AI “has gutted entry-level roles in the tech industry,” reports Rest of World.

One student at a high-ranking engineering college in India tells them that among his 400 classmates, “fewer than 25% have secured job offers… there’s a sense of panic on the campus.”

Students at engineering colleges in India, China, Dubai, and Kenya are facing a “jobpocalypse” as artificial intelligence replaces humans in entry-level roles. Tasks once assigned to fresh graduates, such as debugging, testing, and routine software maintenance, are now increasingly automated. Over the last three years, the number of fresh graduates hired by big tech companies globally has declined by more than 50%, according to a report published by SignalFire, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Even though hiring rebounded slightly in 2024, only 7% of new hires were recent graduates. As many as 37% of managers said they’d rather use AI than hire a Gen Z employee…

Indian IT services companies have reduced entry-level roles by 20%-25% thanks to automation and AI, consulting firm EY said in a report last month. Job platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Eures noted a 35% decline in junior tech positions across major EU countries during 2024…

“Five years ago, there was a real war for [coders and developers]. There was bidding to hire,” and 90% of the hires were for off-the-shelf technical roles, or positions that utilize ready-made technology products rather than requiring in-house development, said Vahid Haghzare, director at IT hiring firm Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment in Dubai. Since the rise of AI, “it has dropped dramatically,” he said. “I don’t even think it’s touching 5%. It’s almost completely vanished.” The company headhunts workers from multiple countries including China, Singapore, and the U.K… The current system, where a student commits three to five years to learn computer science and then looks for a job, is “not sustainable,” Haghzare said. Students are “falling down a hole, and they don’t know how to get out of it.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“Polar bears are still sadly expected to go extinct this century,” with two-thirds of the population gone by 2050,” says the lead researcher on a new study from the University of East Anglia in Britain.

But their research also suggests polar bears “are rapidly rewiring their own genetics in a bid to survive,” reports NBC News, in “the first documented case of rising temperatures driving genetic change in a mammal.”

“I believe our work really does offer a glimmer of hope — a window of opportunity for us to reduce our carbon emissions to slow down the rate of climate change and to give these bears more time to adapt to these stark changes in their habitats,” [the lead author of the study told NBC News].

Building on earlier University of Washington research, [lead researcher] Godden’s team analyzed blood samples from polar bears in northeastern and southeastern Greenland. In the slightly warmer south, they found that genes linked to heat stress, aging and metabolism behaved differently from those in northern bears. “Essentially this means that different groups of bears are having different sections of their DNA changed at different rates, and this activity seems linked to their specific environment and climate,” Godden said in a university press release. She said this shows, for the first time, that a unique group of one species has been forced to “rewrite their own DNA,” adding that this process can be considered “a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice….”

Researchers say warming ocean temperatures have reduced vital sea ice platforms that the bears use to hunt seals, leading to isolation and food scarcity. This led to genetic changes as the animals’ digestive system adapts to a diet of plants and low fats in the absence of prey, Godden told NBC News.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you’re several chapters into a novel and forgot who a character was, Amazon is hoping its new Kindle feature will jog your memory without ever having to put the e-reader down. This feature, called Ask this Book, was announced during Amazon’s hardware event in September, but is finally available for US users on the Kindle iOS app.

According to Amazon, the feature can currently be found on thousands of English best-selling Kindle titles and “only reveals information up to your current reading position” for spoiler-free responses. To use it, you can highlight a passage in any book you’ve bought or borrowed and ask it questions about plot, characters or other crucial details, and the AI assistant will offer “immediate, contextual, spoiler-free information.” You’ll even be able to ask follow-up questions for more detail.

Amazon

While Ask this Book may be helpful to some Kindle readers, the feature touches on a major point of contention with authors and publishers. In response to Publishers Lunch, a daily newsletter for the publishing industry, an Amazon spokesperson said that, “To ensure a consistent reading experience, the feature is always on, and there is no option for authors or publishers to opt titles out.” Other AI companies are already facing lawsuits claiming copyright infringement. Most recently, the New York Times and Chicago Tribune sued Perplexity, accusing the AI company of using its copyrighted works to train its LLMs.

As for the Ask this Book feature, Amazon is already planning to expand it beyond the iOS app and will introduce it to Kindle devices and the Android OS app next year. Beyond this new feature, Amazon also introduced Recaps to Kindle devices and the iOS app for books in a series, which acts much like a TV show’s “Previously on” roundup in between seasons. However, Amazon recently had to withdraw its AI-generated Video Recaps feature, so it might be worth double-checking the info you get from Recaps, too.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/kindles-in-book-ai-assistant-can-answer-all-your-questions-without-spoilers-190609961.html?src=rss

America’s solar industry “just delivered another huge quarter,” reports Electrek, “installing 11.7 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in Q3 2025. That makes it the third-largest quarter on record and pushes total solar additions this year past 30 GW…”

According to the new “US Solar Market Insight Q4 2025” report from Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, 85% of all new power added to the grid during the first nine months of the Trump administration came from solar and storage. And here’s the twist: Most of that growth — 73% — happened in red [Republican-leaning] states. Eight of the top 10 states for new installations fall into that category, including Texas, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Utah, Kentucky, and Arkansas…

Two new solar module factories opened this year in Louisiana and South Carolina, adding a combined 4.7 GW of capacity. That brings the total new U.S. module manufacturing capacity added in 2025 to 17.7 GW. With a new wafer facility coming online in Michigan in Q3, the U.S. can now produce every major component of the solar module supply chain…

SEIA also noted that, following an analysis of EIA data, it found that more than 73 GW of solar projects across the U.S. are stuck in permitting limbo and at risk of politically motivated delays or cancellations.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Close enough, welcome back Xperia Play. After releasing a teaser video in early November, Ayaneo fully revealed its first smartphone called the Pocket Play. As suspected, the Ayaneo Pocket Play features a sliding mechanism that transforms it from a chunky smartphone into a gaming handheld.

In its gaming configuration, the Pocket Play features a controller setup with a D-pad, ABXY buttons and four shoulder buttons. However, Ayaneo has modernized the Xperia Play design by incorporating two touchpads, which will also be seen in the handheld maker’s next flagship device called the Next II. According to Ayaneo, you can map these touchpads as virtual joysticks or customizable inputs. Ayaneo hasn’t revealed the specs of the Pocket Play yet, but the device appears to have slots that could hint at expandable storage options.

The Pocket Play will be Ayaneo’s first foray into the smartphone world, albeit with mobile gaming in mind. It’ll have to compete against the likes of other gaming-specific smartphones like the Redmagic 10 Pro or the Asus ROG Phone series, as well as the latest iPhone and Samsung Galaxy smartphones that can also handle demanding mobile games. Ayaneo will launch the Pocket Play on Kickstarter soon, but hasn’t revealed any pricing details yet.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/ayaneos-first-smartphone-is-a-major-callback-to-the-xperia-play-165206332.html?src=rss

Nonprofit Code.org released its 2025 State of AI & Computer Science Education report this week with a state-by-state analysis of school policies complaining that “0 out of 50 states require AI+CS for graduation.”

But meanwhile, at the college level, “Purdue University will begin requiring that all of its undergraduate students demonstrate basic competency in AI,” writes former college president Michael Nietzel, “starting with freshmen who enter the university in 2026.”

The new “AI working competency” graduation requirement was approved by the university’s Board of Trustees at its meeting on December 12… The requirement will be embedded into every undergraduate program at Purdue, but it won’t be done in a “one-size-fits-all” manner. Instead, the Board is delegating authority to the provost, who will work with the deans of all the academic colleges to develop discipline-specific criteria and proficiency standards for the new campus-wide requirement. [Purdue president] Chiang said students will have to demonstrate a working competence through projects that are tailored to the goals of individual programs. The intent is to not require students to take more credit hours, but to integrate the new AI expectation into existing academic requirements…

While the news release claimed that Purdue may be the first school to establish such a requirement, at least one other university has introduced its own institution-wide expectation that all its graduates acquire basic AI skills. Earlier this year, The Ohio State University launched an AI Fluency initiative, infusing basic AI education into core undergraduate requirements and majors, with the goal of helping students understand and use AI tools — no matter their major.

Purdue wants its new initiative to help graduates:
— Understand and use the latest AI tools effectively in their chosen fields, including being able to identify the key strengths and limits of AI technologies;
— Recognize and communicate clearly about AI, including developing and defending decisions informed by AI, as well as recognizing the influence and consequences of AI in decision-making;
— Adapt to and work with future AI developments effectively.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said Friday he was moving to file a bipartisan bill to repeal Section 230 of America’s Communications Decency Act.

“The law prevents most civil suits against users or services that are based on what others say,” explains an EFF blog post.

“Experts argue that a repeal of Section 230 could kill free speech on the internet,” writes LiveMint — though America’s last two presidents both supported a reapl:

During his first presidency, US President Donald Trump called to repeal the law and signed an executive order attempting to curb some of its protections, though it was challenged in court.
Subsequently, former President Joe Biden also voiced his opinion against the law.

An EFF blog post explains the case for Section 230:

Congress passed this bipartisan legislation because it recognized that promoting more user speech online outweighed potential harms. When harmful speech takes place, it’s the speaker that should be held responsible, not the service that hosts the speech… Without Section 230, the Internet is different. In Canada and Australia, courts have allowed operators of online discussion groups to be punished for things their users have said. That has reduced the amount of user speech online, particularly on controversial subjects. In non-democratic countries, governments can directly censor the internet, controlling the speech of platforms and users. If the law makes us liable for the speech of others, the biggest platforms would likely become locked-down and heavily censored. The next great websites and apps won’t even get started, because they’ll face overwhelming legal risk to host users’ speech.

But “I strongly believe that Section 230 has long outlived its use,” Senator Whitehouse said this week, saying Section 230 “a real vessel for evil that needs to come to an end.”

“The laws that Section 230 protect these big platforms from are very often laws that go back to the common law of England, that we inherited when this country was initially founded. I mean, these are long-lasting, well-tested, important legal constraints that have — they’ve met the test of time, not by the year or by the decade, but by the century.

“And yet because of this crazy Section 230, these ancient and highly respected doctrines just don’t reach these people. And it really makes no sense, that if you’re an internet platform you get treated one way; you do the exact same thing and you’re a publisher, you get treated a completely different way.

“And so I think that the time has come…. It really makes no sense… [Testimony before the committee] shows how alone and stranded people are when they don’t have the chance to even get justice. It’s bad enough to have to live through the tragedy… But to be told by a law of Congress, you can’t get justice because of the platform — not because the law is wrong, not because the rule is wrong, not because this is anything new — simply because the wrong type of entity created this harm.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Time magazine used its 98th annual “Person of the Year” cover to “recognize a force that has dominated the year’s headlines, for better or for worse. For delivering the age of thinking machines, for wowing and worrying humanity, for transforming the present and transcending the possible, the Architects of AI are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year.”

One cover illustration shows eight AI executives sitting precariously on a beam high above the city, while Time’s 6,700-word article promises “the story of how AI changed our world in 2025, in new and exciting and sometimes frightening ways. It is the story of how [Nvidia CEO] Huang and other tech titans grabbed the wheel of history, developing technology and making decisions that are reshaping the information landscape, the climate, and our livelihoods.”

Time describes them betting on “one of the biggest physical infrastructure projects of all time,” mentioning all the usual worries — datacenters’ energy consumption, chatbot psychosis, predictions of “wiping out huge numbers of jobs” and the possibility of an AI stock market bubble. (Although “The drumbeat of warning that advanced AI could kill us all has mostly quieted”). But it also notes AI’s potential to jumpstart innovation (and economic productivity)

This year, the debate about how to wield AI responsibly gave way to a sprint to deploy it as fast as possible. “Every industry needs it, every company uses it, and every nation needs to build it,” Huang tells TIME in a 75-minute interview in November, two days after announcing that Nvidia, the world’s first $5 trillion company, had once again smashed Wall Street’s earnings expectations. “This is the single most impactful technology of our time…”

The risk-averse are no longer in the driver’s seat. Thanks to Huang, Son, Altman, and other AI titans, humanity is now flying down the highway, all gas no brakes, toward a highly automated and highly uncertain future. Perhaps Trump said it best, speaking directly to Huang with a jovial laugh in the U.K. in September: “I don’t know what you’re doing here. I hope you’re right.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A January order blocking wind energy projects in America has now been vacated by a U.S. judge and declared unlawful, reports the Associated Press:

[Judge Saris of the U.S. district court for the district of Massachusetts] ruled in favor of a coalition of state attorneys general from 17 states and Washington DC, led by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, that challenged President Trump’s day one order that paused leasing and permitting for wind energy projects… The coalition that opposed Trump’s order argued that Trump does not have the authority to halt project permitting, and that doing so jeopardizes the states’ economies, energy mix, public health and climate goals.

The coalition includes Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington state and Washington DC. They say they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars collectively to develop wind energy and even more on upgrading transmission lines to bring wind energy to the electrical grid…

Wind is the United States’ largest source of renewable energy, providing about 10% of the electricity generated in the nation, according to the American Clean Power Association.

But the BBC quotes Timothy Fox, managing director at the Washington, DC-based research firm ClearView Energy Partners, as saying he doesn’t expect the ruling to reinvigorate the industry:

“It’s more symbolic than substantive,” he said. “All the court is saying is … you need to go back to work and consider these applications. What does that really mean?” he said.

Officials could still deny permits or bog applications down in lengthy reviews, he noted.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The R programming language “is sometimes frowned upon by ‘traditional’ software engineers,” says the CEO of software quality services vendor Tiobe, “due to its unconventional syntax and limited scalability for large production systems.” But he says it “continues to thrive at universities and in research-driven industries, and “for domain experts, it remains a powerful and elegant tool.”

Yet it’s now gaining more popularity as statistics and large-scale data visualization become important (a trend he also sees reflected in the rise of Wolfram/Mathematica). That’s according to December’s edition of his TIOBE Index, which attempts to rank the popularity of programming languages based on search-engine results for courses, third-party vendors, and skilled engineers. InfoWorld explains:

In the December 2025 index, published December 7, R ranks 10th with a 1.96% rating. R has cracked the Tiobe index’s top 10 before, such as in April 2020 and July 2020, but not in recent years. The rival Pypl Popularity of Programming Language Index, meanwhile, has R ranked fifth this month with a 5.84% share. “Programming language R is known for fitting statisticians and data scientists like a glove,” said Paul Jansen, CEO of software quality services vendor Tiobe, in a bulletin accompanying the December index…

Although data science rival Python has eclipsed R in terms of general adoption, Jansen said R has carved out a solid and enduring niche, excelling at rapid experimentation, statistical modeling, and exploratory data analysis. “We have seen many Tiobe index top 10 entrants rising and falling,” Jansen wrote. “It will be interesting to see whether R can maintain its current position.”

“Python remains ahead at 23.64%,” notes TechRepublic, “while the familiar chase group behind it holds steady for the moment. The real movement comes deeper in the list, where SQL edges upward, R rises to the top 10, and Delphi/Object Pascal slips away… SQLclimbs from tenth to eighth at 2.10%, adding a small +0.11% that’s enough to move it upward in a tightly packed section of the table. Perl holds ninth at 1.97%, strengthened by a +1.33% gain that extends its late-year resurgence.”

It’s interesting to see how TIOBE’s ranking compare with PYPL’s (which ranks languages based solely on how often language tutorials are searched on Google):

TIOBE PYPL

Python Python
C C/C++
C++ Objective-C
Java Java
C# R

JavaScript JavaScript
Visual Basic Swift
SQL C#
Perl PHP
R Rust

Despite their different methodologies, both lists put Python at #1, Java at #5, and JavaScript at #7.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week the Free Software Foundation honored Andy Wingo, Alx Sa, and Govdirectory with this year’s annual Free Software Awards (given to community members and groups making
“significant” contributions to software freedom):

Andy Wingo is one of the co-maintainers of GNU Guile,
the official extension language of the GNU operating system and the
Scheme “backbone” of GNU
Guix. Upon receiving the award, he stated: “Since I learned
about free software, the vision of a world in which hackers freely
share and build on each others’ work has been a profound inspiration
to me, and I am humbled by this recognition of my small efforts in
the context of the Guile Scheme implementation. I thank my
co-maintainer, Ludovic Courtès, for his comradery over the years: we
are just building on the work of the past maintainers of Guile, and I
hope that we live long enough to congratulate its many future
maintainers.”

The 2024 Award for
Outstanding New Free
Software Contributor went to Alx Sa for work on the GNU
Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). When asked to comment, Alx
responded: “I am honored to receive this recognition! I started
contributing to the GNU Image Manipulation Program as a way to return
the favor because of all the cool things it’s allowed me to do.
Thanks to the help and mentorship of amazing people like Jehan Pagès,
Jacob Boerema, Liam Quin, and so many others, I hope I’ve been able
to help other people do some cool new things, too.”

Govdirectory was presented
with this year’s Award
for Projects of Social Benefit, given to a project or team
responsible for applying free software, or the ideas of the free
software movement, to intentionally and significantly benefit
society. Govdirectory provides a collaborative and fact-checked
listing of government addresses, phone numbers, websites, and social
media accounts, all of which can be viewed with free software and
under a free license, allowing people to always reach their
representatives in freedom…

The FSF plans to further highlight the Free Software Award winners
in a series of events scheduled for the new year to celebrate their
contributions to free software.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“The entire java.applet package has been removed from JDK 26, which will release in March 2026,” notes Inside Java.

But long-time Slashdot reader AirHog links to this blog post reminding us that
“Applets Are Officially Gone, But Java In The Browser Is Better Than Ever.”

This brings to an official end the era of applets, which began in 1996. However, for years it has been possible to build modern, interactive web pages in Java without needing applets or plugins. TeaVM provides fast, performant, and lightweight tooling to transpile Java to run natively in the browser…

TeaVM, at its heart, transpiles Java code into JavaScript (or, these days, WASM). However, in order for Java code to be useful for web apps, much more is required, and TeaVM delivers. It includes a minifier, to shrink the generated code and obfuscate the intent, to complicate reverse-engineering. It has a tree-shaker to eliminate unused methods and classes, keeping your app download compact. It packages your code into a single file for easy distribution and inclusion in your HTML page. It also includes wrappers for all popular browser APIs, so you can invoke them from your Java code easily, with full IDE assistance and auto-correct.

The blog post also touts Flavour, an open-source
framework “for coding, packaging, and optimizing single-page apps implemented in Java… a full front-end toolkit with templates, routing, components, and more” to “build your modern single-page app using 100% Java.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Utah-based startup announced last week it used AI to locate a 250-degree Fahrenheit geothermal reservoir, reports CNN. It’ll start producing electricity in three to five years, the company estimates — and at least one geologist believes AI could be an exciting “gamechanger” for the geothermal industry.

[Startup Zanskar Geothermal & Minerals] named it “Big Blind,” because this kind of site — which has no visual indication of its existence, no hot springs or geysers above ground, and no history of geothermal exploration — is known as a “blind” system. It’s the first industry-discovered blind site in more than three decades, said Carl Hoiland, co-founder and CEO of Zanskar. “The idea that geothermal is tapped out has been the narrative for decades,” but that’s far from the case, he told CNN. He believes there are many more hidden sites across the Western U.S.

Geothermal energy is a potential gamechanger. It offers the tantalizing prospect of a huge source of clean energy to meet burgeoning demand. It’s near limitless, produces scarcely any climate pollution, and is constantly available, unlike wind and solar, which are cheap but rely on the sun shining and the wind blowing. The problem, however, has been how to find and scale it. It requires a specific geology: underground reservoirs of hot water or steam, along with porous rocks that allow the water to move through them, heat up, and be brought to the surface where it can power turbines… The AI models Zanskar uses are fed information on where blind systems already exist. This data is plentiful as, over the last century and more, humans have accidentally stumbled on many around the world while drilling for other resources such as oil and gas.

The models then scour huge amounts of data — everything from rock composition to magnetic fields — to find patterns that point to the existence of geothermal reserves. AI models have “gotten really good over the last 10 years at being able to pull those types of signals out of noise,” Hoiland said…

Zanskar’s discovery “is very significant,” said James Faulds, a professor of geosciences at Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology…. Estimates suggest over three-quarters of US geothermal resources are blind, Faulds told CNN. “Refining methods to find such systems has the potential to unleash many tens and perhaps hundreds of gigawatts in the western US alone,” he said… Big Blind is the company’s first blind site discovery, but it’s the third site it has drilled and hit commercial resources. “We expect dozens, to eventually hundreds, of new sites to be coming to market,” Hoiland said…. Hoiland says Zanskar’s work shows conventional geothermal still has huge untapped potential.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Choosing your browser “is one of the most important digital decisions you can make, shaping how you experience the web, protect your data, and express yourself online,” says the Firefox blog. They’ve urged readers to “take a stand for independence and control in your digital life.”

But they also recently polled 8,000 adults in France, Germany, the UK and the U.S. on “how they navigate choice and control both online and offline” (attending in-person events in Chicago, Berlin, LA, and Munich, San Diego, Stuttgart):

The survey, conducted by research agency YouGov, showcases a tension between people’s desire to have control over their data and digital privacy, and the reality of the internet today — a reality defined by Big Tech platforms that make it difficult for people to exercise meaningful choice online:
— Only 16% feel in control of their privacy choices (highest in Germany at 21%)

— 24% feel it’s “too late” because Big Tech already has too much control or knows too much about them. And 36% said the feeling of Big Tech companies knowing too much about them is frustrating — highest among respondents in the U.S. (43%) and the UK (40%)

— Practices respondents said frustrated them were Big Tech using their data to train AI without their permission (38%) and tracking their data without asking (47%; highest in U.S. — 55% and lowest in France — 39%)
And from our existing research on browser choice, we know more about how defaults that are hard to change and confusing settings can bury alternatives, limiting people’s ability to choose for themselves — the real problem that fuels these dynamics.

Taken together our new and existing insights could also explain why, when asked which actions feel like the strongest expressions of their independence online, choosing not to share their data (44%) was among the top three responses in each country (46% in the UK; 45% in the U.S.; 44% in France; 39% in Germany)… We also see a powerful signal in how people think about choosing the communities and platforms they join — for 29% of respondents, this was one of their top three expressions of independence online.

“For Firefox, community has always been at the heart of what we do,” says their VP of Global Marketing, “and we’ll keep fighting to put real choice and control back in people’s hands so the web once again feels like it belongs to the communities that shape it.”

At TwitchCon in San Diego Firefox even launched a satirical new online card game with a privacy theme called Data War.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If Alien: Romulus reawakened your appetite for the iconic sci-fi franchise, the good news is that a promising video game could be on the way. According to an Insider Gaming report, a new game for the Alien franchise is back in development. The report’s sources mentioned that the single-player game will be set in a “decaying space station” as an arcade survival horror that can be compared to “Shadow of [the] Tomb Raider with Xenomorphs.”

It’s not the first time we heard about this Alien game, which was first reported on in 2022 under the codename “Marathon.” According to Insider Gaming, the game has cycled through several developers, but more recently landed with Eidos Montreal, which developed Shadow of the Tomb Raider and is currently working on the upcoming Fable reboot. The report added that the game’s development budget was increased to less than $75 million, up from the initial $30 million budget from a few years ago.

Insider Gaming‘s report noted that the game is still in “early development,” but could feature Ripley 8, the human-Xenomorph hybrid that was first seen in Alien Resurrection. The game’s details and release date are still subject to change, but Insider Gaming‘s sources said the game is “in a good place at this point” and is expected to release in 2028 on all platforms. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/a-aaa-game-for-the-alien-franchise-is-back-in-the-works-204401214.html?src=rss

Half-Life fans are nothing if not patient. For the diehard fans out there, the latest test of patience comes from Insider Gaming Weekly‘s podcast, which claimed that the third installment in the Half-Life franchise is set to release with the launch of the Steam Machine sometime in spring 2026.

“The window I was specifically told was spring 2026 for the Steam Machine, for the Frame, for the Controller, for Half-Life 3,” Mike Straw, one of the hosts of the Insider Gaming Weekly podcast and senior editor at Insider Gaming, said. “At the end of the day, the game is real.”

Straw added that all the previous dates for an announcement of the next Half-Life game have passed, but that his sources “are still adamant this is a game that will be a launch title with the Steam Machine.” However, being tied to Valve’s latest hardware release could be an issue since Straw noted that the explosive jump in RAM pricing is causing considerable concern for the Steam Machine’s pricing announcement.

“There is a concern, however, they haven’t made a decision on price, which is kind of holding back the announcement of anything else,” Straw said. “There’s no doubt in my mind Valve is still trying to make decisions because of what’s going on on the component side.”

While optimistic devotees were hoping for some teasers during The Game Awards, Valve hasn’t officially said anything. However, there’s still a lot of hope, especially considering Valve updated Half-Life 2 for its 20th anniversary, and previous rumors hinted at a game that’s still in development but is playable from beginning to end. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/half-life-3-is-rumored-to-be-a-steam-machine-launch-title-and-could-arrive-in-spring-2026-193029413.html?src=rss