Slashdot

Fujifilm will increase prices on most of its US camera lineup starting August 30, marking the second price adjustment this month following retailer-announced increases two weeks earlier. The company cited "volatile market conditions" in its official statement. The recently released X half and X-E5 cameras will maintain their launch prices, while the backordered X100 VI faces price changes. The company characterized the adjustments as a long-term solution to uncertainties including tariffs and manufacturing circumstances.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

England has declared a "nationally significant" water shortage as reservoirs dropped to 67.7% capacity, their lowest levels in at least a decade. The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology warned of exceptionally low river flows while groundwater continues dwindling across the country. Hosepipe bans now affect all of England, with additional restrictions probable in coming months. Water companies lose approximately one trillion litres annually through leaky pipes -- 20% of all treated water -- while the annual pipe replacement rate remains at 0.05%. No new reservoir has been built in 30 years despite population growth. Government forecasts project England's public water supply could fall short by 5 billion litres daily by 2055 without urgent infrastructure investment. The economic cost of water scarcity could reach $11.48 billion over this parliament, according to thinktank Public First.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Traditional business applications will become the mainframes of the 2030s - functioning but obsolete systems replaced by AI agents, predicts Microsoft corporate vice president Charles Lamanna. AI agents featuring generative AI interfaces, goal-oriented processing, and vector databases will supplant today's form-driven, workflow-based enterprise software within five years, said Lamanna, who leads Microsoft's business applications and platforms division. The executive projects industry patterns for agent-based systems will solidify within 6-18 months. Microsoft MVP Rocky Lhotka called the 2030 timeline "very forward-looking and optimistic," noting that capital-intensive industries cannot readily replace existing infrastructure with virtual agents.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trading volume on AI prediction markets reached approximately $20 million this month across platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket. Kalshi reports ten times the AI trading volume compared to early 2025. Bettors place wagers on outcomes including monthly AI model rankings, federal AI regulation prospects, and Sam Altman's potential OpenAI equity stake.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Prospect magazine, in a recent piece: "LinkedIn doesn't know me anymore," someone complained to me recently. "What do you mean?" I asked. She explained that the platform has replaced the old "recommended jobs" section, which used to show her quite useful job openings based on her previous searches and CV, with an AI search engine that asks you to describe your ideal job in freeform text. The results it brings up aren't nearly as relevant. This is just one of many ways in which the professionals' social media platform, which has embraced artificial intelligence with ferocious zeal, is being gradually "enshittified," to borrow tech writer Cory Doctorow's phrase. Each new embrace of AI tools promises to make hiring, job searching, networking and even posting a bit easier or more fruitful. Instead, AI seems to have made the user's experience more alienating, and to have helped foster a genre of LinkedIn-speak which bears all the hallmarks of the worst AI writing on the internet. Let's start with my opening example -- which, to be fair, is in beta testing mode and can be switched off. Instead of the AI assistant being like an intuitive digital servant, pulling up the best jobs based on your ruminations, users are confronted with a new and annoying task: crafting prompts for the AI. But the non-AI search bar worked perfectly well as it was. Then there is the AI writing assistant, which is available to users who pay for the platform's $40 per month premium service to help them craft their posts. LinkedIn's CEO Ryan Roslansky recently admitted that users aren't using the tool as much as he anticipated. It seems that sounding like a human being to your colleagues and clients is put at, well, a premium. And then there are the ways in which users are deploying outputs from external AI chatbots on the platform, something with which LinkedIn is struggling to cope. According to the New York Times, the number of job applications submitted via the platform increased by 45 per cent in the year to June, now clocking in at an average of 11,000 per minute.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dust is that "feature" or drawback, The Verge's reviewer Allison Johnson argues. Samsung's head of smartphone planning Minseok Kang told her earlier this year that creating dustproof foldable phones remains technically challenging but "not impossible." Current flagship foldables from Samsung and Motorola carry IP48 ratings that protect against particles larger than one millimeter, while traditional smartphones at similar price points offer full IP68 dust and water resistance. The durability gap persists five years after Samsung's original Galaxy Fold experienced screen failures from small particles entering the hinge mechanism.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wikipedia volunteer Grnrchst uncovered a decade-long campaign that created articles about composer David Woodard in 335 languages. The investigation identified 200 accounts and IP addresses systematically creating Woodard articles across 92 languages between 2017 and 2019, averaging one new article every six days. From December 2021 through June 2025, 183 unique accounts each created a single Woodard article in different languages after establishing credibility through unrelated edits. Wikipedia stewards removed 235 articles from smaller wikis. Larger Wikipedia communities banned numerous accounts and deleted 80 additional articles. Twenty Woodard articles remain. Grnrchst called it "the single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia's history."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.