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10 Nov 2025 2:12pm GMT

Visa and Mastercard are nearing a settlement with merchants that aims to end a 20-year-old legal dispute by lowering fees stores pay and giving them more power to reject certain credit cards, WSJ reports, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Under terms being discussed, Visa and Mastercard would lower credit-card interchange fees, which are often between 2% and 2.5%, by an average of around 0.1 percentage point over several years, the people said. They would also loosen rules that require merchants that accept one of a network's credit cards to accept all of them. A deal could be announced soon, the people said, and would require court approval to take effect. If an agreement is finalized, consumers could see big changes at the register. Merchants that accept one kind of Visa credit card wouldn't have to accept all Visa credit cards, for example. Under the current talks, credit-card acceptance would be divided into several categories including rewards credit cards, credit cards with no rewards programs, and commercial cards, the people familiar with the matter said. Some stores might turn away rewards cards, which charge them higher fees and in recent years have become very popular with consumers. But stores that reject those cards would face the risk of declining sales.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Nov 2025 2:00pm GMT

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10 Nov 2025 1:40pm GMT

Firefox 145 open-source web browser lets users add notes to PDFs, preview tab groups, and use local, private Semantic History Search.

10 Nov 2025 12:57pm GMT

Should we leave space exploration to robots - or prioritize human spaceflight, making us a multiplanetary species? Harvard professor Robin Wordsworth, who's researched the evolution and habitability of terrestrial-type planets, shares his thoughts: In space, as on Earth, industrial structures degrade with time, and a truly sustainable life support system must have the capability to rebuild and recycle them. We've only partially solved this problem on Earth, which is why industrial civilization is currently causing serious environmental damage. There are no inherent physical limitations to life in the solar system beyond Earth - both elemental building blocks and energy from the sun are abundant - but technological society, which developed as an outgrowth of the biosphere, cannot yet exist independently of it. The challenge of building and maintaining robust life-support systems for humans beyond Earth is a key reason why a machine-dominated approach to space exploration is so appealing... However, it's notable that machines in space have not yet accomplished a basic task that biology performs continuously on Earth: acquiring raw materials and utilizing them for self-repair and growth. To many, this critical distinction is what separates living from non-living systems... The most advanced designs for self-assembling robots today begin with small subcomponents that must be manufactured separately beforehand. Overall, industrial technology remains Earth-centric in many important ways. Supply chains for electronic components are long and complex, and many raw materials are hard to source off-world... If we view the future expansion of life into space in a similar way as the emergence of complex life on land in the Paleozoic era, we can predict that new forms will emerge, shaped by their changed environment, while many historical characteristics will be preserved. For machine technology in the near term, evolution in a more life-like direction seems likely, with greater focus on regenerative parts and recycling, as well as increasingly sophisticated self-assembly capabilities. The inherent cost of transporting material out of Earth's gravity well will provide a particularly strong incentive for this to happen. If building space habitats is hard and machine technology is gradually developing more life-like capabilities, does this mean we humans might as well remain Earth-bound forever? This feels hard to accept because exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit... To me, the eventual extension of the entire biosphere beyond Earth, rather than either just robots or humans surrounded by mechanical life-support systems, seems like the most interesting and inspiring future possibility. Initially, this could take the form of enclosed habitats capable of supporting closed-loop ecosystems, on the moon, Mars or water-rich asteroids, in the mold of Biosphere 2. Habitats would be manufactured industrially or grown organically from locally available materials. Over time, technological advances and adaptation, whether natural or guided, would allow the spread of life to an increasingly wide range of locations in the solar system. The article ponders the benefits (and the history) of both approaches - with some fasincating insights along the way. "If genuine alien life is out there somewhere, we'll have a much better chance of comprehending it once we have direct experience of sustaining life beyond our home planet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Nov 2025 12:34pm GMT

"He inevitably will have to make tough calls."

10 Nov 2025 12:00pm GMT

Apache NetBeans 28 cross-platform IDE improves Gradle 9 support, refines Maven UI handling, and expands JUnit integration.

10 Nov 2025 11:46am GMT

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10 Nov 2025 11:21am GMT

Fish Shell 4.2 enhances history-based autosuggestions, defaults to UTF-8 encoding, clears transient prompts correctly, and more.

10 Nov 2025 11:00am GMT

"Quantum computing is still years away, but Nvidia just built the bridge that will bring it closer..." argues investment site The Motley Fool, "by linking today's fastest AI GPUs with early quantum processors..." NVIDIA's new hybrid system strengthens communication at microsecond speeds - orders of magnitude faster than before - "allowing AI to stabilize and train quantum machines in real time, potentially pulling major breakthroughs years forward." CUDA-Q, Nvidia's open-source software layer, lets researchers choreograph that link - running AI models, quantum algorithms, and error-correction routines together as one system. That jump allows artificial intelligence to monitor [in real time]... For researchers, that means hundreds of new iterations where there used to be one - a genuine acceleration of discovery. It's the quiet kind of progress engineers love - invisible, but indispensable... Its GPUs (graphics processing units) are already tuned for the dense, parallel calculations these explorations demand, making them the natural partner for any emerging quantum processor... Other companies chase better quantum hardware - superconducting, photonic, trapped-ion - but all of them need reliable coordination with the computing power we already have. By offering that link, Nvidia turns its GPU ecosystem into the operating environment of hybrid computing, the connective tissue between what exists now and what's coming next. And because the system is open, every new lab or start-up that connects strengthens Nvidia's position as the default hub for quantum experimentation... There's also a defensive wisdom in this move. If quantum computing ever matures, it could threaten the same data center model that built Nvidia's empire. CEO Jensen Huang seems intent on making sure that, if the future shifts, Nvidia already sits at its center. By owning the bridge between today's technology and tomorrow's, the company ensures it earns relevance - and revenue - no matter which computing model dominates. So Nvidia's move "isn't about building a quantum computer," the article argues, "it's about owning the bridge every quantum effort will need."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Nov 2025 9:30am GMT

Blue Origin is getting ready to launch its second New Glenn rocket.

09 Nov 2025 3:34pm GMT

"We have some ideas that we think could accelerate the path to the Moon."

08 Nov 2025 9:27pm GMT