AMD ROCm 7.12 Tech Preview Brings More Consumer APU & GPU Support
In addition to this week’s ROCm 7.2.1 stable point release, ROCm 7.12 was also released as the newest tech preview in working toward what will presumably be called ROCm 8.0… ⌘ Read more

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Linux Patches Posted To Fix ~2x Performance Drop For CPU Workloads On NVIDIA Vera Rubin
An important set of Linux scheduler patches were posted for review on Thursday for improving the SMT-aware asymmetric CPU capacity handling. These patches to improve the Linux kernel scheduler around CPU Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) is needed after NVIDIA engineers discovered up to a ~2x performance drop for CPU-intensive workloads on their upcoming Vera Rubin platform… ⌘ Read more

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AMDGPU Driver For Linux 7.1 Preps Debug Improvements, New Hardware IP
Another round of AMDGPU/AMDKFD kernel driver improvements were sent out this week as feature development for DRM-Next ahead of Linux 7.1 begins to wind down… ⌘ Read more

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CERN To Host Europe’s Flagship Open Access Publishing Platform
CERN has confirmed it will host an expanded version of Open Research Europe, the EU-backed fee-free open access publishing platform that works to “keep knowledge in public hands.” Research Professional News reports: A little over a year ago, 10 European research organizations announced that they would add their support to Open Research Europe, to b … ⌘ Read more

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Apple Gives FBI a User’s Real Name Hidden Behind ‘Hide My Email’ Feature
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Apple provided the FBI with the real iCloud email address hidden behind Apple’s ‘Hide My Email’ feature, which lets paying iCloud+ users generate anonymous email addresses, according to a recently filed court record. The move isn’t surprising but still provides uncommon insight into … ⌘ Read more

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wlroots 0.20 Released,Sway 1.12-rc1 Available For Testing With Color Management
Released today was wlroots 0.20 as this Wayland support library used by some Wayland compositors for doing much of the “heavy lifting” of compositor bring-up. Following wlroots 0.20, Sway 1.12-rc1 was released for testing as this closely-aligned Wayland compositor inspired by the i3 window manager… ⌘ Read more

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Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Beta Released: Powered By Linux 7.0 + GNOME 50 + Mesa 26.0
Right on schedule the beta for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is now available for testing. This is a great opportunity to help test this release ahead of the official Long Term Support release due out on 23 April… ⌘ Read more

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Apple Discontinues Mac Pro
Apple has discontinued the Mac Pro and says it has no plans for future models. “The ‘buy’ page on Apple’s website for the Mac Pro now redirects to the Mac’s homepage, where all references have been removed,” reports 9to5Mac. From the report: The Mac Pro has lived many lives over the years. Apple released the current Mac Pro industrial design in 2019 alongside the Pro Display XDR (which was also discontinued earlier th … ⌘ Read more

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Senators Demand to Know How Much Energy Data Centers Use
Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley are pressing the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to provide better information on how much electricity data centers actually use. In a joint letter sent to the EIA on Thursday, the two senators press the agency to publicly collect “comprehensive, annual energy-use disclosures” on data centers, saying it’s “essential for ac … ⌘ Read more

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KDE’s KWin Compositor Lands First Step Toward Vulkan Support
Merged today was the very first step toward implementing Vulkan support within KDE’s KWin compositor as an alternative to OpenGL rendering… ⌘ Read more

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JPMorgan Starts Monitoring Investment Banker Screen Time To Prevent Burnout
JPMorgan is piloting a system that monitors junior investment bankers to avoid burnout (source paywalled; alternative source). “[T]he bank will seek to match up hours claimed by the bankers with digital activity,” reports Bloomberg. “The tool won’t be used for evaluation purposes, but is designed to provide a better estimate of … ⌘ Read more

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Vizio TVs Now Require Walmart Accounts For Smart Features
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Prospective Vizio TV buyers should know there’s a good chance the set won’t work properly without a Walmart account. In an attempt to better serve advertisers, Walmart, which bought Vizio in December 2024, announced this week that select newly purchased Vizio TVs now require a Walmart account for s … ⌘ Read more

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Mozilla and Mila Team Up On Open Source AI Push
BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla just teamed up with Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, to push open source AI – and it feels like a direct response to Big Tech tightening its grip on the space. Instead of relying on closed models, the goal here is to build “sovereign AI” that’s more transparent, privacy-focused, and actually under the control of developers and even … ⌘ Read more

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Wikipedia Bans Use of Generative AI
Wikipedia has banned the use of generative AI to write or rewrite articles, saying it “often violates several of Wikipedia’s core content policies.” That said, editors may still use it for translation or light refinements as long as a human carefully checks the copy for accuracy. Engadget reports: Editors can use large language models (LLMs) to refine their own writing, but only if the copy is checked f … ⌘ Read more

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Tracy Kidder, Author of ‘The Soul of a New Machine’, Dies At 80
Ancient Slashdot reader wiredog writes: Tracy Kidder, author of “The Soul of a New Machine,” has died at the age of 80. “The Soul of a New Machine” is about the people who designed and built the Data General Nova, one of the 32 bit superminis that were released in the 1980’s just before the PC destroyed that industry. It was excerpted in The Atlantic.
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Open-Source Nouveau Performance With Linux 7.0 + NVK Mesa 26.1-dev vs. NVIDIA Linux Driver
As a few months have passed since our prior round of testing the fully open-source NVIDIA Linux driver stack with the Nouveau kernel driver and Mesa NVK Vulkan driver plus Zink, here is a fresh round of benchmarks using Linux 7.0 and Mesa 26.1-dev compared to the open-source stack shipped by Ubuntu 25.10 (Linux 6.17 + Mesa 25.2) for showing how far the open-source NVIDIA driver has progressed the past few months. Plus testing aga … ⌘ Read more

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China Reviews $2 Billion Manus Sale To Meta As Founders Barred From Leaving Country
Chinese authorities have barred two Manus executives from leaving the country while investigating whether Meta’s reported $2 billion acquisition of the Singapore-based AI startup violated foreign investment reporting rules. “Manus was founded in China but last year relocated its headquarters and core team to Singapo … ⌘ Read more

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Researchers At CERN Transport Antiprotons By Truck In World-First Experiment
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Physics World: Researchers at the CERN particle-physics lab have successfully transported antiprotons in a lorry across the lab’s main site. The feat, the first of its kind, follows a similar test with protons in 2024. CERN says the achievement is “a huge leap” towards being able … ⌘ Read more

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Ubuntu Will Switch To ntpd-rs As Its Next Rust System Component
Canonical engineers are planning a switch to ntpd-rs as the newest Rust-based system component for Ubuntu Linux for handling time synchronization… ⌘ Read more

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Intel Xe Driver In Linux 7.1 Enabling THP For Device Pages As A Big SVM Win
Sent out today was a new batch of “drm-xe-next” material of Intel Xe kernel graphics driver improvements ready for the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel cycle. Standing out in this pull is enabling Transparent Hugepages (THP) support for drm_pagemap as a big win for those making use of Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) for GPU compute and the like… ⌘ Read more

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Reddit Takes On Bots With ‘Human Verification’ Requirements
Reddit is rolling out human-verification checks for accounts that show signs of bot-like behavior, while also labeling approved automated accounts that provide useful services. The social media company stressed that these checks will only happen if something appears “fishy,” and that it is “not conducting sitewide human verification.” TechCrunch reports: To i … ⌘ Read more

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Fedora 45 Aims For IPv6-Mostly Support Out-Of-The-Box
One of the early features for Fedora 45 that was approved this week is enabling IPv6-mostly support within NetworkManager for a more modern out-of-the-box network experience… ⌘ Read more

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NXP Neutron NPU Kernel Driver Blocked For Now By A Closed-Source User-Space Blob
Last month NXP posted open-source Linux kernel driver patches for their Neutron NPU accelerator. The NXP Neutron NPU aims to help with edge AI applications and this neural processing unit is found in their different SoCs. Unfortunately, their GitHub repository for the user-space software ends up containing a binary-only blob that will end up delaying plans on getting this driver into the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

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An Enticing Optimization For Linux Memory Reclaim On Today’s Multi-Core Platforms
A new set of Linux kernel patches for batch TLB flushing for dirty folios within the kernel’s vmscan path were recently floated on the Linux kernel mailing list. This batch TLB flushing optimization for dirty folios during memory reclaim can be a significant performance win with today’s multi-core hardware… ⌘ Read more

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Melania Trump Welcomes Humanoid Robot At White House Summit
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: In Melania and the Robot, the New York Times reports on First Lady Melania Trump’s inaugural Fostering the Future Together Coalition Summit, which brought together international leaders, First Spouses from around the world, tech leaders, educators, and nonprofits to collaborate on practical solutions that expand … ⌘ Read more

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Brazil’s UFO Capital Marks 30 Years Since ‘Alien Encounter’
Thirty years after the alleged 1996 “ET of Varginha” encounter, debate continues to rage over the events that happened in Brazil’s self-styled UFO capital. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the Guardian: The skies over this far-flung coffee-growing hub went charcoal black, the heavens opened and one of Brazil’s greatest mysteries was born. “ … ⌘ Read more

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ASUS Armoury & HP WMI Drivers Add More Laptops Ahead Of Linux 7.0-rc6
Merged today was another round of platform-drivers-x86 changes for the ongoing Linux 7.0 cycle. There are bug fixes plus some new hardware support additions that make this merge notable. Due to the new hardware support amounting to just device IDs and not risking existing hardware support, it’s fine for merging at this late stage of Linux 7.0 development… ⌘ Read more

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Postal Service to Impose Its First-Ever Fuel Surcharge on Packages
The U.S. Postal Service plans to impose its first-ever fuel surcharge on packages (source paywalled; alternative source), adding an 8% fee starting in April as it struggles with rising fuel costs and ongoing financial pressure. The surcharge will not apply to letter mail and is currently expected to remain in place until January 2027. The Wal … ⌘ Read more

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This one comes from this years (now scrapped) April 1st DLSS 5 gag, that was originally supposed to use Microsofts AI - in ways similar to the Nvidia technology, which produced interesting, overly detailed results. I wanted to see if I could beat the AI thing at drawing something like that myself and many redraws later, this is my best result.

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Canada’s Immigration Rejected Applicant Based On AI-Invented Job Duties
New submitter haroldbasset writes: Canada’s Immigration Department rejected an applicant because the duties of her current job did not match the Canadian work experience she had claimed, but the Department’s AI assistant had invented that work experience. She has been working in Canada as a health scientist – she has a Ph.D. in the i … ⌘ Read more

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Apple Can Create Smaller On-Device AI Models From Google’s Gemini
Apple reportedly has full access to customize Google’s Gemini model, allowing it to distill smaller on-device AI models for Siri and other features that can run locally without an internet connection. MacRumors reports: The Information explains that Apple can ask the main Gemini model to perform a series of tasks that provide high-quality resul … ⌘ Read more

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Supreme Court Sides With Internet Provider In Copyright Fight Over Pirated Music
Longtime Slashdot reader JackSpratts writes: The Supreme Court unanimously said on Wednesday that a major internet provider could not be held liable for the piracy of thousands of songs online in a closely watched copyright clash. Music labels and publishers sued Cox Communications in 2018, saying the company had fa … ⌘ Read more

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Fedora 45 Plan Approved For Web Frontend To Linux’s “Blue Screen of Death” DRM Panic
With just a few weeks to go until the official Fedora 44 release, there is already feature planning and activity beginning for Fedora 45 that will be released toward the end of 2026. Among the early feature approvals is a new web front-end feature to the DRM Panic “Blue/Black Screen of Death” functionality with a specialized QR code for kernel errors… ⌘ Read more

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Stephen Colbert To Write Next ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Stephen Colbert already has a new job lined up for when he ends his 11-year run as host of “The Late Show” in May – the comedian and well-known J.R.R. Tolkien superfan announced he will co-write and develop a new film in the blockbuster “Lord of the Rings” franchise. Colbert joined “LOTR” director Peter Jackson … ⌘ Read more

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Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case
A jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in a landmark social media addiction case, ruling that addictive design features such as infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations harmed a young user and contributed to her mental health distress. The verdict awards $3 million in compensatory damages so far and could pave the way for … ⌘ Read more

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Meta Loses Trial After Arguing Child Exploitation Was ‘Inevitable’
Meta lost a child safety trial in New Mexico after the court found its platforms failed to adequately protect kids from exploitation and misled parents about app safety. According to Ars Technica, the jury on Tuesday “deliberated for only one day before agreeing that Meta should pay $375 million in civil damages…” It’s From the report: The tri … ⌘ Read more

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AMD ROCm 7.2.1 Released With Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS Support, Bug Fixes
Building off the release of ROCm 7.2 from January, ROCm 7.2.1 is now available with Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS support as well as various bug fixes to this open-source AMD Radeon/Instinct GPU compute stack… ⌘ Read more

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AI Economy Is a ‘Ponzi Scheme,’ Says AI Doc Director
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vanity Fair: Focus Features is releasing The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist in theaters on March 27. If you’re even slightly interested in what’s going on with AI, it’s required viewing: The film touches on all aspects of the technology, from how it’s currently being used to how it will be used in the near future … ⌘ Read more

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KDE Plasma 6.6 Delivers An Impressive Edge For Radeon Graphics Over GNOME 50 On Ubuntu 26.04
In testing thus far on Ubuntu 26.04, the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop with the Wayland session is working pretty darn well and delivering a performance edge across many games/graphics workloads compared to the default GNOME 50 desktop. At least as far as AMD Radeon graphics are concerned, Plasma 6.6 is in quite impressive shape for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. ⌘ Read more

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China Is Mass-Producing Hypersonic Missiles For $99,000
Longtime Slashdot reader cusco writes: A private company in China has developed hypersonic missiles that cost the same as a Tesla Model X. This missile, the YKJ-1000, is being marketed for sale at a reported price of $99,000, and it’s in mass production now after successful tests. That is far below what countries will spend to target and shoot down the missile if it … ⌘ Read more

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Intel Announces Arc Pro B70 With 32GB GDDR6 Video Memory
Alongside announcing the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake parts with vPro for commercial PCs and the Xeon 600 workstation processors, Intel finally announced their professional “big Battlemage” BMG-G31 graphics card with the Arc Pro B70 as well as the Arc Pro B65… ⌘ Read more

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In-reply-to » @zvava how is that client coming along? "/me gently pushes zvava towards a working desk" 😂

@zvava@twtxt.net rooting for it, and you! As soon as there is a stable (no future truly breaking changes) working alpha (can post, can follow, can reply), I will give it a spin! And yes, I understand the contradiction of “stable” and “alpha”; hoping my meaning comes through, LOL.

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Chandra Resolves Why Black Holes Hit the Brakes On Growth
alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Astronomers have an answer for a long-running mystery in astrophysics: why is the growth of supermassive black holes so much lower today than in the past? A study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other X-ray telescopes found that supermassive black holes are unable to consume material as rapidly as … ⌘ Read more

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Lemonade 10.0.1 Improves Setup Process For Using AMD Ryzen AI NPUs On Linux
Earlier this month with the release of the Lemonade SDK 10.0 and FastFlowLM 0.9.35, using AMD Ryzen AI NPUs for running LLMs on Linux finally became feasible. AMD XDNA 2 NPUs can now run on Linux well for LLM workloads! Released on Tuesday was Lemonade 10.0.1 with a few improvements for the setup process of this local LLM open-source solution on Linux… ⌘ Read more

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