alternative_right writes: We certainly weren't looking for it. What we have confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale.' While the observation is unprecedented, it's not wholly unexpected. In 2013, Texas A&M University materials scientist Michael Demkowicz worked on a study predicting that this kind of nanocrack healing could happen, driven by the tiny crystalline grains inside metals essentially shifting their boundaries in response to stress... That the automatic mending process happened at room temperature is another promising aspect of the research. Metal usually requires lots of heat to shift its form, but the experiment was carried out in a vacuum; it remains to be seen whether the same process will happen in conventional metals in a typical environment. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

An artist cancelled their Duolingo and Audible subscriptions to protest the companies' decisions to use more AI. "If enough people leave, hopefully they kind of rethink this," the artist tells the Washington Post.

And apparently, many more people feel the same way...
... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

The education-news site EdSurge published "sponsored content" from Minecraft Education this month. "Students light up when they create something meaningful," the article begins. "Self-expression fuels learning, and creativity lies at the heart of the human experience."

But they also argue that "As AI rapidly reshapes software development, computer science education must move beyond syntax drills and algorithmic repetition." Students "must also learn to think systemically..."... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

"A single infusion of a stem cell-based treatment may have cured 10 out of 12 people with the most severe form of Type 1 diabetes," reports the New York Times.

"One year later, these 10 patients no longer need insulin. The other two patients need much lower doses."

The experimental treatment, called zimislecel and made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals of Boston, involves stem cells that scientists prodded to turn into pancreatic islet cells, which regulate blood glucose levels. The new islet cells were infused and reached the pancreas, where they took up residence. The study was presented Friday evening at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association and published online by The New England Journal of Medicine... ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

"Modern vehicles have quietly become rolling monuments to terrible user experience, trading intuitive physical controls for flashy but dangerous touchscreen interfaces," argues the site Cars & Horsepower, decrying "an industry-wide plague of poorly designed digital dashboards that demand more attention from drivers than the road itself."... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

It's not just Amazon's CEO predicting AI will lower their headcount. "Top executives at some of the largest American companies have a warning for their workers: Artificial intelligence is a threat to your job," reports the Washington Post — including IBM, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

ScienceAlert reports:

Casino lighting could be nudging gamblers to be more reckless with their money, according to a new study, which found a link between blue-enriched light and riskier gambling behavior. The extra blue light emitted by casino decor and LED screens seems to trigger certain switches in our brains, making us less sensitive to financial losses compared to gains of equal magnitude, researchers from Flinders University and Monash University in Australia found... ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

BlueSky has grown from roughly 10 million users in early November to 36.79 million today — and its last 30 days of traffic looks very level.

But instead of calling BlueSky's traffic "level", right-leaning libertarian Megan McArdle argues instead that BlueSky's "decline shows no sign of leveling out" (comparing the stable figures from the last month to a one-time spike seven months ago so they can write "It's now down about 50 percent"). And Wednesday the conservative UK magazine Spectator also ignored the 30-day-leveling to write instead that BlueSky is somehow "sliding down a slope". ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

"The carbon cost of asking an artificial intelligence model a single text question can be measured in grams of CO2..." writes the Washington Post. And while an individual's impact may be low, what about the collective impact of all users?

"A Google search takes about 10 times less energy than a ChatGPT query, according to a 2024 analysis from Goldman Sachs — although that may change as Google makes AI responses a bigger part of search."... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:

Over the past three years, companies have invested tens of billions of dollars toward making electric vehicles in the United States, buoyed by tax incentives aimed at helping American businesses compete with China. Now, those companies are facing a strange problem: too much manufacturing capacity, not enough demand. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

It's not dark matter, writes Space.com. But astronomers have discovered "a vast tendril of hot gas linking four galaxy clusters and stretching out for 23 million light-years, 230 times the length of our galaxy.

"With 10 times the mass of the Milky Way, this filamentary structure accounts for much of the universe's 'missing matter,' the search for which has baffled scientists for decades...."... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

ScienceDaily reports:

Researchers from MIT and Scripps have unveiled a promising new HIV vaccine approach that generates a powerful immune response with just one dose. By combining two immune-boosting adjuvants alum and SMNP the vaccine lingers in lymph nodes for nearly a month, encouraging the body to produce a vast array of antibodies. This one-shot strategy could revolutionize how we fight not just HIV, but many infectious diseases. It mimics the natural infection process and opens the door to broadly neutralizing antibody responses, a holy grail in vaccine design. And best of all, it's built on components already known to medicine.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

In April Anthorpic introduced a new AI trick: multiple Claude agents combine for a "Research" feature that can "search across both your internal work context and the web" (as well as Google Workspace "and any integrations...")

But a recent Anthropic blog post notes this feature "involves an agent that plans a research process based on user queries, and then uses tools to create parallel agents that search for information simultaneously," which brings challenges "in agent coordination, evaluation, and reliability.... The model must operate autonomously for many turns, making decisions about which directions to pursue based on intermediate findings."... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Threads now has 350 million users — but this week a strange bug affected some Threads accounts (on both desktop and mobile). "One user's post will get repeated over and over again..." explains TechCrunch, "as though every user on your feed is saying the same thing."

"Siri, unsubscribe me from 2025," one Threads user wrote, per a screenshot from social media expert Alexa Heinrich. But then, everyone else on Heinrich's feed appeared to be echoing the same cheugy joke... ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Intel is outsourcing much of its marketing work to Accenture, "as new CEO Lip-Bu Tan works to slash costs and improve the chipmaker's operations," reports OregonLive. From the report: The company said it believes Accenture, using artificial intelligence, will do a better job connecting with customers. It says it will tell most marketing employees by July 11 whether it plans to lay them off. "The transition of our marketing and operations functions will result in significant changes to team structures, including potential headcount reductions, with only lean teams remaining," Intel told employees in a notice describing its plans. The Oregonian/OregonLive reviewed a copy of the material.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

YouTube is quietly hosting Pac-Man Superfast within its "Playables" section. "You'd be forgiven for not knowing about YouTube Playables," writes Ars Technica's Kyle Orland. "Few seemed to note its official announcement last year as a collection of free-to-play web games built for the web using standard rendering APIs."... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

French President Emmanuel Macron urged Europe to reassert itself as a global space power, warning that France risks being sidelined in the low Earth orbit satellite market dominated by players like SpaceX and China. Phys.Org reports: Macron spoke at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget outside the French capital a day after France more than doubled its stake in satellite operator Eutelsat, the EU rival to Elon Musk's Starlink. Macron called for more investment as the European space industry struggles to remain competitive in the face of US and Chinese rivals. "SpaceX has disrupted the market, Amazon is also getting involved. China is not far behind, and I think we all need to be very clear-headed," Macron said. Europe must become "a space power once again, with France at its heart," he said. He warned that Europeans were "on the verge of being completely" squeezed out of the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation market.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son is envisaging setting up a $1 trillion industrial complex in Arizona that will build robots and artificial intelligence, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Son is seeking to team up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co for the project, which is aimed at bringing back high-end tech manufacturing to the U.S. and to create a version of China's vast manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, the report said.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

The superyacht Bayesian, owned by UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch, has been recovered off the coast of Sicily nearly a year after it sank during a storm, killing Lynch, his daughter, and five others. Italian authorities hope the $30 million salvage will uncover the cause of the sinking, which is under investigation for suspected manslaughter amid concerns about design flaws and storm vulnerability. The Guardian reports: The white top and blue hull of the 56-meter (184ft) vessel emerged from the depths of the sea in a holding area of a yellow floating crane barge, as salvage crews readied it to be hauled ashore for further investigation. The Italian coastguard said the recovery was scheduled to begin on Saturday morning. A spokesperson for TMC Maritime, which is conducting the recovery operation, said the vessel had been slowly raised from the seabed, 50 meters (165ft) down, over the past three days to allow the steel lifting straps, slings and harnesses to be secured under the keel.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: To comply with a new regulation that takes effect today, Apple has added an energy efficiency label to its iPhone and iPad pages in EU countries. Apple is also required to start including a printed version of the label with the devices sold there. The label grades a given iPhone or iPad model's energy efficiency from a high of A to a low of G, based on the EU's testing parameters. However, Apple said that certain aspects of the testing methods outlined by the European Commission are "ambiguous," so it chose to be conservative with its scores until testing is standardized.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Ancient Slashdot reader Alain Williams shares a report from The Guardian: The BBC is threatening legal action against Perplexity AI, in the corporation's first move to protect its content from being scraped without permission to build artificial intelligence technology. The corporation has sent a letter to Aravind Srinivas, the chief executive of the San Francisco-based startup, saying it has gathered evidence that Perplexity's model was "trained using BBC content." The letter, first reported by the Financial Times, threatens an injunction against Perplexity unless it stops scraping all BBC content to train its AI models, and deletes any copies of the broadcaster's material it holds unless it provides "a proposal for financial compensation."... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

According to Bloomberg (paywalled), Meta reportedly explored acquiring Perplexity AI but the deal fell through, with conflicting accounts on whether it was mutual or Perplexity backed out. Instead, Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, taking a 49% stake as part of its broader push to catch up with OpenAI and Google in the AI race.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

The company behind Applebee's and IHOP plans to use AI in its restaurants and behind the scenes to streamline operations and encourage repeat customers. From a report: Dine Brands is adding AI-infused tech support for all of its franchisees, as well as an AI-powered "personalization engine" that helps restaurants offer customized deals to diners, said Chief Information Officer Justin Skelton. The Pasadena, Calif.-based company, which also owns Fuzzy's Taco Shop and has over 3,500 restaurants across its brands, is taking a "practical" approach to AI by focusing on areas that can drive sales, Skelton said. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Large-scale attacks designed to bring down Internet services by sending them more traffic than they can process keep getting bigger, with the largest one yet, measured at 7.3 terabits per second, being reported Friday by Internet security and performance provider Cloudflare. The 7.3Tbps attack amounted to 37.4 terabytes of junk traffic that hit the target in just 45 seconds. That's an almost incomprehensible amount of data, equivalent to more than 9,300 full-length HD movies or 7,500 hours of HD streaming content in well under a minute.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Manhattan's congestion pricing program has reduced traffic by 10% and cut car-noise complaints by 70% in its first six months of operation, according to city data. The $9 daily toll for vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th Street began January 5, generating approximately $50 million monthly for subway and public transit improvements. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Apple is facing a proposed class-action lawsuit from shareholders who allege the company misled investors about the readiness of its AI-powered Siri upgrades, contributing to a $900 billion drop in market value. Reuters reports: Shareholders led by Eric Tucker said that at its June 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple led them to believe AI would be a key driver of iPhone 16 devices, when it launched Apple Intelligence to make Siri more powerful and user-friendly. But they said the Cupertino, California-based company lacked a functional prototype of AI-based Siri features, and could not reasonably believe the features would ever be ready for iPhone 16s.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

An anonymous reader shares a report: At tens of thousands of shoreline cleanups across the United States in recent years, volunteers logged each piece of litter they pulled from the edges of lakes, rivers and beaches into a global database. One of the most common entries? Plastic bags. But in places throughout the United States where plastic bags require a fee or have been banned, fewer bags end up at the water's edge, according to research published this week in Science. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

The Department of Homeland Security is concerned about the rate at which outlawed signal-jamming devices are being found across the US. From a report: In a warning issued on Wednesday, it said it has seen an 830 percent increase in seizures of these signal jammers since 2021, specifically those made in China. Signal-jamming devices are outlawed in the US, mainly because they can interfere with communications between emergency services and law enforcement. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Anthropic researchers found that 16 leading AI models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, and other major developers consistently engaged in harmful behaviors including blackmail, corporate espionage, and actions that could lead to human death when given autonomy and faced with threats to their existence or conflicting goals. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

New York City on Friday announced new minimum-pay rules for rideshare drivers, settling on a smaller-than-proposed 5% increase following pushback from Uber Technologies and Lyft. From a report: An earlier proposal called for a 6.1% pay boost. The finalized regulations from the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission, or TLC, are also designed to deter Uber and Lyft from locking gig workers out of their apps in an attempt to keep costs down. The board of commissioners will vote on the rules on June 25, according to the agency's website. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

david.emery writes: Microsoft is making it harder to use Chrome on Windows. The culprit? This time, it's Windows' Family Safety feature. Since early this month, the parental control measure has prevented users from opening Chrome. Strangely, no other apps or browsers appear to be affected. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

A United Nations study has found a sharp global divide on attitudes toward AI, with trust strongest in low-income countries and skepticism high in wealthier ones. From a report: More than 6 out of 10 people in developing nations said they have faith that AI systems serve the best interests of society, according to a UN Development Programme survey of 21 countries seen by Bloomberg News. In two-thirds of the countries surveyed, over half of respondents expressed some level of confidence that AI is being designed for good. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

BrianFagioli writes: In a move that could quietly wreak havoc across the Windows ecosystem, Microsoft is purging outdated drivers from Windows Update. The company claims it is doing this for security and reliability, but the result might be broken hardware for users who rely on legacy devices. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Semicolon usage in British literature has declined from once every 205 words in 2000 to once every 390 words today, representing a nearly 50% drop, according to analysis commissioned by language learning company Babbel. The punctuation mark appeared once every 90 words in British literature from 1781, making the current frequency the lowest on record. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

A senior Broadcom executive has defended VMware's controversial licensing changes by arguing that customers complaining about costs simply weren't using the software bundles properly. VMware shifted away from selling perpetual licenses for individual products to subscription bundles after Broadcom's acquisition. Some smaller and mid-sized customers claim their costs increased eight to 15 times under the new pricing structure, prompting migration plans to alternative platforms. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Lawmakers in Britain have narrowly approved a bill to legalize assisted dying for terminally ill people, capping a fraught debate in Parliament and across the country that cut across political, religious and legal divides. From a report: MPs passed the bill by 314 votes to 291, in their final say on the question. The bill -- which has split lawmakers and sparked impassioned conversations with their constituents the breadth of Britain -- will now move to the House of Lords for its final rounds of scrutiny. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Turning recently closed coalmines into solar energy plants could add almost 300GW of renewable energy by 2030, converting derelict wastelands to productive use, according to a new report. From a report: In a first of its kind analysis, researchers from Global Energy Monitor (GEM) identified 312 surface coalmines closed since 2020 around the world, and 134 likely to close by the end of the decade, together covering 5,820 sq km (2,250 sq miles) -- a land area nearly the size of Palestine. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

The DOJ has filed a civil complaint to seize $225.3 million in cryptocurrency linked to pig butchering scams -- long-con frauds where victims are tricked into fake crypto investments. The funds were laundered through a blockchain network, and the DOJ says recovered money will go toward reimbursing victims. The Verge reports: The 75-page complaint (PDF) filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia lays out more detail about the seizure. According to it, the US Secret Service (USSS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) tied scammers to seven groups of Tether stablecoin tokens. The fraud fell under what's typically known as "pig butchering": a form of long-running confidence scam aimed at tricking victims -- sometimes with a fake romantic relationship -- into what they believe is a profitable crypto investment opportunity, then disappearing with the funds. Pig butchering rings often traffic the workers who directly communicate with victims to Southeast Asian countries, something the DOJ alleges this ring did.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: The colossal black hole lurking at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning almost as fast as its maximum rotation rate. That's just one thing astrophysicists have discovered after developing and applying a new method to tease apart the secrets still hidden in supermassive black hole observations collected by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The unprecedented global collaboration spent years working to give us the first direct images of the shadows of black holes, first with M87* in a galaxy 55 million light-years away, then with Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of our own galaxy. [...]... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The Earth could be doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit in as little as three years at current levels of carbon dioxide emissions. That's the stark warning from more than 60 of the world's leading climate scientists in the most up-to-date assessment of the state of global warming. [...] At the beginning of 2020, scientists estimated that humanity could only emit 500 billion more tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) -- the most important planet-warming gas -- for a 50% chance of keeping warming to 1.5C. But by the start of 2025 this so-called "carbon budget" had shrunk to 130 billion tonnes, according to the new study.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Australia's world-first social media ban for under-16s moved closer to implementation after a key trial found that checking a user's age is technologically possible and can be integrated into existing services. From a report: The conclusions are a blow to Facebook-owner Meta Platforms, TikTok and Snap, which opposed the controversial legislation. Some platform operators had questioned whether a user's age could be reliably established using current technology. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A team of biologists from Northeastern University and the University of Kentucky has found one of the key molecules involved in axolotl regeneration. It's a crucial component in ensuring the body grows back the right parts in the right spot: for instance, growing a hand, from the wrist. "The cells can interpret this cue to say, 'I'm at the elbow, and then I'm going to grow back the hand' or 'I'm at the shoulder... so I'm going to then enable those cells to grow back the entire limb'," biologist James Monaghan explains.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from the Cool Down: A team of chemical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented a new process to separate crude oil components, potentially bringing forward a replacement that can cut its harmful carbon pollution by 90%. The original technique, which uses heat to separate crude oil into gasoline, diesel, and heating oil, accounts for roughly 1% of all global energy consumption and 6% of dirty energy pollution from the carbon dioxide it releases.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

The first macOS Tahoe beta appears to drop support for legacy FireWire 400 and 800, making it impossible to sync or mount older iPods and external drives that rely on the standard. MacRumors reports: Unlike on macOS Sequoia and earlier versions, the first macOS Tahoe beta does not include a FireWire section in the System Settings app. Of course, this could all end up being a false alarm. It is still early in the macOS Tahoe beta testing cycle, and FireWire support could return in a later beta version, or in time for the final release.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Publishers face an existential threat in the AI era and need to take action to make sure they are fairly compensated for their content, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told Axios at an event in Cannes on Thursday. From a report: Search traffic referrals have plummeted as people increasingly rely on AI summaries to answer their queries, forcing many publishers to reevaluate their business models. Ten years ago, Google crawled two pages for every visitor it sent a publisher, per Prince. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hollywood Reporter: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li and a legion of the all-time greats of martial cinema are about to get an AI makeover. In a sign-of-the-times announcement at the Shanghai International Film Festival on Thursday, a collection of Chinese studios revealed that they are turning to AI to re-imagine around 100 classics of the genre. Lee's classic Fist of Fury (1972), Chan's breakthrough Drunken Master (1978) and the Tsui Hark-directed epic Once Upon a Time in China (1991), which turned Li into a bone fide movie star, are among the features poised for the treatment, as part of the "Kung Fu Movie Heritage Project 100 Classics AI Revitalization Project."... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Starting mid-July 2025, Microsoft 365 will begin blocking legacy authentication protocols like Remote PowerShell and FrontPage RPC to enhance security under its "Secure by Default" initiative. Admins must now grant explicit consent for third-party app access, which could disrupt workflows but aims to reduce unauthorized data exposure. The Register reports: First in line for the chop is legacy browser authentication to SharePoint and OneDrive using the Remote PowerShell (RPS) protocol. According to Microsoft, legacy authentication protocols like RPS "are vulnerable to brute-force and phishing attacks due to non-modern authentication." The upshot is that attempting to access OneDrive or SharePoint via a browser using legacy authentication will stop working.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

SpaceX's Starship exploded on its test stand in South Texas ahead of an engine test, marking the fourth loss of a Starship this year. "In three previous test flights, the vehicle came apart or detonated during its flight," notes the Washington Post. No injuries were reported but the incident highlights ongoing technical challenges as SpaceX races to prove Starship's readiness for deep-space travel. From the report: In a post on the social media site X, SpaceX said that the explosion on the test stand, which could be seen for miles, happened at about 11 p.m. Central time. For safety reasons, the company had cleared personnel from around the site, and "all personnel are safe and accounted for," it said. The company is "actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials," the post continued. "There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue."... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cybernews: Several collections of login credentials reveal one of the largest data breaches in history, totaling a humongous 16 billion exposed login credentials. The data most likely originates from various infostealers. Unnecessarily compiling sensitive information can be as damaging as actively trying to steal it. For example, the Cybernews research team discovered a plethora of supermassive datasets, housing billions upon billions of login credentials. From social media and corporate platforms to VPNs and developer portals, no stone was left unturned.... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies

Hackers have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from cryptocurrency holders and disrupted major retailers by targeting outsourced call centers used by American corporations to reduce costs, WSJ reported Thursday. The attackers exploit low-paid call center workers through bribes and social engineering to bypass two-factor authentication systems protecting bank accounts and online portals. ... [ Read it >> ]

0 Replies