US Set To Receive $10 Billion Fee For Brokering TikTok Deal
The deal to take control of TikTok’s U.S. business came with an unusual condition, according to people familiar with the matter. The investors — which include Oracle, Abu Dhabi investor MGX, and private-equity firm Silver Lake — “paid the Treasury Department about $2.5 billion when the deal closed in January,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “and are set t … ⌘ Read more

How a Species Evolved Fast Enough to Save Itself from Extinction
California saw its worst drought in 10,000 years between 2012 and 2015, remembers the Washington Post. And yet genetic analyses of California’s scarlet monkeyflower “found that many rapidly evolved… allowing them to cope with water scarcity and rebound from decline.”

“The fact that certain organisms are able to adapt just because of genetics t … ⌘ Read more

@thecanine@twtxt.net Hahaha, nice! :-D

To whoever is operating this “xt” client, there might be a misconfiguration. My feed is often, but not always, pulled twice within a few seconds:

2026-03-14T15:31:02+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T15:31:31+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T15:41:19+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T15:41:31+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T15:51:04+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:01:25+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T16:01:27+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:11:51+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T16:11:54+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:21:53+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:32:19+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T16:32:22+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

2026-03-14T16:52:28+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"
2026-03-14T16:52:31+01:00 "GET /twtxt.txt HTTP/1.1" 304 "xt/0.0.1"

Maybe this is caused by a development and a production setup, no idea. Since this client is sending the If-Modified-Since or If-None-Match request header, I’m good with that, though. Looking forward to discover a new feed hopefully soon. :-)

Debian 13.4 Released With Dozens Of Fixes
Debian 13.4 rolled out today with dozens of security fixes and other general bug fixes with the updated install media for Debian 13 Trixie… ⌘ Read more

AI’s Productivity Boost? Just 16 Minutes Per Week, Claims Study
“A new study suggests the productivity boost from AI may be far smaller than executives claim,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli:

According to research cited in Foxit’s State of Document Intelligence report, while 89% of executives and 79% of end users say AI tools make them feel more productive, the actual time savings shrink dramatically once peo … ⌘ Read more

U.S. State Bans on Lab-Grown Meats Challenged in Court
Last June Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement that Texans “have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It’s plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives.”

But California company Wildtype sells lab-grown … ⌘ Read more

Trying Out Snapdragon X Elite With The Acer Swift 14 AI Laptop On Ubuntu 26.04
This week I tried out the current Ubuntu 26.04 development state on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite with the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop I have been using for my X Elite benchmarks over the past year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a smooth experience with new issues encountered for this Windows On ARM laptop… ⌘ Read more

OpenRazer 3.12 Released With Support For Newer Razer Products On Linux
OpenRazer 3.12 was just released today as the newest update to these independently-maintained, open-source drivers for Razer devices on Linux. Paired with the likes of the Polychromatic GUI, OpenRazer allows for a pleasant experience for the Razer gaming peripherals under Linux… ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org sounds like a plan, it’d be the second biggest version, in Australia.

Number one is on the rplace.live map canvas, where the previous one is in America and the one from today here - no reason other than the fact those countries had a good empty spot, to put them in, at the time I drew them.

Trying Out Snapdragon X Elite With The Acer Swift 14 AI Laptop On Ubuntu 26.04
This week I tried out the current Ubuntu 26.04 development state on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite with the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop I have been using for my X Elite benchmarks over the past year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a smooth experience with new issues encountered for this Windows On ARM laptop… ⌘ Read more

@thecanine@twtxt.net Haha, I just realized you could stick that on the side of @prologic@twtxt.net’s caravan to accompany these large pixels there. Secret mission in Down Under. :-D

@prologic@twtxt.net Oh yeah, this looks like a nice spot with these gums in the background. :-)

Linux 7.1 Will Bring Power Estimate Reporting For AMD Ryzen AI NPUs
This week’s round of drm-misc-next patches bring a few improvements to the AMDXDNA accelerator driver used for supporting the Ryzen AI NPUs. Plus some new panel additions and various other minor Direct Rendering Manager driver changes… ⌘ Read more

Meta Plans Sweeping Layoffs As AI Costs Mount
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers. No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has … ⌘ Read more

Google Now Using AutoFDO To Enhance Android’s Linux Kernel Performance
Google’s Android LLVM toolchain team shared publicly this week that they have begun making use of AutoFDO for automatic feedback directed optimizations of their Linux kernel build used by Android… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6.3 Fixing Direct Scan-Out When Using Fractional Scaling
KDE developers continue being very busy working on Plasma 6.7 feature development as well as continuing to drive new fixes and refinements to the current Plasma 6.6 stable series… ⌘ Read more

Our first test over night trip 🤞

GNOME OS Switches To KMSCON Enabled By Default
GNOME OS as the Linux-based OSTree-using distribution that serves as the leading-edge, reference platform of GNOME desktop development is now using KMSCON by default… ⌘ Read more

Back to the regular scheduled dogpostin and back to something very low resolution.

Also new stuff on my website, won’t list it all here, you’ll just have to check.

Turns out, I even go down to only 50% quality for my thumbnails: https://lyse.isobeef.org/tmp/galres.txt The difference between 50% and 80/90% is just barely noticeable.

$ convert -strip -quality 50 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 50-stripped.jpg
$ convert -quality 50 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 50.jpg
$ ls -lh 50*jpg | awk '{print $5 " " $9}'
26K 50.jpg
25K 50-stripped.jpg

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org Correct, the two smaller versions are loading perfectly fine. The hickup is only for the originals. But in all reality, the middle ones are sufficient for me personally. Please don’t get me wrong, at least for the people photos, the subjects are large enough. The Japanese landscapes, however, would definitely benefit from a bit more detail. ;-)

I just tried it once more, and now, the tree with the sign (/photo/5Zy4pqVIt0oP/IMG_20251106_035048_448.jpg) fully loaded very quickly. Same with the Japanese dish (/photo/tJbmg8oleYbh/IMG_20251030_091719_086.jpg) and shopping center (/photo/qXG5ucIjpPju/IMG_20251029_045002_778.jpg). But the previous and next ones all ran into the same problems again. When I’m very lucky, I eventually get the upper half. Typically not even that much, a third, a fifth, or even less.

Waiting a bit before making an attempt, the wooden walkway through the forest or park (/photo/ojQpDLfBoGN4/IMG_20251023_043829_011.jpg) eventually also made it. But unlike the other successful attempts, it took a long time.

The more photos you add, the more beneficial it might be to separate the index into several different albums. I didn’t measure it, but it felt like 10 to 20 seconds for all the thumbnails to load. That traffic adds up.

Another idea would be to strip the EXIF data from the thumbnails and reducing quality to 90% or even 80%. Using the famous tree with the sign, I cannot tell the difference between the original thumbnail and the 80% quality one. I’m sure it depends on the subject. Here are the numbers:

$ convert -strip IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg stripped.jpg
$ convert -quality 90 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 90.jpg
$ convert -quality 80 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 80.jpg
$ convert -strip -quality 90 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 90-stripped.jpg
$ convert -strip -quality 80 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 80-stripped.jpg
$ ls -lh *jpg | awk '{print $5 " " $9}' 
46K 80.jpg
45K 80-stripped.jpg
64K 90.jpg
63K 90-stripped.jpg
132K IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg
127K stripped.jpg
$ ls -l *jpg | awk '{print $5 " " $9}'
46160 80.jpg
45064 80-stripped.jpg
65012 90.jpg
63916 90-stripped.jpg
135070 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg
129647 stripped.jpg

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me Holy fuck, you were really lucky! This could have gone really bad. You noticed it because of the blackout?

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks for letting me know. HTML checkers seem happy now. I’m not sure what to do about the images not loading. The photos have three sizes (thumbnail, photo page, and original if you click the img tag on the photo page); can you at least see the smaller two sizes? Maybe I will do some experimental fetches and/or start measuring things on my web server.

Two Long-Lost Episodes of ‘Doctor Who’ Found
Longtime Slashdot reader tsuliga writes: Two new episodes of Doctor Who that were previously lost have been found. The original Doctor Who episodes were wiped or deleted by the BBC because they were not aware of the future use of re-runs of these shows. Ninety-five of the 253 episodes from the program’s first six years are currently missing. How many more episodes are out there … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org It’s not that bad. She let me sleep three times last night alone!

Thanks all!

ChatGPT, Other Chatbots Approved For Official Use In the Senate
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A top Senate administrator on Monday gave aides the green light to use three artificial intelligence chatbots for official work, a reflection of how widespread the use of the products has become in workplaces around the globe. The chief information officer for the Senate sergeant-at-arms, w … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org still not as bad as the time a fire started in the breaker panel for my building and I had to personally put it out myself with a fire extinguisher.

Image

Image

Instagram Discontinues End-To-End Encryption For DMs
Meta plans to remove end-to-end encryption (E2EE) from Instagram direct messages by May 8, 2026. “Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we’re removing this option from Instagram in the coming months,” says Meta. “Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.” The Hacker News reports: The … ⌘ Read more

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me @prologic@twtxt.net The web is fucked. :-(

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me What a truly wonderful description. ;‘-D But sorry to hear that. Luckily, no issues over here. It’s extremely rare that this happens. Last time (around five years ago or so) they were cutting down trees in the forest and threw a tree in the overhead power line (which had been converted to underground last year). Power had to be killed in order for the fire brigade to actually extinguish the fire.

@bender@twtxt.net H-Blockx covered it, the original was by Snap! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_(Snap!_song) But it’s actually not my type of music at all. The high pitch refrain “I’ve got the power” is iconic and has somehow burned itself into my brain. Must have been a short circuit.

Qatar Helium Shutdown Puts Chip Supply Chain On a Two-Week Clock
Iranian drone strikes shut down a major helium facility in Qatar, removing about 30% of global helium supply and raising concerns for the semiconductor industry, which relies on the gas for chip fabrication. “QatarEnergy declared force majeure on existing contracts on March 4, freeing it from supply obligations to customers,” reports Tom’s Hardwar … ⌘ Read more

debauit Announced As Debian Source Package Auditor
Announced today was debaudit, a new set of tools and services designed to verify the integrity and reproducibility of Debian source packages… ⌘ Read more

Don’t Get Used To Cheap AI
AI services may not stay cheap for long, as companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are currently subsidizing usage to rapidly grow market share. As these companies move toward profitability and potential IPOs, Axios reports that investors will likely push them to increase prices and improve margins. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Flashback: Silicon Valley has seen this movie before. The so-called “mil … ⌘ Read more

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me Yeah the “web” is pretty broken™ right? 😅

Digg Relaunch Fails
sdinfoserv writes: After running a Reddit clone for a couple of months, the Digg beta shut down again. The website is a splash memo from CEO Justin Mezzell, blaming the latest “Hard Reset” on bots. “Building on the internet in 2026 is different,” writes Mezzell. “We learned that the hard way. Today we’re sharing difficult news: we’ve made the decision to significantly downsize the Digg team…”

The decision was made after struggling … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org 😂 Pretty cool remix(?)!

Backblaze Hosts 314 Trillion Digits of Pi Online
BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Cloud storage company Backblaze has partnered with StorageReview to make a massive dataset containing 314 trillion digits of Pi publicly accessible. The digits were calculated by StorageReview in December 2025 after months of heavy computation designed to stress modern hardware. The dataset now hosted in the cloud weighs in at over … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA 595.44.03 Linux Driver Released With VK_KHR_device_address_commands
Less than a week after their prior NVIDIA Vulkan beta driver in the R595 driver series, today NVIDIA released another new Vulkan beta driver for Linux and Windows systems… ⌘ Read more

Meta Delays Rollout of New AI Model After Performance Concerns
Meta has delayed the release of its next major AI model after internal tests showed it lagging behind competing systems from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The New York Times reports: The model, code-named Avocado, outperformed Meta’s previous A.I. model and did better than Google’s Gemini 2.5 model from March, two of the people said. But it has not … ⌘ Read more

Panther Lake Tuning For The Intel Idle Driver In Linux 7.1
While the Linux support for Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake is largely in good shape as shown in my numerous articles over the past month and a half, there are occasional missing remnants landing in the kernel. As the latest example, or the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel, the unified Panther Lake C-States table is being added for the Intel Idle driver… ⌘ Read more

Live Nation Execs Brag About ‘Robbing’ Ticket Buyers In Slack DMs
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Pitchfork: Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice and Live Nation reached a settlement in the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against the concert giant. During the trial, which lasted only a week, representatives for Live Nation had moved to exclude a collection of Slack direct messages from 2022 between … ⌘ Read more

Yeah. It’s a peculiar situation.

On one hand, I can count on my fingers (ha! fingers… one hand…) how many power losses we have in a year on the last few decades.

On the other hand, I live in an old part of the town and the infrastructure is equal parts a joke in bad taste, an archeological defiance, and an ugly mistake that needs to be killed with fire. (On second thought, maybe not the last part).

This month we started having power failures only on some apartments, which make no sense at all. When we call the power company, they always promise to send someone to check on it, but the power comes back in one or two hours.

The first time it happened, I suspect it damaged my PC’s mainboard and / or GPU, who are both showing random, subtly erratic behaviors.

Linux Kernel API Specification Framework Advances Past RFC Stage
After going through five rounds of review under a Request For Comments (RFC) flag, today the latest round of Kernel API Specification Framework patches were sent out with the RFC flag removed… ⌘ Read more

Don’t tease me with a crazy idea! I was only half-joking. Less than half, if I’m being honest.

Apple’s App Store In China Gets Lower 25% Commission To Appease Regulators
Apple will cut its App Store commission in China from 30% to 25% starting March 15, with small-business and mini-app rates dropping from 15% to 12%. AppleInsider reports: Chinese regulators have been back and forth with Apple in recent years over the 30% App Store commission. The latest publicly known pressure occurred after Pre … ⌘ Read more

My twtxt instance is under a de-facto attack. Or, at this point, I can’t even differentiate an attack from the other in the constant barrage or malicious requests.

There were so many bots hammering it, in only 3 days, they consumed the ironically significant amount of 666 MB — I kid you not! In the last 24 hours, there were 59,673 hits on this endpoint alone.

I had to put my twtxt web interface behind a password-protected BasicAuth directive. As I’m the only one using it, it’s fine.

Bots, scrappers and Large Laggy Manglers are poisoning the open web.

Facial Recognition Error Jails Innocent Grandmother For Months
Mr. Dollar Ton shares a report from the Guardian: Angela Lipps, 50, spent nearly six months in jail after Fargo police identified her as a suspect in an organized bank fraud case using facial recognition software, according to south-east North Dakota news outlet InForum. Lipps told the outlet she had never been to North Dakota and did not commit the c … ⌘ Read more