TUESDAY, 09 DECEMBER 2025, 06:45
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Since online genealogy services began operating, millions of people have sent them saliva samples in hopes of learning about their family roots and discovering far-flung relatives. These services also appeal to law enforcement authorities, who have used them to solve cold case murders and to investigate crimes like the 2022 killing of...
June Squibb stars in the Broadway premiere of Jordan Harrison’s meditation on grief and the nature of human and artificial intelligence.
Europol’s GRIMM taskforce has arrested nearly 200 people accused of running or participating in “violence-as-a-service” schemes where cybercrime groups recruit youth online for real-world attacks. “These individuals are groomed or coerced into committing a range of violent crimes, from acts of intimidation and torture to murder,” the European police said on Monday. The Register reports: GRIMM...
The Trump administration will allow Nvidia to resume selling H200 chips to China, but only if the U.S. government takes a 25% cut. Axios reports: Trump said on Truth Social that he’ll allow Nvidia to sell H200 chips — the generation of chips before its current, more-advanced Blackwell lineup — to China, with the U.S. government pocketing a quarter of the revenue. He said he would apply “the...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the U.S., the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis. The green groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of...
Longtime Slashdot reader hackingbear writes: Taiwan’s government has ordered a one-year block of a popular, mainland Chinese-owned social media app Xiaohongshu, also known as The Little RedNote, citing its failure to cooperate with authorities over fraud-related concerns. Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited Xiaohongshu’s, which does not have business presence on the island,...
IBM is buying Confluent for $11 billion in a major push to own real-time data streaming infrastructure essential for enterprise AI workloads. It marks Big Blue’s biggest acquisition since Red Hat in 2019. Bloomberg reports: The AI boom has touched off billions of dollars in deals for businesses that build, train or leverage the technology, propelling the value of an entire ecosystem of data...
Firefox 146 has been released with native fractional scaling support on Wayland — finally giving Linux users crisp UI rendering. Other new additions include GPU process improvements on macOS, developer-focused CSS features, and broader access to Firefox Labs. Phoronix reports: Firefox 146 also now makes Firefox Labs available to all users, Firefox on macOS now has a dedicated GPU process by...
Approval for the H200 chip followed months of haggling between tech industry backers and defense hawks.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta’s proposal to use less personal data for targeted advertising in its pay-or-consent model that will be rolled out next month won the approval of EU antitrust regulators on Monday, signaling the company will not face daily fines after all. […] The U.S. tech giant has been locked in discussions with the European Commission after getting hit...
The final language of the annual bill that funds the US military is in. It removes provisions that would have helped ensure servicemembers’ ability to fix their own equipment.
Lenovo may be preparing to unveil a gaming laptop that uses rollable OLED technology to expand horizontally into an ultrawide 21:9 display, according to a Windows Latest report suggesting the device could appear at CES 2026 in January. The Lenovo Legion Pro Rollable would differ from the company’s existing ThinkBook Plus Gen 6, which expands its screen vertically. The new gaming-focused design...
The influencer economy that Goldman Sachs projects will reach nearly half a trillion dollars by 2027 depends on a less-examined population: the influenced, millions of people who find themselves accumulating debt and clutter after years of exposure to what amounts to a 24/7 digital infomercial. Antoinette Hocbo, a former marketing professional who knows the tricks brands use to chip away at...
“You don’t have to try every cookie on the holiday table,” wrote Mehmet Oz in an email to all Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services staffers.
From “cameo” to “io,” OpenAI keeps trying to call its new and upcoming releases by names that resemble existing trademarks.
China has contributed less to global growth this year than the U.S. despite Beijing’s frequent criticism of protectionism, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis citing new research from Goldman Sachs economists. U.S. imports are up 10% so far this year compared to a year earlier, while China’s imports have fallen 3% in dollar terms. Goldman’s economists found that the historical...
Denmark’s postal service, established by King Christian IV four centuries ago as one of Europe’s first modern mail systems, will stop delivering letters on December 30, ending a tradition that once saw riders given a maximum of 45 minutes to cover each 10-kilometer stretch of routes running from Hamburg to Norway. PostNord, the postal service Denmark has shared with Sweden since 2009, started...
Dollar General and Family Dollar stores have collectively failed more than 6,400 government price-accuracy inspections since January 2022, charging customers more at checkout than the prices displayed on shelves for everything from frozen pizzas to puppy food, according to an investigation by the Guardian. The review examined records from 45 states and more than 140 counties and cities. Dollar...
Apps like OpenAI’s Sora are fooling millions of users into thinking A.I. videos are real, even when they include warning labels.
Research links variations in the gene GRIN2A to a higher risk of developing schizophrenia and other forms of mental illness.
Google said it’s working to create two different categories of artificial intelligence-powered smart glasses to compete next year with existing models from Meta Platforms: one with screens, and another that’s audio focused. From a report: The first AI glasses that Google is collaborating on will arrive sometime in 2026, it said in a blog post Monday. Samsung Electronics, Warby Parker and Gentle...