2001: "Brookhaven Labs has produced for the first time collisions of gold nuclei at a center of mass energy of 200GeV/nucleon." 2002: "There may be a new type of matter according to researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory." 2010: The hottest man-made temperatures ever achived were a record 4 trillion degree plasma experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York... anointed the Guinness record holder." 2023: "Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered an entirely new kind of quantum entanglement." 2026: On Friday, February 6, "a control room full of scientists, administrators and members of the press gathered" at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab in Upton, New York to witness its final collisions, reports Scientific American: The vibe had been wistful, but the crowd broke into applause as Darío Gil, the Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy, pressed a red button to end the collider's quarter-century saga... "I'm really sad" [said Angelika Drees, a BNL accelerator physicist]. "It was such a beautiful experiment and my research home for 27 years. But we're going to put something even better there." That "something" will be a far more powerful electron-ion collider to further push the frontiers of physics, extend RHIC's legacy and maintain the lab's position as a center of discovery. This successor will be built in part from RHIC's bones, especially from one of its two giant, subterranean storage rings that once held the retiring collider's supply of circulating, near-light speed nuclei...slated for construction over the next decade. [That Electron-Ion Collider, or EIC] will utilize much of RHIC's infrastructure, replacing one of its ion rings with a new ring for cycling electrons. The EIC will use those tiny, fast-flying electrons as tiny knives for slicing open the much larger gold ions. Physicists will get an unrivaled look into the workings of quarks and gluons and yet another chance to grapple with nature's strongest force. "We knew for the EIC to happen, RHIC needed to end," says Wolfram Fischer, who chairs BNL's collider-accelerator department. "It's bittersweet." EIC will be the first new collider built in the US since RHIC. To some, it signifies the country's reentry into a particle physics landscape it has largely ceded to Europe and Asia over the past two decades. "For at least 10 or 15 years," says Abhay Deshpande, BNL's associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics, "this will be the number one place in the world for [young physicists] to come." The RHIC was able "to separately send two protons colliding with precisely aligned spins — something that, even today, no other experiment has yet matched," the article points out: During its record-breaking 25-year run, RHIC illuminated nature's thorniest force and its most fundamental constituents. It created the heaviest, most elaborate assemblages of antimatter ever seen. It nearly put to rest a decades-long crisis over the proton's spin. And, of course, it brought physicists closer to the big bang than ever before... When RHIC at last began full operations in 2000, its initial heavy-ion collisions almost immediately pumped out quark-gluon plasma. But demonstrating this beyond a shadow of a doubt proved in some respects more challenging than actually creating the elusive plasma itself, with the case for success strengthening as RHIC's numbers of collisions soared. By 2010 RHIC's scientists were confident enough to declare that the hot soup they'd been studying for a decade was hot and soupy enough to convincingly constitute a quark-gluon plasma. And it was even weirder than they thought. Instead of the gas of quarks and gluons theorists expected, the plasma acted like a swirling liquid unprecedented in nature. It was nearly "perfect," with zero friction, and set a new record for twistiness, or "vorticity." For Paul Mantica, a division director for the Facilities and Project Management Division in the DOE's Office of Nuclear Physics, this was the highlight of RHIC's storied existence. "It was paradigm-changing," he says... Data from the final run (which began nearly a year ago) has already produced yet another discovery: the first-ever direct evidence of "virtual particles" in RHIC's subatomic puffs of quark-gluon plasma, constituting an unprecedented probe of the quantum vacuum. RHIC's last run generated hundreds of petabytes of data, the article points out, meaning its final smash "isn't really the end; even when its collisions stop, its science will live on." But Science News notes RHIC's closure "marks the end for the only particle collider operating in the United States, and the only collider of its kind in the world. Most particle accelerators are unable to steer two particle beams to crash head-on into one another."

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Back in 2021 on Phoronix was first to report on Intel preparing Linux patches for a "Software Defined Silicon" feature for activating extra licensed hardware features. That Software Defined Silicon support continued moving forward and was then announced as Intel On Demand with a focus on users being able to pay to activate additional accelerators found on select SKUs but not enabled by default...

Building off Friday's release of Wine 11.2 is now Wine-Staging 11.2 as this experimental/testing version of Wine with hundreds of extra patches that have yet to be introduced in upstream proper for this open-source software enabling Windows games and applications on Linux. Notable in this bi-weekly update are more patches for continuing to improve the Adobe Photoshop installer support on Linux...

Of Intel's different CPU accelerator IPs, the arguably most useful and with the greatest customer interest remains around QuickAssist Technology (QAT). Intel QAT allows offloading various compression and encryption tasks for better performance. Intel this week released QATlib 26.02 as the newest version of their user-space library for leveraging QuickAssist Technology on capable hardware...

Back in 2022 DreamWorks Animation announced they were open-sourcing their MoonRay renderer and was then published in early 2023 for this renderer that has been used in a variety of featured animated films. Since then they have continued advancing this MoonRay code via the open-source OpenMoonRay project and this week published their newest feature update...

With QEMU 10.2 that released at the end of last year is the new "MSHV" accelerator for allowing VMs to be created from a Microsoft Hyper-V guest without using nested virtualization. Last weekend at FOSDEM 2026 was a presentation on this MSHV accelerator for those interested...

Une nouvelle saison dédiée aux plus beaux montages Et c'est reparti pour une deuxième saison consacrée aux montages PC et au watercooling en tout genre. Comme l'année dernière, l'objectif n'est pas de suivre une tendance particulière, mais plutôt de mettre en avant des configurations soignées, originales ou simplement impressionnantes sur le plan visuel. Cette année, le rythme évolue légèrement : nous vous proposerons désormais un montage par semaine. Le format quotidien s'est en effet révélé parfois difficile à tenir sur la durée. Comme toujours, si vous souhaitez voir votre propre configuration présentée ici, vous pouvez envoyer vos réalisations à Lucas. […]

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Parlons un peu cartes graphiques avec les prix de ces chers composants cette semaine. Et malheureusement, tout ne s'est pas bien passé. Forcément, les tarifs dépendent des stocks des cartes agressives, mais certaines de ces dernières subissent aussi des augmentations. Et chez AMD, on voit plutôt rouge en ce moment avec des hausses sur l'ensemble des cartes suivies, ou plutôt des GPU suivi. Des petites, des plus importantes, deux stagnations quand même, mais des hausses qui semblent plutôt généralisées et qui feront peut-être regretter d'éventuels achats non passés en fin d'année dernière. Par exemple, nous notions la RX 7600 à moins de 200 U+20AC fin 2025, et nous la trouvons actuellement à 270 U+20AC environ. La version XT ? De 349.90 U+20AC à 505.90 U+20AC ! On peut continuer avec d'autres références pendant (trop) longtemps, aussi évoquons les RX 9070 XT et RX 7900 XTX qui sont plutôt stables ces dernières semaines après une montée importante en début d'année. […]

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"After a half-century asking us to exercise more, doctors and physiologists say we have been thinking about it wrong," writes Washington Post columnist Michael J. Coren. "U.S. and World Health Organization guidelines no longer specify a minimum duration of moderate or vigorous aerobic activity." Movement-tracking studies show even tiny, regular bursts of effort — as short as 30 seconds — can capture many of the health benefits of the gym. Climbing two to three flights of stairs a few times per day could change your life. Experts call it VILPA, or vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity. "The message now is that all activity counts," said Martin Gibala, a professor and former chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University in Canada... Just taking the stairs daily is associated with lower body weight and cutting the risk of stroke and heart disease — the leading (and largely preventable) cause of death globally. While it may not burn many calories (most exercise doesn't), it does appear to extend your health span. Leg power — a measure of explosive muscle strength — was a stronger predictor of brain aging than any lifestyle factors measured in a 2015 study in the journal Gerontology... How little activity can you do? Four minutes daily. Essentially, a few flights of stairs at a vigorous pace. That's the effort [Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor of physical activity and population health at the University of Sydney] found delivered significant health benefits in that 2022 study of British non-exercisers. "We saw benefits from the first minute," Stamatakis said. For Americans, the effect is even more dramatic: a 44 percent drop in deaths, according to a peer-reviewed paper recently accepted for publication. "We showed for the first time that vigorous intensity, even if it's done as part of the day-to-day routine, not in a planned and structured manner, works miracles," Stamatakis said. "The key principle here is start with one, two minutes a day. The focus should be on making sure that it's something that you can incorporate into your daily routine. Then you can start thinking about increasing the dose." Intensity is the most important factor. You won't break a sweat in a brief burst, but you do need to feel it. A highly conditioned athlete might need to sprint to reach vigorous territory. But many people need only to take the stairs. Use your breathing as a guide, Stamatakis said: If you can sing, it's light intensity. If you can speak but not sing, you're entering moderate exertion. If you can't hold a conversation, it's vigorous. The biggest benefits come from moderate to vigorous movement. One minute of incidental vigorous activity prevents premature deaths, heart attacks or strokes as well as about three minutes of moderate activity or 35 to 49 minutes of light activity.

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Le studio Pearl Abyss nous dévoile une nouvelle vidéo portant sur son jeu Crimson Desert, le but étant de nous sensibiliser aux combats, qui sont bien violents tout en étant visuellement impressionnant et à la progression, vous saurez tout sur le déblocage des compétences, l'amélioration des équipements et comment devenir un big combattant ! Le jeu Crimson Desert fut initialement pensé comme un MMORPG avant d'épouser un destin de jeu solo, tout en conservant un aspect open world. Le systéme de combat semble plus convivial que certains titres très, trop, exigeants sur cet aspect, tels que les Dark Souls et Elden Ring, cela pourrait permettre à des joueurs plus occasionnels de tenter leur chance. Le jeu du studio Pearl Abyss est aattendu pour le 19 mars 2026 et supportera le DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation dés sa sortie. "Dans cet épisode, nous mettons en avant deux éléments clés du gameplay : le système de combat et la progression. Sur les immenses champs de bataille de Pywel, vous pourrez combiner armes et compétences comme vous l'entendez, les enchaîner et créer vos propres enchaînements pour comprendre ce que signifie vraiment se battre comme un Crinière Grise. Obtenez de nouvelles compétences, améliorez votre équipement et affrontez les menaces qui pèsent sur Pywel afin de devenir un guerrier d'exception. Nous vous donnons rendez-vous très bientôt pour le dernier épisode de la série : restez à l'affût !" […]

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Le concept semble être à nouveau en vogue, nous n'allons pas nous plaindre, le prochain titre du studioCAPCOM, un certain Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection bénéficie d'une version d'évaluation, téléchargeable ici. Le jeu sera disponible le 13 mars 2026, vous aurez donc largement le temps de vous faire un avis avant cette date butoir. Cette démo est décrite comme une opportunité de commencer l'aventure, en avance, de personnaliser votre personnage,d'essayer le système de combat, mais aussi de commencer à récupérer de l'équipement et des Monsties comme dans le jeu complet. Les données sauvegardées seront transférables dans la version complète, afin de reprendre l'aventure là où vous en étiez. Quelques limites existent malgré tout, la version d'évaluation ne comprend qu'un slot de sauvegardes, contre trois pour le jeu complet, la progression est également limité au niveau 10, il est possible de poursuivre la partie au-delà, mais vous n'engrangez plus de points d'expérience et CAPCOM précise : "Afin de reprendre votre progression dans la version complète du jeu, vous devrez utiliser le même compte avec vos données sauvegardées sur le PC." […]

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Fortune reports on "a watershed moment" in American's nuclear power industry: In January, Meta partnered with Gates' TerraPower and Sam Altman-backed Oklo to develop about 4 gigawatts of combined SMR projects — enough to power almost 3 million homes — for "clean, reliable energy" both for Meta's planned Prometheus AI mega campus in Ohio and beyond. Analysts see Meta as the start of more Big Tech nuclear construction deals — not just agreements with existing plants or restarts such as the now-Microsoft-backed Three Mile Island. "That was the first shot across the bow," said Dan Ives, head of tech research for Wedbush Securities, of the Meta deals. "I would be shocked if every Big Tech company doesn't make some play on nuclear in 2026, whether a strategic partnership or acquisitions." Ives pointed out there are more data centers under construction than there are active data centers in the U.S. "I believe clean energy around nuclear is going to be the answer," he said. "I think 2030 is the key threshold to hit some sort of scale and begin the next nuclear era in the United States." Smaller SMR reactors can be built in as little as three years instead of the decade required for traditional large reactors. And they can be expanded, one or two modular reactors at a time, to meet increasingly greater energy demand from 'hyperscalers,' the companies that build and operate data centers. "There's major risk if nuclear doesn't happen," Oklo chairman and CEO Jacob DeWitte told Fortune, citing the need for emission-free power and consistent baseload electricity to meet skyrocketing demand. "The hyperscalers, as the ultimate consumers of power are, are looking at the space and seeing that the market is real. They can play a major role in helping make that happen," DeWitte said, speaking in his fast-talking, Silicon Valley startup mode.

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Axios reports: Anthropic's latest AI model has found more than 500 previously unknown high-severity security flaws in open-source libraries with little to no prompting, the company shared first with Axios. Why it matters: The advancement signals an inflection point for how AI tools can help cyber defenders, even as AI is also making attacks more dangerous... Anthropic debuted Claude Opus 4.6, the latest version of its largest AI model, on Thursday. Before its debut, Anthropic's frontier red team tested Opus 4.6 in a sandboxed environment [including access to vulnerability analysis tools] to see how well it could find bugs in open-source code... Claude found more than 500 previously unknown zero-day vulnerabilities in open-source code using just its "out-of-the-box" capabilities, and each one was validated by either a member of Anthropic's team or an outside security researcher... According to a blog post, Claude uncovered a flaw in GhostScript, a popular utility that helps process PDF and PostScript files, that could cause it to crash. Claude also found buffer overflow flaws in OpenSC, a utility that processes smart card data, and CGIF, a tool that processes GIF files. Logan Graham, head of Anthropic's frontier red team, told Axios they're considering new AI-powered tools to hunt vulnerabilities. "The models are extremely good at this, and we expect them to get much better still... I wouldn't be surprised if this was one of — or the main way — in which open-source software moving forward was secured."

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Long-time Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis shared this report from InsideEVs: Chinese battery giant CATL and automaker Changan Automobile are preparing to put the world's first passenger car powered by sodium-ion batteries on public roads by mid-2026. And if the launch is successful, it could usher in an era where electric vehicles present less of a fire risk and can better handle extreme temperatures. The CATL Naxtra sodium-ion battery will debut in the Changan Nevo A06 sedan, delivering an estimated range of around 400 kilometers (249 miles) on the China Light-Duty Test Cycle. From there, the battery will roll out across Changan's broader portfolio, including EVs from Avatr, Deepal, Qiyuan and Uni, the company said. "The launch represents a major step in the industry's transition toward a dual-chemistry ecosystem, where sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries complement each other to meet diverse customer needs," CATL said in a press release... It delivers 175 watt-hours per kilogram of energy density, which is lower than nickel-rich chemistries but roughly on par with lithium ion phosphate batteries... Where the Naxtra battery really stands out, however, is cold-weather performance. CATL says its discharge power at -30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit) is three times higher than that of lithium ion phosphate batteries.

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Has the rise of hyper-addictive digital technologies really shattered our attention spans and driven books out of our culture? Maybe not, argues social psychologist Adam Mastroianni (author of the Substack Experimental History): As a psychologist, I used to study claims like these for a living, so I know that the mind is primed to believe narratives of decline. We have a much lower standard of evidence for "bad thing go up" than we do for "bad thing go down." Unsurprisingly, then, stories about the end of reading tend to leave out some inconvenient data points. For example, book sales were higher in 2025 than they were in 2019, and only a bit below their high point in the pandemic. Independent bookstores are booming, not busting; at least 422 new indie shops opened in the United States last year alone. Even Barnes & Noble is cool again. The actual data on reading, meanwhile, isn't as apocalyptic as the headlines imply. Gallup surveys suggest that some mega-readers (11+ books per year) have become moderate readers (1-5 books per year), but they don't find any other major trends over the past three decades. Other surveys document similarly moderate declines. For instance, data from the National Endowment for the Arts finds a slight decrease in the percentage of U.S. adults who read any book in 2022 (49%) compared to 2012 (55%). And the American Time Use Survey shows a dip in reading time from 2003 to 2023. Ultimately, the plausibility of the "death of reading" thesis depends on two judgment calls. First, do these effects strike you as big or small...? The second judgment call: Do you expect these trends to continue, plateau, or even reverse...? There are signs that the digital invasion of our attention is beginning to stall. We seem to have passed peak social media — time spent on the apps has started to slide. App developers are finding it harder and harder to squeeze more attention out of our eyeballs, and it turns out that having your eyeballs squeezed hurts, so people aren't sticking around for it... Fact #2: Reading has already survived several major incursions, which suggests it's more appealing than we thought. Radio, TV, dial-up, Wi-Fi, TikTok — none of it has been enough to snuff out the human desire to point our pupils at words on paper... It is remarkable, even miraculous, that people who possess the most addictive devices ever invented will occasionally choose to turn those devices off and pick up a book instead. The author mocks the "death of reading" hypothesis for implying that all the world's avid readers "were just filling time with great works of literature until TikTok came along."

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Waymo surprised U.S. lawmakers Wednesday during a hearing on autonomous vehicles and their safety and oversight. Newsweek reports: During questioning, Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, asked what happens when a Waymo vehicle encounters a driving situation it cannot independently resolve. "The Waymo phones a human friend for help," Markey explained, adding that the vehicle communicates with a "remote assistance operator." Markey criticized the lack of public information about these workers, despite their role in vehicle safety... [Dr. Mauricio Peña, chief safety officer at Waymo] responded by clarifying the scope of the operators' involvement: "They provide guidance, they do not remotely drive the vehicles," Peña said. "Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets input, but Waymo is always in charge of the dynamic driving task," according to EVShift. Pressed further on where those operators are located, Peña told lawmakers that some are based in the United States and others abroad, though he did not have an exact breakdown. After additional questioning, he confirmed that overseas operators are located in the Philippines... The disclosure prompted sharp criticism from Markey, who raised concerns about security and labor implications. "Having people overseas influencing American vehicles is a safety issue," he said. "The information the operators receive could be out of date. It could introduce tremendous cyber security vulnerabilities," according to People. Markey also pointed to job displacement, noting that autonomous vehicles already affect taxi and rideshare drivers in the U.S. Waymo defended the practice in comments to People, saying the use of overseas staff is part of a broader effort to scale operations globally. Waymo also defended the remote workers to Newsweek as licensed drivers reviewed for "driving-related convictions" and other traffic violations who are also "randomly screened for drug use." Thanks to Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.

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With the Linux 6.19 stable kernel expected to be released tomorrow (8 February), here is a reminder about the top features to expect from this next version of the Linux kernel...

Despite urgent pleas to Americans to save the honeybees, "it was all based on a fallacy," writes Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. "Honeybees were never in existential trouble. And well-meaning efforts to boost their numbers have accelerated the decline of native bees that actually are." "Suppose I were to say to you, 'I'm really worried about bird decline, so I've decided to take up keeping chickens.' You'd think I was a bit of an idiot," British bee scientist Dave Goulson said in a video last year. But beekeeping, he went on, is "exactly the same with one key difference, which is that honeybee-keeping can be actively harmful to wild-bee conservation." Even from healthy hives, diseases flow "out into wild pollinator populations." Honeybees can also outcompete native bees for pollen and nectar, Milbank points out, and promote non-native plants "at the expense of the native plants on which native bees thrive." Bee specialist T'ai Roulston at the University of Virginia's Blandy Experimental Farm here in Boyce warned that keeping honeybees would "just contribute to the difficulties that native bees are having in the world." And the Clifton Institute's Bert Harris, my regular restoration ecology consultant in Virginia, put it bluntly: "If you want to save the bees, don't keep honeybees...." Before I stir up a hornet's nest of angry beekeepers, let me be clear: The save-the-pollinator movement has, overall, been enormously beneficial over the past two decades. It helped to get millions of people interested in pollinator gardens and wildflower meadows and native plants, and turned them against insecticides. A lot of honeybee advocacy groups promote native bees, too, and many people whose environmental awakening came from the plight of honeybees are now champions of all types of conservation... But if your goal is to help pollinators, then the solution is simple: Don't keep honeybees... The bumblebees, sweat bees, mason bees, miner bees, leafcutters and other native bees, most of them solitary, ground-nesting and docile, need your help. Honeybees do not. The article calls it "a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences that emerge when we intervene in nature, even with the best of intentions."

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Last Sunday, Bitcoin had dropped 13% in three days, to $76,790. By Thursday it had dropped another 21%, to $60,062. This morning it's at $69,549 — up from Thursday, down from Sunday, but 44% lower than its all-time high in October of $123,742. In short, Bitcoin "is down almost 30% this week alone," reports CNBC: "This steady selling in our view signals that traditional investors are losing interest, and overall pessimism about crypto is growing," Deutsche Bank analyst Marion Laboure said Wednesday in a note to clients. Growing investor caution comes as many of the sensationalized claims about bitcoin have failed to materialize. The token has largely traded in the same direction as other risk-on assets, such as stocks... and its adoption as a form of payment for goods and services has been minimal... While many in the crypto market have previously credited large institutional investors with supporting the price of bitcoin, now it is those same participants who appear to be selling. "Institutional demand has reversed materially," CryptoQuant said in a report on Wednesday. But not everyone accepts that answer, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. "The worst part for some of crypto's permabulls is that they aren't sure what exactly caused the crash": The selloff left many of the market's luminaries — those so well-known that they go simply as "Pomp" and "Novo" and "Mooch" — searching for answers... Ether dropped 24% to $2,052, off 59% from its own high of last year. Both tokens staged furious rallies Friday, but the week remained a historically bad one for crypto. And few seem to know what went wrong. Market theories for the selloff ranged from investors' pivot toward the prediction markets and other risky bets, to widespread profit-taking after a blistering bull run. "There was no smoking gun," said Michael Novogratz, who runs Galaxy Digital, a crypto merchant-banking and trading firm... "If you ask five experts, you'll get five explanations," said Anthony Scaramucci, who served for 11 days as communications director during Trump's first term and is among the best-known crypto bulls at his firm, SkyBridge Capital. "No, but seriously: What's going on with bitcoin?" reads the headline at CNN, with a story that begins "Bitcoin is acting weird... " Crypto is notoriously volatile, and it's gone through numerous crashes that are bigger than this one. What's strange is this: Bitcoin's four-month slump has come at a time when, in theory, it had everything going for it. Economist Paul Krugman points out the price of Bitcoin is now lower than it was before America's 2024 election, when candidate Trump promised to make cryptocurrency "one of the greatest industries on earth." CNN seems to agree with CNBC that what's behind this new crypto winter is "Mostly doubts that bitcoin is 'digital gold,' after all..." Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.

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ASUS propose du 5 février au 19 mars 2026 une offre qui nous semble suffisamment intéressante pour qu'on en fasse une actualité sur H&Co. Le principe est simple : vous permettre de récupérer, gratuitement, un code Steam pour le jeu Resident Evil Requiem (via Games Planet). On n'est pas non plus...