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Congress and Trump may compromise on the SLS rocket by axing its costly upper stage

There are myriad questions about how NASA's budget process will play out in the coming weeks, with the start of the new fiscal year on October 1 looming. For example, the Trump administration may seek to shut off dozens of science missions that are either already in space or in development. Although Congress has signaled a desire to keep these missions active, absent a confirmed budget, the White House has made plans to turn off the lights. Some answers may be forthcoming this week, as the Hou

Experimenting with Local LLMs on macOS

So, this blog post will be about LLMs, and everyone has opinions about that. To be upfront about it, I’m a skeptic (bordering on hater), yet I like experimenting with stuff so I download and run them locally on my Mac. And I’ll teach you how to do it too, if you’d like! Some call them fancy autocomplete, some argue that they are sentient and should have rights. The truth is somewhere in between. Yes, they perform next word prediction, but it’s so complex that there’s nontrivial emergent behavio

Spotify’s new ‘smart filters’ let you screen library content by activity, genre or mood

Spotify is giving users more ways to personalize what they hear. The company is launching a new feature that allows users to filter their library by specific activities, moods, or genres. These filters can also be used to find playlists, or, to some extent, audio books and podcasts, and can even kick off a new session on Spotify’s AI DJ. The smart filters, which began rolling out on Friday, will first be made available to Premium subscribers on mobile devices and tablets in select markets, incl

We Rarely Lose Technology (2023)

“Στόλος Ρωμαίων πυρπολῶν τὸν τῶν ἐναντίων στόλον,” i.e. “the fleet of the Romans setting ablaze the fleet of the enemies.” i.e. the Byzantines using their Greek Fire weapon. From the Codex Skylitzes Matritensis (12th century) A common trope in the land of fantasy fiction and games is that of lost technology. The hero stumbles upon some ancient ruins, and then finds an ancient weapon, or an ancient vehicle, or an ancient intelligent robot, that helps him in his quest. Nobody alive could possibly

Meta suppressed research on child safety, employees say

At her home in western Germany, a woman told a team of visiting researchers from Meta that she did not allow her sons to interact with strangers on the social media giant’s virtual reality headsets. Then her teenage son interjected, according to two of the researchers: He frequently encountered strangers, and adults had sexually propositioned his little brother, who was younger than 10, numerous times. “I felt this deep sadness watching the mother’s response,” one of the researchers, Jason Satt

These are my 6 favorite self-hosted apps I use on my Android phone

Megan Ellis / Android Authority Self-hosting services save you from subscription costs and give you control over your data. While I’ve previously experimented with self-hosted media servers and file storage, I only really dove into self-hosting this year. I’ve learned a lot over the past few months, but one thing I was happy to find out is just how many of these services can integrate with apps on your Android phone. The main benefit of this is that you can control your services even when you’

Topics: android app home self use

What will you do now that Nova Launcher is shutting down?

Tushar Mehta / Android Authority 🗣️ This is an open thread. We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts in the comments and vote in the poll below — your take might be featured in a future roundup. Nova Launcher, a longtime frontrunner in the competition for the best third-party launchers, may soon cease to exist. Nova’s founder, Kevin Barry, recently announced that the company would discontinue its efforts to develop the launcher. Barry announced their departure from Branch, a company that

I Hate My AI Friend

Schiffmann seems to be doing well, compared to the last times either of us spoke to him. When he first announced the Friend, he talked about how he had come up with the idea for an AI buddy while traveling alone and yearning for companionship. Schiffmann posits himself as older now, wiser, more experienced than he was when he first debuted the Friend necklace. (He is 22.) He has grown out his hair and cultivated a beard, and he seems to have more real-life personal connections than when he first

SQLite's Use of Tcl (2017)

SQLite's Use Of Tcl D. Richard Hipp 24th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference Houston, TX 2017-10-19 1.0 Introduction SQLite is a TCL extension that has escaped into the wild. The design of SQLite was inspired by the design of TCL, both in the way it handles datatypes and in the formatting of its source code. The index use case for SQLite was in a Tcl/Tk application for an industrial company. From its inception, SQLite has always depended heavily on TCL. These days, SQLite no longer uses TCL internal

SQLite's Use of Tcl

SQLite's Use Of Tcl D. Richard Hipp 24th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference Houston, TX 2017-10-19 1.0 Introduction SQLite is a TCL extension that has escaped into the wild. The design of SQLite was inspired by the design of TCL, both in the way it handles datatypes and in the formatting of its source code. The index use case for SQLite was in a Tcl/Tk application for an industrial company. From its inception, SQLite has always depended heavily on TCL. These days, SQLite no longer uses TCL internal

AI Companion App Shuts Down Amid Controversy

In the frenetic world of artificial intelligence, virtual companions have exploded into a market all their own. A recent survey found that some 72 percent of teens said they've experimented with artificial buddies. Of those, over 50 percent say they have a regular relationship with the chatbots. But there's no guarantee those companions will stick around forever — something users of the AI startup Dot are learning the hard way after the company announced it was going belly up on Friday. Found

A really cheap way to get really smart lights

is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 96, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, has your inbox been as busy as mine the past few days?, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I also have for y

Hitting Peak File IO Performance with Zig

Intro This post goes through how to maximize file IO performance on linux using zig with io_uring. All code related to this post can be found in this repo. a) Benchmark We are comparing fio and the zig code which can be found here. test system We are using a machine with: ubuntu 24.04 (6.14 kernel, HWE). kernel parameter nvme.poll_queues=16 . . "datacenter" NVMe SSD without any RAID. 756 GB of RAM. This amount of RAM should be irrelevant for this test. Since we are using direct_io henc

The growing debate over expanding age verification laws

Technologists and policymakers are reckoning with a generation-defining problem on the internet: while it can be a revolutionary force for unprecedented education and connection across the globe, it can also pose dangers to children when they have completely unfettered access. There is no simple way, however, to monitor children’s internet access without surveilling adults, paving the way for disastrous online privacy violations. While some advocates praise these laws as victories for children

Museum of Color

Listen to this Story Narrated by Stephanie Krzywonos Contributor Bios Writer Stephanie Krzywonos is a Xicana nonfiction writer. Her forthcoming debut book is Ice Folx, an intersectional memoir set in the Antarctic underworld. She has written about her experiences on “the Ice” for Sierra Magazine, Ofrenda Magazine, The Willowherb Review, Kosmos Journal, The Dark Mountain Project, The Behemoth, and The Antarctic Sun. Artist Studio Airport, founded by Bram Broerse and Maurits Wouters, is an interdi

Anthropic Agrees to $1.5 Billion Settlement for Downloading Pirated Books to Train AI

Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by authors and publishers over its use of millions of copyrighted books to train the models for its AI chatbot Claude, according to a legal filing posted online. A federal judge found in June that Anthropic’s use of 7 million pirated books was protected under fair use but that holding the digital works in a “central library” violated copyright law. The judge ruled that executives at the company knew they were downloading pirat

You can now book doctors appointments through the Samsung Health app

Samsung Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Samsung Health users can now book virtual doctors' visits. They can also manage Walgreens prescriptions on the app. The virtual doctors can prescribe medication and provide care. You can do more than track your sleep, steps, or cycle on Samsung's Health app. Samsung announced several health integrations to connect users with practitioners and pharmacies on Wednesday. Starting Sept. 8, Samsung Health users

Anthropic Will Pay $1.5 Billion to Authors in Landmark AI Piracy Lawsuit

Anthropic will pay $1.5 billion to settle a lawsuit brought by a group of authors alleging that the AI company illegally pirated their copyrighted books to use in training its Claude AI models. The settlement was announced Aug. 29, as the parties in the lawsuit filed a motion with the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals indicating they had reached an agreement. "This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery. It is the first of its kind in the AI era," Justin Nelson, lawy

Anthropic will pay a record-breaking $1.5 billion to settle copyright lawsuit with authors

Anthropic will pay a record-breaking $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit lawsuit brought by authors and publishers. The settlement is the largest-ever payout for a copyright case in the United States. The AI company behind the Claude chatbot reached a settlement in the case last week, but terms of the agreement weren't disclosed at the time. Now, The New York Times reports that the 500,000 authors involved in the case will get $3,000 per work. The case has been closely watched as top

Lenovo demos laptop with a screen you can swivel into portrait mode

Lenovo has proven again that it isn’t content with PC designs. The latest era of laptops has been focused on ultralight computers that are easy to transport, but they're hard to differentiate. However, Lenovo’s continual experimentation has brought us some unique laptop releases and concepts in recent years, including a laptop with a screen that expands by rolling, a laptop with an outward folding screen, laptops with foldable screens, and laptops with dual 14-inch displays. The ThinkBook Verti

We Use Our Smartphones Like Laptops, So Why Do We Need Both? Here's What CNET's Survey Says

It's not uncommon to have a smartphone, a laptop and a tablet. I use all three, sometimes for many of the same tasks, like text messages, streaming and social media. The same is true for a lot of people. CNET's recent survey examines how most US adults use laptops, tablets and smartphones. Laptops are commonly used for work and educational tasks like creating and viewing documents (52%), streaming (35%) and creative work (33%). Besides texting, calls and social media, we use our smartphones fo

Roblox announces short-video, AI features amid child safety concerns

Roblox on Friday announced new short-video and AI features that come amid increasing lawmaker scrutiny into how the company protects children on its platform. With Roblox Moments, users 13 and older will be able to create and share video clips of their gameplay with others on a feed within the platform. The artificial intelligence additions, meanwhile, will allow users to generate advanced 3D objects for the games they create on the platform. Tune in at 4:15 p.m. ET: Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki j

Data modeling guide for real-time analytics with ClickHouse

This article was written as part of my services Querying billions of weather records and getting results in under 200 milliseconds isn’t theory; it’s what real-time analytics solutions provide. Processing streaming IoT data from thousands of sensors while delivering real-time dashboards with no lag is what certain business domains need. That’s what you’ll learn at the end of this guide through building a ClickHouse-modeled analytics use case. You’ll learn how to land data in ClickHouse that is

Roblox announces short-form video feed for gameplay clips, new AI tools for creators, and more

Online gaming platform Roblox is launching a TikTok-like short-form video feed for sharing gameplay moments, the company unveiled on Friday at the Roblox Developers Conference. The company also announced increased earnings for creators, new AI tools to boost creation, and other advancements in performance. The new short-form video experience, called “Roblox Moments,” is launching in beta for users 13 and older. It allows users to capture clips of their gameplay, then edit and share those clips

ChatGPT’s new branching feature is a good reminder that AI chatbots aren’t people

On Thursday, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT users can now branch conversations into multiple parallel threads, serving as a useful reminder that AI chatbots aren't people with fixed viewpoints but rather malleable tools you can rewind and redirect. The company released the feature for all logged-in web users following years of user requests for the capability. The feature works by letting users hover over any message in a ChatGPT conversation, click "More actions," and select "Branch in new chat

The one way millennials beat Gen Z in AI adoption

koto_feja/E+/Getty Images Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Gen Z is using AI for far more tasks than older generations. Millennials, however, are more willing to spend money on AI. Different generations cited different barriers to adopting AI. The adoption and use of generative AI tools vary widely between generations, according to a recent study from media company Future. Based on a survey of more than 2,000 people across the US and UK, the stud

‘I’m glad it’s over.’ Google CEO thanks Trump for antitrust 'resolution'

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., speaks during a meeting of the White House Task Force on AI Education in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. The White House has been actively promoting artificial intelligence and domestic manufacturing, with recent announcements including a plan to reduce regulation of artificial intelligence and support for leading AI chipmakers. Photographer: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

1Password vs. NordPass: I tested both password managers, and here's the best pick

1Password and NordVPN/ZDNET A password manager is an essential tool for generating, securely storing, and accessing credentials and other sensitive personal data across your devices, whether you need to log into your bank or fill out your information during online checkout. The best password management tools on the market do this seamlessly, but they have a range of features to meet varying user needs at different price points. In our head-to-head comparison of two of our favorite password man

Data Modeling Guide for Real-Time Analytics with ClickHouse

This article was written as part of my services Querying billions of weather records and getting results in under 200 milliseconds isn’t theory; it’s what real-time analytics solutions provide. Processing streaming IoT data from thousands of sensors while delivering real-time dashboards with no lag is what certain business domains need. That’s what you’ll learn at the end of this guide through building a ClickHouse-modeled analytics use case. You’ll learn how to land data in ClickHouse that is

This new Withings smartwatch can tell you when you're getting sick

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET key takeaways Withings has unveiled its Vitality Indicator. The feature can notify users ahead of illness. The feature arrives in tandem with the ScanWatch 2. Tech brands are betting big on the ability to spot health strain before symptoms arrive. The latest feature in Withings' newest smartwatch is no different. Withings' Vitality Indicator, available on its new ScanWatch 2, monitors a user's vitals, like their heart rate variabi