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Kobo Libra Colour Sale (2026): The E-Reader Deal Worth Jumping on This Prime Day

Wired Top Stories - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 10:24am
The color e-reader that’s most worth your money this Prime Day isn't from Amazon.

Apple hikes MacBook and iPad prices, blaming rising chip costs

BBC Tech News - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 10:22am
Apple said it had "never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly".

I Found the Best iPad Deal for Amazon Prime Day This Year (2026)

Wired Top Stories - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 9:52am
With four iPads to choose from, there’s a clear winner in terms of discounts for Amazon Prime Day.

Apple and Audi Alumni Have Made a Luxe EV Based on the Moon Buggy

Wired Top Stories - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 9:00am
The Amble One is a street-legal $25,000 electric buggy designed for luxury resorts—but a car is also coming.

Immigrant-led residential care businesses in Maine launch new coalition

Portland Press Herald Business - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 8:21am
The group consists of 30 agencies who provide Medicaid services to Mainers with intellectual disabilities and autism.

Get Up to 43% Off With the Best Prime Day TV Deals Plus Streaming Devices (2026)

Wired Top Stories - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 7:39am
These are the hottest Prime Day deals on our favorite TVs and streaming devices.

I Found The Best Amazon Prime Day Headphone Deals (2026)

Wired Top Stories - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 7:27am
From AirPods to on-ears, we’ve tested hundreds of pairs of headphones. Here are the best deals from Amazon’s biggest sale event.

New Study Shows That Tall Vehicle Hoods Cause Hundreds More Deaths Per Year

Slashdot - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 7:00am
joshuark shares a report from Car and Driver: A new study conducted by the New York Times shows that the increase in vehicle hood height seen over the last two and a half decades, mainly due to the rise in popularity of large SUVs and trucks, has resulted in several thousand deaths that otherwise may not have happened. The study shows that while automakers and regulators have focused on occupant safety, they have turned a blind eye to pedestrian safety, which has fallen since around 2009. Researchers looked at four main datasets in their investigation: crash test data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) from 2016 to 2024; NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS); vehicle measurement data from Expert AutoStats; and vehicle registration data from S&P Global from 2002 to 2024. The researchers concluded that the increased danger to pedestrians is caused by two main culprits. First, large SUVs and trucks have taller hoods, raising the point of impact above most people's center of gravity and pushing them to the ground, typically hard asphalt, rather than up and onto the hood, which is designed to absorb impacts. Second, with larger A-pillars designed to protect occupants in rollover crashes, modern cars tend to have larger blind spots than cars sold at the turn of the century (presuming the 21st century). The shift toward vehicles with taller hoods led to roughly 3000 deaths between 2016 and 2024. This number is conservative because it does not include crashes that take place in parking lots, driveways, or private roads, which aren't part of the federal database. The data also showed an estimated 2.8 percent increase in the odds of a pedestrian fatality for every one-inch increase in vehicle hood height. Between two different scenarios, one decreasing the hood height of every vehicle in the dataset by 3 inches, and the second using a random sampling of hood heights from 2002 across 10,000 simulated crashes, between 2624 (for scenario two) and 3077 (for scenario one) lives could have been saved from 2016 to 2024.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This Buy-It-For-Life Coffee Maker Just Won Prime Day

Wired Top Stories - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 6:47am
The Moccamaster Prime Day deal is the best price I've seen this year, on a coffee maker that will probably outlive you.

After More Than a Decade of Waiting, ‘GTA VI’ Is Finally Around the Corner

Wired Top Stories - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 6:30am
We’re finally getting Grand Theft Auto VI, poised to be one of the largest gaming releases in history.

IBM hails new 'block of flats' design breakthrough for ultra tiny chips

BBC Tech News - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 6:04am
IBM says it has created the world's first known chip tech below 1 nanometre - but it will be some time before it's ready for production.

Boston artist's product uses cutout layers to help blind people construct mental images with perspective

Mass High Tech News - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 5:15am
The product uses cutout layers that people can feel one at a time to construct complex mental images. It's especially useful for diagrams in textbooks and standardized testing.

NASA Rover Detects Potential Signatures of Ancient Microbial Life On Mars

Slashdot - Thu, 06/25/2026 - 3:00am
NASA's Perseverance rover has detected complex organic carbon in ancient Martian mudstones. The measurements were taken by the rover's Sherloc instrument and the organic carbon that was identified was from the Bright Angel outcrop, "a dried-up river that carried water into the planet's Jezero crater billions of years ago," notes The Guardian. From the report: The form of carbon detected, known as macromolecular carbon or MMC, can originate from living organisms. Geological processes can also produce the material, meaning its detection does not amount to proof of past Martian life. Dr Ashley Murphy at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona said MMC can be found in different settings and types of rocks. "It may originate from biological sources such as fossilized organic matter found in microbial mats and coal," she said, but could also form in reactions between rocks and water or arrive on impacting meteorites. The mudstone rocks from the Bright Angel outcrop caused a stir in 2024 when the Perseverance rover discovered intriguing surface spots and nodules that resemble features produced by fossilized microbes on Earth. When the scientific details were published last year, Sean Duffy, the former acting head of Nasa, said: "This very well could be the clearest sign of life that we've ever found on Mars." [...] The discovery means Nasa rovers have now found organic-bearing mudstones more than 2,000 miles apart on Mars. The others were reported by the Curiosity rover which is exploring the planet's Gale crater. It "indicates that the habitability of Mars, and the availability of organics, may have been widespread across the planet billions of years ago," the authors write in Science Advances.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stripe, Anthropic, and OpenAI Are Backing Effort To Stop Respiratory Infections

Slashdot - Wed, 06/24/2026 - 11:30pm
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: [T]he payment company Stripe, founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, says it will fund a new $500 million nonprofit whose goal is preventing both the common cold and the flu. Its eventual aim is to get rid of respiratory viruses altogether. The new organization, called Intercept, will use grants and investments to back prevention approaches, including vaccines, as well as large-scale air-cleaning systems for schools, offices, and other public spaces. In addition to Stripe, other funders include Anthropic, Flu Lab, and the OpenAI Foundation, as well as Bill Gates and several traders at the quantitative investing fund Jane Street Capital, according to an Intercept spokesperson. "I think we treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but have really underweighted the burden that they impose on society," says Nan Ransohoff, the Stripe executive leading the initiative along with Charlie Petty, a venture capitalist who joined Stripe this year. On average, people spend 5% of their lifetime fighting a cold or the flu, according to Ransohoff. Despite that, drug companies put relatively little effort into preventing colds. Part of the problem is that the sniffles are caused by more than 200 different viruses, according to the American Lung Association, with rhinoviruses being the most common culprits. There are so many that it typically doesn't pay to try to stop any one of them with a vaccine. "When pharma companies look at it, it's not as attractive as other things they could work on," says Ransohoff. "So it hasn't attracted the resources." [...] The project takes inspiration from efforts to fight the covid-19 virus, where Veesler's group was among those involved in the speedy development of vaccines, antiviral drugs, and antibodies. According to Ransohoff, Intercept's advisors will include Peter Marks, a former top FDA official, as well as Moncef Slaoui, the pharmaceutical executive who led the US coronavirus vaccine effort, Operation Warp Speed. A key challenge for Intercept will be coming up with ways to counter many viruses at one time. That accounts for the interest in air-cleaning technology, such as using strong ultraviolet light to inactivate viruses. The idea, the group says, is to remove them from the air in the same way municipalities remove impurities from the water supply before it's piped to people's homes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slate Auto's Radically Simple Electric Truck Starts At $24,950

Slashdot - Wed, 06/24/2026 - 7:00pm
Slate Auto says its stripped-down electric pickup will start at $24,950 before fees, with the base model's estimated range increased from 150 to about 205 miles. The company has started taking preorders on Wednesday. "The aggressive pricing -- half the average cost of a new car in the United States -- puts Slate in position to capture a share of the lowest end of the new car market, which has few gas and fewer electric options these days," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The price reveal comes more than a year after Slate Auto emerged from stealth. Since then, the company has been steadily detailing the extremely basic, transforming EV, which starts as a two-seater pickup truck, but can be modified into a five-seater SUV. The SUV version will start at $29,950, Slate said Wednesday. Slate has said the conversion can be done by professionals or by owners themselves. On Wednesday, it finally showed off some of the first of its "Slate University" how-to videos, which guide people through the steps for doing everything from the SUV conversion to adding headlight covers. Everything else about the truck is bare, though it's customizable. It has hand-crank windows, lacks an infotainment system, and all orders start with the same gray composite material, with no paint options, as Slate plans to let buyers order customizable wraps for the vehicle. That likely helps cut out a major cost center, as factory paint shops can run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The company did not offer more details about the buying process. Slate has said it "won't have traditional dealerships," and plans to sell directly to customers, similar to other EV companies like Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid Motors.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

Slashdot - Wed, 06/24/2026 - 6:00pm
Meta has paused its Model Compatibility Initiative that tracked employee mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and screen content to train AI agents, after some of its collected data became accessible to more employees than intended. Meta says it has no evidence the information was improperly accessed and will not restart the program until it is confident in its safeguards. Wired reports: Meta rolled out the Model Compatibility Initiative (MCI) tool in April to US employees. The tool "collects computer inputs such as mouse movements, click locations and keystrokes, as well as screen content," according to workers who have been petitioning against it over privacy, security, and personal liberty concerns. When MCI launched, employees couldn't opt out, but that changed to a limited degree after workers protested. Meta executives have repeatedly defended the data-gathering project, saying it was necessary to train AI systems to operate computer software the way humans do and that employees were the best examples for the artificial intelligence to learn from. On Monday, a Meta engineer issued an internal security notice stating that databases filled with information gathered by MCI had been exposed to anyone inside the company. A former employee actively involved in pushing back against MCI describes the lapse as "a mess" -- and one that employees had expected would occur. "When workers raised concerns, leadership doubled down and failed to acknowledge the risks workers raised about the safety and privacy of worker and customer data," the person says. "Leadership has clearly created an authoritarian environment where workers are no longer respected or heard." But after critical comments poured into internal forums on Monday expressing frustration about the security issue, Meta shocked some of its staff by pausing MCI altogether, telling WIRED about the development several hours before announcing it to employees. A few workers told WIRED they were confused in the meantime because the tool was continuing to run on their laptops. Late on Monday, Stephane Kasriel, a Meta vice president overseeing AI research, announced the pause and told staff that the security issue had been discovered on June 18 and addressed within four hours. But the initial fix didn't stick and access to the data had to be further locked down. The issue made "some MCI-derived data" accessible to more people than intended, he wrote, without elaborating.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Best Roborock Deal This Prime Day (2026)

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 06/24/2026 - 5:13pm
Shopping Roborock’s models can feel overwhelming. But there’s just one I recommend snagging during Prime Day.

Prime Day Live: Amazon’s Annual Sale Keeps on Truckin’ and So Are We

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 06/24/2026 - 5:06pm
Prime Day is still rolling, and so is our live blog. We'll bring you deals, trends, and commentary during the second day of Amazon's annual summer sale.

GTA VI Is a Worrying Sign For the Future of Physical Games

Slashdot - Wed, 06/24/2026 - 5:00pm
Rockstar Games has revealed the price of Grand Theft Auto VI to be $79.99, and confirmed that the physical versions of the game won't include a disc. Instead, they'll contain a one-time download code when it launches November 19. "Not only is that a disappointing decision for people who like to own physical games, but given the scale of the next GTA, it also sets a bad precedent for the rest of the industry," reports The Verge. From the report: There are a lot of advantages to buying digital. You can start a download from your couch. You can store multiple games on one hard drive so you don't have to get up to play something else. Storefronts like Steam or the PlayStation Store don't run out of inventory of the newest game you're interested in, and you can often get games at a cheaper price thanks to frequent sales. But it's becoming increasingly clear that digital ownership has significant disadvantages, too. If a game you don't own digitally is removed from a storefront, whether that's for things like licensing, artificially limited availability, or even the store eventually closing down, your only option is to hope you can find a physical version. If your account on a platform is banned, even if that ban isn't warranted, you might be locked out of your digital library with no way to play those games unless you buy them again or hope your account gets restored. You can't sell or trade digital games you've purchased, and while there are ways to share digital games, they require some work and are usually intended just for families. It's also much harder to preserve digital games because they only "exist" on the hard drive of a console, PC, or device they were downloaded to. This is an issue across many industries, not just console games; there are multiple examples of things like mobile games and streaming shows becoming lost for good when they don't have a physical version. Without physical versions, you also can't find a used version of a game at a garage sale or a local game shop. It's unclear whether Rockstar will ever release a physical version of the game. As for why, The Verge suspects the decision was made in part to prevent leaks; "by only being available digitally, Rockstar can ensure that GTA VI unlocks at the same exact time for everyone." "The digital-only choice might also indicate that the game has a massive file size that's too big for PlayStation and Xbox game discs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Best Dyson Deals for Prime Day: Vacuums, Hair Tools, and More (2026)

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 06/24/2026 - 4:46pm
It's one of the best times to snag yourself a Dyson device, whether it's a vacuum or a beauty tool.

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