‘Star Wars’ Boss Kathleen Kennedy Steps Down From Lucasfilm
After more than 13 years leading Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down. “When George Lucas asked me to take over Lucasfilm upon his retirement, I couldn’t have imagined what lay ahead,” said Kennedy. “It has been a true privilege to spend more than a decade working alongside the extraordinary talent at Lucasfilm.” The Associated Press reports … ⌘ Read more
Pentagon Device Linked To Havana Syndrome
“Since the United States reopened its embassy in Cuba in 2015, a number of personnel have reported a series of debilitating medical ailments which include dizziness, fatigue, problems with memory, and impaired vision,” writes longtime Slashdot reader smooth wombat. “For ten years, these sudden and unexplained onsets have been studied with no conclusive evidence one way or the other. Now comes … ⌘ Read more
Meta Closes Three VR Studios As Part of Its Metaverse Cuts
Meta is shutting down three acquired VR studios as part of Reality Labs layoffs and a strategic pivot away from VR content toward AI-powered smart glasses. UploadVR reports: Meta shut down Twisted Pixel Games (Deadpool VR), Sanzaru Games (Asgard’s Wrath), and Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR). […] Twisted Pixel Games was founded in 2006 and mostly ma … ⌘ Read more
Senate Passes a Bill That Would Let Nonconsensual Deepfake Victims Sue
The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act (DEFIANCE Act), giving victims of sexually explicit AI deepfakes the right to sue the individuals who created them. The Verge reports: The bill passed with unanimous consent – meaning there was no roll-call vote, and no Senator objected … ⌘ Read more
Global Tech-Sector Layoffs Surpass 244,000 In 2025
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: The global technology sector eliminated some 244,851 jobs in 2025, according to a report from RationalFX. The U.K.-based financial services company says the worldwide downsizing reflects how companies in 2025 restructured their operations to focus on efficiency, profitability, and AI-driven productivity. The RationalFX … ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.0 Released
BrianFagioli writes: Wine 11.0 has officially landed, wrapping up a year of development with more than 6,000 code changes and a broad set of upgrades that touch gaming, desktop behavior, and long-standing architectural work. The biggest milestone is the completion of the new WoW64 model, which is now considered fully supported and allows 32-bit and even 16-bit applications to run in a cleaner way inside 64-bit prefixes. Wine also gains s … ⌘ Read more
JPEG-XL Image Support Returns To Latest Chrome/Chromium Code
After widespread backlash over its 2022 decision to remove JPEG-XL support, Google has quietly restored the image format in the latest Chrome/Chromium codebase. Phoronix reports: Back in December they merged jxl-rs as a pure Rust-based JPEG-XL image decoder from the official libjxl organization. At the end of December they did more JPEG-XL plumbing with the en … ⌘ Read more
Apple Bundles Creative Apps Into a Single Subscription
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple today introduced a new Apple Creator Studio bundle that offers access to six creative apps, as well as exclusive AI features and content, as part of a single subscription. In the U.S., pricing is set at $12.99 per month or $129 per year. Here are the six apps included with an Apple Creator Studio subscription … ⌘ Read more
Taiwan Issues Arrest Warrant for OnePlus CEO for China Hires
Prosecutors in Taiwan issued an arrest warrant [non-paywalled source] for the chief executive officer of the Chinese smartphone company OnePlus, stepping up the island’s efforts to block China’s tech players from recruiting Taiwanese talent. From a report: The Shilin district prosecutors office issued the warrant for CEO and co-founder Pete Lau and indicted … ⌘ Read more
EV Roadside Repairs Easier Than Petrol or Diesel, New Data Suggests
Electric vehicles are more likely to be fixed at the roadside than petrol or diesel cars despite public fears to the contrary, according to new breakdown data from the AA. From a report: New research from Autotrader and the AA, carried out in December among more than 2,000 consumers, found 44% of respondents are concerned about the risk of b … ⌘ Read more
Apple: You (Still) Don’t Understand the Vision Pro
Analyst Ben Thompson, sharing the experience of watching an NBA game on the Vision Pro: When I started the broadcast [on Apple Vision Pro’s immersive view of the Bucks vs. Lakers NBA game] I had, surprise surprise, a studio show, specially tailored for the Apple Vision Pro. In other words, there was a dedicated camera, a dedicated presenter, a dedicated graphics team, etc. Th … ⌘ Read more
Mercedes Temporarily Scraps Its Level 3 ‘Eyes-off’ Driving Feature
Mercedes-Benz is pausing the roll-out of Drive Pilot, an “eyes off” conditionally automated driving feature that was available in Europe and the US. From a report: As first reported by German publication Handelsblatt, the revised S-Class will not have the Level 3 system when it arrives at the end of this month. Mercedes was one of the first auto … ⌘ Read more
Verizon To Stop Automatic Unlocking of Phones as FCC Ends 60-Day Unlock Rule
The Federal Communications Commission is letting Verizon lock phones to its network for longer periods, eliminating a requirement to unlock handsets 60 days after they are activated on its network. From a report: The change will make it harder for people to switch from Verizon to other carriers. The FCC today granted Verizon’s … ⌘ Read more
America’s Biggest Power Grid Operator Has an AI Problem - Too Many Data Centers
America’s largest power-grid operator, PJM, which delivers electricity to 67 million people across a 13-state region from New Jersey to Kentucky, is approaching a supply crisis as AI data centers in Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” consume electricity at an unprecedented rate.
The nonprofit expects demand … ⌘ Read more
Anthropic Invests $1.5 Million in the Python Software Foundation and Open Source Security
Python Software Foundation: We are thrilled to announce that Anthropic has entered into a two-year partnership with the Python Software Foundation (PSF) to contribute a landmark total of $1.5 million to support the foundation’s work, with an emphasis on Python ecosystem security. This investme … ⌘ Read more
Scott Adams, Creator of the ‘Dilbert’ Comic Strip, Dies at 68
Scott Adams, who kept cubicle denizens laughing for more than three decades with Dilbert, the bitingly funny comic strip that poked fun at the absurdity of corporate life, died Tuesday. He was 68. From a report: His death was tearfully revealed by his first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, at the start of Real Coffee With Scott Adams. In May, he said on the podcast … ⌘ Read more
JPMorgan Warns 10% Credit Card Rate Cap Would Backfire on Consumers and Economy
JPMorgan Chase’s chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum pushed back hard on Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s proposed 10% cap on credit card interest rates, calling the measure “very bad for consumers” and “very bad for the economy” during a call with reporters.
The proposed one-year cap, which Trump has said he wan … ⌘ Read more
Signal Creator Marlinspike Wants To Do For AI What He Did For Messaging
Moxie Marlinspike, the engineer who created Signal Messenger and set a new standard for private communications, is now trialing Confer, an open source AI assistant designed to make user data unreadable to platform operators, hackers, and law enforcement alike. Confer relies on two core technologies: passkeys that generate a 32-byte encry … ⌘ Read more
Debian Libre Live 13.3 Images Released For Avoiding Non-Free Firmware
Building off this past weekend’s Debian 13.3 release is now Debian Libre Live 13.3 images for this derivative that ships the install/live media without any of the non-free firmware assets to remain a free software blessed image… ⌘ Read more
Meta Begins Job Cuts as It Shifts From Metaverse to AI Devices
Meta has begun laying off more than 1,000 employees from its Reality Labs division as the company redirects resources away from virtual reality and metaverse products toward AI wearables and smartphone features. The cuts amount to roughly 10% of Reality Labs’ 15,000-person workforce, according to an internal post from CTO Andrew Bosworth reviewed by … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Pledges Full Power Costs, No Tax Breaks in Response To AI Data Center Backlash
Microsoft announced Tuesday what it calls a “community first” initiative for its AI data centers, pledging to pay full electricity costs and reject local property tax breaks following months of growing opposition from residents facing higher power bills. The announcement in Washington, D.C. marks a clea … ⌘ Read more
Trump Says Microsoft To Make Changes To Curb Data Center Power Costs For Americans
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Monday that Microsoft will announce changes to ensure that Americans won’t see rising utility bills as the company builds more data centers to meet rising artificial intelligence demand. “I never want Americ … ⌘ Read more
Researchers Beam Power From a Moving Airplane
Researchers from the startup Overview Energy have successfully demonstrated beaming power from a moving airplane to the ground using near-infrared light. It marks the first step toward space-based solar power satellites that could someday transmit energy from orbit to existing solar farms on Earth. IEEE Spectrum reports: Overview’s test transferred only a sprinkling of power, but it … ⌘ Read more
You Can Now Reserve a Hotel Room On the Moon For $250,000
A newly founded startup called GRU Space is taking deposits of up to $1 million to eventually build inflatable hotels on the Moon. The bet is that space needs destinations, not just rockets, even if the first customers are essentially early adopters of sci-fi optimism. Ars Technica reports: It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late Dec … ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.0 Planned For Release Tomorrow With NTSync Support, Better WoW64
Wine project leader Alexandre Julliard relayed on the mailing list today that the plan is to release Wine 11.0 stable tomorrow, 13 January… ⌘ Read more
Debian 13.3 Released With Many Security & Bug Fixes
Debian 13.3 is out today as the newest stable point release for Debian Trixie… ⌘ Read more
TrixiePup64 2601 Released For Debian 13 Powered Puppy Linux In Wayland & X11 Flavors
For those with fond memories of Puppy Linux as a very lightweight Linux distribution, released last month was a new TrixiePup64 for continuing the Puppy Linux spirit atop Debian. The new TrixiePup64 is based on Debian 13 components while shipping in both X11 and Wayland flavors. Out now is TrixiePup64 2601 as the latest iteration of this lightweight Linux distribution… ⌘ Read more
Linux’s Hung Task Detector Will Be Able To Be Reset For Easing System Administration
Worked on back in 2024 for the Linux kernel was a built-in counter to keep track of the number of hung tasks since boot. That feature for keeping track of the number of hung tasks since boot was merged in Linux 6.13 and exposed via /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_detect_count. For helping ease use around it, new code working its way to the kernel will allow resetting that “hung_task_detect_count” counter… ⌘ Read more
Devuan 6.1 Released For Latest Debian 13 “Init Freedom” Without systemd
Released back in November was Devuan 6.0 for Debian 13 without systemd dependence in order to provide “init freedom” with letting users instead opt for SysVinit, OpenRC, or Runit as the init system. Devuan 6.1 is out today as the newest stable point release… ⌘ Read more
OpenCV 4.13 Brings More AVX-512 Usage, CUDA 13 Support, Many Other New Features
OpenCV 4.13 is out this New Year’s Eve in providing the latest open-source computer vision (CV) capabilities. OpenCV 4.13 brings a wide variety of enhancements to this widely-used computer vision library… ⌘ Read more
44% Of GNOME Core Apps Are Written In C, 13% In JavaScript & 10% In Rust
GNOME developer Sophie Herold has shared some interesting end-of-year code stats for the GNOME project. The “GNOME” codebase is up to 6,692,516 lines of code at the end of 2025 with 1,611,526 lines of that being from GNOME apps. Where the data gets interesting is on the programming language breakdown in different areas… ⌘ Read more
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
Open-Source Linux Driver Christmas Surprise For 20~23 Year Old Radeon GPUs
If Linux 6.19 switching from the Radeon legacy to AMDGPU kernel drivers for the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs for those ~13 year old GPUs isn’t nostalgic enough for you, here’s something a bit more nostalgic this holiday season: fresh open-source driver commits to the Radeon R300g driver for supporting those 23 year old ATI R300 GPUs up through the 20 year old R500 class graphics processors… ⌘ Read more
Intel Linux Driver Preps For Up To 13 Different Panther Lake H SoCs
It looks like the upcoming Intel Panther Lake H SoCs for the next-gen premium/high-end performance laptop market there could be quite a few different SKUs. A new patch for an Intel open-source driver expands the Panther Lake H line-up from three to 13 different IDs… ⌘ Read more
#ptpol #debates #presidenciais
1 - diferenças - UE, diz JP, pondo #CMartins à defesa. CM mostra como eles estão em concordo: quem Europa mas são críticos em termos ou decisões específicos. JP tenta dizer que há uma diferença, mas não se vê diferença nenhuma (e CM tb diz queque se calhar até nem há insana diferença aqui). Comunidade Europeia de Defesa? Não, nem nisso há diferença.
2 - voto útil - ambos acham importante um presidente de esquerda, e são contra o voto útil porque acham Seguro um mau candidato. Estão de acordo.
3 - presidente mais interventivo - é importante, ambos estão de acordo.
“Tecnologia para emancipar”
Considerações pessoais - tristeza de debate, o jornalista perde tempo a tentar atacar estas candidaturas mas não tem tempo para os fazer mostrar diferenças. A única diferença aparente é que o #JPinto diz que eles têm uma visão diferente da Europa ainda que olha-se na prática e afinal não. 27 minutos de debate: com 13 minutos para cada lado o jornalista diz obrigado e boa noite, e fica-se por aqui. Um dos debates mais importantes para ajudar na decisão de voto a eleitores que poderão estar com dúvidas ente estes dois… desperdiçado. Até parece que o jornalista quer convencer que entre estes dois ele preferia um terceiro com o voto útil…
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
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
Intel’s Linux NPU User-Space Driver Adds Panther Lake Support
Since late 2024 Intel has been working on 5th Gen NPU support for their Linux IVPU driver. That 5th Gen NPU support for Intel Core Ultra “Panther Lake” SoCs was upstreamed back in Linux 6.13. Now today the Intel Linux NPU user-space driver has seen its official support added for Panther Lake… ⌘ Read more
MidnightBSD 4.0 Brings Many Changes To This FreeBSD 13 Derived OS
While FreeBSD 15 stable was officially released earlier this month, MidnightBSD continues plotting its own course atop its FreeBSD 13 base. Out today is MidnightBSD 4.0 as the latest iteration of this desktop-minded BSD operating system… ⌘ Read more
Podcast Industry Under Siege as AI Bot Flood Airways with Thousands of Programs
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times:
Popular podcast host Steven Bartlett has used an AI clone to launch a new kind of content aimed at the 13 million followers of his podcast “Diary of a CEO.” On YouTube, his clone narrates “100 CEOs With Steven Bartlett,” which adds AI-generated animation … ⌘ Read more
America Adds 11.7 GW of New Solar Capacity in Q3 - Third Largest Quarter on Record
America’s solar industry “just delivered another huge quarter,” reports Electrek, “installing 11.7 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in Q3 2025. That makes it the third-largest quarter on record and pushes total solar additions this year past 30 GW…”
According to the new “US Solar Market Insight Q4 2025” rep … ⌘ Read more
Trump Ban on Wind Energy Permits ‘Unlawful’, Court Rules
A January order blocking wind energy projects in America has now been vacated by a U.S. judge and declared unlawful, reports the Associated Press:
[Judge Saris of the U.S. district court for the district of Massachusetts] ruled in favor of a coalition of state attorneys general from 17 states and Washington DC, led by Letitia James, New York’s attorney gener … ⌘ Read more
Applets Are Officially Going, But Java In the Browser Is Better Than Ever
“The entire java.applet package has been removed from JDK 26, which will release in March 2026,” notes Inside Java.
But long-time Slashdot reader AirHog links to this blog post reminding us that
“Applets Are Officially Gone, But Java In The Browser Is Better Than Ever.”
This brings to an official end the era of applets, w … ⌘ 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
Firefox Survey Finds Only 16% Feel In Control of Their Privacy Choices Online
Choosing your browser “is one of the most important digital decisions you can make, shaping how you experience the web, protect your data, and express yourself online,” says the Firefox blog. They’ve urged readers to “take a stand for independence and control in your digital life.”
But they also recently polled 8,000 adu … ⌘ Read more
The World’s Electric Car Sales Have Spiked 21% So Far in 2025
Electrek reports:
EV and battery supply chain research specialists Benchmark Mineral Intelligence reports that 2.0 million electric vehicles were sold globally in November 2025, bringing global EV sales to 18.5 million units year-to-date. That’s a 21% increase compared to the same period in 2024.
Europe was the clear growth leader in November, whil … ⌘ Read more
How a 23-Year-Old in 1975 Built the World’s First Handheld Digital Camera
In 1975, 23-year-old electrical engineer Steve Sasson joined Kodak. And in a new interview with the BBC, he remembers that he’d found the whole photographic process “really annoying…. I wanted to build a camera with no moving parts. Now that was just to annoy the mechanical engineers…”
“You take your picture, you have to … ⌘ Read more
More of America’s Coal-Fired Power Plants Cease Operations
New England’s last coal-fired power plant “has ceased operations three years ahead of its planned retirement date,” reports the New Hampshire Bulletin.
“The closure of the New Hampshire facility paves the way for its owner to press ahead with an initiative to transform the site into a clean energy complex including solar panels and battery storage system … ⌘ Read more
Rust in Linux’s Kernel ‘is No Longer Experimental’
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols files this report from Tokyo:
At the invitation-only Linux
Kernel Maintainers Summit here, the top Linux maintainers decided, as Jonathan Corbet, Linux kernel developer, put it, “The consensus among the assembled developers is that Rust
in the kernel is no longer experimental — it is now a core part
of the kernel and is here to stay. So the ‘experim … ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu Studio 26.04 May Modernize Its Desktop Layout
Ubuntu Studio is the variant of Ubuntu Linux focused on content creation and audio recording needs, video editing, and other creative workloads. Ubuntu Studio’s desktop hasn’t seen too many changes since Ubuntu 12.04 LTS some 13+ years ago. But Ubuntu Studio developers are now considering desktop layout changes to help modernize its appearance… ⌘ Read more