TUESDAY, 17 MARCH 2026, 14:20
The deal to take control of TikTok’s U.S. business came with an unusual condition, according to people familiar with the matter. The investors — which include Oracle, Abu Dhabi investor MGX, and private-equity firm Silver Lake — “paid the Treasury Department about $2.5 billion when the deal closed in January,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “and are set to make several additional payments...
California saw its worst drought in 10,000 years between 2012 and 2015, remembers the Washington Post. And yet genetic analyses of California’s scarlet monkeyflower “found that many rapidly evolved… allowing them to cope with water scarcity and rebound from decline.””The fact that certain organisms are able to adapt just because of genetics that are already present is a great source of hope,”...
“A new study suggests the productivity boost from AI may be far smaller than executives claim,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli:According to research cited in Foxit’s State of Document Intelligence report, while 89% of executives and 79% of end users say AI tools make them feel more productive, the actual time savings shrink dramatically once people account for reviewing and validating...
Last June Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement that Texans “have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It’s plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives.” But California company Wildtype sells lab-grown salmon — and is suing Texas...
Save money and reduce your carbon footprint with these tips to snag the best deals on quality refurbished and used electronics.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers. No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been...
First major study on ‘AI psychosis’ suggests chatbots can encourage delusions among vulnerable people
A new scientific review raises concerns about how chatbots powered by artificial intelligence may encourage delusional thinking, especially in vulnerable people.
A summary of existing evidence on artificial intelligence-induced psychosis was published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry,...
Who needs a supercomputer when you can calculate pi with a box of sewing needles?
There’s not much else groundbreaking about the company’s latest flagship, but the built-in privacy display works well without much trade-off.
Here’s the best advice I have for protecting your identity online.
Plus: A porn-quitting app exposed the masturbation habits of hundreds of thousands of users, Russian hackers are trying to take over people’s Signal accounts, and more.
Do you really need a $300 trail running shoe? We test the treads, and the creds, of the Norda 001A G+.
The unique flat-bottom design of the Kalita Wave makes brewing exceptional coffee dead simple—especially if you can’t summon the rigor required to make perfect pour-over.
Her research popularised the idea of the wood wide web, but the scientific backlash was brutal. As the author of The Mother Tree returns to the forest in a new book, she discusses her battle to reimagine our relationship with nature
In 2018, the ecologist and writer Suzanne Simard was conducting research in the forested Caribou Mountains of western Canada when a thunderstorm rolled in. She was...
Declutter and deep clean your home sanely by breaking it into smaller tasks. You’re also bound to discover there are things you no longer need that you can sell.
Researchers in Japan pioneered reprogrammed cells 20 years ago. Now the country has given the first-ever authorizations to manufacture and sell medical products based on the technology.
Tune in to watch the men’s and women’s teams fight to win the 2026 NCAA Division I Basketball championship.
Longtime Slashdot reader tsuliga writes: Two new episodes of Doctor Who that were previously lost have been found. The original Doctor Who episodes were wiped or deleted by the BBC because they were not aware of the future use of re-runs of these shows. Ninety-five of the 253 episodes from the program’s first six years are currently missing. How many more episodes are out there waiting to be...
Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds data from flagship medical research leaked dozens of times
Confidential health data has been exposed online on dozens of occasions, a Guardian investigation can reveal, raising questions about the safeguarding of patient records by one of the UK’s flagship medical research projects.
UK Biobank, which holds the medical records of 500,000 British...
Whether you are heading to a sold-out concert or a championship game, use a Vivid Seats discount code to secure your seats for less this month.
Cern researchers are testing traps capable of moving antimatter, which explodes into energy as soon as it comes into contact with regular matter
When the truck pulls away from the building at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, all eyes will be on its precious cargo, a one-tonne device containing some of the most exotic material on Earth.
The 20-minute test run around...