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SpaceX is significantly reducing Falcon 9 launches from Florida this year, ending the Space Coast's decade-long run as the world's busiest spaceport as more missions shift to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The slowdown is expected to continue until Starship begins flying regularly from Florida. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: A Falcon 9 launch early Tuesday was the last planned Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral until SpaceX begins flying Starsh…

President Trump awarded the four-member Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and signed an executive order directing the creation of a new U.S. Space Academy. The proposed academy would train engineers, scientists, technicians, operators, and astronauts for NASA, the Space Force, and the commercial space industry. Houston Public Media reports: The Artemis II crew -- NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen -- retraced hi…

alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy," the team said in a tweet. The posts included con…

Longtime Slashdot reader belmolis writes: Part of New York City's 911 emergency system was offline from about 3:13 a.m. to 10 a.m. on August 18th due to a software update, according to Medical Daily. Of 5,659 calls to the Bronx call center during that period, about 1,700 calls connected but could not be heard by emergency operators. Some were rerouted to other call centers, but an estimated 400 human callers never got through. The potentially serious consequences of delayed response to emergenc…

A federal appeals court has ruled that states can regulate prediction markets like Kalshi as gambling, handing state regulators their biggest legal victory yet against the booming industry. "There are still related lawsuits pending across the country, and legal experts believe the matter will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court," reports CNN. "But Friday's ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the largest courtroom victory to date for the states as they seek to regulate predi…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Over a hundred tech companies -- including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft -- have signed an open letter urging both the private and public sectors to work together to defend themselves from AI-related cyber threats. The letter -- which was also signed by prominent cyber firms like CrowdStrike, Okta, and Fortinet, as well as prominent financial institutions and internet infrastructure firms -- calls for the adoption of new forms of c…

Australia's official music charts will no longer accept songs that are largely or entirely AI-generated, requiring eligible releases to be "substantially human made." The BBC reports: The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said the new code would help "promote the human nature of artistry." It follows a controversy around a cover of Madonna's Like A Prayer by Australian DJ Josh Fawaz which recently topped the ARIA dance singles chart and peaked at number 2 on the country's overall…

Apple is raising Apple TV's U.S. price to $14.99 per month, up from $12.99, while the annual plan jumps from $99 to $119. It's the service's fourth price hike in four years and means the monthly cost has now tripled from its $4.99 launch price in 2019. Apple One's Individual plan is also rising from $19.95 to $21.95 per month. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A US judge ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration broke the law when it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year, finding that the government had unlawfully targeted the AI firm for refusing to comply with defense department demands. "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision. Lin's ruling barred …

Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have ditched their $53 billion pursuit of PayPal, ending a deal that would have been the largest fintech acquisition ever. "Stripe last week agreed to pay $8 billion for AI model marketplace OpenRouter, but a source said that the OpenRouter and PayPal deals were operating on independent tracks," reports Axios. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roblox is restricting games that reward younger players for endlessly consuming autoplaying media feeds. The new restrictions are specifically targeting Roblox experiences like "Steal an Egg," which encouraged players to watch TikTok-style clips for in-game benefits. "Roblox's official alert does not expressly mention SAE, but the new policy is most certainly targeting the viral game first and foremost," reports TechSpot. From the report: The company said games that reward ongoing media consump…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is reportedly considering new tariffs on semiconductors used in the U.S., as tech giants race to beat China in the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out. The duties will be imposed on an expanded range of tech products made alongside chips, including laptops, data center servers and gaming hardware, eight people familiar with the matter told Politico in a report published Thursday. The measure…

Google is adding an "Expert Intelligence" feature to Gemini Notebook (formerly known as NotebookLM) that lets users cite and work directly from more than 100,000 books they own through Google Play Books. Those books can be used as sources for things like quizzes, infographics, and Audio Overviews. Digital Trends reports: For now, Google is offering one free book to users in the US as part of the launch campaign, with a caveat -- "while supplies last." At the moment, Expert Intelligence is only …

Canada is recruiting 64 researchers to universities across the country (source paywalled; alternative source), including 48 from U.S. institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and MIT. The hires are backed by more than $364 million in government funding and are part of a broader effort to attract researchers in fields such as AI, climate science, and medicine. The New York Times reports: While scientists often shy away from political discourse, some are saying the Trump administration's assault on sc…

An anonymous reader quotes a report fro SFGATE: From "rizz" to "meat proxy," words and phrases have fallen in and out of favor for centuries. Culture, politics and technological development have long influenced these trends, and now, new research shows that ChatGPT is beginning to influence how humans communicate. The findings from a team at the Pew Research Center show how, in a short time since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022 and other chatbots followed, the use of certain words and …