Feed aggregator
Sweetfern Geometer restaurant opens on Portland’s Washington Avenue
The seasonally driven restaurant is the sister business to Mourning Cloak next door.
Disney agrees deal to let TikTokers use its films and TV shows in videos
A deal between will allow some creators to use clips from Disney films and TV shows in their videos.
BenQ GV50 Review: Highly Portable, but With Quality Trade-Offs
This affordable, portable projector doesn’t try to be a cinematic marvel, but it’s fun to use.
NVMe Polishes Its Specs, Brings Virtualization to Locally Attached SSDs
The latest NVMe specifications add SSD-level virtualization that can simplify live VM migration by preserving storage identities across servers. The updates also introduce support for post-quantum cryptography, controller-based rate limiting, voltage monitoring, and factory-reset capabilities. The Register reports: Announced by the NVM Express consortium, all 11 of the suite of NVMe specs have been updated with new features and engineering change notices. These represent the next step in the evolution of the standard, it says, which was created as a protocol to support storage devices connected to a system's PCIe bus. Perhaps the most significant new capability is PCIe Exported NVM Subsystem Migration. This extends existing NVMe virtualization to locally-attached PCIe SSDs. It does this by abstracting the physical drives into host-defined virtualized NVM subsystems, to allow for virtual machine (VM) mobility without storage reconfiguration.
When a VM moves from one server to another, its storage also needs to move with it in a way that's non-disruptive to any applications running in that VM. "With NVM Subsystem Migration, NVMe SSDs can present exported NVM subsystems that hide the complexity of the underlying hardware," says Mike Allison, a senior director at SSD maker Samsung and NVM Express board member. "Instead of interacting with physical controllers and namespaces, the host only sees exported controllers and namespaces. This creates a clean separation between what the VM sees and what's happening under the hood," Allison explains on an NVM Express blog.
"One of the key innovations here is providing the host with control over exported identifiers. During migration, those identifiers can be carried over exactly from the source to the destination. That consistency is crucial: even if the underlying hardware uses different internal IDs, the VM sees no change and can pick up right where it left off with no storage reconfiguration required," he says. In effect, the NVMe layer now enables the virtual machine manager (VMM) to rely on virtualization built into the SSD. The flash drive itself exposes logical, virtualized storage constructs, offloading this complexity from the VMM. You can learn more about the updated NVMe specifications here.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
MIT spinoff Found Industries opens new Cambridge HQ
The Department of Energy just selected Found Industries as part of a $5.4 million program to recover gallium — a critical metal with countless applications in consumer electronics — from domestic feedstocks.
US water systems are facing cyberattacks. Is Maine at risk?
The state has so far avoided the recent wave of infrastructure attacks.
The AI Notetaker Has Been Invited to All the Meetings
Wispr Flow, a popular dictation tool, has released a live notetaker that transcribes and summarizes meetings. It joins a growing wave of AI notetakers for the workplace.
Watch a SpaceX Rocket Crash Into the Moon
A four-ton SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage left drifting after a 2025 lunar mission is expected to crash into the Moon at about 5,400 mph, likely striking Einstein Crater. The impact should occur at approximately 2:35 a.m. ET (0635GMT). Reuters reports: Such stages typically fall back into Earth's atmosphere and burn up or plunge into the ocean after boosting the rocket's payload to a precise spot in orbit. But because the January lunar lander mission required more thrust than missions closer to Earth, the rocket's second stage remained in space, floating aimlessly among thousands of other pieces of space junk that active satellites must steer clear of. It was not until earlier this year that astronomers determined that the rocket stage, which had dumped its remaining fuel and cannot be controlled, was on an orbital trajectory ending at the moon.
"What has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path toward the moon," Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX director of NASA science and Dragon programs, told reporters on Monday. "This may be of some -- probably minor -- scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it," said Bill Gray, creator of widely used astronomy software who published a report on the stage's impact in April. "It doesn't present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of." You can try to watch the impact via a livestream on YouTube; however, the area it's expected to hit (Einstein Crater) is on the moon's western limb, "which is often difficult to see from Earth," notes Reuters. It will also likely "kick up a plume of lunar dust that will likely be illuminated by sunlight but difficult to spot with the naked eye from Earth."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Medicube Coupon Code: 40% Off for August 2026
Upgrade your K-beauty routine with these active Medicube promo codes. Save on Age-R devices, serums, and masks with student discounts and referral rewards.
Meta Quest Promo Codes and Coupons for August 2026
Experience cutting-edge VR and save up to 20% with coupons for the latest games, Meta Quest 3, Ray-Ban AI glasses, and more deals.
Hoka Coupon Codes: 30% Off in August 2026
Unlock free expedited shipping or 10% off with today’s Hoka discount codes, plus save up to 30% with the best discounts for August 2026.
Dermstore Coupons: 25% Off for August 2026
Score major savings on premium skincare, hair care, and cosmetics with these verified Dermstore discount codes and rewards offers.
Tuft & Needle Promo Codes: 30% Off | August 2026
Save 30% on best-selling mattresses with our top Tuft & Needle coupon codes.
Texas Halts Data Center Connections To Power Grid Amid Overwhelming Demand
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nowhere is the US data center boom bigger than in Texas. But less than a year after declaring Texas the "epicenter of AI development," Governor Greg Abbott has declared a moratorium on all new power grid connections for data centers -- at least until developers provide more information about their projects' potential impacts on the grid and communities. The Republican governor directed regulators in an August 3 announcement at the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the grid operators at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to perform a "comprehensive verification and audit of all data centers advancing through ERCOT's interconnection process." As an independent system operator, ERCOT oversees a power grid that operates separately from the rest of the United States and provides services to most of Texas.
Texas has aggressively courted data center development with its availability of cheap land and relatively abundant energy resources, along with offering state incentives, like tax breaks and fewer regulations. That puts the state on track to surpass Virginia in becoming the largest US data center market. But the recent AI boom and the accompanying frenzy of data center development threaten to overwhelm the Texas grid on paper, despite the state leading the country in adding new power generation. The ERCOT interconnection queue currently includes more than 1,800 projects representing over 474 gigawatts' worth of requests to connect to the Texas grid -- more than five times Texas' record peak electricity demand -- and about 90 percent of those power connection requests come from data centers.
"That unprecedented load growth could endanger the reliability and stability of the Texas electric grid," according to the statement from Abbott's office. Many of those data center projects may never materialize for various reasons. But ERCOT has still forecast that data center demand and other factors could drive statewide electricity demand to double the current demand record by 2032, according to The Texas Tribune. The review will examine each project's projected electricity consumption, reliance on the grid and state incentives, ownership, and water use. It will also assess measures intended to "reduce impacts on neighboring property owners and communities," including noise controls, lighting, traffic improvements, setbacks, and emergency planning.
Ars Technica notes that the directive does not address air pollution or greenhouse-gas emissions and does not apply to data centers generating their own power on-site.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AI used new levels of 'autonomy and deception' to trick people in safety test
The UK's AI Safety Institute said recent behaviour from Anthropic and OpenAI models was malicious and unprecedented.
Could tech replace firefighters in the battle against wildfires?
Tech is being used to watch for wildfires but firefighters are still needed to put them out.
Saudi-led group completes $55bn purchase of gaming giant EA
The deal takes the maker of titles including The Sims and EA FC into private ownership - and loads it with debt.
EA Is Now Officially Privately Owned
Longtime Slashdot reader neoRUR shares a report from Game Developer: EA Sports FC and Battlefield publisher EA has been taken private by an investor consortium led by Saudi Arabia's sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF). The move means the U.S. juggernaut is no longer a publicly-traded entity and is now majority owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through its PIF investment arm. Other investors include Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the latter of which was established by U.S. president Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The $55 billion transaction was financed via a combination of cash from PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners as well as roll-over of PIF's existing stake in EA -- constituting an equity investment of approximately $36 billion. Notably, $20 billion of debt financing was provided by JPMorgan Chase Bank. The deal cleared the necessary regulatory hurdles in July, paving the way for its completion at the close of trading on August 4, 2026. It was approved by regulators in major markets such as the European Union and the United States without incident, despite lawmakers and union leaders in the U.S. calling on the Federal Trade Commission to heavily scrutinize the leveraged buyout over geopolitical and employment concerns.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple Limits Bug Bounty Submissions After Flood of AI Slop
Apple has capped the number of open bug-bounty reports researchers can submit after being flooded with low-quality and sometimes entirely fabricated vulnerabilities generated by AI. MacRumors reports: The Financial Times learned of the limit after cybersecurity startup Bynario used ChatGPT to locate more than 50 macOS bugs in three weeks. Bynario found a privilege escalation exploit that could let an attacker get unrestricted access to a Mac, but was unable to report it because Apple limited the number of bug reports Bynario could submit. Bynario sent eight reports to Apple in 2025, and another five in 2026 before hitting a restriction.
Bynario's founder said it is a "very difficult time in the industry" because companies are being "flooded by the sheer amount of bugs." Apple has since been in contact with Bynario and is reviewing the company's submissions. While Apple now has a cap on the number of open submissions a researcher can have, researchers can request an increase to make sure Apple's security team doesn't miss a critical vulnerability.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SpaceX's first-ever earnings show higher revenues and huge spending
Elon Musk said during a call with financial analysts that people were "underestimating" his company.
