gdm (Slashdot reader #97,336) writes: A study published in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives investigates how ants avoid traffic jams…. Quoting the abstract: “The results show that ants adopt specific traffic strategies (platoon formation, quasi-constant speed and no overtaking maneuvers) that help avoid jam phenomena, even at high density.” “Researchers are now studying these insects’ cooperative
Read MoreSmall cylindrical parts are often formed through deep drawing — a process by which a punch forms the finished piece from a flat sheet of metal using a forming die. If it sounds like that stresses the metal, it does. But researchers at Fraunhofer have found a way to reduce friction protecting both the material
Read MorePhilosophy/ethics professor Troy Jollimore looks at the implications of a world where many students are submitting AI-generated essays. (“Sometimes they will provide quotations, giving page numbers that, as often as not, do not seem to correspond to anything in the actual world…”) Ideally if the students write the essays themselves, “some of them start to
Read MoreSlashdot covered the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in 2008 and 2010 — though it’s been running since 1983. Entrants competed to write the worst-possible first sentence for a novel, in a contest started by English professor Scott E. Rice at San Jose State University (which sponsored the contest). In its first year it drew over 10,000
Read MoreApple is working on bolstering future Apple Intelligence efforts by working on AirPods with built-in cameras. AirPods Pro One of the many ways Apple has moved forward with Apple Intelligence is the introduction of Visual Intelligence, a feature that is used to acquire information and to get details of real-world items using an iPhone 16.
Read MoreApple is working on bolstering future Apple Intelligence efforts by working on AirPods with built-in cameras. AirPods Pro One of the many ways Apple has moved forward with Apple Intelligence is the introduction of Visual Intelligence, a feature that is used to acquire information and to get details of real-world items using an iPhone 16.
Read MoreApple’s long-rumored Home Hub peripheral is now rumored to be debuting in the second half of 2025, and is allegedly being taken home by select Apple employees for real-world testing. One concept for a future Apple Smart Home Hub. Various rumors have suggested that Apple will be making a big push into smart home accessories
Read MoreTechnology is great when it works, but nothing is more frustrating than when a piece of tech we rely on stops working. I’ve had a bad time of that lately, with my original Pixelbook completely dying and my 13th-gen Intel gaming PC succumbing to the dreaded microcode issue. The latter is covered by warranty, but
Read MoreLast week Google urged the U.S. government not to break up the company — but apparently, it didn’t work. In a new filing Friday, America’s Justice Department “reiterated its November proposal that Google be forced to sell its Chrome web browser,” reports the Washington Post, “to address a federal judge finding the company guilty of
Read MoreImagine cooling your building with the same principle that kept Victorian-era icehouses stocked with lake-frozen blocks, but in modern form. That’s the idea behind ice batteries, a clever energy storage hack that’s been quietly slashing cooling costs across commercial buildings. The invention works by freezing water when energy is cheap, and using that stored cold
Read MoreImagine cooling your building with the same principle that kept Victorian-era icehouses stocked with lake-frozen blocks, but in modern form. That’s the idea behind ice batteries, a clever energy storage hack that’s been quietly slashing cooling costs across commercial buildings. The invention works by freezing water when energy is cheap, and using that stored cold
Read MoreMovies mirror the time they were made. [ErnieTech] asserts that we can see what people thought about computers back in 1957 by watching the classic Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn movie “Desk Set.” What’s more, he thinks this might be the first movie appearance of a human-like computer. On a side note, in the UK this movie
Read More“The early web was fun,” Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian posted Wednesday on X.com. “It was weird. It was community-driven. It’s time to rebuild that. “Which is why Kevin Rose and I just bought back Digg.” The amount of that purchase is “undisclosed,” reports CNBC: The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where
Read MoreThe Retroid Pocket Mini has an unfixable issue that’s causing certain graphical effects for emulated games not to work properly. Retroid, the China-based company that makes the Pocket Mini, announced on Discord that it will accept returns of the device but only during a limited March 8th to March 14th window — and capped at
Read MoreWarner Bros. Discovery just released a new trailer for the second (and maybe last) season of The Last of Us, offering an action-packed view of the fraught world Pedro Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and his daughter Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are facing. Things look bleak for both of them, and the show’s fungal-based zombies don’t seem
Read MoreWarner Bros. Discovery just released a new trailer for the second (and maybe last) season of The Last of Us, offering an action-packed view of the fraught world Pedro Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and his daughter Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are facing. Things look bleak for both of them, and the show’s fungal-based zombies don’t seem
Read MoreMicrosoft is previewing a .NET web app template intended to enable quick development of AI-powered chat applications. Part of an ongoing effort to make AI development with .NET easier to discover and use, the AI Chat Web App template was announced March 6. The template can be installed with Microsoft.Extensions.AI.Templates by running the following command
Read MoreMicrosoft is previewing a .NET web app template intended to enable quick development of AI-powered chat applications. Part of an ongoing effort to make AI development with .NET easier to discover and use, the AI Chat Web App template was announced March 6. The template can be installed with Microsoft.Extensions.AI.Templates by running the following command
Read MoreApple is offering an alternative to its existing $75 welcome bonus for new Apple Card users, it can provide up to $200 in cash back over ten months, but you’ll have to act fast. If you haven’t already, it’s a good time to apply for an Apple Card. Apple has posted a second current bonus
Read MoreNASA’s SPHEREx observatory (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) is set to launch this week to map 450 million galaxies in infrared, providing insights into galaxy formation, the origins of water, and testing theories about the universe’s rapid expansion following the Big Bang. The two-year mission
Read MoreLucid dreaming is the state of becoming aware one is dreaming while still being within the dream. To what end? That awareness may allow one to influence the dream itself, and the possibilities of that are obvious and compelling enough that plenty of clever and curious people have formed some sort of interest in this
Read MoreThe new version of Starship will be tested again in four to six weeks. A third consecutive failure could indicate fundamental problems with the updated design.
Read MoreAn anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies’ scheduled release dates. According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked
Read MoreCredit: C. Scott Brown / Android Authority Chrome OS 134 is introducing a new feature to help users extend their Chromebook’s battery lifespan. The feature allows users to set a maximum charge limit, such as 80%, to reduce battery degradation. The update is expected to roll out sometime this month. Managing battery health for our
Read MoreCredit: Retroid Retroid confirmed that its upcoming vertical handheld will have a 3.92-inch AMOLED screen. That’s likely the same panel as the AYANEO Pocket DMG, which is widely considered the best of its size. The device will launch this Spring alongside a clamshell foldable with a 5.5-inch display. Retroid is gearing up for two big
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