"If you call 911 in New Orleans, you may hear the sound of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent answering your call instead of a human voice," reports the Shreveport Times: The Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD) is currently testing out the new tool designed to reduce the volume of calls human dispatchers must handle, which is over a thousand emergency calls a day. New Orleans implemented AI in April to answer 311 calls for non-emergencies. The AI was trained and programmed to provide information to callers, as the OPCD says 50% of 311 calls are for information, according to GovTech. AI is now answering 911 emergency calls in Louisiana's largest city and one of the cities with the highest call rates in the U.S. The OPCD is using Carbyne's AI Emergency Call Triage, with triage being the process of analyzing and prioritizing emergency calls. The AI system assesses incoming calls and can provide immediate feedback to callers. This is intended to handle the increase of calls that are related to one incident, so callers get automatically routed to an AI agent who asks if they are calling regarding the incident. If the answer is yes, then callers can receive information or updates, and if it's no, then the callers are transferred to a human. This combats multitudes of calls piling up and taking longer time to potentially answer an emergency call. The OPCD said the AI will not be used to handle emergency calls, only to direct such calls to a human dispatcher.

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In Georgia the Savannah Police Department "terminated four sworn officers and two civilian employees following an internal investigation into misuse of the department's Flock Safety License Plate Reader system," according to a local news report: All six cases are also under independent criminal investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation... Investigators found that employees were running searches on personal acquaintances and family members. One officer was found to have given someone from an outside law enforcement agency access to SPD's Flock Safety system, which they weren't authorized to do. Elsewhere ABC News reports that a female North Carolina police officer was arrested Wednesday "for allegedly using Flock license plate readers to track her boyfriend's ex-wife, according to police..." The officer is accused of accessing the system for personal use 31 different times, including at least twice when she was off-duty, and listing most of the lookups as motor vehicle infractions. [Police chief Ron] Campurciani "added that the department is looking at 10 other potential misuse cases and said three 'look like they could be problematic.'" And an Ohio news station reports a police officer who recently resigned "while under internal investigation repeatedly used the Flock license plate reader system to search a vehicle registered to someone investigators identified as his likely domestic partner." Meanwhile, 404 Media reported this week that an Iowa county's usage police specifically tells police officers — in all capital letters — not to tell occupants of a vehicle that an automated license plate reader was used for a traffic stop. It also instructs officers to not even mention the use of the ALPR technology in their reports "unless absolutely necessary," according to information they'd obtained from a public records request," suggesting they instead they call the cameras "county resources": It is not just local police in small communities who are creating policies designed to obfuscate Flock usage. Earlier this year, we reported that police in multiple states were being told to be "as vague as permissible" about why they were using Flock because their searches could be obtained using public records requests, and that warning was being shared by the FBI and Department of Justice... In the [Iowa county] public records request, Sheriff Don Phillips said "there is no need" to tell people about the use of Flock... "because the information is verified by the deputy running the license plate. It is common practice for law enforcement to refrain from disclosing investigative methods and sources to prevent criminals from learning how to circumvent them."

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"In a milestone for energy storage technology, Peak Energy has selected Sacramento, California, as the home of America's first manufacturing facility dedicated to grid-scale sodium-ion battery systems," according to the sustainability news site Intelligent Living. The move "represents the first large-scale test of whether sodium-ion technology can deliver on its promise of cheaper, safer, and more sustainable grid storage at a scale that actually moves the needle for the U.S. electricity system." The 183,000-square-foot plant, representing a $71 million investment, will produce up to 4 gigawatt-hours of storage annually when production begins in early 2027. That is enough output each year to serve nearly four million homes, and it signals that sodium-ion technology has moved from laboratory promise to commercial reality... Peak Energy, founded in 2023 by former engineers from Tesla, Enovix, and Fluence, announced its Sacramento site selection on July 8, 2026, after a nationwide search that ultimately chose California over Texas... The factory is designed as a system assembly plant rather than a cell fabrication facility. Peak will receive sodium-ion cells, manufactured to its specifications by Chinese suppliers, and assemble them into complete 30-foot-long, 100,000-pound containerized storage systems. Each GS1.1 unit stores 3.1 megawatt-hours, enough to fully charge more than 40 electric vehicles... In the United States, Peak Energy has emerged as the most advanced grid-scale player. It has secured more than 6 GWh of customer commitments, including a landmark deal with Jupiter Power for up to 4.75 GWh through 2030, valued at up to $500 million. Energy Vault has committed to 1.5 GWh of sodium-ion storage for AI data center applications, and RWE Americas has already deployed Peak's first grid-scale system on the MISO grid in Wisconsin, energized in March 2026. General Motors is codeveloping sodium-ion cells with Peak at its Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center in Michigan, testing 170- and 190-amp-hour cell formats with domestic production targeted for 2028. China, however, remains the global heavyweight. CATL, the world's largest battery manufacturer, unveiled its TENER Sodium energy storage system in June 2026 with a rated cycle life of 15,000 cycles and a projected 25-to-30-year service life. In April 2026, CATL signed a 60 GWh supply agreement with HyperStrong, the largest sodium-ion deal announced to date. BYD, HiNa Battery, and Farasis are also shipping commercial sodium-ion products, including batteries for a $400 electric scooter already on sale in China... Peak Energy's first commercial shipments from Sacramento are slated for the first quarter of 2027, with contracted deliveries to Jupiter Power, Energy Vault, and RWE Americas following shortly after. The company has publicly stated it needs to deploy over $100 million in product in 2026, up from roughly $10 million in 2025, and the Sacramento facility is sized to meet that demand. At the system level, sodium-ion grid storage is already operating. Peak's pilot installation at the SolarTAC testing facility in Watkins, Colorado, stores 3.5 MWh and has been running since 2025. The RWE Americas deployment in Wisconsin, energized in March 2026, marks the first time sodium-ion batteries have backed up the MISO grid, which serves 15 central U.S. states and the Canadian province of Manitoba... According to the International Energy Agency, sodium-ion manufacturing capacity announcements have accelerated sharply since 2024, with global pipelines now exceeding 400 GWh annually... Researchers are also pushing the technology forward. In May 2026, a team at the National University of Singapore published a breakthrough in all-solid-state sodium batteries that could further reduce costs and eliminate the flammable liquid electrolytes found in both lithium-ion and current sodium-ion designs. "The technology's sweet spot is utility-scale, multi-megawatt-hour installations," the article points out, "where the system-level cost savings from passive cooling and longer cycle life outweigh the per-cell energy density penalty..." The article also points out observations from the American Battery Leadership Coalition, an industry group advocating for sodium-ion policy support, that sodium-ion batteries can be built almost entirely from American materials, including coal, sawdust, and agricultural waste. This week Syntropic Power and UNIGRID Inc. also announced "a major partnership to commercialize UNIGRID's proprietary sodium chromium oxide (NaCrO2) battery technology across North America," reports Interesting Engineering, "targeting one gigawatt-hour (1 GWh) of deployments in 2027. The technology could be used in residential, virtual power plant, and large-scale stationary grid applications..." Independent testing by the ISO-accredited Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Battery Development Center revealed something surprising. UNIGRID's 210Ah cells displayed endothermic behavior during charging. This means the chemical reaction actually absorbs heat rather than dumping it into the environment. Coupled with a 97.9% cell-level round-trip energy efficiency and remarkable thermal stability under abuse testing, the battery stays cool on its own. The 210Ah sodium-ion cells deliver up to 218Ah of discharge capacity. It demonstrated exceptional durability, retaining over 99% of its capacity after 1,000 full discharge cycles, as well as heat-absorbing behavior during charging. These validated strengths allow Syntropic to optimize its product designs, enabling platforms like GridSpan [its modular DC platform designed for large-scale energy applications with flexible discharge durations ranging from 20 minutes to 20 hours] to operate safely and efficiently at grid scale without needing complex mechanical cooling systems... Commercialization kicks off with Tenet, a safety-focused, wall-mounted system for residential, light-commercial, and virtual power plant uses... Relying on abundant and widely distributed raw materials like sodium and chromium — rather than lithium and cobalt — protects manufacturers from geopolitical price spikes and material shortages. Apart from offering an alternative to lithium, a successful rollout will demonstrate that the most durable energy storage is the kind that could stay cool entirely on its own. Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.

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The Dallas Business Journal reported Monday that the U.S. multinational paper goods company Kimberly-Clark announced "that its researchers identified and advanced patented technology transforming fibers from hesperaloe, a low-water-use plant with pointy leaves that thrives in the southwest region of the country, into material for paper towels." Discovering an alternative to conventional wood fiber "could reshape how the company, and the industry at large, manufactures products," according to article. And the move comes "amid growing pressure on manufacturers regarding their reliance on wood fibre from freshly felled trees," reports The Telegraph. "Campaigners claim that more than one million trees are cut down every day..." Unlike trees, hesperaloe can be grown on dry, low-quality farmland unsuitable for most food crops and harvested much more quickly. Kimberly-Clark said it had tested more than 70 potential materials before settling on hesperaloe. Earlier candidates included wheat straw, corn waste, seaweed, algae and chicken feathers. The US consumer goods giant will now develop the fibre at a pilot factory in Yuma, Arizona, working with local growers to determine whether the crop can be cultivated for commercial use in its tissue products. "This represents an exciting moonshot for Kimberly-Clark and the culmination of more than two decades of materials and plant science expertise," said Craig Slavtcheff, who is helping develop the new toilet paper. However, the company said products made from hesperaloe remained years away from supermarket shelves, with further research needed before the fibre could be produced at the scale required for global manufacturing. The US-based company has invested about $250m (£190m) in the project and filed more than 30 patents linked to the technology.

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The Washington Post shared surprising news this week about five top AI companies. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Oracle "are spending so much on developing AI and delivering it to customers that they're expected to bleed cash in the coming year, according to a Washington Post analysis of data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence." Free cash flow, which measures the cash left over after paying expenses and AI infrastructure costs, is now expected to shrink to almost nothing for the five companies combined in 2026, and decline again to negative $125 billion the following year... AI spending by Amazon and Google pushed the companies to an ignominious milestone: They lost more cash in the past three months than any other large U.S. companies, according to S&P Global data. Investment analysts expect Elon Musk's SpaceX to show even worse cash bleeding this week.

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A set of patches from Intel are set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window to enhance the cluster-aware scheduling code so it better handles load balancing on modern Intel Core (Ultra) hybrid CPUs with a mix of P and E/LPE cores...

For those looking to manage the RGB lighting and other features of their Razer devices on Linux, Polychromatic 0.9.8 is now available for that UI front-end that interacts with the OpenRazer kernel drivers for providing a decent albeit unofficial Linux configuration experience...

At a Hiroshima memorial ceremony, Japan's prime minister said the country "maintains" its three long-standing non-nuclear principles, reports UPI. But the prime minister "stopped short of promising that the policy would remain unchanged, fueling speculation that her government could review a longstanding ban on allowing nuclear weapons into the country." [Prime Minister Sanae] Takaichi made the remarks Thursday at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony marking the 81st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city... Unlike previous prime ministers who pledged that Japan would "continue to uphold" the principles, Takaichi described the government's current position without making an explicit commitment about the future [only saying that Japan has "a mission to continue efforts toward realizing a world without nuclear weapon..."] The wording has drawn attention because her government plans to revise Japan's three key national security documents by the end of the year. At a news conference after the ceremony, Takaichi again said the government "maintains the Three Non-Nuclear Principles as a matter of policy." Asked whether the principles would continue to be included in the revised security documents, however, she declined to commit, saying she would refrain from prejudging the outcome. Japan's Three Non-Nuclear Principles state that the country will not possess nuclear weapons, will not produce them and will not permit their introduction into Japanese territory. The principles originated with a 1967 statement by then-Prime Minister Eisaku Sato and have remained a central element of Japan's postwar nuclear policy. Takaichi has previously questioned the third principle — the prohibition on allowing nuclear weapons into Japan. Before becoming prime minister, she argued in a 2024 book that Japan should retain the commitments not to possess or produce nuclear weapons but that an absolute prohibition on their introduction was unrealistic. Her argument was that barring port calls by U.S. vessels carrying nuclear weapons could limit the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear umbrella protecting Japan... The Japan Innovation Party has also called for a review of the third principle. In security policy recommendations submitted to the government in June, the party called for a "realistic review" of the ban on allowing nuclear weapons into Japan... Under existing government interpretations, Japan could respond flexibly in an extreme national emergency involving a U.S. vessel carrying nuclear weapons. Some within the ruling party therefore question whether formally revising the non-nuclear principles would provide enough practical benefit to justify the political controversy it would create. Critics also warn that changing the policy when Washington has not publicly demanded such a move could give China and North Korea additional grounds to portray Japan as expanding its military role... If Japan were to allow temporary entry by U.S. nuclear weapons or port calls by nuclear-armed vessels, Washington would gain additional operational options for its nuclear forces in Northeast Asia. Such a development could strengthen deterrence against North Korea and China but could also intensify debate over differences between U.S. extended deterrence arrangements with Japan and South Korea. "How the principles are addressed in Japan's revised security documents later this year could determine whether the issue develops into a broader debate over the future of extended nuclear deterrence among Japan, South Korea and the United States..."

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Votre décodeur b.tv reste à la maison, mais vos programmes vous suivent partout. Application mobile, clé B.tv 4K branchée sur la TV du gîte, option multi-écrans pour toute la famille : voici comment profiter de b.tv en vacances depuis n’importe quel écran et n’importe quel endroit. Application b.tv Clé B.tv 4K Option multi-écrans Connexion nécessaire […]

L'article b.tv en vacances : application, clé 4K et multi-écrans a été publié en premier sur Bbox-Mag

A South Korean lunar orbiter has captured the first before-and-after images of the Moon's crash scene caused by a stray SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Associated Press reports: The Korea Aerospace Research Institute's Danuri spacecraft flew over the impact site soon after the Falcon 9 upper stage inadvertently plowed into the moon on Wednesday. Danuri made multiple passes, snapping photos from lunar orbit that were released by the space agency Thursday. The terrain is noticeably darker where the rocket hit and carved out a crater, sending dust and rock everywhere. Korean space officials said Danuri gathered before and after shots. NASA expects its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to fly over the crash site next week to view the aftermath. You can view the images here.

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Making its debut this Saturday rather than the usual bi-weekly Friday release regiment, Wine 11.15 is out today as the newest development release for this open-source software enabling Windows games and applications to run on Linux...

Clairement, à la vue de toutes les news de la semaine sur les hausses de prix ici et là à travers le monde, nous ne nous attendions pas à une accalmie chez nous. Entre le 31 juillet et le 7 août, les hausses sont nombreuses, aussi bien chez AMD que chez NVIDIA, et certaines références prennent plusieurs dizaines d'euros en seulement sept jours. Une tendance qui n'est clairement pas rassurante pour cette période estivale, même si nous avons tout de même droit à deux très belles baisses qui viennent sauver un peu les meubles. AMD : beaucoup de rouge, mais une RX 7700 XT qui s'effondre Chez AMD, la RX 7600 passe de 289,90 à 318,90 euros, soit 29 euros de plus en une semaine. La RX 9060 XT 16 Go poursuit également sa remontée et passe de 439,90 à 459,90 euros, tandis que la RX 9070 grimpe de 629,90 à 649,90 euros. Même constat pour la RX 9070 XT, désormais affichée à 728,90 euros contre 699,90 euros la semaine dernière. Heureusement, la RX 7700 XT vient complètement casser cette tendance avec une énorme baisse : elle passe de 580,90 à seulement 479,90 euros, soit pas moins de 101 euros de moins. Reste qu'on lui préfèrera la 9060 XT plus moderne et toujours moins chère. Les RX 7600 XT, RX 7800 XT, RX 7900 XT et RX 7900 XTX restent, elles, parfaitement stables. […]

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Masterfailed oui

Cet été, Next vous propose des mini-jeux. Aujourd’hui, vous devez aider un pirate en herbe qui veut pénétrer le système informatique de Bercy. Trouvera-t-il la bonne solution avant que le système de sécurité ne se déclenche ? Si oui, que va-t-il découvrir ?

Un code à chiffre, c’est sécurisé ! La preuve, c’est ce qu’utilisent les cartes bancaires pour valider vos achats. Mais la sécurité va parfois à vau-l’eau et on trouve sur Internet des fichiers de 10 000 lignes seulement avec l’intégralité des codes, imaginez un peu !

• #Flockeries et cahier de vacances : amusez-vous avec Next et tentez de gagner des cadeaux

Alors Bercy utilise un système avancé de protection totalement inviolable… enfin, parait-il : remplacer les 10 chiffres par 7 symboles… Il faut les placer dans le bon ordre pour ouvrir la porte. Vous avez huit tentatives et deux modes de jeu (simple avec quatre symboles différents ou complexe avec un même symbole potentiellement présent plusieurs fois).

Un point noir signifie qu’un symbole sur les quatre est bien placé, un point blanc que c’est le bon symbole mais mal positionné. L’ordre des points n’a pas de rapport avec l’emplacement des symboles sur la grille de jeu.

Alors, le petit script-kiddie, comment va-t-il finir ?

Masterfailed oui

Cet été, Next vous propose des mini-jeux. Aujourd’hui, vous devez aider un pirate en herbe qui veut pénétrer le système informatique de Bercy. Trouvera-t-il la bonne solution avant que le système de sécurité ne se déclenche ? Si oui, que va-t-il découvrir ?

Un code à chiffre, c’est sécurisé ! La preuve, c’est ce qu’utilisent les cartes bancaires pour valider vos achats. Mais la sécurité va parfois à vau-l’eau et on trouve sur Internet des fichiers de 10 000 lignes seulement avec l’intégralité des codes, imaginez un peu !

• #Flockeries et cahier de vacances : amusez-vous avec Next et tentez de gagner des cadeaux

Alors Bercy utilise un système avancé de protection totalement inviolable… enfin, parait-il : remplacer les 10 chiffres par 7 symboles… Il faut les placer dans le bon ordre pour ouvrir la porte. Vous avez huit tentatives et deux modes de jeu (simple avec quatre symboles différents ou complexe avec un même symbole potentiellement présent plusieurs fois).

Un point noir signifie qu’un symbole sur les quatre est bien placé, un point blanc que c’est le bon symbole mais mal positionné. L’ordre des points n’a pas de rapport avec l’emplacement des symboles sur la grille de jeu.

Alors, le petit script-kiddie, comment va-t-il finir ?

Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency announced earlier this year a new fellowship program and now as part of that, for the next two years GNOME has a fellow dedicated to working on design and community management...

It's been another busy week in the Linux kernel camp with increased patch activity continuing due to AI/LLM coding agents / bots continuing to uncover different defects in the open-source codebase. The hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem saw many fixes this week for issues mostly raised by the Sashiko AI bot with the issues being described as mostly critical or high severity bugs...

Thanks in part to the power of Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5, a new Windows DirectX 11 driver for QEMU has been created to help improve graphics acceleration for Microsoft Windows guests running under QEMU virtual machines...

The input subsystem fixes for the week include a number of AI-driven patches to address various information leaks, out-of-bounds accesses, validation fixes, and other coding issues that have turned up recently. Plus some device quirks and also adding support for a rather funky gaming controller to the common XPad Linux driver used by many different gaming controllers...

NASA has squeezed at least another year of science out of Voyager 2 by cutting power to nonessential systems and switching to lower-power alternatives. Voyager 1 is expected to receive the same power-saving changes in the coming months. Space.com reports: Voyager 2 and its twin launched in 1977, called Voyager 1, rely on a form of nuclear battery known as a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that uses the heat produced by the decay of plutonium. But the supply of plutonium on each probe drops at about four watts a year on each spacecraft. To keep the probe running on this dwindling power supply, engineers recently reduced Voyager 2's power requirements by turning off a few non-science devices and using "lower-power alternatives" that are still effective enough to keep the spacecraft warm while it's so far from the sun, NASA officials said in a statement. "The spacecraft power margins have grown razor thin, requiring the team to conserve energy by shutting off non-essential devices and systems," NASA officials wrote of the mission, which is managed by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The drop in power is having a measurable science impact on both spacecraft -- each has turned off two of their science instruments since 2024 alone. While some of these instruments were shut off after the spacecraft finished their historic planetary flybys decades ago, others were turned off due to power requirements. Each spacecraft initially launched with 10 instruments, and Voyager 2 is now down to only three instruments. At first it looked as though Voyager 2 would have to shut down another of these instruments later this year, but luckily, the new power shifts will allow all three to operate "for at least another year," NASA said.

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