Do Markets Make Us Moral?
A new study [PDF] examining the United States between 1850 and 1920 found that expanded market access – driven largely by railroad expansion – made Americans more trusting of strangers and more outward-looking, but weakened family-based care for the vulnerable.

Researchers Max Posch of the University of Exeter and Itzchak Tzachi Raz of Hebrew University compared places and people gaining different levels of commercial conne … ⌘ Read more

RISC-V User-Space Control Flow Integrity / Shadow Stack Appears Finally Ready
Similar to what has been available on Intel and AMD processors for users with the shadow stack for control-flow integrity, Linux on RISC-V is finally ready to roll-out its user-space control-flow integrity support… ⌘ Read more

‘Call Screening is Aggravating the Rich and Powerful’
Apple’s call-screening feature, introduced in iOS 26 last year, was designed to combat the more than 2 billion robocalls placed to Americans every month, but as WSJ is reporting, it is now creating friction for the rich and powerful who find themselves subjected to automated interrogation when dialing from unrecognized numbers.

The feature uses an automated voice to … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I reckon up until then you had to have another first name that clearly differentiated. Didn’t read through the court decision, though.

Interesting, I always thought that Kiran was a male first name. But I only know one person with that name. As last name, though.

Now I’m wondering, was that also the beginning when parents started giving their kids really weird names?

@bender@twtxt.net Hahahaha! :-D

Vulkan 1.4.342 Published With Cooperative Matrix Conversion Extension
Following last week’s Vulkan spec updates that brought descriptor heaps and other notable new extensions and the Vulkan Roadmap 2026 Milestone, Vulkan 1.4.342 was published this morning as the latest routine spec update plus one new extension… ⌘ Read more

The UK Paid $5.65 Million For a Bookmarks Site
The UK government paid consulting firm PwC $5.65 million to build its new AI Skills Hub, a site meant to help 10 million workers gain AI skills by 2030 that functions largely as a bookmarking service, directing users to external training courses that already existed before the contract was awarded.

The hub links to platforms like Salesforce’s free Trailhead learning system rather th … ⌘ Read more

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Haha, I just noticed because my client colors mentions differently depending on whether I follow the feed or not. ;-)

AMD EPYC 9755 Delivers Decisive Performance Leadership Over Xeon 6 Granite Rapids With Nearly 500 Benchmarks
Back in December I carried out some fresh benchmarks of the Intel Xeon 6980P vs. AMD EPYC 9755 for these competing 128 core server processors using the latest Linux software stack before closing out 2025. That was done with nearly 200 benchmarks and the AMD EPYC Turin Zen 5 processor delivered terrific performance as we have come to enjoy out of the 5th Gen EPYC line-up over the past year and several mont … ⌘ Read more

Amazon in Talks To Invest Up To $50 Billion in OpenAI
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be a giant bet on the hot AI startup. The ChatGPT maker is seeking up to $100 billion in new capital from investors, a round that could value it at as much as $830 billion, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

An … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft is Experimenting With a Top Menu Bar for Windows 11
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft’s PowerToys team is contemplating building a top menu bar for Windows 11, much like Linux, macOS, or older versions of Windows. The menu bar, or Command Palette Dock as Microsoft calls it, would be a new optional UI that provides quick access to tools, monitoring of system resources, and much more.

Micros … ⌘ Read more

Linux’s ublk Adding Batch I/O Dispatch Capability For Greater Performance
Linux’s user-space block device driver framework “ublk” for implementing virtual block device drivers in user-space relayed by IO_uring is introducing batch I/O dispatch infrastructure… ⌘ Read more

Backseat Software
Mike Swanson: What if your car worked like so many apps? You’re driving somewhere important…maybe running a little bit late. A few minutes into the drive, your car pulls over to the side of the road and asks:

“How are you enjoying your drive so far?”

Annoyed by the interruption, and even more behind schedule, you dismiss the prompt and merge back into traffic.

A minute later it does it again.

“Did you know I have a new feature? Tap … ⌘ Read more

AerynOS Establishes Policy Against LLM Contributions, 2026.01 ISO Refresh
In kicking off 2026, AerynOS developers have continued to make progress on their build tooling and infrastructure for this Linux distribution formerly known as Serpent OS. They have also been working on a new website design and other updated branding to start the new year… ⌘ Read more

Unable To Stop AI, SAG-AFTRA Mulls a Studio Tax On Digital Performers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: In the future, studios that use synthetic actors in place of humans might have to pay a royalty into a union fund. That’s one of the ideas kicking around as SAG-AFTRA prepares to sit down with the studios on Feb. 9. Artificial intelligence was central to the 2023 actors strike, and it’s only g … ⌘ Read more

Open-Source Nova Driver In Linux 7.0 Continues Preparing For NVIDIA Turing GPU Support
This week the Rust DRM changes intended for the Linux 7.0 merge window were sent out by Danilo Krummrich. The Apple Silicon Asahi Linux “AGX” DRM kernel driver still isn’t positioned for upstreaming to the mainline kernel so that leaves most of the Rust DRM upstream work currently around the NVIDIA Nova driver as well as the Arm Mali Tyr drivers… ⌘ Read more

Intel Xe Linux Driver Updated To Disable GuC Power DCC For Panther Lake
Queued up in DRM-Next for the Intel open-source graphics driver ahead of the Linux 7.0 kernel cycle is expanding GPU temperature sensor reporting, multi-device SVM prep, multi-queue support for Crescent Island, Nova Lake display support, and other feature work. With the Linux 6.19 stable release fast approaching, DRM-Next is now focusing in on reading early fixes with concluding feature activity for this next merge window… ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases LLM-Scaler-vLLM 1.3 With New LLM Model Support
Intel today released the LLM-Scaler-vLLM 1.3 update with expanding the array of large language models that can run on Intel Arc Battlemage graphics cards with this Docker-based stack for deploying vLLM… ⌘ Read more

Former Google Engineer Found Guilty of Stealing AI Secrets For Chinese Firms
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: A former Google engineer has been found guilty on multiple federal charges for stealing the tech giant’s trade secrets on artificial intelligence to benefit Chinese companies he secretly worked for, federal prosecutors said. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Offi … ⌘ Read more

Radiologists Catch More Aggressive Breast Cancers By Using AI To Help Read Mammograms, Study Finds
A large Swedish study of 100,000 women found that using AI to assist radiologists reading mammograms reduced the rate of aggressive “interval” breast cancers by 12%. CBC News reports: For the study – published in Thursday’s issue of the medical journal The Lancet – more than … ⌘ Read more

Universal Basic Income Could Be Used To Soften Hit From AI Job Losses In UK, Minister Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The UK could introduce a universal basic income (UBI) to protect workers in industries that are being disrupted by AI, the investment minister Jason Stockwood has said. “Bumpy” changes to society caused by the introduction of the technology w … ⌘ Read more

Comcast Keeps Losing Customers Despite Price Guarantee, Unlimited Data
Comcast’s attempt to slow broadband customer losses still isn’t stopping the bleeding as fiber and fixed wireless competition intensifies. In Q4 2025 alone, Comcast lost 181,000 broadband subscribers, even as it leans harder into wireless bundling and other business lines like Peacock and theme parks. Ars Technica reports: The Q4 net l … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net That’s the plan! Once I’m happy with this v1 (and we find no other obvious bugs/issues) updating “Changes” with user-facing / human-freidnyl changes is part of the release process!

Cory Doctorow On Tariffs and the DMCA In Canada
Longtime Slashdot reader devnulljapan writes: In 2012, Canada passed anti-circumvention law Bill C-11, cut-and-pasted from the U.S. DMCA, in return for access to U.S. markets without tariffs. Trump has tariffed Canada anyway, so Cory Doctorow suggests it sounds like like a good idea to ditch Bill C-11 and turn Canada into a “Disenshittification Nation” and go into the business of … ⌘ Read more

Linux Gaming Developers Join Forces To Form the Open Gaming Collective
A group of Linux gaming-focused distros and developers have formed the Open Gaming Collective to pool work on shared components like kernels, input systems, and Valve tooling. The Verge reports: Universal Blue, developer of the gaming-focused Linux distribution Bazzite, announced on Wednesday that its helping to form the OGC with sev … ⌘ Read more

An AI Toy Exposed 50K Logs of Its Chats With Kids To Anyone With a Gmail Account
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Earlier this month, Joseph Thacker’s neighbor mentioned to him that she’d preordered a couple of stuffed dinosaur toys for her children. She’d chosen the toys, called Bondus, because they offered an AI chat feature that lets children talk to the toy like a kind of machi … ⌘ Read more

Google’s Project Genie Lets You Generate Your Own Interactive Worlds
Google is letting outsiders experiment with DeepMind’s Genie 3 “world model” via Project Genie, a tool for generating short, interactive AI worlds. The caveat: it requires a $250/month AI Ultra subscription, is U.S.-only, and has tight limits that make it more of a tech demo than a game engine. Engadget reports: At launch, Project Genie o … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Working On Improved vCPU Scheduler Support For Hyper-V Linux VMs
Microsoft posted a patch series for introducing Hyper-V integrated scheduler support into the Linux kernel for enhancing vCPU scheduling behavior for virtual machines running within Microsoft’s virtualized environment… ⌘ Read more

Nvidia GeForce NOW Is Now Available Natively On Linux
NVIDIA has officially launched a native GeForce NOW client for Linux as a Flatpak, giving Linux gamers access to cloud-rendered RTX gaming. Phoronix reports: While confined to a Flatpak, for now NVIDIA is just “officially” supporting it on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. Granted, thanks to Flatpak it should run on other non-Ubuntu distributions too but in terms of the of … ⌘ Read more

County Pays $600,000 To Pentesters It Arrested For Assessing Courthouse Security
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Dan Goodin: Two security professionals who were arrested in 2019 after performing an authorized security assessment of a county courthouse in Iowa will receive $600,000 to settle a lawsuit they brought alleging wrongful arrest and defamation. The case wa … ⌘ Read more

ArXiv Will Require English Submissions - and Says AI Translators Are Fair Game
The preprint repository arXiv will require all submissions to be written in English or accompanied by a full English translation starting February 11, a policy change that explicitly permits the use of AI translators even as research suggests large language models remain inconsistent at the task.

Until now, authors … ⌘ Read more

US Leads Record Global Surge in Gas-Fired Power Driven by AI Demands
An anonymous reader shares a report: The US is leading a huge global surge in new gas-fired power generation that will cause a major leap in planet-heating emissions, with this record boom driven by the expansion of energy-hungry datacenters to service AI, according to a new forecast.

This year is set to shatter the annual record for new … ⌘ Read more

US Life Expectancy Jumps To a Record 79 Years
An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. life expectancy rose to a record high of 79 years in 2024, an increase of six months from the previous year, reflecting a sharp decline in deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

According to a report from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy improve … ⌘ Read more

Fell into a bit of a rabbit hole and learned that it took German law until 2008 to actually allow unisex/gender-neutral first names: https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/rk20081205_1bvr057607.html 🤦

Microsoft Admits Windows 11 Has a Trust Problem, Promises To Focus on Fixes in 2026
Microsoft wants you to know that it knows that Windows 11, now used by a billion users, has been testing your patience and announced that its engineers are being redirected to urgently address the operating system’s performance and reliability problems through an internal process the company calls “swarming.”

” … ⌘ Read more

Why Private Equity Is Suddenly Awash With Zombie Firms
The private equity industry is experiencing a quiet reckoning as hundreds of midsize firms find themselves trapped between investors who have lost patience and portfolios of companies they cannot sell at acceptable prices.

“There is existential risk for a number [of funds] because of the fundraising environment,” said Sunaina Sinha Haldea, global head of private … ⌘ Read more

Apple’s Second-Biggest Acquisition Ever Is a Startup That Interprets Silent Speech
Apple has acquired Q.AI, a secretive Israeli startup whose technology can analyze facial skin micro-movements to interpret “silent speech,” in a deal valued at close to $2 billion that marks the iPhone maker’s second-largest acquisition ever, according to backer GV (formerly Google Ventures).

The four-year-old … ⌘ Read more

DDR5-4800 vs. DDR5-6000 Performance With The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D In 300+ Benchmarks
With the incredible market demand around DDR5 memory and significantly elevated pricing on the more premium DDR5 memory modules, as part of the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D launch there’s been some communication that thanks to 2nd Gen AMD 3D V-Cache, using lower memory speeds like DDR5-4800 can be suitable without much of an impact to the gaming performance. But what about for Linux gaming? And other workloads with the Ryzen 7 9850X3D? C … ⌘ Read more

Massive AI Chat App Leaked Millions of Users Private Conversations
An anonymous reader shares a report: Chat & Ask AI, one of the most popular AI apps on the Google Play and Apple App stores that claims more than 50 million users, left hundreds of millions of those users’ private messages with the app’s chatbot exposed, according to an independent security researcher and emails viewed by 404 Media. The expose … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net Will do. 🤣

@movq@www.uninformativ.de if they haven’t, I would recommend a “subtle” nudge. You know, like leaving an advert flier at their door for a “Basic English (including swearing words!) for Dummies” book, or something like that. :-D :-P

Libcamera 0.7 Released - GPU Acceleration Support For SoftISP Can Deliver 15x Performance
Libcamera 0.7 was published today for this modern software library for image signal processors (ISPs) and embedded cameras under Linux. The standout change with libcamera 0.7 is initial plumbing for GPU acceleration in the software ISP “SoftISP” for delivering better performance than just CPU-based… ⌘ Read more

Xbox Hardware Revenue Craters 32%
Microsoft’s Xbox hardware revenue fell 32% in the final quarter of 2025 and overall gaming revenue declined 9% year-over-year, according to the company’s latest quarterly earnings, released as part of results showing Microsoft’s total revenue exceeded $80 billion.

Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Game Pass, dropped 5%.

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@arne@uplegger.eu Das klingt spannend! Setze ich mal auf die Liste. (Bin gerade an The Luminous Dead dran.)

I wonder if my elderly German neighbors have learned enough English by now to understand what I’m swearing about all day long. 🤔

IO_uring Zero-Copy Large Receive Buffer Support To Provide A Nice Performance Win
Slated for introduction in the next kernel cycle (Linux 6.20~7.0) is introducing large receive buffer support for IO_uring’s zero-copy receive code path. This large receive buffer support can be very beneficial for those with higher-end networking hardware capable of handling the larger buffers for some significant performance and efficiency wins… ⌘ Read more

Windows 11 Has Reached 1 Billion Users Faster Than Windows 10
An anonymous reader shares a report: Windows 11 now has one billion users. Microsoft hit the milestone during the recent holiday quarter, meaning Windows 11 has managed to reach one billion users faster than Windows 10 did nearly six years ago.

“Windows reached a big milestone, 1 billion Windows 11 users,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the compa … ⌘ Read more

Waymo Robotaxi Hits a Child Near an Elementary School in Santa Monica
A Waymo robotaxi struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica on January 23, according to the company. Waymo told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that the child – whose age and identity are not currently public – sustained minor injuries. TechCrunch: The NHTSA has opened an investigation into the … ⌘ Read more

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net woohoo! So. Much. Powah! 😈

@prologic@twtxt.net cool! Will test later today. I recommend to keep up with the changes, and make them non-technical user “friendly”.