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Ego 1300 Electric Mower Review: Tame Your Lawn Without Gas

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 7:00am
Ego’s newest, biggest, self-propelled mower handles larger yards in less time with impressive performance and battery life.

QuEra Computing, Zapata partner to prove business value of quantum computing

Mass High Tech News - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 7:00am
The partnership brings together QuEra's announced quantum hardware device and Zapata Quantum's software capabilities. Both have ties to tech giant Nvidia.

McDonald’s Built a 515-Page Dossier on Me. It Says I’ll Never Stop Eating There

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 6:15am
I requested a copy of my data from McDonald’s loyalty program and received an extensive, personalized report that algorithmically predicts my next purchase.

8 Great Deals From Patagonia’s Past-Season Sale

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 5:09am
Summer’s not over yet; pick up some new gear for that last Labor Day trip. Save up to 40 percent on some of our favorite Patagonia items at the company’s past-season sale.

Troy Jackson once blockaded Canadians. How does it shape his Trump-era politics?

Portland Press Herald Business - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 4:00am
Jackson’s career-long focus on limiting Canadian workers in Maine logging meets a political moment when Donald Trump has remade the border dynamics in his backyard.

Behold the 'Glueball,' a Strange New Form of Matter

Slashdot - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 3:00am
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: For more than half a century, physicists have searched for one of the strangest particles predicted by modern theory. It would be made almost entirely of gluons, the elusive subatomic particles that carry the strong nuclear force. Now, using a particle collider in Beijing, researchers say they have effectively proved the existence of such a "glueball." In a preprint posted last month on arXiv and in a presentation last week at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP), the researchers argue that a particle called X(2370), which they produced by smashing electrons into positrons at high energies, has the properties expected of a glueball. "It's an experimental triumph," says Colin Morningstar, a particle physicist at Carnegie Mellon University who was not involved in the finding. "It's the strongest evidence yet that particles dominated by a glueball component can exist in nature."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OnePlus Promo Codes: 30% Off August 2026

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 1:00am
Save 30% with a OnePlus coupon in August 2026, plus save up to 10% on earbuds, phones, and more.

Walmart Promo Codes: Up to 65% Off for August 2026

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 1:00am
Score $10 off with our Walmart promo codes and coupon, and shop flash deals up to 65% off today.

Sam's Club Promo Codes and Membership Deals for August 2026

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 1:00am
Save on bulk groceries, household essentials, and electronics with a verified Sam's Club promo code or membership discount.

Rover Promo Codes and Referral Deals for 2026

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 1:00am
Score your Rover promo code for 2026.

Vimeo Promo Codes and Discounts: Up to 40% Off This August 2026

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/12/2026 - 1:00am
Enjoy 25% off a membership, 40% off, plus an additional 10% off annual plans, and more deals to save at Vimeo.

Contiguous US Breaks Its Record For Hottest Month Ever, NOAA Says

Slashdot - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 11:30pm
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The contiguous United States sizzled to its hottest month ever last month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. July averaged 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit (24.94 degrees Celsius) across the Lower 48 states, eclipsing the Dust Bowl's July 1936 by an eighth of a degree. Records go back to 1895. [...] Although it was unusually cool in Alaska, hotter-than-normal conditions blanketed the Lower 48, with the most excessive heat in the Mountain West, Southwest, Northern Plains and Southeast. The heat was so widespread that every one of the Lower 48 states was at least 1 degree Fahrenheit (nearly 0.6 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average, said Russ Vose, chief of monitoring at NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information. [...] The biggest driver of the record heat was nighttime lows that smashed the old mark for hottest minimums by 0.7 degrees, NOAA said. Hotter nights are a classic sign of human-caused climate change, according to scientists and several studies in peer-reviewed literature. NOAA's calculation is based on averaging 24 hours of temperature, not just highs or lows. "If you're talking heat waves, that nighttime low is incredibly important for determining total heat stress," [said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections]. "So if it doesn't cool off at night, your body doesn't have time to readjust to all the heat." As nighttime temperatures increase, more people die and lose sleep, studies show. The years 2021 and 1936 tie for America's hottest summer, which is June through August. Through July, 2026 is a shade cooler than 2021, which was powered by record heat in June. Because of climate change, Masters said, "this may be one of the coolest years we're gonna experience for the rest of our lives." What's needed, Masters said, is "to stop burning so many fossil fuels. We also need to be spending money to adapt to the new climate that we've put in place."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux Desktop Use Surged To 22% On One Workday, Cloudflare Data Shows

Slashdot - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 7:00pm
Cloudflare data suggests desktop Linux usage in North America has climbed to 6.4%, up from 4.1% a year earlier, with one post-holiday workday briefly spiking to 22%. ZDNet reports: [B]elieve it or not, on Monday, July 6, when people were back after the July 4 holiday, Linux usage jumped to a high of 22%. The users of these systems are not AI agents or bots, but real people. I set Cloudflare to count humans rather than bots. If you include people and bots, Linux has a 9.7% market share. That proportion is similar to StatCounter's score. By Cloudflare's count, bots alone come to 19%. These numbers tell us that workers are leading the way to the Linux desktop. [...] However, past performance doesn't explain present trends. So, why are we now seeing such a bump in Linux desktop growth? Experts believe this trend is largely AI developers and Linux users running AI Agents. For example, as David Linthicum, former managing director and chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting and AI and cloud influencer, recently observed, while "Windows 11 can technically run local AI workloads, but as you begin using multiple tools, managing different projects, and installing various dependencies, the friction starts to build," it's a different story for Linux users. Linthicum continued: "Linux delivered what I can only describe as a true 'AI desktop' experience. Setup was straightforward, mainstream AI instructions matched what you'd actually see in your environment, and GPU-accelerated apps simply worked -- consistently. I spent far less time troubleshooting and far more time actually executing on projects." As for agents, Linux Foundation CEO Jim Zemlin summed up their role succinctly: "Linux is the OS of choice for AI agents." Desktop Linux is also gaining momentum as frustration with Windows 11 and the end of Windows 10 support push users to alternatives, particularly on older PCs that can't officially upgrade. At the same time, Linux has become much easier to use, install software on, and game with, lowering many of the traditional barriers to switching.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Freenet Creator Ian Clarke Shares Progress on Its New Decentralized Network

Slashdot - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 6:00pm
Ian Clarke (aka ancient Slashdot reader Sanity), designer of the peer-to-peer communication platform Freenet, is back with an update on the project's progress following the launch of its P2P network in March. He writes: Earlier this year, Slashdot covered the launch of the completely redesigned Freenet. I recently gave a talk about what we've been building since then. Unlike traditional web applications, apps on Freenet have no central server or database; instead application state is distributed across the network. These now include decentralized group chat, publishing, search, and fully decentralized Git hosting. The talk also gets into some of Freenet's internals, including how we use machine learning for network routing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Gemini Hits 1 Billion Users In Record Time

Slashdot - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 5:00pm
Gemini has become Google's fastest-growing product ever, reaching 1 billion monthly active users faster than any of the company's 13 other billion-user services. Ars Technica reports: Gemini has wormed its way into virtually every Google product and service, powering email organization in Gmail, document summary in Drive, and much more. Gemini is also core to Google's flagship search experience, with AI Mode and AI Overviews becoming increasingly hard to avoid. The 1 billion-user metric has nothing to do with any of that, though. These 1 billion users may also be encountering Gemini in all those places, but that's not the MAU metric. Pichai is talking only about people who are opening the Gemini app or visiting the Gemini web interface to enter a prompt or access Gemini Live. If you used Gemini only once in the past month, you are part of this cohort.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kennebunk board uncertain of mobile home park where units could cost $450K each

Portland Press Herald Business - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 4:34pm
The proposed development, pitched by Abode Communities, would include 192 manufactured homes on 84 acres in West Kennebunk.

Lakes Region tourism numbers remain steady

Portland Press Herald Business - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 4:05pm
Revenue from restaurants and lodging in the region, though, has increased by nearly $1 million from 2025.

A Zoom Screen-Sharing Bug Let Anyone Take Over Other Devices On a Call

Slashdot - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 4:00pm
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: As AI models gain advanced capabilities to find vulnerabilities in software, develop ways to exploit them, and even carry out autonomous hacking sprees, researchers offered a sobering new example on Tuesday, disclosing vulnerabilities in the video conferencing platform Zoom that could have been exploited to take over targets' devices. Anyone on a call that involved screen sharing, whether participants or the host, would have been vulnerable to a silent attack that could be carried out with no indication and no interaction from the victim. Researchers from the digital defense firm A Security say thebugwas discovered in early June using publicly available AI models, and that it took fewer than 20 prompts to uncover the vulnerabilities and create a working attack. Zoom issued a security advisory on Tuesday, including details about fixes the company has already begun rolling out to address the flaws, which affected devices running all operating systems that Zoom supports -- Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. The vulnerabilities were specifically in the protocol used to facilitate real-time annotation during screen sharing. The researchers say that their AI bug hunting systems specifically delved into this component because, like human bug hunters, they have been trained that convoluted and obscure functions often contain overlooked vulnerabilities. This is particularly true with proprietary, closed-source software. An established company like Zoom presumably does extensive code review and vetting on all components and functions, but without the benefit of public, open review, esoteric yet complex features like annotation are more likely to contain mistakes. The bugs are now patched, with Zoom issuing both server and client-side fixes—or patches for both Zoom's own servers and the applications that run on customer devices. But the researchers emphasize that it was alarming to contemplate bugs that could have been exploited to take over a target device simply by getting someone onto a Zoom call. "What is interesting for us and what we believe is dangerous is the democratization of these capabilities -- the barrier to entry is dropping rapidly," A Security cofounder Omer Gull told WIRED ahead of the disclosure. "Before it would have taken a team of five people maybe six months with a lot of refining and iteration to find this. Now people can reach the same results with under 20 prompts. And Zoom is an important type of target because people assume trust when using it. They don't see it as a threat."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

July was the busiest month of the year for Maine’s housing market

Portland Press Herald Business - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 3:38pm
More inventory translated to more sales, while prices dipped slightly from the month before.

Tech Life

BBC Tech News - Tue, 08/11/2026 - 3:30pm
For years, schools have posted photos of their pupils online. But could they be misused?

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