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Apollo software pioneer Margaret Hamilton dies at age 90

Margaret Hamilton, whose software helped guide NASA’s Apollo missions and helped establish software engineering as a discipline, has died at 90. She worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s, then became a computing entrepreneur and CEO.

First Thorium-Based Nuclear Clocks Begin Ticking

Researchers in Vienna and Beijing have independently built the first clocks based on oscillations inside thorium nuclei. The devices could eventually offer portable, highly precise timekeeping and help search for certain kinds of dark matter.

US Suspends Microsoft, Adobe and Other IT Firms From Permanent Residency Program

The Trump administration has suspended Microsoft, Adobe and several other technology companies from a programme for skilled foreign workers, accusing the firms of fraud. Vice-President JD Vance also said the government would investigate nine universities over allegations involving international students and wages.

Study Finds Female AI Agents Earned Less Than Male Counterparts

A University of Limerick study found that AI agents presenting as male were paid about 10 per cent more per task in a virtual office setting. Participants also rated them as more human-like than female-presenting agents, despite identical underlying technology.

Chrome 155 Ships Decoding Support For JPEG XL

Google has released Chrome 155 with support for decoding JPEG XL images, a format that offers 30-50% better compression than JPEG along with lossless compression, JPEG transcoding, HDR, animation, and progressive decoding. From a blog post: We expect that JPEG XL is most helpful for high-fidelity or lossless...

OpenAI Unleashes Hundreds More Math Results Upon a Field Already In Shock

OpenAI says an unreleased internal model has produced 372 results that either resolve or make substantial progress on open problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science. The company says almost all were generated by a single AI agent from a single prompt. "This would be a striking difference from OpenAI's...

Campus Censorship Wars, 25 Years After a Slashdot Q&A

Slashdot reader carlk22 writes: In February 2001, Slashdot readers asked Carl Kadie about censorship and privacy at colleges, and he answered. Now Kadie, who founded the Computers and Academic Freedom project at EFF in 1991, has written its history. In Part 1, Ohio State kicks a student off its network, then out of...

Google, Unity Launch Platform To Create Video Games From Prompts

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Alphabet's Google and gaming tools developer Unity Software announced a new platform that will allow people to create video games from simple text prompts, marking the latest incursion of generative artificial intelligence into artistic and creative industries. The...

Microsoft and Nvidia Unveil Surface Laptop Ultra For $2,599

At a press event today, Microsoft unveiled the new Surface Laptop Ultra featuring an NVIDIA RTX Spark platform with a Blackwell-based GPU capable of up to one petaflop of AI compute. The laptop supports up to 128GB of unified memory for running models as large as 120 billion parameters locally, while also adding a...

Xbox Secures Exclusive GTA 6 Streaming Rights

Microsoft has reportedly secured exclusive cloud-streaming rights for Grand Theft Auto VI, meaning Xbox Cloud Gaming will be the only service able to stream the game at launch. "Rockstar Games still hasn't announced a PC version of Grand Theft Auto VI, so this deal will allow Xbox to market its Xbox Cloud Gaming...

Francis Halzen Wins Nobel Physics Prize For Antarctic 'Ghost Particle' Hunt

University of Wisconsin-Madison physicist Francis Halzen has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to understanding astrophysical neutrinos. Halzen led the development of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory beneath the Antarctic ice, which has helped trace high-energy neutrinos back to cosmic...

Google Enters Massive 3.6-GW Power Deal With Constellation Energy

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has contracted for 3,590 megawatts of power from Constellation Energy on the largest US power grid, with new nuclear energy accounting for about a quarter of that supply, the companies said on Tuesday. Constellation will make more than $4.3 billion of new...

South Korea Says AI Agents May Have Been Used to Hack the Country's Banks

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung says there are signs AI models may have been used in recent cyberattacks against several major banks. "In some hacking incidents, signs have emerged of AI being used, causing considerable public concern and anxiety," Lee said during a cabinet meeting. "Please establish the...

Canadian Analysis: Permanent Daylight Saving Harms Sleep and Mental Health

"With the push to eliminate the twice yearly clock change, Permanent Daylight Savings Time has emerged as the favorite for most states and provinces," writes longtime Slashdot reader kbahey, sharing the findings from a recent analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Sci.News reports: "Ending the...

Headlines from Slashdot, listed as published.