‘Fragmented’ Microsoft Tools Undercut Efficiency at Amazon and Whole Foods, Internal Deloitte Review Finds
An anonymous reader shares a report: It’s been more than eight years since Amazon bought Whole Foods, but the two companies still haven’t aligned their setup for the Microsoft software their employees use. That disconnect was flagged in an 8-week Deloitte review of W … ⌘ Read more

Is the Dictionary Done For?
In the late 1980s, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary sat on the New York Times best-seller list for 155 consecutive weeks and eventually sold 57 million copies, a figure believed to be second only to the Bible in the United States – but those days are thoroughly gone. Stefan Fatsis’s new book “Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary” chronicles what Louis Menand describes in The New Yorker … ⌘ Read more

Remote Work is Officially Dead, Says the World’s Largest Recruiter
The great return-to-office battle has effectively concluded and a clear pecking order has emerged, according to Sander van ’t Noordende, the CEO of Randstad, a staffing giant that places around half a million workers in jobs every week. Remote work is becoming a status symbol reserved for star performers and those possessing rare skills. “You have t … ⌘ Read more

LLVM Considering An AI Tool Policy, AI Bot For Fixing Build System Breakage Proposed
Last week a request for comments (RFC) was issued around establishing an LLVM AI Tool Use Policy. The proposed policy would allow AI-assisted contributions to be made to this open-source compiler codebase but that there would need to be a “human in the loop” and the contributor versed enough to be able to answer questions during code review. Separately, yesterday a proposal was sent out for creating an AI-assisted fixer bot to hel … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net @movq@www.uninformativ.de A crocodile had bitten the big submarine internet cable that connects Australia to Europe. The investigations revealed that some construction work last week accidentally tore up the protective layer around it. That went unnoticed, unfortunately, so marine life had an easy job today. For just 40 minutes, they were quite fast in repairing the damage if you ask me! These communication cables are fricking large.

Just kidding, I completely made that up. :-D I didn’t notice any outage either. But I didn’t try to connect to Down Under at the time span in question.

Linux 6.19-rc2 Released Following A Quiet Week
The second weekly release candidate of Linux 6.19 is now available for testing in leading up to the stable release in early February… ⌘ Read more

Inaugural ‘Hour of AI’ Event Includes Minecraft, Microsoft, Google and 13.1 Million K-12 Schoolkids
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Last September, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org pledged to engage 25 million K-12 schoolchildren in an “Hour of AI” this school year. Preliminary numbers released this week by the Code.org Advocacy Coalition showed that [halfway through the f … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc2 Adding Support For CRKD Guitar Controllers
Most notable with the input subsystem updates sent out today ahead of the Linux 6.19-rc2 release is some new hardware support. New this week is adding support for CRKD Guitars for those into musical gaming/apps… ⌘ Read more

GotaTun Open-Source Rust WireGuard Implementation Announced By Mullvad
The Swedish VPN service Mullvad announced this week GotaTun, an open-source Rust-based WireGuard implementation that is forked from Cloudflare’s BoringTun… ⌘ Read more

I quit LinkedIn
I recently quit LinkedIn. Ironically, the post I made about why I was
quitting was probably the most viewed thing I ever posted. Haha.

If you need to see my CV it’s right here on my website:

https://hack.org/~mc/cv.html

This is what I wrote back in November:

I’m terminating my account on LinkedIn next week. This is possibly
some kind of career suicide.

I’m very seldom visiting LinkedIn, so I’m probably late to the party,
as usual. Perhaps there has already been a lar … ⌘ Read more

Intel Readies Multi-Queue Support For Linux 7.0 As New Feature For Crescent Island
In addition to this week’s drm-intel-next pull request to DRM-Next adding Nova Lake display support, a drm-xe-next pull request was also sent out on Friday that prepares a new multi-queue feature for Xe3P_XPC – initially just the “Crescent Island” AI inference accelerator card. Plus other new features too for this Xe kernel driver in the upcoming Linux 7.0~6.20 kernel version… ⌘ Read more

Firefox Will Ship With an ‘AI Kill Switch’ To Completely Disable All AI Features
An anonymous reader shared this report from 9to5Linux:

After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla’s new CEO that Firefox will evolve into “a modern AI browser,” the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser…

What was not made clear [in Tuesday’s … ⌘ Read more

Gemini AI Yielding Sloppy Code For Ubuntu Development With New Helper Script
A few weeks ago it was mentioned by a Canonical engineer how trying to use AI to modernize the Ubuntu Error Tracker yielded some code that was “plain wrong” and other issues raised by that Microsoft GitHub Copilot code. The same Ubuntu developer shifted to trying Gemini AI to generate a helper script to assist in Ubuntu’s monthly ISO snapshot releases. Google’s Gemini AI also generated some sloppy code for a Python script to assist in tho … ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.0 NVK Driver Lands Improvement For NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 “Turing” GPUs
In addition to the open-source NVIDIA “NVK” Vulkan driver in Mesa merging compression support for big performance wins, another performance optimization was merged earlier in the week that stand to benefit GeForce RTX 20 “Turing” graphics processors… ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.0-rc3 Released With Another Week Of Bug Fixing
In working toward the Wine 11.0 stable release in January, Wine 11.0-rc3 is out today as the latest weekly release candidate… ⌘ Read more

Apple Becomes a Debt Collector With Its New Developer Agreement
Apple released an updated developer license agreement this week that gives the company permission to recoup unpaid funds, such as commissions or any other fees, by deducting them from in-app purchases it processes on developers’ behalf, among other methods. From a report: The change will impact developers in regions where local law allows them to … ⌘ Read more

LG Will Let TV Owners Delete Microsoft Copilot After Customer Outcry
LG said it will let owners of its TVs delete Microsoft’s Copilot shortcut after several reports highlighted the unremovable icon. In a statement to The Verge, LG says the company “respects consumer choice and will take steps to allow users to delete the shortcut icon if they wish.” From the report: Last week, a user on the r/mildlyinfuriating s … ⌘ Read more

Kdenlive 25.12 Video Editor Brings New Docking System, Menu Restructuring
In addition to the release this week of OpenShot 3.4, released today is a major update to another popular open-source video editing application: Kdenlive. The Kdenlive 25.12 release brings many improvements to help with editing of any year-end / holiday videos… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic’s AI Lost Hundreds of Dollars Running a Vending Machine After Being Talked Into Giving Everything Away
Anthropic let its Claude AI run a vending machine in the Wall Street Journal newsroom for three weeks as part of an internal stress test called Project Vend, and the experiment ended in financial ruin after journalists systematically manipulated the bot into … ⌘ Read more

AMD Radeon RX 9000 Series vs. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Open-Source Linux Performance For 2025
In the past few weeks on Phoronix we have explored a fresh look at the open-source Nouveau/NVK performance compared to the NVIDIA 580 packaged Linux driver as well as a multi-generation Nouveau vs. NVIDIA comparison from the GeForce GTX 980 to RTX 5080 since the forthcoming NVIDIA R590 driver series is ending the GTX 900/1000 series support. Today’s article provides another round of fresh open-source NVIDIA Linuc graphic … ⌘ Read more

Another Starship Clone Pops Up In China
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: Every other week, it seems, a new Chinese launch company pops up with a rocket design and a plan to reach orbit within a few years. For a long time, the majority of these companies revealed designs that looked a lot like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The first of these copy cats, the medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket built by LandSpace … ⌘ Read more

Google Releases Gemini 3 Flash, Promising Improved Intelligence and Efficiency
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google began its transition to Gemini 3 a few weeks ago with the launch of the Pro model, and the arrival of Gemini 3 Flash kicks it into high gear. The new, faster Gemini 3 model is coming to the Gemini app and search, and developers will be able to access it immed … ⌘ Read more

Intel Compute Runtime 25.48.36300.8 Brings More Performance Optimizations & Xe3 Fixes
Intel this week released their last planned feature update to their open-source Compute Runtime for 2025. The Intel Compute Runtime 25.48.36300.8 delivers the latest OpenCL and Level Zero performance optimizations, Xe3 workarounds, and other fixes for those on Intel integrated and discrete graphics hardware… ⌘ Read more

Dual-PCB Linux Computer With 843 Components Designed By AI Boots On First Attempt
Quilter says its AI designed a complex Linux single-board computer in just one week, booting Debian on first power-up. “Holy crap, it’s working,” exclaimed one of the engineers. Tom’s Hardware reports: LA-based startup Quilter has outlined Project Speedrun, which marks a milestone in computer design by AI. The … ⌘ Read more

MI6 Chief: We’ll Be as Fluent in Python As We Are in Russian
The new chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service told officers this week that they must become as fluent in programming languages like Python as they are in foreign languages like Russian as the spy agency adapts to what she described as a space between peace and war. Blaise Metreweli, MI6’s first female chief and previously the service’s direc … ⌘ Read more

Like Australia, Denmark Plans to Severely Restrict Social Media Use for Teenagers
“As Australia began enforcing a world-first social media ban for children under 16 years old this week, Denmark is planning to follow its lead,” reports the Associated Press, “and severely restrict social media access for young people.”

The Danish government announced last month that it had secured an agreement b … ⌘ Read more

The Opt-In Proactive & Crash Time Data Collection On Valve’s Steam Deck
Valve’s Steam Deck with SteamOS features built-in crash data collection as well as for logging other system events worth having knowledge about like the split-lock detection and other events. This is all opt-in by users for data collection by Steam, but for those curious about a bit more insight into this Steam Deck data collection, a presentation at this past week’s Linux Plumbers Conference dove into the matter… ⌘ Read more

Purdue University Approves New AI Requirement For All Undergrads
Nonprofit Code.org released its 2025 State of AI & Computer Science Education report this week with a state-by-state analysis of school policies complaining that “0 out of 50 states require AI+CS for graduation.”

But meanwhile, at the college level, “Purdue University will begin requiring that all of its undergraduate students demonstrate basic … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc1 Released From Japan
The Linux 6.19-rc1 kernel is out to cap off the Linux 6.19 merge window. The kernel release is coming the better part of a day earlier due to Linus Torvalds being in Japan for this past week’s Linux Plumbers Conference and Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit… ⌘ Read more

System76 Launches First Stable Release of COSMIC Desktop and Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS
This week System76 launched the first stable release of its Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment, reports 9to5Linux.

Announced in 2021, it’s designed for all GNU/Linux distributions — and it shipping with Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS (based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS):

Previous Pop!_OS releases used a version of the COSMIC desktop tha … ⌘ Read more

‘Free Software Awards’ Winners Announced: Andy Wingo, Alx Sa, Govdirectory
This week the Free Software Foundation honored Andy Wingo, Alx Sa, and Govdirectory with this year’s annual Free Software Awards (given to community members and groups making
“significant” contributions to software freedom):

Andy Wingo is one of the co-maintainers of GNU Guile,
the official extension language of the GNU operating … ⌘ Read more

Startup Successfully Uses AI to Find New Geothermal Energy Reservoirs
A Utah-based startup announced last week it used AI to locate a 250-degree Fahrenheit geothermal reservoir, reports CNN. It’ll start producing electricity in three to five years, the company estimates — and at least one geologist believes AI could be an exciting “gamechanger” for the geothermal industry.

[Startup Zanskar Geotherma … ⌘ Read more

Exciting Laptop & Gaming Handheld Device Improvements Merged For Linux 6.19
Merged during this second week of the Linux 6.19 feature merge window were the many x86 platform driver changes. As usual, much of the x86 platform driver activity surrounds bettering Linux hardware laptop support but also a growing number of handheld computers / gaming devices… ⌘ Read more

Ukrainians Sue US Chip Firms For Powering Russian Drones, Missiles
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of Ukrainian civilians filed a series of lawsuits in Texas this week, accusing some of the biggest US chip firms of negligently failing to track chips that evaded export curbs. Those chips were ultimately used to power Russian and Iranian weapon systems, causing wrongful deaths last … ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.0-rc2 Released With 28 Known Bug Fixes
Following last week’s Wine 11.0-rc1 release that marked the feature freeze as well in working toward Wine 11.0 in January, out today is Wine 11.0-rc2… ⌘ Read more

New Patches Lay Out Linux Kernel Adjustments For RISC-V RVA23 Hardware
With the first of RISC-V RVA23-compatible hardware expected to be released in 2026, we are beginning to see more Linux developers prepare for this RVA23 profile and the now-mandated extensions. Sent out this week was an initial “request for comments” patch series on RVA23 adjustments for the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Washington Post’s AI-Generated Podcasts Rife With Errors, Fictional Quotes
The Washington Post’s top standards editor Thursday decried “frustrating” errors in its new AI-generated personalized podcasts, whose launch has been met with distress by its journalists. From a report: Earlier this week, the Post announced that it was rolling out personalized AI-generated podcasts for users of the paper’s mobil … ⌘ Read more

ReBAR Code Cleaned Up For Linux 6.19 Along With A Few New PCIe Controller Drivers
All of the PCI subsystem updates were merged last week for the nearly-over Linux 6.19 merge window. Standing out this cycle are Resizable BAR improvements as well as introducing a few new PCIe controller drivers… ⌘ Read more

Wells Fargo CEO Says More Job Cuts Coming at the Bank as AI Prompts ‘Efficiency’
Wells Fargo expects more job cuts and higher severance costs in this quarter that ends in three weeks, bank CEO and President Charlie Scharf said Tuesday at an investors conference in New York. He’s also betting on AI to drive efficiency and, eventually, further workforce reduction.From a report: “As we’ve gone through th … ⌘ Read more

Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ
A study this week has found that shoppers using Instacart are often charged different prices for identical products at the same store at the same time, even when selecting in-store pickup rather than delivery. The Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive policy group, and Consumer Reports organized nearly 200 volunteers across four cities to simultaneously … ⌘ Read more

Budgie 10.10 Desktop Approved For Fedora 44 Packaging, Fedora Budgie Spin All-Wayland
In addition to approving Fedora Cloud switching /boot to a Btrfs subvolume, another change approved this week by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) is for shipping the Budgie 10.10 desktop packages in Fedora 44… ⌘ Read more

Collapsed luxury caravan manufacturer’s staggering debt revealed
Zone RV plunged into administration last week, leaving customers, suppliers, employees and taxpayers in a $40 million hole. ⌘ Read more

‘You have to fight’: Timor-Leste marks 50 years since Indonesian invasion
Survivors still have clear memories of the invasion by Indonesia, as Timor-Leste this week commemorates the beginning of a brutal 24-year occupation. ⌘ Read more

Wells says ‘gut reaction’ to travel claims fair but she has ‘upheld’ rules
Communications Minister Anika Wells accepts her taxpayer-funded travel claims have prompted a “gut reaction” in people, after a week of scrutiny over her expenses. ⌘ Read more

Xbox Is Bleeding Out
Microsoft’s Xbox consoles were conspicuously absent from Black Friday’s winners, failing to crack the top three in U.S. sales during one of the retail calendar’s most important weeks. According to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, the PlayStation 5 captured 47% of Black Friday week console sales ending November 29, followed by the Nintendo Switch 2 at 24% and – somewhat remarkably – the NEX Playground, a Kinect-like Android device … ⌘ Read more

India’s Aviation Crisis Is All About Too Big to Tame
India’s dominant airline IndiGo has cancelled roughly 3,000 flights since last week after new pilot fatigue regulations collided with technical issues and the seasonal schedule shift, stranding more than half a million passengers and forcing aviation authorities to reverse course on the safety rules they had just implemented.

InterGlobe Aviation, IndiGo’s parent company, … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Enables Per-CPU BIO Caching By Default For Helping Performance
Last week saw the main set of block and IO_uring feature patches for the Linux 6.19 merge window but some additional block subsystem material was merged on Monday. There are various NVMe updates now merged plus enabling per-CPU BIO caching by default to help with file-system performance… ⌘ Read more

Prosecution tells jury accused lied when denying involvement in alleged murder
The prosecution has begun its closing arguments in the final stages of Jodie Hill’s three week murder trial following the brutal killing of an elderly man in his Dimboola home almost three years ago. ⌘ Read more

New bushfire threat for Tasmanian town, as people told ‘leave immediately’
On the same day that residents in one Tasmanian community are returning to find if their homes are still standing after a bushfire last week, residents in one area are told to ‘leave immediately’ due to a new threat. ⌘ Read more

Travelling teacher brings instrumental music to regional schools
Tina Greenfield drives 350 kilometres each week to teach music to students at five schools in regional Queensland. ⌘ Read more