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NextGov: The IRS has notified states that offered the free, government tax filing service known as Direct File in 2025 that the program won't be available next filing season. In an email sent from the IRS to 25 states, the tax agency thanked them for collaborating and noted that "no launch date has been set for the future." "IRS Direct File will not be available in Filing Season 2026," says the Monday email, obtained by Nextgov/FCW and confirmed by multiple sources. It follows reports that the program was ending and Trump's former tax chief, Billy Long, remarking over the summer that the service was "gone." The program, which debuted in 2024, was a big shift from the decades-long IRS policy of not competing with the tax prep industry in offering its own free, online tax filing service for Americans. Many Republicans had opposed Direct File, and tax prep companies also lobbied against it.

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Web-based video games are experiencing an unexpected revival as the broader $189 billion industry stagnates. Sales for browser-based titles like GeoGuessr and chess were expected to triple from 2021 to 2028, reaching $3.09 billion, according to Google and Kantar. Playgama hosted more than 15,000 new web games in the first half of 2025, exceeding the combined total from 2021 through 2023. Websites provide fast and easy access without console boot-ups or app downloads. Game creators sidestep the 30% revenue cuts imposed by Steam and Apple. Poki has doubled its employee count to 70 since 2020 and now serves 100 million monthly active users. A top-ten developer on the platform earns about $1 million in yearly revenue, up from $50,000 in 2020. Consoles cost more than $450, and smartphone gamers are downloading fewer apps. Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins predicted web games will be "one of the next waves."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: On the new MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple has mandated that all application icons fit into their prescribed squircle. No longer can icons have distinct shapes, nor even any fun frame-breaking accessories. Should an icon be so foolish as to try to have a bit of personality, it will find itself stuffed into a dingy gray icon jail. [...] While Apple had previously urged developers to use squircle icons on our apps, they've now taken things much further to ensure compliance. It's a shame. Apple updated their own app icons on Tahoe, for both the squircle shape as well as the new "Liquid Glass" interface. Mostly, these icons seem dumbed-down, with a loss of detail.

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Last year Brazil saw its biggest drop in emissions since 2009, new data show. The decline comes in the wake of a crackdown on deforestation. From a report: Since returning to power in 2022, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has moved to stem illicit clearing of forest by miners, loggers, and farmers, stepping up enforcement that had been weakened under his predecessor, far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon is now at its lowest level in more than a decade. In Brazil, forests are largely destroyed to create new cropland and pasture, and together, the loss of forest and raising of cattle are its biggest sources of emissions. Lula's crackdown on illegal deforesters has put those emissions in check. According to the Climate Observatory, a green group, Brazilian emissions fell by 16.7 percent last year. "The new data shows the impact of the federal government retaking control over deforestation after a deliberate lack of control between 2019 and 2022," when Bolsonaro held office, the group said in a statement. Lula aims to end illegal deforestation entirely by the end of this decade, but as he makes progress on this goal, Brazil is still facing worsening droughts and fires fueled by warming. Last year, fires accounted for two-thirds of the primary tropical forest lost in Brazil, according to the World Resources Institute. Often small fires used to clear land get out of control, burning through larger, drought-ridden areas.

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U.S. corporate profits have risen to record levels this year as companies eliminated nearly 1 million jobs. Chen Zhao of Alpine Macro calls the disconnect a "jobless boom." Companies typically cut workers when profits decline. Amazon laid off 30,000 employees despite strong earnings. Zhao attributes the pattern to AI adoption boosting productivity across industries while reducing demand for workers. Labor demand has fallen to zero growth or mild contraction. The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates in September and October after Jerome Powell noted concerns about layoff announcements from large employers. The Department of Labor suspended monthly employment reports when the government shutdown began October 1. ADP reported private employers added 42,000 workers in October. The unemployment rate stood at 4.3% in August. The rate has remained stable because the labor pool is contracting due to baby boomer retirements and reduced immigration under Trump administration policies. Art Papas of Bullhorn disputes the AI explanation and argues companies are recalibrating after pandemic overhiring.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon on Friday expanded the reach of its low-cost ecommerce service to 14 additional markets and will call it Amazon Bazaar, as part of a push to compete with Chinese rivals including Shein and PDD Holding's Temu. The expansion of the service comes at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping import tariffs are denting consumer sentiment, especially of lower-income groups, who are on a constant hunt for cheaper deals.

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The bootc project allows users to create a bootable Linux system image using the container tooling that many developers are already familiar with. It is an evolution of OSTree (now called libostree), which is used to create Fedora Silverblue and other image-based distributions. While creating custom images is still a job for experts, the container technology simplifies delivering heavily customized images to non-technical users.

Singaporean super-app company Grab has dumped 200 cloudy Mac Minis and replaced them with physical machines, a move it expects will save $2.4 million over three years. From a report: Grab is Southeast Asia's leading rideshare and food delivery outfit and therefore needs to build apps for iOS to connect with customers. In a Thursday post, the company explains it builds those apps using Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CI/CD) infrastructure that runs on Apple Mac computers. The company started with a single on-prem Mac Pro -- its post shows 2013's cylindrical model based around an Intel Xeon processor -- but eventually reached over 200 Macs, running in the cloud at an unnamed US cloud provider. "At the beginning, it was a no-brainer to rent when our demand for macOS hardware increased from 1 Mac Pro to 20 times that size," Grab's post explains. "However, when that grew to over 200 machines, the total cost became significant."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The volume of activity on Polymarket, one of the most popular prediction markets, has been significantly inflated by so-called wash trading in which users rapidly buy and sell the same contracts, according to a new study by Columbia University researchers. The "artificial trading," as the authors call it, varied over time but accounted for an average of 25% of all buying and selling on Polymarket over the past three years, the researchers concluded. The paper, which has not undergone peer review, was posted Thursday on the open-access research platform SSRN. The authors do not suggest that Polymarket itself was responsible for the wash trading, but they point to elements of the exchange's crypto-based structure that make it possible.

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Rockstar Games has announced that Grand Theft Auto VI won't launch in May of next year as planned. Kotaku: The highly anticipated sequel is now set to arrive in November 2026. On Thursday, Rockstar announced on social media that the long-awaited next entry in its open-world blockbuster franchise would need a bit more time, delaying the game an additional six months from May to November 19, 2026. Rockstar said "these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve."

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Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, bind9.16, libsoup, mariadb:10.5, and sssd), Debian (chromium, keystone, and swift), Fedora (apptainer, buildah, chromium, fcitx5, fcitx5-anthy, fcitx5-chewing, fcitx5-chinese-addons, fcitx5-configtool, fcitx5-hangul, fcitx5-kkc, fcitx5-libthai, fcitx5-m17n, fcitx5-qt, fcitx5-rime, fcitx5-sayura, fcitx5-skk, fcitx5-table-extra, fcitx5-unikey, fcitx5-zhuyin, GeographicLib, libime, mbedtls, mingw-poppler, mupen64plus, python-starlette, webkitgtk, and xen), Mageia (dcmtk, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-latest-openjdk, libvpx, and sqlite3), Oracle (bind, bind9.16, kernel, libsoup, libsoup3, osbuild-composer, qt6-qtsvg, sssd, and valkey), Red Hat (kernel and kernel-rt), SUSE (bind, gpg2, ImageMagick, python-Django, and runc), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, inux-gcp-fips, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gke, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-raspi-5.4, and linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.8).

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Netherlands is prepared to suspend its powers over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia in a move that would de-escalate a fight with Beijing that threatens to disrupt automotive production around the world. The Dutch government is ready to shelve the ministerial order that gave it the power to block or change key corporate decisions at Nexperia, if China allows exports of its critical chips again, according to people familiar with the matter. If the shipment of supplies resumes and is verified in the coming days, the Dutch are willing to revoke its powers as soon as next week, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Financial issues between Nexperia and its Chinese operations would also need to be resolved. [...] In a sign of easing tensions, the Dutch government said in a statement late Thursday that it expects Nexperia's Chinese unit to resume chip supplies in the coming days.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: The U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirms it suffered a cybersecurity incident after a suspected foreign hacker breached its network, potentially exposing sensitive data. In a statement shared with BleepingComputer, CBO spokesperson Caitlin Emma confirmed the "security incident" and said the agency acted quickly to contain it. "The Congressional Budget Office has identified the security incident, has taken immediate action to contain it, and has implemented additional monitoring and new security controls to further protect the agency's systems going forward," Emma told BleepingComputer. "The incident is being investigated and work for the Congress continues. Like other government agencies and private sector entities, CBO occasionally faces threats to its network and continually monitors to address those threats." The Washington Post first reported the breach, stating that officials discovered the hack in recent days and are now concerned that emails and exchanges between congressional offices and the CBO's analysts may have been exposed. While officials have reported told lawmakers they believe the intrusion was detected early, some congressional office have allegedly halted emails with the CBO out of security concerns.

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The Scandinavian furniture giant has unveiled 21 new ultra-affordable Matter-over-Thread smart home devices across three launch segments: lighting, sensors, and control. With prices starting at just a few dollars, Ikea is pushing hard to replace its old Zigbee lineup and become a serious player in the Matter ecosystem. Forbes reports: Back to the 21 new devices specifically and they are all native Matter ones though, so you don't actually need Ikea's hub to get involved, as Matter controllers from other brands will be able to sync them up to your existing smart home platform as well; provided that Matter controller also doubles up as a Thread border router. The good news is that many existing devices you may already have in your house - think Apple HomePod mini, Google Nest Hub Max, most of the recent Amazon Echo range, SmartThings hubs and even some Eero routers - all do. This being Ikea, there are some quirky names involved... the new lineup starts with the Kajplats smart bulb range, with eleven bulbs in total, covering everything from compact spotlights to large decorative globes. They come in a mix of shapes, brightness levels, and finishes, with options for full-color control or just tunable white light. Ikea says each model now offers a wider intensity range and smoother dimming compared to the outgoing Tradfri lineup.

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In a recent article published in the New York Times, author Casey Michael Henry argues that today's tech industry keeps borrowing dystopian sci-fi aesthetics and ideas -- often the parts that were meant as warnings -- and repackages them as exciting products without recognizing that they were originally cautionary tales to avoid. "The tech industry is delivering on some of the futuristic notions of late-20th-century science fiction," writes Henry. "Yet it seems, at times, bizarrely unaware that many of those notions were meant to be dystopian or satirical -- dismal visions of where our worst and dumbest habits could lead us." Here's an excerpt from the report: You worry that someone in today's tech world might watch "Gattaca" -- a film that features a eugenicist future in which people with ordinary DNA are relegated to menial jobs -- and see it as an inspirational launching point for a collaboration between 23andMe and a charter school. The material on Sora, for instance, can feel oddly similar to the jokes about crass entertainment embedded in dystopian films and postmodern novels. In the movie "Idiocracy," America loved a show called "Ow! My Balls!" in which a man is hit in the testicles in increasingly florid ways. "Robocop" imagined a show about a goggle-eyed pervert with an inane catchphrase. "The Running Man" had a game show in which contestants desperately collected dollar bills and climbed a rope to escape ravenous dogs. That Sora could be prompted to imagine a game show in which Michel Foucault chokeslams Ronald Reagan, or Prince battles an anaconda, doesn't feel new; it feels like a gag from a 1990s writer or a film about social decay. The echoes aren't all accidental. Modern design has been influenced by our old techno-dystopias -- particularly the cyberpunk variety, with its neon-noir gloss and "high tech, low life" allure. From William Gibson novels to films like "The Matrix," the culture has taken in countless ruined cityscapes, all-controlling megacorporations, high-tech body modifications, V.R.-induced illnesses, deceptive A.I. paramours, mechanical assassins and leather-clad hacker antiheroes, navigating a dissociative cyberspace with savvily repurposed junk-tech. This was not a world many people wanted to live in, but its style and ethos seem to reverberate in the tech industry's boldest visions of the future.

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Mark Zuckerberg opened an unlicensed school named after the family's pet chicken -- and it was the final straw for his neighbors, writes Slashdot reader joshuark, citing a report from Wired. The magazine obtained 1,665 pages of documents about the neighborhood dispute -- "including 311 records, legal filings, construction plans, and emails." Here are excerpts from the report: The documents reveal that the school may have been operating as early as 2021 without a permit to operate in the city of Palo Alto. As many as 30 students might have enrolled, according to observations from neighbors. [...] Over time, neighbors became fed up with what they argued was the city's lack of action, particularly with respect to the school. Some believed that the delay was because of preferential treatment to the Zuckerbergs. "We find it quite remarkable that you are working so hard to meet the needs of a single billionaire family while keeping the rest of the neighborhood in the dark," reads one email sent to the city's Planning and Development Services Department in February. "Just as you have not earned our trust, this property owner has broken many promises over the years, and any solution which depends on good faith behavioral changes from them is a failure from the beginning." [...] In order for the Zuckerbergs to run a private school on their land, which is in a residential zone, they need a "conditional use" permit from the city. However, based on the documents WIRED obtained, and Palo Alto's public database of planning applications, the Zuckerbergs do not appear to have ever applied for or received this permit. Per emails obtained by WIRED, Palo Alto authorities told a lawyer working with the Zuckerbergs in March 2025 that the family had to shut down the school on its compound by June 30. [...] However, Zuckerberg family spokesperson Brian Baker tells WIRED that the school didn't close, per se. It simply moved. It's not clear where it is now located, or whether the school is operating under a different name. [...] Most of the Zuckerbergs' neighbors did not respond to WIRED's request for comment. However, the ones that did clearly indicated that they would not be forgetting the Bicken Ben saga, or the past decade of disruption, anytime soon.

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alternative_right shares a report from The Conversation: Countries around the world have been discussing the need to rein in climate change for three decades, yet global greenhouse gas emissions -- and global temperatures with them -- keep rising. When it seems like we're getting nowhere, it's useful to step back and examine the progress that has been made. Let's take a look at the United States, historically the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter. Over those three decades, the U.S. population soared by 28% and the economy, as measured by gross domestic product adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. Yet U.S. emissions from many of the activities that produce greenhouse gases -- transportation, industry, agriculture, heating and cooling of buildings -- have remained about the same over the past 30 years. Transportation is a bit up; industry a bit down. And electricity, once the nation's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, has seen its emissions drop significantly. Overall, the U.S. is still among the countries with the highest per capita emissions, so there's room for improvement, and its emissions (PDF) haven't fallen enough to put the country on track to meet its pledges under the 10-year-old Paris climate agreement. But U.S. emissions are down about 15% over the past 10 years. The report mentions how the U.S. managed to replace coal with cheaper, more efficient natural-gas plants while rapidly scaling wind, solar, and battery storage as their costs fell. At the same time, major gains in appliance, lighting, and building efficiency flattened per-capita power use. This also coincided with improved vehicle fuel economy that helped keep transportation emissions in check.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Ford executives are considering scrapping the electric version of the F-150 pickup truck as losses, supply setbacks, slow sales, and the arrival of a cheaper midsize EV truck undermine the business case for its full-size electric pickup. Reuters reports: Last month, a union official told Reuters that Ford was pausing production at the Dearborn, Michigan, plant that makes its F-150 Lightning electric pickup due to a fire at a supplier's aluminum factory. "We have good inventories of the F-150 Lightning and will bring Rouge Electric Vehicle Center back up at the right time, but don't have an exact date at this time," Ford said in a statement on Thursday. The WSJ report added that General Motors executives have discussed discontinuing some electric trucks, citing people familiar with the matter. The Detroit three, which includes Ford, GM and Chrysler-parent Stellantis, have rolled back their ambitious plans for EVs in the United States, pivoting to their gasoline-powered models.

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BrianFagioli writes: Google has released Magika 1.0, a stable version of its AI-based file type detection tool, and rebuilt the entire engine in Rust for speed and memory safety. The system now recognizes more than 200 file types, up from about 100, and is better at distinguishing look-alike formats such as JSON vs JSONL, TSV vs CSV, C vs C++, and JavaScript vs TypeScript. The team used a 3TB training dataset and even relied on Gemini to generate synthetic samples for rare file types, allowing Magika to handle formats that don't have large, publicly available corpora. The tool supports Python and TypeScript integrations and offers a native Rust command-line client. Under the hood, Magika uses ONNX Runtime for inference and Tokio for parallel processing, allowing it to scan around 1,000 files per second on a modern laptop core and scale further with more CPU cores. Google says this makes Magika suitable for security workflows, automated analysis pipelines, and general developer tooling. Installation is a single curl or PowerShell command, and the project remains fully open source. The project is available on GitHub and documentation can be found here.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: What did Ilya see?" Two years ago, it was the meme seen 'round the world (or at least 'round the tech industry). OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had been briefly ousted in November 2023 by members of the company's board of directors, including his longtime collaborator and fellow cofounder Ilya Sutskever. The board claimed Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board," undermining their confidence in him. He was out for less than a week before being reinstated after hundreds of employees threatened to resign. But observers wondered: What hadn't Altman been candid about? And what led Sutskever to turn against him? Now, new details have come to light in a legal deposition involving Sutskever, part of Musk's ongoing lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI. For nearly 10 hours on October 1st, bookended by repeated sniping between Musk's and Sutsever's attorneys, Sutskever answered questions about the turmoil around Altman's ouster, from conflicts between executives to short-lived merger talks with Anthropic. He testified that from personal experience and documentation he'd viewed, he'd seen Altman pit high-ranking executives against each other and offer conflicting information about his plans for the company, telling people what they wanted to hear. The testimony paints a picture of a leader who could be manipulative and chameleon-like in the relentless pursuit of his own agenda -- though Sutskever expressed hesitation about his reliance on some of the secondhand accounts later in testimony, saying he "learned the critical importance of firsthand knowledge for matters like this." In a statement toThe Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said that "The events of 2023 are behind us. These claims were fully examined during the board's independent review, which unanimously concluded Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI." The comment echoes a 2024 statement by board chair Bret Taylor, following an investigation conducted by the company. Altman "exhibits a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his execs, and pitting his execs against one another," reads a quote from the memo Sutskever. Altman told him and Jakub Pachocki, who is now OpenAI's chief scientist, "conflicting things about the way the company would be run," leading to internal conflict and repeated undermining. Sutskever said he also faulted Altman for "not accepting or rejecting" former OpenAI research executive Dario Amodei Dario's conditions when he wanted to run all research and fire OpenAI president Greg Brockman, implying Altman played both sides. Furthermore, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati surfaced claims that Altman left Y Combinator for "similar behaviors. He was creating chaos, starting lots of new projects, pitting people against each other, and thus was not managing YC well."

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