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Submission + - Chromebook Remorse: Tech Backlash at Schools Extends Beyond Phones

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In addition to student cell phone bans, the New York Times' Natasha Singer reports that some schools are also rethinking the wisdom of always-on-and-available school-issued laptops :

Inge Esping, the principal of McPherson Middle School, has spent years battling digital devices for children’s attention. Four years ago, her school in McPherson, Kan., banned student cellphones during the school day. But digital distractions continued. Many children watched YouTube videos or played video games on their school-issued Chromebook laptops. Some used school Gmail accounts to bully fellow students.

In December, the middle school asked all 480 students to return the Chromebooks they had freely used in class and at home. Now the school keeps the laptops, which run on Google’s Chrome operating system, in carts parked in classrooms. Children take notes mostly by hand, and laptops are used sparingly, for specific activities assigned by teachers. “We just felt we couldn’t have Chromebooks be that huge distraction,” said Ms. Esping, 43, Kansas’ 2025 middle school principal of the year. “This technology can be a tool. It is not the answer to education.”

McPherson Middle School no longer gives students their own Chromebooks to use in school and take home. The laptops are now kept in classroom carts and used only for specific activities assigned by teachers. McPherson Middle School, about an hour’s drive from Wichita, is at the forefront of a new tech backlash spreading in education: Chromebook remorse.

Elsewhere in the Times, an opinion piece by CS prof Cal Newport explains why Johnny — and his parents — can't concentrate and what to do about it.

Submission + - World's smallest QR code, smaller than bacteria, could store data for centuries (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Scientists have created a microscopic QR code so tiny it can only be seen with an electron microscope—smaller than most bacteria and now officially a world record. But this isn’t just about size; it’s about durability. By engraving data into ultra-stable ceramic materials, the team has opened the door to storing information that could last for centuries or even millennia without needing power or maintenance.

Submission + - Mozilla and Mila team up on open source AI push (nerds.xyz)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla just teamed up with Mila to push open source AI, and it feels like a direct response to Big Tech tightening its grip on the space. Instead of relying on closed models, the goal here is to build AI thatâ(TM)s more transparent, privacy-focused, and actually under the control of developers and even governments. Theyâ(TM)re starting with things like private memory for AI agents, which sounds niche but matters if you care about where your data goes. Big question is whether open source can realistically keep up with the billions being poured into proprietary AI, but at least someoneâ(TM)s trying to give folks an alternative.

Submission + - Tracy Kidder, Author of "The Soul of a New Machine", has died.

Submitted by wiredog
wiredog writes: Tracy Kidder, author of "The Soul of a New Machine" has died at the age of 80.

"The Soul of a New Machine" is about the people who designed and built the Data General Nova, one of the 32 bit superminis that were released in the 1980's, just before the PC destroyed that industry. It was excerpted in The Atlantic.

"I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."

Submission + - Stephen Colbert to Write Next Lord of the Rings Movie (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Stephen Colbert already has a new job lined up for when he ends his 11-year run as host of “The Late Show” in May – the comedian and well-known J.R.R. Tolkien superfan announced he will co-write and develop a new film in the blockbuster “Lord of the Rings” franchise.

Colbert joined “LOTR” director Peter Jackson to reveal the news in a video announcement.

“I’m pretty happy about it. You know what the books mean to me and what your films mean to me,” the late-night host told Jackson, who led the Oscar-winning team behind the nearly $6 billion original “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies.

Submission + - Delivery Robot Drives Through Bus Stop Shelter, Shattering Glass Everywhere (404media.co)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: A Serve Robotics food delivery robot crashed through the glass wall of a bus stop shelter in Chicago earlier this week, shattering the glass all over the sidewalk.

“We’re aware of the incident involving one of our robots in Chicago. No injuries were reported, our team responded quickly to clean up, and we’re reviewing what happened to make improvements,” the spokesperson said. “We have also been in contact with local stakeholders and are committed to addressing any concerns directly. We take this matter very seriously.”

Serve deployed its robots to Chicago in September under a partnership with Uber Eats. The company operates in a few cities around the country, including in Los Angeles, where activists have been filming the robots in various compromising positions or after they have been knocked over by passersby.

Footage of the aftermath of the crash went viral on social media, with one of the company’s robots shaking shards of glass onto the sidewalk. The crash comes amid a protest against delivery robots in Chicago. Delivery robots have been controversial in Chicago, where at least 3,600 Chicago residents have signed a “No Sidewalk Bots” petition asking the city to ban the robots. The Chicago Department of Transportation did not respond to a request for comment.

Submission + - Chandra resolves why black holes hit the brakes on growth (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Astronomers have an answer for a long-running mystery in astrophysics: why is the growth of supermassive black holes so much lower today than in the past? A study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other X-ray telescopes found that supermassive black holes are unable to consume material as rapidly as they did in the distant past. The results appeared in the December 2025 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Submission + - China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000 (substack.com) 2

Submitted by cusco
cusco writes: https://kdwalmsley.substack.co...

A private company in China has developed hypersonic missiles, that cost the same as a Tesla Model X. This missile, the YKJ-1000 is being marketed for sale, at a reported price of $99,000, and it’s in mass production now after successful tests. That is far below what countries will spend to target and shoot down the missile if it’s heading their way.

Besides the low cost, they can be launched from anywhere. The launcher looks like any one of the tens of millions of shipping containers floating around on the ocean, or sitting at ports, or riding along on trucks, or sitting on industrial lots. The launchers for these missiles are hiding in plain sight, in other words.

Whatever tactical advantages great-power countries have in ballistics is going away, fast; 1,300 km is 800 miles, and so the range is anything within 800 miles of wherever someone can send a shipping container.

Submission + - The rewilding milestone Earth has already passed (bbc.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Throughout the 20th Century, humanity demanded more and more land leading to the loss of vast areas of natural forest and grassland. Today, around half the world's land is farmed, used to grow crops or graze animals. However, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), global agricultural land use peaked in the early 2000s and has been slowly falling ever since. Around the world, farmland is being replaced by grasslands, trees and bush. Wild animals are returning to abandoned pasturelands in areas they had once dominated.

Reaching "peak agricultural land" does not mean the problem of deforestation is solved. Growing demand for products like beef, soy, cocoa and palm oil has put increasing pressure on land across South America, South East Asia and Africa. In the last decade, the world lost an area of tropical forest twice the size of Spain. Still, acre-for-acre across the world there has been yet more farmland abandonment, driven by reforestation in Europe and North America and the abandonment of pastures in Australia and Central Asia.

Submission + - Ads Are Popping Up on the Fridge and It Isn't Going Over Well (wsj.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Walking into his kitchen, Tim Yoder recoiled at a message on his refrigerator door: “Shop Samsung water filters.”

Yoder, a supply-chain manager in Chicago, owns a Samsung Electronics Family Hub fridge. He paid $1,400 for an appliance that came with a 32-inch screen on the door that allows him to control other Samsung gadgets, pull up recipes or stream music.

Submission + - How birds send heat into space (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: As human-caused climate change continues to raise temperatures across the globe, understanding how birds regulate their temperature is vital for their conservation. But how much heat birds emit—an invisible spectrum of radiation known as mid-infrared—has never been studied, until now.

Submission + - China Shows Strategic importance of Renewables - self protection and Cuba aid. (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by AleRunner
AleRunner writes: "China is helping Cuba race to capture renewable solar energy as the United States imposes an effective oil blockade on the Caribbean island, creating its worst energy crisis in decades." reports the Washington post. later in the article it tells that "China’s decades-long push into clean energy technology is now helping to protect it from the soaring oil and gas crisis spurred by Trump’s war against Iran." and that "Chinese exports of solar equipment to Cuba skyrocketed from about $5 million in 2023 to $117 million in 2025 and show no sign of stopping,"

Submission + - The internet was supposed to be free. What went wrong? (dw.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The utopia didn't last long. Early tech enthusiasts quickly realized how to monetize this collective consciousness by developing search engines, algorithms and collecting data.

"We see this in the ideology of early Facebook. The intention was very much like: 'Let me grab all of this data without permission and use it to build something that I can monetize'," says Mejias.

"We've moved from an age of connection to an age of extraction," Turner adds. "Digital media have become mining industries. We are now like oil or coal â" embedded in a social ground that corporations extract from and sell back to us as products and advertising."

Submission + - 2026 Turing Award Goes to Inventors of Quantum Cryptography

Submitted by Dave Knott
Dave Knott writes: Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard have won this year’s Turing Award for their work on quantum cryptography and related technologies. The Turing Award, which was introduced in 1966, is often called the Nobel Prize of computing, and it includes a $1 million prize, which the two scientists will share. Dr. Bennett, 82, is a researcher at an IBM computer science lab in Yorktown, N.Y., and Dr. Brassard, 70, is a professor at the University of Montreal.

The two met in 1979 while swimming in the Atlantic just off the north shore of Puerto Rico. They were taking a break while attending an academic conference in San Juan. Dr. Bennett swam up to Dr. Brassard and suggested they use quantum mechanics to create a bank note that could never be forged. Collaborating between Montreal and New York, they applied Dr. Bennett’s idea to subway tokens rather than bank notes. In a research paper published in 1983, they showed that their quantum subway tokens could never be forged, even if someone managed to steal the subway turnstile housing the elaborate hardware needed to read them. This led to quantum cryptography. After describing their new form of encryption in a research paper published in 1984, they demonstrated the technology with a physical experiment five years later. Called BB84, their system used photons — particles of light — to create encryption keys used to lock and unlock digital data. Thanks to the laws of quantum mechanics, the behavior of a photon changes if someone looks at it. This means that if anyone tries to steal the keys, he or she will leave a telltale sign of the attempted theft — a bit like breaking the seal on an aspirin bottle.

Submission + - Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft's Cloud Was "a Pile of Shit." (propublica.org)

Submitted by madbrain
madbrain writes: Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “a Pile of Shit.” They approved it anyway.

To move federal agencies to the cloud, the government created a program known as FedRAMP, whose job was to ensure the security of new technology.

FedRAMP first raised questions about Microsoft's Government Community Cloud High s security in 2020 and asked Microsoft to provide detailed diagrams explaining its encryption practices. But when the company produced what FedRAMP considered to be only partial information in fits and starts, program officials did not reject Microsoft’s application. Instead, they repeatedly pulled punches and allowed the review to drag out for the better part of five years. And because federal agencies were allowed to deploy the product during the review, GCC High spread across the government as well as the defense industry. By late 2024, FedRAMP reviewers concluded that they had little choice but to authorize the technology — not because their questions had been answered or their review was complete, but largely on the grounds that Microsoft’s product was already being used across Washington.

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