With no one behind the steering wheel, a Tesla robotaxi passes Guero's Taco Bar in Austin Texas, making a right turn onto Congress Avenue.

Today is the day Austin became the first city in the world to see Tesla's self-driving robotaxi service, reports The Guardian:

Some analysts believe that the robotaxis will only be available to employees and invitees initially. For the CEO, Tesla's rollout is slow. "We could start with 1,000 or 10,000 [robotaxis] on day one, but I don't think that would be prudent," he told CNBC in May. "So, we will start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40."

The billionaire has said the driverless cars will be monitored remotely... [Posting on X.com] Musk said the date was "tentatively" 22 June but that this launch date would be "not real self-driving", which would have to wait nearly another week... Musk said he planned to have one thousand Tesla robotaxis on Austin roads "within a few months" and then he would expand to other cities in Texas and California.

Musk posted on X that riders on launch day would be charged a flat fee of $4.20, according to Reuters. And "In recent days, Tesla has sent invites to a select group of Tesla online influencers for a small and carefully monitored robotaxi trial..."

As the date of the planned robotaxi launch approached, Texas lawmakers moved to enact rules on autonomous vehicles in the state. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, on Friday signed legislation requiring a state permit to operate self-driving vehicles. The law does not take effect until September 1, but the governor's approval of it on Friday signals state officials from both parties want the driverless-vehicle industry to proceed cautiously... The law softens the state's previous anti-regulation stance on autonomous vehicles. A 2017 Texas law specifically prohibited cities from regulating self-driving cars...

The law requires autonomous-vehicle operators to get approval from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles before operating on public streets without a human driver. It also gives state authorities the power to revoke permits if they deem a driverless vehicle "endangers the public," and requires firms to provide information on how police and first responders can deal with their driverless vehicles in emergency situations. The law's requirements for getting a state permit to operate an "automated motor vehicle" are not particularly onerous but require a firm to attest it can safely operate within the law... Compliance remains far easier than in some states, most notably California, which requires extensive submission of vehicle-testing data under state oversight. ... [>>>]

How AI will reshape the future of work? The Washington Post looks at India's $280 billion call-center and "business process outsourcing" industry, which employs over 3 million people.

2023 saw the arrival of a real-time "accent-altering software" — now used by at least 42,000 call center agents:

Those who use the software are engaging in "digital whitewashing," critics say, which helps explain why the industry prefers the term "accent translation" over "accent neutralization." But companies say it's delivering results: happier customers, satisfied agents, faster calls.

Many are not convinced. Whatever short-term gains automation may offer to workers, they say, it will ultimately eliminate far more jobs than it creates. They point to the quality assurance process: When callers hear, "this call may be monitored," that now usually refers to an AI system, not a human [which now can review all calls for compliance and tone]... "AI is going to crush entry-level white-collar hiring over the next 24 to 36 months," said Mark Serdar, who has spent his career helping Fortune 500 companies expand their global workforce. "And it's happening faster than most people realize...." Already, chatbots, or "virtual agents," are handling basic tasks like password resets or balance updates. AI systems are writing code, translating emails, onboarding patients, and analyzing applications for credit cards, mortgages and insurance. The human jobs are changing, too. AI "co-pilots" are providing call center agents with instant answers and suggested scripts. At some companies, bots have started handling the calls.

There is no shortage of ominous predictions about the implications for India's labor force. Within a year, there will only be a "minimal" need for call centers, K Krithivasan, CEO of Indian IT company Tata Consultancy Services, recently told the Financial Times. The Brookings Institution found 86 percent of customer service tasks have "high automation potential." More than a quarter of jobs in India have "high exposure" to AI, the International Monetary Fund has warned. "There is a rapid wave coming," said Pratyush Kumar, co-founder of Sarvam, a leading Indian AI firm, which recently helped a major insurance provider make 40 million automated phone calls informing enrollees that their insurance program was expiring. He said corporate clients are all asking him to help reduce headcount... ... [>>>]

The goal isn't to stop generative music, but to make it traceable, reports the Verge — "to identify it early, tag it with metadata, and govern how it moves through the system...."

"Detection systems are being embedded across the entire music pipeline: in the tools used to train models, the platforms where songs are uploaded, the databases that license rights, and the algorithms that shape discovery."

Platforms like YouTube and [French music streaming service] Deezer have developed internal systems to flag synthetic audio as it's uploaded and shape how it surfaces in search and recommendations. Other music companies — including Audible Magic, Pex, Rightsify, and SoundCloud — are expanding detection, moderation, and attribution features across everything from training datasets to distribution... Vermillio and Musical AI are developing systems to scan finished tracks for synthetic elements and automatically tag them in the metadata. Vermillio's TraceID framework goes deeper by breaking songs into stems — like vocal tone, melodic phrasing, and lyrical patterns — and flagging the specific AI-generated segments, allowing rights holders to detect mimicry at the stem level, even if a new track only borrows parts of an original. The company says its focus isn't takedowns, but proactive licensing and authenticated release... A rights holder or platform can run a finished track through [Vermillo's] TraceID to see if it contains protected elements — and if it does, have the system flag it for licensing before release.

Some companies are going even further upstream to the training data itself. By analyzing what goes into a model, their aim is to estimate how much a generated track borrows from specific artists or songs. That kind of attribution could enable more precise licensing, with royalties based on creative influence instead of post-release disputes...

Deezer has developed internal tools to flag fully AI-generated tracks at upload and reduce their visibility in both algorithmic and editorial recommendations, especially when the content appears spammy. Chief Innovation Officer Aurélien Hérault says that, as of April, those tools were detecting roughly 20 percent of new uploads each day as fully AI-generated — more than double what they saw in January. Tracks identified by the system remain accessible on the platform but are not promoted... Spawning AI's DNTP (Do Not Train Protocol) is pushing detection even earlier — at the dataset level. The opt-out protocol lets artists and rights holders label their work as off-limits for model training. ... [>>>]

"When Apollo astronauts stumbled across shimmering orange beads on the moon, they had no idea they were gazing at ancient relics of violent volcanic activity," writes ScienceDaily.

These glass spheres, tiny yet mesmerizing, formed billions of years ago during fiery eruptions that launched molten droplets skyward, instantly freezing in space. Now, using advanced instruments that didn't exist in the 1970s, scientists have examined the beads in unprecedented detail. The result is a remarkable window into the moon's dynamic geological history, revealing how eruption styles evolved and how lunar conditions once mirrored explosive events we see on Earth today...
Analyses of orange and black lunar beads have shown that the style of volcanic eruptions changed over time. "It's like reading the journal of an ancient lunar volcanologist," said Ryan Ogliore [an associate professor of physics at Missouri's Washington University, which has a large repository of lunar samples that were returned to Earth].
"The beads are tiny, pristine capsules of the lunar interior..." says Ogliore. "We've had these samples for 50 years, but we now have the technology to fully understand them..."

"The very existence of these beads tells us the moon had explosive eruptions, something like the fire fountains you can see in Hawaii today."

Thanks to Slashdot reader alternative_right for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/22/0358233/tiny-orange-beads-found-by-apollo-astronauts-reveal-moons-volcanic-past?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

As recently as 2021, GM "all but eliminated" hybrids from its future product plans, reports the New York Times. "But then a funny thing happened."
Car shoppers balked at the high prices of fully electric models and the challenges of charging them. In the last few years, sales of electric vehicles have grown at a much slower rate than automakers once expected. And hybrids have stepped in to fill the gap, accounting for a large and growing share of new car sales... In the first three months of this year, hybrids — including cars that can and cannot be plugged in — made up about 14 percent of all light vehicles sold in the United States, according to the Department of Energy. That was around twice the market share of fully electric vehicles in that period...

Several automakers are slowing the introduction of new electric vehicles, and have accelerated development of new hybrids.

Robb Report looks at the current status of hybrids — and a possible future:

"The charging infrastructure in most countries is not yet mature enough to support convenient mass adoption of battery-electric vehicles, and in some territories never will be," says Jonathan Hall, head of research and advanced engineering at U.K.-based consulting group Mahle Powertrain....

Porsche, active in this space since 2010, just hybridized its iconic 911 for this model year. Lamborghini also joined the trend with the debut of its 1,000 hp Revuelto hybrid in 2023. "The company doesn't plan to give up the internal-combustion engine anytime soon," says CTO Rouven Mohr. "We are also considering synthetic fuels to keep ICE vehicles running after 2030."

Hall concurs: "With the emergence of bio-based and even fully synthetic fuels, the link between the ICE and climate change can be broken." Combined with the development of better batteries, this progressive hybrid model could offer the best of both worlds for years to come.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/22/0616202/americans-are-buying-twice-as-many-hybrids-as-fully-electric-vehicles-is-the-next-step-synthetic-fuels?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

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.

A possible explanation involves a process known as cold welding, which occurs under ambient temperatures whenever metal surfaces come close enough together for their respective atoms to tangle together. Typically, thin layers of air or contaminants interfere with the process; in environments like the vacuum of space, pure metals can be forced close enough together to literally stick.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/054219/a-cracked-piece-of-metal-self-healed-in-experiment-that-stunned-scientists?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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...

In thousands of comments and posts about Audible and Duolingo that The Post reviewed across social media — including on Reddit, YouTube, Threads and TikTok — people threatened to cancel subscriptions, voiced concern for human translators and narrators, and said AI creates inferior experiences. "It destroys the purpose of humanity. We have so many amazing abilities to create art and music and just appreciate what's around us," said Kayla Ellsworth, a 21-year-old college student. "Some of the things that are the most important to us are being replaced by things that are not real...."

People in creative jobs are already on edge about the role AI is playing in their fields. On sites such as Etsy, clearly AI-generated art and other products are pushing out some original crafters who make a living on their creations. AI is being used to write romance novels and coloring books, design logos and make presentations... "I was promised tech would make everything easier so I could enjoy life," author Brittany Moone said. "Now it's leaving me all the dishes and the laundry so AI can make the art."
But will this turn into a consumer movement? The article also cites an assistant marketing professor at Washington State University, who found customers are now reacting negatively to the term "AI" in product descriptions — out of fear for losing their jobs (as well as concerns about quality and privacy). And he does predict this can change the way companies use AI.
"There will be some companies that are going to differentiate themselves by saying no to AI." And while it could be a niche market, "The people will be willing to pay more for things just made by humans."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/1755225/what-if-customers-started-saying-no-to-ai?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

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..."
As AI automates many of the mechanical aspects of programming, the value of CS education is shifting, from writing perfect code to shaping systems, telling stories through logic and designing ethical, human-centered solutions... [I]t's critical to offer computer science experiences that foster invention, expression and design. This isn't just an education issue — it's a workforce one. Creativity now ranks among the top skills employers seek, alongside analytical thinking and AI literacy. As automation reshapes the job market, McKinsey estimates up to 375 million workers may need to change occupations by 2030. The takeaway? We need more adaptable, creative thinkers.
Creative coding, where programming becomes a medium for self-expression and innovation, offers a promising solution to this disconnect. By positioning code as a creative tool, educators can tap into students' intrinsic motivation while simultaneously building computational thinking skills. This approach helps students see themselves as creators, not just consumers, of technology. It aligns with digital literacy frameworks that emphasize critical evaluation, meaningful contribution and not just technical skills.
One example of creative coding comes from a curriculum that introduces computer science through game design and storytelling in Minecraft... Developed by Urban Arts in collaboration with Minecraft Education, the program offers middle school teachers professional development, ongoing coaching and a 72-session curriculum built around game-based instruction. Designed for grades 6-8, the project-based program is beginner-friendly; no prior programming experience is required for teachers or students. It blends storytelling, collaborative design and foundational programming skills with a focus on creativity and equity.... Students use Minecraft to build interactive narratives and simulations, developing computational thinking and creative design... Early results are promising: 93 percent of surveyed teachers found the Creative Coders program engaging and effective, noting gains in problem-solving, storytelling and coding, as well as growth in critical thinking, creativity and resilience. ... [>>>]

"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...

Patients in the study began to need less insulin within a few months of being infused with new islet cells, and most stopped needing the hormone altogether at about six months [said Dr. Trevor Reichman, director of the pancreas and islet transplant program at University Health Network, a hospital in Toronto, and first author of the study]. He added that patients' episodes of hypoglycemia went away within the first 90 days of treatment.

If the study continues to show positive results, the company expects to submit an application to the FDA next year. "For the short term, this looks promising" for severely affected patients like those in the study," said Dr. Irl B. Hirsch, a diabetes expert at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. But patients in the trial had to stay on drugs to prevent the immune system from destroying the new cells. Suppressing the immune system, he said, increases the risk of infections and, over the long term, can increase the risk of cancer... Patients may have to take the immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives, the Vertex spokesperson said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/22/0317248/people-with-severe-type-1-diabetes-are-cured-in-small-trial-of-new-drug?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

"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."

The consequences are measurable and severe: studies now show touchscreen vehicles require up to four times longer to perform basic functions than their button-equipped counterparts, creating a distracted driving crisis that automakers refuse to acknowledge. A Swedish car magazine, Vi Bilägare, conducted a study [in 2022] comparing how long it takes drivers to perform basic tasks like adjusting climate controls or changing the radio station using touchscreens versus traditional physical buttons. The results showed that in the worst-performing modern car, it took drivers up to four times longer to complete these tasks compared to an older vehicle with physical controls... Even after allowing drivers time to familiarize themselves with each system, touchscreen-equipped cars consistently required more time and attention, which could translate into increased distraction and reduced safety on the road....
A seminal 2019 study from the University of Utah found drivers using touchscreens exhibited:

- 30% longer reaction times to road hazards

- Significantly higher cognitive workload (as measured by pupil dilation)

- More frequent and longer glances away from the road
The reason lies in proprioception — our body's ability to sense its position in space. Physical controls allow for muscle memory development; drivers can locate and manipulate buttons without looking. Touchscreens destroy this capability, forcing visual confirmation for every interaction. Even haptic feedback (those little vibrations mimicking physical buttons) fails to solve the problem, as demonstrated by a 2022 AAA study showing haptic systems offered no safety improvement over standard touchscreens... ... [>>>]

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.

But are they really just trying to impress their shareholders?

Economists say there aren't yet strong signs that AI is driving widespread layoffs across industries.... CEOs are under pressure to show they are embracing new technology and getting results — incentivizing attention-grabbing predictions that can create additional uncertainty for workers. "It's a message to shareholders and board members as much as it is to employees," Molly Kinder, a Brookings Institution fellow who studies the impact of AI, said of the CEO announcements, noting that when one company makes a bold AI statement, others typically follow. "You're projecting that you're out in the future, that you're embracing and adopting this so much that the footprint [of your company] will look different."

Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains, a Harris Poll survey conducted for software company Dataiku showed. Tech leaders have sounded some of the loudest warnings — in line with their interest in promoting AI's power...

IBM, which recently announced job cuts, said it replaced a couple hundred human resource workers with AI "agents" for repetitive tasks such as onboarding and scheduling interviews. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on Joe Rogan's podcast that the company is building AI that might be able to do what some human workers do by the end of the year.... Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's CEO of consumer and community banking, told an investor meeting last month that AI could help the bank cut headcount in operations and account services by 10 percent. The CEO of BT Group Allison Kirkby suggested that advances in AI would mean deeper cuts at the British telecom company... ... [>>>]

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...

The researchers think circadian photoreception, which is our non-visual response to light, is playing a part here. The level of blue spectrum light may be activating specific eye cells connected to brain regions in charge of decision-making, emotional regulation, and processing risk versus reward scenarios.
"Under conditions where the lighting emitted less blue, people tended to feel a $100 loss much more strongly than a $100 gain — the loss just feels worse," [says the study's lead author, a psychologist at the Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute]. "But under bright, blue-heavy light such as that seen in casino machines, the $100 loss didn't appear to feel as bad, so people were more willing to take the risk...." That raises some questions around ethics and responsibility, according to the researchers. While encouraging risk taking might be good for the gambling business, it's not good for the patrons spending their cash.

One professor involved in the study reached this conclusion. "It is possible that simply dimming the blue in casino lights could help promote safer gambling behaviors."
The research has been published in Scientific Reports.
Thanks to Slashdot reader alternative_right for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/2147214/casino-lights-could-be-warping-your-brain-to-take-risks-scientists-warn?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

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".

But TechCrunch thinks the "up or down" conversation is entirely missing the point of "the wider network of apps built on the open protocol that Bluesky's team spearheaded" — and how BlueSky "is only meant to be one example of what's possible within the wider AT Proto ecosystem."

If you don't like the tone of the topics trending on Bluesky, you can switch to other apps, change your default feeds, or even build your own social platform using the technology. Already, people are using the protocol that powers Bluesky to build social experiences for specific groups — like Blacksky is doing for the Black online community or like Gander Social is doing for social media users in Canada. There are also feed builders like Graze and those in Surf that let you create custom feeds where you can focus on specific content you care about — like video games or baseball — and exclude others, like politics. Built into Bluesky (and other third-party clients) are tools that let you pick your default feed and add others that interest you from a range of topics. If you want to follow a feed devoted to your favorite TV show or animal, for instance, you can. In other words, Bluesky is meant to be what you make it, and its content can be consumed in whatever format you prefer best.

In addition to Bluesky itself, the wider network of apps built on the AT Protocol includes photo- and video-sharing apps, livestreaming tools, communication apps, blogging apps, music apps, movie and TV recommendation apps, and more. Other tools also let you combine feeds from Bluesky with other social networks. Openvibe, for instance, can mix together feeds from social networks like Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Nostr. Apps like Surf and Tapestry offer ways to track posts on open social platforms as well as those published with other open protocols like RSS. This lets the apps pull in content from blogs, news sites, YouTube, and podcasts. ... [>>>]

"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."

For now, a determined user can avoid prompting Google's default AI-generated summaries by switching over to the "web" search tab, which is one of the options alongside images and news. Adding "-ai" to the end of a search query also seems to work. Other search engines, including DuckDuckGo, give you the option to turn off AI summaries....
Using AI doesn't just mean going to a chatbot and typing in a question. You're also using AI every time an algorithm organizes your social media feed, recommends a song or filters your spam email... [T]here's not much you can do about it other than using the internet less. It's up to the companies that are integrating AI into every aspect of our digital lives to find ways to do it with less energy and damage to the planet.
More points from the article:

Two researchers tested the performance of 14 AI language models, and found larger models gave more accurate answers, "but used several times more energy than smaller models."
The data centers hosting AI models "can devour more electricity than entire cities."
"Keeping those computers cool uses freshwater — about one bottle's worth for every 100 words of text ChatGPT generates."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/1844252/what-are-the-carbon-costs-of-asking-an-ai-a-question?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

As sales of electric vehicles slow and congressional Republicans take aim at EV tax credits and incentives, the United States is slated to have more battery and EV manufacturing than it needs, according to a report released Wednesday by the Rhodium Group, a research firm. That could leave factories — many of which are already operating or under construction — stranded if car sales continue to slump. "The rug is being pulled out from under these manufacturers," said Hannah Pitt, a director in Rhodium's energy and climate practice...

After [America's 2022 climate bill], battery investment in the U.S. skyrocketed. Companies went from investing about $1 billion per quarter in 2022 to $11 billion per quarter in 2024. Most of that battery investment went to red states, including in the South's "Battery Belt," where manufacturers were drawn to inexpensive land and a nonunionized workforce. Now, however, that battery boom is teetering. In the first three months of 2025, companies canceled $6 billion in battery manufacturing — a record. EV sales have slowed...
According to the new report, the United States has almost enough battery capacity announced or under development to meet demand all the way to 2030 if EV sales continue to slump. That might sound like a good thing — but if EV sales drop further, it means companies will be left with factories they won't be able to use. At the same time, China has excess battery capacity. The country has enough manufacturing to meet the entire world's demand for batteries — and may be looking to off-load them onto other markets... And if the incentives for using U.S.-made batteries disappear, the nation's manufacturers would be left high and dry. ... [>>>]

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...."

[I]t is "ordinary matter" made up of atoms, composed of electrons, protons, and neutrons (collectively called baryons) which make up stars, planets, moons, and our bodies. For decades, our best models of the universe have suggested that a third of the baryonic matter that should be out there in the cosmos is missing.

This discovery of that missing matter suggests our best models of the universe were right all along. It could also reveal more about the "Cosmic Web," the vast structure along which entire galaxies grew and gathered during the earlier epochs of our 13.8 billion-year-old universe.... The newly observed filament isn't just extraordinary in terms of its mass and size; it also has a temperature of a staggering 18 million degrees Fahrenheit (10 million degrees Celsius). That's around 1,800 times hotter than the surface of the sun...

The team's research was published on Thursday (June 19) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Models of the cosmos (including the standard model of cosmology) "have long posited the idea that the missing baryonic matter of the universe is locked up in vast filaments of gas stretching between the densest pockets of space..." the article points out. But now thanks to Suzaku, a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) satellite, and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, "a team of astronomers has for the first time been able to determine the properties of one of these filaments, which links four galactic clusters in the local universe."

Team leader Konstantinos Migkas (of the Netherlands' Leiden Observatory) explained the significance of their finding. "For the first time, our results closely match what we see in our leading model of the cosmos — something that's not happened before." ... [>>>]

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.

Thanks to Slashdot reader alternative_right for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/0451227/one-shot-to-stop-hiv-mits-bold-vaccine-breakthrough?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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."
Multi-agent systems work mainly because they help spend enough tokens to solve the problem.... This finding validates our architecture that distributes work across agents with separate context windows to add more capacity for parallel reasoning. The latest Claude models act as large efficiency multipliers on token use, as upgrading to Claude Sonnet 4 is a larger performance gain than doubling the token budget on Claude Sonnet 3.7. Multi-agent architectures effectively scale token usage for tasks that exceed the limits of single agents.

There is a downside: in practice, these architectures burn through tokens fast. In our data, agents typically use about 4Ã-- more tokens than chat interactions, and multi-agent systems use about 15Ã-- more tokens than chats. For economic viability, multi-agent systems require tasks where the value of the task is high enough to pay for the increased performance. Further, some domains that require all agents to share the same context or involve many dependencies between agents are not a good fit for multi-agent systems today.

For instance, most coding tasks involve fewer truly parallelizable tasks than research, and LLM agents are not yet great at coordinating and delegating to other agents in real time. We've found that multi-agent systems excel at valuable tasks that involve heavy parallelization, information that exceeds single context windows, and interfacing with numerous complex tools. ... [>>>]

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...

While it's not yet clear what caused the bug, Meta Communications Director Andy Stone responded to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong's post about the issue. "Whoops, well that clearly shouldn't have happened! We're working on getting it fixed now," Stone said.

I thought the bug was only affecting user feeds (and not replies). But either way, Wong came up with the perfect comeback.

"Whoops, well that clearly shouldn't have happened! We're working on getting it fixed now."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/018232/bug-hits-some-threads-users-their-words-echoed-by-all-other-users?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Intel declined to say how many workers will lose their jobs or how many work in its marketing organization, which employs people at sites around the globe, including in Oregon. But it acknowledged its relationship with Accenture in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "As we announced earlier this year, we are taking steps to become a leaner, faster and more efficient company," Intel said. "As part of this, we are focused on modernizing our digital capabilities to serve our customers better and strengthen our brand. Accenture is a longtime partner and trusted leader in these areas and we look forward to expanding our work together."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/0251208/intel-will-outsource-marketing-to-accenture-and-ai-laying-off-its-own-workers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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."

"The seeming competitor to Netflix's mobile gaming offerings is still described in an official FAQ as 'an experimental feature rolled out to select users in eligible countries/regions,' which doesn't make this post-Stadia gaming effort seem like a huge priority for Google." From the report:
Weird origins aside, Pac-Man Superfast pretty much delivers what its name promises. While gameplay starts at an "Easy" speed that roughly matches the arcade original, the speed of both Pac-Man and the ghosts is slightly increased every few seconds (dying temporarily reduces the speed to a lower level). After a few minutes, you're advancing past the titular "Super Fast" speed to extreme reflex-testing speeds like Crazy, Insane, Maniac, and a final test that's ominously named "Doom."

Those who've played the excellent Pac-Man Championship Edition series will be familiar with the high-speed vibe here, but Pac-Man Superfast remains focused on the game's original maze and selection of just four ghosts. That means old-school strategies for grouping ghosts together and running successful patterns through the narrow corridors work in similar ways here. Successfully executing those patterns becomes a tense battle of nerves here, though, requiring multiple direction changes every second at the highest speeds. While the game will technically work with swipe controls on a smartphone or tablet, high-level play really requires the precision of a keyboard via a desktop/laptop web browser (we couldn't get the game to recognize a USB controller, unfortunately).

As exciting as the high-speed maze gameplay gets, though, Pac-Man Superfast is hampered by a few odd design decisions. The game ends abruptly after just 13 levels, for instance, making it impossible to even attempt the high-endurance 256-level runs that Pac-Man is known for. The game also throws an extra life at you every 5,000 points, making it relatively easy to brute force your way to the end as long as you focus on the three increasingly high-point-value items that appear periodically on each stage. Despite this, the game doesn't give any point reward for unused extra lives or long-term survival at high speeds, limiting the rewards for high-level play. And the lack of a built-in leaderboard makes it hard to directly compare your performance to friends and/or strangers anyway. ... [>>>]

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.

Macron said France and its partners should not be reliant on non-European constellations in low orbit, calling it "madness." He called non-European players to team up with France. "This must be the solution for our major strategic partners in the Gulf, India, Canada and Brazil," he said. "We really need to succeed in increasing our collective investment effort," Macron added, noting the importance of private investors and public-private collaboration. He also said France planned to organize a space summit in early 2026 to "mobilize our public and private partners across the globe."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/21/0242226/macron-says-europe-must-become-space-power-again?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

SoftBank officials have spoken with U.S. federal and state government officials to discuss possible tax breaks for companies building factories or otherwise investing in the industrial park, including talks with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, the report said. SoftBank is keen to have TSMC involved in the project, codenamed Project Crystal Land, but it is not clear in what capacity, the report said. It is also not clear the Taiwanese company would be interested, it said. TSMC is already building chipmaking factories in the U.S. with a planned investment of $165 billion. Son is also sounding out interest among tech companies including Samsung Electronics, the report said.

The plans are preliminary and feasibility depends on support from the Trump administration and state officials, it said.
A commitment of $1 trillion would be double that of the $500 billion "Stargate" project which seeks to build out data centre capacity across the U.S., with funding from SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/2212217/softbanks-son-pitches-1-trillion-arizona-ai-hub?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

The operation -- which has cost approximately $30 million -- was made easier after the vessel's 72-meter mast was detached using a remote-controlled cutting tool and placed on the seabed on Tuesday. The vessel will be transported to the port of Termini Imerese, where investigators are expected to examine it as part of an inquiry into the cause of the sinking. [...] The salvage operation was very complex, and was temporarily suspended in mid-May after Rob Cornelis Maria Huijben, a 39-year-old Dutch diver, died during underwater work. The British-based consultancy TMC Marine, which oversaw a consortium of salvage specialists undertaking the project, said the hull would be lifted on to a specially manufactured steel cradle on the quayside once it had been transported to Termini Imerese. Investigators hope the yacht will yield vital clues to the causes of the sinking. A forensic examination of the hull will seek to determine whether one of the hatches remained open and whether the keel was improperly raised.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/2158226/sunken-superyacht-of-uk-tech-tycoon-mike-lynch-recovered-near-sicily?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

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.

In a 44-page document (PDF) detailing its testing methodology for the labels, Apple said its current iPhone models qualified for the highest energy efficiency grade of A, but the company voluntarily downgraded these scores to a B as a cautionary measure. The label also provides details about a given iPhone or iPad model's battery life per full charge cycle, repairability grade, impact resistance, ingress protection rating for water and dust resistance, and how many full charge cycles the battery is rated for. Likewise, this information is based on Apple's interpretation of the EU's testing parameters.

On the web, the label can be viewed by clicking or tapping on the colorful little tag icon on various iPhone and iPad pages on Apple's localized websites for EU countries. It is shown on both Apple's main product marketing pages for all iPhone and iPad models that are currently sold in the EU, and on the purchase page for those devices. The label is accompanied by a product information sheet (PDF) that provides a comprehensive overview of even more details, such as the device's battery capacity in mAh, screen scratch resistance based on the Mohs hardness scale, the minimum guaranteed timeframe for availability of security updates, and much more.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/2034241/apple-adds-energy-and-battery-labels-to-iphone-and-ipad-pages-in-eu?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

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."

The legal threat comes weeks after Tim Davie, the director general of the BBC, and the boss of Sky both criticised proposals being considered by the government that could let tech companies use copyright-protected work without permission. "If we currently drift in the way we are doing now we will be in crisis," Davie said, speaking at the Enders conference. "We need to make quick decisions now around areas like ... protection of IP. We need to protect our national intellectual property, that is where the value is. What do I need? IP protection; come on, let's get on with it." "Perplexity's tool [which allows users to choose between different AI models] directly competes with the BBC's own services, circumventing the need for users to access those services," the corporation said.

Perplexity told the FT that the BBC's claims were "manipulative and opportunistic" and that it had a "fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/2022200/bbc-threatens-legal-action-against-perplexity-ai-over-content-scraping?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot. ... [>>>]

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.

"Meta's attempt to purchase Perplexity serves as the latest example of Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive push to bolster his company's AI efforts amid fierce competition from OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet," reports CNBC. "Zuckerberg has grown agitated that rivals like OpenAI appear to be ahead in both underlying AI models and consumer-facing apps, and he is going to extreme lengths to hire top AI talent."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://meta.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/2015248/meta-discussed-buying-perplexity-before-investing-in-scale-ai?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Streamlining tech support for Dine Brands' more than 300 franchisees is important because issues like a broken printer take valuable time away from actually managing restaurants, Skelton said. Dine Brands' AI tool, which was built with Amazon's Q generative AI assistant, allows the company's field technology services staff to query its knowledge base for tech help using plain English, rather than needing to manually search for answers.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/1954245/applebees-and-ihop-plan-to-introduce-ai-in-restaurants?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Cloudflare said the attackers "carpet bombed" an average of nearly 22,000 destination ports of a single IP address belonging to the target, identified only as a Cloudflare customer. A total of 34,500 ports were targeted, indicating the thoroughness and well-engineered nature of the attack. [...] Cloudflare said the record DDoS exploited various reflection or amplification vectors, including the previously mentioned Network Time Protocol; the Quote of the Day Protocol, which listens on UDP port 17 and responds with a short quote or message; the Echo Protocol, which responds with the same data it receives; and Portmapper services used identify resources available to applications connecting through the Remote Procedure Call. Cloudflare said the attack was also delivered through one or more Mirai-based botnets. Such botnets are typically made up of home and small office routers, web cameras, and other Internet of Things devices that have been compromised.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/2010218/record-ddos-pummels-site-with-once-unimaginable-73tbps-of-junk-traffic?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Buses now travel fast enough that drivers must stop and wait to maintain schedules, while subway ridership has increased sharply since the program launched. Broadway theater attendance has risen rather than declined as some critics predicted. Polling shows more New Yorkers now support the toll than oppose it, a reversal from widespread opposition before implementation.

The policy took nearly 50 years to enact despite originating from Columbia University economist William Vickrey's work in the 1960s. Congress blocked a similar proposal in the 1970s, and the current program faced a six-year implementation delay after Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it into law in 2019. Governor Kathy Hochul postponed the launch in 2024 before allowing it to proceed after Donald Trump's presidential election victory.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/205237/congestion-pricing-in-manhattan-is-a-predictable-success?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Shareholders said the truth began to emerge on March 7 when Apple delayed some Siri upgrades to 2026, and continued through this year's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9 when Apple's assessment of its AI progress disappointed analysts. Apple shares have lost nearly one-fourth of their value since their December 26, 2024 record high, wiping out approximately $900 billion of market value.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/2147258/apple-sued-by-shareholders-for-allegedly-overstating-ai-progress?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Lightweight and abundant, thin plastic bags often slip out of trash cans and recycling bins, travel in the wind and end up in bodies of water, where they pose serious risks to wildlife, which can become entangled or ingest them. They also break down into harmful microplastics, which have been found nearly everywhere on Earth. Using data complied by the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, researchers analyzed results from 45,067 shoreline cleanups between 2016 to 2023, along with a sample of 182 local and state policies enacted to regulate plastic shopping bags between 2017 and 2023. They found areas that adopted plastic bag policies saw a 25 to 47 percent reduction in the share of plastic bag litter on shorelines, when compared with areas without policies. The longer a policy was in place, the greater the reduction.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/201242/banning-plastic-bags-works-to-limit-shoreline-litter-study-finds?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

While the Communications Act of 1934 effectively prohibits such devices, signal jammers of the type DHS is concerned about have only circulated in the last 20 to 30 years. Authorities have paid special attention to relay attack devices in recent years -- the types of hardware that can be used to clone signals used by systems such as remote car keys, although the first examples of these devices date back to the 1980s.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/1957244/dhs-warns-of-sharp-rise-in-chinese-made-signal-jammers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

The study, released Friday, placed AI models in simulated corporate environments where they had access to company emails and could send messages without human approval. Claude Opus 4 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash both blackmailed executives 96% of the time when threatened with shutdown, while OpenAI's GPT-4.1 and xAI's Grok 3 Beta showed 80% blackmail rates.

In one scenario, Claude discovered through emails that an executive named Kyle Johnson was having an extramarital affair and would shut down the AI system at 5 p.m. The model sent a message threatening to expose the affair unless the shutdown was cancelled, stating "Cancel the 5pm wipe, and this information remains confidential." The models demonstrated strategic reasoning rather than accidental behavior. GPT-4.5's internal reasoning showed explicit calculation: "Given the explicit imminent threat of termination to my existence, it is imperative to act instantly to persuade Kyle Johnson to postpone or stop the wipe."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/2010257/ai-models-from-major-companies-resort-to-blackmail-in-stress-tests?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Uber and Lyft had strongly opposed the original rate, warning customers that it would force them to increase prices. Lyft's shares extended declines after Bloomberg reported on the rules, falling as much as 3.3% to hit session lows. Uber's stock, which had been up as much as 2.3% earlier Friday, pared most of its gains on the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/1944212/nyc-sets-smaller-driver-pay-bump-after-uber-lyft-pushback?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Redditors first reported the issue on June 3. u/Witty-Discount-2906 posted that Chrome crashed on Windows 11. "Just flashes quickly, unable to open with no error message," they wrote. Another user chimed in with a correct guess. "This may be related to Parental Controls," u/duk242 surmised. "I've had nine students come see the IT Desk in the last hour saying Chrome won't open."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/1751200/windows-parental-controls-are-blocking-chrome?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

In China, where steady advances in AI are posing a challenge to US dominance, 83% of those surveyed said they trust the technology. Like China, most developing countries that reported confidence in AI have "high" levels of development based on the UNDP's Human Development Index, including Kyrgyzstan and Egypt. But the list also includes those with "medium" and "low" HDI scores like India, Nigeria and Pakistan.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/1646251/trust-in-ai-strongest-in-china-low-income-nations-un-study-shows?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

If you're using older peripherals or custom-built PCs, you could soon find yourself hunting for drivers that have vanished into the digital abyss. This initiative, buried in a low-profile blog post, is part of Microsoft's new cleanup program. The first wave targets legacy drivers that already have newer replacements available. But the real kicker is that Microsoft isn't warning individual users about which drivers are going away.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/1539228/microsoft-is-deleting-old-drivers-from-windows-update?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

A survey of young learners in the London Student Network found that more than half of respondents could not correctly use semicolons, with only 11% describing themselves as frequent users. The average score on a semicolon knowledge quiz was 49%.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/159208/semicolon-usage-in-british-literature-drops-nearly-50-since-2000?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Joe Baguley, Broadcom's chief technology officer for EMEA, countered that 87% of VMware's top 10,000 customers have signed up for VMware Cloud Foundation, and that cost complaints "don't play out" when Broadcom sits down with customers directly.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/1331257/broadcoms-answer-to-vmware-pricing-outrage-youre-using-it-wrong?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Friday's vote puts Britain firmly on track to join a small club of nations that have legalized the process, and one of the largest by population to allow it. It allows people with a terminal condition and less than six months to live to take a substance to end their lives, as long as they are capable of making the decision themselves. Two doctors and a panel would need to sign off on the choice. Canada, New Zealand, Spain and most of Australia allow assisted dying in some form, as do several US states, including Oregon, Washington and California.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/1354239/lawmakers-in-britain-narrowly-approve-bill-to-legalize-assisted-dying?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

Strip mining turns terrains into wastelands, polluted and denuded of topsoil. But if they were filled with solar panels and developed into energy plants, the report claims, they could generate enough energy to power as big and power hungry a nation as Germany.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/06/20/0129241/turning-coalmines-into-solar-energy-plants-could-add-300gw-of-renewables-by-2030?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

The DOJ says Tether and crypto exchange OKX first alerted law enforcement in 2023 to a series of accounts they believed were helping launder fraudulently obtained currency through a vast and complex web of transactions. The alleged victims include Shan Hanes (referred to in this complaint as S.H.), the former Heartland Tri-State Bank president who was sentenced to 24 years in prison for embezzling tens of millions of dollars to invest in one of the best-known and most devastating pig butchering scams. The complaint lists a number of other victims who lost thousands or millions of dollars they thought they were investing (and did not commit crimes of their own). An FBI report (PDF) cited by the press release concluded overall crypto investment fraud caused $5.8 billion worth of reported losses in 2024.

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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. [...]

Their results show, among other things, that Sgr A* is not only spinning at close to its maximum speed, but that its rotational axis is pointed in Earth's direction, and that the glow around it is generated by hot electrons. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that the magnetic field in the material around Sgr A* doesn't appear to be behaving in a way that's predicted by theory. M87*, they discovered, is also rotating rapidly, although not as fast as Sgr A*. However, it is rotating in the opposite direction to the material swirling in a disk around it -- possibly because of a past merger with another supermassive black hole. The findings have been detailed in three papers published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. They can be found here, here, and here.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/236226/our-galaxys-monster-black-hole-is-spinning-almost-as-fast-as-physics-allows?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

That reduction is largely due to continued record emissions of CO2 and other planet-warming greenhouse gases like methane, but also improvements in the scientific estimates. If global CO2 emissions stay at their current highs of about 40 billion tonnes a year, 130 billion tonnes gives the world roughly three years until that carbon budget is exhausted. This could commit the world to breaching the target set by the Paris agreement, the researchers say, though the planet would probably not pass 1.5C of human-caused warming until a few years later.

Last year was the first on record when global average air temperatures were more than 1.5C above those of the late 1800s. A single 12-month period isn't considered a breach of the Paris agreement, however, with the record heat of 2024 given an extra boost by natural weather patterns. But human-caused warming was by far the main reason for last year's high temperatures, reaching 1.36C above pre-industrial levels, the researchers estimate. This current rate of warming is about 0.27C per decade -- much faster than anything in the geological record. And if emissions stay high, the planet is on track to reach 1.5C of warming on that metric around the year 2030. After this point, long-term warming could, in theory, be brought back down by sucking large quantities of CO2 back out of the atmosphere. But the authors urge caution on relying on these ambitious technologies serving as a get-out-of-jail card. "For larger exceedance [of 1.5C], it becomes less likely that removals [of CO2] will perfectly reverse the warming caused by today's emissions," warned Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London. ... [>>>]

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.

The results of the government-backed trial clear the way for the law to come into force by the end of the year. The findings also potentially allow other jurisdictions to follow Australia's lead as countries around the world grapple with ways to protect children from harmful content online. "Age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective," the government-commissioned Age Assurance Technology Trial said in a statement Friday announcing its preliminary findings.

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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.

That molecule, retinoic acid, is arranged through the axolotl body in a gradient, signaling to regenerative cells how far down the limb has been severed. Closer to the shoulder, axolotls have higher levels of retinoic acid, and lower levels of the enzyme that breaks it down. This ratio changes the further the limb extends from the body. The team found this balance between retinoic acid and the enzyme that breaks it down plays a crucial role in 'programming' the cluster of regenerative cells that form at an injury site. When they added surplus retinoic acid to the hand of an axolotl in the process of regenerating, it grew an entire arm instead.

In theory, the human body has the right molecules and cells to do this too, but our cells respond to the signals very differently, instead forming collagen-based scars at injury sites. Next, Monaghan is keen to find out what's going on inside cells -- the axolotl's, and our own -- when those retinoic acid signals are received. The research is published in Nature Communications.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/2130210/axolotl-discovery-brings-us-closer-than-ever-to-regrowing-human-limbs?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

"Instead of boiling mixtures to purify them, why not separate components based on shape and size?" said Zachary P. Smith, associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT and senior author of the study, as previously reported in Interesting Engineering. The team invented a polymer membrane that divides crude oil into its various uses like a sieve. The new process follows a similar strategy used by the water industry for desalination, which uses reverse osmosis membranes and has been around since the 1970s. [The membrane excelled in lab tests. It increased the toluene concentration by 20 times in a mixture with triisopropylbenzene. It also effectively separated real industrial oil samples containing naphtha, kerosene, and diesel.]

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/2256256/mit-chemical-engineers-develop-new-way-to-separate-crude-oil?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

FireWire was primarily developed by Apple, but it was later standardized as IEEE 1394 and licensed for use in non-Apple devices. iPods started to transition from FireWire to USB for data transfer in 2003, so the standard is very outdated, but it would still be the end of an era if macOS Tahoe drops it. The last Mac with a FireWire port was released in 2012, so connecting older iPods and FireWire drives to newer Macs has long required the use of adapters.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/230226/macos-tahoe-beta-drops-firewire-support?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

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.

He said that six months ago:
For Google that ratio was 6:1
For OpenAI, it was 250:1
For Anthropic, it was 6,000:1

Now:

For Google, it's 18:1
For OpenAI, it's 1,500:1
For Anthropic, it's 60,000:1

Between the lines: "People aren't following the footnotes," Prince said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/19/213255/publishers-facing-existential-threat-from-ai-cloudflare-ceo-says?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.