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30 Sep 2026 7:44pm GMT

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30 Sep 2026 7:26pm GMT

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30 Sep 2026 7:04pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amid a number of updates for moderators and developers announced Wednesday comes bad news for supporters of a more open web: Reddit is ending support for RSS feeds. Reddit says RSS has now become a "common surface for large-scale scraping and automated abuse," which is why it's made the decision to wind down RSS feeds on its platform. "We know RSS has been a beloved part of the open web for a long time, and we're grateful to everyone who used it to stay connected to Reddit," the company noted in its announcement, where it also shared a March 2027 shutdown date for its public API. Reddit said RSS support will cease on November 13. [...] The RSS change was one of several updates issued on Wednesday by the company. Another big change will be the end of its public API. Public API access will also end by March 2027, which will impact any tools that used it for programmatic access to Reddit conversations, including social listening products, those used by researchers, and AI products, such as AI assistants. Today, those assistants can use Reddit to answer questions, but after closing public API access, they will need to forgo commercial deals with Reddit for its data. In addition, Reddit provided an update on its Rules Hub progress and auto-mod changes, and said it was "adding safeguards" to its classic, text-heavy version of its site known as Old Reddit. The latter will include limiting access to logged-in moderators and recent users -- changes Reddit also said were required because of "abusive scraping and automated traffic." Reddit said in the next few months it will limit access for logged-in users to those who have used Old Reddit in the last 90 days. The company also reminded developers building approved third-party apps and bots to register them with the company before January 12, 2027, to avoid disruption. After that date, Reddit will remove API access for any developer that hasn't registered.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Sep 2026 7:00pm GMT

OpenAI makes others suffer "the harms of its unsafe decision-making," nonprofit says.

30 Sep 2026 6:25pm GMT

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Mashable: Singapore's government is trying its hand at matchmaking again. The country's Government Technology Agency (GovTech) has launched FirstDate, a pilot dating service for singles aged 21 to 35. For now, it's open only to public officers, according to the service's website. Applications close Oct. 5. FirstDate is designed as an alternative to endless swiping. Instead of browsing a stream of profiles, users fill out a questionnaire about their interests, habits, values, and preferences. The service then sends them one match per cycle (the time it takes to mutually accept and presumably meet up). Each match includes a compatibility score, a brief description of the person, and a personal note. [...] The pilot arrives as Singapore's birth rate hits a new low, according to the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times. The country's total fertility rate fell to 0.87 children per woman in 2025, down from 1.24 a decade earlier. In April, the government announced a new workgroup tasked with addressing falling birth rates, which is expected to report its findings by early 2027, The Straits Times reported. The service relies on the Gale-Shapley algorithm, a well-known mathematical method that solves the stable matching problem by pairing two sets of participants based on their ranked preferences. Once matched, users have 72 hours to mutually accept before contact details are shared, with optional "Date Quests" and post-date surveys designed to encourage and assess in-person meetups. Accounts are verified through Singapore's Singpass digital ID system to reduce fake profiles, and profiles are only visible to assigned matches. GovTech says user data is protected under government security standards, is not sold to third parties, and can be deleted upon request.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Sep 2026 6:00pm GMT

fahrbot-bot shares a report from CNN: President Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled America.gov, a government website meant to serve as a one-stop shop for people trying to accomplish basic tasks like renewing a passport, enrolling in Medicare or applying for disaster relief. The site, which launched with some basic functions ahead of a full rollout next year, is designed to serve as an AI-powered guide through the thicket of government agencies that Trump officials pledged would ultimately save people a whole lot of frustration. The administration's new initiative aims to allow Americans to access dozens of federal websites through a single point, making America.gov akin to a search tool that pulls information from across the government. And in the same way that people increasingly use AI models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini to compile information and provide customized answers, Trump officials claimed that America.gov would be able to do the same for people's interactions with the federal government. Enrolling in Medicare, for example, will become a matter of typing the request into the America.gov AI tool and following its step-by-step instructions. The same goes for applying to a government job -- the new tool will now let people upload their resume directly to the site -- or answering questions about federal benefits, publicly available documents or other necessities that fall under the federal government's vast umbrella. "Our vision is that one day, this type of convenience and simplicity will be across every government service," said Joseph Gebbia, who leads the government's National Design Studio. But the reality is that the most advanced actions won't be available until some point in 2027, raising questions about how long it will take for the administration to revamp the way the people interact with the government's websites. The current version of America.gov can only do "answers." U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia said the new chatbot is powered by Google's Gemini and Elon Musk's Grok. "We have great partners behind the scenes," Gebbia told CNBC's "Squawk Box" shortly before the site, America.gov, went live around 10 a.m. ET. "Google is proud to be named a technology partner in this vital initiative, leveraging Gemini to help more than 100 million people access critical public resources with greater speed and ease," the company said in a blog post. "By supporting the administration's vision for digital modernization, we are committed to making these everyday public services seamless, accessible, and responsive for all Americans."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Sep 2026 5:00pm GMT

Russia says it has a "promising, reusable manned transport spacecraft."

30 Sep 2026 4:48pm GMT

Many sites see just one-tenth of one percent of their advertising revenue from AI payments.

30 Sep 2026 4:03pm GMT

OpenTofu 1.13 adds official Windows ARM64 builds, new functions for reducing unknown values during planning, and early experimental linting.

30 Sep 2026 3:35pm GMT

Mozilla Thunderbird 157 rolls out with fixes for a 100% CPU usage bug, OpenPGP key handling, IMAP message saving, Gmail OAuth2, and CalDAV.

30 Sep 2026 1:50pm GMT

Qt 6.12 LTS arrives with five years of maintenance, built-in QML Hot Reload, GPU-accelerated CanvasPainter, and improved Qt Graphs.

30 Sep 2026 1:50pm GMT