“So yesterday the Devteam (it is always the Devteam) released version 5.0 of legendary and venerable rogueike compuer game NetHack,” writes the Rogue-like games column @Play. “It is 39 years old…” MilenCent (Slashdot reader #219,397) writes: In addition to play changes it’s left for players to discover, this version updates the code to compile with C99, makes it much easier to cross compile the...
“Vibe coding just got a whole lot more adorable,” writes Engadget:OpenAI introduced AI-generated pets to the Codex app, its agentic tool that helps with coding. These “optional animated companions” don’t do any coding themselves, but serve as a floating overlay that can tell you what Codex is working on, notify you when Codex completes a task or whether it needs your input on something. The new...
On ‘Star Wars day’, researchers more than double the number of potential known ‘circumbinary’ planets like the fictional Tatooine, home to Luke Skywalker
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Astronomers have discovered 27 new potential planets that orbit two stars, like the fictional desert planet Tatooine from the...
The Associated Press reports:On a March afternoon, artificial intelligence detected something resembling smoke on a camera feed from Arizona’s Coconino National Forest. Human analysts verified it wasn’t a cloud or dust, then alerted the state’s forest service and largest electric utility. One of dozens of AI cameras installed for the utility Arizona Public Service had spotted early signs of...
Big Dog Ranch Rescue made deal to buy 1,500 dogs from Ridglan Farms, a Wisconsin breeding and research facility
The first beagles removed from a Wisconsin dog breeding and research facility that was the site of recent protests seemed to know right away that they were safe.
“They started within an hour or so coming up to us, wanting attention. Some crawled in people’s laps. Every single one...
A new meta-analysis found nutrients in food decreased over the last 40 years, reports the Washington Post. “Many of humanity’s most important crops — including wheat, potatoes, beans — contain fewer vitamins and minerals than they did a generation ago.” “The invisible culprit behind this damaging phenomenon? Carbon dioxide pollution.”Surging concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere,...
A startup south of Austin is using robots to build homes out of clay pulled directly from the ground, reports a local news station:The materials are gathered on site, mixed, and placed on a build plate. From there, a robot lowers from above, picks up the clay with a claw, carries it to the wall and drops it into place. Later, the same robot switches tools, using a hammer attachment to pound the...
Further three people taken ill, including 69-year-old Briton reported to be in intensive care in South Africa
Three people have died after a suspected hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship sailing in the Atlantic.
One case of hantavirus infection had been confirmed and there were five additional suspected cases, the World Health Organization told Agence France-Presse on Sunday.
A 1999 press release bragged “Jeeves” answered 92.3 million questions in just three months. “In the digital wilds of Y2K, we came to him with our most probing questions,” remembers the New York Times — whether it was Britney Spears or tamagotchis: We asked, and he answered: Jeeves, the digital butler of information, the online valet who led us into the depths of cyberspace. Now, like so many...
Amazon once tried to pressure Nintendo to break the law, says former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé. At a recent NYU lecture, he describes a conversation with an Amazon executive, Kotaku reports:”Amazon was looking to get bigger into the video game space,” said Fils-Aimé. “Amazon’s mentality back then is they wanted to have the lowest price out in the marketplace, even lower...
The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI “recently gave its popular ChatGPT strict instructions. Stop talking about goblins.”Recent models of the artificial-intelligence chatbot have been bringing up the creatures in conversations with users seemingly out of the blue, as well as gremlins, trolls and ogres. The goblin-speak caught the attention of programmers, who are often heavy users of the...
An official in South Africa withdrew a draft of the country’s national AI policy, reports a local newspaper, “after it was found the draft policy was compiled using AI, which cited academic articles that were ‘fictitious’.”Earlier this month, minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni announced cabinet had approved the draft policy for public comment. [Ntshavheni] said the policy seeks to...
“Ransomware activity jumped again in Q1 2026,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, “with 2,638 victim posts on leak sites, up 22% year over year,” according to a report from cybersecurity company ReliaQuest.But the bigger shift is how messy the ecosystem has become. Established groups like Akira and Qilin are still active, while newer players like The Gentlemen surged into the top tier with a...
Artemis II inspired the public but the Trump administration wants to slash the science underpinning human spaceflight
It should have been a victory lap for Jared Isaacman. The Nasa administrator was in Washington DC for what he surely hoped would be a celebration with lawmakers and the US president, little more than two weeks after the successful conclusion of the first human journey around the...
An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC:”If even one extra person is able to access the internet, I think it’s successful and it’s worth it,” says Sahand. The Iranian man is visibly anxious, speaking to the BBC outside Iran, as he carefully explains how he is part of a clandestine network smuggling satellite internet technology — which is illegal in Iran — into the country....