Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Elon Musk Vies to Turn X Into Super App With Banking Tool Near Launch

An anonymous reader shared this report from Bloomberg:


More than three years after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk says he's nearing his long-stated goal of turning it into an "everything app" with a new financial services tool that he pledged to launch for the public this month... Early users testing the service have touted competitive perks, including 3% cash back on eligible purchases and a 6% interest rate on cash savings — the latter of which is roughly 15 times the national average. Musk's new product is also expected to offer free peer-to-peer transfers, a metal Visa debit card personalised with a user's X handle, and an AI concierge built by Musk's xAI startup that tracks spending and sorts through past transactions, according to reports from users with early access.

Musk, who first rose to prominence in Silicon Valley by co-founding PayPal Holdings Inc, sees payments as crucial to creating a so-called super app similar to social products that have flourished in China. WeChat, for example, lets users hail a ride, book a flight and pay off their credit card... If it works, X Money would sit at the intersection of social media and finance in a way no American product has attempted at this scale... Creators who currently receive payments from X for engagement will be switched from Stripe to X Money as their payment platform, according to early users — a move that guarantees an initial base of active accounts. Some have already been testing X Money to send payments to one another through the app's chat feature or directly through their profiles, according to early participants in the rollout...
X currently holds licences in 44 states, according to its website, and likely won't be able to operate in states where it hasn't obtained a licence.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remembering The 1984 Unix PC. Why Did It Fail So Hard?

"I love these machines," writes long-time Slashdot reader Shayde:

I was super-active in the Unix-PC Usenet groups back in the 90s... We hacked the hell out of them. They were small, sexy, and... they ran Unix!

Unfortunately, they were a commercial failure. There were so many things wrong with them — not just stuff that broke, but the baseline configuration was nigh on worthless. I recently was able to get another machine and got it up and running (with a few hiccups). I whipped up a video showing all the cool things it can do, but also running through what went wrong and why it ultimately failed.
The video shows the ancient green-on-black screen of 1984's AT&T Unix PC (with the OS running on a silicon drive emulation). The original machine had 512K of memory and a 10-megabyte hard drive described as slow, failure-prone, and noisy. There's also a drive for inserting floppy disks, and a separate MS-DOS board (with its own CPU) that could be plugged into the expansion slot — but the device was "remarkably heavy," weighing in aqt 40 pounds

See the strange 1984 mouse, and its keyboard with both a Return key and a separate Enter key. There's even plug-in ports for phone landlines. "It looked great," Shayde says in the video, showing off its Spirograph demo and '80s-era games like Pong, Conway's Game of Life, GNU Chess, "Trk", and NetHack. But besides slow startup times, it was expensive — in today's dollars, it would've cost roughly $15,000 — and suffered from Unix's lack of spreadsheets, word processing software and other office productivity tools at the time. At that price the Unix PCs couldn't compete with IBM's home computers and their desktop applications. "It just didn't have the resources, the software, the capabilities and the price point that made it attractive."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How Will Apple Change Under Its New CEO?

How will Apple change in September under its new CEO — former hardware chief John Ternus? The blog Geeky Gadgets is already expecting "significant updates to the iPhone over the next three years," as well as streamlined internal engineering (plus durability enhancements and high-capacity batteries).

2026: Foldable display
2027: Bezel-less iPhone 20 (celebrating the iPhone's 20th anniversary)
CNET's web sites (which include ZDNET, PCMag, Mashable and Lifehacker) are even hosting a contest "to see which of our readers can make the best Apple predictions for 2026. Answer five questions in any of our three rounds of the contest to be entered to win [$applePrize] in September."
But the blog 9to5Mac already has a list of new upcoming Apple products, courtesy of Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (who appeared
on the TBPN podcast this week "to talk about Apple's CEO transition, what to expect from John Ternus, and more."

As part of the conversation, Gurman said: "There are six major Apple products in development right now, six major new product categories." Here's the full list he shared:
1. AI AirPods
2. Smart glasses
3. Pendant
4. Smart display
5. Tabletop robot
6. Security camera

[...] Gurman has reported on the Pendant before as a new AI wearable that's an alternative to AI AirPods and Glasses. All three products are expected to rely heavily on a paired iPhone for Siri and other AI features. The smart display ('HomePad'), tabletop robot, and security camera are all brand new Apple Home products.
The AI features arrive "thanks to the revamped Apple Foundation Models trained by Google Gemini," reports the AppleInsider blog (citing Gurman's Power On newsletter at Bloomberg). The smart doorbell camera will include "an Apple Intelligence-upgraded version of the facial recognition already included with HomeKit Secure Video. Today, HSV can utilize the Apple Home admin's tagged faces in their Photos app to label people that are viewed on the camera. When a known person rings the doorbell, Siri will announce them by name over the HomePod chime."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Formula 1 News

Formula 1® - The Official F1® Website

5 incredibly close season match bets and who to back

Our betting experts look at which season match bets are worth considering backing this season.

VK: Voorpagina

Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Transavia schrapt vluchten in mei en juni vanwege hoge kerosineprijzen

Wereldwijde defensiebudgetten stijgen voor elfde jaar op rij: vooral Europa investeert meer in wapens

Grootste hulpvloot ooit vanuit Sicilië vertrokken richting Gaza

Grote drukte in Utrecht: ‘Kom niet meer naar de stad tijdens Koningsnacht’

Blindman's Buff

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Blindman's Buff

Found Photograph

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Found Photograph

Pompeii and the gateway to Mount Vesuvius

BertvB posted a photo:

Pompeii and the gateway to Mount Vesuvius

Gevolgen van de Russische dreiging in Europa worden steeds duidelijker zichtbaar: militaire uitgaven stijgen met 14 procent

De wereldwijde uitgaven aan wapensystemen blijven fors toenemen. In 2025 gaf de wereld bijna 3.000 miljard dollar uit aan wapentuig, het hoogste bedrag ooit. Vooral in Europa stijgen de militaire uitgaven snel.

Sargasso

Hopeloos Genuanceerd

Closing Time | Suspicious Minds

Koningsdag in een land vol wantrouwen. Ik hoef hopelijk niet uit te tekenen waarom dit liedje van The King (of Rock & Roll) toepasselijk is, toch?

Het videoclipje is nog leuk gedaan ook.

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

UK government move to delay social media ban faces pushback in Lords

Peers and campaigners say proposal for three-year window to impose controls breaks promise of quick action

Peers will vote on Monday on a government move that could delay action on children’s access to social media for up to three years, which has triggered a backlash from campaigners and senior figures in the Lords.

Ministers tabled an amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill that would allow them to wait before introducing new restrictions, Critics warn it risks watering down earlier commitments to act within months and could result in only limited interventions such as parental controls rather than sweeping measures on access.

Continue reading...

UK urged to deploy EU-style ‘trade bazooka’ against Trump’s tariffs

‘Inadequate economic security’ is putting growth and jobs at risk, says British Chambers of Commerce

UK business leaders have called on the government to build an EU-style “trade bazooka” to protect Britain’s economic interests in response to the latest tariff threats from Donald Trump.

As transatlantic tensions rise, the British Chambers of Commerce said the UK’s “inadequate economic security” was putting growth and jobs at risk.

Continue reading...

The Cage review – an astonishing, deeply moving state-of-the-nation thriller

The creator of The Responder’s new offering is the tale of two casino employees robbing their workplace. It’s a perfectly plotted thriller but it’s also so much more than that

Four years ago, Tony Schumacher, a former taxi driver and police officer turned novelist, made his television writing debut with The Responder. It was a five-part series starring Martin Freeman as a police officer on the edge of a breakdown, his mental, emotional and physical resources worn away every night by the ceaseless tide of crime – swelled by misery, desperation and selfishness – that he and his colleagues are supposed to be turning. It was a drama that dissected just about every social and psychological issue that drives our despair, and dared you not to look away. It was profoundly compassionate, harrowing and brilliant. Which makes it a lot to live up to.

Schumacher’s new offering, The Cage, however, does so. Ostensibly it is the tale of the robbery of a casino by two of its employees, cashier Leanne (Sheridan Smith) and manager Matty (Michael Socha). In reality it is, like The Responder, an astonishing, deeply angry, deeply moving state-of-the-nation piece merely masquerading as a mesmerising, perfectly paced and plotted thriller.

Continue reading...

Nemophila #2 in 2026

bakuretu has added a photo to the pool:

Nemophila #2 in 2026

Nemophila #1 in 2026

bakuretu has added a photo to the pool:

Nemophila #1 in 2026

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

AC Milan en Juventus spelen weer 0-0

MILAAN (ANP) - AC Milan en Juventus hebben voor de tweede keer dit seizoen 0-0 gespeeld in de Serie A. Dit keer was San Siro in Milaan het decor van een saaie wedstrijd zonder doelpunten tussen twee grootmachten in het voetbal. Milan en Juventus kunnen als nummers 3 en 4 in de stand een ticket voor deelname aan de Champions League veiligstellen.

Er was wel een goal te zien van de thuisploeg, maar de treffer van Khéphren Thuram werd afgekeurd om buitenspel. Teun Koopmeiners viel halverwege de tweede helft in voor Thuram.

Vlak voor de aftrap werd Ruud Gullit geëerd in San Siro. De voormalige speler van AC Milan is opgenomen in de Hall of Fame van de club. Gullit kreeg tijdens een ceremonie op het veld een zilveren schaal uitgereikt. De ex-international voetbalde zes seizoenen bij AC Milan en won met de club twee keer de Europa Cup I, de voorganger van de Champions League.


Libanon meldt 14 doden door aanvallen Israël op zondag

BEIROET (ANP/RTR) - Israëlische luchtaanvallen hebben zondag veertien mensen gedood en 37 mensen verwond, meldt het Libanese ministerie van Volksgezondheid. Onder de doden van zondag waren twee kinderen en twee vrouwen, aldus het ministerie van Volksgezondheid. Israël meldt dat een van zijn soldaten is omgekomen.

Eerder zondag meldden Libanese autoriteiten dat al meer dan 2500 mensen zijn omgekomen bij Israëlische aanvallen sinds de meest recente oorlog tussen Hezbollah en Israël op 2 maart begon. Dat was enkele dagen nadat de Verenigde Staten en Israël aanvallen op Iran hadden uitgevoerd.

Sinds medio april is een staakt-het-vuren van kracht tussen Israël en Libanon. Het bestand staat steeds meer onder druk door de aanhoudende aanvallen over en weer.

Het Israëlische leger is bezig met het slopen van huizen en infrastructuur in Zuid-Libanon, met name in de grensdorpen. Sommige dorpen, zoals Beit Lif, zijn vrijwel volledig met de grond gelijkgemaakt, zo is volgens de BBC te zien op satellietbeelden.