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Fires at Sappi’s Skowhegan paper mill blamed on dry, hot weather

Portland Press Herald Business - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 9:25am
Area firefighters have been called to mill for fires six or seven times since June, which is about double the number of incidents in a typical year, a fire official said.

What Is Creatine, and Should You Be Taking Most Studied Supplement (2025)

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 8:00am
It's the most studied supplement in sports medicine, but it's not just for athletes anymore.

The Fairphone (Gen. 6) Review: Better Than Ever

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 7:30am
The repairable, long-lasting smartphone is back, better than ever.

Samsung Smart Monitor M9 M90SF Review: The 4K OLED Hybrid

Wired Top Stories - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 6:30am
Finally, a 4K OLED smart monitor that’s just as good a TV as it is a PC monitor.

Government expands police use of facial recognition vans

BBC Tech News - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 6:18am
The Home Office says the technology helps locate suspects but civil liberties groups warn of heightened surveillance.

Cats Develop Dementia In a Similar Way To Humans

Slashdot - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 6:10am
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Experts at the University of Edinburgh carried out a post-mortem brain examination on 25 cats which had symptoms of dementia in life, including confusion, sleep disruption and an increase in vocalization. They found a build-up of amyloid-beta, a toxic protein and one of the defining features of Alzheimer's disease. The discovery has been hailed as a "perfect natural model for Alzheimer's" by scientists who believe it will help them explore new treatments for humans. Dr Robert McGeachan, study lead from the University of Edinburgh's Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, said: "Dementia is a devastating disease -- whether it affects humans, cats, or dogs. Our findings highlight the striking similarities between feline dementia and Alzheimer's disease in people. This opens the door to exploring whether promising new treatments for human Alzheimer's disease could also help our ageing pets." [...] Previously, researchers have studied genetically-modified rodents, although the species does not naturally suffer from dementia. "Because cats naturally develop these brain changes, they may also offer a more accurate model of the disease than traditional laboratory animals, ultimately benefiting both species and their caregivers," Dr McGeachan said. [...] Prof Danielle Gunn-Moore, an expert in feline medicine at the vet school, said the discovery could also help to understand and manage feline dementia. The findings have been published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bezos-backed Perplexity AI makes surprise bid for Google Chrome

BBC Tech News - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 5:43am
One technology investor called the $34.5bn offer a "stunt" that is much lower than Chrome's true value.

Bezos-backed Perplexity AI makes surprise bid for Google Chrome

BBC Tech News - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 5:43am
One technology investor called the $34.5bn offer a "stunt" that is much lower than Chrome's true value.

Bezos-backed Perplexity AI makes surprise bid for Google Chrome

BBC Tech News - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 5:43am
One technology investor called the $34.5bn offer a "stunt" that is much lower than Chrome's true value.

AI can make us UK's biggest firm, Rolls-Royce says

BBC Tech News - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 5:38am
Tufan Erginbilgic says business deals to supply nuclear power for artificial intelligence could boost its fortunes

AI can make us UK's biggest firm, Rolls-Royce says

BBC Tech News - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 5:38am
Tufan Erginbilgic says business deals to supply nuclear power for artificial intelligence could boost its fortunes

AI can make us UK's biggest firm, Rolls-Royce says

BBC Tech News - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 5:38am
Tufan Erginbilgic says business deals to supply nuclear power for artificial intelligence could boost its fortunes

Apple rejects Musk's App Store bias claims

BBC Tech News - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 5:13am
The X owner had accused Apple of making it impossible to fairly compete with ChatGPT.

Apple rejects Musk's App Store bias claims

BBC Tech News - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 5:13am
The X owner had accused Apple of making it impossible to fairly compete with ChatGPT.

Postal Service rate increases could squeeze Maine businesses

Portland Press Herald Business - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 4:00am
The state's remote geography means most shipments destined for beyond New England will face higher surcharges over the winter holiday season.

ULA Launches First National Security Mission On Vulcan Centaur Rocket

Slashdot - Wed, 08/13/2025 - 3:30am
United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket successfully completed its first-ever national security mission, launching the U.S. military's first experimental navigation satellite in 48 years. Space.com reports: The mission saw the company's powerful new Vulcan Centaur rocket take off from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Vulcan launched with four side-mounted solid rocket boosters in order to generate enough thrust to send its payload directly into geosynchronous orbit on one of ULA's longest flights ever, a seven-hour journey that will span over 22,000 miles (35,000 kilometers), according to ULA. The payload launching on Tuesday's mission was the U.S. military's first experimental navigation satellite to be launched in 48 years. It is what's known as a position, navigation and timing (PNT) satellite, a type of spacecraft that provides data similar to that of the well-known GPS system. This satellite will be testing many experimental new technologies that are designed to make it resilient to jamming and spoofing, according to Andrew Builta with L3Harris Technologies, the prime contractor for the PNT payload integrated onto a satellite bus built by Northrop Grumman. The satellite, identified publicly only as Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3), features a phased array antenna that allows it to "focus powerful beams to ground forces and combat jamming environments," Builta said in a media roundtable on Monday (Aug. 11). GPS jamming has become an increasingly worrisome problem for both the U.S. military and commercial satellite operators, which is why this spacecraft will be conducting experiments to test how effective these new technologies are at circumventing jamming attacks. In addition, the satellite features a software architecture that allows it to be reprogrammed while in orbit. "This is a truly game-changing capability," Builta said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'Cryptocrash king' Do Kwon pleads guilty to fraud

BBC Tech News - Tue, 08/12/2025 - 11:53pm
The South Korean former tech executive co-founded Singapore-based cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs.

'Cryptocrash king' Do Kwon pleads guilty to fraud

BBC Tech News - Tue, 08/12/2025 - 11:53pm
The South Korean former tech executive co-founded Singapore-based cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs.

'Cryptocrash king' Do Kwon pleads guilty to fraud

BBC Tech News - Tue, 08/12/2025 - 11:53pm
The South Korean former tech executive co-founded Singapore-based cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs.

Linus Torvalds Blasts Kernel Dev For 'Making the World Worse' With 'Garbage' Patches

Slashdot - Tue, 08/12/2025 - 11:30pm
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: You can't say Linux creator Linus Torvalds didn't give the kernel developers fair warning. He'd told them: "The upcoming merge window for 6.17 is going to be slightly chaotic for me. I have multiple family events this August (a wedding and a big birthday), and with said family being spread not only across the US, but in Finland too, I'm spending about half the month traveling." Therefore, Torvalds continued, "That does not mean I'll be more lenient to late pull requests (probably quite the reverse, since it's just going to add to the potential chaos)." So, when Meta software engineer Palmer Dabbelt pushed through a set of RISC-V patches and admitted "this is very late," he knew he was playing with fire. He just didn't know how badly he'd be burned. Torvalds fired back on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): "This is garbage and it came in too late. I asked for early pull requests because I'm traveling, and if you can't follow that rule, at least make the pull requests good." It went downhill from there. Torvalds continued: "This adds various garbage that isn't RISC-V specific to generic header files. And by 'garbage," I really mean it. This is stuff that nobody should ever send me, never mind late in a merge window." Specifically, Torvalds hated the "crazy and pointless" way in which one of the patch's helper functions combined two unsigned 16-bit integers into a 32-bit integer. How bad was it? "That thing makes the world actively a worse place to live. It's useless garbage that makes any user incomprehensible, and actively *WORSE* than not using that stupid 'helper.'" In addition to the quality issues, Torvalds was annoyed that the offending code was added to generic header files rather than the RISC-V tree. He emphasized that such generic changes could negatively impact the broader Linux community, writing: "You just made things WORSE, and you added that 'helper' to a generic non-RISC-V file where people are apparently supposed to use it to make other code worse too... So no. Things like this need to get bent. It does not go into generic header files, and it damn well does not happen late in the merge window. You're on notice: no more late pull requests, and no more garbage outside the RISC-V tree." [...] Dabbelt gets it. He replied, "OK, sorry. I've been dropping the ball lately, and it kind of piled up, taking a bunch of stuff late, but that just leads to me making mistakes. So I'll stop being late, and hopefully that helps with the quality issues."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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