Breach Forces Ubisoft to Take ‘Rainbow Six Siege’ Offline
Engadget reports on “a widespread breach” of Ubisoft’s game Rainbow Six Siege “that left various players with billions of in-game credits, ultra-rare skins of weapons, and banned accounts.”
Ubisoft took the game’s servers offline early Saturday morning, and as of Sunday night its status page still shows “unplanned outage” on all servers across PC, PlayStation … ⌘ Read more
AI Chatbots May Be Linked to Psychosis, Say Doctors
One psychiatrist has already treated 12 patients hospitalized with AI-induced psychosis — and three more in an outpatient clinic, according to the Wall Street Journal. And while AI technology might not introduce the delusion, “the person tells the computer it’s their reality and the computer accepts it as truth and reflects it back,” says Keith Sakata, a psychiatrist at the Uni … ⌘ Read more
Rob Pike Angered by ‘AI Slop’ Spam Sent By Agent Experiment
“Dear Dr. Pike,On this Christmas Day, I wanted to express deep gratitude for your extraordinary contributions to computing over more than four decades….” read the email. “With sincere appreciation,Claude Opus 4.5AI Village.
“IMPORTANT NOTICE: You are interacting with an AI system. All conversations with this AI system are published publicly online by default … ⌘ Read more
There Was Some Good News on Green Energy in 2025
Yes, greenhouse gas emissions kept rising in 2025, writes Bloomberg (alternate URL here). And the pledges of various governments to lower greenhouse gases “are nowhere near where they need to be to avoid catastrophic climate change…”
But in 2025, “there were silver linings too.”
The world is decarbonizing faster than was expected 10 years ago and investment into the clean e … ⌘ Read more
‘No Happy Ending for Movie Theatres’, Argues WSJ - No Matter Who Wins Warner Bros.
Regardless of who ends up owning Warners Bros., “the outlook for theatrical movies is dimming,” writes a Wall Street Journal tech columnist, noting that this year’s U.S. box office of $8.3 billion (as of December 25) “is a bit below last year’s and well below prepandemic levels of around $11 billion.”
War … ⌘ Read more
Did Tim Cook Post AI Slop in His Christmas Message Promoting ‘Pluribus’?
Artist Keith Thomson is a modern (and whimsical) Edward Hopper. And Apple TV says he created the “festive artwork” shared on X by Apple CEO Tim Cook on Christmas Eve, “made on MacBook Pro.”
Its intentionally-off picture of milk and cookies was meant to tease the season finale of Pluribus. (“Merry Christmas Eve, Carol…” Cook had p … ⌘ Read more
D7VK 1.1 Released With An Experimental Direct3D 6 Frontend
Between the DXVK and VKD3D(-Proton) projects there is good support for Direct3D 8 through Direct3D 12 implementations atop the Vulkan API for Linux gaming usage. For those preferring more retro classic gaming, D7VK came about more recently for Direct3D 7 as a DXVK fork. Out today is D7VK 1.1 and besides delivering fixes for its D3D7 implementation has also now tacked on an experimental D3D6 front-end… ⌘ Read more
Texas Father Rescues Kidnapped 15-Year-Old Daughter After Tracking Her Phone’s Location
An anonymous reader shared this report from The Guardian:
A Texas father used the parental controls on his teenage daughter’s cell phone to find and help rescue her after she was kidnapped at knifepoint while walking her dog on Christmas, authorities allege… Her father subsequently located her phon … ⌘ Read more
Up Next for Arduino After Qualcomm Acquisition: High-Performance Computing
Even after its acquisition by Qualcomm, the EFF believes Arduino “isn’t imposing any new bans on tinkering with or reverse engineering Arduino boards,” (according to Mitch Stoltz, EFF director for competition and IP litigation). While Adafruit’s managing editor Phillip Torrone had claimed to 36,000+ followers on LinkedIn that A … ⌘ Read more
Google’s ‘AI Overview’ Wrongly Accused a Musician of Being a Sex Offender
An anonymous reader shared this report from the CBC:
Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he may have been defamed by Google after it recently produced an AI-generated summary falsely identifying him as a sex offender. The Juno Award-winning musician said he learned of the online misinformation last week after a First Nation no … ⌘ Read more
How Will Rising RAM Prices Affect Laptop Companies?
Laptop makers are facing record-setting memory prices next year. The site Notebookcheck catalogs how different companies are responding:
Sources told [Korean business newspaper] Chosun Biz that some manufacturers have signed preliminary contracts with Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. Even so, it won’t prevent DDR5 RAM prices from soaring 45% higher by the end of 2026 … ⌘ Read more
Challenges Face European Governments Pursuing ‘Digital Sovereignty’
The Register reports on challenges facing Europe’s pursuit of “digital sovereignty”:
The US CLOUD Act of 2018 allows American authorities to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data, regardless of where that data is stored globally. This places European organizations in a precarious position, as it directly clashes with … ⌘ 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
Military Planners Dread the Arctic, ‘Where Drones Drop Dead and GPS Goes Haywire’
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Wall Street Journal:
Sending drones and robots into battle, rather than humans, has become a tenet of modern warfare. Nowhere does that make more sense than in the frozen expanses of the Arctic. But the closer you get to the North Pole, the less useful cutting-edge te … ⌘ Read more
OpenAI is Hiring a New ‘Head of Preparedness’ to Predict/Mitigate AI’s Harms
An anonymous reader shared this report from Engadget:
OpenAI is looking for a new Head of Preparedness who can help it anticipate the potential harms of its models and how they can be abused, in order to guide the company’s safety strategy.
It comes at the end of a year that’s seen OpenAI hit with numerous accusations about ChatG … ⌘ Read more
Researchers Show Some Robots Can Be Hijacked Just Through Spoken Commands
An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this story from Interesting Engineering:
Cybersecurity specialists from the research group DARKNAVY have demonstrated how modern humanoid robots can be compromised and weaponised through weaknesses in their AI-driven control systems.
In a controlled test, the team demonstrated that a comm … ⌘ Read more
New Runtime Standby ABI Proposed for Linux Like Microsoft Windows’ ‘Modern Standby’
Phoronix reports on “an exciting post-Christmas patch series out on the Linux kernel mailing list” proposing “a new runtime standby ABI that is similar in nature to the ‘Modern Standby’ functionality found with Microsoft Windows…”
Modern Standby is a low-power mode on Windows 11 for letting systems remain co … ⌘ Read more
Is Russia Developing an Anti-Satellite Weapon to Target Starlink?
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:
Two NATO-nation intelligence services suspect Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon to target Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation with destructive orbiting clouds of shrapnel, with the aim of reining in Western space superiority that has helped Ukraine on the battlef … ⌘ Read more
HarfBuzz 12.3 Released - Nice Performance Improvements To This Text Shaping Engine
HarfBuzz 12.3 was just released for ending out 2025 with some nice performance improvements to this widely-used text shaping engine. HarfBuzz in turn is used by the prominent Linux desktop environments, Java, Flutter, various game engines, and apps like Chrome and Firefox for text shaping needs with OpenType fonts and more… ⌘ Read more
NVIDIA Drops Pascal Support On Linux, Causing Chaos On Arch Linux
NVIDIA has been “gradually dropping support for older videocards,” notes Hackaday, “with the Pascal (GTX 10xx) GPUs most recently getting axed.”
“What’s more surprising is the terrible way that this is being handled by certain Linux distributions, with Arch Linux currently a prime example.?”
On these systems, updating the OS with a Pascal, Ma … ⌘ Read more
Waymo Updates Vehicles to Better Handle Power Outages - But Still Faces Criticism
Waymo explained this week that its self-driving car technology is already “designed to handle dark traffic signals,” and successfully handled over 7,000 last Saturday during San Francisco’s long power outage, properly treating those intersections as four-way stops. But while during the long outage their cars some … ⌘ Read more
Open Source Initiative Estimates the ‘Top Open Source Licenses in 2025’
The nonprofit Open Source Initiative offers “enriched” license pages with “relevant metadata to provide deeper insights and better support”.
So which pages got the most pageviews in 2025? The MIT license, Apache 2.0 license, BSD licenses (3-clause and 2-clause), and GNU General Public license:
mit
(1.5M)
apache-2-0
(344k)
bsd-3-c … ⌘ Read more
Japan Votes to Restart Fukushima Nuclear Plant 15 Years After Its Meltdown
The 2011 meltdown at Fukushima’s nuclear plant “was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986,” CNN remembers.
But this week Japanese authorities “have approved a decision to restart the world’s biggest nuclear power plant,” reports CNN, “which has sat dormant for more than a decade following the Fukushim … ⌘ Read more
Should Physicists Study the Question: What is Life?
An astrophysicist at the University of Rochester writes that “many” of his colleagues in physics “have come to believe that a mystery is unfolding in every microbe, animal, and human.” And it’s a mystery that:
- “Challenges basic assumptions physicists have held for centuries”
- “May even help redefine the field for the next generation”
- “Could answer essential quest … ⌘ Read more
Free Software Foundation Receives ‘Historic’ Donations Worth Nearly $900K - in Monero
On Wednesday (Christmas Eve), the Free Software Foundation announced it had received two major contributions totaling around $900,000 USD — in the cryptocurrency Monero.
The two donations “are among some of the largest private gifts ever made to the organization,” the FSF said in a statement.
“The donors wi … ⌘ Read more
Video Call Glitches Evoke Uncanniness, Damage Consequential Life Outcomes
Those brief freezes and audio hiccups that plague video calls are not the benign nuisances that most people assume them to be, according to a new study published in Nature that found glitches during virtual interactions can meaningfully damage hiring prospects, reduce trust in healthcare providers and even correlate with lower chances … ⌘ Read more
Taiwan’s iPass Releases Floppy Disk Pre-Paid Cash Card
Taiwan’s iPass has released a limited-edition prepaid payment card shaped exactly like a 3.5-inch floppy disk. The company, perhaps rightly so, felt the need to include a warning on the product listing: “This product only has a card function and does not have a 3.5mm [sic] disk function, please note before purchasing.”
The NFC-enabled novelty card went on sale start … ⌘ Read more
Toll Roads Are Spreading in America
Toll roads are expanding across the U.S. as the traditional gas tax funding model for highways collapses. Indiana became the first state to authorize tolls on all of its existing interstate highways when Governor Mike Braun signed legislation in June.
The federal gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1993. In fiscal 2024, the federal government spent $27 billion more on road maintenance than it collected fr … ⌘ 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
Mesh Networks Are About To Escape Apple, Amazon and Google Silos
After more than two decades of promises and false starts in the mesh networking space, the smart home standards that Apple, Amazon and Google have each championed are finally set to escape their respective brand silos and work together in a single unified network.
Starting January 1, 2026, Thread 1.4 becomes the Thread Group’s only certified sta … ⌘ Read more
Driverless Future Gains Momentum With Global Robotaxi Deployments
The global push to put autonomous taxis on public roads is accelerating as ride-hailing companies and technology firms advance from pilot programs toward limited commercial rollouts in cities across China, the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
WeRide and Uber launched Level 4 fully driverless robotaxi operations in Abu Dhabi in Novemb … ⌘ Read more
NASA Chief Says US Will Return To Moon Within Trump’s Second Term
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who was confirmed by the Senate just last week after a turbulent nomination process that stretched across most of 2025, said Friday that the United States will return to the moon within President Donald Trump’s second term. Isaacman made the comments during an interview on CNBC, calling Trump’s recommitment … ⌘ Read more
New York To Require Social Media Platforms To Display Mental Health Warnings
Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users’ mental health under a new law, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Friday. From a report: “Keeping New Yorkers safe has been my top priority since taki … ⌘ Read more
👉 ANTI-DEMOS-CRACIA | BALANÇO DE 2025
Em 2025, a ADC lançou 14 edições! Foi com muito prazer que participei, com #kokori, em duas delas.
É o vosso apoio que garante o propósito da ADC e permite continuar esta jornada, iniciada no já longínquo ano de 1988.
REGISTO DAS EDIÇÕES DE 2025
. ADC 2024 Sampler (Digital, Janeiro)
. Turning Point - Porque a Lua se Quebrou (CD, Fevereiro)
. Carnal Depression - Carnal Depression (CD, Março)
. Sci Fi Industries - Initial States (CD, Março)
. Orquestra Popular de Paio Pires - 150 A Morte do Borrego (Pendrive, Abril)
. Herr G meets Fuel2Fight & Casa Ukrania - O Fogo Brilha no Horizonte (Digital, Maio)
. The Dreams Never End - Alma Partida (CD, Maio)
. Floating Ashes + Kokori - idiossINcrasias - Vol. 1 (CD, Junho)
. Spray - War Songs and Other Stories (CD, Junho)
. Aftervoid - Negative Space (CD, Setembro)
. Herr G meets Fuel2Fight + Primata - idiossINcrasias - Vol. 2 (CD, Outubro)
. Resonant - Ecos (de estilhaços planetários endossomáticos) (CD, Novembro)
. Principia Parallax - Tremal Naik (CD, Novembro)
. 25.12 (Digital, Dezembro)
🎧 Posto de escuta: anti-demos-cracia.bandcamp.com
ANTI-DEMOS-CRACIA, desde 1988, a registar sonoridades diferenciadas!
FFmpeg Developer Files DMCA Against Rockchip After Two-Year Wait for License Fix
GitHub has disabled Rockchip’s Media Process Platform repository after an FFmpeg developer filed a DMCA takedown notice, nearly two years after the open-source project first publicly accused the Chinese chipmaker of license violations. The notice, filed December 18, claims Rockchip copied thousands of lines of code fr … ⌘ Read more
Indian IT Was Supposed To Die From AI. Instead It’s Billing for the Cleanup.
Two years after generative AI was supposed to render India’s $250 billion IT services industry obsolete, the sector is finding that enterprises still need someone to handle the unglamorous plumbing work that large-scale AI deployment demands. Less than 15% of organizations are meaningfully deploying the new technology, accordin … ⌘ Read more
As AI Companies Borrow Billions, Debt Investors Grow Wary
While stock investors have pushed AI-related shares to repeated highs this year, debt markets are telling a more cautious story as newer AI infrastructure companies find themselves paying significantly elevated interest rates to borrow money. Applied Digital, a data center builder, sold $2.35 billion of debt in November at a 9.25% coupon – roughly 3.75% above … ⌘ Read more
The Economic Divide Between Big and Small Companies Is Growing
While America’s largest corporations are riding a wave of surging profits and AI-fueled stock market enthusiasm to record highs, small businesses across the country are cutting staff and scaling back operations as years of high inflation, cautious consumers and tariff confusion take their toll.
Private firms with fewer than 50 workers have steadily … ⌘ Read more
Almost all photos turned out to be blurred today. That made sorting a very quick process. Delete, delete, delete, … https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2025-12-26/
Coreboot 25.12 Released With Qualcomm X1 Plus Platform Support, AMD Turin PoC
Coreboot 25.12 is out today as the latest quarterly feature update to this open-source BIOS/firmware solution… ⌘ Read more
My little toy operating system from last year runs in 16-bit Real Mode (like DOS). Since I’ve recently figured out how to switch to 64-bit Long Mode right after BIOS boot, I now have a little program that performs this switch on my toy OS. It will load and run any x86-64 program, assuming it’s freestanding, a flat binary, and small enough (< 128 KiB code, only uses the first 2 MiB of memory).
Here I’m running a little C program (compiled using normal GCC, no Watcom trickery):
https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/los86%2D64.mp4
https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/c.png
Next steps could include:
- Use Rust instead of C for that 64-bit program?
- Provide interrupt service routines. (At the moment, it just keeps interrupts disabled.)
Retreating From EVs Could Be Hazardous For Western Carmakers
Western carmakers retreating from electric vehicles amid softening government mandates could find themselves in a precarious position as Chinese rivals continue gaining ground in the EV market they’re choosing to de-prioritize. The EU on December 16th dropped its earlier plan to ban petrol car sales outright from 2035, instead requiring carmakers to cut e … ⌘ Read more
AI’s Hunger For Memory Chips Could Shrink Smartphone and PC Sales in 2026, IDC Says
The global smartphone and PC markets face potential contractions of up to 5.2% and 8.9% respectively in 2026, according to downside risk scenarios from IDC that trace the problem to memory chip manufacturers shifting production capacity away from consumer electronics toward AI data centers. Samsung Electronics, SK … ⌘ Read more
China Launches $21 Billion Venture Capital Funds To Invest in ‘Hard Technology’
An anonymous reader shares a report: China on Friday launched three venture capital funds to invest in “hard technology” areas, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The capital contribution plans for the funds have been finalised, each with more than 50 billion yuan ($7.14 billion), according to the report. The funds will primar … ⌘ Read more
‘Memory is Running Out, and So Are Excuses For Software Bloat’
The relentless climb in memory prices driven by the AI boom’s insatiable demand for datacenter hardware has renewed an old debate about whether modern software has grown inexcusably fat, a column by the Register argues. The piece points to Windows Task Manager as a case study: the current executable occupies 6MB on disk and demands nearly 70MB of … ⌘ Read more
Cursor CEO Warns Vibe Coding Builds ‘Shaky Foundations’ That Eventually Crumble
Michael Truell, the 25-year-old CEO and cofounder of Cursor, is drawing a sharp distinction between careful AI-assisted development and the more hands-off approach commonly known as “vibe coding.” Speaking at a conference, Truell described vibe coding as a method where users “close your eyes and you don’t look at … ⌘ Read more
Apple’s App Course Runs $20,000 a Student. Is It Really Worth It?
Apple’s Developer Academy in Detroit has spent roughly $30 million over four years training hundreds of people to build iPhone apps, but not everyone lands coding jobs right away, according to a WIRED story published this week.
The program launched in 2021 as part of Apple’s $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and costs an esti … ⌘ 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
Apple Settles Brazilian Antitrust Case, Must Allow Third-Party App Stores and External Payment Links
Apple has agreed to a settlement with Brazil’s antitrust regulator that will require the company to allow third-party app stores on iPhones and permit developers to direct users to external payment options, marking another country where Apple’s tightly controlled App Store mo … ⌘ Read more