Japan Runs Out of Robot Wolves In Fight Against Bears
Japan’s worsening bear problem has created a shortage of handmade “Monster Wolf” robots, which are $4,000 solar-powered scarecrow-like devices with glowing eyes, sensors, and blaring sounds designed to frighten the animals away. “We make them by hand. We cannot make them fast enough now. We are asking our customers to wait two to three months,” company president Y … ⌘ Read more

AMD Is Bringing Improved FSR 4 Upscaling To Its Older GPUs
AMD says FSR 4.1 will finally bring its newer hardware-accelerated upscaling technology to older Radeon GPUs. “The rollout will begin in July with RDNA3- and 3.5-based GPUs, which include the Radeon RX 7000 series, as well as integrated GPUs like the Radeon 890M and Radeon 8060S,” reports Ars Technica. “In ‘early 2027,’ support will also be extended to t … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.352 Introduces VK_NV_cooperative_matrix_decode_vector
Vulkan 1.4.352 is out today as the latest minor spec update to this Khronos API. Besides just a few fixes/clarifications, there is one new extension and that is a NVIDIA vendor extension for cooperative matrix decode vector support… ⌘ Read more

Cisco To Cut Almost 4,000 Jobs In AI-Driven Restructuring
Cisco’s stock soared 17% after the company announced it will cut nearly 4,000 jobs as it shifts investment and staffing toward higher-growth AI opportunities. CNBC reports: CEO Chuck Robbins wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that the latest round of job cuts will begin on May 14. Cisco is the latest company to announce head count reductions tied to AI. “The companies … ⌘ Read more

Physicists Find Possible Errors In 100-Year-Old Model of the Universe
A trio of preprint papers suggests the universe may not be perfectly uniform on the largest scales, finding tentative 2-to-4-sigma deviations from a core assumption of standard cosmology known as FLRW geometry. Live Science reports: The work combines observations of distant exploding stars and large-scale galaxy surveys to probe whet … ⌘ Read more

KDE Receives $1.4 Million Investment From Sovereign Tech Fund
The German Sovereign Tech Fund has invested 1.2 million euros ($1.4 million USD) in KDE Plasma technologies to help strengthen the structural reliability and security of the desktop environment’s core infrastructure, including Plasma, KDE Linux, and the frameworks underlying its communication services. Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin shares an excerpt fro … ⌘ Read more

OpenZFS 2.4.2 Released With Linux 7.0 Kernel Support, Many Bug Fixes
For those making use of OpenZFS on Linux or FreeBSD, OpenZFS 2.4.2 is out today as the newest stable release of this ZFS file-system implementation… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.351 Brings Six New Extensions, Including A Ray-Tracing Improvement
Quietly sneaking out at the end of last week was Vulkan 1.4.351 as the newest spec update to this high performance graphics and compute API… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Says ‘Evil’ Portrayals of AI Were Responsible For Claude’s Blackmail Attempts
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Fictional portrayals of artificial intelligence can have a real effect on AI models, according to Anthropic. Last year, the company said that during pre-release tests involving a fictional company, Claude Opus 4 would often try to blackmail engineers to avo … ⌘ Read more

Intel IGC 2.34.4 Compiler Brings Many Improvements
The Intel Graphics Compiler “IGC” 2.34.4 release is out today as this compiler used by the Intel Compute Runtime for Level Zero and OpenCL compute on Intel graphics hardware plus is also used as the graphics shader compiler under Windows… ⌘ Read more

White House App Is a Terrifying Security Mess
New submitter spazmonkey writes: From a hidden GPS tracker polling your location every 4.5 minutes to JavaScript loaded from a random GitHub account, no SSL certificate pinning, and an in-app browser that silently strips cookie consent dialogs and paywalls from every page you visit, the new White House app seems to have a little bit of everything. A security researcher pulled the APK a … ⌘ Read more

Manjaro 26.1 Preview Released With GNOME 50, KDE Plasma 6.6 & Xfce 4.20 Options
The preview release of the Arch Linux powered Manjaro 26.1 is now available for testing… ⌘ Read more

Brush v0.4 Released As “Significant” Release For This Rust-Based Shell
Brush v0.4 debuted today for this “Bourne Rusty Shell” as a Bash/POSIX-compatible shell written in the Rust programming language… ⌘ Read more

Linux Percentage of Steam Users Doubled in One Year
Steam on Linux use in March “had skyrocketed to 5.33%…” reports Phoronix, “easily the highest level we’ve seen Steam on Linux at since its inception more than a decade ago.”

So what happened in April?
[April’s results] point to Linux having a 4.52% marketshare on Steam, a drop of 0.81% compared to March. Year-over-year it’s roughly double with Steam on Linux in Apri … ⌘ Read more

AI Agent Designed To Speed Up Company’s Coding Wipes Entire Database In 9 Seconds
joshuark shares a report from Live Science: An AI coding agent designed to help a small software company streamline its tasks instead blew a hole through its business in just nine seconds. PocketOS founder Jer Crane, said that the AI coding agent Cursor –powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model – delet … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.350 Released With Three New Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.350 released earlier today as the newest routine spec update. Beyond the usual minor fixes/clarifications, Vulkan 1.4.350 tacks on three more extensions… ⌘ Read more

Shotcut 26.4 Released With Timeline Improvements, Vulkan Accelerated Speech-To-Text
Shotcut 26.4.30 shipped today as the latest and greatest version of this open-source, cross-platform video editor… ⌘ Read more

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net twtstrm/0.4.0 is from Eric. The getwtxt-ng/dev seems to be this.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org 4 is a keeper! Wish it was landscape, perfect for a wall then. :-P

Valve Confirms Steam Controller Release Date, $99 Price
Valve just announced that their new Steam Controller will be going on sale on 4 May. Pricing in the US is at $99 USD… ⌘ Read more

Is the World Ready For a Car Without a Rear Window?
There’s a glass roof — but no rear-view window. Instead the Polestar 4 replaces the rear-view mirror with a live feed from a wide-angle camera. Its high-resolution display (1480 x 320 pixels) promises “a panoramic view of the outside,” according to Polestar’s web site, showing more of what’s behind you. “Visibility in the dark and in rainy conditions is also vastly improve … ⌘ Read more

Godot 4.7 Reaches Beta With HDR Output, Ray-Tracing Improvements & Editor Enhancements
Godot 4.7 reached its beta milestone on Friday for this leading open-source, cross-platform game engine… ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Says Its New GPT-5.5 Model Is More Efficient and Better At Coding
OpenAI released its new GPT-5.5 model today, which the company calls its “smartest and most intuitive to use model yet, and the next step toward a new way of getting work done on a computer.” The Verge reports: OpenAI just released GPT-5.4 last month, but says that the new GPT-5.5 “excels” at tasks like writing and debugging code, doing … ⌘ Read more

Oracle To Reduce The Frequency Of Solaris 11.4 Updates
Oracle announced today they are going to be reducing the frequency of software updates for Solaris 11.4 and their ZFS Storage Appliance software… ⌘ Read more

Godot 4.7 Will Finally Have HDR Output, Including On Linux With Wayland
The upcoming Godor 4.7 open-source, cross-platform game engine release is rolling out support for high dynamic range (HDR)… ⌘ Read more

KMSCON Continues Improving For VT Terminal Emulator In User-Space
KMSCON 9.3.4 is out today for this virtual terminal (VT) emulator in user-space that runs atop the Linux DRM/KMS APIs for those wanting to enjoy a CONFIG_VT=n Linux kernel experience… ⌘ Read more

Apple CEO Tim Cook Is Stepping Down
Apple announced that Tim Cook will step down as CEO in September after 15 years in the role, handing the job to hardware chief John Ternus. Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares the news from MarketWatch: Cook leaves an impressive legacy after growing the company to a $4 trillion market capitalization from just $300 billion 15 years ago. Over Cook’s 15-year tenure as CEO, Apple’s stock has risen 1,932%, … ⌘ Read more

Box64 0.4.2 Begins Working On POWER PPC64LE Backend, Support For SteamRT3 + Proton 11
While FEX-Emu has been garnering a lot of attention due to being sponsored by Valve and slated to be used by the Steam Frame for running Linux x86_64 binaries on AArch64, the Box64 project continues moving along with similar goals for x86_64 binaries on other CPU architectures… ⌘ 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

Popular Rust-Based Database Turns To AI For Up To 1.5x Speedup, Other Improvements
Redb is one of the open-source, embed-friendly key-value databases written in the Rust programming language. Redb is ACID-compliant while known for being high performance and with its new Redb 4.1 release is even faster thanks to some improvements authored by Claude (AI)… ⌘ Read more

LXQt 2.4 Released With More Wayland Fixes/Improvements
The LXQt 2.4 desktop released today for joining the modern open-source desktop party alongside the likes of the recently debuted GNOME 50, KDE Plasma 6.6, and others… ⌘ Read more

I won our only game of Magic for this week with my (yet-to-be published) “Bolas Triumphant” deck: 5 players over 3 hours, including 4 board wipes (one of which came from my Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh), and I even got to cast Omniscience via a Fae of Wishes. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I had a good time. 😁

GIMP 3.2.4 Released With A Fix For Its XCF Code That Has Existed Since 1999
Following last month’s GIMP 3.2 feature release that was followed by the GIMP 3.2.2 point release at the end of March, out now is GIMP 3.2.4 to ship more fixes to users of this open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop and other imaging applications… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Rolls Out Claude Opus 4.7, an AI Model That Is Less Risky Than Mythos
Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.7, calling it its strongest generally available model and an improvement over Opus 4.6 in areas like software engineering, instruction-following, tool use, and agentic coding. But the company says it is “less broadly capable” than the restricted Claude Mythos Preview, “which Anthropic rolled … ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux’s Archinstall 4.2 Fixes Botched Disk Encryption Security
Archinstall 4.2 is now available as the latest update to this very convenient, text-based Arch Linux OS installer… ⌘ Read more

OpenSSL 4.0 Released With Encrypted Client Hello, RFC 8998 Support
OpenSSL 4.0 was just released as a big update for this widely-used SSL/TLS and crypto library… ⌘ Read more

Support For AMD GFX11.7 “RDNA 4m” Pending For RADV & RadeonSI Drivers
Back in February we were the first to report on a new AMD “RDNA 4m” target appearing in the AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler. While part of the “RDNA 4” family, it’s graphics IP version is GFX 11.7 (GFX1170) that is associated with the RDNA 3 family but with some ISA changes to align it slightly more with the newer RDNA 4 graphics IP. While the RDNA 4m AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler patches have been out for two months, the Mesa patches have only been … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.349 Released With Data Graph Optical Flow Extension
Vulkan 1.4.349 is out today as a small update to the Vulkan API specification that incorporates various fixes that accumulated over the past week. Plus there is one new extension… ⌘ Read more

TrueNAS 26 Beta Brings Linux 6.18 LTS + OpenZFS 2.4 Combination For NAS Devices
TrueNAS 26 Beta released today as the initial test release for this next version of this Linux-based operating system for network attached storage (NAS) devices and more… ⌘ Read more

Meta Debuts ‘Muse Spark’, First AI Model Under Alexandr Wang
Meta has launched Muse Spark, its first major AI model under Alexandr Wang’s leadership. The model was built over the past nine months and is being positioned as a significant step up from Llama 4. Axios reports: Muse Spark will power queries in the Meta AI app and Meta.ai website immediately, with plans to expand across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Th … ⌘ Read more

XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.20.4 Released To Protect Against Apps Trashing Arbitrary Host Files
In addition to the release today of Flatpak 1.16.4 for shipping new security fixes including a sandbox escape and the ability to delete host files, XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.20.4 is also now available with another security fix of its own to prevent sandboxed apps from being able to trash arbitrary host files… ⌘ Read more

Flatpak 1.16.4 Brings Important Security Fixes For Sandbox Escape & Deleting Host Files
That Flatbox app sandboxing and distribution system is out today with important security updates… ⌘ Read more

Intel QAT Driver With Linux 7.1 Adding Zstd Offload Support
The Intel QuickAssist “QAT” driver for the mainline Linux 7.1 kernel is adding support for Zstd offloading across QuickAssist Gen 4 / Gen 5 / Gen 6 accelerators for Zstandard compression as well as Zstandard decompression (limited there to the latest Gen 6 hardware)… ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Calls For Robot Taxes, Public Wealth Fund, and 4-Day Workweek To Tackle AI Disruption
OpenAI is proposing (PDF) sweeping policy changes to help manage the societal disruption caused by advanced AI, including taxes on automated labor, a public wealth fund, and experiments with a four-day workweek. The company said the policy document offered a series of “initial ideas” to address … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.348 Ships Four New Extensions - Including One To Help OpenGL Emulation
Vulkan 1.4.348 released this morning as the latest routine update to this high performance graphics and compute API. With Vulkan 1.4.348 comes four new extensions… ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi 4 3GB Launches, Raspberry Pi Prices Go Up Again Due To RAM
AmiMoJo shares a report from Phoronix: Raspberry Pi prices are going up yet again due to the continued memory squeeze on the industry. To help offset the memory prices for some use-cases, Raspberry Pi also announced the introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 3GB model at $83 to help fill the void between the 2GB and 4GB options.

The … ⌘ Read more

Google Announces Gemma 4 Open AI Models, Switches To Apache 2.0 License
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google’s Gemini AI models have improved by leaps and bounds over the past year, but you can only use Gemini on Google’s terms. The company’s Gemma open-weight models have provided more freedom, but Gemma 3, which launched over a year ago, is getting a bit long in the tooth. Starti … ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi 4 3GB Launches, Raspberry Pi Prices Go Up Again Due To RAM
Raspberry Pi prices are going up yet again due to the continued memory squeeze on the industry. To help offset the memory prices for some use-cases, Raspberry Pi also announced the introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 3GB model at $83 to help fill the void between the 2GB and 4GB options… ⌘ Read more

MidnightBSD 4.0.4 Released With Aged & Agectl For Age Verification/Attestation
MidnightBSD 4.0.4 is out today as the newest update to this desktop-minded BSD operating system. Notable with this update is introducing the Aged daemon and Agectl program for handling age verification and age attestation given the increasing number of US states pursuing laws around age verification at the OS user level… ⌘ Read more

MediaTek MT7927 “Filogic 380” WiFi Support Coming Together For Linux
In addition to the MediaTek MT7902 WiFI Linux support emerging in recent months, the Linux support for the MediaTek MT7927 is also coming together for WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support for the upstream Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more