• Workstation Owner Sadly Marks the End-of-Life for HP-UX

    Wednesday marked the end of support for the last and final version of HP-UX, writes OSNews.
    They call it "the end of another vestige of the heyday of the commercial UNIX variants, a reign ended by cheap x86 hardware and the increasing popularisation of Linux."
    I have two HP-UX 11i v1 PA-RISC workstations, one of them being my pride and joy: an HP c8000, the last and fastest PA-RISC workstation HP ever made, back in 2005. It's a behemoth of a machine with two dual-core PA-8900 processors running
  • 39 Million Californians Can Now Legally Demand Data Brokers Delete Their Personal Data

    While California's residents have had the right to demand companies stop collecting/selling their data since 2020, doing so used to require a laborious opting out with each individual company," reports TechCrunch.
    But now Californians can make "a single request that more than 500 registered data brokers delete their information" — using the Delete Requests and Opt-Out Platform (or DROP):Once DROP users verify that they are California residents, they can submit a deletion request that will
  • North Dakota Law Included Fake Critical Minerals Using Lawyers' Last Names

    North Dakota passed a law last May to promote development of rare earth minerals in the state. But the law's language apparently also includes two fake mineral names, according to the Bismarck Tribune, "that appear to be inspired by coal company lawyers who worked on the bill."
    The inclusion of fictional substances is being called an embarrassment by one state official, a possible practical joke by coal industry leaders and mystifying by the lawmakers who worked on the bill, the North Dakota Mon
  • Are Hybrid Cars Helping America Transition to Electric Vehicles?

    America's electric car subsidies expired at the end of September, notes Bloomberg. Yet in those last three months, "while fully electric cars and trucks made up 10% of all auto sales in the US... another 15% of transactions were for hybrid vehicles."The EV market is slowing in the U.S., but analysts expect hybrid sales to continue accelerating. CarGurus Inc., a digital listings platform that covers most of the US auto market, predicts nearly one in six new cars next year will be a hybrid, as aut
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  • Fleischer Studios Criticized for Claiming Betty Boop is Not Public Domain

    Here it is — Betty Boop's first appearance, which became public domain on Thursday. It's a 60-second song halfway through a longer cartoon about a restaurant titled Dizzy Dishes. (The first scene makes it clear this is a restaurant of anthropomorphized animals — which explains why the as-yet-unnamed character has floppy dog ears...)So Fleischer Studios has now warned that claiming Betty Boop is public domain"is actually not true."Very often, different versions of a character that hav
  • 'Fish Mouth' Filter Removes 99% of Microplastics From Laundry Waste

    "The ancient evolution of fish mouths could help solve a modern source of plastic pollution," writes ScienceAlert."Inspired by these natural filtration systems, scientists in Germany have invented a way to remove 99 percent of plastic particles from water. It's based on how some fish filter-feed to eat microscopic prey."The research team has already filed a patent in Germany, and in the future, they hope their creation will help curb a ubiquitous form of plastic pollution that many are unaware o
  • A Drug-Resistant 'Superbug' Fungus Infected 7,000 Americans in 2025

    An anonymous reader shared this report from the Independent:Candida auris, a type of invasive yeast that can cause deadly infections in people with weakened immune systems, has infected at least 7,000 people [in 2025] across 27 U.S. states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The fungus, which can spread easily in healthcare settings such as hospitals and nursing homes, is gaining virulence and spreading at an "alarming" rate, the CDC says. Some strains of the
  • Microsoft's Risky Bet That Windows Can Become The Platform for AI Agents

    "Microsoft is hoping that Windows can once again serve as the platform where it all takes off," reports GeekWire:A new framework called Agent Launchers, introduced in December as a preview in the latest Windows Insider build, lets developers register agents directly with the operating system. They can describe an agent through what's known as a manifest, which then lets the agent show up in the Windows taskbar, inside Microsoft Copilot, and across other apps... "We are now entering a phase where
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  • Trump Organization's $499 Smartphone Delayed Again, Now Until the End of January

    Last June the Trump organization announced sales of a $499 "T1" smartphone with a gold-colored case. But though they originally were scheduled for release in August, this week a customer service representative for the wireless carrier told CBS News the device will be pushed back again, now until the end of January, "attributing the delay to the recent U.S. government shutdown."Some context from The Independent:
    Shortly after the phone was first announced, language describing it as "Made in the U
  • Archboot Adds COSMIC Desktop as a New Install and Rescue Option

    An anonymous reader shared this report from the Linux news site Linuxiac:
    Archboot, a guided, user-friendly, menu-driven installer for Arch Linux that automates much of the traditional manual installation process (while still allowing advanced users to intervene when needed), has added the COSMIC desktop environment as a new selectable option. The change is part of Archboot's development cycle leading up to the 2026.01 release and is already available in the latest tagged builds. With COSMIC now
  • Furiosa's Energy-Efficient 'NPU' AI Chips Start Mass Production This Month, Challenging Nvidia

    The Wall Street Journal profiles "the startup that is now one of a handful of chip makers nipping at the heels of Nvidia."Furiosa's AI chip is dubbed "RNGD" — short for renegade — and slated to start mass production this month. Valued at nearly $700 million based on its most recent fundraising, Furiosa has attracted interest from big tech firms. Last year, Meta Platforms attempted to acquire it, though the startup declined the offer. OpenAI used a Furiosa chip for a recent demonstrat
  • The US Effort to Break China's Rare-Earth Monopoly

    The New York Times checks in on U.S. university researchers and start-ups trying to create domestic rare-earth processing facility:
    There is too little money to be made in rare earths for the elements to be of much interest to mining giants, so the challenge of reestablishing a domestic industry has fallen to small companies like Phoenix Tailings, a Boston-area startup that runs the metal-making plant in Exeter, New Hampshire. A handful of other companies in the United States are processing rare
  • Reddit Surges in Popularity to Overtake TikTok in the UK - Thanks to Google's Algorithm?

    Reddit "has overtaken TikTok as Britain's fourth most-visited social media service," reports the Guardian:The platform has undergone huge growth over the last two years, with an 88% increase in the proportion of UK internet users it reaches. Three in five Brits online now encounter the site, up from a third in 2023, according to Ofcom. Its popularity is rising fastest with younger internet users. It is now the sixth most visited organisation of any kind by UK users aged between 18 and 24, up fro
  • New Tesla Video Shows Tesla Semi Electric Truck Charging at 1.2 MW

    An anonymous reader shared this report from Electrek:
    Tesla has released a new video showing a Tesla Semi truck charging at a massive 1.2 megawatts (MW), finally giving us a clear look at the charging speeds that will enable long-haul electric trucking...>
    Tesla claimed the Semi would be able to charge 70% of its range in 30 minutes. For a truck with a 500-mile range and an estimated battery pack of around 800-900 kWh, that requires an incredibly high power output, well beyond the 250 kW or e
  • What Happened When Alaska's Court System Tried Answering Questions with an AI Chatbot?

    An AI chatbot to answer probate questions from Alaska residents "was supposed to be a three-month project," said Aubrie Souza, a consultant with the National Center for State Courts told NBC News. "We are now at well over a year and three months, but that's all because of the due diligence that was required to get it right.""With a project like this, we need to be 100% accurate, and that's really difficult with this technology," said Stacey Marz, the administrative director of the Alaska Court S
  • Google's $250M Deal with California to Fund Newsrooms May Be Stalled

    Remember how California's government negotiated a 2024 deal where Google contributed millions to California's local newsrooms to offset advertisers moving to the search engine?
    "A year after it was cemented — and billed as a model that could succeed where entire countries and continents had fallen short — the agreement is tangled in budget cuts, bureaucratic infighting and unresolved questions about who controls the money," reports Politico, "leaving journalists empty-handed and cast
  • Has Microsoft Discontinued Offline Activation of Windows?

    An anonymous reader shared
    this report from Neowin:Offline Windows activation has been possible to do using the phone. However, it looks like Microsoft has quietly killed off that method as users online have found that they are no longer able to activate the OS using it... [As documented by Windows user Ben Kleinberg on his YouTube channel], Now when trying to activate the OS by attempting to call the phone number for Microsoft Product Activation, an automated voice response says the following:
  • The US Invaded Venezuela and Captured Nicolás Maduro - But ChatGPT and Perplexity Disagree

    Why did the U.S. invade Venezuela and capture its leader Nicolás Maduro? "If you asked ChatGPT about it this morning, it told you that youâ(TM)re making it up," Wired reported Saturday:
    WIRED asked leading chatbots ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini the same question a little before 9 am ET. In all cases, we used the free, default version of the service, since that's what the majority of users experience. We also asked AI search platform Perplexity, which advertises "accurate, trusted, and
  • SpaceX Lowering Orbits of 4,400 Starlink Satellites for Safety's Sake

    "Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety," announced Michael Nicolls, Starlink's vice president of engineering:"We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tightly coordinated with other operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM. Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in
  • Could AI Bring Us Four-Day Workweeks?

    "While a growing number of U.S. employers are mandating workers return to the office five days a week," reports the Washington Post, "some companies say AI is saving them enough time to launch or sustain a four-day workweek.
    "More companies may move toward a shortened workweek, several executives and researchers predict, as workers, especially those in younger generations, continue to push for better work-life balance." And "several companies — especially those with a largely remote workfo
  • Airlines Cancel Hundreds of Flights After U.S. Attack on Venezuela

    CNBC reports that U.S. airlines have "canceled hundreds of flights to airports in Puerto Rico and Aruba, according to flight tallies from FlightAware and carriers' sites."
    JetBlue, Southwest, and American Airlines were among the multiple airlines showing cancelled flights, which "included close to 300 flights to and from San Juan, Puerto Rico's Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, more than 40% of the day's schedule, according to FlightAware."
    Airlines canceled flights throughou
  • Interference With America's GPS System 'Has Grown Dramatically'

    86 aircraft were affected by an incident in Denver ,and 256 more in Dallas-Fort Worth, America's Federal Aviation Admistrationtold the Washington Post:The pilots flying into Denver International Airport could tell something was wrong. In urgent calls to air traffic controllers, they reported that the Global Positioning System was going haywire, forcing them to rely on backup navigation systems for more than a day. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning to air traffic in the area. E
  • Jobs Vulnerable to AI Replacement Actually 'Thriving, Not Dying Out', Report Suggests

    AI startups now outnumber all publicly traded U.S. companies, according to a year-end note to investors from economists at Vanguard.
    And yet that report also suggest the jobs most susceptible to replacement by AI "are actually thriving, not dying out," writes Forbes:
    "The approximately 100 occupations most exposed to AI automation are actually outperforming the rest of the labor market in terms of job growth and real wage increases," the Vanguard report revealed. "This suggests that current AI s
  • After Half a Decade, the Russian Space Station Segment Stopped Leaking

    A small section of the International Space Station that has experienced persistent leaks for years appears to have stopped venting atmosphere into space. ArsTechnica: The leaks were caused by microscopic structural cracks inside the small PrK module on the Russian segment of the space station, which lies between a Progress spacecraft airlock and the Zvezda module. The problem has been a long-running worry for Russian and US operators of the station, especially after the rate of leakage doubled i
  • NYC Phone Ban Reveals Some Students Can't Read Clocks

    New York City's statewide smartphone ban that went into effect this fall has been largely successful at getting students to focus in class and socialize at lunch, but teachers across the city have discovered an unexpected side effect: many teenagers cannot read analog clocks. "The constant refrain is 'Miss, what time is it?'" said Madi Mornhinweg, a high school English teacher in Manhattan, who eventually started responding by asking students to identify the big hand and little hand themselves.
  • Economic Inequality Does Not Equate To Poor Well-Being or Mental Health, Massive Meta-Analysis Finds

    A new sweeping meta-analysis has found no reliable link between economic inequality and well-being or mental health, challenging a long-held assumption that has shaped public health policy discussions for decades. The study, led by Nicolas Sommet at the University of Lausanne and Annahita Ehsan at the University of British Columbia, synthesized 168 studies involving more than 11 million participants across most world regions. The researchers screened thousands of scientific papers and contacted
  • Dell's XPS Brand May Return Just a Year After Being Retired, Report Claims

    Dell is planning to bring back its XPS laptop branding, according to a news report, just one year after the company retired the storied name in favor of a simplified naming scheme that organized its consumer and professional lineup into Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max tiers. VideoCardz reported this week that Dell has presented an updated XPS lineup during prebriefings ahead of CES 2026, though the company has not officially confirmed the badge's return.
    The reported reversal would come after De
  • Microsoft CEO: Time To Move 'Beyond the Arguments of Slop vs Sophistication'

    The tech industry needs to move "beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication" and develop a new "theory of the mind" that accounts for humans now equipped with "cognitive amplifier tools," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a year-end reflection blog. The post frames 2026 as yet another "pivotal year for AI" -- but one that "feels different in a few notable ways." Nadella claims the industry has moved past the initial discovery phase and is now "beginning to distinguish between 'spectacle'
  • MTV's Music-Only Channels Go Off the Air

    An anonymous reader shares a report: MTV shut down many of its last dedicated 24-hour music channels Dec. 31. The move, announced back in October, affected channels around the world, with the U.K. seeing five different MTV stations going dark. These include MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. As Consequence notes, MTV Music -- which launched in 2011 -- notably ended its run by airing the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," the first visual to air when MTV launched in the Uni
  • Google AI Overviews Put People at Risk of Harm With Misleading Health Advice

    A Guardian investigation published Friday found that Google's AI Overviews -- the generative AI summaries that appear at the top of search results -- are serving up inaccurate health information that experts say puts people at risk of harm. The investigation, which came after health groups, charities and professionals raised concerns, uncovered several cases of misleading medical advice despite Google's claims that the feature is "helpful" and "reliable."
    In one case described by experts as "rea
  • Trump Signs Defense Bill Prohibiting China-Based Engineers in Pentagon IT Work

    President Donald Trump signed into law this month a measure that prohibits anyone based in China and other adversarial countries from accessing the Pentagon's cloud computing systems. From a report: The ban, which is tucked inside the $900 billion defense policy law, was enacted in response to a ProPublica investigation this year that exposed how Microsoft used China-based engineers to service the Defense Department's computer systems for nearly a decade -- a practice that left some of the count
  • AMD Closes in on Intel in Latest Steam Hardware Survey

    AMD's share of processors among Steam users climbed to 47.27% in December 2025, a 4.66% jump in a single month that continues the company's steady encroachment on Intel's once-dominant position in the gaming CPU market. Intel held roughly 77% of the Steam Hardware Survey five years ago, and that lead has eroded considerably as AMD broke the 40% threshold in the third quarter of 2025 and kept climbing.
    The gains came despite an ongoing memory shortage that has pushed DDR5 prices to record highs -
  • Reading is a Vice

    The International Publishers Association spent the past year promoting the slogan "Democracy depends on reading," but Atlantic senior editor Adam Kirsch argues that this utilitarian pitch fundamentally misunderstands why people become readers in the first place.
    The most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that less than half of Americans read a single book in 2022, and only 38% read a novel or short story. A University of Florida and University College London study found dai
  • A Decade of BBC Question Time Data Reveals Imbalance in Journalist Guests

    A new study [PDF] from Cardiff University analyzing a decade of the popular topical debate programme BBC Question Time found that the broadcaster's flagship political debate show relies disproportionately on journalists and pundits from right-wing media outlets, particularly those connected to The Spectator magazine.
    Researcher Matt Walsh examined 391 editions and 1,885 panellist appearances between 2014 and 2024. Journalists from right-leaning publications accounted for 59.59% of media guest sl
  • 'Results Were Fudged': Departing Meta AI Chief Confirms Llama 4 Benchmark Manipulation

    Yann LeCun, Meta's outgoing chief AI scientist and one of the pioneers credited with laying the groundwork for modern AI, has acknowledged that the company's Llama 4 language model had its benchmark results manipulated before its April 2025 release. In an interview with the Financial Times, LeCun said the "results were fudged a little bit" and that the team "used different models for different benchmarks to give better results."
    Llama 4 was widely criticized as a flop at launch, and the company
  • Ghana Tries To Regulate Online Prophecies

    Ghana has decided to deal with the viral spread of prophetic content on social media by setting up an official reporting mechanism for sensitive predictions, a move triggered by the August 2025 helicopter crash that killed the country's defence and environment ministers along with six others.
    After the accident, TikTok clips circulated showing pastors who claimed to have foreseen the disaster before it happened. Elvis Ankrah, the presidential envoy for inter-faith and ecumenical relations, now a
  • The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Prints Final Newspaper, Shifts To All-Digital Format

    CBS News: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has printed its final newspaper, marking the end of a 157-year chapter in Georgia history and officially transitioning the longtime publication into a fully digital news outlet.
    The front-page story of the final print edition asks a fitting question: "What is the future of local media in Atlanta?" The historic last issue is also being sold for $8, a significant increase from the typical $2.00 price.
    Wednesday, Dec. 31, marks the last day The AJC will be
  • How Nokia Went From iPhone Victim To $1 Billion Nvidia Deal

    Nokia, the Finnish company whose iconic ringtone was played an estimated 1.8 billion times daily at the height of its mobile phone dominance and whose 3310 "brick" sold 126 million units, has reinvented itself again -- this time as a key piece of AI infrastructure. In October, Nvidia announced a $1 billion investment in Nokia and a strategic partnership to incorporate AI into telecommunications networks.
    The company that was once worth $335 billion and controlled more than a quarter of the globa
  • ASUS Announces Price Hikes Starting January 5

    ASUS has informed its partners that prices on certain products will increase starting January 5, just days before the company is expected to unveil new hardware at CES. In a letter dated December 30 and obtained by Digitimes, the Taiwanese manufacturer pointed to rising costs for memory and storage components as the primary driver behind the adjustment.
    The company specifically called out DRAM, NAND, and SSD pricing pressure stemming from what it described as "structural volatility" in the globa
  • Australia's Biggest Pension Fund To Cut Global Stocks Allocation on AI Concerns

    Australia's largest pension fund is planning to reduce its allocation to global equities this year, amid signs that the AI boom in the US stock market could be running out of steam. Financial Times: John Normand, head of investment strategy at the A$400bn (US$264bn) AustralianSuper, told the Financial Times that not only did valuations of big US tech companies look high relative to history, but the leverage being used to fund AI investment was increasing "very rapidly," as was the pace of fundra
  • No Standard iPhone 18 Launch This Year, Reports Suggest

    MacRumors: Apple is not expected to release a standard iPhone 18 model this year, according to a growing number of reports that suggest the company is planning a significant change to its long-standing annual iPhone launch cycle.
    Despite the immense success of the iPhone 17 in 2025, the iPhone 18 is not expected to arrive until the spring of 2027, leaving the iPhone 17 in the lineup as the latest standard model for over 18 months. This would mark the first time Apple skips an entire calendar yea
  • IDC Estimates Apple Shipped Just 45,000 Vision Pros Last Quarter

    Apple's Chinese manufacturing partner Luxshare halted production of the Vision Pro headset at the start of 2025, according to market research firm IDC, after the device shipped 390,000 units during its 2024 launch year. The $3,499 headset has also seen its digital advertising budget cut by more than 95% year to date in the US and UK, according to market intelligence group Sensor Tower.
    IDC expects Apple to ship just 45,000 new units in the fourth quarter of 2025. Apple launched an upgraded M5 ve
  • Some of Your Cells Are Not Genetically Yours

    Every human body contains a small population of cells that are not genetically its own -- cells that crossed the placenta during pregnancy and that persist for decades after birth. These "microchimeric" cells, named after the lion-goat-serpent hybrid of Greek mythology, have been found in every organ studied so far, though they are exceedingly rare: one such cell exists for every 10,000 to 1 million of a person's own cells.
    The cells were first noticed in the late 1800s when pathologist Georg Sc
  • 'The Cult of Costco'

    Costco's consistency -- from its $1.50 hot dog and drink combo to its functional shopping carts and satisfied employees -- has produced what The Atlantic calls a "cultlike loyalty" among members at more than 600 locations across the U.S.
    Its annual membership costs $65. The model traces back to Fedco, a nonprofit wholesale collective for federal employees founded in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Costco's private label Kirkland Signature has become one of the world's largest consumer packaged goods b
  • Iran Offers To Sell Advanced Weapons Systems For Crypto

    Iran is offering to sell advanced weapons systems including ballistic missiles, drones and warships to foreign governments for cryptocurrency, in a bid to use digital assets to bypass western financial controls. From a report: Iran's Ministry of Defence Export Center, known as Mindex, says it is prepared to negotiate military contracts that allow payment in digital currencies, as well as through barter arrangements and Iranian rials, according to promotional documents and payment terms analysed
  • 'IPv6 Just Turned 30 and Still Hasn't Taken Over the World, But Don't Call It a Failure'

    Three decades after RFC 1883 promised to future-proof the internet by expanding the available pool of IP addresses from around 4.3 billion to over 340 undecillion, IPv6 has yet to achieve the dominance its creators envisioned. Data from Google, APNIC and Cloudflare analyzed by The Register shows less than half of all internet users rely on IPv6 today.
    "IPv6 was an extremely conservative protocol that changed as little as possible," APNIC chief scientist Geoff Huston told The Register. "It was a
  • DHS Says REAL ID, Which DHS Certifies, Is Too Unreliable To Confirm US Citizenship

    An anonymous reader shares a report: Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn't even work as a national ID. But that's what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers unreliable, even though getting one requires providing proof of citizenship or lawful status in the country.
    In a December 11 court filing [PDF], Philip Lavoie, the acting assistant specia
  • Public Domain Day 2026 Brings Betty Boop, Nancy Drew and 'I Got Rhythm' Into the Commons

    As the calendar flips to January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 are entering the US public domain alongside sound recordings from 1925, making them free to copy, share, remix and build upon without permission or licensing fees. The literary haul includes William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Dashiell Hammett's full novel The Maltese Falcon, Agatha Christie's first Miss Marple mystery The Murder at the Vicarage, and the first four Nancy Drew books. The popular illustrated version
  • European Space Agency Acknowledges Another Breach as Criminals Claim 200 GB Data Haul

    The European Space Agency has acknowledged yet another security incident after a cybercriminal posted an offer on BreachForums the day after Christmas claiming to have stolen over 20GB of data including source code, confidential documents, API tokens and credentials.
    The attacker claims they gained access to ESA-linked external servers on December 18 and remained connected for about a week, during which they allegedly exfiltrated private Bitbucket repositories, CI/CD pipelines, Terraform files a
  • The Man Taking Over the Large Hadron Collider

    Mark Thomson, a professor of experimental particle physics at the University of Cambridge, takes over as CERN's director general this week, and one of his first major decisions during his five-year tenure will be shutting down the Large Hadron Collider for an extended upgrade. The shutdown starts in June to make way for the high-luminosity LHC -- a major overhaul involving powerful new superconducting magnets that will squeeze the collider's proton beams and increase their brightness. The upgrad

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