Shameless Plug

Google Pulls the Plug On Tenor API, Killing GIF Pickers Around the Web Published on 2026-06-30T22:00:00Z Google has shut down the Tenor API, breaking GIF pickers in services that still relied on it and forcing platforms such as X to migrate elsewhere. 9to5Google notes that the library itself remains available at Tenor.com and "integrations within Google products are also still active, including Gboard, Google Messages, and more." From the report: The Tenor API has been rejecting new API sign-ups in January of this year, but existing integrations remained in place. This week, though, they're shutting down, and any integrations that remain in place will stop working on July 1. The support page adds details that "any API or Ads Distribution Agreements" with Tenor will be terminated on June 30, while "current integrations" will be "fully decommissioned" as of June 30. One of the most notable examples here is Twitter/X, which has relied on Ten...

California Bill To Preserve Online Games Fails Committee Vote Published on 2026-06-30T21:00:00Z California's Protect Our Games Act, which would require publishers to warn players before shutting down paid online games and offer refunds or continued access, failed to advance after a state Senate committee vote. Four state senators voted in favor, three voted against, and four abstained. Engadget reports: The committee unanimously voted in favor of granting the bill reconsideration, meaning it could come back before this group of state senators. Assemblymember Chris Ward introduced the bill in February and it passed the California State Assembly 43-16 in late May. That said, the abstentions prevented the bill's progression for now. "Not enough yeses means the bill stops here for this session," a volunteer with the Stop Killing Games campaign (which supported the bill) noted on Reddit. "That is the loss." The volunteer also claimed this was the movement...

Apple iPhone 18 Details Leaked In Tata Data Breach Published on 2026-06-30T20:00:00Z "Another breach at Tata has leaked details about Apple's iPhone 18, along with documents belonging to several other Tata clients," writes Longtime Slashdot reader Ritz_Just_Ritz. "It's becoming a recurring theme for the company." Reuters reports: Reuters has previously reported the Tata Electronics leak of more than 200,000 files on the dark web by World Leaks had files with purported component design papers of older iPhones and some parts of Tesla -- both Tata clients. They also included documents of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Qualcomm, both of which make parts used in iPhones. New documents reviewed by Reuters show there are at least six files that map many components in the iPhone 18 Pro models to the specific company that supplies them. These include details of chips on its main circuit board and parts of the battery and cameras. Apple considers this d...

Claude Science is Here, Antibiotics Designed by Text Prompt Among Applications Published on 2026-06-30T19:00:00Z Anthropic has launched Claude Science, an AI workbench that connects more than 60 scientific databases and tools through a single interface. Through the platform, Basecamp Research is making its EDEN models available for tasks such as designing antibiotic peptides and predicting vaccine targets from simple text prompts, though the results still require laboratory testing before clinical use. Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News reports: In a Claude Science demo, Oliver Vince, PhD, co-founder at Basecamp, uploaded a sample patient microbiology report. When given a simple natural language prompt, the platform designed peptides, predicted their efficacy, and provided a shortlist of candidates most likely to succeed in experiments in minutes. While generating human-ready antibiotics at the click of a button is still a step away, Vince said democratizing these tools is a ...

Remembering How Microsoft's Fake Windows Error Ended In a $280 Million Secret Settlement Published on 2026-06-30T10:34:00Z Slashdot reader joshuark summarizes this walk down memory lane from the tech site MakeUseOf: Facing real competition from Digital Research's DR DOS, Microsoft secretly embedded a sabotaging mechanism known as "AARD code" into beta versions of Windows 3.1 to prevent it from running on Digital Research's competing DR DOS operating system.This code triggered fake, alarming error messages to convince developers that DR DOS was unstable... Although Microsoft disabled the feature in the final retail release, the California-based firm Caldera, Inc., which had acquired DR DOS assets, sued Microsoft for anti-competitive practices.Microsoft settled the lawsuit out of court in 2000 for $280 million, a figure that remained sealed until it was unsealed in 2009. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ford Rehires 'Gray Beard' Engineers After AI Falls Short Published on 2026-06-30T05:34:00Z Ford executives said they've hired 350 veteran engineers — some of them former employees — after AI and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality, reports TechCrunch: Bloomberg reports the company's chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra told journalists that Ford had been "relying more and more on automated quality systems" with disappointing results. So the company "brought back technical specialists," and those specialists "hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor." Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, added, "Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product." The article points out that Ford is using the rehired gray beard engineers to ...

South Korea Plans To Train Entire Military As 'Drone Warriors' Published on 2026-06-30T00:34:00Z "South Korea plans to train every single member of its nearly half-million-strong military to operate drones as easily as they handle personal firearms," reports Ars Technica: The goal is to make drones a "universal combat tool" for all troops by training them to use drones like a "second personal weapon," said Ahn Gyu-back, South Korea's Minister of National Defense, in a June 26 briefing reported by Reuters and other media outlets. The announcement coincides with broader plans to equip individual military units with more cheap and expendable drones for surveillance and strike missions, along with deploying more counter-drone lasers and microwave weapons. Meanwhile, South Korea's former drone operations command headquarters that used to have direct command authority over combat units will be reorganized to focus on collaborating with Sout...