@bender@twtxt.net Apologies, I’m still working through some layout issues with TwtStrm and frequently miss mentions…

Magic: the Gathering does not use a Game Master (although professional referees are often used in sanctioned events). While the game has alot of thematic crossover with with D&D (or fantasy games in general), the system is much more of an abstract, card-dueling system involving things like “the stack” and insanely specific rules on card timing and interactions.

Like, we joke about “I’m sending my army of (goblins / elves / angels / whatever) at you,” but that’s about as far into the “role-playing” element most magic games get in my experience (and most of the “official” competitive games I’ve played at my FLGS were even more abstract and less thematic, although it’s been years since I played in one of those).

Software Developers Say AI Is Rotting Their Brains
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: On Reddit, Hacker News and other places where people in software development talk to each other, more and more people are becoming disillusioned with the promise of code generated by large language models. Developers talk not just about how the AI output is often flawed, but that using AI to get the job done is often … ⌘ Read more

Procès libyen en appel: le parquet général réclame sept ans de prison contre Nicolas Sarkozy
Les trois magistrats représentant l’accusation ont requis une peine de sept ans de prison ferme, 300 000 euros d’amende et une inéligibilité de cinq ans contre l’ancien président. Des peines de prison, ferme ou avec sursis, ont également été réclamées contre ses ex-ministres Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux et Éric Woerth. ⌘ Read more

I just wanted to look up 9V block battery prices online and these automatically generated descriptions are getting dumber by the minute:

Datum der Erzeugung: Verfallsdatum minus 7 Jahre

(Date of manufacturing: expiration date minus 7 years)

Or look at this one:

Die leistungsstarke 9 V-Block E Batterie, auch 6LR61 genannt, eignet sich besonders gut für Taschenlampen, Radio oder Kinderspielzeug, die einen gleichbleibenden Strombedarf haben. Ihre max. Spannung beträgt 1,5 V.

(The high performance 9 V block E battery, also known as 6LR61, is particularly suitable for torches, radio or child’s toys, which have a steady power demand. Its max. voltage is 1.5 V.)

The battery is best suited for… devices where it fits. No shit, Sherlock! Has anyboy ever come across 9V block torches? O_o I haven’t.

The Audemars Piguet x Swatch Collaboration Is Here for Real
With Instagram awash with inaccurate AI-generated concepts for its Royal Pop collab, Swatch was forced to reveal the genuine article. ⌘ Read more

Emmanuel Moulin à la Banque de France: la pression monte sur le candidat de Macron
Après les révélations de «Mediapart», le député socialiste Philippe Brun, chargé d’orchestrer l’audition du candidat au poste de gouverneur de la Banque de France, a interrogé l’actuel patron de l’institution sur l’aide que ses services ont fournie pour préparer l’ancien secrétaire général de l’Élysée. ⌘ Read more

The Top New Features in Google’s Android 17—and Gemini Intelligence—Coming This Summer
You’ll soon be able to generate your own widgets or ask Gemini to finish a booking in Chrome on Android. ⌘ Read more

«La corruption, c’est ça»: l’accusation poursuit sa démonstration au procès Sarkozy-Kadhafi
Après l’association de malfaiteurs lundi, l’avocat général Damien Brunet a réclamé, mardi, la condamnation de Nicolas Sarkozy pour corruption, recel de détournement de fonds publics et financement illégal de campagne, stigmatisant la «perdition républicaine» de l’ex-chef de l’État. ⌘ Read more

Affaire Luc Besson: le parquet général demande la réouverture de la procédure pour viol
Selon nos informations, le parquet général de la cour d’appel de Paris a requis la réouverture de la procédure pour viol concernant le cinéaste. La plaignante, Sand Van Roy, avait demandé la réouverture de l’affaire en produisant de nouvelles analyses ADN. La chambre de l’instruction examinera cette demande le 2 juin. ⌘ Read more

[$] Scaling transparent huge pages to 1GB
As a general rule, when developers talk about huge pages, they are
referring to PMD-level pages that are 1MB or 2MB in size, depending on the
CPU architecture. Most CPUs can support other huge-page sizes, though. On
x86 systems, PUD-level huge pages hold 1GB of data. Providing such large
pages transparently to processes has generally not been considered as
either feasible or desirable, but Usama Arif is trying to change that
assessment. At the 2026 [Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Manageme … ⌘ Read more

I’m not always on the same page as Rob Pike, but this hit close to home:

Although trained in physics, I worked in the computing industry with pride and purpose for over 40 years. And now I can do nothing but sit back and watch it destroy itself for no valid reason beyond hubris (if I’m being charitable).

Ineffable sadness watching something I once loved deliberately lose its soul.

I spent my time trying to make it better. Not just write code, but find better or at least different ways to do so. Simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible.

What’s happening today is a complete repudiation of everything I was trying to achieve.

“Simpler, cleaner, more general, more comprehensible”, that’s what I’ve been trying to establish in our teams as well. Obviously not to the same degree, but you get the idea.

And it all goes out the window now. We’re doing the complete opposite – and with full force.

Aux réquisitions du procès des financements libyens, Nicolas Sarkozy «l’instigateur»
Le parquet général a commencé ses réquisitions, lundi, par les faits d’association de malfaiteurs. Il a requis la condamnation de Nicolas Sarkozy, jugeant les faits «dans les plus hauts niveaux de gravité que la République ait pu connaître». ⌘ Read more

F2FS Preparing FSERROR Reporting Support
Introduced in Linux 7.0 was FSERROR as generic I/O error reporting infrastructure. Linux to that point had no standardized mechanism for reporting metadata corruption or file I/O errors to user-space with each file-system doing its own thing. The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) is now the latest Linux file-system preparing for FSERROR usage… ⌘ Read more

Nazi-Raubkunst bei Nachfahren von SS-General entdeckt ⌘ Read more

Sculpt OS 26.04 Can Finally Be Used To Self-Host For Developing/Building Genode
Sculpt OS as the general purpose operating system built off the Genode OS Framework is out with a new feature release… ⌘ Read more

GM Secretly Sold California Drivers’ Data, Agrees to Pay $12.75M In Privacy Settlement
“General Motors sold the data of California drivers without their knowledge or consent,” says California’s attorney general, “and despite numerous statements reassuring drivers that it would not do so.”

In 2024, The New York Times “reported that automakers including GM were sharing information about their c … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Relents, Lets its Programmers Use OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude
An anonymous reader shared this report from Futurism:

In November, Amazon leaders sent an internal memo to employees, pushing them to use its in-house code generating tool, Kiro, over third-party alternatives from competitors. “While we continue to support existing tools in use today, we do not plan to support addi … ⌘ Read more

«Ceci n’est pas un meeting»: en précampagne, Gabriel Attal peine à rassembler son camp
Pas encore officiellement candidat à la présidentielle, le secrétaire général de Renaissance va de grande ville en grande ville pour mobiliser ses troupes. Mais construire sur les ruines du macronisme s’avère une gageure, quand plusieurs figures ont déjà largué les amarres. ⌘ Read more

‘Changing of the Guard’? AMD, Intel, and Micron Soar While Nvidia Lags
While Nvidia has dominated the “infrastructure boom” since 2022’s launch of ChatGPT and “the generative AI craze,” CNBC writes that “This week offered the starkest illustration yet of what MIzuho analyst Jordan Klein said could be a ‘changing of the guard in AI.’”

Chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices and Intel notched gains of about 25% … ⌘ Read more

Open Source Registries Join Linux Foundation Working Group to Address Machine-Generated Traffic
Under the nonprofit Linux Foundation, “a new Sustaining Package Registries Working Group will seek to identify concrete funding, governance, and security practices,” reports ZDNet, “to keep code flowing as download counts grow…. Because software builds, continuous integration pipelin … ⌘ Read more

Plant Seeds Do Something Incredible When the Sound of Rain Strikes
“Plant seeds can sense the vibrations generated by falling raindrops,” reports ScienceAlert, “and respond by waking from their state of dormancy to welcome the water, new research shows…. to germinate in ‘anticipation’ of the coming deluge.”
The finding, discovered by MIT mechanical engineers Nicholas Makris and Cadine Navarro, offers th … ⌘ Read more

Fiber Optic Cables Can Eavesdrop On Nearby Conversations
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Cold War spies planted bugs in walls, lamps, and telephones. Now, scientists warn, the cables themselves could listen in. A fiber optic technique used to detect earthquakes can also pick up the faint vibrations of nearby speech, researchers reported this week here at the general assembly of the European Geos … ⌘ Read more

HP Z6 G5 A Continues Working Out Well For Linux-Friendly, High-End Workstation
In late 2023 I reviewed the HP Z6 G5 A workstation that at the time was built around the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 series and NVIDIA RTX Ada Generation graphics. More recently, HP has revised the Z6 G5 A workstation for the latest Threadripper PRO 9000 series and NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell graphics. HP sent over the upgraded Z6 G5 A workstation that I’ve been benchmarking the past few weeks. This workstation remains Linux-friendly down to … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Gives Up On Xbox Copilot AI
Microsoft is winding down Xbox Copilot on mobile and ending development of Copilot on console, reversing plans to bring the gaming-focused AI assistant to current-generation Xbox consoles this year. “The move follows [new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s] reorganization of the Xbox platform team earlier on Tuesday, which added executives from Microsoft’s CoreAI team – where Sharma worked before taking ove … ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Vulkan Linux Driver Now Supports Device Generated Commands “DGC”
Exciting yesterday in the land of Intel’s open-source Vulkan driver “ANV” for Linux systems was introducing experimental support for descriptor heaps with the VK_EXT_descriptor_heap extension. Today there is another separate exciting development for this open-source Intel driver: Vulkan device generated commands are finally merged!.. ⌘ Read more

GCC Git Lands Fix For Missing AVX-512 Optimizations On AMD Zen 6
Last week marked the release of GCC 16.1 as the first GCC 16 stable release. While that release introduces initial AMD Zen 6 “znver6” support well in advance of those next-generation AMD processors debuting, it’s not yet in perfect shape with just today two missing optimizations around AVX-512 having been merged… ⌘ Read more

Fedora Yet To Decide On x86_64-v3 Packages For Fedora Linux 45
Last month a Fedora Linux change proposal was shared proposing that Fedora 45 be built with x86_64-v3 packages to complement the generic x86_64 (v1) packages currently being compiled. This has the possibility of providing greater performance out of packaged Fedora software but comes with the cost of greater burdens on web mirrors, QA / testing, and related infrastructure impact. The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee “FESCo” decided toda … ⌘ Read more

The iPhone That Never Was
In 1990, three former Apple employees launched a company that epitomized the Silicon Valley dream. What they invented looked like an iPhone—more than a decade earlier. The device never came to be. ⌘ Read more

@itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com is there a Gamer Master, or Dungeon Master in Magic? My kid plays DnD, and such person is decisive for many outcomes, and for the quality of the game in general.

Congratulations! :-)

NVIDIA Looking To Create New Tool For Generating AutoFDO Profiles For GCC
NVIDIA compiler engineers are looking to develop a standalone tool that could be upstreamed into the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) codebase for generating AutoFDO profiles for consumption by GCC in turn for better benefiting from automatic feedback directed optimizations (FDO) in the name of better performance… ⌘ Read more

The Audio Industry Is Grappling With the Rise of ‘Podslop’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman: Welcome to the modern era of podcasting in which thousands of new shows are released into the world every day with a sizable portion likely being AI-generated. Figuring out exactly which ones fall into that growing category is becoming more difficult just as the industry is starting to take this is … ⌘ Read more

Welcome to the Great American Satellite Age
A new generation of satellite startups in San Francisco is racing to capitalize on recent technological breakthroughs in space-based data collection and communications. ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Introduces AI-Generated Pets for Its Codex App
“Vibe coding just got a whole lot more adorable,” writes Engadget:
OpenAI introduced AI-generated pets to the Codex app, its agentic tool that helps with coding. These “optional animated companions” don’t do any coding themselves, but serve as a floating overlay that can tell you what Codex is working on, notify you when Codex completes a task or whether it needs your … ⌘ Read more

Carbon Pollution Is Making Food Less Nutritious, Risking the Health of Billions
A new meta-analysis found nutrients in food decreased over the last 40 years, reports the Washington Post. “Many of humanity’s most important crops — including wheat, potatoes, beans — contain fewer vitamins and minerals than they did a generation ago.”

“The invisible culprit behind this damaging phenomenon? Carbo … ⌘ Read more

South Africa’s Draft AI Policy Withdrawn Due to ‘Fictitious’ AI-Generated Citations
An official in South Africa withdrew a draft of the country’s national AI policy, reports a local newspaper, “after it was found the draft policy was compiled using AI, which cited academic articles that were ‘fictitious’.”

Earlier this month, minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni announced cabinet had … ⌘ Read more

Claude, Microsoft Copilot Fail Again to Predict the Winners of the Kentucky Derby
In 2016 an online “swarm intelligence” platform generated a correct prediction for the Kentucky Derby — naming all four top finishers in order. (But its 2017 predictions weren’t even close.) Slashdot checked in again on how modern AI systems performed in 2023, 2024, and 2025 — but their predictions were still pretty ba … ⌘ Read more

The $19B “Nuclear AI” Energy Startup That Couldn’t Sign a Single Client
“Nuclear AI startup” Fermi had hoped to build power plants generating 17 gigawatts of electricity, remembers Bloomberg, “three times the amount typically consumed by New York City.”

Hyperscalers could install their data centers on the site itself and tap directly into that power, which would come first from natural gas turbines and … ⌘ Read more

AMD’s GAIA Defaults To Better Model, Continued Improvements For Local AI
AMD software engineers on Friday released a new version of GAIA “Generative AI Is Awesome” as their open-source software for Windows and Linux leveraging the Lemonade SDK and aiming to make it easy to build AI agents on your PC with all local AI processing across AMD’s CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs… ⌘ Read more

New Lithium-Plasma Engine Passes Key Mars Propulsion Test
NASA engineers have tested a next-generation lithium-plasma electric propulsion system that reached 120 kilowatts, a new U.S. record and about 25 times the power of the electric thrusters on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. “Designing and building these thrusters over the last couple of years has been a long lead-up to this first test,” said James Polk, who is a s … ⌘ Read more

ICANN Opens Applications For New Generic Top-Level Domains
ICANN has opened applications for new generic top-level domains for the first time since 2012. The Register reports: ICANN hasn’t offered new gTLDs since 2012, but on Thursday opened applications for new domains in 27 scripts. A 439-page Applicant Guidebook explains the process. The Register suggests paying attention to the string evaluation FAQ, which expla … ⌘ Read more

The Case Against an Imminent Software Developer Apocalypse
ZipNada shares a report from ZDNet: Given the dour headlines as of late concerning the diminishing amounts of entry-level software development jobs, coupled with predictions of applications entirely AI-generated, one could be forgiven for assuming that software developers may soon be an endangered species. However, the data tells a different story. Jam … ⌘ Read more

Spotify Adds ‘Verified’ Badges To Distinguish Human Artists From AI
Spotify is adding “Verified by Spotify” badges to distinguish human artists from AI-generated personas, using signals like linked social accounts, consistent listener activity, merchandise, and concert dates. The BBC reports: The world’s most-used music streaming service said the ‘Verified by Spotify’ text and green checkmark icon wo … ⌘ Read more

The mindset of nerds (or people in general, but nerds especially) appears to be: “There’s a problem – I know how to build a solution around that! (Because I’m good at building things!)”

Rarely does anyone ask: “Why does this problem exist? Can we find a way so that this doesn’t happen in the first place?”

7-Zip 26.01 Now Allows Making Use Of Huge Pages On Linux For Faster Compression
7-Zip 26.01 was released on Monday and making this release significant are huge pages support on Linux and some users may be interested in the new options around the path generation mode for the output directory when extracting archives… ⌘ Read more

Study Finds a Third of New Websites Are AI-Generated
alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: Researchers working with data from the Internet Archive have discovered that a third of websites created since 2022 are AI-generated. The team of researchers – which includes people from Stanford, the Imperial College London, and the Internet Archive – published their findings online in a paper titled “The Impact of A … ⌘ Read more

Physicists Revive 1990s Laser Concept To Propose a Next-Generation Atomic Clock
Physicists have proposed a new kind of atomic clock based on a revived superradiant laser concept that could produce an extraordinarily stable signal with a linewidth around 100 microhertz, potentially the narrowest ever for an optical laser. “The implications of this result could stretch well beyond timekeeping,” … ⌘ Read more

South Korea Police Arrest Man For Posting AI Photo of Runaway Wolf
South Korean police arrested a man accused of spreading an AI-generated image of an escaped wolf, after the fake photo reportedly misled authorities and disrupted the real search operation. The BBC reports: South Korean police have arrested a man for sharing an AI-generated image that misled authorities who were searching for a wolf that had br … ⌘ Read more

Farewell ISDN, Ham Radio & Old Network Drivers: Linus Torvalds Merges 138k L.O.C. Removal
Linus Torvalds did it! He merged the pull request to rid the Linux kernel of the old Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) subsystem and various other old network drivers largely for PCMCIA era network adapters. This was the code suggested for removal given the recent influx of AI/LLM-generated bug reports against this dated code that likely has no active upstream users remaining… ⌘ Read more

New York Sues Coinbase and Gemini, Seeking To Halt Unlicensed Prediction Market Businesses
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: New York is suing Coinbase and Gemini, two of the newest players in the prediction market industry, arguing that the companies’ unregulated and unlicensed platforms are illegal gambling operations. Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsu … ⌘ Read more

Intel Lands Tesla As First Major Customer For 14A Chip Technology
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday the EV maker plans to use Intel’s next-generation 14A manufacturing process to make chips at its Terafab project, an advanced AI chip complex Musk has envisioned in Austin. The contract would mark Intel’s first major customer for the technology, a breakt … ⌘ Read more