One psychiatrist has already treated 12 patients hospitalized with AI-induced psychosis — and three more in an outpatient clinic, according to the Wall Street Journal. And while AI technology might not introduce the delusion, "the person tells the computer it's their reality and the computer accepts it as truth and reflects it back," says Keith Sakata, a psychiatrist at the University of California, calling the AI chatbots "complicit in cycling that delusion."

The Journal says top psychiatrists now "increasingly agree that using artificial-intelligence chatbots might be linked to cases of psychosis," and in the past nine months "have seen or reviewed the files of dozens of patients who exhibited symptoms following prolonged, delusion-filled conversations with the AI tools..." Since the spring, dozens of potential cases have emerged of people suffering from delusional psychosis after engaging in lengthy AI conversations with OpenAI's ChatGPT and other chatbots. Several people have died by suicide and there has been at least one murder. These incidents have led to a series of wrongful death lawsuits. As The Wall Street Journal has covered these tragedies, doctors and academics have been working on documenting and understanding the phenomenon that led to them...

While most people who use chatbots don't develop mental-health problems, such widespread use of these AI companions is enough to have doctors concerned.... It's hard to quantify how many chatbot users experience such psychosis. OpenAI said that, in a given week, the slice of users who indicate possible signs of mental-health emergencies related to psychosis or mania is a minuscule 0.07%. Yet with more than 800 million active weekly users, that amounts to 560,000 people...

Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, said in a recent podcast he can see ways that seeking companionship from an AI chatbot could go wrong, but that the company plans to give adults leeway to decide for themselves. "Society will over time figure out how to think about where people should set that dial," he said.
An OpenAI spokeswoman told the Journal that the compan ycontinues improving ChatGPT's training "to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations and guide people toward real-world support." They added that OpenAI is also continuing to "strengthen" ChatGPT's responses "in sensitive moments, working closely with mental-health clinicians...."

Yes, greenhouse gas emissions kept rising in 2025, writes Bloomberg (alternate URL here). And the pledges of various governments to lower greenhouse gases "are nowhere near where they need to be to avoid catastrophic climate change..."

But in 2025, "there were silver linings too." The world is decarbonizing faster than was expected 10 years ago and investment into the clean energy transition, including everything from wind and solar to batteries and grids, is expected to have reached a new record of $2.2 trillion globally in 2025, according to research by the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, a London nonprofit. "Is this enough to keep us safe? No it clearly isn't," said Gareth Redmond-King, international lead at the ECIU. "Is it remarkable progress compared to where we were headed? Clearly it is...." Global investment in clean tech far outpaced what went into polluting industries. For every $1 funding fossil fuel projects, $2 went into clean power, according to the ECIU. For China, the EU, the U.S. and India, the four largest polluters, it was $2.60.

Funds flowing into renewable power set another record in the first half of this year and were up 10% compared to the same period in 2024, to $386 billion, according to the latest available research by BloombergNEF. Solar and wind grew fast enough to meet all new electricity demand globally in the first three quarters of 2025, according to UK-based energy think tank Ember. That means renewable capacity is set to hit a new record globally this year, with Ember forecasting an 11% increase from 2024. Over the last three years, renewable capacity grew by nearly 30% on average. That puts the world within reach of the goal set at COP 28 in Dubai in 2023 to triple clean power by 2030. China is leading the charge, with the world's largest polluter expected to have delivered 66% of new solar capacity, and 69% of new wind globally this year, according to Ember. Renewables also advanced in parts of Asia, Europe and South America.

The explosive power demand from artificial intelligence is also turning the tide on green technology investment, which had soured in recent years. For the first three quarters of this year, global clean tech investment, which was dominated by funding in next-generation nuclear reactors, renewables and other solutions that help power data centers, has already surpassed all of 2024. That marks the sector's first annual increase since the 2022 peak. And despite President Trump's rollback of climate policies, the S&P's main gauge tracking clean energy is up about 50% this year, outperforming most other stock indexes and even gold. That same enthusiasm has also helped channel more capital into developing and upgrading the power grid, a backbone of the global energy transition.
The article also notes that prices per kilowatt-hour of battery capacity "fell by 8% to a record $108 this year and they're expected to decline a further 3% next year, according to BloombergNEF."

And this year the International Court of Justice "determined that countries risk being in violation of international law if they don't work toward keeping global warming to the 1.5C threshold agreed on at the Paris climate conference in 2015."

Regardless of who ends up owning Warners Bros., "the outlook for theatrical movies is dimming," writes a Wall Street Journal tech columnist, noting that this year's U.S. box office of $8.3 billion (as of December 25) "is a bit below last year's and well below prepandemic levels of around $11 billion." Warner has historically been one of Hollywood's largest producers of theatrical films, averaging about 22 releases annually in the pre-Covid years of 2015 to 2019, according to data from Comscore. Its franchises include "Harry Potter," the DC Comics characters and "Lord of the Rings." But the current bidding war between Netflix and Paramount Skydance means Warner's future will ultimately be in the hands of either a streaming giant with a longstanding distaste for movie theaters, or a rival studio that will carry a sky-high debt load and therefore a need to sharply cut costs... [Though later the article cites a Wedbush analyst's observation that the current theatrical slate has already been negotiated through 2029, "so any buyer would have to honor those contracts" with theatrical releases for Warner films "for at least the next four years."]

Investors seem deeply skeptical. Cinemark shares have shed about 18% of their value over the past month, while rival exhibitor AMC Entertainment is down more than 30%. Morgan Stanley recently downgraded Cinemark to a neutral rating, with analyst Ben Swinburne noting that concern over Netflix's commitment to theatrical distribution and release windows "is likely to cap the multiple" on Cinemark's stock.... [T]ime hasn't been on the side of movie theaters for a while now, and a takeover of Warner Bros. won't turn back that clock.

Artist Keith Thomson is a modern (and whimsical) Edward Hopper. And Apple TV says he created the "festive artwork" shared on X by Apple CEO Tim Cook on Christmas Eve, "made on MacBook Pro."

Its intentionally-off picture of milk and cookies was meant to tease the season finale of Pluribus. ("Merry Christmas Eve, Carol..." Cook had posted.)

But others were convinced that the weird image was AI-generated.

Tech blogger John Gruber was blunt. "Tim Cook posts AI Slop in Christmas message on Twitter/X, ostensibly to promote 'Pluribus'." As for sloppy details, the carton is labeled both "Whole Milk" and "Lowfat Milk", and the "Cow Fun Puzzle" maze is just goofily wrong. (I can't recall ever seeing a puzzle of any kind on a milk carton, because they're waxy and hard to write on. It's like a conflation of milk cartons and cereal boxes.)
Tech author Ben Kamens — who just days earlier had blogged about generating mazes with AI — said the image showed the "specific quirks" of generative AI mazes (including the way the maze couldn't be solved, expect by going around the maze altogether). Former Google Ventures partner M.G. Siegler even wondered if AI use intentionally echoed the themes of Pluribus — e.g., the creepiness of a collective intelligence — since otherwise "this seems far too obvious to be a mistake/blunder on Apple's part." (Someone on Reddit pointed out that in Pluribus's dystopian world, milk plays a key role — and the open spout of the "natural" milk's carton does touch a suspiciously-shining light on the Christmas tree...)

Slashdot contacted artist Keith Thomson to try to ascertain what happened...

Waymo explained this week that its self-driving car technology is already "designed to handle dark traffic signals," and successfully handled over 7,000 last Saturday during San Francisco's long power outage, properly treating those intersections as four-way stops. But while during the long outage their cars sometimes experienced a "backlog" when waiting for confirmation checks (leading them to freeze in intersections), Waymo said Tuesday they're implementing "fleet-wide updates" to provide their self-driving cars "specific power outage context, allowing it to navigate more decisively."

Ironically, two days later Waymo paused their service again in San Francisco. But this time it was due to a warning from the National Weather Service about a powerful storm bringing the possibility of flash flooding and power outages, reports CNBC. They add that Waymo "didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, or say whether regulators required its service pause on Thursday given the flash flood warnings." And they also note Waymo still faces criticism over last Saturday's incident: The former CEO of San Francisco's Municipal Transit Authority, Jeffrey Tumlin, told CNBC that regulators and robotaxi companies can take valuable lessons away from the chaos that arose with Waymo vehicles during the PG&E power outages last week. "I think we need to be asking 'what is a reasonable number of [autonomous vehicles] to have on city streets, by time of day, by geography and weather?'" Tumlin said. He also suggested regulators may want to set up a staged system that will allow autonomous vehicle companies to rapidly scale their operations, provided they meet specific tests. One of those tests, he said, would be how quickly a company can get their autonomous vehicles safely out of the way of traffic if they encounter something that is confusing like a four-way intersection with no functioning traffic lights.

Cities and regulators should also seek more data from robotaxi companies about the planned or actual performance of their vehicles during expected emergencies such as blackouts, floods or earthquakes, Tumlin said.

Apple's Developer Academy in Detroit has spent roughly $30 million over four years training hundreds of people to build iPhone apps, but not everyone lands coding jobs right away, according to a WIRED story published this week.

The program launched in 2021 as part of Apple's $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and costs an estimated $20,000 per student -- nearly twice what state and local governments budget for community colleges. About 600 students have completed the 10-month course at Michigan State University. Academy officials say 71% of graduates from the past two years found full-time jobs across various industries.

The program provides iPhones, MacBooks and stipends ranging from $800 to $1,500 per month, though one former student said many participants relied on food stamps. Apple contributed $11.6 million to the academy. Michigan taxpayers and the university's regular students covered about $8.6 million -- nearly 30% of total funding. Two graduates said their lack of proficiency in Android hurt their job prospects. Apple's own US tech workforce went from 6% Black before the academy opened to about 3% this year.

Waymo's fleet of autonomous robotaxis can navigate city streets and compete with human taxi drivers, but they become stranded when a passenger leaves a door ajar -- prompting the company to pay tow truck operators around $20 to $24 through an app called Honk just to push a door shut. The owner of a towing company in Inglewood, California, completes up to three such jobs a week for Waymo, sometimes freeing vehicles by removing seat belts caught in doors. Another Los Angeles tow operator said locating stuck robotaxis can take 10 minutes to an hour because the precise location isn't always provided, forcing workers to search on foot through narrow streets too narrow for flatbed rigs.

Tow operators also retrieve Waymos that run out of battery before reaching charging stations, earning $60 to $80 per tow -- rates that aren't always profitable after factoring in fuel and labor. During a San Francisco power outage last weekend, multiple operators received a flurry of retrieval requests as robotaxis blocked intersections across the city. One San Francisco tow company manager declined because Waymo's offered rate fell below his standard $250 flatbed fee.

Waymo said in a blog post that the outage caused a "backlog" in requests to remote human workers who help vehicles navigate defunct traffic signals. San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood called for a hearing into Waymo's operations, saying the traffic disruptions were "dangerous and unacceptable." A retired Carnegie Mellon engineering professor who studied autonomous vehicles for nearly 30 years said paying humans to close doors and retrieve stalled cars is expensive and will need to be minimized as Waymo scales up. The company is testing next-generation Zeekr vehicles in San Francisco that feature automatic sliding doors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: It's harder than ever to mine bitcoin. And less profitable, too. But mining-company stocks are still flying, even with cryptocurrency prices in retreat. That's because these firms have something in common with the hottest investment theme on the planet: the massive, electricity-hungry data centers expected to power the artificial-intelligence boom. Some companies are figuring out how to remake themselves as vital suppliers to Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and other "hyperscalers" bent on AI dominance.

Bitcoin-mining -- using vast computer power to solve equations to unlock the digital currency -- has been a lucrative and cutting-edge pursuit in its own right. Lately, however, increased competition and other challenges have eroded profit margins. But just as the bitcoin-mining business began to cool, the AI build-out turned white hot. The AI arms race has created an insatiable demand for some assets the miners already have: data centers, cooling systems, land and hard-to-obtain contracts for electrical power -- all of which can be repurposed to train and power AI models.

It's not a seamless process. Miners often have to build new, specialized facilities, because running AI requires more-advanced cooling and network systems, as well as replacing bitcoin-mining computers with AI-focused graphics processing units. But signing deals with miners allows AI giants to expand faster and cheaper than starting new facilities from scratch. These companies still mine some bitcoin, but the transition gives miners a new source of deep-pocketed customers willing to commit to longer-term leases for their data centers.

"The opportunity for miners to convert to AI is one of the greatest opportunities I could possibly imagine," said Adam Sullivan, chief executive of Core Scientific, which has pivoted to AI data centers. The shift has boosted miners' stocks. The CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF has surged about 90% this year, a rally that has accelerated even as bitcoin erased its gains for 2025. The ETF holds shares of miners including Cipher Mining and IREN, both of which have surged following long-term deals with companies such as Amazon and Microsoft. Shares of Core Scientific quadrupled in 2024 after the company signed its first AI contract that February. The stock has gained 10% this year. The company now expects to exit bitcoin mining entirely by 2028.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Two years ago, Lizmary Fernandez took a detour from studying to be an immigration attorney to join a free Apple course for making iPhone apps. The Apple Developer Academy in Detroit launched as part of the company's $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and aims to expand opportunities for people of color in the country's poorest big city. But Fernandez found the program's cost-of-living stipend lacking -- "A lot of us got on food stamps," she says -- and the coursework insufficient for landing a coding job. "I didn't have the experience or portfolio," says the 25-year-old, who is now a flight attendant and preparing to apply to law school. "Coding is not something I got back to."

Since 2021, the academy has welcomed over 1,700 students, a racially diverse mix with varying levels of tech literacy and financial flexibility. About 600 students, including Fernandez, have completed its 10-month course of half-days at Michigan State University, which cosponsors the Apple-branded and Apple-focused program. WIRED reviewed contracts and budgets and spoke with officials and graduates for the first in-depth examination of the nearly $30 million invested in the academy over the past four years -- almost 30 percent of which came from Michigan taxpayers and the university's regular students. As tech giants begin pouring billions of dollars into AI-related job training courses across the country, the Apple academy offers lessons on the challenges of uplifting diverse communities.

[...] The program gives out iPhones and MacBooks and spends an estimated $20,000 per student, nearly twice as much as state and local governments budget for community colleges. [...] About 70 percent of students graduate, which [Sarah Gretter, the academy leader for Michigan State] describes as higher than typical for adult education. She says the goal is for them to take "a next step," whether a job or more courses. Roughly a third of participants are under 25, and virtually all of them pursue further schooling. [...] About 71 percent of graduates from the last two years went onto full-time jobs across a variety of industries, according to academy officials. Amy J. Ko, a University of Washington computer scientist who researches computing education, calls under 80 percent typical for the coding schools she has studied but notes that one of her department's own undergraduate programs has a 95 percent job placement rate.

Adult children across the United States are increasingly reporting that their aging parents have developed what looks remarkably like the smartphone addiction [non-paywalled source] typically associated with teenagers, a phenomenon The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel has dubbed "phone-based retirement." A 2019 Pew Research Center study found people 60 and older spend more than half their daily leisure time -- four hours and 16 minutes -- in front of screens. Nielsen reported this year that adults 65 and up watch YouTube on their TVs nearly twice as much as they did two years ago. 40% of adults aged 59 to 77 reported feeling anxious without device access in a 2,000-person survey.

Ipsit Vahia, chief of geriatric psychiatry at Mass General Brigham's McLean Hospital, cautioned against treating all older adults as a monolithic group. The COVID-19 pandemic drove significant tech adoption among seniors as Zoom became essential for family gatherings, church services, and telehealth. Some research suggests device use may be linked to better cognitive function for people over 50, and Vahia noted that technology use in older adults appears to protect them from isolation and loneliness -- the opposite of its effect on teenagers.

Amazon finds itself caught between two competing impulses as AI shopping agents from OpenAI, Google, Perplexity and Microsoft mushroom across the e-commerce space -- block them to protect its dominant position, or partner with them to avoid being left behind. The company has largely played defense so far. Amazon recently updated its website code to block external AI agents from crawling it, and as of this week had blocked 47 bots including those from all major AI companies. In November, Amazon sued Perplexity over an agent in the startup's Comet browser that can make purchases on users' behalf, alleging the company concealed its agents to continue scraping Amazon's site. But Amazon's stance appears to be shifting, CNBC reports.

CEO Andy Jassy said on an October earnings call that Amazon expects to partner with third-party agents and has engaged in conversations with some providers. The company is now hiring a corporate development leader to forge strategic partnerships in "agentic commerce." Amazon is also investing in its own tools. The company launched shopping chatbot Rufus last February and has been testing an agent called Buy For Me that can purchase products from other sites within Amazon's app.

European leaders including Emmanuel Macron have accused Washington of "coercion and intimidation," after the US imposed a visa ban on five prominent European figures who have been at heart of the campaign to introduce laws regulating American tech companies. From a report: The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc's Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK.

The other individuals targeted were Imran Ahmed, the British chief executive of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate; Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of the German non-profit HateAid; and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index. Justifying the visa bans, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, wrote on X: "For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organised efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship."

Macron condemned the visa ban in furious terms. "These measures amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty," he wrote, also on X. "The European Union's digital regulations were adopted following a democratic and sovereign process by the European Parliament and the Council. They apply within Europe to ensure fair competition among platforms, without targeting any third country, and to ensure that what is illegal offline is also illegal online. The rules governing the European Union's digital space are not meant to be determined outside Europe."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure U.S. tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints. The Europeans, characterized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as "radical" activists and "weaponized" nongovernmental organizations, fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May to restrict the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States. "For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose," Rubio posted on X. "The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship."

The five Europeans were identified by Sarah Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, in a series of posts on social media. [...] The five Europeans named by Rogers are: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index; and former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who was responsible for digital affairs. Rogers in her post on X called Breton, a French business executive and former finance minister, the "mastermind" behind the EU's Digital Services Act, which imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep internet users safe online. This includes flagging harmful or illegal content like hate speech. She referred to Breton warning Musk of a possible "amplification of harmful content" by broadcasting his livestream interview with Trump in August 2024 when he was running for president.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: CBS cannot contain the online spread of a "60 Minutes" segment that its editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, tried to block from airing. The episode, "Inside CECOT," featured testimonies from US deportees who were tortured or suffered physical or sexual abuse at a notorious Salvadoran prison, the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism. "Welcome to hell," one former inmate was told upon arriving, the segment reported, while also highlighting a clip of Donald Trump praising CECOT and its leadership for "great facilities, very strong facilities, and they don't play games."

Weiss controversially pulled the segment on Monday, claiming it could not air in the US because it lacked critical voices, as no Trump officials were interviewed. She claimed that the segment "did not advance the ball" and merely echoed others' reporting, NBC News reported. Her plan was to air the segment when it was "ready," insisting that holding stories "for whatever reason" happens "every day in every newsroom." But Weiss apparently did not realize that the "Inside CECOT" would still stream in Canada, giving the public a chance to view the segment as reporters had intended.

Critics accusing CBS of censoring the story quickly shared the segment online Monday after discovering that it was available on the Global TV app. Using a VPN to connect to the app with a Canadian IP address was all it took to override Weiss' block in the US, as 404 Media reported the segment was uploaded to "to a variety of file sharing sites and services, including iCloud, Mega, and as a torrent," including on the recently revived file-sharing service LimeWire. It's currently also available to stream on the Internet Archive, where one reviewer largely summed up the public's response so far, writing, "cannot believe this was pulled, not a dang thing wrong with this segment except it shows truth." "Yo what," joked Reddit user Howzitgoin, highlighting only the word "LimeWire." Another user responded, "man, who knew my nostalgia prof pic would become relevant again, WTF."

"Bringing back LimeWire to illegally rip copies of reporting suppressed by the government is definitely some cyberpunk shit," a Bluesky user wrote.

"We need a champion against the darkness," a Reddit commenter echoed. "I side with LimeWire."

Tech giants Google and Apple are asking some employees with H-1B visas to reconsider international travel, as their legal teams warned that visa processing delays could keep employees abroad for months, according to Business Insider. From a report: Law firms representing the tech giants sent memos advising staff who require visa stamps for reentry to stay in the U.S., warning that international travel could entangle them in visa screening delays following the introduction of a new social media screening requirement, according to the news agency. The policy subjects H-1B workers and their dependents to reviews of their social media histories.

"Please be aware that some US Embassies and Consulates are experiencing significant visa stamping appointment delays, currently reported as up to 12 months," BAL Immigration Law, which represents Google, said in a memo obtained by Business Insider. The law firm said the delays were affecting H-1B, H-4, F, J and M visas.

China has unveiled new rules to rein in aggressive pricing tactics by online platforms, prohibiting e-commerce operators from forcing merchants to offer discounts or setting different prices based on user demographics without consent. The 29-article regulation -- jointly issued over the weekend by the National Development and Reform Commission, State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), and Cyberspace Administration of China -- lays out detailed compliance requirements that target several long-standing pain points as competition among internet giants has often eroded the rights of both consumers and merchants.

To restore merchant autonomy on pricing, the rules ban platform operators from leveraging their dominant scale to impose "lowest price" agreements. Platforms are prohibited from using traffic throttling, search ranking demotions, or algorithm penalties to pressure merchants into predatory price-cutting or exclusive pricing arrangements.

Uber and Lyft plan to trial robotaxis in London starting in 2026 using autonomous vehicles from Baidu, as the UK fast-tracks approvals for self-driving cars on public roads. CNBC reports: Lyft's testing of Baidu's initial fleet of dozens of vehicles will begin in 2026, pending regulatory approval, "with plans to scale to hundreds from there," Lyft CEO David Risher said in a post on social media platform X on Monday. Meanwhile, Uber said that its first pilot is expected to start in the first half of 2026. "We're excited to accelerate Britain's leadership in the future of mobility, bringing another safe and reliable travel option to Londoners next year," the company added.

The moves add to Baidu's growing global footprint, which it says includes 22 cities and more than 250,000 weekly trips, as it races against other Chinese players like WeRide and Western giants like Alphabet's Waymo. The UK, in particular, has seen a wave of interest from driverless taxi companies, following the government's announcement in June that it would accelerate its plans to allow autonomous vehicle tech on public roads. The government now aims to begin permitting robotaxis to operate in small-scale pilots starting in spring 2026, with Baidu likely aiming to be among the first. The city of London has also established a "Vision Zero" goal to eliminate all serious injuries and deaths in its transportation systems by 2041, with autonomous driving technology expected to play a large role.

The FCC has banned approval of new foreign-made drones and components, citing "an unacceptable risk" to national security. The move will most heavily impact DJI but it "does not affect drones or drone components that are currently sold in the United States." Reuters reports: The tech was placed on the commission's "Covered List," barring DJI and other foreign drone manufacturers from receiving the FCC's approval to sell new drone models for import or sale in the U.S. In Monday's announcement, the agency said that the move "will reduce the risk of direct [drone] attacks and disruptions, unauthorized surveillance, sensitive data exfiltration and other [drone] threats to the homeland."

FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement that while drones offer the potential to boost public safety and the U.S.' posture on global innovation, "criminals, terrorists and hostile foreign actors have intensified their weaponization of these technologies, creating new and serious threats to our homeland."

The ruling comes as China hawks in Congress amplify warnings about the security risks of drones made by DJI, which accounts for more than 90% of the global market share. But efforts to crack down on Capitol Hill have been met with some pushback due to the potential impacts of curbing the drone usage on U.S. businesses and law enforcement. A wide variety of sectors, including construction, energy, agriculture and mining companies, as well as local police and fire departments across the country, deploy DJI-made drones.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland wonders if "gifts for geeks" is the next big consumer demographic: For this year's holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game "Oregon Trail." ("Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West....") Top sites and major brands are now targeting the "tech" demographic — including programmers, sysadmins and even vintage game enthusiasts — and when Hallmark and Amazon are chasing the same customers as GitHub and Copilot, you know there's been a strange yet meaningful shift in the culture...

While AI was conquering the world, GitHub published its "Ultimate gift guide for the developer in your life" just as soon as doors opened on Black Friday. So if you're wondering, "Should I push to production on New Year's Eve?" GitHub recommends their new "GitHub Copilot Amazeball," which it describes as "GitHub's magical collectible ready to weigh in on your toughest calls !" Copilot isn't involved — questions are randomly matched to the answers printed on the side of a triangle-shaped die floating in water. "[Y]ou'll get answers straight from the repo of destiny with a simple shake," GitHub promises — just like the Magic 8 Ball of yore. "Get your hands on this must-have collectible and enjoy the cosmic guidance — no real context switching required!" And GitHub's "Gift Guide for Developers" also suggests GitHub-branded ugly holiday socks and keyboard keycaps with GitHub's mascots.

But GitHub isn't the only major tech site with a shopping page targeting the geek demographic. Firefox is selling merchandise with its new mascot. Even the Free Software Foundation has its own shop, with Emacs T-shirts, GNU beanies and a stuffed baby gnu ("One of our most sought-after items ... "). Plus an FSF-branded antisurveillance webcam guard.

Maybe Dr. Seuss can write a new book: "How the Geeks Stole Christmas." Because this newfound interest in the geek demographic seems to have spread to the largest sites of all. Google searches on "Gifts for Programmers" now point to a special page on Amazon with suggestions like Linux crossword puzzles. But what coder could resist a book called " Cooking for Programmers? "Each recipe is written as source code in a different programming language," explains the book's description... The book is filled with colorful recipes — thanks to syntax highlighting, which turns the letters red, blue and green. There are also real cooking instructions, but presented as an array of strings, with both ingredients and instructions ultimately logged as messages to the console...

Some programmers might prefer their shirts from FreeWear.org, which donates part of the proceeds from every sale to its corresponding FOSS project or organization. (There are T-shirts for Linux, Gnome and the C programming language — and even one making a joke about how hard it is to exit Vim.)

But maybe it all proves that there's something for everybody. That's the real heartwarming message behind these extra-geeky Christmas gifts — that in the end, tech is, after all, still a community, with its own hallowed traditions and shared celebrations.

It's just that instead of singing Christmas carols, we make jokes about Vim.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Last September, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org pledged to engage 25 million K-12 schoolchildren in an "Hour of AI" this school year. Preliminary numbers released this week by the Code.org Advocacy Coalition showed that [halfway through the five-day event Computer Science Education Week] 13.1 million users had participated in the inaugural Hour of AI, attaining 52.4% of its goal of 25 million participants.

In a pivot from coding to AI literacy, the Hour of AI replaced Code.org's hugely-popular Hour of Code this December as the flagship event of Computer Science Education Week (December 8-14). According to Code.org's 2024-25 Impact Report, "in 2024–25 alone, students logged over 100 million Hours of Code, including more than 43 million in the four months leading up to and including CS Education Week."
Minecraft participated with their own Hour of AI lessons. ("Program an AI Agent to craft tools and build shelter before dusk falls in this iconic challenge!") And Google contributed AI Quests, "a gamified, in-class learning experience" allowing students to "step into the shoes of Google researchers using AI to solve real-world challenges." Other participating organizations included the Scratch Foundation, Lego Education, Adobe, and Roblox.

And Microsoft contributed two — including one with their block-based programming environment Microsoft MakeCode Arcade, with students urged to "code and train your own super-smart bug using AI algorithms and challenge other AI bugs in an epic Tower battle for ultimate Bug Arena glory!"

See all the educational festivities here...