Jupiter’s Lightning May Have the Force of Nuclear Weapons
How powerful is Jupiter’s lightning? Thick clouds cover the view, notes Science magazine. But using an instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft (orbiting Jupiter for the past decade), researchers determined Jupiter’s lightning bolts are 100 to 10,000 times more energetic than earth’s:

A single bolt of lightning on Earth releases about 1 billion joules of energy. … ⌘ Read more

The best noise-cancelling earbuds for your commute and quiet time
If you’re looking for high-end sound and the ability to drown out (or let in) the background, these are our top picks. ⌘ Read more

Transporting Antimatter On a Truck Is Tricky…
Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: … but the CERN Project “Antimatter in motion” just did it. For the first time in history researchers at CERN have transported 92 antiprotons on a truck in a specially designed magnetic enclosure. The test-drive went so well that the researchers spontaneously decided to go another round… The purpose of the experiment was to test the f … ⌘ Read more

Windows PCs Crash Three Times As Often As Macs, Report Says
A workplace-device study says Windows PCs crash significantly more often than Macs, lag further behind on patching and encryption in some sectors, and are typically replaced sooner. TechSpot reports: Omnissa’s 2026 State of Digital Workspace report outlines the IT challenges that various organizations face from the growing use of AI and the heterogeneous d … ⌘ Read more

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

What Would Happen if the Moon Were 20 Times Closer? ⌘ Read more

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

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

Mesa 26.0 Will Make It In Time For The Fedora 44 Release
With the recent Fedora 44 beta release, Mesa 25.3 graphics drivers were in use rather than the newest Mesa 26.0 series. The good news is that there is now approval for getting Mesa 26.0 drivers to land in time for next month’s official Fedora 44 release… ⌘ Read more

Mistral AI : le champion français qui réclame ses propres menottes
Tiens, voilà qu’Arthur Mensch, patron de Mistral AI, a récemment publié une tribune dans le Financial Times pour appeler à la mise en place d’une « contribution obligatoire basée sur le chiffre d’affaires » payée par toutes les entreprises d’IA en Europe, pour alimenter un fonds européen destiné à « soutenir la création culturelle ». Une nouvelle taxe ? Demandée […] ⌘ Read more

OnlyFans Owner Dies At 43
Computershack shares a report from NBC News: Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of adult-content platform OnlyFans, has died of cancer at the age of 43, the company said in a statement on Monday. “We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Leo Radvinsky. Leo passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer,” an OnlyFans spokesperson said. “His family have requested privacy at this difficult time.”

Radvinsky, a Ukrain … ⌘ Read more

@thecanine@twtxt.net congrats on the win! Hopefully it will not turn sour with the next “enter period of time here”. It seems flip-flopping is the law of the land around here.

I never got to ask you, are you affected by this as a developer, or end user, or both?

Trapped! Inside a Self-Driving Car During an Anti-Robot Attack
A man crossing the street one San Francisco night spotted a self-driving car — and decided to confront its passenger, 37-year-old tech worker Doug Fulop. The New York Times reports the man yelled that “he wanted to kill Fulop and the other two passengers for giving money to a robot.”
A taxi driver would have simply driven away. But Fulop’s vehicle had … ⌘ Read more

D7VK 1.6 Overhauls Interaction With DXVK’s D3D9 Backend
D7VK is the open-source project that began as a Direct3D 7 implementation atop the Vulkan API for Linux gamers and with time expanded to support all the way back to Direct3D 3. Out today is D7VK 1.6 with continuing to enhance this D3D compatibility layer atop Vulkan for enhancing retro/vintage gaming on Linux… ⌘ Read more

A CNN Producer Explores the ‘Magic AI’ Workout Mirror
CNN looks at “the Magic AI fitness mirror,” a new product “watching you, and giving you feedback automatically,” while sometimes playing footage of a recorded personal trainer.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland describes CNN’s video report:

CNN says the device “tracks form, counts reps, and corrects technique in real-time — and it doesn’t go easy on you.” (Although the … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thank you for the suggestions. I will probably do some of that when I have time. For the thumbnails, I’m also thinking about trying the loading=“lazy” img attribute. Top on my mind is actually understanding why the big images don’t load. Maybe my VPS’s network connection is saturated, for example. I’ve never needed to worry about such things until now. I’m looking forward to spending some time on it.

Can Private Space Companies Replace the ISS Before 2030?
China’s orbital outpost Tiangong was completed in 2022 and is hosting up to three astronauts at a time, reports CNN.

But meanwhile U.S. lawmakers are now signaling there’s not time to develop and launch a replacement for the International Space Station — considered the signal most expensive object ever built — before its deorbiting in 2030. A recent Senate bi … ⌘ Read more

In the interest of fairness and hopefully for the last time, I ever have to address this, Google has flip-flopped again and promised “sideloading” will not be removed from their version of Android, but instead have to be enabled in the developer settings, using the following “advanced flow”:

To be perfectly clear, this still falls short of what I wanted, but at this point, it is a compromise I’m willing to take, over further pursuing this, through the various available European courts, myself.

Here is their full statement:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html

SUSE’s Agama Installer Sees Architectural Revamp
The modern Agama OS installer for SUSE/openSUSE is out with its first new release since November. With the time since the prior release, SUSE engineers have been making key improvements to Agama and enhancing its architecture to more align with their original vision for it… ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net Thanks for the tip-off, fixed!

I hope to have some time this weekend to tease apart my current setup and build a couple of example sites with it (while also writing some docs along the way). But given the rate I’ve been going, it’ll probably be another month. 😢

Rogue AI Triggers Serious Security Incident At Meta
For the second time in the past month, an AI agent went rogue at Meta – this time giving an engineer incorrect advice that briefly exposed sensitive data. The Verge reports: A Meta engineer was using an internal AI agent, which Clayton described as “similar in nature to OpenClaw within a secure development environment,” to analyze a technical question another employee pos … ⌘ Read more

I thought that YouTube finally destroyed all the feeds, because I didn’t get any new entries in my newsreader for days. Now I realized that Newsboat somehow just froze. No idea what happened. This is the very first time ever in all those years. Haven’t updated the version for literally years. I reckon I will compile the upcoming version then. This will require a new Rust toolchain, that’s going to be great fun, I’m sure. Already looking forward to that…

Walmart Wins Patents To Give Algorithms More Sway Over Prices
Walmart has secured patents for systems that use machine learning to forecast demand and automate pricing decisions, “pushing the U.S. retail behemoth into a debate over the use of algorithms to adjust product costs,” reports the Financial Times. From the report: In January Walmart obtained a U.S. patent for a “system and method for dynamically and auto … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Considers Legal Action Over $50 Billion Amazon-OpenAI Cloud Deal
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Microsoft is considering legal action against its partner OpenAI and Amazon over a $50 billion deal that could violate its exclusive cloud agreement with the ChatGPT maker, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Last month, Amazon and OpenAI signed several agreements, includi … ⌘ Read more

Pardoned Nikola Fraudster Is Raising Funds For AI-Powered Planes He Claims Will Reshape Aviation
Trevor Milton, the pardoned founder of Nikola, is seeking $1 billion for AI-powered autonomous planes through a new venture called SyberJet. The Tech Buzz reports: “Autonomous planes will be 10 times harder than Nikola ever was,” Milton told the Wall Street Journal in a rare interview … ⌘ Read more

FBI Is Buying Location Data To Track US Citizens, Director Confirms
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The FBI has resumed purchasing reams of Americans’ data and location histories to aid federal investigations, the agency’s director, Kash Patel, testified to lawmakers on Wednesday. This is the first time since 2023 that the FBI has confirmed it was buying access to people’s data collected f … ⌘ Read more

2026 Turing Award Goes To Inventors of Quantum Cryptography
Dave Knott shares a report from the New York Times: On Wednesday, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of computing professionals, said Drs. Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard had won this year’s Turing Award for their work on quantum cryptography and related technologies. The Turing Award, which was introduced in 1966, is often … ⌘ Read more

GNOME 50 Released With Many Fantastic Improvements
GNOME 50 is out today, on-schedule and just in time for being the default desktop of the likes of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora Workstation 44… ⌘ Read more

OpenJDK 26 Released With The Java Applet API Finally Removed
OpenJDK 26 is out today as the newest GA reference version for the Java SE platform. With Java 26, it’s finally time to say a goodbye to the Java Applet API… ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org A-ha! That means you haven’t spent enough time with these tools! Go on, try it! (If you don’t, we’ll fire you.) I’m sure you’ll like it!

New ‘Vibe Coded’ AI Translation Tool Splits the Video Game Preservation Community
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” just over a year ago, we’ve seen a rapid increase in both the capabilities and popularity of using AI models to throw together quick programming projects with less human time and effort than ever before. … ⌘ Read more

Polymarket Gamblers Threaten To Kill Journalist Over Iran Missile Story
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Times of Israel, written by journalist Emanuel Fabian: On Tuesday, March 10, a massive explosion shook the city of Beit Shemesh, just outside Jerusalem, in yet another Iranian ballistic missile attack during the ongoing war. Rescue services scrambled to the scene in search of possible casu … ⌘ Read more

GNU C Library Lands x86_64 FMA’ed cosh For A ~35% Improvement
A bit of time has passed since having any exciting performance improvements to report on within the GNU C Library “glibc” but that changed today with another nice x86_64 optimization for modern CPUs… ⌘ Read more

Apple Launches AirPods Max 2 With Better ANC, Live Translation
Apple has quietly announced the AirPods Max 2, featuring improved active noise cancellation, an H2 chip, and new features like adaptive audio and AI-powered real-time translation. Like the original model, these headphones start at $549. The Verge reports: As noted by Apple, the AirPods Max 2 offer active noise-cancellation that’s 1.5 times mo … ⌘ Read more

Data Centers Overtake Offices In US Construction-Spending Shift
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Spending on data center projects in the U.S. has exploded, surpassing offices for the first time at the end of last year. It’s a trend Matt Kunz saw early on when Meta built a computing hub outside Columbus, Ohio. Other tech companies soon swarmed into the area, drawn by its stable economy, univer … ⌘ Read more

Sodium-Ion Battery Tested for Grid-Scale Storage in Wisconsin
“A new type of battery storage is about to be deployed on the Midwestern grid for the first time,” reports Electrek:

Sodium-ion battery storage manufacturer Peak Energy and global energy company RWE Americas will pilot a passively cooled sodium-ion battery system in eastern Wisconsin on the Midcontinent Independent System Operator network — the fi … ⌘ Read more

RADV Driver Lands Another Optimization: “Missing In RADV For A Very Long Time”
A four year old optimization idea for the RADV driver was scratched off the TODO list last week for next quarter’s Mesa 26.1 release… ⌘ Read more

The UK Will Invest Billions to Build a Nuclear Fusion Industry
The UK’s science minister is announcing details of a five-year, £2.5 billion investment in nuclear fusion, reports the Times of London, “including building one of the world’s first prototype fusion power plants in Nottinghamshire and developing a UK sector projected to employ 10,000 people by 2030.”

Despite the potentially transformative impact … ⌘ Read more

Should Banksy Remain Anonymous?
He’s “the most famous anonymous man in the world,” suggests Reuters. But investigating Banksy’s artworks in a bombed Ukrainian village (and other clues in the U.K. and Manhattan) have led them to “a hand-written confession by the artist to a long-ago misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct — a document that revealed, beyond dispute, Banksy’s true identity.”

But Banksy’s long-time lawyer “urged us not to publis … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de For sure. Time for an absue report.

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

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me I am reasonably happy with jenny. If I find time for a twtxt project, I would like to make a web page that works as follows: you point it to your own twtxt feed (as a URL parameter), and then it shows you all the feeds referenced by your “# follow =” lines. So, if I put this up, anyone could use it to view their own feed, with no login required. (Probably a difficult project. For example, I’d want to make sure the backend couldn’t be tricked into helping ddos a web server by trying to fetch lots of “feeds” from it. Anyway, I have too many other projects.)

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

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org sounds like a plan, it’d be the second biggest version, in Australia.

Number one is on the rplace.live map canvas, where the previous one is in America and the one from today here - no reason other than the fact those countries had a good empty spot, to put them in, at the time I drew them.

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org Correct, the two smaller versions are loading perfectly fine. The hickup is only for the originals. But in all reality, the middle ones are sufficient for me personally. Please don’t get me wrong, at least for the people photos, the subjects are large enough. The Japanese landscapes, however, would definitely benefit from a bit more detail. ;-)

I just tried it once more, and now, the tree with the sign (/photo/5Zy4pqVIt0oP/IMG_20251106_035048_448.jpg) fully loaded very quickly. Same with the Japanese dish (/photo/tJbmg8oleYbh/IMG_20251030_091719_086.jpg) and shopping center (/photo/qXG5ucIjpPju/IMG_20251029_045002_778.jpg). But the previous and next ones all ran into the same problems again. When I’m very lucky, I eventually get the upper half. Typically not even that much, a third, a fifth, or even less.

Waiting a bit before making an attempt, the wooden walkway through the forest or park (/photo/ojQpDLfBoGN4/IMG_20251023_043829_011.jpg) eventually also made it. But unlike the other successful attempts, it took a long time.

The more photos you add, the more beneficial it might be to separate the index into several different albums. I didn’t measure it, but it felt like 10 to 20 seconds for all the thumbnails to load. That traffic adds up.

Another idea would be to strip the EXIF data from the thumbnails and reducing quality to 90% or even 80%. Using the famous tree with the sign, I cannot tell the difference between the original thumbnail and the 80% quality one. I’m sure it depends on the subject. Here are the numbers:

$ convert -strip IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg stripped.jpg
$ convert -quality 90 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 90.jpg
$ convert -quality 80 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 80.jpg
$ convert -strip -quality 90 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 90-stripped.jpg
$ convert -strip -quality 80 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg 80-stripped.jpg
$ ls -lh *jpg | awk '{print $5 " " $9}' 
46K 80.jpg
45K 80-stripped.jpg
64K 90.jpg
63K 90-stripped.jpg
132K IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg
127K stripped.jpg
$ ls -l *jpg | awk '{print $5 " " $9}'
46160 80.jpg
45064 80-stripped.jpg
65012 90.jpg
63916 90-stripped.jpg
135070 IMG_20251106_035048_448_size_400.jpg
129647 stripped.jpg

@movq@www.uninformativ.de @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org It’s not that bad. She let me sleep three times last night alone!

ChatGPT, Other Chatbots Approved For Official Use In the Senate
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A top Senate administrator on Monday gave aides the green light to use three artificial intelligence chatbots for official work, a reflection of how widespread the use of the products has become in workplaces around the globe. The chief information officer for the Senate sergeant-at-arms, w … ⌘ Read more

This time is different. Why we must conquer AI before it conquers us
The new tech is both boom and doom. The sudden purge of jobs by Australia’s tech giants is scary, yes, but that’s precisely why we have to master it. ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org still not as bad as the time a fire started in the breaker panel for my building and I had to personally put it out myself with a fire extinguisher.

Image

Image

@rdlmda@rdlmda.me What a truly wonderful description. ;‘-D But sorry to hear that. Luckily, no issues over here. It’s extremely rare that this happens. Last time (around five years ago or so) they were cutting down trees in the forest and threw a tree in the overhead power line (which had been converted to underground last year). Power had to be killed in order for the fire brigade to actually extinguish the fire.