Scientific American’s Elizabeth Anne Brown recently “polled the great art houses of Europe” about whether they’d had any recent experiences with mold in their collections. Despite the stigma that keeps many institutions silent, she found that extremophile “xerophilic” molds are quietly spreading through museums and archives, thriving in low-humidity, tightly sealed storage and damaging everything from textiles and wood to manuscripts and stone. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the article: Mold is a perennial scourge in museums that can disfigure and destroy art and artifacts. […] Consequently, mold is spoken of in whispers in the museum world. Curators fear that even rumors of an infestation can hurt their institution’s funding and blacklist them from traveling exhibitions. When an infestation does occur, it’s generally kept secret. The contract conservation teams that museums hire to remediate invasive mold often must vow confidentiality before they’re even allowed to see the damage.

But a handful of researchers, from in-house conservators to university mycologists, are beginning to compare notes about the fungal infestations they’ve tackled in museum storage depots, monastery archives, crypts and cathedrals. A disquieting revelation has emerged from these discussions: there’s a class of molds that flourish in low humidity, long believed to be a sanctuary from decay. By trying so hard to protect artifacts, we’ve accidentally created the “perfect conditions for [these molds] to grow,” says Flavia Pinzari, a mycologist at the Council of National Research of Italy. “All the rules for conservation never considered these species.”

These molds — called xerophiles — can survive in dry, hostile environments such as volcano calderas and scorching deserts, and to the chagrin of curators across the world, they seem to have developed a taste for cultural heritage. They devour the organic material that abounds in museums — from fabric canvases and wood furniture to tapestries. They can also eke out a living on marble statues and stained-glass windows by eating micronutrients in the dust that accumulates on their surfaces. And global warming seems to be helping them spread. Most frustrating for curators, these xerophilic molds are undetectable by conventional means. But now, armed with new methods, several research teams are solving art history cold cases and explaining mysterious new infestations…

The xerophiles’ body count is rising: bruiselike stains on Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous self-portrait, housed in Turin. Brown blotches on the walls of King Tut’s burial chamber in Luxor. Pockmarks on the face of a saint in an 11th-century fresco in Kyiv. It’s not enough to find and identify the mold. Investigators are racing to determine the limits of xerophilic life and figure out which pieces of our cultural heritage are at the highest risk of infestation before the ravenous microbes set in.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Reuters: Fully electric car sales in December overtook petrol for the first time in the European Union, even as policymakers proposed to loosen emissions regulations, data showed on Tuesday. U.S. battery-electric brand Tesla continued to lose market share to competitors including China’s BYD and Europe’s best-selling group Volkswagen, data from the European auto lobby ACEA showed.

Car sales throughout Europe sustained a sixth straight month of year-on-year growth, with overall registrations, a proxy for sales, hitting their highest volumes in five years in Europe in 2025, though they remained well below pre-pandemic levels. […] December registrations of battery electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid electric cars were up 51%, 36.7% and 5.8%, respectively, to account collectively for 67% of the bloc’s registrations, up from 57.8% in December 2024.

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The Linux kernel community has formalized a continuity plan for the day Linus Torvalds eventually steps aside, defining how the process would work to replace him as the top-level maintainer. ZDNet’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports: The new “plan for a plan,” drafted by longtime kernel contributor Dan Williams, was discussed at the latest Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit in Tokyo, where he introduced it as “an uplifting subject tied to our eventual march toward death.” Torvalds added, in our conversation, that “part of the reason it came up this time around was that my previous contract with Linux Foundation ended Q3 last year, and people on the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board had been aware of that. Of course, they were also aware that we’d renewed the contract, but it meant that it had been discussed.”

The plan stops short of naming a single heir. Instead, it creates an explicit process for selecting one or more maintainers to take over the top-level Linux repository in a worst-case or orderly-transition scenario, including convening a conclave to weigh options and maximize long-term project health. One maintainer in Tokyo jokingly suggested that the group, like the conclave that selects a new pope, be locked in a room and that a puff of white smoke be sent out when a decision was reached.

The document frames this as a way to protect against the classic “bus factor” problem. That is, what happens to a project if its leader is hit by a bus? Torvalds’ central role today means the project currently assumes a bus-factor of one, where a single person’s exit could, in theory, destabilize merges and final releases. In practice, as Torvalds and other top maintainers have discussed, the job of top penguin would almost certainly currently go to Greg Kroah-Hartman, the stable-branch Linux kernel maintainer. Responding to the suggestion that the backup replacement would be Greg KH, Torvalds said: “But the thing is, Greg hasn’t always been Greg. Before Greg, there was Andrew Morton and Alan Cox. After Greg, there will be Shannon and Steve. The real issue is you have to have a person or a group of people that the development community can trust, and part of trust is fundamentally about having been around for long enough that people know how you work, but long enough does not mean to be 30 years.”

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This is a video of dance troupe CDK performing a well choreographed interpretive dance of Queen’s iconic ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. It was a fun watch. My dog dry-heaving up the stuffing she ate out of a plush toy? That was not a fun watch. Or a fun listen. Honestly, I couldn’t find a single thing I liked about the performance.

The troupe’s previously popular Gotye ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ dance below as well.

Tesla will “basically stop the production” of its Model S and X electric vehicles next quarter, CEO Elon Musk has announced at the automaker’s earnings call for the 2025 fiscal year. “It’s time to bring the Model S and X program to a end with an honorable discharge, because we’re really moving into a future that’s based on autonomy,” Musk said. You can still buy the vehicles as long as there are units to be sold, and Tesla promises to support them for as long as people have them. Once they’re gone, though, they’re gone for good, because Tesla is converting their production space in the company’s Fremont factory into a space for the manufacturing of Optimus humanoid robots.

Model S is Tesla’s second vehicle and has been in production since 2012, while the Model X SUV has been in production since 2015. Their shine has faded over the years, however, and the newer Model 3 and Y now make up the bulk of the company’s sales. For the entirety of 2025, for instance, Tesla delivered 1,585,279 Model 3 and Y vehicles but only sold 418,227 Model S and X units. The company also had to stop selling Model S and X in China in mid-2025, because they were being imported from the US and were subject to China’s tariffs that were put in place in response to US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported goods.

In the call, Musk said that Tesla’s long-term goal is to be able to manufacture 1 million Optimus robots in the current Model S and X production space. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland a few days ago, the CEO announced that Tesla will start selling Optimus to the public by the end of next year. Musk has big plans for Optimus and once said that it’s bound to become the “biggest product of all time,” bigger than cellphones, “bigger than anything.” But the humanoid robot has been failing to live up to the hype during demonstrations, and Musk is known for his overly optimistic timelines.

The company’s earnings report has also revealed that Tesla invested $2 billion in Musk’s other company, xAI. Tesla’s shareholders notably sued Musk in 2024 for starting xAI, which they argued is a direct competition to the automaker. The CEO has been claiming for years, after all, that Tesla is an AI company and not just an EV-maker. Still, Tesla’s shareholders approved Musk’s $1 trillion pay package in late 2025 on the condition that the company reaches a market value of $8.5 trillion.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/tesla-is-killing-off-its-model-s-and-x-cars-to-make-robots-010621101.html?src=rss

French lawmakers have voted to ban social media access for children under 15 and prohibit mobile phones in high schools, positioning France as the second country after Australia to impose sweeping age-based digital restrictions. The Guardian reports: The lower national assembly adopted the text by a vote of 130 to 21 in a lengthy overnight session from Monday to Tuesday. It will now go to the Senate, France’s upper house, ahead of becoming law. Macron hailed the vote as a “major step” to protect French children and teenagers in a post on X. The legislation, which also provides for a ban on mobile phones in high schools, would make France the second country to take such a step following Australia’s ban for under-16s in December. […] “The emotions of our children and teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated, either by American platforms or Chinese algorithms,” Macron said in a video broadcast on Saturday. Authorities want the measures to be enforced from the start of the 2026 school year for new accounts.

Former prime minister Gabriel Attal, who leads Macron’s Renaissance party in the lower house, said he hoped the Senate would pass the bill by mid-February so that the ban could come into force on September 1. He added that “social media platforms will then have until December 31 to deactivate existing accounts” that do not comply with the age limit. […] The draft bill excludes online encyclopedias and educational platforms. An effective age verification system would have to come into force for the ban to become reality. Work on such a system is under way at the European level.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Investors are souring on the bonds of software companies that service industries ranging from automotive to finance as fast-paced artificial intelligence innovations threaten to upend their business models. […] Bond prices tumbled as advances in artificial intelligence rack up. Google announced plans to launch an AI assistant to browse for internet surfers Wednesday while a customer support startup, Decagon AI Inc., raised a new round of funding. Such developments are further stoking the angst about AI displacing enterprise software companies, driving a selloff in the sector’s stocks and bonds across the globe.

[…] Some say the AI fears weighing on software companies are overdone. “While point-solution software faces disruption risk, large company platforms with complex workflows and proprietary data are better positioned to benefit from AI-driven automation,” wrote Union Bancaire Prive in its investment outlook for 2026 released this week. But a recent report by EY-Parthenon flagged that in the UK last year, software and computer services firms issued the highest number of warnings on earnings among listed firms. “Software multiples have compressed amid uncertainty around whether incumbents can defend pricing power and sustain growth in an AI-first work-flow environment,” wrote Bruce Richards, chief executive officer and chairman of Marathon Asset Management, in a LinkedIn post last week.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple picked up an intriguing new member for its design team today in Sebastiaan de With, co-founder of the iPhone camera app Halide. He announced the move today on Threads, adding, “So excited to work with the very best team in the world on my favorite products.”

The Halide app has caught our eye at Engadget at several points over the years. de With also is co-founder of Lux, which is Halide’s parent company. The other Lux apps also have an emphasis on photography and videography, particularly on Apple devices. Prior to Halide, de With had done other work at Apple, collaborating on properties including iCloud, MobileMe and Find My apps. It’s unclear if his exit will mean any notable changes for Halide, or for the Lux apps Kino, Spectre and Orion.

For a long time, Apple’s design philosophy was personified by Jony Ive, who left the company in 2022. Since his departure, no single person has emerged as the face and voice of Apple’s attitude toward design, which could be why recent moves such as Liquid Glass have been met with deeply divided reactions.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/halide-co-founder-joins-apples-design-team-235023416.html?src=rss

Walking is an easy way to get some exercise in your day, and it delivers mental health benefits as well. I’m one of the many people who added daily walks to my routine during the pandemic, and they improved my life so much I don’t intend to stop. But does walking do enough for your body that you can count it as cardio exercise?

The answer is complicated. Walking counts as cardio in some respects: it can burn calories, it gets your heart rate up, and it counts toward the exercise we should all be getting every week. But on the other hand, it’s not going to increase your cardio fitness in the same way as a run or an intense aerobics class would. If you want to improve your endurance, you’ll have to do more than just walk.

How walking’s calorie burn compares to running

Running burns more calories than walking per unit time, but both are similar when you consider distance.

A rule of thumb is that you burn about 100 calories per mile whether you run it or walk it, but in truth calorie burn varies according to the size of your body (you burn more calories if you are larger) and how fast you run or walk. The calories per mile are slightly lower when you walk. This calculator estimates that a 150-pound person will burn 108 calories by walking a mile at 3 miles per hour, or 104 calories by running it at 6 miles per hour. Some calculators give a lower estimate for walking,

The bigger difference is in calories per hour (rather than calories per mile): for the same 150-pound person, walking burns 324 calories per hour, and running burns 627. The faster you go, the higher the calorie burn. So if you’re walking or running to burn calories, running will burn about double the calories in a given time. But if you prefer walking and you have the time to spare, both will do the job.

Walking can’t replace “vigorous” cardio

Each intensity level of exercise offers its own benefits. Walking is what I’d consider very easy cardio, jogging is more of a medium exercise, and high-intensity cardio would be something like sprinting or racing. All of these are good for you, although depending on your goals, you may not need to do all of them.

If you want to be a fast runner, for example, you’ll need plenty of medium cardio (slow running) and some higher intensity stuff (speedwork); if you want to improve your endurance, as measured by metrics like VO2max, you’ll definitely need to put in some work at these intensities.

On the other hand, if you’re just trying to get some movement in your life and you don’t care about getting better at it, lower intensity exercise like walking may be enough.

According to major health organizations (including the CDC, the WHO, and the AHA), we should all be getting at least 150 minutes per week of “moderate” exercise, or 75 minutes of “vigorous” exercise. You can mix and match, with the idea that each minute of vigorous exercise counts double.

So where does walking fall in that recommendation? Walking is moderate, and I have more here on how that’s defined. But if you want a rule of thumb to compare it to heart rate, the American Heart Association defines moderate exercise as that in which your heart rate is between 50-70% of your max, and vigorous exercise as between 70-85% of your max. (That does assume you know your true max.) Walking will generally be in the moderate range, so you’ll have to do twice as much of it—counting in minutes—as if you chose to do more vigorous cardio. That matches up with our calorie calculations.

Walking doesn’t have to mean an easy stroll

The distinction between walking and running is a mechanical one: if you always have at least one foot on the ground, you’re walking. If instead your gait has a little hop as you move from foot to foot, you’re running. (Jogging is simply a slow run.)

It’s often easier to keep up a higher intensity (and a higher heart rate) by running than by walking, but that’s not always true. If you’re hiking up a mountain, your heart rate can easily get into the “vigorous” zone. And if you’re an efficient enough runner, you may be able to go for a slow jog while you keep your heart rate down in the “moderate” realm.

As you’re planning your workouts, think about the intensity: Measure your heart rate if you aren’t sure where you fall; you can use a tracker like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch to do this, but you can also just put two fingers on the side of your neck and count the beats of your pulse. If your max is 200 and you count 150 beats per minute, you’re at 75% of your max heart rate.

Maybe walking gets you a higher heart rate than you thought—not impossible if you’re a beginner or if your walks take you over hilly terrain. If you want a tougher cardio workout, you can walk faster, or you can choose a different type of exercise like cycling or dancing that gets your heart rate up higher. But it’s fine to go for an easy walk if that’s all you’re aiming for.

Apple is forcing Patreon to move all remaining creators onto Apple’s in-app purchase subscription system by November 2026 “or else Patreon would risk removal from the App Store,” reports TechCrunch. “Apple made this decision because Patreon was managing the billing for some percentage of creators’ subscriptions, and the tech giant saw that as skirting its App Store commission structure.” The tech giant initially told Patreon that it must do so by November 2025, but the deadline was pushed back. From the report: “We strongly disagree with this decision,” its blog post states. “Creators need consistency and clarity in order to build healthy, long-term businesses. Instead, creators using legacy billing will now have to endure the whiplash of another policy reversal — the third such change from Apple in the past 18 months. Over the years, we have proposed multiple tools and features to Apple that we could’ve built to allow creators using legacy billing to transition on their own timelines, with more support added in. Unfortunately, Apple has continually declined them,” it says.

Creators can read more about the transition plan on Patreon’s website. It has also built several tools to support these changes, including a benefit eligibility tool to see who has paid or is scheduled to pay, tier repricing tools, and gifting and discount tools to offer payment flexibility. An option for annual-only memberships will be introduced before November 2026 as well. The commission on in-app purchases and subscriptions is 30% on Apple’s system, but “drops to 15% for a subscription that has been ongoing for more than a year,” notes MacRumors. Patreon lets creators either raise prices only in its iOS app to cover Apple’s fee or keep prices the same by absorbing the cost, while iPhone and iPad users can avoid the App Store commission entirely by paying through Patreon’s website instead.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is rolling out an “auto browse” AI agent in Chrome that can navigate websites, fill out forms, compare prices, and handle tedious online tasks on a user’s behalf. Bloomberg reports: The feature, called auto browse, will allow users to ask an assistant powered by Gemini to complete tasks such as shopping for them without leaving Chrome, said Charmaine D’Silva, a director of product. Chrome users will be able to plan a family trip by asking Gemini to open different airline and hotel websites to compare prices, for instance, D’Silva explained.
“Our testers have used it for all sorts of things: scheduling appointments, filling out tedious online forms, collecting their tax documents, getting quotes for plumbers and electricians, checking if their bills are paid, filing expense reports, managing their subscriptions, and speeding up renewing their driving licenses — a ton of time saved,” said Parisa Tabriz, vice president of Chrome, in a blog post.

[…] Chrome’s auto browse will be available to US AI pro and AI Ultra subscribers and will use Google Password Manager to sign into websites on a user’s behalf. As part of the launch, Google is also bringing its image generation tool, Nano Banana, directly into Chrome.
The company said that safeguards have been placed to ensure the agentic AI will not be able to make final calls, such as placing an order, without the user’s permission. “We’re using AI as well as on-device models to protect people from what’s really an ever-evolving landscape, whether it’s AI-generated scams or just increasingly sophisticated attackers,” Tabiz said during the call.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Zuckerberg says there’s an end in sight to Reality Labs’ years of multibillion-dollar losses following the company’s layoffs to the metaverse division earlier this year. The CEO said he expects to “gradually reduce” how much money the company is losing as it doubles down on AI glasses and shifts away from virtual reality.

Speaking during Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg was clear that the changes won’t happen soon, but sounded optimistic about the division that lost more than $19 billion in 2025 alone. “For Reality Labs, we are directing most of our investment towards glasses and wearables going forward, while focusing on making Horizon a massive success on mobile and making VR a profitable ecosystem over the coming years,” he said. “I expect Reality Labs losses this year to be similar to last year, and this will likely be the peak, as we start to gradually reduce our losses going forward.”

The company cut more than 1,000 employees from Reality Labs earlier this month, shut down three VR studios and announced plans to retire its app for VR meetings. Meta has also paused plans for third-party Horizon OS headsets. Instead, Meta is doubling down on its smart glasses and and wearables business, which tie in more neatly to Zuckerberg’s vision for creating AI “superintelligence.” 

During the call, Zuckerberg noted that sales of Meta’s smart glasses “more than tripled” in 2025, and hinted at bigger plans for AR glasses. “They’re [AI glasses] going to be able to see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you and help you as you go about your day and even show you information or generate custom UI right there in your vision,” he said. 

Developing…

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/mark-zuckerberg-says-reality-labs-will-eventually-stop-losing-so-much-money-222900157.html?src=rss

Tesla published its financial results for 2025 this afternoon. If 2024 was a bad year for the electric automaker, 2025 was far worse: For the first time in Tesla’s history, revenues fell year over year.

A bad quarter

Earlier this month, Tesla revealed its sales and production numbers for the fourth quarter of 2025, with a 16 percent decline compared to Q4 2024. Now we know the cost of those lost sales: Automotive revenues fell by 11 percent to $17.7 billion.

Happily for Tesla, double-digit growth in its energy storage business ($3.8 billion, an increase of 25 percent) and services ($3.4 billion, an increase of 18 percent) made up some of the shortfall.

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