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Researchers at Stanford University have created a programmable synthetic "skin" that can independently change color and texture, "a feat previously only available within the animal kingdom," reports the Register. From the report: The technique employs electron beams to write patterns and add optical layers that create color effects. When exposed to water, the film swells to reveal texture and colors independently, depending on which side of the material is exposed, according to a paper published in the scie
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Slashdot
OpenAI and SoftBank will each invest $500 million in SB Energy, a SoftBank-backed data center developer that’s building a site for the Stargate project. As part of the investment, the companies have agreed to work together on data centers using designs developed by OpenAI, according to a Friday ... Read more ›
3,273 fresh
In October, Apple caved to pressure from the Trump administration and removed ICEBlock — and similar apps which crowdsourced the location of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement activity — from its App Store. Apple's stated rationale? The apps could "be used to harm law enforcement officers." But armed-to-the-teeth ICE officers don’t need protection from civilians. Apple had that exactly backward.That became impossible to ignore on Wednesday, when ICE agent Jonathon Ross... Read more ›
2,530 fresh
AI toys, companions, and robots have been everywhere at CES this year, but among the horde of waddling plushies and light-up emoji eyes, two stood out to me. HeyMates and Buddyo are each betting that the collectible figurine boom is going to come back with an AI-powered vengeance, letting us chat to sports stars and […] Read more ›
1,714 fresh
Since X's users started using Grok to undress women and children using deepfake images, I have been waiting for what I assumed would be inevitable: X getting booted from Apple's and Google's app stores. The fact that it hasn't happened yet tells me something serious about Silicon Valley's leadership: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are […] Read more ›
1,564 fresh
"What happened to the police body cameras?" one Uber driver in Minnesota asked a Border Patrol agent. Read more ›
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The president uses digital media to get his message across — but he really loves old media like newspapers and cable TV. Read more ›
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Amazon is making a return, of sorts, to physical retail via plans to build a big-box retail store in the Chicago suburbs, The Information reports. The 225,000-square foot retail space will open in Orland Park, Illinois, and give the company the opportunity to sell more than just groceries after it closed most of its physical bookstores and gift shops in 2022.The new store will offer in-store shopping, but also act... Read more ›
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Billionaire’s xAI start-up lacks adequate safeguards, say experts, but many AI models are trained on troubling material Read more ›
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"We're in the singularity. We're at the top of the roller coaster, and it's about to go down." Read more ›
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The first video I saw of the Minneapolis shooting was bad enough. Shortly after I saw it, I had the terrible realization that there were multiple people in the clip holding their phones up - another angle was bound to surface. Within minutes, a second video was all over social media, and it was even […] Read more ›
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The new 4K release has an excellent, star-studded, two-hour look back at the film. Read more ›
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The launch of an AI image editing feature on xAI’s Grok has caused chaos on X after it was used to generate a flood of non-consensual sexualized deepfakes. As Hayden Field wrote, “screenshots show Grok complying with requests to put real women in lingerie and make them spread their legs, and to put small children […] Read more ›
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How much alcohol should you drink? The US government now vaguely, in effect, says just don’t drink too much. And what qualifies as too much? Well, that’s up to you. As part of the new federal dietary guidelines released this week, the Trump administration eliminated the previous specific recommended limits on alcohol consumption — two […] Read more ›
254 fresh
Charlie Brooker's series will return to Netflix for another round of (inevitably) eerily timely episodes. Read more ›
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We just gave the Lego Smart Brick our Best In Show award at CES 2026, and I wanted to stop by The Lego Group's suite to get a last glimpse before I left Las Vegas. To my surprise, the company showed off one more feature I didn't see during my first demo, perhaps the most […] Read more ›
234 fresh
In an interview with Netflix's Tudum, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker announced today that the sci-fi anthology series will be returning for an eighth season. "Well, luckily it does have a future, so I can confirm that Black Mirror will return, just in time for reality to catch up with it," Brooker said. "That chunk […] Read more ›
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One of the issues holding Auracast back from wider mainstream use is some companies' lack of support for the Bluetooth technology - Apple being a prime example. With iOS having 58 percent of the market share in North America and nearly 28 percent worldwide, a decision by Apple to enable native Auracast support would potentially […] Read more ›
219 fresh
President Donald Trump posted a chart on Thursday night that included data from the then-unreleased jobs report. Read more ›
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Slashdot
schwit1 shares a report from Gothamist: Wegmans in New York City has begun collecting biometric data from anyone who enters its supermarkets, according to new signage posted at the chain's Manhattan and Brooklyn locations earlier this month. Anyone entering the store could have data on their face, eyes and voices collected and stored by the Rochester-headquartered supermarket chain. The information is used to "protect the safety and security of our... Read more ›
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A new sweeping meta-analysis has found no reliable link between economic inequality and well-being or mental health, challenging a long-held assumption that has shaped public health policy discussions for decades. The study, led by Nicolas Sommet at the University of Lausanne and Annahita Ehsan at the University of British Columbia, synthesized 168 studies involving more than 11 million participants across most world regions. The researchers screened thousands of scientific papers... Read more ›
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An anonymous reader shares a report: MTV shut down many of its last dedicated 24-hour music channels Dec. 31. The move, announced back in October, affected channels around the world, with the U.K. seeing five different MTV stations going dark. These include MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. As Consequence notes, MTV Music -- which launched in 2011 -- notably ended its run by airing... Read more ›
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After Congress approved President Donald Trump's rescission package eliminating federal funding, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting voted to dissolve after 58 years, rather than continue to exist and potentially be "vulnerable to future political manipulation or misuse." The shutdown leaves hundreds of local public TV and radio stations facing an uncertain future. Variety reports: The CPB was created by Congress by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to support the... Read more ›
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A new working paper from researchers at the University of Hong Kong has found that Chinese graduate students who plagiarized more heavily in their master's theses were significantly more likely to pursue careers in the civil service and to climb the ranks faster once inside. John Liu and co-authors analyzed 6 million dissertations from CNKI, a Chinese academic repository, and cross-referenced them against public records of civil-service exam-takers to identify... Read more ›
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Ritchie Torres has introduced a bill to ban government officials from using insider information to trade on political prediction markets like Polymarket. The bill was prompted by reports that traders on Polymarket made large profits betting on Nicolas Maduro's removal, raising suspicions that some wagers were placed using material non-public information. "While such insider trading in capital markets is already illegal and often prosecuted by the Justice Department and Securities... Read more ›
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National Weather Service pulled an AI-generated forecast graphic after it hallucinated fake town names in Idaho. "The blunder -- not the first of its kind to be posted by the NWS in the past year -- comes as the agency experiments with a wide range of AI uses, from advanced forecasting to graphic design," reports the Washington Post. "Experts worry that without properly trained officials, mistakes could erode trust in... Read more ›
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Last June the Trump organization announced sales of a $499 "T1" smartphone with a gold-colored case. But though they originally were scheduled for release in August, this week a customer service representative for the wireless carrier told CBS News the device will be pushed back again, now until the end of January, "attributing the delay to the recent U.S. government shutdown." Some context from The Independent: Shortly after the phone... Read more ›
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Stack Overflow's monthly question volume has collapsed about 300 -- levels not seen since the site launched in 2009, according to data from the Stack Overflow Data Explorer that tracks the platform's activity over its sixteen-year history. Questions peaked around 2014 at roughly 200,000 per month, then began a gradual decline that accelerated dramatically after ChatGPT's November 2022 launch. By May 2025, monthly questions had fallen to early-2009 levels, and... Read more ›
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Californians are getting a new, supercharged way to stop data brokers from hoarding and selling their personal information, as a recently enacted law that's among the strictest in the nation took effect at the beginning of the year. [...] Two years ago, California's Delete Act took effect. It required data brokers to provide residents with a means to obtain a copy... Read more ›
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Most popular sources
Gizmodo
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19% 12 |
Business Insider
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15% 4 |
Wired
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9% 6 |
The Verge
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9% 4 |
Vox
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7% 5 |
| View sources » | |
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09.01.2026 18:38
Last update: 18:30 EDT.
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