Remembering Zip Drives - the Trendy Storage Technology of the 1990s
Back in the 1990s, floppy disks “had a mere capacity of 1.44MB,” remembers XDA Developers, “which would soon become absolutely tiny for the increasingly large pieces of software that would come about.”
Floppy disks also felt quite fragile, and while we got “superfloppy” formats that were physically larger and had more capacity, those w … ⌘ Read more
@itsericwoordward@itsericwoodward.com Hahaha, Top secret! what a great movie.
@itsericwoordward@itsericwoodward.com I could not agree more. This is good stuff. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. :-)
@kiwu@twtxt.net Luckily, I already forgot about this trip by now. :-D
@kiwu@twtxt.net Thanks, mate! I’m glad you like them. :-)
Duolingo CEO Says They’ve Stopped Tracking Employees’ AI Use for Performance Reviews
Last May Duolingo’s stock peaked at $529.05. But while the learning app passed $1 billion in revenue in 2025 and 50 million daily active users, today its stock price has dropped more than 81%, to $100.51.
And there’s been other changes, reports Entrepreneur:
In April 2025, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn made headline … ⌘ Read more
Also, this really speaks to me (or maybe it speaks for me): https://neilzone.co.uk/2026/04/just-let-me-compute-in-peace/
“There is sauerkraut in my lederhosen.”
SpaceX, Blue Origin Compete For ‘Artemis III’ Mission
After Artemis II’s astronauts returned to earth, “NASA has Artemis III in its sights,” reports the Associated Press:
In a mission recently added to the docket for next year, Artemis III’s yet-to-be -named astronauts will practice docking their Orion capsule with a lunar lander or two in orbit around Earth. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 Sees RAID Fixes, IO_uring Enhancements
The block subsystem and IO_uring changes were merged this week for Linux 7.1 in continuing to enhance Linux storage capabilities… ⌘ Read more
@bender@twtxt.net Yeah I donate to the Signal Foundation for this reason.
New Movie Trailer Shows First AI-Generated Performance By a Major Star: the Late Val Kilmer
“A trailer has been released for the first film to star an authorised generative AI version of a major Hollywood actor,” writes The Guardian:
Val Kilmer was cast in western As Deep As the Grave before his death in April 2025. Production delays meant he never shot any scenes, but the c … ⌘ Read more
Old Cars ‘Tell Tales’ by Storing Data That’s Never Wiped
Slashdot reader Bismillah shared this report from ITNews:
Research and development engineer Romain Marchand of Paris headquartered Quarkslab obtained a telematic control unit (TCU) from a salvage yard in Poland… Marchand tore down the TCU, which is based on a Qualcomm system on a chip, and extracted the Linux-based file system from the Micron multi-chip package … ⌘ Read more
As an enjoyer of delightfully bad graphic design, found on most Czech village center cork boards, I’m sad to see the stolen clipart and badly cropped watermarked stock images, gradually replaced with AI slop.
This is far from a serious rant, but generating images of my kind being telepathically hit with sharp rocks, surely gives me a right to complain.
So far these seem the most prominent slop categories, seem to be…
Architecture slop:
Moralizing slop:
History slop:
Fewer US College Students Major in CS. More Choose Data Science, Engineering
“From 2008 to 2024, the number of four-year computer science degrees granted rose about fivefold…” reports the Washington Post. Then in 2025 CS suddenly dropped from the fourth-largest undergraduate major to sixth, they report (citing data from the nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse, which compiles numbers from … ⌘ Read more
US Congress Fails to Pass Long-Term FISA Extension, Authorizes It Through April 30
Yesterday the U.S. Congress approved “a short-term extension” of a FISA law that allows wiretaps without a warrant for surveilling foreign targets, reports CNN — but only until April 30. Republican congressional leaders had sought an 18-month extension, but “failed to secure” the votes after “clamoring from some … ⌘ Read more
GhostBSD 26.1 Now Based On FreeBSD 15.0, Switches to XLibre X Server
GhostBSD 26.1-R15.0p2 released today as a big upgrade for this desktop-focused, BSD operating system derived from FreeBSD… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 Adds New AMD SMCA Bank Types, Presumably For Upcoming EPYC Venice
The AMD Machine Check Exception “mce_amd” driver as part of the Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) subsystem is introducing support for new SMCA bank types on AMD platforms. Given the timing these new bank types are presumably for AMD’s upcoming Zen 6 / EPYC Venice hardware… ⌘ Read more
30 WordPress Plugins Turned Into Malware After Ownership Change
Wednesday BleepingComputer reported that more than 30 WordPress plugins “have been compromised with malicious code that allows unauthorized access to websites running them.”
A malicious actor planted the backdoor code last year but only recently started pushing it to users via updates, generating spam pages and causing redirects, as per the instruct … ⌘ Read more
My mate and I hiked some 16-18 kilometers to the Wasserberg. The 22°C sun was beating down hard on us. There were quite a bunch of clouds all around, but none of them casted the tiniest shade on us. Only in the second half we got a little bit luckier in that regard. Still, we were soaked before we even left town. Hardly any breeze.
Unfortunately, I left my camera at home and found it hidden behind the cettle in the kitchen after searching the entire house for some 15 odd minutes. However, a greenfinch paid me a visit this morning and I got it on camera. The sunset was crazy colored, too:
WireGuard For Windows Reaches v1.0
For those making use of the WireGuard open-source, secure VPN tunnel software, WireGuard For Windows 1.0 is finally available… ⌘ Read more
Fructose Isn’t Just Sugar. It Acts More Like a Hormone
Slashdot reader smazsyr writes: A new review says we’ve had fructose wrong for decades. The nine authors, led by Richard Johnson at the University of Colorado Anschutz, argue that fructose “is not just another calorie.” It is a signal. It tells the liver to make fat and brace for a famine that never comes. That made sense for a bear fattening up on autumn berries. … ⌘ Read more
20-Year-Old Enters Prison for Historic Breach, Ransoming of Massive Student Database
20-year-old Matthew Lane sent a text message to ABC News as his parents drove him to federal prison in Connecticut. “I’m just scared,” he said, calling the whole situation “extremely sad.”
Barely a year earlier, while still a teenager, he helped launch what’s been described as the biggest cyberattack in U.S. … ⌘ Read more
FSF to OnlyOffice: You Can’t Use the GNU (A)GPL to Take Software Freedom Away
Nextcloud joined a project to create a sovereign replacement for Microsoft Office called “Euro-Office”. But after that project forked OnlyOffice, OnlyOffice suspended its partnership with Nextcloud. “They removed all references to our brand/attribute as required by our license,” argued OnlyOffice CEO Lev Bannov on March 30t … ⌘ Read more
US Government Now Wants Anthropic’s ‘Mythos’, Preparing for AI Cybersecurity Threats
Friday Anthropic’s CEO met with top U.S. officials and “discussed opportunities for collaboration,” according to a White House spokesperson itedd by Politico, “as well as shared approaches and protocols to address the challenges associated with scaling this technology.”
CNN notes the meeting happens at the same … ⌘ Read more
@prologic@twtxt.net I sponsor no one. If getting paid is the aim, form a business, or sell a product. I donate to just causes, though, including sponsorship to the dispossessed.
Linux 7.1 Scheduler Changes May Benefit Some Workloads
The scheduler changes for Linux 7.1 are now in place and may bring performance benefits for at least some systems and workloads… ⌘ Read more
Shuttered Startups Are Selling Old Slack Chats, Emails To AI Companies
Some failed startups are reportedly selling old Slack messages, emails, and other internal records to AI companies as training data, creating a new way to cash out after shutting down. Fast Company reports: Shanna Johnson, the CEO of now-defunct software company Cielo24, told the publication that she was able to sell every Slack message, … ⌘ Read more
GNOME’s Maps, Graphs, RustConn & Other App Improvements
For pairing nicely with the GNOME 50 desktop release last month, a number of GNOME-associated apps have been seeing new features and refinements… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 Lands High Resolution Timer “HRTIMER” Overhaul
Merged this week for Linux 7.1 was a rework of the high resolution timer “HRTIMER” subsystem for reducing the overhead of frequently-armed timers, such as the HRTICK scheduler timer. The HRTICK scheduler timer is useful for enhancing system responsiveness and fairness… ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.7 Ready With Wayland Session Management, Other New Improvements
KDE Plasma 6.7 enjoyed a lot of recent feature development work thanks to a developer sprint in Graz, Austria. Also because of that developer sprint, This Week In Plasma wasn’t published last week and so in turn a new issue is now available to highlight the changes over the past two weeks… ⌘ Read more
NASA Restarts Work To Support Europe’s Uncrewed Trip To Mars After Years of Setbacks
NASA has revived support for the European Space Agency’s long-delayed Rosalind Franklin Mars rover mission. According to the space agency, the current plan is to launch via a SpaceX Falcon Heavy no earlier than 2028. Engadget reports: This is a partnership between NASA and the ESA, with the European agenc … ⌘ Read more
Just cancelled my sponsorship of two developers on Github, sorry 😞 – I’m not going to sponsor going forward if no-one else can be bothered to. It seems silly to be the sole sponsor of another’s work or project 🤦♂️
Critical Atlantic Current Significantly More Likely To Collapse Than Thought
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding “very concerning” as a c … ⌘ Read more
The “NTFS Resurrection” Has Occurred For Linux 7.1
As a very exciting follow-up to the recent article around the new NTFS driver being submitted for Linux 7.1 to address the shortcomings of the current Paragon NTFS3 driver and the prior read-only NTFS kernel driver, that work has been merged!.. ⌘ Read more
New/Overhauled NTFS Driver Merged For Linux 7.1
As a very exciting follow-up to the recent article around the new NTFS driver being submitted for Linux 7.1 to address the shortcomings of the current Paragon NTFS3 driver and the prior read-only NTFS kernel driver, that work has been merged!.. ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.7 Brings VBScript Fixes, DirectSound 7.1 Channel Support
For those using upstream Wine for running your Windows games/apps on Linux rather than the likes of the Proton 11.0 beta, out today is Wine 11.7 as the newest bi-weekly development release… ⌘ Read more
Online Personalities and Comedians Overtake TV and Newspapers as Primary News Sources
A new Ipsos poll finds Americans are increasingly getting news from online personalities and comedians instead of traditional TV or newspapers. The survey says nearly 70% get news online in a given week, versus 55% from TV and 25% from newspapers, with figures like Joe Rogan, Greg Gutfeld, Sean Hannity, a … ⌘ Read more
NIST Limits CVE Enrichment After 263% Surge In Vulnerability Submissions
NIST is narrowing how it handles CVEs in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), saying it will only automatically enrich higher-priority vulnerabilities. “CVEs that do not meet those criteria will still be listed in the NVD but will not automatically be enriched by NIST,” it said. “This change is driven by a surge in CVE submissi … ⌘ Read more
Gazing Into Sam Altman’s Orb Could Solve Ticket Scalping
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Sam Altman’s iris-scanning, humanity-verifying World project announced at an event in San Francisco on Friday that Tinder users around the globe can now put a digital badge on their profiles signaling to potential suitors that they’re a real human, provided they’ve already stared into one of World’s glossy white Orbs … ⌘ Read more
Mozilla ‘Thunderbolt’ Is an Open-Source AI Client Focused On Control and Self-Hosting
BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla’s email subsidiary MZLA Technologies just introduced Thunderbolt, an open-source AI client aimed at organizations that want to run AI on their own infrastructure instead of relying entirely on cloud services. The idea is to give companies full control over their data, models, an … ⌘ Read more
Thanks, @movq@www.uninformativ.de! Oh no, get well, mate!
Yes, our singer is a male I’m pretty sure. Of course, it’s hard to tell after sunset whether our blackbird wears a black or brown feather coat, but during daylight I’ve always only seen black ones sit on this roof ridge. It appears that Wikipedia is backing this up a little bit: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsel#Reviergesang
I just added a video. Hmm, filtering the background camera noise also makes the audio rather squeaky. :-(
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Those are some very colorful shots. 👌 It was pretty warm here as well, health issues prevented me from going out, though.
(Have we established that Azabache is male? 😃)
@klaxzy@klaxzy.net I should cancel Netflix as well. Back when they started their streaming service, it was a revelation: Finally, I could watch interesting shows in English, without having to wait for years, and legally (I like to be a paying customer, if it’s good). But this is long over. The interesting shows are gone or, once again, I have to wait for years until they’re available on Netflix. So, why bother anymore? 🤷♀️
@rnlog@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Well, welcome back. 👋
Amazon’s New Fire TV Sticks No Longer Support Sideloading
Amazon’s newest Fire TV Sticks are dropping support for normal sideloading, blocking apps from outside the Amazon Appstore unless the device is registered with developers. Cord Cutters News reports: This week, Amazon announced the upcoming launch of a new Fire TV Stick HD. The new model will run on Amazon’s Vega OS, rather than Android, so most streamin … ⌘ Read more
The weathermen just cannot be right with their 20°C today, it must have been more. It was awfully hot, the light breeze was not enough and even absent most of the time. In the shade, it was alright. Other than that, the walk to the dairy farm and back was really beautiful. Very lovely scenery.
Somebody spilled their paintbox at sunset. Unfortunately, I missed to reinsert the SD card into my camera, so I could not take more photos of Azabache and his new mate. They quickly disappeared. He even landed right next to my window, so that would have been a killer shot.
OpenAI Starts Offering a Biology-Tuned LLM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, OpenAI announced it had developed a large language model specifically trained on common biology workflows. Called GPT-Rosalind after Rosalind Franklin, the model appears to differ from most science-focused models from major tech companies, which have generally taken a more generic approach that works for various fields. … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Increases the FAT32 Limit From 32GB To 2TB
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo writes: Windows has limited FAT32 partitions to a maximum of 32GB for decades now. When memory cards and USB drives exceeded 32GB in size, the only options were exFAT or NTFS. Neither option was well supported on other platforms at first, although exFAT support is fairly widespread now. In their latest blog post, Microsoft announced … ⌘ Read more