Snap is laying off about 1,000 employees, or 16% of its workforce, while closing 300 open roles as it tries to cut costs and push toward profitability with more AI-driven efficiency. "While these changes are necessary to realize Snap's long-term potential, we believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers," CEO Evan Spiegel wrote in a memo, which was included in the company's 8-K filing (PDF). "We have already witnessed small squads leveraging AI tools to drive meaningful progress across several important initiatives." The Verge reports: The changes are expected to save Snap $500 million by the second half of 2026. Snap had about 5,261 full-time employees as of December 2025, and now joins the growing list of tech companies that have already announced significant layoffs this year, including Meta, Amazon, Oracle, GoPro, and Jack Dorsey's Block. "Last fall, I described Snap as facing a crucible moment, requiring a new way of working that is faster and more efficient, while pivoting towards profitable growth," Spiegel wrote. "Over the past several months, we have carefully reviewed the work required to best serve our community and partners, and made tough choices to prioritize the investments we believe are most likely to create long-term value."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Allbirds made a surprise announcement this morning: it's pivoting from sustainable shoes to AI compute infrastructure, rebranding as NewBird AI after selling its brand assets and closing its U.S. full-price stores. The move sent shares soaring more than 700%. CNBC reports: The move boosted shares of the miniscule market cap company -- it was valued at about $21 million at Tuesday's close -- by more than 700%. The shares, which were under $3 a day ago, jumped to above $17. [...] The new company, which expects to be called NewBird AI, announced a deal to raise up to $50 million in funding, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. Allbirds announced a deal with American Exchange Group to sell its intellectual property and other assets for $39 million last month. "The Company will initially seek to acquire high-performance, low-latency AI compute hardware and provide access under long-term lease arrangements, meeting customer demand that spot markets and hyperscalers are unable to reliably service," the company said in the announcement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Rivian is joining with Redwood Materials to reuse EV batteries for energy storage -- the largest repurposed-battery energy storage system for an automotive manufacturer in the U.S., executives told The Wall Street Journal. Redwood Materials is a battery-recycling firm started by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel. Once completed later this year, Rivian's plant in Normal, Ill., will draw electricity from more than 100 Rivian EV batteries in an area the size of a small parking lot. It will reduce Rivian's dependence on the power grid during peak demand hours. "It saves Rivian money on what it takes to run the plant. It reduces the demand on the grid, which is great," Rivian Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe said in an interview. In the Rivian project, the batteries will come from either its test vehicles or from vehicles that have viable batteries but can no longer drive. Those batteries get sent off to Redwood, which integrates them into power storage units. Both companies declined to specify the cost of this project. The setup is expected to initially provide 10 megawatt-hours of energy, equivalent to about 1,000 home-energy battery storage units linked together, Redwood's Straubel said. "These batteries are already built," he said. "We need to integrate them and connect them together, but that can happen quite fast. They don't have to get imported from some other place." [...] Scaringe said that while branching into battery energy storage systems is "not a focus for us as a business right now," Rivian hopes to do more at its sites with Redwood. "There's hopefully a lot more, and there's going to be a lot of batteries we'll have access to," he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A.I. has always been compared to human intelligence, but that may not be the right way to think about it. What it does well can help predict what jobs it may replace.

A 63-year-old man in Norway appears to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from his brother, who turned out to have a rare mutation that makes immune cells resistant to HIV. "Four years after the transplant, and two years after the man stopped antiretroviral therapy, he still appears to be free of the infection," reports Gizmodo. From the report: According to the report, the man was first diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of cancer that weakens blood cell production from bone marrow, in 2018. Though he seemed to initially respond to treatment, the cancer returned after two years, and doctors decided to perform a stem cell transplant. Because the man also had HIV (diagnosed in 2006), the doctors were hoping to treat both conditions at once, though they knew their chances were low. Most of these cases have involved the use of stem cells taken from people with two copies of a particular mutation in their CCR5 gene, which regulates the CC5R receptor on white blood cells. This mutation, named CCR5-delta 32, makes immune cells naturally resistant to infection from strains of HIV-1 (the most common type of the virus). However, only about 1% of the population carries two copies of the mutation. After initial screening failed to find someone who both possessed the mutation and had compatible bone marrow, the doctors decided to move ahead with the man's brother, who was already known to have compatible bone marrow. But to everyone's surprise, testing on the day of the transplant showed that the brother also had the mutation. Though the man did experience some complications from the procedure, his body successfully started to produce new blood cells with the mutation. The doctors decided to take him off antiretroviral medication two years after the transplant. And in the two years since then, regular follow-up tests have failed to show any signs of the virus in his system. [...] According to AFP, there have only been roughly 10 cases worldwide involving an HIV cure through stem cell transplantation. This is the first to involve a family donor.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was once considered one of President Trump’s closest European allies. Their friendship now appears in danger.

Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman urged theater owners to cut down the roughly 30 minutes of trailers and ads before movies. "Get off the ad crack," Rothman told the audience at CinemaCon this week. "Get rid of the endless advertising and substantially shorten the long pre-shows." Variety reports: He noted that frequent moviegoers now show up a half hour late to avoid all the spots (something that reserved seating has made easier than ever before). Rothman said that means many people "don't even see the trailers," which results in "enticements gone to waste." Rothman predicted that the 2026 box office, which has already benefitted from hits like "Super Mario Galaxy Movie" and "Project Hail Mary," will rebound in a big way. But he acknowledged that attendance still trails pre-pandemic levels. Rothman has been a vociferous defender of the big screen, pushing studios to embrace longer windows so that movies will stay in cinemas longer. That was a theme that Rothman returned to at CinemaCon, pressing exhibitors to hold strong and agree not to show movies that quickly appear on streaming services or on-demand platforms. "Enforce longer windows," Rothman said. "Yes, even if that means you cannot play every film." In addition to stumping for exhibition, Rothman has practically begged Hollywood to invest in new stories along with all the franchise fare. In a recent New York Times op-ed, for instance, Rothman, the longest-serving studio chief, wrote, "For all the success of films driven by existing intellectual property, originality is essential to movies. Neither movie theaters nor the art form itself can survive without at least some originality. After all, you can't make a sequel to nothing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is buying satellite communications company Globalstar for $10.8 billion to expand its Leo satellite-internet network and compete more directly with SpaceX's Starlink. The deal also includes a partnership with Apple to support satellite connectivity for iPhones and Apple Watches, with Amazon planning voice, data, and messaging services starting in 2028. The New York Times reports: Leo was Amazon's move to enter the market for beaming high-speed internet to the ground from orbit. That is an arena dominated by Elon Musk's SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite-internet service. Starlink, which has thousands of satellites in orbit, already serves several million customers around the world. This month, SpaceX filed to go public in what is shaping up to be one of the largest-ever initial public offerings. Mr. Musk has valued SpaceX -- which has landed contracts with federal agencies such as NASA and the Department of Defense -- at more than $1 trillion. Other companies are racing to catch up to what Mr. Musk has built for space. Globalstar, founded in 1991, is a Louisiana-based global telecommunications company. It operates networks of low-Earth orbiting satellites to provide internet connectivity to customers. Paul Jacobs, Globalstar's chief executive, said in a statement that together, the two companies "will advance innovations in digital connectivity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A harsh attack by the president drew a quick response from the pontiff, a reminder of his uniquely moral voice.

The spirit of the Sudanese people cannot be crushed.

Catholicism is growing fast on the continent, yet Africans play a comparatively small role in church leadership. Cameroon, which Leo XIV will visit Wednesday, shows the divide.

The country’s creaking electricity grid is lagging behind its push for renewable sources — just as its growing economy hungers for oil stranded by war.

The actor-comedian said he will return to Broadway this fall with a new solo show called “860,” named for the address of his destroyed family home.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cord Cutters News: Sony has notified owners of its recent BRAVIA television models that significant changes to the built-in TV Guide for its OTA TV antenna users and related menu features will take effect starting in late May 2026. The update affects a range of premium sets released between 2023 and 2025, marking another instance of feature adjustments for older smart TV hardware as manufacturers shift focus toward newer product lines. The changes primarily target the program guide functionality for over-the-air antenna TV channels received via the ATSC tuner. After the cutoff date, program information may fail to display on certain channels, limiting the guide's usefulness for planning viewing schedules. Users will often see listings only for channels they have recently watched, rather than a comprehensive overview of available broadcasts. Additionally, channel logos that previously appeared in the guide will disappear, and any thumbnail images accompanying program descriptions will no longer load or show. Further modifications will appear in the television's menu system. For users relying on connected set-top boxes, the dedicated Set Top Box menu option will be removed entirely. In its place, a simpler Control menu will surface, streamlining access but eliminating some specialized navigation previously available. Program thumbnails, which provided visual previews in various menu sections, will also cease to appear across affected interfaces. These adjustments stem from Sony's ongoing efforts to manage backend services and data feeds that support enhanced guide features on its Google TV-powered BRAVIA lineup. As television ecosystems evolve rapidly with advancements in processing power, artificial intelligence integration, and cloud-based content delivery, companies periodically retire select capabilities on prior-generation hardware to optimize resources. The 2023 through 2025 models, while still offering excellent picture quality through advanced OLED and LCD panels with features like XR processing, now fall into the category of devices receiving scaled-back support. These are the models impacted: 2025 models: Bravia 8 II (XR80M2), Bravia 5 (XR50) 2024 models: Bravia 9 (XR90), Bravia 8 (XR80), Bravia 7 (XR70) 2023 models: Bravia A95L series

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Democratic candidates see sudden voter interest in the sleepy contest as a campaign opportunity. All are scrambling for support from former backers of Eric Swalwell.

The Justice Department’s criminal inquiry into the Federal Reserve threatens to delay the confirmation of the next chair.

In a thinly veiled critique of the war in Iran, China’s leader said the world could not risk reverting “to the law of the jungle.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has opposed raising some taxes, favored a “pied-à-terre” luxury tax because it largely targets the ultrawealthy who primarily live outside New York City.

The admission by Senator Ruben Gallego that he had heard, but disbelieved, rumors about Eric Swalwell and women showed the attitude on Capitol Hill toward men accused of behaving badly.

Vice President JD Vance appeared to express sympathy with critics of the war with Iran: “I recognize that young voters do not love the policy we have in the Middle East, OK. I understand.”