There’s an 85-second ad (starring a humanoid robot) that argues “Technology promised to save us time. Instead it stole our focus. Opera Neon gives you both back.”

Or, as BleepingComputer describes it, Opera Neon “is a new browser that puts AI in control of your tabs and browsing activities, but it’ll cost $19.90 per month.”

It’ll do tasks for you, open websites for you, manage tabs for you, and listen to you. The idea behind these agentic browsers is to put AI in control. “Neon acts at your command, opening tabs, conducting research, finding the best prices, assessing security, whatever you need. It delivers outcomes you can use, share, and build on,” Opera noted…

As spotted on X, Opera Neon, the premium AI browser for Windows & macOS, costs $59.90 for nine months. Opera neon invite. This is an early bird offer, but when the offer expires, Opera Neon will cost $19.90 per month.

The browser’s web page says Opera Neon “can handle everyday tasks for you, like filling in forms, placing orders, replying to emails, or tidying up files. Reusable cards turn repeated chores into single-step tasks, letting you focus on the work that matters most to you.”

Opera describes itself as “the company that gave you tabs…”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post notes AI’s “increasingly outsize role” in propping up America’s economic fortunes.

“Last week, the United States reported that the economy expanded at a rate of 1.6 percent in the first half of the year, with most of that growth driven by AI spending. Without AI investment, growth would have been at about a third of that rate, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”

The huge economic influence of AI spending illustrates how Silicon Valley is placing a bet of unprecedented scale that the technology will revolutionize every aspect of life and work. Its sway suggests there will be economic damage far beyond Silicon Valley if that bet doesn’t work out or companies pull back. Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are on track to spend nearly $400 billion this year on data centers…

Concern about a potential bubble in AI investment has recently grown in technology and financial circles. ChatGPT and other AI tools are hugely popular with companies and consumers, and hundreds of billions of dollars has been sunk into AI ventures over the past three years. But few of the new initiatives are profitable, and huge profits will be needed for the immense investments to pay off… “I’m getting more and more skeptical and more and more concerned with what’s happening” with artificial intelligence, said Andrew Odlyzko, an economic historian and University of Minnesota emeritus professor who has studied financial bubbles closely, including the telecom bubble that collapsed in 2001 as part of the dot-com crash. Some industry insiders have expressed concern that the latest AI releases have fallen short of expectations, suggesting the technology may not advance enough to pay back the huge investments being made, he said. “AI is a craze,” Odlyzko said…
[The Federal Reserve’s August “beige book” summarizes interviews with business owners across the country, according to the article — and it found surging investments in AI data centers, which could tie their fortunes to other sectors.] That’s boosting demand for electricity and trucking in the Atlanta region, a hot spot for the facilities, and creating new projects for commercial real estate developers in the Philadelphia region. Because tech companies now dominate public markets, any change in their fortunes and share prices can also have a powerful influence on stock indexes, 401(k)s and the wider economy… Stock market slumps can have knock-on effects by undercutting the confidence of American businesses and consumers, leading them to spend less, said Gregory Daco [chief economist at strategy consulting firm EY-Parthenon]… “That directly affects economic activity,” he said, potentially widening the economic fallout…

Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a Sept. 4 note to clients that even if AI investment works out for companies like Google, there will be an “inevitable slowdown” in data center construction. That will cut revenue to companies providing the projects with chips and electricity, the note said. In a more extreme scenario where Big Tech pulls back spending to 2022 levels, the entire S&P 500 would lose 30 percent of the revenue growth Wall Street currently expects next year, the analysts wrote.

The AI bubble is 17 times the size of the dot-com frenzy — and four times the subprime bubble, according to estimates in a recent note from independent research firm the MacroStrategy Partnership (as reported by MarketWatch).

And “never before has so much money been spent so rapidly on a technology that, for all its potential, remains somewhat unproven as a profit-making business model,” writes Bloomberg, adding that OpenAI and other large tech companies are “relying increasingly on debt to support their unprecedented spending.” (Although Bloomberg also notes that ChatGPT alone has roughly 700 million weekly users, and that last month Anthropic reported roughly three quarters of companies are using Claude to automate work.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you prefer open-ear AirPods but still have an older model, this deal could be worth noting. Amazon’s October Prime Day has the AirPods 4 on sale for $90, or 30 percent off their usual price. That’s also the lowest we’ve seen them.

When Apple updated its standard AirPods in 2024, it released two models: one with active noise cancellation (ANC) and one without. We consider the non-ANC models to be the best budget AirPods you can get, so they’re an even better buy at this sale price. The ANC versions are also discounted at the moment, so you can pick them up for $140 instead of the usual $180.

The AirPods’ H2 chip brings a bunch of Pro-adjacent features to the standard model. That list includes Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Transparency, Personalized Spatial Audio and wireless charging. For calls, it supports Voice Isolation, which helps filter out background noise and make it easier for you to be heard. And if that call is via FaceTime, it supports Apple’s 48kHz “cinema-quality” audio.

Sound is improved over the AirPods 3. “There’s more low-end tone than the previous model right out of the gate, and the punchier treble opens the sound stage so it’s wider and more immersive,” Engadget’s Billy Steele wrote. “The improved frequency response is on full display with Dolby Atmos content (movies, music, and TV), but the AirPods 4 are also more sonically adept with non-spatial tunes and video.”

You can expect around five hours of battery life on a single charge. With the ANC model, that estimate drops to around four hours with the marquee feature activated. With either version, you can drop them in the charging case to extend their total time to around 30 hours. And hey, it’s good to give your ears a rest now and then anyway.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-airpods-4-drop-to-90-for-prime-day-130033169.html?src=rss

Your Apple Account is the key to everything you do on your iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro. It keeps your purchases, subscriptions and personal data secure. If you think your account has been hacked, if you’ve logged in on a shared device or if you haven’t updated your password in a while, it’s a good idea to update it. Apple officially rebranded Apple ID as Apple Account in 2024, but your login details work the same way. We’ll walk you through how to reset or change your Apple Account password on your iPhone, iPad, Mac or the web.

How to change your Apple Account password on your iPhone or iPad

The fastest way to update your password is through your device’s settings. This method works for iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro devices, and can also be started on Apple Watches if you have Stolen Device Protection enabled.

1. Navigate to Settings > Your Name > Sign-In & Security.

2. Tap Change Password.

3. You’ll need to enter your current password or device passcode.

4. Enter your new password and confirm the new password.

5. Tap Change.

If you want to change your child’s Apple Account password, you can do so if you have an iPhone, iPad or Apple Vision Pro running the latest version of iOS, iPadOS or visionOS with two-factor authentication turned on.

1. Navigate to Settings > Family > Your child’s account.

2. Tap Apple Account & Password.

3. Tap Change Child’s Name Password.

4. You’ll be prompted to enter your device passcode and follow the onscreen instructions.

How to change your Apple Account password on your Mac

If you’re on macOS Sequoia or later, the process is just as simple. Although the general process is the same as in previous macOS versions, specific menu names may be different.

1. Navigate to the Apple menu > System Settings > Your Name.

2. Select Sign-In & Security.

3. Select Change Password.

4. You’ll need to enter your current password that you use to unlock your Mac.

5. Follow the prompts to enter and verify your new Apple Account password.

How to change your Apple Account password on the web

If you don’t have access to your devices, you can still change your password online. However, you will initially be prompted to access a trusted device to manage your Apple Account (where possible).

1. Go to account.apple.com and sign in to your Apple Account.

2. Navigate to Sign-In and Security > Password.

3. Follow the prompts to enter and verify your new Apple Account password.

How to reset your Apple Account password

If you don’t remember your password, Apple gives you a couple of ways to reset it. The easiest way to reset your password is by using your iPhone or other trusted Apple device (one that’s already signed in to your Apple Account).

Using your iPhone, iPad or Apple Vision Pro:

1. Navigate to Settings > Your Name > Sign-In & Security > Change Password.

2. Follow the onscreen instructions to reset your password.

Using your Mac:

1. Navigate to the Apple menu > System Settings > Your Name > Sign-In & Security > Change Password.

2. Follow the onscreen instructions to reset your password.

If you don’t have access to a trusted device, there are a few things you can do:

• Borrow an Apple device from a friend or family member or use one at an Apple Store to access the Apple Support app. You’ll be able to choose the option to “Help Someone Else” if you have access to your Apple Account email address or phone number.

• Reset your password on the web at iforgot.apple.com and follow the instructions.

Tips for a strong Apple Account password

When setting up your new password, keep these things in mind:

• Use at least eight characters

• Include a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols

• Avoid common words, birthdates or anything that’s easy to guess

Apple won’t let you reuse a recent password, so be ready to come up with something fresh. iOS devices and password apps can generate strong passwords for you, but these are not going to be easy to remember. A password manager is a smart way to keep track of it if you’re juggling multiple logins.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/how-to-change-your-apple-account-password-120010992.html?src=rss

The book Life 3.0 remembers a 2017 conversation where Alphabet CEO Larry Page “made a ‘passionate’ argument for the idea that ‘digital life is the natural and desirable next step’ in ‘cosmic evolution’,” remembers an essay in the Wall Street Journal. “Restraining the rise of digital minds would be wrong, Page contended. Leave them off the leash and let the best minds win…”

“As it turns out, Larry Page isn’t the only top industry figure untroubled by the possibility that AIs might eventually push humanity aside. It is a niche position in the AI world but includes influential believers. Call them the Cheerful Apocalyptics… ”

I first encountered such views a couple of years ago through my X feed, when I saw a retweet of a post from Richard Sutton. He’s an eminent AI researcher at the University of Alberta who in March received the Turing Award, the highest award in computer science… [Sutton had said if AI becomes smarter than people — and then can be more powerful — why shouldn’t it be?] Sutton told me AIs are different from other human inventions in that they’re analogous to children. “When you have a child,” Sutton said, “would you want a button that if they do the wrong thing, you can turn them off? That’s much of the discussion about AI. It’s just assumed we want to be able to control them.” But suppose a time came when they didn’t like having humans around? If the AIs decided to wipe out humanity, would he be at peace with that? “I don’t think there’s anything sacred about human DNA,” Sutton said. “There are many species — most of them go extinct eventually. We are the most interesting part of the universe right now. But might there come a time when we’re no longer the most interesting part? I can imagine that…. If it was really true that we were holding the universe back from being the best universe that it could, I think it would be OK…”

I wondered, how common is this idea among AI people? I caught up with Jaron Lanier, a polymathic musician, computer scientist and pioneer of virtual reality. In an essay in the New Yorker in March, he mentioned in passing that he had been hearing a “crazy” idea at AI conferences: that people who have children become excessively committed to the human species. He told me that in his experience, such sentiments were staples of conversation among AI researchers at dinners, parties and anyplace else they might get together. (Lanier is a senior interdisciplinary researcher at Microsoft but does not speak for the company.)”There’s a feeling that people can’t be trusted on this topic because they are infested with a reprehensible mind virus, which causes them to favor people over AI when clearly what we should do is get out of the way.” We should get out of the way, that is, because it’s unjust to favor humans — and because consciousness in the universe will be superior if AIs supplant us. “The number of people who hold that belief is small,” Lanier said, “but they happen to be positioned in stations of great influence. So it’s not something one can ignore….”

You may be thinking to yourself: If killing someone is bad, and if mass murder is very bad, then the extinction of humanity must be very, very bad — right? What this fails to understand, according to the Cheerful Apocalyptics, is that when it comes to consciousness, silicon and biology are merely different substrates. Biological consciousness is of no greater worth than the future digital variety, their theory goes… While the Cheerful Apocalyptics sometimes write and talk in purely descriptive terms about humankind’s future doom, two value judgments in their doctrines are unmissable.The first is a distaste, at least in the abstract, for the human body. Rather than seeing its workings as awesome, in the original sense of inspiring awe, they view it as a slow, fragile vessel, ripe for obsolescence… The Cheerful Apocalyptics’ larger judgment is a version of the age-old maxim that “might makes right”…

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Currently DNA synthesis companies “deploy biosecurity software designed to guard against nefarious activity,” reports the Washington Post, “by flagging proteins of concern — for example, known toxins or components of pathogens.” But Microsoft researchers discovered “up to 100 percent” of AI-generated ricin-like proteins evaded detection — and worked with a group of leading industry scientists and biosecurity experts to design a patch. Microsoft’s chief science officer called it “a Windows update model for the planet.

“We will continue to stay on it and send out patches as needed, and also define the research processes and best practices moving forward to stay ahead of the curve as best we can.”
But is that enough?

Outside biosecurity experts applauded the study and the patch, but said that this is not an area where one single approach to biosecurity is sufficient. “What’s happening with AI-related science is that the front edge of the technology is accelerating much faster than the back end … in managing the risks,” said David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University School of Medicine. “It’s not just that we have a gap — we have a rapidly widening gap, as we speak. Every minute we sit here talking about what we need to do about the things that were just released, we’re already getting further behind.”

The Washington Post notes not every company deploys biosecurity software. But “A different approach, biosecurity experts say, is to ensure AI software itself is imbued with safeguards before digital ideas are at the cusp of being brought into labs for research and experimentation.”

“The only surefire way to avoid problems is to log all DNA synthesis, so if there is a worrisome new virus or other biological agent, the sequence can be cross-referenced with the logged DNA database to see where it came from,” David Baker, who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on proteins, said in an email.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“When someone searches for ‘James Bond’ on Prime Video now, all of the classic films will show up…” notes Parade. But recently Amazon’s streaming service had tried new thumbnails with “matching minimalist backgrounds,” so every Bond actor — from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig — “had a stylish image with ‘007’ emblazoned over a color background.” But in most of those “stylized” images, James Bond’s guns were edited out.

It looks like Amazon backed off. On my TV and on my tablet, selecting Dr. No now brings up a page where Bond is holding his gun. (Just like in the original publicity photo.) And there’s also guns in the key art for The Spy Who Loved Me, A View to a Kill, and License to Kill.

“Perhaps feeling shame for the terrible botch job on the artwork, not to mention the idea in the first place, Amazon Prime has now reinstated the previous key art across its streaming service,” notes the unofficial James Bond fan site MI6. (In most cases guns still aren’t shown, but they seem to achieve this by showing a photo from the movie.)

That blog post includes a gallery preserving copies of Amazon’s original “stylized” images. They’d written Thursday that Amazon didn’t just use cropping. “In some cases the images have been digitally manipulated to varying levels of success.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you upload an image to serve as the inspiration for a Sora video, “the app will reject your image if it detects a face — any face,” writes Mashable.” (Unless that person has agreed to participate.) All Sora videos also include a watermark, notes PC Magazine, and Sora banned the creation of AI-generated videos showing public figures.

“But it turns out the policy doesn’t apply to dead celebrities…”
Unlike lower-quality deepfakes, many of the Sora videos appear disturbingly realistic and accurately mimic the voices and facial expressions of deceased celebrities. Some of the clips even contain licensed music… [A]ccording to OpenAI, the videos are fair game. “We don’t have a comment to add, but we do allow the generation of historical figures,” the company tells PCMag.
CNBC reported Saturday that Sora users have also “flooded the platform with artificial intelligence-generated clips of popular brands and animated characters.” They noted Sora generated videos with clearly-copyrighted characters like Ronald McDonald, Simpsons characters, Pikachu, Patrick Star from “SpongeBob SquarePants,” and Pikachu. (as Cracked.com puts it, “Ever wish ‘South Park’ was two minutes long and not funny?”)

OpenAI’s “opt-out” policy for copyright holders was unusual, CNBC writes, since “Typically, third parties have to get explicit permission to use someone’s work under copyright law”” (as explained by Jason Bloom, partner/chair of the intellectual property litigation practice group at law firm Haynes Boone). “You can’t just post a notice to the public saying we’re going to use everybody’s works, unless you tell us not to,” he said. “That’s not how copyright works.”
“A lot of the videos that people are going to generate of these cartoon characters are going to infringe copyright,” Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, said in an interview. “OpenAI is opening itself up to quite a lot of copyright lawsuits by doing this…”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Toyota sold just 61 BZ models in September, reports Electrek.

“Including the Lexus RZ, which managed 86 sales, Toyota sold just 147 all-electric vehicles in the US last month, over 90% less than the 1,847 it sold in September 2024.”

Toyota’s total sales were up 14% with over 185,700 vehicles sold, meaning EVs accounted for less than 0.1%… So, why is Toyota struggling to sell EVs when the market is booming? For one, Toyota recalled over 95,000 electric vehicles last month, including the bZ4X, Lexus RZ, and Subaru Solterra, all of which are built on the same platform. The recall was due to a faulty defroster, but Toyota instructed its dealers to halt sales of the bZ4X, Lexus RZ, and Subaru Solterra.

Toyota hopes to turn things around with a new and improved lineup. The 2026 Toyota BZ (formerly the bZ4X) is arriving at US dealerships, promising to fix some of the biggest complaints with the outgoing electric SUV. Powered by a larger 74.7 kWh battery, the 2026 Toyota BZ offers up to 314 miles of driving range, a 25% improvement from the 2025 bZ4X… Toyota’s new electric SUV also features a built-in NACS charge port, allowing for recharging at Tesla Superchargers. It also features a new thermal management system and battery preconditioning, which improves charge times from 10% to 80% in about 30 minutes…

It’s not just the US that Toyota’s EV sales crashed last month, either. In its home market of Japan, Toyota (including Lexus) sold just 18 EVs in September.

The Japanese auto giant is betting on new models to drive growth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“Microsoft buys a lot of GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD,” writes the Register. “But moving forward, Redmond’s leaders want to shift the majority of its AI workloads from GPUs to its own homegrown accelerators…”

Driving the transition is a focus on performance per dollar, which for a hyperscale cloud provider is arguably the only metric that really matters. Speaking during a fireside chat moderated by CNBC on Wednesday, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott said that up to this point, Nvidia has offered the best price-performance, but he’s willing to entertain anything in order to meet demand.

Going forward, Scott suggested Microsoft hopes to use its homegrown chips for the majority of its datacenter workloads. When asked, “Is the longer term idea to have mainly Microsoft silicon in the data center?” Scott responded, “Yeah, absolutely…

Microsoft is reportedly in the process of bringing a second-generation Maia accelerator to market next year that will no doubt offer more competitive compute, memory, and interconnect performance… It should be noted that AI accelerators aren’t the only custom chips Microsoft has been working on. Redmond also has its own CPU called Cobalt and a whole host of platform security silicon designed to accelerate cryptography and safeguard key exchanges across its vast datacenter domains.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Redemption Road’s absolutely bonkers-looking medieval shooter, Kingmakers, was slated to launch in Early Access on October 8, but now its release has been pushed back with no new date in sight. The developers posted an update on Steam to say that the scheduled launch, just days away, “will no longer be possible,” going on to explain that they need “a bit more time on content polish before we feel good about charging money for it.”

Redemption Road Games

Kingmakers has generated a fair amount of hype since it was announced last year, and it sits among the top wishlisted titles on Steam. The game sends players “back in time to a war-torn medieval era with a vast arsenal of modern weapons,” from guns to tanks. And if you’ve seen the trailers, you know it’s not just the concept that’s bananas — the gameplay we’ve been shown so far is completely over the top. In its statement about the delay, the team said that Kingmakers is “an incredibly ambitious, uncompromising game, and we don’t want to cut any planned features, for the sake of getting it out the door earlier.”

“With Kingmakers, we set out to push the Unreal Engine 4 codebase to its absolute limits, while still providing true 60fps to midrange PCs, without the need for fake frames,” the team wrote. “We are an 80% engineering team, who got into this business to push technological barriers. We currently have tens of thousands of soldiers, each with AI and pathfinding that rivals what you’d expect from a AAA third person shooter. When you walk away from a battle, it continues to play out. Nothing is faked.”  

The developers haven’t provided any update on what the timeline looks like now beyond the fact that the game won’t be ready for October 8. But, they added, “We will be presenting a half hour long deepdive on Kingmakers gameplay very soon, with a comprehensive overview of everything we’ve been working on.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/kingmakers-the-medieval-battle-game-with-modern-weapons-has-been-delayed-211935670.html?src=rss

The Greater Manchester Police force has 12,677 employees. But they’ve now suspended work-from-home privileges, reports the BBC, “following an investigation into so-called ‘key-jamming’, which can allow people to falsely appear to be working. “Twenty-six police officers, staff and contractors are facing misconduct proceedings following the probe, the force said.”

One constable told a hearing that a police detective working from home had made it look like his computer was in use on 38 different occasions over 12 days, according to an earlier BBC article. The evidence “showed lengthy periods where the only activity is single keystrokes, pressing the ‘H’ key about 30 times, between 10:28 and 11:56 GMT on 3 December, and then the ‘I’ key more than 16,000 times.” The detective “used key jamming for 45 hours out of a total of 85 he was logged in for and was frequently away from the keyboard for half of his working day.”

The constable said the detective’s motivation was “laziness” — and the detective has already resigned.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just a day after dethroning SpaceX as the most valuable private company in the world, OpenAI has acquired another startup. This time, the AI giant acquired Roi, an app that offers a one-stop shop for all your financial portfolios and an AI chatbot that provides personalized investing advice. Details of the acquisition weren’t made public, but TechCrunch reported that Sujith Vishwajith, the startup’s CEO and co-founder, will be the only one joining OpenAI’s team.

It might come as a surprise for OpenAI to venture into the personal finance space, but this latest acquisition offers some hints at what the company could have in store for the future. OpenAI could be leaning into an AI chatbot that provides more than just responses to general queries and offers more personalization as a “proactive assistant,” as detailed in its blog post introducing Pulse.

OpenAI is also no stranger to acquiring smaller companies that offer something that could advance ChatGPT. In May, the company acquired io, an AI hardware startup cofounded by former Apple designer Jony Ive, for $6.5 billion. OpenAI followed up that major purchase by spending another $1.1 billion to acquire Statsig, a startup that focused on product testing, in September.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-acquires-an-ai-powered-personal-investing-app-192339271.html?src=rss

Around this time each year, the US Space Force convenes a Mission Assignment Board to dole out contracts to launch the nation’s most critical national security satellites. The military announced this year’s launch orders Friday, and SpaceX was the big winner.

Space Systems Command, the unit responsible for awarding military launch contracts, selected SpaceX to launch five of the seven missions up for assignment this year. United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, won contracts for the other two. These missions for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office are still at least a couple of years away from flying.

SpaceX and ULA are the only companies with rockets certified by the Space Force to launch the Pentagon’s big-ticket satellites. ULA’s Vulcan rocket, which replaces the company’s Atlas V, debuted nearly two years ago and successfully launched its first national security mission in August. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets each have long track records of success.

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From 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. today (EDT), the Free Software Foundation celebrates its 40th anniversary with an online and in-person event. “We will broadcast the talks and workshops via a fully free software livestream on fsf.org/live,” according to the FSF’s official “FSF40 Celebration” page. “Everyone will be able to join the discussion via the #fsf40 IRC channel on Libera.Chat.”

“4 decades, 4 freedoms, 4 all users” is the event’s slogan.

And during the ceremony, a 40th-anniversary cake was sliced by newly-elected FSF president Ian Kelling (who was unanimously confirmed by FSF board members):

Kelling, age 43, has held the role of a board member and a voting member since March 2021. The board said of Kelling’s confirmation: “His hands-on technical experience resulting from his position as the organization’s senior systems administrator proved invaluable for his work on the board of directors… He has the technical knowledge to speak with authority on most free software issues, and he has a strong connection with the community as an active speaker and blogger.”
Kelling earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and is a continuous user, developer, and advocate for free software. His personal commitment to complete software freedom has been shaped by his past experiences working as a software developer for proprietary software companies while using, learning, and contributing to GNU/Linux on his own time.

“Ian has shown good judgment on the board, and a firm commitment to the free software movement,” FSF founder and Chief GNUisance Richard Stallman said. Outgoing FSF President and long-time board member Geoff Knauth added: “Since joining the board in 2021, Ian has shown a clear understanding of the free software philosophy in today’s technology, and a strong vision. He recognizes threats in upcoming technologies, promotes transparency, has played a significant role in designing and implementing the new board recruitment processes, and has always adhered to ethical principles. He has also given me valuable advice at critical moments, for which I am very grateful…”
Kelling will continue to fill the role of senior systems administrator for the FSF, which he has held since 2017, where he leads the FSF’s tech team under the direction of Zoë Kooyman, executive director of the FSF. True to the FSF’s tradition for this role, he takes on the governance role as a volunteer.

Upcoming on the livestream:

Free Software Foundation triviaLibreLocal group lightning talksA panel with the FSF, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) , F-Droid, and Sugar Labs

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:

Women tend to live longer than men. There are traditional explanations: Men smoke more. They drink more. They tend to engage in riskier behavior. But the fact that this lifespan gap holds true regardless of country or century indicates something deeper is also at play.

A growing body of evidence suggests that women’s relative longevity may derive, in part, from having double X chromosomes, a redundancy that protects them against harmful mutations. That theory was further bolstered Wednesday with the publication of the most sweeping analysis to date of the lifespan differences between males and females in more than 1,000 mammal and bird species…

If a baby has a pair of X chromosomes, she’s a girl. If the baby inherits an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, he’s a boy. In birds, however, the situation is reversed. Female birds have a pair of unlike sex chromosomes while males have the like pair… For their study, Colchero, Staerk and their colleagues collected data on the lifespans of 528 mammal species and 648 bird species kept in zoos. The team found that most other mammals are like humans, with the females of nearly three-fourths of mammal species outliving their male counterparts. But in birds, 68 percent of species studied showed a bias toward male longevity, as expected from their chromosomal makeup.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are some recently released titles to add to your reading list. This week, we read Bora Chung’s Midnight Timetable: A Novel in Ghost Stories, and started a new series from Mad Cave Studios, It Killed Everyone But Me.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-this-weekend-ghost-stories-to-kick-off-october-182937425.html?src=rss

Tesla launched its own auto insurance options for California customers back in 2019, but it may soon lose its authorization to do just that. The California Department of Insurance (CDI) issued enforcement actions against Tesla Insurance, which acts as an agent for State National Insurance Company and is also named in the legal notice. The issued warning claims that Tesla Insurance and State National saw “repeated failures to comply with long-standing claims handling laws.” The agency also accused Tesla Insurance of “egregious delays” when responding to its customers’ claims and not conducting “thorough, fair and objective investigations of claims.”

According to the filing, the CDI received 97 complaints about State National in 2022 and determined that 21 were justified, while also noting that the insurance provider committed 40 violations of the state’s insurance regulations. The numbers skyrocketed over the years, eventually hitting 1,095 received complaints about State National, which were boiled down to 415 justified complaints between January 1, 2025 and September 22, 2025. Within this year’s complaints so far, the CDI said that State National committed 1,498 violations of the state’s insurance code. 

As for Tesla Insurance, the CDI received 842 complaints and said that 166 of which were justified in the same time period. The agency also accused Tesla of committing 532 violations. On top of the violations, the state agency claimed that Tesla Insurance’s Head of Claims position was left vacant for several months, and when eventually filled, saw frequent turnover between April 2023 and May 2025.

After the filing on Friday, Tesla Insurance and State National have 15 days to respond to the CDI. If the two insurance providers don’t resolve the issues laid out in the complaint, they will be put in front of a judge who will determine if they can continue offering insurance in the state. Along with the potential regulatory consequences, Tesla Insurance and State National will face “monetary penalties up to $5,000 for each unlawful, unfair, or deceptive act, or up to $10,000 for each such act determined to be willful.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/california-regulators-threaten-to-revoke-teslas-insurance-license-for-mishandling-claims-180942929.html?src=rss