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The FDA has approved the first mRNA flu vaccine in the United States after a clinical trial found it was about 27% more effective than a standard flu shot. Manufactured by Moderna and marketed as mFlusiva, the vaccine is expected to be available this fall for adults ages 50 to 64 and those 65 and older, though approval for the older group is conditional on Moderna conducting an additional clinical trial, NBC News reports. From the report: Many scientists and public health experts have touted the idea of an mRNA-based flu vaccine, which uses the same messenger RNA platform as the Covid vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer. That's because mRNA vaccines can be manufactured much faster than traditional vaccines, allowing scientists to better match circulating influenza strains. Moderna said it takes two to three months from picking the strain to rolling out its flu shot, compared with about six months for traditional flu shots.

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06 Aug 2026 11:00am GMT

The latest OpenVPN update patches two vulnerabilities, improves DCO key-state handling, and introduces several user-visible configuration changes.

06 Aug 2026 10:23am GMT

Two months after proposing the changes, several Rust teams have officially adopted a policy restricting AI-generated contributions.

06 Aug 2026 10:06am GMT

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06 Aug 2026 7:34am GMT

Longtime Slashdot readers schwit1 and fjo3 shared a report about BMW displaying a Spider-Man promotion on connected vehicle screens in more than 70 markets. According to reports, drivers had to play or dismiss the ad before they could use the infotainment system. Futurism reports: BMW, showing that it was about as in-touch as its drivers are familiar with turn signals, teased the promotion as a "special surprise." According to The Autopian's coverage and the heaps of complaints online, the ad appears on the center console screen when you start up the car. When the ad's done playing -- a cheap looking animation that doesn't come close to warranting all this hubbub -- it even has the gall to ask you to scan a QR code. While it does give you the option to play or skip the "festive animation," it's still an annoying extra step drivers have to take before pulling up the map they need or the music they want to listen to. It's also a breach of trust: drivers keep their cars connected so they receive critical software updates, not unexpectedly see ads when they're trying to hit the road. Few owners were pleased. Enthusiasts in the r/BMW subreddit had a veritable meltdown when someone posted footage of the ad playing on their infotainment system.

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06 Aug 2026 7:00am GMT

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06 Aug 2026 6:43am GMT

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06 Aug 2026 6:24am GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Scientists have captured images of the sun's surface in the finest detail yet, revealing a strange and dynamic facade. It's dangerous to look directly at the sun without proper eye protection. But researchers were able to peek at its scorching surface with the help of the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, located on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Scientists originally took the images for a different reason: to fine-tune and test the limits of the telescope. But when they looked at the results, they realized they'd photographed the sun's bright outer shell at higher resolution than ever before. What's more, they saw strange feathery patterns rippling across the surface. "That reminds me of famous paintings, like the swirling skies in Van Gogh's Starry Night," said solar physicist Ruizhu Chen with Stanford University, who was not involved with the new research. Researchers saw ripples of instability on the sun's surface caused by bits of magnetized plasma moving past each other at different speeds -- similar to waves that stir when a gust of wind blows over water. It's a well-known phenomenon that guides how fluids move. This has been glimpsed on Earth and other planets like Jupiter and Saturn, but "it has not been observed ever at that level on the solar surface," according to study co-author Friedrich Woger with the National Solar Observatory. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

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06 Aug 2026 3:30am GMT

GNOME 50.4 is now available with security improvements for GDM and GLib, along with fixes for GNOME Shell, Mutter, GVfs, and more.

05 Aug 2026 11:26pm GMT

Baseboard management controllers from the world's biggest manufacturers are a security mess.

05 Aug 2026 10:35pm GMT

Schwartz is well-qualified for the role, but crashed and burned in Senate hearing.

05 Aug 2026 9:03pm GMT

Anthropic and OpenAI models' unprompted actions forced halt to UK cyber tests.

05 Aug 2026 8:47pm GMT