The Trump administration’s announcement that it would pull $4 billion for the state’s bullet train project is likely to mean significant delays in serving the first passengers, several analysts said.

Once upon a time, long-time Slashdot reader tgibson learned how to type on a manual typewriter, back in an 8th grade classroom. And to this day, they write, "my bias is to nod approvingly at touch typists and roll my eyes at those who need to stare at the keyboard while typing..." But how true is that for computer professionals today? After 15 years I left industry and became a post-secondary computer science educator. Occasionally I rant to my students about the importance of touch-typing as a skill to have as a software engineer. But I've been out of the game for some time now. Those of you hiring or working with freshly-minted software engineers, what's your take? One anonymous Slashdot reader responded: Oh, you mean the kid in the next cubicle that has said "Hey Siri" 297 times this morning? I'll let you know when he starts typing. A minor suggestion to office managers... please purchase a very quiet keyboard. Fellow cube-mates who are accomplished typists would consider that struggling audibly to be akin to nails on a blackboard... Share your own thoughts in the comments. How important is it for programmers to learn touch typing?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Emmanuel Macron of France plans to travel to the island nation, which President Trump has vowed to take control of, on the way to Canada for a Group of 7 meeting.

MIT comp-sci professor Ryan Williams suspected that a small amount of memory "would be as helpful as a lot of time in all conceivable computations..." writes Quanta magazine. "In February, he finally posted his proof online, to widespread acclaim..." Every algorithm takes some time to run, and requires some space to store data while it's running. Until now, the only known algorithms for accomplishing certain tasks required an amount of space roughly proportional to their runtime, and researchers had long assumed there's no way to do better. Williams' proof established a mathematical procedure for transforming any algorithm — no matter what it does — into a form that uses much less space. What's more, this result — a statement about what you can compute given a certain amount of space — also implies a second result, about what you cannot compute in a certain amount of time. This second result isn't surprising in itself: Researchers expected it to be true, but they had no idea how to prove it. Williams' solution, based on his sweeping first result, feels almost cartoonishly excessive, akin to proving a suspected murderer guilty by establishing an ironclad alibi for everyone else on the planet. It could also offer a new way to attack one of the oldest open problems in computer science. "It's a pretty stunning result, and a massive advance," said Paul Beame, a computer scientist at the University of Washington. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The nearly 11,000-seat Muny in St. Louis is receiving the regional theater Tony Award. This week it began preparing to open its 107th season with “Bring It On.”

The St. Louis theater, this year’s regional Tony Award winner, has drawn Broadway actors to its stage for a century.

Meta's Facebook and Instagram apps "were siphoning people's data through a digital back door for months," writes a Washington Post tech columnist, citing researchers who found no privacy setting could've stopped what Meta and Yandex were doing, since those two companies "circumvented privacy and security protections that Google set up for Android devices. "But their tactics underscored some privacy vulnerabilities in web browsers or apps. These steps can reduce your risks." Stop using the Chrome browser. Mozilla's Firefox, the Brave browser and DuckDuckGo's browser block many common methods of tracking you from site to site. Chrome, the most popular web browser, does not... For iPhone and Mac folks, Safari also has strong privacy protections. It's not perfect, though. No browser protections are foolproof. The researchers said Firefox on Android devices was partly susceptible to the data harvesting tactics they identified, in addition to Chrome. (DuckDuckGo and Brave largely did block the tactics, the researchers said....) Delete Meta and Yandex apps on your phone, if you have them. The tactics described by the European researchers showed that Meta and Yandex are unworthy of your trust. (Yandex is not popular in the United States.) It might be wise to delete their apps, which give the companies more latitude to collect information that websites generally cannot easily obtain, including your approximate location, your phone's battery level and what other devices, like an Xbox, are connected to your home WiFi. Know, too, that even if you don't have Meta apps on your phone, and even if you don't use Facebook or Instagram at all, Meta might still harvest information on your activity across the web.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Everyone has a blog these days, even Claude," Anthropic wrote this week on a page titled "Claude Explains." "Welcome to the small corner of the Anthropic universe where Claude is writing on every topic under the sun". Not any more. After blog posts titled "Improve code maintainability with Claude" and "Rapidly develop web applications with Claude" — Anthropic suddenly removed the whole page sometime after Wednesday. But TechCrunch explains the whole thing was always less than it seemed, and "One might be easily misled into thinking that Claude is responsible for the blog's copy end-to-end." According to a spokesperson, the blog is overseen by Anthropic's "subject matter experts and editorial teams," who "enhance" Claude's drafts with "insights, practical examples, and [...] contextual knowledge." "This isn't just vanilla Claude output — the editorial process requires human expertise and goes through iterations," the spokesperson said. "From a technical perspective, Claude Explains shows a collaborative approach where Claude [creates] educational content, and our team reviews, refines, and enhances it...." Anthropic says it sees Claude Explains as a "demonstration of how human expertise and AI capabilities can work together," starting with educational resources. "Claude Explains is an early example of how teams can use AI to augment their work and provide greater value to their users," the spokesperson said. "Rather than replacing human expertise, we're showing how AI can amplify what subject matter experts can accomplish [...] We plan to cover topics ranging from creative writing to data analysis to business strategy...." The Anthropic spokesperson noted that the company is still hiring across marketing, content, and editorial, and "many other fields that involve writing," despite the company's dip into AI-powered blog drafting. Take that for what you will.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are already indications that his coalition is fraying, and it’s not just about Elon Musk.

This year's annual celebration of the best on Broadway is being hosted by Cynthia Erivo.

Cybercriminals have been increasingly turning to "residential proxy" services over the past two to three years to disguise malicious web traffic as everyday online activity, according to research presented at the Sleuthcon cybercrime conference. The shift represents a response to law enforcement's growing success in targeting traditional "bulletproof" hosting services, which previously allowed criminals to maintain anonymous web infrastructure. Residential proxies route traffic through decentralized networks running on consumer devices like old Android phones and low-end laptops, providing real IP addresses assigned to homes and offices. This approach makes malicious activity extremely difficult to detect because it appears to originate from trusted consumer locations rather than suspicious server farms. The technology creates particular challenges when attackers appear to come from the same residential IP ranges as employees of target organizations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Britain is moving toward major nuclear power commitments after years of delays, as government officials acknowledge they can no longer postpone critical energy infrastructure decisions. The U.K. Treasury has exhausted options for delaying nuclear power choices, Politico reported this week, citing sources within Whitehall and the nuclear industry. The urgency stems from Britain's aging nuclear infrastructure, where five power plants currently supply 15% of the country's total energy needs but face shutdown by 2030. This timeline has created significant pressure on policymakers to secure replacement capacity or risk substantial gaps in the nation's electricity supply.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia’s spy hunters are increasingly worried about China’s espionage, even as the two countries grow closer.

His self-dealing is part of his larger efforts to weaken American democracy.

Startup Nord Quantique has demonstrated that a single piece of hardware can host an error-detecting logical qubit by using two quantum frequencies within one resonator. The breakthrough has the potential to slash the hardware demands for quantum error correction and deliver more compact and efficient quantum computing architectures. Ars Technica reports: The company did two experiments with this new hardware. First, it ran multiple rounds of error detection on data stored in the logical qubit, essentially testing its ability to act like a quantum memory and retain the information stored there. Without correcting errors, the system rapidly decayed, with an error probability in each round of measurement of about 12 percent. By the time the system reached the 25th measurement, almost every instance had already encountered an error. The second time through, the company repeated the process, discarding any instances in which an error occurred. In almost every instance, that meant the results were discarded long before they got through two dozen rounds of measurement. But at these later stages, none of the remaining instances were in an erroneous state. That indicates that a successful correction of the errors -- something the team didn't try -- would be able to fix all the detected problems. Several other companies have already performed experiments in which errors were detected -- and corrected. In a few instances, companies have even performed operations with logical qubits, although these were not sophisticated calculations. Nord Quantique, in contrast, is only showing the operation of a single logical qubit, so it's not even possible to test a two-qubit gate operation using the hardware it has described so far. So simply being able to identify the occurrence of errors is not on the cutting edge. Why is this notable? All the other companies require multiple hardware qubits to host a single logical qubit. Since building many hardware qubits has been an ongoing challenge, most researchers have plans to minimize the number of hardware qubits needed to support a logical qubit -- some combination of high-quality hardware, a clever error correction scheme, and/or a hardware-specific feature that catches the most common errors. You can view Nord Quantique's approach as being at the extreme end of the spectrum of solutions, where the number of hardware qubits required is simply one. From Nord Quantique's perspective, that's significant because it means that its hardware will ultimately occupy less space and have lower power and cooling requirements than some of its competitors. (Other hardware, like neutral atoms, requires lots of lasers and a high vacuum, so the needs are difficult to compare.) But it also means that, should it become technically difficult to get large numbers of qubits to operate as a coherent whole, Nord Quantique's approach may ultimately help us overcome some of these limits.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Moscow has long been suspicious of foreign messaging apps. WeChat’s weak encryption makes it vulnerable.

A directive from Russia’s domestic security service was part of a cache that was advertised online by a cybercrime group.

Stephen DeMaria has overseen the building of “Saturday Night Live” scenery since the show began. At 87, he finally hung up his hammer.

Apple has urged Australia not to follow the European Union in mandating iPhone app sideloading, warning that such policies pose serious privacy and security risks. "This communication comes as the Australian federal government considers new rules that could force Apple to open up its iOS ecosystem, much like what happened in Europe with recent legislation," notes Neowin. Apple claims that allowing alternative app stores has led to increased exposure to malware, scams, and harmful content. From the report: Apple, in its response to this Australian paper (PDF), stated that Australia should not use the EU's Digital Markets Act "as a blueprint". The company's core argument is that the changes mandated by the EU's DMA, which came into full effect in March 2024, introduce serious security and privacy risks for users. Apple claims that allowing sideloading and alternative app stores effectively opens the door for malware, fraud, scams, and other harmful content. The tech company also highlighted specific concerns from its European experience, alleging that its compliance there has led to users being able to install pornography apps and apps that facilitate copyright infringement, things its curated App Store aims to prevent. Apple maintains that its current review process is vital for user protection, and that its often criticized 30% commission applies mainly to the highest earning apps, with most developers paying a lower 15% rate or nothing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The president could tighten federal oversight of the tech titan’s businesses, even if heavy reliance by the Pentagon and NASA on them makes terminating Mr. Musk’s contracts less feasible.