A Decade of BBC Question Time Data Reveals Imbalance in Journalist Guests
A new study [PDF] from Cardiff University analyzing a decade of the popular topical debate programme BBC Question Time found that the broadcaster’s flagship political debate show relies disproportionately on journalists and pundits from right-wing media outlets, particularly those connected to The Spectator magazine.

Research … ⌘ Read more

‘Results Were Fudged’: Departing Meta AI Chief Confirms Llama 4 Benchmark Manipulation
Yann LeCun, Meta’s outgoing chief AI scientist and one of the pioneers credited with laying the groundwork for modern AI, has acknowledged that the company’s Llama 4 language model had its benchmark results manipulated before its April 2025 release. In an interview with the Financial Times, LeCun said the … ⌘ Read more

RadeonSI Starts 2026 With NIR Compilation Refactoring For Better Performance, Lower GLSL Compile Times
Merged on New Year’s Day was a set of 36 patches authored by well known AMD Mesa developer Marek Olšák for refactoring the NIR compilation code for the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver… ⌘ Read more

How Nokia Went From iPhone Victim To $1 Billion Nvidia Deal
Nokia, the Finnish company whose iconic ringtone was played an estimated 1.8 billion times daily at the height of its mobile phone dominance and whose 3310 “brick” sold 126 million units, has reinvented itself again – this time as a key piece of AI infrastructure. In October, Nvidia announced a $1 billion investment in Nokia and a strategic partnership to incorp … ⌘ Read more

With RAM crazy prices being what they are, I guess my PC is gonna be stuck on 16GB RAM for some time. I originally bought the DDR4 16GB kit for like $49 AUD, and I thought I’d just buy another 16GB or more later down the track (this was like a year and a half ago), thinking it would be similarly priced or even cheaper…

Boy was that a mistake in hindsight LOL. The same kit is like $229 AUD now….

Australia’s Biggest Pension Fund To Cut Global Stocks Allocation on AI Concerns
Australia’s largest pension fund is planning to reduce its allocation to global equities this year, amid signs that the AI boom in the US stock market could be running out of steam. Financial Times: John Normand, head of investment strategy at the A$400bn (US$264bn) AustralianSuper, told the Financial Times that not only d … ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux Ends 2025 With 3.19% Marketshare, AMD Linux CPU Use Approaches 72%
Back in November Steam on Linux use hit an all-time high at 3.2%. With the still increasing popularity around the Steam Deck powered by the Arch Linux based SteamOS, Linux gaming continuing to grow thanks to Steam Play (Proton), and excitement around the upcoming Steam Frame and Steam Machine hardware, the Linux gaming outlook continues to be positive. The Steam Survey results for December 2025 are out tonight and with just a tiny … ⌘ Read more

It’s that time again, I’ve just rotated my #twtxt feed!

Find last quarter’s twts at the feed, or see them on the web.

UK Company Sends Factory With 1,000C Furnace Into Space
A UK-based company has successfully powered up a microwave-sized space factory in orbit, proving it can run a 1,000C furnace to manufacture ultra-pure semiconductor materials in microgravity. “The work that we’re doing now is allowing us to create semiconductors up to 4,000 times purer in space than we can currently make here today,” says Josh Western, CEO of Space … ⌘ Read more

Opinion / Question time…

Do you think Mu (µ)’s native compiler and therefore emitted machine code “runtime” (which obviously adds a bit of weight to the resulting binary, and runtime overheads) needs to support “runtime stack traces”, or would it be enough to only support that in the bytecode VM interpreter for debuggability / quick feedback loops and instead just rely on flat (no stacktraces) errors in natively built compiled executables?

So in effect:

Stack Traces:

• Bytecode VM Interpreter: ✅
  
• Native Code Executables: ❌

NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts
NASA is closing its largest research library at the Goddard Space Flight Center amid budget cuts and campus consolidation, putting tens of thousands of largely non-digitized historical and scientific documents at risk of being warehoused or discarded. The New York Times reports: Jacob Richmond, a NASA spokesman, said the agency would review the library holdings … ⌘ Read more

Heart Association Revives Theory That Light Drinking May Be Good For You
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For a while, it seemed the notion that light drinking was good for the heart had gone by the wayside, debunked by new studies and overshadowed by warnings that alcohol causes cancer. Now the American Heart Association has revived the idea in a scientific review that i … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Is Paying Employees More Than Any Major Tech Startup in History
OpenAI is paying employees more than any major tech startup in history, with average stock-based compensation hitting roughly $1.5 million per worker in 2025. “That is more than seven times higher than the stock-based pay Google disclosed in 2003, before it filed for an initial public offering in 2004,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The … ⌘ Read more

Intel Meteor Lake On Linux Two Years Post-Launch: 93% The Original Performance
As part of the various end-of-year annual benchmarking comparisons and the like on Phoronix, today is a look at how the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H “Meteor Lake” performance has evolved under Ubuntu Linux in the two years since launching. Plus with next-gen Intel Panther Lake laptops expected to be showcased next week at CES, it’s a good time for revisiting the Meteor Lake performance to see the difference two years have made for Intel Met … ⌘ Read more

Hurray, I finally fixed another rendering bug in tt that was bugging me for a long time. Previously, when there were empty lines in a markdown multiline code block, the background color of the code block had not been used for the empty lines. So, this then looked as if there were actually several code blocks instead of a single one.

US Measles Cases Surpass 2,000, Highest in 30 Years: CDC
The U.S. has surpassed 2,000 measles cases for the first time in more than 30 years, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From a report: As of Dec. 23, a total of 2,012 cases have been reported in the U.S. Of those cases, 24 were reported among international visitors to the U.S.

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Denmark’s Main Postal Carrier Ends Letter Delivery
PostNord is ending letter delivery in Denmark after a 90%+ collapse in mail volume. It marks the first known case of a national postal carrier abandoning letters entirely – a symbolic milestone of a fully digitized society that’s sparking nostalgia even among people who stopped sending mail years ago. The New York Times reports: Denmark has had a postal service for more than … ⌘ Read more

Cheap Solar Is Transforming Lives and Economies Across Africa
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: South Africans … have found a remedy for power cuts that have plagued people in the developing world for years. Thanks to swiftly falling prices of Chinese made solar panels and batteries, they now draw their power from the sun. These aren’t the tiny, old-school solar lanterns that once … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Mu (µ)’s startup latency appears to be ~10ms on my machine:

$ time ./bin/mu ./foo.mu 

real    0m0.011s
user    0m0.004s
sys     0m0.006s

Unexpected Surprise: Windows 11 Outperforming Linux On An Intel Arrow Lake H Laptop
Typically when receiving any review hardware preloaded with Microsoft Windows I tend to run some Windows vs. Linux benchmarks just as a sanity test plus it still seems to generate a fair amount of interest even though the outcome is almost always the same: Linux having a hefty performance advantage over Windows especially in the more demanding creator-type workloads. As an unexpected twist and time consuming puzzle the past two … ⌘ Read more

Despite a Record Year, Airlines Are Grappling With Big Challenges
The global airline industry is on track to post an all-time profit high of nearly $40 billion in 2025, according to trade group IATA, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 figure of $26 billion, but carriers are still managing a net margin of just 4% – roughly $7.90 per passenger. Economist adds: Not everything has been in the ascent. European and N … ⌘ Read more

The baseline here is about 55 ms for nothing, btw. Python ain’t fast to start up.

$ time python -c 'exit(0)'

real    0m0.055s
user    0m0.046s
sys     0m0.007s

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

I assume you made the thing load quickly, didn’t you?

That’s the problem with Python. If you have a couple of files to import, it will take time.

I want this to be reasonably fast on my old Intel NUC from 2016 (Celeron N3050 @ 1.60GHz) and I already notice that the program startup takes about 95 ms (or 125 ms when there are no .pyc files yet). That’s still fine, but it shows that I’ll have to be careful and keep this thing very small …

Python 3.14 will bring lazy imports, maybe that can help in some cases.

Singapore Study Links Heavy Infant Screen Time To Teen Anxiety
A study by a Singapore government agency has found that children exposed to high levels of screen time before age two showed brain development changes linked to slower decision-making and higher anxiety in adolescence, adding to concerns about early digital exposure. From a report: The study was conducted by a team within the country’s Agency for … ⌘ Read more

Phew, it was just a one-time thing. Ta! :-)

In less than two days time, laidback.moe will be opened to the public.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Well, I used SnipMate years ago (until 2012). IIRC, it’s more than just “insert a bit of text here”, it can also jump to the correct next location(s) and stuff like that. Don’t remember why I stopped using it.

Then I used nothing for a long time. Just before Christmas, I made my own plugin (… of course …), which does everything I need at the moment (and nothing more).

It can insert simple templates and then jump to the next location:

https://movq.de/v/67cdf7c827/sisni%2Dpython.mp4

And replace a string after insertion:

https://movq.de/v/67cdf7c827/sisni%2Dheader.mp4

(It’s not public (yet?) and it also uses vim9script, so I guess it wouldn’t work on your system.)

Lack of known library documentation has forced the time traveler to do classified information to the client library

It Took 6+ Years For Linux’s “New” Mount API To Be Properly Documented In Man Pages
In demonstrating one of the gaps of man pages in modern times and likely having hindered the adoption of the Linux kernel’s new mount API, it took more than six years for those system calls to be properly documented within man pages. The Linux “new” mount API was introduced back in mid-2019 with Linux 5.2 and since supported by key file-systems after several years but not until weeks ago was this file descriptor based mount API sco … ⌘ Read more

‘Pull Over and Show Me Your Apple Wallet’
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: MacRumors reports that Apple plans to expand iPhone and Apple Watch driver’s licenses to 7 U.S. states (CT, KY, MS, OK, UT, AR, VA). A recent convert is the State of Illinois, whose website videos demo how you can use your Apple Wallet license to display proof of identity or age the next time you get carded by a cop, bartender, or TSA agent. The new st … ⌘ Read more

Americans Are Watching Fewer New TV Shows and More Free TV
Americans are settling into streaming habits that should worry Hollywood executives, as new Nielsen data analyzed by Bloomberg reveals that not a single new original series cracked the top 10 most-watched streaming shows in 2025 – the first time this has happened since Nielsen began publishing streaming data in 2020.

The shift extends beyond origi … ⌘ Read more

This was the scariest movie I’ve seen in a long time, jesus. 🤣 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_(2022_film)

LG Launches UltraGear Evo Gaming Monitors With What It Claims is the World’s First 5K AI Upscaling
LG has announced a new premium gaming monitor brand called UltraGear, and the lineup’s headline feature is what the company claims is the world’s first 5K AI upscaling technology – an on-device solution that analyzes and enhances content in real time before it reaches the panel, … ⌘ Read more

Ask Slashdot: What’s the Stupidest Use of AI You Saw In 2025?
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: What’s the stupidest use of AI you encountered in 2025? Have you been called by AI telemarketers? Forced to do job interviews with a glitching AI?
With all this talk of “disruption” and “inevitability,” this is our chance to have some fun. Personally, I think 2025’s worst AI “innovation” was the AI-powered web … ⌘ Read more

@zvava@twtxt.net By hashing definition, if you edit your message, it simply becomes a new message. It’s just not the same message anymore. At least from a technical point of view. As a human, personally I disagree, but that’s what I’m stuck with. There’s no reliable way to detect and “correct” for that.

Storing the hash in your database doesn’t prevent you from switching to another hashing implementation later on. As of now, message creation timestamps earlier than some magical point in time use twt hash v1, messages on or after that magical timestamp use twt hash v2. So, a message either has a v1 or a v2 hash, but not both. At least one of them is never meaningful.

Once you “upgrade” your database schema, you can check for stored messages from the future which should have been hashed using v2, but were actually v1-hashed and simply fix them.

If there will ever be another addressing scheme, you could reuse the existing hash column if it supersedes the v1/v2 hashes. Otherwise, a new column might be useful, or perhaps no column at all (looking at location-based addressing or how it was called). The old v1/v2 hashes are still needed for all past conversation trees.

In my opinion, always recalculating the hashes is a big waste of time and energy. But if it serves you well, then go for it.

Linux 6.19-rc3 Released With A Holiday’s Week Of Fixes
Linus Torvalds just released Linux 6.19-rc3 to ship this week’s fixes. Linux 6.19-rc3 is coming in light as expected due to the Christmas week with many corporate developers getting paid time off and others taking part in year-end festivities… ⌘ Read more

Is Dark Energy Weakening?
An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC:

There is growing controversy over recent evidence suggesting that a mysterious force known as dark energy might be changing in a way that challenges our current understanding of time and space. An analysis by a South Korean team has hinted that, rather than the Universe continuing to expand, galaxies could be pulled back together by gravity, ending in what astronomers … ⌘ Read more

Sal Khan: Companies Should Give 1% of Profits To Retrain Workers Displaced By AI
“I believe artificial intelligence will displace workers at a scale many people don’t yet realize,” says Sal Kahn (founder/CEO of the nonprofit Khan Academy). But in an op-ed in the New York Times he also proposes a solution that “could change the trajectory of the lives of millions who will be displaced…”

“I believe … ⌘ Read more

It’s this time of the year again, where people burn money on the streets.

Rocket Crashes in Brazil’s First Commercial Launch
The first-ever commercial rocket launched at Brazil’s Alcantara Space Center crashed soon after liftoff late earlier this week, dealing a blow to Brazilian aerospace ambitions and shares of South Korean satellite launch company Innospace. From a report: The rocket began its vertical trajectory as planned after liftoff [Monday] at 10:13 p.m. local time (0113 GMT) but fell … ⌘ Read more

QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop Brings QNX 8.0 To A Wayland + Xfce Desktop
Announced earlier in December but flying under the radar until now is the initial reoease of a QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop. This is a developer environment for the QNX real-time operating system primarily used on embedded systems. With now having this developer desktop option, the hassle of cross-compilation to target QNX can be avoided… ⌘ Read more

Gmail Users May Soon Be Able To Change Their Email Address and Keep the Old One
Google appears to be testing a feature that would let users change their @gmail.com address for the first time, according to an official support document. The support page exists only in Hindi, suggesting an India-first rollout, and Google notes that users will “gradually begin to see this option.”

The feature would l … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net @movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh, I take my 0°C over the 36°C anytime! Even with yesterday’s gray and windy sleet in my face. However, there are definitely more pleasant times to walk in town, I’ll give you that. For example on 0°C sunny today: https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2025-12-25/

The Phone-Based Retirement Is Here
Adult children across the United States are increasingly reporting that their aging parents have developed what looks remarkably like the smartphone addiction [non-paywalled source] typically associated with teenagers, a phenomenon The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel has dubbed “phone-based retirement.” A 2019 Pew Research Center study found people 60 and older spend more than half their daily leisure time – … ⌘ Read more

An Amateur Codebreaker May Have Just Solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac Killings
Los Angeles Times (non-paywalled source): When police questioned Marvin Margolis following the murder of Elizabeth Short – who became known as the Black Dahlia – he lied about how well he had known her. The 22-year-old Short had been found mutilated in a weedy lot in South Los Angeles, severed neatly in half with … ⌘ Read more

YouTube Has a Firm Grip on Daytime TV
YouTube has been winning the streaming wars for years, but its real competitive advantage comes not from prime-time viewing but from its stranglehold on daytime hours when Americans are meditating, exercising, cooking, or simply looking for background noise. At 11 a.m. in October, YouTube commanded an average audience of 6.3 million viewers compared to Netflix’s 2.8 million, according to Nielsen dat … ⌘ Read more

Ireland’s Diarmuid Early Wins World Microsoft Excel Title
Irish competitor Diarmuid Early, dubbed the “Lebron James of Excel spreadsheets,” has won the 2025 Microsoft Excel World Championship in Las Vegas, dethroning three-time champion Andrew Ngai. The BBC reports: The esport showpiece in December attracted competitors worldwide as 256 spreadsheet heads battled it out across knockout rounds to join the final 24 in Ve … ⌘ 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

Samsung’s 2026 Gaming Monitors Promise 6K, 3D, and Up To 1,040Hz
An anonymous reader shares a report: Samsung is breaking new ground with its 2026 lineup of gaming monitors, with the Odyssey 3D G90XH becoming the first to feature a 6K display with “glasses-free 3D.” The new monitor comes with a 32-inch IPS panel, offering real-time eye-tracking that “adjusts depth and perspective” based on your position, … ⌘ Read more

Australia Poised for Desalination Boom as Water Shortages Loom
Australia is on track for a significant expansion of desalination capacity – converting seawater to freshwater – to meet the needs of a swelling population at a time of declining average rainfall. From a report: The world’s driest inhabited continent is projected to build or expand 11 desalination plants worth more than A$23 billion ($15 billion) over t … ⌘ Read more