The Incredible Evolution Of AMD EPYC HPC Performance Shown In The Azure Cloud
Last week the Microsoft Azure HBv5 instances reached general availability as powered by the custom EPYC 9V64H CPUs with HBM3 memory. These very interesting EPYC processors for memory bandwidth intensive workloads were announced last year while have finally reached GA with jaw-dropping results for software able to take advantage of the 6.7 TB/s memory bandwidth thanks to the HBM memory. The Azure HBv5 benchmarks last week showed how th … ⌘ Read more

France Fully Lifts Travel Ban on Telegram Founder Durov
An anonymous reader shares a report: France has lifted its travel ban on Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who is under investigation over illegal content on his messaging app, judicial sources close to the case said Thursday. The entrepreneur, 41, was detained in Paris in 2024 and is under formal investigation by French authorities over the platform’s alleged complic … ⌘ Read more

Linux Looks To Remove SHA1 Support For Signing Kernel Modules
Patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list this week are seeking to remove SHA1 support for signing of kernel modules. This is part of the larger effort in the industry for moving away from SHA1 given its vulnerabilities to hash collisions and superior hashing algorithms being available… ⌘ Read more

China’s EV Market Is Imploding
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Chinese electric car has become a symbol of the country’s seemingly unstoppable rise on the world stage. Many observers point to their growing popularity as evidence that China is winning the race to dominate new technologies. But in China, these electric cars represent something entirely different: the profound threats that Beijing’s meddling in markets poses to both China … ⌘ Read more

Google To Allow ‘Experienced Users’ To Install Unverified Android Apps
Google says it will build a new “advanced flow” to allow experienced users to install Android apps from unverified developers, easing up on restrictions it proposed in late August. The company said earlier that Android would block such installations starting next year. The new flow will include clear warnings about security risks but wil … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA CUDA 13.0 U2 Brings DGX Spark Performance Improvements
CUDA 13.0 Update 2 is now available as the latest incremental improvement to NVIDIA’s compute stack… ⌘ Read more

Iceland Deems Possible Atlantic Current Collapse A Security Risk
Iceland has formally classified the potential collapse of a major Atlantic Ocean current system a national security threat, warning that a disruption could trigger a modern-day ice age in Northern Europe and destabilize global weather systems. The move elevates the risk across government and enables it to strategize for worst-case scenarios. Reut … ⌘ Read more

RadeonSI OpenGL Mesh Shader Support Is Now Completed For Mesa 26.0
For next quarter’s Mesa 26.0 release, the AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D driver will present OpenGL mesh shaders support. It’s been a long journey from the GL_EXT_mesh_shader extension being crafted and merged to wiring up the Mesa driver support while now it’s in place for the AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver… ⌘ Read more

Intel Now Confirms Nova Lake Will Support AVX10.2 & APX Extensions
Recently when Intel contributed Nova Lake support for LLVM/Clang and the GCC compiler support there was not any AVX10 or APX support contrary to rumors and expectations. Intel has now published a new programming reference manual where they now confirm Nova Lake will in fact support AVX10.2 and APX… ⌘ Read more

Editor’s Note: Security Human Validation
Stephan A. Schwartz,  Editor  -  Schwartzreport

_Stephan: Even though we had several levels of security already installed, SR has been experiencing so many hacking attacks that it was getting difficult to publish it because the attacks kept screwing up the application we use to produce SR. So Beth Alexander, my wonderful web manager of many years, consulted with security specialists, and they told her we needed to add a human verification first … ⌘ Read more

Canonical To Now Provide Up To 15 Years Commercial Support For Ubuntu LTS Releases
Canonical announced today the expansion of the legacy add-on for Ubuntu Pro to provide total coverage of Ubuntu LTS releases up to 15 years… ⌘ Read more

Why it’s so hard to bust the weather control conspiracy theory
Dave Levitan,  Climate Science Writer  -  MIT Technology Review

_Stephan: ”king” Trump, his administration, and his Congressional vassals are doing nothing about preparing for the ongoing climate change crisis, whose crescendo is estimated to be about 14 years from now. Instead, they seek to entrap the United States in carbon energy to serve the oligarchs who have funded Trump and the Republican Congr … ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court rejects call to overturn its decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide
MARK SHERMAN,  Supreme Court Reporter  -  Associated Press

_Stephan: The Epstein Trump pedophilia story has taken over the media, so I want to focus on some other major stories getting very little media attention. This is some good news, surprising in a way, given the MAGAt majority that dominates the Supreme Court. The good news is that the C … ⌘ Read more

‘No way we’re going back’: Canadians are flying just about anywhere but the US
Ewan Gleadow,  Staff Writer  -  Raw Story

_Stephan: The damage “king” Trump has done to the wellbeing of the United States is historic, and it particularly stands out in international relationships. Canadians, Europeans, Chinese, and others aren’t choosing to visit.   It has affected the tourism business, the importation by other nations of American goods, and the importat … ⌘ Read more

Common cents: US Mint to press its final penny
Associated Press Reporters,    -  Associated Press

Stephan: No more pennies. After 232 years, the little copper coins we have handled all our lives will cease to be coined. Here are the facts.

Image

The US Mint in [Philadelphia](htt … ⌘ Read more

Alien: Earth Renewed For Second Season
FX has renewed Alien: Earth for a second season and signed creator Noah Hawley to a massive nine-figure overall deal with Disney Entertainment Television. Deadline reports: Inspired by Ridley Scott’s sci-fi thriller film Alien, Hawley adapted the film franchise for television with the strong support of Scott Free and its president, David W. Zucker, who is an executive producer of the serie … ⌘ Read more

China’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomacy Returns With Threat Against Japan’s Leader
A Chinese diplomat’s call to cut off the prime minister’s “filthy neck” signaled a revival of a combative style Beijing had tried to dial back. ⌘ Read more

Trump Is Said to Propose Opening California Coast to Oil Drilling
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a chief critic of the president and an opponent of oil exploration in the Pacific, called the proposal “dead on arrival.” ⌘ Read more

Syria’s Leaders Pledge to Join Fight Against Islamic State
Large parts of Syria were once overrun by the terrorist group Islamic State. The country’s new government has just committed to a global effort to fight the group. ⌘ Read more

How France Remembers the November 2015 Terrorist Attacks in Paris
A decade ago, Islamic State militants killed 130 people in an assault that shocked France. Some survivors are still struggling, but for many of their compatriots, memories of the attacks are growing more distant. ⌘ Read more

Study provides new forecasts of remote islands’ vulnerability to sea level rise
In the summer of 2022, 20 islands in the Maldives were flooded when a distant swell event in the Indian Ocean coincided with an extremely high tide level. ⌘ Read more

Scientists Watch Supernova Shockwave Shoot Through a Dying Star For First Time
For the first time, astronomers captured the shockwave of a supernova bursting through the surface of a dying red supergiant star, revealing a surprisingly symmetrical, grape-shaped explosion. Space.com reports: Seeing this moment in detail has previously been elusive because it’s rare for a supernova to be spotted … ⌘ Read more

South Asia on Edge
There are no known links between two bomb attacks in India and Pakistan, but they come as tensions between the countries are already high. ⌘ Read more

How France Remembers the November 2015 Terrorist Attacks in Paris
A decade ago, Islamic State militants killed 130 people in an assault that shocked France. Some survivors are still struggling, but for many of their compatriots, memories of the attacks are growing more distant. ⌘ Read more

Toyota Opens the Doors To Its First EV Battery Plant In the US
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Production is now underway at Toyota’s new $13.9 billion battery plant in North Carolina, the company’s first outside Japan. After the first batteries rolled off the production line at its new facility in Liberty, North Carolina, on Wednesday, Toyota said today marks a “pivotal moment” in the company … ⌘ Read more

Rubio Shrugs Off Allies’ Concerns Over U.S. Drug Strikes
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said no one raised the Caribbean military operation in closed-door meetings at a G7 summit. But ministers from France and the European Union publicly called them unlawful. ⌘ Read more

Russia’s AI Robot Falls Seconds After Being Unveiled
Russia’s first AI humanoid robot, Aldol, fell just seconds after its debut at a technology event in Moscow on Tuesday. “The robot was being led on stage to the soundtrack from the film ‘Rocky,’ before it suddenly lost its balance and fell,” reports the BBC. “Assistants could then be seen scrambling to cover it with a cloth – which ended up tangling in the process.” … ⌘ Read more

As homes get hotter, new research aims to tackle issue of indoor heat waves
With discussions at COP30 pushing for sustainable cooling and AI innovation, research by the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow has found a new way of detecting indoor mini-heat waves and the factors influencing these. ⌘ Read more

Intel Finds Great Performance With PostgreSQL’s AVX-512 Support
Back in April PostgreSQL added AVX-512 support for CRC32 computations. At the time the gains for CRC32 computations with this popular open-source database server were reported to be 50% to 3x faster for x86_64 CPUs able to leverage AVX-512. That AVX-512 support is found with PostgreSQL 18.0 that released in September and now Intel is praising this addition to PostgreSQL for which their developers also had a part in along with AWS and others… ⌘ Read more

Rubio Shrugs Off Allies’ Concerns Over U.S. Drug Strikes
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said no one raised the Caribbean military operation in closed-door meetings at a G7 summit. But ministers from France and the European Union publicly called them unlawful. ⌘ Read more

Rubio Shrugs Off Allies’ Concerns Over U.S. Drug Strikes
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said no one raised the Caribbean military operation in closed-door meetings at a G7 summit. But ministers from France and the European Union publicly called them unlawful. ⌘ Read more

AI-Generated Song Tops Country Music Chart
Slashdot readers Tablizer and fjo3 share news that an AI-generated country song has topped the U.S. sales chart for the first time this week. ABC News reports: The new country tune, “Walk my Walk” by Breaking Rust, recently hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, reaching over 3 million streams on Spotify in less than a month. That success has garnered mixed rea … ⌘ Read more

Waymo Robotaxis Are Now Giving Rides On Freeways
Waymo is rolling out robotaxi rides that use freeways across Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix for the first time – “a critical expansion for the company that it says will reduce ride times by up to 50%,” reports TechCrunch. From the report: That stat could help attract a whole new group of users who need to travel between the many towns and suburbs within the greater San … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic To Spend $50 Billion On US AI Infrastructure
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Anthropic announced plans Wednesday to spend $50 billion on a U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out, starting with custom data centers in Texas and New York. The facilities, which will be designed to support the company’s rapid enterprise growth and its long-term research agenda, will be developed in part … ⌘ Read more

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Head for a Record in 2025, Global Carbon Project Reports
But there are signs that greenhouse gas pollution in China might be slowing, according to a new analysis. ⌘ Read more

Former Syrian Security Official Indicted in Austria
Prosecutors say a Syrian security official accused of torture hid in plain sight in Europe for years, protected by Israeli and Austrian intelligence agents. ⌘ Read more

Iraq’s Prime Minister Leads in Elections but May Struggle to Form a Government
Mohammed al-Sudani pitches himself as someone who can keep Iranian influence in check, but his vote share may not be big enough to ensure a clear political victory. ⌘ Read more

Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Good Android Tablets Out There?
Longtime Slashdot reader hadleyburg writes: For a user with an Android phone and who’s happy to stick within the Google ecosystem, an Android tablet might seem like the more obvious choice over an iPad. Of course, iPads are a lot more popular, and asking about Android tablets is likely to invite advice about sticking with what everyone else has.

The Slashdot … ⌘ Read more

Valve Rejoins the VR Hardware Wars With Standalone Steam Frame
Valve is ready to rejoin the VR hardware race with the Steam Frame, a lightweight standalone SteamOS headset that can run games locally or stream wirelessly from a PC using new “foveated streaming” tech. It’s set to launch in early 2026. Ars Technica reports: Powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with 16 GB of RAM, the Steam Frame sports a 216 … ⌘ Read more

Labour Party’s Internal Fight Goes Public, as Starmer’s Trouble Grows
An attempt by Keir Starmer’s allies to undercut a rival has forced into the open a party debate over whether to replace the prime minister. ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Fights Order To Turn Over Millions of ChatGPT Conversations
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI asked a federal judge in New York on Wednesday to reverse an order that required it to turn over 20 million anonymized ChatGPT chat logs amid a copyright infringement lawsuit by the New York Times and other news outlets, saying it would expose users’ private conversations. The artificial … ⌘ Read more

How to Capture the Northern Lights With Just Your Smartphone
Modern cellphone cameras make it easy to capture the famously fickle Aurora Borealis. ⌘ Read more

@kiwu@twtxt.net doing awesome, how about ya? We are having some coolish days, which are super rare, so I am enjoying them plenty!

Mesa 25.2.7 Ships The Latest Open-Source OpenGL & Vulkan Driver Fixes
Eric Engestrom today released Mesa 25.2.7 as the newest bi-weekly point release for this stable set of open-source (predominantly) OpenGL and Vulkan drivers for Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s GPT-5.1 Brings Smarter Reasoning and More Personality Presets To ChatGPT
OpenAI today released GPT-5.1, an update to its flagship model line. The update includes two versions: GPT-5.1 Instant, which OpenAI says adds adaptive reasoning capabilities and improved instruction following, and GPT-5.1 Thinking, which adjusts its processing time based on query complexity.

The Thinking model respond … ⌘ Read more

South Asia on Edge
There are no known links between two bomb attacks in India and Pakistan, but they come as tensions between the countries are already high. ⌘ Read more

Israel Reopens Gaza Aid Route It Had Closed for Months
The cease-fire with Hamas has blunted the hunger faced by Gazans during the war. But aid agencies say Israeli restrictions are still hobbling their work. ⌘ Read more

Algeria Pardons Writer Boualem Sansal at Germany’s Request
Boualem Sansal, an Algerian-French writer, was arrested on accusations of undermining national security during a visit to his homeland a year ago and sentenced to five years in prison. ⌘ Read more

Deadly Blasts in India and Pakistan Set Region on Edge
The rare explosions in the country’s capitals have not been directly linked, but there are fears the governments will blame each other after their previous military conflict alarmed the world. ⌘ Read more

Valve Enters the Console Wars
Valve has unveiled a new Steam Machine console, taking a second shot at living room gaming a decade after its 2015 Steam Machine initiative failed. The 6-inch cube runs Linux-based SteamOS but plays Windows games through Proton, a compatibility layer built on Wine that translates Microsoft graphical APIs.

Valve spent over a decade working on SteamOS and ways to run Windows games on Linux after the original Steam … ⌘ Read more