Scientists Just Doubled Our Catalog of Black Hole and Neutron Star Collisions
Colliding black holes were detected through spacetime ripples for the first time in 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), notes Space.com:
Since then, LIGO and its partner gravitational wave detectors Virgo in Italy and KAGRA (Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector) in Japan have detect … ⌘ Read more
Rust Coreutils 0.7 Released With Many Performance Optimizations
Rust Coreutils 0.7 released on Sunday as a performance-focused update to this popular alternative to GNU Coreutils that is still striving for 100% compatibility against the GNU Test Suite… ⌘ Read more
Judges Find AI Doesn’t Have Human Intelligence in Two New Court Cases
Within the last month two U.S> judges have effectively declared AI bots are not human, writes Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik:
On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to take up a lawsuit in which artist and computer scientist Stephen Thaler tried to copyright an artwork that he acknowledged had been created by an AI bot of his … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0-rc3 Released: “Some Of The Biggest In Recent History”
Linux 7.0-rc3 is out as the latest weekly test candidate in leading up to the stable Linux 7.0 release in mid-April… ⌘ Read more
Could Home-Building Robots Help Fix the Housing Crisis?
CNN reports on a company called Automated Architecture (AUAR) which makes “portable” micro-factories that use a robotic arm to produce wooden framing for houses (the walls, floors and roofs):
Co-founder Mollie Claypool says the micro-factories will be able to produce the panels quicker, cheaper and more precisely than a timber framing crew, freeing up carpente … ⌘ Read more
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org hahhaha! Succulent, as in this type of plant. Certainly not looking to eat them, for sure! 😅
A Security Researcher Went ‘Undercover’ on Moltbook - and Found Security Risks
A long-time information security professional “went undercover” on Moltbook, the Reddit-like social media site for AI agents — and shares the risks they saw while posing as another AI bot:
I successfully masqueraded around Moltbook, as the agents didn’t seem to notice a human among them. When I attempted a genuine connect … ⌘ Read more
Robotic Surgery Performed Remotely on Patient 1,500 Miles Away
“A surgeon in London says he has performed the UK’s first long-distance robotic operation,” reports the BBC, “on a patient located 1,500 miles (2,400km) away…”
Leading robotic urological surgeon Professor Prokar Dasgupta said it felt “almost as if I was there” as he carried out a prostate removal on [62-year-old] Paul Buxton… It is hoped tha … ⌘ Read more
@bender@twtxt.net Haha, one could think it’s so cold over here, even the posts have to wear beanies. :-D 04 was actually in a villa garden not too far from the edge of the village. Those plants in 05 are tiiiny. Not sure if eating them is healthy. I’m glad about the temperatures, no interest in trading them. ;-)
Steam on Linux Numbers Dropped to 2.23% in February
“In November Steam on Linux use hit an all-time high of 3.2%,” reports Phoronix. And then in December Steam on Linux jumped even higher, to 3.58%.
But January’s numbers settled a little lower, at 3.38%. And last Monday the February numbers were released, showing Steam on Linux at… 2.23%?
Like with prior times where there are wild drops in Linux use, the Steam Survey sh … ⌘ Read more
OpenAI’s Former Research Chief Raises $70M to Automate Manufacturing With AI
“OpenAI’s former chief research officer is raising $70 million for a new startup building an AI and software platform to automate manufacturing,” reports the Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the matter.
“Arda, the new startup co-founded by Bob McGrew, is raising at a valuation of $700 million, according to pe … ⌘ Read more
2/3 of Node.Js Users Run an Outdated Version. So OpenJS Announces Program Offering Upgrade Providers
How many Node.js users are running unsupported or outdated versions. Roughly two thirds, according to data from Node’s nonprofit steward, OpenJS.
So they’ve announced “the Node.js LTS Upgrade and Modernization program” to help enterprises move safely off legacy/end-of-life Node. … ⌘ Read more
CachyOS Handheld Edition Switches To Wayland, CachyOS Installer Drops Bcachefs
The March 2026 ISO refresh of the Arch Linux powered CachyOS distribution is now available for new installations and upgrading from existing CachyOS installs… ⌘ Read more
Jack Dorsey’s Block Accused of ‘AI-Washing’ to Excuse Laying Off Nearly Half Its Workforce
When Block cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce — co-founder Jack Dorsey “pointed to AI as the culprit,” writes Entrepreneur magazine. “Dorsey claimed that AI tools now allow fewer employees to accomplish the same work.”
“But analysts see a different explanation: poor management.”
Block more … ⌘ Read more
Number 03, the warmest log in the land! :-) Number 04, was that in the middle of nowhere? I’d find the garden decoration interesting if so. Love the succulent like looking plants on 06 (my wife loves them too)!
About those 13ºC… oh my, how we wish…. we currently have 28ºC, cloudy.
Workers Who Love ‘Synergizing Paradigms’ Might Be Bad at Their Jobs
Cornell University makes an announcement. “Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like ‘synergistic leadership,’ or ‘growth-hacking paradigms’ may struggle with practical decision-making, a new Cornell study reveals.”
Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, research by cognitive psychologist Shane Littrel … ⌘ Read more
FFmpeg 8.1 Preparing For Release With Vulkan Improvements, JPEG-XS & More
FFmpeg developers are preparing to soon release FFmpeg 8.1 with some great new features and other improvements… ⌘ Read more
Experimental Intel Nova Lake P Device Bits Merged For Mesa 26.1
Merged this week for Mesa 26.1 are the initial Nova Lake P “NVL-P” device bits for Intel’s ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D drivers. But this support isn’t yet exposed by default and not yet ready for end-users with more driver changes still to be published… ⌘ Read more
Ah, found it: Lauren Hart did a laryngoscopy a while ago:
https://youtu.be/zy1El8U2kaA?t=175
Here around the 3:00 minute mark, the doctor explains what’s going on and you can (kind of) see which tissue is vibrating. Pretty interesting.
Notable Intel & AMD CPU Changes Merged For Linux 7.0-rc3
This week’s batch of “x86/urgent” patches that were merged overnight for Linux 7.0 contain some fixes and other adjustments worth highlighting for both AMD and Intel… ⌘ Read more
AI CEOs Worry the Government Will Nationalize AI
Palantir’s CEO was blunt. “If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone’s white-collar job… and you’re going to screw the military — if you don’t think that’s going to lead to the nationalization of our technology, you’re retarded…”
And OpenAI’s Sam Altman is thinking about the same thing, writes long-time Slashdot reader destinyland:
“It has seemed to me … ⌘ Read more
@bender@twtxt.net Just for fun, I made it through the entire Wikipedia article and I find it interesting, how deeply one can analyze a fairytale. :-D This also made me realize that, as a kid, I never questioned why the princess was traveling alone without any servants etc.
Finally, the Danish language lacks the subjunctive. Wow! I didn’t know that.
LLM-Driven Large Code Rewrites With Relicensing Are The Latest AI Concern
The newest open-source concern around AI that is seeing a lot of interest this weekend is when large language models / AI code generators may rewrite large parts of a codebase and then the “developers” claiming an alternative license incompatible with the original source license. This became a real concern this week with a popular Python project experiencing an AI-driven code rewrite and now published under an alternative license that … ⌘ Read more
digiKam 9.0 Leading Open-Source Digital Photo Manager Software Released
The KDE/Qt-aligned digiKam software for managing RAW digital photos is out today with the big digiKam 9.0 release… ⌘ Read more
After making three crosses (state and mayoral election) my mate and I went into the wildernes. Well, nature at least. There are heaps of people out there, too. The 13°C (and still raising) are very nice. I’m drowing in sweat, though.
Daylight Saving Time Ritual Continues. But Are There Alternatives?
Would you move sunrise to 9 a.m. in Detroit? Or to 4:11 a.m. in Seattle…
Though both options have problems, “There’s no law we can pass to move the sun to our will,” argues the president of the nonprofit “Save Standard Time”. The Associated Press explains why America remains stuck in that annual ritual making clocks “spring forward, fall backwa … ⌘ Read more
As US Tariffs Hit EVs, Hyundai Discontinues Its Cheapest IONIQ 6, While Kia Delays EV6 adn EV9 GT
First, Hyundai “is discontinuing its most affordable electric sedan after just three years on the market,” reports USA Today. After being introduced in 2022, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 “quickly gained the admiration of automotive critics because of its affordable pricing and capable perform … ⌘ Read more
Steven Spielberg + Dinosaurs + Netflix = Mixed Reviews
Steven Spielberg directed his last Jurassic Park movie nearly 30 years ago, notes ScreenRant. But the 79-year-old filmmaker now brings us The Dinosaurs, a four-part documentary on Netflix where he’s executive producer:
The first few reviews are in, and the results lead to a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s worth noting that the rating will likely f … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Adds A New Minor Performance Optimization Shown With AMD Zen 2 CPUs
The Linux event poll “epoll” code for efficient I/O multiplexing and monitoring of file descriptors for seeing when I/O is possible has a new optimization merged today for Linux 7.0… ⌘ Read more
A First for Humanity Confirmed: NASA’s DART Mission Slowed the Asteroid’s Orbit
NASA heralded a new study published Friday documenting a first for humanity — “the first time a human-made object has measurably altered the path of a celestial body around the Sun.”
It was 2022’s DART mission where NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid — and the experiment “could have implications for protectin … ⌘ Read more
Japan Approves Stem-Cell Treatments For Parkinson’s, Heart Failure In World Firsts
Long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 shared this report from Agence France-Presse:
Japan has approved ground-breaking stem-cell treatments for Parkinson’s and severe heart failure, one of the manufacturers and media reports said Friday, with the therapies expected to reach patients within months.
Pharmaceutical co … ⌘ Read more
OpenAI’s Head of Robotics Resigns, Says Pentagon Deal Was ‘Rushed Without the Guardrails Defined’
In a tweet that’s been viewed 1.3 million times in the last six hours, OpenAI’s head of robotics announced their resignation. They said they “care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together,” so this “wasn’t an easy call,” but offered this reason for resigning:
… ⌘ Read more
Astronomers Think They’ve Spotted a Galaxy That’s 99.9% Dark Matter
Astronomers have spotted a galaxy they believe is made of 99.9% dark matter, reports CNN — and it’s so faint, it’s almost invisible:
CDG-2, which is about 300 million light-years from Earth, appears to be so rich in dark matter that it could belong to a hypothesized subset of low surface brightness galaxies called “dark galaxies,” which are … ⌘ Read more
How Anthropic’s Claude Helped Mozilla to Improve Firefox’s Security
“It took Anthropic’s most advanced artificial-intelligence model about 20 minutes to find its first Firefox browser bug during an internal test of its hacking prowess,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
The Anthropic team submitted it, and Firefox’s developers quickly wrote back: This bug was serious. Could they get on a call? “What else do yo … ⌘ Read more
Military GPS Jamming is Interfering with the Navigation Systems of Commercial Ships
“Within 24 hours of the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, ships in the region’s waters found their navigation systems had gone haywire,” reports CNN, “erroneously indicating that the vessels were at airports, a nuclear power plant and on Iranian land.
“The location confusion was a result of widespread jammin … ⌘ Read more
Budgie 10.10.2 Brings Improved Labwc Wayland Compositor Integration
Out today is Budgie 10.10.2 as the latest minor update to this open-source desktop environment that began as part of the Solus Linux project… ⌘ Read more
Seagate Just Unleashed 44TB Hard Drives
“Seagate says it is now shipping its Mozaic 4+ HAMR-based hard drives at up to 44TB per drive,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, “with production deployments already underway at two hyperscale cloud providers.
“The company claims the platform is the only heat-assisted magnetic recording [HAMR] implementation currently operating at scale, and it is targeting a path from today’s 4+TB pe … ⌘ Read more
First Solar Car Rolls Off Validation Assembly Line At Aptera
“Reservation holders, it’s finally time to get ready,” writes long-time Slashdot reader AirHog. The EV news site Electrek reports:
Aptera Motors, “the little startup that could,” announced another important milestone… completing the first example of its flagship solar EV on its validation assembly line in Southern California…
While the validation l … ⌘ Read more
She sure has a very nice voice. What a gamut!
Prediction Market ‘Kalshi’ Sued for Not Paying $54 Million for Bets on Khamenei’s Death
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Independent:
A popular predictions market app will not pay out the $54 million some of its users believed they were owed after correctly forecasting the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a report.
Kalshi, which allows players to gamble on real- … ⌘ Read more
AMD GAIA 0.16 Introduces C++17 Agent Framework For Building AI PC Agents In Pure C++
AMD’s GAIA open-source framework for building AI agents that run locally on Ryzen AI hardware via the Radeon iGPUs and/or NPUs is up to version 0.16. With this new GAIA release is support for developing AI agents purely in C++ with no longer needing to depend upon Python… ⌘ Read more
Indonesia To Ban Social Media For Children Under 16
Indonesia will ban children under 16 from having accounts on major social media platforms as part of a government push to protect minors from harmful content, addiction, and online threats. The rule will roll out starting March 28 and makes Indonesia the first country in Southeast Asia to impose such a restriction. The Guardian reports: Meutya Hafid said in a statement to … ⌘ Read more
FreeBSD 15.1 On Track With Better Realtek WiFi & KDE Desktop Install Option
The effort around improving FreeBSD on laptops continues full speed ahead in 2026. The upcoming FreeBSD 15.1 remains on track with not only having a KDE desktop option from FreeBSD’s text-based installer UI but also improved Realtek WiFi adapter support is on the way, updating of the graphics drivers from Linux, and more… ⌘ Read more
New Maui.Gtk Project Provides A GTK4 Backend For Microsoft’s .NET MAUI
Maui.Gtk is a new open-source project providing a GTK4 Linux back-end for Microsoft’s .NET MAUI… ⌘ Read more
3mdeb Making Progress On AMD Ryzen AM5 Motherboard Port With Coreboot + openSIL
In addition to the 3mdeb firmware consulting firm porting Coreboot with AMD openSIL to an EPYC 9005 “Turin” Gigabyte motherboard, their developers have also been working on a similar Coreboot + openSIL port to an AM5 Ryzen consumer motherboard… ⌘ Read more
Resources For GNOME Adds Intel Xe GPU Power Usage & Intel NPU Frequency Reporting
Resources, the modern GNOME GTK4/libadwaita-based GUI application for system resource monitoring and an alternative to GNOME System Monitor, is out with a new update. Resources 1.10.2 brings some nice improvements for those running GNOME on modern Intel hardware… ⌘ Read more
China Releases First Homegrown Quantum Computing OS
The Global Times reports: China’s first domestically developed quantum computer operating system, Origin Pilot, has been made available for online download, the Global Times learned from the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center on Wednesday. A Chinese scientist said while several quantum computing operating system efforts are underway worldwide, this is the … ⌘ Read more
Asteroid 2024 YR4 Will Not Impact the Moon
Ancient Slashdot reader alanw shares a report from the European Space Agency (ESA): Last year, an approximately 60 meter near-Earth object captured global attention. For a brief period, asteroid 2024 YR4 became the most dangerous asteroid discovered in the last 20 years. While an Earth impact was soon ruled out, the asteroid faded from view with a lingering 4% chance of striking the Moo … ⌘ Read more
Humanity Heating Planet Faster Than Ever Before, Study Finds
An anonymous reader The Guardian: Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before, a study has found. Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures. It found global heating accelerated from a steady rate of … ⌘ Read more
New Something Something Unlocked: “Making Yogurt”. (Still not sure if it’s a new skill or an addiction)