Tony Hoare, Turing Award-Winning Computer Scientist Behind QuickSort, Dies At 92
Tony Hoare, the Turing Award-winning pioneer who created the Quicksort algorithm, developed Hoare logic, and advanced theories of concurrency and structured programming, has died at age 92.
News of his passing was shared today in a blog post. The site I Programmer also commemorated Hoare in a post highlighting … ⌘ Read more
Intel Demos Chip To Compute With Encrypted Data
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Worried that your latest ask to a cloud-based AI reveals a bit too much about you? Want to know your genetic risk of disease without revealing it to the services that compute the answer? There is a way to do computing on encrypted data without ever having it decrypted. It’s called fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE. But ther … ⌘ Read more
Silicon Valley Is Buzzing About This New Idea: AI Compute As Compensation
sziring shares a report from Business Insider: Silicon Valley has long competed for talent with ever-richer pay packages built around salary, bonus, and equity. Now, a fourth line item is creeping into the mix: AI inference. As generative AI tools become embedded in software development, the cost of running the underlying models - … ⌘ Read more
Six of my last eight posts were about twtxt itself. As much as it’s understandable between all the excitement and confusion with finding out and using a new technology, I really don’t want this feed to become something like this:
(source) PS: I just noticed that by making this meta-rant I’m talking about not talking about *twtxt*!How AI Assistants Are Moving the Security Goalposts
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: AI-based assistants or “agents” – autonomous programs that have access to the user’s computer, files, online services and can automate virtually any task – are growing in popularity with developers and IT workers. But as so many eyebrow-raising headlines over the past few weeks have shown, these powerful and assert … ⌘ Read more
Qualcomm’s New Arduino Ventuno Q Is an AI-Focused Computer Designed For Robotics
Qualcomm and Arduino have unveiled the Arduino Ventuno Q, a new AI-focused single-board computer built for robotics and edge systems. Engadget reports: Called the Arduino Ventuno Q, it uses Qualcomm’s Dragonwing IQ8 processor along with a dedicated STM32H5 low-latency microcontroller (MCU). “Ventuno Q is enginee … ⌘ Read more
Judges Find AI Doesn’t Have Human Intelligence in Two New Court Cases
Within the last month two U.S> judges have effectively declared AI bots are not human, writes Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik:
On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to take up a lawsuit in which artist and computer scientist Stephen Thaler tried to copyright an artwork that he acknowledged had been created by an AI bot of his … ⌘ Read more
China Releases First Homegrown Quantum Computing OS
The Global Times reports: China’s first domestically developed quantum computer operating system, Origin Pilot, has been made available for online download, the Global Times learned from the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center on Wednesday. A Chinese scientist said while several quantum computing operating system efforts are underway worldwide, this is the … ⌘ Read more
Trump Administration Says It Can’t Process Tariff Refunds Because of Computer Problems
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a filing on Friday that it currently cannot process billions in tariff refunds because its import-processing system is “not well suited to a task of this scale.” The Verge reports: The CBP’s admission comes after the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs im … ⌘ Read more
Vulkan 1.4.345 Released With New ARM Shader Instrumentation Extension
Vulkan 1.4.345 released overnight as the latest routine spec update to this graphics and compute API. There is one new extension besides a handful of different clarifications and corrections to various elements of the spec… ⌘ Read more
Computer Scientists Caution Against Internet Age-Verification Mandates
fjo3 shares a report from Reason Magazine: Effective January 1, 2027, providers of computer operating systems in California will be required to implement age verification. That’s just part of a wave of state and national laws attempting to limit children’s access to potentially risky content without considering the perils such laws the … ⌘ Read more
Intel Rendering Toolkit & OpenVINO AI GPU Performance On Intel Panther Lake’s Xe3 B390
Over the past month I have been running a lot of Linux benchmarks on Intel’s new Panther Lake using the Core Ultra X7 358H and its Xe3-based Arc B390 Graphics. The Arc B390 on Linux has been quite interesting with its OpenGL and Vulkan graphics performance compared to prior generations of Intel graphics plus the Intel Compute Runtime / OpenCL performance too. In today’s article are more benchmarks of the latter in looking a … ⌘ Read more
AI-Generated Art Can’t Be Copyrighted After Supreme Court Declines To Review the Rule
The Supreme Court of the United States declined to review a case challenging the U.S. Copyright Office’s stance that AI-generated works lack the required human authorship for copyright protection, leaving lower court rulings intact. The Verge reports: The Monday decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a comput … ⌘ Read more
AMD Makes rocprof-trace-decoder Open-Source
AMD open-sourced the ROCprof Trace Decoder “rocprof-trace-decoder”, a tool useful for developers targeting the AMD GPU compute stack… ⌘ Read more
AMD Announces Ryzen AI PRO 400 Series Desktop CPUs For AI-Focused Computing
AMD is using Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week to announce new Ryzen AI PRO 400 Series products, including Ryzen AI PRO 400 desktop processors… ⌘ Read more
Google Quantum-Proofs HTTPS
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google on Friday unveiled its plan for its Chrome browser to secure HTTPS certificates against quantum computer attacks without breaking the Internet. The objective is a tall order. The quantum-resistant cryptographic data needed to transparently publish TLS certificates is roughly 40 times bigger than the classical cryptographic material used today. Today’s X.509 c … ⌘ Read more
Human Brain Cells On a Chip Learned To Play Doom In a Week
Researchers at Cortical Labs used living human neurons grown on a chip to learn how to play Doom in about a week. “While its performance is not up to par with humans, experts say it brings biological computers a step closer to useful real-world applications, like controlling robot arms,” reports New Scientist. From the report: In 2021, the Australian compan … ⌘ Read more
Perplexity Announces ‘Computer,’ an AI Agent That Assigns Work To Other AI Agent
joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Perplexity has introduced “Computer,” a new tool that allows users to assign tasks and see them carried out by a system that coordinates multiple agents running various models. The company claims that Computer, currently available to Perplexity Max subscribers, is “a system that … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft: Computer Programming Is Dying, Long Live AI Literacy
theodp writes: On Tuesday, Microsoft GM of Education and Workforce Policy (and former Code.org Chief Academic Officer) Pat Yongpradit posted an obituary of sorts for coders. “Computer programmers and software developers are codified differently in the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] data,” Yongpradit wrote. “The modern AI-infused world needs less … ⌘ Read more
@kingdomcome@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Oh, that brings back memories! I’ve played minetest one and half centuries ago. Some classmates and I tried to recreate our computer science building at the time. The proportions didn’t work out, but it still kinda worked. Minetest was one of the very few games I played a bit more extensively.
AMD Posts Linux Patches For SEV-SNP BTB Isolation
It’s quite a mouthful but today AMD posted Linux kernel patches for preparing SEV-SNP BTB isolation support for further enhancing the security of virtual machines (VMs) for confidential computing… ⌘ Read more
F-35 Software Could Be Jailbreaked Like an IPhone: Dutch Defense Minister
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft is a supersonic stealth “strike fighter.” But this week the military news site TWZ reports that the fighter’s “computer brain,” including “its cloud-based components, could be cracked to accept third-party software updates, just like ‘jailbreaking’ a cellphone, according to the Dutch State S … ⌘ Read more
After 16 Years, ‘Interim’ CTO Finally Eradicating Fujitsu and Horizon From the UK’s Post Office
Besides running tech operations at the UK’s Post Office, their interim CTO is also removing and replacing Fujitsu’s Horizon system, which Computer Weekly describes as “the error-ridden software that a public inquiry linked to 13 people taking their own lives.”
After over 16 years of cover … ⌘ Read more
@bender@twtxt.net Sweet! So glad that Twtxt still lives, and that everyone’s been keeping busy. My main computer is broken, It’ll take me some time to setup jenny on the R-pi and try to catch-up.
Have a blessed week-end everyone!
Cloud Hypervisor 51 Brings Performance Improvements, Better QCOW2 v3 Support
Cloud Hypervisor 51 is now available for this Rust-based VMM focused on secure cloud computing. For what began as an Intel open-source project years ago is continuing to be largely led by Microsoft, Cyberus Tech, Tencent, Ant Group, and others… ⌘ Read more
Vulkan 1.4.344 Released With New Extension From Valve
Vulkan 1.4.344 is out today as the latest routine spec update for this high performance graphics and compute API. Besides a handful of fixes and clarifications, Vulkan 1.4.344 brings a new extension courtesy of Valve engineers… ⌘ Read more
Amazon Dethrones Walmart as World’s Biggest Company by Sales
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon has officially dethroned Walmart as the biggest global company by revenue, a milestone attesting to the massive scale the e-commerce and cloud-computing giant has achieved since its humble beginnings in 1994 as an online bookseller in Jeff Bezos’ Seattle-area garage.
Walmart, which had been the largest company by rev … ⌘ Read more
@aelaraji@aelaraji.com hey, hey! I saw you tinkering with ActivityPub, so I know you were well.
Glad to have you back here! No much has happened on twtxt.net-world. @prologic@twtxt.net is quite busy with large language models, and seeking further independence through capitalistic ways. @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org continues dazzling us with his clicks, @movq@www.uninformativ.de brings us interesting music, videos to see, and a sprinkle of home made computing here and there, and me… well, I continue bending (or trying to) things! 😂
@abucci@anthony.buc.ci coined the term “failscene”:
https://buc.ci/abucci/p/1771250567.039684
I wonder about using “failscene” to describe the current slate of AI tools and demos. In contrast with the demoscene, which is about getting very low powered computers to do cool things you wouldn’t expect them to be able to do, the failscene is about getting very high powered computers to fail at doing boring things we already know how to do without them. Plus you can stylize it fAIlscene if you’re inclined to.
I love it.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Model Brings ‘Much-Improved Coding Skills’, Upgraded Free Tier
Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.6, the first upgrade to its mid-tier AI model since version 4.5 arrived in September 2025. The new model features a “1M token context window” and delivers a “full upgrade of the model’s skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge wor … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft’s AI Chief Says All White-Collar Desk Work Will Be Automated Within 18 Months
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman expects “human-level performance on most, if not all professional tasks” from AI, and believes most work involving “sitting down at a computer” – accounting, legal, marketing, project management – will be fully automated within the next year or 18 months. He pointed to ex … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 CXL Enables AMD Zen 5 Address Translation Feature
A long-in-development feature for AMD EPYC Zen 5 server platforms now merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel is ACPI PRMT-based address translation for the Compute Express Link (CXL) subsystem… ⌘ Read more
Arc B390 Graphics With Panther Lake Performing Great On Open-Source Intel Compute Runtime
This month I have been doing a lot of Panther Lake benchmarking under Linux with the Core Ultra X7 358H. One of the areas of much interest has been the Arc B390 Xe3 graphics that have been working nicely out-of-the-box with the Intel open-source driver stack on Linux although there still are some gaps to fill against Windows. Those Intel Arc B390 Linux benchmarks so far have been focused on OpenGL and Vulkan graphics, but wh … ⌘ Read more
FTC Ratchets Up Microsoft Probe, Queries Rivals on Cloud, AI
The US Federal Trade Commission is accelerating scrutiny of Microsoft as part of an ongoing probe into whether the company illegally monopolizes large swaths of the enterprise computing market with its cloud software and AI offerings, including Copilot. From a report: The agency has issued civil investigative demands in recent weeks to companies that compete wi … ⌘ Read more
Evaluating The Performance Cost To AMD SEV-SNP On EPYC 9005 VMs
AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) provides memory encryption and integrity protections that can be especially useful in modern cloud computing. Typically a 2~10% performance overhead is reported when engaging AMD SEV-SNP for these hardware-backed security protections. In this article is an extensive look at the current AMD SEV-SNP performance impact for confidential computing on EPYC 9005 “Turin” servers. The curr … ⌘ Read more
Bill Introduced To Replace West Virginia’s New CS Course Graduation Requirement With Computer Literacy Proficiency
theodp writes: West Virginia lawmakers on Tuesday introduced House Bill 5387 (PDF), which would repeal the state’s recently enacted mandatory stand-alone computer science graduation requirement and replace it with a new computer literacy proficiency … ⌘ Read more
AMD ROCm TheRock 7.11 Released, Ubuntu Making Progress On Shipping ROCm Packages
Two useful bits of ROCm news today for those interested in AMD’s open-source GPU compute stack… ⌘ Read more
Intel Releases New Compute Runtime, Upstreams More SYCL Code To LLVM
Intel today released a new version of their Compute Runtime stack and IGC graphics compiler for Level Zero and OpenCL usage with their integrated and discrete graphics. Separately they also upstreamed more SYCL code this week into mainline LLVM… ⌘ Read more
Cyber-Espionage Group Breached Systems in 37 Nations, Security Researchers Say
An anonymous reader shared this report from Bloomberg:
An Asian cyber-espionage group has spent the past year breaking into computer systems belonging to governments and critical infrastructure organizations in more than 37 countries, according to the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, Inc. The state-aligned attacker … ⌘ Read more
Big Tech’s $1.1 Trillion Cloud Computing Backlog
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon, Google, and Microsoft each reported hundreds of billions in RPO (remaining performance obligations) – signed contracts for cloud computing services that can’t yet be filled and haven’t yet hit the books. Collectively, the big three cloud providers reported a $1.1 trillion backlog of revenue.
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1 points posted by Everton Marques ⌘ Read more
Racing to build utility-scale computer, quantum start-up earns $20m federal investment
Australian taxpayers are backing Sydney start-up Diraq’s ambition to become a global leader in utility-scale quantum computing. ⌘ Read more
When 20-Year-Old Bill Gates Fought the World’s First Software Pirates
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Just months after his 20th birthday, Bill Gates had already angered the programmer community,” remembers this 50th-anniversary commemoration of Gates’ Open Letter to Hobbyists. “As the first home computers began appearing in the 1970s, the world faced a question: Would its software be free?”
… ⌘ Read more
cTGP Graphics Power Setting Coming For Uniwill / TUXEDO Laptops With Linux 7.0
Upstreamed for the Linux 6.19 kernel is the Uniwill laptop platform driver for exposing more features/settings for laptops made by this Taiwanese OEM/ODM, including the laptops from TUXEDO Computers. Coming for the next kernel cycle is further extending the Uniwill platform driver for now having support for adjusting the custom total graphics power “cTGP” for those laptops with a dedicated GPU… ⌘ Read more
Scientists Found a Way To Cool Quantum Computers Using Noise
Slashdot reader alternative_right writes: Quantum computers need extreme cold to work, but the very systems that keep them cold also create noise that can destroy fragile quantum information. Scientists in Sweden have now flipped that problem on its head by building a tiny quantum refrigerator that actually uses noise to drive cooling instead of figh … ⌘ Read more
Nobel Hacking Likely Leaked Peace Prize Winner Name, Probe Finds
An anonymous reader shares a report: A hacking of the Nobel organization’s computer systems is the most likely cause of last year’s leak of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado’s name, according to the results of an investigation [non-paywalled source]. An individual or a state actor may have illegally gained access in a cyber breach, … ⌘ Read more
Tim Berners-Lee Wants Us To Take Back the Internet
mspohr shares a report: When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free. Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people – and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.
Since Berner … ⌘ Read more
FreeRDP 3.22 Released With Overhauled SDL-Based Client UI
FreeRDP 3.22 was just released as the newest version of this Apache-licensed open-source Remote Desktop protocol (RDP) implementation for interfacing with another computer over the network… ⌘ Read more