Most Swiss Back Initiative To Cap Population At 10 Million
A new poll shows a slim majority of Swiss voters now support a June 14 referendum to cap the country’s population at 10 million by 2050. Under the proposal backed by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), “the permanent resident population must not exceed 10 million before 2050, and Switzerland should abandon its freedom of movement agreement with the EU … ⌘ Read more

Australia’s Teen Social Media Ban Isn’t Working. Half Their Teens Still Have Access, Survey Finds
After Australia banned social media for users younger than 16, teenagers “immediately worked to circumvent the restrictions,” reports Fortune:

14-year-old in New South Wales, told
The Washington Post in December 2025, just
before the implementation of the ban, she planned to use her mot … ⌘ Read more

Intel LLM-Scaler vllm-0.14.0-b8.2 Released With Official Arc Pro B70 Support
As part of Intel’s LLM-Scaler initiative for AI inferencing on Intel Arc hardware, out today is their vllm-0.14.0-b8.2 update that includes officially supporting the Arc Pro B70 graphics card… ⌘ Read more

HarfBuzz Continues Improving Its New GPU-Accelerated Text Shaping Library
Released at the beginning of the month was a new version of HarfBuzz, a widely-used, open-source text shaping engine. With this HarfBuzz 14.0 release it introduced a GPU-based text rasterization library that supported GLSL shaders as well as HLSL, WGSL, and APple’s Metal MSL. Since then this GPU-accelerated library has been seeing more improvements… ⌘ Read more

Intel Compute Runtime Promotes Support For Wildcat Lake, “Early” Crescent Island
Out today is the Intel Compute Runtime 26.14.37833.4 that now includes production support for the newly-launched Wildcat Lake cut-down Panther Lake SoCs that debuted last week as the Core Series 3… ⌘ Read more

Sony Boss Urges Theaters To Stop 30 Minutes of Trailers and Ads Before Movies
Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman urged theater owners to cut down the roughly 30 minutes of trailers and ads before movies. “Get off the ad crack,” Rothman told the audience at CinemaCon this week. “Get rid of the endless advertising and substantially shorten the long pre-shows.” Variety reports: He noted that fr … ⌘ Read more

Sony Is Removing Many Popular Features From Its Free OTA TV Options
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cord Cutters News: Sony has notified owners of its recent BRAVIA television models that significant changes to the built-in TV Guide for its OTA TV antenna users and related menu features will take effect starting in late May 2026. The update affects a range of premium sets released between … ⌘ Read more

FCC Grants Netgear Conditional Approval For Routers
The FCC has granted (PDF) Netgear the first exemption from its foreign-made router ban, allowing the company to keep selling new consumer router models made outside the U.S. through Oct. 1, 2027. PCMag reports: The Defense Department reviewed Netgear’s application for an exemption and found that its products “do not pose risks to US national security.” The FCC’s order do … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Reveals Major Price Increase For All Surface PCs
Microsoft has sharply raised prices across its Surface lineup as RAM and component costs keep climbing. “Both its midrange and flagship Surface lines are now significantly more expensive than they were just a few weeks ago, with the flagship Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 now starting at $500 more than they launched at in 2024,” reports Windows Central. … ⌘ Read more

California Ghost-Gun Bill Wants 3D Printers To Play Cop, EFF Says
A proposed California bill would require 3D printer makers to use state-certified software to detect and block files for gun parts, but advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) say it would be easy to evade and could lead to widespread surveillance of users’ printing activity. The Register reports: The bill in question is AB 2047 … ⌘ Read more

Audit Finds Google, Microsoft, and Meta Still Tracking Users After Opt-Out
alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: An independent privacy audit of Microsoft, Meta, and Google web traffic in California found that the companies may be violating state regulations and racking up billions in fines. According to the audit from privacy search engine webXray, 55 percent of the sites it checked set a … ⌘ Read more

Chrome Now Lets You Turn AI Prompts Into Repeatable ‘Skills’
Google is rolling out a Chrome feature called “Skills” that lets users save Gemini prompts as reusable one-click workflows they can run across multiple tabs. The feature also includes preset Skills from Google. It’s launching first for Chrome desktop users set to US English. The Verge reports: Once you have access to the feature, it can be managed by t … ⌘ Read more

Thousands of Rare Concert Recordings Are Landing On the Internet Archive
A Chicago concert superfan Aadam Jacobs who has recorded more than 10,000 shows since the 1980s is working with Internet Archive volunteers to digitize the collection before the cassettes deteriorate. “So far, about 2,500 of these tapes have been posted on the Internet Archive, including some rare gems like a Nirvana performan … ⌘ Read more

Social Media Platforms Need To Stop Never-Ending Scrolling, UK’s Starmer Says
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said social media platforms should remove addictive infinite-scroll features for young users as Britain considers new child-safety measures. “We’re consulting on whether there should be a ban for under 16s,” Starmer told BBC Radio. “But I think equally important, the addictive scrolling mecha … ⌘ Read more

Google Faces Mass Arbitration By Advertisers Seeking Billions
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Alphabet’s Google is facing billions of dollars in potential damage claims as part of mass arbitration tied to the company’s online search and advertising technology businesses, which courts have ruled were illegal monopolies. Advertisers are banding together to seek payouts through mass arbitration pro … ⌘ Read more

A New Computer Chip Could Finally Withstand The Hellscape of Venus
Researchers at the University of Southern California say they’ve developed a memristor memory device that continued operating at 700 degrees Celsius. “And crucially, 700 degrees was not the limit, it was simply as hot as their testing equipment could go,” adds ScienceAlert. “The device showed no signs of failing.” From the report: The devi … ⌘ Read more

Air Force Pushed Out UFO Investigator
J. Allen Hynek started as an Air Force consultant brought in to help explain away early UFO reports, but over time he grew frustrated with what he saw as the government’s effort to minimize unexplained cases rather than seriously investigate them. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an article from Popular Mechanics, in collaboration with Biography.com, that argues Hynek’s shift from ske … ⌘ Read more

WeatherBug Data Says October 8 Is the Real Perfect Date
BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: For years pop culture has treated April 25 as the “perfect date,” thanks to the famous Miss Congeniality line about needing only a light jacket. But new analysis from WeatherBug suggests that idea does not actually hold up when you look at the numbers. After reviewing U.S. weather data from 2018 through today, the compa … ⌘ Read more

Stanford Report Highlights Growing Disconnect Between AI Insiders and Everyone Else
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: AI experts and the public’s opinion on the technology are increasingly diverging, according to Stanford University’s annual report on the AI industry, which was released Monday. In particular, the report noted a growing trend of anxiety around AI and, in the U.S … ⌘ Read more

Does Ubuntu Now Require More RAM Than Windows 11?
“Canonical is no longer pretending that 4GB is enough,” writes the blog How-to-Geek, noting Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “raises the baseline memory to 6GB, alongside a 2GHz dual-core processor, and 25GB of storage…”

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) set the floor at 1GB — a modest ask when it launched more than a decade ago in 2014. Then came the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) that pus … ⌘ Read more

Thank you, @bender@twtxt.net!

My mate and I took advantage of the public holiday and went on a hike. At first, the 14°C and only slight wind weren’t all that terrible, especially since there were only a few clouds. Later, the sun got covered more and more and also the wind picked up. I was really glad that I brought my jacket along. In the beginning I was contemplating about leaving it at home, but then still wore it and stripped it a few minutes into the trip. It was very windy at the summit, so for our second lunch break wearing it was an absolute must. It was a very beautiful trip and I enjoyed my mate’s company.

Finally, Azabache showed up, too. I didn’t bother videoing with all the wind. Didn’t feel like fixing the audio. Maybe tomorrow.

https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2026-04-03/

HarfBuzz 14.0 Released With New GPU Accelerated Text Rendering Library
HarfBuzz is the open-source text shaping engine originally born out of the FreeType project and now widely-used by GNOME, KDE, Java, Flutter, Godot, Chromium, LibreOffice, and countless other applications. HarfBuzz 14.0 released today and making this release quite exciting is introducing a GPU-accelerated text rendering library… ⌘ Read more

Austria Plans Social Media Ban For Under-14s
Austria plans to restrict under-14s from using social media platforms over concerns about addictive algorithms and harmful content. The government says draft legislation should be ready by the end of June, though details around enforcement and age verification have yet to be finalized. The BBC reports: Announcing the plans, Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler of the Social Democrats said th … ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Appeals Piracy Shield Fine, Hopes To Kill Italy’s Site-Blocking Law
Cloudflare is appealing a 14.2 million-euro fine from Italy for refusing to comply with its “Piracy Shield” law, which requires blocking access to websites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service within 30 minutes. The company argues the system lacks oversight, risks widespread overblocking, and could undermine core Internet infrastru … ⌘ Read more

Will AI Bring ‘the End of Computer Programming As We Know It’?
Long-time tech journalist Clive Thompson interviewed over 70 software developers at Google, Amazon, Microsoft and start-ups for a new article on AI-assisted programming. It’s title?

“Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It.”

Published in the prestigious New York Times Magazine, the article even cites long-time programm … ⌘ Read more

America’s First Large-Scale Offshore Wind Project Finally Finishes Construction
It’s America’s first large-scale offshore wind project, reports WBUR — enough clean energy to power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts from 62 offshore wind turbines generating 800 megawatts.

But it took a while… The plant’s first construction delay happened back in 2019, they point out — and then “Just three months ag … ⌘ Read more

How a Raspberry Pi Saved the Super Nintendo’s Infamously Inferior Version Of ‘Doom’
“Just the anachronism of seeing Doom, one of the poster children for the moral panic around violent video games, on a Nintendo console is novel,” writes Kotaku — especially with the console’s underpowered “Super FX” coprocessor

Hampered by a nearly unplayable framerate, especially in later levels, and mired by … ⌘ Read more

Are U.S. Utilities Trying to Delay Easy-to-Use Solar ‘Balcony’ Panels?
Plug-in (or “balcony”) solar panels can also be hung out a window or be set up in a backyard, reports NPR. They channel energy from the sun straight into a home’s electrical outlet, generating enough electricity to power a refrigerator or microwave while “displacing electricity that otherwise would come in from the grid…”

But what’s hol … ⌘ Read more

Gaming Site Editor Jailbreaks an Amazon Echo Show
“A few developers found a way, for now, to turn a few of these increasingly mediocre Amazon Show devices into friendly, useful, open computers,” writes the co-founder of the gaming/tech news site Aftermath. For under $50 each, he bought some used versions of the devices and tested their instructions, partly to escape the full-screen ads Amazon began showing late last year, an … ⌘ Read more

Should Keycaps Use Text or Glyphs for Delete, Return, Tab, Caps Lock, and Shift?
“The new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models feature a keyboard change,” reports MacRumors:

On the U.S. English version of the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro keyboards, the tab, caps lock, shift, return, and delete keycaps now have glyphs on them. On previous-generation models, these keys are labeled with text instead … ⌘ Read more

System76 CEO Sees ‘Real Possibility’ Colorado’s Age-Verification Bill Excludes Open-Source
Last week System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized age-verification laws for operating systems — but he now sees a “real possibility” Colorado’s law might exclude open-source.

Phoronix reports that the System76 CEO met with the state Senator who co-authored Colorado’s bill, and then posted on X.com t … ⌘ Read more

US Set To Receive $10 Billion Fee For Brokering TikTok Deal
The deal to take control of TikTok’s U.S. business came with an unusual condition, according to people familiar with the matter. The investors — which include Oracle, Abu Dhabi investor MGX, and private-equity firm Silver Lake — “paid the Treasury Department about $2.5 billion when the deal closed in January,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “and are set t … ⌘ Read more

How a Species Evolved Fast Enough to Save Itself from Extinction
California saw its worst drought in 10,000 years between 2012 and 2015, remembers the Washington Post. And yet genetic analyses of California’s scarlet monkeyflower “found that many rapidly evolved… allowing them to cope with water scarcity and rebound from decline.”

“The fact that certain organisms are able to adapt just because of genetics t … ⌘ Read more

AI’s Productivity Boost? Just 16 Minutes Per Week, Claims Study
“A new study suggests the productivity boost from AI may be far smaller than executives claim,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli:

According to research cited in Foxit’s State of Document Intelligence report, while 89% of executives and 79% of end users say AI tools make them feel more productive, the actual time savings shrink dramatically once peo … ⌘ Read more

U.S. State Bans on Lab-Grown Meats Challenged in Court
Last June Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement that Texans “have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It’s plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives.”

But California company Wildtype sells lab-grown … ⌘ Read more

Trying Out Snapdragon X Elite With The Acer Swift 14 AI Laptop On Ubuntu 26.04
This week I tried out the current Ubuntu 26.04 development state on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite with the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop I have been using for my X Elite benchmarks over the past year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a smooth experience with new issues encountered for this Windows On ARM laptop… ⌘ Read more

Trying Out Snapdragon X Elite With The Acer Swift 14 AI Laptop On Ubuntu 26.04
This week I tried out the current Ubuntu 26.04 development state on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite with the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop I have been using for my X Elite benchmarks over the past year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a smooth experience with new issues encountered for this Windows On ARM laptop… ⌘ Read more

Meta Plans Sweeping Layoffs As AI Costs Mount
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers. No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has … ⌘ Read more

Two Long-Lost Episodes of ‘Doctor Who’ Found
Longtime Slashdot reader tsuliga writes: Two new episodes of Doctor Who that were previously lost have been found. The original Doctor Who episodes were wiped or deleted by the BBC because they were not aware of the future use of re-runs of these shows. Ninety-five of the 253 episodes from the program’s first six years are currently missing. How many more episodes are out there … ⌘ Read more

Italian Prosecutors Seek Trial For Amazon, Four Execs Over Alleged $1.4 Billion Tax Evasion
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Milan prosecutors have requested trial for Amazon’s European unit and four of its managers over alleged tax evasion worth around $1.38 billion, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Thursday. The move is unprecedented for a case o … ⌘ Read more

Intel Updates LLM-Scaler-vLLM With Support For More Qwen3/3.5 Models
Intel’s LLM-Scaler project that makes it easy to deploy various large language models on modern Arc Graphics hardware is out with a new test release to expand its LLM coverage… ⌘ Read more

Researchers Discover 14,000 Routers Wrangled Into Never-Before-Seen Botnet
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers say they have uncovered a takedown-resistant botnet of 14,000 routers and other network devices – primarily made by Asus – that have been conscripted into a proxy network that anonymously carries traffic used for cybercrime. The malware – dubbed KadNap – takes … ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 14.4 Released For Those Not Yet Ready To Move To FreeBSD 15
FreeBSD 14.4 is out today as the latest update to the aging FreeBSD 14 series for those not yet ready to upgrade to FreeBSD 15 that debuted as stable last year… ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases llm-scaler-vllm 0.14.0-b8, Talks Up 1.49x Performance With BMG-G31
Intel kicked off the new month by releasing the latest version of LLM Scaler vLLM (llm-scaler-vllm) as their Docker-based solution for running vLLM on Intel Battlemage GPUs for AI inferencing… ⌘ Read more

Duolingo Grows, But Users Disliked Increased Ads and Subscription Pushes. Stock Plummets Again
Friday was “a horrible day” for investors in Duolingo, reports Fast Company. But Friday’s one-day 14% drop is just part of a longer story.

Since last May, Duolingo’s stock has dropped 81%. Yes, the company faced a social media backlash that month after its CEO promised they’d become an “AI-fir … ⌘ 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

I took advantage of the beautiful 14°C sunshine and decided to have a long lunch break: https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2026-02-25/ When there was no wind, the thin jacket was actually too warm.

Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible
The first fiber-optic cable ever laid across an ocean – TAT-8, a nearly 6,000-kilometer line between the United States, United Kingdom, and France that carried its first traffic on December 14, 1988 – is now being pulled off the Atlantic seabed after more than two decades of sitting dormant, bound for recycling in South Africa.
… ⌘ Read more

It’s raining and raining and raining and raining. I had hoped my mate canceled the hike today. But he didn’t. He showed up. So, off we went to the Staufeneck Castle Ruin after having a lunch first. The rain drizzling on the umbrella was very nice and I was very glad that he dragged me outside.

It was super wet, though. Entire creeks were coming down on some path sections. A slippery, muddy mess on others. Our boots were already soaked a few kilometers in the trip. The important part was that the feet were warm, though, despite being wet. We barely met anybody in this lousy weather. So we had basically everything for us alone. That’s always great.

Visibility was poor the higher we got. At 13 a low hanging cloud was moving in, 14 is the result just three minutes later. We couldn’t see the castle 300 meters away anymore. No chance. It was really funny, because the houses in town at two kilometers distance were still visible. Poorly, but you could clearly make out the town. Not the castle, there was just a white wall of cloud :-)

On the way back, we warmed up with tea I brought along. After I dropped off my mate at the train station, I bumped into a fellow scout, so my wet feet cooled off completely in these 15 minutes we talked. The rainjacket mostly held up with the protection of the umbrella, just the sleeves were down. My rain trousers, on the other hand, leaked a little bit a the lower ends. I was glad when I could strip all the wet stuff. I would do it again, though. :-) Now, I’m swapping the newspaper in my boots every half an hour to absorb all the moisture.

https://lyse.isobeef.org/wanderung-auf-die-burg-staufeneck-2026-02-21/

Oh, our leaning silo laughs at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. :-D I’m wondering when it collapses. I’m waiting for this to happen for years now.

Britain Lost 14,000 Pubs, a Quarter, in 13 Years
Britain has lost more than 14,000 pubs since 2009, a decline from roughly 54,000 registered public houses and bars to under 40,000 by 2022, according to a new analysis of UK business register data by data analyst Lauren Leek. The North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands lost 25 to 30% of their stock; London saw the smallest decline.

Leek trained a random forest model on … ⌘ Read more