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New Lawsuit Against Amazon: 'Subscribe and Save' Program Can Actually Cost You More: Amazon's "Subscribe & Save" program — for recurring purchasees — has triggered a new lawsuit, reports Oregon Live. "The lawsuit contends that after luring in customers with 'artificially low prices,' the world's biggest online retailer jacked up the prices in the months after their first shipments arrived." In some cases, the lawsuit claims that customers were paying more for the exact same items through the Subscribe & Save program than they would be if they bought the items from other sellers on the site. That was true even when the up to 15% discount that the subscription program offers was calculated into the final purchase price, according to the suit. The Seattle law firm that filed the May 15 lawsuit says that Amazon's business practices amount to "deceptive," "misleading" and "bait and switch tactics." The firm is seeking class-action status in U.S. District Court for western Washington, a move that could potentially draw tens of millions of Amazon customers from across the U.S. into the litigation... [The suit says the plaintiffs' first order of espresso coffee grounds was $16.60.] When their order auto-renewed a few months later, the price had gone up to $17.04. A few months later, it rose to $21.25. Then in October 2024, the price increased to $28.69 — about $12 more than the Hermans had paid at the beginning of their subscription, according to the lawsuit. [The discount can be as little as 5% or up to 15%, Amazon told Oregon Live in a statement, noting customers do receive an email showing "applicable savings" before the orders ship. But...] The suit says Amazon gave the Hermans little notice to cancel the order or to shop around because it notified them of the latest price increase in an email at 8:54 p.m. — the same night it processed their order and charged them. The suit says if the Hermans had been given the time to shop around for a better price, they would have found that another Amazon seller was charging $25.90 — or $2.79 less — for the identical item. Amazon's "Subscribe & Save Terms & Conditions" page tells customers that it "may change the price for a Subscribe & Save subscription at any time for any reason...." The analytical group Consumer Intelligence Research Partners says about 25% of U.S. Amazon customers are enrolled in the Subscribe & Save program. Oregon Live got Amazon's response, which suggested their program saves customers time and money "through convenient, flexible, and recurring deliveries". (So when customers saw "Subscribe and Save", they were perhaps supposed to intuit the word save referred in part to... time-saving?) The plaintiffs' lawyer argues instead that "When you sign up for something that is called 'Subscribe & Save,' you'd expect that you're saving by subscribing. But that's not actually what's happening in many cases." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Desalination System Turns Seawater Into Drinking Water and Useful Salts - Including Lithium: "Scientists have developed a solar desalination system that turns seawater into drinking water without creating environmentally damaging brine," reports ScienceDaily. "Special laser-textured metal panels use sunlight to evaporate water while automatically moving salt deposits away from the working surface, preventing clogging. The process was successfully tested with water from three oceans and can recover nearly all salts as solids. Those leftover materials could even become a source of valuable lithium for batteries." (The research team was led by University of Rochest professor Chunlei Guo and published their results in the journal Light: Science & Applications.) The University of Rochester has made an announcement: The technology uses solar panels made of black metal etched with femtosecond lasers to make the surface super light-absorbing and superwicking — or extremely attractive to water. The panels have a laser-treated active region that pulls a thin layer of water across the surface, absorbs nearly all solar radiation, distills the water, and deposits the leftover salts and minerals into the panel's untreated sides or "passive" region so that the salt does not clog the active region and disrupt continuous desalination... Guo's team precisely etched the black metal's grooves so the various salts and minerals in ocean water would simply slough off... [I]t extracts nearly 100 percent of the salts in solid form. This could not only produce an abundant supply of table salt, but it could also be used to extract more precious minerals, including lithium, which is used in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and other electronics. In a related paper in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Guo and his colleagues show how they can use the same superwicking solar panels to separate lithium from the rest of other salts in desalination. Embedding nanoparticles made of hydrogen titanate in the tiny grooves of the black metal surface isolates the lithium from other salts and minerals...Using water samples from Great Salt Lake, the researchers extracted about 50 percent of the lithium from the salts left behind by the desalination process. Guo says now that the superwicking desalination technology has been demonstrated in proofs of concept on small-scale devices, he sees the technology inherently scalable, capable of improving global access to drinking water and building more sustainable supply chains for precious minerals. "The National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Worldwide Universities Network supported this research." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Something Made Earth's Molten Core Reverse Direction In 2010: ScienceAlert reports: In the molten ocean of iron churning in Earth's outer core, a section deep beneath the Pacific Ocean suddenly reversed direction and started moving eastward against the planet's usual westward flow. This happened in 2010, according to satellite measurements of Earth's magnetic field, and scientists are still trying to figure out what caused it... [I]t seemed to have a large, wave-like structure — as though a chunk of molten core material suddenly thought better of where it wanted to go, surging in the other direction... This finding suggests that there are processes that can influence it strongly enough to alter its behavior in bulk — and that our planet's interior may be more dynamic and variable than we thought. A new analysis captures what we know so far — and "It's from the roiling, molten, conducting metal at Earth's heart that the planetary magnetic field is generated... vital to our continued existence. It helps keep the atmosphere we breathe in and harmful cosmic radiation out." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US, Australia, and UK Plan New Unmanned Vehicles to Protect Undersea Data Cables: "Around 570 cables (plus a further 80 planned) carry between 95% and 99% of the world's intercontinental telecommunications data," reports CNN (since fiber cables offer speeds of terabits per second, carry much more data than satellite links). And "networks of green energy cables carrying electricity are also starting to sprawl across the world's seabeds." Now to protect them, the U.S., Australia and the U.K. "are planning to develop new unmanned undersea vehicles" as part of their trilateral security partnership. Western governments see a growing risk of Russian and Chinese sabotage of undersea cables and are also concerned that Iran may seek to exploit the many data networks running through the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. The "seabed is a battlefield" said Australia's Defence Minister, Richard Marles, in Singapore, calling for tougher action against so-called shadow-fleet vessels... The programme will improve the three nations' reconnaissance and strike capabilities, "and bolster superiority in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare," as well as mine countermeasures, [according to a statement from their trilateral AUKUS partnership]... The new AUKUS project will sharpen all three countries' ability to respond to threats, including those targeting underwater cables and pipelines, through a range of "cutting edge sensors and weapons systems for undersea drones," UK Defence Secretary John Healey said. Marles said undersea internet cables — "the arteries of modern civilization" — were being cut at an unprecedented rate, with island nations like Australia acutely vulnerable. "Over the past 18 months, we have witnessed a series of attacks against subsea critical infrastructure at a scale and frequency that is historically unprecedented," he said. The UK government has also highlighted the vulnerability of the world's digital highways. "Every international payment, every cross-border trade executed in milliseconds, every flow of data between businesses here in the UK and markets overseas — all travel along the seabed," Telecoms Minister Liz Lloyd said Friday... Last month, the UK said it had tracked three Russian submarines covertly surveying undersea cables in the north Atlantic... A UK parliamentary inquiry warned last year that UK infrastructure might be targeted in a crisis, adding it was "not confident that the UK could prevent such attacks or recover within an acceptable time period." The UK Navy is already exploring the creation of a hybrid force that incorporates the widespread use of underwater drones to combat Russian threats in the Atlantic. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'The Oral Tradition That Built Software May Not Survive AI': A historian-turned-software engineer warns that "so little is ever written down" by professional programmers in a new article for Fast Company: Perhaps there's an early design doc, but then it turns out that everything was substantially revised before work began. Maybe there are a few wiki pages explaining known issues, some of which were solved a long time ago and others that have been left to molder in the codebase. Somebody might have left a comment in the code itself, but typically it's a warning not to change something or else something else will break... Software engineering has an ambivalent relationship with documentation. Everyone agrees documentation matters in theory, but in practice it's inconsistent, outdated, or missing entirely. Part of that is simple inertia. Writing documentation is usually less interesting than writing the code itself. But it's also ideological. The Agile movement emerged in part as a reaction against the heavily documented Waterfall methodology, and one of Agile's core values explicitly prioritizes "working software over comprehensive documentation." In escaping bureaucratic overdocumentation, the industry also normalized underdocumentation. High turnover at software jobs always brings "a constant drain of domain knowledge." And he's he's skeptical that generative AI will be able to fill in those gaps: [H]aving it generate documentation on the codebase itself might sound like a solution to the absence of other written information. LLMs can certainly summarize code back to you. But hold up with that idea. Beyond hallucinations, there's a deeper problem: Writing documentation is itself part of the thinking process. Whether I'm writing history or software, putting an approach into words helps refine it before I sink hours into implementation. Documentation also captures intent. An LLM may be able to summarize what a codebase does, but it cannot reliably explain why a developer chose one approach over another, or what trade-offs shaped that decision... An LLM can read code that I've written. It might even scan a large codebase and accurately summarize what it's doing. But it can't assess authorial intent. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Teachers' Union Urges Schools To Curb AI Chatbots and Screen Time: Axios reports: The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers' union in the U.S., released a 10-point plan to introduce AI and screen-time guardrails in classrooms. The plan would limit AI use and ban screens for students in prekindergarten through second grade "unless there is a compelling reason," such as supporting students with special needs. The teacher union's president Randi Weingarten warned that young students "are drowning in tech," according to the New York Times, which reports the union president also "called on schools on Wednesday to stop giving digital devices like iPads to children in prekindergarten through second grade." In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, Weingarten also urged elementary schools to avoid using artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Khan Academy's Khanmigo with children [and] called for new national privacy and safety standards for A.I. tools in all schools... "The work of teaching and learning in the earliest grades should be done without A.I." The union's effort reflects a backlash among parents and educators against heavy use of school-issued laptops and apps. Some parents and nonprofit children's groups are also pushing back against campaigns by tech giants like Google and OpenAI to spread their A.I. products in schools... Weingarten said that the union was negotiating safety and privacy standards for A.I. use in schools with "our partners in the A.I. academy," and that Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic had agreed in principle to those standards. Weingarten "laid out a plan for reorienting public schooling toward human abilities and student well-being," according to the article, calling it "a devices down, eyes up, hands-on strategy." And meanwhile school cellphone bans are expanding into broader efforts to establish guardrails around AI in education and limit screen use, reports Axios. "At least 16 states — both red and blue — have introduced bills to limit classroom technology." Schools Beyond Screens formed with fewer than a dozen parents in Los Angeles Unified School District last year, but the nonprofit has grown to include thousands of parents and educators nationwide, SBS policy director Kate Brody tells Axios... McPherson Middle School principal Inge Esping told Axios that the suspension rate at her Kansas school fell 70% after cellphones were banned in 2022. Students also started speaking more with one another and with teachers. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Star Wars Movie Falls to #3 Behind Two Movies Directed By YouTube Stars: Disney's Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu "suffered a catastrophic 70% drop in its second weekend," reports Variety, suggesting the movie isn't finding audiences "beyond an aging group of core fans." "Despite playing on far more screens, The Mandalorian and Grogu landed in third place on weekend charts behind Backrooms and Obsession." (described as "two buzzy horror films.") Suprisingly, both movies were directed by 20-something YouTube stars, "and cost nearly nothing to produce." Analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations tells Variety, "We knew indie horror was hot, but we didn't know how hot. It's actually competing with the big summer blockbuster." Directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, "Backrooms" has earned $118 million globally so far... With a production budget of roughly $10 million, it's already one of the most profitable movies of the year. Though a sequel hasn't been announced, Parsons has already started toying with the idea of turning "Backrooms" into a film franchise... [The "Backrooms" premise seems to have originated on 4chan, then expanded in a YouTube video Parsons filmed when he was 16.] "Backrooms" also ranked as the biggest debut in history for original horror, as well as the best start for a first-time filmmaker on a non-franchise film. Parsons is the youngest director, by far, to have the No. 1 film at the box office. Based on Parsons' hit web series, "Backrooms" follows a furniture store owner (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who finds a secret doorway that leads him to a seemingly endless stretch of nondescript rooms. When he disappears, his therapist (Renate Reinsve) ventures into the unknown to rescue him. Nearly 85% of audiences were under the age of 35, and more than 50% were 25 or younger, according to PostTrak data. Parsons and [26-year-old Obsession director/writer Curry] Barker are part of a wave of YouTubers who have turned their talents to the big screen — and brought their enormous, youthful fanbases along with them. Earlier this year, YouTube creator Mark Fischback directed, self-financed and distributed the horror film "Iron Lung," which earned a stellar $50 million against a $3 million budget. What's all the more impressive is that "Backrooms" and "Obsession" aren't cannibalizing each other at the box office. In fact, "Obsession" rose 10% from the prior weekend, which was already up a stunning 39% from its solid $17 million debut. It's defying box office norms as the first film since "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" in 1982 to see ticket sales increase in its second and third weekends outside of the holiday season, according to Focus. After three weekends of release, "Obsession" has grossed $106 million domestically and $148 million worldwide against a mere $1 million production budget. The first-weekend box office for The Mandalorian and Grogu was the worst since 2002's Attack of the Clones, but then it's second-weekend drop in sales w

Renewable Energy is Surging in Africa: Almost a fifth of the earth's population lives in Africa. And Africa's next generation of power projects "is increasingly being built around solar and wind power and battery storage," reports the Associated Press, "as governments and investors shift away from coal and large hydropower dams in search of cheaper, faster and more reliable electricity." The shift is visible in a $1.5 billion energy agreement between China and Zambia announced in early May that includes three separate 300-megawatt projects spanning solar, wind and coal-fired power. While the inclusion of coal underscores the continent's continuing need for stable baseload electricity, African countries facing rising fuel import bills as a result of the Iran war, unreliable grids and growing industrial demand are increasingly turning to renewable energy projects that can be deployed faster and more cheaply than traditional plants. Of the 322 energy projects announced across Africa in 2025, 173 were solar projects, followed by hydropower at 46, wind at 34, gas at 22 and hybrid energy projects at 14, according to the energy research firm Electron Intelligence... Utility-scale solar power costs have dropped by nearly 90% globally since 2010, while onshore wind costs have fallen around 70%, making renewables the cheapest source of new electricity generation in many African markets... Much of the growth is through distributed solar and battery systems installed directly in mines, factories, telecom towers and homes. "Most official statistics still measure the energy transition the old way, by counting megawatts connected to national grids," [said Matt Tilleard, CEO of CrossBoundary Energy, which invests in renewable energy in Africa]. "But solar and batteries don't need central utilities." Data from the Africa Solar Industry Association shows 23.4 gigawatts of operational solar projects had been tracked across Africa by the end of 2025. But Chinese export figures indicate 58.1 gigawatts of solar panels have been shipped to African countries since 2017, suggesting solar adoption may be growing far faster than official figures capture. Investor Tilleard says "Renewable energy is now unequivocally the fastest, cheapest, and most bankable way to connect people, companies and economies to the megawatts they need to grow." And the article also includes this quote from Mugwe Manga, climate finance lead at FSD Kenya. "Africa is not on the periphery of the global energy transition, it is sitting at its center. The continent holds the world's best renewable resources, and the economics have now decisively turned in favor of clean energy." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI Agents Get Their Own Directory Built Atop DNS: "In the future, AI agents will be able to find one another using the Domain Name System (DNS), instead of crawling about and probing ports or checking configured resources," writes The Register. InfoWorld writes that "numerous proprietary agent registries are on the market, but the Linux Foundation suggests we simply extend the distributed, open Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure we already have." The foundation is now inviting contributions to the DNS-AID project, a standard way for AI agents to discover, verify, and communicate with one another over DNS that requires no new infrastructure. It enables agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers to use DNS as a global, vendor-neutral directory. While many details remain to be worked out, the proposal suggests domain owners create a new well-known address that can provide a starting point for agents looking for one another: _index._agents.{domain}. This approach ensures that agent discovery remains scalable, secure, and compatible with the protocols that underly the internet, the Linux Foundation said. The Linux Foundation descrbes DNS-AID as enabling a standard way for AI agents to discover and communicate with one another. "By leveraging the internet's existing Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure, DNS-AID provides a robust, decentralized alternative to the centralized registries and hardcoded URLs currently limiting AI interoperability." The standard was originally developed by Infoblox, their announcement notes, but "Because the protocol is implementation-agnostic, it functions across any DNS provider, ensuring that organizations maintain control over their agent infrastructure without relying on proprietary, centralized services." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'Virtual OS Museum' Lets You Try 570 Extinct Operating Systems: You can try 570 extinct operating systems at a new "virtual museum," according to a new article by ZDNet. Their reporter downloaded the ancient OS NeXTStep, and was "shocked" by how easy it was to run it, "and by the sheer number of operating systems to choose from." Essentially, what you do is download a zipped file, unzip it, change into the newly created directory, and run the executable. VirtualBox then opens to a Debian Linux instance, where you can select from a very long list of operating systems to run... You can run operating systems like Amiga, Apple I/II/III, Atari, Avigo, Commodore 64, Cray, DEC Alpha, Einstein, Game Boy Advance, GE 200, HP 3000, IBM 1130, iPod touch, Jupiter Ace, Lisa, Macintosh, MIPS-based SBCs, Neo, Newton, NeXT, NORC, Palm, and so many more. You can test the earliest mainframes, later mainframes and minicomputers, workstations and Unix variants, home computers, personal computer operating systems, mobile and embedded adOSes, and research-based and obscure systems. As far as Linux is concerned, you can run early Debian and its derivatives, Red Hat and its derivatives, early Slackware, and more... There are two editions of the Virtual OS Museum: full and lite. The full edition is currently 174GB and includes everything you need to run these old-school operating systems. The full version does not require a network connection to run. The Lite version is only 14GB and requires an internet connection because it downloads the full OS image you want to use. Gizmodo notes "this project is all the more remarkable for being the work of one man: Andrew Wartenkin, who has been collecting OS images for over two decades." Of course, Wartenkin didn't write all the emulation software himself, and he maintains a list of credits to give credit where it's due... The Museum itself runs in a virtual machine, which seems kinda fitting — it opens in a virtualized Linux installation and presents you with the full list of available operating systems. Did you know someone has written a GUI for the Commodore 64? Neither did I! There are simulations of ancient mainframes, like the IBM 1130 (yours for the low, low price of $32,280 — or $41,230 with a disk drive — back in 1965). There's also a YouTube channel. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00Kfor sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot.