SlashdotNews for nerds, stuff that matters
Jun 6th 2026, 15:34 by EditorDavid
An upcoming vote in a few weeks on America's cryptocurrency "Clarity Act" is "rattling Wall Street and consumer advocates," reports CNN, with its proposal to regulate the bulk of crypto markets through America's Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "It allows crypto companies to operate, at long last, in compliance with U.S. rules, rather than what they have been doing — essentially running their businesses within a patchwork of state and federal legal gray areas." Even for Jamie Dimon, the banking titan who's not known to mince words, it was a surprising shot across the bow when he described a fellow financier as "full of sh*t." "No one's gonna bow down to this guy or that company," Dimon told Fox Business last week. "This guy" being Brian Armstrong, and "that company" being cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. The Dimon-Armstrong tension isn't new, but it is boiling over publicly as the Senate inches closer to a floor vote on the crypto industry's No. 1 legislative priority, known as the Clarity Act. Dimon, a longtime crypto skeptic, broadly supports crypto regulation but takes issue with a provision in the Clarity Act that would allow companies like Coinbase to "effectively pay interest on deposits... without the protection they should have." The spicy comment about Armstrong came after Dimon rattled off other concerns about the Clarity Act, including what he sees as its insufficient anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer safeguards that banks have had in place for decades... "If (Armstrong) takes deposits like a bank, he should have bank rules," Dimon said in the Fox Business interview... The immediate concern from banks (and many consumer advocates) is that crypto exchanges like Coinbase would, in the grand tradition of Silicon Valley innovation, lure customers in with huge rewards and then phase those benefits out over time. Deposits in a crypto exchange are also not insured by the federal government the way bank deposits are, but that's the kind of fine print that customers tend to overlook until it's too late. JPMorgan Chase spokesperson Trish Wexler underscored that the bank wants the bill to pass, with some "fixes," like prohibiting rewards on stablecoin holdings and strengthening anti-money-laundering guardrails. Coinbase's CEO responded in an interview with Politico: Armstrong pointed to restrictions on rewards paid to idle cryptocurrency balances and disclosures on stablecoins as part of a handful of policies included in the bill to appease the banking industry's requests. "I think it'd be good for the banks," Armstrong said of the bill. "It would be great for crypto companies as well ... Hopefully we can get past the absolutisms and just see if we can get this bill over the finish line." But CNN notes concerns about weaving cryptocurrency — "a historically self-contained financial system prone to stomach-churning booms and busts" — more deeply into America's traditional finance infrastructure: "It's not just a crypto story, it's a broad deregulation of our securities markets story," Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who specializes in banking and cryptocurrency, said in an interview. And that should concern everyone, Allen says, even if they have no investments at all, because "if we get a financial crisis in this space... no one comes out of that unscathed."
 
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Jun 6th 2026, 14:34 by EditorDavid
An official trailer dropped this week for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. It's "a full-blown remake of the original 1996 Tomb Raider game," reports Kotaku, "rebuilt from the ground up using Unreal Engine 5." Developed by Flying Wild Hog (with assistance/guidance from longtime Tomb Raider studio Crystal Dynamics), "it will also make some changes to puzzles, combat, platforming..." The game's Steam page acknowledges that AI-assisted tools were used during development "to support some early exploration and temporary development content," but that any AI-assisted assets were "either replaced or refined by humans in order to maintain the creative and artistic vision of the development team." In a statement to Eurogamer, Crystal Dynamics clarifies that they "leverage" AI tools "to help our teams iterate on ideas faster and more efficiently, while ensuring that all finished content in the final product is human-crafted." (But are they considering AI-assisted assets "refined" by humans as "human-crafted"?) Polygon reports that "The early response to the news has been mixed to negative on the Tomb Raider subreddit, ranging from vague hopes that the generative-AI craze will simply go away to grim resignation that this is the future of game development." Beyond labor concerns, art theft worries, and environmental issues, the most straightforward reason AI art has been unpopular is that many players find it hideous. We'll find out for sure whether Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis' use of AI is particularly blatant when it comes out in February 2027. Its release date is February 12, 2027 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC.
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Jun 6th 2026, 13:00 by BeauHD
Utah residents and a progressive nonprofit are suing officials over Kevin O'Leary's planned Stratos Project AI data center, arguing that the special authority overseeing it gives unelected officials too much control over land use, taxation, public health, and local governance. The lawsuit comes as O'Leary has agreed to shrink the proposed 40,000-acre project by 75% amid mounting political and community pushback. NBC News reports: The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Utah's 3rd District Court by the Alliance for a Better Utah and the group of anonymous residents. The plaintiffs hope to challenge the constitutionality of the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) -- a special entity that oversees the data center's proposal -- and its approval of the project, a spokesperson for the nonprofit said. Attorney David Irvine, who is representing the plaintiffs, alleges that MIDA is exercising powers as an unelected body that "the Utah Constitution never authorized." "Under the Stratos plan, it would hold permanent, irrevocable control over public health, safety, taxation, and land use across tens of thousands of acres of Box Elder County, with no voter recourse," he said in a statement. The lawsuit alleges that allowing MIDA to oversee the data center's development "irrevocably" cuts off Box Elder County citizens' rights by not allowing sufficient public input in the project. "The Stratos Project Area Plan, and actions taken by MIDA and the Commission to enact the same, puts lawmaking power respecting questions of public health, safety, welfare, morals, taxation, zoning, land use, and the like, in relation to a significant swath of county territory in a non-elected MIDA Board," the complaint reads. In addition to MIDA and the Box Elder County Commission, the lawsuit names Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams and state Sen. Jerry Stevenson, who also serve as MIDA board members. Irvine said Adams and Stevenson's presence on the MIDA board as active legislators "appears to violate the prohibition on holding more than one office of public trust simultaneously," and claimed this should render the data center's approval "null and void."
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Jun 6th 2026, 11:00 by BeauHD
After 50 years of searching, astronomers say they have finally found evidence of a long-sought "wind" blowing from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. "Unless a black hole exists in a perfect vacuum, it must blow a wind somehow. And there is no perfect vacuum in the universe," team co-leader and Northwestern University researcher Mark Gorski said in a statement. "With new observations, this is the first time we've had a clean enough view to see the wind's imprint. We looked at the data and said, 'There it is. There is the thing that everybody's been looking for for 50 years.'" Space.com reports: Scientists have been aware for some time that feeding black holes launch powerful outflows of material around them, including jets and winds. Winds are caused when matter falling to the black hole is accelerated to near light-speed, generating pressure that pushes infalling material away. That has been seen with ravenously feeding black holes before, but not the barely feeding Sgr A*. Its sparse consumption of material and the fact it is obscured by the plane of the Milky Way from our vantage point have made tracing this wind difficult. Gorski's Northwestern colleague and team co-leader Lena Murchikova pointed out that the scientists were the first to detect molecular gas very close to Sgr A* feeding the supermassive black hole. That makes Sgr A* reassuringly like other supermassive black holes. "The wind is not powerful, and its direction probably wanders with time. It shows that our black hole is not unique, and our place in the universe is not unique," Murchikova added. "To observe our own black hole, we have to look through the plane of our galaxy. That means we have to peer through gas, dust and ionized structures, and you can't really see through all of that easily." While the team's results confirm that Sgr A* is extremely quiet compared to the supermassive black holes that sit in bright, turbulent regions of other galaxies called active galactic nuclei (AGN), this black hole wind is no slouch. In fact, the scientists think that it has been raging for around 20,000 years. "The majority of other galaxies spend most of their lives in a state where they are not particularly active," Murchikova said. "But we can only see them when they are in a fireworks stage. It is very attractive to study black holes when they are in the fireworks stage, but that's not actually their dominant state. "Sgr A* finally gives us a window into the life of a black hole in this quiet state." The team's research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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