22 Jul 2026
Slashdot
The Army Is Burning Through Its AI Tokens
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A little over a month after the Department of Defense (DOD) bragged that nearly half of its 3.5 million employees were using AI at work, members of the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) received an email informing them that they were burning through tokens, and needed to limit use. "Although the Army CIO announced in May 2026 that they were offering unlimited tokens, by mid-June the Army CIO pool was exhausted of tokens and had to re-establish limits," the email reads. The email goes on to say that although the Army has chosen to renew token usage at "its current levels," it's unclear "if the Army CIO pool will be renewed after 1 Oct." The Army uses Ask Sage, a multimodal generative AI platform where users can run different large language models (LLMs), including Alphabet's Gemini, Meta's Llama, and OpenAI's ChatGPT. "Apparently the whole Army burned through the whole year of tokens for just one service," says an Army employee who spoke to WIRED [...]. The Army employee says that the Army has been pushing its workers to lean into using generative AI. Employees were given an allotment of at least 200,000 tokens per month, according to emails viewed by WIRED, and were automatically allocated more if they burned through their initial allotment. Employees who had signed up for Ask Sage but were not regularly using it would receive emails encouraging them to use more of their allocated tokens. In order to use Ask Sage, the Army had access to 100,000,000 tokens as part of an annual subscription to an "enterprise pack." Tokens represent a unit of output, either in text or image, from an LLM. For the Ask Sage tool, a single token equates to about 3.7 characters, according to documents viewed by WIRED. The Defense Department burned through some 20 billion tokens per day during the 38-day Operation Epic Fury in Iran, according to Breaking Defense. It's unclear if the tokens used by regular DOD employees are drawn from the same pool as those who might be using AI tools on classified or secret information.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
22 Jul 2026 7:00pm GMT
Linuxiac
COSMIC Desktop 1.4 Improves System Monitor with App Controls and GPU Stats

COSMIC Desktop 1.4 adds quit and force-quit controls to System Monitor, alongside switchable CPU/GPU graphs and GPU frequency monitoring.
22 Jul 2026 6:41pm GMT
Slashdot
Microsoft Announces Xbox Backward Compatibility For PC
Microsoft has announced Xbox Backward Compatibility for PC, a new preservation program that will let players run select classic Xbox games on Windows PCs and handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally. Tom's Hardware reports: "This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve XBOX games from the past and bring them to PC over time," the company said in a blog post authored by Xbox "VP next generation" Jason Ronald. Alongside backward compatibility, the company says games will also include new features. The four titles in the announcement are: BLiNX: The Time Sweeper; Conker: Live and Reloaded; Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge; and Fuzion Frenzy. You can now buy all of these games on PC, and they're also included in all Xbox Game Pass plans. Anyone who already owns these titles digitally on console can also now play them on PC or handheld, with support for Xbox Play Anywhere and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Crucially, this appears to be a digital-only preservation effort, so it won't help anyone who only owns physical copies of these games. Xbox has reportedly been testing a way to digitize physical games as far back as Xbox One, but that hasn't yet materialized yet. Alongside the preserved original gameplay, Xbox claims these games will let users customize graphics settings, with up to 4x resolution scaling, VSync support, Fullscreen and Windowed modes, anisotropic filtering, and enhanced anti-aliasing, with more features to come in the future. Notably, Xbox will add achievements to select original Xbox games on console and PC.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
22 Jul 2026 6:00pm GMT
Hacker News
Everyone Should Know SIMD
22 Jul 2026 5:48pm GMT
Terrence Tao's ChatGPT Conversation about the Jacobian Conjecture Counterexample
22 Jul 2026 5:30pm GMT
GigaToken: ~1000x faster Language model tokenization
22 Jul 2026 5:20pm GMT
Slashdot
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Announced to Compete With Future iPhone Fold
At a Galaxy Unpacked event in London today, Samsung unveiled a new foldable smartphone designed to compete with the still-unannounced iPhone Fold. Called the Galaxy Z Fold 8, it features a wider 4:3 form factor with a 7.6-inch inner AMOLED display, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. "The inner display has enough extra real estate for multi-tasking and entertainment," reports Mashable, which got a chance to try the new foldable ahead of the event. "And if you're worried about a crease in the middle of the display, don't be. We got up close with the device, and the crease fully disappears when the display is activated." From the report: As stated above, the main distinguishing factor of the new Z Fold 8 is its wider 4:3 proportions compared to the Z Fold 8 Ultra. If the latter is a book-style foldable, the former can almost be called a tablet-style foldable, instead. We think the wide screen will serve even better for reading books or multi-tasking with several apps open at once. Also, at 201g, Samsung is really emphasizing how light the device is. The company is calling it the "world's lightest fold ever." And while the device may be light, its no lightweight. Samsung's newest foldable features Flex Titanium technology, which makes the Galaxy Z Fold 8 more durable. Speaking of durability, it also boasts Samsung's advantage hinge technology, Armor Flexhinge. The Z Fold 8 feels like a solid middle point between the premium Z Fold 8 Ultra and the comparatively affordable Z Flip 8. All three phones use the same chip, but the Z Fold 8's 4,800mAh battery is smaller than that of the Z Fold 8 Ultra. However, the Z Fold 8 does have an option for 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage, similar to the Ultra.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
22 Jul 2026 5:00pm GMT
Linuxiac
Raspberry Pi Launches New 10-Inch Touch Display 2 for $80

Raspberry Pi's new 10-inch Touch Display 2 offers a 1200×1920 resolution, ten-finger touch support, and native Raspberry Pi OS integration.
22 Jul 2026 1:24pm GMT
Steam July Client Update Brings Remote Play and Linux Fixes

Valve's latest stable Steam Client update adds a 59.94 FPS option for Remote Play while fixing crashes, streaming problems, and controller issues.
22 Jul 2026 7:27am GMT
21 Jul 2026
Ars Technica
Range Rover answers the question: "What if we built a not-SUV?"
The Range Rover GT will debut as an EV with a hybrid version to follow.
21 Jul 2026 11:01pm GMT
On the run for 20 years, most-wanted fugitive caught hiding as a biotech exec
Ronald Fischer, aka Richard Graydon, was arrested in New York last week.
21 Jul 2026 10:04pm GMT
Sony releases one last trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day
"Maybe that's my responsibility, to live alone with the truth."
21 Jul 2026 7:50pm GMT