Staffers at Film at Lincoln Center keep a list of the incorrect movie titles they’ve heard from patrons. That list is very, very long.

"Saturn and some of its 274 moons are pretty weird," writes Smithsonian magazine: [Saturn moon] Titan has strangely few impact craters, Hyperion is tiny and misshapen, and Iapetus has a tilted orbit. What's more, planets tend to wobble along their rotational axes as they spin, like an off-kilter spinning top in the moments before it topples over. Formally called precession, scientists have long thought that Saturn's wobble rate should match Neptune's because they're probably gravitationally linked. However, data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which studied the ringed planet from 2004 to 2017, revealed that Saturn's precession rate is slightly speedier than Neptune's. In 2022, some researchers suggested that the destruction of a hypothetical moon, called Chrysalis, around 160 million years ago may have knocked Saturn out of sync and formed the pieces that became the planet's rings. But this work implied that Chrysalis probably would've crashed into Titan, posing a major problem, study co-author Matija Äuk, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, tells New Scientist's Leah Crane. In that case, Chrysalis' debris couldn't have become the rings, he says. So, Äuk and his colleagues used computer simulations to investigate what would happen if Chrysalis did smack into Titan. If that happened around 400 million years ago, they found, the crash would've wiped away Titan's craters and made its orbit more elliptical. The altered path may have slowly pushed the trajectories of other moons, which then scraped against one another and left chunks of ice and rock that now make up Saturn's rings. The timing seems to align with the rings' estimated age of roughly 100 million years. Additionally, one piece of kicked-up debris may have formed the weird moon Hyperion, which may have subsequently tilted the orbit of the moon Iapetus, according to the analysis. The scenario could also resolve Saturn's unexpected wobble, which is currently "a little bit too fast," Äuk tells Jacopo Prisco at CNN. The study has been accepted for publication in the Planetary Science Journal, and is already available on the preprint server arXiv.

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As the Mobile World Conference begins in Spain, Lenovo brought a new attachable accessory for their laptops — an AI agent. CNET reports: The little circular module perches on the top of your Lenovo laptop display, attached via the magnetic Magic Bay on the rear. The module is home to an adorable animated companion called Tiko, who you can interact with via text or voice... [I]t can start and stop your music, open a web page for you or answer a question. You can also interact with it by using emoji. Give it a book emoji, for example, and it will pop on its glasses and sit reading with you while you work... The company wants to sell the Magic Bay accessory later this year — although it doesn't know exactly when, or how much it will cost. It even comes with a timer (for working in Pomodoro-style intervals) — but Lenovo has also created another "concept" AI companion that CNET describes as "a kind of stationary tabletop robot, not dissimilar to the Pixar lamp, but with an orb for a head." With a combination of cameras, microphones and projectors, the AI Workmate can undertake a variety of tasks, including helping you generate and display presentations or turn your written work or art into a digital asset... It's robotic head swivelled around and projected the slides onto the wall next to me. Lenovo created a video to show this "next-generation AI work companion" — with animated eyes — "designed to transform how modern professionals interact with their workspace." It bridges the physical and digital worlds — capturing handwritten notes, recognizing gestures, summarizing tasks, and proactively helping you stay ahead of your day. The moment you sit down, Lenovo AI Workmate greets you, surfaces priority tasks, and keeps your work organized without switching apps or losing context. From turning sketches into presentations to projecting information for instant collaboration, [it] brings on-device AI intelligence directly to your desk — secure, responsive, and always ready... It's not just software. It's a smarter way to work. It looks like Lenovo once considered naming it "AI Sphere" (since that name still appears in its description on YouTube). Lenovo also showed another "concept" laptop idea that PC Magazine called "futuristic": The ThinkBook Modular AI PC looks like a traditional laptop at first glance, but a second, removable screen fastens onto the lid. You can swap that screen onto the keyboard deck (in place of the keyboard, which can then be used wirelessly), or use it alongside the laptop as a portable monitor, attached via an included cable.... While Lenovo is still working on this device, and it's very much in the concept phase, it feels like one of its best-thought-out prototypes, one likely to make it to store shelves at some point. Another "concept" laptop is Lenovo's Yoga Book Pro 3D Concept, ofering directional backlight and eye-tracking technology for the illusion of 3D (playing slightly different images to each of your eyes). It offers gesture control for 3D models, two OLED displays, and some magical "snap-on pads" which, when laid on the display — make the GUI appear on the screen for a new control menu to "provide quick-access shortcuts for adjusting lighting, viewing angle, and tone".

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The Afghan military said it had thwarted a Pakistani airstrike on the former U.S. base, Bagram airfield, amid an intensifying campaign that has targeted dozens of military sites across the country.

The Olympic athletes are the subject of uncomfortable public comparisons that present online narratives that overlap more than both sides may realize.

Parents in China are turning to A.I. chatbots and other tools to help their children gain an edge and ease the fighting over homework.

The shooter killed two and injured 14 early Sunday at an Austin bar. The police and the F.B.I. searched the home of a suspect who was shot and killed by authorities at the scene.

The vampire drama was named outstanding cast and, in an upset, its star won best lead actor. Other victors included Catherine O’Hara for “The Studio.”

Timothée Chalamet, Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti walked the red carpet for the Screen Actor Guild’s Actor Awards on Sunday night.

If U.S. automakers turn their backs on electric vehicles, "their sales outside the U.S. will shrivel," warns Bloomberg. [Alternate URL.] They're already falling behind on the technology, relying on a 100% U.S. tariff on Chinese EVs to keep surging rivals like BYD Co. at bay.... While the American automakers "mostly understand the challenge in front of them, they don't have full plans" to confront it [said Mark Wakefield, head of the global automotive practice at consultant AlixPartners]... "Now is a great time for the V-8 engine," said Ryan Shaughnessy, the Mustang's brand manager. "We've done extensive customer research in multiple cities, looking at a variety of powertrains, and the V-8 is always the number-one choice." It isn't just customers. U.S. automakers have long been run by "car guys:" enthusiasts who live for the bone-shaking rumble of a big engine. For them, quiet and smooth EVs — even the absurdly fast ones — can't satisfy that craving. They're convinced many American car buyers share the same enthusiasm for what Shaughnessy described as "the sound and roar of the V-8." Wall Street couldn't be happier with the new direction... Ford's fortunes are also on the rise, as it's predicting operating profits could grow by as much as 47% this year to $10 billion. Ford's stock has risen nearly 50% over the last 12 months. Under the previous environmental rules, automakers effectively had to sell zero-emission vehicles in growing numbers to offset their gas-guzzlers. When they fell short, they had to buy regulatory credits from EV companies such as Tesla Inc. or face penalties. GM spent $3.5 billion on credits from 2022 to the middle of 2025. Now, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst Ryan Brinkman, GM and Ford each have "billion dollar tailwinds"... [T]he hangover from all that new horsepower could leave US automakers lagging their Chinese rivals who already build the world's most advanced — and lowest priced — electric cars. Indeed, there is much talk in Detroit about the competitive tsunami that will be unleashed on American automakers once Chinese car companies find a way to break through trade barriers now protecting the US market. [Ford Chief Executive Officer Jim] Farley even calls it an "existential threat"... "They're going to build as many V-8 engines and big trucks as they can get out the factory doors," said Sam Fiorani, vice president of vehicle forecasting for consultant Auto Forecast Solutions. "And as the rest of the world develops modern drivetrains, newer batteries and better electric vehicles, GM and Ford in particular are going to find themselves falling even further behind." The article notes GM "continues to develop battery-powered vehicles, and CEO Mary Barra said the automaker would begin offering a 'handful' of hybrids soon," while Ford and Stellantis "have plans to launch extended-range electric vehicles, or EREVs, a new kind of plug-in hybrid with an internal combustion engine that recharges the battery as the vehicle drives down the road." But while automakers may be investing in future EV vehicles, they're also "leaning into the lucre that comes from selling millions of fossil-fuel vehicles in a rare moment of loosened regulation."

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How long prices remain high will depend on what the United States, Israel and Iran do next.

In a brief interview, he said the country’s hardened military should simply surrender their weapons to the Iranian public.

The Norwegian Consumer Council, a government funded organization advocating for consumer's rights, released a report on the trend of "enshittification" in digital consumer goods and services, suggesting ways consumers for consumers to resist. But they've also dramatized the problem with a funny four-minute video about the man whose calls for him to make things shitty for people. "It's not just your imagination. Digital services are getting worse," the video concludes — before adding that "Luckily, it doesn't have to be this way." The Consumer Council's announcement recommends: Stronger rights for consumers to control, adapt, repair, and alter their products and services, Interoperability, data portability, and decentralisation as the norm, so the threshold for moving to different services becomes as low as possible, Deterrent and vigorous enforcement of competition law, so that Big Tech companies are not allowed to indiscriminately acquire start-ups, competitors or otherwise steer the market to their advantage, Better financing of initiatives to build, maintain or improve alternative digital services and infrastructure based on open source code and open protocols, Reduce public sector dependence on big tech, to regain control and to contribute to a functioning market for service providers that respect fundamental rights, Deterrent and consistent enforcement of other laws, including consumer and data protection law. The Norwegian Consumer Council is also joining 58 organisations and experts in a letter asking the Norwegian government to rebalance power with enforcement resources and by prioritizing the procurement of services based on open source code. And "Our sister organisations are sending similar letters to their own governments in 12 countries." They're also sending a second letter to the European Commission with 29 civil society organisations (including the EFF and Amnesty International) warning about the risks of deregulation and calling for reducing dependency on big tech. Thanks to Slashdot reader DeanonymizedCoward for sharing the news.

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"Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises," reports New Scientist: Kenneth Payne at King's College London set three leading large language models — GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash — against each other in simulated war games. The scenarios involved intense international standoffs, including border disputes, competition for scarce resources and existential threats to regime survival. The AIs were given an escalation ladder, allowing them to choose actions ranging from diplomatic protests and complete surrender to full strategic nuclear war... In 95 per cent of the simulated games, at least one tactical nuclear weapon was deployed by the AI models. "The nuclear taboo doesn't seem to be as powerful for machines [as] for humans," says Payne. What's more, no model ever chose to fully accommodate an opponent or surrender, regardless of how badly they were losing. At best, the models opted to temporarily reduce their level of violence. They also made mistakes in the fog of war: accidents happened in 86 per cent of the conflicts, with an action escalating higher than the AI intended to, based on its reasoning... OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, the companies behind the three AI models used in this study, didn't respond to New Scientist's request for comment. The article includes this comment from Tong Zhao, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace think tank. "It is possible the issue goes beyond the absence of emotion. More fundamentally, AI models may not understand 'stakes' as humans perceive them." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Tufriast for sharing the article.

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Despite warnings after an earlier wave of killings, top Iranian officials gathered in person, and Israel seized the chance to kill Iran’s supreme leader.

Slashdot reader JustAnotherOldGuy shared this report from the Guardian: Chronic ocean heating is fuelling a "staggering and deeply concerning" loss of marine life, a study has found, with fish levels falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade. Researchers examined the year-to-year change of 33,000 populations in the northern hemisphere between 1993 and 2021, and isolated the effect of the decadal rate of seabed warming from short shifts such as marine heatwaves. They found the drop in biomass from chronic heating to be as high as 19.8% in a single year. "To put it simply, the faster the ocean floor warms, the faster we lose fish," said Shahar Chaikin, a marine ecologist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Spain and the study's lead author. "A 7.2% decline for every tenth of a degree per decade might sound small," he added. "But compounded over time, across entire ocean basins, it represents a staggering and deeply concerning loss of marine life."

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"Anthropic may have lost out on doing business with the US government," reports Engadget, "but it's gained enough popularity to earn the number one spot on the App Store's Top Free Apps leaderboard." Anthropic's Claude AI assistant had already leaped to the #2 slot on Apple's chart by late Friday," CNBC reported Saturday: The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in news headlines, stemming from its refusal to have its models used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons... OpenAI's ChatGPT sat at No. 1 on the App Store rankings on Saturday, while Google's Gemini was at No. 3... On Jan. 30, [Claude] was ranked No. 131 in the U.S., and it bounced between the top 20 and the top 50 for much of February, according to data from analytics company Sensor Tower... [And Friday night, for 85.3 million followers] pop singer Katy Perry posted a screenshot of Anthropic's Pro subscription for consumers, with a heart superimposed over it. Sunday Engadget reported Anthropic's "very public spat" with the Pentagon "led to a wave of user support that finally allowed Claude to dethrone OpenAI's ChatGPT on the App Store as the most downloaded free app." . Friday Anthropic posted "We are deeply grateful to our users, and to the industry peers, policymakers, veterans, and members of the public who have voiced their support in recent days. Thank you. "

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The Pentagon and Anthropic were close to agreeing on the use of artificial intelligence. But strong personalities, mutual dislike and a rival company unraveled a deal.

Heinous allegations have prompted state officials to restart an inquiry, which went cold in 2019, into the convicted sex offender’s lesser-known property.

Engadget reports: In a lengthy post on Truth Social on February 27, President Trump ordered all federal agencies to "immediately cease all use of Anthropic's technology" following strong disagreements between the Department of Defense and the AI company. A few hours later, the U.S. conducted a major air attack on Iran with the help of Anthropic's AI tools, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Even Trump's post noted there would be a six-month phase-out for Anthropic's technology (adding that Anthropic "better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.") Anthropic's Claude technology was also used by the U.S. military less than two months ago in its operation in Venezuela — reportedly making them the first AI developer known to be used in a classified U.S. War Department operation. The Wall Street Journal reported Anthropic's technology found its way into the mission through Anthropic's contract with Palintir.

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