• Woman Hailed As a Hero For Smashing Man's Meta Smart Glasses On Subway

    "Woman Hailed as Hero for Smashing Man's Meta Smart Glasses on Subway," reads the headline at Futurism:
    As Daily Dot reports, a New York subway rider has accused a woman of breaking his Meta smart glasses. "She just broke my Meta glasses," said the TikTok user, who goes by eth8n, in a video that has since garnered millions of views.
    "You're going to be famous on the internet!" he shouted at her through the window after getting off the train. The accused woman, however, peered back at him complet
  • A 1950s Material Just Set a Modern Record For Lightning-fast Chips

    "Researchers engineered a strained germanium layer on silicon that allows charge to move faster than in any silicon-compatible material to date," reports Science Daily. "This record mobility could lead to chips that run cooler, faster, and with dramatically lower energy consumption.
    "The discovery also enhances the prospects for silicon-based quantum devices..."
    Scientists from the University of Warwick and the National Research Council of Canada have reported the highest "hole mobility" ever me
  • Chernobyl's Protective Shield Can No Longer Confine Radiation, UN Nuclear Watchdog Says

    "A structure designed to prevent radioactive leakage at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine is no longer operational," reports Politico, "after Russian drones targeted it earlier this year, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog has found."[T]he large steel structure "lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability" when its outer cladding was set ablaze after being struck by Russian drones, according to a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Beyond that,
  • Aptera's Solar-Powered EVs Take Another Step Toward Production

    To build three-wheeled, solar electric vehicles, Aptera has now launched its "validation" vehicle assembly line, reports the San Diego Business Journal."The validation line will set a technical foundation for the company's eventual low-volume assembly line, ensuring that manufacturing processes are optimized and refined, particularly for the company's composite body structure."To date, Aptera has produced three validation vehicles, two of which are in use driving around the San Diego region, wit
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  • Why These Parents Want Schools to Stop Issuing iPads to Their Children

    What happened when a school in Los Angeles gave a sixth grader an iPad for use throughout the school day? "He used the iPad during school to watch YouTube and participate in Fortnite video game battles," reports NBC News.
    His mother has now launched a coalition of parents called Schools Beyond Screens "organizing in WhatsApp groups, petition drives and actions at school board meetings and demanding meetings with district administrators, pressuring them to pull back on the school-mandated screen
  • Why These Parents Want Schools to Stop Issuing iPads to the Their Children

    What happened when a school in Los Angeles gave a sixth grader an iPad for use throughout the school day? "He used the iPad during school to watch YouTube and participate in Fortnite video game battles," reports NBC News.
    His mother has now launched a coalition of parents called Schools Beyond Screens "organizing in WhatsApp groups, petition drives and actions at school board meetings and demanding meetings with district administrators, pressuring them to pull back on the school-mandated screen
  • Could Netflix's Deal for Warner Bros. Fall Apart?

    While Netflix hopes to buy Warner Bros. Discovery for $72 billion, CNBC reports a senior official in America's federal government said the administration was viewing the deal with "heavy skepticism. And that's not the only hurdle:On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount, in a letter to lawyers for Warner Bros. Discovery [WBD], had warned that a sale to Netflix likely would "never close" because of regulatory challenges in the United States and overseas. "Acquiring Warner's st
  • The AI Boom Could Increase Prices for Phones and Tablets Next Year

    CNN's prediction for 2026? "Any device that uses memory, from phones to tablets and smartwatches, could get pricier." But will it be a little or a lot?
    The article cites an analysis from multinational strategy/management consulting firm McKinsey & Company which found America's data center demand could continue growing by 20 to 25 percent per year" through 2030. "That's prompted memory manufacturers like Micron and Samsung to shift their focus to data centers, which use a different type of me
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  • Linus Torvalds Defends Windows' Blue Screen of Death

    Linus Torvalds recently defended Windows' infamous Blue Screen of Death during a video with Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips, where the two built a PC together. It's FOSS reports: In that video, Sebastian discussed Torvalds' fondness for ECC (Error Correction Code). I am using their last name because Linus will be confused with Linus. This is where Torvalds says this: "I am convinced that all the jokes about how unstable Windows is and blue screening, I guess it's not a blue screen anymore, a
  • 'Rage Bait' Named Oxford Word of the Year 2025

    Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares a report from the BBC: Do you find yourself getting increasingly irate while scrolling through your social media feed? If so, you may be falling victim to rage bait, which Oxford University Press has named its word or phrase of the year. It is a term that describes manipulative tactics used to drive engagement online, with usage of it increasing threefold in the last 12 months, according to the dictionary publisher.Rage bait beat two other shortlisted terms
  • Meta Confirms 'Shifting Some' Funding 'From Metaverse Toward AI Glasses'

    Meta has officially confirmed it is shifting investment away from the metaverse and VR toward AI-powered smart glasses, following a Bloomberg report of an up to 30% budget cut for Reality Labs. "Within our overall Reality Labs portfolio we are shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward AI glasses and Wearables given the momentum there," a statement from Meta reads. "We aren't planning any broader changes than that." From the report: Following Bloomberg's report, other mainstream news
  • OpenAI Has Trained Its LLM To Confess To Bad Behavior

    An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: OpenAI is testing another new way to expose the complicated processes at work inside large language models. Researchers at the company can make an LLM produce what they call a confession, in which the model explains how it carried out a task and (most of the time) owns up to any bad behavior. Figuring out why large language models do what they do -- and in particular why they sometimes appear to lie, cheat, and deceive -- is one of
  • Blackest Fabric Ever Made Absorbs 99.87% of All Light That Hits It

    alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: Engineers at Cornell University have created the blackest fabric on record, finding it absorbs 99.87 percent of all light that dares to illuminate its surface. [...] In this case, the Cornell researchers dyed a white merino wool knit fabric with a synthetic melanin polymer called polydopamine. Then, they placed the material in a plasma chamber, and etched structures called nanofibrils -- essentially, tiny fibers that trap light. "The light bas
  • AI Led To an Increase In Radiologists, Not a Decrease

    Despite predictions that AI would replace radiologists, healthcare systems worldwide are hiring more of them because AI tools enhance their work, create new oversight tasks, and increase imaging volumes rather than reducing workloads. "Put all that together with the context of an aging population and growing demand for imaging of all kinds, and you can see why Offiah and the Royal College of Radiologists are concerned about a shortage of radiologists, not their displacement," writes Financial Ti
  • Trump Wants Asia's 'Cute' Kei Cars To Be Made and Sold In US

    sinij shares news of the Trump administration surprising the auto industry by granting approval for "tiny cars" to be built in the United States. Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump, apparently enamored by the pint-sized Kei cars he saw during his recent trip to Japan, has paved the way for them to be made and sold in the U.S., despite concerns that they're too small and slow to be driven safely on American roads.
    "They're very small, they're really cute, and I said "How would that do in t
  • Chinese-Linked Hackers Use Backdoor For Potential 'Sabotage,' US and Canada Say

    U.S. and Canadian cybersecurity agencies say Chinese-linked actors deployed "Brickstorm" malware to infiltrate critical infrastructure and maintain long-term access for potential sabotage. Reuters reports: The Chinese-linked hacking operations are the latest example of Chinese hackers targeting critical infrastructure, infiltrating sensitive networks and "embedding themselves to enable long-term access, disruption, and potential sabotage," Madhu Gottumukkala, the acting director of the Cybersecu

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