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

Opus 1.6 Audio Codec Adds New Machine Learning Functionality
Version 1.6 of libopus as the library for the open-source Opus audio codec is now available. Opus 1.6 brings new machine learning “ML” based features in building atop the machine learning features initially added to Opus 1.5… ⌘ Read more

Why Floods Threaten One of the Driest Places in the World
One of the most water-scarce regions on Earth is now experiencing a dramatic atmospheric shift that’s pushing moisture onto Oman’s northern coast at rates more than 1.5 times the global average, according to a Washington Post investigation of global atmospheric data [non-paywalled source]. The change has turned extreme rainfall into a recurrent source of cat … ⌘ Read more

Jumping Frog Radius
⌘ Read more

2025 is the second hottest year since records began
Mean temperatures this year approached 1.5°C above the preindustrial average, making it the second hottest year after 2024 ⌘ Read more

X.Org Server’s xkbcomp Updated For Four Security Issues Dating Back Years
Red Hat’s Peter Hutterer announced the release today of xkbcomp 1.5, the CLI utility used for compiling X Keyboard Extension (XBD) keyboard descriptions for the X.Org Server. Driving this new xkbcomp release are fixes for four security issues… ⌘ Read more

South-east Qld population set to reach 4.5m despite rising property prices
The analysis by KPMG reveals the population in the south-east corner has grown by as much as 2.2 per cent over the past five years, above the national average of 1.5 per cent. ⌘ Read more

UK To Tax Electric Cars by the Mile Starting 2028
The UK government will levy a pay-per-mile tax on electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles starting April 2028, UK’s finance minister Rachel Reeves announced, a measure designed to offset some of the fuel duty revenue that will disappear as drivers shift away from petrol and diesel cars. Electric vehicles will be charged 3 pence per mile and plug-in hybrids 1.5 pence per mile, pa … ⌘ Read more

SA woman suffered permanent brain injury after hospital failed to diagnose stroke, court hears
An Adelaide woman is suing a southern suburbs hospital for $1.5 million in damages alleging she suffered a “permanent neurological injury” when doctors failed to diagnose her with a stroke, court documents reveal. ⌘ Read more

MLPerf Client 1.5 Introduces Experimental Linux Support
MLPerf Client as MLCommons’ machine language inferencing benchmark for client form factors / PCs now has a Linux build. MLPerf Client 1.5 was released yesterday with an experimental Linux build but for now at least is not nearly as full-featured as this AI benchmark on Windows and macOS… ⌘ Read more

AI’s $5 Trillion Cost Needs Every Debt Market, JPMorgan Says
The furious push by AI hyperscalers to build out data centers will need about $1.5 trillion of investment-grade bonds over the next five years and extensive funding from every other corner of the market, according to an analysis by JPMorgan. From a report: “The question is not ‘which market will finance the AI-boom?’ Rather, the question is ‘how will financings … ⌘ Read more

Python Foundation Donations Surge After Rejecting Grant - But Sponsorships Still Needed
After the Python Software Foundation rejected a $1.5 million grant because it restricted DEI activity, “a flood of new donations followed,” according to a new report. By Friday they’d raised over $157,000, including 295 new Supporting Members paying an annual $99 membership fee, says PSF executi … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Let’s go through it one by one. Here’s a wall of text that took me over 1.5 hours to write.

This section says AI should not be treated as an authority. This is actually just what I said, except the AI phrased/framed it like it was a counter-argument.

The AI also said that users must develop “AI literacy”, again phrasing/framing it like a counter-argument. Well, that is also just what I said. I said you should treat AI output like a random blog and you should verify the sources, yadda yadda. That is “AI literacy”, isn’t it?

My text went one step further, though: I said that when you take this requirement of “AI literacy” into account, you basically end up with a fancy search engine, with extra overhead that costs time. The AI missed/ignored this in its reply.

Okay, so, the AI also said that you should use AI tools just for drafting and brainstorming. Granted, a very rough draft of something will probably be doable. But then you have to diligently verify every little detail of this draft – okay, fine, a draft is a draft, it’s fine if it contains errors. The thing is, though, that you really must do this verification. And I claim that many people will not do it, because AI outputs look sooooo convincing, they don’t feel like a draft that needs editing.

Can you, as an expert, still use an AI draft as a basis/foundation? Yeah, probably. But here’s the kicker: You did not create that draft. You were not involved in the “thought process” behind it. When you, a human being, make a draft, you often think something like: “Okay, I want to draw a picture of a landscape and there’s going to be a little house, but for now, I’ll just put in a rough sketch of the house and add the details later.” You are aware of what you left out. When the AI did the draft, you are not aware of what’s missing – even more so when every AI output already looks like a final product. For me, personally, this makes it much harder and slower to verify such a draft, and I mentioned this in my text.

You, @prologic@twtxt.net, also mentioned this in your car tyre example.

In my text, I gave two analogies: The gym analogy and the Google Translate analogy. Your car tyre example falls in the same category, but Gemini’s calculator example is different (and, again, gaslight-y, see below).

What I meant in my text: A person wants to be a programmer. To me, a programmer is a person who writes code, understands code, maintains code, writes documentation, and so on. In your example, a person who changes a car tyre would be a mechanic. Now, if you use AI to write the code and documentation for you, are you still a programmer? If you have no understanding of said code, are you a programmer? A person who does not know how to change a car tyre, is that still a mechanic?

No, you’re something else. You should not be hired as a programmer or a mechanic.

Yes, that is “skill evolution” – which is pretty much my point! But the AI framed it like a counter-argument. It didn’t understand my text.

(But what if that’s our future? What if all programming will look like that in some years? I claim: It’s not possible. If you don’t know how to program, then you don’t know how to read/understand code written by an AI. You are something else, but you’re not a programmer. It might be valid to be something else – but that wasn’t my point, my point was that you’re not a bloody programmer.)

Gemini’s calculator example is garbage, I think. Crunching numbers and doing mathematics (i.e., “complex problem-solving”) are two different things. Just because you now have a calculator, doesn’t mean it’ll free you up to do mathematical proofs or whatever.

What would have worked is this: Let’s say you’re an accountant and you sum up spendings. Without a calculator, this takes a lot of time and is error prone. But when you have one, you can work faster. But once again, there’s a little gaslight-y detail: A calculator is correct. Yes, it could have “bugs” (hello Intel FDIV), but its design actually properly calculates numbers. AI, on the other hand, does not understand a thing (our current AI, that is), it’s just a statistical model. So, this modified example (“accountant with a calculator”) would actually have to be phrased like this: Suppose there’s an accountant and you give her a magic box that spits out the correct result in, what, I don’t know, 70-90% of the time. The accountant couldn’t rely on this box now, could she? She’d either have to double-check everything or accept possibly wrong results. And that is how I feel like when I work with AI tools.

Gemini has no idea that its calculator example doesn’t make sense. It just spits out some generic “argument” that it picked up on some website.

The AI makes two points here. The first one, I might actually agree with (“bad bot behavior is not the fault of AI itself”).

The second point is, once again, gaslighting, because it is phrased/framed like a counter-argument. It implies that I said something which I didn’t. Like the AI, I said that you would have to adjust the copyright law! At the same time, the AI answer didn’t even question whether it’s okay to break the current law or not. It just said “lol yeah, change the laws”. (I wonder in what way the laws would have to be changed in the AI’s “opinion”, because some of these changes could kill some business opportunities – or the laws would have to have special AI clauses that only benefit the AI techbros. But I digress, that wasn’t part of Gemini’s answer.)

Except for one point, I don’t accept any of Gemini’s “criticism”. It didn’t pick up on lots of details, ignored arguments, and I can just instinctively tell that this thing does not understand anything it wrote (which is correct, it’s just a statistical model).

And it framed everything like a counter-argument, while actually repeating what I said. That’s gaslighting: When Alice says “the sky is blue” and Bob replies with “why do you say the sky is purple?!”

But it sure looks convincing, doesn’t it?

This took so much of my time. I won’t do this again. 😂

Is the expansion of the universe slowing down?
It is widely accepted that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, but now researchers say our measurements of the mysterious force driving that may be wrong and that the universe began to slow 1.5 billion years ago – but other scientists disagree ⌘ Read more

The Emissions Gap Report 2025 brings us no news, but unfortunately that means it just confirms the very bad trajectory we keep choosing to take.

https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2025

Words fail sometimes, but I think this graphic summarizes well the situation and my current mood.

#ClimateCrisis #EmissionsGapReport

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Python Software Foundation Running Out of Money
After turning down $1.5 Million from the US Government as an act of DEI Virtue Signalling, the Python Software Foundation reveals that they have a $1.4 Million deficit, with only 6 months of money left. ⌘ Read more

Python Software Foundation has bigger spine than big tech
Back in January 2025, the Python Software Foundation applied for a $1.5 million grant from the US government’s National Science Foundation, under the Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open Source Ecosystems program, to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and PyPI. After a lot of paperwork, their application was approved, but upon receiving the contractual agreement, the Python Software Foundation decided to b … ⌘ Read more

Python Says Discriminatory DEI Policies More Important Than $1.5 Million Dollars
The Python Software Foundation has turned down a $1.5 Million Dollar grant from the US government, as it would require them to cease discriminatory Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion practices. ⌘ Read more

The PSF has withdrawn a $1.5 million proposal to US government grant program
Comments ⌘ Read more

1.5 years, first time he EVER jumped on my lap. ⌘ Read more

Top 250 oil and gas firms own just 1.5% of the world’s renewable power
Despite public promises by many fossil fuel firms that they are investing in the green transition, it turns out that they have made little contribution to the growth of renewable energy ⌘ Read more

The Price of Neglect. The Big Questions Behind Jaguar Land Rover’s Government £1.5 B Cyber Bailout. ⌘ Read more

SQLite Pub/Sub, Quickstart, and more — Watermill 1.5 Released
1 points posted by m110 ⌘ Read more

37C3 and New Year’s Eve 2023
Another one from the vaults. The 37C3 conference took place in
December, 2023. This report was mostly written in January, 2024.
Mostly finished it at night in my cottage between 28 and 29th
December, then edited and added some stuff in July, 2025. So… Only
1.5 years late?

It was a little ironic, and a little sad, that I was finishing the
37C3 report during 38C3. I didn’t manage to get any tickets for me and
#3 for 38C3 and had to make do with watching the stream.

The links to the talks go to [C … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org They are optional dependencies and listed as such:

$ pacman -Qi pinentry
Name            : pinentry
Version         : 1.3.1-5
Description     : Collection of simple PIN or passphrase entry dialogs which
                  utilize the Assuan protocol
Optional Deps   : gcr: GNOME backend [installed]
                  gtk3: GTK backend [installed]
                  qt5-x11extras: Qt5 backend [installed]
                  kwayland5: Qt5 backend
                  kguiaddons: Qt6 backend
                  kwindowsystem: Qt6 backend

And it’s probably a good thing that they’re optional. I wouldn’t want to have all that installed all the time.

基於 Dify 的 RAG 知識庫搭建
Dify 是一款開源的大模型應用開發平臺，旨在幫助開發者快速構建生產級生成式 AI 應用。在 Dify 本地化部署中，知識庫功能是實現企業級 AI 應用的核心能力。本文介紹基於版本 1.5.1 搭建知識庫全流程解析，包括以下內容：Dify 基本概念Dify 本地部署基於 Dify 的知識庫搭建一、Dify 基本概念Dify 是一款開源的大模型應用開發平臺，旨在幫助開發者快速構建生產級生成式 AI ⌘ Read more

New oil and gas fields incompatible with Paris climate goals
Opening any new North Sea oil and gas fields is incompatible with achieving the Paris Climate Agreement goals of limiting warming to 1.5°C or holding warming to “well below 2°C” relative to preindustrial levels, finds a new report published by UCL academics. ⌘ Read more

“AI” coding chatbot funded by Microsoft were Actually Indians
London-based Builder.ai, once valued at $1.5 billion and backed by Microsoft and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, has filed for bankruptcy after reports that its “AI-powered” app development platform was actually operated by Indian engineers, said to be around 700 of them, pretending to be artificial intelligence. The startup, which raised over $445 million from investors including Microsoft and the Qatar Investm … ⌘ Read more

Harpoom: of course the Apple Network Server can be hacked into running Doom
Of course you can run Doom on a $10,000+ Apple server running IBM AIX. Of course you can. Well, you can now. Now, let’s go ahead and get the grumbling out of the way. No, the ANS is not running Linux or NetBSD. No, this is not a backport of NCommander’s AIX Doom, because that runs on AIX 4.3. The Apple Network Server could run no version of AIX later than 4.1.5 and there are substan … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de i feel like when i read go code i’m reading some algebra shit where every part is 1-5 letters long and then there’s weird symbols like := and it’s just infinitely harder for me to parse and infer meaning from lol. it’s such a me problem

10 Rare & Interesting Versions of Common Animals
The animal kingdom is never short on variety, with over 1.5 million living animal species in existence today. And yet, our interests tend to focus on a common few—the black bear, the ring-tailed lemur, the gray wolf. But for every common species, there is an equally uncommon and interesting variation that hardly anyone pays attention […]

The post [10 Rare & Interesting Versions of Common Animals](https://listverse.com/2025/04/16/10-rare … ⌘ Read more

XMPP Interop Testing: Enabling Tests
Our project creates a framework that allows anyone to easily add XMPP standards compliance tests to the test phase of
their build pipeline. Prior to our most recent release (version 1.5.0) a test execution would basically run all tests
in the test suite. We provided an option to exclude certain tests, but in essence, the bulk of tests would execute.

This behavior is generally preferable when testing an XMPP server implementation. A benefit of exclusion-based
… ⌘ Read more

RDK X5 Development Kit Featuring HDMI, MIPI CSI, and Gigabit Ethernet
The RDK X5 is a development kit designed for intelligent computing and robotics. It features a form factor similar to the Raspberry Pi single board computer but is powered by the 10 TOPS Sunrise 5 processor. The RDK X5 includes an octa-core Cortex-A55 CPU running at 1.5 GHz, a dedicated BPU with 10 TOPS of […] ⌘ Read more

10 Unbelievable Advertising Fiascoes
For various reasons, product advertisements sometimes go awry in a big way. A case in point: Budweiser Light’s ad campaign featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney resulted in a boycott that cost the company almost 1.5 billion dollars, as customers switched from Bud Light to competitors’ brands. As Harvard Business Review points out, companies learned that […]

The post [10 Unbelievable Advertising Fiascoes](https://listverse.com/2025/02/12/10-unbeliev … ⌘ Read more

Haveno v1.0.18 released with various fixes and improvements
woodser1 has released Haveno2 version 1.0.183 with various bug fixes, improvements and updates.

Reduce disk usage up to 98% by saving wallets less frequently..
Update to Tor browser v14.0.3 and Tor binary v0.4.8.13
Increase trade limit of 'no deposit' offers to 1.5 XMR
Rename 'Cash at ATM' to 'Cardless Cash'
Support startup flag to specify blockchain location for local node
Improv ... ⌘ [Read more](https://monero.observer/woodser-releases-haveno-v1.0.18-fixes-improvements/)

Cyrix126 releases Gupaxx v1.5.4
Cyrix1261 has released Gupaxx 2 version 1.5.43 with lots of UI improvements and various bugfixes:

[UI] Use fixed size of fonts, do not resize them
[UI] Rework Top/Bottom bar
[UI] Rework widgets/fonts
[UI] Status: human friendly display of hashrate with right metrics
[Internal] Bundle: bump version of XMRig to 6.22.2
[Internal] deprecate support for mac os 12
[Docs] improve grammar and syntax of various doc files
[Fix] when n ... ⌘ [Read more](https://monero.observer/cyrix126-releases-gupaxx-v1.5.4/)

These volunteers care for Tasmania’s largest rose garden. Here’s their tips and tricks
Nestled within the walls of the world heritage-listed Woolmers Estate sits Tasmania’s largest rose collection. The sprawling 1.5 hectare garden is largely maintained by about a dozen volunteers. ⌘ Read more

Cyrix126 releases Gupaxx v1.5.2
Cyrix1261 has released Gupaxx 2 version 1.5.23 with various bugfixes and improvements:

[UI] Node : place toggle buttons on same height
[UI] P2Pool: "use local node" unchecked by default
[Internal] increase default p2pool buffer from 5% to 25%
[Internal] update chosen XvB node at start of process
[Fix] prevent updating xmrig/proxy twice immediately if time too spare
[Fix] remove Xmrig-Proxy empty directory from standalone ver ... ⌘ [Read more](https://monero.observer/cyrix126-releases-gupaxx-v1.5.2/)

Bringing developer choice to Copilot with Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI’s o1-preview
At GitHub Universe, we announced Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI’s o1-preview and o1-mini are coming to GitHub Copilot—bringing a new level of choice to every developer.

The post [Bringing developer choice to Copilot with Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI’s o1-preview](https://github.blog/news-in … ⌘ Read more

Cyrix126 releases Gupaxx v1.5.1
Cyrix1261 has released Gupaxx 2 version 1.5.13 with multiple bug fixes:

Freeze after some time
Xmrig could not be started after Xmrig-Proxy manually (Linux/MacOS)
Node and Proxy custom args were not parsed correctly
Unable to save node selection in Proxy Tab
Crashes on Wayland [..]

The full changelog, sources, SHA256SUM and .asc files can be found on Github3.

This project is a Gupax 4 fork which in … ⌘ Read more

Gupaxx v1.5.0 released with monerod integration
Cyrix1261 has released Gupaxx 2 version 1.5.03 with monerod integration4, multiple other UI changes, bug fixes and updates:

UI:
-new big feature: integration of Monerod
-new button on p2pool simple tab to use the local node (default)
Internals:
-new big feature: integration of Monerod process
-put p2pool to synchronizing status if a node doesn't respond
Fixes:
-xmrig-proxy tab sim ... ⌘ [Read more](https://monero.observer/cyrix126-releases-gupaxx-v1.5.0-monerod-integration/)

Summer vacation ‘24
A week ago, we returned from our summer vacation: This year, just like four years ago, when there weren’t many other options due to COVID, we went for 1.5 weeks to my grandmother’s vacation apartment in Lübeck-Travemünde. ⌘ Read more

@mckinley@twtxt.net, in your blog, I think a “line-heigh” of 1.5 (if I remember correctly you are setting it on the “body” on CSS) will make it more legible.

Isode: Cobalt 1.5 – New Capabilities

This release adds new functionality and features to Cobalt, our web based role and user provisioning tool. You can find out more about Cobalt here.

Image

This enhancement enables multiple Cobalt servers to be run against a single directory. There are two reasons for this.

1. In a distributed … ⌘ Read more

DietPi January 2024 news (version 9.0)
DietPi’s latest release, version 9.0, rolled out today, marks a significant update for the lightweight Linux OS, renowned for its efficiency on single-board computers. This release phases out support for the older Debian Buster version, introduces compatibility with the new 1.5 GB Orange Pi Zero 3, and brings several enhancements and bug fixes across the […] ⌘ Read more

Isode: M-Guard 1.5 – New Capabilities
M-Guard is an XML guard that is used at a network boundary to control traffic. An M-Guard instance is an application level data diode, with traffic flowing in one direction only. Commonly, M-Guard instances will be deployed in pairs, one controlling flow in each direction. The following is a list of the new capabilties introduced in version 1.5.

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The economic impact of the AI-powered developer lifecycle and lessons from GitHub Copilot
Today at Collision Conference we unveiled breaking new research on the economic and productivity impact of generative AI–powered developer tools. The research found that the increase in developer productivity due to AI could boost global GDP by over $1.5 trillion. ⌘ Read more

sqs-to-sns 1.5.4: utility written in Go to forward messages from AWS SQS Queues to AWS SNS Topics
1 points posted by Everton Marques ⌘ Read more

QOA Benchmark Results and File Format Specification
The specification for the Quite OK Audio Format,
announced in a previous blog post,
is now finalized. QOA is a lossy audio compression format. Typical audio
signals (44100hz, stereo) are encoded into 278 kbits/s, or more precisely 3.2
bits per sample – exactly 1/5 of the bits needed for an uncompressed WAV.

Image

The QOA-Specification [fits on a single … ⌘ Read more

**RT by @mind_booster: Highlights from IPCC report:

• The world’s on track to hit above 3°C of warming by 2100.
  
• Emissions must peak by 2025 and nearly halve by 2030 to keep warming to 1.5°C
  
• 3-bil people likely to suffer water scarcity at 2°C.
  
• No gov has a credible plan to keep warming in target.**
  Highlights from IPCC report:
  

- The world’s on track to hit above 3°C of warming by 2100.

- Emissions must peak by 2025 and nearly halve by 2030 to keep warming to 1.5°C

- 3-bil people likely to suffer w … ⌘ Read more