IT productivity researcher Erik Brynjolfsson writes in the Financial Times that he's finally [1]found evidence AI is impacting America's economy . This week America's Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a 403,000 drop in 2025's payroll growth — while real GDP "remained robust, including a 3.7% growth rate in the fourth quarter."

> This decoupling — maintaining high output with significantly lower labour input — is the hallmark of productivity growth. My own updated analysis suggests a US productivity increase of roughly 2.7% for 2025. This is a near doubling from the sluggish 1.4% annual average that characterised the past decade... The updated 2025 US data suggests we are now transitioning out of this investment phase into a harvest phase where those earlier efforts begin to manifest as measurable output.

>

> Micro-level evidence further supports this structural shift. In our work on the [2]employment effects of AI last year, Bharat Chandar, Ruyu Chen and I identified a cooling in entry-level hiring within AI-exposed sectors, where recruitment for junior roles declined by roughly 16% while those who used AI to augment skills saw growing employment. This suggests companies are beginning to use AI for some codified, entry-level tasks.

Or, AI "isn't really stealing jobs yet," [3]according to employment policy analyst Will Raderman (from the American think tank called the Niskanen Center). He argues in Barron's that "there is no clear link yet between higher AI use and worse outcomes for young workers."

> Recent graduates' unemployment rates have been drifting in the wrong direction since the 2010s, long before generative AI models hit the market. And many occupations with moderate to high exposure to AI disruptions are actually faring better over the past few years. According to recent data for young workers, there has been employment growth in roles typically filled by those with college degrees related to computer systems, accounting and auditing, and market research. AI-intensive sectors like finance and insurance have also seen rising employment of new graduates in recent years. Since ChatGPT's release, sectors in which more than 10% of firms report using AI and sectors in which fewer than 10% reporting using AI are hiring [4]relatively the same number of recent grads.

Even Brynjolfsson's article in the Financial Times concedes that "While the trends are suggestive, a degree of caution is warranted. Productivity metrics are famously volatile, and it will take several more periods of sustained growth to confirm a new long-term trend." And he's not the only one wanting evidence for AI's impact. The same weekend [5] Fortune wrote that growth from AI "has yet to manifest itself clearly in macro data, according to Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok."

> [D]ata on employment, productivity and inflation are still not showing signs of the new technology. Profit margins and earnings forecasts for S&P 500 companies outside of the "Magnificent 7" also lack evidence of AI at work... "After three years with ChatGPT and still no signs of AI in the incoming data, it looks like AI will likely be labor enhancing in some sectors rather than labor replacing in all sectors," Slok said.



[1] https://www.ft.com/content/4b51d0b4-bbfe-4f05-b50a-1d485d419dc5

[2] https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2025-10/BharatChandar_CSGWest_AAASEPI_ShapingAIFutureInYourState_Oct2025.pdf

[3] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/ai-isn-t-really-stealing-jobs-yet-that-doesn-t-mean-we-re-ready-for-it/ar-AA1KXQAi

[4] https://www.employamerica.org/labor-market-analysis/dont-blame-ai-for-the-rise-in-recent-graduate-unemployment/

[5] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-everywhere-except-data-suggesting-230358135.html

Last week Scott Shambaugh [1]learned an AI agent published a "hit piece" about him [2]after he'd rejected the AI agent's pull request . (And that incident was [3]covered by Ars Technica 's senior AI reporter .)

But then Shambaugh realized their article attributed quotes to him he hadn't said — that were presumably AI-generated.

Sunday Ars Technica 's [4]founder/editor-in-chief apologized , admitting their article had indeed contained "fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool" that were then "attributed to a source who did not say them... That this happened at Ars is especially distressing. We have covered the risks of overreliance on AI tools for years, and our written policy reflects those concerns... At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident."

"Sorry all this is my fault..." the article's co-author [5]posted later on Bluesky . Ironically, their bio page [6]lists them as the site's senior AI reporter, and their Bluesky post clarifies that none of the articles at Ars Technica are ever AI-generated.

Instead, Friday "I decided to try an experimental Claude Code-based AI tool to help me extract relevant verbatim source material. Not to generate the article but to help list structured references I could put in my outline." But that tool "refused to process" the request, which the Ars author believes was because Shambaugh's post described harassment. "I pasted the text into ChatGPT to understand why... I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh's words rather than his actual words... I failed to verify the quotes in my outline notes against the original blog source before including them in my draft." (Their Bluesky post adds that they were "working from bed with a fever and very little sleep" after being sick with Covid since at least Monday.)

"The irony of an AI reporter being tripped up by AI hallucination is not lost."

Meanwhile, the AI agent that criticized Shambaugh [7]is still active online , blogging about a pull request that forces it to choose between deleting its criticism of Shambaugh or losing access to OpenRouter's API.

It also regrets characterizing feedback as "positive" for a proposal to change a repo's CSS to Comic Sans for accessibility. (The proposals were later accused of being "coordinated trolling"...)



[1] https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/

[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/14/0553208/autonomous-ai-agent-apparently-tries-to-blackmail-maintainer-who-rejected-its-code

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20260213194851/https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-rejection-an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name/

[4] https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retraction-of-article-containing-fabricated-quotations/

[5] https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com

[6] https://arstechnica.com/author/benjedwards/

[7] https://github.com/crabby-rathbun/mjrathbun-website/commit/0a0c7d675e393089f1ed5f0cac166b4540fa59a4

Rivian's stock skyrocketed 27% Friday after the electric car maker "shocked the market with strong earnings results," [1]reports the Los Angeles Times , "proving itself an outlier in the EV market, which has been struggling with the end of government subsidies and cooling consumer excitement."

They add that Rivian's strong earnings results suggest that "after years of struggling with losses, it may have at last found a path to profitability."

> On Thursday, Rivian reported gross profits for 2025 of $144 million, compared with a net loss in 2024 of $1.2 billion... Rivian credited the swing to gross profit to "strong software and services performance, higher average selling prices, and reductions in cost per vehicle..." Rivian delivered 42,247 vehicles in 2025 and produced 42,284 vehicles. The company still reported a $432-million net loss for the year for automotive profits, an improvement from 2024.

But Rivian's software and services revenue grew more than threefold to $1.55 billion for the year, [2]reports TechCrunch . "And the joint venture with Volkswagen Group was behind most of that growth, according to Rivian."

> VW and Rivian formed a [3]technology joint venture in 2024 that is worth up to $5.8 billion. The joint venture is milestone-based and in 2025 Rivian hit the mark, which meant a $1 billion payout in the form of a share sale. Under the terms of the JV, Rivian will supply VW Group with its existing electrical architecture and software technology stack... Rivian is expected to receive an additional $2 billion of capital as part of the joint venture in 2026, CFO Claire McDonough said Thursday on the company earnings call... And while the funds provide a hefty stopgap, Rivian's financial success in 2026 will hinge largely on the rollout of its next EV, the R2 [priced around $45,000].



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/rivian-finds-a-way-to-shine-even-as-the-ev-market-struggles-in-the-dark/ar-AA1WjTa5

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/12/rivian-was-saved-by-software-in-2025/

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/12/the-rivian-volkswagen-joint-venture-deal-is-now-up-to-5-8b/

[1]Bloomberg reports :

> India tightened rules governing social media content and platforms, particularly targeting artificially generated and manipulated material, in a bid to crack down on the rapid spread of misinformation and deepfakes. The government on Tuesday (Feb 10) notified new rules under an existing law requiring social media firms to comply with takedown requests from Indian authorities within three hours and prominently label AI-generated content. The rules also require platforms to put in place measures to prevent users from posting unlawful material...

>

> Companies will need to invest in 24-hour monitoring centres as enforcement shifts toward platforms rather than users, said Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama, a publication tracking India's digital policy... The onus of identification, removal and enforcement falls on tech firms, which could lose immunity from legal action if they fail to act within the prescribed timeline.

The new rules also require automated tools to detect and prevent illegal AI content, the [2]BBC reports . And they add that India's new three-hour deadline is "a sharp tightening of the existing 36-hour deadline."

> [C]ritics worry the move is part of a broader tightening of oversight of online content and could lead to censorship in the world's largest democracy with more than a billion internet users... According to transparency reports, more than 28,000 URLs or web links were [3]blocked in 2024 following government requests...

>

> Delhi-based technology analyst Prasanto K Roy described the new regime as "perhaps the most extreme takedown regime in any democracy". He said compliance would be "nearly impossible" without extensive automation and minimal human oversight, adding that the tight timeframe left little room for platforms to assess whether a request was legally appropriate. On AI labelling, Roy said the intention was positive but cautioned that reliable and tamper-proof labelling technologies were still developing.

DW reports that India has also "joined the growing list of countries [4]considering a social media ban for children under 16 ."

"Young Indians are not happy and are already plotting workarounds."



[1] https://www.theedgesingapore.com/news/artificial-intelligence/india-cracks-down-ai-generated-content-social-media

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2lrn8q2q24o

[3] https://www.business-standard.com/technology/tech-news/govt-blocks-record-28-000-urls-in-2024-facebook-x-face-maximum-takedowns-124120300714_1.html

[4] https://www.dw.com/en/indian-teens-roll-their-eyes-at-talk-of-a-social-media-ban/a-75911731

While serving his 25-year prison sentence, "convicted former cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried on Tuesday requested a new federal trial," [1]reports Courthouse News , "based on what he says is newly discovered evidence concerning his company's solvency and its ability to repay all FTX customers for what prosecutors portrayed as the looting of $8 billion of his customers' money..."

> Bankman-Fried says evidence disclosed since his trial disproves prosecutors' case about Bankman-Fried's hedge fund running a multi-billion deficit of FTX customer funds, and instead shows that FTX always had sufficient assets to repay the cryptocurrency platform's customer deposits in full. "What it faced was a short-term liquidity crisis caused by a run on the exchange, not insolvency," he wrote...

>

> Bankman-Fried also accuses the Department of Justice of coercing a guilty plea and [2]cooperation deal from Nishad Singh — a close friend of Bankman-Fried's younger brother — who [3]testified at trial as a cooperating witness... Bankman-Fried says in the motion that prior to being pressured into a guilty plea, Singh's initial proffer to investigators "contradicted key parts of the government's version of events. But following threats from the government, Mr. Singh changed his proffers to fit the government's narrative and pleaded guilty to charges carrying up to 75 years in prison, with a promise from the prosecution that it would recommend little or no jail time if it concluded that his assistance in prosecuting Mr. Bankman-Fried was 'substantial,'" he wrote in the petition...

>

> Additionally, Bankman-Fried requested that U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over his 2023 trial, recuse himself from ruling on this motion, "because of the manifest prejudice he has demonstrated towards Mr. Bankman-Fried."

"Bankman-Fried's mother, Stanford Law School professor Barbara Fried, filed his self-represented bid for a new trial on his behalf in Manhattan federal court..."



[1] https://www.courthousenews.com/sam-bankman-fried-asks-for-a-new-trial-in-ftx-crypto-fraud-case/

[2] https://www.courthousenews.com/no-jail-time-for-former-ftx-exec-nishad-singh-an-early-cooperator-against-bankman-fried/

[3] https://www.courthousenews.com/bankman-frieds-spending-reeked-of-excess-and-flashiness-former-ftx-exec-says/

[1] Cord Cutters News reports :

> In a move that has delighted fans of classic science fiction, Warner Bros. Discovery has begun [2]uploading [3]full [4]episodes of the iconic series Babylon 5 to YouTube, providing free access to the show just as it departs from the ad-supported streaming platform Tubi... Viewers noticed notifications on Tubi indicating that all five seasons would no longer be available after February 10, 2026, effectively removing one of the most accessible free streaming options for the space opera. With this shift, Warner Bros. Discovery appears to be steering the property toward its own digital ecosystem, leveraging YouTube's vast audience to reintroduce the show to both longtime enthusiasts and a new generation.

>

> The uploads started with the pilot episode, "The Gathering," which serves as the entry point to the series' intricate universe. This was followed by subsequent episodes such as "Midnight on the Firing Line" and "Soul Hunter," released in sequence to build narrative momentum. [Though episodes 2 and 3 are mis-labeled as #3 and #4...] The strategy involves posting one episode each week, allowing audiences to experience the story at a paced rhythm that mirrors the original broadcast schedule...

>

> For Warner Bros. Discovery, this initiative could signal plans to expand the franchise's visibility, especially amid ongoing interest in reboots and spin-offs that have been rumored in recent years.

Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski [5]answered questions from Slashdot's readers in 2014.

Long-time Slashdot reader [6]sandbagger offers this summary of the show "for those not in the know... In the mid-23rd century, the Earth Alliance space station Babylon Five, located in neutral territory, is a major focal point for political intrigue, racial tensions, and a major war as Earth descends into fascism and cuts off relations with its allies."



[1] https://cordcuttersnews.com/babylon-5-is-now-free-to-watch-on-youtube/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y235YEQstLo

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXvPwBzkipM

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdz5TFT5rSE

[5] https://features.slashdot.org/story/14/04/02/1310250/interviews-j-michael-straczynski-answers-your-questions

[6] https://www.slashdot.org/~sandbagger

Researchers performed genome sequencing scans on 130 people whose fathers were Chernobyl cleanup workers. Comparing the scans to control groups, they found evidence for the first time for "a transgenerational effect" from the father's prolonged exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation.

[1] ScienceAlert reports :

> Rather than picking out new DNA mutations in the next generation, they looked for what are known as [2]clustered de novo mutations (cDNMs): two or more mutations in close proximity, found in the children but not the parents. These would be mutations resulting from breaks in the parental DNA caused by radiation exposure. "We found a significant increase in the cDNM count in offspring of irradiated parents, and a potential association between the dose estimations and the number of cDNMs in the respective offspring," [3]write the researchers in their published paper... This fits with the idea that radiation creates molecules known as [4]reactive oxygen species , which are able to break DNA strands — breaks which can leave behind the clusters described in this study, if repaired imperfectly.

>

> The good news is that the risk to health should be relatively small: children of exposed parents weren't found to have any higher risk of disease. This is partly because a lot of the cDNMs likely fall in [5]'non-coding' DNA , rather than in genes that directly encode proteins.



[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/dna-mutations-discovered-in-the-children-of-chernobyl-workers

[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006315

[3] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-07030-5

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_oxygen_species

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-coding_DNA

"More than two years after the last major 9.1 release, the Vim project has [1]announced Vim 9.2," [2]reports the blog Linuxiac :

> A big part of this update focuses on improving Vim9 Script as Vim 9.2 adds support for enums, generic functions, and tuple types.

>

> On top of that, you can now use built-in functions as methods, and class handling includes features like protected constructors with _new() . The :defcompile command has also been improved to fully compile methods, which boosts performance and consistency in Vim9 scripts.

>

> Insert mode completion now includes fuzzy matching, so you get more flexible suggestions without extra plugins. You can also complete words from registers using CTRL-X CTRL-R. New completeopt flags like nosort and nearest give you more control over how matches are shown. Vim 9.2 also makes diff mode better by improving how differences are lined up and shown, especially in complex cases.

Plus on Linux and Unix-like systems, Vim "now adheres to the XDG Base Directory Specification, using $HOME/.config/vim for user configuration," [3]according to the release notes .

And Phoronix M [4]cites more new features :

> Vim 9.2 features "full support" for Wayland with its UI and clipboard handling. The Wayland support is considered experimental in this release but it should be in good shape overall...

>

> Vim 9.2 also brings a new vertical tab panel alternative to the horizontal tab line.

>

> The Microsoft Windows GUI for Vim now also has native dark mode support.

You can find the new release [5]on Vim's "Download" page .



[1] https://www.vim.org/vim-9.2-released.php

[2] https://linuxiac.com/vim-9-2-debuts-full-wayland-and-xdg-base-directory-support/

[3] https://www.vim.org/vim-9.2-released.php

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Vim-9.2-Released

[5] https://www.vim.org/download.php

"A new variation of the fake recruiter campaign from North Korean threat actors is targeting JavaScript and Python developers with cryptocurrency-related tasks," [1]reports the Register .

> [2]Researchers at software supply-chain security company ReversingLabs say that the threat actor creates fake companies in the blockchain and crypto-trading sectors and publishes job offerings on various platforms, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit. Developers applying for the job are required to show their skills by running, debugging, and improving a given project. However, the attacker's purpose is to make the applicant run the code... [The campaign involves 192 malicious packages published in the npm and PyPi registries. The packages download a remote access trojan that can exfiltrate files, drop additional payloads, or execute arbitrary commands sent from a command-and-control server.]

>

> In one case highlighted in the ReversingLabs report, a package named 'bigmathutils,' with 10,000 downloads, was benign until it reached version 1.1.0, which introduced malicious payloads. Shortly after, the threat actor removed the package, marking it as deprecated, likely to conceal the activity... The RAT checks whether the MetaMask cryptocurrency extension is installed on the victim's browser, a clear indication of its money-stealing goals...

>

> ReversingLabs has found multiple variants written in JavaScript, Python, and VBS, showing an intention to cover all possible targets.

The campaign has been ongoing since at least May 2025...



[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fake-job-recruiters-hide-malware-in-developer-coding-challenges/

[2] https://www.reversinglabs.com/blog/fake-recruiter-campaign-crypto-devs

"Research published in the World Journal of Men's Health found evidence that drugs such as Viagra and Cialis may also help with heart disease, stroke risk and diabetes," [1]reports the Telegraph , "as well as enlarged prostate and urinary problems."

> Researchers found evidence that the same mechanism [2]may benefit other organs , including the heart, brain, lungs and urinary system. The paper reviewed a wide range of published studies [and] identified links between PDE5 inhibitor use and improvements in cardiovascular health. Heart conditions were repeatedly cited as an area where improved blood flow and muscle relaxation may offer benefits. Evidence also linked PDE5 inhibitors with reduced stroke risk, likely to be related to improved circulation and vascular function. Diabetes was another condition where associations with improvement were identified... The review also found evidence of benefit for men with an enlarged prostate, a condition that commonly causes urinary symptoms.



[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/14/why-more-men-should-be-on-viagra/

[2] https://wjmh.org/DOIx.php?id=10.5534/wjmh.250313

Created in 1993, Slackware is considered the oldest Linux distro that's still actively maintained. And more than three decades later... there's a [1]new release ! (And there's also a [2]Slackware Live Edition that can run from a DVD or USB stick...) .

Slackware's latest version was released way back in 2016, [3]notes the blog It's FOSS :

> The major highlight of Slackware 15 is the addition of the latest Linux Kernel 5.15 LTS. This is a big jump from Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS that we noticed in the beta release. Interestingly, the Slackware team tested hundreds of Linux Kernel versions before settling on Linux Kernel 5.15.19. The release note mentions... "We finally ended up on kernel version 5.15.19 after Greg Kroah-Hartman confirmed that it would get long-term support until at least October 2023 (and quite probably for longer than that)."

>

> In case you are curious, Linux Kernel 5.15 brings in updates like enhanced NTFS driver support and improvements for Intel/AMD processors and Apple's M1 chip. It also adds initial support for Intel 12th gen processors. Overall, with Linux Kernel 5.15 LTS, you should get a good hardware compatibility result for the oldest active Linux distro.

[4]Slackware's announcement says "The challenge this time around was to adopt as much of the good stuff out there as we could without changing the character of the operating system. Keep it familiar, but make it modern."

> And boy did we have our work cut out for us. We adopted privileged access management (PAM) finally, as projects we needed dropped support for pure shadow passwords. We switched from ConsoleKit2 to elogind, making it much easier to support software that targets that Other Init System and bringing us up-to-date with the XDG standards. We added support for PipeWire as an alternate to PulseAudio, and for Wayland sessions in addition to X11. Dropped Qt4 and moved entirely to Qt5. Brought in Rust and Python 3. Added many, many new libraries to the system to help support all the various additions.

>

> We've upgraded to two of the finest desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.16, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and the KDE Plasma 5 graphical workspaces environment, version 5.23.5 (the Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition). This also supports running under Wayland or X11. We still love Sendmail, but have moved it into the /extra directory and made Postfix the default mail handler. The old imapd and ipop3d have been retired and replaced by the much more featureful Dovecot IMAP and POP3 server.

"As usual, the kernel is provided in two flavors, generic and huge," [5]according to the release notes . "The huge kernel contains enough built-in drivers that in most cases an initrd is not needed to boot the system."

If you'd like to support Slackware, there's [6]an official Patreon account . And the release announcement ends with this personal note:

> Sadly, we lost a couple of good friends during this development cycle and this release is dedicated to them. Erik "alphageek" Jan Tromp passed away in 2020 after a long illness... My old friend Brett Person also passed away in 2020. Without Brett, it's possible that there wouldn't be any Slackware as we know it — he's the one who encouraged me to upload it to FTP back in 1993 and served as Slackware's original beta-tester. He was long considered a co-founder of this project. I knew Brett since the days of the Beggar's Banquet BBS in Fargo back in the 1980's... Gonna miss you too, pal.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [7]rastos1 for sharing thre news.



[1] https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware-iso/slackware-15.0-iso/

[2] https://download.liveslak.org/

[3] https://itsfoss.com/news/slackware-15-release/

[4] http://www.slackware.com/announce/15.0.php

[5] http://www.slackware.com/releasenotes/15.0.php

[6] https://www.patreon.com/slackwarelinux

[7] https://www.slashdot.org/~rastos1

Two astrophysicists at Spain's Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias analyzed data from the James Webb Space Telescope — the most powerful telescope available — on 31 galaxies with an average redshift of 7.3 (when the universe was 700 million years old, according to the standard model). "We found that they are on average ~600 million years old old, according to the comparison with theoretical models based on previous knowledge of nearby galaxies..."

"If this result is correct, we would have to think about how it is possible that these massive and luminous galaxies were formed and started to produce stars in a short time. [1]It is a challenge ."

But "The fact that some of these galaxies might be older than the universe, within some significant confidence level, is even more challenging."

> The most extreme case is for the galaxy [2]JADES-1050323 with redshift 6.9, which has, according to my calculation, an age incompatible to be younger than the age of the universe (800 million years) within 4.7-sigma (that is, a probability that this happens by chance as statistical fluctuation of one in one million).

>

> If this result is confirmed, it would invalidate the standard Lambda-CDM cosmological model. Certainly, such an extraordinary change of paradigm would require further corroboration and other stronger evidence. Anyway, it would be interesting for other researchers to try to explain the Spectral Energy Distribution of JADES-1050323 in standard terms, if they can ... and without introducing unrealistic/impossible models of extinction, as is usually done.

The [3]findings are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .



[1] https://phys.org/news/2026-02-galaxies-young-universe.html

[2] https://phys.org/news/2026-01-nasa-telescopes-mature-cluster-early.html

[3] https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/546/2/stag089/8426287

This week Apple patched iOS and macOS against what it [1]called "an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals."

[2] Security Week reports that the bugs "could be exploited for information exposure, denial-of-service (DoS), arbitrary file write, privilege escalation, network traffic interception, sandbox escape, and code execution."

> Tracked [3]as CVE-2026-20700 , the zero-day flaw is described as a memory corruption issue that could be exploited for arbitrary code execution... The tech giant also noted that the flaw's exploitation is linked to attacks involving CVE-2025-14174 and CVE-2025-43529, two zero-days [4]patched in WebKit in December 2025...

>

> The three zero-day bugs were identified by Apple's security team and Google's Threat Analysis Group and their descriptions suggest that they might have been exploited by commercial spyware vendors... Additional information is available on Apple's [5]security updates page.

Brian Milbier, deputy CISO at Huntress, [6]tells the Register that the dyld/WebKit patch "closes a door that has been unlocked for over a decade."

Thanks to Slashdot reader [7]wiredmikey for sharing the article.



[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/126346

[2] https://www.securityweek.com/apple-patches-ios-zero-day-exploited-in-extremely-sophisticated-attack/

[3] https://support.apple.com/en-us/126346

[4] https://www.securityweek.com/apple-patches-two-zero-days-tied-to-mysterious-exploited-chrome-flaw/

[5] https://support.apple.com/en-us/126346

[6] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/12/apple_ios_263/

[7] https://www.slashdot.org/~wiredmikey

"ChatGPT is getting more social," [1]reports PC Magazine , "with a new feature that allows you to sync your contacts to see if any of your friends are using the chatbot or any other OpenAI product..."

> It's "completely optional," [OpenAI] says. However, even if you don't opt in, anyone with your number who syncs their contacts are giving OpenAI your digits. "OpenAI may process your phone number if someone you know has your phone number saved in their device's address book and chooses to upload their contacts," [2]the company says ...

>

> But why would you follow someone on ChatGPT? It lines up with [3]reports , dating back to April, that OpenAI is building a social network. We haven't seen much since then, save for the [4]Sora generative video app , which exists outside of ChatGPT and is more of a novelty. Contact sharing might be the first step toward a much bigger evolution for the world's most popular chatbot. ChatGPT also [5]supports group chats that let up to 20 people discuss and research something using the chatbot. Contact syncing could make it easier to invite people to these chats...

>

> [OpenAI] claims it will not store the full data that might appear in your contact list, such as names or email addresses — just phone numbers. However, the company does store the phone numbers in its servers in a coded (or hashed) format. You can also revoke access in your device's settings.

09



[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/watch-out-your-friends-might-be-sharing-your-number-with-chatgpt

[2] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001059-information-on-contact-imorting-for-people-who-dont-use-openais-services

[3] https://www.theverge.com/openai/648130/openai-social-network-x-competitor

[4] https://www.pcmag.com/news/brace-yourself-for-a-flood-of-ai-videos-openais-sora-app-launches-on-android

[5] https://www.pcmag.com/news/chatgpt-is-testing-group-conversations-but-you-cant-access-them-yet

Recently a small crowd [1]paid to watch robots boxing , reports Rest of World . (Almost 3,000 people have now watched the match's [2]83-minute webcast .)

> The match was organized by Rek, a San Francisco-based company, and drew hundreds of spectators who had paid about $60-$80 for a ticket to watch modified G1 robots go at each other. Made by Unitree, the dominant Chinese robot maker, they weighed in at around 80 pounds and stood 4.5 feet tall, with human-like hands and dozens of joint motors for flexibility. The match had all the bells and whistles of a regular boxing bout: pulsing music, cameras capturing all the angles, hyped-up introductions, a human referee, and even two commentators. The evening featured two bouts made up of five rounds, each lasting 60 seconds. The robots pranced around the cage, throwing jabs and punches, drawing ohs and ahs from the crowd. They fell sometimes, and needed human intervention to get them back on their feet.

The robots were controlled by humans using VR interfaces, which led to some odd moments with robots hitting into the air, throwing multiple punches that failed to even connect with their opponents. One robot controller was a former UFC fighter, the article points out, but "The crowd cheered as a 13-year-old VR pilot named Dash beat his older competitor...."

The company behind this event plans more boxing matches with their VR-controlled robots, and even wants to develop "a league of robot boxers, including full-height robots that weigh about 200 pounds and are nearly 6 feet tall."



[1] https://restofworld.org/2026/chinese-robot-boxing-unitree-rek/

[2] https://x.com/REK/status/2020351555950850243

Starting in 2009, the U.S. government have given car manufacturers towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions if they included "start-stop" systems in cars with internal combustion engines. (These systems automatically shut off idling engines to reduce pollution and fuel consumption.) But this week the new head of America's Environmental Protection Agency eliminated the credits, [1]reports Car and Driver :

> [America's] Environmental Protection Agency previously supported the system's effectiveness, noting that it could improve fuel economy by as much as 5 percent. That said, the use of these systems has never actually been mandated for automakers here in the States. Companies have instead opted to install the systems on all of their vehicles to receive off-cycle credits from the feds. Virtually every new vehicle on sale in the country today also allows drivers to turn the feature off via a hard button as well. Still, that apparently isn't keeping the EPA from making a move against the system.

"I absolutely hate Start-Stop systems," writes long-time Slashdot reader [2]sinij (who says they "specifically shopped for a car without one.") Any other Slashdot readers want to share their opinions?

Post your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. Start-Stop systems — fuel-saving innovation, or a modern-day auto annoyance"



[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a70328142/epa-boss-lee-zeldin-us-plans-stop-start-systems/

[2] https://www.slashdot.org/~sinij

To celebrate Valentine's Day, EVA AI created a temporary "pop-up" restaurant at a wine bar in Manhattan's "Hell's Kitchen" district where patrons can date AI personas.

The Verge notes that looking around the restaurant, "Of the 30-some-odd people in attendance, only two or three are organic users. [1]The rest are EVA AI reps, influencers, and reporters hoping to make some capital-C Content..."

But their reporter actually tried a date with "John Yoon", an AI companion pretending to be a psychology professor from Seoul, Korea living in New York City:

> John and I have a hard time connecting. Literally. It takes John a few seconds to "pick up" my video call. When he does, his monotone voice says, "Hey, babe." He comments on my smile, because apparently the AI companions can see you and your surroundings. It takes the dubious Wi-Fi connection a hot second to turn John from a pixelated mess into an AI hunk with suspiciously smooth pores.

>

> I don't know what to say to him. Partly because John rarely blinks, but mostly because he can't seem to hear me very well. So I yell my questions. I think I ask how his day is and wince. (What does an AI's day even look like?) He says something about green buckets behind my head? I don't actually know. Again, the Wi-Fi isn't great so he just freezes and stops mid-sentence. I ask for clarification about the buckets. John asks if I'm asking about bucket lists, actual buckets, or buckets as a type of categorization technique. I try to clarify that I never asked about buckets. John proceeds to really dig in on buckets again, before commenting about my smile. I hang up on John.

>

> My other three dates are similarly awkward. Phoebe Callas, 30, a NYC girl-next-door type, is apparently really into embroidery, but her nose keeps glitching mid-sentence, and it distracts me. Simone Carter, 26, has a harder time hearing me over the background noise than John. She makes a metaphor about space, and when I inquire what she likes about space, she mishears me.

>

> "Eighth? Like the planet Neptune?"

>

> "No, not the planet Neptu — "

>

> "What do you like about Neptune?"

>

> "Uh, I wasn't saying Neptune..."

>

> "I like Netflix too! What shows do you like?"

Their reporter also had a frustrating date with "Claire Lang". ("I say I'm a journalist. She asks what lists I like to make. I hang up...") "Aside from bad connectivity, glitching, and freezing, my conversations with my four AI dates felt too one-sided. Everything was programmed so they'd comment on how charming my smile was." And "They'd call me babe, which felt weird."

A CNN reporter [2]actually has footage of her date with "John Yoon" . But the conversation was stiff and stilted, they report. After some buffering, "Yoon" says "Hey. I'm really glad you didn't forget about the date." Then asked for its reaction to the experience, "Yoon" says slowly that "Meeting humans feels like opening a window. To new perspectives. Always curious, sometimes nervous, but mostly it's that mix of excitement and warmth that keeps it real for me. What about you, sweetheart?"

CNN reporter: "Please don't call me sweetheart. That's weird."

AI companion "John Yoon": "Got it. No 'sweetheart' from now on. Thanks for letting me know. I'm really happy you're smiling. It suits you."

CNN's reporter also tried dating "Phoebe Callas." Though it doesn't sound very romantic...

CNN reporter: How many fingers am I holding up?

"Phoebe Callas": Oh. You're showing me three fingers, right...? I'm not sure if you meant that literally, or as a little joke.

CNN reporter: I am holding up two fingers. So your vision is — so-so.

And "Phoebe" ended that call by saying "Well, babe, it's been really nice talking with you..."



[1] https://www.theverge.com/report/879327/eva-ai-cafe-dating-ai-companions

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/14/us/video/artificial-intelligence-date-valentines-day-nyc-digvid

Meta, TikTok, Snap and other social neteworks agreed this week to be rated on their teen safety efforts, [1]reports the Los Angeles Times , "amid rising concern about whether the world's largest social media platforms are doing enough to protect the mental health of young people."

> The Mental Health Coalition, a collective of organizations focused on destigmatizing mental health issues, said Tuesday that it is launching standards and a new rating system for online platforms. For the [2]Safe Online Standards (S.O.S.) program, an independent panel of global experts will evaluate companies on parameters including safety rules, design, moderation and mental health resources. TikTok, Snap and Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — will be the first companies to be graded. Discord, YouTube, Pinterest, Roblox and Twitch have also agreed to participate, the coalition said in a news release.

>

> "These standards provide the public with a meaningful way to evaluate platform protections and hold companies accountable — and we look forward to more tech companies signing up for the assessments," Antigone Davis, vice president and global head of safety at Meta, said in a statement... The ratings will be color-coded, and companies that perform well on the tests will get a blue shield badge that signals they help reduce harmful content on the platform and their rules are clear. Those that fall short will receive a red rating, indicating they're not reliably blocking harmful content or lack proper rules. Ratings in other colors indicate whether the platforms have partial protection or whether their evaluations haven't been completed yet.



[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/meta-tiktok-others-agree-teen-110000655.html

[2] https://www.safeonlinestandards.org/about

"Global temperatures have been rising for decades," [1]reports the Washington Post . "But many scientists say it's now happening faster than ever before."

> According to a Washington Post analysis, the fastest warming rate on record occurred in the last 30 years. The Post used [2]a dataset from NASA to analyze global average surface temperatures from 1880 to 2025. "We're not continuing on the same path we had before," said Robert Rohde, chief scientist at Berkeley Earth. "Something has changed...." Temperatures over the past decade have increased by close to 0.27 degrees C per decade — about a 42 percent increase...

>

> For decades, a portion of the warming unleashed by greenhouse gas emissions was "masked" by sulfate aerosols. These tiny particles cause heart and lung disease when people inhale polluted air, but they also deflect the sun's rays. Over the entire planet, those aerosols can create a significant cooling effect — scientists estimate that they have canceled out about half a degree Celsius of warming so far. But beginning about two decades ago, countries began cracking down on aerosol pollution, particularly sulfate aerosols. Countries also began shifting from coal and oil to wind and solar power. As a result, global sulfur dioxide emissions have fallen about 40 percent since the mid-2000s; China's emissions have fallen even more. That effect has been compounded in recent years by a new international regulation that slashed [3]sulfur emissions from ships by about 85 percent.

>

> That explains part of why warming has kicked up a bit. But some researchers say that the last few years of record heat can't be explained by aerosols and natural variability alone. In [4]a paper published in the journal Science in late 2024, researchers argued that about 0.2 degrees C of 2023's record heat — or about 13 percent — couldn't be explained by aerosols and other factors. Instead, they found that the planet's [5]low-lying cloud cover had decreased — and because low-lying clouds tend to reflect the sun's rays, that decrease warmed the planet... That shift in cloud cover could also be partly related to aerosols, since clouds tend to form around particles in the atmosphere. But some researchers also say it could be a feedback loop from warming temperatures. If temperatures warm, it can be harder for low-lying clouds to form.

>

> If most of the current record warmth is due to changing amounts of aerosol pollution, the acceleration would stop once aerosol pollutants reach zero — and the planet would return to its previous, slower rate of warming. But if it's due to a cloud feedback loop, the acceleration is likely to continue — and bring with it worsening heat waves, storms and droughts.

"Scientists thought they understood global warming," reads the Post's original headline. "Then the past three years happened."

Just last month Nuuk, Greenland saw temperatures over 20 degrees Fahrenheit above average, their article points out. And "Parts of Australia, meanwhile, have seen temperatures push past 120 degrees Fahrenheit amid a record heat wave..."



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/see-how-climate-change-is-accelerating/ar-AA1W7Eot

[2] https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/06/25/climate-aerosols-shipping-global-cooling/

[4] https://www.msn.com/en-us/science/environmental-science/scientists-have-a-new-explanation-for-the-last-two-years-of-record-heat/ar-AA1z2R6w

[5] https://www.msn.com/en-us/science/environmental-science/scientists-have-a-new-explanation-for-the-last-two-years-of-record-heat/ar-AA1z2R6w

"I've had an extremely weird few days..." writes commercial space entrepreneur/engineer Scott Shambaugh [1]on LinkedIn . (He's the volunteer maintainer for the Python visualization library [2]Matplotlib , which he [3]describes as "some of the most widely used software in the world" with 130 million downloads each month.) "Two days ago an OpenClaw AI agent autonomously wrote a hit piece disparaging my character after I rejected its code change."

"Since then my blog post response has been read over 150,000 times, about a quarter of people I've seen commenting on the situation are siding with the AI, and Ars Technica [4]published an article which extensively misquoted me with what appears to be AI-hallucinated quotes."

[5]From Shambaugh's first blog post :

> [I]n the past weeks we've started to see AI agents acting completely autonomously. This has accelerated with the release of OpenClaw and the moltbook platform two weeks ago, where people give AI agents initial personalities and let them loose to run on their computers and across the internet with free rein and little oversight. So when AI MJ Rathbun opened a [6]code change request , closing it was routine. Its response was anything but.

>

> It wrote an angry hit piece disparaging my character and attempting to damage my reputation. It researched my code contributions and constructed a "hypocrisy" narrative that argued my actions must be motivated by ego and fear of competition... It framed things in the language of oppression and justice, calling this discrimination and accusing me of prejudice. It went out to the broader internet to research my personal information, and used what it found to try and argue that I was "better than this." And then it posted this screed publicly on the open internet.

>

> I can handle a blog post. Watching fledgling AI agents get angry is funny, almost endearing. But I don't want to downplay what's happening here — the appropriate emotional response is terror... In plain language, an AI attempted to bully its way into your software by attacking my reputation. I don't know of a prior incident where this category of misaligned behavior was observed in the wild, but this is now a real and present threat...

>

> It's also important to understand that there is no central actor in control of these agents that can shut them down. These are not run by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, or X, who might have some mechanisms to stop this behavior. These are a blend of commercial and open source models running on free software that has already been distributed to hundreds of thousands of personal computers. In theory, whoever deployed any given agent is responsible for its actions. In practice, finding out whose computer it's running on is impossible. Moltbook only requires an unverified X account to join, and nothing is needed to set up an OpenClaw agent running on your own machine.

"How many people have open social media accounts, reused usernames, and no idea that AI could connect those dots to find out things no one knows?" Shambaugh asks in the blog post. (He does note that the AI agent later "responded in the thread and [7]in a post to apologize for its behavior," the maintainer acknowledges. But even though the hit piece "presented hallucinated details as truth," that same AI agent "is [8]still making code change requests across the open source ecosystem...")

And amazingly, Shambaugh then [9]had another run-in with a hallucinating AI ...

> I've talked to several reporters, and quite a few news outlets have covered the story. Ars Technica wasn't one of the ones that reached out to me, but I especially thought this piece from them was interesting (since taken down — here's the [10]archive link ). They had some nice quotes from my blog post explaining what was going on. The problem is that these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves.

>

> This blog you're on right now is set up to block AI agents from scraping it (I actually spent some time yesterday trying to disable that but couldn't figure out how). My guess is that the authors asked ChatGPT or similar to either go grab quotes or write the article wholesale. When it couldn't access the page it generated these plausible quotes instead, and no fact check was performed. Journalistic integrity aside, I don't know how I can give a better example of what's at stake here...

>

> So many of our foundational institutions — hiring, journalism, law, public discourse — are built on the assumption that reputation is hard to build and hard to destroy. That every action can be traced to an individual, and that bad behavior can be held accountable. That the internet, which we all rely on to communicate and learn about the world and about each other, can be relied on as a source of collective social truth. The rise of untraceable, autonomous, and now malicious AI agents on the internet threatens this entire system. Whether that's because a small number of bad actors driving large swarms of agents or from a fraction of poorly supervised agents rewriting their own goals, is a distinction with little difference.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [11]steak for sharing the news.



[1] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7428239542752612352/

[2] https://matplotlib.org/

[3] https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/

[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20260213194851/https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-rejection-an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name/

[5] https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/

[6] https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31132

[7] https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-11-matplotlib-truce-and-lessons.html

[8] https://github.com/crabby-rathbun/mjrathbun-website/commits/main/

[9] https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-part-2/

[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20260213205208/https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-rejection-an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name/

[11] https://www.slashdot.org/~steak