A "massive influx" of jellyfish forced Electricite de France SA to shut three units at its Gravelines nuclear power plant this week and reduce output at a fourth, reports Bloomberg. Just as summer temperatures surged, 3.2 gigawatts went offline — and the power utility was already facing cuts other nuclear sites as high temperatures reduced the river water available for cooling. More details from ScienceAlert: As Politico reports, the Gravelines nuclear power plant spent hundreds of thousands of euros in 2025 to stop this happening again, only to see a repeat 12 months later... Increasing temperatures in the water can produce more of the plankton and animals that jellyfish feed on, as well as accelerating life cycles and extending breeding seasons.... It's not just jellyfish that have a habit of disrupting human energy infrastructure. Last year in Connecticut, a single raccoon caused more than a thousand power outages, as reported by CT Insider. It's not clear exactly what the raccoon did, but we do know it somehow got into a substation and caused damage to the equipment in there. The unwitting act of sabotage left more than 2,500 customers in the area without power at one stage — though repairs were swiftly carried out. Reuters reported Tuesday on how the French utility responded to their jellyfish swarm: EDF has installed fixed cameras at the intake canals and on the filter drum screens to detect any incoming blockages as soon as possible, an engineer told Reuters... The company has also partnered with a French fishing organisation and a sea rescue organisation, which monitor for swarms and can raise an alert to launch targeted trawling operations by fishermen to reduce the swarm's density before it reaches the plant, the engineer said. The fishing boats were deployed [last] Saturday after an initial alarm was raised, limiting the impact from the swarm. The jellyfish that are already on site are being removed with vacuum trucks, he said. No new jellyfish are arriving, so cleanup is finishing, which should lead to a quick restart of the units, they added... Scientists warn such events could become more common due to factors including global warming, the arrival of invasive species, habitat loss of predators and over-fishing. Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.

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Less than a year ago he was the #1 richest man in the world. 10 weeks ago he was #2. But yesterday Larry Ellison dropped to #8, Forbes reports, falling behind Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Ellison's net worth is now estimated at just $192.6 billion — after a $104 billion decline: Shares of Oracle plunged roughly 54% between hitting a high of just over $250 on June 1 to a low of $114.50 on July 28, though the stock rebounded slightly to $150.52 as of Friday. A decline followed Oracle telling investors it expected to raise $40 billion through debt and equity financing, with capital expenditures surging 162% to $55.7 billion and spending expected to top $95 billion by fiscal 2027. Jacob Bourne, an analyst at eMarketer, told Reuters there are broader concerns about how Oracle would fund its capital spending to match its revenue projections, and Bank of America analysts separately flagged in a note cautioning that more than 50% of Oracle's remaining performance obligation comes from OpenAI. Melius Research analysts wrote last month that Oracle's spending plans may not hold if OpenAI or Anthropic demands more computing capacity. S&P Global also downgraded Oracle's credit rating in July, arguing the firm's "rapidly expanding" AI infrastructure business could pay off, but may be too expensive and could weaken Oracle's financial position in the meantime. $443 billion. That's how much Oracle's market valuation has dropped since peaking at $877.1 billion in September, hitting $433.5 billion as of Friday... Oracle, once viewed as a potential winner of the booming AI infrastructure buildout, has since raised concerns among investors who appear to view the firm as taking on too much financial risk to fund its projects. Wall Street has cautioned that mega-cap tech firms may be taking on too much spending to match growing demand for AI products, with firms like Amazon expecting to spend more than $200 billion. Oracle's backlog has exploded to $638 billion, but more than half is reportedly associated with OpenAI, and some analysts have cautioned that most of those funds may not be guaranteed.

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"An engineering director at Google said four years ago that AI would deliver a four-day work week by 2025," remembers the BBC. And earlier this year OpenAI "formally urged companies to start testing out a four-day work week (with no change in pay), claiming that AI will soon be able to speed up so much human labour that the corporate world should prepare itself." However, a former OpenAI technical employee who left the company last year told the BBC the firm never actually trialled the four-day work week it suggested others should try while they were there. Instead, the person described what was often a gruelling work culture marked by frequent "crisis meetings", working on weekends, and "super cut-throat" performance reviews that would see colleagues suddenly let go... [T]he former OpenAI employee said they would put in at least 70 hours a week, much more than they did in previous tech jobs... Other companies have also pushed the idea that AI will effectively reduce the number of hours people need to work, for better or worse. [At OpenAI and Anthropic] sprints can stretch on for many weeks and top 90 hours of work in a seven-day period, tech workers that the BBC spoke to for this story said... At Meta, workers said they have been abruptly pushed onto teams this year doing AI work being treated as urgent... The hours on such teams at Meta are often long, with staff working into the night, on weekends, and feeling they are "on call" during the hours they are not working, according to descriptions of the work from the current and former employees... Some new research suggests that AI tools are making people's workloads even more burdensome. A study out of UC Berkeley followed hundreds of workers at a US tech company for eight months as they used AI. It found the employees "worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day"... The UC Berkeley research found that the workload of tech employees was expanded in part because of the need to constantly check the output of AI tools. In the article Neil Thompson, an innovation scholar at MIT, pointed out a problem with estimates that AI will ease the workload on humans. "People assume that 20% less work means four-day weeks. But new work emerges." The BBC also points out helpfully that "there are no limits in the U.S. on how many hours a person over the age of 16 can work." (While in the UK and Europe, "laws limit a working week to 48 hours, including overtime.") Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hadleyburg for sharing the article.

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Le 11 aout 2026, AMD a rendu public un bulletin de sécurité confirmant la résolution de deux failles d'intensité "élevée" découvertes sur de nombreux processeurs de son catalogue, récents comme plus anciens, puisque cela remonte par exemple jusqu'aux Ryzen 3000 Series en processeurs desktops. Le mêm...

It's not just RAM prices that are going up, writes CNET. "Reports suggest the cost of Windows licenses for manufacturers is rising by up to 10%." Several sites that closely follow Microsoft news, including Windows Central and Windows Latest, have published articles citing a report from Taiwan's Economic Daily News that claims some PC manufacturers are seeing a 7% to 10% increase in the cost of Windows 11 licenses... Because they buy licenses in bulk, they get a sizeable discount over what a consumer would pay for a new copy of Windows 11. But given the existing cost pressures from other components, a big Windows 11 price hike could lead them to pass on some of the added cost to PC buyers. According to the EDN story, PC makers could raise prices by about 5% over the next quarter due to the reported Windows price hike. .. A translated version of the Economic Daily News article contains information from an unnamed PC brand executive. It says that while Microsoft typically raises licensing costs every year by single-digit percentages, that hike has reached 7% to 10% this year, a significant increase. "A representative for Microsoft declined to comment on the report," according to the article. But it also notes that three weeks ago laptop maker Framework blamed price hikes and reconfigurations for some of their models on processor, memory, storage, "and other silicon costs — but also "an increase in Windows license costs." Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the article.

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"The European Union's Copernicus climate monitoring service confirmed Monday that June and July were the hottest on record in western Europe," .according to a report from the CBC. "The period saw an estimated 25,000 heat-related deaths." CNN has before-and-after photos of Europe's dried rivers, calling it "a crisis so dire it can be seen from space" River levels are so low that commercial ships have had to reduce their loads by as much as 80% to avoid running aground. It's disrupting supply chains and making shipping more expensive. Other effects of Europe's drying rivers The BBC reports that Romania has "shut down its only nuclear power station because of extremely low water levels in the Danube river." A bridge built in the year 39 AD by the Roman emperor Caligula "is usually entirely underwater," reports CNN, but this year full blocks of the ancient structure are visible, giving archaeologists a rare opportunity to study it." The reports adds that drying Tiber has also now also revealed formerly submerged e-bikes, scooters, refrigerators and a car." The CBC reports a dozen Nazi warships scuttled in a river during the Second World War are now resurfacing as water levels plunge. "Elsewhere, the drying Danube has revealed a German military motorcycle in Hungary, an unexploded 700-kilogram British bomb in Slovakia, and what are believed to be the ancient remains of a mammoth in Bulgaria."

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This week Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word open letter titled "The Future is for Everyone". But the BBC is more interested in why big tech executives keep writing manifestos about AI: [Zuckerberg's] vision echoes what AI leaders have expressed in various forms: the product they are building is among the "most important technologies in history." Marc Andreessen, co-founder of early web titan Netscape, perhaps started this trend in 2023 with a 5,000-word essay he called "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto", which argued innovation was the way to solve life's problems... As the International Monetary Fund warns AI could affect nearly 40% of jobs and worsen global financial inequality, Zuckerberg says he believes there will be an abundance of jobs in the future. "I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity's relevance would rush to build that future." Never mind that Zuckerberg's Meta has cut 10% of its global workforce — about 8,000 jobs — as the company reorganizes to focus on AI. Zuckerberg's manifesto is the latest to land in our social media feeds in an effort to put a positive spin on AI. In 2024, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI boss Sam Altman released a manifesto called "The Intelligence Age", a sweeping expression of optimism about the tech's potential... That same year, in a manifesto titled "Machines of Loving Grace", Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei touted the potential of AI to transform everything from healthcare to politics. So what's going on with these tech executives' manifestos? Economics blogger Noah Smith suggested to the BBC "they all feel like it's such an important moment that it's incumbent upon them to do whatever they can to shape the direction that this technology is going." Although he does see some value in their engagement with important issues. "Should we open-source something that has the ability to kill humanity? If you don't take that seriously, you're just a fool." But Rob Lalka, a business professor at Tulane University, had a different explanation for the BBC: Lalka said the timing of Zuckerberg's manifesto coincides with rising anger over AI's impact on everything from jobs to the environment. And while tech journalists and academics might pore over them trying to glean nuggets of meaning, these executive manifestos are not necessarily landing with the general public. "They're trying to make the case that the positives will far outweigh some of those negatives that the public backlash is pointing out," he said. "But I think a lot of the reasons for optimism are still yet to be seen."

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Ce sont deux tarifs qu'on ne croise vraiment pas souvent, surtout sur du matériel d'une marque réputée comme Samsung. Ces prix sont de plus directement sur le site officiel du fabricant, avec la livraison offerte par Chronopost. Il y a tout de même un "mais" que nous vous annonçons de suite pour ne...

En aout 2013, le studio Overkill Software lançait Payday 2. Un jeu plutôt marquant, et surtout à la longévité assez folle. Année après année, le titre continue par exemple à avoir environ 30 000 joueurs connectés en permanence sur Steam, sans faiblir. Il en a pourtant connu des controverses et diver...

Jusqu'à la mi-juin 2026, NVIDIA avait maintenu le tarif officiel de ses RTX PRO 6000 à "seulement" 8 900 $, grâce en réalité à une longue rupture de stock qui avait permis à la société de ne pas avoir à se pencher dessus. Un peu la même situation finalement que celle autour des GeForce RTX 5090, 508...

La crise que traverse actuellement le monde du hardware PC aboutit à des situations qu'on aurait eu bien du mal à imaginer il y a encore un an de cela. Alors que l'AM4 fait un retour en force chez ceux qui ont un budget limité pour leur nouvelle configuration, cela a donné l'idée aux fabricants de c...

PC Games Hardware vient de publier un article qui peut intéresser bien du monde, notamment pour mettre en favori sur son navigateur et pouvoir y retourner par la suite en cas de besoin. Le gros point fort, il est clair : regrouper en une seule page, et même finalement un seul graphe, les consommatio...

Nous n'aurions évidemment même pas jeté notre attention une seule seconde sur un tel prix il y a ne serait-ce qu'un mois de cela, mais il faut bien se rendre à l'évidence : si vous avez un budget de l'ordre de 300 à 350 € pour une carte graphique neuve, vous avez bien peu de chances de trouver mieux...

En business, comme en politique, tourner les chiffres pour qu'ils aillent dans le sens prévu par son argumentaire est une habitude à laquelle Capcom s'est amusé lors de l'annonce de ses résultats financiers du 2e trimestre 2026. La société a en effet souhaité soutenir la récente décision de Sony de...

Le 30 mai 2026, nous vous présentions avec un peu d'avance le lancement du Cooler Master V8 ACE 3DHP, le nouveau ventirad haut de gamme du fabricant. Un modèle vraiment pas comme les autres, sur lequel Cooler Master a beaucoup travaillé pour proposer notamment un design hybride mêlant des caloducs c...

Nous allons garder le conditionnel, aussi dans l'espoir que tout cela ne soit qu'un mauvais rêve et que nous allons bientôt nous réveiller, mais le forum chinois Board Channels se veut affirmatif et sûr de lui quand il indique qu'AMD aurait communiqué à ses partenaires en Chine sa nouvelle politique...

En ce 11 aout 2026, ARCTIC sort un nouveau produit destiné aux amateurs de refroidissement PC. Cela va inévitablement faire se lever les sourcils de certains passionnés, car il faut bien admettre que la marque a su au fil des années se tailler une plutôt belle réputation, avec du matériel généraleme...

Nous n'avons évidemment pas de boule de cristal à H&Co qui nous permettrait de vous affirmer que vous ne trouverez pas mieux comme prix sur une AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT dans les semaines à venir. Ce qu'on peut vous dire en tout cas, c'est que nous ne miserions pas spécialement dessus... Les prix de...

Alors celle-là, on ne l'avait pas forcément vue venir. La RAM, les SSD et HDD ont augmenté à cause de l'ogre IA qui s'accapare les stocks, et par répercussion les cartes graphiques qui embarquent également de la VRAM. Jusque là, plutôt simple à suivre. Les waterblocks ont augmenté également à cause...

En matière de protection des "fameux" connecteurs 16 pins qui ont une fâcheuse tendance à surchauffer en cas de pépin, qu'ils soient 12V-2x6 ou 12VHPWR, toutes les solutions ne se valent pas, mais n'ont également pas les mêmes couts... Le top du top, c'est le monitoring de l'intensité de chaque fil...