Amazon once tried to pressure Nintendo to break the law, says former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé. At a recent NYU lecture, he describes a conversation with an Amazon executive, Kotaku reports: "Amazon was looking to get bigger into the video game space," said Fils-Aimé. "Amazon's mentality back then is they wanted to have the lowest price out in the marketplace, even lower than Walmart... Essentially what Amazon wanted... Read more ›
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The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI "recently gave its popular ChatGPT strict instructions. Stop talking about goblins." Recent models of the artificial-intelligence chatbot have been bringing up the creatures in conversations with users seemingly out of the blue, as well as gremlins, trolls and ogres. The goblin-speak caught the attention of programmers, who are often heavy users of the bot. Barron Roth, a 32-year-old product manager at a tech... Read more ›
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An official in South Africa withdrew a draft of the country's national AI policy, reports a local newspaper, "after it was found the draft policy was compiled using AI, which cited academic articles that were 'fictitious'." Earlier this month, minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni announced cabinet had approved the draft policy for public comment. [Ntshavheni] said the policy seeks to strengthen government's ability to regulate and adopt AI responsibly,... Read more ›
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"Ransomware activity jumped again in Q1 2026," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, "with 2,638 victim posts on leak sites, up 22% year over year," according to a report from cybersecurity company ReliaQuest. But the bigger shift is how messy the ecosystem has become. Established groups like Akira and Qilin are still active, while newer players like The Gentlemen surged into the top tier with a 588 percent spike in activity. At... Read more ›
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An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC: "If even one extra person is able to access the internet, I think it's successful and it's worth it," says Sahand. The Iranian man is visibly anxious, speaking to the BBC outside Iran, as he carefully explains how he is part of a clandestine network smuggling satellite internet technology — which is illegal in Iran — into the country. Sahand, whose... Read more ›
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In 2016 an online "swarm intelligence" platform generated a correct prediction for the Kentucky Derby — naming all four top finishers in order. (But its 2017 predictions weren't even close.) Slashdot checked in again on how modern AI systems performed in 2023, 2024, and 2025 — but their predictions were still pretty bad. Would AI-generated Derby predictions be any better in 2026? This year's winner was 24-to-1 longshot "Golden Tempo"... Read more ›
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"The war in Iran has sent oil-starved countries scrambling for fuel," CNN reported this week. And many of those countries now want renewable fuels, the article points out, "leaving them turning to the renewables king of the planet: China." Chinese exports of solar technology, batteries and electric vehicles all reached record highs in March, according to energy think tank Ember, a sign that the historic oil supply shock is accelerating... Read more ›
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"Scientists have created a miraculous new way to stop fires from spreading through neighborhoods using nothing but sound," reports the New York Post: Former NASA engineers with California-based Sonic Fire Tech found that using sound waves can snuff out blazes and potentially be used to stop another Pacific Palisades inferno... The technology works by targeting oxygen molecules using low-frequency sound waves that vibrate them, stopping the fire from growing. "Sound... Read more ›
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Long-time Slashdot reader Anne Thwacks frequently uses YouTube's subtitles "not to disturb others in the room, or because my hearing is not very good." But they say there's a new problem. "The subtitling is terrible!" Almost every sentence has a huge error. Proper names are more often wrong than right. Non-English place names are almost always mangled to barely recognizable. And no effort whatsoever is made to use context to... Read more ›
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"Nuclear AI startup" Fermi had hoped to build power plants generating 17 gigawatts of electricity, remembers Bloomberg, "three times the amount typically consumed by New York City." Hyperscalers could install their data centers on the site itself and tap directly into that power, which would come first from natural gas turbines and later from nuclear reactors. The pitch ticked so many boxes — artificial intelligence, nuclear energy, political connections —... Read more ›
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Monday a company called Rainmaker announced their rain-triggering technology had produced 143 million gallons of freshwater for Utah and Oregon residents — making them "the first private company in history to validate the results of cloud seeding operations." The Deseret News reports: Founded in 2023, Rainmaker uses drones to disperse silver iodide into clouds, then they track precipitation with advanced radar. However, Rainmaker — and every other rain-enhancement company —... Read more ›
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"Running a Big Tech company during Silicon Valley's AI mania may not necessarily require fewer workers or cost less," writes the Washington Post: Amazon, Google and Meta together have roughly the same number of employees now as they did during an industry-wide hiring binge in 2022, company disclosures show. Growing costs for technical workers and related expenses have often outpaced sales recently. The tech giants' big AI bet hasn't yet... Read more ›
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Slashdot reader joshuark writes: Scientific American reports that a ChatGPT AI has proved a conjecture with a method no human had developed. A 23-year-old student Liam Price just cracked a 60-year-old problem that world-class mathematicians have tried and failed to solve. The new solution that Price got in response to a single prompt to GPT-5.4 Pro was posted on www.erdosproblems.com, a website devoted to the Erds problems. The question Price... Read more ›
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Last Saturday someone dressed as Jesus "was among the dozens of people in costumes and masks seen on a video forcing open the door of a Scientology building on Hollywood Boulevard," reports the Los Angeles Times, "after a tug-of-war with a security guard." The footage posted on TikTok and Instagram shows the group sprinting up and down stairs and clashing with black-shirted security guards, giggling and gasping to catch their... Read more ›
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This week Bill Gates wrote a blog post about a special camera from medtech startup Remidio, which delivers high-resolution images of a patient's retina in seconds. The camera plugs into a phone running an AI system that watches for early signs of diabetes — all without needing a blood draw, eye dilation, or a dibetes specialist. It's already been used in 40 countries for more than 15 million patients. But... Read more ›
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Steam on Linux use in March "had skyrocketed to 5.33%..." reports Phoronix, "easily the highest level we've seen Steam on Linux at since its inception more than a decade ago." So what happened in April? [April's results] point to Linux having a 4.52% marketshare on Steam, a drop of 0.81% compared to March. Year-over-year it's roughly double with Steam on Linux in April 2025 being at 2.27%. Or two years... Read more ›
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The once-a-year free comic book giveaway "is splitting in two," according to a local news report. Launched in 2002 by Diamond Comic Distributor, comic book giants like Marvel and DC have historically participated together. But things changed after Diamond Comic Distributors went bankrupt in 2025, "leaving other companies to swoop in and pick up where Diamond left off." The rights to the "Free Comic Book Day" brand were sold to... Read more ›
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GameStop is reportedly preparing a potential offer for eBay, an unusually ambitious move given that eBay's roughly $46 billion market value is nearly four times GameStop's. Reuters reports: GameStop is preparing an offer for eBay as CEO Ryan Cohen pursues plans to boost the struggling videogame retailer's market value more than tenfold, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Shares of eBay, which has a market capitalization of about $46... Read more ›
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NASA engineers have tested a next-generation lithium-plasma electric propulsion system that reached 120 kilowatts, a new U.S. record and about 25 times the power of the electric thrusters on NASA's Psyche spacecraft. "Designing and building these thrusters over the last couple of years has been a long lead-up to this first test," said James Polk, who is a senior research scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's a huge moment... Read more ›
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Amazon's cloud customers will need to wait several more months before the US tech company can repair war-damaged data centers and restore normal operations in the Middle East. The announcement comes two months after Iranian drone strikes targeted three Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain -- meaning that full recovery from the cloud disruption could take nearly... Read more ›
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29.07.2026 02:03
Last update: 01:55 EDT.
News rating updated: 08:50.
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