Monday, 16 March
16:00 EDT
Trump and his FCC chair demand more positive news coverage of Iran war [Ars Technica - All content]
President Trump and the Federal Communications Commission chairman are demanding more positive media coverage of the Iran war. On Saturday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr issued yet another threat to revoke licenses from news broadcasters, claiming without evidence that they are running "hoaxes and news distortions" related to the war in Iran.
In an X post, Carr shared a complaint about an Iran war headline that Trump had made on Truth Social and added his own commentary. "Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up," Carr wrote. "The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not."
Carr making vague threats about enforcing rules against hoaxes and news distortion is nothing new. Given how difficult it is to actually revoke a broadcast license, and the fact that no TV station licenses are up for renewal until 2028, the threats so far have been attempts to intimidate news organizations without any concrete punishment.
OpenAI’s own mental health experts unanimously opposed “naughty” ChatGPT launch [Ars Technica - All content]
OpenAI cannot escape the doom cloud swirling around its rollout of a text-based "adult mode" in ChatGPT.
Late Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that insiders confirmed that OpenAI’s "handpicked council of advisers on well-being and AI" were "freaking out" over the company's plans to move ahead with "adult mode," despite their urgent warnings.
Back in January, council members unanimously warned OpenAI that "AI-powered erotica could foster unhealthy emotional dependence on ChatGPT for users and that minors could find ways to access sex chats," sources told the WSJ. One expert suggested that without major updates to ChatGPT, OpenAI risked creating a "sexy suicide coach" for vulnerable users prone to form intense bonds with their companion bots.
Driving the $375,000 Porsche race car that debuted as a $12 DLC in iRacing [Ars Technica - All content]
Video game launches for new cars are increasingly common these days—Gran Turismo alone has hosted dozens of "Vision" concepts—but Porsche decided to go a little more serious for the digital debut of its latest model. iRacing, the online driving sim that has been punishing people's digital driving indiscretions since 2008, was not only the first place anyone could drive the new 911 Cup, but also serves as a sort of digital feeder series to Porsche's one-make Porsche Carrera Cup.
That sim makes a great venue because the 911 Cup is as hardcore a racer as iRacing is a hardcore racing game. When I was invited to drive that new car for real, I knew exactly where to start.
Making the Cup
While there are faster and more expensive versions of Porsche's 911, the GT3 has long been the ultimate "racer for the road" spec, riddled with track-focused upgrades yet offering just enough creature comforts for daily driving.
A new drug could be the beginning of the end for sleeping sickness [NPR Topics: News]
The goal in the world of global health s to bring an end to this scourge by 2030. A new drug looks as if it could do the job.
(Image credit: Patrick Robert/Corbis/Sygma)
Cuba hit by island wide blackout as energy crisis deepens [NPR Topics: News]
On Monday Cuba was plunged into an island-wide blackout affecting 11 million people after a "complete disconnection" of its electrical system, officials said, amid a worsening fuel shortage.
(Image credit: Ramon Espinosa)
Vaccine critics keep the pressure on, even as RFK Jr. shifts focus [NPR Topics: News]
Anti-vaccine activists rally supporters to try to keep the momentum going on changing federal vaccine policies. This comes even as the White House tries to tamp down attention to the unpopular issue ahead of the midterm elections, and a powerful federal advisory committee plans to meet to consider even more moves.
(Image credit: Creative Images Lab)
Apple Launches AirPods Max 2 With Better ANC, Live Translation [Slashdot]
Apple has quietly announced the AirPods Max 2, featuring improved active noise cancellation, an H2 chip, and new features like adaptive audio and AI-powered real-time translation. Like the original model, these headphones start at $549. The Verge reports: As noted by Apple, the AirPods Max 2 offer active noise-cancellation that's 1.5 times more effective when compared to its predecessor. Transparency mode, which allows you to hear your surroundings while wearing the headphones, also sounds "more natural" with the AirPods Max 2, according to Apple. The AirPods Max 2 support 24-bit, 48kHz lossless audio when connected with a USB-C cable, as well as offer up to 20 hours of listening time on a single charge. Other capabilities include loud sound reduction, a camera remote feature that works by pressing the digital crown to take a photo or start a recording, as well as a personalized volume feature that "automatically fine-tunes the listening experience" based on your preferences over time.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
15:00 EDT
14:00 EDT
F1 in China: I've never seen so many people in those grandstands [Ars Technica - All content]
Formula 1 raced in China this past weekend, just a week after the sport kicked off its 2026 season in Australia. Most of the teams had a better handle on the sport's complicated new cars in China, and the more traditional racetrack environment played better to the strengths of their hybrid power units, with enough hard braking zones to recharge batteries without having to sap engine power instead.
We have a better idea of the grid's current pecking order, at least for now. There's some daylight between each of the top three teams and a close battle for midfield honors. Meanwhile, the specter of unreliability is well and truly with us; four cars failed to even take the start, and seven (of 22) were not classified as finishing. For fans of those teams and drivers, it wasn't a great weekend, especially if you woke up at 3 am to watch the race. But F1 generally put on an entertaining show in Shanghai.
That's a lot of fans
The sport has been visiting the city since 2004. The setting is a classic turn-of-the-century facility designed and built by Herman Tilke. It's a captivating-looking place, with a pond-filled paddock, a vast grandstand that spans the start-finish straight, and a layout that resembles the character for "shang," which creates some rather tricky corners, like the spiraling decreasing radii of turns 1 and 2.
Apple’s AirPods Max 2 bring H2 chip, boosted ANC in April for $549 [Ars Technica - All content]
Apple announced the AirPods Max 2 today, following up the original AirPods Max, which were announced in December 2020. The new model brings improved active noise cancellation (ANC) and other new features via an updated H2 chip.
The AirPods Max 2 are available in the same five
colorways as their predecessor. Credit: Apple
Apple introduced the H2 with the AirPods Pro (2nd Generation), which came out in September 2022. The original AirPods Max released in 2021 with an H1, meaning the new over-ear headphones should be more in line with Apple’s AirPods series in terms of features.
Apple claims that the new chip, combined with new computational audio algorithms, makes ANC up to 1.5 times “more effective” on the AirPods Max 2 compared to the original AirPods Max.
100 years later, where is Robert Goddard's first liquid-fueled rocket? [Ars Technica - All content]
It flew for only two seconds, but its impact is still felt a century later.
Robert Goddard's first liquid-fueled rocket, which lifted off from a snowy field on March 16, 1926, has been written about extensively. Earlier solid-fueled rockets existed, but liquid-fueled rockets promised the sustainability and control needed to send spacecraft and humans into Earth orbit and beyond.
"The rocket's reach was short, but it marked the moment that humanity entered a new era," said Kevin Schindler, author of "Robert Goddard's Massachusetts," speaking at the site of that first launch as part of a centennial commemoration held Saturday in Auburn (March 14). "It proved that liquid fuel could lift a craft skyward—the essential breakthrough that would one day carry humans to the moon."
Gasoline prices are still rising as the Iran war stretches into its third week [NPR Topics: News]
U.S. gasoline prices are up nearly 80 cents from a month ago, while diesel prices have shot up even more. Diesel is now just under $5 a gallon, according to AAA, up $1.34 from last month.
(Image credit: Lindsey Wasson)
San Francisco Bay Area Trip Report II [Philip Greenspun’s Weblog]
Moe’s Books (Berkeley) moved all of the Gaza books to the back of the store (see A trip to Berkeley, California (November 2024))
Some of the books that were prominently displayed:
Nearby Mrs. Dalloway’s Books features works on how to spend most of the day reminding kids that they’re going to die when the Earth goes Full Venus:
I talked to a professor of adolescent medicine shortly after seeing these books and he said that it made sense for all teenagers to be in therapy because of their reasonable fears regarding climate change.
Housing is a human right, which means either a $3 million house from this real estate agency or sleeping in the real estate agency’s alcove:
Dove soap is too precious to be left on the shelf at CVS:
The post San Francisco Bay Area Trip Report II appeared first on Philip Greenspun’s Weblog.
Meta Signs $27 Billion AI Infrastructure Deal With Nebius [Slashdot]
AI infrastructure company Nebius signed a deal to provide up to $27 billion in AI computing capacity to Meta over the next five years, including a guaranteed $12 billion purchase by 2027. Reuters reports: Under the agreement, Meta will also buy an additional $15 billion worth of capacity planned by Nebius over the coming five years if it is not sold to other customers, giving the contract a total value of up to $27 billion, Nebius said. The deal is the latest example of U.S. tech giants' efforts to supplement their own AI data-centre build-outs by locking in scarce GPU and power capacity from "neocloud" providers like Nebius. Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh said the latest Meta deal would help "accelerate the build-out and growth of our core AI cloud business." Further reading: Data Centers Overtake Offices In US Construction-Spending Shift
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
13:00 EDT
Data Centers Overtake Offices In US Construction-Spending Shift [Slashdot]
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Spending on data center projects in the U.S. has exploded, surpassing offices for the first time at the end of last year. It's a trend Matt Kunz saw early on when Meta built a computing hub outside Columbus, Ohio. Other tech companies soon swarmed into the area, drawn by its stable economy, university talent pipeline and ample power, water and land, said Kunz, vice president and general manager at Turner Construction Co., the firm that led Meta's build-out. Since Meta broke ground in 2017, it's expanded its data center campus, and Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Microsoft Corp. made plans to join it nearby. "When one shows up, almost all the other ones tend to follow," Kunz said. For Turner, a construction giant responsible for supertall office skyscrapers, sports stadiums and cultural venues around the globe, data centers are commanding more of its bandwidth. The company completed $9.4 billion of the projects last year, more than five times its 2020 total. Last month, Turner announced it was chosen as one of the contractors on a $10 billion data center for Meta in Indiana. Tech companies' needs for AI processing facilities have made data centers the latest darling of the real estate industry. The properties are figuring heavily into portfolios of major investors such as Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management and KKR, on a bet that long-term demand for computing power will continue to grow. At the same time, office development has slowed as cities across the U.S. contend with vacancies that have piled up since the Covid lockdowns. Construction spending for data centers has climbed steadily in recent years, while outlays for general office projects headed downward, U.S. Census data show. The two crossed paths in December, with roughly $3.57 billion spent on data centers that month, compared with $3.49 billion for offices, according to preliminary estimates. The shift is likely to continue and "may perpetuate itself even further as AI is utilized for automating day-to-day jobs," said Andy Cvengros, co-lead of U.S. data center markets for the brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. "It's going to directly impact the amount of office space people need." According to Christopher McFadden, senior vice president at Turner, more than a third of the company's backlog is now tied to data centers. "We're going to be building these at this scale for years to come," McFadden said. "There's a lot of wind in the sail."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Court Rules TCL's 'QLED' TVs Aren't Truly QLED [Slashdot]
A German court ruled that TCL misled consumers by marketing certain TVs as "QLED" when they "do not deliver the color reproduction expected from QLED TVs." It has ordered the company to stop advertising or selling those models in Germany. TechRadar reports: The case was filed by Samsung, which claimed that TCL was running deceptive advertising, and more court cases on the same topic are coming in other countries, including the US. The lawsuits all make the same claim: that what TCL calls a QLED isn't a QLED as it's commonly understood, and that consumers are being mis-sold TVs as a result. The court found that TCL's quantum dot TVs, such as the QLED870 series available in Germany, didn't deliver the characteristics of a quantum dot LED, and that consumers were being misled as a result. The tests were commissioned by Seoul chemicals company Hansol Chemical (which, it's worth noting, works with Samsung, a key TCL rival, and which heavily promoted the results of these tests alongside launching the court case) and carried out by Geneva's SGS and the UK's Intertek. According to ET News (via Google Translate), "no indium (In) or cadmium (Cd) was detected in three TCL QD TV models. Indium and cadmium are essential materials that cannot be omitted for QD implementation... if neither is present, QD technology cannot be said to have been applied." You can see the test results here. TCL disputed the findings -- "The QD content may vary depending on the supplier, but it definitely contains cadmium," it responded -- and published its own tests, including a test by SGS, the same firm that conducted tests for Hansol. The results contradicted Hansol Chemical's tests, but those tests used a different methodology: where TCL's tests focused on TCL's quantum dot films, Hansol's commissioned tests were on finished TCL TVs. [...] Hansol Chemical has filed a complaint against TCL with the US Federal Trade Commission, alleging false advertising, and TCL is also facing class action lawsuits in several US states making the same claim. TCL isn't alone here: Hisense has also been targeted in the US.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
12:00 EDT
One-Minute Daily AI News 3/15/2026 [AI Daily News by Bush Bush]
- Organisations worldwide are racing to develop a universally recognised label for “human-made” products and services as part of the growing backlash against AI use.[1]
- Garry Tan Releases gstack: An Open-Source Claude Code System for Planning, Code Review, QA, and Shipping.[2]
- Scientists create the first artificial neuron capable of communicating with the human brain.[3]
- Hong Kong artist Victor Wong fuses tradition with technology, using an AI-powered robotic arm to paint intricate landscapes inspired by Chinese ink art.[4]
Team USA won the second-most medals at these Paralympics. See the standout moments [NPR Topics: News]
A mix of decorated veterans and rising stars won 24 medals for Team USA, 13 of them gold. The last one arrived Sunday, when the U.S. sled hockey team beat Canada to win its fifth straight gold medal.
(Image credit: Stefano Rellandini)
Best beginners’ guide to bees
Over the years I’ve kept a few hives of bees for honey. And I have a whole shelf of bee books. Beekeeping for Dummies is my current best choice for a beginner’s introduction to bees. As in many subjects, there is nothing like attending a local hands-on workshop as way to learn fast, but you could get a few hives going in your backyard using just the clear step-by-step instructions in this book alone. It’ll guide you through basic bee biology, safety concerns, using the gear, and how to get bees. More than any other beekeeping tutorial it anticipates most questions newbies will have. It also offer guidance on what to do with your bounty of honey and wax. Bees are eternally fascinating and there’s a library of other classic bee books to follow up with, but this one is the best place to start. — KK
- Knowing when it’s time for more smoke A few minutes into your inspection, you may notice that the bees allhave lined up between the top bars like racehorses at the startinggate. Their little heads are all in a row between the frames. Kind ofcute, aren’t they? They’re watching you. That’s your signal to givethe girls a few more puffs of smoke to disperse them again so thatyou can continue with your inspection.
- Having Realistic Expectations In your first year, don’t expect too much of a honey harvest. Sorry,but a newly established colony doesn’t have the benefit of a full seasonof foraging. Nor has it had an opportunity to build its maximumpopulation. I know that’s disappointing news. But be patient. Nextyear will be a bonanza!Beekeeping is like farming. the actual yield depends upon the weather. Many warm, sunny days with ample rain results in more flowers and greater nectar flows. When gardens flourish, so do bees. If Mother Nature works in your favor, a hive can produce 60 to 100 pounds of surplus honey (that’s the honey you can take form the bees), or more. If you live in a warm climate (like Florida or Southern California) you can expect multiple harvests each year. But remember that your bees need you to leave some honey for their own use. In cold climates leave them 60 pounds, in climates with no winter, leave 20 to 30 pounds.
- A fume board looks like an outer cover with a flannel lining. A liquid bee repellent is applied to the flannel lining and the fume board is placed on top of the honey supers (in place of the inner and outer covers). Within five minutes, the bees are repelled out of the honey supers and down into the brood chamber. Instant success! The honey supers can then be safely removed and taken to your harvesting area.
Cheapest way to start bees
Mann Lake Beekeeping Starter Kit
This is the least expensive kit for starting beekeeping. It has everything you need to raise some honey, except 3 things. You’ll need bees; order them by mail separately, or find a swarm. You’ll need to add at least one “upper” story of frames to store your share of the honey, and you’ll need access to an extractor — extracting honey by hand from this upper is possible but extremely messy. With care the equipment included should last many decades. You need only keep adding boxes of frames.
Used bee equipment is not advisable these days because of rampant bee disease. A beginner should start with new gear. There are a few sources with cheaper kits, but their shipping costs — between costs $60-$90 — will kill any bargain. Mann Lake offers free shipping, a fantastic deal with such bulky stuff. Also, their boxes and frames come fully assembled, which is also not the norm. That can save you several hours, and for a beginner, it provides assurance everything is right. Get the unpainted option; that’s easy enough to do and you can choose your color (they don’t have to be white).
If you have Amazon Prime you can get the same deal through Amazon. — KK
The Basic Starter Kit Includes:
- Assembled Hive Bodies or Supers
- Assembled Frames with Rite-Cell®
Foundation OR
Waxed Standard Plastic Frames - Assembled Telescoping Cover w/Inner Cover
- Assembled Bottom Board w/Reducer
- 9 1/2” (24.13 cm) Hive Tool
- Economy Leather Gloves (Large, color may vary)
- Alexander Bee Veil
- Dome Top Smoker w/Guard
- “The New Starting Right With Bees” Book
Human-powered honey removal
This gorgeous, stainless steel spinning extractor, made in Italy for Mann Lake, sits in a privileged part of our living room and sometimes serves as a coffee table. But come extraction time, I not only use this beauty in my yard, I share it with my beekeeping friends. It’s about the size of a medium garbage can, so it’s easy to load into the car. It fits three frames at a time — the perfect amount for backyard beekeepers who often need to extract only 9 frames at once.
There’s no plug, no motor, just human arm power.
Inside is a metal carriage or rack you slide your frames into. Each side of the frame has honeycomb, so you need to flip the frames to get the honey out of both sides. But most backyard beekeepers are curious and want to check out the progress of the extraction process, anyhow. Watching the honey splatter on the inside edges of the extractor is very satisfying.
It’s also very satisfying to hold up the frame to the light and see that the honey has been sucked out of the comb and is now dripping down the inside of the extractor. And therein lies the beauty of this hand-crank model: the spigot. The honey flows down the sides of the extractor and coalesces in a pool. One only has to turn the spigot and out drips your liquid gold. I never filter or heat my honey so we just hold jars under the spigot. Viola!
Clean up is simple — just put the extractor near the beehive. The bees will lick up the remaining honey. And before I put it back in the living room, I like to pour a few buckets of hot soapy water just to make sure.
Mann Lake makes a few extractors, including a cheaper 3-frame model. However, cheaper models have the crank on top instead of on the side, which makes it more difficult to spin (can you say instant tennis elbow?). I’ve also heard it’s harder to get the spinner moving fast enough to splatter the honey. With this extractor (the HH-190), the crank is on the side, which is more ergonomically friendly. The next model up is motorized, which I think you need only if you’re a commercial size beekeeper or elderly.
Beekeeping involves buying a lot of equipment (an urban farmer, I have been beekeeping since 1999 and bought this extractor two years ago). Paradoxically, while we’re in it for the long haul and strive to buy quality, long-lasting equipment, we also pride ourselves on being thrifty, and some of us border on the edge of being Luddites. For example, in order to extract the bee’s hard-earned honey, a beekeeper must remove the frames of honeycomb, slice off the capped honey and then somehow extract the sticky ambrosia. I’m proud to say I’ve never used one of those electric, plug-in hot knives for uncapping the comb. I use a pot of boiling water and a good kitchen knife, and simply dunk the knife in the water for a time, wipe it off and then slice. No cord, no expense.
I feel the same way about my extractor: It’s a nice synthesis of human and machine. Before I got on I used to try to use a bowl, some pans and gravity. This is impossible in a place like California with all these ants! And it just takes forever to let the honey drip out. This machine allows us to speed up the extraction process, but not too much. — Novella Carpenter
Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
Animated 'Firefly' Reboot In Development With Nathan Fillion [Slashdot]
An animated reboot of Firefly is in early development at 20th Television Animation with Nathan Fillion involved. The project has Joss Whedon's blessing and will be run by writers Tara Butters and Marc Guggenheim, with early concept art already underway. According to the Hollywood Reporter, "The series would be set in the timeline between the original, 11-episode TV run in 2002 and the 2005 feature film continuation, Serenity." You can watch Fillion announce the Firefly reboot on Instagram. When the first episode of the original series premiered in late 2002, Slashdot reader fm6 wrote: "Firefly, Joss Whedon's 'anti-Trek drama' premieres tonight, on Fox, 8 E/P. I normally despise hypespeak, but this time it's the only language that fits: this is groundbreaking, mind-boggling, totally original. I've seen a bootleg of the pilot (which, unfortunately, the network is holding back) and I promise you this is the most geek-friendly SF you've seen in a long time. Yes, more so than Star Trek and B5, and way past Star Wars. I've never seen the future so skillfully, realistically, and lovingly portrayed. Here is the Official Site and a leading fan site." "This is the single new show this season I have added a season pass for to the old Tivo," CmdrTaco said at the time. "But I'll probably watch it live. This looks like it could be as good as we hope."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
11:00 EDT
No accountability: Bills would ban liability lawsuits for climate change [Ars Technica - All content]
Republican lawmakers in multiple states and Congress are advancing proposals to shield polluters from climate accountability and prevent any type of liability for climate change harms—even as these harms and their associated costs continue to mount.
It’s the latest in a counter-offensive that has unfolded on multiple fronts, from the halls of Congress and the White House to courts and state attorneys general offices across the country.
Dozens of local communities, states, and individuals are suing major oil and gas companies and their trade associations over rising climate costs and for allegedly lying to consumers about climate change risks and solutions. At the same time, some states are enacting or considering laws modeled after the federal Superfund program that would impose retroactive liability on large fossil fuel producers and levy a one-time charge on them to help fund climate adaptation and resiliency measures.
Look at that goofy nerd with the beautiful girl [Pharyngula]
Today is our 46th wedding anniversary. I have no idea why she agreed to it in the first place.
No celebration today. We’re both just going to work, she won’t get home until 11pm, we don’t even have dinner plans.
Let’s end Spring Break for good [Pharyngula]
This year’s Spring Break is over, and it was a mess, as usual. The students got a full week of vacation, while I got nothing, other than a pile of grading and the need to do their lab work for them (admittedly, a small trivial bit of their work, because flies keep breeding no matter what the calendar says). Then we had a blizzard, which has disrupted everyone’s travel schedules — I have students who will miss class for the entire first half of this week, because airlines have been cancelling all kinds of flights into the upper midwest.
My modest suggestion is that in future years we abolish the tradition of Spring Break. Everyone just stays at the university working, and then we finish up the term a week early. Less chaos! More order! No more resetting unrealistic expectations by allowing them to escape to a warm sunny beach somewhere. No more youthful debauchery. Reality is cold, icy, white landscapes scoured by bitter winds, overseen by dour gray-bearded taskmasters. The sooner they get used to it, the better.
There may be some initial resistance, but everyone will eventually adapt, and I won’t have to go through this yearly ritual of having to modify course- and lab-work to accommodate these unserious childish hijinks.
No one is learning biology here.
10:00 EDT
The science of how fireflies stay in sync [Ars Technica - All content]
Scientists have discovered that male fireflies in a South Carolina swamp follow local interaction rules to synchronize their flashing mating displays. The research is being presented at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver. (A preprint is also available on the biorxiv.) Such work could one day lead to insights into how the body's cells sync to its internal circadian rhythm, or how neurons fire together in the brain, as well as the design of drone swarms communicating through synchronized flashes.
As previously reported, research into swarming and flocking was largely relegated to observational biologists for decades. But in the 1980s, a computer graphics specialist named Craig Reynolds developed the so-called “boids” program, an agent-based computational model that has dominated collective behavior studies ever since. In such a model, each individual unit in a swarm is a dot moving in a straight line at a constant speed. By introducing a few simple rules regarding interactions between dots, a flocking pattern will emerge once the dots get dense enough. Another set of rules will produce a swarming pattern, and so forth.
Fire ants provide a textbook example of this kind of collective behavior. A few ants spaced well apart behave like individual ants. But pack enough of them closely together, and they behave more like a single unit, exhibiting both solid and liquid properties. You can pour them from a teapot like ants, or they can link together to build towers or floating rafts—a handy survival skill when, say, a hurricane floods Houston. They also excel at regulating their own traffic flow. You almost never see an ant traffic jam.