computers

30 May 2026

Slashdot

US Aims to Give Cold War Plutonium to Startups For Nuclear Fuel

The Trump administration is planning to provide Cold War-era plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads to nuclear startups that want to convert it into reactor fuel, arguing it could help address a looming fuel shortage for advanced reactors. Critics warn the idea raises serious nonproliferation, security, cost, and technical concerns. The New York Times reports: The plan has generated debate and some unease among nonproliferation experts. If finalized, it would mark the first time the U.S. government has made weapons-grade plutonium available to private companies. The Energy Department has more than 50 tons of surplus plutonium left over from nuclear weapons programs, and the agency had previously been planning to dilute much of that material and bury it. Some of the nuclear start-ups trying to obtain that plutonium say that transforming the waste into fuel is a better way to dispose of it. On Tuesday, the Energy Department said that it had selected five companies to enter into "advanced negotiations" to potentially receive some surplus plutonium. That includes Oklo, a California-based nuclear power company, which plans to partner with Newcleo, a European developer of advanced nuclear reactors. Using plutonium for fuel, Oklo and Newcleo said, could solve a looming problem: Energy firms want to build a new wave of nuclear reactors, but the United States can't yet make enough conventional fuel from uranium to supply the plants. Harvesting old plutonium stockpiles could provide a short-term fix. "A lack of fuel is one of the biggest choke points in expanding nuclear power right now," said Jacob DeWitte, the chief executive of Oklo, which is developing a novel type of small reactor intended to run on plutonium. "This will help us get more nuclear power online faster." [...] The plan is not yet final, and companies will still have to negotiate with the federal government over how to secure and transfer the plutonium. In addition to Oklo, the Energy Department said it had also selected four other companies -- Standard Nuclear, Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies and Flibe Energy -- to enter into advanced negotiations to receive the material under its Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, which was established last year. The program "is anticipated to help companies unlock the next level of private funding to broaden domestic nuclear fuel supplies, spur innovation on American recycling technologies, and unlock private sector funding to fuel the nation's nuclear renaissance," said Michael Goff, the principal deputy assistant secretary of nuclear energy, in a statement.

Ars Technica

Grifters, cynics, and true believers: The family tree of vaccine opponents

A new book looks into the long history of people who have opposed vaccines.

30 May 2026 11:00am GMT

Environmentalists turn out in force to oppose Trump coal ash rollbacks

Trump admin wants to rely on states for coal ash monitoring, enforcement, allow them to bypass national standards.

30 May 2026 10:00am GMT

Slashdot

Apple Working To Cram Massive Gemini Model Into iPhone To Power New Siri

Apple is reportedly working to shrink Google's Gemini models enough to power parts of a long-delayed AI-enhanced Siri on iPhones. But despite Apple's best efforts to run the AI locally, "the iPhone's Gemini makeover will lean heavily on Google and Nvidia in the cloud," reports Ars Technica. That could complicate Apple's privacy-first AI messaging, especially if more complex Siri requests are routed through Google infrastructure and Nvidia's encrypted cloud-computing platform. Ars Technica reports: After inking the Google deal, Apple apparently got to work distilling Google's giant cloud-based Gemini models. Distillation is a process in which a small, less resource-intensive model learns to mimic a large, expensive one. With enough time, this can reliably transfer useful capabilities while pruning less important weights from the model. That may enable Siri to handle some tasks with private local compute, but a cloud component looks inevitable. Processing users' AI data in the cloud could be a problem for Apple. At WWDC, the company will probably promote its years of experience designing chips and how well that positions it for AI. However, The Information claims that Apple has struggled to even get Google's massive undistilled Gemini models running on its custom Private Cloud Compute infrastructure, which is built on on M-series Mac chips. When the smarter Siri rolls out, it will probably route more complex tasks to Google's cloud infrastructure instead of Apple's, but it won't be running on Google TPUs. Apple has reportedly signed a deal with Nvidia to use its Confidential Computing platform for this purpose. Confidential Computing keeps data encrypted on Nvidia GPUs while it's being processed in the cloud, which could help Apple claim it's still sensitive to user privacy concerns. It might even retain its own Private Cloud Compute branding for the system. The iPhone probably won't tell you which version of Gemini is handling individual Siri requests. Device makers designing hybrid systems that rely on local and cloud-based AI like to talk about making the experience feel "seamless." There might be clues, though.

RIP: Marcia Lucas, Oscar-Winning Star Wars Editor, Dies At 80

```Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 brings word that Marcia Lucas, part of the editing team for both Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, has died at age 80 after a battle with metastatic cancer. Married to George Lucas from 1969 to 1983, Marcia is remembered by The Wrap as "a powerful asset in the early days of the Star Wars series, helping shape its voice and identity long before it became the massive global franchise..." She won an Academy Award for Best Film Editing for her work on the original "Star Wars" movie, an award that came four years after she was nominated for editing George's previous film, "American Graffiti." She additionally edited his debut feature, "THX 1138." Beyond these collaborations with her then-husband, Marcia worked as an editor with other acclaimed filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. She was credited as sole editor for Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," and served as supervising editor for "Taxi Driver" and "New York, New York." Marcia served as part of a three-person crew editing both "Star Wars" and "Return of the Jedi." On the first film, she worked alongside Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew and was personally responsible for editing the Battle of Yavin - otherwise known as the iconic "trench run" sequence near the end of the film. For "Return of the Jedi," Marcia shared credit with Sean Barton and Duwayne Dunham. "If only Lucas had people like her on the prequels instead of sycophants who worshipped him as a God..." argues this 2015 blog post noting an article calling her "the secret weapon behind Star Wars - including this anecdote from The Secret History of Star Wars : The [Star Wars] Death Star trench run was originally scripted entirely different, with Luke having two runs at the exhaust port; Marcia had re-ordered the shots almost from the ground up, trying to build tension lacking in the original scripted sequence, which was why this one was the most complicated (Deleted Magic has a faithful reproduction of the original assembly, which is surprisingly unsatisfying). She warned George, "If the audience doesn't cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he's being chased by Darth Vader, the picture doesn't work." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

29 May 2026

Ars Technica

Proposed new US funding rules: We can cancel any grant at any time

Peer review now optional, political staff would screen grants for forbidden topics.

29 May 2026 10:58pm GMT

OSnews

Flathub bans slopcoded applications, but not if they’re from a “mature, well-maintained” project

Flathub, by the most popular (effectively only) repository for Flatpak applications, has changed its policies to include a strict ban on "AI" use for both application submissions as well as the application code itself. This policy applies to both the application being submitted to Flathub and the Flathub submission itself, including the manifest, metadata, patches, build scripts, and pull request. For the purpose of this policy, applications include BaseApps, extensions, and any other artifacts that can be produced by flatpak-builder. Submission pull requests must not be generated, opened, or automated using AI tools or agents. Please also do not request review from any AI tools in the submission PR. Automated Copilot reviews on GitHub can be disabled by the submitter by going here and changing Repository access to exclude the repo or disabling the global "Automatic Copilot code review" found here. Applications containing AI-generated or AI-assisted code, documentation, or other content are not allowed. ↫ Flathub policy diff This is a fairly strict policy, but they do leave some wiggle room by also including the following line: Exceptions may be granted for mature, well-maintained projects. ↫ Flathub policy diff I don't think they had any choice adding this exception, but it does feel a little bit like "rules for thee but not for me". I can easily see the relatively small in-crowd of developers around Flathub and Flatpak, and their friends, handing each other exceptions, while enforcing the much stricter rules when it comes to outsiders. Say a well-known GNOME application from a long-time GNOME contributor adds "AI"-generated code, will it really be banned from Flathub? I have my doubts. Regardless, it's mostly good news. It's important to note that this policy change won't be applied retroactively, so slopcoded applications already on Flathub won't be removed.

29 May 2026 8:32pm GMT

Genode OS Framework 26.05 released

The work on the May release has been dominated by topics on account of the just published Sculpt OS version 26.04. Besides featuring profound driver improvements across Wifi, ACPI, I2C HID, SOF audio, and graphics, it turns the most innovative aspects of Sculpt OS into building blocks for the easy reuse in other incarnations of Genode-based systems. In the same vein, the Goa SDK has been updated to match the latest Sculpt OS version while accumulating plenty of detail improvements. Further highlights of the release are the new touch-awareness of the window manager making Sculpt OS usable on tablets, the addition of Linux user-space networking based on libslirp, the update of Qt to version 6.8.3, and a largely revised LTE modem stack. ↫ Genode OS Framework 26.05 release notes In addition, the migration from GitHub to Codeberg has been completed as well, which is a big step forward for the project.

29 May 2026 1:37pm GMT

NVIDIA retires its classic Control Panel application for Windows

In the release notes for the latest NVIDIA driver version for Windows, the "AI" company who happens to spare a few GPUs for regular users every now and then has announced that the curtain has fallen for the classic NVIDIA Control Panel. After 20 years of dedicated service, the classic NVIDIA Control Panel is officially retiring for Game Ready and Studio Drivers. For NVIDIA RTX PRO users, the NVIDIA Control Panel will continue to be supported until we have migrated professional features to the NVIDIA app. Existing installs of the NVIDIA Control Panel will remain on users' systems, unless they perform a clean installation, and users who still need the NVIDIA Control Panel can continue to download it from the Microsoft Store, but we won't be adding features, fixes, or other changes. ↫ NVIDIA GeForce driver release notes According to NVIDIA, every setting has migrated from the Control Panel to the NVIDIA application, meaning it's no longer necessary to keep maintaining it. Of course, the NVIDIA application also happens to have ads, a login mechanism, and is probably just an inefficient web application, so not everybody may be excited about the loss of the NVIDIA Control Panel.

29 May 2026 1:28pm GMT