On its 20th anniversary, Firefox "is still going strong, and it is a better browser today than it ever was," according to TechCrunch.
In an interview, Mozilla's interim CEO says one of the first things they did when was to "unlock a bunch of money towards Firefox product development... I've been in enough places where people tend to forget about the core business, and they stop investing in it, because they get distracted by shiny things — and then they regret it."... [ Read it >> ]

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Renew Home says they're building a "virtual power plant" in Texas by "enabling homes to easily reduce and shift the timing of energy use." Thursday they announced a 10-year project distributing hundreds of thousands of smart thermostats to customers of Texas-based power utility NRG Energy, starting next spring. (Bloomberg calls them "AI-enabled thermostats that use Alphabet Inc.'s Google Cloud technology.") The ultimate goal? "Create a nearly 1-gigawatt, AI-powered virtual power plant" — equivalent to 1.9 million solar panels, enough to power about 200,000 homes during peak demand. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Wednesday Cuba was hit by a major hurricane which took down its entire power grid again, this time for about 24 hours, according to CNN:

Videos of the aftermath showed power infrastructure turned into a mangled mess and power poles down on streets. Hundreds of technicians were mobilized Thursday to reestablish power connections, according to state media... Operations at two electrical plants were partially restored and parts of eastern and central Cuba had electricity back up by Thursday afternoon, state media reported... The country's power grid has collapsed multiple times, including when Hurricane Oscar hit in October and killed at least 7 people. ... [ Read it >> ]

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When a volcano erupted in 1980 about 70 miles from Portland, "lava incinerated anything living for miles around," remembers an announcement from the University of California at Riverside. But "As an experiment, scientists later dropped gophers onto parts of the scorched mountain for only 24 hours. ... [ Read it >> ]

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When a volcano erupted in 1980 about 70 miles from Portland, "lava incinerated anything living for miles around," remembers an announcement from the University of California at Riverside. But "As an experiment, scientists later dropped gophers onto parts of the scorched mountain for only 24 hours. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis writes: Despite its impressive output, a recent study from MIT suggests generative AI doesn't have a coherent understanding of the world. While the best-performing large language models have surprising capabilities that make it seem like the models are implicitly learning some general truths about the world, that isn't necessarily the case. The recent paper showed that Large Language Models and game-playing AI implicitly model the world, but the models are flawed and incomplete. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Long-time Slashdot reader DesScorp writes:
The Washingtonian magazine reports that yet another company is ending most remote work for its employees. The Post's previous policy from 2022 until now had been 3 days in office, 2 days remote. The employee union for the paper, the Washington Post Guild, will oppose the mandate. ... [ Read it >> ]

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"Java application security would be enhanced through two proposals aimed at resisting quantum computing attacks," reports InfoWorld, "one plan involving digital signatures and the other key encapsulation."

The two proposals reside in the OpenJDK JEP (JDK Enhancement Proposal) index. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Slashdot reader sciencehabit shared this report from Science magazine: Elephants love showering to cool off, and most do so by sucking water into their trunks and spitting it over their bodies. But an elderly pachyderm named Mary has perfected the technique by using a hose as a showerhead, much in the way humans do. The behavior is a remarkable example of sophisticated tool use in the animal kingdom. But the story doesn't end there. Mary's long, luxurious baths have drawn so much attention that an envious elephant at the Berlin Zoo has figured out how to shut the water off on her supersoaking rival—a type of sabotage rarely seen among animals. Both behaviors, reported today in Current Biology, further cement elephants as complex thinkers, says Lucy Bates, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Portsmouth not involved in the study. The work, she says, 'suggests problem solving or even 'insight.''... [ Read it >> ]

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Salesforce "plans to hire more than 1,000 workers to sell its new generative AI agent product," reports Bloomberg:
The hiring surge is aimed at capitalizing on "amazing momentum" for the new artificial intelligence product, Chief Executive Marc Benioff said in a message. "Agentforce became available just two weeks ago and we're already hearing incredible feedback from our customers." ... [ Read it >> ]

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The Free Software Foundation turns forty on October 4, 2025 "and we will end our thirties on a high note!" they announced this week:
We wish we were celebrating the achievement of software freedom for all computer users, but we're not there yet. Until our mission becomes reality and we can retire, instead, we are celebrating forty years of activism, and all that we have achieved. ... [ Read it >> ]

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NASA hopes to stimulate in-space manufacturing through a multi-year "laser beam welding collaboration" with Ohio State University. The project "seeks to understand the physical processes of welding on the lunar surface," according to NASA.gov, "such as investigating the effects of laser beam welding in a combined vacuum and reduced gravity environment."... [ Read it >> ]

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Nathan Sobo "joined GitHub in late 2011 to build the Atom text editor," according to an online biography, "and he led the Atom team until 2018." Max Brunsfeld joined the Atom team in 2013, and "While driving Atom towards its 1.0 launch during the day, Max spent nights and weekends building Tree-sitter, a blazing-fast and expressive incremental parsing framework that currently powers all code analysis at GitHub." ... [ Read it >> ]

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"The Rust trademark policy has been updated and a new draft is available to view," announced the Rust Foundation this week.
The last proposed trademark policy (in April of 2023) was criticized by open source advocate Bruce Perens in The Register as "far awry of fair use which is legally permitted." The Rust Foundation says this new version has "incorporated a number of suggestions from the Rust community," in a blog post that summarizes the feedback and enumerates specific ways it's been addressed:... [ Read it >> ]

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Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper than lithium-ion batteries — and they're also more environmentally friendly. And "In the past few years, sodium-ion battery production has increased in the United States," reports the Washington Post, with a new factory planned to manufacture them "in the same way as lithium-ion batteries, just with different ingredients. Instead of using expensive materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt, these will be made of sodium, iron and manganese..."... [ Read it >> ]

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On Tuesday Massachusetts voted to become the first state to allow gig-working drivers to join labor unions, reports WBUR:
Since these gig workers are classified as independent contractors, federal law allowing employees the right to unionize does not apply to them. With the passage of this ballot initiative, Massachusetts is the first state to give ride-hailing drivers the ability to collectively bargain over working conditions. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Friday "would have been his 38th birthday," writes the EFF, remembering Aaron Swartz as "a digital rights champion who believed deeply in keeping the internet open..." And they add that today the official web site for Aaron Swartz Day honored his memory with a special podcast "featuring those carrying on the work around issues close to his heart," including an appearance by Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. ... [ Read it >> ]

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This week Discover magazine looks at evidence — both old and new — for a ninth planet in our solar system:
"Orbits of the most distant small bodies — comets or asteroids — seem to be clustered on one half or one side of the solar system," says Amir Siraj [an astrophysicist with Princeton University]. "That's very weird and something that can't be explained by our current understanding of the solar system." A 2014 study in Nature first noted these orbits. A 2021 study in The Astronomical Journal examined the clustering in the orbit and concluded that "Planet Nine" was likely closer and brighter than expected. ... [ Read it >> ]

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"The majority of strokes could be prevented," reports the Associated Press, according to the first new guidelines in 10 years from the American Stroke Association, which are "aimed at helping people and their doctors do just that."
Stroke was the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half a million Americans have a stroke every year. But up to 80% of strokes may be preventable with better nutrition, exercise and identification of risk factors... The good news is that the best way to reduce your risk for stroke is also the best way to reduce your risk for a whole host of health problems — eat a healthy diet, move your body and don't smoke... ... [ Read it >> ]

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Tuesday at California's Vandenberg Space Force base, the U.S. launched a Minuteman III missile, "in an important test of the weapon's ability to strike its targets with multiple warheads," according to Air and Space Forces magazine:

The Minuteman III missiles that form a critical leg of the U.S. nuclear triad each carry one nuclear-armed reentry vehicle. But the missile that was tested carried three test warheads... The intercontinental ballastic missile (ICBM) test was controlled by an airborne command post in a test of the U.S. ability to launch its nuclear deterrent from a survivable platform.... Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a release: "An airborne launch validates the survivability of our ICBMs, which serve as the strategic backstop of our nation's defense and defense of allies and partners...." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Back in 1976, Mattel Electronics Auto Race became the very first handheld game to use only solid-state electronics, according to Wikipedia. (Its only mechanical elements were its on/off switch and hand-operated controls...) Nearly half a century goes by — until the ancient and broken gizmo reaches long-time Slashdot reader Shayde, who "dove into disassembling the unit and figuring out the problem." ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shared this report from Digital Trends:

A number of popular generative AI platforms are seeing consistent growth as users are figuring out how they want to use the tools â" and ChatGPT is at the top of the list with the most visits, at 3.7 billion worldwide. So many people are visiting the AI chatbot, its figures are rivaling browser market share. It can only be compared to Google Chrome figures in terms of monthly users, which is estimated to be around 3.45 billion. ... [ Read it >> ]

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After missing a chance to capitalize on the AI boom, "Samsung's profit has plunged," reports CNBC, and "around $126 billion has been wiped off its market value, according to data from S&P Capital IQ."
It's gotten so bad that "an executive issued a rare public apology about the company's recent financial performance."... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shared this report from Phoronix:

Intel's Linux kernel test robot has reported a 3888.9% performance improvement in the mainline Linux kernel as of this past week...
Intel thankfully has the resources to maintain this automated service for per-kernel commit/patch testing and has been maintaining their public kernel test robot for years now to help catch performance changes both positive and negative to the Linux kernel code. The commit in question causing this massive uplift to performance is mm, mmap: limit THP alignment of anonymous mappings to PMD-aligned sizes. The patch message confirms it will fix some prior performance regressions and deliver some major uplift in specialized cases... ... [ Read it >> ]

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Though it breaks down faster than CO2, methane is a greenhouse gas over 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide, reports the Washington Post. It suddenly started increasing in the atmosphere in 2007 — and then in 2020, its growth rate doubled.
While scientists have suspected it was natural gas, some researchers have a new theory...... [ Read it >> ]

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A 2002 Slashdot post informed the world that "Recently Blake Ross, a developer of the Phoenix web browser, has made a post on the Mozillazine forums looking for a new name for the project. Apparently the people over at Phoenix Technologies decided that the name interferes with their trademark since they make an 'internet access device..." ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a post from Financial Times: The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties and politicians across the developed world. From America's Democrats to Britain's Tories, Emmanuel's Macron's Ensemble coalition to Japan's Liberal Democrats, even to Narendra Modi's erstwhile dominant BJP, governing parties and leaders have undergone an unprecedented series of reversals this year. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Law enforcement officers are warning other officials and forensic experts that iPhones which have been stored securely for forensic examination are somehow rebooting themselves, returning the devices to a state that makes them much harder to unlock, 404 Media is reporting, citing a law enforcement document it obtained. From the report: The exact reason for the reboots is unclear, but the document authors, who appear to be law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesize that Apple may have introduced a new security feature in iOS 18 that tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have been disconnected from a cellular network for some time. After being rebooted, iPhones are generally more secure against tools that aim to crack the password of and take data from the phone. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Google is generally rolling out its Gemini AI-powered Vids app that lets you create video presentations using a prompt. From a report: Some of Vids' key features include letting Gemini auto-insert stock footage for you, generating a script, and making AI voiceovers so you don't have to speak. Google advertises that the tool can help turn customer support articles into videos, make training videos, share company announcements, create meeting recaps, and more. Vids will be available by default for Workspace organizations with access, but Google notes possible usage limits may apply to features like "Help me create" and AI voiceovers starting in 2026.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Police are on the hunt for 43 monkeys who escaped from a research facility in South Carolina, after a keeper left their pen open. The rhesus macaque fugitives broke out of Alpha Genesis, a company that breeds primates for medical testing and research, and are on the loose in a part of the state known as the Lowcountry.... [ Read it >> ]

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Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: It's been two long years since the launch of Matter -- the one smart home standard designed to rule them all -- and there's been a fair amount of disappointment around a sometimes buggy rollout, slow adoption by companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google, and frustrating setup experiences. However, the launch of the Matter 1.4 specification this week shows some signs that the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the organization behind Matter) is using more sticks and fewer carrots to get the smart home industry coalition to cooperate.... [ Read it >> ]

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With the debut of the Pirate Bay TV series in Sweden, international viewers are finding it surprisingly difficult to pirate. TorrentFreak reports: The series premiered at the on-demand platform of the Swedish national broadcaster SVT a few hours ago. International deals haven't been announced, but pirates can generally get access anyway. Soon after the first two episodes of The Pirate Bay series came out, scene release copies started circulating online. As one would expect.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FBI is warning that hackers are obtaining private user information — including emails and phone numbers — from U.S.-based tech companies by compromising government and police email addresses to submit "emergency" data requests. The FBI's public notice filed this week is a rare admission from the federal government about the threat from fraudulent emergency data requests, a legal process designed to help police and federal authorities obtain information from companies to respond to immediate threats affecting someone's life or property. The abuse of emergency data requests is not new, and has been widely reported in recent years. Now, the FBI warns that it saw an "uptick" around August in criminal posts online advertising access to or conducting fraudulent emergency data requests, and that it was going public for awareness.... [ Read it >> ]

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Starting November 11, TSMC plans to stop supplying 7 nm and smaller chips to Chinese companies working on AI processors and GPUs. "The move is reportedly to ensure it remains compliant with US export restrictions," reports The Register. From the report: This will not affect Chinese customers wanting 7 nm chips from TSMC for other applications such as mobile and communications, according to Nikkei, which said the overall impact on the chipmaker's revenue is likely to be minimal. TrendForce further cites another China-based source who claims the move was at the behest of the US Department of Commerce, which informed TSMC that any such shipments should not proceed unless approved and licensed by its BIS (Bureau of Industry and Security). We asked the agency for confirmation.... [ Read it >> ]

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According to a partial teardown video of Apple's new Mac mini, the new machine features modular storage that can be removed. "As we saw with the Mac Studio, however, replacing the modular storage is complicated," notes MacRumors. The teardown also reveals two 128GB storage chips in the 256GB model, enabling faster SSD speeds comparable to higher-capacity versions. From the report: The criticism surrounding Apple's decision to use a single 256GB chip in some base-model Macs a few years ago primarily came from a vocal contingent of tech enthusiasts, and the average customer is unlikely to even notice the slower speeds in common day-to-day tasks. Nevertheless, it appears that customers who do want the fastest SSD speeds do not need to worry about which storage capacity they choose when ordering the new Mac mini.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anthropic has announced a partnership with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to bring its Claude AI models to unspecified US intelligence and defense agencies. Claude, a family of AI language models similar to those that power ChatGPT, will work within Palantir's platform using AWS hosting to process and analyze data. But some critics have called out the deal as contradictory to Anthropic's widely-publicized "AI safety" aims. On X, former Google co-head of AI ethics Timnit Gebru wrote of Anthropic's new deal with Palantir, "Look at how they care so much about 'existential risks to humanity.'"... [ Read it >> ]

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Scalpers attempting to profit from Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro are struggling to sell units above retail price, as widespread availability dampens resale prospects. The $699 console, launched this week with enhanced graphics capabilities, remains in stock at major retailers across the United States and Europe. eBay listings show PS5 Pro units selling below the manufacturer's suggested retail price, with some auctions starting at $640. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The FBI is warning that hackers are obtaining private user information -- including emails and phone numbers -- from U.S.-based tech companies by compromising government and police email addresses to submit "emergency" data requests. From a report: The FBI's public notice filed this week is a rare admission from the federal government about the threat from fraudulent emergency data requests, a legal process designed to help police and federal authorities obtain information from companies to respond to immediate threats affecting someone's life or property. ... [ Read it >> ]

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From an opinion piece on GamesIndustry.biz about the recently launched PS5 Pro that went on sale this week: What I'd argue is actually more interesting about PS5 Pro in a wider perspective isn't what Sony has done to the chips in the system -- it's what they've chosen not to include, and what it tells us about the decision-making process that's likely occurring for the company's future hardware. PS5 Pro doesn't have a disc drive. Anyone who wants to play disc-based games on the system will need to buy one of the add-on drives Sony started selling when the PS5 Slim model was released, adding further to the cost of the already very expensive device. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The chief executive of Cop29 has been filmed apparently agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals at the climate summit. From a report: The recording has amplified calls by campaigners who want the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists to be banned from future Cop talks. The campaign group Global Witness posed undercover as a fake oil and gas group asking for deals to be facilitated in exchange for sponsoring the event.... [ Read it >> ]

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UK government-appointed commissioners have labeled Birmingham City Council's Oracle Fusion rollout as "the poorest ERP deployment" they have seen. From a report: A report published by the UK council's Corporate Finance Overview and Scrutiny Committee found that 18 months after Fusion went live, the largest public authority in Europe "had not tactically stabilized the system or formulated clear plans to resolve the system issues and recover the operation." ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: AMD has gained a substantial 5.7 percentage points of share of the desktop x86 CPU market in the third quarter compared to Q2, the largest quarterly share gain since we began tracking the market share reports in 2016. It also represents an incredible ten percentage point improvement over the prior year. AMD also raked in a strong increase in revenue share, jumping 8.5 percentage points over the prior quarter, indicating that it is selling a strong mix of higher-end CPU models. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Block will abandon development of its Web5 decentralized internet project and reduce investment in music streaming service Tidal to focus on bitcoin mining hardware and self-custody wallets, the payments company announced in its third-quarter letter to shareholders. The Jack Dorsey-led firm cited strong market demand for its bitcoin mining products and Bitkey wallet as key drivers behind the strategic shift.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Oregon Live: Intel told employees this week that it will bring back free coffee and tea at its work sites, one of many benefits the chipmaker eliminated last summer as it sought to slash $10 billion from its annual budget. "Although Intel still faces cost challenges, we understand that small comforts play a significant role in our daily routines," Intel wrote on its internal messaging forum, called Circuit. "We know this is a small step, but we hope it is a meaningful one in supporting our workplace culture." Intel declined comment. The company did not resume offering free fruit, another perk eliminated last summer. Employees say privately that morale has been devastated by Intel's poor financial performance and by cutbacks aimed at returning the business to profitability.... [ Read it >> ]

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According to Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr, Lucasfilm is developing a new Star Wars trilogy. It will be written by Simon Kinberg, who will also produce the films alongside Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy. From the report: I heard this will comprise Episodes 10-12 of The Skywalker Saga that began with George Lucas's 1977 first film, which, along with Steven Spielberg's Jaws, reshaped the global blockbuster game. Insiders disputed my intel that Kinberg will continue that storyline, saying this instead will begin a new saga, and sit alongside percolating Star Wars projects with James Mangold, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Taika Waititi and Donald Glover. As usual, Lucasfilm and Disney are not commenting.... [ Read it >> ]

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IBM is facing a new lawsuit alleging that its Weather Channel website shared users' personal data with third-party ad partners without consent, violating the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). The Register reports: In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law, the complaint [PDF] claims Big Blue violated America's Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), enacted in 1988 in response to the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's videotape rental records. IBM was sued in 2019 (PDF) by then Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer over similar allegations: That its Weather Channel mobile app collected and shared location data without disclosure. The IT titan settled that claim in 2020. A separate civil action against IBM's Weather Channel was filed in 2020 and settled in 2023 (PDF).... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: A "Mass Effect" TV series is officially in development at Amazon MGM Studios, Variety has learned exclusively. Daniel Casey is set to write and executive produce the adaptation. Karim Zreik will executive produce under his Cedar Tree Productions banner, with Ari Arad and EA's Michael Gamble also executive producing. Cedar Tree is currently under an overall deal at Amazon MGM Studios. Exact plot details are being kept under wraps. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Max will begin a gradual password-sharing crackdown with "soft messaging" over the next few months, with a potential price increase to follow. The Verge reports: During Warner Bros. Discovery's Q3 earnings call on Thursday, chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said this initial rollout would be followed by more progress in 2025 and 2026. Wiedenfels called password sharing "a form of price rises," as the company is "asking members who have not signed up, or multi-household members to pay a little bit more." This isn't the first time we've heard about Max's interest in password sharing, but now we have more details about when -- and how -- it will all begin. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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Elwood Edwards, the voice of AOL's "You've Got Mail" greeting, has died at age 74 following a long illness, according to local Ohio news station WKYC. "He worked at 3News for many years as graphics guru, camera operator, and general jack-of-all-trades, yet it was a somewhat random opportunity in 1989 that earned him international fame." From the report: That year, Elwood received $200 from the then-unknown America Online, merely because his wife worked at a predecessor company. He was asked to simply record four voiceover lines:... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: If you voted in the U.S. presidential election yesterday in which Donald Trump won comfortably, or a previous election, a website powered by a right-wing group is probably doxing you. VoteRef makes it trivial for anyone to search the name, physical address, age, party affiliation, and whether someone voted that year for people living in most states instantly and for free. This can include ordinary citizens, celebrities, domestic abuse survivors, and many other people. Voting rolls are public records, and ways to more readily access them are not new. But during a time of intense division, political violence, or even the broader threat of data being used to dox or harass anyone, sites like VoteRef turn a vital part of the democratic process -- simply voting -- into a security and privacy threat. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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