine published a 7,000-word exploration of our modern "Mythology Of Conscious AI" written by a neuroscience professor who directs the University of Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science:The very idea of conscious AI rests on the assumption that consciousness is a matter of computation. More specifically, that implementing the right kind of computation, or information processing, is sufficient for consciousness to arise. This assumption, which philosophers call computational functionalism, is so deeply ingrained that it can be difficult to recognize it as an assumption at all. But that is what it is. And if it's wrong, as I think it may be, then real artificial consciousness is fully off the table, at least for the kinds of AI we're familiar with. He makes detailed arguments against a computation-based consciousness (including "Simulation is not instantiation... If we simulate a living creature, we have not created life.") While a computer may seem like the perfect metaphor for a brain, the cognitive science of "dynamical systems" (and other approaches) reject the idea that minds can be entirely accounted for algorithmically. And maybe actual life needs to be present before something can be declared conscious. He also warns that "Many social and psychological factors, including some well-understood cognitive biases, predispose us to overattribute consciousness to machines." But then his essay reaches a surprising conclusion:As redundant as it may sound, nobody should be deliberately setting out to create conscious AI, whether in the service of some poorly thought-through techno-rapture, or for any other reason. Creating conscious machines would be an ethical disaster. We would be introducing into the world new moral subjects, and with them the potential for new forms of suffering, at (potentially) an exponential pace. And if we give these systems rights, as arguably we should if they really are conscious, we will hamper our ability to control them, or to shut them down if we need to. Even if I'm right that standard digital computers aren't up to the job, other emerging technologies might yet be, whether alternative forms of computation (analogue, neuromorphic, biological and so on) or rapidly developing methods in synthetic biology. For my money, we ought to be more worried about the accidental emergence of consciousness in cerebral organoids (brain-like structures typically grown from human embryonic stem cells) than in any new wave of LLM. But our worries don't stop there. When it comes to the impact of AI in society, it is essential to draw a distinction between AI systems that are actually conscious and those that persuasively seem to be conscious but are, in fact, not. While there is inevitable uncertainty about the former, conscious-seeming systems are much, much closer... Machines that seem conscious pose serious ethical issues distinct from those posed by actually conscious machines. For example, we might give AI systems "rights" that they don't actually need, since they would not actually be conscious, restricting our ability to control them for no good reason. More generally, either we decide to care about conscious-seeming AI, distorting our circles of moral concern, or we decide not to, and risk brutalizing our minds. As Immanuel Kant argued long ago in his lectures on ethics, treating conscious-seeming things as if they lack consciousness is a psychologically unhealthy place to be... One overlooked factor here is that even if we know, or believe, that an AI is not conscious, we still might be unable to resist feeling that it is. Illusions of artificial consciousness might be as impenetrable to our minds as some visual illusions... What's more, because there's no consensus over the necessary or sufficient conditions for consciousness, there aren't any definitive tests for deciding whether an AI is actually conscious.... Illusions of conscious AI are dangerous in their own distinctive ways, especially if we are constantly distracted and fascinated by the lure of truly sentient machines...If we conflate the richness of biological brains and human experience with the information-processing machinations of deepfake-boosted chatbots, or whatever the latest AI wizardry might be, we do our minds, brains and bodies a grave injustice. If we sell ourselves too cheaply to our machine creations, we overestimate them, and we underestimate ourselves... The sociologist Sherry Turkle once said that technology can make us forget what we know about life. It's about time we started to remember.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Astronomers are preparing to capture a movie of a supermassive black hole in action for the first time," reports the Guardian:The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will track the colossal black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy throughout March and April with the aim of capturing footage of the swirling disc that traces out the edge of the event horizon, the point beyond which no light or matter can escape... The EHT is a global network of 12 radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarctica to Spain and Korea, which in 2019 unveiled the first image of a black hole's shadow. During March and April, as the Earth rotates, M87's central black hole will come into view for different telescopes, allowing a complete image to be captured every three days... Measuring the black hole's spin speed matters because this could help discriminate between competing theories of how these objects reached such epic proportions. If black holes grow mostly through accretion - steadily snowballing material that strays nearby - they would be expected to end up spinning at incredibly high speeds. By contrast, if black holes expand mostly through merging with other black holes, each merger could slow things down. The observations could also help explain how black hole jets are formed, which are among the largest, most powerful structures produced by galaxies. Jets channel vast columns of gas out of galaxies, slowing down the formation of new stars and limiting galaxy growth. In turn this can create dense pockets of material that trigger bursts of star formation beyond the host galaxy... While the movie campaign will take place in the spring, the sheer volume of data produced by the telescopes means the scientists will need to wait for Antarctic summer before the hard drives can be physically shipped to Germany and the US for processing. So it is likely to be a lengthy wait before the rest of the world gets a glimpse of the black hole in action. In a correction, the Guardian apologizes for originally including an AI-generated illustration of black hole with a caption suggesting it was a photo from telescopes. They've since swapped in an actual picture of the Messier 87 galaxy black hole.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Porsche made an announcement Friday. In Europe they sold more electrified Porsches last year than pure combustion-engined models, reports Electrek:in Europe, a majority (57.9%) of Porsche's deliveries were plug-ins, with 1/3 of its European sales being fully electric. For models that have no fully electric version but do have a PHEV (Cayenne and Panamera), the plug-in hybrid version dominated sales. Of particular note, the Macan sold better with an electric powertrain than it did with a gas one, and was the company's strongest-selling model line and the line with the largest sales growth. The Macan sold 84,328 units globally (up 2% from last year), with 45,367 (53.8%) of those being electric. That 53.8% may seem like a slim majority, but when compared to EV sales globally, it's incredibly high. About a quarter of new cars sold globally were electric in 2025, so Porsche is beating that number with the one model where direct comparisons are available. And even in the US, about a third of Macans sold were electric. That's notable given the tough year EVs had in the US, with it being the only major car-buying region that experienced a tick down in EV sales... And again, while 1/3 is a minority of Macan sales in the US, it's also well over the US' average ~10% EV sales. So it's clear the EV Macan isn't just performing like an average EV, but well beyond it. The article adds that "we're quite excited about the Cayenne EV, which will be the most powerful Porsche ever."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. college graduates "have historically found jobs more quickly than people with only a high school degree," writes Bloomberg. "But that advantage is becoming a thing of the past, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.""Recently, the job-finding rate for young college-educated workers has declined to be roughly in line with the rate for young high-school-educated workers, indicating that a long period of relatively easier job-finding prospects for college grads has ended," Cleveland Fed researchers Alexander Cline and BarAAY Kaymak said in a blog post published Monday. The study follows the latest monthly employment data released on Nov. 20, which showed the unemployment rate for college-educated workers continued to rise in September amid an ongoing slowdown in white-collar hiring... The unemployment rate for people between the ages of 20 to 24 was 9.2% in September, up 2.2 percentage points from a year prior. There is a caveat. "Young college graduates maintain advantages in job stability and compensation once hired..." the researchers write. "The convergence we document concerns the initial step of securing employment rather than overall labor market outcomes." Their research includes a graph showing how the "unemployment gap" first increased dramatically after 2010 between college-educated and high school-educated workers, which the researchers attribute to "the prolonged jobless recovery after 2008". But that gap has been closing ever since, with that gap now smaller than at any time since the 1970s. "Young high school workers are riding the wave of the historically tight postpandemic labor market with well-below-average unemployment compared to that of past high school graduates, while young college workers are experiencing unemployment rates rarely observed among past college cohorts barring during recessions."The labor market advantages conferred by a college degree have historically justified individual investment in higher education and expanding support for college access. If the job-finding rate of college graduates continues to decline relative to the rate for high school graduates, we may see a reversal of these trends. The convergence we document concerns the initial step of securing employment rather than overall labor market outcomes. These details suggest a nuanced shift in employment dynamics, one in which college graduates face greater difficulty finding jobs than previously but maintain advantages compared with high school graduates in job stability and compensation once hired. Two key quotes:"Declining job prospects among young college graduates may reflect the continued growth in college attainment, adding ever larger cohorts of college graduates to the ranks of job seekers, even though technology no longer favors college-educated workers.""Developments related to AI, which may be affecting job-finding prospects in some cases, cannot explain the decades-long decline in the college job-finding rate."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week a University of Arizona astronomy professor "watched anxiously...as an awe-inspiring SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA's new exoplanet telescope, Pandora, into orbit." In 2018 NASA had approached Daniel Apai to help build the telescope, which he says will "shatter a barrier - to understand and remove a source of noise in the data - that limits our ability to study small exoplanets in detail and search for life on them."Astronomers have a trick to study exoplanet atmospheres. By observing the planets as they orbit in front of their host stars, we can study starlight that filters through their atmospheres... But, starting from 2007, astronomers noted that starspots - cooler, active regions on the stars - may disturb the transit measurements. In 2018 and 2019, then-Ph.D. student Benjamin V. Rackham, astrophysicist Mark Giampapa and I published a series of studies showing how darker starspots and brighter, magnetically active stellar regions can seriously mislead exoplanets measurements. We dubbed this problem "the transit light source effect...." In our papers - published three years before the 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope - we predicted that the Webb cannot reach its full potential. We sounded the alarm bell...Pandora will do what Webb cannot: It will be able to patiently observe stars to understand how their complex atmospheres change. By staring at a star for 24 hours with visible and infrared cameras, it will measure subtle changes in the star's brightness and colors. When active regions in the star rotate in and out of view, and starspots form, evolve and dissipate, Pandora will record them. While Webb very rarely returns to the same planet in the same instrument configuration and almost never monitors their host stars, Pandora will revisit its target stars 10 times over a year, spending over 200 hours on each of them. It's the first space telescope "built specifically for detailed multi-color observations of starlight filtered through the atmospheres of exoplanets," reports the Arizona Daily Star, noting the University of Arizona will serve as mission control:[T]echnicians will operate Pandora in real time and monitor its telemetry and overall health under a contract with NASA... The spacecraft will undergo about a month of commissioning before beginning science operations, which are scheduled to last for a year... Pandora was selected as part of NASA's Astrophysics Pioneers program, which was created in 2020 to foster compelling, relatively low-cost science missions using smaller, cheaper hardware and flight platforms with a price cap of no more than $20 million. By comparison, the Webb telescope - the largest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever sent into space - carries a pricetag of about $10 billion. Pandora is a joint mission NASA and California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission "has opened a public call for evidence on European open digital ecosystems," writes Help Net Security, part of preparations for an upcoming Communication "that will examine the role of open source in EU's digital infrastructure."The consultation runs from January 6 to February 3, 2026. Submissions will be used to shape a Commission Communication addressed to the European Parliament, the Council, and other EU bodies, which is scheduled for publication in the first quarter of 2026... The call for evidence links Europe's reliance on digital technologies developed outside the EU to concerns over long term control of infrastructure and software supply chains... Open digital ecosystems are discussed in the context of technological sovereignty and the use of technologies that can be inspected, adapted, and shared. Long-time Slashdot reader Elektroschock describes it as the European Commission "stepping up its efforts behind open-source software"Building on President von der Leyen's political guidelines, the initiative will review the Commission's 2020-2023 open-source approach and set out concrete actions to strengthen Europe's open-source ecosystem across key areas such as cloud, AI, cybersecurity and industrial technologies. The strategy will be presented alongside the upcoming Cloud and AI Development Act, forming a broader policy package aimed at reducing strategic dependencies and boosting Europe's digital resilience. And "In just a few days, over 370 submissions have already been filed, indicating that the issue is touching a nerve across the EU," writes CyberNews.com:"Europe must regain control over its software supply chain to safeguard freedom, security, and innovation," suggests an individual from Slovakia. Similar perspectives appear to be widely shared among respondents... The document doesn't mention US tech giants specifically, but rather aims to support tech sovereignty and seek "digital solutions that are valid alternatives to proprietary ones...." "This is not a legislative initiative. The strategy will take the form of a Commission communication. The initiative will set out a general approach and will propose: actions relying on further commitments and an implementation process," the EC explains. Policymakers expect the strategy to help EU member states identify the necessary steps to support national open-source companies and communities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The senior editor at the blog Windows Central decries two serious Windows issues "that were not spotted by Microsoft during testing, and are so severe that the company has now issued an emergency fix to address the problems."Microsoft's first update for Windows 11 in 2026 has already caused two major issues that saw users unable to fully shutdown their PCs or sign-in into a device when using Remote Desktop... Being unable to shut down your PC due to a recent OS update is a huge oversight on Microsoft's part, but this is the latest in a long list of updates over the last year to cause a major issue like this... Other issues that have cropped up in Windows 11 in the last year include a bug that caused Task Manager to fail to close when the user exited the application, causing system resources to lock up after a prolonged period of time if the user had opened and closed Task Manager multiple times in a session.Another update caused saw File Explorer flashbang users with a white screen when opening it in dark mode, which appeared in an update that was supposed to improve dark mode on Windows 11... For whatever reason, the Windows Insider Program doesn't appear to be working anymore, as severe bugs are somehow making it into shipping versions of the OS. "The out of band updates, KB5077744 and KB5077797, are available now via Windows Update and is rolling out to everybody," they write. "Once installed, your PC should go back to being able to shut down successfully, and signing-in via Remote Desktop should work again." Microsoft has also officially acknowledged a third bug which crashes Outlook Classic when using POP accounts, according to the blog Windows Latest, which adds that that bug has not yet been fixed. They've also identified other minor bugs, including "a black screen problem in Windows 11 KB5074109... either due to the update itself or some compatibility issues with GPU drivers."After you install the January 2026 Update, Windows triggers random black screens where the desktop freezes for a second or two, the display goes black, then everything comes back. I can't pinpoint any specific configuration, but I can confirm the black screen issue has been observed on a small subset of PCs with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. After you install the January 2026 Update, Windows triggers random black screens where the desktop freezes for a second or two, the display goes black, then everything comes back.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:Particles from Earth's atmosphere have been carried into space by solar wind and have been landing on the moon for billions of years, mixing into the lunar soil, according to a new study [published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment last month]. The research sheds new light on a puzzle that has endured for over half a century since the Apollo missions brought back lunar samples with traces of substances such as water, carbon dioxide, helium and nitrogen embedded in the regolith - the moon's dusty surface layer. Early studies theorized that the sun was the source of some of these substances. But in 2005 researchers at the University of Tokyo suggested that they could have also originated from the atmosphere of a young Earth before it developed a magnetic field about 3.7 billion years ago. The authors suspected that the magnetic field, once in place, would have stopped the stream by trapping the particles and making it difficult or impossible for them to escape into space. Now, the new research upends that assumption by suggesting that Earth's magnetic field might have helped, rather than blocked, the transfer of atmospheric particles to the moon - which continues to this day. "This means that the Earth has been supplying volatile gases like oxygen and nitrogen to the lunar soil over all this time," said Eric Blackman, coauthor of the new study and a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester in New York. Earth's magnetic field "somewhat inflates the atmosphere of Earth" when it's hit by solar winds, according to study coauthor Eric Blackman, a physics/astronomy professor at New York's University of Rochester. He told CNN the moon passes through this region for a few days each month, with particles landing on the lunar surface and embedding in the soil (because the moon lacks an atmosphere that would block them). This also means the moon's soil could actually contain a chemical record of Earth's ancient atmosphere, according to the study - "spanning billions of years..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Acer has filed three separate patent infringement lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, taking the unusual step of hauling the nation's largest wireless carriers into federal court. The suits, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, claim the companies are using Acer-developed cellular networking technology without paying for the privilege. Acer says it tried to negotiate licenses for years but reached a dead end, arguing it was left with no option except litigation. The case centers on six U.S. patents Acer asserts are core to modern wireless networks, rather than anything tied to PCs or laptops. The company describes itself as reluctant to pursue courtroom battles, but it has been quietly building a large global patent portfolio after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D. Acer also notes that some of its patents count as standard-essential, hinting the carriers may be required to license them. All three companies are expected to push back, and the dispute could become another long-running telecom patent saga. Consumers will not notice any immediate changes, but if Acer wins or settles, it may find a new revenue stream far beyond its traditional hardware business. Further coverage from Hot HardwareRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Futurism:China has unveiled an extremely powerful "hypergravity machine" that can generate forces almost two thousand times stronger than Earth's regular gravity. The futuristic-looking machine, called CHIEF1900, was constructed at China's Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) at Zheijang University in Eastern China, and allows researchers to study how extreme forces affect various materials, plants, cells, or other structures, as the South China Morning Post reports... [Once up and running, it will allow researchers to recreate "catastrophic events such as dam failures and earthquakes inside a laboratory, according to the university."] For instance, it can analyze the structural stability of an almost 1,000-feet-tall dam by spinning a ten-foot model at 100 Gs, meaning 100 times the Earth's regular gravity. It could also be used to study the resonance frequencies of high-speed rail tracks, or how pollutants seep into soil over thousands of years. The machine officially dethroned its predecessor, CHIEF1300, which became the world's most powerful centrifuge a mere four months ago... It can generate 1,900 g-tonnes of force, or 1,900 times the Earth's gravity. To put that into perspective, a washing machine only reaches about two g-tonnes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

European satellite operator Eutelsat "plans to launch 440 Airbus-built LEO satellites in the coming years to replenish and expand its constellation," Reuters reported Friday. And last week America's Federal Communications Commission approved SpaceX's request to deploy another 7,500 Starlink satellites, while Starlink "projects it will eventually have a constellation of 34,000 satellites," writes Fast Company, and Amazon's Project Leo "plans to launch more than 3,200 satellites." Meanwhile "Beijing and some Chinese companies are planning two separate mega-constellations, Guowang and G60 Starlink, totaling nearly 26,000 satellites," and this week the Chinese government "applied for launch permits for 200,000 satellites." But a small Texas-based company called AST SpaceMobile "believes it can provide better service with fewer than 100 gigantic satellites in space." AST SpaceMobile has developed a direct-to-cell technology that utilizes large satellites called BlueBirds. These machines use thousands of antennas to deliver broadband coverage directly to standard mobile phones, says the company's president, Scott Wisniewski. "This approach is remarkably efficient: We can achieve global coverage with approximately 90 satellites, not thousands or even tens of thousands required by other systems," Wisniewski writes in an email... The key is its satellites' size and sophistication. AST's first generation of commercial satellite, the BlueBird 1-5, unfolds into a massive 693-square-foot array in space. Today, the company has five operational BlueBird 1-5 satellites in orbit, but its ambitions are much bigger. On December 24, 2025, AST launched the first of its next-generation satellites from India - called Block 2 - and this one broke records. The BlueBird 6 has a surface of almost 2,400 square feet, making it the largest single satellite in low Earth orbit. The company plans to launch up to 60 more by the end of 2026. "This large surface area is essential for gathering faint signals from standard, unmodified mobile phones on the ground," Wisniewski explains. It is essentially a single, extremely powerful and sensitive cell tower in the sky, capable of serving a huge geographical area... To be clear, AST SpaceMobile's approach is not without its own controversies. The sheer size of the company's satellites makes them incredibly bright in the night sky, a significant source of frustration for ground-based astronomers. McDowell confirms that when it launched in 2022, AST's prototype satellite, BlueWalker 3, became "one of the top 10 brightest objects in the night sky for a while." "It's a serious issue, and we are working directly with the astronomy community to mitigate our impact," Wisniewski says. The company is exploring solutions like anti-reflective coatings and operational adjustments to minimize the time its satellites are at maximum brightness... AST SpaceMobile has already proven its technology works, the article points out, with six working satellites now transmitting at typical 5G speeds directly to regular phones.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week Google "unveiled a set of tools for retailers that helps them roll out AI agents," reports the Wall Street Journal,The new retail AI agents, which help shoppers find their desired items, provide customer support and let people order food at restaurants, are part of what Alphabet-owned Google calls Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience. Major retailers, including home improvement giant Lowe's, the grocer Kroger and pizza chain Papa Johns say they are already using Google's tools to help prepare for the incoming wave of AI-assisted shopping and ordering... Kicking off the race among tech giants to get ahead of this shift, OpenAI released its Instant Checkout feature last fall, which lets users buy stuff directly through its chatbot ChatGPT. In January, Microsoft announced a similar checkout feature for its Copilot chatbot. Soon after OpenAI's release last year, Walmart said it would partner with OpenAI to let shoppers buy its products within ChatGPT. But that's just the beginning, reports the New York Times, with hundreds of start-ups also vying for the attention of retailers:There are A.I. start-ups that offer in-store cameras that can detect a customer's age or gender, robots that manage shelves on their own and headsets that give store workers access to product information in real time... The scramble to exploit artificial intelligence is happening across the retail spectrum, from the highest echelons of luxury goods to the most pragmatic of convenience stores. 7-Eleven said it was using conversational A.I. to hire staff at its convenience stores through an agent named Rita (Recruiting Individuals Through Automation). Executives said that they no longer had to worry about whether applicants would show up to interviews and that the system had reduced hiring time, which had taken two weeks, to less than three days. The article notes that at the National Retail Federation conference, other companies showing their AI advancements included Applebee's, IHOP, the Vitamin Shoppe, Urban Outfitters, Rag & Bone, Kendra Scott, Michael Kors and Philip Morris.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

=["More than half of all cryptocurrencies ever launched are now defunct," reports CoinDesk, citing a new analysis by cryptocurrency data aggregator CoinGecko. And most of those failures occurred in 2025:The study looked at token listings on GeckoTerminal between mid-2021 and the end of 2025. Of the nearly 20.2 million tokens that entered the market during that period, 53.2% are no longer actively traded. A staggering 11.6 million of those failures happened in 2025 alone - accounting for 86.3% of all token deaths over the past five years. One key driver behind the surge in dead tokens was the rise of low-effort memecoins and experimental projects launched via crypto launchpads like pump.fun, CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee said. These platforms lowered the barrier to entry for token creation, leading to a wave of speculative assets with little or no development backing. Many of these tokens never made it past a handful of trades before disappearing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At the AI safety site Foom, science journalist Mordechai Rorvig explores a paper presented at November's Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference:[R]esearchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Georgia Tech revisited earlier findings that showed that language models, the engines of commercial AI chatbots, show strong signal correlations with the human language network, the region of the brain responsible for processing language... The results lend clarity to the surprising picture that has been emerging from the last decade of neuroscience research: That AI programs can show strong resemblances to large-scale brain regions - performing similar functions, and doing so using highly similar signal patterns. Such resemblances have been exploited by neuroscientists to make much better models of cortical regions. Perhaps more importantly, the links between AI and cortex provide an interpretation of commercial AI technology as being profoundly brain-like, validating both its capabilities as well as the risks it might pose for society as the first synthetic braintech. "It is something we, as a community, need to think about a lot more," said Badr AlKhamissi, doctoral student in computer science at EPFL and first author of the preprint, in an interview with Foom. "These models are getting better and better every day. And their similarity to the brain [or brain regions] is also getting better - probably. We're not 100% sure about it...." There are many known limitations with seeing AI programs as models of brain regions, even those that have high signal correlations. For example, such models lack any direct implementations of biochemical signalling, which is known to be important for the functioning of nervous systems.However, if such comparisons are valid, then they would suggest, somewhat dramatically, that we are increasingly surrounded by a synthetic braintech. A technology not just as capable as the human brain, in some ways, but actually made up of similar components. Thanks to Slashdot reader Gazelle Bay for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As 2026 begins, MIT Technology Review publishes "educated guesses" on emerging technologies that will define the future, advances "we think will drive progress or incite the most change - for better or worse - in the years ahead." This year's list includes next-gen nuclear, gene-editing drugs (as well as the "resurrection" of ancient genes from extinct creatures), and three AI-related developments: AI companions, AI coding tools, and "mechanistic interpretability" for revealing LLM decision-making. But also on the list is sodium-ion batteries, "a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium."Backed by major players and public investment, they're poised to power grids and affordable EVs worldwide. [Chinese battery giant CATL claims to have already started manufacturing sodium-ion batteries at scale, and BYD also plans a massive production facility for sodium-ion batteries.] The most significant impact of sodium-Aion technology may be not on our roads but on our power grids. Storing clean energy generated by solar and wind has long been a challenge. Sodium-ion batteries, with their low cost, enhanced thermal stability, and long cycle life, are an attractive alternative. Peak Energy, a startup in the US, is already deploying grid-scale sodium-ion energy storage. Sodium-ion cells' energy density is still lower than that of high-end lithium-ion ones, but it continues to improve each year - and it's already sufficient for small passenger cars and logistics vehicles. And another "breakthrough technology" on their list is commercial space stations:Vast Space from California, plans to launch its Haven-1 space station in May 2026 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If all goes to plan, it will initially support crews of four people staying aboard the bus-size habitat for 10 days. Paying customers will be able to experience life in microgravity and conduct research such as growing plants and testing drugs. On its heels will be Axiom Space's outpost, the Axiom Station, consisting of five modules (or rooms). It's designed to look like a boutique hotel and is expected to launch in 2028. Voyager Space aims to launch its version, called Starlab, the same year, and Blue Origin's Orbital Reef space station plans to follow in 2030. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In December 2024 the Google Threat Intelligence Group published research on the code of the commercial spyware "Predator". But there's now been new research by Jamf (the company behind a mobile device management solution) showing Predator is more dangerous and sophisticated than we realized, according to SecurityWeek. Long-time Slashdot reader wiredmikey writes: The new research reveals an error taxonomy that reports exactly why deployments fail, turning black boxes into diagnostic events for threat actors. Almost exclusively marketed to and used by national governments and intelligence agencies, the spyware also detects cybersecurity tools, suppresses forensics evidence, and has built-in geographic restrictions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ars Technica reports:Security firm Mandiant [part of Google Cloud] has released a database that allows any administrative password protected by Microsoft's NTLM.v1 hash algorithm to be hacked in an attempt to nudge users who continue using the deprecated function despite known weaknesses.... a precomputed table of hash values linked to their corresponding plaintext. These generic tables, which work against multiple hashing schemes, allow hackers to take over accounts by quickly mapping a stolen hash to its password counterpart... Mandiant said it had released an NTLMv1 rainbow table that will allow defenders and researchers (and, of course, malicious hackers, too) to recover passwords in under 12 hours using consumer hardware costing less than $600 USD. The table is hosted in Google Cloud. The database works against Net-NTLMv1 passwords, which are used in network authentication for accessing resources such as SMB network sharing. Despite its long- and well-known susceptibility to easy cracking, NTLMv1 remains in use in some of the world's more sensitive networks. One reason for the lack of action is that utilities and organizations in industries, including health care and industrial control, often rely on legacy apps that are incompatible with more recently released hashing algorithms. Another reason is that organizations relying on mission-critical systems can't afford the downtime required to migrate. Of course, inertia and penny-pinching are also causes. "By releasing these tables, Mandiant aims to lower the barrier for security professionals to demonstrate the insecurity of Net-NTLMv1," Mandiant said. "While tools to exploit this protocol have existed for years, they often required uploading sensitive data to third-party services or expensive hardware to brute-force keys." "Organizations that rely on Windows networking aren't the only laggards," the article points out. "Microsoft only announced plans to deprecate NTLMv1 last August." Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday a federal judge "cleared U.S. power company Dominion Energy to resume work on its Virginia offshore wind project." But a U.S. federal judge also ruled Thursday that another major offshore wind farm is allowed to resume construction, reports the Hill. "The project, which would supply power to New York, was one of five that were halted by the Trump administration in December...." In fact, there were three different court rulings this week each allowing construction to continue on a U.S. wind project:Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, granted a preliminary injunction allowing Empire Wind to keep building... Another, Revolution Wind, was also allowed to move forward in court this week... The project would provide enough power for up to 500,000 homes, according to its website. The court's decision allows construction to resume while the underlying case against the Trump order plays out. Meanwhile, power company Orsted "is also suing over the pause of its Sunrise Wind project for New York," reports the Associated Press, "with a hearing still to be set."The fifth paused project is Vineyard Wind, under construction in Massachusetts. Vineyard Wind LLC, a joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, joined the rest of the developers in challenging the administration on Thursday. CNN points out that the Vineyard Wind project "has been allowed to send power to the grid even amid Trump's suspension, a spokesperson for regional grid operator ISO-New England told CNN in an email."Residential customers in the mid-Atlantic region, including Virginia, desperately need more energy to service the skyrocketing demand from data centers a" and many are seeing spiking energy bills while they wait for new power to be brought online. CNN notes that president Trump said last week "My goal is to not let any windmill be built; they're losers." The Associated Press adds that "In contrast to the halted action in the US, the global offshore wind market is growing, with China leading the world in new installations. Nearly all of the new electricity added to the grid in 2024 was renewable. The British government said on Wednesday it had secured a record 8.4 gigawatts of offshore wind in Europe's largest offshore wind auction, enough clean electricity to power more than 12m homes."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new article from Bloomberg says dozens of America's colleges "succumbed to a fundamental problem killing colleges across the US: not enough students. The schools will award their final degrees this spring, stranding students not yet ready to graduate and forcing faculty and staff to hunt for new jobs."The country's tumbling birth rate is pushing schools toward a "demographic cliff," where a steadily dropping population of people in their late teens and early 20s will leave desks and classrooms empty. Many smaller, lesser-known schools like Cazenovia have already hit the precipice. They're firing professors, paring back liberal arts courses in favor of STEM - or closing altogether. Others will likely reach the cliff in the next few years... [T]the US birth rate ticked upward slightly before the 2008 financial crisis, and that brief demographic boost has kept enrollment at larger schools afloat. But the nationwide pool of college-aged Americans is expected to shrink after 2025. Schools face the risk that each incoming class could be smaller than the last. The financial pressure will be relentless... Since 2020, more than 40 schools have announced plans to close, displacing students and faculty and leaving host towns without a key economic engine... Close to 400 schools could vanish in the coming decade, according to Huron Consulting Group. The projected closures and mergers will impact around 600,000 students and redistribute about $18 billion in endowment funds, Huron estimates... Pennsylvania State University, citing falling enrollment at many of its regional branches, plans to shutter seven of its 20 branch campuses after the spring 2027 semester... [C]ampuses in far-flung places, without brand recognition, are falling out of favor with students already questioning the value of a college degree. For example, while Penn State's flagship University Park campus saw enrollment grow 5% from 2014 to 2024, 12 other Penn State campuses recorded a 35% drop, according to a report tasked with determining whether closures were necessary. The article notes that "Less than half of students whose schools shut down before they graduate re-enroll in another college or university, according to a 2022 study." But even at colleges that remain, "The shrinking supply of students has already sparked a frenzied competition for high school seniors..." Some public institutions are letting seniors bypass traditional requirements like essays and letters of recommendation to gain entry automatically... Direct-admission programs, which allow students to skip traditional applications, are one potential response. Some 15 states have them, according to Taylor Odle, assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He found in a 2022 paper that direct admissions increased first-year undergrad enrollment by 4% to 8%... And they don't require nearly as many paid staff to run, since there are no essays or letters of recommendation to read.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A mega rocket set to take astronauts around the Moon for the first time in decades is being taken to its launch pad," the BBC reported this morning. NASA is livestreaming their move of the 11-million-pound "stack" - which includes the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft secured to it, all standing on its Mobile Launch Platform. Travelling at less than 1 mile per hour, the move is expected to take 12 hours. The mission - which could blast off as soon as 6 February - is expected to take 10 days. It is part of a wider plan aimed at returning astronauts to the lunar surface. As well as the rocket being ready, the Moon has to be in the right place too, so successive launch windows are selected accordingly. In practice, this means one week at the beginning of each month during which the rocket is pointed in the right direction followed by three weeks where there are no launch opportunities. The potential launch dates are: - 6, 7, 8, 10 and 11 February - 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 March - 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 April "The crew of four will travel beyond the far side of the moon, which could set a new record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth, currently held by Apollo 13," reports CNN:But why won't Artemis II land on the lunar surface? "The short answer is because it doesn't have the capability. This is not a lunar lander," said Patty Casas Horn, deputy lead for Mission Analysis and Integrated Assessments at NASA. "Throughout the history of NASA, everything that we do is a bit risky, and so we want to make sure that that risk makes sense, and only accept the risk that we have to accept, within reason. So we build out a capability, then we test it out, then we build out a capability, then we test it out. And we will get to landing on the moon, but Artemis II is really about the crew..." The upcoming flight is the first time that people will be on board the Artemis spacecraft: The Orion capsule will carry the astronauts around the moon, and the SLS rocket will launch Orion into Earth orbit before the crew continues deeper into space... The mission will begin with two revolutions around Earth, before starting the translunar injection - the maneuver that will take the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and on toward the moon - about 26 hours into the flight, Horn said. "That's when we set up for the big burn - it's about six minutes in duration. And once we do this, you're on your way back to Earth. There's nothing else that you need to do. You're going to go by the moon, and the moon's gravity is going to pull you around and swing you back towards the Earth...." Avoiding entering lunar orbit keeps the mission profile simpler, allowing the crew to focus on other tasks as there is no need to pilot the spacecraft in any way. "The Artemis program's first planned lunar lander is called the Starship HLS, or Human Landing System, and is currently under development by SpaceX..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A couple months ago, YouTuber Benn Jordan "found vulnerabilities in some of Flock's license plate reader cameras," reports 404 Media's Jason Koebler. "He reached out to me to tell me he had learned that some of Flock's Condor cameras were left live-streaming to the open internet." This led to a remarkable article where Koebler confirmed the breach by visiting a Flock surveillance camera mounted on a California traffic signal. ("On my phone, I am watching myself in real time as the camera records and livestreams me - without any password or login - to the open internet... Hundreds of miles away, my colleagues are remotely watching me too through the exposed feed.")Flock left livestreams and administrator control panels for at least 60 of its AI-enabled Condor cameras around the country exposed to the open internet, where anyone could watch them, download 30 days worth of video archive, and change settings, see log files, and run diagnostics. Unlike many of Flock's cameras, which are designed to capture license plates as people drive by, Flock's Condor cameras are pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras designed to record and track people, not vehicles. Condor cameras can be set to automatically zoom in on people's faces... The exposure was initially discovered by YouTuber and technologist Benn Jordan and was shared with security researcher Jon "GainSec" Gaines, who recently found numerous vulnerabilities in several other models of Flock's automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. Jordan appeared this week as a guest on Koebler's own YouTube channel, while Jordan released a video of his own about the experience. titled "We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds." (Thanks to Slashdot reader beadon for sharing the link.) But together Jordan and 404 Media also created another video three weeks ago titled "The Flock Camera Leak is Like Netflix for Stalkers" which includes footage he says was "completely accessible at the time Flock Safety was telling cities that the devices are secure after they're deployed." The video decries cities "too lazy to conduct their own security audit or research the efficacy versus risk," but also calls weak security "an industry-wide problem." Jordan explains in the video how he "very easily found the administration interfaces for dozens of Flock safety cameras..." - but also what happened next:None of the data or video footage was encrypted. There was no username or password required. These were all completely public-facing, for the world to see.... Making any modification to the cameras is illegal, so I didn't do this. But I had the ability to delete any of the video footage or evidence by simply pressing a button. I could see the paths where all of the evidence files were located on the file system... During and after the process ofconducting that research and making thatvideo, I was visited by the police andhad what I believed to be privateinvestigators outside my homephotographing me and my property andbothering my neighbors. John Gaines orGainSec, the brains behind most of thisresearch, lost employment within 48hours of the video being released. Andthe sad reality is that I don't viewthese things as consequences orpunishment for researching securityvulnerabilities. I view these asconsequences and punishment for doing itethically and transparently. I've beencontacted by people on or communicatingwith civic councils who found my videosconcerning, and they shared FlockSafety's response with me. The companyclaimed that the devices in my video didnot reflect the security standards ofthe ones being publicly deployed. TheCEO even posted on LinkedIn and boastedabout Flock Safety's security policies.So, I formally and publicly offered topersonally fund security research intoFlock Safety's deployed ecosystem. Butthe law prevents me from touching theirlive devices. So, all I needed was theirpermission so I wouldn't get arrested.And I was even willing to let themsupervise this research. I got noresponse. So instead, he read Flock's official response to a security/surveillance industry research group - while standing in front of one of their security cameras, streaming his reading to the public internet. "Might as well. It's my tax dollars that paid for it." " 'Flock is committed to continuously improving security...'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T2 SDE "is not just a regular Linux distribution," explains its repository on GitHub. "It is a flexible Open Source System Development Environment or Distribution Build Kit. Others might even name it Meta Distribution. T2 allows the creation of custom distributions with state of the art technology, up-to-date packages and integrated support for cross compilation." And now after "a decade of deep focus on embedded and server systems," T2 SDE Linux "is back to the Desktop," according to its web site, calling the new "T2 Desktop" flavour "ready for everyday home and office use!"Built on the latest KDE Plasma, systemd, and Wayland, the new T2 Desktop flavour delivers a modern, clean, and performant experience while retaining the project's trademark portability and reproducible cross-compilation across architectures. T2 Desktop targets x86_64, arm64, and riscv64, delivering "a fully polished, streamlined out-of-the-box experience," according to project lead Rene Rebe (also long-time Slashdot reader ReneR):I>[T2 Desktop] delivered a full KDE Plasma desktop on RISC-V, reproducibly cross-compiled from source using T2 SDE Linux. The desktop spans more than 600 packages - from toolchain to Qt and KDE and targets a next-generation RVA23 RISC-V flagship desktop, including full multimedia support and AMD RDNA GPU acceleration under Wayland. As a parallel milestone, the same fully reproducible desktop stack is now also landing on Qualcomm X1 ARM64 platforms, highlighting T2 SDE's architecture-independent approach and positioning both RISC-V and ARM64 as serious, first-class Linux desktop contenders.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:The U.S. Department of Transportation brought an automated bus to D.C. this week to showcase its work on self-driving vehicles, taking officials from around the country on a ride between agency headquarters at Navy Yard and Union Station. One of those trips was interrupted Sunday when the bus got rear-ended. The bus, produced by the company Beep, was following its fixed route when it was struck by a Tesla with Maryland plates whose driver was trying to change lanes, officials said. The bus had a human driver behind the wheel for backup as required by the city. The Tesla driver stayed on the scene on H Street for about 10 minutes. No police were called. "The service was temporarily paused after another vehicle made an illegal lane change and contacted the rear of the autonomous bus, which resulted in minor cosmetic damage to both vehicles," a spokesman for Beep said in a statement. "The autonomous bus operated appropriately in the moment and, after review, it was determined the autonomous bus was safe to resume service." Beep is working with the [U.S.] Transportation Department and Carnegie Mellon University on a pilot program of automated public buses. The vehicle was brought to D.C. for an annual conference that brings together transportation researchers and policymakers...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Nearly five million social media accounts belonging to Australian teenagers have been deactivated or removed, a month after a landmark law barring those younger than 16 from using the services took effect, the government said on Thursday. The announcement was the first reported metric reflecting the rollout of the law, which is being closely watched by several other countries weighing whether the regulation can be a blueprint for protecting children from the harms of social media, or a cautionary tale highlighting the challenges of such attempts. The law required 10 social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Reddit, to prevent users under 16 from accessing their services. Under the law, which came into force in December, failure by the companies to take "reasonable steps" to remove underage users could lead to fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars, about $33 million. [...] The number of removed accounts offered only a limited picture of the ban's impact. Many teenagers have said in the weeks since the law took effect that they were able to get around the ban by lying about their age, or that they could easily bypass verification systems. The regulator tasked with enforcing and tracking the law, the eSafety Commissioner, did not release a detailed breakdown beyond announcing that the companies had "removed access" to about 4.7 million accounts belonging to children under 16. Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, said this week that it had removed almost 550,000 accounts of users younger than 16 before the ban came into effect. "Change doesn't happen overnight," said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. "But these early signs show it's important we've acted to make this change."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Monsanto's argument that federal pesticide law should shield it and parent company Bayer from tens of thousands of state lawsuits over Roundup since the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning label. The case could determine whether federal rules preempt state failure-to-warn claims without deciding whether glyphosate causes cancer. The Los Angeles Times reports: Some studies have found it is a likely carcinogen, and others concluded it does not pose a true cancer risk for humans. However, the court may free Monsanto and Bayer, its parent company, from legal claims from more than 100,000 plaintiffs who sued over their cancer diagnosis. The legal dispute involves whether the federal regulatory laws shield the company from being sued under state law for failing to warn consumers. [...] "EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide, does not cause cancer. EPA has consistently reached that conclusion after studying the extensive body of science on glyphosate for over five decades," the company told the court in its appeal. They said the EPA not only refused to add a cancer warning label to products with Roundup, but said it would be "misbranded" with such a warning. Nonetheless, the "premise of this lawsuit, and the thousands like it, is that Missouri law requires Monsanto to include the precise warning that EPA rejects," they said. On Friday, the court said in a brief order that it would decide "whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the warning." The court is likely to hear arguments in the case of Monsanto vs. Durnell in April and issue a ruling by late June.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge has temporarily lifted the Trump administration's suspension of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, allowing construction on the largest offshore wind project in the U.S. to resume. CNBC reports: Judge Jamar Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted Dominion's request for a preliminary injunction Friday. Dominion called the Trump suspension "arbitrary and illegal" in its lawsuit. "Our team will now focus on safely restarting work to ensure CVOW begins delivery of critical energy in just weeks," a Dominion spokesperson told CNBC in a statement Friday. "While our legal challenge proceeds, we will continue seeking a durable resolution of this matter through cooperation with the federal government," the spokesperson said. Dominion said in December that "stopping CVOW for any length of time will threaten grid reliability for some of the nation's most important war fighting, AI and civilian assets." Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is a 176-turbine project that would provide enough power for more than 600,000 homes, according to Dominion. It is scheduled to start dispatching power by the end of the first quarter of 2026. In December, the Trump administration paused the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the U.S., blaming the decisions on a classified report from the Department of Defense.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Even low levels of common agricultural pesticides can stunt the long-term lifespan of fish, according to research led by Jason Rohr, a biologist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Signs of aging accelerated when fish were exposed to the chemicals, according to the study, published in Science, which could have implications for other organisms. [...] The research found that fish from pesticide-affected lakes showed shortened telomeres, the caps at the end of chromosomes that are known as the biological clock for aging. When they shorten, it is a sign of cellular aging and a decline in the body's regenerative capacity. The lake populations consisted of younger fish, indicating that the pesticides contributed to shortened lives. Laboratory experiments confirmed the findings and showed chronic low-dose exposure reduced fish survival and degraded telomeres. These effects were not seen with acute high-dose exposure. Chemical analysis showed chlorpyrifos, which is banned in the UK and the EU but used in the US and China, was the only compound found in the fish tissues that was consistently associated with signs of aging. These included shortened telomeres and lipofuscin deposition -- a buildup of insoluble proteins often described as cellular "junk". The worrying aging effects occurred at concentrations below current US freshwater safety standards, Rohr said, suggesting the effects of chemicals and pesticides could be occurring at low levels over the long term. While short-term exposure to high doses did not appear to cause these aging issues -- though it did cause high toxicity and death in fish -- the researchers concluded that it was long-term exposure to low doses that drove the changes. The scientists added that reduced lifespan was particularly problematic because older fish often contribute disproportionately to reproduction, genetic diversity and population stability.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anna's Archive has been hit with a U.S. federal court default judgment and permanent injunction over its scraping and distribution of OCLC's WorldCat data, which occurred more than two years ago. According to the ruling, the shadow library must delete all copies of its WorldCat data and stop scraping, using, storing, or distributing the data. "It is expected that OCLC will use the injunction to motivate third-party intermediaries to take action against Anna's Archive," reports TorrentFreak. From the report: Yesterday, a federal court in Ohio issued a default judgment and permanent injunction against the site's unidentified operator(s). This order was requested by OCLC, which owns the proprietary WorldCat database that was scraped and published by Anna's Archive more than two years ago. OCLC initially demanded millions of dollars in damages but eventually dropped this request, focusing on taking the site down through an injunction that would also apply to intermediaries. "Anna's Archive's flagrantly illegal actions have damaged and continue to irreparably damage OCLC. As such, issuance of a permanent injunction is necessary to stop any further harm to OCLC," the request read. This pivot makes sense since Anna's Archive did not respond to the lawsuit and would likely ignore all payment demands too. However, with the right type of court order, third-party services such as hosting companies and domain registrars might come along. The permanent injunction, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson yesterday, does not mention any third-party services by name. However, it is directed at all parties that are "in active concert and participation with" Anna's Archive. Specifically, the site's operator and these third parties are prohibited from scraping WorldCat data, storing or distributing the data on Anna's Archive websites, and encouraging others to store, use or share this data. Additionally, the site has to delete all WorldCat data, which also includes all torrents. Judge Watson denied the default judgment for 'unjust enrichment' and 'tortious interference.' However, he granted the order based on the 'trespass to chattels' and 'breach of contract' claims. The latter is particularly noteworthy, as the judge ruled that because Anna's Archive is a 'sophisticated party' that scraped the site daily, it had constructive notice of the terms and entered into a 'browsewrap' agreement simply by using the service. While these nuances are important for legal experts, the result for Anna's Archive is that it lost. And while there are no monetary damages, the permanent injunction can certainly have an impact. Further reading: Spotify Says 'Anti-Copyright Extremists' Scraped Its LibraryRead more of this story at Slashdot.