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Chatbots are more persuasive in online debates than people -- especially when they are able to personalize their arguments using information about their opponent. From a report: The finding, published in Nature Human Behaviour on 19 May, highlights how large language models (LLMs) could be used to influence people's opinions, for example in political campaigns or targeted advertising. "Obviously as soon as people see that you can persuade people more with LLMs, they're going to start using them," says study co-author Francesco Salvi, a computational scientist at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne (EPFL). "I find it both fascinating and terrifying." Research has already shown that artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots can make people change their minds, even about conspiracy theories, but it hasn't been clear how persuasive they are in comparison to humans. GPT-4 was 64.4% more persuasive than humans in one-to-one debates, the study found.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: European "green" funds holding more than $33 billion of investments in major oil and gas companies have been revealed by an investigation, despite fossil fuels being the root cause of the climate crisis. Some of these investment funds used branding such as Sustainable Global Stars and Europe Climate Pathway. Over $18 billion was invested in the five biggest polluters: TotalEnergies, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP. These topped a 2023 Carbon Majors ranking for oil and gas production among shareholder-owned firms. Other investments by funds following EU sustainable finance disclosure regulations (SFDR) included those in US fracking company Devon Energy and Canadian tar sands company Suncor, the investigation by Voxeurop and the Guardian found. Investors claim that holding a stake in a company allows them to influence the firm's pursuit of climate goals. However, no major oil and gas producer has plans consistent with international climate targets and many companies have weakened their plans in the last year, according to a report from Carbon Tracker in April. The investment firms with the biggest stakes in fossil companies in their green funds were JP Morgan, BlackRock and DWS in Germany.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft unveiled "Edit on Windows," a new command-line text editor, at its Build conference today. The open-source tool allows developers to edit files directly in the command line without switching to another app, similar to vim but designed to be more user-friendly. Accessible by typing "edit" in a command prompt, the lightweight editor (less than 250KB) includes features like multiple file support via ctrl + P shortcuts, find and replace functionality, and regular expression support. "What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows," said Christopher Nguyen, product manager of Windows Terminal, noting that 32-bit Windows versions already ship with MS-DOS Edit. Microsoft also wanted to avoid the notorious "how do I exit vim?" problem by creating a modeless editor, The Verge writes. The tool will be available to Windows Insiders in the coming months.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI is eroding entry-level positions across multiple industries, threatening the traditional career ladder for young professionals, LinkedIn's chief economic opportunity officer warned Monday. College graduate unemployment has risen 30% since September 2022, compared to 18% for workers overall, according to LinkedIn data. The company's research shows Generation Z workers expressing greater pessimism about their futures than any other age group. "Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder," wrote Aneesh Raman in a New York Times column, citing examples across technology, law, and retail where AI is replacing tasks traditionally assigned to junior workers. A LinkedIn survey of 3,000 executives found 63% believe AI will eventually handle mundane entry-level tasks, with professionals holding advanced degrees likely facing greater disruption than those without. Some firms are adapting by redesigning roles. KPMG now assigns recent graduates tax work previously reserved for more experienced employees, while Macfarlanes has early-career lawyers interpreting complex contracts once handled by senior colleagues. Though economic uncertainty also impacts hiring, Raman warned that delayed career entry can cost young workers approximately $22,000 in earnings over a decade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has announced NLWeb, an open protocol designed to democratize AI-powered search capabilities for websites and apps. Developed by Microsoft technical fellow Ramanathan V. Guha, who previously created RSS and Schema.org, NLWeb allows site owners to implement ChatGPT-style natural language search with minimal code. The protocol enables websites to process complex queries like "spicy and crunchy appetizers for Diwali" or "jackets warm enough for Quebec," requiring only an AI model, some code, and the site's own data. During his demonstration to news outlet The Verge, Guha showed how NLWeb remembers user preferences, such as dietary restrictions, for future interactions. "It's a protocol, and the protocol is a way of asking a natural-language question, and the answer comes back in structured form," explained Guha, who argues the approach is significantly cheaper than traditional search methods that require extensive web crawling and indexing. Microsoft is partnering with publishers and companies including TripAdvisor, Eventbrite, and Shopify to implement NLWeb, though Guha acknowledges the challenge of achieving widespread adoption in a web that historically tends toward centralization.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is now open source, Microsoft said Monday. The tool, which allows developers to run Linux distributions directly in Windows, is available for download, modification, and contribution. "We want Windows to be a great dev box," said Pavan Davuluri, corporate VP at Microsoft. "Having great WSL performance and capabilities" allows developers "to live in the Windows-native experience and take advantage of all they need in Linux." First launched in 2016 with an emulated Linux kernel, WSL switched to using the actual Linux kernel in 2019 with WSL 2, improving compatibility. The system has since gained support for GPUs, graphical applications, and systemd. Microsoft significantly refactored core Windows components to make WSL a standalone system before open sourcing it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Germany has dropped its long-held opposition to nuclear power, in the first concrete sign of rapprochement with France by Berlin's new government led by conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Berlin has signalled to Paris it will no longer block French efforts to ensure nuclear power is treated on par with renewable energy in EU legislation, according to French and German officials. The move resolves a major dispute between the two countries that has delayed decisions on EU energy policy, including during the crisis that followed Russiaa(TM)s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation's third-largest school district, is now deploying Google's Gemini chatbots to more than 105,000 high school students -- marking the largest U.S. school district AI deployment to date. This represents a dramatic reversal from just two years ago when the district blocked such tools over cheating and misinformation concerns. The initiative follows President Trump's recent executive order promoting AI integration "in all subject areas" from kindergarten through 12th grade. District officials spent months testing various chatbots for accuracy, privacy, and safety before selecting Google's platform.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter optical_phiber writes: In March 2025, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education discovered that Microsoft Teams had begun collecting students' voice and facial biometric data without their prior knowledge. This occurred after Microsoft enabled a Teams feature called 'voice and face enrollment' by default, which creates biometric profiles to enhance meeting experiences and transcriptions via its CoPilot AI tool. The NSW department learned of the data collection a month after it began and promptly disabled the feature and deleted the data within 24 hours. However, the department did not disclose how many individuals were affected or whether they were notified. Despite Microsoft's policy of retaining data only while the user is enrolled and deleting it within 90 days of account deletion, privacy experts have raised serious concerns. Rys Farthing of Reset Tech Australia criticized the unnecessary collection of children's data, warning of the long-term risks and calling for stronger protections.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Abstract of a paper featured on NBER: This year marks the 40th anniversary of the NBER Macro Annual Conference, founded in 1986. This paper reviews the evolution of mainstream macroeconomics since then. It presents my views, informed by a survey of a number of researchers who have made important contributions to the field. I develop two main arguments. The first is that, starting from strikingly different positions, there has been substantial convergence, in terms of methodology, architecture, and main mechanisms. Methodology: Explicit micro foundations, explicit treatment of distortions, with, at the same time, an increased willingness to deviate from rational expectations, neoclassical utility and profit maximization. Architecture: The wide acceptance of nominal rigidities as an essential distortion, although with mixed feelings. Mechanisms: The wide nature of the shocks to both the demand and the supply side. The second is that this convergence has been, for the most part, good convergence, i.e. the creation of a generally accepted conceptual and analytical structure, a core to which additional distortions can be added, allowing for discussions and integration of new ideas and evidence, rather than fights about basic methodology. Not everything is right however, with too much emphasis on general equilibrium implications from the start, rather than, first, on partial equilibrium analysis of the phenomenon at hand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Danish government plans to evaluate the prospect of beginning a nuclear power programme," reports the Telegraph, noting that this week Denmark lifted a nuclear power ban imposed 40 years ago.Unlike its neighbours in Sweden and Germany, Denmark has never had a civil nuclear power programme. It has only ever had three small research reactors, the last of which closed in 2001. Most of the renewed interest in nuclear seen around the world stems from the expected growth in electricity demand from AI data centres, but Denmark is different. The Danes are concerned about possible blackouts similar to the one that struck Iberia recently. Like Spain and Portugal, Denmark is heavily dependent on weather-based renewable energy which is not very compatible with the way power grids operate... ["The spinning turbines found in fossil-fuelled energy systems provide inertia and act as a shock absorber to stabilise the grid during sudden changes in supply or demand," explains a diagram in the article, while solar and wind energy provide no inertia.] The Danish government is worried about how it will continue to decarbonise its power grid if it closes all of its fossil fuel generators leaving minimal inertia. There are only three realistic routes to decarbonisation that maintain physical inertia on the grid: hydropower, geothermal energy and nuclear. Hydro and geothermal depend on geographic and geological features that not every country possesses. While renewable energy proponents argue that new types of inverters could provide synthetic inertia, trials have so far not been particularly successful and there are economic challenges that are difficult to resolve. Denmark is realising that in the absence of large-scale hydroelectric or geothermal energy, it may have little choice other than to re-visit nuclear power if it is to maintain a stable, low carbon electricity grid. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Despite many obstacles - and what you may read elsewhere - electric-vehicle sales continue to grow at a healthy pace in the U.S. market," Cox Automotive reported this week. "Roughly 7.5% of total new-vehicle sales in the first quarter were electric vehicles, an increase from 7% a year earlier." An anonymous reader shared this analysis from Autoweek:"Despite a cloud of uncertainty around future EV interest and potential economic headwinds hanging over the automotive industry, consumer demand for electric vehicles has remained stable," according to the J.D. Power 2025 US Electric Vehicle Consideration Study released yesterday. Specifically, the study showed that 24% of vehicle shoppers in the U.S. say they are "very likely" to consider purchasing an EV and 35% say they are "somewhat likely," both of which figures remain unchanged from a year ago... Globally the numbers are even more pro-EV. Electric car sales exceeded 17 million globally in 2024, reaching a sales share of more than 20%, according to a report issued this week by the International Energy Agency. "Just the additional 3.5 million electric cars sold in 2024 compared with the previous year is more than the total number of electric cars sold worldwide in 2020," the IEA said. China, which has mandated increases in EV sales, is the leader in getting electric vehicles on the road, with electric cars accounting for almost half of all Chinese car sales in 2024, the IEA said. "The over 11 million electric cars sold in China last year were more than global sales just 2 years earlier. As a result of continued strong growth, 1 in 10 cars on Chinese roads is now electric." Interesting figures on U.S. EV sales from the article:2024 EV sales rose 7.3% from 2023, according to Cox Automotive data."Last year American consumers purchased 1.3 million electric vehicles, which was a new record, according to data from KBB. "Sales have never stopped growing, and the percentage of new cars sold powered purely by gasoline continues to slip.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TechCrunch reports:The world's only net-positive fusion experiment has been steadily ramping up the amount of power it produces, TechCrunch has learned. In recent attempts, the team at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Ignition Facility (NIF) increased the yield of the experiment, first to 5.2 megajoules and then again to 8.6 megajoules, according to a source with knowledge of the experiment. The new results are significant improvements over the historic experiment in 2022, which was the first controlled fusion reaction to generate more energy than the it consumed. The 2022 shot generated 3.15 megajoules, a small bump over the 2.05 megajoules that the lasers delivered to the BB-sized fuel pellet. None of the shots to date have been effective enough to feed electrons back into the grid, let alone to offset the energy required to power the entire facility - the facility wasn't designed to do that. The first net-positive shot, for example, required 300 megajoules to power the laser system alone. But they are continued proof that controlled nuclear fusion is more than hypothetical.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI CEO and Sam Altman believe Artificial General Intelligence could arrive within the next few years. But the speculations of some technologists "are getting ahead of reality," writes the New York Times, adding that many scientists "say no one will reach AGI without a new idea - something beyond the powerful neural networks that merely find patterns in data. That new idea could arrive tomorrow. But even then, the industry would need years to develop it.""The technology we're building today is not sufficient to get there," said Nick Frosst, a founder of the AI startup Cohere who previously worked as a researcher at Google and studied under the most revered AI researcher of the last 50 years. "What we are building now are things that take in words and predict the next most likely word, or they take in pixels and predict the next most likely pixel. That's very different from what you and I do." In a recent survey of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a 40-year-old academic society that includes some of the most respected researchers in the field, more than three-quarters of respondents said the methods used to build today's technology were unlikely to lead to AGI. Opinions differ in part because scientists cannot even agree on a way of defining human intelligence, arguing endlessly over the merits and flaws of IQ tests and other benchmarks. Comparing our own brains to machines is even more subjective. This means that identifying AGI is essentially a matter of opinion.... And scientists have no hard evidence that today's technologies are capable of performing even some of the simpler things the brain can do, like recognizing irony or feeling empathy. Claims of AGI's imminent arrival are based on statistical extrapolations - and wishful thinking. According to various benchmark tests, today's technologies are improving at a consistent rate in some notable areas, like math and computer programming. But these tests describe only a small part of what people can do. Humans know how to deal with a chaotic and constantly changing world. Machines struggle to master the unexpected - the challenges, small and large, that do not look like what has happened in the past. Humans can dream up ideas that the world has never seen. Machines typically repeat or enhance what they have seen before. That is why Frosst and other sceptics say pushing machines to human-level intelligence will require at least one big idea that the world's technologists have not yet dreamed up. There is no way of knowing how long that will take. "A system that's better than humans in one way will not necessarily be better in other ways," Harvard University cognitive scientist Steven Pinker said. "There's just no such thing as an automatic, omniscient, omnipotent solver of every problem, including ones we haven't even thought of yet. There's a temptation to engage in a kind of magical thinking. But these systems are not miracles. They are very impressive gadgets." While Google's AlphaGo could be humans in a game with "a small, limited set of rules," the article points out that tthe real world "is bounded only by the laws of physics. Modelling the entirety of the real world is well beyond today's machines, so how can anyone be sure that AGI - let alone superintelligence - is just around the corner?" And they offer this alternative perspective from Matteo Pasquinelli, a professor of the philosophy of science at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, Italy. "AI needs us: living beings, producing constantly, feeding the machine. It needs the originality of our ideas and our lives."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Kotaku:One of the most striking things about Bungie's Marathon is its presentation. The sci-fi extraction shooter combines bleak settings with bright colors in a way that makes it feel a bit like a sneaker promo meets Ghost in the Shell, or as designer Jeremy Skoog put it, "Y2K Cyberpunk mixed with Acid Graphic Design Posters." But it now looks like at least a few of the visual design elements that appeared in the recent alpha test were lifted from eight-year old work by an outside artist. "The Marathon alpha released recently and its environments are covered with assets lifted from poster designs I made in 2017," Bluesky user antire.ala posted on Thursday. She shared two images showing elements of her work and where they appeared in Marathon's gameplay, including a rotated version of her own logo. A poster full of small repeating icon patterns also seems to be all but recreated in Marathon's press kit ARG and website... Bungie has responded and blamed the incident on a former employee. The studio says it's reaching out to the artist in question and conducting a full review of its in-game assets for Marathon ["and implementing stricter checks to document all artist contributions."] "We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist decals in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game," the studio posted on X. "As a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission..." their X post emphasizes. "We value the creativity and dedication of all artists who contribute to our games, and we are committed to doing right by them. Thank you for bringing this to our attention."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The BBC visits "the strange, stubborn world of obsolete Windows machines."Even if you're a diehard Apple user, you're probably interacting with Windows systems on a regular basis. When you're pulling cash out, for example, chances are you're using a computer that's downright geriatric by technology standards. (Microsoft declined to comment for this article.) "Many ATMs still operate on legacy Windows systems, including Windows XP and even Windows NT," which launched in 1993, says Elvis Montiero, an ATM field technician based in Newark, New Jersey in the US. "The challenge with upgrading these machines lies in the high costs associated with hardware compatibility, regulatory compliance and the need to rewrite proprietary ATM software," he says. Microsoft ended official support for Windows XP in 2014, but Montiero says many ATMs still rely on these primordial systems thanks to their reliability, stability and integration with banking infrastructure. And a job listing for an IT systems administrator for Germany's railway service "were expected to have expertise with Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS - systems released 32 and 44 years ago, respectively. In certain parts of Germany, commuting depends on operating systems that are older than many passengers."It's not just German transit, either. The trains in San Francisco's Muni Metro light railway, for example, won't start up in the morning until someone sticks a floppy disk into the computer that loads DOS software on the railway's Automatic Train Control System (ATCS). Last year, the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority (SFMTA) announced its plans to retire this system over the coming decade, but today the floppy disks live on. Apple is "really aggressive about deprecating old products," M. Scott Ford, a software developer who specialises in updating legacy systems, tells the BBC. "But Microsoft took the approach of letting organisations leverage the hardware they already have and chasing them for software licenses instead. They also tend to have a really long window for supporting that software." And so you get things like two enormous LightJet printers in San Diego powered by servers running Windows 2000, says photographic printer John Watts:Long out of production, the few remaining LightJets rely on the Windows operating systems that were around when these printers were sold. "A while back we looked into upgrading one of the computers to Windows Vista. By the time we added up the money it would take to buy new licenses for all the software it was going to cost $50,000 or $60,000 [38,000 to 45,000]," Watts says. "I can't stand Windows machines," he says, "but I'm stuck with them...." In some cases, however, old computers are a labour of love. In the US, Dene Grigar, director of the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University, Vancouver, spends her days in a room full of vintage (and fully functional) computers dating back to 1977... She's not just interested in early, experimental e-books. Her laboratory collects everything from video games to Instagram zines.... Grigar's Electronic Literature Lab maintains 61 computers to showcase the hundreds of electronic works and thousands of files in the collection, which she keeps in pristine condition. Grigar says they're still looking for a PC that reads five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While Amazon won FAA approval to fly beyond an operators' visual line of sight, "the program remains a work in progress," reports Bloomberg:A pair of Amazon.com Inc. package delivery drones were flying through a light rain in mid-December when, within minutes of one another, they both committed robot suicide... [S]ome 217 feet (66 meters) in the air [at a drone testing facility], the aircraft cut power to its six propellers, fell to the ground and was destroyed. Four minutes later and 183 feet over the taxiway, a second Prime Air drone did the same thing. Not long after the incidents, Amazon paused its experimental drone flights to tweak the aircraft software but said the crashes weren't the "primary reason" for halting the program. Now, five months after the twin crashes, a more detailed explanation of what happened is starting to emerge. Faulty readings from lidar sensors made the drones think they had landed, prompting the software to shut down the propellers, according to National Transportation Safety Board documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The sensors failed after a software update made them more susceptible to being confused by rain, the NTSB said. Amazon also removed a backup sensor present that had been present on earlier iterations, according to the article - though an Amazon spokesperson said the company had found ways to replicate the removed sensors. But Bloomberg notes Amazon's drone efforts has faced "technical challenges and crashes, including one in 2021 that set a field ablaze at the company's testing facility in Pendleton, Oregon."Deliveries are currently limited to College Station, Texas, and greater Phoenix, with plans to expand to Kansas City, Missouri, the Dallas area and San Antonio, as well as the UK and Italy. Starting with a craft that looked like a hobbyist drone - and was vulnerable to even modest gusts of wind - Amazon went through dozens of designs to toughen the vehicle and ultimately make it capable of carting about 5 pounds, giving it the capability to transport items typically ordered from its warehouses. Engineers settled on a six-propeller design that takes off vertically before cruising like a plane. The first model to make regular customer deliveries, the MK27, was succeeded last year by the MK30, which flies at about 67 miles an hour and can deliver packages up to 7.5 miles from its launch point. The craft takes off, flies and lands autonomously.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM laid off "a couple hundred" HR workers and replaced them with AI agents. "It's becoming a huge thing," says Mike Peditto, a Chicago-area consultant with 15 years of experience advising companies on hiring practices. He tells Slate "I do think we're heading to where this will be pretty commonplace."Although A.I. job interviews have been happening since at least 2023, the trend has received a surge of attention in recent weeks thanks to several viral TikTok videos in which users share videos of their A.I. bots glitching. Although some of the videos were fakes posted by a creator whose bio warns that his content is "all satire," some are authentic - like that of Kendiana Colin, a 20-year-old student at Ohio State University who had to interact with an A.I. bot after she applied for a summer job at a stretching studio outside Columbus. In a clip she posted online earlier this month, Colin can be seen conducting a video interview with a smiling white brunette named Alex, who can't seem to stop saying the phrase "vertical-bar Pilates" in an endless loop... Representatives at Apriora, the startup company founded in 2023 whose software Colin was forced to engage with, did not respond to a request for comment. But founder Aaron Wang told Forbes last year that the software allowed companies to screen more talent for less money... (Apriora's website claims that the technology can help companies "hire 87 percent faster" and "interview 93 percent cheaper," but it's not clear where those stats come from or what they actually mean.) Colin (first interviewed by 404 Media) calls the experience dehumanizing - wondering why they were told dress professionally, since "They had me going the extra mile just to talk to a robot." And after the interview, the robot - and the company - then ghosted them with no future contact. "It was very disrespectful and a waste of time." Houston resident Leo Humphries also "donned a suit and tie in anticipation for an interview" in which the virtual recruiter immediately got stuck repeating the same phrase.Although Humphries tried in vain to alert the bot that it was broken, the interview ended only when the A.I. program thanked him for "answering the questions" and offering "great information" - despite his not being able to provide a single response. In a subsequent video, Humphries said that within an hour he had received an email, addressed to someone else, that thanked him for sharing his "wonderful energy and personality" but let him know that the company would be moving forward with other candidates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Prossimo project (funded by the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group) seeks to "move the Internet's security-sensitive software infrastructure to memory safe code." Two years ago the Prossimo project made an announcement: they'd begun work on rav1d, a safer high performance AV1 decoder written in Rust, according to a new update:We partnered with Immunant to do the engineering work. By September of 2024 rav1d was basically complete and we learned a lot during the process. Today rav1d works well - it passes all the same tests as the dav1d decoder it is based on, which is written in C. It's possible to build and run Chromium with it. There's just one problem - it's not quite as fast as the C version... Our Rust-based rav1d decoder is currently about 5% slower than the C-based dav1d decoder (the exact amount differs a bit depending on the benchmark, input, and platform). This is enough of a difference to be a problem for potential adopters, and, frankly, it just bothers us. The development team worked hard to get it to performance parity. We brought in a couple of other contractors who have experience with optimizing things like this. We wrote about the optimization work we did. However, we were still unable to get to performance parity and, to be frank again, we aren't really sure what to do next. After racking our brains for options, we decided to offer a bounty pool of $20,000 for getting rav1d to performance parity with dav1d. Hopefully folks out there can help get rav1d performance advanced to where it needs to be, and ideally we and the Rust community will also learn something about how Rust performance stacks up against C. This drew a snarky response from FFmpeg, the framework that powers audio and video processing for everyone from VLC to Twitch. "Rust is so good you can get paid $20k to make it as fast as C," they posted to their 68,300 followers on X.com. Thanks to the It's FOSS blog for spotting the announcement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The only nuclear power plant still operating in Taiwan was shut down on Saturday, reports Japan's public media organization NHK:People in Taiwan have grown increasingly concerned about nuclear safety in recent years, especially after the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, northeastern Japan... Taiwan's energy authorities plan to focus more on thermoelectricity fueled by liquefied natural gas. They aim to source 20 percent of all electricity from renewables such as wind and solar power next year. AFP notes that nuclear power once provided more than half of Taiwan's energy, with three plants operating six reactors across an island that's 394 km (245 mi) long and 144 km (89 mi) wide. So the new move to close Taiwan's last reactor is "fuelling concerns over the self-ruled island's reliance on imported energy and vulnerability to a Chinese blockade," - though Taiwan's president insists the missing nucelar energy can be replace by new units in LNG and coal-fired plants:The island, which targets net-zero emissions by 2050, depends almost entirely on imported fossil fuel to power its homes, factories and critical semiconductor chip industry. President Lai Ching-te's Democratic Progressive Party has long vowed to phase out nuclear power, while the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party says continued supply is needed for energy security... [The Ma'anshan Nuclear Power Plant] has operated for 40 years in a region popular with tourists and which is now dotted with wind turbines and solar panels. More renewable energy is planned at the site, where state-owned Taipower plans to build a solar power station capable of supplying an estimated 15,000 households annually. But while nuclear only accounted for 4.2 percent of Taiwan's power supply last year, some fear Ma'anshan's closure risks an energy crunch.... Most of Taiwan's power is fossil fuel-based, with liquefied natural gas (LNG) accounting for 42.4 percent and coal 39.3 percent last year. Renewable energy made up 11.6 percent, well short of the government's target of 20 percent by 2025. Solar has faced opposition from communities worried about panels occupying valuable land, while rules requiring locally made parts in wind turbines have slowed their deployment. Taiwan's break-up with nuclear is at odds with global and regional trends. Even Japan aims for nuclear to account for 20-22 percent of its electricity by 2030, up from well under 10 percent now. And nuclear power became South Korea's largest source of electricity in 2024, accounting for 31.7 percent of the country's total power generation, and reaching its highest level in 18 years, according to government data.... And Lai acknowledged recently he would not rule out a return to nuclear one day. "Whether or not we will use nuclear power in the future depends on three foundations which include nuclear safety, a solution to nuclear waste, and successful social dialogue," he said. DW notes there's over 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste on Taiwan's easternmost island "despite multiple attempts to remove them... At one point, Taiwan signed a deal with North Korea so they could send barrels of nuclear waste to store there, but it did not work out due to a lack of storage facilities in the North and strong opposition from South Korea... "Many countries across the world have similar problems and are scrambling to identify sites for a permanent underground repository for nuclear fuel. Finland has become the world's first nation to build one." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

During this year's annual Pwn2Own contest, two researchers from Palo Alto Networks demonstrated an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox, reports Cyber Security News, "earning $50,000 and 5 Master of Pwn points." And the next day another participant used an integer overflow to exploit Mozilla Firefox (renderer only). But Mozilla's security blog reminds users that a sandbox escape would be required to break out from a tab to gain wider system access "due to Firefox's robust security architecture" - and that "neither participating group was able to escape our sandbox..."We have verbal confirmation that this is attributed to the recent architectural improvements to our Firefox sandbox which have neutered a wide range of such attacks. This continues to build confidence in Firefox's strong security posture. Even though neither attack could escape their sandbox, "Out of abundance of caution, we just released new Firefox versions... all within the same day of the second exploit announcement." (Last year Mozilla responded to an exploitable security bug within 21 hours, they point out, even winning an award as the fastest to patch.) The new updated versions are Firefox 138.0.4, Firefox ESR 128.10.1, Firefox ESR 115.23.1 and Firefox for Android. "Despite the limited impact of these attacks, all users and administrators are advised to update Firefox as soon as possible...."To review and fix the reported exploits a diverse team of people from all across the world and in various roles (engineering, QA, release management, security and many more) rushed to work. We tested and released a new version of Firefox for all of our supported platforms, operating systems, and configurations with rapid speed.... Our work does not end here. We continue to use opportunities like this to improve our incident response. We will also continue to study the reports to identify new hardening features and security improvements to keep all of our Firefox users across the globe protected.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's a nonprofit that's provide hosting for the Linux Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation, Drupal, Firefox, and 160 other projects - delivering nearly 430 terabytes of information every month. (It's currently hosting Debian, Fedora, and Gentoo Linux.) But hosting only provides about 20% of its income, with the rest coming from individual and corporate donors (including Google and IBM). "Over the past several years, we have been operating at a deficit due to a decline in corporate donations," the Open Source Lab's director announced in late April. It's part of the CS/electrical engineering department at Oregon State University, and while the department "has generously filled this gap, recent changes in university funding makes our current funding model no longer sustainable. Unless we secure $250,000 in committed funds, the OSL will shut down later this year." But "Thankfully, the call for support worked, paving the way for the OSU Open Source Lab to look ahead, into what the future holds for them," reports the blog It's FOSS. "Following our OSL Future post, the community response has been incredible!" posted director Lance Albertson. "Thanks to your amazing support, our team is funded for the next year. This is a huge relief and lets us focus on building a truly self-sustaining OSL."To get there, we're tackling two big interconnected goals: 1. Finding a new, cost-effective physical home for our core infrastructure, ideally with more modern hardware.2. Securing multi-year funding commitments to cover all our operations, including potential new infrastructure costs and hardware refreshes. Our current data center is over 20 years old and needs to be replaced soon. With Oregon State University evaluating the future of this facility, it's very likely we'll need to relocate in the near future. While migrating to the State of Oregon's data center is one option, it comes with significant new costs. This makes finding free or very low-cost hosting (ideally between Eugene and Portland for ~13-20 racks) a huge opportunity for our long-term sustainability. More power-efficient hardware would also help us shrink our footprint. Speaking of hardware, refreshing some of our older gear during a move would be a game-changer. We don't need brand new, but even a few-generations-old refurbished systems would boost performance and efficiency. (Huge thanks to the Yocto Project and Intel for a recent hardware donation that showed just how impactful this is!) The dream? A data center partner donating space and cycled-out hardware. Our overall infrastructure strategy is flexible. We're enhancing our OpenStack/Ceph platforms and exploring public cloud credits and other donated compute capacity. But whatever the resource, it needs to fit our goals and come with multi-year commitments for stability. And, a physical space still offers unique value, especially the invaluable hands-on data center experience for our students.... [O]ur big focus this next year is locking in ongoing support - think annualized pledges, different kinds of regular income, and other recurring help. This is vital, especially with potential new data center costs and hardware needs. Getting this right means we can stop worrying about short-term funding and plan for the future: investing in our tech and people, growing our awesome student programs, and serving the FOSS community. We're looking for partners, big and small, who get why foundational open source infrastructure matters and want to help us build this sustainable future together. The It's FOSS blog adds that "With these prerequisites in place, the OSUOSL intends to expand their student program, strengthen their managed services portfolio for open source projects, introduce modern tooling like Kubernetes and Terraform, and encourage more community volunteers to actively contribute." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader I'm just joshin for suggesting the story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new YouTube tool will let advertisers use Google's Gemini AI model to target ads to viewers when they're most engaged, reports CNBC:Peak Points has the potential to enable more impressions and a higher click-through rate on YouTube, a primary metric that determines how creators earn money on the video platform... Peak Points is currently in a pilot program and will be rolling out over the rest of the year. The product "aims to benefit advertisers by using a tactic that aims to grab users' attention right when they're most invested in the content," reports TechCrunch:This approach appears to be similar to a strategy called emotion-based targeting, where advertisers place ads that align with the emotions evoked by the video. It's believed that when viewers experience heightened emotional states, it leads to better recall of the ads. However, viewers may find these interruptions frustrating, especially when they're deeply engaged in the emotional arc of a video and want the ad to be over quickly to resume watching. In related news, YouTube announced another ad format that may be more appealing to users. The platform debuted a shoppable product feed where users can browse and purchase items during an ad.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last August a Microsoft security update broke dual-booting Windows 11 and Linux systems, remembers the blog Neowin. Distros like Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, and Puppy Linux were all affected, and "a couple of days later, Microsoft provided a slightly lengthy workaround that involved tweaking around with policies and the Registry in order to fix the problem." The update "was meant to address a GRUB bootloader vulnerability that allowed malicious actors to bypass Secure Boot's safety mechanisms," notes the It's FOSS blog. "Luckily, there's now a proper fix for this, as Microsoft has quietly released a new patch on May 13, 2025, addressing the issue nine months after it was first reported... Meanwhile, many dual-boot users were left with borked setups, having to use workarounds or disable Secure Boot altogether."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon's AWS Labs has created LLRT an experimental, lightweight JavaScript runtime designed to address the growing demand for fast and efficient serverless applications. Slashdot reader BitterEpic wants to know what you think of it:Traditional JavaScript runtimes like Node.js rely on garbage collection, which can introduce unpredictable pauses and slow down performance, especially during cold starts in serverless environments like AWS Lambda. LLRT's manual memory management, courtesy of Rust, eliminates this issue, leading to smoother, more predictable performance. LLRT also has a runtime under 2MB, a huge reduction compared to the 100MB+ typically required by Node.js. This lightweight design means lower memory usage, better scalability, and reduced operational costs. Without the overhead of garbage collection, LLRT has faster cold start times and can initialize in milliseconds-perfect for latency-sensitive applications where every millisecond counts. For JavaScript developers, LLRT offers the best of both worlds: rapid development with JavaScript's flexibility, combined with Rust's performance. This means faster, more scalable applications without the usual memory bloat and cold start issues. Still in beta, LLRT promises to be a major step forward for serverless JavaScript applications. By combining Rust's performance with JavaScript's flexibility, it opens new possibilities for building high-performance, low-latency applications. If it continues to evolve, LLRT could become a core offering in AWS Lambda, potentially changing how we approach serverless JavaScript development. Would you consider Javascript as the core of your future workflow? Or maybe you would prefer to go lower level with quckjs?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Ars Technica:Nextcloud, a host-your-own cloud platform that wants to help you "regain control over your data," has had to tell its Android-using customers for months now that they cannot upload files from their phone to their own servers. Months of emails and explanations to Google's Play Store representatives have yielded no changes, Nextcloud . That blog post - and media coverage of it - seem to have moved the needle. In an update to the post, Nextcloud wrote that as of May 15, Google has offered to restore full file access permissions. "We are preparing a test release first (expected tonight) and a final update with all functionality restored. If no issues occur, the update will hopefully be out early next week," the Nextcloud team wrote.... [Nextcloud] told The Register that it had more than 800,000 Android users. The company's blog post goes further than pinpointing technical and support hurdles. "It is a clear example of Big Tech gatekeeping smaller software vendors, making the products of their competitors worse or unable to provide the same services as the giants themselves sell," Nextcloud's post states. "Big Tech is scared that small players like Nextcloud will disrupt them, like they once disrupted other companies. So they try to shut the door." Nextcloud is one of the leaders of an antitrust-minded movement against Microsoft's various integrated apps and services, having filed a complaint against the firm in 2021.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The world has changed," writes Stack Overflow's blog. "Fast. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we build, learn, and solve problems. Software development looks dramatically different than it did even a few years ago - and the pace of change is only accelerating." And they believe their brand "at times" lost "fidelity and clarity. It's very much been always added to and not been thought of holistically. So, it's time for our brand to evolve too," they write, hoping to articulate a perspective "forged in the fires of community, powered by collaboration, shaped by AI, and driven by people." The developer news site DevClass notes the change happens "as the number of posts to its site continues a dramatic decline thanks to AI-driven alternatives."According to a quick query on the official data explorer, the sum of questions and answers posted in April 2025 was down by over 64 percent from the same month in 2024, and plunged more than 90 percent from April 2020, when traffic was near its peak... Although declining traffic is a sign of Stack Overflow's reduced significance in the developer community, the company's business is not equally affected so far. Stack Exchange is a business owned by investment company Prosus, and the Stack Exchange products include private versions of its site (Stack Overflow for Teams) as well as advertising and recruitment. According to the Prosus financial results, in the six months ended September 2024, Stack Overflow increased its revenue and reduced its losses. The company's search for a new direction though confirms that the fast-disappearing developer engagement with Stack Overflow poses an existential challenge to the organization. DevClass says Stack Overflow's parent company "is casting about for new ways to provide value (and drive business) in this context..."The company has already experimented with various new services, via its Labs research department, including an AI Answer Assistant and Question Assistant, as well as a revamped jobs site in association with recruitment site Indeed, Discussions for technical debate, and extensions for GitHub Copilot, Slack, and Visual Studio Code. From the official announcement on Stack Overflow's blog:This rebrand isn't just a fresh coat of paint. It's a realignment with our purpose: to support the builders of the future in an AI world - with clarity, speed, and humanity. It's about showing up in a way that reflects who we are today, and where we're headed tomorrow. "We have appointed an internal steering group and we have engaged with an external expert partner in this area to help bring about the required change," notes a post in Stack Exchange's "meta" area.This isn't just about a visual update or marketing exercise - it's going to bring about a shift in how we present ourselves to the world which you will feel everywhere from the design to the copywriting, so that we can better achieve our goals and shared mission. As the emergence of AI has called into question the role of Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange Network, one of the desired outputs of the rebrand process is to clarify our place in the world. We've done work toward this already - our recent community AMA is an example of this - but we want to ensure that this comes across in our brand and identity as well. We want the community to be involved and have a strong voice in the process of renewing and refreshing our brand. Remember, Stack Overflow started with a public discussion about what to name it! And another another post two months agoStack Exchange is exploring early ideas for expanding beyond the "single lane" Q&A highway. Our goal right now is to better understand the problems, opportunities, and needs before deciding on any specific changes... The vision is to potentially enable: - A slower lane, with high-quality durable knowledge that takes time to create and curate, like questions and answers. - A medium lane, for more flexible engagement, with features like Discussions or more flexible Stack Exchanges, where users can explore ideas or share opinions. - A fast lane for quick, real-time interaction, with features like Chat that can bring the community together to discuss topics instantly. With this in mind, we're seeking your feedback on the current state of Chat, what's most important to you, and how you see Chat fitting into the future. In a post in Stack Exchange's "meta" area, brand design director David Longworth says the "tension mentioned between Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange" is probably the most relevant to the rebranding. But he posted later that "There's a lot of people behind the scenes on this who care deeply about getting this right! Thank you on behalf of myself and the team."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CRN:CPU-tracking firm Mercury Research reported on Thursday that Intel's x86 CPU market share grew 0.3 points sequentially to 75.6 percent against AMD's 24.4 percent in the first quarter. However, AMD managed to increase its market share by 3.6 points year over year. These figures only captured the server, laptop and desktop CPU segments. When including IoT and semicustom products, AMD grew its x86 market share sequentially by 1.5 points and year over year by 0.9 points to 27.1 percent against Intel's 72.9 percent... AMD managed to gain ground on Intel in the desktop and server segments sequentially and year over year. But it was in the laptop segment where Intel eked out a sequential share gain, even though rival AMD ended up finishing the first quarter with a higher share of shipments than what it had a year ago... While AMD mostly came out on top in the first quarter, [Mercury Research President Dean] McCarron said ARM's estimated CPU share against x86 products crossed into the double digits for the first time, growing 2.3 points sequentially to 11.9 percent. This was mainly due to a "surge" of Nvidia's Grace CPUs for servers and a large increase of Arm CPU shipments for Chromebooks. Meanwhile, PC Gamer reports that ARM's share of the PC processor market "grew to 13.6% in the first quarter of 2025 from 10.8% in the fourth quarter of 2024." And they note the still-only-rumors that an Arm-based chip from AMD will be available as soon next year.[I]f one of the two big players in x86 does release a mainstream Arm chip for the PC, that will very significant. If it comes at about the same time as Nvidia's rumoured Arm chip for the PC, well, momentum really will be building and questioning x86's dominance will be wholly justified.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The altruistic OpenAI is gone, if it ever existed," argues a new article in the Atlantic, based on interviews with more than 90 current and former employees, including executives. It notes that shortly before Altman's ouster (and rehiring) he was "seemingly trying to circumvent safety processes for expediency," with OpenAI co-founder/chief scientist Ilya telling three board members "I don't think Sam is the guy who should have the finger on the button for AGI." (The board had already discovered Altman "had not been forthcoming with them about a range of issues" including a breach in the Deployment Safety Board's protocols.) Adapted from the upcoming book, Empire of AI, the article first revisits the summer of 2023, when Sutskever ("the brain behind the large language models that helped build ChatGPT") met with a group of new researchers:Sutskever had long believed that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, was inevitable - now, as things accelerated in the generative-AI industry, he believed AGI's arrival was imminent, according to Geoff Hinton, an AI pioneer who was his Ph.D. adviser and mentor, and another person familiar with Sutskever's thinking.... To people around him, Sutskever seemed consumed by thoughts of this impending civilizational transformation. What would the world look like when a supreme AGI emerged and surpassed humanity? And what responsibility did OpenAI have to ensure an end state of extraordinary prosperity, not extraordinary suffering? By then, Sutskever, who had previously dedicated most of his time to advancing AI capabilities, had started to focus half of his time on AI safety. He appeared to people around him as both boomer and doomer: more excited and afraid than ever before of what was to come. That day, during the meeting with the new researchers, he laid out a plan. "Once we all get into the bunker - " he began, according to a researcher who was present. "I'm sorry," the researcher interrupted, "the bunker?" "We're definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI," Sutskever replied. Such a powerful technology would surely become an object of intense desire for governments globally. The core scientists working on the technology would need to be protected. "Of course," he added, "it's going to be optional whether you want to get into the bunker." Two other sources I spoke with confirmed that Sutskever commonly mentioned such a bunker. "There is a group of people - Ilya being one of them - who believe that building AGI will bring about a rapture," the researcher told me. "Literally, a rapture...." But by the middle of 2023 - around the time he began speaking more regularly about the idea of a bunker - Sutskever was no longer just preoccupied by the possible cataclysmic shifts of AGI and superintelligence, according to sources familiar with his thinking. He was consumed by another anxiety: the erosion of his faith that OpenAI could even keep up its technical advancements to reach AGI, or bear that responsibility with Altman as its leader. Sutskever felt Altman's pattern of behavior was undermining the two pillars of OpenAI's mission, the sources said: It was slowing down research progress and eroding any chance at making sound AI-safety decisions. "For a brief moment, OpenAI's future was an open question. It might have taken a path away from aggressive commercialization and Altman. But this is not what happened," the article concludes. Instead there was "a lack of clarity from the board about their reasons for firing Altman." There was fear about a failure to realize their potential (and some employees feared losing a chance to sell millions of dollars' worth of their equity). "Faced with the possibility of OpenAI falling apart, Sutskever's resolve immediately started to crack... He began to plead with his fellow board members to reconsider their position on Altman." And in the end "Altman would come back; there was no other way to save OpenAI."To me, the drama highlighted one of the most urgent questions of our generation: How do we govern artificial intelligence? With AI on track to rewire a great many other crucial functions in society, that question is really asking: How do we ensure that we'll make our future better, not worse? The events of November 2023 illustrated in the clearest terms just how much a power struggle among a tiny handful of Silicon Valley elites is currently shaping the future of this technology. And the scorecard of this centralized approach to AI development is deeply troubling. OpenAI today has become everything that it said it would not be.... The author believes OpenAI "has grown ever more secretive, not only cutting off access to its own research but shifting norms across the industry to no longer share meaningful technical details about AI models..." "At the same time, more and more doubts have risen about the true economic value of generative AI, including a growing body of studies that have shown that the technology is not translating into productivity gains for most workers, while it's also eroding their critical thinking."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from The Hill:A new study indicates the debilitating "brain fog" suffered by millions of long COVID patients is linked to changes in the brain, including inflammation and an impaired ability to rewire itself following COVID-19 infection. United Press International reported this week that the small-scale study, conducted by researchers at Corewell Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Michigan State University, shows that altered levels of a pair of key brain chemicals could be the culprit. The study marks the first time doctors have been able to provide scientific proof that validates the experiences of the approximately 12 million COVID "long-haulers" in the U.S. who have reported neurological symptoms. Researchers looked at biomarkers in study participants and found that those complaining of brain fog had higher levels of an anti-inflammatory protein that is crucial to regulating a person's immune system, UPI reported. They also showed lower serum levels of nerve growth factor, a protein vital to the brain's plasticity... One of the biggest issues involving long COVID has been doctors' inability to find physical proof of the symptoms described by patients. The study has changed that, according to co-author Dr. Bengt Arnetz.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Researchers are seeking a breakthrough in technologies to tackle PFAS contamination," reports the Washington Post - including experiments with ultraviolet light, plasma and sound waves:"We're in a good spot," said Christopher Higgins, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Colorado School of Mines who researches PFAS. "There's a lot of things being tested. ... Around the world, everyone is trying to work on this topic...." PFAS destruction technologies are beginning to show potential. Some methods have been licensed by companies that are rolling out the systems in real-world settings. "There's been a lot of research happening over the past few years looking at advanced destruction technologies, and there's been a lot of improvements and advancements, and we're now starting to see some of them actually at scale," said Anna Reade [a senior scientist and director of PFAS advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council]. An approach known as supercritical water oxidation is one of the more developed technologies, Reade and other experts said. It involves heating and pressurizing water to a specific point that creates the ideal conditions to break every carbon fluorine bond, said Amy Dindal [a PFAS expert with Battelle, a science and technology nonprofit that has developed a PFAS destruction technology]. The process used in a patented technology created by Battelle produces carbon dioxide and a form of fluorine that can be quickly neutralized to become a harmless salt. "It's a complete destruction and mineralization technology, because we're actually breaking all of the carbon fluorine bonds," Dindal said, adding that the technology is "PFAS agnostic...." Another promising approach using heat and pressure was developed by researchers at the Colorado School of Mines [and already licensed by a company in Washington]. Known as hydrothermal alkaline treatment, or HALT, it involves adding a low-cost chemical reagent such as sodium hydroxide to superheated liquid water.... A destruction method that harnesses ultraviolet light has also emerged as a contender [has licensed by a company in Michigan]. When UV light oxidizes an electron-generating compound, it produces a powerful electron that's very reactive and strong enough to break carbon fluorine bonds... Other technologies are experimenting with the use of plasma, which can generate reactive electrons to break down PFAS but tends to require a large amount of energy. Researchers are also experimenting with a process that uses sound waves. High-intensity sound waves create small bubbles in a water system or liquid waste stream, Higgins said. As those bubbles collapse, they can generate the high temperatures and pressure needed to degrade PFAS. But "At the end of the day, not using these chemicals unless it's absolutely necessary is the actually most effective tool in our toolbox," Reade said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Curl contributor replaced an ASCII letter with a Unicode alternative in a pull request, writes Curl lead developer/founder Daniel Stenberg. And not a single human reviewer on the team (or any of their CI jobs) noticed. The change "looked identical to the ASCII version, so it was not possible to visually spot this..."The impact of changing one or more letters in a URL can of course be devastating depending on conditions... [W]e have implemented checks to help us poor humans spot things like this. To detect malicious Unicode. We have added a CI job that scans all files and validates every UTF-8 sequence in the git repository. In the curl git repository most files and most content are plain old ASCII so we can "easily" whitelist a small set of UTF-8 sequences and some specific files, the rest of the files are simply not allowed to use UTF-8 at all as they will then fail the CI job and turn up red. In order to drive this change home, we went through all the test files in the curl repository and made sure that all the UTF-8 occurrences were instead replaced by other kind of escape sequences and similar. Some of them were also used more or less by mistake and could easily be replaced by their ASCII counterparts. The next time someone tries this stunt on us it could be someone with less good intentions, but now ideally our CI will tell us... We want and strive to be proactive and tighten everything before malicious people exploit some weakness somewhere but security remains this never-ending race where we can only do the best we can and while the other side is working in silence and might at some future point attack us in new creative ways we had not anticipated. That future unknown attack is a tricky thing. In the original blog post Stenberg complained he got "barely no responses" from GitHub (joking "perhaps they are all just too busy implementing the next AI feature we don't want.") But hours later he posted an update. "GitHub has told me they have raised this as a security issue internally and they are working on a fix."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Shares of Ubisoft sank 18% on Thursday," reports CNBC, "after the French video game firm reported full-year earnings that disappointed investors... The company's shares have lost almost 60% of their value in the past 12 months, as the firm faced financial struggles, development hurdles, and underperformance of some of its key titles." Ubisoft said its latest Assassin's Creed game "delivered the second-highest Day 1 sales revenue in franchise history and set a new record for Ubisoft's Day 1 performance on the PlayStation digital store," according to Reuters. And AFP notes that according to data from consultancy Circana, that game become the second-best-selling game of the year so far in the U.S. But...[A] string of disappointing releases undermined this year's performance, with a net loss of 159 million euros ($178 million) on revenues of 1.9 billion - down 17.5 percent year-on-year. Over the past 12 months, Ubisoft's would-be blockbuster "Star Wars Outlaws" fell short of sales expectations on release, while it cancelled multiplayer first-person shooter "XDefiant" for lack of players. "This year has been a challenging one for Ubisoft, with mixed dynamics across our portfolio, amid intense industry competition," chief executive Yves Guillemot said in a statement. But a string of disappointing releases undermined this year's performance, with a net loss of 159 million euros ($178 million) on revenues of 1.9 billion - down 17.5 percent year-on-year. The group expects the measure to hold steady in the coming 2025-26 financial year, during which it will release a new "Prince of Persia" game, strategy title "Anno 117: Pax Romana" and mobile versions of shooters "Rainbow Six" and "The Division"... Moving to address its business woes, Ubisoft said in late March that it would create a new subsidiary to manage its three top franchises: "Assassin's Creed", "Far Cry" and "Rainbow Six". "Since January, the shares have lost more than 12 percent, touching their lowest price in over a decade in April."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"With the help of more than five dozen fossils, paleontologists have uncovered a tiny three-eyed predator nicknamed the 'sea moth'," reports CNN, "that swam in Earth's oceans 506 million years ago." Tiny as in 15 to 61 mm in total body length. (That's 0.60 to 2.4 inches...) But check out the illustration in CNN's article...Mosura fentoni, as the species is known, belongs to a group called radiodonts, an early offshoot of the arthropod evolutionary tree, according to a new study published Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science. While radiodonts are now extinct, studying their fossilized remains can illuminate how modern arthropods such as insects, spiders and crabs evolved. One of the most diverse animal groups, arthropods are believed to account for more than 80% of living animal species, said lead study author Dr. Joe Moysiuk, curator of paleontology and geology at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg. Well-preserved specimens of the previously unknown Mosura fentoni also reveal something that's never been seen in any other radiodont: an abdomen-like body region with 16 segments that include gills at its rear. This part of the creature's anatomy is similar to a batch of segments bearing respiratory organs at the rear of the body found in distant modern radiodont relatives like horseshoe crabs, woodlice and insects, Moysiuk said.... No animal living today quite looks like Mosura fentoni, Moysiuk said, although it had jointed claws similar to those of modern insects and crustaceans. But unlike those critters, which can have two or four additional eyes used to help maintain orientation, Mosura had a larger and more conspicuous third eye in the middle of its head. "Although not closely related, Mosura probably swam in a similar way to a ray, undulating its multiple sets of swimming flaps up and down, like flying underwater," Moysiuk said in an email. "It also had a mouth shaped like a pencil sharpener and lined with rows of serrated plates, unlike any living animal." About the size of an adult human's index finger, Mosura and its swimming flaps vaguely resemble a moth, which led researchers to call it the "sea moth." The Royal Society publication notes the etymology of the species name (Mosura fentoni is "from the name of the fictional Japanese monster, or kaiju... also known as 'Mothra'...in reference to the moth-like appearance of the animal." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thursday was Rust's 10-year anniversary for its first stable release. "To say I'm surprised by its trajectory would be a vast understatement," writes Rust's original creator Graydon Hoare. "I can only thank, congratulate, and celebrate everyone involved... In my view, Rust is a story about a large community of stakeholders coming together to design, build, maintain, and expand shared technical infrastructure."It's a story with many actors: - The population of developers the language serves who express their needs and constraints through discussion, debate, testing, and bug reports arising from their experience writing libraries and applications. - The language designers and implementers who work to satisfy those needs and constraints while wrestling with the unexpected consequences of each decision. - The authors, educators, speakers, translators, illustrators, and others who work to expand the set of people able to use the infrastructure and work on the infrastructure. - The institutions investing in the project who provide the long-term funding and support necessary to sustain all this work over decades. All these actors have a common interest in infrastructure. Rather than just "systems programming", Hoare sees Rust as a tool for building infrastructure itself, "the robust and reliable necessities that enable us to get our work done" - a wide range that includes everything from embedded and IoT systems to multi-core systems. So the story of "Rust's initial implementation, its sustained investment, and its remarkable resonance and uptake all happened because the world needs robust and reliable infrastructure, and the infrastructure we had was not up to the task."Put simply: it failed too often, in spectacular and expensive ways. Crashes and downtime in the best cases, and security vulnerabilities in the worst. Efficient "infrastructure-building" languages existed but they were very hard to use, and nearly impossible to use safely, especially when writing concurrent code. This produced an infrastructure deficit many people felt, if not everyone could name, and it was growing worse by the year as we placed ever-greater demands on computers to work in ever more challenging environments... We were stuck with the tools we had because building better tools like Rust was going to require an extraordinary investment of time, effort, and money. The bootstrap Rust compiler I initially wrote was just a few tens of thousands of lines of code; that was nearing the limits of what an unfunded solo hobby project can typically accomplish. Mozilla's decision to invest in Rust in 2009 immediately quadrupled the size of the team - it created a team in the first place - and then doubled it again, and again in subsequent years. Mozilla sustained this very unusual, very improbable investment in Rust from 2009-2020, as well as funding an entire browser engine written in Rust - Servo - from 2012 onwards, which served as a crucial testbed for Rust language features. Rust and Servo had multiple contributors at Samsung, Hoare acknowledges, and Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Huawei, and others "hired key developers and contributed hardware and management resources to its ongoing development." Rust itself "sits atop LLVM" (developed by researchers at UIUC and later funded by Apple, Qualcomm, Google, ARM, Huawei, and many other organizations), while Rust's safe memory model "derives directly from decades of research in academia, as well as academic-industrial projects like Cyclone, built by AT&T Bell Labs and Cornell." And there were contributions from "interns, researchers, and professors at top academic research programming-language departments, including CMU, NEU, IU, MPI-SWS, and many others." JetBrains and the Rust-Analyzer OpenCollective essentially paid for two additional interactive-incremental reimplementations of the Rust frontend to provide language services to IDEs - critical tools for productive, day-to-day programming. Hundreds of companies and other institutions contributed time and money to evaluate Rust for production, write Rust programs, test them, file bugs related to them, and pay their staff to fix or improve any shortcomings they found. Last but very much not least: Rust has had thousands and thousands of volunteers donating years of their labor to the project. While it might seem tempting to think this is all "free", it's being paid for! Just less visibly than if it were part of a corporate budget. All this investment, despite the long time horizon, paid off. We're all better for it. He looks ahead with hope for a future with new contributors, "steady and diversified streams of support," and continued reliability and compatability (including "investment in ever-greater reliability technology, including the many emerging formal methods projects built on Rust.") And he closes by saying Rust's "sustained, controlled, and frankly astonishing throughput of work" has "set a new standard for what good tools, good processes, and reliable infrastructure software should be like. "Everyone involved should be proud of what they've built."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Australia's first orbital-class rocket launch was delayed after the nose cone of Gilmour Space's Eris rocket unexpectedly detached due to an electrical fault during final preparations. Although no damage occurred and no payload was onboard, the company is postponing the launch to investigate and replace the fairing before attempting another test flight. Ars Technica reports: Gilmour, the Australian startup that developed the Eris rocket, announced the setback in a post to the company's social media accounts Thursday. "During final launch preparations last night, an electrical fault triggered the system that opens the rocket's nose cone (the payload fairing)," Gilmour posted on LinkedIn. "This happened before any fuel was loaded into the vehicle. Most importantly, no one was injured, and early checks show no damage to the rocket or the launch pad." Gilmour was gearing up for a launch attempt from a privately owned spaceport in the Australian state of Queensland early Friday, local time (Thursday in the United States). The company's Eris rocket, which was poised for its first test flight, stands about 82 feet (25 meters) tall with its payload fairing intact. It's designed to haul a payload of about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit. While Gilmour didn't release any photos of the accident, a company spokesperson confirmed to Ars that the payload fairing "deployed" after the unexpected electrical issue triggered the separation system. Payload fairings are like clamshells that enclose the satellites mounted to the top of their launch vehicle, protecting them from weather on the launch pad and from airflow as the rocket accelerates to supersonic speeds. Once in space, the rocket releases the payload shroud, usually in two halves. There were no satellites aboard the rocket as Gilmour prepared for its first test flight. The report notes that the Eris rocket is aiming to "become the first all-Australian launcher to reach orbit."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA engineers have successfully revived Voyager 1's backup thrusters, unused since 2004 and once considered defunct. Space.com reports: This remarkable feat became necessary because the spacecraft's primary thrusters, which control its orientation, have been degrading due to residue buildup. If its thrusters fail completely, Voyager 1 could lose its ability to point its antenna toward Earth, therefore cutting off communication with Earth after nearly 50 years of operation. To make matters more urgent, the team faced a strict deadline while trying to remedy the thruster situation. After May 4, the Earth-based antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 -- and its twin, Voyager 2 -- was scheduled to go offline for months of upgrades. This would have made timely intervention impossible. To solve the problem, NASA's team had to reactivate Voyager 1's long-dormant backup roll thrusters and then attempt to restart the heaters that keep them operational. If the star tracker drifted too far from its guide star during this process, the roll thrusters would automatically fire as a safety measure -- but if the heaters weren't back online by then, firing the thrusters could cause a dangerous pressure spike. So, the team had to precisely realign the star tracker before the thrusters engaged. Because Voyager is so incredibly distant, the team faced an agonizing 23-hour wait for the radio signal to travel all the way back to Earth. If the test had failed, Voyager might have already been in serious trouble. Then, on March 20, their patience was finally rewarded when Voyager responded perfectly to their commands. Within 20 minutes of receiving the signal, the team saw the thruster heaters' temperature soar -- a clear sign that the backup thrusters were firing as planned. "It was such a glorious moment. Team morale was very high that day," Todd Barber, the mission's propulsion lead at JPL, said in the statement. "These thrusters were considered dead. And that was a legitimate conclusion. It's just that one of our engineers had this insight that maybe there was this other possible cause, and it was fixable. It was yet another miracle save for Voyager."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: U.S. health officials on Friday endorsed the first blood test that can help diagnose Alzheimer's and identify patients who may benefit from drugs that can modestly slow the memory-destroying disease. The test can aid doctors in determining whether a patient's memory problems are due to Alzheimer's or a number of other medical conditions that can cause cognitive difficulties. The Food and Drug Administration cleared it for patients 55 and older who are showing early signs of the disease. The new test, from Fujirebio Diagnostics, Inc., identifies a sticky brain plaque, known as beta-amyloid, that is a key marker for Alzheimer's. Previously, the only FDA-approved methods for detecting amyloid were invasive tests of spinal fluid or expensive PET scans. The lower costs and convenience of a blood test could also help expand use of two new drugs, Leqembi and Kisunla, which have been shown to slightly slow the progression of Alzheimer's by clearing amyloid from the brain. Doctors are required to test patients for the plaque before prescribing the drugs, which require regular IV infusions. [...] A number of specialty hospitals and laboratories have already developed their own in-house tests for amyloid in recent years. But those tests aren't reviewed by the FDA and generally aren't covered by insurance. Doctors have also had little data to judge which tests are reliable and accurate, leading to an unregulated marketplace that some have called a "wild west." Several larger diagnostic and drug companies are also developing their own tests for FDA approval, including Roche, Eli Lilly and C2N Diagnostics. The tests can only be ordered by a doctor and aren't intended for people who don't yet have any symptoms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has released Command Palette, an enhanced version of its PowerToys Run launcher introduced five years ago. The utility, aimed at power users and developers, provides quick access to applications, files, calculations, and system commands through a Spotlight-like interface. Command Palette integrates the previously separate Window Walker functionality for switching between open windows and supports launching command prompts, executing web searches, and navigating folder structures. Unlike its predecessor, the new launcher offers full customization via extensions, allowing users to implement additional commands beyond default capabilities. Available through the PowerToys application since early April, Command Palette can be triggered using Win+Alt+Space after installationRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Walmart is preparing for a future where AI agents shop on behalf of consumers by adapting its systems to serve both humans and autonomous bots. As major players like Visa and PayPal also invest in agentic commerce, Walmart is positioning itself as a leader by developing its own AI agents and supporting broader industry integration. PYMNTS reports: Instead of scrolling through ads or comparing product reviews, future consumers may rely on digital assistants, like OpenAI's Operator, to manage their shopping lists, from replenishing household essentials to selecting the best TV based on personal preferences, according to the report (paywalled). "It will be different," Walmart U.S. Chief Technology Officer Hari Vasudev said, per the report. "Advertising will have to evolve." The emergence of AI-generated summaries in search results has already altered the way consumers gather product information, the report said. However, autonomous shopping agents represent a bigger transformation. These bots could not only find products but also finalize purchases, including payments, without the user ever lifting a finger. [...] Retail experts say agentic commerce will require companies to overhaul how they market and present their products online, the WSJ report said. They may need to redesign product pages and pricing strategies to cater to algorithmic buyers. The customer relationship could shift away from retailers if purchases are completed through third-party agents. [...] To prepare, Walmart is developing its own AI shopping agents, accessible through its website and app, according to the WSJ report. These bots can already handle basic tasks like reordering groceries, and they're being trained to respond to broader prompts, such as planning a themed birthday party. Walmart is working toward a future in which outside agents can seamlessly communicate with the retailer's own systems -- something Vasudev told the WSJ he expects to be governed by industry-wide protocols that are still under development. [...] Third-party shopping bots may also act independently, crawling retailers' websites much like consumers browse stores without engaging sales associates, the WSJ report said. In those cases, the retailer has little control over how its products are evaluated. Whether consumers instruct their AI to shop specifically at Walmart or ask for the best deal available, the outcomes will increasingly be shaped by algorithms, per the report. Operator, for example, considers search ranking, sponsored content and user preferences when making recommendations. That's a far cry from how humans shop. Bots don't respond to eye-catching visuals or emotionally driven branding in the same way people do. This means retailers must optimize their content not just for people but for machine readers as well, the report said. Pricing strategies could also shift as companies may need to make rapid pricing decisions and determine whether it's worth offering AI agents exclusive discounts to keep them from choosing a competitor's lower-priced item, according to the report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, AWS CEO Matt Garman said the UK must expand nuclear energy to meet the soaring electricity demands of AI-driven data centers. From the report: Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is part of the retail giant Amazon, plans to spend 8 billion pounds on new data centers in the UK over the next four years. Matt Garman, chief executive of AWS, told the BBC nuclear is a "great solution" to data centres' energy needs as "an excellent source of zero carbon, 24/7 power." AWS is the single largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world and has funded more than 40 renewable solar and wind farm projects in the UK. The UK's 500 data centres currently consume 2.5% of all electricity in the UK, while Ireland's 80 hoover up 21% of the country's total power, with those numbers projected to hit 6% and 30% respectively by 2030. The body that runs the UK's power grid estimates that by 2050 data centers alone will use nearly as much energy as all industrial users consume today. In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Matt Garman said that future energy needs were central to AWS planning process. "It's something we plan many years out," he said. "We invest ahead. I think the world is going to have to build new technologies. I believe nuclear is a big part of that particularly as we look 10 years out."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new set of 27 Linux kernel patches introduces a "Swap Tables" mechanism aimed at enhancing virtual memory management. As Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports, "the hope is for lower memory use, higher performance, dynamic swap allocation and growth, greater extensibility, and other improvements over the existing swap code within the Linux kernel." From the report: Engineer Kairui Song with Tencent posted the Swap Table patch series today for implementing the design ideas discussed in recent months by kernel developers. The results are very exciting so let's get straight to it: "With this series, swap subsystem will have a ~20-30% performance gain from basic sequential swap to heavy workloads, for both 4K and mTHP folios. The idle memory usage is already much lower, the average memory consumption is still the same or will also be even lower (with further works). And this enables many more future optimizations, with better defined swap operations." "The patches also clean-up and address various historical issues with the SWAP subsystem," notes Larabel. Context: In Linux, swap space acts as an overflow for RAM, storing inactive memory pages on disk to free up RAM for active processes. Traditional swap mechanisms are limited in flexibility and performance. The proposed "Swap Tables" aim to address these issues by allowing more efficient and dynamic management of swap space, potentially leading to better system responsiveness and resource utilization.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Apple's next step for CarPlay is a version you'll only get to try if you're a fan of luxury cruisers or a popular spy film franchise. CarPlay Ultra, with its new suite of exclusive features like custom gauges, is coming first to Aston Martin vehicles with the largest, most blaring dash screens. The more advanced version of CarPlay won't necessarily fix the lingering issues the software has with some modern vehicles. Segmenting CarPlay into newer and older systems may make things worse for those with aging cars. Apple's CarPlay Ultra includes a new kind of dashboard alongside real-time information that can include car diagnostics -- like tire pressure -- or dashboard gauges. You should be able to control temperature and other car-based features as well. The new version of the software includes options for dashboards or console screens, and it will work with on-screen controls, Siri, and "physical buttons." CarPlay Ultra was supposed to launch in 2024, but Apple missed its release date by close to half a year. The new feature suite was first revealed at WWDC in 2022, where Apple promised a "unified and consistent" suite of informational dashboards offering more control over radio and AC "without ever leaving the CarPlay experience." Last year, Apple showed off "the next generation" of its car-focused app that included custom gauges and other layouts made for a variety of automakers. It lacked much of the full-width, busy design of the initial iteration from two years prior. [...] To entice more manufacturers, CarPlay Ultra is supposed to adapt to multiple screen sizes thanks to a modular layout system with more options for companies to adhere to their own brand identity. Apple promised carmakers they could resize and reorient gauges on a dashboard like you do widgets on your iPhone. Users can change up various gauges on the dash and bring up apps like Apple Music or Maps in between your temperature gauge and speedometer. Aston Martin showed off these features on an Aston Martin DBX, a luxury SUV that costs more than $250,000. Apple said these features should be coming to the U.S. and Canada first, with more Aston Martins getting these features through software updates from local dealerships. Apple said its still trying to bring these features to brands like Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis. Maybe we'll see Ultra on a vehicle regular folk can afford. "The customizable dashboards are a way for Apple to let each carmaker have their say in how their vehicles look, but they won't help all those who are stuck with regular CarPlay on their aging beaters," concludes Gizmodo's Kyle Barr. "The new version will inevitably create a distinction between those with new software and others with legacy software..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MIT has formally requested the withdrawal of a preprint paper on AI and scientific discovery due to serious concerns about the integrity and validity of its data and findings. It didn't provide specific details on what it believes is wrong with the paper. From a post: "Earlier this year, the COD conducted a confidential internal review based upon allegations it received regarding certain aspects of this paper. While student privacy laws and MIT policy prohibit the disclosure of the outcome of this review, we are writing to inform you that MIT has no confidence in the provenance, reliability or validity of the data and has no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper. Based upon this finding, we also believe that the inclusion of this paper in arXiv may violate arXiv's Code of Conduct. "Our understanding is that only authors of papers appearing on arXiv can submit withdrawal requests. We have directed the author to submit such a request, but to date, the author has not done so. Therefore, in an effort to clarify the research record, MIT respectfully request that the paper be marked as withdrawn from arXiv as soon as possible." Preprints, by definition, have not yet undergone peer review. MIT took this step in light of the publication's prominence in the research conversation and because it was a formal step it could take to mitigate the effects of misconduct. The author is no longer at MIT. [...] "We are making this information public because we are concerned that, even in its non-published form, the paper is having an impact on discussions and projections about the effects of AI on science. Ensuring an accurate research record is important to MIT. We therefore would like to set the record straight and share our view that at this point the findings reported in this paper should not be relied on in academic or public discussions of these topics." The paper in question, titled "Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation" and authored by Aidan Toner-Rodgers, investigated the effects of introducing an AI-driven materials discovery tool to 1,018 scientists in a U.S. R&D lab. The study reported that AI-assisted researchers discovered 44% more materials, filed 39% more patents, and achieved a 17% increase in product innovation. These gains were primarily attributed to AI automating 57% of idea-generation tasks, allowing top-performing scientists to focus on evaluating AI-generated suggestions effectively. However, the benefits were unevenly distributed; lower-performing scientists saw minimal improvements, and 82% of participants reported decreased job satisfaction due to reduced creativity and skill utilization. The Wall Street Journal reported on MIT's statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has launched Codex, a powerful AI coding agent in ChatGPT that autonomously handles tasks like writing features, fixing bugs, and testing code in a cloud-based environment. TechCrunch reports: Codex is powered by codex-1, a version of the company's o3 AI reasoning model optimized for software engineering tasks. OpenAI says codex-1 produces "cleaner" code than o3, adheres more precisely to instructions, and will iteratively run tests on its code until passing results are achieved. The Codex agent runs in a sandboxed, virtual computer in the cloud. By connecting with GitHub, Codex's environment can come preloaded with your code repositories. OpenAI says the AI coding agent will take anywhere from one to 30 minutes to write simple features, fix bugs, answer questions about your codebase, and run tests, among other tasks. Codex can handle multiple software engineering tasks simultaneously, says OpenAI, and it doesn't limit users from accessing their computer and browser while it's running. Codex is rolling out starting today to subscribers to ChatGPT Pro, Enterprise, and Team. OpenAI says users will have "generous access" to Codex to start, but in the coming weeks, the company will implement rate limits for the tool. Users will then have the option to purchase additional credits to use Codex, an OpenAI spokesperson tells TechCrunch. OpenAI plans to expand Codex access to ChatGPT Plus and Edu users soon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Meta thinks there's no reason to carry on with its defense after the Federal Trade Commission closed its monopoly case, and the company has moved to end the trial early by claiming that the FTC utterly failed to prove its case. "The FTC has no proof that Meta has monopoly power," Meta's motion for judgment (PDF) filed Thursday said, "and therefore the court should rule in favor of Meta." According to Meta, the FTC failed to show evidence that "the overall quality of Meta's apps has declined" or that the company shows too many ads to users. Meta says that's "fatal" to the FTC's case that the company wielded monopoly power to pursue more ad revenue while degrading user experience over time (an Internet trend known as "enshittification"). And on top of allegedly showing no evidence of "ad load, privacy, integrity, and features" degradation on Meta apps, Meta argued there's no precedent for an antitrust claim rooted in this alleged harm. "Meta knows of no case finding monopoly power based solely on a claimed degradation in product quality, and the FTC has cited none," Meta argued. Meta has maintained throughout the trial that its users actually like seeing ads. In the company's recent motion, Meta argued that the FTC provided no insights into what "the right number of ads" should be, "let alone" provide proof that "Meta showed more ads" than it would in a competitive market where users could easily switch services if ad load became overwhelming. Further, Meta argued that the FTC did not show evidence that users sharing friends-and-family content were shown more ads. Meta noted that it "does not profit by showing more ads to users who do not click on them," so it only shows more ads to users who click ads. Meta also insisted that there's "nothing but speculation" showing that Instagram or WhatsApp would have been better off or grown into rivals had Meta not acquired them. The company claimed that without Meta's resources, Instagram may have died off. Meta noted that Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom testified that his app was "pretty broken and duct-taped" together, making it "vulnerable to spam" before Meta bought it. Rather than enshittification, what Meta did to Instagram could be considered "a consumer-welfare bonanza," Meta argued, while dismissing "smoking gun" emails from Mark Zuckerberg discussing buying Instagram to bury it as "legally irrelevant." Dismissing these as "a few dated emails," Meta argued that "efforts to litigate Mr. Zuckerberg's state of mind before the acquisition in 2012 are pointless." "What matters is what Meta did," Meta argued, which was pump Instagram with resources that allowed it "to 'thrive' -- adding many new features, attracting hundreds of millions and then billions of users, and monetizing with great success." In the case of WhatsApp, Meta argued that nobody thinks WhatsApp had any intention to pivot to social media when the founders testified that their goal was to never add social features, preferring to offer a simple, clean messaging app. And Meta disputed any claim that it feared Google might buy WhatsApp as the basis for creating a Facebook rival, arguing that "the sole Meta witness to (supposedly) learn of Google's acquisition efforts testified that he did not have that worry." In sum: A ruling in Meta's favor could prevent a breakup of its apps, while a denial would push the trial toward a possible order to divest Instagram and WhatsApp.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Communications Commission has approved Verizon's $9.6 billion acquisition of Frontier Communications, valuing the Dallas-based company at $20 billion including debt. The approval comes after Verizon agreed to scale back diversity initiatives to comply with Trump administration policies. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who previously threatened to block mergers over DEI practices, praised the deal for its potential to "unleash billions in new infrastructure builds" and "accelerate the transition away from old, copper line networks to modern, high-speed ones." The acquisition positions America's largest phone carrier to expand its high-speed internet footprint across Frontier's 25-state network. Verizon plans to deploy fiber to more than one million U.S. homes annually following the transaction.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Charter Communications announced a $21.9 billion deal Friday to acquire Cox Communications, combining two major cable providers as they face mounting competition from wireless carriers offering 5G home internet. The transaction merges Charter's 31.4 million customers with Cox's 6.3 million, creating a larger entity to defend against aggressive expansion from Verizon and T-Mobile. Charter lost 60,000 internet customers in the March quarter, underscoring the industry's vulnerability as traditional cable broadband growth stalls. Wireless carriers have successfully marketed their fixed wireless access services at lower price points while delivering competitive speeds, turning what was once cable's most profitable segment into contested territory.The combined company, which will be headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, plans to adopt the Cox Communications name within a year of closing while retaining Spectrum as its consumer-facing brand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Health authorities in densely-populated Hong Kong and Singapore have warned that Covid-19 cases are spiking, as a resurgent wave spreads through Asia. Bloomberg: The virus' activity in Hong Kong is now "quite high," Albert Au, head of the Communicable Disease Branch of the city's Center for Health Protection, told local media this week. The percentage of respiratory samples testing Covid-positive in Hong Kong recently reached its highest in a year. Severe cases -- including deaths -- also reached its highest level in about a year to 31 in the week through May 3, the center's data shows. While the resurgence is yet to match the infection peaks seen in the past two years, rising viral load found in sewage water and Covid-related medical consultations and hospitalizations suggest the virus is actively spreading in the city of over 7 million people. Rival financial hub Singapore is also on Covid alert. The city-state's health ministry released its first update on infection numbers in almost a year this month, as the estimated number of cases jumped 28% to 14,200 in the week through May 3 from the previous seven days while daily hospitalization rose around 30%. Singapore now only provides case updates when there is a noticeable spike.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Boys and young men in the United States are experiencing declining outcomes in education, mental health, and transition to adulthood compared to their female counterparts, according to comprehensive data analyzed by researchers. High school graduation rates for boys stand at 83% versus 89% for girls, while college enrollment of recent male high school graduates has barely increased to 57% from 54% in 1960, compared to women's surge to 66% from 38% in the same period. Mental health indicators show 28% of boys ages 3-17 have mental, emotional, behavioral or developmental problems versus 23% of girls. Male suicide rates for ages 15-24 have nearly doubled to 21 per 100,000 in 2023 from 11 in 1968. Labor force participation among men ages 25-54 has declined to 89% from 94% in 1975, while women's participation rose to 78% from 55%. Additionally, 19% of men ages 25-34 now live with parents, compared to 13% of women. "The contemporary American economy is not rewarding a lot of the characteristics associated with men and masculinity," said Robb Willer, professor of sociology at Stanford.Read more of this story at Slashdot.