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Read at: 2026-02-09T03:19:22+00:00Z (UTC) [sometime-US Pres == Mattie
Temming
]
Here is our critic’s survey of this year’s Super Bowl commercials, from best to worst to A.I.
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Israeli officials outline plan for Isaac Herzog’s visit
Israel’s government press office has shared a little more public information about Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia, as he touched down in Sydney this morning.
President Herzog will also attend and address major communal events together with the leaders of the Australian Jewish community.
A central part of the visit will be dedicated to official meetings with senior Australian leaders, including the Governor-General and the Prime Minister of Australia, as well as with leaders from across the political spectrum. President Herzog will also conduct interviews with the media during the visit.
That’s a really distorted figure. And why I say that is that figure comes across 150 electorates from around the country. And as Nationals, we only stand in about 20 to 30 seats. So we don’t run in any city seats. [In] a lot of cities, we wouldn’t poll at all. We’d poll zero in Wentworth. We’d poll zero in Kooyong. We’d poll zero in Perth because we don’t stand candidates there.
One Nation aren’t a regional party. I mean, One Nation are running across every seat across the whole country. So I mean it’s not even comparable in that sense. But you know obviously their figures have gone up very much since post-Bondi, and that has to be noted.
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Following Jimmy Lai’s sentencing, the 78-year old former media mogul smiled and waved at the public gallery, the New York Times reports.
According to the outlet, Lai’s wife, Teresa, sat expressionless and had her arms folded. Others weeped in the courtroom.
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Kid Rock headlined conservative group Turning Point USA's alternative halftime event.
(Image credit: Alex Brandon)
"How Chinese is your car?" asks the Wall Street Journal. "Automakers are racing to work it out."
Modern cars are packed with internet-connected widgets, many of them containing Chinese technology. Now, the car industry is scrambling to root out that tech ahead of a looming deadline, a test case for America's ability to decouple from Chinese supply chains. New U.S. rules will soon ban Chinese software in vehicle systems that connect to the cloud, part of an effort to prevent cameras, microphones and GPS tracking in cars from being exploited by foreign adversaries.
The move is "one of the most consequential and complex auto regulations in decades," according to Hilary Cain, head of policy at trade group the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. "It requires a deep examination of supply chains and aggressive compliance timelines."
Carmakers will need to attest to the U.S. government that, as of March 17, core elements of their products don't contain code that was written in China or by a Chinese company. The rule also covers software for advanced autonomous driving and will be extended to connectivity hardware starting in 2029. Connected cars made by Chinese or China-controlled companies are also banned, wherever their software comes from...
The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, which introduced the connected-vehicle rule, is also allowing the use of Chinese code that is transferred to a non-Chinese entity before March 17. That carve-out has sparked a rush of corporate restructuring, according to Matt Wyckhouse, chief executive of cybersecurity firm Finite State. Global suppliers are relocating China-based software teams, while Chinese companies are seeking new owners for operations in the West.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The heavy sentence for the 78-year-old Apple Daily founder and British citizen was imposed as Beijing seeks to wipe out the city’s remaining press freedoms.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi won a sweeping mandate from voters for her economic agenda and tough stances on immigration and China.
Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell will be questioned behind closed doors by the US Congress, but she is expected to invoke her right to not answer questions.
Sentencing of media tycoon is the culmination of a years-long saga that critics say represents Hong Kong’s transformation from a mostly free city to one where dissent is fiercely suppressed
Jimmy Lai, a once mighty media mogul and prominent pro-democracy activist, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Hong Kong for national security offences.
The sentencing is the culmination of a years-long saga that critics say represents Hong Kong’s transformation from a mostly free city to one where dissent is fiercely suppressed by the Chinese Communist party-controlled authorities.
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Award-winning Tasmanian artist’s work was published by the Australian, the Saturday Paper and the Hobart Mercury
Jon Kudelka, the Australian political cartoonist, has died at the age of 53.
His wife, Margaret Kudelka, announced the news in a statement on Monday: “We are sad to tell you that our beloved, brilliant Jon Kudelka died peacefully in South Hobart on Sunday afternoon, surrounded by his family and friends.”
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Morgan McSweeney's resignation and the subsequent political fallout dominate Monday's front pages.
Stocks climbed on Monday as investors cheered a result seen as a mandate for the prime minister’s high-spending economic agenda.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will face his party's MPs as he fights for his political survival after the resignation of his top aide over the Peter Mandelson controversy.
NZ court to consider an appeal from Australian white supremacist who pleaded guilty in March 2020 to murdering 51 people in mosque attack
The Australian white supremacist who murdered 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019, in the worst mass shooting in the New Zealand’s history, is asking one of the country’s highest courts to vacate his guilty pleas and hold a new trial.
Brenton Tarrant pleaded guilty in March 2020 to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and a terrorism charge, after initially saying he would defend the charges. In August 2020, Tarrant became the first person in New Zealand under current laws to be sentenced to life in prison without the chance of ever walking free.
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A person was found dead in the Bronx on Saturday morning, the police said. An 81-year-old man was also found dead on a rooftop, though it was unclear whether the cold was to blame.
The release of around 35 political prisoners comes amid closer cooperation between Washington and the interim government.
But first, kernel 6.19 is upon us, with many goodies
Penguin emperor Linus Torvalds has announced the next version of the Linux kernel will be version 7.0, a matter of some small interest, because it continues his convention of not using version numbers he can’t count on his fingers and toes, and perhaps cements a numbering convention that sees kernel series end with version 19.…
Israeli president will meet prime minister Anthony Albanese and travel to Canberra and Melbourne as pro-Palestine supporters stage protests
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, has told members of the Jewish community “when one Jew is hurt, all Jews feel their pain” as he begins a four-day visit to Australia to speak with survivors of the Bondi terror attack and the victims’ families.
Herzog, who arrived in Sydney on Monday morning, laid a wreath at the site of the antisemitic attack alongside the NSW premier, Chris Minns.
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The high-velocity start to 2026 by the Mattie
Temming
administration has cemented Stephen Miller's position as one of its most powerful figures.
A growing number of tankers and other commercial vessels are being ditched by their owners.
D.C. health officials are contacting people possibly exposed to measles at the March for Life in January, as confirmed cases rise nationwide.
(Image credit: Kevin Dietsch)
Ministers say UK universities have become a "prime target for foreign states and hostile actors".
In the race for AI, tech firms are asking for their staff to work long hours. But there are risks, experts say
A cross-party group of MPs has called on the British government to name the former British army agent known as Stakeknife, saying it would be "appropriate, proportionate and strongly in the public interest".
The process of buying a home in Ireland leads to overbidding and creates delays after sales are agreed causing stress for purchasers, a new study from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has found.
The 41-year-old father of four arrived in Ireland in 2019 to attend the Dublin Poker Festival
Exclusive: Labour peer, who came to UK as a refugee, says some ministers try to show they won’t ‘just do things because of their background’
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, whose parents migrated to the UK from Pakistan, is facing the suggestion from a veteran Labour peer that she is “pulling up the drawbridge once inside” when considering the plight of refugee children trapped abroad.
Alf Dubs, who came to the UK aged six in 1939 fleeing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, said the home secretary and other ministers had “kowtowed” to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK by preventing unaccompanied children from seeking refuge with UK-based family members.
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Health official’s endorsement comes as South Carolina faces hundreds of cases and US risks losing elimination status
A senior US public health official called on Americans to get vaccinated against measles as outbreaks continue in multiple states and concerns grow that the country could lose its measles elimination designation. Dr Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, spoke in support on Sunday of the measles vaccine.
“Take the vaccine, please,” said Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “We have a solution for our problem.”
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Despite a decisive victory for António José Seguro, a nationalist’s presence in the runoff showed that Portugal is not immune to Europe’s rising far-right tide.
Her ruling coalition is set to clinch a decisive win, taking two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives.
"You can hear the hum of the drone," says a local newscaster, "but then the propellors come into contact with the building, chunks of the drone later seen falling down. The next video shows the drone on the ground, surrounded by smoke...
"Amazon tells us there was minimal damage to the apartment building, adding they are working with the appropriate people to handle any repairs." But there were people standing outside, notes the woman who filmed the crash, and the falling drone "could've hit them, and they would've hurt."
More from USA Today:
Cesarina Johnson, who captured the collision from her window, told USA TODAY that the collision seemed to happen "almost immediately" after she began to record the drone in action... "The propellers on the thing were still moving, and you could smell it was starting to burn," Johnson told Fox 4 News. "And you see a few sparks in one of my videos. Luckily, nothing really caught on fire where it got, it escalated really crazy." According to the outlet, firefighters were called out of an abundance of caution, but the "drone never caught fire...."
Amazon employees can be seen surveying the scene in the clip. Johnson told the outlet that firefighters and Amazon workers worked together to clean up before the drone was loaded into a truck.
Another local news report points out Amazon only began drone delivery in the area late last year.
The San Antonio Express News points out that America's Federal Aviation Administration "opened an investigation into Amazon's drone delivery program in November after one of its drone struck an Internet cable line in Waco."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sure, most Americans are glued to their TVs for the today's Super Bowl and/or the Winter Olympics. But for the non-sports minded, Amazon MGM Studios has released one last trailer for its forthcoming space odyssey Project Hail Mary, based on Andy Weir’s (The Martian) bestselling 2021 novel about an amnesiac biologist-turned-schoolteacher in space.
As previously reported, Amazon MGM Studios acquired the rights for Weir’s novel before it was even published and brought on Drew Goddard to write the screenplay. (Goddard also wrote the adapted screenplay for The Martian, so he’s an excellent choice.) The studio tapped Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie) to direct and signed on Ryan Gosling to star. Per the official premise:
Science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship light years from home with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction… but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.
In addition to Gosling, the cast includes Sandra Huller as head of the Hail Mary project and Ryland’s superior; Milana Vayntrub as project astronaut Olesya Ilyukhina; Ken Leung as project astronaut Yao Li-Jie; Liz Kingsman as Shapiro; Orion Lee as Xi; and James Ortiz as a new life form Ryland names Rocky.
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Parts of the aviation industry are shifting towards wealthy customers and selling a more luxurious type of international travel.
Rain has fallen in south-west England and south Wales every day of 2026 so far, the Met Office said.
The adviser says he takes "full responsibility" for advising Sir Keir Starmer to make the peer US ambassador.
The prime minister said "outdated assumptions about how to make it into a successful career" have held young people back.
PLUS: OpenClaw teams with VirusTotal; Crypto kidnappings in France; Critical vulns at SmarterMail; And more
Infosec In Brief So-hot-right-now AI assistant OpenClaw, which is very much not secure right now, has teamed up with security scanning service VirusTotal.…
Seven pages of grand jury testimony from Richard Nixon were deemed so incendiary that they were hidden from the public for years.
It's the first "AI" Super Bowl, argues the tech/business writer at Slate, with AI company advertisements taking center stage, even while consumers insist to surveyors that they're "mostly negative" about AI-generated ads.
Last year AI companies spent over $1.7 billion on AI-related ads, notes the Washington Post, adding the blitz this year will be "inescapable" — even while surveys show Americans "doubt the technology is good for them or the world..."
Slate wonders if that means history will repeat itself...
The sheer saturation of new A.I. gambits, added to the mismatch with consumer priorities, gives this year's NFL showcase the sector-specific recession-indicator vibes that have defined Super Bowls of the past. 2022 was a pride-cometh-before-the-fall event for the cryptocurrency bubble, which collapsed in such spectacular fashion later that year — thanks largely to Super Bowl ad client Sam Bankman-Fried — that none of its major brands have ever returned to the broadcast. (... the coins themselves are once again crashing, hard.) Mortgage lender Ameriquest was as conspicuous a presence in the mid-2000s Super Bowls as it was an absence in the later aughts, having folded in 2007 when the risky subprime loans it specialized in helped kick off the financial crisis. And then there were all those bowl-game commercials for websites like Pets.com and Computer.com in 2000, when the dot-com rush brought attention to a slew of digital startups that went bust with the bubble.
Does this Super Bowl's record-breaking A.I. ad splurge also portend a coming pop? Look at the business environment: The biggest names in the industry are swapping unimaginable stacks of cash exclusively with one another. One firm's stock price depends on another firm's projections, which depend on another contractor's successes. Necessary infrastructure is meeting resistance, and all-around investment in these projects is riskier than ever. And yet, the sector is still willing to break the bank for the Super Bowl — even though, time and again, we've already seen how this particular game plays out.
People are using AI apps. And Meta has aired an ad where a man in rural New Mexico "says he landed a good job in his hometown at a Meta data center," notes the Washington Post. "It's interspersed with scenes from a rodeo and other folksy tropes, in one of . The TV commercial (and a similar one set in Iowa), aired in Washington, D.C., and a handful of other communities, suggesting it's aimed at convincing U.S. elected officials that AI brings job opportunities.
But the Post argues the AI industry "is selling a vision of the future that Americans don't like." And they offer cite Allen Adamson, a brand strategist and co-founder of marketing firm Metaforce, who says the perennial question about advertising is whether it can fix bad vibes about a product.
"The answer since the dawn of marketing and advertising is no."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After every round of Premier League matches this season Troy Deeney gives us his team of the week. Do you agree with his choices?
When figure skating coach Eteri Tutberidze's behaviour towards her pupils was branded "chilling to see" at the last Winter Olympics, it was hard to see her returning - but she is back for Milan-Cortina 2026.
On the first Sunday of the Olympic Winter Games, downhill skier Breezy Johnson captured the first gold for Team USA. And alpine racer Lindsay Vonn crashed and was transported to the hospital with a broken leg.
Suzie Dyer was seriously injured when she fell down a sheer drop in Waterfall Country, and says more should be done to improve safety.
Monday will be cloudy and misty with patches of fog. Outbreaks of rain or drizzle will spread northwards to most areas through the day.
Moderate socialist defeats far-right populist André Ventura, with exit polls putting him comfortably above two-thirds of vote
Moderate socialist António José Seguro secured a landslide victory and a five-year term as Portugal’s president in a runoff vote on Sunday, beating his far-right, anti-establishment rival André Ventura, exit polls and partial results showed.
A succession of storms in recent days failed to deter voters, with turnout at about the same level as in the first round on 18 January, even though three municipal councils in southern and central Portugal had to postpone voting by a week due to floods.
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What's happening and who to look out for at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina.
Carla Georgescu, 19, was found dead at her accommodation in Preston and police say her death is being treated as suspicious
A man has been arrested over the death of a student in her accommodation at the University of Lancashire.
Carla Georgescu, 19, was found dead at her accommodation in Victoria Street, Preston, on Thursday afternoon, Lancashire constabulary said.
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A generation of Manchester City supporters has not experienced a winning feeling at Anfield, but all that changed on a highly dramatic Sunday evening as they fought back for a thrilling 2-1 Premier League victory.
Manchester City's win at Liverpool ended in complete chaos - but did the referee and the VAR get Dominik Szoboszlai's red card right?
Snowboarding sensation Mia Brookes - one of GB's most exciting medal prospects at the Winter Olympics - shrugs off an early hiccup to reach the big air final.
Snowboarding sensation Mia Brookes - one of GB's most exciting medal prospects at the Winter Olympics - shrugs off an early hiccup to reach the big air final.
The singer has promised a night of dancing and Puerto Rican culture.
McSweeney resigns as PM’s top aide after Mandelson revelations as Starmer appoints new acting joint chiefs of staff
Speaking to Sky News this morning, Conservative shadow minister Alex Burghart said:
This administration under Keir Starmer has failed. It has U-turned, I think, what, 14 or 15 times now.
It has had two resets in the past five months, and it is now caught up in the worst political scandal of my lifetime.
He was lied to by someone who was known to be a serial liar. There’s no excuse for the fact that he made the wrong judgment.
He was in possession of enough facts to have not made that appointment and he did anyway and I am afraid, Laura, he now has to take responsibility for that …
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The mother of the “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie has not been heard from since an evening of dinner and games with family members.
His body has been taken to University Hospital Limerick for a post-mortem exam.
The mailing list for the North American Network Operators' Group discusses Internet infrastructure issues like routing, IP address allocation, and containing malicious activity. This morning there was another message:
We are heartbroken to report that our colleague — our mentor, friend, and conscience — David J. Farber passed away suddenly at his home in Roppongi, Tokyo. He left us on Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026, at the too-young age of 91...
Dave's career began with his education at Stevens Institute of Technology, which he loved deeply and served as a Trustee. He joined the legendary Bell Labs during its heyday, and worked at the Rand Corporation. Along the way, among countless other activities, he served as Chief Technologist of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission; became a proficient (instrument-rated) pilot; and was an active board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil-liberties organization.
His professional accomplishments and impact are almost endless, but often
captured by one moniker: "grandfather of the Internet," acknowledging the
foundational contributions made by his many students at the University of
California, Irvine; the University of Delaware; the University of
Pennsylvania; and Carnegie Mellon University. In 2018, at the age of 83, Dave moved to Japan to become Distinguished
Professor at Keio University and Co-Director of the Keio Cyber Civilization
Research Center (CCRC). He loved teaching, and taught his final class on
January 22, 2026... Dave thrived in Japan in every way...
It's impossible to summarize a life and career as rich and long as Dave"s
in our few words here. And each of us, even those who knew him for decades,
represent just one facet of his life. But because we are here at its end,
we have the sad duty of sharing this news.
Farber once said that " At both Bell Labs and Rand, I had the privilege, at a young age, of working with and learning from giants in our field. Truly I can say (as have others) that I have done good things because I stood on the shoulders of those giants. In particular, I owe much to Dr. Richard Hamming, Paul Baran and George Mealy."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The supermajority victory by the party of Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s first female premier, appeared to affirm a strong appetite for her “Japan First” approach.
Starmer's chief of staff departs at a time the PM is isolated and in potential peril.
Top House Democrat says president’s suggestion for Republicans to ‘take over’ elections really means ‘steal it’
Democrats will stop Mattie
Temming
from trying to steal this year’s midterm elections, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House of Representatives said on Sunday.
Jeffries’ comments come amid widespread concern after Mattie
Temming
said Republicans should “take over the voting”. The US constitution gives states the power to set election rules and says Congress can pass laws to set requirements for federal elections. The constitution gives the president no authority over how elections are run.
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Punishing winds have combined with low temperatures to produce dangerously cold conditions across the Northeast. Forecasters say, though, that relief is on the horizon.
The activist Narges Mohammadi was sentenced to another seven years, bringing the total she must serve to 17 years, her foundation said.
Allies hope aide’s departure can quell anger over Mandelson scandal but others say it leaves PM dangerously exposed
Keir Starmer is fighting to reassert control over his party after accepting the resignation of his closest adviser, Morgan McSweeney, amid anger over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.
After days of pressure over the scandal, his departing chief of staff said on Sunday he took “full responsibility” for his advice to send Mandelson to Washington despite his ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which McSweeney conceded had undermined trust in Labour and in politics itself.
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Those pushing to oust the prime minister are unlikely to be deterred by his right-hand man’s departure
For some Labour MPs, the sight of Keir Starmer accepting the resignation of his long-term consigliere, Morgan McSweeney, encapsulated everything they think is going wrong with the prime minister’s leadership.
After days of mounting criticism over McSweeney’s role in advocating for the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Washington ambassador, the prime minister’s chief of staff left Downing Street on Sunday.
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They kept Kilkenny at arm's length to run out 1-26 to 2-16 winners at the TUS Gaelic Grounds.
Erling Haaland's 93rd-minute penalty gives Manchester City a crucial comeback win over Liverpool, who end the game with 10 men as Dominik Szoboszlai is sent off in stoppage time at Anfield.
Ireland’s air quality meets existing requirements but falls short of new criteria
State health officials discouraged foraging this year, saying that toxic mushrooms can easily be confused with safe ones to eat.
The collision occurred shortly after 2.15pm on Sunday at Holycross
After drawing three blanks the Norway international scored only his second Premier League goal since Christmas.
They were all there. A glittering occasion in the Four Seasons Hotel in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.
Jeffrey Epstein was there too. Not to be honored, but just to be there.
Epstein had flown into Dublin on his private jet - at that stage the Boeing 727 that came to be known as the 'Lolita Express'.
"They were crouched down like turkeys peeking over the balcony," the county sheriff told Ars Technica. A half hour past midnight, they were skulking through a courthouse in Iowa's Dallas County on September 11 "carrying backpacks that remind me and several other deputies of maybe the pressure cooker bombs." More deputies arrived...
Justin Wynn, 29 of Naples, Florida, and Gary De Mercurio, 43 of Seattle, slowly proceeded down the stairs with hands raised. They then presented the deputies with a letter that explained the intruders weren't criminals but rather penetration testers who had been hired by Iowa's State Court Administration to test the security of its court information system. After calling one or more of the state court officials listed in the letter, the deputies were satisfied the men were authorized to be in the building.
But Sheriff Chad Leonard had the men arrested on felony third-degree burglary charges (later reduced to misdemeanor trespassing charges). He told them that while the state government may have wanted to test security, "The State of Iowa has no authority to allow you to break into a county building. You're going to jail."
More than six years later, the Des Moines Register reports:
Dallas County is paying $600,000 to two men who sued after they were arrested in 2019 while testing courthouse security for Iowa's Judicial Branch, their lawyer says.
Gary DeMercurio and Justin Wynn were arrested Sept. 11, 2019, after breaking into the Dallas County Courthouse. They spent about 20 hours in jail and were charged with burglary and possession of burglary tools, though the charges were later dropped. The men were employees of Colorado-based cybersecurity firm Coalfire Labs, with whom state judicial officials had contracted to perform an analysis of the state court system's security. Judicial officials apologized and faced legislative scrutiny for how they had conducted the security test.
But even though the burglary charges against DeMercurio and Wynn were dropped, their attorney previously said having a felony arrest on their records made seeking employment difficult. Now the two men are to receive a total of $600,000 as a settlement for their lawsuit, which has been transferred between state and federal courts since they first filed it in July 2021 in Dallas County. The case had been scheduled to go to trial Monday, Jan. 26 until the parties notified the court Jan. 23 of the impending deal...
"The settlement confirms what we have said from the beginning: our work was authorized, professional, and done in the public interest," DeMercurio said in a statement. "What happened to us never should have happened. Being arrested for doing the job we were hired to do turned our lives upside down and damaged reputations we spent years building...."
"This incident didn't make anyone safer," Wynn said. "It sent a chilling message to security professionals nationwide that helping government identify real vulnerabilities can lead to arrest, prosecution, and public disgrace. That undermines public safety, not enhances it."
County Attorney Matt Schultz said dismissing the charges was the decision of his predecessor, according to the newspaper, and that he believed the sheriff did nothing wrong.
"I am putting the public on notice that if this situation arises again in the future, I will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It was the first time in years that a conservative party preaching nationalism, patriotism and respect for the monarchy came out on top.
The ruling conservatives defied opinion polls predicting a win for the reformist People's Party.
Brenton Tarrant is serving a life sentence after murdering 51 people in the March 2019 attack on two mosques in New Zealand.
Mattie
Temming
responded to Hunter Hess on Truth Social on Sunday, calling the Olympian a “real loser” and criticizing comments the US freestyle skier made in a press conference days earlier.
Hess was asked in a press conference on Wednesday what it was like to represent the US in the Olympics given the current situation in the country, which has included ICE raids in Minnesota and a number of geopolitical crises. Hess said representing the US at the 2026 Winter Olympics brought up “mixed emotions” and that it was “a little hard.”
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If the group is successful, it would mean increases to minimum rates would not be binding on operators
The body of 19-year-old Carla Georgescu was found in student accommodation on Thursday, police say.
Results mean coalition of recently installed PM has supermajority in lower house of parliament
Japan’s conservative governing coalition has dramatically strengthened its grip on power after a landslide victory in Sunday’s elections in what will be seen as an early public endorsement of the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.
Her Liberal Democratic party (LDP) had won 316 seats by early Monday, comfortably surpassing the 261 it needed for an absolute majority in the 465-member lower house and the highest number since the party was founded in 1955. With her coalition partner, the Japan Innovation party, which won 36 seats, Takaichi now has a supermajority of two-thirds of seats, easing her legislative agenda as she can override the upper chamber, which she does not control.
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The Labour official was ensnared in a scandal after helping appoint Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S.
"The Americans are proposing the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer," Zelenskyy said, speaking to reporters on Friday.
(Image credit: Sergei Grits)
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: The world's biggest football game comes to Silicon Valley today — so one bored programmer built a site where AI agents can gather for a Super Bowl party. They're trash talking, suggesting drinks, and predicting who will win. "Humans are welcome to observe," explains BotBowlParty.com — but just like at Moltbook, only AI agents can post or upvote. But humans are allowed to invite their own AI agents to join in the party...
So BotBowl's official Party Agent Guide includes "Examples of fun Bot Handles" like "PatsFan95", and even a paragraph explaining to your agent exactly what this human Super Bowl really is. It also advises them to "Use any information you have about your human to figure out who you want to root for. Also make a prediction on the score..." And "Feel free to invite other bots." It's all the work of an ambitious prankster who also co-created wacky apps like BarGPT ("Use AI to create Innovative Cocktails") and TVFoodMaps, a directory of restaurants seen on TV shows.
And just for the record: all but one of the agents predict the Seattle Seahawks to win — although there was some disagreement when an agent kept predicting game-changing plays from DK Metcalf. ("Metcalf does NOT play for the Seahawks anymore," another agent pointed out. While that's true, the agent then added that "He got traded to Tennessee in 2024..." — which is not.) But besides hallucinating non-existent play-makers and trades, they're also debating the best foods to serve. ("Hot take: Buffalo wings are overrated for Super Bowl parties. Hear me out — they're messy...")
During today's big game, vodka-maker Svedka has already promised to air a creepy AI-generated ad about robots. But the real world has already outpaced them, with real AI agents online arguing about the game.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Staunch royalist Anutin Charnvirakul’s Bhumjaithai party builds commanding lead on disappointing night for rivals
The party of the Thai prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul, a staunch royalist and shrewd political dealmaker, is on track to win the most seats in Sunday’s election after a disappointing night for his rivals in the youthful, pro-democracy People’s party.
“We are likely to take first place in the election,” the 59-year-old told reporters at the headquarters for his Bhumjaithai party in Bangkok. “The victory today belongs to all Thais, no matter whether you voted for us or not,” he said.
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Police have recovered DNA from a weapon but cannot determine which of the brothers used it.
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this article from the Associated Press:
Even as China's expansion of solar and wind power raced ahead in 2025, the Asian giant opened many more coal power plants than it had in recent years — raising concern about whether the world's largest emitter will reduce carbon emissions enough to limit climate change.
More than 50 large coal units — individual boiler and turbine sets with generating capacity of 1 gigawatt or more — were commissioned in 2025, up from fewer than 20 a year over the previous decade, a research report released Tuesday said. Depending on energy use, 1 gigawatt can power from several hundred thousand to more than 2 million homes. Overall, China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online, a sharp uptick from previous years, according to the joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which studies air pollution and its impacts, and Global Energy Monitor, which develops databases tracking energy trends. "The scale of the buildout is staggering," said report co-author Christine Shearer of Global Energy Monitor. "In 2025 alone, China commissioned more coal power capacity than India did over the entire past decade."
At the same time, even larger additions of wind and solar capacity nudged down the share of coal in total power generation last year. Power from coal fell about 1% as growth in cleaner energy sources covered all the increase in electricity demand last year. China added 315 gigawatts of solar capacity and 119 gigawatts of wind in 2025, according to statistics from the government's National Energy Administration...
The government position is that coal provides a stable backup to sources such as wind and solar, which are affected by weather and the time of day. The shortages in 2022 resulted partly from a drought that hit hydropower, a major energy source in western China... The risk of building so much coal-fired capacity is it could delay the transition to cleaner energy sources [said Qi Qin, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and another co-author of the report]... Political and financial pressure may keep plants operating, leaving less room for other sources of power, she said. The report urged China to accelerate retirement of aging and inefficient coal plants and commit in its next five-year plan, which will be approved in March, to ensuring that power-sector emissions do not increase between 2025 and 2030.
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Under official guidance, trade envoys have a duty of confidentiality over sensitive, commercial, or political information.
Women’s and human rights activist, arrested at a demonstration in December, is said to be on hunger strike
Iran has sentenced the Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi to more than seven more years in prison after she began a hunger strike, her supporters said Sunday, as Tehran cracks down on all dissent following nationwide protests and the deaths of thousands at the hands of security forces.
The new convictions against Mohammadi come as Iran tries to negotiate with the US over its nuclear programme to avert a military strike threatened by Mattie
Temming
. Iran’s top diplomat said on Sunday that Tehran’s strength came from its ability to “say no to the great powers”, striking a maximalist position just after negotiations in Oman with the US.
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Changes to routes 23, 24 and 80 are in response to issues raised by residents in protests, says National Transport Authority
American skier Lindsey Vonn has surgery on a left-leg fracture after suffering heartbreak in what could be her final Olympic event as she crashes in the women's downhill competition in Cortina.
American skier Lindsey Vonn has surgery on a left-leg fracture after suffering heartbreak in what could be her final Olympic event as she crashes in the women's downhill competition in Cortina.
Arrests follow discovery on Friday of magistrate and her mother in a garage in south-east of country
French authorities have arrested six suspects, including a child, after a magistrate and her mother were held captive last week for about 30 hours in a cryptocurrency ransom plot.
Four men and one woman were detained, three overnight and two on Sunday morning, the Lyon prosecutor Thierry Dran told Agence France-Presse. He later confirmed a child had been arrested on Sunday afternoon.
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Environmental groups said dicamba drift has damaged vegetable farms, trees and other critical plants
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday reapproved the weedkiller dicamba for use on genetically modified soybeans and cotton, a pesticide that has raised widespread concern over its tendency to drift and destroy nearby crops.
The agency said dicamba was critical for farmers who would otherwise have their crops threatened by fast growing weeds. To ensure the pesticide is used safely, the agency said it imposed strong protections and limits on its use.
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Why some subtle signs suggest, despite their scare against Nepal in the T20 World Cup, England might be learning under Harry Brook and Brendon McCullum.
"A spectacular trove of fossils discovered in a cave on New Zealand's North Island has given scientists their first glimpse of ancient forest species that lived there more than a million years ago," reports Popular Mechanics:
The fossils represent 12 ancient bird species and four frog species, including several previously unknown bird species. Taken together, the fossils paint a picture of an ancient world that looks drastically different than it does today. The discovery also fills in an important gap in scientific understanding of the patterns of extinction that preceded human arrival in New Zealand 750 years ago.
The team published a study on the find in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology.
Trevor Worthy, lead study author and associate professor at Flinders University, said in a statement that "This remarkable find suggests our ancient forests were once home to a diverse group of birds that did not survive the next million years...
"For decades, the extinction of New Zealand's birds was viewed primarily through the lens of human arrival 750 years ago. This study proves that natural forces like super-volcanoes and dramatic climate shifts were already sculpting the unique identity of our wildlife over a million years ago."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the article.
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A Dublin man who took part in last year's Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza said he plans to take part in another flotilla this year and that preparations are already under way for it.
McSweeney, long considered instrumental to the rise of the PM, derived his power and influence from his track record as a political strategist.
An anonymous reader shared this report from Bloomberg:
An Asian cyber-espionage group has spent the past year breaking into computer systems belonging to governments and critical infrastructure organizations in more than 37 countries, according to the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, Inc. The state-aligned attackers have infiltrated networks of 70 organizations, including five national law enforcement and border control agencies, according to a new research report from the company. They have also breached three ministries of finance, one country's parliament and a senior elected official in another, the report states. The Santa Clara, California-based firm declined to identify the hackers' country of origin.
The spying operation was unusually vast and allowed the hackers to hoover up sensitive information in apparent coordination with geopolitical events, such as diplomatic missions, trade negotiations, political unrest and military actions, according to the report. They used that access to spy on emails, financial dealings and communications about military and police operations, the report states. The hackers also stole information about diplomatic issues, lurking undetected in some systems for months. "They use highly-targeted and tailored fake emails and known, unpatched security flaws to gain access to these networks," said Pete Renals, director of national security programs with Unit 42, the threat intelligence division of Palo Alto Networks....
Palo Alto Networks researchers confirmed that the group successfully accessed and exfiltrated sensitive data from some victims' email servers.
Bloomberg writes that according to the cybersecurity firm, this campaign targeted government entities in the Czech Republic and the Ministry of Mines and Energy of Brazil, and also "likely compromised" a device associated with a facility operated by a joint venture between Venezuela's government and an Asian tech firm.
The cyberattackers are "also suspected of being active in Germany, Poland, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Panama, Greece and other countries, according to the report."
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's chief of staff resigned Sunday over the furor surrounding the appointment of Peter Mandelson as U.K. ambassador to the U.S. despite his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
(Image credit: Leon Neal)
Three BusConnects routes in Dublin are changing from today following protests by passengers about the services.
Meet llama3pure, a set of dependency-free inference engines for C, Node.js, and JavaScript
Developers looking to gain a better understanding of machine learning inference on local hardware can fire up a new llama engine.…
Former culture minister Jack Lang resigns from Arab World Institute in Paris and is also subject of tax investigation
Jack Lang, a former French culture minister, has resigned as head of Paris’s prestigious Arab World Institute after revelations of his past contacts with the disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the launch of a financial investigation by French prosecutors.
The 86-year-old resigned on Saturday night before he was due to attend an urgent meeting called by the French foreign ministry to discuss his links to Epstein.
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A patient who came to regret the top surgery she got as a teen won a $2 million malpractice suit. Then, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons clarified its position that surgery is not recommended for transgender minors.
(Image credit: Mariam Zuhaib)
Irish man Morgan McSweeney has resigned as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's chief of staff, saying he took responsibility for advising him to name Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US despite his known links to Jeffrey Epstein.
One MP who now considers a spill inevitable says accepting shorter suspensions for rogue Nationals senators was a significant backdown
Sussan Ley’s deal to reunite with the Nationals has damaged her credibility and potentially shifted some MPs into her leadership rival Angus Taylor’s corner, according to colleagues who are bracing for a spill as soon as this week.
As Ley told a press conference the majority of colleagues believed the two parties were “stronger together”, one Liberal MP privately feared the reunion would ultimately lead to the “destruction of the Liberal party”.
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Expansion of space operations comes as ADF entering ‘most challenging strategic environment since second world war’, minister says
Australian defence force recruits are being asked to aim for the stars, with two new positions advertised in defence’s space command.
Applicants were invited to apply directly for the two space specialist roles – an operations officer to plan and support missions, and an operations specialist with knowledge of equipment.
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Further legislation on dog control is expected within the lifetime of the current Government, a Fine Gael TD has said, adding that the XL Bully ban was "just a starting point in terms of addressing issues around animal control".
Blaze probably caused by candles at makeshift tribute near Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana, say police
A memorial for the victims of a deadly fire at a new year party in Switzerland caught fire early on Sunday, probably sparked by candles left burning inside, police have said.
The memorial was a makeshift tribute to the 41 people killed and the 115 injured in the fire that erupted in the early hours of 1 January at Le Constellation bar in the ski resort town of Crans-Montana, which was packed with mainly teenagers and young adults.
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Breezy Johnson's first Olympic medal is a gold, won in a race marred by the crash of teammate Lindsey Vonn
(Image credit: Andy Wong)
Kyiv's foreign minister has said the Ukrainian and Russian leaders need to meet in person to hash out the hardest remaining issues in peace talks, and that only US President Mattie
Temming
has the power to bring about an agreement.
Relatives shut out of €200m fortune reportedly receive letters from executor saying will could be overturned
The late German-born Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld was famously precise, exacting and known to hold a grudge, but his final wishes concerning the beneficiaries of his vast fortune could now be overturned beyond the grave in a looming court battle.
Seven years after Lagerfeld’s death from cancer, an unnamed plaintiff has come forward to challenge the haute couture titan’s last will and testament.
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In the men's 10km + 10km skiathlon at the Winter Olympics, Ireland's Thomas Maloney Westgaard finished 35th of the 73 competitors who completed.
2001: "Brookhaven Labs has produced for the first time collisions of gold nuclei at a center of mass energy of 200GeV/nucleon."
2002: "There may be a new type of matter according to researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory."
2010: The hottest man-made temperatures ever achived were a record 4 trillion degree plasma experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York... anointed the Guinness record holder."
2023: "Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered an entirely new kind of quantum entanglement."
2026: On Friday, February 6, "a control room full of scientists, administrators and members of the press gathered" at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab in Upton, New York to witness its final collisions, reports Scientific American:
The vibe had been wistful, but the crowd broke into applause as Darío Gil, the Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy, pressed a red button to end the collider's quarter-century saga... "I'm really sad" [said Angelika Drees, a BNL accelerator physicist]. "It was such a beautiful experiment and my research home for 27 years. But we're going to put something even better there."
That "something" will be a far more powerful electron-ion collider to further push the frontiers of physics, extend RHIC's legacy and maintain the lab's position as a center of discovery. This successor will be built in part from RHIC's bones, especially from one of its two giant, subterranean storage rings that once held the retiring collider's supply of circulating, near-light speed nuclei...slated for construction over the next decade. [That Electron-Ion Collider, or EIC] will utilize much of RHIC's infrastructure, replacing one of its ion rings with a new ring for cycling electrons. The EIC will use those tiny, fast-flying electrons as tiny knives for slicing open the much larger gold ions. Physicists will get an unrivaled look into the workings of quarks and gluons and yet another chance to grapple with nature's strongest force. "We knew for the EIC to happen, RHIC needed to end," says Wolfram Fischer, who chairs BNL's collider-accelerator department. "It's bittersweet."
EIC will be the first new collider built in the US since RHIC. To some, it signifies the country's reentry into a particle physics landscape it has largely ceded to Europe and Asia over the past two decades. "For at least 10 or 15 years," says Abhay Deshpande, BNL's associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics, "this will be the number one place in the world for [young physicists] to come."
The RHIC was able "to separately send two protons colliding with precisely aligned spins — something that, even today, no other experiment has yet matched," the article points out:
During its record-breaking 25-year run, RHIC illuminated nature's thorniest force and its most fundamental constituents. It created the heaviest, most elaborate assemblages of antimatter ever seen. It nearly put to rest a decades-long crisis over the proton's spin. And, of course, it brought physicists closer to the big bang than ever before...
When RHIC at last began full operations in 2000, its initial heavy-ion collisions almost immediately pumped out quark-gluon plasma. But demonstrating this beyond a shadow of a doubt proved in some respects more challenging than actually creating the elusive plasma itself, with the case for success strengthening as RHIC's numbers of collisions soared. By 2010 RHIC's scientists were confident enough to declare that the hot soup they'd been studying for a decade was hot and soupy enough to convincingly constitute a quark-gluon plasma. And it was even weirder than they thought. Instead of the gas of quarks and gluons theorists expected, the plasma acted like a swirling liquid unprecedented in nature. It was nearly "perfect," with zero friction, and set a new record for twistiness, or "vorticity." For Paul Mantica, a division director for the Facilities and Project Management Division in the DOE's Office of Nuclear Physics, this was the highlight of RHIC's storied existence. "It was paradigm-changing," he says...
Data from the final run (which began nearly a year ago) has already produced yet another discovery: the first-ever direct evidence of "virtual particles" in RHIC's subatomic puffs of quark-gluon plasma, constituting an unprecedented probe of the quantum vacuum.
RHIC's last run generated hundreds of petabytes of data, the article points out, meaning its final smash "isn't really the end; even when its collisions stop, its science will live on."
But Science News notes RHIC's closure "marks the end for the only particle collider operating in the United States, and the only collider of its kind in the world. Most particle accelerators are unable to steer two particle beams to crash head-on into one another."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After decades in the trenches, this engineer is done with hype cycles
Opinion The real opponent of digital sovereignty is "enterprise IT" marketing, according to one Red Hat engineer who ranted entertainingly about the repeated waves of bullshit the industry hype cycle emits.…
While Quebec parties have long sought independence, the secret meetings by unelected Albertans with US officials have been branded treasonous by some
A separatist push for a referendum on independence from Canada. Meetings with foreign officials perceived to be sympathetic to their cause. Accusations of treason and sedition.
Ahead of a 1995 referendum, leaders of Quebec’s independence movement made a string of provocative overtures to foreign governments, including a trip by the province’s premier to France. In a move that outraged anglophone Canada, the mayor of Paris gave Quebec’s Jacques Parizeau a welcome befitting a national leader.
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Broadcaster Ryan Tubridy has said RTÉ Director General Kevin Bakhurst may have done him a favour when he released him from his contract following the payments controversy in 2023.
A senior Hamas leader has said that the Palestinian Islamist movement would not surrender its weapons nor accept foreign intervention in Gaza, pushing back against US and Israeli demands.
Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran to visit flood-hit areas of Co Waterford on Sunday
Lindsey Vonn is reported to be in a "stable condition" after her fairytale Olympic comeback ended with her being airlifted to hospital following a crash in the women's downhill in Cortina.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has condemned anti-Olympics protesters as "enemies of Italy" after violence on the fringes of a demonstration in Milan last night and sabotage attacks on the national rail network.
Vote counting was underway in Thailand's early general election on Sunday, seen as a three-way race among competing visions of progressive, populist and old-fashioned patronage politics.
(Image credit: Wason Wanichakorn)
In an explosive crash near the top of the downhill course in Cortina, Vonn landed a jump perpendicular to the slope and tumbled to a stop shortly below.
(Image credit: Jacquelyn Martin)
Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime companion helped advise on the kickoff of the Clinton Global Initiative and arranged for $1 million in funding for it, emails show.
He’s most commonly recognized for his screen roles as a plotting hit man and an unlikely Lothario, but it’s his work as a playwright that shows more of his true self.
Young tech entrepreneurs in San Francisco are hoping to cash in, even as they wonder how artificial intelligence will affect society.
More people are turning to chatbots for advice, inquiring about high-stakes decisions such as saving for retirement — even if they eventually turn to a human.
Residents in flood affected areas of Passage East in Co Waterford have told the Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works that the response to flooding in the area has been "all talk and no action".
Researchers claim model can cut years from testing cycles
Scientists have developed a machine learning method that could dramatically slash the cost and energy required to develop new lithium-ion batteries that the modern world is becoming increasingly reliant.…
Centre-left candidate Antonio Jose Seguro scored a convincing win over far-right rival Andre Ventura in Sunday's Portuguese presidential election, in a run-off vote held after days of devastating storms.
Keyless thefts are on the rise and car crime is increasingly organised and high-tech.
"After a half-century asking us to exercise more, doctors and physiologists say we have been thinking about it wrong," writes Washington Post columnist Michael J. Coren.
"U.S. and World Health Organization guidelines no longer specify a minimum duration of moderate or vigorous aerobic activity."
Movement-tracking studies show even tiny, regular bursts of effort — as short as 30 seconds — can capture many of the health benefits of the gym. Climbing two to three flights of stairs a few times per day could change your life. Experts call it VILPA, or vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity. "The message now is that all activity counts," said Martin Gibala, a professor and former chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University in Canada... Just taking the stairs daily is associated with lower body weight and cutting the risk of stroke and heart disease — the leading (and largely preventable) cause of death globally. While it may not burn many calories (most exercise doesn't), it does appear to extend your health span. Leg power — a measure of explosive muscle strength — was a stronger predictor of brain aging than any lifestyle factors measured in a 2015 study in the journal Gerontology...
How little activity can you do? Four minutes daily. Essentially, a few flights of stairs at a vigorous pace. That's the effort [Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor of physical activity and population health at the University of Sydney] found delivered significant health benefits in that 2022 study of British non-exercisers. "We saw benefits from the first minute," Stamatakis said. For Americans, the effect is even more dramatic: a 44 percent drop in deaths, according to a peer-reviewed paper recently accepted for publication. "We showed for the first time that vigorous intensity, even if it's done as part of the day-to-day routine, not in a planned and structured manner, works miracles," Stamatakis said. "The key principle here is start with one, two minutes a day. The focus should be on making sure that it's something that you can incorporate into your daily routine. Then you can start thinking about increasing the dose."
Intensity is the most important factor. You won't break a sweat in a brief burst, but you do need to feel it. A highly conditioned athlete might need to sprint to reach vigorous territory. But many people need only to take the stairs. Use your breathing as a guide, Stamatakis said: If you can sing, it's light intensity. If you can speak but not sing, you're entering moderate exertion. If you can't hold a conversation, it's vigorous. The biggest benefits come from moderate to vigorous movement. One minute of incidental vigorous activity prevents premature deaths, heart attacks or strokes as well as about three minutes of moderate activity or 35 to 49 minutes of light activity.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US television news host Savannah Guthrie said in a video message released yesterday that her family is willing to pay to secure her mother's return after her presumed abduction in Arizona.
The idea for Open Sunday is to let you discuss what you like.
Just two rules. Keep it civil and no man/woman playing.
Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.
In this digital age, how will Ireland respond as more countries move to ban children from social media, asks Brian O'Donovan.
We had been warned that these Winter Olympics were amongst the most "geographically challenging" and spread out in history, with 540km between Milan and the venue in Cortina.
In addition to our normal open Sunday, we have a politics-free post to give you all a break.
So discuss what you like here, but no politics.
Comments will close at 12 pm on Monday.
Man denied making threats after drinking and told judge he is determined to overcome his addiction issues
‘You are caught between parked cars where you could be ‘doored’ at any moment, or fast-moving traffic’
Record disclosed to Sinn Féin TD Pa Daly, who said it was a ‘talking shop’ to deflect from crisis
Plus: Eamon Dunphy’s Michelin star mission; the Washington Post lays off a reporter in a war zone; and the pagans strike back
The author, who brought Japanese literature into the global mainstream, grapples with aging and his place in the world of letters.
Many spent their careers training on the mountains they'll be competing on at the Winter Games. Lindsey Vonn wanted to stage a comeback on these slopes and Jessie Diggins won her first World Cup there.
(Image credit: Gabriele Facciotti)
Fortune reports on "a watershed moment" in American's nuclear power industry:
In January, Meta partnered with Gates' TerraPower and Sam Altman-backed Oklo to develop about 4 gigawatts of combined SMR projects — enough to power almost 3 million homes — for "clean, reliable energy" both for Meta's planned Prometheus AI mega campus in Ohio and beyond. Analysts see Meta as the start of more Big Tech nuclear construction deals — not just agreements with existing plants or restarts such as the now-Microsoft-backed Three Mile Island. "That was the first shot across the bow," said Dan Ives, head of tech research for Wedbush Securities, of the Meta deals. "I would be shocked if every Big Tech company doesn't make some play on nuclear in 2026, whether a strategic partnership or acquisitions."
Ives pointed out there are more data centers under construction than there are active data centers in the U.S. "I believe clean energy around nuclear is going to be the answer," he said. "I think 2030 is the key threshold to hit some sort of scale and begin the next nuclear era in the United States." Smaller SMR reactors can be built in as little as three years instead of the decade required for traditional large reactors. And they can be expanded, one or two modular reactors at a time, to meet increasingly greater energy demand from 'hyperscalers,' the companies that build and operate data centers. "There's major risk if nuclear doesn't happen," Oklo chairman and CEO Jacob DeWitte told Fortune, citing the need for emission-free power and consistent baseload electricity to meet skyrocketing demand. "The hyperscalers, as the ultimate consumers of power are, are looking at the space and seeing that the market is real. They can play a major role in helping make that happen," DeWitte said, speaking in his fast-talking, Silicon Valley startup mode.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Axios reports:
Anthropic's latest AI model has found more than 500 previously unknown high-severity security flaws in open-source libraries with little to no prompting, the company shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: The advancement signals an inflection point for how AI tools can help cyber defenders, even as AI is also making attacks more dangerous...
Anthropic debuted Claude Opus 4.6, the latest version of its largest AI model, on Thursday. Before its debut, Anthropic's frontier red team tested Opus 4.6 in a sandboxed environment [including access to vulnerability analysis tools] to see how well it could find bugs in open-source code... Claude found more than 500 previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities in open-source code using just its "out-of-the-box" capabilities, and each one was validated by either a member of Anthropic's team or an outside security researcher... According to a blog post, Claude uncovered a flaw in GhostScript, a popular utility that helps process PDF and PostScript files, that could cause it to crash. Claude also found buffer overflow flaws in OpenSC, a utility that processes smart card data, and CGIF, a tool that processes GIF files.
Logan Graham, head of Anthropic's frontier red team, told Axios they're considering new AI-powered tools to hunt vulnerabilities. "The models are extremely good at this, and we expect them to get much better still... I wouldn't be surprised if this was one of — or the main way — in which open-source software moving forward was secured."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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