An anonymous reader shares a report: In a landmark move, Illinois state lawmakers have passed a bill banning AI from acting as a standalone therapist and placing firm guardrails on how mental health professionals can use AI to support care. Governor JB Pritzker signed the bill into law on Aug. 1. ... [ Read it >> ]

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For years, whistle-blowers have warned that fake results are sneaking into the scientific literature at an increasing pace. A new statistical analysis backs up the concern. From a report: A team of researchers found evidence of shady organizations churning out fake or low-quality studies on an industrial scale. And their output is rising fast, threatening the integrity of many fields. ... [ Read it >> ]

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BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Synchron has just released a public demo showing something that used to feel impossible. A man with ALS is now using his iPad with nothing but his brain. No hands. No voice. No eye-tracking. Just thought. The man in the video is named Mark. He's part of Synchron's COMMAND clinical study and has an implant called the Stentrode. It sits inside his brain's blood vessels and picks up his motor intention. Those signals get sent wirelessly to an external decoder, which then tells the iPad what to do. It's all made possible by Apple's new Brain-Computer Interface Human Interface Device protocol, which lets iPadOS treat brain activity like an actual input method.... [ Read it >> ]

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NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission ended prematurely after losing contact with the satellite just one day post-launch, the agency announced today. Engadget reports: The NASA satellite was part of the IM-2 mission by Intuitive Machines, which took off from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center on February 26 at 7:16PM ET. The Lunar Trailblazer successfully separated from the rocket as planned about 48 minutes after launch. Operators in Pasadena, CA established communication with the satellite at 8:13PM ET, but two-way communication was lost the next day and the team was unable to recover the connection. From the limited data ground teams received before the satellite went dark, the craft's solar arrays were not correctly positioned toward the sun, which caused its batteries to drain. "While it was not the outcome we had hoped for, mission experiences like Lunar Trailblazer help us to learn and reduce the risk for future, low-cost small satellites to do innovative science as we prepare for a sustained human presence on the Moon," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator at NASA Headquarters' Science Mission Directorate. "Thank you to the Lunar Trailblazer team for their dedication in working on and learning from this mission through to the end."... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will announce expedited plans this week to build a nuclear reactor on the moon, the first major action by the former Fox News host as the interim NASA administrator. NASA has discussed building a reactor on the lunar surface, but this would set a more definitive timeline -- according to documents obtained by POLITICO -- and come just as the agency faces a massive budget cut. [...] The reactor directive orders the agency to solicit industry proposals for a 100 kilowatt nuclear reactor to launch by 2030, a key consideration for astronauts' return to the lunar surface. NASA previously funded research into a 40 kilowatt reactor for use on the moon, with plans to have a reactor ready for launch by the early 2030s.... [ Read it >> ]

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Google will pause non-essential AI workloads to protect power grids, the advertising giant announced on Monday. From a report: The web giant already does this sort of thing for non-essential workloads like processing YouTube vids, which it moves to datacenters where power is available rather than continuing to run them in places demand for energy strains the grid. Under an agreement with Indiana Michigan Power (I&M) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Google will use the same techniques for AI workloads. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Disney scrapped plans to use a deepfake of Dwayne Johnson in Moana and an AI-generated character in Tron: Ares due to concerns over bad publicity and legal ownership. Ultimately, the studio decided the potential PR and copyright risks weren't worth the convenience. Deadline reports: Disney is working on a live-action remake of Moana, where Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will reprise his role of Maui. In a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, the studio came up with the idea to digitally clone Johnson and use a body double for some shots. "Disney would work with AI company Metaphysic to create deepfakes of Johnson's face that could be layered on top of Reed's performance in the footage -- a 'digital double' that effectively allowed Johnson to be in two places at once," WSJ said (paywalled). Although the Black Adam star approved the idea, the studio "worried" that they "ultimately couldn't claim ownership over every element of the film if AI generated parts of it." The film studio and the AI company were seemingly unable to come to terms, and the footage was scrapped.... [ Read it >> ]

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Rivian has filed a federal lawsuit in Ohio to challenge a state law preventing it from selling electric vehicles directly to consumers, arguing the rule is anti-competitive and outdated. The law currently protects legacy dealerships while allowing Tesla a special carve-out, and Rivian wants similar rights to apply for a direct-sales license in the state. TechCrunch reports: "Ohio's prohibition of Rivian's direct-sales-only business model is irrational in the extreme: it reduces competition, decreases consumer choice, and drives up consumer costs and inconvenience -- all of which harm consumers -- with literally no countervailing benefit," lawyers for the company wrote in the complaint. Rivian is asking the court to allow the company to apply for a dealership license so it can sell vehicles directly. Ohio customers have to buy from Rivian vehicles from locations in other states where direct sales are allowed. The cars are then shipped to Rivian service centers within Ohio.... [ Read it >> ]

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Fermi America is planning to build a colossal AI datacenter complex in Amarillo, Texas, powered by up to six gigawatts of nuclear energy. According to The Register, the company has selected Hyundai to support the deployment of the "HyperGrid," describing it as the "world's largest advanced energy campus." From the report: The project is backed by Rick Perry, who served as Texas governor and US Energy Secretary, and investor Toby Neugebauer, and aims to establish Texas as the US's largest energy and intelligence campus. Construction of the first of four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors is set to begin next year in Amarillo with the plant funneling behind-the-meter power to GPU bit barns by 2032, at least that's according to a memorandum of understanding (MoU). In other words, there is no guarantee the 23 million square meter project (1.1 MilliWales) will actually be built in its entirety, but if it is, Hyundai will oversee it.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CyberScoop: North Korean operatives seeking and gaining technical jobs with foreign companies kept CrowdStrike busy, accounting for almost one incident response case or investigation per day in the past year, the company said in its annual threat hunting report released Monday. "We saw a 220% year-over-year increase in the last 12 months of Famous Chollima activity," Adam Meyers, senior vice president of counter adversary operations, said during a media briefing about the report. "We see them almost every day now," he said, referring to the North Korean state-sponsored group of North Korean technical specialists that has crept into the workforce of Fortune 500 companies and small-to-midsized organizations across the globe.... [ Read it >> ]

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Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from TechCrunch: Sarah Murray recalls the first time she saw an artificial model in fashion: It was 2023, and a beautiful young woman of color donned a Levi's denim overall dress. Murray, a commercial model herself, said it made her feel sad and exhausted. The iconic denim company had teamed up with the AI studio Lalaland.ai to create "diverse" digital fashion models for more inclusive ads. For an industry that has failed for years to employ diverse human models, the backlash was swift, with New York Magazine calling the decision "artificial diversity."... [ Read it >> ]

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OpenAI's ChatGPT is on track to hit 700 million weekly active users, "up from 500 million in March, marking a more than fourfold year-over-year surge in growth," reports CNBC. From the report: The figure spans all ChatGPT artificial intelligence products -- free, Plus Pro, Enterprise, Team, and Edu -- and comes as daily user messages surpassed three billion, according to the company. The growth rate is also accelerating, compared with 2.5 times year-over-year growth at this time last year. "Every day, people and teams are learning, creating, and solving harder problems," said Nick Turley, VP of product for ChatGPT, in announcing the benchmark.... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Patrick Schlott often finds himself in a cellular dead zone during his drive to work. "You go down the road, you turn the corner and you're behind a mountain and you'll lose cell coverage pretty fast," he says. The 31-year-old electrical engineer says poor reception is a common frustration for residents of Vermont's Orange County. To address this issue, he's providing his community with a new way to stay connected.... [ Read it >> ]

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Plastics are a "grave, growing and under-recognised danger" to human and planetary health, a new expert review has warned. From a report: The world is in a "plastics crisis," it concluded, which is causing disease and death from infancy to old age and is responsible for at least $1.5 trillion a year in health-related damages. The driver of the crisis is a huge acceleration of plastic production, which has increased by more than 200 times since 1950 and is set to almost triple again to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The Indian IT sector has operated for decades under the dominance of major firms TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCLT. The historical growth of these companies was tightly coupled with the U.S. economy through a strong "multiplier effect," where Indian IT export growth significantly outpaced US GDP growth. This reliable growth model is now under pressure. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Google released a 30-second Pixel 10 ad today that mocks Apple's year-long delay in delivering promised AI improvements to Siri on iPhone 16 devices. The ad suggests users could "just change your phone" if they purchased a device for a feature that's been "coming soon for a full year."... [ Read it >> ]

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Major cloud storage providers maintain unclear policies about deleting user data after subscription cancellations, Wired reports, with deletion timelines ranging from six months to indefinite preservation.

Apple reserves the right to delete iCloud backups after 180 days of device inactivity but does not specify what happens to general file storage. Google may delete content after users exceed free storage limits for extended periods, though files remain safe for two years after cancellation. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Delta Air Lines has walked back previous statements about individualized pricing after lawmakers questioned the airline's AI-assisted dynamic pricing model. In November, Delta president Glen Hauenstein told investors the company would have pricing "available on that flight, on that time, to you, the individual." ... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft announced last month that Chinese state-sponsored hackers exploited vulnerabilities in SharePoint to breach hundreds of companies and government agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security. The company omitted that SharePoint support is handled by China-based engineers who have maintained the software for years. ... [ Read it >> ]

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AI startup Perplexity is deploying undeclared web crawlers that masquerade as regular Chrome browsers to access content from websites that have explicitly blocked its official bots, according to a Cloudflare report published Monday. When Perplexity's declared crawlers encounter robots.txt restrictions or network blocks, the company switches to a generic Mozilla user agent that impersonates "Chrome/124.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" running on macOS, the web infrastructure firm reported. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Fujifilm has raised prices on cameras and lenses across its lineup, with price hikes reaching into the hundreds of dollars. From a report: Among the hikes is an increase to the price of Fuji's ultra-popular X100VI from $1,599 to $1,799. The capable X-T5 has gone from $1,699 to $1,899. And the already very expensive GFX100 II has gone from $7,499 to $8,299 -- an $800 increase. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The management consulting industry is facing potential disruption as AI companies enter the advisory business and traditional firms struggle to maintain growth. McKinsey, approaching its 100th anniversary, reduced its workforce by 5,000 employees since late 2023 while its revenue growth slowed to 2% in 2024. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The Associated Press investigates whether tech industry layoffs are really being caused by AI.
Their conclusion? "The reality is more complicated..."

"We're kind of in this period where the tech job market is weak, but other areas of the job market have also cooled at a similar pace," said Brendon Bernard, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. "Tech job postings have actually evolved pretty similarly to the rest of the economy, including relative to job postings where there really isn't that much exposure to AI...." ... [ Read it >> ]

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"Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched a crypto billionaire and five other people to the final frontier on Sunday," reports Space.com:

The mission — known as NS-34, because it was the 34th overall flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle — lifted off from the company's West Texas spaceport at 8:43 a.m. EDT (1243 GMT; 7:43 a.m. local time in West Texas). ... [ Read it >> ]

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Disney "cloned" Dwayne Johnson when filming a live-action Moana, reports the Wall Street Journal, using an AI process that they were ultimately afraid to use:

Under the plan they devised, Johnson's similarly buff cousin Tanoai Reed — who is 6-foot-3 and 250 pounds — would fill in as a body double for a small number of shots. Disney would work with AI company Metaphysic to create deepfakes of Johnson's face that could be layered on top of Reed's performance in the footage — a "digital double" that effectively allowed Johnson to be in two places at once... Johnson approved the plan, but the use of a new technology had Disney attorneys hammering out details over how it could be deployed, what security precautions would protect the data and a host of other concerns. They also worried that the studio ultimately couldn't claim ownership over every element of the film if AI generated parts of it, people involved in the negotiations said. Disney and Metaphysic spent 18 months negotiating on and off over the terms of the contract and work on the digital double. But none of the footage will be in the final film when it's released next summer... ... [ Read it >> ]

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Napster's latest AI pivot "is the latest in a series of attempts by various owners to ride its brand cachet during emerging tech waves," Fast Company reported in July.
In March, it sold for $207 million to Infinite Reality, an immersive digital media and e-commerce company, which also rebranded as Napster last month. Since 2020, other owners have included a British VR music startup (to create VR concerts) and two crypto-focused companies that bought it to anchor a Web3 music platform. Napster's launch follows a growing number of attempts to drive AI adoption beyond smartphones and laptops. ... [ Read it >> ]

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NBC News reports that in the U.S., many recent graduates looking to enter the labor force "are painting a dire picture of their job search."

NBC News asked people who recently finished technical school, college or graduate school how their job application process was going, and in more than 100 responses, the graduates described months spent searching for a job, hundreds of applications and zero responses from employers — even with degrees once thought to be in high demand, like computer science or engineering. ... [ Read it >> ]

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"Hyundai sold 79,543 vehicles in the U.S. last month," reports the EV news site Electrek — Hyundai's best July ever, and 15% higher than last year.

"The growth was mainly driven by electrified vehicles, including EVs and hybrids..."

Hyundai said that electrified vehicle sales "reached new heights," after climbing 50% compared to July 2024. Electrified vehicles accounted for nearly a third (32%) of Hyundai's retail sales in July 2025, with several popular nameplates setting new all-time monthly sales records, including the new IONIQ 5. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Started in 1984, it's been described as the internet's longest-running contest. And yesterday 2025's International Obfuscated C Code Contest concluded — with 23 new winners announced in a special four-and-a-half-hour livestreamed ceremony!
Programmers submitted their funniest programs showcasing C's unusual/obscure subtleties while having some fun. (And demonstrating the importance of clarity and style with some very bad examples...) Among this year's winners were an OpenRISC 32-bit CPU emulator, a virtual machine capable of running Doom, and some kind of salmon recipe that makes clever use of C's U"string" literal prefix... ... [ Read it >> ]

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Slashdot reader ffkom writes: The air around you mostly consists of nitrogen [78%]. And in that air exist happy little monogamous pairs of two nitrogen atoms per molecule, also known as N2. Researchers from the University of Giessen, Germany, recently managed to synthesize N6 molecules, "the first, to our knowledge, experimentally realized neutral molecular nitrogen allotrope beyond N2 that exhibits unexpected stability." ... [ Read it >> ]

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IBM's legendary Model M keyboard was sturdy and solid. But "What would happen if you took the classic layout and look of the Model M and rebuilt it with modern mechanical guts?" asks long-time Slashdot reader uninet.

Writing for the long-running tech blog Open for Business , they review a new wireless keyboard from Vortex that was clearly inspired by the Model M:... [ Read it >> ]

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America's nonprofit College Board lets high school students take college-level classes — including a computer programming course that culminates with a 90-minute test. But students did better on questions about If-Then statements than they did on questions about arrays, according to the head of the program. Long-time Slashdot reader theodp explains:... [ Read it >> ]

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The Chinese government "has embarked on an all-out drive to transform the technology from a remote concept to a newfangled reality, with applications on factory floors and in hospitals and government offices..." reports the Washington Post.

"[E]xperts say Beijing is pursuing an alternative playbook in an attempt to bridge the gap" with America: "aggressively pushing for the adoption of AI across the government and private sector."... [ Read it >> ]

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Microsoft's AI coding assistant "GitHub Copilot" has now had 20 million "all-time users," a GitHub spokesperson told TechCrunch.

That means 5 million people have tried out GitHub Copilot for the first time in the last three months — the company reported in April the tool had reached 15 million users. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader shared this report from Engadget:

Nintendo sold 5.82 million Switch 2s in less than four weeks and is on pace to hit its target of 15 million units by April 2026, the company said in its latest earnings report. If that pans out, the Switch 2 would easily outsell the original Switch, which took a full year to hit that same 15 million sales number... ... [ Read it >> ]

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"Did Craigslist drive the downfall of print classifieds?" That's the question asked in a new article from the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies:

"I've always wondered about that," Newmark said in a Zoom interview July 1. "I think it had an effect." But portraying him and the list as torpedoing an otherwise great business model is way overblown, he still believes. Citing an influential essay by Thomas Baekdal, Newmark contends that the root of newspapers' trouble was the loss of readers. "TV hit hard. ... (And) l'm like the folks on 'CSI,' I follow the evidence. That goes back at least to the '60s." ... [ Read it >> ]

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"Digital storefront Itch.io is reindexing its free adult games," reports Engadget, "and is talking to its partnered payment processors about plans to gradually reintroduce paid NSFW content..."
In a statement included in the Itch.io update, Stripe said it hasn't closed the door on the possibility of being able to support adult content again in the future. In the meantime, Itch.io says it is talking to its other payment partners about accepting the card payments Stripe is currently no longer able to process. ... [ Read it >> ]

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Established in 1943 to coordinate America's building of the first atomic bomb, the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico is still "one of the world's largest and most advanced scientific institutions" notes Wikipedia.

And it now has a "National Security AI Office," where senior director Jason Pruet is working to help "prepare for a future in which AI will reshape the landscape of science and security," according to the lab's science and technology magazine 1663. "This year, the Lab invested more in AI-related work than at any point in history..."... [ Read it >> ]

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It's a cultural milestone. Fiverr just released an ad mocking vibe coding.
The video features what its description calls a "clueless entrepreneur" building an app to tell if an avocado is ripe — who soon ends up blissfully singing with an avocado to the tune of the cheesy 1987 song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now." The avocado sings joyously of "a new app on the rise in a no-code world that's too good to be true" (rhyming that with "So close. Just not tested through...") ... [ Read it >> ]

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Remember, it's all synthesized "anthropomorphizing". But with that caveat, Science News reports:
In populations of simple software agents (like characters in "The Sims" but much, much simpler), having "guilt" can be a stable strategy that benefits them and increases cooperation, researchers report July 30 in Journal of the Royal Society Interface... When we harm someone, we often feel compelled to pay a penance, perhaps as a signal to others that we won't offend again. This drive for self-punishment can be called guilt, and it's how the researchers programmed it into their agents. The question was whether those that had it would be outcompeted by those that didn't, say Theodor Cimpeanu, a computer scientist at the University of Stirling in Scotland, and colleagues. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The women-only app Tea now "faces two class action lawsuits filed in California" in response to a recent breach," reports NPR — even as the company is now boasting it has more than 6.2 million users.

A spokesperson for Tea told the CBC it's "working to identify any users whose personal information was involved" in a breach of 72,000 images (including 13,000 verification photos and images of government IDs) and a later breach of 1.1 million private messages. Tea said they will be offering those users "free identity protection services."... [ Read it >> ]

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The Washington Post reports:
In early July, a wasp nest with a radiation level 10 times what is allowed by federal regulations was found inside the grounds of a sprawling Cold War-era nuclear site in South Carolina that today partly serves as a storage area for radioactive liquid waste. Federal officials said Friday that at least three more contaminated wasp nests were found within the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site, which encompasses an area more than four times the size of the District of Columbia... ... [ Read it >> ]

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After an 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Russia, "weather authorities leapt into action," reports SFGate, by modeling the threat of a tsunami "and releasing warnings and advisories to prepare their communities..."

But some residents of Hawaii, Japan and North America's West Coast turned to AI tools for updates that "appear to have badly bungled the critical task at hand." Google's "AI Overview," for example, reportedly gave "inaccurate information about authorities' safety warnings in Hawaii and elsewhere," according to reports on social media.... [ Read it >> ]

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There's now an "influx" of startups fightging wildfires, reports the Washington Post.

"More than 100 new wildfire-related technologies have launched in the U.S. and around the world since 2023, according to Lori Moore-Merrell, who served as U.S. fire administrator during the Biden administration... Unmanned lookout poles that use AI to sense smoke have been erected in the West. Swarms of military-grade drones are increasingly used for wildfire detection and management. AI technology also tracks lightning strikes, which can ignite wildfires..."... [ Read it >> ]

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"The July 2025 results of the Steam Survey were posted a few minutes ago," Phoronix reported last night, "and show a healthy 0.32% increase to put the Linux gaming marketshare at 2.89%."
That's a recent high in percentage terms and while Steam saw around 3% in the early days of Steam on Linux a decade ago, in absolute terms this is likely the largest surveyed figure ever for the Linux gaming population. ... [ Read it >> ]

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After it began "peering into the distant universe" in 2022, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope "has discovered a rash of 'little red dots'," reports Science magazine. There's "hundreds of them, shining within the first billion years of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe, so small and red that they defied conventional explanation." ... [ Read it >> ]

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In Shanghai at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (which ran until Tuesday), the Chinese government "announced an international organization for AI regulation and a 13-point action plan aimed at fostering global cooperation to ensure the technology's beneficial and responsible development," reports the Washington Post. ... [ Read it >> ]

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The vehicle "once led the Space Shuttle down the runway at Edwards Air Force Base," The Drive reported in 2022, noting it was won in an auction for $21,061 (beating 18 other bidders). "I just figured the NASA brand combined with Airsteam hip seemed like a can't lose combination," the buyer says now, in a listing for the vehicle on the on the automotive sales site Hemmings.com asking $199,000.. ... [ Read it >> ]

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Silicon Valley's AI talent war just reached a compensation milestone that makes even the most legendary scientific achievements of the past look financially modest. When Meta recently offered AI researcher Matt Deitke $250 million over four years (an average of $62.5 million per year)—with potentially $100 million in the first year alone -- it shattered every historical precedent for scientific and technical compensation we can find on record. [Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly also offered an unnamed AI engineer $1 billion in compensation to be paid out over several years.] That includes salaries during the development of major scientific milestones of the 20th century. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

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A Rutgers-led study using advanced computational modeling reveals that expanding solar power by just 15% could reduce U.S. carbon emissions by over 8.5 million metric tons annually, with the greatest benefits concentrated in specific regions like California, Texas, and the Southwest. The study has been published in Science Advances. From the report: The study quantified both immediate and delayed emissions reductions resulting from added solar generation. For example, the researchers found that in California, a 15% increase in solar power at noon was associated with a reduction of 147.18 metric tons of CO2 in the region in the first hour and 16.08 metric tons eight hours later.... [ Read it >> ]

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