Russia Still Using Black Market Starlink Terminals On Its Drones schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black: In its war with the Ukraine, it appears Russia is still managing to obtain black market Starlink mini-terminals for use on its drones, despite an effort since 2024 to block access. [Imagery from eastern Ukraine shows a Russian Molniya-type drone outfitted with a mini-Starlink terminal, reinforcin ... ⌘ Read more

Russian Launch Site Mishap Shows Perilous State of Storied Space Program A Soyuz launch at Baikonur damaged Russia's only launchpad capable of sending astronauts and crucial propellant to the ISS. "The rocket itself headed to space without incident, taking three astronauts -- Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev of Russia and Chris Williams of NASA -- to the space station," reports the New York Ti ... ⌘ Read more

Samsung Debuts Its First Trifold Phone At an event in Seoul on Tuesday, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z TriFold, a dual-hinged smartphone that unfolds into a 10-inch tablet (source paywalled; alternative source). It launches on Dec. 12 in Korea for about $2,450. The company plans to sell the phone in the U.S., but hasn't shared pricing. Bloomberg reports: Samsung's device has a different hinge design, folding inward from two sides wher ... ⌘ Read more

'We Built a Database of 290,000 English Medieval Soldiers' An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Conversation, written by authors Adrian R. Bell, Anne Curry, and Jason Sadler: When you picture medieval warfare, you might think of epic battles and famous monarchs. But what about the everyday soldiers who actually filled the ranks? Until recently, their stories were scattered across handwritten manuscripts i ... ⌘ Read more

Swiss Illegal Cryptocurrency Mixing Service Shut Down Longtime Slashdot reader krouic shares a report from Europol: From November 24-28, 2025, Europol supported an action week conducted by law enforcement authorities from Switzerland and Germany in Zurich, Switzerland. The operation focused on taking down the illegal cryptocurrency mixing service Cryptomixer, which is suspected of facilitating cybercrime and money laundering. ... ⌘ Read more

Smartphones At Age 12 Linked To Worse Health A new study from the University of Pennsylvania finds that preteens who own smartphones by age 12 have significantly higher odds of depression, obesity, and poor sleep compared to their peers. Axios reports: Kids who owned a smartphone at age 12 were found to have about 31% higher odds of depression, 40% higher odds of obesity and 62% higher odds of insufficient sleep than their peers ... ⌘ Read more

Apple AI Chief Retiring After Siri Failure Apple's longtime AI chief John Giannandrea is retiring, with former Microsoft and Google AI leader Amar Subramanya stepping in to take over. MacRumors notes the retirement comes after the company's repeated delays in delivering its revamped Siri and internal turmoil that led to an AI team exodus. From the report: Giannandrea will serve as an advisor between now and 2026, with former Micro ... ⌘ Read more

Flock Uses Overseas Gig Workers To Build Its Surveillance AI An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Flock, the automatic license plate reader and AI-powered camera company, uses overseas workers from Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms, with training material telling workers how to review and categorize footage including images people and vehicles in the United States, according to material ... ⌘ Read more

Austria's Rebel Nuns Refuse To Give Up Instagram To Stay In Their Convent Three Austrian nuns in their 80s who escaped a care home and reclaimed their old convent are refusing the church's offer to stay because it requires them to quit Instagram, stop speaking to the press, and avoid legal counsel -- conditions they call a gag order. Their standoff with church authorities has now escalated to the Vatic ... ⌘ Read more

Zipcar To End UK Operations "The car-sharing company, first launched in the U.S. in 2000, has been active in the UK since 2010 and has just under half a million members," writes Slashdot reader guesstral. "'I'm writing to let you know that we are proposing to cease the UK operations of Zipcar,' wrote Zipcar UK's general manager, James Taylor, in an email to members today. He went on to say that Zipcar will temporarily suspend new bookings after D ... ⌘ Read more

Korea's Coupang Says Data Breach Exposed Nearly 34 Million Customers' Personal Information An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: South Korean e-commerce platform Coupang over the weekend said nearly 34 million Korean customers' personal information had been leaked in a data breach that had been ongoing for more than five months. The company said it first detected the unaut ... ⌘ Read more

New York Now Requires Retailers To Tell You When AI Sets Your Price New York has become the first state in the nation to enact a law requiring retailers to disclose when AI and personal data are being used to set individualized prices [non-paywalled source] -- a measure that lawyers say will make algorithmic pricing "the next big battleground in A.I. regulation."

The law, enacted through the state budget, ... ⌘ Read more

Singapore Extends Secondary School Smartphone Ban To Cover Entire School Day Singapore's Ministry of Education has announced that secondary school students will be banned from using smartphones and smartwatches throughout the entire school day starting January 2026, extending current restrictions beyond regular lesson time to cover recess, co-curricular activities, and supplementary lessons. Under ... ⌘ Read more

A Windows Update Broke Login Button, and Microsoft's Advice is To Click Where It Used To Be Microsoft has acknowledged that a recent Windows preview update, KB5064081, contains a bug that renders the password icon invisible on the lock screen, leaving users to click on what appears to be empty space to enter their credentials.

The issue affects Windows Insider channel users who instal ... ⌘ Read more

Waymo Has A Charging Problem The Santa Monica City Council has unanimously voted to order Waymo to halt overnight charging operations at two outdoor depots near Broadway and 14th Street after months of resident complaints about constant beeping from reverse sensors, noise from charging equipment, traffic congestion and flashing lights between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. As many as 56 autonomous vehicles charge at the two sites. It's unclear whether Waymo ... ⌘ Read more

Netflix Kills Casting From Phones An anonymous reader writes: Netflix has removed the ability to cast shows and movies from phones to TVs, unless subscribers are using older casting devices. An updated help page on Netflix's website, first reported by Android Authority, says that the streaming service "no longer supports casting shows from a mobile device to most TVs and TV-streaming devices," and instead directs users to navigate ... ⌘ Read more

Colleges Are Preparing To Self-Lobotomize The skills that future graduates will most need in an age of automation -- creative thinking, critical analysis, the capacity to learn new things -- are precisely those that a growing body of research suggests may be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process, yet universities across the United States are now racing to embed the technology into every dimension of their curricula.

O ... ⌘ Read more

Top Consultancies Freeze Starting Salaries as AI Threatens 'Pyramid' Model Major consulting firms including McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group and Bain have frozen starting salaries for the third consecutive year as AI reshapes how these companies think about their traditional reliance on large cohorts of junior analysts. Job offers for 2026 show undergraduate packages holding steady at $135,000-$140,00 ... ⌘ Read more

UK 'Not in Favor' of Dimming the Sun The British government said it opposes attempts to cool the planet by spraying millions of tons of dust into the atmosphere -- but did not close the door to a debate on regulating the technology. From a report: The comments in parliament Thursday came after a POLITICO investigation revealed an Israeli-U.S. company Stardust Solutions aimed to be capable of deploying solar radiation modification, as the t ... ⌘ Read more

India Orders Mobile Phones Preloaded With Government App To Ensure Cyber Safety An anonymous reader shares a report: India's telecoms ministry has privately asked all smartphone makers to preload all new devices with a state-owned cyber security app, a government order showed, a move set to spark a tussle with Apple, which typically dislikes such directives.

[...] The November 28 order, seen ... ⌘ Read more

Airbus Says Most of Its Recalled 6,000 A320 Jets Now Modified Airbus said Monday that the vast majority of around 6,000 A320-family jets affected by an emergency software recall have now been modified, leaving fewer than 100 aircraft still requiring work after a frantic weekend of repairs prompted by the discovery of a vulnerability to solar flares. The unprecedented recall -- described as the broadest emergency a ... ⌘ Read more

China's Central Bank Flags Money Laundering and Fraud Concerns With Stablecoins China's central bank has flagged stablecoins as a specific concern in its latest push against virtual currencies, warning that the tokens fail to meet requirements for customer identification and anti-money-laundering controls and risk being used for fraud, money laundering, and unauthorized cross-border fund transfers.

T ... ⌘ Read more

Former CEO Blasts Intel's 'Decay': 'We Don't Know How To Engineer Anymore' Pat Gelsinger, the former Intel CEO who was pushed out in late 2024 during a five-year turnaround effort, told the Financial Times that the "decay" he found when he returned to the company in 2021 was "deeper and harder than I'd realized." In the five years before his return, "not a single product was delivered on schedule," he said. "Bas ... ⌘ Read more

Two Former US Congressmen Announce Fundraising for Candidates Supporting AI Regulation Two former U.S. congressmen announced this week that they're launching two tax-exempt fundraising groups "to back candidates who support AI safeguards," reports The Hill, "as a counterweight to industry-backed groups."

Former Representatives Chris Stewart (Republican-Utah) and Brad Carson (Democrat-Okl ... ⌘ Read more

Amazon and Google Announce Resilient 'Multicloud' Networking Service Plus an Open API for Interoperability Their announcement calls it "more than a multicloud solution," saying it's "a step toward a more open cloud environment. The API specifications developed for this product are open for other providers and partners to adopt, as we aim to simplify global connectivity f ... ⌘ Read more

Russia Left Without Access to ISS Following Structure Collapse During Thursday's Launch After a successful November 27th launch to the International Space Station, Russia discovered an accident had occurred on their launch site's mobile maintenance cabin — when a drone spotted it lying upside down in a flame trench.

"The main issue with the structure collapse is that it puts Site 31/6 ... ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel 6.18 Officially Released From the blog 9to5Linux:

Linux kernel 6.18 is now available for download, as announced today by Linus Torvalds himself, featuring enhanced hardware support through new and updated drivers, improvements to file systems and networking, and more.

Highlights of Linux 6.18 include the removal of the Bcachefs file system, support for the Rust Binder driver, a new dm-pcache device-mapper target to enable ... ⌘ Read more

How OpenAI Reacted When Some ChatGPT Users Lost Touch with Reality Some AI experts were reportedly shocked ChatGPT wasn't fully tested for sycophancy by last spring. "OpenAI did not see the scale at which disturbing conversations were happening," writes the New York Times — sharing what they learned after interviewing more than 40 current and former OpenAI employees, including safety engineers, executives, and re ... ⌘ Read more

'Crime Rings Enlist Hackers To Hijack Trucks' It's "a complex mix of internet access and physical execution," says the chief informance security officer at Cequence Security.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 summarizes this article from The Wall Street Journal:

By breaking into carriers' online systems, cyber-powered criminals are making off with truckloads of electronics, beverages and other goods In the most recent tactics id ... ⌘ Read more

Can AI Transform Space Propulsion? An anonymous reader shared this report from The Conversation:

To make interplanetary travel faster, safer, and more efficient, scientists need breakthroughs in propulsion technology. Artificial intelligence is one type of technology that has begun to provide some of these necessary breakthroughs. We're a team of engineers and graduate students who are studying how AI in general, and a subset of AI call ... ⌘ Read more

Info to Decipher Secret Message in Kryptos Sculpture at CIA HQ Auctioned for Nearly $1M An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:

The information needed to decipher the last remaining unsolved secret message embedded within a sculpture at CIA headquarters in Virginia sold at auction for nearly $1 million, the auction house announced Friday. The winner will get a pri ... ⌘ Read more

Morgan Stanley Warns Oracle Credit Protection Nearing Record High A gauge of risk on Oracle debt "reached a three-year high in November," reports Bloomberg.

"And things are only going to get worse in 2026 unless the database giant is able to assuage investor anxiety about a massive artificial intelligence spending spree, according to Morgan Stanley."

A funding gap, swelling balance sheet and obsolesce ... ⌘ Read more

What Happens When You Kick Millions of Teens Off Social Media? Australia's About to Find Out 27 million people live in Australia. But there's a big change coming if you're under 16, reports CNN:

From December 10, sites that meet the Australian government's definition of an "age-restricted social media platform" will need to show that they're doing enough to eject or block children u ... ⌘ Read more

Amazon Tells Its Engineers: Use Our AI Coding Tool 'Kiro' "Amazon suggested its engineers eschew AI code generation tools from third-party companies in favor of its own ," reports Reuters, "a move to bolster its proprietary Kiro service, which it released in July, according to an internal memo viewed by Reuters."

In the memo, posted to Amazon's internal news site, the company said, "While we continue to support ex ... ⌘ Read more

Is OpenAI Preparing to Bring Ads to ChatGPT? "OpenAI is now internally testing 'ads' inside ChatGPT," reports BleepingComputer:

Up until now, the ChatGPT experience has been completelyfree. While there are premium plans and models, you don't see GPT sell you products or show ads. On the other hand, Google Search has ads that influence your buying behaviour. OpenAI is planning to replicate a similar experience.

As spotted [by softwa ... ⌘ Read more

AI Can Already Do the Work of 12% of America's Workforce, Researchers Find An anonymous reader shared this report from CBS News:

Artificial intelligence can do the work currently performed by nearly 12% of America's workforce, according to a recentstudy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers, relying on a metric called the "Iceberg Index" that measures a job's potential to be aut ... ⌘ Read more

Benedict Cumberbatch Films Two Bizarre Holiday Ads: for 'World of Tanks' and Amazon "There are times when World of Tanks feels less like a videogame and more like a giant ad budget looking for something to be spent on," writes PC Gamer.

This year, all those huge sacks with dollar signs on them have been thrown Benedict Cumberbatch's way, making him the game's newest "Holiday Ambassador" and t ... ⌘ Read more

Browser Extension 'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It's 2022 "The internet is being increasingly polluted by AI generated text, images and video," argues the site for a new browser extension called Slop Evader. It promises to use Google's search API "to only return content published before Nov 30th, 2022" — the day ChatGPT launched — "so you can be sure that it was written or produced by the human han ... ⌘ Read more

AI Helps Drive Record $11.8B in Black Friday Online Spending Earlier this month MasterCard noted that even Walmart now allows its customers to make purchases through ChatGPT. And after polling more than 4,000 consumers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and UAE, they found "more than four in 10 consumers already use AI tools to help them shop, including 61% of Gen Z and 57% of millennials."

Many (50% of Gen Z and 49% of millenn ... ⌘ Read more

Are There More Linux Users Than We Think? "By my count, Linux has over 11% of the desktop market," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols:

In StatCounter's latest US numbers, which cover through October, Linux shows up as only 3.49%. But if you look closer, "unknown" accounts for 4.21%. Allow me to make an educated guess here: I suspect those unknown desktops are actually running Linux. What else could it be? FreeBSD? Unix? OS/2? Unl ... ⌘ Read more

Scientists Discover People Act More Altruistic When Batman Is Present Psychology Today reports:

In a study conducted in Milan, Italy, and published in November 2025, the sight of a person dressed as Batman led to a nearly doubled rate of people giving up their seat to a pregnant woman. Over the course of 138 subway rides, researchers found that people who saw "Batman" standing near the pregnant woman ... ⌘ Read more

Defense Company Announces an AI-Powered Dome to Shield Cities and Infrastructure From Attacks An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:

Italian defense company Leonardo on Thursday unveiled plans for an AI-powered shield for cities and critical infrastructure, adding to Europe's push to ramp up sovereign defense capabilities amid rising geopolitical tensions.

The system, ... ⌘ Read more

The Battle Over Africa's Great Untapped Resource: IP Addresses In his mid-20s, Lu Heng "got an idea that has made him a lot richer," writes the Wall Street Journal.

He scooped up 10 million unused IP addresses, mostly form Africa, and then leases them to companies, mostly outside Africa, "that need them badly."

[A]round half of internet traffic continues to use IPv4, because changing to IPv6 can be expensive a ... ⌘ Read more

Hundreds of Free Software Supporters Tuned in For 'FSF40' Hackathon The Free Software Foundation describes how "After months of preparation and excitement, we finally came together on November 21 for a global online hackathon to support free software projects and "put a spotlight on the difficult and often thankless work that free software hackers carry out..."

Based on how many of you dropped in over the wee ... ⌘ Read more

63% of Americans Polled say Four-Year College Degrees Aren't Worth the Cost Almost two-thirds of registered U.S. voters "say that a four-year college degree isn't worth the cost," according to a new NBC News poll:

Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is "worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime," while 63% agree more with the con ... ⌘ Read more

Uber Launches Driverless Robotaxi Service in Abu Dhabi, and Plans Many More "A year after launching a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi, Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide and partner Uber can finally call that service driverless," reports TechCrunch. A company official hailed it as "a historic transportation milestone, as the first driverless AV deployment outside of the U.S ... ⌘ Read more

How Bad Will RAM and Memory Shortages Get? Digital Trends reports: A wave of shortages now threatens to ripple across RAM, SSDs, and even hard drives, affecting not only performance-hungry rigs but also everyday systems.

— CyberPowerPC has publicly confirmed it will raise prices on all systems starting December 7th due to RAM costs spiking by 500% and SSD prices doubling since October. — Memory suppliers warn of a global DRAM ... ⌘ Read more

New Hyperloop Projects Continue in Europe Hyperloop One ceased operations in December 2023, notes CNN. "Yet nearly two years on, in other parts of the world, hyperloop projects are ongoing." For example, Rotterdam-based Hardt Hyperloop has a cool web site — and the company's managing director tells CNN that hyperloops are the only "actionable, sustainable solution to replace short-haul air travel" over distances greater than 300 mil ... ⌘ Read more

Viral Song Created with Suno's genAI Removed From Streaming Platforms, Re-Released With Human Vocals An EDM song by the British group Haven ran into trouble in October after it shared clips of upcoming song "I Run" on TikTok.

The song "was an overnight viral sensation online," writes Digital Music News — racking up millions of plays "even before it hit streaming serv ... ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Partners Amass $100 Billion Debt Pile To Fund Its Ambitions OpenAI's data centre partners are on course to amass almost $100 billion in borrowing tied to the lossmaking start-up, as the ChatGPT maker benefits from a debt-fuelled spending spree without taking on financial risks itself. Financial Times: SoftBank, Oracle and CoreWeave have borrowed at least $30 billion to invest in the start-up or help build i ... ⌘ Read more