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Apple has discontinued the Mac Pro and says it has no plans for future models. "The 'buy' page on Apple's website for the Mac Pro now redirects to the Mac's homepage, where all references have been removed," reports 9to5Mac. From the report: The Mac Pro has lived many lives over the years. Apple released the current Mac Pro industrial design in 2019 alongside the Pro Display XDR (which was also discontinued earlier this month). That version of the Mac Pro was powered by Intel, and Apple refresh…

Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley are pressing the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to provide better information on how much electricity data centers actually use. In a joint letter sent to the EIA on Thursday, the two senators press the agency to publicly collect "comprehensive, annual energy-use disclosures" on data centers, saying it's "essential for accurate grid planning and will support policymaking to prevent large companies from increasing electricity costs for American families.…

JPMorgan is piloting a system that monitors junior investment bankers to avoid burnout (source paywalled; alternative source). "[T]he bank will seek to match up hours claimed by the bankers with digital activity," reports Bloomberg. "The tool won't be used for evaluation purposes, but is designed to provide a better estimate of employee workloads." From the report: The program will monitor the weekly digital footprint, including video calls, desktop keystrokes, and scheduled meetings, the Finan…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Prospective Vizio TV buyers should know there's a good chance the set won't work properly without a Walmart account. In an attempt to better serve advertisers, Walmart, which bought Vizio in December 2024, announced this week that select newly purchased Vizio TVs now require a Walmart account for setup and accessing smart TV features. Since 2024, Vizio TVs have required a Vizio account, which a Vizio OS website says is necessary for accessi…

BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla just teamed up with Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, to push open source AI -- and it feels like a direct response to Big Tech tightening its grip on the space. Instead of relying on closed models, the goal here is to build "sovereign AI" that's more transparent, privacy-focused, and actually under the control of developers and even governments. They're starting with things like private memory for AI agents, which sounds niche but matters if you c…

Wikipedia has banned the use of generative AI to write or rewrite articles, saying it "often violates several of Wikipedia's core content policies." That said, editors may still use it for translation or light refinements as long as a human carefully checks the copy for accuracy. Engadget reports: Editors can use large language models (LLMs) to refine their own writing, but only if the copy is checked for accuracy. The policy states that this is because LLMs "can go beyond what you ask of them …

Ancient Slashdot reader wiredog writes: Tracy Kidder, author of "The Soul of a New Machine," has died at the age of 80. "The Soul of a New Machine" is about the people who designed and built the Data General Nova, one of the 32 bit superminis that were released in the 1980's just before the PC destroyed that industry. It was excerpted in The Atlantic. "I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese authorities have barred two Manus executives from leaving the country while investigating whether Meta's reported $2 billion acquisition of the Singapore-based AI startup violated foreign investment reporting rules. "Manus was founded in China but last year relocated its headquarters and core team to Singapore," notes the Financial Times. "Meta acquired it for $2 billion at the end of last year." The Financial Times reports: Manus's chief executive Xiao Hong and chief scientist Ji Yicha…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Physics World: Researchers at the CERN particle-physics lab have successfully transported antiprotons in a lorry across the lab's main site. The feat, the first of its kind, follows a similar test with protons in 2024. CERN says the achievement is "a huge leap" towards being able to transport antimatter between labs across Europe. [...] To do so, in 2020 the BASE team began developing a device, known as BASE-STEP (for Baryon-Antibaryon Symmetry Experimen…

Reddit is rolling out human-verification checks for accounts that show signs of bot-like behavior, while also labeling approved automated accounts that provide useful services. The social media company stressed that these checks will only happen if something appears "fishy," and that it is "not conducting sitewide human verification." TechCrunch reports: To identify potential bots, Reddit is using specialized tooling that looks at account-level signals and other factors -- like how quickly the …

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…