Grand Theft Auto V topped Twitch viewership charts in 2024 with a staggering 1.4 billion hours watched, according to data released by the streaming platform. The 11-year-old game outperformed all competitors, including League of Legends, which also surpassed the billion-hour mark. Competitive shooters filled the remaining top spots, with Valorant recording 804 million hours, Fortnite exceeding 500 million, and Call of Duty reaching 451 million hours watched. V-Tubers -- streamers using animated avatars instead of showing their faces -- saw viewership increase by 10% year-over-year, accumulating over a billion hours watched collectively.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How Democrats found their way out of the political wilderness once before, and how they could do it again now.

Google's search AI is confidently generating explanations for nonexistent idioms, once again revealing fundamental flaws in large language models. Users discovered that entering any made-up phrase plus "meaning" triggers AI Overviews that present fabricated etymologies with unwarranted authority. When queried about phrases like "a loose dog won't surf," Google's system produces detailed, plausible-sounding explanations rather than acknowledging these expressions don't exist. The system occasionally includes reference links, further enhancing the false impression of legitimacy. Computer scientist Ziang Xiao from Johns Hopkins University attributes this behavior to two key LLM characteristics: prediction-based text generation and people-pleasing tendencies. "The prediction of the next word is based on its vast training data," Xiao explained. "However, in many cases, the next coherent word does not lead us to the right answer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Male college enrollment in Lake County, Ohio plummeted by more than 15% over the last decade -- the steepest decline among any large U.S. county. Nationwide, men now constitute virtually the entirety of the 1.2 million student drop in college attendance between 2011 and 2022. Financial concerns dominate decision-making, with even public in-state education costing approximately $25,000 annually. One high school senior secured a $15/hour collision repair job, Bloomberg reports, calculating he'll earn "upwards of a grand every other week" while avoiding student debt. Social media significantly influences these choices. "You see a lot of influencers saying you don't need to go to college, and when people see that, they listen," explained one student from Perry High School.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US government agencies and Fortune 500 companies are turning to AI to modernize mission-critical systems built on COBOL, a programming language dating back to the late 1950s. The US Social Security Administration plans a three-year, $1 billion AI-assisted upgrade of its legacy COBOL codebase [alternative source], according to Bloomberg. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly stressed the need to overhaul government systems running on COBOL. As experienced programmers retire, organizations face growing challenges maintaining these systems that power everything from banking applications to pension disbursements. Engineers now use tools like ChatGPT and IBM's watsonX to interpret COBOL code, create documentation, and translate it to modern languages.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Conservatives had enjoyed a lead over Liberals in the region largely because of rising housing and food costs. But President Trump’s tariffs have shifted the equation.

Smooth floors. Public restrooms. A built-in audience: The lower level of Moynihan Hall doubles as a rehearsal space for a variety of dance groups, including K-pop, salsa and Brazilian Zouk.

The virus leads to an estimated 36,000 deaths in the United States each season — many of them so sudden that families are left reeling.

The Pakistani government said it did not want an escalation, but in the wake of a deadly attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir by unidentified militants, analysts warned of an unpredictable situation.

In his first, 22-year stretch as prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad transformed Malaysia’s economy. But he was also accused of being a strongman and antisemite. In an interview, he offers a self-assessment.

Online mockery of President Trump is fodder for the Communist Party’s propagandists. For liberal-minded Chinese, it is a creative expression of shock at his policies.

Videos on the social media app, filmed at factories in China, urge viewers to buy luxury goods directly, as tariffs drive up prices. Americans are receptive.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: There is some microplastics in normal, healthy arteries," Dr. Ross Clark, a University of New Mexico medical researcher who led the study, told Business Insider before he presented his findings at the meeting of the American Heart Association in Baltimore on Tuesday. "But the amount that's there when they become diseased -- and become diseased with symptoms -- is really, really different," Clark said. Clark and his team measured microplastics and nanoplastics in the dangerous, fatty plaque that can build up in arteries, block blood flow, and cause strokes or heart attacks. Compared to the walls of healthy plaque-free arteries, plaque buildup had 16 times more plastic -- just in the people who didn't have symptoms. In people who had experienced stroke, mini-stroke, or vision loss, the plaque had 51 times more plastic. [...] To investigate why, Clark studied samples from 48 people's carotid arteries -- the pair of superhighways in your neck that channel blood to your brain. The difference in plastic quantities surprised him, but his team found another concerning trend, too. Cells in the plaque with lots of plastic showed different gene activity than those with low plastic. In the high-plastic environment, one group of immune cells had switched off a gene that's associated with turning off inflammation. Clark's team also found genetic differences in a group of stem cells thought to help prevent heart attacks and strokes by reducing inflammation and stabilizing plaque. "Could it be that microplastics are somehow altering their gene expression?" Clark said. He added that there's "lots more research needed to fully establish that, but at least it gives us a hint as to where to look." Ross, who specializes in the genetic mechanisms behind disease, agreed that more research is needed, but added that she thinks "these plastics are doing something with these plaques." Tracking microplastics in the human body is a new scientific endeavor as of the last couple years. It's not perfect. Clark's team heated the plaque samples to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to vaporize plastic polymers and break them down into smaller organic molecules, which can be identified and measured by their mass and other properties. Unfortunately, the lipids in plaque can break down into chemicals that look very similar to polyethylene, the most common plastic found in everything from plastic bags to car parts. "Because we know about this problem, we've taken a lot of steps to remove those lipids and confirm their removal, so that we're sure we're measuring polyethylene," Clark said. Still, he added, "it's a big limitation, and it should be acknowledged that these types of methodologies are continuously improving." "Almost all of what we know about microplastics in the human body, no matter where you look, can be summed up as: It's there, and we need to study further as to what it's doing, if anything," Clark said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump’s approval rating has sunk to about 45 percent, down from 52 percent one week after he took office.

The Department of Government Efficiency has already made an immense imprint on the government, but it has not come close to Elon Musk’s pledge of cutting $1 trillion.

Five years removed from the onset of the Covid pandemic, Google is demanding that some remote employees return to the office if they want to keep their jobs and avoid being part of broader cost cuts at the company. CNBC reports: Several units within Google have told remote staffers that their roles may be at risk if they don't start showing up at the closest office for a hybrid work schedule, according to internal documents viewed by CNBC. Some of those employees were previously approved for remote work.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The $160 million Davis Center, with upgrades to six bucolic acres and a lake, writes a new chapter for the Harlem end of the park.

New Jersey sued the property management software company RealPage, accusing it and 10 of the state's largest landlords of conspiring to drive up residential rents, violating federal and state antitrust laws and New Jersey consumer fraud laws. From a report: The complaint filed on Wednesday by state Attorney General Matthew Platkin said the defendants, including AvalonBay Communities illegally used RealPage's revenue management software and algorithms to inflate rents for apartments in multifamily properties. New Jersey said the defendants also quietly exchanged non-public data such as lease prices, amenities, concessions offered, property values and housing inventory, in order to align pricing and avoid competition to lower rents. The state said the collusion has inflated rents for hundreds of thousands of residents, with half of low-income renters paying more than 30% of their gross incomes toward rent. Many real estate and financial experts recommend a 30% limit.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A draft executive order from the Trump administration proposes integrating AI into K-12 education by directing federal agencies to promote AI literacy, train teachers, and establish public-private partnerships. "The draft is marked 'predecisional' and could be subject to change before it is signed, or it could be abandoned," notes the Washington Post. From the report: Titled "Advancing artificial intelligence education for American youth," the draft order would establish a White House task force on AI education that would be chaired by Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and would include the secretaries of education, agriculture, labor and energy, as well as Trump's special adviser for AI and cryptocurrency, David Sacks. The draft order would instruct federal agencies to seek public-private partnerships with industry, academia and nonprofit groups in efforts to teach students "foundational AI literacy and critical thinking skills." The task force should look for existing federal funding such as grants that could be used for AI programs, and agencies should prioritize spending on AI education, according to the draft order. It would also instruct Education Secretary Linda McMahon to prioritize federal grant funding for training teachers on how to use AI, including for administrative tasks and teacher training and evaluation. All educators should undergo professional development to integrate AI into all subject areas, the draft order says. It would also establish a "Presidential AI Challenge" -- a competition for students and educators to demonstrate their AI skills -- and instruct Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer to develop registered apprenticeships in AI-related occupations. The focus is on K-12 education, but the draft order says, "Our Nation must also make resources available for lifelong learners to develop new skills for a changing workforce."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The lawsuit, filed by Democratic attorneys general, said the president’s tariffs have hurt their economies and residents.