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Reçu aujourd’hui — 2 mai 2026 ⏭ Actualités numériques

The $19B "Nuclear AI" Energy Startup That Couldn't Sign a Single Client

✇Slashdot
Par : EditorDavid
2 mai 2026 à 21:34
"Nuclear AI startup" Fermi had hoped to build power plants generating 17 gigawatts of electricity, remembers Bloomberg, "three times the amount typically consumed by New York City." Hyperscalers could install their data centers on the site itself and tap directly into that power, which would come first from natural gas turbines and later from nuclear reactors. The pitch ticked so many boxes — artificial intelligence, nuclear energy, political connections — that some investors found it irresistible. Fermi went public in October worth more than $19 billion in market value, despite reporting no revenue or signed customers. Now, the startup's board has fired its top executive, Toby Neugebauer, after months of negotiations failed to secure a single client. Chief Financial Officer Miles Everson left as well... Fermi's stock, meanwhile, has tumbled 84% from its peak. The company's more than 5,000-acre site in the Texas panhandle — dubbed Project Matador, or the President Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus — remains mostly unfinished. And some analysts see a cautionary tale of the market's AI enthusiasm running ahead of reality, with investors betting on companies whose grand projects may never get built... The idea of giving data centers their own, dedicated power supply not dependent on the grid may sound tempting, but former US Department of Energy official Jigar Shah said banks don't want to finance it. The grid, drawing power from many sources, is more reliable than a handful of expensive, on-site plants, he said. He considers Fermi a failure "of monumental proportions" and says similar, off-grid data center projects elsewhere deserve more skepticism than they've received... "We're allowing these types of projects to continue to be viewed as viable when they most certainly are not," said Shah, who ran the department's Loan Programs Office during the Biden administration.... "It was a piece of dirt with a dream," an investor who visited the site in February told the short sellers, Fuzzy Panda Research.

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Using Drones for Cloud-Seeding Can Trigger Rain, Company Claims

✇Slashdot
Par : EditorDavid
2 mai 2026 à 20:34
Monday a company called Rainmaker announced their rain-triggering technology had produced 143 million gallons of freshwater for Utah and Oregon residents — making them "the first private company in history to validate the results of cloud seeding operations." The Deseret News reports: Founded in 2023, Rainmaker uses drones to disperse silver iodide into clouds, then they track precipitation with advanced radar. However, Rainmaker — and every other rain-enhancement company — has been up against the notoriously difficult challenge of validation. Since there is no control set to test, and because the weather is chaotic and variable, the Government Accountability Office declares the benefits of the technology to be "unproven." To overcome this evaluation challenge, Rainmaker flies drones in unique patterns when seeding. Then operators compare distinct radar and satellite features with where their drones operated. As of April, Rainmaker found 82 unambiguous seeding signatures, which show their seeding operations directly caused precipitation. In Utah and Oregon alone, the company said its cloud-seeding efforts have added enough water to match the annual usage of about 1,750 households. However, "this figure likely represents only a small fraction of Rainmaker's total generation this season," the company said in their press release... Their drone precision, combined with their radar systems, have produced satellite images proving a direct correlation between the seeding and precipitation. Some images show cloud holes or regions of depressed cloud tops after seeding. Rainmaker's announcement promises they'll "go forward and continue our mission to refill the Great Salt Lake, end drought in the American West and deliver water abundance wherever it is needed most around the world." (Rainmaker currently operates in Utah, Idaho, Oregon, California and Colorado.) The director of Utah's Natural Resources Department told the Deseret News that with cloud seeding, "cost per unit of water is so low; it really is the smartest thing we can be doing with our money," Ferry said.

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What if Tech Company Layoffs Aren't All About AI?

✇Slashdot
Par : EditorDavid
2 mai 2026 à 19:34
"Running a Big Tech company during Silicon Valley's AI mania may not necessarily require fewer workers or cost less," writes the Washington Post: Amazon, Google and Meta together have roughly the same number of employees now as they did during an industry-wide hiring binge in 2022, company disclosures show. Growing costs for technical workers and related expenses have often outpaced sales recently. The tech giants' big AI bet hasn't yet paid for itself. That means AI might be killing jobs not through its labor-saving wizardry but by increasing spending so much that CEOs are pressured to find savings, giving them cover to consciously uncouple from their workforces. Marc Andreessen, a prominent start-up investor and a Meta board director, put it bluntly on a recent podcast. Big company layoffs are a fix for overstaffing and changing economic conditions, he said, but AI provides a convenient scapegoat. "Now they all have the silver bullet excuse: 'Ah, it's AI,'" he said... "Almost every company that does layoffs is blaming AI, whether or not it really is about AI," Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT owner OpenAI, said at a March conference when he listed explanations for AI's unpopularity in the United States. "Recent history suggests Big Tech companies might not be moving toward a future with fewer workers," the article concludes, "but recalibrating to spend the same, or more, on different people and projects." So in the end, "AI might soon reduce hiring," the article acknowledges, "But the reluctance or inability of the largest tech firms to cut too deeply so far could also show that the path to making a workforce AI-ready — whatever that means — isn't a predictable straight line charting declining headcount."

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Deux nouvelles cartes mères AM4 à chipset B550 chez MSI en 2026. Le socket éternel ?

✇Hardware & Co - Actualités
Par : contact@hardwareand.co (David Sergent)
2 mai 2026 à 19:10

Le socket AM4 d'AMD continue à marquer l'histoire du hardware PC. Alors qu'il va fêter dans seulement quatre mois ses dix ans d'existence, les configurations AM4 se vendent toujours très bien, et se découvrent même une énième jeunesse avec la pénurie de DRAM qui fait que les petits budgets se tourne...

An Amateur Just Solved a 60-Year-Old Math Problem - by Asking AI

✇Slashdot
Par : EditorDavid
2 mai 2026 à 18:34
Slashdot reader joshuark writes: Scientific American reports that a ChatGPT AI has proved a conjecture with a method no human had developed. A 23-year-old student Liam Price just cracked a 60-year-old problem that world-class mathematicians have tried and failed to solve. The new solution that Price got in response to a single prompt to GPT-5.4 Pro was posted on www.erdosproblems.com, a website devoted to the Erds problems. The question Price solved — or prompted ChatGPT to solve—concerns special sets of whole numbers, where no number in the set can be evenly divided by any other... Price sent it to his occasional collaborator Kevin Barreto, a second-year undergraduate in mathematics at the University of Cambridge. The duo had jump-started the AI-for-Erds craze late last year by prompting a free version of ChatGPT with open problems chosen at random from the Erds problems website. Reviewing Price's message, Barreto realized what they had was special, and experts whom he notified quickly took notice.

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Costumed Crowd 'Speedruns' Scientology Building For Social Media Trend

✇Slashdot
Par : EditorDavid
2 mai 2026 à 17:34
Last Saturday someone dressed as Jesus "was among the dozens of people in costumes and masks seen on a video forcing open the door of a Scientology building on Hollywood Boulevard," reports the Los Angeles Times, "after a tug-of-war with a security guard." The footage posted on TikTok and Instagram shows the group sprinting up and down stairs and clashing with black-shirted security guards, giggling and gasping to catch their breath while church members scream at them to leave. On their way out — as security guards approach armed with fire extinguishers — one of the sprinters stops and dances to celebrate their successful escape, a move reminiscent of a taunt from the video game Fortnite. For weeks, groups of people have barged into two of the church's Hollywood properties, racing through hallways and tussling with security guards, trying to see how far they can get before they are forced to leave by church staff... Church officials say the incidents are not a game and have accused the speed runners of "hate crimes." After dozens on Saturday stormed the Ivar Avenue building that houses an exhibit dedicated to the church's founder, science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, the external door handles were removed from all three of Scientology's properties on Hollywood Boulevard by Sunday morning. Guards could be seen blocking the doorway to one building on Monday afternoon... No arrests have been made. A report from the Associated Press cites a joke left on one of the videos: that if runners reach the top of the building, they'll find Tom Cruise. One commenter on a recent TikTok video of a speedrun asked why people are doing this, and another user simply replied, "because it's fun." The 18-year-old who started the trend told the Hollywood Reporter his original video has been viewed over 100 million times. "From there on out, I pretty much knew that Scientology was like a free gateway to a lot of views." Vulture notes that "there's even a Roblox re-creation of the trend, made using the 'maps; drawn from actual videos"

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Performance Test CPU pour Star Citizen : il aime la 3D V-Cache, mais aussi beaucoup les cœurs !

✇Hardware & Co - Actualités
Par : contact@hardwareand.co (David Sergent)
2 mai 2026 à 17:28

Cela fait maintenant un peu plus de 10 ans que Star Citizen est disponible en version alpha pour le grand public. Nous avons évidemment eu le temps d'avoir des retours à la pelle au sujet du jeu et, parmi ce qui ressort le plus en matière de performances et de framerates, il y a sa dépendance énorme...

Retina Scan for Diabetes Could Also Reduce Deaths During Pregnancy in Developing Countries

✇Slashdot
Par : EditorDavid
2 mai 2026 à 16:34
This week Bill Gates wrote a blog post about a special camera from medtech startup Remidio, which delivers high-resolution images of a patient's retina in seconds. The camera plugs into a phone running an AI system that watches for early signs of diabetes — all without needing a blood draw, eye dilation, or a dibetes specialist. It's already been used in 40 countries for more than 15 million patients. But that same hardware, with different software, can also flag the conditions that drive so many dangerous pregnancies. Gestational diabetes sharply increases the risk of pre-eclampsia [a spike in blood pressure during pregnancy responsible for half a million fetal deaths every year and 70,000 maternal deaths]... In most of rural sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia, it usually isn't screened for at all, because the standard test requires a lab. A retinal scan offers a different way in. Remidio's device is currently being used in India to screen pregnant women for conditions that drive stillbirth. And researchers are now adapting the same hardware to screen for anemia and hypertension, too... [S]mall, portable, affordable diagnostics in the hands of community health workers are exactly the kind of lever that can start to move a number that hasn't moved in a long time.

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Linux Percentage of Steam Users Doubled in One Year

✇Slashdot
Par : EditorDavid
2 mai 2026 à 15:34
Steam on Linux use in March "had skyrocketed to 5.33%..." reports Phoronix, "easily the highest level we've seen Steam on Linux at since its inception more than a decade ago." So what happened in April? [April's results] point to Linux having a 4.52% marketshare on Steam, a drop of 0.81% compared to March. Year-over-year it's roughly double with Steam on Linux in April 2025 being at 2.27%. Or two years ago for April 2024, Steam on Linux was at 1.9%.

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Marvel, DC, Game Publishers Launch Rival Events Saturday for Free Giveaways

✇Slashdot
Par : EditorDavid
2 mai 2026 à 14:34
The once-a-year free comic book giveaway "is splitting in two," according to a local news report. Launched in 2002 by Diamond Comic Distributor, comic book giants like Marvel and DC have historically participated together. But things changed after Diamond Comic Distributors went bankrupt in 2025, "leaving other companies to swoop in and pick up where Diamond left off." The rights to the "Free Comic Book Day" brand were sold to Universal Distribution, which plans to bring Free Comic Book Day back on Saturday. On the same day, Penguin Random House plans to launch a rival event called Comics Giveaway Day. This means you'll still get plenty of free comics, but this time they will be separated, with some coming under the Free Comic Book Day branding and others arriving under the Comics Giveaway Day branding. Free Comic Book Day will include publishers like DC, Image, Dynamite and Archie Comics. Comics Giveaway Day will include publishers such as Marvel, Dark Horse, Boom! Studios and Tokyopop... The other big change coming this year is the introduction of game publishers Wizards of the Coast and Upper Deck to the lineup, as part of Universal Distribution's Free Comic Book Day. Wizards of the Coast is known for its tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, as well as its trading card game Magic: The Gathering. Upper Deck is best known for its sports trading cards and entertainment collectibles, along with deck-building games like the Legendary series... In addition to adding these game makers, Universal plans to expand Free Comic Book Day to include what are colloquially referred to as your friendly local game stores. Marvel's offerings this year include a special Alien, Predator & Planet of the Apes one-shot, while D.C. is offering the first chapter of their upcoming graphic novel Aquamanatee. Other comics include Avatar: The Last Airbender — Legends from Dark Horse Comics and Sonic the Hedgehog from IDW Publishing.

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GameStop Is Preparing Offer For eBay

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
2 mai 2026 à 11:00
GameStop is reportedly preparing a potential offer for eBay, an unusually ambitious move given that eBay's roughly $46 billion market value is nearly four times GameStop's. Reuters reports: GameStop is preparing an offer for eBay as CEO Ryan Cohen pursues plans to boost the struggling videogame retailer's market value more than tenfold, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Shares of eBay, which has a market capitalization of about $46 billion, soared about 14% in extended trading. GameStop gained 4%. The company has a market value of nearly $12 billion. GameStop has been quietly building a stake in eBay's shares ahead of a potential offer, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. If eBay is not receptive, Cohen could decide to take the offer directly to the e-commerce company's shareholders, the Journal said.

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5 Minutes pour juger : Coop sous tension, Épisode 1

✇CowcotLand news
2 mai 2026 à 08:33

Le samedi, c'est souvent le moment parfait pour parler jeu vidéo, manette en main ou café posé à portée de clic. Jusqu'ici, notre chronique prenait la forme d'un rendez-vous mensuel. Le problème, c'est qu'au fil du temps, nous avions toujours plus de titres à recommander, commenter ou remettre en lumière. Résultat, un seul mois devenait trop étroit pour contenir toutes nos envies. Il fallait donc revoir la formule. Désormais, la rubrique devient quotidienne, avec un thème différent chaque mois afin de garder un fil conducteur clair et agréable à suivre. Pour inaugurer ce nouveau rythme, nous avons choisi les jeux à faire entre amis, en couple, entre frères et sœurs, surtout avec cette personne suffisamment patiente pour supporter vos erreurs répétées. Oui, nous aurions pu citer immédiatement Portal 2 et son mode coopération légendaire, mais ce serait trop simple. Nous allons donc nous concentrer sur quatre jeux qui ont semé un joyeux chaos dans une relation père-enfant, avec cris, rires, conseils inutiles et parfois vengeance passive sur la manette suivante. Et pour ouvrir cette sélection, difficile de trouver meilleur ambassadeur que It Takes Two. […]

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AMD aussi prépare son mini-PC à base de Ryzen AI Max+ 395

✇Hardware & Co - Actualités
Par : contact@hardwareand.co (Thibaut GALONNIER)
2 mai 2026 à 09:56

C'est un plébiscite que cet APU Ryzen Ai Max+ 395. Il affiche des performances élevées et quasi inédites pour ce type de processeur, avec ses 16 cœurs et 32 threads, ses 40 CU RDNA 3.5 et son NPU XDNA 2. Il est donc complet pour la puissance processeur, calé en AI avec son XDNA 2, et terrible en gam...

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