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Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: In Melania and the Robot, the New York Times reports on First Lady Melania Trump's inaugural Fostering the Future Together Coalition Summit, which brought together international leaders, First Spouses from around the world, tech leaders, educators, and nonprofits to collaborate on practical solutions that expand access to educational tools while strengthening protections for children in digital environments (Day 2 WH summary). The Times begins: "On Wednes…

Thirty years after the alleged 1996 "ET of Varginha" encounter, debate continues to rage over the events that happened in Brazil's self-styled UFO capital. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the Guardian: The skies over this far-flung coffee-growing hub went charcoal black, the heavens opened and one of Brazil's greatest mysteries was born. "It really was something unique," recalls Marco Antonio Reis, a zoo director, who was at his ranch outside Varginha one stormy day in January 1996 w…

The U.S. Postal Service plans to impose its first-ever fuel surcharge on packages (source paywalled; alternative source), adding an 8% fee starting in April as it struggles with rising fuel costs and ongoing financial pressure. The surcharge will not apply to letter mail and is currently expected to remain in place until January 2027. The Wall Street Journal reports: Other parcel carriers, including FedEx and United Parcel Service, have imposed fuel surcharges, as well as a basket of other surc…

New submitter haroldbasset writes: Canada's Immigration Department rejected an applicant because the duties of her current job did not match the Canadian work experience she had claimed, but the Department's AI assistant had invented that work experience. She has been working in Canada as a health scientist -- she has a Ph.D. in the immunology of aging -- but the AI genius instead described her as "wiring and assembling control circuits, building control and robot panels, programming and troubl…

Apple reportedly has full access to customize Google's Gemini model, allowing it to distill smaller on-device AI models for Siri and other features that can run locally without an internet connection. MacRumors reports: The Information explains that Apple can ask the main Gemini model to perform a series of tasks that provide high-quality results, with a rundown of the reasoning process. Apple can feed the answers and reasoning information that it gets from Gemini to train smaller, cheaper mode…

Longtime Slashdot reader JackSpratts writes: The Supreme Court unanimously said on Wednesday that a major internet provider could not be held liable for the piracy of thousands of songs online in a closely watched copyright clash. Music labels and publishers sued Cox Communications in 2018, saying the company had failed to cut off the internet connections of subscribers who had been repeatedly flagged for illegally downloading and distributing copyrighted music. At issue for the justices was wh…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Stephen Colbert already has a new job lined up for when he ends his 11-year run as host of "The Late Show" in May -- the comedian and well-known J.R.R. Tolkien superfan announced he will co-write and develop a new film in the blockbuster "Lord of the Rings" franchise. Colbert joined "LOTR" director Peter Jackson to reveal the news in a video announcement. "I'm pretty happy about it. You know what the books mean to me and what your films mean to me,"…

A jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in a landmark social media addiction case, ruling that addictive design features such as infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations harmed a young user and contributed to her mental health distress. The verdict awards $3 million in compensatory damages so far and could pave the way for more lawsuits seeking financial penalties and product changes across the social media industry. "Meta is responsible for 70 percent of that cost and YouTube for the re…

Meta lost a child safety trial in New Mexico after a court found that its platforms failed to adequately protect children from exploitation and misled parents about app safety. According to Ars Technica, the jury on Tuesday "deliberated for only one day before agreeing that Meta should pay $375 million in civil damages..." While the jury declined to impose the maximum penalty New Mexico sought, which could have cost the company $2.2 billion, Meta may still face additional financial penalties an…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vanity Fair: Focus Features is releasing The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist in theaters on March 27. If you're even slightly interested in what's going on with AI, it's required viewing: The film touches on all aspects of the technology, from how it's currently being used to how it will be used in the near future, when we potentially reach the age of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. AGI is a theoretical form of AI that supposedly would…

Longtime Slashdot reader cusco writes: A private company in China has developed hypersonic missiles that cost the same as a Tesla Model X. This missile, the YKJ-1000, is being marketed for sale at a reported price of $99,000, and it's in mass production now after successful tests. That is far below what countries will spend to target and shoot down the missile if it's heading their way. Besides the low cost, they can be launched from anywhere. The launcher looks like any one of the tens of mill…

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Astronomers have an answer for a long-running mystery in astrophysics: why is the growth of supermassive black holes so much lower today than in the past? A study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other X-ray telescopes found that supermassive black holes are unable to consume material as rapidly as they did in the distant past. The results appeared in the December 2025 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. [...] The team ran tests of the …

NASA is reportedly halting work on the lunar Gateway in favor of a more direct push to build a lunar base. The new plan would cost tens of billions over the next decade, though the change could face hurdles because Congress previously funded Gateway specifically. SpaceNews reports: "Starting today, we're building humanity's first deep space outpost," said Carlos Garcia-Galan, program executive for NASA's moon base effort. The lunar base will take place in three phases. Phase 1, running from 202…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Hong Kong police can now demand phone or computer passwords from those who are suspected of breaching the wide-ranging National Security Law (NSL). Those who refuse could face up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $12,700, and individuals who provide "false or misleading information" could face up to three years in jail. It comes as part of new amendments to a bylaw under the NSL that the government gazetted on Monday. The NSL was introduced …

Linux gamers are seeing massive performance gains with Wine's new NTSYNC support, "which is a feature that has been years in the making and rewrites how Wine handles one of the most performance-sensitive operations in modern gaming," reports XDA Developers. Not every game will see a night-and-day difference, but for the games that do benefit from these changes, "the improvements range from noticeable to absurd." Combined with improvements to Wayland, graphics, and compatibility, as well as a ma…