US Threatens Anthropic with ‘Supply-Chain Risk’ Designation. OpenAI Signs New War Department Deal
It started Friday when all U.S. federal agencies were ordered to “immediately cease” using Anthropic’s AI technology after contract negotiations stalled when Anthropic requested prohibitions against mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. But later Friday there were ev … ⌘ Read more

Since I’ve been recently appointed “the bringer of music” … 🤪

Lauren Hart has joined Arch Enemy 😍 Arch Enemy – To The Last Breath

Kayla Dixon replaced Avienne Low in Vintersea a while ago and she’s doing a phenomenal job 🤯 (Avienne was already great) Vintersea – Become The Wave

Rikke List with Konvent makes for funny stories in YouTube comments (little boy wonders “women can do that?!”), and those are just killer riffs by Sara Nørregaard 🤘 Konvent – Puritan Masochism

I miss the days when Mina Špiler was with Laibach, she was perfect for this group 😢 Laibach – Bossanova

Courtney LaPlante is from another world entirely 😍🫠 (be sure to watch this to the very end 😅) Spiritbox – Rule Of Nines (one take)

Antarctica’s Massive Neutrino Observatory Gets an Upgrade
There’s already 5,000 sensors embedded in Antarctica’s ice to look for evidence of neutrinos, reports the Washington Post. But in November scientists drilled six new holes at least a mile and a half deep and installed cables with hundreds more light detectors — an upgrade to the massive 15-year-old IceCube Neutrino Observatory to detect the charged particles … ⌘ Read more

Looks very nice and cozy! The only thing I hate about caravans, and RVs in general, is the disposal of the bio “stuff”. 😅

‘World’s Largest Battery’ Soon At Google Data Center: 100-Hour Iron-Air Storage
Interesting Engineering reports:

US tech giant Google announced on Tuesday that it will build a new data center in Pine Island, Minnesota. The new facility will be powered by 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy from wind and solar, coupled with a 300-megawatt battery, claimed to be the ‘world’s largest’, with a 30-gi … ⌘ Read more

After US-Israel Attacks, 90 Million Iranians Lose Internet Connectivity
CNN reports that images from Iran’s capital “have shown cars jammed along Tehran’s street, with heavy traffic on major roads after today’s wave of attacks by the US and Israel.” And though Iran has a population of 93 million, the attacks suddenly plunged Iran into “a near-total internet blackout with national connectivity at 4% of or … ⌘ Read more

AMD Prepares Linux For Instruction-Based Sampling Improvements With Zen 6
A set of patches recently posted to the Linux kernel mailing list have now been queued up to a tip/tip.git branch for planned introduction in Linux 7.1. These patches are for enhancing the Linux perf subsystem support for AMD Instruction-Based Sampling (IBS) improvements with next-gen Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more

America’s Teenagers Say AI Cheating Has Become a Regular Feature of Student Life
Tuesday Pew Research announced their newest findings: that 54% of America’s teens use AI help with schoolwork:
One-in-five teens living in households making less than $30,000 a year say they do all or most of their schoolwork with AI chatbots’ help. A similar share of those in households making $30,000 to just under … ⌘ Read more

Startup Plans April Launch for a Satellite Reflect Sunlight to Earth at Night
A start-up called Reflect Orbital “proposes to use large, mirrored satellites to redirect sunlight to Earth at night,” reports the Washington Post, “with plans to bathe solar farms, industrial sites and even entire cities in light that could, if desired, reach the intensity of daylight….”

Slashdot noted their idea i … ⌘ Read more

Verisilicon DC8200 & Coreboot Framebuffer Drivers Sent To DRM-Next For Linux 7.1
The first DRM-Misc-Next pull request was submitted this week to DRM-Next as new kernel graphics/display driver features to begin queuing for the Linux 7.1 kernel that will release mid-year. Among the early code for DRM-Next are two new drivers… ⌘ Read more

Servo Browser Engine Starts 2026 With Many Notable Improvements
The Servo project has issued their January 2026 development report that highlights all the interesting changes they made to this open-source browser layout engine last month. With Servo 0.0.5 they have landed many improvements to this engine and also continuing to enhance its ability to embed Servo inside other applications… ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Lol, that huge, lit-up branding.

The magpies approve of the caravan, too. :-)

Google Quantum-Proofs HTTPS
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google on Friday unveiled its plan for its Chrome browser to secure HTTPS certificates against quantum computer attacks without breaking the Internet. The objective is a tall order. The quantum-resistant cryptographic data needed to transparently publish TLS certificates is roughly 40 times bigger than the classical cryptographic material used today. Today’s X.509 c … ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 14.4-RC1 Adds Emacs, Vim & More To DVD Images
For those on the current FreeBSD 14 series with no immediate plans to move to FreeBSD 15 that debuted at the end of 2025, FreeBSD developers have been preparing for the release of FreeBSD 14.4. Released overnight was the first release candidate of FreeBSD 14.4… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.7 Preps Rounded Style UI Enhancement For QtWidgets-Based Apps
KDE Plasma 6.7 development continues heating up following the Plasma 6.6 desktop release earlier this month… ⌘ Read more

Rubin Observatory Has Started Paging Astronomers 800,000 Times a Night
On February 24th, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory activated its automated alert system, sending out roughly 800,000 real-time notifications flagging asteroids, supernovae, flaring black holes and “other transient celestial events,” reports Scientific American. And this is only the beginning – that number is projected to climb into th … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That’s the plan!

@prologic@twtxt.net Happy camping, mate! That’s a giant rig. Don’t forget to snip one or the other pic from the landscape. :-)

Southern California Air Board Rejects Pollution Rules After AI-Generated Flood of Comments
Southern California’s air quality board rejected proposed rules to phase out gas-powered appliances after receiving more than 20,000 opposition comments generated through CiviClick, “the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform.” Phys.org reports: A Southern California-based public a … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Fires an Employee For Prediction Market Insider Trading
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: OpenAI has fired an employee following an investigation into their activity on prediction market platforms including Polymarket, WIRED has learned. OpenAI CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, disclosed the termination in an internal message to employees earlier this year. The employee, she said, “used confidenti … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net 😅

Human Brain Cells On a Chip Learned To Play Doom In a Week
Researchers at Cortical Labs used living human neurons grown on a chip to learn how to play Doom in about a week. “While its performance is not up to par with humans, experts say it brings biological computers a step closer to useful real-world applications, like controlling robot arms,” reports New Scientist. From the report: In 2021, the Australian compan … ⌘ Read more

Hyperion Author Dan Simmons Dies From Stroke At 77
Author Dan Simmons, best known for the epic sci-fi novel Hyperion and its sequels, has died at 77 following a stroke. Ars Technica’s Eric Berger remembers Simmons, writing: Simmons, who worked in elementary education before becoming an author in the 1980s, produced a broad portfolio of writing that spanned several genres, including horror fiction, historical fiction, and sc … ⌘ Read more

CISA Replaces Bumbling Acting Director After a Year
New submitter DeanonymizedCoward shares a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is reportedly in crisis following major budget cuts, layoffs, and furloughs under the Trump administration, says TechCrunch. The agency has now replaced its acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, after a turbulent year marked by controversy and i … ⌘ Read more

GNOME GitLab Redirecting Some Git Traffic To GitHub For Reducing Costs
If you are cloning from a GNOME repository on their GitLab and now finding your Git traffic being redirected to GitHub, you are not alone. GNOME’s infrastructure team is now redirecting Git traffic from the GNOME.org GitLab over to GitHub mirrors for reducing bandwidth costs… ⌘ Read more

Perplexity Announces ‘Computer,’ an AI Agent That Assigns Work To Other AI Agent
joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity has introduced “Computer,” a new tool that allows users to assign tasks and see them carried out by a system that coordinates multiple agents running various models. The company claims that Computer, currently available to Perplexity Max subscribers, is “a system that … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net congrats! That’s why you were so quiet. And now it will even get quieter, when y’all start camping all over Down Under. We lost James! 😅

South Korea Set To Get a Fully Functioning Google Maps
South Korea has reversed a two-decade policy and approved the export of high-precision map data, paving the way for a fully functional Google Maps in the country. Reuters reports: The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement. Those conditions include blurrin … ⌘ Read more

Trump Orders Federal Agencies To Stop Using Anthropic AI Tech ‘Immediately’
President Donald Trump has ordered all U.S. federal agencies to “immediately cease” using Anthropic’s AI technology, escalating a standoff after the company sought limits on Pentagon use of its models. CNBC reports: The company, which in July signed a $200 million contract with Pentagon, wants assurances that the Defense Depar … ⌘ Read more

US Military Accidentally Shoots Down Border Protection Drone With Laser
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The U.S. military used a laser Thursday to shoot down a “seemingly threatening” drone flying near the U.S.-Mexico border. It turned out the drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, lawmakers said. The case of mistaken identity prompted the Federal Aviation Admini … ⌘ Read more

White House Stalls Release of Approved US Science Budgets
An anonymous reader shares a report: Weeks after the U.S. Congress rejected unprecedented cuts to science budgets that the administration of US President Donald Trump had sought for 2026, funding to several agencies that award research grants is still not freely flowing.

One reason is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been slow to … ⌘ Read more

‘The Death of Spotify: Why Streaming is Minutes Away From Being Obsolete’
An anonymous reader shares a column: I’m going to take the diplomatic hat off here and say with brutal honesty: basically everybody in the music business hates Spotify except for the people who work there. It’s a platform that sucks artists for everything they have, it actively prevents community building, and, despite all … ⌘ Read more

AI Mistakes Are Infuriating Gamers as Developers Seek Savings
The $200 billion video game industry is caught between studios eager to cut ballooning development costs through AI and a player base that has grown openly hostile to the technology after a string of visible blunders.

As Bloomberg news, Arc Raiders, a surprise hit from Stockholm-based Embark Studios that sold 12 million copies in three months, was br … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net Indeed 😂

We got at our new van!!! 🥳

Intel Releases Updated CPU Microcode For Xeon 6 SoCs “Granite Rapids D”
Catching me by surprise today was a new Intel CPU microcode drop “20260227” for Linux users/administrators outside of their typical Patch Tuesday alignment for CPU microcode releases… ⌘ Read more

Smartphone Market To Decline 13% in 2026, Marking the Largest Drop Ever Due To the Memory Shortage Crisis
An anonymous reader shares a report: Worldwide smartphone shipments are forecast to decline 12.9% year-on-year (YoY) in 2026 to 1.1 billion units, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. This decline will bring … ⌘ Read more

Hyprland 0.54 Released As A “Massive” Update To This Wayland Compositor
Hyprland 0.54 was released today as what’s described as a “a massive update with no understatement” to this Wayland compositor… ⌘ Read more

Nasa Announces Artemis III Mission No Longer Aims To Send Humans To Moon
Nasa announced on Friday radical changes to its delayed Artemis III mission to land humans back on the moon, as the US space agency grapples with technical glitches and criticism that it is trying to do too much too soon. From a report: The abrupt shift in strategy was laid out by the space agency’s recently confirmed administr … ⌘ Read more

A Chinese Official’s Use of ChatGPT Accidentally Revealed a Global Intimidation Operation
A sprawling Chinese influence operation – accidentally revealed by a Chinese law enforcement official’s use of ChatGPT – focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. From a report: The Chines … ⌘ Read more

Metacritic Will Kick Out Media Attempting To Submit AI Generated Reviews
An anonymous reader shares a report: While some see AI as a tool to be used, its specific use and how it is deployed responsibly is being heavily debated online across a wide range of industries. In terms of journalistic content, and in this particular instance, reviews, review aggregator Metacritic has taken a firm stance on con … ⌘ Read more

Sam Altman Says OpenAI Shares Anthropic’s Red Lines in Pentagon Fight
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a memo to staff that he will draw the same red lines that sparked a high-stakes fight between rival Anthropic and the Pentagon: no AI for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. If other leading firms like Google follow suit, this could massively complicate the Pentag … ⌘ Read more

Netflix Ditches deal for Warner Bros. Discovery After Paramount’s Offer is Deemed Superior
Netflix is walking away from a deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets after the WBD board on Thursday deemed a revised bid by Paramount Skydance to be a superior offer. From a report: Earlier this week, Paramount raised its bid to buy the entirety of WBD to $31 p … ⌘ Read more

SilverStone RM4A: 4U Rackmount Server/Workstation Chassis That’s Great For Liquid Cooling
For those looking to build a rackmount-ready server or workstation that can handle up to an SSI-EEB motherboard and capable of fitting a large liquid cooling setup, the RM4A is a new option from SilverStone that can fit up to a 360mm radiator while still fitting an SSI-EEB motherboard and up to eight expansion slots within 4U size constraints. ⌘ Read more