An anonymous reader quotes a report from the San Francisco Chronicle: A long stretch of curb in San Francisco's Mission District might contain a whole menagerie of parked vehicles: hatchbacks, SUVs, dusty pick-ups, chic Teslas. And recently, Waymo robotaxis. That's what Kyle Grochmal saw walking through the northeast Mission District on Monday afternoon. Cutting down York Street, he glimpsed a tell-tale white electric Jaguar in one of the coveted one-hour spots, its sensors spinning. The Waymo sat there for at least 20 minutes, Grochmal said. He whipped out his cell phone and started recording. After the Waymo drove off, another one showed up within an hour and took the same spot.

"This is something I started to notice about six months ago," Grochmal said, recalling how disorienting it was to be strolling down a largely deserted sidewalk, and suddenly hear the purring motor and soft click of autonomous vehicle cameras. He'd look up to see a Waymo "just sitting there, not loading anyone." But Waymo's use of public curb space raised questions for Grochmal, who wonders whether San Franciscans are prepared to have their infrastructure dominated by autonomous vehicles. "Say Tesla gets to self-driving, so people have personal AVs," he said. "So then do people from Palo Alto get dropped off in San Francisco and let their cars drive around all day searching for free parking?"

Such a future seems particularly unsettling in the northeast Mission, where snug streets couldn't handle much traffic, and competition for parking is already fierce. A recent influx of Artificial Intelligence companies brought many more workers and cars, as well as robotaxis that trawl the blocks, waiting for fares. It makes sense, to Grochmal, that some of them wind up squatting in one-hour spaces. [...] Still, it's conceivable that residents will lose patience with Waymo, and other AV companies, as the fleets scale up and the vehicles compete more aggressively with humans for parking.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing number of tech startups are stocking offices with free nicotine pouches as founders and employees chase sharper focus and stamina in hyper-competitive AI-era work environments. The Wall Street Journal reports: Earlier this year, two nicotine startups -- Lucy Nicotine and Sesh -- made branded vending machines filled with flavored products for analytics company Palantir Technologies. Both machines are in the company's Washington, D.C., offices. The pouches are free for employees and guests over the age of 21, a spokeswoman for Palantir said. Palantir pays to stock the nicotine products.

Alex Cohen, a startup founder based in Austin, Texas, said he was first exposed to nicotine pouches in the workplace after seeing tins of Zyns on the desks of his software engineers. His company, Hello Patient, makes AI-powered healthcare-communication software. "They were very productive, so I thought maybe there's something here," he said. Those engineers soon asked him if he could buy it for the office.

Cohen said he initially bought the nicotine pouches as a joke for social media. He posted a picture of a drawer in his startup's office filled with nicotine pouches made by different brands with the caption, "We're hiring." "Then, I accidentally got addicted," said Cohen. He said he uses around two to three pouches a day. His go-to flavors are mango or minty. Cohen said he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, and he has found that the pouches can provide a quick productivity boost. "It helps with reining in my focus because it is a stimulant," he said. Today, Hello Patient has a nicotine-pouch fridge in its office kitchen.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cyber Press: A newly uncovered Chinese threat group, DarkSpectre, has been linked to one of the most widespread browser-extension malware operations to date, compromising more than 8.8 million users of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera over the past seven years. According to research by Koi.ai, the group operates three interconnected campaigns: ShadyPanda, GhostPoster, and a newly identified one named The Zoom Stealer, forming a single, strategically organized operation.

DarkSpectre's structure differs from that of ordinary cybercrime operations. The group runs separate but interconnected malware clusters, each with distinct goals. The ShadyPanda campaign, responsible for 5.6 million infections, focuses on long-term user surveillance and e-commerce affiliate fraud. Its extensions have appeared legitimate for years, offering new tab pages and translation utilities, before secretly downloading malicious configurations from command-and-control servers such as jt2x.com and infinitynewtab.com. Once activated, they inject remote scripts, hijack search results, and track browsing activity.

The second campaign, GhostPoster, spreads via Firefox and Opera extensions that conceal malicious payloads in PNG images via steganography. After lying dormant for several days, the extensions extract and execute JavaScript hidden within images, enabling stealthy remote code execution. This campaign has affected over one million users and relies on domains like gmzdaily.com and mitarchive.info for payload delivery.

The most recent discovery, The Zoom Stealer, exposes around 2.2 million users to corporate espionage. These extensions masquerade as productivity tools or video downloaders while secretly harvesting corporate meeting links, credentials, and speaker profiles from more than 28 video conferencing platforms, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. The extensions use real-time WebSocket connections to exfiltrate data to Firebase databases, such as zoocorder.firebaseio.com, and to Google Cloud functions, such as webinarstvus.cloudfunctions.net.

Reuters reports that the United States Department of the Treasury under the Donald Trump administration has lifted sanctions on three executives linked to the spyware firm Intellexa. Reuters reports: The move partially reverses the imposition of sanctions last year by then-President Joe Biden's administration on seven people tied to Intellexa. The Treasury Department at the time described the consortium, opens new tab, launched by former Israeli intelligence official Tal Dilian, as "a complex international web of decentralized companies that built and commercialized a comprehensive suite of highly invasive spyware products."

Treasury said in an email that the removal "was done as part of the normal administrative process in response to a petition request for reconsideration." It added that each of the individuals had "demonstrated measures to separate themselves from the Intellexa Consortium."

The notice said sanctions were lifted on Sara Hamou, whom the U.S. government accused of providing managerial services to Intellexa, Andrea Gambazzi, whose company was alleged by the U.S. government to have held the distribution rights to the Predator spyware, and Merom Harpaz, described by U.S. officials as a top executive in the consortium.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: France intends to follow Australia and ban social media platforms for children from the start of the 2026 academic year. A draft bill preventing under-15s from using social media will be submitted for legal checks and is expected to be debated in parliament early in the new year. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has made it clear in recent weeks that he wants France to swiftly follow Australia's world-first ban on social media platforms for under-16s, which came into force in December. It includes Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

Le Monde and France Info reported on Wednesday that a draft bill was now complete and contained two measures: a ban on social media for under-15s and a ban on mobile phones in high schools, where 15- to 18-year-olds study. Phones have already been banned in primary and middle schools. The bill will be submitted to France's Conseil d'Etat for legal review in the coming days. Education unions will also look at the proposed high-school ban on phones. The government wants the social media ban to come into force from September 2026.

Le Monde reported the text of the draft bill cited "the risks of excessive screen use by teenagers," including the dangers of being exposed to inappropriate social media content, online bullying, and altered sleep patterns. The bill states the need to "protect future generations" from dangers that threaten their ability to thrive and live together in a society with shared values. Earlier this month, Macron confirmed at a public debate in Saint Malo that he wanted a social media ban for young teenagers. He said there was "consensus being shaped" on the issue after Australia introduced its ban.

"The more screen time there is, the more school achievement drops the more screen time there is, the more mental health problems go up," he said. He used the analogy of a teenager getting into a Formula One racing car before they had learned to drive. "If a child is in a Formula One car and they turn on the engine, I don't want them to win the race, I just want them to get out of the car. I want them to learn the highway code first, and to ensure the car works, and to teach them to drive in a different car."

The fight over net neutrality saw another turbulent year in 2025, as federal protections that seemed poised for a comeback in 2024 were first struck down by a court and then preemptively removed by the Trump administration's FCC without a chance for public comment.

The removal, The Verge summarizes in a report, was part of Chairman Brendan Carr's "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative targeting what the agency deems unnecessary regulations. Federal net neutrality rules have now been on and off for 15 years, passing under Obama in 2010, returning in 2015, getting overturned in 2017, and briefly revived in 2024 before courts struck them down again.

Matt Wood, vice president of policy and general counsel at nonprofit Free Press, told The Verge that ISPs often feel little financial impact from these rules. "A lot of their complaints about the supposed 'burdens' from these rules are really just ideological in nature," Wood said. States have filled the void.

California's 2018 law remains the nation's gold standard, and Maine passed a bipartisan bill in June. John Bergmayer, legal director at Public Knowledge, said state-level laws and the threat of new ones "has kept some of the worst outcomes in check."

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is now pressuring states to exempt ISPs from net neutrality laws to remain eligible for broadband infrastructure funding. Chao Jun Liu of the Electronic Frontier Foundation summed up the year's pattern: "ISPs just want to do whatever they want to do with no limits and nobody telling them how to do it."

Finnish authorities on Wednesday seized a vessel suspected of severing an undersea telecommunications cable that connects Helsinki to Tallinn by dragging its anchor across the Gulf of Finland, the latest in a string of infrastructure incidents that have put Baltic Sea nations on edge since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Police are investigating the case as aggravated criminal damage and have not disclosed the ship's name, nationality or details about its crew. The cable belongs to Finnish telecoms group Elisa. Estonia's justice ministry reported that a second telecoms cable connecting the two countries -- owned by Sweden's Arelion -- also went down on Wednesday. This follows Finland's December 2024 boarding of the Russian-linked oil tanker Eagle S, which investigators said damaged a power cable and multiple telecoms links using the same anchor-dragging method. A Finnish court in October dismissed criminal charges against the Eagle S crew after prosecutors failed to prove intent.

Israel has operationally deployed Iron Beam, a 100,000-watt laser air-defense system capable of shooting down drones, rockets, and mortars at negligible per-shot cost. According to Tom's Hardware, it marks the first real-world deployment of a high-energy laser as part of a modern, multi-layered missile defense network. From the report: The Iron Beam is a short-range line-of-sight laser interceptor that is extremely cheap to run and, therefore, perfectly suited for intercepting low-cost, high-volume threats. According to the official Israeli announcement, Iron Beam systems have "successfully intercepted rockets, mortars, and UAVs."

A complex mix of government, military, scientific, and commercial interests were responsible for the research and development of the Iron Beam laser system. Central to the Iron Beam are "an advanced laser source and a unique electro-optical targeting system, enabling the interception of a wide range of targets at an enhanced operational range, with maximum precision and superior efficiency," boasted the press release by Israel's MoD. Moreover, it works "at a negligible marginal cost, which constitutes the laser system's primary advantage."

We don't get much more by way of technical details, perhaps understandably. However, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems execs heralded the system's "unique adaptive optics technology," in what it calls "the world's most advanced laser-based system for intercepting aerial threats." Its operational debut "marks the beginning of the era of high-energy laser defense," they claimed.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Mac Bauer is fast, but the city's trams, weighing more than 100,000lbs and traveling at a maximum speed of nearly 45mph, should be far faster than him. And yet as of late December, in head-to-head races against streetcars, the 32-year-old remains undefeated in his quest to highlight how sluggish the trams, used by 230,000 people daily, truly are.

Some races have pushed him closer to his limits as a runner. On other occasions, the car has been so slow he's had time to nip into a McDonald's before it reaches the last station. "I don't like winning. I really don't. I really, really wish these streetcars were faster than me," he said. "But they're not. And this is the problem." Bauer's rise as a running celebrity and transit critic embodies the mounting frustration of a city beset by chronic delays, congested streets and decades of under-built transit.

"Streetcars just shouldn't be stuck in traffic," he said, adding the system also needed more "signal priority" which gives the streetcars lengthened green lights and shortened red lights. Bauer started racing transit vehicles roughly a year ago after he and his wife realized how long it took them to traverse the city. He posted videos of those races to Instagram and quickly transformed into a minor celebrity. Bauer describes his runs as a form of social activism, and his ability to lay bare the absurdities of Toronto's beleaguered public transit system -- a person can outrun a streetcar! -- has struck a nerve with the tens of thousands of commuters who share his Instagram posts.

The global airline industry is on track to post an all-time profit high of nearly $40 billion in 2025, according to trade group IATA, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 figure of $26 billion, but carriers are still managing a net margin of just 4% -- roughly $7.90 per passenger. Economist adds: Not everything has been in the ascent. European and North American airlines, which account for three-fifths of the industry's net profits, have had to contend with circuitous long-haul routes to avoid Russian airspace since the start of the war in Ukraine. This year parts of the Middle East became no-go zones after Israel's strike on Iran in June. America's airlines were hit by a government shutdown that stopped federal workers from travelling and kept unpaid air-traffic controllers at home, disrupting flights.

What is more, despite a drop in fuel prices, which account for 25-30% of airlines' operating expenses, other costs have risen. Airlines flew 4.8 billion passengers in 2024, beating the 2019 peak, and that figure likely reached 5 billion in 2025 as combined revenues topped $1 trillion for the first time and load factors hit a record of nearly 84%.

But the industry is flying older planes because Boeing and Airbus can't deliver enough new ones. The duopoly shipped under 1,400 aircraft in 2025, well below the 2018 record of just over 1,600. Boeing has struggled since two fatal 737 MAX crashes in late 2018 and early 2019 led to a 20-month grounding, and a fuselage panel blew off another 737 MAX mid-flight in early 2024. Airbus cut its 2025 delivery target from 820 to 790 in early December due to a supplier's production flaw, and Pratt & Whitney engine problems have grounded a third of the global A320neo fleet.

IATA estimates the aircraft shortage won't resolve before 2031 at the earliest, and the global fleet's average age has climbed to 15 years from 13 in 2019. Annual fuel efficiency gains have slowed from about 2% to 0.3% in 2025, and an IATA and Oliver Wyman report pegs the cost of aging fleets -- extra fuel, repairs, spare parts -- at over $11 billion in 2025.

After more than three decades of service, New York City's iconic MetroCard is about to retire, as December 31, 2025 marks the final day commuters can purchase or refill the gold-hued plastic cards that replaced subway tokens back in 1994. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been transitioning to OMNY, a contactless payment system introduced in 2019 that lets riders tap a credit card, phone or smart device at turnstiles.

More than 90% of subway and bus trips are now paid using the tap-and-go system, and the agency says the changeover saves at least $20 million annually in MetroCard-related costs. The new system also introduces automatic fare capping: riders get unlimited travel within a seven-day period after 12 paid rides, maxing out at $35 a week once fares rise to $3 in January. Riders who prefer not to link a credit card or phone can purchase reloadable OMNY cards.

Existing MetroCards will continue to work into 2026, allowing riders time to use up remaining balances. The MetroCard's arrival in 1994 was itself a significant shift from the brass tokens that had been in use since 1953. London and Singapore have long operated similar contactless systems; San Francisco launched its own tap-to-pay system earlier this year, joining Chicago and other U.S. cities.

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."

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.

Windows 10's formal end-of-support arrived in October, and while the operating system is generally remembered as one of the "good" versions of Windows -- the most widely used since XP -- many of the annoyances people complain about in Windows 11 actually started during the Windows 10 era, ArsTechnica writes.

Windows 10 earned its positive reputation primarily by not being Windows 8. It restored a version of the traditional Start menu, rolled out as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 users, and ran on virtually all the same hardware as those older versions. Microsoft introduced the Windows Subsystem for Linux during this period and eventually rebuilt Edge on Chromium. The company seemed more willing to meet users where they were rather than forcing them to change their behavior.

But Windows 10 also began collecting more information about how users interacted with the operating system, cluttered the lock screen with advertisements and news articles, and added third-party app icons to the Start menu without user consent. The mandatory Microsoft Account sign-in requirement -- one of Windows 11's most frequently complained-about features -- was a Windows 10 innovation, easier to circumvent at the time but clearly a step down the road Windows 11 is currently traveling.

To be sure, Windows 11 has made things worse by stacking new irritants on top of old ones. The Microsoft Account requirement expanded to both Home and Pro editions, the SCOOBE screen now regularly nags users to "finish setting up" years-old installations and Microsoft's Copilot push changed the default PC keyboard layout for the first time in 30 years.

AI-generated video tools like OpenAI's Sora will make individual content creators "far, far, far less valuable" as social media platforms shift toward algorithmically generated content tailored to each viewer, according to Michael Mignano, a partner at venture capital firm Lightspeed and who cofounded the podcasting platform Anchor before Spotify acquired it.

Speaking on a podcast, Mignano described a future where content is generated instantaneously and artificially to suit the viewer. The TikTok algorithm is powerful, he said, but it still requires human beings to make content -- and there's a cost to that. AI could drive those costs down significantly. Mignano called this shift the "death of the creator" in a post, acknowledging it was "devastating" but arguing it marked a "whole new chapter for the internet."

In an email to Business Insider, Mignano wrote that quality will win out. "Platforms will no longer reward humans posting the same old, tried and true formats and memes," he wrote. "True uniqueness of image, likeness, and creativity will be the only viable path for human-created content."

The world's largest hotel chains are aggressively pushing customers toward direct bookings as they brace for a future where AI "agents" could reshape how travelers find and reserve rooms. Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham have all expanded their loyalty programs and perks in recent months, aiming to reduce their reliance on online travel agents like Expedia and Booking.com that typically charge commissions of 15 to 25%.

Marriott's Bonvoy program reached almost 260 million members by the end of September, an 18% jump from the prior year. Hilton has lowered the barriers to elite status and struck partnerships that let members spend points outside its hotel portfolio.

AI-powered booking tools could route customers away from brand-conscious decisions, but they could also offer hotels a cheaper distribution channel than traditional OTAs. Marriott CFO Leeny Oberg said at a conference this month that AI bookings "could potentially be cheaper than the OTAs." Wyndham CEO Geoff Ballotti called tools like ChatGPT and Gemini "a unique opportunity" to reduce OTA dependency.

LG has announced a new premium gaming monitor brand called UltraGear, and the lineup's headline feature is what the company claims is the world's first 5K AI upscaling technology -- an on-device solution that analyzes and enhances content in real time before it reaches the panel, theoretically letting gamers enjoy 5K-class clarity without needing to upgrade their GPUs.

The initial UltraGear evo roster includes three monitors. The 39-inch GX9 is a 5K2K OLED ultrawide that can run at 165Hz at full resolution or 330Hz at WFHD, and features a 0.03ms response time. The 27-inch GM9 is a 5K MiniLED display that LG says dramatically reduces the blooming artifacts common to MiniLED panels through 2,304 local dimming zones and "Zero Optical Distance" engineering.

The 52-inch G9 is billed as the world's largest 5K2K gaming monitor and runs at 240Hz. The AI upscaling, scene optimization, and AI sound features are available only on the 39-inch OLED and 27-inch MiniLED models. All three will be showcased at CES 2026. No word on pricing or when the sets will hit the market.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the CBC: Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he may have been defamed by Google after it recently produced an AI-generated summary falsely identifying him as a sex offender. The Juno Award-winning musician said he learned of the online misinformation last week after a First Nation north of Halifax confronted him with the summary and cancelled a concert planned for Dec. 19. "You are being put into a less secure situation because of a media company — that's what defamation is," MacIsaac said in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press, adding he was worried about what might have happened had the erroneous content surfaced while he was trying to cross an international border...

The 50-year-old virtuoso fiddler said he later learned the inaccurate claims were taken from online articles regarding a man in Atlantic Canada with the same last name... [W]hen CBC News reached him by phone on Christmas Eve, he said he'd already received queries from law firms across the country interested in taking it on pro bono.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Wall Street Journal: Sending drones and robots into battle, rather than humans, has become a tenet of modern warfare. Nowhere does that make more sense than in the frozen expanses of the Arctic. But the closer you get to the North Pole, the less useful cutting-edge technology becomes. Magnetic storms distort satellite signals; frigid temperatures drain batteries or freeze equipment in minutes; navigation systems lack reference points on snowfields.

During a seven-nation polar exercise in Canada earlier this year to test equipment worth millions of dollars, the U.S. military's all-terrain arctic vehicles broke down after 30 minutes because hydraulic fluids congealed in the cold. Swedish soldiers participating in the exercise were handed $20,000 night-vision optics that broke because the aluminum in the goggles couldn't handle the minus 40 degree Fahrenheit conditions....

An arctic conflict would force war planners back to basics. Extreme cold makes the most common components brittle. Low temperatures alter the physical properties of rubber, causing seals to lose their elasticity and leak. Traces of water or humidity freeze into ice crystals that can scratch pumps and create blockages. Wires should be insulated with silicone rather than PVC, which can crack. Oil and other lubricants thicken and congeal. In most standard hydraulic systems, fluid becomes syrupy and can affect everything from aircraft controls to missile launchers and radar masts. A single freeze-up can knock out an entire weapons platform or immobilize a convoy.
Even the Aurora Borealis interferes with radio communications and satellite-navigation systems, according to the article.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: Two NATO-nation intelligence services suspect Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon to target Elon Musk's Starlink constellation with destructive orbiting clouds of shrapnel, with the aim of reining in Western space superiority that has helped Ukraine on the battlefield. Intelligence findings seen by The Associated Press say the so-called "zone-effect" weapon would seek to flood Starlink orbits with hundreds of thousands of high-density pellets, potentially disabling multiple satellites at once but also risking catastrophic collateral damage to other orbiting systems.

Analysts who haven't seen the findings say they doubt such a weapon could work without causing uncontrollable chaos in space for companies and countries, including Russia and its ally China, that rely on thousands of orbiting satellites for communications, defense and other vital needs. Such repercussions, including risks to its own space systems, could steer Moscow away from deploying or using such a weapon, analysts said. "I don't buy it. Like, I really don't," said Victoria Samson, a space-security specialist at the Secure World Foundation who leads the Colorado-based nongovernmental organization's annual study of anti-satellite systems. "I would be very surprised, frankly, if they were to do something like that." [Later they suggested the research might just be experimental.]

But the commander of the Canadian military's Space Division, Brig. Gen. Christopher Horner, said such Russian work cannot be ruled out in light of previous U.S. allegations that Russia also has been pursuing an indiscriminate nuclear, space-based weapon. "I can't say I've been briefed on that type of system. But it's not implausible," he said... The French military's Space Command said in a statement to the AP that it could not comment on the findings but said, "We can inform you that Russia has, in recent years, been multiplying irresponsible, dangerous, and even hostile actions in space."
The article also points out that this month Russia "said it has fielded a new ground-based missile system, the S-500, which is capable of hitting low-orbit targets..."