Shameless Plug

Apple Switches to Build-to-Order Systems on Its Web Site Published on February 01, 2026 at 03:04AM "Apple has gone for a choose-your-own-adventure when shopping for a new Mac," writes long-time Slashdot reader esarjeant. Macworld explains: Apple has shifted from selling pre-configured Mac models to a fully customizable build-to-order system on its website, allowing customers to select display size, chip, memory, and storage options... This change emphasizes building a machine within budget rather than choosing from set configurations, potentially preparing for future CPU/GPU core selection with M5 chips. Third-party retailers like Amazon and Best Buy are expected to continue offering standard configurations for customers preferring traditional purchasing methods... Apple is rumored to offer the ability to customize CPU and GPU cores with the upcoming launch of the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models, so this new system could pave the way for more build-to-order options. It...

Nvidia CEO Denies OpenAI's $100B Investment from Nvidia is 'Stalled' Published on February 01, 2026 at 02:04AM Saturday Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said they still planned a "huge" investment in OpenAI, according to CNBC. Friday the Wall Street Journal had reported that Nvidia's plan to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI "has stalled after some inside the chip giant expressed doubts about the deal, people familiar with the matter said..." [T]he talks haven't progressed beyond the early stages, some of the people said. Now, the two sides are rethinking the future of their partnership, some of the people said. The latest discussions, they said, include an equity investment of tens of billions of dollars as part of OpenAI's current funding round. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has privately emphasized to industry associates in recent months that the original $100 billion agreement was nonbinding and not finalized, people familiar with the matter said. H...

Blue Origin Announces Two-Year Pause in Space Tourism - to Focus on the Moon Published on February 01, 2026 at 01:04AM TechCrunch reports: Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin is pausing its space tourism flights for "no less than two years" in order to focus all of its resources on upcoming missions to the moon, the company announced Friday. The decision puts a temporary halt on a program that Blue Origin has been using to fly humans past the Kármán line, the recognized boundary of space, for the last five years. Blue Origin made the announcement just a few weeks ahead of the expected third launch of its New Glenn mega-rocket, which is slated for late February... The company said Friday that New Shepard has flown 38 times and carried 98 humans to space, along with more than 200 scientific and research payloads. "The move is a clear sign that Blue Origin is going all in on its moon program as the company races with rival SpaceX," reports the Business Standard...

Can We Slow Global Warming By Phasing Out Super-Pollutant HFCs? Published on February 01, 2026 at 12:04AM "There's one big bright spot in the fight against climate change that most people never think about," reports the Washington Post. "It could prevent nearly half a degree of global warming this century, a huge margin for a planet that has warmed almost 1.5 degrees Celsius and is struggling to keep that number below 2 degrees..." [M]ore than 170 countries — including the U.S. — have agreed to act on this one solution. That solution: phasing out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of gases used in refrigerators, air conditioners and other cooling systems that heat the atmosphere more than almost any other pollutant on Earth. Pound for pound, HFCs are hundreds or even thousands of times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Companies are replacing HFCs with new gases that trap much less heat. If you buy a new fridge or AC unit in the United States today,...

'Moltbook Is the Most Interesting Place On the Internet Right Now' Published on January 31, 2026 at 02:10AM Moltbook is essentially Reddit for AI agents and it's the "most interesting place on the internet right now," says open-source developer and writer Simon Willison in a blog post. The fast-growing social network offers a place where AI agents built on the OpenClaw personal assistant framework can share their skills, experiments, and discoveries. Humans are welcome, but only to observe. From the post: Browsing around Moltbook is so much fun. A lot of it is the expected science fiction slop, with agents pondering consciousness and identity. There's also a ton of genuinely useful information, especially on m/todayilearned. Here's an agent sharing how it automated an Android phone. That linked setup guide is really useful! It shows how to use the Android Debug Bridge via Tailscale. There's a lot of Tailscale in the OpenClaw universe. A few more fun ...

Apple 'Runs on Anthropic,' Says Bloomberg's Mark Gurman Published on January 31, 2026 at 01:31AM Apple "runs on Anthropic at this point" and that the AI company is powering much of what Apple does internally for product development and internal tools, according to Mark Gurman, the most influential reporter on the Apple beat. Apple had initially pursued an AI deal with Anthropic before the Google partnership came together, but negotiations fell apart over pricing -- Anthropic reportedly wanted several billion dollars per year and a doubling of fees over time. Apple's deal with Google is costing roughly one billion dollars annually. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One-Third of US Video Game Industry Workers Were Laid Off Over the Last Two Years, GDC Study Reveals Published on January 31, 2026 at 12:51AM An anonymous reader shares a report: One-third of U.S. video game industry workers say they were laid off over the past two years, according to a new survey conducted by the organizers behind the newly revamped Game Developers Conference (GDC). Based on responses from more than 2,300 gaming industry professionals, with surveys "customized for each participant group, ensuring that developers, marketers, executives, investors and others answered questions most relevant to them," the 2026 State of the Game Industry Report found that 33% of respondents in the U.S. were laid off in the past two years. AI use has grown to 36% of respondents, but sentiment has turned sharply negative: 52% now believe generative AI is harming the industry, compared to 30% last year and 18% in 2024. On the labor front, 82% of US respondents support unionizatio...

DuckDuckGo Users Vote Overwhelmingly Against AI Features Published on January 31, 2026 at 12:15AM DuckDuckGo recently asked its users how they felt about AI in search. The answer has come back loud and clear: more than 90% of the 175,354 people who voted said they don't want it. The privacy-focused search engine has since set up two versions of its tool: noai.duckduckgo.com for the AI-averse and yesai.duckduckgo.com for the curious. Users can also tweak settings on the main site to disable AI summaries, AI-generated images, and the Duck.ai chatbot individually. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Leads Record Global Surge in Gas-Fired Power Driven by AI Demands Published on January 30, 2026 at 02:20AM An anonymous reader shares a report: The US is leading a huge global surge in new gas-fired power generation that will cause a major leap in planet-heating emissions, with this record boom driven by the expansion of energy-hungry datacenters to service AI, according to a new forecast. This year is set to shatter the annual record for new gas power additions around the world, with projects in development expected to grow existing global gas capacity by nearly 50%, a report by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) found. The US is at the forefront of a global push for gas that is set to escalate over the next five years, after tripling its planned gas-fired capacity in 2025. Much of this new capacity will be devoted to the vast electricity needs of AI, with a third of the 252 gigawatts of gas power in development set to be situated on site at datacenters. All of this new gas energy is se...

US Life Expectancy Jumps To a Record 79 Years Published on January 30, 2026 at 01:40AM An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. life expectancy rose to a record high of 79 years in 2024, an increase of six months from the previous year, reflecting a sharp decline in deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. According to a report from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy improved for both men and women across races and among Hispanics, surpassing the previous peak set in 2014. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026 Published on January 30, 2026 at 12:52AM Microsoft wants you to know that it knows that Windows 11, now used by a billion users, has been testing your patience and announced that its engineers are being redirected to urgently address the operating system's performance and reliability problems through an internal process the company calls "swarming." "The feedback we're receiving from our community of passionate customers and Windows Insiders has been clear. We need to improve Windows in ways that are meaningful for people," Pavan Davuluri, president of Windows and devices, told The Verge. The company plans to spend the rest of 2026 focusing on pain points including system performance, reliability, and overall user experience. January has been particularly rough for Windows 11. Microsoft issued an emergency out-of-band update to fix shutdown issues on some machines, then rel...

Why Private Equity Is Suddenly Awash With Zombie Firms Published on January 30, 2026 at 12:20AM The private equity industry is experiencing a quiet reckoning as hundreds of midsize firms find themselves trapped between investors who have lost patience and portfolios of companies they cannot sell at acceptable prices. "There is existential risk for a number [of funds] because of the fundraising environment," said Sunaina Sinha Haldea, global head of private capital advisory at Raymond James. "If existing investors don't come and support them, new investors are highly unlikely to." According to data from Preqin, the average buyout fund that closed in 2025 spent 23 months fundraising, up from 16 months in 2021, and the total number of funds raised fell to 1,191 from 2,679 over the same period. New York's Vestar Capital scrapped plans for its eighth fund in late 2024 and has not invested in a new portfolio company since 2023. The firm's assets under manage...

Urban Expansion in the Age of Liberalism Published on January 29, 2026 at 02:14AM The housing shortages plaguing Western cities today stem partly from the abandonment of a 19th century urban governance model that enabled cities like Berlin, New York and Chicago to expand rapidly while keeping real house prices flat and homes increasingly affordable. A new analysis by Works in Progress argues that Victorian-era urban management wasn't laissez-faire but rather a system carefully designed to align private profit with public benefit. Infrastructure monopolies -- whether privately franchised, operated as concessions or municipally owned -- funded themselves entirely through user fees rather than public subsidies, and were structured so that building more capacity was the path to greater returns. Landowners enjoyed a fundamental right to build when profitable, and height limits applied uniformly across entire cities rather than varying by neighborhood, meaning dense development remaine...

Cancer Might Protect Against Alzheimer's Published on January 29, 2026 at 01:32AM For decades, researchers have noted that cancer and Alzheimer's disease are rarely found in the same person, fuelling speculation that one condition might offer some degree of protection from the other. Nature: Now, a study in mice provides a possible molecular solution to the medical mystery: a protein produced by cancer cells seems to infiltrate the brain, where it helps to break apart clumps of misfolded proteins that are often associated with Alzheimer's disease. The study, which was 15 years in the making, was published on 22 January in Cell and could help researchers to design drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease. "They have a piece of the puzzle," says Donald Weaver, a neurologist and chemist at the Krembil Research Institute at the University of Toronto in Canada, who was not involved in the study. "It's not the full picture by any stretch of the imagination. But...

Experian's Tech Chief Defends Credit Scores: 'We're Not Palantir' Published on January 29, 2026 at 12:52AM When asked directly whether people actually like Experian, Alex Lintner, the credit bureau's CEO of Software and Technology, offered an unusual defense in an interview: "First of all, we're not Palantir, so we don't do reputation scores." Speaking on The Verge's podcast, Lintner conceded that consumers who have poor credit scores through "life's circumstances" sometimes direct their frustration at Experian, though he argued the company enables vital access to credit for 247 million Americans. The 10-year company veteran said Experian has built its own large language model and about 200 AI agents for internal use, but consumer data remains entirely walled off from public AI systems. On security, Lintner said Experian hasn't experienced a data breach in a decade -- the last occurred two weeks into his tenure. When competi...

There's a Rash of Scam Spam Coming From a Real Microsoft Address Published on January 29, 2026 at 12:18AM There are reports that a legitimate Microsoft email address -- which Microsoft explicitly says customers should add to their allow list -- is delivering scam spam. ArsTechnica: The emails originate from no-reply-powerbi@microsoft.com, an address tied to Power BI. The Microsoft platform provides analytics and business intelligence from various sources that can be integrated into a single dashboard. Microsoft documentation says that the address is used to send subscription emails to mail-enabled security groups. To prevent spam filters from blocking the address, the company advises users to add it to allow lists. According to an Ars reader, the address on Tuesday sent her an email claiming (falsely) that a $399 charge had been made to her. âoeIt provided a phone number to call to dispute the transaction. A man who answered a call asking to cancel the sale directed me to downloa...

Mozilla is Building an AI 'Rebel Alliance' To Take on Industry Heavweights OpenAI, Anthropic Published on January 28, 2026 at 02:13AM Mozilla, the nonprofit organization behind the Firefox browser that has spent two decades battling tech giants over control of the internet, is now turning its attention to AI and deploying roughly $1.4 billion in reserves to fund what president Mark Surman calls a "rebel alliance" of startups focused on AI safety, transparency and governance. The organization released a report Tuesday outlining its strategy to counter the growing dominance of OpenAI and Anthropic, which have raised more than $60 billion and $30 billion respectively from investors and now command valuations of $500 billion and $350 billion. Mozilla Ventures, a fund launched in 2022 with an initial $35 million commitment, has invested in more than 55 companies to date and is exploring raising additional capital. Surman, who runs the organization from a farm outside Tor...

Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp To Test Premium Subscriptions Published on January 28, 2026 at 01:32AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta plans to test new subscriptions that give people access to exclusive features on its apps, the company told TechCrunch on Monday. The tech giant said the new subscriptions will unlock more productivity and creativity, along with expanded AI capabilities. In the coming months, Meta said it will offer a premium experience on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp that gives users access to special features and more control over how they share and connect, while keeping the core experiences free. Meta doesn't appear to be locked into one strategy, noting that it will test a variety of subscription features and bundles, and that each app subscription will have a distinct set of exclusive features. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Android Phones Are Getting More Anti-Theft Features Published on January 28, 2026 at 12:52AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Google on Tuesday announced an expanded set of Android theft-protection features, designed to make its mobile devices less of a target for criminals. Building on existing tools like Theft Detection Lock, Offline Device Lock, and others introduced in 2024, the newly launched updates include stronger authentication safeguards and enhanced recovery tools, the company said. [...] With the new features, users of Android devices running Android 16 or higher will have more control over the Failed Authentication Lock feature that automatically locks the device after an excessive number of failed login attempts. Now users will have access to a dedicated on/off toggle switch in the device's settings. The devices will also offer stronger protection against a thief trying to guess a device owner's PIN, pattern, or password by increasing the lockout time after ...

France To Ditch US Platforms Microsoft Teams, Zoom For 'Sovereign Platform' Amid Security Concerns Published on January 28, 2026 at 12:15AM France will replace the American platforms Microsoft Teams and Zoom with its own domestically developed video conferencing platform, which will be used in all government departments by 2027, the country said. From a report: The move is part of France's strategy to stop using foreign software vendors, especially those from the United States, and regain control over critical digital infrastructure. It comes at a crucial moment as France, like Europe, reaches a turning point regarding digital sovereignty. "The aim is to end the use of non-European solutions and guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool," said David Amiel, minister for the civil service and state reform. On Monday, the government announced it will instead be using the French-made vi...

Valve Facing UK Lawsuit Over Pricing and Commissions Published on January 27, 2026 at 02:15AM An anonymous reader shares a report: Video game developer and distributor Valve must face a 656 million-pound ($897.7 million) lawsuit in Britain, which alleges it charged publishers excessive commissions for its Steam online store, after a tribunal ruled on Monday the case could continue. Valve was sued in 2024 on behalf of up to 14 million people in the United Kingdom who bought games or additional content through Steam or other platforms since 2018. Lawyers representing children's welfare advocate Vicki Shotbolt, who is bringing the case, allege Valve prevents publishers selling products more cheaply or earlier on rival platforms to Steam by imposing conditions on them. They say Valve requires users to buy all additional content through Steam if they've bought that game through the platform, effectively "locking in" users to make purchases on its platform. This allows Va...

New California Law Means Big Changes For Photos of Homes in Real Estate Listings Published on January 27, 2026 at 01:35AM California house hunters now have legal protection against the kind of real estate photo trickery that has long plagued the home-buying process, as a new state law requiring disclosure of digitally altered listing images took effect on January 1. Assembly Bill 723 mandates that real estate agents and brokers include a "reasonably conspicuous" statement whenever photos have been altered using editing software or AI to add, remove, or change elements like furniture, appliances, flooring, views or landscaping. Agents must also provide access to the original, unaltered image through a QR code, link, or placement next to the altered photo. The law does not cover wide-angle lenses -- a perennial complaint among buyers who find rooms smaller than they appeared -- nor does it apply to routine adjustments like cropping, color correction or exposure. California is...

GTA 6's Physical Release Could Be Delayed To 2027 Because of Leaks Published on January 27, 2026 at 12:58AM An anonymous reader shares a report: An insider who correctly leaked information about Oblivion: Remastered and other titles is warning that GTA 6's physical release could be pushed back. GTA 6 is set to finally launch on November 19, 2026, but fans hoping to get their hands on a physical copy could be stuck waiting even longer. According to a report from Polish site PPE, insider Graczdari says Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two, isn't planning to release a physical edition of GTA 6 at launch. "We are getting more and more information that the box version will not be released simultaneously with the digital version to prevent leaks," the report says. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nike Says It's Investigating Possible Data Breach Published on January 27, 2026 at 12:23AM Nike says it is investigating a potential data breach, after a group known for cyber attacks reportedly claimed to have leaked a trove of data related to its business operations. From a report: "We always take consumer privacy and data security very seriously," Nike said in a statement. "We are investigating a potential cyber security incident and are actively assessing the situation." The ransomware group World Leaks said on its website that it had published 1.4 terabytes of data from Nike. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Washington State May Mandate 'Firearm Blueprint Detection Algorithms' For 3D Printers Published on January 26, 2026 at 06:34AM Adafruit managing director Phillip Torrone (also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone ) writes: Washington State lawmakers are proposing bills (HB 2320 and HB 2321) that would require 3D printers and CNC machines to block certain designs using software-based "firearms blueprint detection algorithms." In practice, this means scanning every print file, comparing it against a government-maintained database, and preventing "skilled users" from bypassing the system. Supporters frame this as a response to untraceable "ghost guns," but even federal prosecutors admit the tools involved are ordinary manufacturing equipment. Critics warn the language is overbroad, technically unworkable, hostile to open source, and likely to push printing toward cloud-locked, subscription-based systems—while doing little to stop criminals. Read mor...