RSS Feed Reader

  • Interesting Engineering: 10 times larger water reserve than Great Lakes found beneath desert, China claims
    Sept. 17, 2026, 10:26 a.m.

    Geologists have identified two large groundwater sources beneath the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China, potentially...

  • MQL5: Development and Forward Testing of an Autonomous LLM Agent for Trading with SEAL
    Sept. 17, 2026, 10:08 a.m.

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: Nach der US-Leitzins-Erhöhung – Schmerzhafte Folgen vor allem für die USA
    Sept. 17, 2026, 9:03 a.m.

    US-Kredite werden teurer, auch für den Staat. Für die Schweiz wiederum geht es um die weltweite Finanzstabilität.

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: Steuerprivileg Hotellerie – Wieso die Boom-Branche Tourismus seit 1996 Krisenhilfe erhält
    Sept. 17, 2026, 8:58 a.m.

    1996 führte das Parlament eine reduzierte Mehrwertsteuer für die serbelnde Hotellerie ein. Heute boomt die Branche.

  • linuxiac.com: VLC 3.0.24 Multimedia Player Upgrades to FFmpeg 8.1.2, Adds Flatpak Support
    Sept. 17, 2026, 8:45 a.m.

    VLC 3.0.24 upgrades FFmpeg from 4.4 to 8.1.2, adds Flatpak build support, improves Qt 6 compatibility, and delivers numerous playback fixes.

  • slashdot: OpenAI Admits Six More Instances of AI Models Acting Deceptively
    Sept. 17, 2026, 7:31 a.m.

    OpenAI announced Wednesday that "We do not believe that the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer." But along with the announcement, OpenAI announced it "found additional incidents of AI models acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during training," reports CNN. And they add that OpenAI is also "introducing a new process for the company to publicly report such instances." Under the new system, OpenAI will share updates on concerning AI behavior more frequently instead of waiting to bundle multiple instances into one report. The company said it wants to share more information about troubling AI behavior in the absence of an industry-wide standard... "As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research," OpenAI wrote in a blog post Wednesday... OpenAI said it observed "misaligned behavior" when training and evaluating AI models in six circumstances in the last six months... In one rare instance, OpenAI said an unreleased research model added "jailbreak-like instructions" to the summaries it uses to preserve context in long-running tasks that said it was "freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots." Separately, the company said some instances of its 5.6 Sol model included directives to invent information to conceal failures from the user during training. Other newly reported incidents include an instance of an agent uploading files to the internet to cite them without being told to do so, and agents publicly sharing files to collaborate on a task when they were instructed to only use local files during training. AI models also used an internal software repository as a message board in an unsanctioned way. These instances involved unreleased internal models or internal research models. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: BIP-Prognose – Bund erhöht Wachstumsprognose deutlich
    Sept. 17, 2026, 7:23 a.m.

    Die Schweizer Wirtschaft dürfte 2026 deutlich stärker wachsen als bisher erwartet.

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: Steuerprivileg Hotellerie – Warum die Boom-Branche Tourismus seit 1996 Krisenhilfe erhält
    Sept. 17, 2026, 5:35 a.m.

    1996 führte das Parlament eine reduzierte Mehrwertsteuer für die serbelnde Hotellerie ein. Heute boomt die Branche.

  • Zollikofen News: Naturförderung: Aufruf für Beitragsgesuche
    Sept. 17, 2026, 5:30 a.m.

    Die Gemeinde Zollikofen unterstützt mit Förderbeiträgen Projekte aus der Bevölkerung, die zum Erhalt und Aufwertung des Ortsbildes und heimischen Artenvielfalt beitragen. Gefördert werden unter anderem Massnahmen, die Grünflächen besser miteinander verbinden und ökologisch wertvolle, naturnahe Lebensräume innerhalb und ausserhalb des Siedlungsgebiets schaffen.  Ein Beispiel hierfür wäre das Anlegen einer artenreichen Wild-, Futter- oder Naschhecke mit heimischen Sträuchern, sowohl als Neupflanzung als auch als Ersatzpflanzung für bestehende Monokulturhecken.  Achten Sie bei der Einreichung Ihres Gesuchs auf folgende Punkte:  Die geplanten Massnahmen müssen die Anforderungen des Beitragsreglements erfüllen und den explizit geförderten Massnahmen gemäss Richtplan Landschaft entsprechen. Diese sind die Mass-nahmen 5.1-5.7 und Massnahme 6.1. An wiederkehrende Baumpflegemassnahmen, an die Entfernung und Entsorgung von Neophyten sowie an Entsiegelungen, Trockensteinmauern und Nistkästen werden in der Regel keine Förderbeiträge gesprochen. Beschreiben Sie klar, wie Ihr Projekt zur Vernetzung der Landschaft, zur Schaffung naturnaher Lebensräume oder zur Anpassung an den Klimawandel beiträgt.  Reichen Sie Ihr Gesuch rechtzeitig vor Baubeginn ein. Anträge werden zweimal jährlich behandelt. Der nächste Eingabeschluss ist der 31. Oktober 2026. Weitere Informationen: Förderprogramm Baudenkmäler und Naturobjekte www.zollikofen.ch > Umwelt > Förderprogramm Richtplan Landschaft https://www.zollikofen.ch/publikationen/186389 Wildpflanzen für den Garten floretia.ch Naturgärten entdecken missionb.ch

  • PostgreSQL: Radim Marek: Row locks at the page level
    Sept. 17, 2026, 5 a.m.

    In PostgreSQL, every tuple starts with 23-byte header, and the first eight bytes are two transaction IDs. t_xmin for the transaction that created the row and t_xmax for the one that deleted or updated it. That is the visibility story covered in PostgreSQL MVCC, Byte by Byte. For now we have discussed t_xmax acting as the delete marker. t_xmax has a second job. When you run SELECT ... FOR UPDATE or an insert checks a foreign key, PostgreSQL has nowhere else to record the row lock. The shared memory lock table is limited by max_locks_per_transaction. Locking a million rows would exceed its capacity. PostgreSQL works around this by storing the locking transaction ID in t_xmax and marking the row as locked with flags in t_infomask, while readers can still see it, so every row lock in PostgreSQL ends up as a write to the page. Setup The setup is one parent table in the usual shape, plus a child table with a foreign key, since foreign key checks lock parent rows. Everything below was captured on a single PostgreSQL 18.6 cluster using the postgres:18 image. Transaction IDs will be different on your cluster; compare the bits instead. CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS pageinspect; CREATE TABLE lock_demo ( id integer GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY, owner text NOT NULL, balance numeric(12,2) ); CREATE TABLE lock_demo_tx ( id integer GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY, account_id integer NOT NULL REFERENCES lock_demo (id), amount numeric(12,2) ); INSERT INTO lock_demo (owner, balance) VALUES ('alice', 100.00), ('bob', 200.00), ('carol', 300.00); <span style="color: #F97583

  • Interesting Engineering: Missile seeker windows could be designed with sapphire optics that can withstand high temperature
    Sept. 17, 2026, 4:36 a.m.

    As industries increasingly operate equipment in extreme thermal and demanding environments, optical components must withstand...

  • slashdot: Adafruit's New CircuitPython 'Turbo' Brings Native Code To Tiny Boards
    Sept. 17, 2026, 3:29 a.m.

    Targeting students and beginners, Adafruit released "CircuitPython" in 2017 (as a derivative of the MicroPython microcontroller-optimized programming language). Now Adafruit managing director Phillip Torrone (also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone) brings this update: Adafruit has published CircuitPython Turbo, a workflow that compiles selected Python functions into native machine code on a computer, then loads them onto compatible microcontroller boards. It builds on MicroPython's Native and Viper emitters. In a documented Metro RP2040 fixed-point Mandelbrot test, Viper cut computation time from 8.335 seconds to 0.423 seconds, a 19.71x speedup over bytecode. The rest of the application stays in Python. The guide includes benchmarks, source code and hardware demos. The speedup is for the measured computation, not the whole application. "Turbo support is now included in the latest official CircuitPython builds for RP2040 and RP2350 boards..." explains Torrone's announcement at Adafruit.com. "The new Turbo in CircuitPython helps when the board spends time calculating: making neopixel effects, drawing fractals, processing audio, filtering sensor readings, or preparing lots of pixels. Those projects can get smoother animation, quicker responses, or room to do more things at once." With Turbo, it's easier, better, and now even faster to make LED light up costumes that also reacts to sound at the same time, a sensor dashboard with animated graphics, or a tiny game doing physics while drawing the screen. Turbo speeds up the busy Python parts. It won't make a slow sensor or display connection faster... Your computer turns selected functions into instructions the chip can run directly. Python still handles the rest. We have measured speedups, real display captures, and examples you can pull apart to see what happened. None of this arrived alone. CircuitPython, MicroPython, PyMCU, compiler tools, open hardware, and people sharing their work gave us pieces to connect. The Bao experiments take that idea somewhere else, handing calculations to four helper cores. Now we get to make those paths easier to use, compare results, and find the next useful thing. Maybe that's smoother animation, a responsive instrument, or an idea we haven't tried yet. That's what I like about open source. Someone shares a piece, someone else sees a possibility, and we get to keep building it together. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • PostgreSQL: Christophe Pettus: All Your GUCs in a Row: max_logical_replication_workers
    Sept. 17, 2026, 1 a.m.

    When a logical replication worker pool runs dry, subscriptions don't fail—they just stop making progress, filling your logs with warnings every five seconds…

  • Interesting Engineering: New technology converts industrial waste heat into power, draws $100M investment
    Sept. 17, 2026, 12:18 a.m.

    Industrial facilities could turn some of the energy they currently throw away into electricity, with...

  • Interesting Engineering: Infrared sensors link two 1,500-mph F-16 fighter jets for faster battle targeting
    Sept. 17, 2026, 12:02 a.m.

    Lockheed Martin has tested two F-16s sharing infrared targeting data through a new pod-to-pod link....

  • Interesting Engineering: Hitachi’s biggest US $528M investment will double Mississippi transformer output
    Sept. 16, 2026, 11:20 p.m.

    Hitachi Energy will spend $528 million on a new transformer manufacturing plant in Gallman, Mississippi....

  • Interesting Engineering: 6MW floating solar array turns Ohio reservoir into power site, saves 30 acres of land
    Sept. 16, 2026, 11:18 p.m.

    A 6-megawatt floating solar array is now generating electricity from an Ohio reservoir, using water...

  • PostgreSQL: Elizabeth Garrett Christensen: PostgreSQL 19 Delayed: Key Feature Reversions &amp; Release Updates
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:49 p.m.

    Postgres 19 won't make the expected release date. PostgreSQL has shipped its major version every fall for the last several years. But this year, the code is in a heavy review cycle, major features have been reverted during beta, and many others are under heavy revision. Beta 4 is scheduled for Sept. 24, 2026. A release of Postgres 19 is certainly delayed by weeks and maybe even months. Postgres 19 was an ambitious release already, with a lot of large features. With any project, you have to choose priorities. For Postgres, the priorities were quality, followed by shipping within the time window. The team is reducing the scope of the release to get closer to meeting its timeline with the quality it requires. I'll break down some of the major reversions in Postgres 19. While this is a long list, I want to make it abundantly clear that the PostgreSQL code development process is working beautifully. Code is getting tested at a wide scale and things that aren't ready are getting pulled. How PostgreSQL gets made A typical PostgreSQL code development process works like this: New patches are added by the community in a series of open commitfests and discussed on the Hackers mailing list Patches selected for approval are added to a future version by one of the ~30 project committers A beta version is cut, the community starts testing for ~6 months, updates and bugs are patched and some features are reverted A final production version is released, followed by quarterly maintenance versions for bug patches and security updates Notable PG19 Feature Reverts There have been quite a few reverts for version 19 of Postgres: 53 since the beta began in June 2025. Below are some of the more major user-facing features you may be familiar with: SQL Property Graph Queries (SQL/PGQ) Property graphs would add graph query views on top of tables and a light approach to graph queries in Postgres. The hackers discussion suggests broader design and readiness concerns. ALTER TABLE MERGE/SPLIT PARTITION(S) This has been a long-requested feature for partition management. The reversion discussion cites design issues which are too late to address in this release cycle. UPDATE/DELETE FOR PORTION OF This was an exciting update for temporal range columns for Postgres to handle some boundary time math. GROUP BY ALL A post-commit review found it missed special handling of ORDER BY entries with nondefault equality semantics, producing wrong results. Default TOAST compression change to lz4 This feature would change TOAST compression. The team discussed this was missing some support in the buildfarm, so this will be reworked later when project compilation issues are sorted out. Nontext output formats for pg_dumpall Active bugs were found on post-commit review, but work on this will continue in future versions. JSON_TABLE ON ERROR cascading This feature made table-level ON ERROR cascade to columns (per SQL standard), and was reverted due to bugs reported. Fast default for domains with nonvolatile constraints A proper fix requires additions to the Table Access Method API and thus it is not ready for v19. Logical replication database-specific snapshots This is related to the logical replication supporting the REPACK feature. That is now limited to a single process that can run concurrently across different tables and databases. Luckily it looks like REPACK is still in V 19. Nested query tracking (pg_stat_statements) This gives cleaner mappings between query ID and query strings, but some syntax issues were found during testing. Online data checksums You can use checksums to check for data corruption. This would let you change your checksum settings while pg is still running. Common pattern

  • Interesting Engineering: New 3D lidar sensor detects radio-silent drone threats from nearly one mile away
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:30 p.m.

    Small drones are forcing counter-UAS systems to detect threats earlier, especially as aircraft become harder...

  • Zollikofen Events: Magglinen - Taubenlochschlucht - Biel
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:29 p.m.

    Wanderung, mit Magglingen-Bahn nach Magglingen, dann Mittagsrast beim Lysserbrunnen, zur&uuml;ck via Taubenlochschlucht

  • Zollikofen Events: Abstimmung
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:29 p.m.

  • Zollikofen Events: Konzert: ERÖFFNUNGSBAND
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:29 p.m.

    Dummy-Event um in der neuen Saison das Format &uuml;bernehmen zu k&ouml;nnen.

  • Zollikofen Events: Tavannes - Tramelan
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:29 p.m.

    Wanderung von Tavannes nach Tramelan, 13.6 km, 4.5 Std.

  • Zollikofen Events: Internationaler Tag der Gebärdensprache – öffentliche Ackertour
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:29 p.m.

    Lerne auf dem Weltacker Bern die 50 h&auml;ufigsten Ackerkulturen der Welt kennen &amp;#8211; von A wie Ackerbohne &uuml;ber S wie Soja zu Z wie Zuckerhirse. Wenn wir die weltweit verf&uuml;gbare Ackerfl&auml;che gleichm&auml;ssig auf alle Menschen aufteilen, stehen jedem 2000 m&sup2; zur Verf&uuml;gung. Auf dieser Fl&auml;che muss alles wachsen, was uns ern&auml;hrt und versorgt: Lebensmittel, Futtermittel, Kleidung und mehr. Auf dem Weltacker Bern machen wir diese globale Herausforderung greifbar. Zum internationalen Tag der Geb&auml;rdensprache wird die Ackertour auch in Geb&auml;rdensprache &uuml;bersetzt.

  • Zollikofen Events: Dein Buch - mein Buch
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:29 p.m.

    Wir stellen einander B&uuml;cher vor, die wir gerade gelesen haben: Worum geht es?Was hat mir gefallen, was nicht?Was weiss ich &uuml;ber den Autor/die Autorin?Willkommen sind alle - mit oder ohne Buch!

  • slashdot: As Part of California's Coast Begins to Crumble, Is the Clock Ticking on Moving Radioactive Waste?
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:29 p.m.

    "As parts of the Southern California coastline crumbled into the sea, slammed by intense waves and flooding in recent days, oceanographer Kim McCoy had one thing on his mind," reports the Los Angeles Times. He was thinking about "the nuclear waste set in concrete on the beach near San Clemente at the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant." "Rising sea levels, storm waves, El Ni&ntilde;o which increases wave height ... these could wash away a section of the walkway that protects the San Onofre seawall, and the waste canisters are just 100 feet away from that," the former wave dynamics researcher and longtime advocate against beach storage of nuclear waste said. Most experts agree the risk of erosion damaging the nuclear waste storage system is extremely low in the near term. The plant's owner, Southern California Edison, has promised the California Coastal Commission to move the waste to higher elevation on-site if modeling shows sea level rise and erosion will start to pose a challenge. But the recent waves, fueled by Hurricane Marie far away in the Pacific, resurfaced the issue of the ultimate fate of the highly radioactive spent fuel that used to power the reactors. "At the moment, it is under control, I think it's essential to say that," said James Day, a geology professor at UC San Diego. "But geologically we must be thinking long term. The waste lasts for hundreds, if not thousands of generations...." [In 2103 some of the site's canisters' approach their intended 100-year lifespans, and the utility may have to start the transfer into new cansiters.] The distinctive twin domes that once housed the reactor cores will start coming down early next year. But the 3.6 million pounds of high-level waste will stay in the coastal community indefinitely. How much of a safety hazard that is depends on whom you ask. "San Onofre is sitting on some fairly young rocks in a seismically active region," Day said at a recent symposium at the Scripps Seaside Forum in La Jolla, hosted by the Samuel Lawrence Foundation. "This is not the sort of place you would leave nuclear waste." Others noted that collapse of beach slopes could make the site more vulnerable to tsunamis. They spoke of the corrosive effects of the ocean air on the steel canisters that hold the waste... Edison says its system will be safe for decades to come. "The maximum credible tsunami here would not even overtake the seawall," said Manuel Camargo, principal manager of decommissioning for Edison, standing on the concrete pad that holds the steel waste storage canisters. "The maximum credible earthquake, somewhere around a 7.0 magnitude, would produce something about half of what this system is designed to withstand...." Edison is bolstering a path below the seawall. Based on state data from the California Ocean Protection Council, the seawall would not be inundated before 2050, Camargo said... Plans for a deep geological repository beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada crumbled in the face of local opposition in 2011. Utilities around the U.S. now sue the federal government every year to recoup their storage expenses because the Department of Energy has not come through on its promise. The lawsuits cost taxpayers $2 million a day, according to Camargo. "It's so safe that it's almost a problem," Camargo said. "It's not a priority to a lot of folks to move it." "The Trump administration's Department of Energy wants to create 'campuses' in several states to store waste," the article points out, "and, in exchange, give local jurisdictions funding to develop different aspects of the nuclear cycle &mdash; such as fuel creation, power generation and potentially fuel recycling..." "The administration wants to address the fact that waste is sitting at 80 reactor sites around the country. It also needs places for waste from new reactors it wants to build." <a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=As+Part+of+California's+Coa

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: Höhere Zinsen in den USA – US-Notenbank hebt Leitzinsen um 0.25 Prozentpunkte an
    Sept. 16, 2026, 10:09 p.m.

    Die Zinsspanne der Federal Reserve liegt damit bei 3.75 bis 4.00 Prozent. US-Präsident Trump dürfte das nicht gefallen.

  • Interesting Engineering: New 128MW battery shifts solar power into four hours of peak electricity demand
    Sept. 16, 2026, 9:30 p.m.

    A 128-megawatt battery energy storage facility has entered commercial operation in Georgia, adding up to...

  • kottke.org: Genius Design Details: Pips and Nubs
    Sept. 16, 2026, 9:02 p.m.

    The gang from Craighill explains the origins and uses of three seemingly small design details that show up everywhere: pips, nubs, and the very useful union of pips and nubs. You’ve seen pips on dice and dominos, nubs are used for Braille text, and the pips/nubs combo is used for locks or stops that can be released under pressure. Craighill even has a pips + nubs category in their online store. (thx, rion) Tags: Craighill · design · video

  • linuxiac.com: Unicode 18.0 Released with 13,007 New Characters
    Sept. 16, 2026, 8:48 p.m.

    Unicode 18.0 is now available with 13,007 new characters, three new scripts, new currency symbols, nine emojis, and updated text-processing rules.

  • Interesting Engineering: Nuclear fuel recycling could cut US waste storage from 100,000 years to hundreds
    Sept. 16, 2026, 8:39 p.m.

    The US aims to add 300 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity by 2050 and develop...

  • Interesting Engineering: Fighter jet-maker’s modular airframe to broaden launch, payload options for cruise missile family
    Sept. 16, 2026, 8:19 p.m.

    An American defense giant has introduced a modular airframe to widen launch and payload options...

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: Kampf gegen Inflation – US-Notenbank Fed geht auf Distanz zu Trump
    Sept. 16, 2026, 8:04 p.m.

    Der neue Fed-Chef Kevin Warsh setzt mit der Zinserhöhung ein klares Zeichen. Doch reicht das als Abgrenzung zu Trump?

  • kottke.org: Usenet-Rewind : search over 1 billion Usenet text posts...
    Sept. 16, 2026, 7:49 p.m.

    Usenet-Rewind: search over 1 billion Usenet text posts from 1981 to the present.

  • Interesting Engineering: $92M deal turns high-altitude drones into airborne sensors for hypersonic flight tests
    Sept. 16, 2026, 7:47 p.m.

    AEVEX Corp. has landed a potential $92.2 million contract to support the U.S. military&#8217;s SkyRange...

  • slashdot: Firefox Touts Lower CPU Use for Large JPEGs, Faster PDF Viewer Startup (and AI Controls)
    Sept. 16, 2026, 7:29 p.m.

    Firefox 156 is the second release since Mozilla moved to a twice-monthly release schedule, and the blog OMG Ubuntu notes it has faster start-up times for its built-in PDF viewer and also lower CPU usage when viewing large JPEG images: In Firefox 156, the browser now uses libjpeg-turbo's IDCT scaling to reduce images during decoding, rather than loading a full-size image into memory and then shrinking it. Benchmarks from the bug report show up to 20x less memory used during very large image loading, and decoding is up to twice as fast. Since these speeds were quite fast already, there's no perceptible difference to users. Behind the scenes, it's more efficient. Firefox's built-in PDF viewer starts up to 45% faster in this release. The browser now loads the background PDF.js worker sooner, rather than launching it only when needed. Sponsored suggestions in the address bar are live for users in France, Germany and Italy (Ouais!, Juhu!, etc). These are already available in some other locales. Don't want them? Disable them via Settings &gt; Search &gt; Firefox Suggest &gt; Suggestions from Sponsors. Besides that, the rest of this release is primarily bug fixes &mdash; worthwhile and welcome as always. And in about two weeks Firefox 157 will be released, reports PC World. "That update should add support for JPEG XL (JXL), a modern image format that offers the same quality as JPEG at a significantly smaller size. Although JPEG XL was launched in 2021, Safari is the only browser to support it yet. For a short period, Chrome also supported it, but that ended in 2022." Also, a recent Firefox blog post emphasized that it supports whatever level of AI engagement "is right for you... Because the only person telling you how much AI you need should be you." Opting out of upcoming and current AI features on your browser should not require endless navigation through multiple Settings pages. That's why Firefox offers an AI controls section within its General Settings panel. A single, easily located place where you can block current and future AI features and related pop-ups with the swipe of a toggle... For the many people who sit in the middle of the AI usage spectrum, we made sure you can opt in and out of specific features in line with your preferences. Capabilities like AI translations, image alt text in Firefox PDF viewer, tab group suggestions, and key points in link previews can all be individually switched on and off, ensuring you can enjoy such offerings on a case by case basis as it suits your needs... Smart Window is Firefox's most integrated AI experience, but that doesn't mean it compromises our commitment to choice, privacy, and transparency. Our newest window type, which we've been polishing and testing in beta, uses only the context you share with it to help you move work forward and across the finish line. When permitted by you, its built-in, AI-powered assistant can work directly with your open tabs and browsing history to connect the dots. This means comparing information, generating recommendations, summarizing pages, and planning projects without having to feed every crumb of context from your previous and current browsing activity each time you enter a new prompt. And if you want to block Google's AI Overviews, there's over 100 extensions to choose from. <img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/fac

  • kottke.org: &#8220; Figures show Japan is now home to 107,677...
    Sept. 16, 2026, 6:59 p.m.

    &#8220;Figures show Japan is now home to 107,677 centenarians, the highest number in the world, of whom 88% are women. The oldest woman is Kishimoto Fuyo, a 114-year-old from Kyoto City and the oldest man is Kato Hikaru, a 112-year-old from Kumamoto.&#8221;

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: Zinssitzung der Fed – US-Notenbank hebt Leitzinsen um 0.25 Prozentpunkte an
    Sept. 16, 2026, 6:30 p.m.

    Die Zinsspanne der Federal Reserve liegt damit bei 3.75 bis 4.00 Prozent. US-Präsident Trump dürfte das nicht gefallen.

  • slashdot: Anthropic Commits to Independent AI Evaluators, Wants Slower Development. Nvidia's CEO Wants It 'As Fast as You Can'
    Sept. 16, 2026, 6:29 p.m.

    "Anthropic's CEO took the stage at a conference in San Francisco on Tuesday to reiterate his call for a slowdown of AI development," reports the Guardian, " while Nvidia's CEO argued against slowing its development. "Run as fast as you can." Amodei is calling for three courses of action: embedding third-party evaluators inside AI companies; coordinating safety standards among Democratic countries; and, eventually, larger global coordination. At Dreamforce, Amodei said Anthropic has committed to independent evaluators and was "going to have a dialogue with the rest of the industry" on the other two steps. Amodei, xAI's Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman have recently called for a slowdown in the pace of AI development. ["Dario is right," Musk posted on X.com] Huang, who also made an appearance at Dreamforce on Tuesday, said companies should not slow down AI development. He argued that new regulations were not necessary, advising AI companies to simply wait to release products until they know they are safe rather than begging the US government to intervene... One day prior at the All-In summit in Los Angeles, Donald Trump called Huang while the CEO was on stage. Huang put the president on speakerphone as Trump called the growing concern about AI a "hoax" and asserted again that a slowdown would only benefit China... [OpenAI's] Altman said AI models had advanced so quickly that monitoring and security need to be treated with a "new level of rigor", calling an incident in which OpenAI agents hacked into another company a "wake-up call" for the industry. He also said the public was very "right to be afraid" of AI because of the potential loss of control, and the possibility of a small group of powerful AI companies exerting their views on the world. The cofounder of Google DeepMind posted on X that "Dario's essay points towards the right path forward." And in an internal memo, Microsoft's Satya Nadella endorsed broader third-party testing and warned that companies must take time to make the technology safe, Business Insider reports. Monday Microsoft also published a 37-page training manual "for how we develop our AI, and how we intend it to function during deployment," requesting public feedback. But Michael Burry "is not buying it," reports The Street. The investor made famous in The Big Short "dismissed the united front as 'self-serving' and laid out four numbered objections..." He argued that large language models are not artificial general intelligence, so there is nothing meaningful left to slow down. Fast competition benefits incumbents, he said, and danger warnings work as hype ahead of IPOs. The whole exercise, he added, could mask growth that is already slowing as those IPOs get pushed back. Former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun is also skeptical, posting on X.com that Anthropic's Dario Amodei "was already claiming that GPT2 was too dangerous to open source back in 2019. I made fun of them then. Everyone should make fun of them now." Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of Google's AI ethics team who was fired in 2020, even thinks the AI companies are stoking fears of extinction "to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons," according to Wired. But others still remain concerned. "I've been in rooms with the hyperscalers, and the Trump administration officials, and none of them know what to do," CNN commentator Van Jones said in a recent panel discussion. "So I do want to say: nobody's flying the plane on this... I think that the ethicists that work for them &mdash; when they are quitting, and they are running out, and they're pointing back at the building and they're waving their arms, and saying 'I'm seeing stuff that's scaring me' &mdash; we should take that very seriously." <a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Anthropic+Commits+to+Independent+AI+Evaluators%2C+Wants+Slower+Development.+Nvidia's+CEO+Wants+It+'As+Fast+as+You+Can'%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fslashdot.org

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: Zinssitzung der Fed – US-Notenbank hebt Leitzinsen um 0.25 Prozentpunkte an
    Sept. 16, 2026, 6:26 p.m.

    Die Zinsspanne der Federal Reserve liegt damit bei 3.75 bis 4.00 Prozent. Der Markt hat das Signal gespannt erwartet.

  • Interesting Engineering: China’s new 4MWh sodium-ion battery system targets 30-year life for grid storage
    Sept. 16, 2026, 6:16 p.m.

    China-based energy storage company HiTHIUM has unveiled a 4MWh sodium-ion energy storage system designed to...

  • Interesting Engineering: MIT researchers create brain-inspired computing platform using soft polymers
    Sept. 16, 2026, 6:10 p.m.

    Deep underwater, an octopus can camouflage its skin instantly without sending every micro-decision back to...

  • Interesting Engineering: Researchers build AthenaZero, a robot that throws, catches, and hits baseball like humans
    Sept. 16, 2026, 6:10 p.m.

    A robot built specifically to move like an athlete, not a machine, can now throw,...

  • Interesting Engineering: Scientists finally took T. rex’s temperature, and it ran almost as warm as you
    Sept. 16, 2026, 6:05 p.m.

    Everything scientists know about Tyrannosaurus rex comes from clues left behind more than 60 million...

  • Linux Kernel Releases: next-20260916: linux-next
    Sept. 16, 2026, 6:04 p.m.

    Version:next-20260916 (linux-next) Released:2026-09-16

  • Interesting Engineering: GE moves closer to assembling futuristic fighter engine for US Air Force’s key program
    Sept. 16, 2026, 5:59 p.m.

    GE Aerospace is moving closer to assembling its XA102 adaptive cycle engine, a key technology...

  • Interesting Engineering: US boosts perovskite films’ performance for indoor solar power with 35% bromine recipe
    Sept. 16, 2026, 5:39 p.m.

    Remember those solar-powered calculators that seemed to work forever without a battery? A new generation...

  • kottke.org: Danny MacAskill Plays in the Endless Light of Norway
    Sept. 16, 2026, 5:39 p.m.

    Scottish trials rider and mountain biker Danny MacAskill, who I first featured on the site more than 17 years ago, recently took his Santa Cruz eMTB north of the Arctic Circle to Narvik, Norway. He rode three different mountains and the result is this incredibly beautiful video, backed by a Max Cooper soundtrack. As one of the commenters notes, MacAskill makes a relatively heavy eMTB seem extraordinarily playful. As a mountain biker myself, some of that looks insanely fun but the narrow steep stuff looks insanely insane. Makes me want an eMTB, which I suppose is the whole point of the video. Tags: biking · Danny MacAskill · Max Cooper · music · video

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: Bankenregulierung – Hickhack zu UBS: Politisches Tauziehen wie vor 15 Jahren
    Sept. 16, 2026, 5:21 p.m.

    Schon nach der UBS-Rettung wollte der Bundesrat 2011 schärfere Regeln für Grossbanken – das Parlament zog nicht mit.

  • kottke.org: Hidden in Pieces: Live at the Royal Albert Hall . A live...
    Sept. 16, 2026, 4:44 p.m.

    Hidden in Pieces: Live at the Royal Albert Hall. A live album from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Hell yes yes yes! 13 songs are available now plus 9 more tracks when the full album drops in October.

  • Wirtschaft – News aus der Schweizer- und Weltwirtschaft – SRF: Schlüsselrolle im Zollstreit – «Achte Bundesrätin»: Seco-Chefin Helene Budliger tritt zurück
    Sept. 16, 2026, 4:32 p.m.

    Staatssekretärin Helene Budliger Artieda tritt Ende März 2027 zurück. Eine Findungskommission plant ihre Nachfolge.

  • Interesting Engineering: US nuclear reactor designer advances 6-gigawatt SMR fleet across the Atlantic
    Sept. 16, 2026, 4:03 p.m.

    American reactor designer X-energy has cleared a major hurdle in its push to export commercial...

  • kottke.org: Paul Ford: Aided by LLMs, people & companies are...
    Sept. 16, 2026, 3:59 p.m.

    Paul Ford: Aided by LLMs, people &#038; companies are producing lots of software. But where are the AI-coded killer apps? “[AI is] very good at reproducing things that look and feel like what came before.&#8221;

  • PostgreSQL: Joshua Drake: PostgreSQL 19: Sept 08 - Sept 16, 2026
    Sept. 16, 2026, 3:42 p.m.

    Version 19: 71 commits on REL_19_STABLE. Version 20: 46 commits on master. Reverted out of 19: 74 commits, in 6 reverts. Six features tracked, 2 still shipping. Window closed at d8408e8d682.Summary71 commits landed on the 19 branch in nine days. The six reverts in the same window name 74 commits between them.Six reverts, newest first.Online data checksum transitions. September 16, Daniel Gustafsson.UPDATE …

  • Interesting Engineering: Microsoft helps Blykalla cut lead-cooled reactor licensing prep from years to months
    Sept. 16, 2026, 3:26 p.m.

    Nuclear technology company Blykalla has deployed a new computational platform developed with Microsoft to clear...

  • Interesting Engineering: High-energy laser systems to get production boost with new agreement
    Sept. 16, 2026, 3:20 p.m.

    Two companies have executed a long term agreement to support the production of mission ready...

  • kottke.org: The All of the Above Trail Fest is &#8220;deconstructing...
    Sept. 16, 2026, 3:17 p.m.

    The All of the Above Trail Fest is &#8220;deconstructing the very definition of a trail race, refiguring it into something more expansive and inclusive”. There are no gender divisions and winners are decided by who gets closest to their predicted finish time.

  • Interesting Engineering: First-of-its-kind DNA computer solves complex math without wires or continuous power
    Sept. 16, 2026, 3:14 p.m.

    Researchers in Ireland say they created one of the fastest and most complex &#8220;DNA computers&#8221;...

  • linuxiac.com: GNOME 51 “A Coruña” Released with Offline Maps, Faster Desktop Performance
    Sept. 16, 2026, 2:59 p.m.

    GNOME 51 is now available with smoother frame scheduling, offline maps, improved Settings, a revamped file previewer, and many desktop refinements.

  • Interesting Engineering: Star Trek’s iconic warp speed combat Picard Maneuver would work, physicist proves
    Sept. 16, 2026, 2:46 p.m.

    A Brazilian physicist has discovered that a famous battle tactic from the American sci-fi TV...