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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Production is now underway at Toyota's new $13.9 billion battery plant in North Carolina, the company's first outside Japan. After the first batteries rolled off the production line at its new facility in Liberty, North Carolina, on Wednesday, Toyota said today marks a "pivotal moment" in the company's history. The facility is Toyota's 11th plant in the US and its first battery plant outside of Japan. Toyota first announced plans to build EV batteries in the US almost four years ago. The nearly $14 billion facility will create up to 5,100 jobs in the area. In addition, the Japanese auto giant announced plans to invest an additional $10 billion in its US operations over the next five years. Since it first arrived in the US nearly 70 years ago, Toyota has invested close to $60 billion. The mega site spans 1,850 acres, or about the size of 121 football fields, and can produce up to 30 GWh annually. Toyota will use the hub to develop and build lithium-ion batteries for its growing lineup of "electrified" vehicles, including battery electric (EV), plug-in hybrid (PHEV), and hybrid (HEV) models. Batteries from the plant will power the new Camry HEV, Corolla Cross HEV, RAV4 HEV, and Toyota's yet-to-be-announced three-row electric SUV.

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Russia's first AI humanoid robot, Aldol, fell just seconds after its debut at a technology event in Moscow on Tuesday. "The robot was being led on stage to the soundtrack from the film 'Rocky,' before it suddenly lost its balance and fell," reports the BBC. "Assistants could then be seen scrambling to cover it with a cloth -- which ended up tangling in the process." Developers of Aldol blamed poor lighting and calibration issues for the collapse, saying the robot's stereo cameras are sensitive to light and the hall was dark.

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Slashdot readers Tablizer and fjo3 share news that an AI-generated country song has topped the U.S. sales chart for the first time this week. ABC News reports: The new country tune, "Walk my Walk" by Breaking Rust, recently hit No. 1 on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart, reaching over 3 million streams on Spotify in less than a month. That success has garnered mixed reactions from music fans and artists alike, particularly on TikTok, where hundreds of users have posted videos addressing the tune and others discussing the music in the comments. Billboard has acknowledged Breaking Rust is an AI act and said it is one of at least six to chart in the past few months alone. "Ultimately, this feels like an experiment to see just how far something like this can go and what happens in the future and in other disciplines of art as well," senior entertainment reporter Kelley L. Carter told ABC News. "AI artists won't require things that a real human artist will require, and once companies start considering it and looking at bottom lines, I think that's when artists should rightly be concerned about it," she added.

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Waymo is rolling out robotaxi rides that use freeways across Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix for the first time -- "a critical expansion for the company that it says will reduce ride times by up to 50%," reports TechCrunch. From the report: That stat could help attract a whole new group of users who need to travel between the many towns and suburbs within the greater San Francisco Bay Area or quicken commutes across the sprawling Los Angeles and Phoenix metro areas. Using freeways is also essential for Waymo to offer rides to and from the San Francisco Airport, a location the company is currently testing in. The service won't be offered to all Waymo riders at first, the company said. Waymo riders who want to experience freeway rides can note their preference in the Waymo app. Once the rider hails a ride, they may be matched with a freeway trip, according to the company. The company's robotaxi routes will now stretch to San Jose, an expansion that will create a unified 260-mile service area across the Peninsula, according to Waymo. The company said it will also begin curbside drop off and pick up service at the San Jose Mineta International Airport. It already offers curbside service to the Sky Harbor Phoenix International Airport.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Anthropic announced plans Wednesday to spend $50 billion on a U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out, starting with custom data centers in Texas and New York. The facilities, which will be designed to support the company's rapid enterprise growth and its long-term research agenda, will be developed in partnership with Fluidstack. Fluidstack is an AI cloud platform that supplies large-scale graphics processing unit, or GPU, clusters to clients like Meta, Midjourney and Mistral. Additional sites are expected to follow, with the first locations going live in 2026. The project is expected to create 800 permanent jobs and more than 2,000 construction roles. The investment positions Anthropic as a major domestic player in physical AI infrastructure at a moment when policymakers are increasingly focused on U.S.-based compute capacity and technological sovereignty. "We're getting closer to AI that can accelerate scientific discovery and help solve complex problems in ways that weren't possible before. Realizing that potential requires infrastructure that can support continued development at the frontier," said CEO Dario Amodei. "These sites will help us build more capable AI systems that can drive those breakthroughs, while creating American jobs."

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The same owners operate Asian House in Old Orchard Beach.

Longtime Slashdot reader hadleyburg writes: For a user with an Android phone and who's happy to stick within the Google ecosystem, an Android tablet might seem like the more obvious choice over an iPad. Of course, iPads are a lot more popular, and asking about Android tablets is likely to invite advice about sticking with what everyone else has. The Slashdot community on the other hand -- being a discerning and thoughtful crowd -- might have some experience in this area and be willing to share the pros and cons they have found. The use case is someone not requiring any heavy usage -- no video editing or gaming -- just email, browsing, YouTube, video calls, and that sort of thing.

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Upcoming Medicaid cuts from the Republican budget bill passed over the summer threaten the financial health of rural hospitals.

Valve is ready to rejoin the VR hardware race with the Steam Frame, a lightweight standalone SteamOS headset that can run games locally or stream wirelessly from a PC using new "foveated streaming" tech. It's set to launch in early 2026. Ars Technica reports: Powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with 16 GB of RAM, the Steam Frame sports a 2160 x 2160 resolution display per eye at an "up to 110 degrees" field-of-view and up to 144 Hz. That's all roughly in line with 2023's Meta Quest 3, which runs on the slightly less performant Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor. Valve's new headset will be available in models sporting 256GB and 1TB or internal storage, both with the option for expansion via a microSD card slot. Pricing details have not yet been revealed publicly. The Steam Frame's inside-out tracking cameras mean you won't have to set up the awkward external base stations that were necessary for previous SteamVR headsets (including the Index). But that also means old SteamVR controllers won't work with the new hardware. Instead, included Steam Frame controllers will track your hand movements, provide haptic feedback, and offer "input parity with a traditional game pad" through the usual buttons and control sticks. For those who want to bring desktop GPU power to their VR experience, the Steam Frame will be able to connect wirelessly to a PC using an included 6 GHz Wi-Fi 6E adapter. That streaming will be enhanced by what Valve is calling "foveated rendering" technology, which sends the highest-resolution video stream to where your eyes are directly focused (as tracked by two internal cameras). That will help Steam Frame streaming establish a "fast, direct, low-latency link" to the machine, Valve said, though the company has yet to respond to questions about just how much additional wireless latency users can expect. Further reading: Valve Enters the Console Wars

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Porteur Breads takes over spot from Indrani's in the Tontine Mall.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI asked a federal judge in New York on Wednesday to reverse an order that required it to turn over 20 million anonymized ChatGPT chat logs amid a copyright infringement lawsuit by the New York Times and other news outlets, saying it would expose users' private conversations. The artificial intelligence company argued that turning over the logs would disclose confidential user information and that "99.99%" of the transcripts have nothing to do with the copyright infringement allegations in the case. "To be clear: anyone in the world who has used ChatGPT in the past three years must now face the possibility that their personal conversations will be handed over to The Times to sift through at will in a speculative fishing expedition," the company said in a court filing (PDF). The news outlets argued that the logs were necessary to determine whether ChatGPT reproduced their copyrighted content and to rebut OpenAI's assertion that they "hacked" the chatbot's responses to manufacture evidence. The lawsuit claims OpenAI misused their articles to train ChatGPT to respond to user prompts. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang said in her order to produce the chats that users' privacy would be protected by the company's "exhaustive de-identification" and other safeguards. OpenAI has a Friday deadline to produce the transcripts.

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OpenAI today released GPT-5.1, an update to its flagship model line. The update includes two versions: GPT-5.1 Instant, which OpenAI says adds adaptive reasoning capabilities and improved instruction following, and GPT-5.1 Thinking, which adjusts its processing time based on query complexity. The Thinking model responds roughly twice as fast on simple tasks and twice as slow on complex problems compared to its predecessor. The company began rolling out both models to paid subscribers and plans to extend access to free users in coming days. OpenAI added three personality presets -- Professional, Candid, and Quirky -- to its existing customization options. The previous GPT-5 models will remain available through a legacy dropdown menu for three months.

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New restrictions have led to a scramble at Greater Portland Metro, which halted a training program coordinated by Portland Adult Education and said more than 10% of its drivers are at risk of losing their commercial licenses.

Valve has unveiled a new Steam Machine console, taking a second shot at living room gaming a decade after its 2015 Steam Machine initiative failed. The 6-inch cube runs Linux-based SteamOS but plays Windows games through Proton, a compatibility layer built on Wine that translates Microsoft graphical APIs. Valve spent over a decade working on SteamOS and ways to run Windows games on Linux after the original Steam Machines failed. The device promises six times the performance of the Steam Deck handheld using AMD's 2022-2023 technology. In an interaction with The Verge, Valve demonstrated Cyberpunk 2077 running at settings comparable to PS5 Pro or beyond on a 4K television. The console updates games in the background and includes automatic HDMI television control that Valve tested against a warehouse of home entertainment equipment. The system navigates entirely through gamepad controls and resumes games instantly from sleep mode. Valve said pricing will be "comparable to a PC with similar specs" rather than subsidized like traditional consoles. PCs with similar GPUs have cost roughly $1,000 or more. Linux currently plays Windows games better than Windows in side-by-side tests.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft employs various schemes to stop Edge users from switching to Chrome, and the latest includes financial rewards for sticking with the browser. As spotted by Windows Latest, select users who search on Bing within Microsoft Edge for a link to download Google Chrome are now shown an offer to stay with the browser. It gives users 1,300 Microsoft Rewards points, which can be redeemed for gift cards (examples include Amazon, Roblox, and Spotify) or donated to one of over 2 million nonprofits.

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The Buzz: Sebagel is now open year-round in a standalone gathering spot at the Naples Causeway on Route 302.