https://slashdot.org/firehose.pl News for nerds, stuff that matters en-us Copyright Slashdot Media. All Rights Reserved. 2026-07-16T21:43:05+00:00 Slashdot Media feedback@slashdot.org Technology 1970-01-01T00:00+00:00 1 hourly https://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicslashdot.gif https://slashdot.org/firehose.pl https://slashdot.org/submission/17349024/physicists-create-first-room-temperature-quantum-material?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed In a study published in Nature, LSU physicists have developed the first room-temperature quantum material capable of distinguishing and transporting different quantum states of light, overcoming one of the biggest challenges in quantum materials research. Led by Associate Professor of Physics Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza, the work establishes a general design principle for engineering an entirely new class of quantum materials, opening new possibilities for quantum computing, secure communications, sensing technologies and advanced energy systems. alternative_right 2026-07-15T16:31:57+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17349002/how-microsofts-little-workaround-created-a-major-pentagon-threat?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed ProPublica Reporter Renee Dudley heard Microsoft was running tech support for the U.S. Defense Department through China, the country’s biggest cybersecurity adversary.The arrangement was called “digital escorting.” She thought it sounded like a conspiracy theory — until she started looking into it. This is the story of what she found and how her investigation changed government policy.Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.National security and cybersecurity experts in the Trump administration contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China’s digital prowess as a top threat to the country.Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as “Impact Level” 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.“If someone ran a script called ‘fix_servers.sh’ but it actually did something malicious then [escorts] would have no idea,” a former Microsoft engineer who worked on the escort system, told ProPublica in an email. That said, he maintained that the “scope of systems they could disrupt” is limited.In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers “are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists,” but the agency did not respond to ProPublica’s questions regarding the digital escorts’ qualifications.It’s unclear whether other cloud providers to the federal government use digital escorts as part of their tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.A spokesperson for the inspector general — whose office is supposed to operate independently in order to investigate potential waste, fraud and abuse — told ProPublica they were not authorized to speak about the issue and directed questions to DISA public affairs. joshuark 2026-07-14T21:18:31+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348936/californians-sign-up-to-have-data-brokers-delete-their-personal-information?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed More than 300,000 Californians have demanded that hundreds of data brokers erase information about their locations, finances, health and personal lives as the state’s first-in-the-nation Delete Act requires brokers to start the mandatory process of removing data on Aug. 1.Brokers must start accessing deletion requests within 45 days after Aug. 1, then once they have collected those requests, they have another 45 days to report what data they have purged to the agency — known as CalPrivacy — and people who have signed up. ...The information Californians are asking brokers to erase can be extraordinarily sensitive. Of the nearly 600 data brokers in CalPrivacy’s registry, 110 sell people’s precise locations, the registry shows. More than 40 sell identity data that can include Social Security numbers. Almost 70 sell information on people’s gender identity. Seven sell data related to reproductive health, and six sell information on union membership. Eighteen sell minors’ data — and Kemp said children can sign up for deletion using DROP, or parents can do it for them.Many of the brokers build — and sell to advertisers and marketers — dossiers that are increasingly processed using artificial intelligence to draw conclusions about a person’s interests, family, politics, lifestyle, finances, sexual orientation and health. ZipNada 2026-07-12T22:21:58+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348900/china-recovers-orbital-rocket-with-net-capturing-system?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed The first Long March 10B rocket lifted off at 12:15 a.m. Eastern (0415 UTC) July 10 from Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site on the southern island province of Hainan. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) confirmed the successful recovery of the rocket’s first stage 11 minutes later, using a sea platform equipped with a net capture system, a world first. Videos emerging in the minutes following showed a controlled, powered descent with black smoke billowing from the top of the first stage, followed by capture by the Linghang Zhe (“navigator”) sea recovery vessel, with hooks deployed from the booster caught by a tensioned net. The recovery occurred six minutes after separation of the first and second stages. The full success of the flight with insertion of an unnamed satellite into orbit was confirmed by CASC more than 90 minutes after liftoff, representing a huge boost to both China’s desire to develop reusable rocket capabilities, and for its crewed lunar program. The five-meter-diameter, two-stage Long March 10B is 63 meters long, with a mass of 760,000 kilograms at liftoff and has a low Earth orbit payload capacity of 16,000 kg in reusable mode. The full, tri-core Long March 10 will be used to launch astronauts and a landing stack to the moon, with China committed to landing a pair of astronauts on the lunar surface before 2030. hackingbear 2026-07-10T16:30:18+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348996/kalshi-is-betting-nvidia-gpu-time-will-become-the-new-oil?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Kalshi has launched compute forward curves for Nvidia B200, H200, and A100 GPUs, using its own market activity to estimate the future hourly cost of renting AI hardware. The company says the curves could help cloud providers, data centers, AI labs, and other heavy compute users plan spending and manage the risk of future price changes.The curves are not tradable assets, but they can serve as reference prices for private agreements, swaps, and block trades. Kalshi claims compute could eventually become a commodity market larger than oil futures, although that will depend on whether its GPU markets attract enough liquidity to produce reliable pricing. BrianFagioli 2026-07-14T17:13:12+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17349006/records-are-made-to-be-broken-patch-tuesday-raises-triage-stakes?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed When Microsoft vice president of engineering Tom Gallagher warned in May that the company's monthly patch releases could soon grow larger because of AI-driven vulnerability discovery, few likely expected the numbers would surpass 600 just two months later. But with fixes for 622 unique CVEs, Microsoft’s July 2026 Patch Tuesday update is the largest by far in the program's history and offers a preview of the growing prioritization challenges organizations face as AI dramatically increases the volume of flaws requiring attention. July's update contains fixes for three zero-day vulnerabilities, two of which attackers are already exploiting and one that's publicly known but remains unexploited. The patch update also includes fixes for more than five dozen critical vulnerabilities, many of which Microsoft identified as flaws that attackers are more likely to exploit. The total includes 416 vulnerabilities in Windows, 82 each in Office and Office 2016, 46 in Edge, 27 in Microsoft Developer Tools, and 17 in SharePoint Server. "If people want a severity hook, July has 26 vulnerabilities with a CVSS base score above 9.0, and 13 of those sit at 9.8," said Josh Taylor, lead cybersecurity analyst at Fortra, in an emailed comment. "That matters, but CVSS is still only one part of the risk story. The real triage problem this month is the mix of exploited issues, a publicly disclosed BitLocker flaw, and a massive concentration of vulnerabilities in Windows and Office," he said. And rather than focusing on volume, patching teams need to prioritize the exploited vulnerabilities and their exposed infrastructure first, Taylor added. "Today, July 14, 2026, marks a pivotal moment in our industry," researchers from Nightwing said in a statement. "We are officially moving past the traditional 'Patch Tuesday' approach and entering an era of continuous, high-volume security updates" and continuous patching. schwit1 2026-07-15T00:56:05+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348912/stormwall-scientists-propose-space-based-shield-against-dangerous-solar-storms?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Walsh and his colleagues explored a different approach: modifying near-Earth space to reduce the impact of incoming solar storms. The idea draws inspiration from a natural process in which particles from Earth’s upper atmosphere drift outward and help reinforce parts of the planet’s magnetosphere. This magnetic bubble shields Earth from charged particles.Under the proposed StormWall architecture, six spacecraft would operate in geosynchronous orbit. Each vehicle would carry stores of material such as barium or lithium. When a major solar storm is forecast, the spacecraft would release this material into space. Sunlight would ionise the particles, creating a cloud of plasma that spreads toward the outer regions of Earth’s magnetosphere.According to the team’s computer simulations, the added plasma could alter how solar storm energy enters the magnetosphere. In some scenarios, it reduced the intensity of a major geomagnetic storm by roughly 50% and redirected a significant fraction of the incoming energy away from Earth. fjo3 2026-07-11T01:30:03+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348894/converting-semi-trailers-into-plug-in-hybrids?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed There are several companies, such as Tesla, trying to make semi trucks fully electric. The capital cost for such a truck, and the MW-scale infrastructure to recharge it, may be a hard sell for some operators. IEEE Spectrum reports that some companies are instead adding batteries and an electric motor to the semi-trailers that trucks haul behind them.The Nivalis Powered Trailer Kit centers on an electric axle...rated at 50 kilowatts peak, capable of both propulsion assistance and regenerative braking. That axle draws on a 60-kilowatt-hour, 400-volt lithium-ion battery pack charged from three sources: the axle itself during braking and deceleration, a full-rooftop array of photovoltaic panels generating up to 3.7 kilowatts-peak, and a 32-amp, three-phase AC grid connection available during parking stops. This approach is more akin to a plug-in hybrid: the truck may still be diesel-powered, but the electric assist from the trailer allows the truck to run more efficiently. Replacing diesel with kWh can save operators money while also reducing emissions. This incremental approach may be more accessible and less capital-intensive than replacing the truck itself.Trailer Dynamics’s modular system offers three configurations ranging from 187 to 551 kilowatt-hours.... The M300 version [a 300-kWh battery] adds approximately four tonnes to the trailer.... Trailer Dynamics argues the weight penalty is largely academic in practice, because more than 90 percent of trailer movements are constrained by cargo volume before they approach legal weight limits. Trailer Dynamics prices its system between €145,000 and €195,000 and targets a payback period of no more than five years. Nivalis targets five to six years at current costs.... Until someone publishes a full year of results from a trailer running in normal commercial rotation, fleet operators cannot answer the two questions that actually drives adoption: What does this cost, and when does it pay back? necro81 2026-07-10T12:20:44+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17349028/china-new-law-bans-ai-companions-bots?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Two of China’s major consumer-facing artificial intelligence apps, ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba Group Holding’s Qwen, are moving to disable customised agent features, as new rules on humanlike AI interaction services are set to take effect, part of Beijing’s push to build a broader regulatory framework for the fast-growing sector. Doubao informed users in a Friday night notice that its agent feature would go offline on July 15 because of “product function adjustments”. After October 15, Doubao’s related data would be handled in accordance with the company’s privacy policy and no longer be viewable or recoverable inside the app. Qwen also issued a similar notice on Saturday morning, saying that its “humanlike interactive agents and user-created agent functions” would be disabled on July 10, while broader “Qwen agent functions and services” would be taken offline on July 15. Users would no longer be able to access related agent settings or previous conversations after the shutdown. Both apps had offered a pool of agents, created by both the companies and users, that could be customised for specific tasks, skills and speaking styles. Users could also create their own agents, turning a general-purpose chatbot into a named assistant, tutor, role-playing character or companion with a fixed persona and tone. The timing coincides with the implementation of the Interim Measures for the Administration of Artificial Intelligence Anthropomorphic Interaction Services, effective July 15. Issued in April, the rules cover AI services that “simulate human personality traits, thinking patterns and communication styles to provide sustained emotional interaction”. The rules exclude customer service bots, knowledge Q&A, workplace assistants, education and scientific research tools, as long as they do not involve sustained emotional interaction. schwit1 2026-07-15T21:08:30+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17349058/ai-executives-add-personal-security-as-backlash-turns-violent?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed In April, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's San Francisco home, and within days a second attack put gunfire into the property. The Wall Street Journal reports that AI executives are hardening personal security as opposition to the industry moves from online posts into the physical world.Prosecutors say Daniel Moreno-Gama, the 20-year-old accused in the first attack, traveled from Texas to San Francisco intending to kill Altman, and had writings on him about AI's purported risk to humanity. He faces two counts of attempted murder and attempted arson in California state court. Two more suspects were later arrested in connection with the second incident. Around the same time, The Information described Silicon Valley leaning into a new breed of bodyguards for AI leadership.The pressure isn't only on the people at the top. According to the Data Center Watch Q1 2026 report, organized opposition groups roughly doubled from 396 at the end of last year to 833 by the end of March, spanning 49 states, and opponents blocked or delayed at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion in a single quarter. That is a very different problem from a viral tweet. It is permits denied, votes lost, sites relocated. fjo3 2026-07-16T17:06:58+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17349020/federal-school-and-library-internet-connectivity-program-under-review?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed A program that helps connect schools and libraries to the internet at discounted rates is under review by the Federal Communications Commission. Educators and advocates are bracing for the funding to shrink or be eliminated. El Fantasmo 2026-07-15T13:23:59+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348898/payloads-used-to-dictate-the-terms-of-launch-thats-finally-changing?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed A new report from the Aerospace Corporation helps elucidate why satellite companies are optimizing for Starship. It’s big and reusable, and once operational, it could cut the cost of launching a kilogram of payload into orbit by an order of magnitude from the Falcon 9. This means costs could come down from a few thousand dollars per kilogram to a few hundred. Karen Jones, a space economist and lead author of the paper, said her research supports some of those optimistic cost projections. She outlines three scenarios, two of which assume an initial launch cost of $100 million for each fully reusable Starship and Super Heavy booster, with marginal costs of 20 or 35 percent. This is in line with the marginal costs of the smaller, partially reusable Falcon 9, which SpaceX can launch for as little as $15 million per flight on a dedicated Starlink mission. This would bring the per-kilogram launch cost for a fully loaded Starship down to $133 to $233 after 10 reuse cycles. A more optimistic scenario with a $50 million initial launch cost and 20 percent marginal cost would reduce payload costs to $67 per kilogram for a Starship/Super Heavy launch at full capacity after nine use cycles. That’s less than it costs to fill the gas tanks of most SUVs. If SpaceX can make these more optimistic ambitions a reality, it would validate a claim made by Elon Musk in 2022 that a Starship flight could eventually cost as little as $10 million. “I actually thought I would basically disprove that [claim], and on my first try, I got to $67 per kilogram after nine use cycles,” Jones told Ars. “It’s based upon some significant assumptions in the paper, but it’s not something that’s completely crazy. It certainly wouldn’t be something they’d reach on the first few times, on their first model; but over time, and with a learning curve, why not? I think it’s possible. “These [Wall Street] analyst dweebs just have no clue what daily orbital access at under $100/kg means.” — veteran aerospace engineer Will Collier schwit1 2026-07-10T13:53:47+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348914/say-hello-to-google-mystery-owner-behind-wyomings-largest-data-center-project?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed The 2.7-gigawatt data center once called Project Jade 8 miles south of Cheyenne has been unmasked as a massive Google campus. Google’s project, according to planning documents, will be a 716-acre campus in the Switchgrass Industrial Park. schwit1 2026-07-11T02:27:56+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348872/linux-boots-on-the-atari-jaguar?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Remember the Atari Jaguar? The ill-fated 64-bit game console from 1993 just pulled off something nobody expected over 30 years later: it now boots Linux. Developer cakehonolulu managed to port uClinux to the aging hardware, overcoming the Jaguar’s lack of an MMU, tiny 2MB RAM limit, and quirky architecture by writing platform-specific code, custom drivers, and taking advantage of Linux’s existing Motorola 68000 support. The system now reaches a BusyBox shell on both real hardware and in emulation, though input is currently limited to a serial connection. The developer published a detailed technical write-up explaining the process, from kernel memory layout to timer initialization and debugging compiler issues. BrianFagioli 2026-07-09T22:34:34+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348960/fastmail-launches-eu-email-hosting-with-one-important-privacy-catch?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Fastmail is opening a new data center in Amsterdam and will begin moving European customers to EU hosted infrastructure in August. The primary copy of customer data will be stored inside the European Union, which could help with compliance and improve performance for users in the region.There is one important catch. Fastmail says European customer data will still be replicated to the United States for resiliency. That means the service is not fully EU only, even though the primary copy will remain in Amsterdam. BrianFagioli 2026-07-13T12:41:53+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348934/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-warns-companies-not-to-give-ai-firms-their-secrets?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warns companies not to give AI firms their secretsMicrosoft CEO Satya Nadella says businesses may be paying twice for artificial intelligence: once with money, and again with the proprietary knowledge they feed into AI systems to make them useful. He calls this the Reverse Information Paradox, arguing that prompts, corrections, evaluations, workflows, and other usage data can gradually expose how a company actually operates.Nadella says enterprises should keep control of their own models, memory, feedback, and internal learning loops while avoiding dependence on a single AI provider. The warning is notable coming from Microsoft, which sells the cloud infrastructure and AI services needed to build exactly that kind of private environment. BrianFagioli 2026-07-12T17:16:43+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348924/the-mind-bending-company-that-gets-a-million-job-applicationsand-rejects?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Getting an offer from Bending Spoons, which owns AOL, has become harder than getting into HarvardIt’s a mind-bending number. The most cutthroat banks and consulting firms brag about hiring rates of 1%. Citadel and Citadel Securities took 0.36% of the quants who applied for internships this summer. NASA lets in 0.1% of those who want to be astronauts. But 0.04%? It means that getting a job at Bending Spoons is 100 times harder than getting into Harvard.The company is run by executives in their 30s and early 40s. The employees are mostly in their 20s and 30s and have never worked anywhere else. Many are younger than the brands they take over.“Being able to spot people who are unusually talented and motivated very early in their careers, then giving them unusually high levels of responsibility and coaching, has been an absolutely key advantage for us,” said Ferrari, who is 41.It’s a key part of the business model, too. When Bending Spoons buys a company, it begins each radical transformation by slashing most of the acquired employees—and replacing them with the much leaner team of Spooners.There are now about 700 people who made it through the notorious hiring process and now work in technical, product and growth roles across the organization. They move from one Bending Spoons acquisition to the next, making what Ferrari calls “very deep changes”—rewriting the code, rebuilding the infrastructure, redesigning the user interface. And they are “held to particularly demanding performance standards,” the company promises.In fact, an entire team of Spooners does nothing but evaluate other Spooners and potential Spooners. schwit1 2026-07-11T19:01:08+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17349054/ai-data-centers-being-built-faster-than-they-can-be-secured?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed AI is reshaping data centers and introducing security risks traditional architectures weren't designed to handle. As AI data centers scale at breakneck speed, security isn't keeping up. Researchers outline the Top 10 AI infrastructure security risks, including hardware integrity, multi-tenant isolation, high-speed network fabrics, supply chain compromise, and patching failures. wiredmikey 2026-07-16T15:35:48+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348916/cloudflare-netlify-and-vercel-with-new-toys-for-phishers-and-threat-actors?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Web Bros’ Latest Genius Move: Drop a Zip, Ship Malware Cloudflare, Vercel, and Netlify have all launched their own “Drop” services: upload a zip, get a live site instantly on their edge networks. Authentication and abuse protection? That’s for later. Right now it’s pure vibes. This is peak industry brain rot. In a world already drowning in phishing, malware, and scam sites, these platforms just rolled out the easiest, fastest way for bad actors to host malicious content. Drag-and-drop phishing kits on workers.dev, instant fake login pages on Vercel, malware droppers on Netlify — all live in seconds with zero friction. No real verification. No serious upfront checks. Just “move fast and let the internet clean up our mess." The hopium these web bros are smoking must be nuclear grade quality. They’ve spent years building trust in their platforms, only to turn them into free malware CDNs for anyone with a zip file.This isn’t democratizing the web. This is handing phishers and scammers the keys with a smile. Brilliant strategy, truly. Nota bene — apparently real world bad actors beat red teams in abusing those new "services". Slow clap Apparently all the web bros are drinking the same hopium-flavored cool aid, where no phishers, c2s, implants and bad actors exist whatsoever. https://cloudflare.com/drop/ Same concept from vercel and netlify https://vercel.com/drop https://app.netlify.com/drop https://x.com/JCyberSec_/statu... Try a DAP.LIVE or URLSCAN.IO query to see abuse and workers.dev (and pages.dev and r2.dev for that matter) — for each valid deployment, there are hundreds of confirmed fraud scams. Nice statistics, which will only get worse now. Good job. D,Petkow 2026-07-11T05:51:49+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17349030/us-suffered-a-major-power-outage-every-month-of-2026?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed A Reddit post making the rounds this week claims the US has experienced at least one major power outage every month of 2026 – but is it true? I dug into several outages, the extreme weather behind them, and what we can do to help keep the lights on. [...] The claim that hundreds of thousands of Americans were without power over extended periods at least once per month, every month of 2026 surprised be in two ways. First, because I had no idea if it was true – and, second, because it felt true. We try to do better than writing about things that feel true around here, however, so I did a bit of research (translation: I Googled power outages by month) and came up with the following examples in about sixty seconds January: More than 296,000 customers still without power as winter storm freezes much of the US February: More than 380,000 customers without power as winter storm hits US Northeast March: Storms Cut Power to Over 1 Million Customers in US Midwest, Mid-Atlantic; Ohio Hardest Hit April: At least 29 tornadoes touched down in Central Illinois on April 17th May: Energy Secretary Issues Emergency Order to Deploy Backup Generation in the Mid-Atlantic Amid Heatwave June: More than 373,000 US customers without power due to extreme weather ... and that list is far from comprehensive, and how you feel about it might depend on what you consider a “major” outage, of course – but consider that there are tens of thousands of Americans without power right now, and that’s not making the news. [...] The lesson here is that weather-related grid outages – whether they’re caused by wildfires, mudslides, derechos, tornadoes, ice storms, hurricanes, heat waves, or some other disaster I’m lucky enough to have forgotten about – read like statistics when they’re happening over there, but get personal real quick when they’re happening to you. Anonymous Coward 2026-07-15T21:22:02+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348908/ai-fiction-is-easy-to-detect-because-its-stupid-and-bad-research-finds?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Fiction written by artificial intelligence is easy to detect because it struggles with complex story structure and tends to moralize in clunky ways, according to a preprint study from researchers at University of Maryland, College Park and Google DeepMind. They found that AI fiction has tells that go beyond stereotypical overuse of em-dashes and other obvious AI tropes and have more to do with the formulaic nature of the text itself.âoeAI stories over-explain themes and favor tidy, single-track plots while human stories frame protagonistsâ(TM) choices as more morally ambiguous and have increased temporal complexity,â the study, which looked at more than 50,000 AI-generated short stories, found. âoeClaude produces notably flat event escalation, GPT over-indexes on dream sequences, and Gemini defaults to external character description. We find that AI-generated stories cluster in a shared region of narrative space, while human-authored stories exhibit greater diversity. More broadly, these results suggest that differences in underlying narrative construction, not just writing style, can be used to separate human-written original works from AI-generated fiction.âBasically, AI-generated fiction sucks and at the moment is easy to detect. alternative_right 2026-07-10T20:34:21+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348902/disable-autoplay-and-infinite-scroll-or-risk-massive-fines-eu-tells-meta?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed The European Union is ramping up pressure on Meta to make big changes to Facebook and Instagram after the European Commission preliminarily found that features like autoplay, infinite scroll, and highly personalized content recommendations were addictive. On Thursday, the EC said its investigation indicated that “Meta did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design on the physical and mental wellbeing of users, including minors and vulnerable adults.” “These features fuel the user’s urge to keep scrolling and shift the brain into ‘autopilot mode,’ contributing to unhealthy habits and compulsive use,” the commission said. Over the next few months, Meta will have an opportunity to dispute the claims, and it has already taken a defensive stance. Meta’s spokesperson, Ben Walters, told Reuters that Meta disagrees with the commission’s preliminary findings, which supposedly “don’t accurately take into account the significant steps we’ve taken to protect teens.” “Since this investigation began, we rolled out Teen Accounts that automatically protect teens and put parents in control—allowing them to block access to Instagram at night and cap daily screen time at just 15 minutes,” Walters said. However, the EC emphasized that Meta’s current mitigation efforts, including time management tools activated by default for teens, “failed to effectively tackle the risks stemming from its addictive design.” Additionally, parental controls were deemed “only effective if parents and guardians possess adequate technical expertise” and dedicated “effort and time to understand them effectively.” “This undermines the efficiency of such measures in addressing the inherent risks posed by Instagram and Facebook’s addictive design,” the EC said, particularly for minors. At this stage, the EC recommended that Meta consider “disabling key addictive features such as ‘autoplay’ and ‘infinite scroll’ by default, implementing effective ‘screen time breaks,’ and adapting its recommender system to make it less engagement-oriented.” If Meta fails to make changes to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act, the company risks fines up to 6 percent of its global annual turnover when the EC makes its final decision in the coming months. “Our starting point is that, based on our findings, this design is too addictive and changes need to be made,” Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s tech chief, told Reuters. “The next step is either that Meta changes its design or a non-compliance decision will follow,” she said, noting in the press release that the EU’s priority is “protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans.” Anonymous Coward 2026-07-10T17:32:46+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348988/the-fbi-has-seized-more-than-600-drones-since-the-start-of-the-world-cup?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed The FBI and Atlanta Police Department are getting ready for a massive security operation ahead of the World Cup semifinals between England and Argentina at Atlanta Stadium. Both agencies have used drones to search for potential threats on the ground and in the sky. The FBI is enforcing the Federal Aviation Administration's Temporary Flight Restrictions around the venue. The FBI has confiscated more than 600 drones nationwide since the World Cup began. Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Atlanta Field Office Marlo Graham said 86 of those drones were seized in Atlanta. Graham said the FBI uses a "mechanism" that allows agents to see unauthorized drones in restricted airspace. Agents then work to mitigate the threat posed by unknown drones. "We've been able to safely land drones that have been unauthorized in the flight restricted area," Graham said. There is a one-mile restriction around World Cup stadiums on non-match days, and a three-mile restriction on game day. schwit1 2026-07-14T11:16:06+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17349026/google-and-epic-cancel-settlement-third-party-app-stores-coming-to-google-play?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Big changes are coming to Android apps, but they’re not the changes Google wanted. The settlement between Google and Epic that aimed to put to rest the companies’ long-running antitrust battle is being withdrawn, and that means third-party app stores are coming to the Play Store. Google has confirmed that it will begin distributing rival app stores next week, setting the stage for competing platforms to take a bite out of Google’s Android revenue stream. [...] Google and Epic were set to return to court on July 16 to argue in favor of the settlement. However, the writing may have been on the wall. In a recent expert analysis provided to the court, MIT economics professor Nancy Rose noted that the settlement was “unlikely to enable Google Play’s potential competitors to overcome their long-standing network-effect disadvantage in a timely manner.” With settlement approval looking increasingly unlikely, Epic and Google agreed this week to call the whole thing off. Here’s how Google Trust and Reputation Communications Lead Dan Jackson explains the company’s decision: “We’ve agreed with Epic to withdraw our motion to modify the US Court’s injunction rather than prolonging this process which creates uncertainty for the ecosystem. This allows us to focus on executing our recently announced global business model evolution to deliver greater app store choice, lower prices, and more opportunities for developers and users. We remain committed to maintaining Android’s industry-leading security and fostering a competitive ecosystem where every app store and developer has the freedom to compete. In parallel, we continue to comply with the US Court’s injunction.” In a brief filing (PDF), Google’s legal team informs the court that Google is prepared to begin distributing third-party app stores in Google Play on July 22. Under the terms of Judge Donato’s original injunction, these stores will have access to the full catalog of Google Play apps by default. Developers will have the option to opt out of distribution in these stores, and Google has a support page explaining how to do so. Google also has documentation on how app stores can get access to the Google Play catalog. It won’t be mirroring those apps in any shady storefront that asks. The court has allowed Google to charge reasonable fees to cover its security and compliance review of third-party stores, which will be $5,000 per year. Google will also require approved stores to block malware, respect intellectual property, and include mechanisms to update and uninstall apps. App stores can be removed from the program if more than 1 percent of attempted app installs appear to be malware or unwanted software. It’s unclear if there will be separate, possibly more stringent requirements for storefront distribution in the Play Store. However, Google is prohibited from unreasonably blocking third-party store clients uploaded to Google Play. The changes Google has announced under the Epic agreement will proceed for now. That means Registered App Stores will happen globally, but they will probably only appear in the Play Store for US users. Google hasn’t specified if there will be any differences in the features available to the stores downloaded from Play versus registered stores. Anonymous Coward 2026-07-15T17:36:21+00:00 https://slashdot.org/submission/17348972/gravitricity-energy-storage-goes-bankrupt-but-two-others-keep-on-trying?utm_source=rss1.0&utm_medium=feed Gravitricity, a Scottins corporation that proposed using gravitational potential energy to store electrical energy, went bankrupt at the end of 2025. The basic idea is so simple, even a freshman physics student could describe it: use an electric motor to raise a weight up against gravity, and then when you need energy, lower the weight back down, and use the energy to run a generator. The difficulty, however, is in scale. Their proof of concept unit, a 40-ton block of steel falling the height of a 30-story building, stores an amount of energy equal to about eight hours of an average American home’s electricity. Their solution was to go big: there are literally millions of abandoned mine shafts around the world, many of them kilometer and more deep. They proposed a full GraviStore system would hang up to 24 separate weights of 500 metric tons each from cabled winches inside a single shaft. Twelve thousand metric tons of suspended steel, going up and down forever. But turning their concept into a reality ended up spending money faster than it could be invested, and, so quietly it took investors three months to even notice, the company went bankrupt.But the basic concept may not be dead. Several other companies are still working at turning the concept into reality. And hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines are scattered across the United States, most of them a liability, a few of them with a kilometer of free vertical drop and a hoist house and a grid connection already sitting on site. Geoffrey.landis 2026-07-13T20:20:18+00:00