Germany is reinstating EV subsidies after a sharp sales drop, rolling out a 3 billion-euro program offering 1,500-6,000 euros per buyer starting in May and running through 2029. Unlike some neighboring countries, the incentives are open to all manufacturers with a focus on low- and middle-income households. From a report: “I cannot see any evidence of this postulated major influx of Chinese car manufacturers in Germany, either in the figures or on the roads — and that is why we are facing up to the competition and not imposing any restrictions,” German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider said at a Monday press conference. The decision is a major boon for affordable Chinese automakers like BYD that are steadily gaining ground in the European market, [Bloomberg noted].

Germany’s green-light for Chinese EVs stands in stark contrast to other nations’ approaches. In the UK, subsidies introduced last year effectively excluded Chinese battery-powered vehicles, while France’s so-called social leasing scheme includes similar restrictions. […] Germany maintains strong diplomatic ties with China. German automakers are among the most significant players in China’s automotive industry. Over the past years, China’s policies — including purchase subsidies and purchase tax reductions — have not excluded models or automakers from specific countries. Whether German automakers like Volkswagen or American automakers like Tesla, all enjoy national-level purchase incentive policies in China on par with domestic automakers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sphere Entertainment plans to build a second U.S. Sphere near Washington, D.C., with a smaller 6,000-seat “mini-Sphere” proposed for National Harbor in Maryland. The venue would retain the signature LED exterior and immersive 4D tech of the Las Vegas Sphere, just at a more compact scale. The Verge reports: The second US sphere would be built in an area known as National Harbor in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Located along the Potomac River, National Harbor currently features a convention center, multiple hotels, restaurants, and shops. While Abu Dhabi plans to build a sphere as large as the one in Las Vegas, the National Harbor venue would be one of the first mini-Sphere venues announced last March.

Its capacity would be limited to 6,000 seats instead of over 17,000. But the smaller Sphere would still be hard to miss with an exterior LED exosphere for showcasing the “artistic and branded content” that helped make the original sphere a unique part of the Las Vegas skyline. The inside of the mini-Sphere will feature a high-resolution 16,000 by 16,000 pixel wrap-around screen, the company’s immersive sound technology, haptic seating, and “4D environmental effects.” For the AI-enhanced version of The Wizard of Oz currently playing in Las Vegas, audiences experience effects like wind, fog, smells, and apples falling from the ceiling.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: NVIDIA executives allegedly authorized the use of millions of pirated books from Anna’s Archive to fuel its AI training. In an expanded class-action lawsuit that cites internal NVIDIA documents, several book authors claim (PDF) that the trillion-dollar company directly reached out to Anna’s Archive, seeking high-speed access to the shadow library data. […] Last Friday, the authors filed an amended complaint that significantly expands the scope of the lawsuit. In addition to adding more books, authors, and AI models, it also includes broader “shadow library” claims and allegations. The authors, including Abdi Nazemian, now cite various internal Nvidia emails and documents, suggesting that the company willingly downloaded millions of copyrighted books. The new complaint alleges that “competitive pressures drove NVIDIA to piracy,” which allegedly included collaborating with the controversial Anna’s Archive library.

According to the amended complaint, a member of Nvidia’s data strategy team reached out to Anna’s Archive to find out what the pirate library could offer the trillion-dollar company “Desperate for books, NVIDIA contacted Anna’s Archive — the largest and most brazen of the remaining shadow libraries — about acquiring its millions of pirated materials and ‘including Anna’s Archive in pre-training data for our LLMs,'” the complaint notes. “Because Anna’s Archive charged tens of thousands of dollars for ‘high-speed access’ to its pirated collections [] NVIDIA sought to find out what “high-speed access” to the data would look like.”

According to the complaint, Anna’s Archive then warned Nvidia that its library was illegally acquired and maintained. Because the site previously wasted time on other AI companies, the pirate library asked NVIDIA executives if they had internal permission to move forward. This permission was allegedly granted within a week, after which Anna’s Archive provided the chip giant with access to its pirated books. “Within a week of contacting Anna’s Archive, and days after being warned by Anna’s Archive of the illegal nature of their collections, NVIDIA management gave ‘the green light’ to proceed with the piracy. Anna’s Archive offered NVIDIA millions of pirated copyrighted books.” The complaint states that Anna’s Archive promised to provide NVIDIA with access to roughly 500 terabytes of data. This included millions of books that are usually only accessible through Internet Archive’s digital lending system, which itself has been targeted in court. The complaint does not explicitly mention whether NVIDIA ended up paying Anna’s Archive for access to the data.

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that NVIDIA also stands accused of using other pirated sources. In addition to the previously included Books3 database, the new complaint also alleges that the company downloaded books from LibGen, Sci-Hub, and Z-Library. In addition to downloading and using pirated books for its own AI training, the authors allege NVIDIA distributed scripts and tools that allowed its corporate customers to automatically download “The Pile”, which contains the Books3 pirated dataset.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to CFO Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s annualized revenue surpassed $20 billion in 2025, up from $6 billion a year earlier with growth closely tracking an expansion in computing capacity. Reuters reports: OpenAI’s computing capacity rose to 1.9 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 from 0.6 GW in 2024, Friar said in the blog, adding that Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s weekly and daily active users figures continue to produce all-time highs. OpenAI last week said it would start showing ads in ChatGPT to some U.S. users, ramping up efforts to generate revenue from the AI chatbot to fund the high costs of developing the technology. Separately, Axios reported on Monday that OpenAI’s policy chief Chris Lehane said that the company is “on track” to unveil its first device in the second half of 2026.

Friar said OpenAI’s platform spans text, images, voice, code and APIs, and the next phase will focus on agents and workflow automation that run continuously, carry context over time, and take action across tools. For 2026, the company will prioritize “practical adoption,” particularly in health, science and enterprise, she said. Friar said the company is keeping a “light” balance sheet by partnering rather than owning and structuring contracts with flexibility across providers and hardware types.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pioneering mathematician Dr. Gladys West has passed away at the age of 95. Her name may not be familiar to you, but her contributions certainly are; West’s work laid the foundation for the global positioning system. As you likely know from experience, GPS is now an essential component of industries ranging from aviation and emergency response, as well as ensuring that you get to that dinner date or job interview on time. 

West was born in 1930 in Virginia. Despite the oppression of Jim Crow laws in the south, she was able to pursue higher education at Virginia State College (now named Virginia State University), obtaining bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics. In 1956, West was hired at what is now called the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, VA. Her focus during the 1970s and 1980s was creating accurate models of the Earth’s shape based on satellite data, a complex task requiring the type of mathematical gymnastics that would make the average person dizzy. Those models later became the backbone for GPS. West worked at the Dahlgren center for 42 years, retiring in 1998. 

As has been the case with so many of the women, particularly those of color, behind tech and science breakthroughs in the US, West’s work went largely uncelebrated for decades. After submitting a short biography of her accomplishments to a sorority function in 2018, members of Alpha Kappa Alpha helped West to receive belated recognition for her contributions. She was inducted into the US Air Force Space and Missiles Pioneers Hall of Fame and honored as Female Alumna of the Year by the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Awards in that same year. The Guardian published an interview with West in 2020 that shared some insights on her journey, including a note that when West was out and about, she favored paper maps over the technology she indirectly helped create.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/dr-gladys-west-whose-mathematical-models-inspired-gps-dies-at-95-234605023.html?src=rss

New data from Similarweb shows Threads has overtaken X in daily mobile users. However, X still dominates on the web with around 150 million daily web visits compared to Threads’ 8.5 million daily visits. TechCrunch reports: Similarweb’s data shows that Threads had 141.5 million daily active users on iOS and Android as of January 7, 2026, after months of growth, while X has 125 million daily active users on mobile devices. This appears to be the result of longer-term trends, rather than a reaction to the recent X controversies […]. Instead, Threads’ boost in daily mobile usage may be driven by other factors, including cross-promotions from Meta’s larger social apps like Facebook and Instagram (where Threads is regularly advertised to existing users), its focus on creators, and the rapid rollout of new features.

Over the past year, Threads has added features like interest-based communities, better filters, DMs, long-form text, disappearing posts, and has recently been spotted testing games. Combined, the daily active user increases suggest that more people are using Threads on mobile as a more regular habit. Further reading: Threads Now Has More Than 400 Million Monthly Active Users

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a video of LEGO experimenter Brick Technology (previously) pitting LEGO cars against increasingly larger loopty loops. It was a fun watch with surprisingly high production value, and this is the exact sort of experimenting I wish I spent my weekends doing. But nooooo, I spent the entirety of last weekend running experiments to find out what will make a toilet stop leaking. Do you know how many trips to Home Depot I took? Four, and on the fourth I was *this close* to fixing the toilet and the rest of my home improvement projects with a new gas can.

BONUS MULTI-LOOP CORKSCREW AT THE END.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing [Friday] on “examining the effect of technology on America’s youth.” Witnesses warned about “addictive” online content, mental health, and kids spending too much time buried in screen. At the center of the debate is a bill from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) called the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA), which they say will protect children and “empower parents.”

That’s a reasonable goal, especially at a time when many parents feel overwhelmed and nervous about how much time their kids spend on screens. But while the bill’s press release contains soothing language, KOSMA doesn’t actually give parents more control. Instead of respecting how most parents guide their kids towards healthy and educational content, KOSMA hands the control panel to Big Tech. That’s right — this bill would take power away from parents, and hand it over to the companies that lawmakers say are the problem. […] This bill doesn’t just set an age rule. It creates a legal duty for platforms to police families. Section 103(b) of the bill is blunt: if a platform knows a user is under 13, it “shall terminate any existing account or profile” belonging to that user. And “knows” doesn’t just mean someone admits their age. The bill defines knowledge to include what is “fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances” — in other words, what a reasonable person would conclude from how the account is being used. The reality of how services would comply with KOSMA is clear: rather than risk liability for how they should have known a user was under 13, they will require all users to prove their age to ensure that they block anyone under 13.

KOSMA contains no exceptions for parental consent, for family accounts, or for educational or supervised use. The vast majority of people policed by this bill won’t be kids sneaking around — it will be minors who are following their parents’ guidance, and the parents themselves. Imagine a child using their parent’s YouTube account to watch science videos about how a volcano works. If they were to leave a comment saying, “Cool video — I’ll show this to my 6th grade teacher!” and YouTube becomes aware of the comment, the platform now has clear signals that a child is using that account. It doesn’t matter whether the parent gave permission. Under KOSMA, the company is legally required to act. To avoid violating KOSMA, it would likely lock, suspend, or terminate the account, or demand proof it belongs to an adult. That proof would likely mean asking for a scan of a government ID, biometric data, or some other form of intrusive verification, all to keep what is essentially a “family” account from being shut down.

Violations of KOSMA are enforced by the FTC and state attorneys general. That’s more than enough legal risk to make platforms err on the side of cutting people off. Platforms have no way to remove “just the kid” from a shared account. Their tools are blunt: freeze it, verify it, or delete it. Which means that even when a parent has explicitly approved and supervised their child’s use, KOSMA forces Big Tech to override that family decision. […] These companies don’t know your family or your rules. They only know what their algorithms infer. Under KOSMA, those inferences carry the force of law. Rather than parents or teachers, decisions about who can be online, and for what purpose, will be made by corporate compliance teams and automated detection systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida—Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad.

The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At the end of its nearly 10-day tour through cislunar space, the Orion capsule on top of the rocket will exceed 25,000 mph as it plunges into the atmosphere to bring its four-person crew back to Earth.

“This is the start of a very long journey,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “We ended our last human exploration of the moon on Apollo 17.”

Read full article

Comments

ASUS appears to be shifting its business operations away from smartphones. According to translations of recent quotes from Chairman Jonney Shih, the company does not plan to release new phone models in the future. The chairman did not confirm whether smartphones would be completely phased out, but he did acknowledge that possibility. Whatever direction ASUS takes, its existing phones will continue to receive software updates and warranty assistance. Shih suggested that its future plans may include a shift into AI-related projects such as robotics or smartglasses.

Previous reports hinted that ASUS would not introduce any smartphones in 2026, but Shih’s recent comments indicate that the pause may stretch longer than a year. We’ve reached out to ASUS for additional comment and will update if the company shares any further information. 

ASUS had plenty of other updates emerging from CES at the start of the month unrelated to smartphones, such as dual-screen laptops and a pair of gaming smartglasses. So if it does decide to leave that product segment, there will still be other ASUS-branded gear on the market.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/asus-will-not-release-any-new-smartphones-this-year-213043832.html?src=rss

It’s been nearly three years now since Destiny maker (and Sony subsidiary) Bungie formally announced a revival of the storied Marathon FPS franchise. And it has been about seven months since the game’s original announced release date of September 23, 2025 was pushed back indefinitely after a reportedly poor response to the game’s first Alpha test.

But today, in a post on the PlayStation Blog, Bungie revealed that the new Marathon would finally be hitting PS5, Windows, and Xbox Series X|S on March 5, narrowing down the month-long March release window announced back in December.

Unlike Destiny 2, which transitioned to a free-to-play model in 2019, the new Marathon sells for $40 in a Standard Edition or a $60 Deluxe Edition that includes some digital rewards and cosmetics. That mirrors the pricing of the somewhat similar Arc Raiders, which recently hit 12 million sales in less than 12 weeks.

Read full article

Comments