Feed aggregator

Norway plans to ban social media access for children under 16 (source paywalled; alternative source), "joining a growing number of countries responding to concerns about the potential harm kids face online," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The bill comes after "overwhelming" demand from the public, the government said Friday. It plans to bring the legislation to parliament before the end of the year. The limit will apply up until January 1 the year a child turns 16 with technology companies responsible for age verification, the government said. "We want a childhood where children get to be children," Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in the statement. "Play, friendships, and everyday life must not be taken over by algorithms and screens." "Children cannot be left with the responsibility for staying away from platforms they are not allowed to use," Karianne Tung, Norway's minister of digitalization, said in the statement. "That responsibility rests with the companies providing these services." Recent Slashdot coverage of countries instituting or proposing social media bans has included Australia, France, Austria, Indonesia, and Denmark.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Michigan township has voted to impose a one-year moratorium on providing water to hyperscale data centers, a move aimed at delaying a planned facility that would support Los Alamos National Laboratory's nuclear weapons research. The moratorium may not be enough to stop the project, however: "the University and LANL plan to break ground on the data center on Monday," reports 404 Media. From the report: The proposed data center in the Ypsilanti Township's Hydro Park has been a sore spot for the community since its proposal. The $1.2 billion 220,000 square foot facility would be used by Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) some 1,500 miles away for nuclear weapons research. In February, UofM's Steven Ceccio told the University of Michigan Record that the facility would consume 500,000 gallons of water per day and that the University planned to buy it from the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority. (YCUA) The YCUA has spent the past month lobbying for a moratorium on providing water and sewer access to hyperscale data centers and "artificial intelligence computing facilities," according to notes on a presentation stored on the organization's website. The moratorium would include LANL's data center. The YCUA cited an American Water Works Association white paper about data center water demands and concluded it needed more time to investigate the matter. "Hyper-scale data centers, as well as other mid-sized data centers, artificial intelligence computing facilities, and high-performance computational centers are 'high-impact customers' for water and sewer utilities," YCUA said in its presentation. The moratorium places a 12-month stop on serving water to data centers while the YCUA conducts a long-term water supply analysis and looks into the environmental sustainability studies. "During the 12-month moratorium period, the Authority will refrain from executing any capacity reservation agreement." This is a delay tactic on the part of a Township that does not want to see the data center constructed. Many in the community have strong feelings about the use of parkland for a facility that researchers nuclear weapons. Beyond the moral and ethical concerns, some are worried about becoming targets in a war. Last month, Township attorney Douglas Winters told the Board of Trustees that building hosting the data center would make Ypsilanti Township a "high value target." He pointed to the recent bombing of Gulf Coast data centers by Iran as evidence.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it arrested Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an enlisted member of the US Army's special forces, for allegedly using "classified, nonpublic" information about the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to notch more than $400,000 in profits on Polymarket trades. A grand jury indicted him on five counts, including multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. Van Dyke is the first person to be charged with insider trading on a prediction market in the United States. Lawmakers have been voicing concerns for months about the high likelihood that politicians and public servants could use nonpublic information to profit from trades on leading industry platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, which have exploded in popularity over the past year. The arrest comes just weeks after Department of Justice prosecutors met with Polymarket about potential insider tradition violations. [...] After Van Dyke's arrest was made public, Polymarket posted a statement to social media noting that it had "identified a user trading on classified government information" and "referred the matter to the DOJ & cooperated with their investigation." The company declined to comment further. According to court documents, Van Dyke has been an active duty US soldier since September 2008 and rose to the level of master sergeant in 2023. At the time of the alleged trading activity, he was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina and assigned to the Army's Special Operations Command Western Hemisphere Operations. [...] The complaint alleges that Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro's arrest and that he was aware that he wasn't authorized to share nonpublic information about US military operations. The complaint says that Van Dyke signed a nondisclosure agreement that forbade him from revealing sensitive or classified government information "by writing, word, conduct, or otherwise." The complaint also alleges Van Dyke saved a screenshot to his Google account "displaying the results of an artificial intelligence query" outlining how the US Special Forces maintains many classified files including "operational details that are not available to the public." [...] Van Dyke faces a maximum sentence of 60 years if convicted on all counts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Passwords have long been the default way we secure accounts online but the NCSC has said passkeys are a better option.

Companies, brands and institutions of all kinds are attaching themselves to the uber-popular Portland soccer team. Makes sense to me.

Dyson’s newest stick vacuum has a fresh, streamlined look and some limitations. But I still keep reaching for it.

Clean your house without the constraint of a power cord with these cordless stick vacuums.

Anthropic is expanding Claude's app integrations beyond work tools, adding personal-service connectors like Spotify, Uber, AllTrails, TripAdvisor, Instacart, and TurboTax. The Verge reports: Some of these apps, such as Spotify, already have similar connectors in OpenAI's ChatGPT. Once an app is connected, Claude will suggest relevant connected apps directly in your conversations, like using AllTrails for hike recommendations. Anthropic notes in its blog post announcing the new connectors that, "Your data from [connected apps] isn't used to train our models, and the app doesn't see your other conversations with Claude. You can also disconnect it at any time." Additionally, Anthropic says "there are no paid placements or sponsored answers in conversations with Claude." When multiple apps seem relevant, Claude will show results from both "ranked by what's most useful." Claude will also ask users to verify before taking actions like making a purchase or reservation using a connected app.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VMax's new electric scooter has a secret menu that lets you unlock the top speed and engage cruise control.

It's another step forward in the comeback story of the quantum software startup, which shut down as Zapata AI in 2024 after a failed reverse merger.

These merino wool tees are the last shirts you’ll ever wear. I’m wearing one right now.

Professor Sir Rory Collins said he was "angry" and "upset" about the incident, as both the bank's boss and a participant.

As people increasingly rely on AI chatbots for guidance, even on financial matters, a healthy dose of skepticism is critical.

We pooled advice from our team—and a few financial experts—so you can worry less and save more in these turbulent times.

It’s an expensive time to fly. These tips can help lighten the load on your wallet.

Arturo Natella says token limits prevent people from using AI for complex work. His solution: government-provided tokens, not cash.

The cuts, which employees had been expecting for weeks, will be Meta's largest layoff since 2023.

The FCC has expanded its foreign-made router ban to also cover consumer Wi-Fi hotspots and LTE/5G home-internet devices, though existing products and phones with hotspot features are not affected. PCMag reports: On Wednesday, the FCC updated its FAQ on the ban, clarifying which consumer-grade routers are subject to the restrictions. Portable Wi-Fi hotspots are usually considered a separate category from Wi-Fi home routers. Both offer internet access, but portable Wi-Fi hotspots use a SIM card to connect to a cellular network rather than an Ethernet cable inside a residence. However, the FCC's FAQ now specifies that "consumer-grade portable or mobile MiFi Wi-Fi or hotspot devices for residential use" are covered under the ban. The ban also affects "LTE/5G CPE devices for residential use," which are installed for fixed wireless access and use a carrier's cellular network to deliver home internet. The FCC didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the changes. In the meantime, the FAQ reiterates that the foreign-made router ban only applies to consumer-grade devices, not enterprise products. The document also notes that mobile phones with hotspot features remain outside the restrictions. In addition, the ban only affects new router models that vendors plan to sell, not existing models, as T-Mobile emphasized to PCMag.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

States are already passing laws to deal with what's becoming a common practice.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: New gas projects linked to just 11 data center campuses around the US have the potential to create more greenhouse gases than the country of Morocco emitted in 2024. Emissions estimates from air permit documents examined by WIRED show that these natural gas projects -- which are being built to power data centers to serve some of the US's most powerful AI companies, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI -- have the potential to emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. As tech companies race to secure massive power deals to build out hundreds of data centers across the country, these projects represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential climate cost of the AI boom. The infrastructure on this list of large natural gas projects reviewed by WIRED is being developed to largely bypass the grid and provide power solely for data centers, a trend known as behind-the-meter power. As data center developers face long waits for connections to traditional utilities, and amid mounting public resistance to the possibility of higher energy bills, making their own power is becoming an increasingly popular option. These projects have either been announced or are under construction, with companies already submitting air permit application materials with state agencies. [...] The emissions projections for the xAI and Microsoft projects, and all the others on WIRED's list, were pulled directly from publicly-available air permit documents in state databases as well as public air permit materials collected by both Cleanview and Oil and Gas Watch, a database maintained by the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental enforcement nonprofit. Actual greenhouse gas emissions from power plants are usually lower than what's on their air permits. Air permit modeling is based on the scenario of a power plant constantly running at full capacity. That's rarely the reality for grid-connected power plants, as turbines go offline for maintenance or adjust to the ebbs and flows of customer demand. "Permitted emission numbers represent a theoretical, conservative scenario, not the actual projected emissions," Alex Schott, the director of communications at Williams Companies, an oil and gas company that is building out three behind-the-meter power plants in Ohio for Meta, told WIRED in an email. Internal modeling done by the company, Schott added, shows that actual emissions could be "potentially two-thirds less than what's on paper." The projections involved, however, are still substantial. Even if the actual emissions from these power plants end up being half of the emissions numbers on the permits, they still could create more greenhouse gas emissions than the country of Norway emitted in 2024. This number is, according to the EPA, equivalent to the emissions from more than 153 average-sized natural gas plants. (WIRED's analysis does not include emissions from backup generators and turbines on the data center campuses themselves, which create smaller amounts of emissions.) Energy researcher Jon Koomey says the data center boom has created a shortage of the most efficient gas turbines, pushing some developers toward less efficient models that would need to run longer and produce more emissions. "[Data center operators'] belief is that the value being delivered by the servers is much, much more than the cost of running these inefficient power plants all the time," he said. Michael Thomas, the founder of clean energy research firm Cleanview, has been tracking gas permits for data centers across the country. He calls behind-the-meter power "a crazy acceleration of emissions." He added: "It's almost like we thought we were on the downside of the Industrial Revolution, retiring coal and gas, and now we have a new hump where we're going to rise. That terrifies me in a lot of ways."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.