Reporter Suggests Half-Life 3 Will Be a Steam Machine Launch Title
A veteran games journalist claims Half-Life 3 is real and still planned as a Spring 2026 launch title tied to Valve’s next Steam Machine push. Ars Technica reports: On the contrary, veteran journalist Mike Straw insisted on a recent Insider Gaming podcast that “everybody I’ve talked to are still adamant [Half-Life 3] is a game that will be … ⌘ Read more

Volkswagen To End Production At German Plant, a First In Company History
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The last vehicle will roll off the assembly line at Volkswagen’s plant in Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday, marking the first time in the automaker’s 88-year history that it has closed a plant in its home country. Volkswagen warned of potential production cuts last year, as i … ⌘ Read more

Utah Leaders Hinder Efforts To Develop Solar Energy Supply
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed two bills this year that ended solar development tax credits and imposed a new tax on solar generation despite solar power accounting for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid. The legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature has already had an impact.

Since May, when the … ⌘ Read more

MI6 Chief: We’ll Be as Fluent in Python As We Are in Russian
The new chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service told officers this week that they must become as fluent in programming languages like Python as they are in foreign languages like Russian as the spy agency adapts to what she described as a space between peace and war. Blaise Metreweli, MI6’s first female chief and previously the service’s direc … ⌘ Read more

Racks of AI Chips Are Too Damn Heavy
The weight of AI server racks has reached a point where legacy data centers cannot accommodate them even with significant retrofitting efforts, The Verge reports. Chris Brown, chief technical officer at Uptime Institute, said most retrofitting attempts would require “bulldozing the building and starting over from scratch.”

AI racks are projected to reach 5,000 pounds compared to the 400 to 600 pounds … ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Cache Aware Scheduling Presentation At LPC 2025
One of the exciting Intel innovations to the Linux kernel this year has been around the Cache Aware Scheduling for helping to deliver better performance on modern CPUs with multiple last level caches. The kernel patches have yet to be upstreamed but testing has shown to be quite promising for grouping tasks sharing data to the same LLC domain to help reduce cache misses and cache bouncing. Those wishing to learn more about Cache Aware Scheduling, there wa … ⌘ Read more

US Threatens Penalties Against European Tech Firms Amid Regulatory Fight
U.S. officials excoriated the European Union for discriminating against American technology companies and threatened to penalize European tech companies in return, in a social media post on Tuesday. From a report: The pronouncement appeared to signal a rockier period for U.S.-E.U. trade relations, as the two governments work to fi … ⌘ Read more

Texas Sues TV Makers For Taking Screenshots of What People Watch
mprindle writes: The Texas Attorney General sued five major television manufacturers, accusing them of illegally collecting their users’ data by secretly recording what they watch using Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology.

The lawsuits target Sony, Samsung, LG, and China-based companies Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation. Att … ⌘ Read more

McKinsey Plots Thousands of Job Cuts in Slowdown for Consulting Industry
McKinsey, the consulting giant that has spent a century advising companies on how to cut costs and restructure operations, is now turning that advice inward as it plans to eliminate thousands of jobs across its non-client-facing departments over the next 18 to 24 months.

The firm’s leadership has discussed a roughly 10% headcount redu … ⌘ Read more

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe I think I never watched it. In any case, enjoy reading your books.

High-Speed Traders Are Feuding Over a Way To Save 3.2 Billionths of a Second
A millisecond used to be a big deal for the world’s quickest traders. A dispute over huge trading profits at one of the world’s largest futures exchanges shows they now think a million times faster [non-paywalled source]. From a report: The controversy is about an arcane technical maneuver in which high-speed traders bombar … ⌘ Read more

Tech Giants Can’t Agree On What To Call Their AI-Powered Glasses
The glasses-shaped face computers that tech companies have been building for years now face an identity crisis, and their makers can’t agree on what to call them. Meta has asked a journalist to refer to its Ray-Ban glasses as “AI glasses” to distinguish them from Google Glass. Google, whose Project Aura is a collaboration with Xreal, calls the pro … ⌘ Read more

The Significant Performance Gains For Radeon RADV Ray-Tracing Performance In 2025
As part of my various year-end comparison benchmarking, I recently ran some tests looking at how the Radeon RX 9000 series RDNA 4 performance has evolved since its debut near the beginning of the year. The Vulkan ray-tracing performance in particular was standing out this year as having evolved quite nicely while for conventional OpenGL and Vulkan performance the performance has been largely stable this year with its great at-launch su … ⌘ Read more

The Entry-Level Hiring Process Is Breaking Down
The traditional signals that employers used to evaluate entry-level job candidates – college GPAs, cover letters, and interview performance – have lost much of their value as grade inflation and widespread AI use render these metrics nearly meaningless, writes The Atlantic.

The recent-graduate unemployment rate now sits slightly higher than the overall workforce’s, a reversal … ⌘ Read more

Mozilla Names New CEO, Firefox To Evolve Into A “Modern AI Browser”
Mozilla Corporation has named its new CEO in replacing interim CEO Laura Chambers… ⌘ Read more

Mozilla’s New CEO Bets Firefox’s Future on AI
Mozilla has named Anthony Enzor-DeMeo as its new chief executive, promoting the executive who has spent the past year leading the Firefox browser team and who now plans to make AI central to the company’s future.

Enzor-DeMeo announced on Tuesday that an “AI Mode” is coming to Firefox next year. The feature will let users choose from multiple AI models rather than being locked into a s … ⌘ Read more

Google’s Real Estate Listings ‘Experiment’ Sends Zillow Shares Down More Than 8%
Google’s data partner HouseCanary has begun displaying home listings directly in search results in select markets, sending Zillow’s shares tumbling more than 8% yesterday as investors weighed whether the search giant might eventually cut into the portal business that Zillow dominates.

The experiment places property de … ⌘ Read more

Red Hat Acquires Another AI Company
Last year Red Hat acquired Neural Magic as part of their AI acquisitions and to bolster the open-source AI ecosystem. Today they announced another AI acquisition… ⌘ Read more

SoundCloud Confirms Breach After Member Data Stolen, VPN Access Disrupted
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Audio streaming platform SoundCloud has confirmed that outages and VPN connection issues over the past few days were caused by a security breach in which threat actors stole a database containing user information. The disclosure follows widespread reports over the past four … ⌘ Read more

ZLUDA For CUDA On Non-NVIDIA GPUs Enables AMD ROCm 7 Support
The ZLUDA open-source project that has been through several incarnations but ultimately about getting CUDA software up and running on non-NVIDIA GPUs now supports the AMD ROCm 7 series… ⌘ Read more

Servo 0.0.3 Browser Engine Brings Better Performance, Embedding Improvements
Servo 0.0.3 is out today as the newest update to this Rust-based, open-source web layout engine. Servo 0.0.3 incorporates many enhancements made over the past month from better performance to enhancing its embedding API and other improvements like context menus for more web content… ⌘ Read more

MidnightBSD 4.0 Brings Many Changes To This FreeBSD 13 Derived OS
While FreeBSD 15 stable was officially released earlier this month, MidnightBSD continues plotting its own course atop its FreeBSD 13 base. Out today is MidnightBSD 4.0 as the latest iteration of this desktop-minded BSD operating system… ⌘ Read more

OpenShot 3.4 Video Editor Released: One Of Their Largest Updates Ever
OpenShot 3.4 is now available as the latest feature update to this open-source video editor app. OpenShot 3.4 happens to be “one of our largest updates we’ve ever done” with a variety of improvements in tow… ⌘ Read more

PayPal Applies To Become a Bank As US Loosens Regulatory Reins
PayPal has applied to become a US bank by forming a Utah-chartered industrial loan company, signaling a push to deepen its financial services “as companies rush to capitalize on a friendly regulatory environment under the Trump administration,” reports Reuters. From the report: If approved, the move will help PayPal to strengthen its lending offering … ⌘ Read more

Got a nice conspiracy theory for you:

https://mastodon.social/@mcc/115670290552252848

Actually wait I just thought about this and realized that the precise timing of the ACTUAL GitHub seed bank, by which I mean the Arctic Code Vault, on 2020-02-02, makes it more or less a perfect snapshot of pre-Copilot GitHub. Also precisely timed before we all got brain damage from COVID. This is the only remaining archive of source code by people with a fully working sense of smell

(Bonus points because the Arctic World Archive is located in Svaldbard and that’s the name of the AI in Stacey Kade’s “Cold Eternity”.)

Glaciers To Reach Peak Rate of Extinction In the Alps In Eight Years
A new study warns that glaciers in the European Alps will hit their peak extinction rate within eight years, with global glacier loss accelerating toward thousands per year unless emissions are rapidly cut. “Glaciers in the western US and Canada are forecast to reach their peak year of loss less than a decade later, with more than 800 dis … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Will Finally Kill Obsolete Cipher That Has Wrecked Decades of Havoc
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is killing off an obsolete and vulnerable encryption cipher that Windows has supported by default for 26 years following more than a decade of devastating hacks that exploited it and recently faced blistering criticism from a prominent US senator. When the so … ⌘ Read more

Fedora Games Lab Looks To Be Revitalized As Modern Linux Gaming Showcase
One of the lesser known Fedora spins under the “Fedora Labs” initiative is the Fedora Games Lab that showcases some open-source games and can serve as an easy demonstrator for Linux gaming. Looking forward to 2026 with Fedora 44, there is a proposal to revitalize Fedora Games Lab to become a better showcase for the modern potential of Linux gaming… ⌘ Read more

Lidar-Maker Luminar Files For Bankruptcy
Once a star of the self-driving hype cycle, lidar maker Luminar has filed for bankruptcy amid legal turmoil, layoffs, and a cooling autonomous-vehicle market. It plans to sell off its assets before shutting down entirely. The Verge reports: As part of its bankruptcy, Luminar is seeking permission to sell both its lidar and semiconductor businesses, the latter of which it has already agreed to … ⌘ Read more

Google Search Homepage Adds a ‘Plus’ Menu
After introducing an AI Mode shortcut earlier this year, Google has now added a new “plus” menu to its Search homepage, highlighting options for image and file uploads. 9to5Google reports: On google.com, the Search bar now has a plus icon at the far left that replaces the magnifying glass. Clicking lets you “Upload image” or “Upload file.” It very much matches the AI Mode experience. Those t … ⌘ Read more

China, Iran Are Having a Field Day With React2Shell, Google Warns
A critical React vulnerability (CVE-2025-55182) is being actively exploited at scale by Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, and criminal groups to gain remote code execution, deploy backdoors, and mine crypto. The Register reports: React maintainers disclosed the critical bug on December 3, and exploitation began almost immediately. According to Amazon … ⌘ Read more

JPMorgan Steps Further Into Crypto With Tokenized Money Fund
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: JPMorgan Chase is joining the list of traditional financial firms seeking to bring blockchain technology to an investing staple: the money-market fund. The banking giant’s $4 trillion asset-management arm is rolling out its first tokenized money-market fund on the Ethereum blockchain. JPMo … ⌘ Read more

Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year Is ‘Slop’
Merriam-Webster crowned “slop” its 2025 Word of the Year, reflecting growing public awareness and and fatigue around low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet. “It’s such an illustrative word,” said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster’s president. “It’s part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bi … ⌘ Read more

GIMP 3.2-RC2 Brings Bug Fixes & Minor Refinements
GIMP 3.2-RC2 is out today as what could be the last release candidate of GIMP 3.2 before its stable release. This leading open-source image editor/creation alternative to the likes of Adobe Photoshop continues becoming much more refined and polished in the GIMP 3 series… ⌘ Read more

Ford Ends F-150 Lightning Production, Starts Battery Storage Business
Ford has effectively pulled the plug on the all-electric F-150 Lightning, pivoting away from full-size BEV pickups toward hybrids, range-extended EVs (EREVs), and even data-center battery storage. Ars Technica reports: Ford’s announcements today can’t be said to have come out of the blue. Rumors of the F-150’s demise have been circul … ⌘ Read more

Torvalds On Linux Security Modules: “I Already Think We Have Too Many Of Those Pointless Things”
Stemming from a security researcher and his team proposing a new Linux Security Module (LSM) three years ago and it not being accepted to the mainline kernel, he raised issue over the lack of review/action to Linus Torvalds and the mailing lists. In particular, seeking more guidance for how new LSMs should be introduced and raised the possibility of taking the issue to the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board … ⌘ Read more

Russian Ban On Roblox Gaming Platform Sparks Rare Protest
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Several dozen people protested on Sunday in the Siberian city of Tomsk against Russia’s ban on U.S. children’s gaming platform Roblox, a rare show of public dissent as popular irritation over the ban gains some momentum. In wartime Russia, censorship is extensive: Moscow blocks or restricts social media platform … ⌘ Read more

Fedora 44 Could Work Nicely “Out Of The Box” On Snapdragon-Powered Windows ARM Laptops
Longtime Red Hat engineer Hans de Goede who worked on many Intel/AMD laptop enhancements over the years left Red Hat and ended up joining Qualcomm. Now it turns out one of his projects at Qualcomm is enhancing the Fedora Linux support for running nicely out-of-the-box on Snapdragon-powered Windows on ARM laptops… ⌘ Read more

Verizon Refused To Unlock Man’s iPhone, So He Sued the Carrier and Won
A Kansas man who sued Verizon in small claims court after the carrier refused to unlock his iPhone has won his case, scoring a small but meaningful victory against a company that retroactively applied a policy change to deny his unlock request.

Patrick Roach bought a discounted iPhone 16e from Verizon’s Straight Talk brand in February 2 … ⌘ Read more

Flatpak Adds Support For Building OCI Bundles Using Zstd Compressed Layers
Back in November Flatpak 1.17 released with support for sideloading from OCI images and other improvements in working toward the Flatpak 1.18 stable release. Out today is Flatpak 1.17.1 and was then followed quickly by Flatpak 1.17.2 to fix a mistake in the release artifacts… ⌘ Read more

Why Floods Threaten One of the Driest Places in the World
One of the most water-scarce regions on Earth is now experiencing a dramatic atmospheric shift that’s pushing moisture onto Oman’s northern coast at rates more than 1.5 times the global average, according to a Washington Post investigation of global atmospheric data [non-paywalled source]. The change has turned extreme rainfall into a recurrent source of cat … ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Reveals How Bots and Governments Reshaped the Internet in 2025
Cloudflare’s sixth annual Year in Review report describes an internet increasingly shaped by two forces: automated traffic and government intervention, as global connectivity grew 19% year over year in 2025.

Google’s web crawler now dominates automated traffic, dwarfing other AI and indexing bots to become the single largest so … ⌘ Read more

Google To Retire ‘Dark Web Report’ Tool That Scanned for Leaked User Data
Google has decided to retire its free dark web monitoring tool, saying it wasn’t as helpful as the company hoped. From a report: In a support page, Google announced the discontinuation of the “dark web report” tool, two years after offering it as a free perk to Gmail users before expanding it more broadly. The feature worked by sca … ⌘ Read more

US Tech Force Aims To Recruit 1,000 Technologists
The Trump administration announced Monday the United States Tech Force, a new program to recruit around 1,000 technologists for two-year government stints starting as soon as March – less than a year after dismantling several federal technology teams and driving thousands of tech workers out of their jobs.

The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers an … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Features: LUO, PCIe Link Encryption, ASUS Armoury, DRM Color Pipeline API & More
With Linux 6.19-rc1 released, the merge window for Linux 6.19 has now concluded. Here is a summary of the interesting Linux 6.19 new features and changes with this kernel version. ⌘ Read more

AmpereOne M Finally Appears - In The Oracle Cloud With A4
Back in July 2024, Ampere Computing announced AmpereOne M on their road-map for Q4’2024 to provide AmpereOne with 12 channel DDR5 memory compared to eight memory channels with the original AmpereOne processors. Then this past May the AmpereOne M SKUs were announced while Ampere Computing stated these “M” processors had been shipping since Q4 of last year. Since then we haven’t seen or heard anything more about AmpereOne M nor the AmpereOne MX processors … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Thought Parkinson’s Was in Our Genes. It Might Be in the Water
For decades, Parkinson’s disease research has overwhelmingly focused on genetics – more than half of all research dollars in the past two decades flowed toward genomic studies – but a growing body of evidence now points to something far more mundane as a primary culprit: contaminated drinking water.

A landmark study by epide … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Neither have I. :-D

How Did the CIA Lose a Nuclear Device?
Sixty years after a team of American and Indian climbers abandoned a plutonium-powered generator on the slopes of Nanda Devi, one of the world’s most forbidding Himalayan peaks, the U.S. government still refuses to acknowledge that the mission ever happened. The device, a SNAP-19C portable generator containing plutonium isotopes including Pu-239 – the same material used in the Nagasaki bomb – was … ⌘ Read more

Wayland Protocols 1.47 Released With Updated Color Management Protocol
Following the Color Management protocol introduced in Wayland Protocols 1.41, out today is Wayland Protocols 1.47 with various revisions to that color management and HDR support… ⌘ Read more