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BleepingComputer reports: Microsoft says ongoing issues causing games to crash or fail to launch after installing the August 2026 Windows updates may be caused by peripherals with RGB lighting. As Microsoft explained when it confirmed it's investigating on Wednesday, this known issue affects games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tokon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals on systems running Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2... "[Peripherals or internal device components with RGB lighting features] may install drivers or code components with file names similar to inpoutx64. In systems where these drivers are found, the issue is then triggered by launching certain games," it noted. Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the article.

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23 Aug 2026 2:29am GMT

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23 Aug 2026 12:56am GMT

Wrongly discarded lithium batteries, such as those in vapes, are causing more than 10 fires a week at U.K. recycling centers, according to figures shared with the Guardian: The Environment Services Association (ESA), the trade body for waste management companies, said its members had reported 1,518 fires in the year to March 2026. At least 541 of these fires were directly attributed to lithium ion batteries, the survey found. There were a further 216 battery fires in bin lorries [garbage trucks]. The ESA said the reported number of battery-related fires underestimated the scale of the problem, because in most incidents it was impossible to determine the cause of the blaze. A spokesperson said: "We know 40% of fires at recycling centres are caused by batteries, but we think the actual number is more like 70%." It estimates that annual cost of these fires has increased from £150m in 2021 to £1bn today... The ESA is calling for a £5 deposit scheme on the sale of all vapes to ensure that vape users have an incentive to return used devices to retailers for safe disposal... [Patrick Brighty, the head of recycling policy at the ESA, said] "Vapes are among the biggest culprits because they're cheap, abundant and typically have a short use-life." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

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23 Aug 2026 12:29am GMT

"AI went from being very terrible to seemingly genuinely quite good at a professional level in a very short space of time..." says the Verge's AI reporter. But AI systems "are still truly, truly terrible at some areas of math... even the days of the week." If you look at academic math papers, a lot of the time you won't see numbers... So they're still terrible, but they're now also very good at this other part. As to why, at some point you reach a critical mass of what these systems can do. We saw it with writing, we've seen it with programming. They're very good at forging connections between different areas, applying old methods in new ways, those kinds of things. It appears that the newer models they're training have apparently reached that level where it clicks, and now it can do math... There are areas now where it seems to be producing work that is on par with good mathematicians, alongside other parts where yeah, it can't count. All caught up in that is whether it's going to rewrite employment structures or funding structures... One would hope [math researchers] would branch out into all of these new exciting areas or pose new questions. But AI won't do that, and that's the concern. And then that would leave the field quite sterile, and it will have all of these things that have been done, and maybe nothing left to pursue... [A] lot are scared that it's closing off the field. So by definition, those breakthroughs that lead to something surprising and new that you can say, "Oh, this works here," may not be happening anymore... There were some bleak responses from graduate students I saw in essays posted online. Where's their place in this as future researchers? Do they have a place in this? Is it as glorified AI proof checkers? That will be quite an unsatisfying career, I imagine. Or maybe not, I don't know. We will see. I think anything used properly will be a net boon. They also had an interesting response when asked if AI democratizes access to high-level mathematical proofs: A lot of the mathematicians I spoke to were almost quite weary of this, actually. They love the idea, in theory, of democratizing access. They're also quite fed up with AI-generated or -assisted papers that are flooding every publication imaginable, as well as the pre-print servers that they use in these fields. Some of those I spoke to said things like, "Oh, I got three emails this week alone with people being like, 'Hey, is this legit?'" Because they thought they'd solved something with ChatGPT or with Claude, and they also don't have the mathematical skills to check whether they've actually solved something. On the flip side, there are parts where they said, "Well, we've got a talented undergrad who's done something that a talented undergrad would probably have never managed, and here they are doing grad-level work and they've produced a paper that is legit." And in the bigger scheme of things, a few I spoke to said, "Well yeah, a lot of these are in the ivory tower. Having access to this kind of thing globally could really boost access to the kind of things here." On the flip side, the cost. These things cost a lot to run.

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22 Aug 2026 10:39pm GMT

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22 Aug 2026 10:14pm GMT

Godot 4.7.2 is now available with 57 fixes covering the editor, rendering, Wayland, multiplayer, input handling, and more.

22 Aug 2026 7:59pm GMT

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22 Aug 2026 7:07pm GMT

Hibernation cuts down on synapses, but mice seem to retain memories anyway.

22 Aug 2026 11:22am GMT

Lands free of roads are under threat from the Trump administration's proposed rollback.

22 Aug 2026 11:08am GMT

KDE developers continue shaping Plasma 6.8 with smarter automatic brightness, faster panels, improved lock screen authentication, and performance gains.

22 Aug 2026 10:49am GMT

OpenZFS 2.4.4 is out with Linux 7.2 compatibility, a new zhack mmp reclaim command, DDT fixes, and numerous reliability improvements.

22 Aug 2026 9:35am GMT

"We probably need another site that's capable of heavy and super heavy launch capability."

21 Aug 2026 11:32pm GMT