Visa Says AI Will Start Shopping and Paying For You In 2026
BrianFagioli writes: Visa says it has completed hundreds of secure, AI-initiated transactions with partners, arguing this proves agent driven shopping is ready to move beyond experiments. The company believes 2025 will be the last full year most consumers manually check out, with AI agents handling purchases at scale by the 2026 holiday season. Nearly half of U … ⌘ Read more
State of Play: Who Holds the Power in the Video Games Industry in 2025?
The video games industry in 2025 finds itself caught between the familiar forces of consolidation and job losses that have plagued creative industries, and a newer development: governments and the ultra-wealthy have begun treating games as tools of political influence. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund closed a $55 billion deal fo … ⌘ Read more
Samsung Is Putting Google Gemini AI Into Your Refrigerator, Whether You Need It or Not
BrianFagioli writes: Samsung is bringing Google Gemini directly into the kitchen, starting with a refrigerator that can see what you eat. At CES 2026, the company plans to show off a new Bespoke AI Refrigerator that uses a built in camera system paired with Gemini to automatically recognize food items, includi … ⌘ Read more
Welcome To America’s New Surveillance High Schools
Beverly Hills High School has deployed an AI-powered surveillance apparatus that includes facial recognition cameras, behavioral analysis software, smoke detector-shaped bathroom listening devices from Motorola, drones, and license plate readers from Flock Safety – a setup the district spent $4.8 million on in the 2024-2025 fiscal year and considers necessary given the scho … ⌘ Read more
Linux 6.19’s Significant ~30% Performance Boost For Old AMD Radeon GPUs
For those still using old AMD GCN 1.0 “Southern Islands” or GCN 1.1 “Sea Islands” graphics cards, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel is a wonderful holiday gift. With Linux 6.19, the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs are now defaulting to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver in place of the legacy “Radeon” DRM driver that has been the default for GCN 1.1/1.0 and other ATI/AMD graphics processors of the past 2+ decades. In this article is a look at the performance ben … ⌘ Read more
iRobot Founder Says FTC Treated Blocked Deals ‘Like Trophies’ as Bankruptcy Follows Failed Amazon Acquisition
Colin Angle, the founder of iRobot who built the company from his living room over 35 years and sold more than 50 million Roomba vacuums, watched his creation file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month after what he describes as an “avoidable” regulatory ord … ⌘ Read more
Rex: Proposed Safe Rust Kernel Extensions For The Linux Kernel, In Place Of eBPF
University researchers presented Rex at this month’s Linux Plumbers Conference 2025 in Tokyo. Rex is designed for “safe and usable” Rust-based kernel extensions that could serve in place of eBPF programs for extending the Linux kernel functionality… ⌘ Read more
Spotify Says ‘Anti-Copyright Extremists’ Scraped Its Library
A group of activists has scraped Spotify’s entire library, accessing 256 million rows of track metadata and 86 million audio files totaling roughly 300TB of data. The metadata has been released via Anna’s Archive, a search engine for “shadow libraries” that previously focused on books.
Spotify described the activists as “anti-copyright extremists … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 To Remove Support For AMD’s Never-Released Ryzen AI NPU2
The upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel (unless it ends up being called Linux 6.20) will drop support for the AMD NPU2 as their second-generation neural processing unit that never ended up being released into any retail products… ⌘ Read more
Is Xbox Betting on Cross-Platform Gaming?
A “slew of layoffs, price hikes and studio closures” for Microsoft’s Xbox “have led many to declare — not for the first time — that the Xbox is dead,” reports CNBC.
Or is it just changing its business model?
The company’s overall gaming revenue decreased 2% year-over-year, with a 29% dip in Xbox hardware sales, according to Microsoft’s first-quarter earnings for fiscal 2026. The broader co … ⌘ Read more
NVIDIA’s Quest For A “Safe” Linux Kernel For Automobiles, Robotics
NVIDIA engineer Igor Stoppa presented at the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) earlier this month around using Linux in safety-critical environments like automobiles and the current shortcomings of the upstream Linux kernel and the challenges on achieving Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) certifications around the Linux kernel. It’s an interesting read/watch around the safety of Linux (or not) for such strict safety environments… ⌘ Read more
Weston 15.0 Alpha Released With New Protocols, Experimental Vulkan Renderer
After being delayed by three months to allow additional time for new features to land, Weston 15.0 Alpha 1 is out today as a big feature release for this reference Wayland compositor… ⌘ Read more
Intel Releases GenAI Examples v1.5 - While Validating This AI Showcase On Old Xeon CPUs
Intel engineers as part of the OPEA Project today released the Generative AI Examples v1.5 update. This “GenAIExamples” open-source project is a collection of GenAI examples as part of showing the capabilities of the Open Platform for Enterprise AI (OPEA) and also highlighting Intel’s hardware strengths for generative AI… ⌘ Read more
Intel Releases VA-API libva 2.23 Adds AV1 Profile 2 Support
Intel today released libva 2.23 as the newest feature release for this Video Acceleration API “VA-API” reference library implementation. Most significant with libva 2.23 is adding AV1 Profile 2 support… ⌘ Read more
Apple Developer’s Account Restored After Compromised Gift Card Incident
“It’s all fixed,” says that Apple developer who was locked out of his Apple Account after redeeming a compromised Apple Gift Card.
“A lovely man from Singapore, working for Apple Executive Relations, who has been calling me every so often for a couple of days, has let me know it’s all fixed. It looks like the gift card I tried to r … ⌘ Read more
In 2025 Scammers Have Stolen $835M from Americans Using Fake Customer Service Numbers
They call it “the business-impersonator scam”. And it’s fooled 396,227 Americans in just the first nine months of 2025 — 18% more than the 335,785 in the same nine months of 2024. That’s according to a Bloomberg reporter (who also fell for it in late November), citing the official statistics from America’s … ⌘ Read more
The U.S. Could Ban Chinese-Made Drones Used By Police Departments
Tuesday the White House faces a deadline to decide “whether Chinese drone maker DJI Technologies poses a national security threat,” reports Bloomberg. But their article notes it’s “a decision with the potential to ground thousands of machines deployed by police and fire departments across the US.”
One person making the case against the drones is … ⌘ Read more
Google Launches CO2 Battery Plants for Long-Duration Storage of Renewable Energy
In July Google promised to scale the CO2 batteries of “Energy Dome” as a long-duration energy storage solution. Now IEEE Spectrum visits its first plant in Sardinia, where 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide power a turbine generating 20 MW over 10 hours — storing “large amounts of excess renewable energy until it’s … ⌘ Read more
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
Are ‘Geek Gifts’ Becoming Their Own Demographic?
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland wonders if “gifts for geeks” is the next big consumer demographic:
For this year’s holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game “Oregon Trail.” (“Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West … ⌘ Read more
‘Confused’ Waymos Stopped in Intersections During San Francisco Power Outage
“On Saturday, videos shared widely on social media showed Waymo vehicles stopped mid-intersection with hazard lights flashing, forcing other cars to maneuver around them,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Independent notes that “Without working traffic lights, the driverless cars were seemingly left confused, with m … ⌘ Read more
Indie Game Awards Disqualifies ‘Clair Obscur’ Over GenAI Usage
“Perhaps no group of fans, industry workers, and consumers is more intense about AI use than gamers….” writes New York magazine’s “Intelligencer” column:
Just this month, the latest Postal game was axed by its publisher, which was “overwhelmed with negative responses”
from the “concerned Postal community” after fans spotted
AI-generated material in … ⌘ Read more
MPV 0.41 Released With Wayland Improvements, Vulkan Hardware Decoding Preferred
MPV 0.41 is out today as the newest feature release for this MPlayer/mplayer2-derived open-source video player. With MPV 0.41 there is a big focus on improving Wayland support as well as now preferring Vulkan Video acceleration over alternative video decode APIs… ⌘ Read more
Package Forge: The Lesser Known Snap/Flatpak Alternative Without Distro Lock-In
An anonymous reader shared this report from the site It’s FOSS:
Linux gives you plenty of ways to install software: native distro packages, Flatpak, Snap, AppImage, source builds, even curl-piped installers. The catch is that each one solves a different problem, yet none of them fully eliminates the “works here, break … ⌘ 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
AMD ISP4 Linux Driver Patches Update Again For HP ZBook Ultra G1a, Future Ryzen Laptops
One of the features that sadly didn’t make it into the recent Linux 6.19 merge window was the long-awaited AMD ISP4 driver for supporting the web camera found with the high-end HP ZBook Ultra G1a and also expected to be used by future flagship AMD Ryzen laptops… ⌘ Read more
Will Work Change Over the Next 20 Years?
What is the future of work? The Wall Street Journal asked five workplace experts and practitioners.
So while AI “is already doing tasks once relegated to newly minted college graduates in many professions,” the Journal predicts that in the next 20 years AI “will have an impact on the role of managers, how organizations measure business outcomes and accelerate tasks that once took months.”
A sen … ⌘ Read more
FSF Says Nintendo’s New DRM Allows Them to Remotely Render User’s Device ‘Permanently Unusuable’
“In the lead up to its Switch 2 console release, Nintendo updated its user agreement,” writes the Free Software Foundation, warning that Nintendo now claims “broad authority to make consoles owned by its customers permanently unusable.”
“Under Nintendo’s most aggressive digital restric … ⌘ Read more
Trump Admin to Hire 1,000 for New ‘Tech Force’ to Build AI Infrastructure
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:
The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a new initiative dubbed the “U.S. Tech Force,” comprising about 1,000 engineers and other specialists who will work on artificial intelligence infrastructure and other technology projects throughout the federal government.
Participants wi … ⌘ Read more
Intel Prepares For KVM Guest VMs To Support Advanced Performance Extensions (APX)
Since Linux 6.16 the Intel APX support has been ready for the kernel infrastructure and goes along with the compiler toolchain support for Advanced Performance Extensions with the likes of GCC and LLVM/Clang. The latest element being worked on for APX enablement in the open-source/Linux world is for allowing KVM guest virtual machines (VMs) to make use of APX… ⌘ Read more
While Releasing ‘Avatar 3’, James Cameron Questions the Future of Movies
“If I get to do another Avatar film, it’ll be because the business model still works,” James Cameron tells CNN in a video interview — adding “That I can’t guarantee, as I sit here today. That’ll play out over the next month, really.” He says theatre is a “sacred space,” and while it will never go away, “I think that it could … ⌘ 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
WMI Marshalling Support For Linux Aims To Match Windows’ ACPI/WMI Handling
Open-source developer Armin Wolf has been working most recently on marshalling support for the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) platform code within the Linux kernel. This WMI marshalling support is to better match the behavior of Microsoft Windows’ WMI ACPI driver and ultimately to allow for better compatibility with some ACPI firmware and enhancing some WMI drivers… ⌘ Read more
Linux 6.19 Lands Fix For Seagate Barracuda HDD Taking Down The SATA Bus
It’s not often getting to talk about hard drives on Phoronix these days, but there’s an important fix merged to the Linux 6.19 kernel today ahead of Linux 6.19-rc2. If you happen to be using a Seagate ST2000DM008 Barracuda 2TB HDD, an important fix was merged to avoid it taking down the systems’ SATA bus and/or potentially other issues… ⌘ Read more
Darktable 5.4 RAW Photography Software Reaches Parity Between X11 & Wayland
Darktable 5.4 is out today as the newest feature release to this open-source RAW photography software. Besides improving camera support, UI enhancements, and more the Wayland support has been improved with Darktable. With today’s Darktable 5.4 release, the Wayland support should be on par with the X11 support… ⌘ Read more
Is America’s Tech Industry Already Facing a Recession?
America’s unemployment rate for tech jobs rose to 4% in November, and “has been steadily rising since May,” reports the Washington Post (citing data from the IT training/certifications company CompTIA).
Between October and November, the number of technology workers across different industries fell 134,000, while the number of people working in the tech industry decline … ⌘ Read more
Rust’s ‘Vision Doc’ Makes Recommendations to Help Keep Rust Growing
The team authoring the Rust 2025 Vision Doc interviewed Rust developers to find out what they liked about the language — and have now issued three recommendations “to help Rust continue to scale across domains and usage levels.”
— Enumerate and describe Rust’s design goals and integrate them into our processes, helping to ensure they … ⌘ Read more
Bell Labs ‘Unix’ Tape from 1974 Successfully Dumped to a Tarball
Archive.org now has a page with “the raw analog waveform and the reconstructed digital tape image (analog.tap), read at the Computer History Museum’s Shustek Research Archives on 19 December 2025 by Al Kossow using a modified tape reader and analyzed with Len Shustek’s readtape tool.” A Berlin-based retrocomputing enthusiast has created a page with … ⌘ 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
Does AI Really Make Coders Faster?
One developer tells MIT Technology Review that AI tools weaken the coding instincts he used to have. And beyond that, “It’s just not fun sitting there with my work being done for me.”
But is AI making coders faster? “After speaking to more than 30 developers, technology executives, analysts, and researchers, MIT Technology Review found that the picture is not as straightforward as it might seem…”
… ⌘ 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:
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
The phone situation
I need to write something about this or I’ll burst.
I have a new phone. It’s an old iPhone SE 2022. Yes, I know. Evil,
evil Apple. Won’t someone please think of the privacy issues? Right,
well, Apple has at least better reputation about these things than
Google does, but we’ll come to that.
It feels like I’m betraying the FLOSS cause. I feel horrible, although
probably not just because of this.
Let’s recap:
- My main phone has been a de-googled (not even microG) Fairphone 4
with CalyxOS. CalyxOS … ⌘ Read more
Parrot OS Switches to KDE Plasma Desktop
“Yet another distro is making the move to the KDE Plasma desktop,” writes Linux magazine.
“Parrot OS, a security-focused Linux distribution, is migrating from MATE to KDE Plasma, starting with version 7.0, now available in beta.”
Based on Debian 13, Parrot OS’s goal is a shift toward “modernization, focusing on clearing technical debt and future-proofing the system.” One big under-the-hood c … ⌘ Read more
Flock Executive Says Their Camera Helped Find Shooting Suspect, Addresses Privacy Concerns
During a search for the Brown shoogin suspect, a law enforcement press conference included a request for “Ring camera footage from residents and businesses near Brown University,” according to local news reports.
But in the end it was Flock cameras according to an article in Gizmodo, after a Redd … ⌘ 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
Military Satellites Now Maneuver, Watch Each Other, and Monitor Signals and Data
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post. (Alternate URL here):
The American patrol satellite had the targets in its sights: two recently launched Chinese spacecraft flying through one of the most sensitive neighborhoods in space. Like any good tactical fighter, the American spacecraft, known … ⌘ Read more
Arch Linux’s Main NVIDIA Driver Packages Now Using The Open Kernel Modules
With the Arch Linux packages for the NVIDIA official graphics driver moving to the now-stable NVIDIA 590 driver series that drops the GeForce GTX 900 and GTX 1000 series GPU support, Arch Linux users with those old Maxwell and Pascal graphics cards will need to transition to using the NVIDIA legacy driver packages from the Arch Linux AUR. Meanwhile for those on Turing and newer with the NVIDIA 590 driver will enjoy the open-source ke … ⌘ Read more
‘Subscription Captivity’: When Things You Buy Own You
A reporter at Mother Jones writes about a $169 alarm clock with special lighting and audio effects. But to use the features, “you need to pay an additional $4.99 per month, in perpetuity.”
“Welcome to the age of subscription captivity, where an increasing share of the things you pay for actually own you.”
What vexes me are the companies that sell physical products for a hef … ⌘ Read more
EV Battery-Swapping Startup That Raised $330 Million Files for Bankruptcy
In 2023 Slashdot covered a battery-swapping startup that promised to give EVs a full charge in about the same time it takes to fill a tank of gas.
They just filed for bankruptcy, reports Inc:
Ample was founded in 2014 with a goal of “solving slow charging times and infrastructure incompatibility” for commercial EV fleets su … ⌘ 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