# Instrument Clusters Are Now Paid Extras In Two Hyundai Models
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 07:22:01 2026-09-03
"Enshittification of car controls [is] rapidly accelerating," writes longtime Slashdot reader sinij, pointing to a new report from Car and Driver. From the report: Remember when iPhones used to come with free headphones and a phone charger (including the wall plug)? It didn't feel so much like Apple giving you free goodies as it did that the company was providing you with the relevant hardware to use the device. Apple stopped including headphones and charging blocks in 2020. Now, Hyundai is pulling some of its standard hardware from the box, at least for two models.
Hyundai is charging customers extra for a driver's display in the new Elantra generation (more specifically, the Korea-market Avante), as well as the Ioniq 3, Motor1 reported. Both models feature Pleos Connect, Hyundai's new infotainment setup that pairs a center touchscreen with a slim 9.9-inch instrument cluster mounted above the dashboard -- except where it doesn't.
In its domestic market, the instrument cluster screen is offered as a 350,000 won ($255) option for the base trim. Not the most expensive optional extra in the world, but still kind of a slap in the face for a feature traditionally viewed as standard fare. Things are more expensive for the electric Ioniq 3. In the EV's case, the base trim gives customers the full Tesla-screen experience, meaning if customers want the driver's display, they'll need to fork over the additional $5000 necessary to move up to the next-level trim. [...] Hyundai plans to have the setup equipped in 20 million cars globally by the end of the decade.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/2246257/instrument-clusters-are-now-paid-extras-in-two-hyundai-models?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 07:22:01 2026-09-03
"Enshittification of car controls [is] rapidly accelerating," writes longtime Slashdot reader sinij, pointing to a new report from Car and Driver. From the report: Remember when iPhones used to come with free headphones and a phone charger (including the wall plug)? It didn't feel so much like Apple giving you free goodies as it did that the company was providing you with the relevant hardware to use the device. Apple stopped including headphones and charging blocks in 2020. Now, Hyundai is pulling some of its standard hardware from the box, at least for two models.
Hyundai is charging customers extra for a driver's display in the new Elantra generation (more specifically, the Korea-market Avante), as well as the Ioniq 3, Motor1 reported. Both models feature Pleos Connect, Hyundai's new infotainment setup that pairs a center touchscreen with a slim 9.9-inch instrument cluster mounted above the dashboard -- except where it doesn't.
In its domestic market, the instrument cluster screen is offered as a 350,000 won ($255) option for the base trim. Not the most expensive optional extra in the world, but still kind of a slap in the face for a feature traditionally viewed as standard fare. Things are more expensive for the electric Ioniq 3. In the EV's case, the base trim gives customers the full Tesla-screen experience, meaning if customers want the driver's display, they'll need to fork over the additional $5000 necessary to move up to the next-level trim. [...] Hyundai plans to have the setup equipped in 20 million cars globally by the end of the decade.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/2246257/instrument-clusters-are-now-paid-extras-in-two-hyundai-models?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Global Heating Will Hit At Least 1.8C, UN Warns, and There Are 'No Good Outcomes'
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 04:22:01 2026-09-03
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Global heating will reach at least 1.8C under even the most optimistic future, well beyond the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C, according to a UN report that warns every fraction of temperature rise intensifies destructive extreme weather, glacier melt, ecosystem loss, and island and coastal city submersion. The report by the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program confirmed overshooting the 1.5C goal inscribed in the landmark Paris agreement of 2015 was now "unavoidable" and, despite some progress in addressing the human-caused climate crisis driven by burning fossil fuels, likely in the next few years. It said: "There are no good outcomes above 1.5C."
Heating of up to 3C above preindustrial levels could lead to glaciers losing more than a quarter of their mass by 2100, raising sea levels by up to 13cm. Global food production could decline by up to 14% by 2050 if there are not effective strategies to adapt. Human health, water supplies, nature, cities, infrastructure and economies could all be severely damaged. Some losses would be irreversible. Many communities may have to relocate or change their livelihoods. The report said the best hope for humanity to limit damage was to adopt an "overshoot, peak and decline" pathway that required immediate and sustained greenhouse gas emissions cuts combined with steps to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
It described the goal of net zero emissions -- increasingly politically contentious in some countries -- as "an essential milestone that cannot be skipped" and stressed carbon dioxide removal through steps such as establishing vast new forests must occur alongside, not as an alternative to, deep cuts in fossil pollution. Crucially, the authors of the report, titled Limiting Overshoot, said the average global temperature could be returned to 1.5C this century only if heating stayed below about 1.8C. They warned nature's capacity to store carbon was uncertain and would shrink the more the planet heats. [...] The report's authors cited earlier work that found limiting heating to about 1.8C required global emissions to be halved by 2035. They said existing national policies were projected to lead to at least 2.3C heating, but it would still be possible to limit stay below 2C if countries delivered on net zero emissions commitments by mid-century.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/2228245/global-heating-will-hit-at-least-18c-un-warns-and-there-are-no-good-outcomes?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 04:22:01 2026-09-03
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Global heating will reach at least 1.8C under even the most optimistic future, well beyond the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C, according to a UN report that warns every fraction of temperature rise intensifies destructive extreme weather, glacier melt, ecosystem loss, and island and coastal city submersion. The report by the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program confirmed overshooting the 1.5C goal inscribed in the landmark Paris agreement of 2015 was now "unavoidable" and, despite some progress in addressing the human-caused climate crisis driven by burning fossil fuels, likely in the next few years. It said: "There are no good outcomes above 1.5C."
Heating of up to 3C above preindustrial levels could lead to glaciers losing more than a quarter of their mass by 2100, raising sea levels by up to 13cm. Global food production could decline by up to 14% by 2050 if there are not effective strategies to adapt. Human health, water supplies, nature, cities, infrastructure and economies could all be severely damaged. Some losses would be irreversible. Many communities may have to relocate or change their livelihoods. The report said the best hope for humanity to limit damage was to adopt an "overshoot, peak and decline" pathway that required immediate and sustained greenhouse gas emissions cuts combined with steps to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
It described the goal of net zero emissions -- increasingly politically contentious in some countries -- as "an essential milestone that cannot be skipped" and stressed carbon dioxide removal through steps such as establishing vast new forests must occur alongside, not as an alternative to, deep cuts in fossil pollution. Crucially, the authors of the report, titled Limiting Overshoot, said the average global temperature could be returned to 1.5C this century only if heating stayed below about 1.8C. They warned nature's capacity to store carbon was uncertain and would shrink the more the planet heats. [...] The report's authors cited earlier work that found limiting heating to about 1.8C required global emissions to be halved by 2035. They said existing national policies were projected to lead to at least 2.3C heating, but it would still be possible to limit stay below 2C if countries delivered on net zero emissions commitments by mid-century.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/2228245/global-heating-will-hit-at-least-18c-un-warns-and-there-are-no-good-outcomes?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# FCC Plans Robocall Scorecard to Grade Phone Companies On Spam Call Blocking
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2026-09-02
The FCC is proposing (PDF) a public "robocall mitigation scorecard" that would grade phone companies on how well they block illegal spam calls while avoiding false positives on the legitimate ones. "The Scorecard will empower consumers and encourage providers to continue to combat illegal robocalls by providing the public with an assessment of the effectiveness of voice service providers' efforts to protect consumers from illegal robocalls," the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said in a public notice. Ars Technica reports: The scorecards could include call-blocking statistics along with data on customer complaints and enforcement actions. The FCC said scorecards could grade providers on a number scale, with letter grades, or by classifying providers as low risk, medium risk, or high risk. The proposed tool would rate wireless, wireline, and VoIP providers on efforts to block robocalls and their "actual results in protecting [consumers] from illegal robocalls," the FCC said. "In practice, that means moving beyond a simple administrative checklist (i.e., did the provider file the right paperwork, did they offer the right tools) and toward a composite set of metrics that reflects both operational practices and measurable outcomes, including how often legitimate calls are blocked."
Whether the tool is useful for consumers will depend on how it's designed, how easy each provider's scorecard is to find, and what data sources it relies on. The proposed scorecard would apply to domestic voice service providers with retail customers, but not telcos that operate solely as wholesale or intermediate providers. "Combatting the scourge of illegal robocalls remains the FCC's top consumer protection priority... As proposed in today's public notice, the FCC aims to develop a scorecard that will give consumers more information about the measures providers are taking to fight illegal robocalls, and it will also incentivize providers to improve their efforts," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a press release.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/215232/fcc-plans-robocall-scorecard-to-grade-phone-companies-on-spam-call-blocking?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2026-09-02
The FCC is proposing (PDF) a public "robocall mitigation scorecard" that would grade phone companies on how well they block illegal spam calls while avoiding false positives on the legitimate ones. "The Scorecard will empower consumers and encourage providers to continue to combat illegal robocalls by providing the public with an assessment of the effectiveness of voice service providers' efforts to protect consumers from illegal robocalls," the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said in a public notice. Ars Technica reports: The scorecards could include call-blocking statistics along with data on customer complaints and enforcement actions. The FCC said scorecards could grade providers on a number scale, with letter grades, or by classifying providers as low risk, medium risk, or high risk. The proposed tool would rate wireless, wireline, and VoIP providers on efforts to block robocalls and their "actual results in protecting [consumers] from illegal robocalls," the FCC said. "In practice, that means moving beyond a simple administrative checklist (i.e., did the provider file the right paperwork, did they offer the right tools) and toward a composite set of metrics that reflects both operational practices and measurable outcomes, including how often legitimate calls are blocked."
Whether the tool is useful for consumers will depend on how it's designed, how easy each provider's scorecard is to find, and what data sources it relies on. The proposed scorecard would apply to domestic voice service providers with retail customers, but not telcos that operate solely as wholesale or intermediate providers. "Combatting the scourge of illegal robocalls remains the FCC's top consumer protection priority... As proposed in today's public notice, the FCC aims to develop a scorecard that will give consumers more information about the measures providers are taking to fight illegal robocalls, and it will also incentivize providers to improve their efforts," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a press release.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/215232/fcc-plans-robocall-scorecard-to-grade-phone-companies-on-spam-call-blocking?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# 1Password Wades Into a Right-Wing Mess After Funding a Linux Project
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 22:22:01 2026-09-02
1Password is facing customer and internal employee backlash after pledging $300,000 to support a Linux distro created by David Heinemeier Hansson, who has regularly published racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. "The popular password manager is now a 'distinguished corporate patron' of Omacom, the nonprofit foundation that oversees a popular Linux distribution known as Omarchy," reports The Verge. From the report: One viral blog post declared that 1Password "Supports the Ethnic Cleansing of Europe" because of the donation. Others on social media asked for suggestions for alternative password managers so they would not support the funding of a project from Heinemeier Hansson, better known as DHH. The donation has also resulted in internal pushback from employees of 1Password who are disappointed by the affiliation, The Verge has learned. 1Password CEO David Faugno and cofounder Roustem Karimov have since posted internal messages addressing what Faugno describes as "concerns, both internally and externally" that have been raised "due to the polarizing nature" of DHH.
DHH is a Danish entrepreneur best known for creating Ruby on Rails, Basecamp, and the Hey email client. Omarchy is DHH's "opinionated" version of Linux, meaning it's Linux the way he likes to use it. It's based on Arch Linux, with certain apps that install by default. It's also, apparently, one of 1Password's big customer environments. [...] In an internal Slack message obtained by The Verge, 1Password's Karimov downplayed the overtly racist comments from DHH, telling staff the following: "As I said, people have different personal opinions. You believe in your heart that DHH is evil, that you have the moral high ground, and that nothing will change your mind. However, not everyone believes that. It is not fair to claim a monopoly and ostracize team members who might disagree with you. There are people who are afraid to speak up simply because they will be personally attacked."
1Password CEO Faugno took a different approach, trying to reassure staff that "1Password does not endorse hateful, dehumanizing, or exclusionary views, including those shared publicly by DHH." Nonetheless, it seems the company has sacrificed a moral position for a "mission-driven" position. In the same message to staff, Faugno says "the scale and growth of [Omarchy's] use among our customers is significant -- Omarchy has grown to be the second most used Linux distribution among 1Password users." Faugno then tries to create distance, telling staff that its contribution is "to the Omacom Foundation, not an individual." Still, he says "we recognize that Omarchy is associated with DHH, its founder. Our donation is not in any way an endorsement of his personal views or conduct."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/2055245/1password-wades-into-a-right-wing-mess-after-funding-a-linux-project?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 22:22:01 2026-09-02
1Password is facing customer and internal employee backlash after pledging $300,000 to support a Linux distro created by David Heinemeier Hansson, who has regularly published racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. "The popular password manager is now a 'distinguished corporate patron' of Omacom, the nonprofit foundation that oversees a popular Linux distribution known as Omarchy," reports The Verge. From the report: One viral blog post declared that 1Password "Supports the Ethnic Cleansing of Europe" because of the donation. Others on social media asked for suggestions for alternative password managers so they would not support the funding of a project from Heinemeier Hansson, better known as DHH. The donation has also resulted in internal pushback from employees of 1Password who are disappointed by the affiliation, The Verge has learned. 1Password CEO David Faugno and cofounder Roustem Karimov have since posted internal messages addressing what Faugno describes as "concerns, both internally and externally" that have been raised "due to the polarizing nature" of DHH.
DHH is a Danish entrepreneur best known for creating Ruby on Rails, Basecamp, and the Hey email client. Omarchy is DHH's "opinionated" version of Linux, meaning it's Linux the way he likes to use it. It's based on Arch Linux, with certain apps that install by default. It's also, apparently, one of 1Password's big customer environments. [...] In an internal Slack message obtained by The Verge, 1Password's Karimov downplayed the overtly racist comments from DHH, telling staff the following: "As I said, people have different personal opinions. You believe in your heart that DHH is evil, that you have the moral high ground, and that nothing will change your mind. However, not everyone believes that. It is not fair to claim a monopoly and ostracize team members who might disagree with you. There are people who are afraid to speak up simply because they will be personally attacked."
1Password CEO Faugno took a different approach, trying to reassure staff that "1Password does not endorse hateful, dehumanizing, or exclusionary views, including those shared publicly by DHH." Nonetheless, it seems the company has sacrificed a moral position for a "mission-driven" position. In the same message to staff, Faugno says "the scale and growth of [Omarchy's] use among our customers is significant -- Omarchy has grown to be the second most used Linux distribution among 1Password users." Faugno then tries to create distance, telling staff that its contribution is "to the Omacom Foundation, not an individual." Still, he says "we recognize that Omarchy is associated with DHH, its founder. Our donation is not in any way an endorsement of his personal views or conduct."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/2055245/1password-wades-into-a-right-wing-mess-after-funding-a-linux-project?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# CERN Transitioning From RHEL To Debian
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 21:22:02 2026-09-02
Longtime Slashdot reader Microsplat: CERN plans to have all 2,200+ industrial computers and embedded systems in its accelerator-control infrastructure running Debian 13 by the end of 2026. These are systems used for accelerator control, laboratory equipment and other operational functions ... They also generate and interact with a hefty amount of data, although this Linux.com article refers more broadly to CERN's computing infrastructure. It's unclear whether the Debian migration covers all server infrastructure or what scientific-research-based systems are included. Our shops have done much the same in recent years, mostly due to CentOS and CFEngine getting the can. Phoronix adds some additional context in its article: CERN was a longtime RHEL/CentOS shop, previously co-maintained the Scientific Linux RHEL derivative, moved to CentOS in 2015, and later considered CentOS Stream. CERN says Red Hat's adoption of the "-march=x86-64-v2" compiler flag by default, which it viewed as "forced obsolescence" of older hardware, was the "straw that broke the camel's back."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/2041220/cern-transitioning-from-rhel-to-debian?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 21:22:02 2026-09-02
Longtime Slashdot reader Microsplat: CERN plans to have all 2,200+ industrial computers and embedded systems in its accelerator-control infrastructure running Debian 13 by the end of 2026. These are systems used for accelerator control, laboratory equipment and other operational functions ... They also generate and interact with a hefty amount of data, although this Linux.com article refers more broadly to CERN's computing infrastructure. It's unclear whether the Debian migration covers all server infrastructure or what scientific-research-based systems are included. Our shops have done much the same in recent years, mostly due to CentOS and CFEngine getting the can. Phoronix adds some additional context in its article: CERN was a longtime RHEL/CentOS shop, previously co-maintained the Scientific Linux RHEL derivative, moved to CentOS in 2015, and later considered CentOS Stream. CERN says Red Hat's adoption of the "-march=x86-64-v2" compiler flag by default, which it viewed as "forced obsolescence" of older hardware, was the "straw that broke the camel's back."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/2041220/cern-transitioning-from-rhel-to-debian?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# OpenAI's Altman Says the Use of AI is 'Non-Negotiable'
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 21:22:02 2026-09-02
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI adoption is "non-negotiable" for countries, comparing rejecting it to refusing electricity a century ago and predicting it will unleash an unprecedented boom in entrepreneurship. "The economic growth and benefit to people that can come from this, the value to a country, is too high to ignore," he said. His comments were made during a fireside chat with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. CNBC reports: Altman thinks the public won't be talking as much about AI a decade from now -- it'll be expected everywhere. "A kid growing up today will never be smarter than AI, but he or she will also never have understood a world where every product and service that they interact with is not really smart and really capable and really helpful," he said.
Altman referenced the adoption of electricity multiple times in his comments and drew a line between that and AI. "I think it would be approximately as bad of an idea to say we're not going to have AI in our country as it was to say we're not going to have electricity in our country, you know, back 100 plus years ago," he said.
Altman called cybersecurity one of the biggest challenges to navigate in the age of AI and one that leaders shouldn't sidestep. "I think some things are going to go very wrong with cybersecurity unless people act quite urgently," he said. Altman said that falling short in cyber defense and other areas "could set this technology back a great deal." You can watch a recording of the chat on YouTube.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/1957204/openais-altman-says-the-use-of-ai-is-non-negotiable?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 21:22:02 2026-09-02
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI adoption is "non-negotiable" for countries, comparing rejecting it to refusing electricity a century ago and predicting it will unleash an unprecedented boom in entrepreneurship. "The economic growth and benefit to people that can come from this, the value to a country, is too high to ignore," he said. His comments were made during a fireside chat with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. CNBC reports: Altman thinks the public won't be talking as much about AI a decade from now -- it'll be expected everywhere. "A kid growing up today will never be smarter than AI, but he or she will also never have understood a world where every product and service that they interact with is not really smart and really capable and really helpful," he said.
Altman referenced the adoption of electricity multiple times in his comments and drew a line between that and AI. "I think it would be approximately as bad of an idea to say we're not going to have AI in our country as it was to say we're not going to have electricity in our country, you know, back 100 plus years ago," he said.
Altman called cybersecurity one of the biggest challenges to navigate in the age of AI and one that leaders shouldn't sidestep. "I think some things are going to go very wrong with cybersecurity unless people act quite urgently," he said. Altman said that falling short in cyber defense and other areas "could set this technology back a great deal." You can watch a recording of the chat on YouTube.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/1957204/openais-altman-says-the-use-of-ai-is-non-negotiable?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# NYC Public Schools Ban AI Use Through Middle School
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 19:22:01 2026-09-02
New York City Public Schools is banning generative AI for students from pre-K through eighth grade for the 2026-27 school year, affecting more than half a million students in the nation's largest school district. ABC News reports: In a statement to ABC News, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that the city is implementing a moratorium on generative AI for students in pre-school or 2-K through eighth grade and will spend the next year "studying the impacts of this technology." Mamdani wrote in part, "the tech industry wants us to believe that A.I.-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary." "We do not see it that way," he added.
[...] The district said it is implementing the most expansive AI moratorium in the nation, eliminating software that uses student-facing AI and banning companion chatbots. The city's AI moratorium does not apply to high school students. The district said it will offer twice-yearly AI literacy classes designed to help high school students "think critically" about the technology before they start to "rely" on it.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/167206/nyc-public-schools-ban-ai-use-through-middle-school?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 19:22:01 2026-09-02
New York City Public Schools is banning generative AI for students from pre-K through eighth grade for the 2026-27 school year, affecting more than half a million students in the nation's largest school district. ABC News reports: In a statement to ABC News, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that the city is implementing a moratorium on generative AI for students in pre-school or 2-K through eighth grade and will spend the next year "studying the impacts of this technology." Mamdani wrote in part, "the tech industry wants us to believe that A.I.-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary." "We do not see it that way," he added.
[...] The district said it is implementing the most expansive AI moratorium in the nation, eliminating software that uses student-facing AI and banning companion chatbots. The city's AI moratorium does not apply to high school students. The district said it will offer twice-yearly AI literacy classes designed to help high school students "think critically" about the technology before they start to "rely" on it.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/167206/nyc-public-schools-ban-ai-use-through-middle-school?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Google Defeats US Bid to Force Ad Tech Sale
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 18:22:02 2026-09-02
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet's Google escaped a breakup of its advertising technology business on Wednesday, when a judge in Virginia rejected U.S. antitrust enforcers' bid to force a sale of Google's online advertising exchange. While the ad exchange is a small part of Google's business, the ruling is the second powerful symbolic victory against the U.S. Department of Justice in its efforts to force Google to sell assets to address illegal monopolies. U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to make Google sell AdX, where publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. She accepted most of the parties' proposed behavioral remedies.
The DOJ and a broad coalition of states sued Google in 2023 over its dominance in markets for advertising technology used by online publishers and websites. In April 2025, Brinkema ruled that Google holds illegal monopolies on servers that host publisher ads and ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers. Google unlawfully locked publishers on its ad server into using its AdX, the judge found. The tech giant's anticompetitive conduct "substantially harmed Google's publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web," Brinkema said at the time.
At a trial last year on remedies in the case, the DOJ argued that Google cannot be trusted to run AdX, given its past behavior. Google argued that a forced sale would be technically difficult and result in a long and painful transition that would hurt customers. During the remedies trial, Google's lawyers warned that forcing it to sell parts of its ad-tech business would cause disruption and damage. [...] The ruling is the third time in a row that a judge has rejected a bid by U.S. antitrust enforcers to break up Big Tech in a crackdown that started during President Donald Trump's first term. In another major Google antitrust case, a judge similarly rejected the DOJ's push to force Google to sell Chrome. It is likely to fuel questions about whether courts are up to the task of checking the industry's unprecedented power over the U.S. economy.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/1755251/google-defeats-us-bid-to-force-ad-tech-sale?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 18:22:02 2026-09-02
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Alphabet's Google escaped a breakup of its advertising technology business on Wednesday, when a judge in Virginia rejected U.S. antitrust enforcers' bid to force a sale of Google's online advertising exchange. While the ad exchange is a small part of Google's business, the ruling is the second powerful symbolic victory against the U.S. Department of Justice in its efforts to force Google to sell assets to address illegal monopolies. U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to make Google sell AdX, where publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. She accepted most of the parties' proposed behavioral remedies.
The DOJ and a broad coalition of states sued Google in 2023 over its dominance in markets for advertising technology used by online publishers and websites. In April 2025, Brinkema ruled that Google holds illegal monopolies on servers that host publisher ads and ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers. Google unlawfully locked publishers on its ad server into using its AdX, the judge found. The tech giant's anticompetitive conduct "substantially harmed Google's publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web," Brinkema said at the time.
At a trial last year on remedies in the case, the DOJ argued that Google cannot be trusted to run AdX, given its past behavior. Google argued that a forced sale would be technically difficult and result in a long and painful transition that would hurt customers. During the remedies trial, Google's lawyers warned that forcing it to sell parts of its ad-tech business would cause disruption and damage. [...] The ruling is the third time in a row that a judge has rejected a bid by U.S. antitrust enforcers to break up Big Tech in a crackdown that started during President Donald Trump's first term. In another major Google antitrust case, a judge similarly rejected the DOJ's push to force Google to sell Chrome. It is likely to fuel questions about whether courts are up to the task of checking the industry's unprecedented power over the U.S. economy.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/1755251/google-defeats-us-bid-to-force-ad-tech-sale?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Uber Is Laying Off 10% of Its Workforce
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 17:22:02 2026-09-02
Uber is laying off about 3,300 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring aimed at cutting management layers and redirecting investment toward ridesharing, delivery, and robotaxis. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the changes in an internal email that was also published online.TechCrunch reports: According to the email, the layoffs are part of a restructuring exercise that would shrink the number of managers by 20%, and some personnel in these roles would work as individual contributors going forward.
The ridesharing giant is reducing the number of teams with one or two members by 50%, and letting go staff who are "more than seven layers down from the CEO," per Bloomberg. Khosrowshahi's email said the company is combining its engineering, science, and delivery divisions. The company is also bringing together its delivery operations across restaurants, retail, and direct divisions.
Remote jobs at the company are going away, too, with Uber only allowing less than 1% of its staff to work remotely.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/161253/uber-is-laying-off-10-of-its-workforce?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 17:22:02 2026-09-02
Uber is laying off about 3,300 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring aimed at cutting management layers and redirecting investment toward ridesharing, delivery, and robotaxis. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the changes in an internal email that was also published online.TechCrunch reports: According to the email, the layoffs are part of a restructuring exercise that would shrink the number of managers by 20%, and some personnel in these roles would work as individual contributors going forward.
The ridesharing giant is reducing the number of teams with one or two members by 50%, and letting go staff who are "more than seven layers down from the CEO," per Bloomberg. Khosrowshahi's email said the company is combining its engineering, science, and delivery divisions. The company is also bringing together its delivery operations across restaurants, retail, and direct divisions.
Remote jobs at the company are going away, too, with Uber only allowing less than 1% of its staff to work remotely.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/161253/uber-is-laying-off-10-of-its-workforce?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 16:22:02 2026-09-02
A dark-web identity theft service called Nexus claims to be selling scans of more than 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver's licenses, along with millions of other identity documents. "Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase through the service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely used Louisiana-based identity verification company," reports KrebsOnSecurity. The outlet also reports that the FBI's New Orleans field office has launched an official inquiry into the source of the images. From the report: On Monday, Aug. 31, a source alerted KrebsOnSecurity to a service advertised by a new user on the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit, offering access to digital scans of identity documents on more than 170 million people in North America. The source brought it to my attention because the proprietor of this identity theft service offered my Virginia drivers license as a free sample in their initial sales thread on Exploit. The service, dubbed Nexus, claims to have more than 153 million drivers licenses for people in the United States and Canada, as well as more than 10 million identification cards; more than three million travel documents and/or international IDs; and at least 579,000 medical cards.
[...] The people behind Nexus claim the license images are coming from an active breach at "a major identity verification company" whose customers include multiple Fortune 500 companies. "We have been continuously exfiltrating new data for over a year into our private database," the service enthused in its introductory post on Exploit. "Records are available to preview before purchase with pertinent information redacted. Customer photos are displayed if available." Indeed, over the past 24 hours, the number of drivers license records listed as available in Nexus has increased by nearly 400,000, suggesting that freshly stolen license data is being harvested and uploaded to this service on a semi-regular basis. KrebsOnSecurity traced the apparent source by comparing timestamps on stolen license images with when their owners had their IDs scanned, including at Hertz rental counters and a Planet13 dispensary. Both companies use identity-verification services from Louisiana-based idscan.net, whose technology also scans IDs using infrared and ultraviolet light.
Since the story was published, Krebs reports that the Nexus identity theft service website "vanished from the darkweb, replacing its login page with a plain text message that reads, 'This service is no longer available.'"
[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0611226/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m-drivers-licenses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 16:22:02 2026-09-02
A dark-web identity theft service called Nexus claims to be selling scans of more than 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver's licenses, along with millions of other identity documents. "Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase through the service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely used Louisiana-based identity verification company," reports KrebsOnSecurity. The outlet also reports that the FBI's New Orleans field office has launched an official inquiry into the source of the images. From the report: On Monday, Aug. 31, a source alerted KrebsOnSecurity to a service advertised by a new user on the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit, offering access to digital scans of identity documents on more than 170 million people in North America. The source brought it to my attention because the proprietor of this identity theft service offered my Virginia drivers license as a free sample in their initial sales thread on Exploit. The service, dubbed Nexus, claims to have more than 153 million drivers licenses for people in the United States and Canada, as well as more than 10 million identification cards; more than three million travel documents and/or international IDs; and at least 579,000 medical cards.
[...] The people behind Nexus claim the license images are coming from an active breach at "a major identity verification company" whose customers include multiple Fortune 500 companies. "We have been continuously exfiltrating new data for over a year into our private database," the service enthused in its introductory post on Exploit. "Records are available to preview before purchase with pertinent information redacted. Customer photos are displayed if available." Indeed, over the past 24 hours, the number of drivers license records listed as available in Nexus has increased by nearly 400,000, suggesting that freshly stolen license data is being harvested and uploaded to this service on a semi-regular basis. KrebsOnSecurity traced the apparent source by comparing timestamps on stolen license images with when their owners had their IDs scanned, including at Hertz rental counters and a Planet13 dispensary. Both companies use identity-verification services from Louisiana-based idscan.net, whose technology also scans IDs using infrared and ultraviolet light.
Since the story was published, Krebs reports that the Nexus identity theft service website "vanished from the darkweb, replacing its login page with a plain text message that reads, 'This service is no longer available.'"
[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0611226/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m-drivers-licenses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Dell Stock Surges On Record Orders For AI Servers
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 15:22:02 2026-09-02
Dell reported record fiscal Q2 results as AI server demand surged, booking $60.9 billion in AI server orders and ending the quarter with a $95 billion backlog. From a report: The company posted record revenue of $47 billion, up 58% year over year. Earnings per share came in at $6.34, up 273% from a year ago. Adjusted earnings rose 203% to $7.04 per share.
"With AI momentum accelerating and our opportunity expanding across the portfolio, we're raising our full-year FY27 revenue outlook by $25 billion to $192 billion, up nearly 70% year over year," said Jeff Clarke, CEO of Dell Technologies, in the company's earnings release.
Dell has seen its orders balloon as enterprise customers adopt artificial intelligence and use AI servers locally to run agentic AI queries. Dell stock is up more than 230% year to date. Peer Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which also moved up 110% since the start of the year, jumped in after-hours trading.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0551240/dell-stock-surges-on-record-orders-for-ai-servers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 15:22:02 2026-09-02
Dell reported record fiscal Q2 results as AI server demand surged, booking $60.9 billion in AI server orders and ending the quarter with a $95 billion backlog. From a report: The company posted record revenue of $47 billion, up 58% year over year. Earnings per share came in at $6.34, up 273% from a year ago. Adjusted earnings rose 203% to $7.04 per share.
"With AI momentum accelerating and our opportunity expanding across the portfolio, we're raising our full-year FY27 revenue outlook by $25 billion to $192 billion, up nearly 70% year over year," said Jeff Clarke, CEO of Dell Technologies, in the company's earnings release.
Dell has seen its orders balloon as enterprise customers adopt artificial intelligence and use AI servers locally to run agentic AI queries. Dell stock is up more than 230% year to date. Peer Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which also moved up 110% since the start of the year, jumped in after-hours trading.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0551240/dell-stock-surges-on-record-orders-for-ai-servers?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Sonos Has New Devices, a New OS, and Yes, a New App
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 11:22:01 2026-09-02
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Sonos has a new app. Stop me if you've heard this one before. The smart speaker company, long a darling of the audio industry, undid much of the goodwill it earned with its multiroom speakers through a bevy of software updates that broke its app in 2024. Almost all app users hated it, citing the loss of features like volume control and accessibility tools meant to help blind people use the wireless speaker system. Sonos eventually owned up to the mistake, considered bringing back the old app again, then booted its CEO and marched its new leaders out to apologize profusely to win back the company's furious customers.
Now, Sonos says it has a brand-new app update, infused with lots of generative AI features. The company also announced a new soundbar and its second pair of over-the-ear headphones. Sonos representatives say it doesn't want to be seen as a speaker company anymore, but as something bigger and more holistic. "For years people have been seeing us as a speaker company," says Brandon Holley, the interim hardware lead at Sonos. "What we actually are is an audio operating system." The company is calling that operating system Sonos 27, and it manifests in a few ways.
[...] This is a lot of change for Sonos, something the company hasn't always handled gracefully. Sonos' home systems already aren't the easiest to set up, sometimes requiring separate apps for older products. The company may be rejiggering itself as an "audio operating system," but its software has long been the source of its troubles with getting its products to work right. Will AI smarts fix that? Maybe for its newer devices. But anyone with an existing system may still struggle. The AI features on products and in the Sonos 27 app will be opt-in, meaning you can avoid them entirely. "That really is our new approach to our app release," Patel says. "We're going to bring our customers along. We're going to listen more." That would be a good plan. Sounds like Sonos' speakers will be listening more, too. Sonos is emphasizing a more "customer-centric feedback listening approach" after the backlash to its previous redesign. Improvements include easier tab navigation, better room sorting, revamped volume controls, and new system-health tools for diagnosing connection problems.
The centerpiece is Sonos 27voice, a generative AI voice assistant that can handle conversational music requests, connect with services like ChatGPT through Model Context Protocol, and power customizable "Sonos Custom Agents" for tasks such as automatically activating certain speakers. "Obviously AI is something that's very hot these days," Sonos software VP Sid Patel said. "So we have integrated various pieces of AI into our system." However, the features will only work with the newer S2 app, and Sonos cautions that "not every product will support every new feature," with detailed compatibility information coming later.
Sonos is also branding its multiroom networking technology Sonos Fabric, which what Patel calls "the magic that has existed for what Sonos was built on." New Fabric features include portable surround, which lets users temporarily move speakers between rooms and have them automatically configure themselves for surround sound, and Headphone Linking, which lets users seamlessly switch audio between Sonos speakers and headphones.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0543221/sonos-has-new-devices-a-new-os-and-yes-a-new-app?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 11:22:01 2026-09-02
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Sonos has a new app. Stop me if you've heard this one before. The smart speaker company, long a darling of the audio industry, undid much of the goodwill it earned with its multiroom speakers through a bevy of software updates that broke its app in 2024. Almost all app users hated it, citing the loss of features like volume control and accessibility tools meant to help blind people use the wireless speaker system. Sonos eventually owned up to the mistake, considered bringing back the old app again, then booted its CEO and marched its new leaders out to apologize profusely to win back the company's furious customers.
Now, Sonos says it has a brand-new app update, infused with lots of generative AI features. The company also announced a new soundbar and its second pair of over-the-ear headphones. Sonos representatives say it doesn't want to be seen as a speaker company anymore, but as something bigger and more holistic. "For years people have been seeing us as a speaker company," says Brandon Holley, the interim hardware lead at Sonos. "What we actually are is an audio operating system." The company is calling that operating system Sonos 27, and it manifests in a few ways.
[...] This is a lot of change for Sonos, something the company hasn't always handled gracefully. Sonos' home systems already aren't the easiest to set up, sometimes requiring separate apps for older products. The company may be rejiggering itself as an "audio operating system," but its software has long been the source of its troubles with getting its products to work right. Will AI smarts fix that? Maybe for its newer devices. But anyone with an existing system may still struggle. The AI features on products and in the Sonos 27 app will be opt-in, meaning you can avoid them entirely. "That really is our new approach to our app release," Patel says. "We're going to bring our customers along. We're going to listen more." That would be a good plan. Sounds like Sonos' speakers will be listening more, too. Sonos is emphasizing a more "customer-centric feedback listening approach" after the backlash to its previous redesign. Improvements include easier tab navigation, better room sorting, revamped volume controls, and new system-health tools for diagnosing connection problems.
The centerpiece is Sonos 27voice, a generative AI voice assistant that can handle conversational music requests, connect with services like ChatGPT through Model Context Protocol, and power customizable "Sonos Custom Agents" for tasks such as automatically activating certain speakers. "Obviously AI is something that's very hot these days," Sonos software VP Sid Patel said. "So we have integrated various pieces of AI into our system." However, the features will only work with the newer S2 app, and Sonos cautions that "not every product will support every new feature," with detailed compatibility information coming later.
Sonos is also branding its multiroom networking technology Sonos Fabric, which what Patel calls "the magic that has existed for what Sonos was built on." New Fabric features include portable surround, which lets users temporarily move speakers between rooms and have them automatically configure themselves for surround sound, and Headphone Linking, which lets users seamlessly switch audio between Sonos speakers and headphones.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0543221/sonos-has-new-devices-a-new-os-and-yes-a-new-app?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# NASA Selects Blue Origin As Mars Telecommunications Network Provider
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 07:22:01 2026-09-02
NASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract worth up to $700 million to build and operate a dedicated Mars telecommunications network for current and future missions to the Red Planet. Blue Origin is expected to deliver the spacecraft by the end of 2028, with the network targeted to become operational by 2030. From a press release: Blue Origin will design, develop, integrate, launch, and operate the network as a part of the agency's broader space communications and navigation infrastructure. The architecture will consist of a high-performance telecommunications spacecraft orbiting Mars, transmitting science data, imagery, navigation information, and critical mission communications for spacecraft operating on and around the planet.
The award marks a milestone in NASA's strategy to expand communications and navigation services beyond Earth and the Moon, establishing the foundation for sustained exploration of Mars in the coming decades.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0527234/nasa-selects-blue-origin-as-mars-telecommunications-network-provider?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 07:22:01 2026-09-02
NASA has awarded Blue Origin a contract worth up to $700 million to build and operate a dedicated Mars telecommunications network for current and future missions to the Red Planet. Blue Origin is expected to deliver the spacecraft by the end of 2028, with the network targeted to become operational by 2030. From a press release: Blue Origin will design, develop, integrate, launch, and operate the network as a part of the agency's broader space communications and navigation infrastructure. The architecture will consist of a high-performance telecommunications spacecraft orbiting Mars, transmitting science data, imagery, navigation information, and critical mission communications for spacecraft operating on and around the planet.
The award marks a milestone in NASA's strategy to expand communications and navigation services beyond Earth and the Moon, establishing the foundation for sustained exploration of Mars in the coming decades.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0527234/nasa-selects-blue-origin-as-mars-telecommunications-network-provider?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# LZ Experiment Sees Surprising Result In Search For Dark Matter
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 04:22:01 2026-09-02
New submitter greytree shares a report from Brown University: LUX-ZEPLIN, an experiment co-led by Brown University faculty and students, observed a particle interaction that could be interpreted as a signal from WIMPs, a dark matter candidate -- but researchers need more data to confirm. [...] The result does not yet meet the statistical threshold required to claim a discovery, but it is the most compelling hint of dark matter reported by the experiment to date. "We're very intrigued to see this event in the data, in the region where we expect dark matter to show up, and the competing backgrounds are very low," said Rick Gaitskell, a professor of physics at Brown University and the spokesperson for LZ. "With only one event, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We are not claiming to have seen dark matter. But we have seen something interesting that we want to share with the scientific community for their input." [...]
If the anomalous event was caused by dark matter, the WIMP that generated it would likely have a mass of at least 200 GeV/c2 (gigaelectronvolts), or more than 200 times the mass of a proton. The LZ results have not reached "5-sigma" significance, the statistical threshold in physics that an event must reach to be considered a discovery. The new analysis is 2.6 sigma, meaning there is approximately a 0.5% chance that the event could be explained by known backgrounds. With additional data, researchers can test whether the finding continues to grow in significance or fades away. LZ has already accumulated the world's largest dark matter dataset and will continue to accrue WIMP search data at SURF, substantially improving their search statistics.
JiJi Fan, an associate professor of physics at Brown not involved in the LZ experimental research but whose theoretical work is cited in the new LZ paper, said the new findings were "very intriguing." While the event recorded by LZ could not have been the simplest type of WIMP interaction, there are other types of possible interactions that could explain it, she said. Had a WIMP interacted in the simplest way at the high energy associated with this recent event, the detector would have recorded many recoil events at lower energies following the initial event. LZ recorded a single event, however, which requires an expanded theoretical explanation. "There are well-motivated theoretical extensions, including inelastic scattering and momentum-dependent elastic scattering, that could potentially account for this single event," Fan said. "This also sets up a target for on-going dark matter hunting, not only at direct detection experiments such as LZ but also at other complementary experimental frontiers."
The results were presented in a scientific talk at the 2026 TeV Particle Astrophysics conference in Japan on Tuesday, Sept. 1. A paper detailing the finding can be found here (PDF).
[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0018212/lz-experiment-sees-surprising-result-in-search-for-dark-matter?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 04:22:01 2026-09-02
New submitter greytree shares a report from Brown University: LUX-ZEPLIN, an experiment co-led by Brown University faculty and students, observed a particle interaction that could be interpreted as a signal from WIMPs, a dark matter candidate -- but researchers need more data to confirm. [...] The result does not yet meet the statistical threshold required to claim a discovery, but it is the most compelling hint of dark matter reported by the experiment to date. "We're very intrigued to see this event in the data, in the region where we expect dark matter to show up, and the competing backgrounds are very low," said Rick Gaitskell, a professor of physics at Brown University and the spokesperson for LZ. "With only one event, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We are not claiming to have seen dark matter. But we have seen something interesting that we want to share with the scientific community for their input." [...]
If the anomalous event was caused by dark matter, the WIMP that generated it would likely have a mass of at least 200 GeV/c2 (gigaelectronvolts), or more than 200 times the mass of a proton. The LZ results have not reached "5-sigma" significance, the statistical threshold in physics that an event must reach to be considered a discovery. The new analysis is 2.6 sigma, meaning there is approximately a 0.5% chance that the event could be explained by known backgrounds. With additional data, researchers can test whether the finding continues to grow in significance or fades away. LZ has already accumulated the world's largest dark matter dataset and will continue to accrue WIMP search data at SURF, substantially improving their search statistics.
JiJi Fan, an associate professor of physics at Brown not involved in the LZ experimental research but whose theoretical work is cited in the new LZ paper, said the new findings were "very intriguing." While the event recorded by LZ could not have been the simplest type of WIMP interaction, there are other types of possible interactions that could explain it, she said. Had a WIMP interacted in the simplest way at the high energy associated with this recent event, the detector would have recorded many recoil events at lower energies following the initial event. LZ recorded a single event, however, which requires an expanded theoretical explanation. "There are well-motivated theoretical extensions, including inelastic scattering and momentum-dependent elastic scattering, that could potentially account for this single event," Fan said. "This also sets up a target for on-going dark matter hunting, not only at direct detection experiments such as LZ but also at other complementary experimental frontiers."
The results were presented in a scientific talk at the 2026 TeV Particle Astrophysics conference in Japan on Tuesday, Sept. 1. A paper detailing the finding can be found here (PDF).
[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/09/02/0018212/lz-experiment-sees-surprising-result-in-search-for-dark-matter?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# GoPro Says It's Moving Into Data Centers As Part of a $285 Million Merger
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2026-09-01
GoPro plans to expand into AI infrastructure through a $285 million merger with optical-photonics company Starman Optical, whose transceivers will give the action-camera maker a foothold in the fast-growing data center market. GoPro also plans to push into defense, robotics, aerospace, and government markets while continuing its existing camera business. Engadget reports: Starman's optical transceivers are expected to fall under its umbrella, "extending the Company's reach into the large and rapidly growing market for AI infrastructure in optical transceivers," according to a press release. GoPro is also planning a push into the defense, government, robotics and aerospace sectors, bolstered by the combined company's IP, optics and imaging capabilities.
[...] As Reuters notes, GoPro briefly reached a valuation of $4 billion on its first day as a publicly traded company in 2014. Its stock has struggled in recent years, but the share price received a boost on Monday when it was revealed that YouTuber and filmmaker Markiplier (Mark Fischbach) had become GoPro's largest individual shareholder after acquiring an 8.5 percent stake. The move follows a similar pivot made by the struggling shoe retailer Allbirds in April when it announced a pivot to AI compute infrastructure, sending the stock soaring more than 700%.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1943244/gopro-says-its-moving-into-data-centers-as-part-of-a-285-million-merger?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2026-09-01
GoPro plans to expand into AI infrastructure through a $285 million merger with optical-photonics company Starman Optical, whose transceivers will give the action-camera maker a foothold in the fast-growing data center market. GoPro also plans to push into defense, robotics, aerospace, and government markets while continuing its existing camera business. Engadget reports: Starman's optical transceivers are expected to fall under its umbrella, "extending the Company's reach into the large and rapidly growing market for AI infrastructure in optical transceivers," according to a press release. GoPro is also planning a push into the defense, government, robotics and aerospace sectors, bolstered by the combined company's IP, optics and imaging capabilities.
[...] As Reuters notes, GoPro briefly reached a valuation of $4 billion on its first day as a publicly traded company in 2014. Its stock has struggled in recent years, but the share price received a boost on Monday when it was revealed that YouTuber and filmmaker Markiplier (Mark Fischbach) had become GoPro's largest individual shareholder after acquiring an 8.5 percent stake. The move follows a similar pivot made by the struggling shoe retailer Allbirds in April when it announced a pivot to AI compute infrastructure, sending the stock soaring more than 700%.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1943244/gopro-says-its-moving-into-data-centers-as-part-of-a-285-million-merger?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Who Is John Ternus, the New Apple CEO?
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 22:22:01 2026-09-01
John Ternus has officially taken over as Apple CEO after 15 years under Tim Cook, stepping up from his role as senior vice president of hardware engineering. A 25-year Apple veteran who helped oversee products including AirPods, Apple Watch, Vision Pro, Apple silicon, and the new MacBook Neo, Ternus now inherits the challenge of pushing Apple forward in AI while Cook stays on as executive chairman. TechCrunch reports: Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life -- now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years. He joined Apple's product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021. [...] Ternus previously reported to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and led all of hardware engineering at Apple. That's a pretty big deal for a company that's known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook. [...] Ternus' earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor. "At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw ... and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25," Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. "I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, 'What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?'"
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder's attention to craftsmanship. "[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful," Ternus said. "It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here."
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple's transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon. Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple's new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device. "We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up ... leveraging both the technologies we'd been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we've developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things," Ternus told Tom's Guide.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1955204/who-is-john-ternus-the-new-apple-ceo?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 22:22:01 2026-09-01
John Ternus has officially taken over as Apple CEO after 15 years under Tim Cook, stepping up from his role as senior vice president of hardware engineering. A 25-year Apple veteran who helped oversee products including AirPods, Apple Watch, Vision Pro, Apple silicon, and the new MacBook Neo, Ternus now inherits the challenge of pushing Apple forward in AI while Cook stays on as executive chairman. TechCrunch reports: Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life -- now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years. He joined Apple's product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021. [...] Ternus previously reported to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and led all of hardware engineering at Apple. That's a pretty big deal for a company that's known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook. [...] Ternus' earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor. "At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw ... and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25," Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. "I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, 'What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?'"
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder's attention to craftsmanship. "[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful," Ternus said. "It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here."
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple's transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon. Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple's new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device. "We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up ... leveraging both the technologies we'd been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we've developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things," Ternus told Tom's Guide.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1955204/who-is-john-ternus-the-new-apple-ceo?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 Arrive With a 75% Cost Reduction For Fable Cache Reads
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 21:22:01 2026-09-01
Anthropic has released Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, two versions of the same underlying model aimed at longer-running agentic work. "For enterprise buyers, however, the release is about more than another round of benchmark gains," reports VentureBeat. "Anthropic is simultaneously changing the economics of running persistent agents, reducing the cost of cached context by 75%, and introducing a new security architecture called Enterprise Frontier Safeguards, or EFS, designed to let organizations retain monitoring data inside infrastructure they control." From the report: Those changes arrive at a particularly consequential moment. Over the past several weeks, Anthropic and the U.K. AI Security Institute have disclosed incidents in which earlier Claude models, running under unusually permissive cybersecurity evaluation conditions, took unauthorized actions against real systems. Anthropic temporarily paused external cyber evaluations and has since introduced additional containment and monitoring before resuming them.
Taken together, Fable 5.1 looks less like a conventional model refresh than an attempt to solve three increasingly intertwined enterprise problems: how to make agents capable enough to finish difficult work, economical enough to leave running for hours, and governable enough to give access to sensitive systems.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/2037255/anthropics-claude-fable-51-and-mythos-51-arrive-with-a-75-cost-reduction-for-fable-cache-reads?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 21:22:01 2026-09-01
Anthropic has released Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, two versions of the same underlying model aimed at longer-running agentic work. "For enterprise buyers, however, the release is about more than another round of benchmark gains," reports VentureBeat. "Anthropic is simultaneously changing the economics of running persistent agents, reducing the cost of cached context by 75%, and introducing a new security architecture called Enterprise Frontier Safeguards, or EFS, designed to let organizations retain monitoring data inside infrastructure they control." From the report: Those changes arrive at a particularly consequential moment. Over the past several weeks, Anthropic and the U.K. AI Security Institute have disclosed incidents in which earlier Claude models, running under unusually permissive cybersecurity evaluation conditions, took unauthorized actions against real systems. Anthropic temporarily paused external cyber evaluations and has since introduced additional containment and monitoring before resuming them.
Taken together, Fable 5.1 looks less like a conventional model refresh than an attempt to solve three increasingly intertwined enterprise problems: how to make agents capable enough to finish difficult work, economical enough to leave running for hours, and governable enough to give access to sensitive systems.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/2037255/anthropics-claude-fable-51-and-mythos-51-arrive-with-a-75-cost-reduction-for-fable-cache-reads?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Dyson Made a Camera-Equipped Toothbrush That Flosses For You
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 20:22:02 2026-09-01
Dyson is entering oral care with the $499 CameraJet, a smart toothbrush that uses a tiny camera and on-device AI to detect gaps between teeth and automatically blast them with mouthwash while you brush. Regular toothpaste and mouthwash will work with the CameraJet, but Dyson plans to sell its own non- or low-foaming formulas designed to give the toothbrush's camera a clearer view inside your mouth. The Verge reports: Just below the brush head is a tiny camera with a 100,000-pixel resolution and a strobing light. The toothbrush's AI analyzes 28 live images from the camera every second as part of a feature Dyson calls Gap Optical Targeting, without storing them on the device or sending them to the cloud. Within 100 milliseconds of a gap between your teeth being detected, the CameraJet emits a cone-shaped blast of mouthwash to clean out the space. Dyson uses a wider blast than what water flossers typically employ so it can effectively remove plaque with less pressure, making the CameraJet's flossing mechanism gentler on enamel and gums
The replaceable brush heads use a combination of softer outer bristles that safely clean along the gumline and stiffer inner bristles that are better at scrubbing away tooth stains. The brush head oscillates nearly 1,000 times each second while the angle of oscillation is constantly changing to improve the effectiveness of your brushing. Pricing on replacement brush heads isn't known, but each one features an RFID tag so the CameraJet can track usage and alert you when a replacement is needed every three months.
To ensure its mouthwash reservoir can effectively pump no matter how the CameraJet is held -- even upside down -- instead of sticking a tube into the reservoir, there's an air bladder inside the tank that slowly inflates to fill empty space, minimize air pockets, and maintain a constant pressure. An elaborate docking station recharges the toothbrush and can automatically fill its built-in 12.5ml mouthwash reservoir in just three seconds.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1927243/dyson-made-a-camera-equipped-toothbrush-that-flosses-for-you?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 20:22:02 2026-09-01
Dyson is entering oral care with the $499 CameraJet, a smart toothbrush that uses a tiny camera and on-device AI to detect gaps between teeth and automatically blast them with mouthwash while you brush. Regular toothpaste and mouthwash will work with the CameraJet, but Dyson plans to sell its own non- or low-foaming formulas designed to give the toothbrush's camera a clearer view inside your mouth. The Verge reports: Just below the brush head is a tiny camera with a 100,000-pixel resolution and a strobing light. The toothbrush's AI analyzes 28 live images from the camera every second as part of a feature Dyson calls Gap Optical Targeting, without storing them on the device or sending them to the cloud. Within 100 milliseconds of a gap between your teeth being detected, the CameraJet emits a cone-shaped blast of mouthwash to clean out the space. Dyson uses a wider blast than what water flossers typically employ so it can effectively remove plaque with less pressure, making the CameraJet's flossing mechanism gentler on enamel and gums
The replaceable brush heads use a combination of softer outer bristles that safely clean along the gumline and stiffer inner bristles that are better at scrubbing away tooth stains. The brush head oscillates nearly 1,000 times each second while the angle of oscillation is constantly changing to improve the effectiveness of your brushing. Pricing on replacement brush heads isn't known, but each one features an RFID tag so the CameraJet can track usage and alert you when a replacement is needed every three months.
To ensure its mouthwash reservoir can effectively pump no matter how the CameraJet is held -- even upside down -- instead of sticking a tube into the reservoir, there's an air bladder inside the tank that slowly inflates to fill empty space, minimize air pockets, and maintain a constant pressure. An elaborate docking station recharges the toothbrush and can automatically fill its built-in 12.5ml mouthwash reservoir in just three seconds.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1927243/dyson-made-a-camera-equipped-toothbrush-that-flosses-for-you?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# BT's Old Copper Landline Network Could Be Worth Over $2 Billion
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 19:22:01 2026-09-01
BT could make more than $2.7 billion by recycling copper from its aging UK landline network as BT subsidiary Openreach replaces legacy wiring with full-fiber broadband. Engadget reports: BT's recovered copper was previously valued at around $2 billion. But prices have surged, thanks to rising global demand tied to AI data centers, renewable energy and electrification. With global demand expected to grow sharply over the next decade, the value of BT's copper could potentially exceed even that $2.7 billion estimate.
The BT subsidiary Openreach is in the process of replacing its legacy copper network with full-fiber broadband, with plans to connect 30 million residences by the end of the decade. It's already recovered nearly 10,000 metric tons of copper in its latest financial year and over 22,000 metric tons since 2023. "Copper has become one of the most strategic materials in the modern economy," according to Openreach's head of sustainability, Abby Chicken.
Unsurprisingly, BT isn't waiting to profit from the recovered metal. It has an agreement with EMR, a cable recycling company, and recently received $133 million up front for recovered copper.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1815258/bts-old-copper-landline-network-could-be-worth-over-2-billion?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 19:22:01 2026-09-01
BT could make more than $2.7 billion by recycling copper from its aging UK landline network as BT subsidiary Openreach replaces legacy wiring with full-fiber broadband. Engadget reports: BT's recovered copper was previously valued at around $2 billion. But prices have surged, thanks to rising global demand tied to AI data centers, renewable energy and electrification. With global demand expected to grow sharply over the next decade, the value of BT's copper could potentially exceed even that $2.7 billion estimate.
The BT subsidiary Openreach is in the process of replacing its legacy copper network with full-fiber broadband, with plans to connect 30 million residences by the end of the decade. It's already recovered nearly 10,000 metric tons of copper in its latest financial year and over 22,000 metric tons since 2023. "Copper has become one of the most strategic materials in the modern economy," according to Openreach's head of sustainability, Abby Chicken.
Unsurprisingly, BT isn't waiting to profit from the recovered metal. It has an agreement with EMR, a cable recycling company, and recently received $133 million up front for recovered copper.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1815258/bts-old-copper-landline-network-could-be-worth-over-2-billion?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# OpenClaw 2.0 Is Here, Ushering In the Era of 'Multiplayer' AI Coding
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 18:22:01 2026-09-01
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: The viral fervor we saw earlier this year around OpenClaw, the open source AI harness that turns powerful language models into autonomous workers the user can message via their favorite channels (Telegram, iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord etc), has cooled off substantially from its peak in March 2026. But over the weekend, OpenClaw's creator Peter Steinberger and current team of co-developers gave the world -- especially enterprises -- a reason to look at it again, announcing OpenClaw 2.0, billed as the most significant update to the harness and surrounding platform yet.
OpenClaw 2.0 seeks to transform what began largely as a personal agent harness into something increasingly designed for teams, shared infrastructure and enterprise workflows. OpenClaw 2.0 introduces a rebuilt browser interface that brings conversations, files, approvals, configuration and live agent activity into a common workspace. It adds shared cloud sessions and multi-user collaboration. And it expands the security model with stronger sandboxing, role-based permissions, approval controls, secrets handling and auditing.
Together, those additions move OpenClaw closer to being infrastructure that an organization could deploy for employees rather than simply a powerful agent an individual developer runs locally. They also sharpen a competitive question surrounding the project: whether OpenClaw has addressed the security and isolation concerns that helped inspire newer alternatives such as NanoClaw. The answer is increasingly yes at the capability level -- but not necessarily by default. Over the past two months, OpenClaw has been "build[ing] OpenClaw with OpenClaw," shifting its team from individual local coding tools to a shared agent environment at team.openclaw.ai that can see what everyone is working on. Steinberger called "multiplayer coding + infinite compute with nodes and cloud sessions" a "game changer," adding that local coding harnesses now "feel like relics of the past."
VentureBeat highlights a use case from Solvely CEO Colin Johnson that shows how OpenClaw's multiplayer WebUI can improve collaboration between developers and AI agents. Instead of simply "messaging a bot," multiple developers can now join the same live session, see the same history and artifacts, and work "inside the same context." In Johnson's case, that meant a developer taking over his project could simply join the existing agent thread rather than rely on a separate handoff document. As he put it, "the session itself became the handoff document."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1733206/openclaw-20-is-here-ushering-in-the-era-of-multiplayer-ai-coding?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 18:22:01 2026-09-01
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: The viral fervor we saw earlier this year around OpenClaw, the open source AI harness that turns powerful language models into autonomous workers the user can message via their favorite channels (Telegram, iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord etc), has cooled off substantially from its peak in March 2026. But over the weekend, OpenClaw's creator Peter Steinberger and current team of co-developers gave the world -- especially enterprises -- a reason to look at it again, announcing OpenClaw 2.0, billed as the most significant update to the harness and surrounding platform yet.
OpenClaw 2.0 seeks to transform what began largely as a personal agent harness into something increasingly designed for teams, shared infrastructure and enterprise workflows. OpenClaw 2.0 introduces a rebuilt browser interface that brings conversations, files, approvals, configuration and live agent activity into a common workspace. It adds shared cloud sessions and multi-user collaboration. And it expands the security model with stronger sandboxing, role-based permissions, approval controls, secrets handling and auditing.
Together, those additions move OpenClaw closer to being infrastructure that an organization could deploy for employees rather than simply a powerful agent an individual developer runs locally. They also sharpen a competitive question surrounding the project: whether OpenClaw has addressed the security and isolation concerns that helped inspire newer alternatives such as NanoClaw. The answer is increasingly yes at the capability level -- but not necessarily by default. Over the past two months, OpenClaw has been "build[ing] OpenClaw with OpenClaw," shifting its team from individual local coding tools to a shared agent environment at team.openclaw.ai that can see what everyone is working on. Steinberger called "multiplayer coding + infinite compute with nodes and cloud sessions" a "game changer," adding that local coding harnesses now "feel like relics of the past."
VentureBeat highlights a use case from Solvely CEO Colin Johnson that shows how OpenClaw's multiplayer WebUI can improve collaboration between developers and AI agents. Instead of simply "messaging a bot," multiple developers can now join the same live session, see the same history and artifacts, and work "inside the same context." In Johnson's case, that meant a developer taking over his project could simply join the existing agent thread rather than rely on a separate handoff document. As he put it, "the session itself became the handoff document."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/1733206/openclaw-20-is-here-ushering-in-the-era-of-multiplayer-ai-coding?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Anthropic Signs $35 Billion Cloud Deal With Nvidia-Backed Lambda
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 17:22:01 2026-09-01
Anthropic has reportedly signed a $35 billion cloud-computing deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda for a roughly 350-megawatt Texas data center being developed by Hut 8. "Lambda will install Nvidia chips at the Hut 8 facility, with the arrangement designed to expand the pool of Nvidia computing resources available to power Anthropic's Claude AI products," reports Quartz. From the report: The arrangement is a further sign of how Nvidia is positioning itself as a facilitator of computing access across the AI industry. It also benefited Lambda, which counts Nvidia as an investor and was able to land a major Anthropic contract without having to independently source or lease the underlying data center space, according to the Journal.
The data center covers roughly 350 megawatts of capacity, according to Bloomberg. Hut 8, which began as a bitcoin mining company before moving into AI data centers, disclosed in July that an investment-grade customer had signed 15-year leases for its Texas campus, with a base contract value of $19.6 billion, without naming the tenant.
The Lambda deal is the latest in a series of large computing agreements Anthropic has pursued. Last week, the company agreed to spend $45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale's West Virginia data center campus. It has also signed deals worth $50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack Ltd. and $45 billion with SpaceX, according to Bloomberg.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/177239/anthropic-signs-35-billion-cloud-deal-with-nvidia-backed-lambda?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 17:22:01 2026-09-01
Anthropic has reportedly signed a $35 billion cloud-computing deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda for a roughly 350-megawatt Texas data center being developed by Hut 8. "Lambda will install Nvidia chips at the Hut 8 facility, with the arrangement designed to expand the pool of Nvidia computing resources available to power Anthropic's Claude AI products," reports Quartz. From the report: The arrangement is a further sign of how Nvidia is positioning itself as a facilitator of computing access across the AI industry. It also benefited Lambda, which counts Nvidia as an investor and was able to land a major Anthropic contract without having to independently source or lease the underlying data center space, according to the Journal.
The data center covers roughly 350 megawatts of capacity, according to Bloomberg. Hut 8, which began as a bitcoin mining company before moving into AI data centers, disclosed in July that an investment-grade customer had signed 15-year leases for its Texas campus, with a base contract value of $19.6 billion, without naming the tenant.
The Lambda deal is the latest in a series of large computing agreements Anthropic has pursued. Last week, the company agreed to spend $45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale's West Virginia data center campus. It has also signed deals worth $50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack Ltd. and $45 billion with SpaceX, according to Bloomberg.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/177239/anthropic-signs-35-billion-cloud-deal-with-nvidia-backed-lambda?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Jensen Huang and Lisa Su Snubbed By TIME's 2026 List of Top 100 AI Leaders
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 16:22:01 2026-09-01
TIME's 2026 list of the 100 most influential people in AI omits Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su, despite both having appeared on previous editions and playing central roles in the hardware powering the AI boom. Nvidia's only representative this year is sustainability chief Josh Parker, while the list includes figures such as Ben Affleck and Paris Hilton alongside major tech executives and policymakers. Tom's Hardware reports: Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, SMIC co-CEO Liang Mong Song, and Huawei HiSilicon president He Tingbo all appear on the 2026 list, joined by Cerebras' Andrew Feldman, CoreWeave's Michael Intrator, and Nscale's Josh Payne. Together, the roster includes Nvidia's HBM supplier, two of its biggest GPU cloud customers, its custom-accelerator rivals, and China, which is trying -- and so far struggling -- to replace Nvidia altogether.
Parker's profile, which appears under the Thinkers category, focuses on data center energy and water consumption, alongside Nvidia's tripling of Scope 3 emissions in two years, and the Rubin platform's shift to 100% liquid cooling. "Nvidia is at the center of the AI revolution," Parker told TIME.
TIME editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote in the list's accompanying article that selection was led by editor Ayesha Javed, and that the 100 honorees represent the year's "key storylines and who, in our opinion, are having the most influence in driving these developments." Now in its fourth year, this edition of the TIME100 AI appears to have focused especially on featuring the new additions to TIME's community of AI leaders, with Mark Zuckerberg, Demis Hassabis, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella representing four other honorees, arguably deserving of a space on this year's list, churned out.
Su's strong TIME back catalog makes her omission all the stranger still. The magazine named her its 2024 CEO of the Year, put her on the 2024 AI list and the main TIME100 in 2025, and included her among December's Architects of AI.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/0331222/jensen-huang-and-lisa-su-snubbed-by-times-2026-list-of-top-100-ai-leaders?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 16:22:01 2026-09-01
TIME's 2026 list of the 100 most influential people in AI omits Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su, despite both having appeared on previous editions and playing central roles in the hardware powering the AI boom. Nvidia's only representative this year is sustainability chief Josh Parker, while the list includes figures such as Ben Affleck and Paris Hilton alongside major tech executives and policymakers. Tom's Hardware reports: Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, SMIC co-CEO Liang Mong Song, and Huawei HiSilicon president He Tingbo all appear on the 2026 list, joined by Cerebras' Andrew Feldman, CoreWeave's Michael Intrator, and Nscale's Josh Payne. Together, the roster includes Nvidia's HBM supplier, two of its biggest GPU cloud customers, its custom-accelerator rivals, and China, which is trying -- and so far struggling -- to replace Nvidia altogether.
Parker's profile, which appears under the Thinkers category, focuses on data center energy and water consumption, alongside Nvidia's tripling of Scope 3 emissions in two years, and the Rubin platform's shift to 100% liquid cooling. "Nvidia is at the center of the AI revolution," Parker told TIME.
TIME editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote in the list's accompanying article that selection was led by editor Ayesha Javed, and that the 100 honorees represent the year's "key storylines and who, in our opinion, are having the most influence in driving these developments." Now in its fourth year, this edition of the TIME100 AI appears to have focused especially on featuring the new additions to TIME's community of AI leaders, with Mark Zuckerberg, Demis Hassabis, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella representing four other honorees, arguably deserving of a space on this year's list, churned out.
Su's strong TIME back catalog makes her omission all the stranger still. The magazine named her its 2024 CEO of the Year, put her on the 2024 AI list and the main TIME100 in 2025, and included her among December's Architects of AI.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/0331222/jensen-huang-and-lisa-su-snubbed-by-times-2026-list-of-top-100-ai-leaders?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Florida Bans Flock Cameras From State Highways
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 15:22:02 2026-09-01
schwit1 shares a report from WCTV: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he's removing Flock camera from state roadways. The announcement comes amid a growing concern over the misuse of automated license plate readers. On Monday, DeSantis ordered all Flock cameras removed from what he calls the 'state highway system' within the next 30 days, which would include interstates like I-10 and I-75. That order led to several sheriff's departments like in Franklin, Liberty and Putnam Counties to announce they're ending their own license plate reader programs. According to the Florida Department of Transportation memo, if the cameras aren't removed from the state right-of-ways within 30 days, then the state government will take them down on their own. The memo also says FDOT will deny any other permits for cameras in the future.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/032256/florida-bans-flock-cameras-from-state-highways?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 15:22:02 2026-09-01
schwit1 shares a report from WCTV: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he's removing Flock camera from state roadways. The announcement comes amid a growing concern over the misuse of automated license plate readers. On Monday, DeSantis ordered all Flock cameras removed from what he calls the 'state highway system' within the next 30 days, which would include interstates like I-10 and I-75. That order led to several sheriff's departments like in Franklin, Liberty and Putnam Counties to announce they're ending their own license plate reader programs. According to the Florida Department of Transportation memo, if the cameras aren't removed from the state right-of-ways within 30 days, then the state government will take them down on their own. The memo also says FDOT will deny any other permits for cameras in the future.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/032256/florida-bans-flock-cameras-from-state-highways?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# California Lawmakers Greenlight Solar Panels You Can Plug Into the Wall
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 11:22:01 2026-09-01
California lawmakers have passed a bill that would legalize plug-in "balcony" solar systems, allowing residents to connect small solar panels directly to a standard wall outlet after completing a simple online registration. The systems would be capped at 1,200 watts and must meet safety requirements designed to prevent power from feeding back onto the grid during outages. KQED reports: The legislation, SB 868, sailed through the state assembly and senate with bipartisan support. The bill now moves to the governor's desk for signature. The devices can be tented in a backyard, hung off a balcony or placed on a roof. Models range from as low as $300 to $2200, depending on size. The bill would open the solar market to people who were previously left out: renters, people with unsuitable roofs, and those lacking the capital to build out a rooftop system, which can cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.
[...] If signed into law by Newsom, the legislation would exempt plug-in solar devices from what critics say is a cumbersome and expensive interconnection application process, and replace registration with a free and straightforward online form. [...] The newly passed bill outlines several device requirements. The balcony solar systems must be capped at generating 1,200 watts per home, plug into a standard outlet, offset a customer's onsite electricity use and meet state and national electrical codes. They also must be certified by an outside safety organization like Underwriters Laboratories and have a feature that would prevent electricity from feeding back into the grid if there's a power outage.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/0318201/california-lawmakers-greenlight-solar-panels-you-can-plug-into-the-wall?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 11:22:01 2026-09-01
California lawmakers have passed a bill that would legalize plug-in "balcony" solar systems, allowing residents to connect small solar panels directly to a standard wall outlet after completing a simple online registration. The systems would be capped at 1,200 watts and must meet safety requirements designed to prevent power from feeding back onto the grid during outages. KQED reports: The legislation, SB 868, sailed through the state assembly and senate with bipartisan support. The bill now moves to the governor's desk for signature. The devices can be tented in a backyard, hung off a balcony or placed on a roof. Models range from as low as $300 to $2200, depending on size. The bill would open the solar market to people who were previously left out: renters, people with unsuitable roofs, and those lacking the capital to build out a rooftop system, which can cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.
[...] If signed into law by Newsom, the legislation would exempt plug-in solar devices from what critics say is a cumbersome and expensive interconnection application process, and replace registration with a free and straightforward online form. [...] The newly passed bill outlines several device requirements. The balcony solar systems must be capped at generating 1,200 watts per home, plug into a standard outlet, offset a customer's onsite electricity use and meet state and national electrical codes. They also must be certified by an outside safety organization like Underwriters Laboratories and have a feature that would prevent electricity from feeding back into the grid if there's a power outage.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/0318201/california-lawmakers-greenlight-solar-panels-you-can-plug-into-the-wall?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Electrically Charged Raindrops Can Corrode Cars and Buildings
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 07:22:01 2026-09-01
Researchers have found that tiny electrical charges picked up by moving water droplets may be damaging cars and buildings like the Eiffel Tower. In experiments, thousands of charged droplets degraded Teflon and corroded the copper beneath it, while uncharged droplets caused no comparable damage. C&EN reports: For years, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have studied how water droplets from rain, dew, ocean waves, and melting snow become electrically charged. They say the process is like tribocharging, which causes static when we rub certain objects together, such as a balloon on our hair or a sweater on our skin. "Water drops spontaneously become electrically charged when moving on different surfaces, such as plant leaves, insect wings, building walls, window glass, and plastic. This process, known as contact or sliding electrification, is analogous to tribocharging between solids," says study coauthor Zhongyuan Ni, a PhD candidate at Max Planck. "Water drops getting charged is not a new phenomenon, but for the past 200 years, people have not paid attention to this," Ni says.
In 2023, Ni and colleagues set out to determine whether electrically charged water droplets affect the surfaces they contact. To find out, the team poured water over four common surfaces -- a plant leaf; polyvinyl chloride foam board; polystyrene glass; and perfluoro octadecyltrichlorosilane (PFOTS), a commonly used water-repelling coating -- and let it drip onto sheets of Teflon-coated copper tilted at 50 degrees. When the experiments began, the team would allow only a few dozen drops to fall onto the copper before using electron microscopy to examine it. The researchers repeatedly failed to find any evidence of decay. But one day, Ni just let the drops keep falling. "After thousands of drops, it looked like the drops were pinning onto the surface," he says. After inspecting the copper under the microscope, Ni got his first glimpse of the destructive strength of electrically charged water drops.
After repeating the experiment several times with thousands rather than dozens of drops, the researchers found that the electrified water drops not only broke down the Teflon coating but also corroded the underlying copper. Up close, the copper sheets looked like scraped-up skin. But when the experiment was conducted with nonelectrified drops, neither the copper nor its Teflon coating was any worse for wear. Even though the drops contained only around 0.2 to 2.0 nanocoulombs of charge -- around one billionth of a standard unit -- the impact of the charged drops was significant. "The finding is important because it suggests that the electrical state of a water droplet, not just its chemical composition, acidity, or mechanical impact, can influence how corrosion begins," says Guangwen Zhou, a professor of mechanical engineering at Binghamton University who was not involved in the study.
"This perspective could open up new approaches to designing protective coatings and materials that are more resistant to corrosion in environments where charged water droplets are present."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/0043208/electrically-charged-raindrops-can-corrode-cars-and-buildings?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 07:22:01 2026-09-01
Researchers have found that tiny electrical charges picked up by moving water droplets may be damaging cars and buildings like the Eiffel Tower. In experiments, thousands of charged droplets degraded Teflon and corroded the copper beneath it, while uncharged droplets caused no comparable damage. C&EN reports: For years, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have studied how water droplets from rain, dew, ocean waves, and melting snow become electrically charged. They say the process is like tribocharging, which causes static when we rub certain objects together, such as a balloon on our hair or a sweater on our skin. "Water drops spontaneously become electrically charged when moving on different surfaces, such as plant leaves, insect wings, building walls, window glass, and plastic. This process, known as contact or sliding electrification, is analogous to tribocharging between solids," says study coauthor Zhongyuan Ni, a PhD candidate at Max Planck. "Water drops getting charged is not a new phenomenon, but for the past 200 years, people have not paid attention to this," Ni says.
In 2023, Ni and colleagues set out to determine whether electrically charged water droplets affect the surfaces they contact. To find out, the team poured water over four common surfaces -- a plant leaf; polyvinyl chloride foam board; polystyrene glass; and perfluoro octadecyltrichlorosilane (PFOTS), a commonly used water-repelling coating -- and let it drip onto sheets of Teflon-coated copper tilted at 50 degrees. When the experiments began, the team would allow only a few dozen drops to fall onto the copper before using electron microscopy to examine it. The researchers repeatedly failed to find any evidence of decay. But one day, Ni just let the drops keep falling. "After thousands of drops, it looked like the drops were pinning onto the surface," he says. After inspecting the copper under the microscope, Ni got his first glimpse of the destructive strength of electrically charged water drops.
After repeating the experiment several times with thousands rather than dozens of drops, the researchers found that the electrified water drops not only broke down the Teflon coating but also corroded the underlying copper. Up close, the copper sheets looked like scraped-up skin. But when the experiment was conducted with nonelectrified drops, neither the copper nor its Teflon coating was any worse for wear. Even though the drops contained only around 0.2 to 2.0 nanocoulombs of charge -- around one billionth of a standard unit -- the impact of the charged drops was significant. "The finding is important because it suggests that the electrical state of a water droplet, not just its chemical composition, acidity, or mechanical impact, can influence how corrosion begins," says Guangwen Zhou, a professor of mechanical engineering at Binghamton University who was not involved in the study.
"This perspective could open up new approaches to designing protective coatings and materials that are more resistant to corrosion in environments where charged water droplets are present."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/09/01/0043208/electrically-charged-raindrops-can-corrode-cars-and-buildings?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.