An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Production is now underway at Toyota's new $13.9 billion battery plant in North Carolina, the company's first outside Japan. After the first batteries rolled off the production line at its new facility in Liberty, North Carolina, on Wednesday, Toyota said today marks a "pivotal moment" in the company's history. The facility is Toyota's 11th plant in the US and its first battery plant outside of Japan. Toyota first announced plans to build EV batteries in the US almost four years ago. The nearly $14 billion facility will create up to 5,100 jobs in the area. In addition, the Japanese auto giant announced plans to invest an additional $10 billion in its US operations over the next five years. Since it first arrived in the US nearly 70 years ago, Toyota has invested close to $60 billion. The mega site spans 1,850 acres, or about the size of 121 football fields, and can produce up to 30 GWh annually. Toyota will use the hub to develop and build lithium-ion batteries for its growing lineup of "electrified" vehicles, including battery electric (EV), plug-in hybrid (PHEV), and hybrid (HEV) models. Batteries from the plant will power the new Camry HEV, Corolla Cross HEV, RAV4 HEV, and Toyota's yet-to-be-announced three-row electric SUV.

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Back in April PostgreSQL added AVX-512 support for CRC32 computations. At the time the gains for CRC32 computations with this popular open-source database server were reported to be 50% to 3x faster for x86_64 CPUs able to leverage AVX-512. That AVX-512 support is found with PostgreSQL 18.0 that released in September and now Intel is praising this addition to PostgreSQL for which their developers also had a part in along with AWS and others...

Russia's first AI humanoid robot, Aldol, fell just seconds after its debut at a technology event in Moscow on Tuesday. "The robot was being led on stage to the soundtrack from the film 'Rocky,' before it suddenly lost its balance and fell," reports the BBC. "Assistants could then be seen scrambling to cover it with a cloth -- which ended up tangling in the process." Developers of Aldol blamed poor lighting and calibration issues for the collapse, saying the robot's stereo cameras are sensitive to light and the hall was dark.

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Slashdot readers Tablizer and fjo3 share news that an AI-generated country song has topped the U.S. sales chart for the first time this week. ABC News reports: The new country tune, "Walk my Walk" by Breaking Rust, recently hit No. 1 on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart, reaching over 3 million streams on Spotify in less than a month. That success has garnered mixed reactions from music fans and artists alike, particularly on TikTok, where hundreds of users have posted videos addressing the tune and others discussing the music in the comments. Billboard has acknowledged Breaking Rust is an AI act and said it is one of at least six to chart in the past few months alone. "Ultimately, this feels like an experiment to see just how far something like this can go and what happens in the future and in other disciplines of art as well," senior entertainment reporter Kelley L. Carter told ABC News. "AI artists won't require things that a real human artist will require, and once companies start considering it and looking at bottom lines, I think that's when artists should rightly be concerned about it," she added.

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Waymo is rolling out robotaxi rides that use freeways across Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix for the first time -- "a critical expansion for the company that it says will reduce ride times by up to 50%," reports TechCrunch. From the report: That stat could help attract a whole new group of users who need to travel between the many towns and suburbs within the greater San Francisco Bay Area or quicken commutes across the sprawling Los Angeles and Phoenix metro areas. Using freeways is also essential for Waymo to offer rides to and from the San Francisco Airport, a location the company is currently testing in. The service won't be offered to all Waymo riders at first, the company said. Waymo riders who want to experience freeway rides can note their preference in the Waymo app. Once the rider hails a ride, they may be matched with a freeway trip, according to the company. The company's robotaxi routes will now stretch to San Jose, an expansion that will create a unified 260-mile service area across the Peninsula, according to Waymo. The company said it will also begin curbside drop off and pick up service at the San Jose Mineta International Airport. It already offers curbside service to the Sky Harbor Phoenix International Airport.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Anthropic announced plans Wednesday to spend $50 billion on a U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out, starting with custom data centers in Texas and New York. The facilities, which will be designed to support the company's rapid enterprise growth and its long-term research agenda, will be developed in partnership with Fluidstack. Fluidstack is an AI cloud platform that supplies large-scale graphics processing unit, or GPU, clusters to clients like Meta, Midjourney and Mistral. Additional sites are expected to follow, with the first locations going live in 2026. The project is expected to create 800 permanent jobs and more than 2,000 construction roles. The investment positions Anthropic as a major domestic player in physical AI infrastructure at a moment when policymakers are increasingly focused on U.S.-based compute capacity and technological sovereignty. "We're getting closer to AI that can accelerate scientific discovery and help solve complex problems in ways that weren't possible before. Realizing that potential requires infrastructure that can support continued development at the frontier," said CEO Dario Amodei. "These sites will help us build more capable AI systems that can drive those breakthroughs, while creating American jobs."

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Longtime Slashdot reader hadleyburg writes: For a user with an Android phone and who's happy to stick within the Google ecosystem, an Android tablet might seem like the more obvious choice over an iPad. Of course, iPads are a lot more popular, and asking about Android tablets is likely to invite advice about sticking with what everyone else has. The Slashdot community on the other hand -- being a discerning and thoughtful crowd -- might have some experience in this area and be willing to share the pros and cons they have found. The use case is someone not requiring any heavy usage -- no video editing or gaming -- just email, browsing, YouTube, video calls, and that sort of thing.

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Valve is ready to rejoin the VR hardware race with the Steam Frame, a lightweight standalone SteamOS headset that can run games locally or stream wirelessly from a PC using new "foveated streaming" tech. It's set to launch in early 2026. Ars Technica reports: Powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with 16 GB of RAM, the Steam Frame sports a 2160 x 2160 resolution display per eye at an "up to 110 degrees" field-of-view and up to 144 Hz. That's all roughly in line with 2023's Meta Quest 3, which runs on the slightly less performant Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor. Valve's new headset will be available in models sporting 256GB and 1TB or internal storage, both with the option for expansion via a microSD card slot. Pricing details have not yet been revealed publicly. The Steam Frame's inside-out tracking cameras mean you won't have to set up the awkward external base stations that were necessary for previous SteamVR headsets (including the Index). But that also means old SteamVR controllers won't work with the new hardware. Instead, included Steam Frame controllers will track your hand movements, provide haptic feedback, and offer "input parity with a traditional game pad" through the usual buttons and control sticks. For those who want to bring desktop GPU power to their VR experience, the Steam Frame will be able to connect wirelessly to a PC using an included 6 GHz Wi-Fi 6E adapter. That streaming will be enhanced by what Valve is calling "foveated rendering" technology, which sends the highest-resolution video stream to where your eyes are directly focused (as tracked by two internal cameras). That will help Steam Frame streaming establish a "fast, direct, low-latency link" to the machine, Valve said, though the company has yet to respond to questions about just how much additional wireless latency users can expect. Further reading: Valve Enters the Console Wars

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Eric Engestrom today released Mesa 25.2.7 as the newest bi-weekly point release for this stable set of open-source (predominantly) OpenGL and Vulkan drivers for Linux systems...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI asked a federal judge in New York on Wednesday to reverse an order that required it to turn over 20 million anonymized ChatGPT chat logs amid a copyright infringement lawsuit by the New York Times and other news outlets, saying it would expose users' private conversations. The artificial intelligence company argued that turning over the logs would disclose confidential user information and that "99.99%" of the transcripts have nothing to do with the copyright infringement allegations in the case. "To be clear: anyone in the world who has used ChatGPT in the past three years must now face the possibility that their personal conversations will be handed over to The Times to sift through at will in a speculative fishing expedition," the company said in a court filing (PDF). The news outlets argued that the logs were necessary to determine whether ChatGPT reproduced their copyrighted content and to rebut OpenAI's assertion that they "hacked" the chatbot's responses to manufacture evidence. The lawsuit claims OpenAI misused their articles to train ChatGPT to respond to user prompts. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang said in her order to produce the chats that users' privacy would be protected by the company's "exhaustive de-identification" and other safeguards. OpenAI has a Friday deadline to produce the transcripts.

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OpenAI today released GPT-5.1, an update to its flagship model line. The update includes two versions: GPT-5.1 Instant, which OpenAI says adds adaptive reasoning capabilities and improved instruction following, and GPT-5.1 Thinking, which adjusts its processing time based on query complexity. The Thinking model responds roughly twice as fast on simple tasks and twice as slow on complex problems compared to its predecessor. The company began rolling out both models to paid subscribers and plans to extend access to free users in coming days. OpenAI added three personality presets -- Professional, Candid, and Quirky -- to its existing customization options. The previous GPT-5 models will remain available through a legacy dropdown menu for three months.

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Just hours ago Valve announced the new Steam Controller along with the Steam Frame VR headset and new Steam Machine. While these new Steam hardware products won't be available until early 2026, Valve has just-now upstreamed support for the new Steam Controller to the SDL3 library...

Valve has unveiled a new Steam Machine console, taking a second shot at living room gaming a decade after its 2015 Steam Machine initiative failed. The 6-inch cube runs Linux-based SteamOS but plays Windows games through Proton, a compatibility layer built on Wine that translates Microsoft graphical APIs. Valve spent over a decade working on SteamOS and ways to run Windows games on Linux after the original Steam Machines failed. The device promises six times the performance of the Steam Deck handheld using AMD's 2022-2023 technology. In an interaction with The Verge, Valve demonstrated Cyberpunk 2077 running at settings comparable to PS5 Pro or beyond on a 4K television. The console updates games in the background and includes automatic HDMI television control that Valve tested against a warehouse of home entertainment equipment. The system navigates entirely through gamepad controls and resumes games instantly from sleep mode. Valve said pricing will be "comparable to a PC with similar specs" rather than subsidized like traditional consoles. PCs with similar GPUs have cost roughly $1,000 or more. Linux currently plays Windows games better than Windows in side-by-side tests.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft employs various schemes to stop Edge users from switching to Chrome, and the latest includes financial rewards for sticking with the browser. As spotted by Windows Latest, select users who search on Bing within Microsoft Edge for a link to download Google Chrome are now shown an offer to stay with the browser. It gives users 1,300 Microsoft Rewards points, which can be redeemed for gift cards (examples include Amazon, Roblox, and Spotify) or donated to one of over 2 million nonprofits.

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Les précédentes fuites esquissant les projets de Valve faisaient l’objet de moult spéculations. Certains entrevoyaient un nouveau casque VR, d’autres la résurrection d'une Steam Machine... [Tout lire]

The US is set to make its final penny. The Philadelphia Mint will strike its last batch of one-cent coins on Thursday, after more than 230 years of production. From a report: The coins will remain in circulation but the phase-out has already prompted businesses to start adjusting prices, as they say pennies are becoming harder to find. The government says the move will save money, or as President Donald Trump put it in February when he first announced the plans: "Rip the waste out of our great nation's budget, even if it's a penny at a time." Pennies, which honour Civil War president Abraham Lincoln and are made of copper-plated zinc, today cost nearly four cents each to make -- more than twice the cost of a decade ago, according to the Treasury Department. It estimates the decision to end production will save about $56 million a year. Officials have argued that the rise of electronic transactions is making the penny, which first went into production in 1793, increasingly moot. The Treasury Department estimates that about 300 billion of the coins will remain in circulation, "far exceeding the amount needed for commerce."

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Valve just sent over the press release announcing three new Steam Hardware devices...

The University of California, San Diego has documented a steep decline in the academic preparation of its entering freshmen over the past five years, according to a report [PDF] released this month by the campus's Senate-Administration Working Group on Admissions. Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly thirtyfold, from roughly 30 to 921 students. These students now represent one in eight members of the entering cohort. The Mathematics Department redesigned its remedial program this year to focus entirely on elementary and middle school content after discovering students struggled with basic fractions and could not perform arithmetic operations taught in grades one through eight. The deterioration extends beyond mathematics. Nearly one in five domestic freshmen required remedial writing instruction in 2024, returning to pre-pandemic levels after a brief decline. Faculty across disciplines report students increasingly struggle to engage with longer and complex texts. The decline coincided with multiple disrupting factors. The COVID-19 pandemic forced remote learning starting in spring 2020. The UC system eliminated SAT and ACT requirements in 2021. High school grade inflation accelerated during this period, leaving transcripts unreliable as indicators of actual preparation. UC San Diego simultaneously doubled its enrollment from under-resourced high schools designated LCFF+, admitting more such students than any other UC campus between 2022 and 2024. The working group concluded that admitting large numbers of underprepared students risks harming those students while straining limited instructional resources. The report recommends developing predictive models to identify at-risk applicants and calls for the UC system to reconsider standardized testing requirements.

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Tant qu'on peut voir Christian Bale headbang sur du Pantera

Plusieurs indices concordants alimentent l’hypothèse, désormais ouvertement débattue, selon laquelle l’économie de la tech pourrait bientôt affronter une bulle de l’IA similaire en intensité à ce qu’ont connu les marchés financiers au tournant des années 2000.

Au sein des forums spécialisés, on aime bien ironiser sur la personnalité de Michael Burry. S’il a réussi le coup du siècle en pariant sur l’imminence de la crise des subprimes aux États-Unis en 2008 (immortalisé dans le film The Big Short d’Adam McKay), ce docteur en médecine reconverti en gestionnaire de fonds s’est depuis magistralement planté à plusieurs reprises. Il n’empêche, les positions de sa société de gestion sont toujours surveillées de loin par les observateurs.

Leur attention s’est nettement réveillée début novembre, quand sa déclaration trimestrielle au gendarme de la bourse américain (le formulaire 13-F) a révélé que la société de gestion qu’il dirige, Scion Asset Management, venait de placer plus d’un milliard de dollars d’options misant sur le gadin en bourse de deux sociétés parmi les plus emblématiques de la scène IA, Palantir et NVIDIA.

Vingt ans après avoir commencé sa carrière d’investisseur, Michael Burry se prépare donc à « shorter » le marché de l’IA, et semble décidé à miser gros, puisque cette vente à découvert représente des frais de l’ordre de plusieurs millions de dollars par jour. La simple divulgation de ce pari à la baisse a temporairement fait tanguer les deux actions concernées, et Burry a donc sans doute déjà soldé les positions en question, empochant au passage un petit pactole, mais l’homme d’affaires semble décidé à ne pas en rester là.

Soupçons d’amortissements abusifs

Depuis, il a en effet repris du service sur Twitter après deux ans de silence. Il y enchaîne depuis quelques jours les mèmes issus du film illustrant ses exploits de 2008, et les extraits de graphiques censés illustrer les dérives financières du secteur de l’IA.

Lundi 10 novembre, il s’est d’un seul coup montré plus précis, avec un message accusatoire pointant du doigt l’un des phénomènes qui, selon lui, alimenterait la bulle en permettant aux géants de l’IA de doper artificiellement leurs résultats financiers.

« Sous-estimer l’amortissement en prolongeant artificiellement la durée de vie utile des actifs gonfle les bénéfices – une des fraudes les plus courantes de notre époque, attaque Michael Burry, avant de détailler : L’augmentation massive des dépenses d’investissement par l’achat de puces/serveurs Nvidia sur un cycle de produit de 2 à 3 ans ne devrait pas entraîner l’allongement de la durée de vie utile des équipements informatiques. Or, c’est précisément ce qu’ont fait tous les géants du cloud. Selon mes estimations, ils sous-estimeront l’amortissement de 176 milliards de dollars entre 2026 et 2028. D’ici 2028, Oracle surestimera ses bénéfices de 26,9 %, Meta de 20,8 %, etc. »

Understating depreciation by extending useful life of assets artificially boosts earnings -one of the more common frauds of the modern era.

Massively ramping capex through purchase of Nvidia chips/servers on a 2 - 3 yr product cycle should not result in the extension of useful… pic.twitter.com/h0QkktMeUB

— Cassandra Unchained (@michaeljburry) November 10, 2025

Une petite explication de texte s’impose. Lorsqu’une entreprise déclenche des investissements significatifs (au hasard, une commande de GPU pour équiper un datacenter dédié à l’IA), elle étale le coût de cette acquisition sur le nombre d’années pendant lesquelles l’équipement en question doit être utilisé, selon le principe de l’amortissement comptable.

Ce que Burry dénonce ici, et résume dans son tableau, c’est la durée de vie programmée qu’attribueraient les grands acteurs de l’IA à leurs puces informatiques dédiées. Google, par exemple, serait passé d’un amortissement sur trois ans en 2020 à une durée de vie programmée de six ans à partir de 2023.

Or étaler l’amortissement sur une durée de vie plus longue permet de réduire la part annuelle de chiffre d’affaires nécessaire à sa compensation. Ce faisant, l’entreprise se met donc en position d’augmenter artificiellement sa rentabilité… du moins à court terme, puisqu’il y a toujours un moment où le budget prévisionnel est censé rattraper la réalité, c’est-à-dire la valeur résiduelle réelle des puces informatiques concernées.

Mais que vaudront les puces actuellement déployées dans les datacenters IA des GAFAM après trois, quatre ou cinq ans, compte tenu du cycle de développement rapide du leader, NVIDIA, et de la multiplication des projets d’infrastructures impliquant des puces de dernière génération ?

With the upcoming release of Weston 15.0, this Wayland reference compositor will finally feature a Vulkan renderer. For those curious about its potential, a presentation recently outlined the current state of this Vulkan code path...