A segment in a documentary about the cartoonist Art Spiegelman was edited two weeks before it was set to air on public television stations across the country.

Google's new AI Mode for Search, which is rolling out to everyone in the U.S., has sparked outrage among publishers, who call it "the definition of theft" for using content without fair compensation and without offering a true opt-out option. Internal documents revealed by Bloomberg earlier this week suggest that Google considered giving publishers more control over how their content is used in AI-generated results but ultimately decided against it, prioritizing product functionality over publisher protections. News/Media Alliance slammed Google for "further depriving publishers of original content both traffic and revenue." Their full statement reads: "Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft. The DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the internet by one company." 9to5Google's take: It's not hard to see why Google went the route that it did here. Giving publishers the ability to opt out of AI products while still benefiting from Search would ultimately make Google's flashy new tools useless if enough sites made the switch. It was very much a move in the interest of building a better product. Does that change anything regarding how Google's AI products in Search cause potential harm to the publishing industry? Nope. Google's tools continue to serve the company and its users (mostly) well, but as they continue to bleed publishers dry, those publishers are on the verge of vanishing or, arguably worse, turning to cheap and poorly produced content just to get enough views to survive. This is a problem Google needs to address, as it's making the internet as a whole worse for everyone.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Nate Anderson: Don't worry about the "mission-driven not-for-profit" College Board -- it's drowning in cash. The US group, which administers the SAT and AP tests to college-bound students, paid its CEO $2.38 million in total compensation in 2023 (the most recent year data is available). The senior VP in charge of AP programs made $694,662 in total compensation, while the senior VP for Technology Strategy made $765,267 in total compensation. Given such eye-popping numbers, one would have expected the College Board's transition to digital exams to go smoothly, but it continues to have issues. Just last week, the group's AP Psychology exam was disrupted nationally when the required "Bluebook" testing app couldn't be accessed by many students. Because the College Board shifted to digital-only exams for 28 of its 36 AP courses beginning this year, no paper-based backup options were available. The only "solution" was to wait quietly in a freezing gymnasium, surrounded by a hundred other stressed-out students, to see if College Board could get its digital act together. [...] College Board issued a statement on the day of the AP Psych exam, copping to "an issue that prevented [students] from logging into the College Board's Bluebook testing application and beginning their exams at the assigned local start time." Stressing that "most students have had a successful testing experience, with more than 5 million exams being successfully submitted thus far," College Board nonetheless did "regret that their testing period was disrupted." It's not the first such disruption, though. [...] College Board also continues to have problems delivering digital testing at scale in a high-pressure environment. During the SAT exam sessions on March 8-9, 2025, more than 250,000 students sat for the test -- and some found that their tests were automatically submitted before the testing time ended. College Board blamed the problem on "an incorrectly configured security setting on Bluebook." The problem affected nearly 10,000 students, and several thousand more "may have lost some testing time if they were asked by their room monitor to reboot their devices during the test to fix and prevent the auto-submit error." College Board did "deeply and sincerely apologize to the students who were not able to complete their tests, or had their test time interrupted, for the difficulty and frustration this has caused them and their families." It offered refunds, plus a free future SAT testing voucher.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At a wildlife center in San Diego, caretakers of a black bear cub are using extraordinary measures to keep him from becoming reliant on humans, including donning masks and vintage fur coats.

Joel said he had normal pressure hydrocephalus, which has led to “problems with hearing, vision and balance.”

Spain's grid operator has accused some large power plants of not doing their job to help regulate the country's electricity system in the moments before last month's catastrophic blackout across the Iberian peninsula. From a report: Beatriz Corredor, chair of grid operator Red Electrica's parent company, said power plants fell short in controlling the voltage of the electricity system. However, the heads of Spain's biggest plant owners linked the blackout to a lack of grid investment and insufficient efforts to boost electricity demand. The public blame game over the outage is intensifying as more than three weeks after 60 million people were left without power, Spanish government investigators insisted they needed more time to establish the root cause.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Out of 186 countries, only Guyana produces enough food to self-sufficiently feed all its citizens without foreign imports, according to new research. From a report: The study, published in Nature Food, investigated how well each country could feed their populations in seven food groups: fruits, vegetables, dairy, fish, meat, plant-based protein and starchy staples. Worldwide, the study found that 65% of countries were overproducing meat and dairy, compared to their own population's dietary needs. It also found that Guyana, located in South America, was the only country that could boast total self-sufficiency, while China and Vietnam were close behind, being able to produce enough food in six out of seven food groups. Just one in seven of the tested countries were judged self-sufficient in five or more categories.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several romance novelists have accidentally left AI writing prompts embedded in their published books, exposing their use of chatbots, 404Media reports. Readers discovered passages like "Here's an enhanced version of your passage, making Elena more relatable" in K.C. Crowne's "Dark Obsession," for instance, and similar AI-generated instructions in works by Lena McDonald and Rania Faris.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rice plants can inherit tolerance to cold without changes to their genomes, according to a decade-long study carried out by researchers in China. From a report: The work, published in Cell this week, strengthens the evidence for a form of evolution in which environmental pressures induce heritable changes that do not alter an organism's DNA. The study conducted experiments that demonstrate, for the first time, the mechanism for these changes -- 'epigenetic' tweaks to chemical markers on the plant's DNA that don't actually tinker with the sequences themselves. "What they're showing is extremely convincing; I would say that it's a landmark in the field," says Leandro Quadrana, a plant geneticist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris-Saclay. Michael Skinner, who studies epigenetic inheritance at Washington State University in Pullman, says the study adds to the growing body of evidence challenging the prevailing view of evolution that the only way that adaptations emerge is through gradual natural selection of randomly arising DNA mutations. This study shows that the environment isn't just a passive actor in evolution, but a selective force inducing a targeted change.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has resisted pressure to make its most important product in the United States since 2016, and instead has moved some production to India.

Harvard University's Galileo Project is using AI to automate the search for unidentified anomalous phenomena, marking a significant shift in how academics approach what was once considered fringe research. The project operates a Massachusetts observatory equipped with infrared cameras, acoustic sensors, and radio-frequency analyzers that continuously scan the sky for unusual objects. Researchers Laura Domine and Richard Cloete are training machine learning algorithms to recognize all normal aerial phenomena -- planes, birds, drones, weather balloons -- so the system can flag genuine anomalies for human analysis. The team uses computer vision software called YOLO (You Only Look Once) and has generated hundreds of thousands of synthetic images to train their models, though the software currently identifies only 36% of aircraft captured by infrared cameras. The Pentagon is pursuing parallel efforts through its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which has examined over 1,800 UAP reports and identified 50 to 60 cases as "true anomalies" that government scientists cannot explain. AARO has developed its own sensor suite called Gremlin, using similar technology to Harvard's observatory. Both programs represent the growing legitimization of UAP research following 2017 Defense Department disclosures about military encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Glitch, the coding platform where developers can share and remix projects, will soon no longer offer its core feature: hosting apps on the web. From a report: In an update on Thursday, Glitch CEO Anil Dash said it will stop hosting projects and close user profiles on July 8th, 2025 -- but stopped short of saying that it's shutting down completely. Users will be able to access their dashboard and download code for their projects through the end of 2025, and Glitch is working on a new feature that allows users to redirect their project subdomains. The platform has also stopped taking new Pro subscriptions, but it will continue to honor existing subscriptions until July 8th.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You don’t need to be on the sand to enjoy these novels. You just need a certain willingness to be swiftly transported.

Heidi Klum, Colman Domingo, Kimberly Guilfoyle and more attended the lavish amfAR gala, held at the end of the Cannes Film Festival.

Cornell University researchers have solved a kitchen mystery by demonstrating that sharp knives produce fewer and slower-moving droplets when cutting onions compared to dull blades. The findings used high-speed cameras and particle tracking to analyze droplet formation during onion cutting at speeds up to 20,000 frames per second. The team discovered that onion droplets form through a two-stage process: an initial violent ejection driven by internal pressure, followed by slower fragmentation of liquid streams in air. Blunter blades create up to 40 times more droplets because the onion's tough outer skin acts as a barrier, allowing the softer interior tissue to compress significantly before rupturing and releasing pressurized liquid. The research reveals that droplets are ejected at speeds between 1 and 40 meters per second, with the fastest ones posing the greatest risk of reaching a cook's eyes. Beyond tear reduction, the study suggests sharp knives may also limit the spread of foodborne pathogens, since atomized droplets can carry bacteria like Salmonella from contaminated cutting boards.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our critics picked 10 films that you might have missed but that are worth your time on this long holiday weekend.

The announcement of an escalation in the war came after a particularly deadly week for Palestinians in Gaza. Some of Israel’s allies denounced the move.

The swelling budget deficit makes future tax increases likely, our columnist says, even if taxes are going down now. Hedge your bets with a concept from investing — diversification.

The university has previously been the target of more $400 million in federal funding cuts.

The jokes mask a deep-seated anger over the legacy of apartheid and the inequality that many Black people say continues to define life in their country.