Starbucks is piloting a generative AI assistant called "Green Dot Assist" to streamline barista tasks and improve service speed, with plans for a broader rollout in fiscal 2026. The assistant is built on Microsoft Azure's OpenAI platform. CNBC reports: Instead of flipping through manuals or accessing Starbucks' intranet, baristas will be able to use a tablet behind the counter equipped with Green Dot Assist to get answers to a range of questions, from how to make an iced shaken espresso to troubleshooting equipment errors. Baristas can either type or verbally ask their queries in conversational language. As the AI assistant evolves, Starbucks has even bigger plans for its next generation. Those ideas include automatically creating a ticket with IT for equipment issues or generating suggestions for a substitute when a barista calls out of work, according to [Starbucks Chief Technology Officer Deb Hall Lefevre]. [...] Lefevre said tenured baristas have been learning to use the new POS in as little as an hour. Plus, the technology can offer personalized recommendations and loyal customers' repeat orders, helping Starbucks achieve the personalized touch it's looking to bring back to its cafes. "It's just another example of how innovation technology is coming into service of our partners and making sure that we're doing all we can to simplify the operations, make their jobs just a little bit easier, maybe a little bit more fun, so that they can do what they do best," Lefevre told CNBC.

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An anonymous reader shares a blog post from Google: Today, we're bringing you Android 16, rolling out first to supported Pixel devices with more phone brands to come later this year. This is the earliest Android has launched a major release in the last few years, which ensures you get the latest updates as soon as possible on your devices. Android 16 lays the foundation for our new Material 3 Expressive design, with features that make Android more accessible and easy to use.

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Bluesky's user engagement has fallen roughly 50% since peaking in mid-November, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis, as progressive groups' efforts to migrate users from Elon Musk's X platform show signs of failure. The research found that while many news influencers maintain Bluesky accounts, two-thirds post irregularly compared to more than 80% who still post daily to X. A Washington Post columnist tries to make sense of it: The people who have migrated to Bluesky tend to be those who feel the most visceral disgust for Musk and Trump, plus a smattering of those who are merely curious and another smattering who are tired of the AI slop and unregenerate racism that increasingly pollutes their X feeds. Because the Musk and Trump haters are the largest and most passionate group, the result is something of an echo chamber where it's hard to get positive engagement unless you're saying things progressives want to hear -- and where the negative engagement on things they don't want to hear can be intense. That's true even for content that isn't obviously political: Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School who studies AI, recently announced that he'll be limiting his Bluesky posting because AI discussions on the platform are too "fraught." All this is pretty off-putting for folks who aren't already rather progressive, and that creates a threefold problem for the ones who dream of getting the old band back together. Most obviously, it makes it hard for the platform to build a large enough userbase for the company to become financially self-sustaining, or for liberals to amass the influence they wielded on old Twitter. There, they accumulated power by shaping the contours of a conversation that included a lot of non-progressives. On Bluesky, they're mostly talking among themselves.

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The World Bank sharply reduced its global economic growth forecast for 2025 to 2.3% from 2.7%, warning that the current decade is on track to become the weakest for the global economy since the 1960s. The Washington-based lender attributed the downgrade to mounting costs from "international discord -- about trade, in particular," as Donald Trump's tariff policies create unprecedented uncertainty. The revised forecast would mark the slowest growth rate outside full-blown recessions since 2008. Even with a modest recovery to 2.4% expected in 2026, the bank characterized the outlook as merely "tepid." Chief economist Indermit Gill said "outside of Asia, the developing world is becoming a development-free zone." Growth in developing economies has steadily declined from 6% annually in the 2000s to 5% in the 2010s, now falling below 4% in the 2020s. The bank said that "many of the forces behind the great economic miracle of the last 50 years" have reversed, with more than half of low-income countries either in debt distress or at high risk.

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AI is speeding up the work of America's intelligence services, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Tuesday. From a report: Speaking to a technology conference, Gabbard said AI programs, when used responsibly, can save money and free up intelligence officers to focus on gathering and analyzing information. The sometimes slow pace of intelligence work frustrated her as a member of Congress, Gabbard said, and continues to be a challenge. AI can run human resource programs, for instance, or scan sensitive documents ahead of potential declassification, Gabbard said. Her office has released tens of thousands of pages of material related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, on the orders of President Donald Trump. Experts had predicted the process could take many months or even years, but AI accelerated the work by scanning the documents to see if they contained any material that should remain classified, Gabbard said during her remarks at the Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington. "We have been able to do that through the use of AI tools far more quickly than what was done previously -- which was to have humans go through and look at every single one of these pages," Gabbard said.

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A NASA-backed project using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has released more than 1.5 TB of data for open science, offering the largest view deep into the universe available to date. From a report: The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), a joint project from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Rochester Institute of Technology, has launched a searchable dataset for budding astrophysics enthusiasts worldwide. As well as a catalog of galaxies, the dataset includes an interactive viewer that users can search for images of specific objects or click them to view their properties, covering approximately 0.54 square degrees of sky with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and a 0.2 square degree area with the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI). Although the raw data was already publicly available to the science community, the aim of the COSMOS-Web project was to make it more usable for other scientists.

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BrianFagioli writes: Ubuntu 25.10, known as Questing Quokka, is taking a big turn under the hood. Canonical has dropped support for the GNOME desktop running on Xorg. Starting with this release, the default Ubuntu session now uses Wayland only. Yes, folks, there's no longer an option to log into GNOME on Xorg.

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Apple's latest AI models continue to lag behind competitors, according to the company's own benchmark testing it disclosed this week. The tech giant's newest "Apple On-Device" model, which runs locally on iPhones and other devices, performed only "comparably" to similarly-sized models from Google and Alibaba in human evaluations of text generation quality -- not better, despite being Apple's most recent release. The performance gap widens with Apple's more powerful "Apple Server" model, designed for data center deployment. Human testers rated it behind OpenAI's year-old GPT-4o in text generation tasks. In image analysis tests, evaluators preferred Meta's Llama 4 Scout model over Apple Server, a particularly notable result given that Llama 4 Scout itself underperforms leading models from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI on various benchmarks.

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Cisco is updating its networking and security products to make AI networks speedier and more secure, part of a broader push to capitalize on the AI spending boom. From a report: A new generation of switches -- networking equipment that links computer systems -- will offer a 10-fold improvement in performance, the company said on Tuesday. That will help prevent AI applications from suffering bottlenecks when transferring data, Cisco said. Networking speed has become a bigger issue as data center operators try to manage a flood of AI information -- both in the cloud and within the companies' own facilities. Slowdowns can hinder AI models, Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel said in an interview. That applies to the development phase -- known as training -- and the operation of the models, a stage called inference. A massive build-out of data centers has made Cisco more relevant, he said. "AI is going to be network-bound, both on training and inference," Patel said. Having computer processors sit idle during training because of slow networks is "just throwing away money."

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A group of 20 internationally renowned scientists have issued a strong warning against attempts to narrow the definition of "forever chemicals" in what they describe as a politically or economically motivated effort to weaken regulation of the potentially harmful chemicals. From a report: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas) are a large group of synthetic chemicals used for their oil-, water- and stain-resistant properties in a range of consumer and industrial products from waterproof clothing and non-stick cookware to firefighting foams and electronics. Their molecular structure makes them resistant to degradation, earning them the nickname "forever chemicals." In the last few years there has been growing awareness of the problems associated with Pfas, and a push for more stringent regulation, resulting in the banning of certain forms. A group of scientists are now raising the alarm about efforts, including by some individuals and groups in the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUpac), to narrow the current international definition of Pfas in ways that could exclude certain chemical subgroups.

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The Class of 2025 is encountering the worst entry-level job market in years with unemployment among recent degree-holders aged 22 to 27 reaching 5.8% this spring -- the highest level in approximately four years and well above the national average. According to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data, 85% of the unemployment rate increase since mid-2023 stems from new labor market entrants struggling to find work. Corporate hiring freezes implemented under threats of President Trump's tariffs, combined with AI replacing traditional entry-level positions, have severely constrained opportunities for new graduates. More than 60% of executives surveyed on LinkedIn indicate that AI will eventually assume tasks currently assigned to entry-level employees, particularly mundane and manual roles. The impact varies significantly by major, with computer engineering graduates -- once highly sought-after -- now facing a 7.5% unemployment rate, the third-highest among recent graduates. Employment in computer science and mathematical jobs for those under 27 has dropped 8% since 2022, even as it grew 0.8% for older workers.

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OpenAI plans to add Alphabet's Google cloud service to meet its growing needs for computing capacity, Reuters reported Tuesday, marking a surprising collaboration between two prominent competitors in the AI race. From the report: The deal, which has been under discussion for a few months, was finalized in May, one of the sources added. It underscores how massive computing demands to train and deploy AI models are reshaping the competitive dynamics in AI, and marks OpenAI's latest move to diversify its compute sources beyond its major supporter Microsoft, including its high-profile Stargate data center project. It is a win for Google's cloud unit, which will supply additional computing capacity to OpenAI's existing infrastructure for training and running its AI models, sources said, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters. The move also comes as OpenAI's ChatGPT poses the biggest threat to Google's dominant search business in years, with Google executives recently saying that the AI race may not be winner-take-all.

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Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: The old Code.org curriculum page for middle and high school students has been changed to include a new Python Lab in the tech-backed nonprofit's K-12 offerings. Elsewhere on the site, a Computer Science and AI Foundations curriculum is described that includes units on 'Foundations of AI Programming [in Python]' and 'Insights from Data and AI [aka Data Science].' A more-detailed AI Foundations Syllabus 25-26 document promises a second semester of material is coming soon: "This semester offers an innovative approach to teaching programming by integrating learning with and about artificial intelligence (AI). Using Python as the primary language, students build foundational programming skills while leveraging AI tools to enhance computational thinking and problem-solving. The curriculum also introduces students to the basics of creating AI-powered programs, exploring machine learning, and applying data science principles." Newly-posted videos on Code.org's YouTube channel appear to be intended to support the new Python-based CS & AI course. "Python is extremely versatile," explains a Walmart data scientist to open the video for Data Science: Using Python. "So, first of all, Python is one of the very few languages that can handle numbers very, very well." A researcher at the Univ. of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) adds, "Python is the gold standard and what people expect data scientists to know [...] Key to us being able to handle really big data sets is our use of Python and cluster computing." Adding to the Python love, an IHME data analyst explains, "Python is a great choice for large databases because there's a lot of support for Python libraries." Code.org is currently recruiting teachers to attend its CS and AI Foundations Professional Learning program this summer, which is being taught by Code.org's national network of university and nonprofit regional partners (teachers who signup have a chance to win $250 in DonorsChoose credits for their classrooms). A flyer for a five-day Michigan Professional Development program to prepare teachers for a pilot of the Code.org CS & A course touts the new curriculum as "an alternative to the AP [Computer Science] pathway" (teachers are offered scholarships covering registration, lodging, meals, and workshop materials). Interestingly, Code.org's embrace of Python and Data Science comes as the nonprofit changes its mission to 'make CS and AI a core part of K-12 education' and launches a new national campaign with tech leaders to make CS and AI a graduation requirement. Prior to AI changing the education conversation, Code.org in 2021 boasted that it had lined up a consortium of tech giants, politicians, and educators to push its new $15 million Amazon-bankrolled Java AP CS A curriculum into K-12 classrooms. Just three years later, however, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was boasting to investors that Amazon had turned to AI to automatically do Java coding that he claimed would have otherwise taken human coders 4,500 developer-years to complete.

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Meta is preparing to unveil a new AI research lab dedicated to pursuing "superintelligence," a hypothetical A.I. system that exceeds the powers of the human brain, as the tech giant jockeys to stay competitive in the technology race, New York Times reported Tuesday, citing four people with the knowledge of the company's plans. From the report: Meta has tapped Alexandr Wang, 28, the founder and chief executive of the A.I. start-up Scale AI, to join the new lab, the people said, and has been in talks to invest billions of dollars in his company as part of a deal that would also bring other Scale employees to the company. Meta has offered seven- to nine-figure compensation packages to dozens of researchers from leading A.I. companies such as OpenAI and Google, with some agreeing to join, according to the people. The new lab is part of a larger reorganization of Meta's A.I. efforts, the people said. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has recently grappled with internal management struggles over the technology, as well as employee churn and several product releases that fell flat, two of the people said.

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Blue Origin is falling far short of its goal to launch the New Glenn rocket eight times in 2025, with its second flight now delayed until at least mid-August. Key leadership changes were also announced, including the departure of the New Glenn program head, as the company faces pressure to increase launch cadence and compete with SpaceX for federal contracts and Amazon's Project Kuiper deployments. Ars Technica reports: The mission, with an undesignated payload, will be named "Never Tell Me the Odds," due to the attempt to land the booster. "One of our key mission objectives will be to land and recover the booster," [chief executive of Blue Origin, Dave Limp] wrote. "This will take a little bit of luck and a lot of excellent execution. We're on track to produce eight GS2s this year, and the one we'll fly on this second mission was hot-fired in April." In this comment, GS2 stands for "Glenn stage 2," or the second stage of the large rocket. It is telling that Limp commented on the company tracking toward producing eight second stages, which would match the original launch cadence planned for this year. This likely is a fig leaf offered to Bezos, who, two sources said, was rather upset that Blue Origin would not meet (or even approach) its original target of eight launches this year. One person familiar with the progress on the vehicle told Ars that even a launch date in August is unrealistic -- this too may have been set aggressively to appease Bezos -- and that September is probably the earliest the rocket is likely to be ready for launch. Blue Origin has not publicly stated what the payload will be, but this second flight is expected to carry the ESCAPADE mission for NASA. On May 28, a couple of days after Limp's all-hands meeting, the chief executive emailed his entire team to announce an "organizational update." As part of this, the company's senior vice president of engines, Linda Cova, was retiring. Multiple sources confirmed this retiring was expected and that the company's program to produce BE-4 rocket engines is going well. However, the other name in the email raised some eyebrows, coming so soon after the announcement that New Glenn's cadence would be significantly slower than expected. Jarrett Jones, the senior vice president running the New Glenn program, was said to be "stepping away from his role and taking a well deserved year off" starting on August 15. It is unclear whether this departure was linked to Bezos' displeasure with the rocket program. One company official said Jones' sabbatical had been planned, but the timing is curious. A search for internal and external candidates to fill his role is ongoing.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: The head of the Federal Aviation Administration just outlined an ambitious goal to upgrade the U.S.'s air traffic control (ATC) system and bring it into the 21st century. According to NPR, most ATC towers and other facilities today feel like they're stuck in the 20th century, with controllers using paper strips and floppy disks to transfer data, while their computers run Windows 95. While this likely saved them from the disastrous CrowdStrike outage that had a massive global impact, their age is a major risk to the nation's critical infrastructure, with the FAA itself saying that the current state of its hardware is unsustainable. "The whole idea is to replace the system. No more floppy disks or paper strips," acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau told the House Appropriations Committee last Wednesday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said earlier this week," This is the most important infrastructure project that we've had in this country for decades. Everyone agrees -- this is non-partisan. Everyone knows we have to do it." The aviation industry put up a coalition pushing for ATC modernization called Modern Skies, and it even ran an ad telling us that ATC is still using floppy disks and several older technologies to keep our skies safe. [...] Currently, the White House hasn't said what this update will cost. The FAA has already put out a Request For Information to gather data from companies willing to take on the challenge of upgrading the entire system. It also announced several 'Industry Days' so companies can pitch their tech and ideas to the Transportation Department. Duffy said that the Transportation Department aims to complete the project within four years. However, industry experts say this timeline is unrealistic. No matter how long it takes, it's high time that the FAA upgrades the U.S.'s ATC system today after decades of neglect.

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South Asia has warmed far more slowly than the rest of the world over the past four decades with temperatures rising just 0.09C per decade compared to 0.30C elsewhere on land, according to new climate research. Scientists believe this "warming hole" results from two factors that have masked the true impact of global warming: heavy aerosol pollution that reflects sunlight back to space and expanded irrigation that cools air through evaporation. The protective effect is temporary and comes at a deadly cost. Air pollution currently kills between 2 million and 3 million people annually in South Asia, while extreme heat causes 100,000 to 600,000 deaths. As governments reduce pollution and groundwater depletion limits irrigation expansion, atmospheric scientists predict India will warm at twice the rate of the past 20 years. By 2047, the average Indian could experience a four-fold increase in dangerous heat stress days, threatening a region where only 10% of households have air conditioning.

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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has called for changes to the roster of officials appointed to oversee the forthcoming election at the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC), the latest twist in a conflict that stretches back years and has left the African regional internet registry in limbo. From a report: AFRINIC is one of the world's five regional internet registries, the governance bodies that delegate and manage IP addresses and autonomous systems numbers in co-ordination with ICANN. The African organization has essentially been dead in the water, operating without a board or CEO since 2022. The problems started in 2020 when AFRINIC alleged that one of its members -- a company called Cloud Innovation -- had breached its agreement with the registry in ways that could lead AFRINIC to reclaim the company's IP address holdings. Cloud Innovation countered that AFRINIC acted improperly and launched multiple lawsuits in Mauritius, the Indian Ocean nation the registry calls home. Other parties also sued AFRINIC for similar reasons. The lawsuits left AFRINIC's bank accounts frozen and meant it was unable to convene a board or run elections. In February 2025, the Supreme Court of Mauritius appointed a receiver to secure AFRINIC's assets and reconstitute its board.

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Robert F. Smith, CEO of Vista Equity Partners, told attendees at the SuperReturn International 2025 conference in Berlin last week that 60% of the 5,500 finance professionals present will be "looking for work" next year due to AI disruption. Smith predicted that while 40% of attendees will adopt AI agents -- programs that autonomously perform complex, multi-step tasks -- the remaining majority will need to find new employment as AI transforms the sector. "All of the jobs currently carried out by one billion knowledge workers today would change due to AI," Smith said, clarifying that while jobs won't disappear entirely, they will fundamentally transform.

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Apple announced that macOS 26 "Tahoe" will be the final version to support Intel-based Macs, with future macOS releases running exclusively on Apple Silicon devices (that is, 2020 M1 models and newer). They will, however, continue to receive security updates for a few more years. 9to5Mac reports: In some ways, Apple has already stopped supporting some non-Apple Silicon models of its lineup. macOS Tahoe does not work with any Intel MacBook Air or Mac mini for instance. But Tahoe does still support some Intel Macs. That includes compatibility with the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, the 2020 Intel 13-inch MacBook Pro, 2020 iMac, and the 2019 Mac Pro. Based on Apple's warning, you can expect that macOS 27 will drop support for all of these legacy machines, and therefore macOS 26 will be the last compatible version. These devices will continue to receive security updates for another three years, however. Going forward, the minimum support hardware generations will be from 2020 onwards, as that is when Apple began the Apple Silicon transition with the M1. M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros followed in 2021.

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