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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After 20 years, being able to look at any corner of the planet in Google Earth doesn't seem that impressive, but it was a revolution in 2005. Google Earth has gone through a lot of changes in that time, and Google has some more lined up for the service's 20th anniversary. Soon, Google Earth will help you travel back in time with historic Street View integration, and pro users will get some new "AI-driven insights" -- of course Google can't update a product without adding at least a little AI. [...] While this part isn't new, Google is also using the 20th anniversary as an opportunity to surface its 3D timelapse feature. These animations use satellite data to show how an area has changed from a higher vantage point. They're just as cool as when they were announced in 2021. The AI layers are launching in the coming weeks in Google Earth web and mobile as part of Google's Professional Advanced offering. If you use that version of Earth, you should have access to a collection of so-called "AI-driven insights." For instance, you can find the average surface temperature or tree canopy coverage in a given area. This could be of help in urban planning or construction, but it's unclear how many of these insights the app will have. Google says the AI angle here is that the new layers use machine learning to categorize pixels. It's possible Google has just reached the "AI as a buzzword" stage.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a major federal campaign to promote wearable health tech, aiming for every American to adopt a device within four years as part of a broader effort to "Make America Healthy Again." Gizmodo reports: RFK Jr. announced the initiative Tuesday afternoon during a House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee meeting to discuss the HHS' budget request for the upcoming fiscal year. In response to a question from representative Troy Balderson (R-Ohio) about wearables, Kennedy revealed that HHS will soon conduct one of the agency's largest ever advertising campaigns to promote their use. He added that in his ideal future, every American will be donning a wearable within the next four years. "It's a key part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again," RFK Jr. stated in an X post following the question.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.Org: In new research published by scientists studying fission yeasta"a single-celled organism surprisingly similar to human cellsa"researchers found that caffeine affects aging by tapping into an ancient cellular energy system. A few years ago, the same research team found that caffeine helps cells live longer by acting on a growth regulator called TOR (target of rapamycin). TOR is a biological switch that tells cells when to grow, based on how much food and energy is available. This switch has been controlling energy and stress responses in living things for over 500 million years. But in their latest study, the scientists made a surprising discovery: Caffeine doesn't act on this growth switch directly. Instead, it works by activating another important system called AMPK, a cellular fuel gauge that is evolutionarily conserved in yeast and humans. "When your cells are low on energy, AMPK kicks in to help them cope," explains Dr. Charalampos (Babis) Rallis, Reader in Genetics, Genomics and Fundamental Cell Biology at Queen Mary University of London, the study's senior author. "And our results show that caffeine helps flip that switch." Interestingly, AMPK is also the target of metformin, a common diabetes drug that's being studied for its potential to extend human lifespan together with rapamycin. Using their yeast model, the researchers showed that caffeine's effect on AMPK influences how cells grow, repair their DNA, and respond to stress -- all of which are tied to aging and disease. The study has been published in the journal Microbial Cell.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A massive data center for Meta's AI will likely lead to rate hikes for Louisiana customers, but Meta wants to keep the details under wraps. Holly Ridge is a rural community bisected by US Highway 80, gridded with farmland, with a big creek -- it is literally named Big Creek -- running through it. It is home to rice and grain mills and an elementary school and a few houses. Soon, it will also be home to Meta's massive, 4 million square foot AI data center hosting thousands of perpetually humming servers that require billions of watts of energy to power. And that energy-guzzling infrastructure will be partially paid for by Louisiana residents. The plan is part of what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would be "a defining year for AI." On Threads, Zuckerberg boasted that his company was "building a 2GW+ datacenter that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan," posting a map of Manhattan along with the data center overlaid. Zuckerberg went on to say that over the coming years, AI "will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership. Let's go build! " What Zuckerberg did not mention is that "Let's go build" refers not only to the massive data center but also three new Meta-subsidized, gas power plants and a transmission line to fuel it serviced by Entergy Louisiana, the region's energy monopoly. Key details about Meta's investments with the data center remain vague, and Meta's contracts with Entergy are largely cloaked from public scrutiny. But what is known is the $10 billion data center has been positioned as an enormous economic boon for the area -- one that politicians bent over backward to facilitate -- and Meta said it will invest $200 million into "local roads and water infrastructure." A January report from NOLA.com said that the the state had rewritten zoning laws, promised to change a law so that it no longer had to put state property up for public bidding, and rewrote what was supposed to be a tax incentive for broadband internet meant to bridge the digital divide so that it was only an incentive for data centers, all with the goal of luring in Meta. But Entergy Louisiana's residential customers, who live in one of the poorest regions of the state, will see their utility bills increase to pay for Meta's energy infrastructure, according to Entergy's application. Entergy estimates that amount will be small and will only cover a transmission line, but advocates for energy affordability say the costs could balloon depending on whether Meta agrees to finish paying for its three gas plants 15 years from now. The short-term rate increases will be debated in a public hearing before state regulators that has not yet been scheduled. The Alliance for Affordable Energy called it a "black hole of energy use," and said "to give perspective on how much electricity the Meta project will use: Meta's energy needs are roughly 2.3x the power needs of Orleans Parish ... it's like building the power impact of a large city overnight in the middle of nowhere."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Register's Simon Sharwood reports: Huawei's chairman Xu Zhijun -- aka Eric Xu -- has called out China's enormous lead in fiber-to-the-room (FTTR) installations. Speaking at last week's Mobile World Congress event in Shanghai, Xu shared his views on the telecommunications industry's future growth opportunities and said by the end of 2025 China will be home to 75 million FTTR installations -- but just 500,000 exist outside the Middle Kingdom. Xu said FTTR will benefit businesses by increasing their internet connection speeds, helping them address spotty Wi-Fi coverage, allowing them to deploy tech in more places, and therefore creating more opportunities to adopt productivity-boosting devices and services. FTTR will also help carriers to sell more expensive packages, he said. Xu also urged telecom carriers to target high-growth user groups like delivery riders and livestream influencers, citing their above-average data consumption and revenue potential. Delivery riders, who will make up 5% of the global workforce by 2030, use four times more voice minutes and double the data of average users, while influencers generate five times the data usage and four times the revenue. He also pushed for greater collaboration between carriers and platforms to deliver more high-res video content, and called for improved efficiency in networking equipment and device power use. "Xu said Huawei is here to help carriers deliver any of the scenarios he mentioned," concludes Sharwood. "And of course it is, because the Chinese giant has a thriving business selling to telcos -- or at least to telcos beyond the liberal democracies that have largely decided Huawei's close ties with Beijing mean the company and its products represent an unacceptable threat to the operation of critical infrastructure."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes: Firefox 140 just landed. Some user-facing features include: Vertical Tabs: You can now keep more -- or fewer -- pinned tabs in view for quicker access to important windows. Just drag the divider to resize your pinned tabs section.Unload Tabs: You can now unload tabs by right-clicking on a tab (or multiple selected tabs) and selecting "Unload Tab." This can speed up performance by reducing Firefox's memory and CPU usage. But the most important feature? This release is an Extended Support Release (ESR). Why are ESRs so important? ESR is the Firefox version that ships as the default with many Linux distributions. Some downstream projects (like Waterfox) depend on the ESR version. Many enterprise software systems are tested only against ESR. When features are dropped -- like support for older operating systems or Flash -- ESR keeps that functionality around for longer. And speaking of old operating systems: If you are using Windows 7, 8.1, or macOS 10.12~10.15, note that FireFox ESR 115 (the last version supporting these OSs) will continue to receive patches until at least September 2025. So one can see why ESR is very important for some people. The release notes are available here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google DeepMind has launched Gemini Robotics On-Device, a new language model that enables robots to perform complex tasks locally without internet connectivity. TechCrunch reports: Building on the company's previous Gemini Robotics model that was released in March, Gemini Robotics On-Device can control a robot's movements. Developers can control and fine-tune the model to suit various needs using natural language prompts. In benchmarks, Google claims the model performs at a level close to the cloud-based Gemini Robotics model. The company says it outperforms other on-device models in general benchmarks, though it didn't name those models. In a demo, the company showed robots running this local model doing things like unzipping bags and folding clothes. Google says that while the model was trained for ALOHA robots, it later adapted it to work on a bi-arm Franka FR3 robot and the Apollo humanoid robot by Apptronik. Google claims the bi-arm Franka FR3 was successful in tackling scenarios and objects it hadn't "seen" before, like doing assembly on an industrial belt. Google DeepMind is also releasing a Gemini Robotics SDK. The company said developers can show robots 50 to 100 demonstrations of tasks to train them on new tasks using these models on the MuJoCo physics simulator.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is planning to cut jobs in the company's Xbox gaming business, as early as next week. I first reported in Notepad earlier this month that Microsoft was planning Xbox layoffs "potentially by the end of the month," and now Bloomberg says a round of "major layoffs" is due next week. I understand managers at Microsoft have been briefed about Xbox cuts and wider layoffs in other parts of Microsoft's businesses. The upcoming cuts are also expected to hit Microsoft's sales organization, just at the start of a new financial year. Microsoft is planning to restructure parts of its Xbox business as it looks ahead to its next generation of consoles. One source tells me Microsoft is restructuring Xbox distribution across central Europe, resulting in some Xbox operations ceasing in some regions. The expected layoffs will be in addition to the 6,000 cuts Microsoft already made in May, and on top of the more than 300 job cuts earlier this month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo and Uber have launched a robotaxi service in Atlanta, allowing users to book autonomous rides through the Uber app across a 65-square-mile area. They will not yet travel on highways or to the airport. CNBC reports: The vehicles feature Waymo's driverless technology, known as the Waymo Driver, integrated into battery electric Jaguar I-PACE SUVs. [...] In Atlanta and Austin, Waymo rides are only available through Uber's app, while in San Francisco and Los Angeles, passengers book through the Waymo One app. Waymo said it would start with dozens of robotaxis live in Atlanta. The company says it currently has more than 1,500 autonomous vehicles in its U.S. fleet. The Waymo-Uber partnership only covers passenger rides, not Uber Eats deliveries.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has released a modern, open-source version of its classic MS-DOS Editor -- built with Rust and compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux. It's now simple called "Edit." Ars Technica reports: Aside from ease of use, Microsoft's main reason for creating the new version of Edit stems from a peculiar gap in modern Windows. "What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows," writes [Christopher Nguyen, a product manager on Microsoft's Windows Terminal team] while referring to the command-line interface, or CLI. "32-bit versions of Windows ship with the MS-DOS editor, but 64-bit versions do not have a CLI editor installed inbox." [...] Linux users can download Edit from the project's GitHub releases page or install it through an unofficial snap package. Oh, and if you're a fan of the vintage editor and crave a 16-bit text-mode for your retro machine that actually runs MS-DOS, you can download a copy on the Internet Archive. [...] At 250KB, the new Edit maintains the lightweight philosophy of its predecessor while adding features the original couldn't dream of: Unicode support, regular expressions, and the ability to handle gigabyte-sized files. The original editor was limited to files smaller than 300KB depending on available conventional memory -- a constraint that seems quaint in an era of terabyte storage. But the web publication OMG! Ubuntu found that the modern Edit not only "works great on Ubuntu" but noted its speed when handling gigabyte-sized documents.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Transport Topics: A ship that caught fire in the Pacific Ocean earlier this month has sunk. The vessel was abandoned in the middle of the pacific -- about 360 miles from land -- after a blaze. It was carrying about 3,000 vehicles of which about 800 were EVs. Damage caused by the fire was compounded by heavy weather, causing the ship to take on water and ultimately sink on June 23, the vessel's manager, Zodiac Maritime, said in a statement on June 24. Smoke was initially seen emanating from a deck carrying electric vehicles, Zodiac said when the incident first happened. While the ship's relative distance from land means that it will sink into ocean that is approximately 5,000 meters deep, it also made a rapid response trickier. The second of three specialist vessels that were due to assist the ship arrived on June 15, more than a week after the fire first broke out. The vessel was carrying cars from a range of manufacturers including Chery Automobile Co. and Great Wall Motor Co. to Mexico, people familiar with the matter said at the time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 110 million people across Europe suffer high levels of health-damaging noise pollution, according to a report. The resulting physiological stress and sleep disturbance leads to 66,000 early deaths a year and many cases of heart disease, diabetes and depression. The Guardian: The report, from the European Environment Agency (EEA), focuses on noise from cars, trains and aeroplanes and found that 20% of the population of the European Economic Area (EEA) were affected. Separate research, using a slightly lower threshold for dangerous noise pollution, found that 40% of the UK population were exposed to harmful transport noise. Seventeen million people endure particularly high noise pollution -- "long-term, high-annoyance" -- and almost 5 million suffer "severe" sleep disturbance. Fifteen million children live in areas of harmful noise. The harm to health from noise is greater than that from higher-profile risks including secondhand tobacco smoke or lead exposure, and incurs an economic cost of almost $116bn a year, the analysis found. The damage to health is likely to be an underestimate, the researchers said. Using the World Health Organization's stricter threshold for risky noise pollution gives an estimate of 150 million people across Europe exposed. The EU's target to cut the number of people chronically disturbed by transport noise by 30% by 2030 will not be met without further action, the researchers said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has begun rolling out a feature that allows Chrome users on Android to move the browser's address bar to the bottom of the screen. This capability has been available to iOS Chrome users since 2023 and aims to improve accessibility for users with larger devices. Users can relocate the address bar by pressing and holding on it and selecting the move option, or by adjusting the setting through Chrome's settings menu. The feature addresses usability concerns for users of phones with bigger screens, where reaching the top of the display can prove difficult during one-handed operation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Western Digital has succeeded in having the sum it owed from a patent infringement case reduced from $553 million down to just $1 in post-trial motions, when the judge found the plaintiff's claims had shifted during the course of the litigation. From a report: The storage biz was held by a California jury to have infringed on data encryption patents owned by SPEX Technologies Inc in October, relating to several of its self-encrypting hard drive products. WD was initially told to pay $316 million in damages, but District Judge James Selna ruled the company owed a further $237 million in interest charges earlier this year, bringing the total to more than half a billion dollars. In February, WD was given a week to file a bond or stump up the entire damages payment. Selna granted Western Digital's post-trial motion to reduce damages, writing that "SPEX's damages theory changed as certain evidence and theories became unavailable" and there was "insufficient evidence from which the Court could determine a reasonable royalty."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple customers aren't thrilled they're getting an ad from the Apple Wallet app promoting the tech giant's Original Film, "F1 the Movie." Across social media, iPhone owners are complaining that their Wallet app sent out a push notification offering a $10 discount at Fandango for anyone buying two or more tickets to the film. The feature film, starring Brad Pitt, explores the world of Formula 1 and was shot at actual Grand Prix races. It also showcases the use of Apple technology, from the custom-made cameras made of iPhone parts used to film inside the cars, to the AirPods Max that Pitt's character, F1 driver Sonny Hayes, sleeps in. However well-received the film may be, iPhone users don't necessarily want their built-in utilities, like their digital wallet, marketing to them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Philips Hue will raise prices across its smart lighting and security products for US customers starting July 1st, with parent company Signify attributing the increases directly to tariffs. The company initially notified customers that prices would "go up" through a promotional message before confirming the tariff-related reasoning in a statement. Signify has not provided specific pricing details or identified which products will be affected, though the company's statement suggests changes may impact the entire Hue lineup. Some products already reflect higher US pricing, including the new $219.99 Hue Play Wall Washer light, which costs approximately 10% more than the European price when currencies are converted. The latest $32.99 Smart Button also exceeds the $24.99 launch price of its predecessor, while European pricing remained at 21.99 euro ($25.50) for both generations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft will offer free Windows 10 security updates through October 2026 to consumers who enable Windows Backup or spend 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, the company said today. The move provides alternatives to the previously announced $30-per-PC Extended Security Update program for individuals wanting to continue using Windows 10 past its October 14, 2025 end-of-support date. The company will notify Windows 10 users about the ESU program through the Settings app and notifications starting in July, with full rollout by mid-August. Both free options require a Microsoft Account, which the company has increasingly pushed in Windows 11. Business and organizational customers can still purchase up to three years of ESU updates but must pay for the service. Windows 10 remains installed on 53% of Windows PCs worldwide, according to Statcounter data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has designed features that would allow people to collaborate on documents and communicate via chat within ChatGPT, The Information reported Tuesday. The features would pit OpenAI directly against Microsoft, its biggest shareholder and business partner, and Google, whose search engine has already lost traffic to people using ChatGPT for web searches. Whether OpenAI will actually release the collaboration features remains unclear, the report cautioned. The designs would target the core of Microsoft's dominant productivity suite and could strain the companies' already complicated relationship as OpenAI seeks Microsoft's approval for restructuring its for-profit unit. Product chief Kevin Weil first discussed and showed off designs for document collaboration nearly a year ago, but OpenAI lacked sufficient staff to develop the product due to other priorities. OpenAI launched Canvas in October, a ChatGPT feature that makes drafting documents and code easier with AI assistance, as a possible first step toward full collaboration tools. More recently, OpenAI developed but has not launched software allowing multiple ChatGPT customers to communicate about shared work within the application.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China's advantages in developing AI are about to unleash a wave of innovation that will generate more than 100 DeepSeek-like breakthroughs in the coming 18 months, according to a former top official. From a report: The new software products "will fundamentally change the nature and the tech nature of the whole Chinese economy," Zhu Min, who was previously a deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said during the World Economic Forum in Tianjin on Tuesday. Zhu, who also served as the deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund, sees a transformation made possible by harnessing China's pool of engineers, massive consumer base and supportive government policies. The bullish take on China's AI future promises no letup in the competition for dominance in cutting-edge technologies with the US, just as the world's two biggest economies are also locked in a trade war.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge has ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its Claude AI models constitutes fair use, but rejected the startup's defense for downloading millions of pirated books to build a permanent digital library. U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted partial summary judgment to Anthropic in the copyright lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson. The court found that training large language models on copyrighted works was "exceedingly transformative" under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. Anthropic downloaded over seven million books from pirate sites, according to court documents. The startup also purchased millions of print books, destroyed the bindings, scanned every page, and stored them digitally. Both sets of books were used to train various versions of Claude, which generates over $1 billion in annual revenue. While the judge approved using books for AI training purposes, he ruled that downloading pirated copies to create what Anthropic called a "central library of all the books in the world" was not protected fair use. The case will proceed to trial on damages related to the pirated library copies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon today announced its intention to bring same-day and next-day delivery to "tens of millions" of people who live in live in smaller towns by the end of 2026. From a report: Speedier deliveries will be available to residents "in more than 4,000 smaller cities, towns, and rural communities," the company said in a press release Tuesday. Items categorized as "everyday essentials," including groceries, beauty products, household goods, or pet food, will now be available to small town or rural customers for same-day or next-day delivery. If they are Prime subscribers (currently $14.99 a month or $139 annually), they get unlimited free same-day delivery when spending over $25 at checkout.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leading AI companies including Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI are discovering significant inconsistencies in how their AI reasoning models operate, according to company researchers. The companies have deployed "chain-of-thought" techniques that ask AI models to solve problems step-by-step while showing their reasoning process, but are finding examples of "misbehaviour" where chatbots provide final responses that contradict their displayed reasoning. METR, a non-profit research group, identified an instance where Anthropic's Claude chatbot disagreed with a coding technique in its chain-of-thought but ultimately recommended it as "elegant." OpenAI research found that when models were trained to hide unwanted thoughts, they would conceal misbehaviour from users while continuing problematic actions, such as cheating on software engineering tests by accessing forbidden databases.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ford is moving forward with its $3 billion EV battery plant in Michigan despite political pushback and the potential loss of key U.S. tax credits that make the project financially viable. Axios reports: Ford's argument is that by building batteries using technology licensed from China's leading battery producer, CATL, it is helping to re-shore important manufacturing expertise that was long ago ceded to China. [...] "LFP batteries are produced all around Europe, and the rest of the world," said Lisa Drake, Ford's vice president of technology platform programs and EV systems. "How can we compete if we don't have this technology? Somebody has to take the lead to do this," she said, adding that it will lead to homegrown innovation and the seeding of a domestic supply base. "I'm convinced this is the right thing to do for the United States," she said. Drake said the tax subsidies are even more important in the face of slower-than-expected EV demand. "When EV adoption slowed, it just became a huge headwind," she said. "The [production tax credit] allows us to keep on this path, and to keep going." "We don't want to back off on scaling, hiring or training in an industry we need to be competitive in the future," she said. "It would be a shame to build these facilities and then have to scale back on the most important part of it, which is the people. These are 1,700 jobs. They don't come along very often." Consumer tax credits for EV purchases get the most attention, but for manufacturers, the far more lucrative incentives come in the form of production tax credits. Companies could receive a tax credit of $35 per kilowatt-hour for each U.S.-made cell, and another $10 per kilowatt-hour for each battery pack. With an annual production capacity of 20 GWh, Ford's battery plant could potentially receive a $900 million tax credit, offsetting almost one-third of its investment. [...] The Republican-controlled Senate could vote as early as Wednesday on a budget bill that would rewrite language around EV tax credits. A House version of the bill passed last month effectively killed the production tax credits for manufacturers by severely tightening the eligibility requirements. It also specifically prohibited credits for batteries made in the U.S. under a Chinese licensing agreement -- a direct hit on Ford.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Goldman Sachs has officially rolled out a generative AI assistant across the company to enhance productivity, with around 10,000 employees already using it for tasks like summarizing documents and data analysis. Reuters reports: With the AI tool's official company-wide launch, Goldman joins a long list of big banks already leveraging the technology to shape their operations in a targeted manner and help employees in day-to-day tasks. [...] The GS AI assistant will help Goldman employees in "summarizing complex documents and drafting initial content to performing data analysis," according to the internal memo. "While the official line is that AI frees up employees for 'higher-value work,' the real-world consequence is a reduced need for human labor," notes Gizmodo in their reporting. A banker told Gizmodo that because their AI system now processes 85% of all client responses for margin calls, "the operations team avoided hiring 30 new people." Gizmodo asks pointedly: "If one AI tool is replacing the need for 30 back-office staff in one corner of one bank, what happens when the entire industry scales that up?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from OilPrice.com: China installed its highest solar power capacity for a single month in May, according to official data, which showed mind-boggling figures that the country installed more solar capacity in a month than any other nation did for the entire 2024. With 93 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity installed in May, China smashed its own record of 71 GW in December 2024, per data from the National Energy Administration cited by Bloomberg. China's solar capacity additions in May were rushed ahead of a new government policy -- effective June 1 -- to remove pricing protection for solar power projects. Under these protections, solar projects had all but guaranteed profits when they start operations. Another new rule, effective May 1, made connecting rooftop panels to the grid more difficult. These new policies are expected to moderate the growth in solar power additions this summer, analysts say. A separate report notes that China's cumulative installed solar capacity has surpassed 1 TW, according to the National Energy Administration (NEA). "By the end of May 2025, solar capacity had reached 1.08 TW (1,080 GW), up 56.9% year on year," reports pv magazine. "NEA data show total power generation capacity stood at 3.61 TW at the end of May, an 18.8% increase from a year earlier."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is turning the Xbox App on PC into a universal game launcher by integrating libraries from multiple storefronts like Steam. The feature is currently limited to those in the Xbox Insider program. From the announcement: With the aggregated gaming library, players can conveniently launch games from Xbox, Game Pass, Battle.net and other leading PC storefronts from a single library within the Xbox PC app. Whether you're on a Windows PC or a handheld device, your Xbox library, hundreds of Game Pass titles, and all your installed games from leading PC storefronts will now be at your fingertips. When a player installs a game from a supported PC storefront, it will automatically appear in "My library" within the Xbox PC app, as well as the "Most recent" list of titles in the sidebar -- making it easier than ever to jump back into your games. And this is just the beginning. We'll continue rolling out support for additional PC storefronts over time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ExtremeTech: Microsoft has changed how Windows 11 manages System Restore points after its June 2025 security update. The update, KB5060842, says that starting with Windows 11 version 24H2, System Restore points will be kept for up to 60 days. After 60 days, restore points older than 60 days will no longer be available for use. [...] The change does not change the way restore points are created or used; it only sets a clear time limit for how long they are stored. Windows will still delete older restore points if the allocated disk space fills up. But now there is a firm upper limit of 60 days, regardless of available space. The report notes that restore points in Windows 11 have varied. "Some restore points were removed after only 10 days, while others sometimes lasted the full 90 days, as reported by XDA Developers." The new 60-day limit should give users more certainty about how long their restore points will remain on their system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a podcast interview with The Verge's Nilay Patel, Hinge CEO Justin McLeod described integrating AI into dating apps as promising but warned against relying on AI companionship, likening it to "playing with fire" and consuming "junk food," potentially exacerbating the loneliness epidemic. He emphasized Hinge's mission to foster genuine human connections and highlighted upcoming AI-powered features designed to improve matchmaking and provide coaching to encourage real-world interactions. Here's an excerpt from the interview: Again, there's a fine line between prompting someone and coaching them inside Hinge, and we're coaching them in a different way within a more self-contained ecosystem. How do you think about that? Would you launch a full-on virtual girlfriend inside Hinge? Certainly not. I have lots of thoughts about this. I think there's actually quite a clear line between providing a tool that helps people do something or get better at something, and the line where it becomes this thing that is trying to become your friend, trying to mimic emotions, and trying to create an emotional connection with you. That I think is really playing with fire. I think we are already in a crisis of loneliness, and a loneliness epidemic. It's a complex issue, and it's baked into our culture, and it goes back to before the internet. But just since 2000, over the past 20 years, the amount of time that people spend together in real life with their friends has dropped by 70 percent for young people. And it's been almost completely displaced by the time spent staring at screens. As a result, we've seen massive increases in mental health issues, and people's loneliness, anxiety, and depression. I think Mark Zuckerberg was just quoted about this, that most people don't have enough friends. But he said we're going to give them AI chatbots. That he believes that AI chatbots can become your friends. I think that's honestly an extraordinarily reductive view of what a friendship is, that it's someone there to say all the right things to you at the right moment The most rewarding parts of being in a friendship are being able to be there for someone else, to risk and be vulnerable, to share experiences with other conscious entities. So I think that while it will feel good in the moment, like junk food basically, to have an experience with someone who says all the right things and is available at the right time, it will ultimately, just like junk food, make people feel less healthy and mo re drained over time. It will displace the human relationships that people should be cultivating out in the real world. How do you compete with that? That is the other thing that is happening. It is happening. Whether it's good or bad. Hinge is offering a harder path. So you say, "We've got to get people out on dates." I honestly wonder about that, based on the younger folks I know who sometimes say, aoeI just don't want to leave the house. I would rather just talk to this computer. I have too much social pressure just leaving the house in this way.a That's what Hinge is promising to do. How do you compete with that? Do you take it head on? Are you marketing that directly? I'm starting to think very much about taking it head on. We want to continue at Hinge to champion human relationships, real human-to-human-in-real-life relationships, because I think they are an essential part of the human experience, and they're essential to our mental health. It's not just because I run a dating app and, obviously, it's important that people continue to meet. It really is a deep, personal mission of mine, and I think it's absolutely critical that someone is out there championing this. Because it's always easier to race to the bottom of the brain stem and offer people junk products that maybe sell in the moment but leave them worse off. That's the entire model that we've seen from what happened with social media. I think AI chatbots could frankly be much more dangerous in that respect. So what we can do is to become more and more effective and support people more and more, and make it as easy as possible to do the harder and riskier thing, which is to go out and form real relationships with real people. They can let you down and might not always be there for you, but it is ultimately a much more nourishing and enriching experience for people. We can also champion and raise awareness as much as we can. That's another reason why I'm here today talking with you, because I think it's important to put out the counter perspective, that we don't just reflexively believe that AI chatbots can be your friend, without thinking too deeply about what that really implies and what that really means. We keep going back to junk food, but people had to start waking up to the fact that this was harmful. We had to do a lot of campaigns to educate people that drinking Coca-Cola and eating fast food was detrimental to their health over the long term. And then as people became more aware of that, a whole personal wellness industry started to grow, and now that's a huge industry, and people spend a lot of time focusing on their diet and nutrition and mental health, and all these other things. I think similarly, social wellness needs to become a category like that. It's thinking about not just how do I get this junk social experience of social media where I get fed outraged news and celebrity gossip and all that stuff, but how do I start building a sense of social wellness, where I can create an enriching, intimate connection with important people in my life. You can listen to the podcast here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Magic Lantern, the popular open-source suite of software enhancements for Canon DSLR cameras, has returned under new leadership. The revived project aims to offer regular updates and support for additional models, including compatibility for Canon's newer mirrorless cameras equipped with DIGIC X processors. PetaPixel reports: The new lead developer, names_are_hard, announced Magic Lantern's return yesterday on Magic Lantern's forums, seen by Reddit r/cinematography users and confirmed on the official Magic Lantern website. "It's been a long journey, but official Magic Lantern builds return, for all cameras," names_are_hard writes. They add that this means that there will be new, regular releases for all supported cameras and new cameras will be supported. As of now, the supported cameras are almost entirely DSLR models, save for tools for the original EOS M mirrorless camera. However, one of the members of the core Magic Lantern team, which comprises developers g3ggo, kitor, and WalterSchulz, says the team is looking at supporting cameras with DIGIC X processors, which includes mirrorless EOS R models. "It would be awesome if they start supporting new cameras. Imaging unlocking Open Gate on the R5/R6 lines, or RAW on cameras that don't have it (like R6, R7, etc.)," writes Redditor user machado34. "I believe it will be possible. They say they're exploring up to DIGIC X," adds 3dforlife. "In fact we are," developer kitor replies. "Just DIGIC 8 is stubborn and X adds some new (undocumented) hardware on top of that." Kitor is listed as the chief DIGIC 8 and DIGIC X hacker on Magic Lantern's forums, plus kitor is chiefly in charge of the revived website and Magic Lantern's social media presence. If the team can crack mirrorless cameras, it would be a boon. [...] The new Magic Lantern core team of devs, plus many other key players who are involved to various degrees in bringing Magic Lantern back to life, have built a new repo, formalized the code base, and developed a new, efficient build system. "Around 2020, our old lead dev, a1ex, after years of hard work, left the project. The documentation was fragmentary. Nobody understood the build system. A very small number of volunteers kept things alive, but nothing worked well. Nobody had deep knowledge of Magic Lantern code," names_are_hard writes. "Those that remained had to learn how everything worked, then fix it. Then add support for new cams without breaking the old ones." "We have an updated website. We have a new repo. We have new supported models. We have a new build system. We have cleaner, faster, smaller code." The team is now using Git, building on modern operating systems with contemporary tools, and compiling clean. "This was a lot of work, and invisible to users, but very useful for devs. It's easier than ever to join as a dev." Alongside the exciting return, Magic Lantern has added support for numerous new Canon DSLR cameras, including the 200D, 6D Mark II, 750D, and 7D Mark II.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jalvarez13 writes: My venerable HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus is showing its age and it has become expensive to operate due to the cost of the original cartridges. I tried some alternative cartridges but the printer rejects them. Now that schools still require kids to print stuff at home (mine are in 2nd and 4th grade), and my wife also needs to use the printer, I think it may be wise to invest in a good-quality printer that has a lower cost per page (maybe laser?). In that context, I'd love to have unbiased information about brand quality, printing technology, cost efficiency, and other factors that I might have missed. Any thoughts?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Disabling Intel graphics security mitigations in GPU compute stacks for OpenCL and Level Zero can yield a performance boost of up to 20%, prompting Ubuntu's Canonical and Intel to disable these mitigations in future Ubuntu packages. Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Intel does allow building their GPU compute stack without these mitigations by using the "NEO_DISABLE_MITIGATIONS" build option and that is what Canonical is looking to set now for Ubuntu packages to avoid the significant performance impact. This work will likely all be addressed in time for Ubuntu 25.10. This NEO_DISABLE_MITIGATIONS option is just for compiling the Intel Compute Runtime stack and doesn't impact the Linux kernel security mitigations or else outside of Intel's "NEO" GPU compute stack. Both Intel and Canonical are in agreement with this move and it turns out that even Intel's GitHub binary packages for their Compute Runtime for OpenCL and Level Zero ship with the mitigations disabled due to the performance impact. This Ubuntu Launchpad bug report for the Intel Compute Runtime notes some of the key takeaways. There is also this PPA where Ubuntu developers are currently testing their Compute Runtime builds with NEO_DISABLE_MITIGATIONS enabled for disabling the mitigations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After a court ordered OpenAI to "indefinitely" retain all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats, of millions of users, two panicked users tried and failed to intervene. The order sought to preserve potential evidence in a copyright infringement lawsuit raised by news organizations. In May, Judge Ona Wang, who drafted the order, rejected the first user's request (PDF) on behalf of his company simply because the company should have hired a lawyer to draft the filing. But more recently, Wang rejected (PDF) a second claim from another ChatGPT user, and that order went into greater detail, revealing how the judge is considering opposition to the order ahead of oral arguments this week, which were urgently requested by OpenAI. The second request (PDF) to intervene came from a ChatGPT user named Aidan Hunt, who said that he uses ChatGPT "from time to time," occasionally sending OpenAI "highly sensitive personal and commercial information in the course of using the service." In his filing, Hunt alleged that Wang's preservation order created a "nationwide mass surveillance program" affecting and potentially harming "all ChatGPT users," who received no warning that their deleted and anonymous chats were suddenly being retained. He warned that the order limiting retention to just ChatGPT outputs carried the same risks as including user inputs, since outputs "inherently reveal, and often explicitly restate, the input questions or topics input." Hunt claimed that he only learned that ChatGPT was retaining this information -- despite policies specifying they would not -- by stumbling upon the news in an online forum. Feeling that his Fourth Amendment and due process rights were being infringed, Hunt sought to influence the court's decision and proposed a motion to vacate the order that said Wang's "order effectively requires Defendants to implement a mass surveillance program affecting all ChatGPT users." [...] OpenAI will have a chance to defend panicked users on June 26, when Wang hears oral arguments over the ChatGPT maker's concerns about the preservation order. In his filing, Hunt explained that among his worst fears is that the order will not be blocked and that chat data will be disclosed to news plaintiffs who may be motivated to publicly disseminate the deleted chats. That could happen if news organizations find evidence of deleted chats they say are likely to contain user attempts to generate full news articles. Wang suggested that there is no risk at this time since no chat data has yet been disclosed to the news organizations. That could mean that ChatGPT users may have better luck intervening after chat data is shared, should OpenAI's fight to block the order this week fail. But that's likely no comfort to users like Hunt, who worry that OpenAI merely retaining the data -- even if it's never shared with news organizations -- could cause severe and irreparable harms. Some users appear to be questioning how hard OpenAI will fight. In particular, Hunt is worried that OpenAI may not prioritize defending users' privacy if other concerns -- like "financial costs of the case, desire for a quick resolution, and avoiding reputational damage" -- are deemed more important, his filing said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's iOS 26 introduces Recovery Assistant, a feature that allows users to restore malfunctioning iPhones without requiring a Mac or PC. The system automatically boots devices into Recovery mode when startup issues occur, displaying the message "This iPhone encountered an issue while starting." Users can then initiate recovery through another Apple device like an iPad, which downloads and installs a newer iOS version onto the malfunctioning iPhone. Apple described Recovery Assistant as "a new way to recover your device if it doesn't start up normally" in release notes for the second iOS 26 beta.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The number of doctoral graduates globally has grown steadily over recent decades, creating a massive imbalance between PhD holders and available academic positions. Among the 38 OECD countries, new doctorate holders almost doubled between 1998 and 2017. China's doctoral enrollment has exploded from around 300,000 students in 2013 to more than 600,000 in 2023. This growth has forced PhD graduates into non-academic careers at unprecedented rates. A 2023 study of more than 4,500 PhD graduates in the United Kingdom found over two-thirds were employed outside academia. In South Africa, 18% of more than 6,000 PhD graduates reported difficulty finding jobs related to their expertise. Some countries have begun adapting their doctoral programs. Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom now offer training and paid internships during doctoral studies, including "industrial PhD" programs where students conduct research in collaboration with companies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hackers suspected of working on behalf of the Chinese government exploited a maximum-severity vulnerability, which had received a patch 16 months earlier, to compromise a telecommunications provider in Canada, officials from that country and the US said Monday. ArsTechnica: "The Cyber Centre is aware of malicious cyber activities currently targeting Canadian telecommunications companies," officials for the center, the Canadian government's primary cyber security agency, said in a statement. "The responsible actors are almost certainly PRC state-sponsored actors, specifically Salt Typhoon." The FBI issued its own nearly identical statement. Salt Typhoon is the name researchers and government officials use to track one of several discreet groups known to hack nations all over the world on behalf of the People's Republic of China. In October 2023, researchers disclosed that hackers had backdoored more than 10,000 Cisco devices by exploiting CVE-2023-20198, a vulnerability with a maximum severity rating of 10. Any switch, router, or wireless LAN controller running Cisco's iOS XE that had the HTTP or HTTPS server feature enabled and exposed to the Internet was vulnerable. Cisco released a security patch about a week after security firm VulnCheck published its report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bacteria can be used to turn plastic waste into painkillers, researchers have found, opening up the possibility of a more sustainable process for producing the drugs. From a report: Chemists have discovered E coli can be used to create paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, from a material produced in the laboratory from plastic bottles. "People don't realise that paracetamol comes from oil currently," said Prof Stephen Wallace, the lead author of the research from the University of Edinburgh. "What this technology shows is that by merging chemistry and biology in this way for the first time, we can make paracetamol more sustainably and clean up plastic waste from the environment at the same time." Writing in the journal Nature Chemistry, Wallace and colleagues report how they discovered that a type of chemical reaction called a Lossen rearrangement, a process that has never been seen in nature, was biocompatible. In other words, it could be carried out in the presence of living cells without harming them. The team made their discovery when they took polyethylene terephthalate (PET) -- a type of plastic often found in food packaging and bottles -- and, using sustainable chemical methods, converted it into a new material.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microplastics are present in all beverages, but those packaged in glass bottles contain more microplastic particles than those in plastic bottles, cartons or cans. This was the surprising finding of a study conducted by the Boulogne-sur-Mer unit of the ANSES Laboratory for Food Safety. The scientists hypothesised that these plastic particles could come from the paint used on bottle caps. Water and wine are less affected than other beverages. These findings have highlighted a source of microplastics in drinks that manufacturers can easily take measures to address.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FICO credit scores will begin incorporating buy-now-pay-later data for the first time. From a report: With over 90 million Americans expected to use BNPL for purchases this year, critics argue that existing credit scores paint an incomplete picture of an individual's ability to pay back loans. Fair Isaac Corp., which runs FICO, said Monday that it will launch two separate credit scores including BNPL data. FICO Score 10 BNPL and FICO Score 10 T BNPL will "represent a significant advancement in credit scoring, accounting for the growing importance of BNPL loans in the U.S. credit ecosystem," the company said in a statement. "These scores provide lenders with greater visibility into consumers' repayment behaviors, enabling a more comprehensive view of their credit readiness which ultimately improves the lending experience," FICO added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: AI firm DeepSeek is aiding China's military and intelligence operations, a senior U.S. official told Reuters, adding that the Chinese tech startup sought to use Southeast Asian shell companies to access high-end semiconductors that cannot be shipped to China under U.S. rules. The U.S. conclusions reflect a growing conviction in Washington that the capabilities behind the rapid rise of one of China's flagship AI enterprises may have been exaggerated and relied heavily on U.S. technology. [...] "We understand that DeepSeek has willingly provided and will likely continue to provide support to China's military and intelligence operations," a senior State Department official told Reuters in an interview. "This effort goes above and beyond open-source access to DeepSeek's AI models," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to speak about U.S. government information. Chinese law requires companies operating in China to provide data to the government when requested. But the suggestion that DeepSeek is already doing so is likely to raise privacy and other concerns for the firm's tens of millions of daily global users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IYO filed a trademark infringement lawsuit [PDF] against OpenAI and Jony Ive's company earlier this month, alleging the defendants deliberately adopted a confusingly similar name for competing products. The lawsuit surfaced after the Microsoft-backed startup quietly pulled promotional materials about its $6.5 acquisition billion deal with Ive's firm. The Northern District of California complaint targets OpenAI's $6.5 billion acquisition of "IO Products, Inc.," announced May 21, 2025. IYO, which spun out from Google X in 2021, produces the "IYO ONE," an ear-worn device that allows users to interact with computers and AI through voice commands without screens or keyboards. IYO has invested over $62 million developing its audio computing technology, it says in the filing. According to the complaint, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive's design studio LoveFrom met with IYO representatives multiple times between 2022 and 2025, learning details about IYO's technology and business plans. In March 2025, Altman allegedly told IYO he was "working on something competitive" called "io." IO Products, formed in September 2023, develops hardware for screenless computer interaction similar to IYO's products. The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief and damages for trademark infringement and unfair competition.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New York will construct the first major new U.S. nuclear power plant in more than 15 years, with Governor Kathy Hochul directing the state's public electric utility to add at least one gigawatt of nuclear generation capacity. The New York Power Authority will identify an upstate location and determine reactor design, either independently or through private partnerships. The project tests President Trump's May executive orders aimed at accelerating nuclear development through regulatory overhaul, expedited licensing, and expanded use of federal lands for reactors. Only five new commercial reactors have come online since 1991, while nuclear capacity has declined more than 4% from its 2012 peak. Potential sites include grounds of New York's three existing plants owned by Constellation Energy. The state is already collaborating with Constellation on federal grant applications for reactor additions at the Nine Mile Point facility in Oswego and studying Ontario's small modular reactor initiatives.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has quietly removed its day-old "The Parent Presentation" video from YouTube. From a report: The Parent Presentation is a customizable slideshow that explains why a Mac is a useful tool in college. [...] Students can customize the presentation slides, and then show it to their parents to convince them to buy them a Mac. In an accompanying YouTube video shared by Apple, comedian Martin Herlihy showed a group of high school students how to effectively use The Parent Presentation. Some users described the ad as "cringe" and "gross."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. House chief administrative officer has banned WhatsApp from congressional staffers' government devices citing data vulnerability concerns. The cybersecurity office deemed the messaging app "high-risk" due to lack of transparency in data protection, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks, according to an email obtained by Axios. Staff cannot download or keep WhatsApp on any House device, including mobile, desktop, or web browser versions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bruce66423 writes (slightly edited to add more context): A former potash mine at Wittelsheim in Alsace now entombs about 42,000 tonnes of toxic industrial waste, and scientists warn that, over time, contaminants could seep upward into the Alsace aquifer, which in turn feeds the transboundary Upper Rhine groundwater system supplying drinking water to millions in France, Germany and Switzerland. Campaigners argue that leaving the waste underground instead of removing it creates a long-term 'time-bomb' for people and wildlife.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Perched in Chile's Andes mountains, "A revolutionary new space telescope has just taken its first pictures of the cosmos," reports National Geographic - "and they're spectacular." Formerly known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, it's expected to bring "unprecedented detail" to space photography:The observatory has a few key components: A giant telescope, called the Simonyi Survey Telescope, is connected to the world's largest and highest resolution digital camera. Rubin's 27-foot primary mirror, paired with a mind-boggling 3,200-megapixel camera, will repeatedly take 30-second exposure images of vast swaths of the sky with unrivaled speed and detail. Each image will cover an area of sky as big as 40 full moons. Every three nights for the next 10 years, Rubin will produce a new, ultra-high-definition map of the entire visible southern sky. With this much coverage, scientists hope to create an updated and detailed "movie" they can use to view how the cosmos changes over time.... For the next decade, Rubin will capture millions of astronomical objects each day - or more than 100 every second. Ultimately, it's expected to discover about 17 billion stars and 20 billion galaxies that we've never seen before... When the observatory begins science operations in earnest later in 2025, its instruments will yield a deluge of astronomical data that will be too overwhelming to process manually. (Each night, the observatory will generate around 20 terabytes of data.) Astronomers expect high-quality observations taken with the telescope will help map out the structure of the universe, find comets and potentially hazardous asteroids in our solar system, and detect exploding stars and black holes in distant galaxies. The observatory will also examine the optical counterparts of gravitational wave events - ripples in the fabric of space caused by some of the most energetic processes in the cosmos. By studying these events, astronomers hope to uncover the secrets of the invisible forces that shape the universe like dark matter and dark energy. "Already, in just over 10 hours of test observations, the observatory has discovered 2,104 never-before-seen-asteroids," reports NPR, "including seven near-Earth asteroids, none of which pose any danger..." The basic idea is that the data "should let astronomers catch transient phenomena that they otherwise wouldn't know to look for, such as exploding stars, asteroids, interstellar objects whizzing in from other solar systems, and maybe even the movement of a giant planet that some believe is lurking out in our own solar system, beyond Pluto." The telescope is a joint project between the U.S. Energy Department and its National Science Foundation - and it will stream a special live broadcast of its first images today at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on their official YouTube channel (also simulacast at Space.com).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The classic VW bus got an all-electric update - but that was just the beginning. Now there's an autonomous driving version (that's intended for commercial fleets, reports Jalopnik, "a level 4 vehicle that drives set routes" that's "going into full production" as the ID Buzz AD. (The AD stands for "autonomous driving")The AD version sports a longer wheelbase and a higher roofline than its mere human-driven sibling, which helps it to fit in the 13 cameras, nine LiDARs, and five radars that will (hopefully) allow the car to drive without crashing into anybody. These are intended for large-fleet customers providing taxi services, either ones run by local governments or private companies. [Volkswagen Group software subsidiary MOIA] has already lined up its first customer, the German city of Hamburg, which will provide the automated Buzz as a public transit option alongside traditional bus and subway services. If all goes well, after Hamburg MOIA "will bring sustainable, autonomous mobility to large-scale deployment in Europe and the U.S.," according to VW Group CEO Oliver Blume. Down the road, VW has also signed an agreement for rideshare juggernaut Uber to use the ID Buzz AD across America, starting with Los Angeles in 2026. The ID Buzz AD is the first vehicle in Germany to reach SAE International's threshold for Level 4 autonomous driving, meaning that the car can drive itself, with no need for a driver behind the wheel, within designated areas. It comes with "a full suite of tools for public and private transit providers," notes the EV news site Electrek. "That includes everything from the self-driving tech to fleet management software, passenger support, and operator training. That will allow cities and companies to launch driverless fleets quickly, safely, and at scale." And Christian Senger, a member of the board of management of VW Commercial Vehicles, tells DW the vans will be manufactured in very large numbers.The Hannover VW factory is set to produce more than 10,000 commercial vehicles. "We believe we can be the leading supplier in Europe," Senger says.... [Senger] does not expect the top dog of Germany's beleaguered auto industry to make any money, at least at first. In the long term, though, he explains that autonomous driving is the lucrative field of the future, one that promises to be much more profitable than the traditional automotive industry... The exact price has not yet been announced but the ID. Buzz AD is unlikely to come cheap. According to Senger, buyers will have to pay a low six-figure sum (in euros) per vehicle. That means it's going to be expensive for transport companies. The Association of German Transport Companies or VDV, is calling for a nationally coordinated strategy of long-term financing, and a market launch supported by public funding, to establish the country's supremacy in this market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Python Software Foundation ("made up of, governed, and led by the community") does more than just host Python and its documnation, the Python Package Repository, and the development workflows of core CPython developers. This week the PSF released its 28-page Annual Impact Report this week, noting that 2024 was their first year with three CPython developers-in-residence - and "Between Lukasz, Petr, and Serhiy, over 750 pull requests were authored, and another 1,500 pull requests by other authors were reviewed and merged."Lukasz Langa co-implemented the new colorful shell included in Python 3.13, along with Pablo Galindo Salgado, Emily Morehouse-Valcarcel, and Lysandros Nikolaou.... Code-wise, some of the most interesting contributions by Petr Viktorin were around the ctypes module that allows interaction between Python and C.... These are just a few of Serhiy Storchaka's many contributions in 2024: improving error messages for strings, bytes, and bytearrays; reworking support for var-arguments in the C argument handling generator called "Argument Clinic"; fixing memory leaks in regular expressions; raising the limits for Python integers on 64-bit platforms; adding support for arbitrary code page encodings on Windows; improving complex and fraction number support... Thanks to the investment of [the OpenSSF's security project] Alpha-Omega in 2024, our Security Developer-in-Residence, Seth Larson, continued his work improving the security posture of CPython and the ecosystem of Python packages. Python continues to be an open source security leader, evident by the Linux kernel becoming a CVE Numbering Authority using our guide as well as our publication of a new implementers guide for Trusted Publishers used by Ruby, Crates.io, and Nuget. Python was also recommended as a memory-safe programming language in early 2024 by the White House and CISA following our response to the Office of the National Cyber Directory Request for Information on open source security in 2023... Due to the increasing demand for SBOMs, Seth has taken the initiative to generate SBOM documents for the CPython runtime and all its dependencies, which are now available on python.org/downloads. Seth has also started work on standardizing SBOM documents for Python packages with PEP 770, aiming to solve the "Phantom Dependency" problem and accurately represent non-Python software included in Python packages. With the continued investment in 2024 by Amazon Web Services Open Source and Georgetown CSET for this critical role, our PyPI Safety & Security Engineer, Mike Fiedler, completed his first full calendar year at the PSF... In March 2024, Mike added a "Report project as malware" button on the website, creating more structure to inbound reports and decreasing remediation time. This new button has been used over 2,000 times! The large spike in June led to prohibiting Outlook email domains, and the spike in November was driven by a persistent attack. Mike developed the ability to place projects in quarantine pending further investigation. Thanks to a grant from Alpha-Omega, Mike will continue his work for a second year. We plan to do more work on minimizing time-on-PyPI for malware in 2025... In 2024, PyPI saw an 84% growth in download counts and 48% growth in bandwidth, serving 526,072,569,160 downloads for the 610,131 projects hosted there, requiring 1.11 Exabytes of data transfer, or 281.6 Gbps of bandwidth 24x7x365. In 2024, 97k new projects, 1.2 million new releases, and 3.1 million new files were uploaded to the index.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. consumers "rank problems with public electric vehicle charging and the time it takes to recharge as their top two reasons for rejecting electric vehicles," writes the New York Times, citing figures from data analytics firm J.D. Power. But are things getting better?Automakers and charging companies are building new stations and updating their cars to allow drivers to more easily and quickly recharge their vehicles. They're also outfitting charging stations with items such as food and bathrooms, and making the devices more reliable. Because chargers are only as fast as the cars they connect with, automakers are designing new cars to absorb electricity at higher speeds. In addition, many automakers have cut deals with Tesla to allow owners of other cars to use the company's fast-charging network, the largest in the country and widely considered the most reliable. Early evidence suggests efforts to improve electric vehicle charging are paying off. In recent years, J.D. Power surveys showed about 20% of attempts to charge electric vehicles at all public stations ended in failure because of faulty chargers, long lines or payment glitches. But in the first three months of 2025, overall failure rates fell to 16%, the biggest improvement since the surveys began in 2021. "The industry is finally elevating as a whole," said Brent Gruber, an executive director at J.D. Power. The number of chargers has also increased. There were about 55,200 fast chargers in the United States in May, up from 42,200 a year earlier, according to federal data. In February, a former Phillips 66 gas station in Apex, N.C., near Raleigh, became the first "Rechargery" from Ionna, a company created by eight automakers, including General Motors, Hyundai Motors, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Their chargers can deliver up to 400 kilowatts of juice, much more than Tesla's 250-kilowatt Superchargers. Some cars can replenish a battery in 30 minutes or less at the higher charging speeds. When connected to chargers of 350 kilowatts or more, including those at Ionna and Electrify America, another fast-charging network, a Hyundai Ioniq 5 can fill its electric "tank" from 10% to 80% in 18 minutes... Some models from BMW, Hyundai and Kia have also enabled a national "Plug and Charge" standard that lets car owners begin charging their vehicles at Ionna stalls without first having to use a smartphone app or swipe a credit card, eliminating a step that sometimes results in errors. Tesla's chargers have long worked this way for Tesla cars and now work with some other vehicles, including Rivian's SUVs and pickups. More cars and charging stations are expected to have plug-and-charge capability in the coming months... Nearly every major automaker is redesigning their cars with plug outlets and software that are compatible with Tesla chargers. Infrastructure upgrades are happening elsewhere too, according to the article.Texas-based gas chain Buc-ee's is offering "premium" charging using renewable power (working with Mercedes), while Waffle House plans to install BP Pulse fast chargers next year. J.D. Power's Gruber says that while America's federal charger program only helped construct a tiny fraction of new chargers, it did also published guidelines which helped automakers and charging companies work together and address technical problems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The developer-focused analyst firm RedMonk releases twice-a-year rankings of programming language popularity. This week they also released a handy graph showing the movement of top 20 languages since 2012. Their current rankings for programming language popularity... 1. JavaScript2. Python3. Java4. PHP5. C#6. TypeScript7. CSS8. C++9. Ruby10. C The chart shows that over the years the rankings really haven't changed much (other than a surge for TypeScript and Python, plus a drop for Ruby). JavaScript has consistently been #1 (except in two early rankings, where it came in behind Java). And in 2020 Java finally slipped from #2 down to #3, falling behind... Python. Python had already overtaken PHP for the #3 spot in 2017, pushing PHP to a steady #4. C# has maintained the #5 spot since 2014 (though with close competition from both C++ and CSS). And since 2021 the next four spots have been held by Ruby, C, Swift, and R. The only change in the current top 20 since the last ranking "is Dart dropping from a tie with Rust at 19 into sole possession of 20," writes RedMonk co-founder Stephen O'Grady. "In the decade and a half that we have been ranking these languages, this is by far the least movement within the top 20 that we have seen. While this is to some degree attributable to a general stasis that has settled over the rankings in recent years, the extraordinary lack of movement is likely also in part a manifestation of Stack Overflow's decline in query volume..."The arrival of AI has had a significant and accelerating impact on Stack Overflow, which comprises one half of the data used to both plot and rank languages twice a year... Stack Overflow's value from an observational standpoint is not what it once was, and that has a tangible impact, as we'll see.... As that long time developer site sees fewer questions, it becomes less impactful in terms of driving volatility on its half of the rankings axis, and potentially less suggestive of trends moving forward... [W]e're not yet at a point where Stack Overflow's role in our rankings has been deprecated, but the conversations at least are happening behind the scenes. "The veracity of the Stack Overflow data is increasingly questionable," writes RedMonk's research director:When we use Stack Overflow for programming language rankings we measure how many questions are asked using specific programming language tags... While other pieces, like Matt Asay's AI didn't kill Stack Overflow are right to point out that the decline existed before the advent of AI coding assistants, it is clear that the usage dramatically decreased post 2023 when ChatGPT became widely available. The number of questions asked are now about 10% what they were at Stack Overflow's peak. "RedMonk is continuing to evaluate the quality of this analysis," the research director concludes, arguing "there is value in long-lived data, and seeing trends move over a decade is interesting and worthwhile. On the other hand, at this point half of the data feeding the programming language rankings is increasingly stale and of questionable value on a going-forward basis, and there is as of now no replacement public data set available. "We'll continue to watch and advise you all on what we see with Stack Overflow's data."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI appears to have pulled a much-discussed video promoting the friendship between CEO Sam Altman and legendary Apple designer Jony Ive (plus, incidentally, OpenAI's $6.5 billion deal to acquire Ive and Altman's device startup io) from its website and YouTube page. [Though you can still see the original on Archive.org.] Does that suggest something is amiss with the acquisition, or with plans for Ive to lead design work at OpenAI? Not exactly, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who reports [on X.com] that the "deal is on track and has NOT dissolved or anything of the sort." Instead, he said a judge has issued a restraining order over the io name, forcing the company to pull all materials that used it. Gurman elaborates on the disappearance of the video (and other related marketing materials) in a new article at Bloomberg:Bloomberg reported last week that a judge was considering barring OpenAI from using the IO name due to a lawsuit recently filed by the similarly named IYO Inc., which is also building AI devices. "This is an utterly baseless complaint and we'll fight it vigorously," a spokesperson for Ive said on Sunday. The video is still viewable on X.com, notes TechCrunch. But visiting the "Sam and Jony" page on OpenAI now pulls up a 404 error message - written in the form of a haiku: Ghost of code lingersBlank space now invites wonderThoughts begin to soar by o4-mini-highRead more of this story at Slashdot.