Amazon Puts a Camera In Its Echo Studio So Alexa Can See
Amazon has added a camera to its Echo Studio speaker, allowing Alexa to visually identify objects, help with tasks and remotely monitor a room. For those concerned about privacy, Amazon is keeping a camera-free version available. The Next Web reports: The camera speaker ships today for $249.99. Hold up a board game box and Alexa can explain the rules, or show it a … ⌘ Read more

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Are AI Execs Too Out of Touch To Build For the General Public?
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Former Yahoo CEO and early Google engineer Marissa Mayer is catching a lot of flak for how she uses AI. In an interview about her new app Dazzle, an AI assistant that learns from your camera roll, Mayer poses what she believes is an impressive flex for the product: It helped her come up with three bullet … ⌘ Read more

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Linux Kernel Developers Considering Removal Of KGDB Debugging Functionality
Merged to the kernel all the way back in Linux 2.6.26 in 2008 was KGDB for improving the kernel debugging experience. KGDB works in conjunction with the GNU Debugger (GDB) to debug the kernel in a similar fashion to user-space debugging. KGDB requires the use of a second computer connected via serial or network cable. KGDB isn’t widely used in recent years and a patch was floated today to remove it from the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

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Amazon Finds ‘Tokenmaxxing’ Lacks Productivity Gains
Ancient Slashdot reader Gilmoure shares a report from Tom’s Hardware, adding: “Huh. Looks like consuming one’s own slop does not turn the wheels of industry.” From the report: Amazon wants its engineers to quit chasing token counts, warning that heavy AI usage does not automatically mean better work. In updated engineering guidelines published on October 27, the company l … ⌘ Read more

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Apple Announces Its First Touchscreen MacBook Pro
Apple has unveiled its first touchscreen MacBook Pro, reversing a position the company held for more than 15 years that touchscreens were poorly suited for laptops. 9to5Mac reports: The new machine features a light-up Apple logo, tandem OLED, and touch input on the display. It runs on the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, like the existing MacBook Pro models without OLED touch dis … ⌘ Read more

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System76 Introducing AMD-Powered Linux Small PC
System76 began teasing today the new Thelio Prime Desktop as an AMD-powered Linux mini PC that will begin shipping in November… ⌘ Read more

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EMACS Turns 50
“EMACS, the mother of all editors, turns 50!” writes Slashdot reader dr_jerry, sharing a report from MIT Technology Review: Programming used to be a very different experience from the one we know today. In fact, the first programmers didn’t write code at all; the six women who worked on the ENIAC, one of the world’s first computers, at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946 did it by physically configuring switches, cables, and plugboards.

A … ⌘ Read more

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FCC Approves Amazon Leo’s $11.5 Billion Acquisition of Globalstar
The FCC has approved (PDF) Amazon Leo’s $11.5 billion acquisition of satellite operator Globalstar, giving the Starlink rival additional infrastructure and spectrum to expand into direct-to-device satellite connectivity. Engadget reports: You may not know Globalstar but have possibly used its services, as the company provides Apple’s emergency … ⌘ Read more

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Canonical Reviving Their Immutable Ubuntu Core Desktop
Canonical engineers back in 2023 outlined plans for Ubuntu Core Desktop as their immutable Linux desktop. They made some good initial progress but since 2024 it went rather silent. Now they are reviving Ubuntu Core Desktop as their immutable desktop OS offering and with grand plans for the future… ⌘ Read more

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Google Begins Certifying Registered App Stores For Android
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Running an app ecosystem has gotten a lot more complex for Google after its loss in the Epic Games antitrust case. While U.S. users can access app stores in Google Play by court order, international users will use Google’s voluntary Registered App Stores program. Google has announced that stores wishing … ⌘ Read more

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CachyOS vs. Fedora 45 vs. Ubuntu 26.10 Performance On AMD Ryzen 9
With the recently released Ubuntu 26.10 and the nearly-released Fedora Workstation 45, Phoronix readers have begun inquiring about fresh benchmarks looking at how they stack up against the performance-optimized, Arch Linux based CachyOS. Up today are our first CachyOS vs. Fedora 45 vs. Ubuntu 26.10 benchmarks on an AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D2 desktop system. ⌘ Read more

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NetBSD Adds Alternative Text Editor To vi & xedit For Easing New Users
NetBSD-current has added a new command line text editor to its base set of packages for helping out new users as an alternative to their vi and xedit editors currently included… ⌘ Read more

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X.Org XCB Co-Creator Praises Wayland’s Protocol Design
Open-source developer Jamey Sharp who is a longtime X.Org developer and co-creator of the X protocol C-language Binding (XCB) finally had the need to write a Wayland client and ended up praising its design… ⌘ Read more

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Provenance Time Proposed As A New Timestamp For Linux
While the Linux kernel and various file-system drivers already support the notion of the birth time for tracking a file/directory’s birth/creation time, a slightly different provenance time “ptime” is now being proposed for the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

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Hyprland 0.57 Released With Compiz Inspired Wobbly Windows
For those that want to reminisce over the days long ago of Compiz and Beryl on the Linux desktop, the Hyprland 0.57 Wayland compositor released today and has added Compiz-inspired wobbly windows support… ⌘ Read more

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Astronomers May Have Just Discovered Our Solar System’s Sixth Dwarf Planet
Astronomers using the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have discovered 2026 ED138, a large object beyond Neptune that could become the solar system’s sixth recognized dwarf planet if further observations confirm it is massive enough to be round. Located about 46 times farther from the Sun than Earth, the object is estimated to be 60 … ⌘ Read more

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VKD3D-Proton 3.1 Released With New Features Ahead Of Big v3.2 Release
Hans-Kristian Arntzen of Valve’s Linux team just tagged the VKD3D-Proton 3.1 release. This version comes with a number of new features and performance optimizations while being the stable point ahead of VKD3D-Proton beginning to see a lot of new feature code for what will then become VKD3D-Proton 3.2… ⌘ Read more

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GhostBSD 26.2 Released As FreeBSD 15.1 Powered OS With New Installer
GhostBSD 26.2 is out as the latest feature release of this FreeBSD-powered desktop operating system… ⌘ Read more

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Retiring BSD-Compress Proposed For Linux PPP Network Code
A patch has been proposed to remove the BSD-Compress support from the Linux kernel for the Linux networking point-to-point protocol (PPP) due to being unmaintained and having fundamental issues with the code that can lead to a fatal error… ⌘ Read more

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CDC Warns of Rising Threat of Drug-Resistant Germs
The CDC estimates that 19 drug-resistant pathogens cause 9.7 million infections and more than 50,000 deaths annually in the U.S., with resistance continuing to outpace development of new treatments. “The agency considers this problem to be one of our most urgent public health threats,” reports NBC News. From the report: The report is the CDC’s first comprehensive assessm … ⌘ Read more

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Greenhouse Gas Levels Set Records In 2025, UN Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere rose to record highs in 2025, locking in climate impacts that will persist for centuries, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Levels of the three main greenhouse gases – the climate-warming carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – all rose to unprecedented figures in 2025, … ⌘ Read more

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Wine Merges Support For MESA_map_buffer_client_pointer To Improve WoW64 32-bit OpenGL
An initiative led by CodeWeavers this year has come to fruition for improving OpenGL support with WoW64 for bettering Windows 32-bit application/game support while using 64-bit system libraries… ⌘ Read more

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Ford’s Most Affordable EV Will Offer Built-In Bidirectional Home Charging
Ford’s upcoming $28,350 Fathom electric truck will include a built-in inverter capable of supplying up to 10 kW of AC power to a home, bringing bidirectional charging to a significantly cheaper EV. Owners will still need additional Ford home hardware for features like outage backup and peak-rate energy management, but the com … ⌘ Read more

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Growing List of Firms Object to OKX-ICE Tokenized Stock Plans
Intel, Oracle, IBM and IonQ have joined a growing list of companies objecting to having tokenized versions of their shares traded through OKX and Intercontinental Exchange’s blockchain venture, bringing the total number of objections to 26. About 37% of the companies on OKXICE’s original list have now opted out, according to CoinDesk. From the report: … ⌘ Read more

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Code-Execution Flaw In UEFI Firmware Threatens Most Servers On Planet Earth
Ars Technica’s Dan Goodin reports: Defenders across the world face the burden of responding to yet another botched code-execution vulnerability, this time in boot-time firmware used by most of the world’s server vendors and data centers. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 9.5 out of 10, resides in the TianoCore EDK I … ⌘ Read more

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Linux 7.4 Introduces DMA-BUF Support To I/O Path With IO_uring
Merged today for the ongoing Linux 7.4 merge window is the infrastructure for enabling DMA-BUF support in the kernel’s I/O path with the wonderful IO_uring framework… ⌘ Read more

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Google’s Genie 4 World Model Adds Audio, More Realistic Worlds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google DeepMind released its newest world model, Genie 4, in research preview on Tuesday. The latest model generates the most photorealistic and interactive worlds yet, allowing users to type prompts mid-simulation to change the scene. The model also generates real-time audio that matches the simulat … ⌘ Read more

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Raspberry Pi Zero 3 W & Raspberry Pi 4 Model A Surface In Linux Kernel Patches
It looks like a next-generation Raspberry Pi Zero is about to surface, the long-awaited Raspberry Pi Zero 3 W. And in an interesting twist in these times amid high PC component costs and supply chain constraints, a Raspberry Pi 4 Model A… ⌘ Read more

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Anduril Partners With Qualcomm to Build Laptops On US Soil
Longtime Slashdot reader fadethepolice writes: Anduril, arguing that its manufacturing capabilities are directly applicable to laptop manufacturing, is starting a project for a fully 100% U.S.-sourced laptop. The computer will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. I did not see any information about the OS, but I’m assuming that, given the type of processor, this w … ⌘ Read more

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Apple’s Foldable iPhone Duo Draws Early Complaints of the Screen Cracking
Apple has acknowledged an inner-display defect affecting a small number of its new $1,999 iPhone Duo foldables after customers reported hearing a crunch while unfolding the device before cracks, lines and other display failures appeared along the crease. Apple is replacing affected phones and investigating the problem.

iFixi … ⌘ Read more

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Cybersecurity CEO Indicted For Allegedly Scamming Millions From Ransomware Victims
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: A Florida man who was the subject of a 2019 investigation by ProPublica was indicted last month on federal charges that he defrauded clients of his ransomware data recovery firm. According to the Justice Department, the man, Zohar Pinhasi, told customers he cou … ⌘ Read more

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Apple Updates MacBook Pro With M6 Chips
Ahead of the touchscreen MacBook Pro expected to debut tomorrow, Apple has refreshed its standard 14-inch MacBook Pro with the new M6 processor, promising up to 20% faster multithreaded performance, improved power efficiency, and more powerful on-device AI capabilities. The Verge reports: Announced this morning through a press release, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro features three Thunder 4 USB-C … ⌘ Read more

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In China, the AI Bubble Has Already Burst
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: While global tech stocks teeter, in China they have already crashed as lofty valuations collapse under worries about AI demand and curbs on Chinese exports. The meltdown, tanking the mainland STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor leaders by 40% in less than four months and vaporizing some $480 billion in market value, is an ill omen for wobbly world … ⌘ Read more

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Pavee OS: Ikey Doherty’s New Daily-Driver Desktop Distro Being Built Atop Barney
Back in September Ikey Doherty of Solus Linux and Serpent OS notoriety as well as being a former Intel Clear Linux developer announced Barney as his planned showcase for how to “properly” build a modern Linux distribution in 2026+. Today he’s provided an update on this Barney distro tooling effort as well as announcing Pavee OS as his planned daily-driver desktop distribution built atop it… ⌘ Read more

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KDE Plasma 6.8.2 Released With Dozens Of Additional Bug Fixes
Debuting two weeks ago on the 30th anniversary of the KDE project was the Plasma 6.8 desktop with many exciting improvements. Last week it was succeeded by Plasma 6.8.1 with dozens of bug fixes and this week now brings Plasma 6.8.2 with yet more bug fixing… ⌘ Read more

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AMD EPYC Zen 6 PML Support, ARM64 On s390 Merged For Linux 7.4 KVM
The many Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) improvements have been merged for Linux 7.4 to deliver a number of new features for different server processors… ⌘ Read more

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