What Happened to the Northern Lights?
A geomagnetic storm that was forecast to produce streaks of colorful light across much of the country was weaker than expected.
Low Turnout in Mexico’s Judicial Election Fuels Legitimacy Concerns
Nearly 90 percent of voters did not cast ballots on Sunday, one of the lowest turnouts in any federal election since Mexico became a democracy.
Mount Etna Erupts in Sicily, Sending Hikers Scrambling for Cover
Videos circulating on social media showed visitors rushing to descend the mountain as volcanic plumes rose overhead.
Suspect in Colorado Attack Was Charged With a Hate Crime
Also, coffee was linked to healthy aging. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.
David Cope, Godfather of A.I. Music, Is Dead at 83
His EMI algorithm, an early form of artificial intelligence that he developed in the 1980s, prompted searching questions about the limits of human creativity.
Trump Administration to Open Alaska Wilderness to Drilling and Mining
The Interior Department plans to repeal Biden-era protections across the state’s ecologically sensitive North Slope.
A.I. Is Coming For the Coders Who Made It
A.I.’s takeover of jobs may come first for computer science.
Drinking Coffee Is Associated With a Longer, Healthier Life, According to a New Study
A new study of over 47,000 women found links between coffee drinking and healthy aging. Here’s what we know.
Snowflake Finance VP Says Big Companies Migrate at a Glacial Pace
Snowflake's growth among large enterprise customers faces a significant bottleneck tied to the sluggish replacement cycles of existing on-premises data warehouse systems, according to finance vice president Jimmy Sexton. Speaking at a Jefferies conference, Sexton explained that while the cloud data company secured two deals worth more than $100 million each in the financial services sector during its latest quarter, such migrations unfold over multiple years as "cumbersome projects."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
What if Google Just Broke Itself Up? A Tech Insider Makes the Case.
Prosecutors aren’t the only ones arguing for a smaller Google. Some critics say it might be better for investors, customers and innovation.
ISP Settles With Record Labels That Demanded Mass Termination of Internet Users
An anonymous reader shares a report: Internet service provider Frontier Communications agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by major record labels that demanded mass disconnections of broadband users accused of piracy. Universal, Sony, and Warner sued Frontier in 2021. In a notice of settlement filed last week in US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the parties agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice, with each side to pay its own fees and costs.
The record labels and Frontier simultaneously announced a settlement of similar claims in a Bankruptcy Court case in the same district. Frontier also settled with movie companies in April of this year, just before a trial was scheduled to begin. (Frontier exited bankruptcy in 2021.) [...] Regardless of what is in the agreement, the question of whether ISPs should have to crack down more harshly on users accused of piracy could be decided by the US Supreme Court.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Web-Scraping AI Bots Cause Disruption For Scientific Databases and Journals
Automated web-scraping bots seeking training data for AI models are flooding scientific databases and academic journals with traffic volumes that render many sites unusable. The online image repository DiscoverLife, which contains nearly 3 million species photographs, started receiving millions of daily hits in February this year that slowed the site to the point that it no longer loaded, Nature reported Monday.
The surge has intensified since the release of DeepSeek, a Chinese large language model that demonstrated effective AI could be built with fewer computational resources than previously thought. This revelation triggered what industry observers describe as an "explosion of bots seeking to scrape the data needed to train this type of model." The Confederation of Open Access Repositories reported that more than 90% of 66 surveyed members experienced AI bot scraping, with roughly two-thirds suffering service disruptions. Medical journal publisher BMJ has seen bot traffic surpass legitimate user activity, overloading servers and interrupting customer services.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft Mandates Universal USB-C Functionality To End 'USB-C Port Confusion' on Windows 11 Devices
Microsoft will require all USB-C ports on Windows 11 certified laptops and tablets to support data transfer, charging, and display functionality under updated hardware compatibility program rules. The mandate targets devices shipping with Windows 11 24H2 and aims to eliminate what Microsoft -- and the industry -- calls "USB-C port confusion," where identical-looking ports offer different capabilities across PC manufacturers.
The Windows Hardware Compatibility Program updates also require USB 40Gbps ports to maintain full compatibility with both USB4 and Thunderbolt 3 peripherals.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple Challenges EU Order To Open iOS To Rivals
Apple has filed an appeal with the European Union's General Court in Luxembourg challenging the bloc's order requiring greater iOS interoperability with rival companies' products under the Digital Markets Act. The EU executive in March directed Apple to make its mobile operating system more compatible with competitors' apps, headphones, and virtual reality headsets by granting developers and device makers access to system components typically reserved for Apple's own products.
Apple contends the requirements threaten its seamless user experience while creating security risks, noting that companies have already requested access to sensitive user data including notification content and complete WiFi network histories. The company faces potential fines of up to 10% of its worldwide annual revenue if found in violation of the DMA's interoperability rules designed to curb Big Tech market power.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Business Insider Recommended Nonexistent Books To Staff As It Leans Into AI
An anonymous reader shares a report: Business Insider announced this week that it wants staff to better incorporate AI into its journalism. But less than a year ago, the company had to quietly apologize to some staff for accidentally recommending that they read books that did not appear to exist but instead may have been generated by AI.
In an email to staff last May, a senior editor at Business Insider sent around a list of what she called "Beacon Books," a list of memoirs and other acclaimed business nonfiction books, with the idea of ensuring staff understood some of the fundamental figures and writing powering good business journalism.
Many of the recommendations were well-known recent business, media, and tech nonfiction titles such as Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin, DisneyWar by James Stewart, and Super Pumped by Mike Isaac. But a few were unfamiliar to staff. Simply Target: A CEO's Lessons in a Turbulent Time and Transforming an Iconic Brand by former Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel was nowhere to be found. Neither was Jensen Huang: the Founder of Nvidia, which was supposedly published by the company Charles River Editors in 2019.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
How Stack Overflow's Reputation System Led To Its Own Downfall
A new analysis argues that Stack Overflow's decline began years before AI tools delivered the "final blow" to the once-dominant programming forum. The site's monthly questions dropped from a peak of 200,000 to a steep collapse that began in earnest after ChatGPT's 2023 launch, but usage had been declining since 2014, according to data cited in the InfoWorld analysis.
The platform's remarkable reputation system initially elevated it above competitors by allowing users to earn points and badges for helpful contributions, but that same system eventually became its downfall, the piece argues. As Stack Overflow evolved into a self-governing platform where high-reputation users gained moderation powers, the community transformed from a welcoming space for developer interaction into what the author compares to a "Stanford Prison Experiment" where moderators systematically culled interactions they deemed irrelevant.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Going To an Office and Pretending To Work: A Business That's Booming in China
A new business model has emerged across China's major cities, El Pais reports, where companies charge unemployed individuals to rent desk space and pretend to work, responding to social pressure around joblessness amid rising youth unemployment rates. These services charge between 30 and 50 yuan ($4-7) daily for desks, Wi-Fi, coffee, and lunch in spaces designed to mimic traditional work environments.
Some operations assign fictitious tasks and organize supervisory rounds to enhance the illusion, while premium services allow clients to roleplay as managers or stage workplace conflicts for additional fees. The trend has gained significant traction on Xiaohongshu, China's equivalent to Instagram, where advertisements for "pretend-to-work companies" accumulate millions of views. Youth unemployment reached 16.5% among 16-to-24-year-olds in March 2025, according to National Bureau of Statistics data, while overall urban unemployment stood at 5.3% in the first quarter.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AI's Adoption and Growth Truly is 'Unprecedented'
"If the adoption of AI feels different from any tech revolution you may have experienced before — mobile, social, cloud computing — it actually is," writes TechCrunch. They cite a new 340-page report from venture capitalist Mary Meeker that details how AI adoption has outpaced any other tech in human history — and uses the word "unprecedented" on 51 pages:
ChatGPT reaching 800 million users in 17 months: unprecedented. The number of companies and the rate at which so many others are hitting high annual recurring revenue rates: also unprecedented. The speed at which costs of usage are dropping: unprecedented. While the costs of training a model (also unprecedented) is up to $1 billion, inference costs — for example, those paying to use the tech — has already dropped 99% over two years, when calculating cost per 1 million tokens, she writes, citing research from Stanford. The pace at which competitors are matching each other's features, at a fraction of the cost, including open source options, particularly Chinese models: unprecedented...
Meanwhile, chips from Google, like its TPU (tensor processing unit), and Amazon's Trainium, are being developed at scale for their clouds — that's moving quickly, too. "These aren't side projects — they're foundational bets," she writes.
"The one area where AI hasn't outpaced every other tech revolution is in financial returns..." the article points out.
"[T]he jury is still out over which of the current crop of companies will become long-term, profitable, next-generation tech giants."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Inside Trump’s Attack on Harvard
The battle between Harvard University and the Trump administration has continued to escalate. Michael C. Bender, a correspondent for The New York Times in Washington, surveys the administration’s actions against the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university.
She Crowdfunded Surgery to Repair Damage From Genital Cutting
Shamsa Sharawe made her name campaigning against female genital cutting. Then she heard about surgery to rebuild what had been taken from her.