For the first time in America, an empty self-driving car has been involved in a fatal collision. But it was "hit from behind by a speeding car that was going about 98 miles per hour," a local news site reports, citing comments from Waymo. ("Two other victims were taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. A dog also died in the crash, according to the San Francisco Fire Department.") Waymo's... Read more ›
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This weekend Cory Doctorow delved into "the two factors that make services terrible: captive users, and no constraints." If your users can't leave, and if you face no consequences for making them miserable (not solely their departure to a competitor, but also fines, criminal charges, worker revolts, and guerrilla warfare with interoperators), then you have the means, motive and opportunity to turn your service into a giant pile of shit...... Read more ›
3
Earlier this month a major fire erupted at a California battery plant. But several factors contributed to its rapid spread, the fire district's chief told the Los Angeles Times: A fire suppression system that is part of every battery rack at the plant failed and led to a chain reaction of batteries catching on fire, he said at a news conference last week. Then, a broken camera system in the... Read more ›
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The state of Michigan will now require each public high school in the state to offer at least one computer science course to its students. "This bill aligns Michigan with a majority of the country," according to the state's announcement, which says the bill "advances technological literacy" and ensures their students "are well-equipped with the critical thinking skills necessary for success in the workforce." Slashdot reader theodp writes: From the... Read more ›
9
Amid the ongoing Linux 6.14 kernel development cycle, Phoronix spotted a pull request for ACPI updates which "will allow for faster suspend and resume cycles on some systems." Wikipedia defines ACPI as "an open standard that operating systems can use to discover and configure computer hardware components" for things like power management and putting unused hardware components to sleep. Phoronix reports: The ACPI change worth highlighting for Linux 6.14 is... Read more ›
0
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from the Guardian: More electricity was made from sunshine than coal in the EU last year, a report has found, in what analysts called a "milestone" for the clean energy transition. Solar panels generated 11% of the EU's electricity in 2024, while coal-burning power plants generated 10%, according to data from climate thinktank Ember... Coal-burning in the EU power sector peaked in 2003... Read more ›
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Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: "Every US intelligence agency still unanimously maintains that Covid-19 was not developed as a biological weapon," CNN reported today. But what about the possibility of an accidental leak (rather than Covid-19 originating from wild animal meat traded the Wuhan Market)? "The agency has for years said it did not have enough information to determine which origin theory was more likely." CNN notes there's suddenly been a... Read more ›
36
July saw the news that Meta had launched a powerful open-source AI model, Llama 3.1. But the Free Software Foundation evaluated Llama 3.1's license agreement, and announced this week that "this is not a free software license and you should not use it, nor any software released under it." Not only does it deny users their freedom, but it also purports to hand over powers to the licensors that should... Read more ›
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Friday Bill Gates shared an excerpt from his upcoming memoir Source Code: My Beginnings. Published in the Wall Street Journal, the excerpt includes pictures of young Bill Gates when he was 12 (dressed for a hike) and 14 (studying a teletype machine). Gates remembers forming "a sort of splinter group" from the Boy Scouts when he was 13 with a group of boys who "wanted more freedom and more risk"... Read more ›
35
A plan to keep TikTok available in the U.S. "involves tapping software company Oracle and a group of outside investors," reports NPR, "to effectively take control of the app's global operations, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks..." "[P]otential investors who are engaged in the talks include Microsoft." Under the deal now being negotiated by the White House, TikTok's China-based owner ByteDance would retain a minority stake... Read more ›
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Two computer scientists at the University of Waterloo in Canada believe changing 30 lines of code in Linux "could cut energy use at some data centers by up to 30 percent," according to the site Data Centre Dynamics. It's the code that processes packets of network traffic, and Linux "is the most widely used OS for data center servers," according to the article: The team tested their solution's effectiveness and... Read more ›
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Founded in 1947, the Minor Planet Center is the official worldwide authority "for observing and reporting new asteroids, comets and other small bodies in the solar system," reports USA Today. Unfortunately, "What an amateur astronomer recently took to be a newly discovered asteroid turned out to be a Tesla Roadster," The Minor Planet Center didn't initially consider the possibility when the organization announced the discovery on Jan. 2 of the... Read more ›
9
An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch: The developer behind Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup, open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, respectively, is now raising funds on Kickstarter to fuel the apps' further development. The trio is part of the growing open social web, also known as the fediverse, powered by the same ActivityPub protocol used by X alternative Mastodon... [and] challenge Meta's social media empire... "Help us... Read more ›
24
CleanTechnicareports that last year Americans "bought 37% more air source heat pumps than the next most popular heating appliance — gas furnaces." And Americans bought 21% more heat pumps than they did in 2023. Canary Media is quick to point out that in many homes, more than one heat pump is required, so that data should be interpreted with that in mind. Typically, a home uses only one furnace. Nevertheless,... Read more ›
20
ZDNET's senior editor sees an "overwhelmingly negative" response to Microsoft's surprise price hike for the 84 million paying subscribers to its Microsoft 365 software suite. Attempting the first price hike in more than 12 years, "they made it a 30% price increase" — going from $10 a month to $13 a month — "and blamed it all on artificial intelligence." Bad idea. Why? Because... No one wants to pay for... Read more ›
38
2021: "Automotive Startup Canoo Debuts a Snub-Nosed Electric Pickup" 2025: Canoo "Goes Belly-Up After Moving to Texas" "Its production volumes paled in comparison to Canoo's rate of cash burn, which was substantial, with net losses in 2023 totaling just over $300 million..." reports AutoWeek. "It was able to deliver small batches of vans to a few customers, but apparently remained distant from anything approaching volume production." "Back in 2020, electric... Read more ›
8
TikTok is still not available for download from U.S.-based app stores, reports CBS News. So "Some fast-acting entrepreneurs are selling phones with TikTok preloaded on devices for thousands of dollars online." The Associated Press notes that New York-based Nicholas Matthews "listed an iPhone 14 Plus with TikTok for $10,000. As of Friday, Matthews said his highest bid was for $4,550." Another example from The New York Times: An information technology... Read more ›
35
Slashdot reader jenningsthecat writes: 3D printer manufacturer Bambu Labs has faced a storm of controversy and protest after releasing a security update which many users claim is the first step in moving towards an HP-style subscription model. Bambu Labs responded that there's misinformation circulating online, adding "we acknowledge that our communication might have contributed to the confusion." Bambu Labs spokesperson Nadia Yaakoubi did "damage control", answering questions from the Verge:... Read more ›
7
"For years, renewable energy proponents have hoped to build a U.S. electric grid powered by wind, solar, geothermal and — to a lesser extent — nuclear power..." writes the Washington Post. In America's power markets "the economics of clean energy are strong," with renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuel plants in many jurisdictions. But the Post spoke to the "electricity modeling" director at nonpartisan clean energy think tank Energy Innovation,... Read more ›
7
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Late last month, researchers revealed a finding that's likely to shock some people and confirm the low expectations of others: Renewable energy facilities throughout Central Europe use unencrypted radio signals to receive commands to feed or ditch power into or from the grid that serves some 450 million people throughout the continent. Fabian Braunlein and Luca Melette stumbled on their discovery... Read more ›
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30.06.2026 21:02
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