Non-harmonic two-color femtosecond lasers achieve 1,000-fold enhancement of white-light output in water
Scientists at Japanâs Institute for Molecular Science have achieved a 1,000-fold enhancement in white-light generation inside water by using non-harmonic two-color femtosecond laser excitation. This previously unexplored approach in liquids unlocks new nonlinear optical pathways, enabling a dramatic boost in supercontinuum generation. The breakthrough lays a foundation for next-generation b ⊠â Read more
New study shows AI enhances teacher development
Research from the Manchester Institute of Education offers vital early insights into how AI tools can be responsibly and effectively embedded into teacher training. The preliminary findings from year 1 of the three-year longitudinal pioneering research project explore the integration of generative AI in primary teacher education, centered on the use of TeachMateAI (TMAI) within the University of Manchesterâs Primary PGCE program. â Read more
UK Secondary Schools Pivoting From Narrowly Focused CS Curriculum To AI Literacy
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: The UK Department for Education is âreplacing its narrowly focused computer science GCSE with a broader, future-facing computing GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education] and exploring a new qualification in data science and AI for 16-18-year-olds.â The move aims to ⊠â Read more
Ukraine strikes oil refinery in Russiaâs Saratov Oblast, oil terminal, warehouse in occupied territories, General Staff confirms â Read more
Fifty years since the dismissal of PM Gough Whitlam
The dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by the governor-general left an indelible scar on the nation. â Read more
Chinaâs CO2 Emissions Have Been Flat Or Falling For Past 18 Months, Analysis Finds
Chinaâs CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, âadding evidence to the hope that the worldâs biggest polluter has managed to hit its target of peak CO2 emissions well ahead of schedule,â reports the Guardian. From the report: Rapid increases in the deployment of solar and wind power generation â ⊠â Read more
âThree generationsâ in catastrophic crash with truck in south-west Victoria
Police said a three-year-old boy was among those killed after the vehicle drove into the path of a truck. â Read more
Keating told Whitlam to sack or arrest governor-general
Paul Keating has revealed he told Gough Whitlam to either sack Sir John Kerr or have the governor-general arrested during the dismissal. â Read more
Australia news LIVE: Paul Keating reveals he told Whitlam to sack then governor-general Kerr over dismissal; Senate passes bill to end US shutdown
Follow along as we bring you the latest live news updates from Australia and around the world. â Read more
Australia news LIVE: Paul Keating reveals he told Whitlam to sack then governor-general Kerr over dismissal; Liberal Party net zero debate rages on as party set to meet tomorrow
Follow along as we bring you the latest live news updates from Australia and around the world. â Read more
Australia news LIVE: Paul Keating reveals he told Whitlam to sack then governor-general Kerr over dismissal; Liberal Party net zero debate rages on as party set to meet tomorrow
Follow along as we bring you the latest live news updates from Australia and around the world. â Read more
Australia news LIVE: Paul Keating reveals he told Whitlam to sack then governor-general Kerr over dismissal; Liberal Party net zero debate rages on as party set to meet tomorrow
Follow along as we bring you the latest live news updates from Australia and around the world. â Read more
Australia news LIVE: Paul Keating reveals he told Whitlam to sack then governor-general Kerr over dismissal; Liberal Party net zero debate rages on as party set to meet tomorrow
Follow along as we bring you the latest live news updates from Australia and around the world. â Read more
Australia news LIVE: Paul Keating reveals he told Whitlam to sack then governor-general Kerr over dismissal; Liberal Party net zero debate rages on as party set to meet tomorrow
Follow along as we bring you the latest live news updates from Australia and around the world. â Read more
Australia news LIVE: Paul Keating reveals he told Whitlam to sack then governor-general Kerr over dismissal; Liberal Party net zero debate rages on as party set to meet tomorrow
Follow along as we bring you the latest live news updates from Australia and around the world. â Read more
Australia news LIVE: Paul Keating reveals he told Whitlam to sack then governor-general Kerr over dismissal; Liberal Party net zero debate rages on as party set to meet tomorrow
Follow along as we bring you the latest live news updates from Australia and around the world. â Read more
Australia news LIVE: Paul Keating reveals he told Whitlam to sack then governor-general Kerr over dismissal; Liberal Party net zero debate rages on as party set to meet tomorrow
Follow along as we bring you the latest live news updates from Australia and around the world. â Read more
New Project Brings Strong Linux Compatibility To More Classic Windows Games
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For years now, Valve has been slowly improving the capabilities of the Proton compatibility layer that lets thousands of Windows games work seamlessly on the Linux-based SteamOS. But Valveâs Windows-to-Linux compatibility layer generally only extends back to games writt ⊠â Read more
@bender@twtxt.net Hahaha! :-D But I actually do like their approach. I donât know what staff should do differently when they are not involved in the channel topic. At least in the general case. Maybe in this specific scenario here they could have cross-checked domains, git repos and stuff like that. But I also reckon that itâs only fair if they treat everybody the same.
Google Cloud N4D Delivers Great VM Performance & Value Powered By AMD EPYC Turin
Google Cloud today is rolling out their N4D compute instances that are optimized for cost/price-performance and geared for general purpose workloads. The N4D instances are powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC âTurinâ processors and offer very nice performance and value over their prior-generation general purpose VMs. â Read more
AI may blunt our thinking skills â hereâs what you can do about it
There is growing evidence that our reliance on generative AI tools is reducing our ability to think clearly and critically, but it doesnât have to be that way â Read more
Tim Davie resigns as BBC director general after accusations of âserious and systemicâ bias in coverage â Read more
Neurodiverse Professionals 25% More Satisfied With AI Tools and Agents
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:
Neurodiverse professionals may see unique benefits from artificial intelligence tools and agents, research suggests. With AI agent creation booming in 2025, people with conditions like ADHD, autism, dyslexia and more report a more level playing field in the workplace thanks to generative ⊠â Read more
SLogic16U3 USB3 Logic Analyzer Combines Compact Design with 3.2 Gbps Bandwidth
The SLogic16U3 is a next-generation USB3 logic analyzer designed for engineers and hobbyists seeking high-speed signal analysis in a small form factor. Measuring just 40 Ă 40 Ă 10 mm, it provides sampling rates of 800 M @ 4 channels, 400 M @ 8 channels, and 200 M @ 16 channels over a USB 3.0 [âŠ] â Read more
AMD Sends Out Initial GNU Binutils Patch For AMD Zen 6 - Confirms New AVX-512 Features
AMD has begun their open-source compiler enablement upstreaming effort for Zen 6 processors! The first âZnver6â patch was sent out on Friday in preparing for new instructions to be found with these next-generation AMD Ryzen and EPYC processors⊠â Read more
Lawmakers are ditching Congress at a record pace
Stef W. Kight , Hans Nichols , Andrew Solender,  Staff Writers -  Axios
Stephan:
_Tuesdayâs election is, I predict, is just the first phase of a trend that is going to restructure Congress. It is not going to be just political parties; it is also going to be a generational change. My hope is that the Democrats, in spite of all the Republican election rigging, are still going to take the majority in both the House and Senate ⊠â Read more
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Itâs possible to run the validator locally (my blog generator scripts do that):
https://validator.w3.org/nu/about.html
That way you donât forget. đ„ł
Double congrats, @thecanine@twtxt.net! \o/
Iâm not a fan of the gemtext limits. This being only a single page (which probably doesnât get updated a whole lot), the efforts of having two dedicates files are not all that big, or so Iâd at least naively imagine.
I always recommend checking the W3C validator results, even though Iâm very guilty of not doing that myself. It just doesnât occur to me in the heat of the moment. I reckon if I were writing HTML on a more regular basis, I would pick up on making that a real habit. Anyway, your HTML being generated, you probably canât address the findings, though. So, might not be even worth the time heading over to the validator.
From a privacy point of view, personally, I would definitely host the CSS myself. Other than that, nice link collection. :-)
Lego Unveils First-Ever Star Trek Set
New submitter semper_statisticum shares a report from the Independent: Lego is releasing its first-ever Star Trek-inspired model â with an incredible recreation of the signature ship from the â80s TV series. Made from 3,600 pieces, the [first-ever] Star Trek inspired Lego set is of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, the spaceship that serves as the main setting of Star Trek: The Next Generation ⊠â Read more
Most DevSecOps Advice Is Useless without ContextâHereâs What Actually Works
Generic DevSecOps advice may sound good on paper, but it often fails in practice because it ignores team context, workflow, and environment-specific needs. Overloaded controls, broad policies, and misapplied tools disrupt the flow of development. And once flow breaks, security measures are the first to get bypassed. The way forward isnât more rules but smarter⊠â Read more
@prologic@twtxt.net Letâs go through it one by one. Hereâs a wall of text that took me over 1.5 hours to write.
The criticism of AI as untrustworthy is a problem of misapplication, not capability.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 âAI literacyâ, 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 âAI literacyâ, isnât it?
My text went one step further, though: I said that when you take this requirement of âAI literacyâ 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 â okay, fine, a draft is a draft, itâs 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 donât feel like a draft that needs editing.
Can you, as an expert, still use an AI draft as a basis/foundation? Yeah, probably. But hereâs the kicker: You did not create that draft. You were not involved in the âthought processâ behind it. When you, a human being, make a draft, you often think something like: âOkay, I want to draw a picture of a landscape and thereâs going to be a little house, but for now, Iâll just put in a rough sketch of the house and add the details later.â You are aware of what you left out. When the AI did the draft, you are not aware of whatâs missing â 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.
Skill Erosion vs. Skill EvolutionYou, @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 Geminiâs 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, youâre something else. You should not be hired as a programmer or a mechanic.
Yes, that is âskill evolutionâ â which is pretty much my point! But the AI framed it like a counter-argument. It didnât understand my text.
(But what if thatâs our future? What if all programming will look like that in some years? I claim: Itâs not possible. If you donât know how to program, then you donât know how to read/understand code written by an AI. You are something else, but youâre not a programmer. It might be valid to be something else â but that wasnât my point, my point was that youâre not a bloody programmer.)
Geminiâs calculator example is garbage, I think. Crunching numbers and doing mathematics (i.e., âcomplex problem-solvingâ) are two different things. Just because you now have a calculator, doesnât mean itâll free you up to do mathematical proofs or whatever.
What would have worked is this: Letâs say youâre 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, thereâs a little gaslight-y detail: A calculator is correct. Yes, it could have âbugsâ (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), itâs just a statistical model. So, this modified example (âaccountant with a calculatorâ) would actually have to be phrased like this: Suppose thereâs an accountant and you give her a magic box that spits out the correct result in, what, I donât know, 70-90% of the time. The accountant couldnât rely on this box now, could she? Sheâd 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 doesnât make sense. It just spits out some generic âargumentâ that it picked up on some website.
3. The Technical and Legal Perspective (Scraping and Copyright)The AI makes two points here. The first one, I might actually agree with (âbad bot behavior is not the fault of AI itselfâ).
The second point is, once again, gaslighting, because it is phrased/framed like a counter-argument. It implies that I said something which I didnât. Like the AI, I said that you would have to adjust the copyright law! At the same time, the AI answer didnât even question whether itâs okay to break the current law or not. It just said âlol yeah, change the lawsâ. (I wonder in what way the laws would have to be changed in the AIâs âopinionâ, because some of these changes could kill some business opportunities â or the laws would have to have special AI clauses that only benefit the AI techbros. But I digress, that wasnât part of Geminiâs answer.)
tl;drExcept for one point, I donât accept any of Geminiâs âcriticismâ. It didnât 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, itâs just a statistical model).
And it framed everything like a counter-argument, while actually repeating what I said. Thatâs gaslighting: When Alice says âthe sky is blueâ and Bob replies with âwhy do you say the sky is purple?!â
But it sure looks convincing, doesnât it?
Never againThis took so much of my time. I wonât do this again. đ
A New Ion-Based Quantum Computer Makes Error Correction Simpler
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: The US- and UK-based company Quantinuum today unveiled Helios, its third-generation quantum computer, which includes expanded computing power and error correction capability. Like all other existing quantum computers, Helios is not powerful enough to execute the industryâs dream money- ⊠â Read more
More Intel Crescent Island Enablement Prepped For Linux 6.19
Following Intelâs disclosure less than one month ago of Crescent Island as a upcoming Xe3P graphics card with 160GB of vRAM focused on enterprise-level AI inferencing, Intelâs open-source Linux graphics driver engineers have been quick to begin plumbing the Xe kernel graphics driver for this next-generation graphics card⊠â Read more
Akamai Builds Cloud Native Resilience: Cloud Credits to Power CNCF Projects
Akamai, a CNCF Gold member since 2023 and a committed supporter of open source infrastructure, is generously donating $1,000,000 in annual cloud credits. The donation will support both the Linux Foundation and Cloud Native Computing FoundationâŠ. â Read more
3mdeb Achieves Good Progress Porting Coreboot+OpenSIL To AMD Turin Motherboard
Over the past few months the open-source firmware consulting firm 3mdeb has been porting Coreboot and AMDâs new openSIL silicon initialization library to the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1. The Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 is a broadly available motherboard that supports the latest-generation AMD EPYC 9005 âTurinâ server processors. 3mdeb has been fairly successful in their quest and an early demonstrator for openSIL⊠â Read more
Maldives becomes the first country to impose a generational ban on smoking â Read more
Benchmarking The AMD EPYC 9V64H: Azure HBv5âs Custom AMD CPU With HBM3
Nearly one year ago Microsoft announced the HBv5 virtual machines powered by a custom-designed AMD 4th Gen EPYC processor with high bandwidth memory (HBM3). Finally today the Azure HBv5 series is reaching general availability for those with memory-intensive HPC applications and other workloads. Microsoft kindly provided Phoronix with HBv5 access in advance to begin testing these new VMs with the AMD EPYC 9V64H CPUs featuring HBM memory, so ⊠â Read more
USDA Tells Grocery Stores They Canât Give Discounts to People Hit by Trumpâs Food Stamp Freeze
Stephen Prager,  Staff Writer -  Common Dreams
_Stephan: This story, and the Trump administration, are so vile, I am not sure I have the adjectives to describe Trump and his incompetent vassals. What Trump has done is make it illegal for a generous grocer to help families who have lost SNAP by giving them discounts. If you know someone wh ⊠â Read more
Ukrainian forces repel almost 70 Russian assaults on Kupiansk and Pokrovsk fronts â Ukraineâs General Staff â Read more
How to Use Multimodal AI Models With Docker Model Runner
One of the most exciting advances in modern AI is multimodal support, the ability for models to understand and generate multiple types of input, such as text, images, or audio. With multimodal models, youâre no longer limited to typing prompts; you can show an image or play a sound, and the model can understand itâŠ. â Read more
Announcing cgp-serde: A modular serialization library for Serde powered by Context-Generic Programming
Comments â Read more
The Political State of Generation Z
Oct 30, 2025, Â CEO of PRRIÂ - Â PRRI
Stephan:Â Gen Z, individuals born between 1997 and 2012, played a role in âkingâ Trumpâs election to his second term, and I have been wondering what role they will play in the 2026 elections. We will get a first glimpse on Tuesday, and here is the best fact-based research I could find on the attitudes of Gen Zers.
⊠â Read more
We may have found a surprisingly nearby cluster of primordial stars
The very first generation of stars, called Population III stars, are mostly expected to be too distant to see directly â but astronomers may have found some for the very first time â Read more
Microsoft breaks Task Manager in Windows 11, hard
Letâs take a look at how things are going at Microsoft, whose CEO claimed a few months ago that 30% of their code was generated by âAIâ. After installing Windows Updates released on or after October 28, 2025 (KB5067036), you might encounter an issue where closing Task Manager using the Close (X) button does not fully terminate the process. When you reopen Task Manager, the previous instance continues running in the background even th ⊠â Read more