Longtime Slashdot reader chicksdaddy writes: CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, isn't just about shiny new gadgets. As AP reports, this year brought back the fifth annual Worst in Show anti-awards, calling out the most harmful, wasteful, invasive, and unfixable tech at the Las Vegas show. The coalition behind the awards -- including Repair.org, iFixit, EFF, PIRG, Secure Repairs, and others -- put the spotlight on products that miss the point of innovation and make life worse for users.

2026 Worst in Show winners include:

Overall (and Repairability): Samsung's AI-packed Family Hub Fridge -- over-engineered, hard to fix, and trying to do everything but keep food cold.
Privacy: Amazon Ring AI -- expanding surveillance with features like facial recognition and mobile towers.
Security: Merach UltraTread treadmill -- an AI fitness coach that also hoovers up sensitive data with weak security guarantees, including a privacy policy that declares the company "cannot guarantee the security of your personal information" (!!).
Environmental Impact: Lollipop Star -- a single-use, music-playing electronic lollipop that epitomizes needless e-waste.
Enshittification: Bosch eBike Flow App -- pushing lock-in and digital restrictions that make gear worse over time.
"Who Asked For This?": Bosch Personal AI Barista -- a voice-assistant coffee maker that nobody really wanted.
People's Choice: Lepro Ami AI Companion -- an overhyped "soulmate" cam that creeps more than it comforts.

The message? Not all tech is progress. Some products add needless complexity, threaten privacy, or throw sustainability out the window -- and the industry's watchdogs are calling them out.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Internet access available through mobile devices in Iran appears to be limited, according to several social media accounts that routinely track such developments. Cloudflare Radar, which monitors internet traffic on behalf of the internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare, said on Thursday that IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), a standard widely used for mobile infrastructure, was affected.

"IPv6 address space in Iran dropped by 98.5 per cent, concurrent with IPv6 traffic share dropping from 12 per cent to 1.8 per cent, as the government selectively blocks internet access amid protests," read Cloudflare Radar's social post. NetBlocks, which tracks internet access and digital rights around the world, also confirmed it was seeing problems with connectivity through various internet providers in Iran. "Live network data show Tehran and other parts of Iran are now entering a digital blackout," NetBlocks posted on X.

Disney+, which is looking to catch up with some streaming and digital rivals in terms of daily engagement, is adding vertical videos to the service. From a report: The arrival of the new format later this year was one of several advertising-oriented announcements the company made Wednesday at its Tech + Data Showcase at CES in Las Vegas. Other new offerings include a new "brand impact" metric and a new video generation tool that helps advertisers create high-quality connected-TV-ready commercials using existing assets and guidelines.

[...] In an interview prior to the Wednesday showcase, Erin Teague, EVP of Product Management for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, said "everything's on the table" in terms of how vertical video is delivered on Disney+. It could be original short-form programming, repurposed social clips, refashioned scenes from longer-form episodic or feature titles or a combination. "We're obviously thinking about integrating vertical video in ways that are native to core user behaviors," Teague said. "So, it won't be a kind of a disjointed, random experience."

LEGO has responded to concerns that its newly announced Smart Brick technology represents a departure from the company's foundation in physical, non-digital play, a day after the official reveal at CES drew criticism from child development advocates. Federico Begher, SVP of Product, New Business, told IGN the sensor-packed bricks are "an addition, a complementary evolution" and emphasized that the company would "still very much nurture and innovate and keep doing our core experience."

A BBC News report on the CES announcement noted "unease" among "play experts" at the unveiling. Josh Golin, executive director of children's wellbeing group Fairplay, said he believed Smart Bricks could "undermine what was once great about Lego" and curtail imagination during play. Begher compared the rollout to the Minifigure's gradual introduction decades ago. The Smart Brick launches in March in Star Wars sets including an X-Wing that produces engine sounds based on movement. The technology is screen-free and physical, Begher said, drawing on learnings from previous projects like Super Mario figures where "some of the levels were very prescriptive."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Open Rights Group is warning politicians that the UK is leaning far too heavily on US tech companies to run critical systems, and wants the Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill to force a rethink.

The digital rights outfit says the bill, which is due to receive its second reading in the House of Commons today, represents a rare opportunity to force the government to confront what it sees as a strategic blind spot: the UK's reliance on companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and data analytics biz Palantir for everything from cloud hosting to sensitive public sector systems.

"Just as relying on one country for the UK's energy needs would be risky and irresponsible, so is overreliance on US companies to supply the bulk of our digital infrastructure," said James Baker, platform power programme manager at Open Rights Group. He argued that digital infrastructure has become an extension of geopolitical power, and the UK is increasingly vulnerable to decisions taken far beyond Westminster's control.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: At CES in Las Vegas today, Lego has unveiled its new Smart Play platform, aimed at taking its distinctly analog plastic blocks and figures into a new world of tech-powered interactive play -- but crucially one without any reliance on screens. Smart Play revolves around Lego's patented sensor- and tech-packed brick. It's the same size as a standard 2 x 4 Lego brick, but it is capable of connecting to compatible Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags and interacting with them in real time. By pairing these components, kids big and small can create context-appropriate sounds and light effects as they play with the Danish company's toys.

[...] Lego is claiming this Smart Play platform developed in house by the company's Creative Play Lab team in collaboration with Capgemini's Cambridge Consultants "features more than 20 patented world-firsts within its technology." The heart of the system is the Smart Brick's custom-made chip, measuring smaller than a standard Lego stud. Other elements crammed into the eight-stud brick are an LED light array, accelerometers, light sensors, and sound sensor, and even a miniature speaker. The internal battery will supposedly work even after years of inactivity, and to avoid any need for cable access to the Smart Brick once it's built into a beloved creation, Lego has also added wireless charging. Indeed, Lego has made a charging pad that will power up several Smart Bricks simultaneously.

That all-important brain chip is a 4.1-millimeter custom mixed-signal ASIC chip running a bespoke Play Engine, which interprets motion, orientation, and magnetic fields. A copper coil assembly enables the brick's tag recognition, while a proprietary "Brick-to-Brick position system" uses these coils to sense distance, direction, and orientation between multiple Smart Bricks. Moreover, Lego claims this use of multiple Smart Bricks creates a "self-organizing network" that requires no setup, no app, no central hub, nor external controllers -- and so no screens. A Bluetooth-based "BrickNet" protocol shares the data between the Smart Bricks.

Sounds are handled by a tiny analog synthesizer putting out real-time audio (thus minimizing memory load) via the brick's miniature speaker, which uses the brick's internal air spaces to amplify sound. As a result, the audio effects are apparently immediate and can be used to enhance play with real-time sound. Lego insists there are no prerecorded clips of lightsabers or other pieces of audio being used as a cheat. Just like the Smart Minifigs, the 2 x 2 studless tile tags trigger sounds, lights, or behaviors tied to where they are placed or how they are played with. They communicate with other components through near-field magnetic connections. Each tile has a unique digital ID, which is read by the brain brick, while the minifigures -- outwardly identical to standard minifigs -- carry their unique digital ID on an internal chip.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon's AI-powered overhaul of its digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is coming to the web. On Monday, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the official launch of a new website, Alexa.com, which is now rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow customers to use Alexa+ online, much as you can do today with other AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google's Gemini.

[...] Related to this expansion, Amazon is updating its Alexa mobile app, which will now offer a more "agent-forward" experience. Or, in other words, it's putting a chatbot-style interface on the app's homepage, making it seem more like a typical AI chatbot. (While you could chat with Alexa before in the app, the focus is now on the chatting -- while the other features take a back seat.) On the Alexa.com website, customers can use Alexa+ for common tasks -- for instance, exploring complex topics, creating content, and making trip itineraries. However, Amazon aims to differentiate its assistant from others by focusing on families and their needs in the home.

[...] The Alexa.com website features a navigation sidebar for quicker access to your most-used Alexa features, so you can pick up where you left off on tasks like setting the thermostat, checking your calendar for appointments, reviewing shopping lists, and more. In addition, Amazon aims to convince customers to share their personal documents, emails, and calendar access with Alexa+, so its AI can become a sort of hub to manage the goings-on at home, from kids' school holidays and soccer schedules to doctor's appointments and other things families need to remember -- like when the dog got its last rabies shot, or what day the neighbor's backyard BBQ is taking place. "Seventy-six percent of what customers are using Alexa+ for no other AI can do," says Daniel Rausch, VP of Alexa and Echo at Amazon.

"Ninety-seven percent of Alexa devices support Alexa+, and we see now in adoption from customers that they're using Alexa across all those many years and many generations of devices," Rausch adds. "We support all of Alexa's original capabilities, the tens of thousands of services and devices that Alexa was integrated with already are carried forward to the Alexa+ experience."

The report notes that Alexa.com will initially only be available to Early Access customers who sign in with their Amazon account.

SanDisk is retiring the WD Blue and WD Black SSD brands and replacing them with a new "Optimus" line that carries the same model numbers as its predecessors. The move follows Western Digital's late-2023 decision to split into two companies -- one retaining the WD name for hard drives sold to NAS and data center customers, the other reviving SanDisk for solid-state storage. That separation effectively unwound WD's $19 billion acquisition of SanDisk a decade earlier.

Under the new structure, the entry-level WD Blue SN5100 becomes the SanDisk Optimus 5100, mid-tier WD Black drives shift to Optimus GX, and high-end WD Black SSDs become Optimus GX Pro. The Optimus 5100 uses slower quad-level cell flash, the GX 7100 steps up to triple-level cell memory, and the GX Pro 8100 adds a PCIe 5.0 interface and dedicated DRAM cache. SanDisk offered no timeline for its WD Green and WD Red drives. The rebranding arrives as SSD prices climb on demand from AI data centers -- volatility that prompted Micron last month to discontinue its Crucial-branded consumer drives and RAM.

America's electric car subsidies expired at the end of September, notes Bloomberg. Yet in those last three months, "while fully electric cars and trucks made up 10% of all auto sales in the US... another 15% of transactions were for hybrid vehicles." The EV market is slowing in the U.S., but analysts expect hybrid sales to continue accelerating. CarGurus Inc., a digital listings platform that covers most of the US auto market, predicts nearly one in six new cars next year will be a hybrid, as automakers green-light more and better machines with the technology. And though these cars and trucks will still burn gas, they will quietly move the needle on both transportation emissions and the transition to fully electric cars and trucks... CarGurus calls hybrids the success story of 2025. Indeed, the fastest-selling car in the country this year has been the Hyundai Palisade Hybrid; it sat on lots for fewer than 14 days on average...

While carmakers have struggled to turn a profit on fully electric vehicles, analysts say their investments in batteries and electric motors are helping them sell more and better hybrid machines. It's also increasingly difficult to discern a hybrid from a solely gas-powered model, said Scott Hardman, assistant director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California at Davis. Carmakers today often don't even label a hybrid as such. Consider Toyota's RAV4, one of the best-selling vehicles in America. The 2026 version of the SUV comes in six different variants, all of which include an electric motor and a gas tank. "A hybrid is just a regular car now," Hardman said. "You can buy one by accident...."

While not as clean as an electric vehicle, hybrids offer sneaky carbon cuts as well. Americans, on average, drive about 38 miles a day, which requires about one gallon of gas in most basic hybrids. Contemporary plug-in hybrids, which can run on all-battery power, can cover almost that entire range without the gas engine kicking in. And a small crowd of cars will do even better, stretching their batteries well over 40 miles per charge. All told, hybridization can reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of a vehicle by roughly 20% to 30%, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation.
Some interesting statistics from the article:

• By 2030 Ford expects fully or partially electrified vehicles will represent half its global sales. Toyota has already reached 50% ("in part thanks to all those hybrid RAV4s").

• Honda is "basing its entire business on hybrids until at least 2030."

• Around one-third of America's hybrid drivers "transition to a fully electric vehicle when they next switch cars."

• In September 57% of America's car shoppers "were considering a fully electric auto, according to JD Power. However, among hybrid households, that share was almost 70%."

New York City's statewide smartphone ban that went into effect this fall has been largely successful at getting students to focus in class and socialize at lunch, but teachers across the city have discovered an unexpected side effect: many teenagers cannot read analog clocks. "The constant refrain is 'Miss, what time is it?'" said Madi Mornhinweg, a high school English teacher in Manhattan, who eventually started responding by asking students to identify the big hand and little hand themselves.

Tiana Millen, an assistant principal at Cardozo High School in Queens, said the ban has helped move foot traffic more swiftly through hallways and gotten more students to class on time -- they just don't know it because they can't read the wall clocks. The city's education department says students learn clock-reading in first and second grade. A 2017 Oklahoma study found only one in five children ages 6-12 could read analog clocks, and England began replacing classroom analog clocks with digital ones in 2018.

President Donald Trump signed into law this month a measure that prohibits anyone based in China and other adversarial countries from accessing the Pentagon's cloud computing systems. From a report: The ban, which is tucked inside the $900 billion defense policy law, was enacted in response to a ProPublica investigation this year that exposed how Microsoft used China-based engineers to service the Defense Department's computer systems for nearly a decade -- a practice that left some of the country's most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary.

U.S.-based supervisors, known as "digital escorts," were supposed to serve as a check on these foreign employees, but we found they often lacked the expertise needed to effectively supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills. In the wake of the reporting, leading members of Congress called on the Defense Department to strengthen its security requirements while blasting Microsoft for what some Republicans called "a national betrayal." Cybersecurity and intelligence experts have told ProPublica that the arrangement posed major risks to national security, given that laws in China grant the country's officials broad authority to collect data.

CBS News: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has printed its final newspaper, marking the end of a 157-year chapter in Georgia history and officially transitioning the longtime publication into a fully digital news outlet.

The front-page story of the final print edition asks a fitting question: "What is the future of local media in Atlanta?" The historic last issue is also being sold for $8, a significant increase from the typical $2.00 price.

Wednesday, Dec. 31, marks the last day The AJC will be delivered to driveways across metro Atlanta. Starting Jan. 1, 2026, the newspaper will exist exclusively online, a move its leadership says reflects how readers now consume news and ensures the organization's future.

AJC President and Publisher Andrew Morse said the decision was not made lightly, especially given how deeply the paper is woven into daily life for generations of readers. The move makes Atlanta the only major U.S. city without a daily printed newspaper.

Apple's Chinese manufacturing partner Luxshare halted production of the Vision Pro headset at the start of 2025, according to market research firm IDC, after the device shipped 390,000 units during its 2024 launch year. The $3,499 headset has also seen its digital advertising budget cut by more than 95% year to date in the US and UK, according to market intelligence group Sensor Tower.

IDC expects Apple to ship just 45,000 new units in the fourth quarter of 2025. Apple launched an upgraded M5 version in October featuring a more powerful chip, extended battery life, and a redesigned headband. The company sells the device directly in 13 countries and did not expand availability in 2025.

Iran is offering to sell advanced weapons systems including ballistic missiles, drones and warships to foreign governments for cryptocurrency, in a bid to use digital assets to bypass western financial controls. From a report: Iran's Ministry of Defence Export Center, known as Mindex, says it is prepared to negotiate military contracts that allow payment in digital currencies, as well as through barter arrangements and Iranian rials, according to promotional documents and payment terms analysed by the Financial Times.

The offer, introduced during the past year, appears to mark one of the first known instances in which a nation state has publicly indicated its willingness to accept cryptocurrency as payment for the export of strategic military hardware. Mindex, a state-run body responsible for Iran's overseas defence sales, says it has client relationships with 35 countries and advertises a catalogue of weapons that includes Emad ballistic missiles, Shahed drones, Shahid Soleimani-class warships and short-range air defence systems.

Pibroch(CiH) writes: According to the obituary linked, Stewart Cheifet of Computer Chronicles fame has died. The obituary states he passed Dec 28, 2025. Cheifet and Digital Research founder Gary Kildall hosted the public television show The Computer Chronicles starting in 1984, and Stewart continued to host the show well into the 1990s. He was well-known for his affable presence and adeptness at interviewing guests and finding out the straight dope about their products. He had recently undergone spinal surgery and had somewhat disappeared from public view after the death of his wife Peta in 2024.

A study by a Singapore government agency has found that children exposed to high levels of screen time before age two showed brain development changes linked to slower decision-making and higher anxiety in adolescence, adding to concerns about early digital exposure. From a report: The study was conducted by a team within the country's Agency for Science, Technology and Research and the National University of Singapore, and published in The Lancet's eBioMedicine open access journal. It tracked 168 children for more than a decade, and conducted brain scans on them at three time points. Heavier screen exposure among very young children was associated with "accelerated maturation of brain networks" responsible for vision and cognitive control, the study found.

The researchers suggested this may have been the result of "intense sensory stimulation that screens provide." They found that screen time measured at ages three and four, however, did not show the same effects. Those children with "altered brain networks" took longer to make decisions when they were 8.5, and also had higher anxiety symptoms at age 13, the study said.

The camera industry shipped 6.5 million interchangeable lens cameras last year -- a 50% decline from 2010's peak -- yet 2025 may have been the most creatively ambitious year in nearly two decades of digital photography. DPReview's Richard Butler argues that this year's releases displayed "invention, experimentation and niche-tickling lunacy" not seen since digital's earliest days.

Interchangeable lens shipments rose 11% in the first ten months of 2025 compared to last year, and fixed lens cameras climbed roughly 26%. The practical cameras arrived as expected: Panasonic's S1 II, Canon's EOS R6 III, and Sony's a7 V all delivered performance that "can go toe-to-toe with the pro sports models of just a few years ago." But the stranger releases drew attention.

Sony's RX1R III faced criticism for being a "lazy update," yet Butler found it "small, fun to use and the pictures look great." Leica launched the Q3 Monochrom, a $7,800 fixed-lens full-frame compact that cannot capture color. Fujifilm's X half targeted young buyers who might otherwise hunt for vintage compacts on eBay. The Sigma BF abandoned traditional camera design entirely -- no viewfinder, one dial, intentionally stylized.

"Look at some of this year's releases through a pragmatic lens of whether they're the best tool for the job, and the conclusion you'd typically draw is 'no,'" Butler wrote. These cameras "aren't trying to be the best, the most flexible or the most practical. They're intentionally, knowingly niche."

In a year when print book sales have slipped 1% to 679 million copies through early December, according to Circana BookScan, audiobooks continue to carve out territory that once belonged exclusively to hardcovers, and in several notable cases this year, the audio versions have outright outsold their physical counterparts.

S.A. Cosby's southern crime novel "King of Ashes" moved more copies as an audiobook than as a hardcover, according to publisher Macmillan Audio. The same is true for celebrity memoirs from Jeremy Renner, Alyson Stoner, and Brooke Shields -- all narrated by the authors themselves. Karin Slaughter's thriller "We Are All Guilty Here" and comedian Nate Bargatze's "Big Dumb Eyes" also saw their audio editions outpace hardcover sales.

Digital audiobook revenue jumped nearly 24% in 2024 to $1.1 billion, per the Association of American Publishers, though growth has cooled to 1% through October this year, bringing in nearly $888 million. The format's strength has professional narrators watching AI developments nervously. Emily Lawrence, who has narrated more than 600 audiobooks, said there's "a lot of water cooler talk about people who haven't had work in months." Hachette Audio publisher Ana Maria Allessi said voice-cloning technology is becoming more sophisticated and could change how authors approach narration.

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: MacRumors reports that Apple plans to expand iPhone and Apple Watch driver's licenses to 7 U.S. states (CT, KY, MS, OK, UT, AR, VA). A recent convert is the State of Illinois, whose website videos demo how you can use your Apple Wallet license to display proof of identity or age the next time you get carded by a cop, bartender, or TSA agent. The new states will join 13 others who already offer driver's licenses in the Wallet app (AZ, MD, CO, GA, OH, HI, CA, IA, NM, MT, ND, WV, IL).

There's certainly been a lot of foot-dragging by the states when it comes to embracing phone-based driver's licenses -- Slashdot reported that Iowa was ready to launch a mobile driver's license in 2014; they didn't get one until nearly a decade later, in late 2023.

Michal Kicinski, who co-founded both CD Projekt and the DRM-free digital games store GOG back in 2008, has acquired 100% ownership of GOG from CD Projekt, bringing the platform full circle to one of its original creators.

GOG was already operating as part of CD Projekt through its Sp.z.o.o. subsidiary, but Kicinski now takes complete control of the company. The platform will continue operating independently and maintain its commitment to DRM-free gaming. "The mission stays the same: Make Games Live Forever," GOG said in its announcement.

CD Projekt's joint CEO Michal Nowakowski said the parent company's focus on its development roadmap and franchise expansion made this the right time for the move. GOG has signed a distribution agreement ensuring all upcoming CD Projekt Red titles will release on the platform. Kicinski, describing himself as a "mature gamer" who plays classics, said he's personally involved in developing several retro-spirited games slated for GOG in 2026.