fidzu : nerd

Comments

11 Feb 2026 4:15am GMT

Iceland in October classified the potential collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation -- the ocean current system that ferries warm water northward from the tropics and essentially functions as the country's central heating -- as a national security risk, a designation that amounts to a formal reckoning with the possibility that climate change could render the island nation uninhabitable. Several recent studies have found the AMOC far more vulnerable to breakdown than scientists had long assumed. One, analyzing nine models under high-emission scenarios, saw the current weaken and collapse in every single instance; even under the Paris agreement's emission targets, the researchers estimated a 25% chance of shutdown. Stefan Rahmstorf, an oceanographer at Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a co-author of that study, said it was "wrong to assume this was low probability." Simulations of a post-collapse world project Icelandic winter extremes plunging to minus-50 degrees Celsius, and sea ice surrounding the country for the first time since Viking settlement. Iceland's national strategy for dealing with AMOC risks is scheduled to be finalized by 2028. The country has also flagged that NASA Goddard, a key source of AMOC modeling, has been targeted for significant staff and budget cuts under the current U.S. administration.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11 Feb 2026 3:45am GMT

Comments

11 Feb 2026 2:55am GMT

hackingbear writes: China's Bytedance has released Seedance 2.0, an AI video generator which handles up to four types of input at once: images, videos, audio, and text. Users can combine up to nine images, three videos, and three audio files, up to a total of twelve files. Generated videos run between 4 and 15 [or 60] seconds long and automatically come with sound effects or music. Its performance is unfortunately so good that it has forced the firm to block its facial-to-voice feature after the model reportedly demonstrated the ability to generate highly accurate personal voice characteristics using only facial images, even without user authorization. In a recent test, Pan Tianhong, founder of tech media outlet MediaStorm, discovered that uploading a personal facial photo caused the model to produce audio nearly identical to his real voice -- without using any voice samples or authorized data. [...]

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11 Feb 2026 1:45am GMT

The move comes amid RFK Jr.'s relentless efforts to enact his anti-vaccine agenda.

11 Feb 2026 1:21am GMT

Comments

11 Feb 2026 1:00am GMT

The next Starship flight is a key precursor for more ambitious missions.

10 Feb 2026 11:35pm GMT

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Trump administration wants some of the world's largest technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. A draft of the compact obtained by POLITICO lays out commitments designed to ensure energy-hungry data centers do not raise household electricity prices, strain water supplies or undermine grid reliability, and that the companies driving demand also carry the cost of building new infrastructure. The proposed pact, which is not final and could be subject to change, is framed as a voluntary agreement between President Donald Trump and major U.S. tech companies and data center developers. It could bind OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other AI giants to a broad set of energy, water and community principles. None of these companies immediately responded to a request for comment.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Feb 2026 10:45pm GMT

DDoS hit blog that tried to uncover Archive.today founder's identity in 2023.

10 Feb 2026 7:29pm GMT

System76 has released COSMIC Desktop 1.0.6, which brings file manager fixes, better clipboard support, new terminal hotkeys, and more.

10 Feb 2026 6:54pm GMT

MOS is a new open-source server operating system designed for homelabs and self-hosting, combining storage, containers, and virtual machines.

10 Feb 2026 5:50pm GMT

Redis 8.6 in-memory data store is out with performance and latency improvements, alongside reduced memory usage across core data structures.

10 Feb 2026 5:00pm GMT