Feed aggregator

Reuters reports: Flock plans to let go of about 18% of its employees, people with direct knowledge of the plans said on Thursday, as the maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras and license-plate readers faces mounting opposition to its products from communities and lawmakers.... The company has about 1,500 employees [with job cuts hitting 270 employees]. Flock faces growing scrutiny from regulators, lawmakers, and privacy advocates, despite drawing strong investor interest among venture capitalists. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Americans are divided on whether Flock cameras are a good idea. Some 38% of the country supports the use of Flock cameras in their community, compared to 47% who oppose their use. A related story... In Texas this week a county commissioner decommissioned all 61 of their Flock surveillance cameras and license plate readers, according to a local news report. County residents "have raised serious questions about who can access this data, what vendors can disclose, improper searches, and records being kept after data expires," the precinct's Chief Public Affairs Officer said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shiona McCallum visits Cairngorms National Park to see tech monitor wildfire damage.

The automaker has been criticized for misleading drivers with the feature’s name. Now it’s renaming it for European regulators.

The awards are part of the Maine Food Producer Showcase.

Amid accusations of retaliation, the hospital says a federal agency should have brought the vote to a halt.

The camera-maker says it is now re-evaluating the rules and procedures of its Small World in Motion contest.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cloudflare doesn't block pirate sports streaming sites through its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver in France, only through its CDN. The Paris Judicial Court has now accepted that stance, rejecting [French pay-TV provider] Canal+'s request for penalties of 50,000 euros per site, per day. Interestingly, the court's conclusion relies on statistics provided by Canal+ itself. [...] As a result, Cloudflare will not be penalized under these orders, even though its public DNS resolver is not blocking the sites in question. That is in line with the company's long-standing claim that it doesn't interfere with its DNS. In its recent transparency reports, Cloudflare repeatedly stated that it hasn't blocked any content through 1.1.1.1, despite orders from French and Italian courts. "To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver," the company's latest report reads. [...] Blocking through the CDN is another matter. According to the same report, Cloudflare geoblocked 1,238 domains in France in the second half of 2025, all under a single court order. In the first half of the year, it geoblocked 662 domains under seven orders. Cloudflare recently explained its position to the European Commission, in a submission (PDF) to its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation, stressing that global public DNS resolvers should not be used to block or restrict access. Instead, it highlights its real-time pirate stream blocking program, which allows vetted rightsholders to flag pirate streams that run through its network. These streams are disrupted "within seconds," Cloudflare says, without any DNS or IP address blocking. "For live content, where speed is crucial, Cloudflare has built real-time mitigation mechanisms that allow vetted rightsholder partners to flag infringing streams. When those streams are running through our network, we act on them in seconds," Cloudflare informed the Commission. For now, Cloudflare can continue to block pirate sites through its CDN only, while its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver remains untouched. Canal+ can still appeal the rulings, so it may not be the last we hear of it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The firm said users can no longer engage in "sustained and needless" abusive behaviour towards the tech.

Apple’s Mac desktops have become some of the most sought-after computers this year, driven by surging interest in agentic AI. Here’s which model to buy depending on your use case.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: A physicist has put a definite date on Doomsday," The New York Times wrote on November 4, 1960. "He calculates that it will come on Friday the Thirteenth in November, 2026 A. D. On that date, or thereabouts, the human population will have expanded so far as to approach infinity and thus will automatically annihilate itself." The newspaper was right -- but the prediction was wrong. That week, Austrian American physicist Heinz von Foerster and two colleagues published a paper in Science with the stunningly succinct title "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026." The work was based on a simple observation: The time it took for the human population to double in size kept getting shorter. Using population estimates from about 400 B.C.E. until 1958 C.E., the authors -- all from the department of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign -- came up with an equation that best described the trend. If things continued the way they were going, the number of humans on Earth would rise faster and faster, reaching more than 25 billion by 2020. The researchers didn't calculate when humanity would run out of food, land, or energy. They just concluded that at some point this year, the equation ceased to give meaningful results because the predicted population shot toward infinity. That was their doomsday. "Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve," they wrote. "They will be squeezed to death." The exact date was somewhat arbitrary, however. The formula solved to 2026.87 plus or minus 5.5 years, and The New York Times reported that von Foerster "searched the center of this doom-time span for an appropriate date and found that a Friday the Thirteenth would fall conveniently in November of 2026." (November 13 also happened to be his birthday.) [...] [D]emographers, annoyed by what they saw as a provocation by outsiders, pointed out obvious flaws. For example, the time it takes for the number of humans to double could get a lot shorter, but certainly not shorter than the 9 months it takes for a baby to develop. "In view of the comments that subsequently were published in this journal, an extensive discussion of this article does not seem to be required," public health expert Harold Dorn drily noted in Science 2 years after von Foerster's article was published. The forecast would set a record, he predicted, "for the short length of time required to demonstrate its unreliability." "The failure of the Doomsday equation is ultimately a cautionary tale about the dangers of extrapolating from historically exceptional circumstances," writes economist Javier Birchenall of the University of California, Santa Barbara writes in a Perspective published in Science today.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The 35,518 square-foot downtown hub will house 200 employees by 2028. It represents a major pillar in the company's shift toward digital gaming.

It’s finally time to ditch the gas canister—I tested these cordless leaf blowers on gravel, wood chips, and even a 5-pound concrete paver.

The AI firm instead claims the researchers were fired for mishandling sensitive information.

Demand is so high that some used cars are selling for more than new ones.

Firmus said it had made the decision due to "recent market volatility and prevailing market conditions".

Meredith Whittaker says the tech has been misunderstood, in an exclusive interview with BBC Global Women.

"Margaret Hamilton, the groundbreaking researcher who helped create the field of software engineering and whose code helped land NASA's Apollo astronauts on the moon to win the 20th century space race, has died," writes longtime Slashdot reader Veeru. "She was 90." MIT News reports: A computing pioneer who authored over 130 publications, Hamilton helped to establish software engineering as a dedicated discipline. She worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s, after which she became a successful computing entrepreneur and CEO. Her life's work was recognized with many awards and honors, including the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, whose citation noted: "Hamilton defined new forms of software engineering and helped launch an industry that would forever change human history. Her software architecture led to giant leaps for humankind, writing the code that helped America set foot on the moon." "To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer -- to say she was ahead of her time -- would be a dramatic understatement. She was a software engineer at a time when that field was in its infancy, and she not only developed advanced code herself but also led a team in using that nascent technology to develop one of the most complex systems humanity had ever achieved," says Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program Professor and interim head of the MIT Department Aeronautics and Astronautics. "The Apollo program still stands as one of our greatest testaments to the power of collaboration, ingenuity, and engineering, and Margaret Hamilton was a fundamental contributor to that program's success. And for her that was just the beginning! She went on to become an entrepreneur and remained on the cutting edge of systems software throughout an extraordinary career, while acting as an advocate, mentor, and inspiration to millions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Save on Lovehoney, including bestselling toys, lingerie, and popular gift sets for date nights, self-care, and couples’ play.

Save on We-Vibe, including app-controlled bestsellers and popular gift sets designed for couples, connection, and shared pleasure.

Tax season doesn’t have to be stressful. Score 10% off full service expert on federal tax filings and more exclusive TurboTax discount codes on WIRED.