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America's school districts "spent billions on technology during the pandemic," reports the Washington Post. "But now some states are limiting in-school screen time because of concerns about its impact on children." Nationwide [U.S.] schools invested at least $15 billion and possibly as much as $35 billion from federal pandemic relief funds on laptops, learning software and other technology between 2020 and 2024, according to an estimate by the Edunomics Lab, an education think tank. By last school year, 88% of public schools reported in a federal survey they had given every child a laptop, tablet or similar device. Now, some states and school districts are walking back their technology use following pressure from parents who claim too much in-school screen time has zapped children's attention spans and left them worse off academically. At least a dozen states introduced or adopted policies this year that attempt to regulate screen time in schools — from prescribing limits to allowing families to opt out of virtual instruction... In Missouri, a bill would require every school district in that state to come up with a screen time policy is making its way through the state legislature. "Ed tech is just big tech in a sweater vest," said Missouri state Rep. Tricia Byrnes (R), who introduced the legislation and blames what she described as the overuse of technology for middling test scores... Complicating the issue is research that shows students do not see any academic gains when provided with laptops. A meta-analysis of studies on reading comprehension suggests paper-based texts are better than digital-based reading... A body of research has established that excessive or unstructured screen time can have detrimental effects on children, including harming language development, weakening social skills and triggering anxiety and depression. But the effects of school-issued devices and in-school usage on children's development are less understood, said Tiffany Munzer, a developmental behavioral pediatrician and digital media researcher at the University of Michigan. Some studies report that high-quality digital tools can support students' learning goals, Munzer said. But "a lot of the apps that are marketed as educational ... are not actually educational and contain a lot of commercialized content."

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A four-foot humanoid robot named Gabi has become a monk at a Buddhist temple in Seoul, participating in a modified initiation ceremony where it pledged to respect life, obey humans, act peacefully toward other robots and objects. "Robots are destined to collaborate with humans in every field in the future," Hong Min-suk, a manager at the Jogye Order, the largest sect of Buddhism in South Korea, tells the New York Times. "It will only be natural for them to be part of our festival." Smithsonian Magazine reports: For the temple, this marks the first time a robot has participated in the sugye initiation ceremony, when followers pledge their devotion to the Buddha and his teachings. Gabi -- a Buddhist name that refers to mercy, Yonhap News Agency reports -- was made by Unitree Robotics, a Chinese civilian robotics company. The model, G1, retails starting at $13,500. During the ceremony, Gabi agreed to five vows usually recited by human monks and slightly altered for the humanoid. The robot pledged to respect life, act with peace toward other robots and objects, listen to humans, refrain from acting or speaking in a deceptive manner and save energy. Gabi participated in a modified yeonbi purification ritual. While a human monk normally receives a small incense burn on the arm, instead Gabi received a lotus lantern festival sticker and a prayer bead necklace. The landmark event aligns with the promise made during a New Year's address by the Venerable Jinwoo, president of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, to incorporate artificial intelligence into the Buddhist tradition. "We aim to fearlessly lead the A.I. era and redirect its achievements toward the path of attaining peace of mind and enlightenment," he said, per a statement.

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Can’t hear what they’re saying? Now you can turn on the subtitles for real-life conversations.

The cars that debuted at the Beijing Auto Show demonstrate that the Chinese market is now at the forefront of electrification and intelligence. These are the 19 most intriguing models we saw.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Cold War spies planted bugs in walls, lamps, and telephones. Now, scientists warn, the cables themselves could listen in. A fiber optic technique used to detect earthquakes can also pick up the faint vibrations of nearby speech, researchers reported this week here at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union. Freely available artificial intelligence (AI) software turned the fiber optic data into intelligible, real-time transcripts. "Not many people realize that [fiber optic cables] can detect acoustic waves," says Jack Lee Smith, a geophysicist at the University of Edinburgh who presented the result. "We show that in almost every case where you use these fibers, this could be a privacy concern." Fiber optics can pick up on sound through a technique called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). Using a machine called an interrogator, researchers fire laser pulses down a cable and record the pattern of reflections coming back from tiny glass defects along the length of the fiber optic. When an earthquake's seismic wave crosses a section of the fiber, it stretches and squeezes the defects, leading to shifts in the reflected light that researchers can use to build a picture of an earthquake. DAS essentially turns a fiber cable into a long chain of seismometers that can detect not only earthquakes, but also the rumblings of volcanoes, cars, and college marching bands. And although scientists set up dedicated fiber lines specifically for research, DAS can also be performed on "dark fiber" -- unused strands in the web of fiber optics that runs through cities and across oceans, carrying the world's internet traffic. DAS can also be used to eavesdrop, the work of Smith and his colleagues shows. They conducted a field test using an existing DAS setup used to study coastal erosion. They set a speaker next to the cable and played pure tones, music, and speech. Human speech contains frequencies ranging from a few hundred to several thousand hertz. The low end of the range could be pulled out of the data "even without any preprocessing," Smith says. "You can easily see acoustic waves." Getting higher frequency speech took a bit of postprocessing, but it was possible. Dumping the data directly into Whisper, a free AI transcription tool, provided accurate real-time transcription. However, this technique worked only for coiled cables, exposed at the surface, at distances of up to 5 meters from the speaker. Burying the cable under just 20 centimeters of dirt was enough to muddy the speech. And straight cables -- even exposed ones right next to the speaker -- did not record speech well.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Walking into Mexico City's sprawling central Zocalo is a dizzying experience. At one end of the plaza, the capital's cathedral, with its soaring spires, slumps in one direction. An attached church, known as the Metropolitan Sanctuary, tilts in the other. The nearby National Palace also seems off-kilter. The teetering of many of the capital's historic buildings is the most visible sign of a phenomenon that has been ongoing for more than a century: Mexico City is sinking at an alarming rate. Now, the metropolis's descent is being tracked in real time thanks to one of the most powerful radar systems ever launched into space. Known as Nisar, the satellite can detect minute changes in Earth's surface, even through thick vegetation or cloud cover. "Nisar takes radar imaging observations of Earth to the next level," said Marin Govorcin, a scientist at Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory. "Nisar will see any change big or small that happens on Earth from week to week. No other imaging mission can claim this." Though not the first time that Mexico City's sinking has been observed from space, the Nisar mission has provided a greater sense of how far the sinking spreads and how it changes across different types of land than any other space-based sensor. It has also been able to penetrate areas on the outskirts of the city that were previously challenging to study because of the complex terrain. The implications of the imagery extend far beyond the Mexican capital. "This study of Mexico City speaks to the realm of possibilities that will open up thanks to the Nisar system," said Dario Solano-Rojas, an engineer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam). "And not just for sinking cities but also for studying volcanoes, for studying the deformation associated with earthquakes, for studying landslides." According to Nasa, the technology is also capable of monitoring the climate crisis, glacier sliding, agricultural productivity, soil moisture, forestry, coastal flooding and more. The Nisar system found that some parts of the city are dropping by more than 2cm a month. "First documented in 1925, the city's sinking is a result of centuries of exploitation of the groundwater," the report says. "Because Mexico City and its surrounds were built on an ancient lake bed, the soil beneath the city is extremely soft. When water is pumped out of the aquifer below, this clay-like earth compacts, resulting in a city that is quietly sinking." The crisis is also self-reinforcing: as the city sinks, aging pipes crack and leak, causing Mexico City to lose an estimated 40% of its water, even as drought and climate change make supplies more fragile.

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This Mother's Day, Megelin is slashing prices on its best-selling laser and LED devices.

Longtime Slashdot reader cellocgw writes: Hiding inside another layoff report, Fidelity is reorganizing: "The changes are aimed at moving the teams away from an 'agile' makeup -- comprising smaller, siloed squads -- and toward larger teams built to move faster on projects." OMG, as they say: "Sudden outbreak of common sense." According to the Boston Globe, Fidelity is cutting about 1,000 jobs even as it plans to hire roughly 5,300 new workers, many of them early-career engineers. Half of the 3,300 new workers hired this year "will be in tech or product-related roles," the report says, noting that "about 2,000 of those jobs are currently open, and 400 of them are in tech/product-delivery." "The company also plans to add almost 2,000 new early-career workers, with the goal of making the tech and product-delivery teams more hands-on. In all, that means roughly 5,300 new jobs in the pipeline for Fidelity." The company says AI isn't driving the shift; as cellocgw noted, it's about moving toward larger teams that Fidelity says can move faster on priority projects. The financial services firm also reported a strong 2025 under CEO Abigail Johnson, with managed assets rising 19% from 2024 to $7.1 trillion and revenue climbing 15% to $37.7 billion. "Throughout the company's history, our investments in technology have fueled our growth and customer service capabilities," Johnson wrote in a letter (PDF) included in the company's annual report. "We will continue to prioritize technology initiatives that help us advance digital capabilities, simplify our technology ecosystem, and protect the firm and our customers."

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