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According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is reportedly planning a major Siri overhaul in iOS 27 and macOS 27 where the current assistant interface will be replaced with a deeply integrated, ChatGPT-style chatbot experience. "Users will be able to summon the new service the same way they open Siri now, by speaking the 'Siri' command or holding down the side button on their iPhone or iPad," says Gurman. "More significantly, Siri will be integrated into all of the company's core apps, including ones for mail, music, podcasts, TV, Xcode programming software and photos. That will allow users to do much more with just their voice." 9to5Mac reports: The unannounced Siri overhaul will reportedly be revealed at WWDC in June as the flagship feature for iOS 27 and macOS 27. Its release is expected in September when Apple typically ships major software updates. While Apple plans to release an improved version of Siri and Apple Intelligence this spring, that version will use the existing Siri interface. The big difference is that Google's Gemini models will power the intelligence. With the bigger update planned for iOS 27, the iOS 26 upgrade to Siri and Apple Intelligence sounds more like the first step to a long overdue modernization. Gurman reports that the major Siri overhaul will "allow users to search the web for information, create content, generate images, summarize information and analyze uploaded files" while using "personal data to complete tasks, being able to more easily locate specific files, songs, calendar events and text messages." People are already familiar with conversational interactions with AI, and Bloomberg says the bigger update to Siri will be support both text and voice. Siri already uses these input methods, but there's no real continuity between sessions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Spotify and several major record labels, including UMG, Sony, and Warner, have taken legal action against the unknown operators of Anna's Archive. The action follows the shadow library's announcement that it would release hundreds of terabytes of scraped Spotify data. Unsealed documents reveal that the court already issued a broad preliminary injunction, ordering hosting companies, Cloudflare, and domain name services, to take action. [...] All these documents were filed under seal, as the shadow library might otherwise be tipped off and take countermeasures. These documents were filed ex-parte and kept away from Anna's Archive. According to Spotify and the labels, this is needed "so that Anna's Archive cannot pre-emptively frustrate" the countermeasures they seek. The lawsuit (PDF), which was unsealed recently, explains directly why Anna's Archive lost several of its domain names over the past weeks. The .ORG domain was suspended by the U.S.-based Public Interest Registry (PIR) in early January, while a domain registrar took the .SE variant offline a few days later. "We don't believe this has to do with our Spotify backup," AnnaArchivist said at the time, but court records prove them wrong. The unsealed paperwork shows that the court granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) on January 2, which aimed to target Anna's Archive hosting and domain names. The sealed nature of this order also explains why the .ORG registry informed us that it could not comment on the suspension last week. While the .ORG and the .SE domains are suspended now, other domains remain operational. This suggests that the responsible registrars and registries do not automatically comply with U.S. court orders. [...] While the unsealed documents resolve the domain suspension mystery, it is only the start of the legal battle in court. It is expected that Spotify and the music companies will do everything in their power to take further action, if needed. Interestingly, however, it appears that the music industry lawsuit may have already reached its goal. A few days ago, the dedicated Spotify download section was removed by Anna's Archive. Whether this removal is linked to the legal troubles is unknown. However, it appears that Anna's Archive stopped the specific distribution of Spotify content alleged in the complaint, seemingly in partial compliance with the injunction's ban on 'making available' the scraped files.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a report by The Information (paywalled), Apple is reportedly developing an AirTag-sized, camera-equipped AI wearable pin that could arrive as early as 2027. "Apple's pin, which is a thin, flat, circular disc with an aluminum-and-glass shell, features two cameras -- a standard lens and a wide-angle lens -- on its front face, designed to capture photos and videos of the user's surroundings," reports The Information, citing people familiar with the device. "It also includes three microphones to pick up sounds in the area surrounding the person wearing it. It has a speaker, a physical button along one of its edges and a magnetic inductive charging interface on its back, similar to the one used on the Apple Watch..." 9to5Mac reports: The Information also notes that Apple is attempting to speed up development in hopes of competing with OpenAI's first wearable (slated to debut in 2026), and that it is not immediately clear whether this wearable would work in conjunction with other products, such as AirPods or Apple's reported upcoming smart glasses. Today's report also notes that this has been a challenging market for new companies, citing the recent failure of Humane's AI Pin as an example.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nova Launcher has been acquired by Instabridge, which says it will keep the app maintained but is evaluating ad-supported options for the free version. Android Authority reports: Today, Nova Launcher announced that the Swedish company Instabridge has acquired it from Branch Metrics. Instabridge claims it wants to be a responsible owner of Nova and does not want to reinvent the launcher overnight. However, the launcher still needs a sustainable business model to support ongoing development and maintenance. To this end, Instabridge is exploring different options, including paid tiers and ad-supported options for the free version. The new owners claim that if ads are introduced, Nova Prime will remain ad-free. However, this is misleading, as ads are already here for some users. Last year, the founder and original programmer of Nova Launcher left the company, signaling its "death" as he had been the sole developer working on the launcher for the past year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The Belarusian government is threatening three HAM radio operators with the death penalty, detained at least seven people, and has accused them of "intercepting state secrets," according to Belarusian state media, independent media outside of Belarus, and the Belarusian human rights organization Viasna. The arrests are an extreme attack on what is most often a wholesome hobby that has a history of being vilified by authoritarian governments in part because the technology is quite censorship resistant. The detentions were announced last week on Belarusian state TV, which claimed the men were part of a network of more than 50 people participating in the amateur radio hobby and have been accused of both "espionage" and "treason." Authorities there said they seized more than 500 pieces of radio equipment. The men were accused on state TV of using radio to spy on the movement of government planes, though no actual evidence of this has been produced. State TV claimed they were associated with the Belarusian Federation of Radioamateurs and Radiosportsmen (BFRR), a long-running amateur radio club and nonprofit that holds amateur radio competitions, meetups, trainings, and forums. Siarhei Besarab, a Belarusian HAM radio operator, posted a plea for support from others in the r/amateurradio subreddit. "I am writing this because my local community is being systematically liquidated in what I can only describe as a targeted intellectual genocide," Besarab wrote. "I beg you to amplify this signal and help us spread this information. Please show this to any journalist you know, send it to human rights organizations, and share it with your local radio associations."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New research from Cornell University has tracked how households change their spending after someone starts taking GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, and the numbers are material enough to explain why food industry earnings calls keep blaming everything except the obvious culprit. The study analyzed transaction data from 150,000 households linked to survey responses on medication adoption. Households cut grocery spending by 5.3% within six months of a member starting GLP-1s; high-income households cut by 8.2%. Fast food spending fell 8.0%. Savory snacks took the biggest hit at 10.1%, followed by sweets and baked goods. Yogurt was the only category to see a statistically significant increase. As of July 2024, 16.3% of U.S. households had at least one GLP-1 user. Nearly half of adopters reported taking the medication specifically for weight loss rather than diabetes management. About 34% of users discontinue within the sample period, and when they stop, candy and chocolate purchases rise 11.4% above pre-adoption levels. Further reading: Weighing the Cost of Smaller Appetites.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just 32 fossil fuel companies were responsible for half the global carbon dioxide emissions driving the climate crisis in 2024, down from 36 a year earlier, a report has revealed. The Guardian: Saudi Aramco was the biggest state-controlled polluter and ExxonMobil was the largest investor-owned polluter. Critics accused the leading fossil fuel companies of "sabotaging climate action" and "being on the wrong side of history" but said the emissions data was increasingly being used to hold the companies accountable. State-owned fossil fuel producers made up 17 of the top 20 emitters in the Carbon Majors report, which the authors said underscored the political barriers to tackling global heating. All 17 are controlled by countries that opposed a proposed fossil fuel phaseout at the Cop30 UN climate summit in December, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and India. More than 80 other nations had backed the phaseout plan.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adobe has added a suite of AI-powered features to Acrobat that enable users to edit documents through natural language prompts, generate podcast-style audio summaries of their files, and create presentations by pulling content from multiple documents stored in a single workspace. The prompt-based editing supports 12 distinct actions: removing pages, text, comments, and images; finding and replacing words and phrases; and adding e-signatures and passwords. The presentation feature builds on Adobe Spaces, a collaborative file and notes collection the company launched last year. Users can point Acrobat's AI assistant at files in a Space and have it generate an editable pitch deck, then style it using Adobe Express themes and stock imagery. Shared files in Spaces now include AI-generated summaries that cite specific locations in the source document. Users can also choose from preset AI assistant personas -- "analyst," "entertainer," or "instructor" -- or create custom assistants using their own prompts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The price of water and sewer services for American households has more than doubled since the early 1980s after adjusting for inflation, even though per-capita water use has actually decreased over that period. Households in large cities now spend about $1,300 a year on water and sewer charges, approaching the roughly $1,600 they spend on electricity. The main driver is federal regulation. Since the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, the U.S. has spent approximately $5 trillion in contemporary dollars fighting water pollution -- about 0.8% of annual GDP across that period. The EPA itself admits that surface water regulations are the one category of environmental rules where estimated costs exceed estimated benefits. New York City was required to build a filtration plant to address two minor parasites in water from its Croton aqueduct. The project took a decade longer than expected and cost $3.2 billion, more than double the original estimate. After the plant opened in 2015, the city's Commissioner of Environmental Protection noted that the water would basically be "the same" to the public. Jefferson County, Alabama, meanwhile, descended into what was then the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2011 after EPA-mandated sewer upgrades pushed its debt from $300 million to over $3 billion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eightfold AI, a venture capital-backed AI hiring platform used by Microsoft, PayPal and many other Fortune 500 companies, is being sued in California for allegedly compiling reports used to screen job applicants without their knowledge. From a report: The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday accusing Eightfold of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act shows how consumer advocates are seeking to apply existing law to AI systems capable of drawing inferences about individuals based on vast amounts of data. Santa Clara, California-based Eightfold provides tools that promise to speed up the hiring process by assessing job applicants and predicting whether they would be a good fit for a job using massive amounts of data from online resumes and job listings. But candidates who apply for jobs at companies that use those tools are not given notice and a chance to dispute errors, job applicants Erin Kistler and Sruti Bhaumik allege in their proposed class action. Because of that, they claim Eightfold violated the FCRA and a California law that gives consumers the right to view and challenge credit reports used in lending and hiring.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ubisoft is canceling game projects, shutting down studios and cutting its guidance as the Assassin's Creed maker restructures its business into five units. From a report: The French gaming firm expects earnings before interest and tax to be a loss of $1.2 billion the fiscal year 2025-2026 as a result of the restructuring, driven by a one-off writedown of about $761 million, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. Ubisoft also expects net bookings of around $1.76 billion for the year, with a $386 million gross margin reduction compared to previous guidance, it said. Six games, including a remake of Prince of Persia The Sands of Time, have been discontinued and seven other unidentified games are delayed, the company said. The measures are part of a broader plan to streamline operations, including closing studios in Stockholm and Halifax, Canada. Ubisoft said it will have cut at least $117 million in fixed costs compared to the latest financial year by March, a year ahead of target, and has set a goal to slash an additional $234 million over the next two years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Irish government is planning to bolster its police's ability to intercept communications, including encrypted messages, and provide a legal basis for spyware use. From a report: The Communications (Interception and Lawful Access) Bill is being framed as a replacement for the current legislation that governs digital communication interception. The Department of Justice, Home Affairs, and Migration said in an announcement this week the existing Postal Packets and Telecommunications Messages (Regulation) Act 1993 "predates the telecoms revolution of the last 20 years." As well as updating laws passed more than two decades ago, the government was keen to emphasize that a key ambition for the bill is to empower law enforcement to intercept of all forms of communications. The Bill will bring communications from IoT devices, email services, and electronic messaging platforms into scope, "whether encrypted or not." In a similar way to how certain other governments want to compel encrypted messaging services to unscramble packets of interest, Ireland's announcement also failed to explain exactly how it plans to do this. However, it promised to implement a robust legal framework, alongside all necessary privacy and security safeguards, if these proposals do ultimately become law. It also vowed to establish structures to ensure "the maximum possible degree of technical cooperation between state agencies and communication service providers."/iRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has temporarily disabled YouTube's advanced SRV3 caption format after discovering the feature was causing playback errors for some users, according to a statement the company posted. SRV3, also known as YouTube Timed Text, is a custom subtitle system Google introduced around 2018 that allows creators to use custom colors, transparency, animations, and precise text positioning. Creators cannot upload new SRV3 captions while the feature remains disabled, and existing videos that use the format may not display any captions until Google restores it. The company has provided no timeline for when SRV3 will return, and its forum post notes that changes should be temporary for "almost" all videos.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter BeaverCleaver shares a report: Japan has restarted operations at the world's largest nuclear power plant for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima disaster forced the country to shut all of its reactors. The decision to restart reactor number 6 at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa north-west of Tokyo was taken despite local residents' safety concerns. It was delayed by a day because of an alarm malfunction and is due to begin operating commercially next month. Japan, which had always heavily relied on energy imports, was an early adopter of nuclear power. But in 2011 all 54 of its reactors had to be shut after a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at Fukushima, causing one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. This is the latest installment in Japan's nuclear power reboot, which still has a long way to go. The seventh reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is not expected to be brought back on until 2030, and the other five could be decommissioned. That leaves the plant with far less capacity than it once had when all seven reactors were operational: 8.2 gigawatts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

San Diego Comic-Con changed an AI art friendly policy following an artist-led backlash last week. From a report: It was a small victory for working artists in an industry where jobs are slipping away as movie and video game studios adopt generative AI tools to save time and money. Every year, tens of thousands of people descend on San Diego for Comic-Con, the world's premier comic book convention that over the years has also become a major pan-media event where every major media company announces new movies, TV shows, and video games. For the past few years, Comic-Con has allowed some forms of AI-generated art at this art show at the convention. According to archived rules for the show, artists could display AI-generated material so long as it wasn't for sale, was marked as AI-produced, and credited the original artist whose style was used. "Material produced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be placed in the show, but only as Not-for-Sale (NFS). It must be clearly marked as AI-produced, not simply listed as a print. If one of the parameters in its creation was something similar to 'Done in the style of,' that information must be added to the description. If there are questions, the Art Show Coordinator will be the sole judge of acceptability," Comic-Con's art show rules said until recently.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan used his annual letter to creators, published Wednesday, to outline an ambitious 2026 vision that embraces AI-powered creative tools while simultaneously pledging to crack down on the low-quality AI content that has come to be known as "slop." Mohan identified four AI-related areas that YouTube "must get right in 2026." The platform is working on tools that will let creators use AI to generate Shorts featuring their own likenesses and to experiment with music. "Just as the synthesizer, Photoshop and CGI revolutionized sound and visuals, AI will be a boon to the creatives who are ready to lean in," he wrote. Features like autodubbing, he says, will "transform the viewer experience." But "the rise of AI has raised concerns about low-quality content, aka 'AI slop,'" he wrote. YouTube is building on its existing spam and clickbait detection systems to reduce the spread of such content. He also flagged deepfakes as a particular concern: "It's becoming harder to detect what's real and what's AI-generated." The platform plans to double down on AI labels and introduce tools that let creators protect their likenesses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Companies are spending vast sums on AI expecting the technology to boost efficiency, but a new survey from AI consulting firm Section found that two-thirds of non-management workers among 5,000 white-collar respondents say they save less than two hours a week or no time at all, while more than 40% of executives report the technology saves them upward of eight hours weekly. Workers were far more likely to describe themselves as anxious or overwhelmed about AI than excited -- the opposite of C-suite respondents -- and 40% of all surveyed said they would be fine never using AI again. A separate Workday report of roughly 1,600 employees found that though 85% reported time savings of one to seven hours weekly, much of it was offset by correcting errors and reworking AI-generated content -- what the company called an "AI tax" on productivity. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of nearly 4,500 CEOs found more than half have seen no significant financial benefit from AI so far, and only 12% said the technology has delivered both cost and revenue gains.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from DroidLife: When the FCC cleared Verizon of its 60-day device unlock policy a week ago, we talked about how the government agency, which is as anti-consumer as it has ever been at the moment, was giving Verizon the power to basically create whatever unlock policy it wanted. We also expected Verizon to make a change to its policies in a hurry and they did not disappoint. Again, the FCC provided them a waiver 7 days ago and they are already starting to update policies. As of this morning, Verizon has implemented a new device unlock policy across its various prepaid brands and I'd imagine their postpaid policy change is right around the corner. Brands like Visible, Total Wireless, Tracfone, and StraightTalk, all have an updated device unlock policy today that extends to 365 days of paid and active service before they'll free your phone from the Verizon network. Starting January 20, Verizon says that devices purchased from their prepaid brands will only be unlocked upon request after 365 days and if you meet several requirements [...]. What exactly is changing here? Well, if you purchased a device from Verizon's value brands previously, they would automatically unlock them after 60 days. Now, you have to wait 365 days, request the unlock because it doesn't happen automatically, and also have active service. [...] The FCC mentioned in their waiver that by allowing Verizon to create whatever unlock policy they wanted that this would "benefit consumers." How does any of this benefit consumers?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Snap has settled a social media addiction lawsuit just days before trial, while Meta, TikTok, and Alphabet remain defendants and are headed to court. "Terms of the deal were not announced as it was revealed by lawyers at a California Superior Court hearing, after which Snap told the BBC the parties were 'pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner.'" From the report: The plaintiff, a 19-year old woman identified by the initials K.G.M., alleged that the algorithmic design of the platforms left her addicted and affected her mental health. In the absence of a settlement with the other parties, the trial is scheduled to go forward against the remaining three defendants, with jury selection due to begin on January 27. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify, and until Tuesday's settlement, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel was also set to take the stand. Snap is still a defendant in other social media addiction cases that have been consolidated in the court. The closely watched cases could challenge a legal theory that social media companies have used to shield themselves. They have long argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects them from liability for what third parties post on their platforms. But plaintiffs argue that the platforms are designed in a way that leaves users addicted through choices that affect their algorithms and notifications. The social media companies have said the plaintiffs' evidence falls short of proving that they are responsible for alleged harms such as depression and eating disorders.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: Thanks to a giant eruption on the Sun and a large opening in its atmosphere, we're currently experiencing G4 conditions -- a severe geomagnetic storm strong enough to disrupt power grids as energy from space weather disturbances drives electric currents through Earth's magnetic field and the ground. Experts say the storm could even reach G5 levels, the extreme category responsible for the spectacular auroral activity seen in May 2024. In fact, space weather bureaus around the world are forecasting powerful aurora conditions, with some suggesting aurora could be visible at unusually low latitudes, potentially rivaling the reach of 2024's historic superstorm. A livestream of the Northern Lights is available on YouTube. The Aurora forecast is available here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The world has entered an era of "global water bankruptcy" that is harming billions of people, a UN report has declared. The overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently, the report's lead author said, because no one knew when the whole system could collapse, with implications for peace and social cohesion. All life depends on water but the report found many societies had long been using water faster than it could be replenished annually in rivers and soils, as well as over-exploiting or destroying long-term stores of water in aquifers and wetlands. This had led to water bankruptcy, the report said, with many human water systems past the point at which they could be restored to former levels. The climate crisis was exacerbating the problem by melting glaciers, which store water, and causing whiplashes between extremely dry and wet weather. Prof Kaveh Madani, who led the report, said while not every basin and country was water bankrupt, the world was interconnected by trade and migration, and enough critical systems had crossed this threshold to fundamentally alter global water risk. The result was a world in which 75% of people lived in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure and 2 billion people lived on ground that is sinking as groundwater aquifers collapse. Conflicts over water had risen sharply since 2010, the report said, while major rivers, such as the Colorado, in the US, and the Murray-Darling system, in Australia, were failing to reach the sea, and "day zero" emergencies -- when cities run out of water, such as in Chennai, India -- were escalating. Half of the world's large lakes had shrunk since the early 1990s, the report noted. Even damp nations, such as the UK, were at risk because of reliance on imports of water-dependent food and other products. "This report tells an uncomfortable truth: many critical water systems are already bankrupt," said Madani, of the UN University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health. "It's extremely urgent [because] no one knows exactly when the whole system would collapse." About 70% of fresh water taken by human withdrawals was used for agriculture, but Madani said: "Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted or disappearing water sources. Water bankruptcy in India or Pakistan, for example, also means an impact on rice exports to a lot of places around the world." More than half of global food was grown in areas where water storage was declining or unstable, the report said. Madani said action to deal with water bankruptcy offered a chance to bring countries together in an increasingly fragmented world. "Water is a strategic, untapped opportunity to the world to create unity within and between nations. It is one of the very rare topics that left and right and north and south all agree on its importance." The UN report, which is based on a forthcoming paper in the peer-reviewed journal Water Resources Management, sets out how population growth, urbanization and economic growth have increased water demand for agriculture, industry, energy and cities. "These pressures have produced a global pattern that is now unmistakable," it said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ancient Slashdot reader jantangring shares a report from Swedish electronics industry news site Elektroniktidningen (translated to English), writing: "Open source code library cURL is removing the possibility to earn money by reporting bugs, hoping that this will reduce the volume of AI slop reports," reports etn.se. "Joshua Rogers -- AI wielding bug hunter of fame -- thinks it's a great idea." cURL maintainer Daniel Stenberg famously reported on the flood AI-generated bad bug reports last year -- "Death by a thousand slops." Now, cURL is removing the bounty payouts as of the end of January. "We have to try to brake the flood in order not to drown," says cURL maintainer Daniel Stenberg [...]. "Despite being an AI wielding bug hunter himself, Joshua Rogers -- slasher of a hundred bugs -- thinks removing the bounty money is an excellent idea. [...] I think it's a good move and worth a bigger consideration by others. It's ridiculous that it went on for so long to be honest, and I personally would have pulled the plug long ago," he says to etn.se.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI and ServiceNow signed a three-year deal to embed AI agents directly into ServiceNow's enterprise workflows. CNBC reports: As part of the deal, ServiceNow will integrate GPT-5.2 into its enterprise workflow platform and create AI voice technology harnessing these models. "Bringing together our engineering teams and our respective technologies will drive faster value for customers and more intuitive ways of working with AI," said Amit Zavery, president, chief operating officer, and chief product officer at ServiceNow.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week, Google finally shut down the official Stadia Bluetooth conversion tool... but there's no need to panic! Developer Christopher Klay preserved a copy on his personal GitHub and is hosting a fully working version of the tool on a dedicated website to make it even easier to find. The Verge's Sean Hollister reports: I haven't tried Klay's mirror, as both of my gamepads are already converted, but here's my video on how easy the process is. It's worth doing now that the pads work relatively well with Steam! I maintain that while Google made a lot of mistakes, it's an amazing example of shutting down a service the right way.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from U.S. News & World Report: U.S. health officials plan a new study investigating whether radiation from cellphones may affect human health. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the research will examine electromagnetic radiation and possible gaps in current science. The initiative stems from numerous concerns raised by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has linked cellphone use to neurological damage and cancer. "The [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] removed webpages with old conclusions about cell phone radiation while HHS undertakes a study on electromagnetic radiation and health research to identify gaps in knowledge, including on new technologies, to ensure safety and efficacy," HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said. He added that the study was directed in a strategy report from the president's Make America Healthy Again Commission. Some webpages from the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say current research does not show clear harm from cellphone radiation. The National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, says that "evidence to date suggests that cellphone use does not cause brain or other kinds of cancer in humans.".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The UK government has launched a public consultation on whether to ban social media use for children under 16, drawing inspiration from Australia's recently enacted age-based restrictions. "It would also explore how to enforce that limit, how to limit tech companies from being able to access children's data and how to limit 'infinite scrolling,' as well as access to addictive online tools," reports Engadget. "In addition to seeking feedback from parents and young people themselves, the country's ministers are going to visit Australia to see the effects of the country's social media ban for kids, according to Financial Times."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A PwC survey of more than 4,500 CEOs found that over half report no revenue growth or cost savings from their AI investments so far, despite massive spending. Of the 4,454 business leaders surveyed, only 12% saw both lower costs and higher revenue, while 56% saw neither benefit. "26% saw reduced costs, but nearly as many experienced cost increases," adds The Register. From the report: AI adoption remains limited. Even in top use cases like demand generation (22 percent), support services (20 percent), and product development (19 percent), only a minority are deploying AI extensively. Last year, a separate PwC study found that only 14 percent of workers indicated they were using generative AI daily in their work. Despite the CEOs' repsonses, PwC concludes more investment is required. It claims that "isolated, tactical AI projects" often don't deliver measurable value, and that tangible returns instead come from enterprise-wide deployments consistent with business strategy. [...] In terms of the broader picture, PwC says it found CEO confidence has hit a five-year low, with only 30 percent optimistic about revenue growth (down from 38 percent last year). This points to growing geopolitical risk and intensifying cyber threats, as well as uncertainty over the benefits and downsides of AI. Unsurprisingly, concern remains over tariffs as the Trump administration continues its erratic approach to policy, with almost a third of company chiefs saying tariffs are expected to reduce their company's profit margin in the year ahead. In the U.S., 22 percent indicate their corporation is highly or extremely exposed to tariffs. PwC warns that companies avoiding major investments due to geopolitical uncertainty underperform peers by two percentage points in growth and three points in profit margins.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta's Oversight Board is tackling a case focused on Meta's ability to permanently disable user accounts. Permanent bans are a drastic action, locking people out of their profiles, memories, friend connections, and, in the case of creators and businesses, their ability to market and communicate with fans and customers. This is the first time in the organization's five-year history as an oversight body that permanent account bans have been a subject of the Oversight Board's focus, the organization notes. The case being reviewed isn't exactly one of an everyday user. Instead, the case involves a high-profile Instagram user who repeatedly violated Meta's Community Standards by posting visual threats of violence against a female journalist, anti-gay slurs against politicians, content depicting a sex act, allegations of misconduct against minorities, and more. The account had not accumulated enough strikes to be automatically disabled, but Meta made the decision to permanently ban the account. The Board's materials didn't name the account in question, but its recommendations could impact others who post content that targets public figures with abuse, harassment, and threats, as well as users who have their accounts permanently banned without receiving transparent explanations. Meta referred this specific case to the Board, which included five posts made in the year before the account was permanently disabled. The Board says it's looking for input about several key issues: how permanent bans can be processed fairly, the effectiveness of its current tools to protect public figures and journalists from repeated abuse and threats of violence, the challenges of identifying off-platform content, whether punitive measures effectively shape online behaviors, and best practices for transparent reporting on account enforcement decisions. [...] Whether the Oversight Board has any real sway to address issues on Meta's platform continues to be debated, of course. [...] After the Oversight Board issues its policy recommendations to Meta, the company has 60 days to respond. The Board is also soliciting public comments on this topic. The report notes that Meta's Oversight Board is able to overturn individual moderation decisions and offer recommendations, but largely sidelined from major policy shifts driven by Mark Zuckerberg.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than half of companies haven't seen any financial benefit from their AI investments, according to PwC's latest Global CEO Survey [PDF], and yet the spending shows no signs of slowing down. Some 56% of the 4,454 chief executives surveyed across 95 countries said their companies have realized neither higher revenues nor lower costs from AI over the past year. Only 12% reported getting both benefits -- and those rare winners tend to be the ones who built proper enterprise-wide foundations rather than chasing one-off projects. CEO confidence in near-term growth has taken a notable hit. Just 30% feel strongly optimistic about revenue growth over the next 12 months, down from 38% last year and nowhere near the 56% who felt that way in 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MacPaw, the Ukraine-based developer, has announced that Setapp Mobile -- its alternative iOS app store for European Union users that launched in open beta in September 2024 -- will shut down on February 16, 2026, citing "still-evolving and complex business terms" for alternative marketplaces that don't fit its current business model. Alternative iOS stores became possible under the Digital Markets Act but face challenges including Apple's controversial Core Technology Fee, which Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has called "ruinous for any hopes of a competing store getting a foothold."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei predicted a future in which AI will spur significant economic growth -- but could lead to widespread unemployment and inequality. Amodei is both "excited and worried" about the impact of AI, he said in an interview at Davos Tuesday. "I don't think there's an awareness at all of what is coming here and the magnitude of it." Anthropic is the developer of the popular chatbot Claude. Amodei said the government will need to play a role in navigating the massive displacement in jobs that could result from advances in AI. He said there could be a future with 5% to 10% GDP growth and 10% unemployment. "That's not a combination we've almost ever seen before," he said. "There's gonna need to be some role for government in the displacement that's this macroeconomically large." Amodei painted a potential "nightmare" scenario that AI could bring to society if not properly checked, laying out a future in which 10 million people -- 7 million in Silicon Valley and the rest scattered elsewhere -- could "decouple" from the rest of society, enjoying as much as 50% GPD growth while others were left behind. "I think this is probably a time to worry less about disincentivizing growth and worry more about making sure that everyone gets a part of that growth," Amodei said. He noted that was "the opposite of the prevailing sentiment now," but the reality of technological change will force those ideas to change.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker warned that AI agents that autonomously carry out tasks pose a threat to encrypted messaging apps [non-paywalled source] because they require broad access to data stored across a device and can be hijacked if given root permissions. Speaking at Davos on Tuesday, Whittaker said the deeper integration of AI agents into devices is "pretty perilous" for services like Signal. For an AI agent to act effectively on behalf of a user, it would need unilateral access to apps storing sensitive information such as credit card data and contacts, Whittaker said. The data that the agent stores in its context window is at greater risk of being compromised. Whittaker called this "breaking the blood-brain barrier between the application and the operating system." "Our encryption no longer matters if all you have to do is hijack this context window," she said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI will displace so many jobs that it will eliminate the need for mass immigration, according to Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Bloomberg: "There will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training," said Karp, speaking at a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. "I do think these trends really do make it hard to imagine why we should have large-scale immigration unless you have a very specialized skill." Karp, who holds a PhD in philosophy, used himself as an example of the type of "elite" white-collar worker most at risk of disruption. Vocational workers will be more valuable "if not irreplaceable," he said, criticizing the idea that higher education is the ultimate benchmark of a person's talents and employability.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cointelegraph, once one of the most-visited cryptocurrency news sites, has seen its monthly traffic plummet from roughly 8 million visits to 1.4 million -- an 80% drop in three months -- after Google issued a manual penalty in October 2025 for the outlet's partnership with a blackhat SEO firm that used Cointelegraph's domain authority to promote affiliate links to offshore casinos and betting platforms. The CEO, who had no prior media experience, proceeded despite warnings from Google earlier in 2025 and repeated objections from the outlet's three most senior editorial staff members throughout the year. The penalty removed Cointelegraph from Google News, Discover and search results entirely; a search for "Cointelegraph" now returns CoinDesk as the top result. Jon Rice, the former editor-in-chief, resigned on December 31st and described the situation as an "existential threat to business."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who served three years in prison after creating the world's first gene-edited babies in 2018, is now preparing for another attempt at germline editing -- this time to prevent Alzheimer's disease. In an interview, He said he has established an independent lab in south Beijing and raised $7 million from private donors to fund research into introducing a protective genetic mutation found in Icelandic populations. The three girls born from his original experiment are now in primary school and healthy, according to He. Since germline editing remains banned in China, He said he plans to conduct future human trials in South Africa and has already spoken with contacts there. He estimates he needs two more years to complete mouse and monkey studies before seeking regulatory approval abroad. He said his lab is developing techniques to make 12 simultaneous genetic edits in a single embryo, targeting genes associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease, HIV, and other conditions. He is currently working on human cell lines and has not yet begun embryo experiments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Europe must invest in its own open source artificial intelligence labs and address soaring energy prices, or it will quickly find itself dependent on Chinese models, former Google chief executive and tech investor Eric Schmidt said. "In the US, the companies are largely moving to closed source, which means they'll be purchased and licensed and so forth. And it is also the case that China is largely open weight, open source in its approach," Schmidt said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. "Unless Europe is willing to spend lots of money for European models, Europe will end up using the Chinese models. It's probably not a good outcome for Europe."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Ukraine will establish a system allowing its allies to train their AI models on Kyiv's valuable combat data collected throughout the nearly four-year war with Russia, newly appointed Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has said. Fedorov -- a former digitalisation minister who last week took up the post to drive reforms across Ukraine's vast defence ministry and armed forces -- has described Kyiv's wartime data trove as one of its "cards" in negotiations with other nations. Since Russia's invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has gathered extensive battlefield information, including systematically logged combat statistics and millions of hours of drone footage captured from above. Such data is important for training AI models, which require large volumes of real-world information to identify patterns and predict how people or objects might act in various situations.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Energy costs will be key to deciding which country wins the AI race, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said. CNBC: As countries race to build AI infrastructure to capitalize on the technology's promise of huge efficiency gains, Nadella told the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday that "GDP growth in any place will be directly correlated" to the cost of energy in using AI. He pointed to a new global commodity in "tokens" -- basic units of processing that are bought by users of AI models, allowing them to run tasks. "The job of every economy and every firm in the economy is to translate these tokens into economic growth, then if you have a cheaper commodity, it's better." "I would say we will quickly lose even the social permission to actually take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens, if these tokens are not improving health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness across all sectors," Nadella said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs are starting to be reflected in the price of some items, as sellers weigh how to absorb the shock of the added costs. From a report: Amazon and many of its third-party merchants pre-purchased inventory to try to get ahead of the tariffs and keep prices low for customers, but most of that supply ran out last fall, Jassy said in a Tuesday interview with CNBC's Becky Quick at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "So you start to see some of the tariffs creep into some of the prices, some of the items, and you see some sellers are deciding that they're passing on those higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, some are deciding that they'll absorb it to drive demand and some are doing something in between," Jassy said. "I think you're starting to see more of that impact." The comments are a notable shift from last year, when Jassy said Amazon hadn't seen "prices appreciably go up" a few months after Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs. Further reading: Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds: Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Trump and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe. [...] The new research, published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a well-regarded German think tank, suggests that the impact of tariffs is likely to show up over time in the form of higher U.S. consumer prices. [...] By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year's U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony plans to spin off its TV hardware business to a new joint venture controlled by Chinese electronics giant TCL, the two said Tuesday, a significant retreat for the Japanese giant whose Bravia line has long occupied the premium end of the television market. TCL would hold a 51% stake in the venture and Sony would retain 49% under a nonbinding agreement the two companies signed. They aim to finalize binding terms by the end of March and begin operations in April 2027, pending regulatory approvals. The new company would retain the Sony and Bravia branding for televisions and home audio equipment but use TCL's display technology. Japanese TV manufacturers have steadily lost ground to Chinese and Korean rivals over the years. Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and Pioneer exited the business entirely. Panasonic and Sharp de-emphasized televisions in their growth strategies. Sony's Bravia line survived by positioning itself at the premium tier where consumers pay more for high-end picture and sound quality.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an opinion piece for The Register, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols argues that while "vibe coding" can be fun and occasionally useful for small, throwaway projects, it produces brittle, low-quality code that doesn't scale and ultimately burdens real developers with cleanup and maintenance. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: Vibe coding got a big boost when everyone's favorite open source programmer, Linux's Linus Torvalds, said he'd been using Google's Antigravity LLM on his toy program AudioNoise, which he uses to create "random digital audio effects" using his "random guitar pedal board design." This is not exactly Linux or even Git, his other famous project, in terms of the level of work. Still, many people reacted to Torvalds' vibe coding as "wow!" It's certainly noteworthy, but has the case for vibe coding really changed? [...] It's fun, and for small projects, it's productive. However, today's programs are complex and call upon numerous frameworks and resources. Even if your vibe code works, how do you maintain it? Do you know what's going on inside the code? Chances are you don't. Besides, the LLM you used two weeks ago has been replaced with a new version. The exact same prompts that worked then yield different results today. Come to think of it, it's an LLM. The same prompts and the same LLM will give you different results every time you run it. This is asking for disaster. Just ask Jason Lemkin. He was the guy who used the vibe coding platform Replit, which went "rogue during a code freeze, shut down, and deleted our entire database." Whoops! Yes, Replit and other dedicated vibe programming AIs, such as Cursor and Windsurf, are improving. I'm not at all sure, though, that they've been able to help with those fundamental problems of being fragile and still cannot scale successfully to the demands of production software. It's much worse than that. Just because a program runs doesn't mean it's good. As Ruth Suehle, President of the Apache Software Foundation, commented recently on LinkedIn, naive vibe coders "only know whether the output works or doesn't and don't have the skills to evaluate it past that. The potential results are horrifying." Why? In another LinkedIn post, Craig McLuckie, co-founder and CEO of Stacklok, wrote: "Today, when we file something as 'good first issue' and in less than 24 hours get absolutely inundated with low-quality vibe-coded slop that takes time away from doing real work. This pattern of 'turning slop into quality code' through the review process hurts productivity and hurts morale." McLuckie continued: "Code volume is going up, but tensions rise as engineers do the fun work with AI, then push responsibilities onto their team to turn slop into production code through structured review."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography finds that factoring ocean damage into climate economics nearly doubles the estimated global cost of climate change, adding close to $2 trillion per year from losses to fisheries, coral reefs, and coastal infrastructure. "It is the first time a social cost of carbon (SCC) assessment -- a key measure of economic harm caused by climate change -- has included damages to the ocean," reports Inside Climate News. From the report: "For decades, we've been estimating the economic cost of climate change while effectively assigning a value of zero to the ocean," said Bernardo Bastien-Olvera, who led the study during his postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps. "Ocean loss is not just an environmental issue, but a central part of the economic story of climate change." The social cost of carbon is an accounting method for working out the monetary cost of each ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. "[It] is one of the most efficient tools we have for internalizing climate damages into economic decision-making," said Amy Campbell, a United Nations climate advisor and former British government COP negotiator. Calculations have historically been used by international organizations and state departments like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assess policy proposals -- though a 2025 White House memo from the Trump administration instructed federal agencies to ignore the data during cost-benefit analyses unless required by law. "It becomes politically contentious when deciding whose damages are counted, which sectors are included and most importantly how future and retrospective harms are valued," Campbell said. Excluding ocean harm, the social cost of carbon is $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. This increases to $97.20 per ton when the ocean, which covers 70 percent of the planet, is included. In 2024, global CO2 emissions were estimated to be 41.6 billion tons, making the 91 percent cost increase significant. Using greenhouse gas emission predictions, the report estimates the annual damages to traditional markets alone will be $1.66 trillion by 2100.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A former Bank of England analyst has urged contingency planning for a potential financial shock if the U.S. government were to confirm the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The argument is that "ontological shock" alone could destabilize confidence and trigger crisis dynamics. The Independent reports: [Helen McCaw, who served as a senior analyst in financial security at the UK's central bank and worked for the Bank of England for 10 years until 2012] said politicians and bankers can no longer afford to dismiss talk of alien life, and warned a declaration of this nature could trigger bank collapses. She reportedly said: "The United States government appears to be partway through a multi-year process to declassify and disclose information on the existence of a technologically advanced non-human intelligence responsible for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs)." "If the UAP proves to be of non-human origin, we may have to acknowledge the existence of a power or intelligence greater than any government and with potentially unknown intentions." Her warning comes as senior American officials have recently indicated their belief in the possibility of alien life. [...] Ms McCaw said: "UAP disclosure is likely to induce ontological shock and provoke psychological responses with material consequences ... There might be extreme price volatility in financial markets due to catastrophising or euphoria, and a collapse in confidence if market participants feel uncertain on how to price assets using any of the familiar methods." The former Bank of England worker explained there might be a rush towards assets such as gold or other precious metals, and government bonds, which are perceived as "safe." Alternatively, she said precious metals might lose their status as perceived safe assets if people speculate that new space-faring technologies will soon increase the supply of precious metals. The article cites a recent UFO documentary, The Age of Disclosure, where 34 U.S. government insiders, including those from the military and intelligence community officials, share insights about the governments work with UAP. Per the film's description, the documentary "reveals an 80-year global cover-up of non-human intelligent life and a secret war among major nations to reverse-engineer advanced technology of non-human origin."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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.