3,346 backers pledged $1,198,844 on Kickstarter to build the (modular) handheld Linux computer, the Mecha Comet. It's slightly bigger and heavier than your smartphone, with a 4-inch AMOLED display and loaded up with things like microphones, speakers, a SIM tray, two USB ports and a mini HDMI port. There's three separate kill switches for wifi, microphone and camera — plus a "boot mode" switch for the SD card, and even three pins for instant access to its debug console. It's now expected to ship in October or November (and is still available for preorder). Snap-in extensions include a keyboard (with programmable colors for its backlit keys), a gamepad, and a special IO Breakout that exposes the 40 pogo pins for modules, sensors, and MCUs. They're all open hardware, and founder Shoaib Merchant says "I'm looking forward to more community designs over the upcoming months." He shows the screen in action in a video on Kickstarter, demonstrating native apps like Music, Notes, Settings, and Files — as well as a Terminal app running on its color screen. A Linux correspondent at How-To Geek notes its ships "with a custom, hardware-optimized Linux distro out of the box," so "it's like having a dedicated Linux terminal in your pocket." And they argue the new device "could be the future of Linux smartphones." I should also mention that you don't necessarily have to use the battery; it can power on over USB PD without one. Overall, you're getting the same I/O you'd expect from a computer in a smartphone-like form factor, complete with modular input devices — and it's running Linux under the hood. For me, that's the most innovative gadget I've seen in the Linux hardware space in a long time... It's powerful enough to run most Linux terminal apps, which opens up a lot of possibilities. You're also getting an NPU built right into the SoC, which opens up the possibility for on-device AI workflows — something not possible in budget smartphones. Now, I personally plan to use it for SSHing into my main computer and home lab and operating them remotely. That's also why I'll be putting the LTE modem in the M.2 slot rather than an SSD — mobile data means I can reach my machines even when there's no Wi-Fi around. I also showed it to my partner, and she sees this as the ideal minimalist phone for digital detoxing. There's a built-in media player, a basic notes app, and you can even run Spotify from the terminal if you want.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's "radically different from other quantum computers" reports Phys.org. The Helios system uses trapped ions — charged atoms suspended in free space using electromagnetic fields. But it operates with 98 qubits — making it the largest trapped-ion quantum computer built so far. Quantinuum, the company behind the device, is based in Cambridge, U.K., and Broomfield, Colorado. It demonstrated earlier machines operating on 32 qubits in 2023 and 56 qubits in 2025... It relies on two major advances — one in hardware and one in software. First, the four-way X junction lets the system handle several tasks at once rather than one at a time, which is much faster. That was impossible in earlier QCCD [quantum charge-coupled device] machines, which could only move data back and forth in a single line or loop. Second, judicious use of the freedom offered by the two dimensions of the X junction relies on new classical control software called Helios runtime, which plans the smartest, fastest route for moving and processing the data. Together, these represent a substantial advance in the engineering of quantum computers. An important consequence is that Helios can perform computations that cannot be performed even on the largest supercomputers using known methods within reasonable amounts of time and power consumption. This demonstrates the ability of this device and its successors to surpass the computational prowess of classical computers — although their algorithms and hardware are rapidly advancing, too. Having said that, Helios' computations have just been random benchmark tests, so the practical importance of this leap forward is still limited. To perform quantum computations of practical importance in science and commerce, even the most optimistic estimates suggest that quantum computers must be enormously bigger and better — of the order of a million qubits.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A class action filed this week accused Amazon's Twitch gaming service of using video streams to fuel its AI products without licensing or obtaining permission, reports Engadget: Earlier this month, Twitch Support posted on X that it added an option to opt out of "having your channel content used to train generative AI content models across Amazon." Shortly after, Twitch hosted an episode of its recurring Patch Notes stream where Mike Minton, the company's chief product officer, said "if it was opt-in, nobody would opt in," when asked by a viewer why the Twitch settings for AI training aren't opt-in but instead enabled by default, requiring users to opt out if they don't want to participate. Now, the latest class action lawsuit claims that Twitch and Amazon committed a breach of contract when the companies decided to use its streamers as "free training stock for separate commercial AI products."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week OpenAI launched a version of ChatGPT exclusively designed for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17, reports CTV, "saying this version came with stronger protections around content related to mentions of suicide, self-harm and romantic or sexual chats." [Tech analyst Carmi Levy says] "What it's doing is it's using cues, it's sort of watching how you're using the tool, and it's trying to guess your age." Levy said if ChatGPT thinks a person has lied about their age when they first signed up, it will automatically put them into the Teens mode for protection. "It includes those sort of two things: prevent you from having experiences that are age inappropriate, and also add features that are aligned with academics, so that makes it easier to study, makes it less likely for you to cheat on an assignment, provide resources that that that allow you to learn more effectively," he said. Levy reminded users that this is still an application and a web service, which means it's constantly collecting personal information about the users' activities on the device and using the data to estimate their age... In the event a user is talking about self-harm, this new version will block the conversation and suggest additional help or call emergency or mental health services, Levy explained. It would do the same with violent content, eating disorders, engaging in dangerous activities, as well as explicit, sexual or graphic content. "It's using AI again to sort of parse out that conversation: 'are we headed in a in a significant direction? If so, throw up that guardrail, stop it from happening, redirect.'" However, the tech analyst said a number of people who have attempted to bypass the guiderails for research have succeeded in doing so "with a little bit of prompting.... I wouldn't call it 100% safe. That's kind of the catch-22 of the entire AI industry." This will lead parents to think that their children are safer and reduce the oversight on their online activities, which Levy described as a "perverse impact" that is "problematic." "Parents should not assume that OpenAI has their kids' best interests at heart. They should also not assume that these technologies are perfect. They will miss certain things, and they will also engage in what we call false positives," he said. "An adult who's legitimately is in the platform might be tagged as a child because the AI simply got it wrong." OpenAI's blog post says the new mode was designed for "preserving the ability to learn, create, and explore." But CNN notes the move "comes as OpenAI faces a string of lawsuits alleging that inappropriate conversations with ChatGPT contributed to the harm or deaths of young people." [New tools] include nudges for teen users to take a break if they've been active for 90 minutes within a three-hour window. OpenAI is also adding options for teens or parents to set "Quiet Hours" when ChatGPT is unavailable or "Study Hours" where ChatGPT's study mode for learning will be on by default. The company also said it has improved protections to prevent ChatGPT from expressing personal feelings toward a user. And it's adding reminders that caution teens to think twice if they try to upload a private or sensitive image to the chatbot... Nearly a third of American teens use AI chatbots daily, a Pew Research Center study published in December found. ChatGPT was by far the most popular AI chatbot in the survey, with more than half of those teens reporting having used it. Engadget shared this observation from Josh Golin, the executive director of Fairplay, a non-profit advocating for policies to make the internet safer for children. "Most parents, overwhelmingly, do not avail themselves of [parental oversight] tools, in part because they are deliberately made hard to find and use." Golin's group wanted to see testing of the tools first to see whether they led to better outcomes for teenagers. "The way this was just announced feels more like a response aimed at public relations than actual deep thinking about what kind of support [teens] need." And Mashable got a similar quote from Robbie Torney, head of AI/digital assessments for Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute. OpenAI's teen experience makes important safety commitments, but "What we really need now is evidence that they work, and we need this evidence, including our testing and the testing of others, before anyone, including parents, puts real trust in ChatGPT for Teens." Importantly, Torney said parents shouldn't assume their child is using ChatGPT for Teens. While OpenAI uses age estimation to place users in the age-appropriate version of ChatGPT, it can still mistake a user as older. Parents can be sure their child is using the teen version by linking their ChatGPT account to their child's and implementing OpenAI's parental control features. If a teen has previously lied about their age — and plenty do — they may continue to access the adult version of ChatGPT... Torney said caregivers must enact parental controls to receive notifications from OpenAI should their teen discuss suicide, self-harm, or acts of violence in immediate or dangerous ways... An OpenAI spokesperson said every notification is reviewed by a trained human before it's sent. The company strives to review notifications in under one hour.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Iran shut down a British power plant for four days in an unprecedented cyber attack," reports the Telegraph. More details from the BBC: The government said that at no point was there a risk to the UK's energy system, but the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has contacted power companies to advise them about the risk of cyber attacks... DESNZ said the incident had affected a small-scale generator and at no point had there been a risk to the wider energy system. The UK's power network has a number of smaller gas generators which provide short-term power when needed. Thanks to Alain Williams (Slashdot reader #2,972) for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slovakia acquired speed cameras to modernize its traffic control-- but there was a surprise. Tom's Hardware cites this story from the Risky Bulletin Newsletter: Unfortunately, the country's national security service, the NBU, has discovered that the cameras have multiple security issues. Firstly, they have SMS-activated Russian backdoors. Secondly, live camera feeds can be accessed by anyone with the device IP, no password necessary... [The cameras] are thought to be rebranded Russian CORDON PRO.M traffic cameras, produced by a St. Petersburg-based firm called Semicon... reportedly bought via a Cyprus-based shell company with fake certifications. Reports also suggest that pressure from the opposition political party in Slovakia led to the NBU investigations... Probably most seriously, in terms of national security, these cameras contain a hardcoded list of Russian phone numbers, which can be used to open a backdoor. An SMS from one of these numbers can open shell and network access... [T]he SecureBoot feature is ineffective, and the web management portal can be accessed, exposing live streams, by anyone with the camera IP. Cameras that have been installed and set up have since been deactivated by the Slovak Ministry of the Interior. Meanwhile, for due diligence, an independent auditor will be called in to confirm the NBU's findings. It is thought that Croatia, and some other countries in Eastern Europe, may have undiscovered issues with traffic control cameras of similar origin.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"There is still no sign of economy-wide job destruction," says economist Erik Brynjolfsson. Working with researchers at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Brynjolfsson has determined an AI "job apocalypse" is unlikely, reports the Washington Post, "even though it will likely impact entry-level jobs." And Brynjolfsson "predicts that demand for experienced workers such as senior coders will still be high even if AI takes on more routine knowledge and coding work in the future." Earlier this month, Brynjolfsson and his colleagues at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab updated their widely publicized report, "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence," to reflect that they do not see widespread, economy-wide job displacement associated with AI... Brynjolfsson: What has moved on the upside is productivity. Nonfarm business productivity growth is running over 2 percent, the best sustained stretch since the late-1990s boom... The gains show up years after the investment, and they're starting to show up... By 2030, we will have enormously more capable AI, meaningfully faster productivity growth and an unemployment rate that looks unremarkable — somewhere in its historical range. That surprises people, but it's what the mechanism implies... [T]he technology is becoming much more powerful, and it's going to be even more powerful. Secondly, there are huge implications for business and the economy, including some increases in living standards, but also, potentially, job disruption. And then, thirdly, we must act now to address this gap. We can't just sit back and wait for the tsunami to hit us. And one of the things we can do is put in place institutions, policies and research to make the technology more complementary — using AI to complement people so it creates more jobs. A common misconception among business managers is AI, in order to be effective, has to reduce jobs. That's just not true. You can use AI to increase employment and productivity at the same time. It's kind of a win-win... Right now, tax policy is very skewed toward favoring capital versus labor — and, as a consequence, a lot of entrepreneurs and managers, they're basically being guided by the federal government to replace workers with machines. And I don't think that's necessarily what we'd like to have happen. From an economist's perspective, what you want to be doing is not mimicking and replacing things. You want to be extending and complementing — have humans do new things they never could have done before. He acknowledges "real, persistent and widening" effects on entry-level jobs, with a labor market "closing the on-ramp for people starting their careers... If companies don't hire people at the base of the pyramid, then they're not going to have those people later when they need them." One he points out that one company is instead using AI to speed up its training of young employees.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"It began life just a year after SimCity 4's 2003 launch," writes the blog PCGamesN. "Now, over 20 years later, it's still going strong with the arrival of Network Addon Mod update 50." The SimCity 4 Network Addon Mod, or simply 'NAM' among the community, has long been a de facto recommendation to anyone looking to pick up the classic city builder. It's a comprehensive overhaul to the game's transportation and infrastructure networks that combines key fixes with a vast set of additional build pieces such as overpasses, intersections, on-ramps, roundabouts, and so on.... [Y]ou'll be able to place down elements adjacent to one another that might previously have needed a one-tile gap between them. Streets can be dragged diagonally, slope tolerances have been improved, and you can build tunnels with the street network. The new version also includes a fix for the 'Eternal Commuter Loop' bug, which might sound fairly innocuous if you're not deep in the weeds. In actuality, it's a 23-year-long frustration that has plagued modders ever since launch. Essentially, it's a problem with the regional pathfinding across city boundaries in certain layouts, causing your Sims to bounce from location to location in search of work without actually taking up a job in any of them. Your zone demand is ruined, traffic builds to unsustainable levels, and the economy falls to pieces before your very eyes. Until now, the only real solution was to simply avoid building layouts that gave your commuters the chance to loop between locations. Now, by blocking specific neighbor-to-neighbor routes while allowing the rest to run as normal, the problem has been resolved... Equally impressively, the mandatory implementation of the DLL has reduced the size of the NAM codebase "by almost 90% and by more than ten million lines, making it easier to maintain and reducing the chance of bugs." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Striek for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the blog It's FOSS: Canonical has committed funding to a three-year PhD project focused on building a system that can automatically translate large C codebases into Rust. And they are not alone; UK Research and Innovation is matching their funding for the project, which is set to run through the University of Bristol's Programming Languages Research Group. The PhD is aiming to build an all-encompassing platform that can take a C repository running into hundreds of thousands of lines and translate it into Rust that's "safe, behaviourally correct and maintainable Rust." The work will be carried out by a student, Alex Wood, who will be supported by Professor Meng Wang leading the work, with Dr. Cristina David and Canonical's Jon Seager serving as co-supervisors.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

47% of recent graduates say AI has already impacted hiring in their field, according to an April survey from ZipRecruiter. "But is AI really the problem, or is it more complicated?" asks NPR. "Here's what economists have to say." According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for recent graduates — which it defines as 22-to-27-year-olds with a new bachelor's degree or higher — was 5.7% as of June, more than the rate for all workers, which stands at 4.1%... Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson says AI is impacting the labor market for entry-level roles. "AI is not the whole story, but it's part of the story and the evidence is building," he says. Using payroll data, Brynjolfsson and his co-authors found that since late 2022 — when large language models like ChatGPT started popping up — early-career workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles, like software developers and marketing managers, have experienced a 16% relative employment decline. In comparison, employment rates for older workers in AI-exposed fields and for all workers in jobs that aren't easily automated — like home health aides, physical therapists and construction workers — remained stable or have grown over that same time period... [Though he also says often when companies pull back on hiring, they cut junior roles first.] Harvard University economist David Deming isn't convinced that AI is to blame for the challenging early-career job market. "If you look very carefully at the timing, it looks like the decline in junior hiring actually started a bit like six months before ChatGPT was released. And so what that tells me is it's something else," Deming says. "I think it's more like remote work." A recent analysis from the New York Fed found that companies are less likely to hire recent college grads into roles that can be done remotely. As remote jobs increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, so did unemployment among younger college grads, the New York Fed found. The analysis also found that AI didn't explain the rise in unemployment among younger workers and that remote work was more of a driving force... Employers hiring for remote jobs may be less likely to choose an entry-level candidate because it's harder to train them from afar... [And with remote positions, there's many more senior candidates to choose from.] And here's another thing to consider: University of Chicago economist Anders Humlum says if AI were replacing entry-level jobs, you'd expect to see companies that rely heavily on AI to hire fewer workers. But that's not what the data shows. Humlum points to a study done by the financial accounting firm Ramp and the workforce research company Revelio Labs. The study examined AI spending and employee head count across more than 21,000 U.S. firms, from early 2021 to early 2026. It found that at companies making the largest AI investments, entry-level head count grew by 12% over the two years following AI adoption.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Firefox 154 "brings a number of usability improvements," writes PC World: The free built-in VPN, introduced with Firefox 149, continues to offer a selection of virtual locations — temporarily extended to 28 countries until the end of August... The free VPN is currently available to Firefox users in the US, Canada, the UK, France, and Germany. In addition, the free VPN can now also be used in Firefox for Android (rolling out gradually) with iOS to follow soon. Firefox 154 also begins adding the privacy-focused search engine Startpage to its address-bar search options for desktop users in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands (the home markets for the Netherlands-based search engine). And Startpage is also coming soon to Android and iOS. "When so much of the web experience is decided by a handful of very large companies, a search option that's private by design and European by origin isn't a small thing," explains a Mozilla blog post, with Ajit Varma, Head of Firefox, saying this now gives millions of people in Europe one-click access to "real results, zero profiling, AI-free." Queries aren't stored or linked to you, and there are no AI answers pushed above your search results. In fact, there's no AI at all. Based in the Netherlands, Startpage built its product around a simple idea: great search and personal privacy can go hand in hand... Firefox users were choosing Startpage long before today — to the tune of more than a billion searches a year, every one of them required some assembly: an extension, a manual setting, a workaround... Startpage ranks among the most-requested search engines in the Firefox community. When demand is this clear, our job is to remove the friction... Most browsers have already decided how you're going to search. Firefox hasn't. Pick your search engine, control what happens to your queries, decide who sees data about you, even turn AI on or off. It should always be your call. Not everyone wants the same thing from search, and a browser shouldn't pretend they do. "Firefox has always been the browser for people who want to make their own decisions about the web," said Startpage President Stewart Marlborough, "which makes it a natural home for private search." Nvidia's GeForce NOW cloud-gaming platform is also now officially supported on Firefox, expanding access across even more devices," according to a Nvidia blog post: Members can outfox big downloads and jump into high-performance PC gaming directly from the browser — no waiting on lengthy game installs or updates. The experience delivers GeForce RTX-powered performance at up to 1440p and 120 frames per second for GeForce NOW Ultimate members. Simply download the latest version of Firefox, head to play.geforcenow.com and start playing. The cloud handles the heavy lifting, so games are ready to play without taking up valuable storage space on the device. Firefox joins Chrome, Edge and Opera in supporting GeForce NOW on Windows browsers. Mozilla's own blog post even includes an animation of the Firefox mascot playing games: Gamers put real effort into making their rigs their own, and Firefox gets that. Users can choose themes, custom colors, and tab settings to customize their setup, instead of sitting there like just another window. We also know online gaming doesn't happen in just one window. It's social and sometimes spontaneous. With Firefox, you can have a Discord call running in Split View, a guide open in another tab, or Reddit pulled up between matches. Then go full screen when you're ready to play, no need to switch browsers to stream games. "In the security report for Firefox 154, Mozilla lists 58 resolved security vulnerabilities, 54 of which were discovered and reported by external security researchers," notes PC World. ("Mozilla classifies 17 of these vulnerabilities as high risk.") With Firefox 155 (scheduled for September 1), Mozilla is switching to a fortnightly release cycle for major versions, like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fjo3 shares a report from SFGATE: The San Francisco Bay Area, epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, is home to a massive amount of tech workers employed by some of the world's most valuable companies, from Apple to Nvidia. But for the first time, New York has eclipsed the Bay Area as the home of the largest "tech talent workforce," a report by real estate and investment firm CBRE shows. The firm has published the annual report for 13 years. Last year, the New York Metro Area's tech talent workforce reached 394,300, surpassing the Bay Area's 375,730, according to the report. Fueled by mass layoffs, the Bay Area's tech talent workforce dropped by 6% from 2022 to 2025. New York's tech talent workforce, on the other hand, grew by more than 8% during that period "The Bay Area is likely to remain ... the central location for the AI industry and for innovation. But as we've seen during past cycles, as it tends to grow, that spreads out to all the key markets," Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE's Tech Insights Center, said during a news conference Tuesday.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a post from chief product officer Hari Srinivasan, "over a million people" have clicked on LinkedIn's new "Seems like AI slop" button, which launched after one analysis found 41% of the platform's longform posts were fully AI-generated. The Verge reports: In Thursday's post, Srinivasan said that users are overall "now experiencing 40% less views on what we classify as AI slop from just a few weeks ago." LinkedIn is also adding a new message that will tell users who make a post if "Some members told us this post seems like AI." "We approached this assuming good intent; I know I'm increasingly conscious on how to not sound like AI & the goal is to provide helpful feedback," Srinivasan said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A rapidly developing El Nino is already reaching record-setting levels for this time of year and is expected to intensify further over the coming months. "The El Nino has blossomed. It is off the charts. Usual measures of El Nino have blown past prior record levels in the period with good data, even though maximum effects are still several months in the future," writes renowned climate scientist James Hansen at Columbia University in New York in a newsletter sent today. Climate scientists disagree over whether it has already surpassed previous "super El Nino" events on every metric, but several say the signal is unprecedented in forecasts and could ultimately become the strongest modern event on record. New Scientist reports: There are different ways of measuring El Ninos, which occur when warm surface waters spread eastwards along the equator across the surface of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Hansen thinks the best measure is how much warmer than usual the upper 300 meters of the eastern tropical Pacific becomes. "Our preferred metric, the heat anomaly in the upper 300 meters of the Equatorial Pacific Ocean... already exceeds the 1997-98 super El Nino," he writes. [...] What's clear is that this developing super El Nino will soon exceed previous events on all measures. "I have never seen an El Nino signal this intense in our forecasts," [Adam Scaife at the Met Office, the UK's national weather service] said in a statement released today. "If the forecast is accurate... then 2026 will far exceed our recent experience of El Nino and its worldwide climate influences." While Hansen is comparing the developing super El Nino to other modern events for which we have direct temperature records, Hayley Fowler at Newcastle University in the UK thinks it could also exceed historical events suspected to be even larger. "The super El Nino evolving in the Pacific will likely be the biggest ever recorded, reaching or exceeding the levels of the 1877-1878 El Nino which caused widespread impacts, including famines and around 50 million deaths (3-4 percent of the global population at the time), mostly across Asia and South America," Fowler said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: According to a Bloomberg report, attributed to China's Ministry of State Security, the country has ordered some government agencies to drop Windows 10 China Government Edition for Chinese-made Linux distributions. Why not Windows 11? Because China, like many other non-US governments, no longer trusts American companies with their software and services. This approach is all about digital sovereignty. In addition, even before the recent trend of governments outside America moving away from Windows, Beijing has started a long-running push to replace foreign technology in sensitive systems with domestic, open-source alternatives. [...] The Chinese government did not specify which Linux versions would replace Windows 10. However, the stock prices of Chinese Linux suppliers, Kylin Software and Tongxin Software Technology (commonly known as UnionTech), immediately jumped. These companies' respective operating systems, Kylin OS (no relation to Ubuntu Kylin) and UnionTech OS (UOS), were already positioned as domestic desktop and server replacements for Windows in government, state-owned enterprise, and critical-infrastructure environments. [...] Huawei's HarmonyOS 2, which began as an Android variant but is now a proprietary mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) operating system, is also being developed into a PC platform. HarmonyOS 2 won't be deployed anytime soon. Kylin and UOS are the only mature desktops that are ready for institutional desktop deployments. [...] ... this transition won't be easy. For agencies now moving off the government Windows build, the issue will be more demanding than simply swapping one desktop interface for another. Migration requires application testing, peripheral and driver validation, identity system integration, document-format compatibility, staff retraining and, in many cases, replacement or adaptation of Windows-dependent line-of-business software. The report provides no details on exactly how this transformation will occur. But the speed of the shift suggests that these issues are already being addressed in China's centralized managed desktop stack.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, has imposed a six-month moratorium on "major electric utility infrastructure" in its latest attempt to delay a proposed $1.2 billion University of Michigan-Los Alamos data center that would support nuclear-weapons research. Township leaders, who have already paused water service for data centers, say the project has moved forward without adequate consultation and want more time to study noise, grid impacts, and other effects on residents. 404 Media reports: Last year, the university announced it was partnering with LANL on the construction of a massive 220,000 square foot hyperscale data center in Ypsilanti Township and residents have been fighting it ever since. During a meeting of the Township Board on August 18, the council unanimously passed a resolution that will delay the construction of new electrical infrastructure for 180 days. Data centers need a lot of energy, and Michigan's power authority will have to build new substations in the Township to power the proposed facility. The moratorium asked the local power authorities to use the six month delay to study noise pollution and how the new infrastructure would affect existing customers. The moratorium is narrowly focused on "the nature and scale of electrical infrastructure necessary to serve new high-energy-demand land uses [...] including infrastructure associated, but not limited to hyper-scale data centers, mid-sized data centers, artificial intelligence computing facilities, and high-performance computational centers, industrial facilities, and other intensive electrical users." Earlier this month, the University of Michigan announced it had settled on a specific plot of land in Ypsilanti Township -- a 144-acre plot on Textile Road. In a press release about the decision, the University said the data center would have the "capacity to change the world" and insisted it would not be a "high value target risk" in a war, that it would not store any hazardous nuclear material, and was not a weapons production facility. LANL previously confirmed that the data center will be used for nuclear weapons research. Ypsilanti Township Supervisor Brenda Stumbo told WEMU news that the selection of the site was a "travesty of justice" because it ignores constituents' concerns about environmental impact. During the August 18 moratorium vote, the Board projected a large stock photograph of an electric substation behind its members. The photo was meant to remind people of the size of the incoming infrastructure and the lack of communication from the university about it. "This picture's really important to think about because U of M has been so crystal clear that they've been communicating to us abundantly -- which is not true," Township clerk Debbie Swanson said during the meeting. "That speaks to the lack of respect."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is cutting more than 200 jobs as it shifts resources toward a rebuilt, AI-powered Siri and other future products. Roughly 100 positions are being eliminated from the Vision Pro organization, including much of its gaming team and some immersive-video staff. Another 100 cuts are hitting the Siri and software teams. Bloomberg reports: In a statement, Apple acknowledged that it was realigning some teams "to evolve our business to deliver the best experiences for our users." "While we will create new roles as part of this change, it will also impact a limited number of existing roles," the company said. "We are grateful to these team members for their contributions, and we are committed to supporting them throughout their transition, including opportunities to apply for other roles at Apple." The Siri reshuffling is tied to an upcoming AI-infused version of the assistant, which is built on a new technical architecture. That shift requires a change in the necessary expertise, prompting the company to eliminate a small number of existing roles, reallocate resources and create new positions supporting the updated Siri. The changes to the Intelligent Systems Experience team reflect an effort to reorganize work on AI-powered capabilities. As more groups bring AI functions to apps, features and services, Apple is realigning teams to match priorities and accelerate development. The restructuring will eliminate some existing positions while creating new roles.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Federal prosecutors have charged activist Samuel Tunick with obstruction after he gave Customs and Border Protection officers a duress passcode that wiped his GrapheneOS-powered Pixel during a border search. "His prosecution is one of the earliest known instances of the federal authorities charging a person with destroying evidence using a program designed to wipe a device clean after a specific code is entered," reports The New York Times. From the report: "Obstructing federal law enforcement is a serious matter that has serious repercussions," Theodore Hertzberg, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said in a statement. "Individuals who destroy or attempt to destroy property, including data, to prevent lawful search and seizure should expect to face prosecution and punishment for their actions." A spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that the agency had the authority to search the electronic devices of anyone entering or leaving the United States, regardless of citizenship, to enforce laws addressing terrorism, child exploitation, drug- and human-smuggling, visa fraud and national security threats. "The border search will only include an examination of information that is present on the device at the time it is presented for inspection," the spokeswoman said, adding that it searched the electronic devices of fewer than 0.01 percent of all arriving international travelers in the last fiscal year. "Just the knowledge that the government is peering into your private life in this way, trying to dig up dirt on you, even though it's unsuccessful, is creepy," Tunick said, in response to a question about how the charges have affected him. His message: "The government doesn't own our communications, our relationships, as hard as they might try to. We have to defend our fundamental right to privacy; otherwise we can't say that we really live in a democracy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Economist: Students and school children are increasingly using artificial intelligence. A survey last year by Chegg, an ed-tech firm, found that 80% of rich-world undergraduates used it in their studies. More recent polls put the figure at 94% in Britain and 93% in Germany. Such widespread adoption has fueled concerns about the impact the technology might be having on learning. Teachers report marking identikit essays that they suspect are churned out by ChatGPT. Yet firm evidence on AI's educational effects has been lacking. David Stromberg of Stockholm University and Victor Lei and Wu Yanhui of the University of Hong Kong set out to fill the gap. They tracked 27,000 pupils aged 12-18 in China, where AI adoption has been fast. Around 80% reported using models such as Doubao and DeepSeek; the other 20% formed the control group. The results are eye-opening. After six months, pupils using AI saw their average homework score rise by 18% across all subjects. The time they took to complete each assignment fell from an average of 64 minutes to 45. But come exam time, the same students scored 20% below their classmates who had not called on AI's help. Homework scores once predicted exam performance; now those who score highest are, perversely, more likely to do worse in exams. The takeaway: "AI can boost learning productivity, but only for those who use the technology intelligently," reports The Economist. "Students must resist the temptation to reach for an AI-generated answer before thinking things through for themselves."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A man dressed as Darth Vader used a Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee meeting in San Diego to mock the city's use of Flock surveillance cameras, sarcastically arguing that the technology would help the "emperor" track "rebel scum" and find Luke Skywalker. "This is what the emperor needs. This technology will help us find the rebel scum and the hidden base on Hoth," he said. The Hill reports: He urged that the cameras be used to surveil any "rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium, because we all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers, they are following children." The plea for the cameras shifted to raising taxes to clear out storm drains and to the clearing of homeless encampments in the city. The man said the council members can use "doublespeak" to say the police department is humanitarian. "And how will the people trust this City Council when this City Council continues to vote for surveillance technology that imprisons them? Ms. Campbell, you must work on your Jedi mind tricks," he said, addressing City Council member Jennifer Campbell, before waving his hand to the audience. "Do it like this." His last plea was for the Flock cameras to be used to "help us find Luke Skywalker as he traverses the universe in his X-wing." "This technology is a necessary, necessary force," he concluded. According to DeFlock, San Diego has more than 550 Flock cameras across the city.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.