Smartwatches Help Detect Abnormal Heart Rhythms 4x More Often In Clinical Trial
A clinical trial found that seniors at high stroke risk who wore an Apple Watch were four times more likely to have hidden heart rhythm disorders detected than those receiving standard care. The researchers noted that over half the time, these smartwatch wearers with heart rhythm problems hadn’t shown any symptoms … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc6 Bringing Sound Fixes For ROG Xbox Ally X & Various Laptops
With the Linux 6.19-rc6 kernel release due out later today there will be a number of sound fixes/workarounds to note from the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X gaming handheld to several newer laptops seeing fixes for their audio support… ⌘ Read more

Europe is Rediscovering the Virtues of Cash
After spending years pushing digital payments to combat tax evasion and money laundering, European Union ministers decided in December to ban businesses from refusing cash. The reversal comes as 12% of European businesses flatly refused cash in 2024, up from 4% three years earlier.

Over one in three cinemas in the Netherlands no longer accept notes and coins. Cash usage across the euro … ⌘ Read more

European Firms Hit Hiring Brakes Over AI and Slowing Growth
European hiring momentum is cooling as slower growth and accelerating AI adoption make both employers and workers more cautious. DW.com reports: [Angelika Reich, leadership adviser at the executive recruitment firm Spencer Stuart] noted how Europe’s labor market has “cooled down” and how “fewer job vacancies and a tougher economic climate naturally make emplo … ⌘ Read more

The Surprising Spectre BHI Mitigation Performance Impact On Meteor Lake
When recently carrying out performance benchmarks of Intel Meteor Lake performance on Linux since launch day two years ago, the geo mean came in at 93% the original performance. Finding the performance trending clearly lower with an up-to-date Linux software stack compared to in December 2023 was quite surprising considering the rather nice gains we have seen over time on other Intel/AMD hardware. As noted in that article though, one of the … ⌘ Read more

Amazon’s AI Tool Listed Products from Small Businesses Without Their Knowledge
Bloomberg reports on Amazon listings “automatically generated by an experimental AI tool” for stores that don’t sell on Amazon.

Bloomberg notes that the listings “didn’t always correspond to the correct product”, leaving the stores to handle the complaints from angry customers:

Between the Christmas and New Year holidays, s … ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk: X’s New Algorithm Will Be Made Open Source in Seven Days
“We will make the new ð algorithm…open source in 7 days,” Elon Musk posted Saturday on X.com. Musk says this is “including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users,” and “This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed.”

Some context f … ⌘ Read more

‘The Downside To Using AI for All Those Boring Tasks at Work’
The promise of AI-powered workplace tools that sort emails, take meeting notes, and file expense reports is finally delivering meaningful productivity gains – one software startup reported a 20% boost around mid-2025 – but companies are discovering an unexpected tradeoff: employees are burning out from the relentless pace of high-level cognitive work.

Roge … ⌘ Read more

Google and Character.AI Agree To Settle Lawsuits Over Teen Suicides
Google and Character.AI have agreed to settle multiple lawsuits from families alleging the chatbot encouraged self-harm and suicide among teens. “The settlements would mark the first resolutions in the wave of lawsuits against tech companies whose AI chatbots encouraged teens to hurt or kill themselves,” notes Axios. From the report: Families … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Health, Encouraging Users To Connect Their Medical Records
OpenAI has unveiled ChatGPT Health, a sandboxed health-focused mode that lets users connect medical records and wellness apps for more personalized guidance. The company makes sure to note that ChatGPT Health is “not intended for diagnosis or treatment.” The Verge reports: The company is encouraging users to … ⌘ Read more

Google Will Now Only Release Android Source Code Twice a Year
Google will begin releasing Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source code only twice a year starting in 2026. “In the past, Google would release the source code for every quarterly Android release, of which there are four each year,” notes Android Authority. From the report: Google told Android Authority that, effective 2026, Google will publish new s … ⌘ Read more

Are Hybrid Cars Helping America Transition to Electric Vehicles?
America’s electric car subsidies expired at the end of September, notes Bloomberg. Yet in those last three months, “while fully electric cars and trucks made up 10% of all auto sales in the US… another 15% of transactions were for hybrid vehicles.”

The EV market is slowing in the U.S., but analysts expect hybrid sales to continue accelerati … ⌘ Read more

Jobs Vulnerable to AI Replacement Actually ‘Thriving, Not Dying Out’, Report Suggests
AI startups now outnumber all publicly traded U.S. companies, according to a year-end note to investors from economists at Vanguard.

And yet that report also suggest the jobs most susceptible to replacement by AI “are actually thriving, not dying out,” writes Forbes:

“The approximately 100 occupations most ex … ⌘ Read more

MTV’s Music-Only Channels Go Off the Air
An anonymous reader shares a report: MTV shut down many of its last dedicated 24-hour music channels Dec. 31. The move, announced back in October, affected channels around the world, with the U.K. seeing five different MTV stations going dark. These include MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. As Consequence notes, MTV Music – which launched in 2011 – notably ended it … ⌘ Read more

Groq Investor Sounds Alarm On Data Centers
Axios reports that venture capitalist Alex Davis is warning that a speculative rush to build data centers without committed tenants could trigger a financing crunch by 2027-2028.

“This critique is coming from inside the AI optimist camp,” notes Axios, as Davis’ firm, Disruptive, “recently led a large investment in AI chipmaker Groq, which then signed a $20 billion licensing deal with Nvidia. I … ⌘ Read more

Well, you girls and guys are making cool things, and I have some progress to show as well. 😅

https://movq.de/v/c0408a80b1/movwin.mp4

Scrolling widgets appears to work now. This is (mostly) Unicode-aware: Note how emojis like “😅” are double-width “characters” and the widget system knows this. It doesn’t try to place a “😅” in a location where there’s only one cell available.

Same goes for that weird “ä” thingie, which is actually “a” followed by U+0308 (a combining diacritic). Python itself thinks of this as two “characters”, but they only occupy one cell on the screen. (Assuming your terminal supports this …)

This library does the heavy Unicode lifting: https://github.com/jquast/wcwidth (Take a look at its implementation to learn how horrible Unicode and human languages are.)

The program itself looks like this, it’s a proper widget hierarchy:

(There is no input handling yet, hence some things are hardwired for the moment.)

‘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

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

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

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

Framework Raises Memory Prices Again, Suggests Customers Bring Their Own RAM
Framework has announced yet another price increase for memory modules, the second in roughly a month, and the company is now actively encouraging customers to source their own RAM elsewhere if they can find better deals. The laptop maker cited “extreme memory shortages and price volatility” as the reason for the hike, noting … ⌘ Read more

Why Are There No Large Market Cap Companies Globally in Edtech?
Goldman Sachs, in a note this week, via India Dispatch: There are various reasons that explains this: (i) A large part of the global education spend goes towards formal education (schools, colleges and universities), which are typically either run by governments or are not-for-profit institutions;

(ii) It is difficult to replicate education quality … ⌘ Read more

The U.S. Could Ban Chinese-Made Drones Used By Police Departments
Tuesday the White House faces a deadline to decide “whether Chinese drone maker DJI Technologies poses a national security threat,” reports Bloomberg. But their article notes it’s “a decision with the potential to ground thousands of machines deployed by police and fire departments across the US.”

One person making the case against the drones is … ⌘ Read more

‘Confused’ Waymos Stopped in Intersections During San Francisco Power Outage
“On Saturday, videos shared widely on social media showed Waymo vehicles stopped mid-intersection with hazard lights flashing, forcing other cars to maneuver around them,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Independent notes that “Without working traffic lights, the driverless cars were seemingly left confused, with m … ⌘ Read more

Pro-AI Group Launches First of Many Attack Ads for US Election
“Super PAC aims to drown out AI critics in midterms,” the Washington Post reported in August, noting its intial funding over $100 million from “some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful investors and executives” including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, his wife, and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. The group’s goal was “to quash a philosophical debate … ⌘ Read more

Uber is Hiring More Engineers Because AI is Making Them More Valuable, CEO Says
Uber is hiring more engineers rather than fewer because AI tools have made them “superhumans,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said, pushing back against the industry trend of using productivity gains to justify headcount cuts. Speaking on the “On with Kara Swisher” podcast, Khosrowshahi noted that other tech executives see AI … ⌘ Read more

GitHub Is Going To Start Charging You For Using Your Own Hardware
GitHub will begin charging $0.002 per minute for self-hosted Actions runners used on private repositories starting in March. “At the same time, GitHub noted in a Tuesday blog post that it’s lowering the prices of GitHub-hosted runners beginning January 1, under a scheme it calls ‘simpler pricing and a better experience for GitHub Actions,’” … ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Rust Code Sees Its First CVE Vulnerability
Longtime Linux developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced that the Linux kernel has received its first CVE tied to Rust code. Phoronix reports: This first CVE (CVE-2025-68260) for Rust code in the Linux kernel pertains to the Android Binder rewrite in Rust. There is a race condition that can occur due to some noted unsafe Rust code. That code can lead to memory corrupti … ⌘ Read more

Are Warnings of Superintelligence ‘Inevitability’ Masking a Grab for Power?
Superintelligence has become “a quasi-political forecast” with “very little to do with any scientific consensus, emerging instead from particular corridors of power.” That’s the warning from James O’Sullivan, a lecturer in digital humanities from University College Cork. In a refreshing 5,600-word essay in Noema magazine, he notes t … ⌘ Read more

New Rule Forbids GNOME Shell Extensions Made Using AI-Generated Code
An anonymous reader shared this report from Phoronix:

Due to the growing number of GNOME Shell extensions looking to appear on extensions.gnome.org that were generated using AI, it’s now prohibited. The new rule in their guidelines note that AI-generated code will be explicitly rejected:

“Extensions must not be AI-generated

While it i … ⌘ 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

Doom Studio id Software Forms ‘Wall-To-Wall’ Union
id Software employees voted to form a wall-to-wall union with the CWA, covering all roles at the Doom studio. “The vote wasn’t unanimous, though a majority did vote in favor of the union,” notes Engadget. From the report: The union will work in conjunction with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which is the same organization involved with parent company ZeniMax’s … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net I dunno if it’s me or the bridge, but my pleroma instance didn’t pull any of your notes + a follow request got stuck as Request Sent

Image

Glibc Now Enabling 2MB THP On AArch64 By Default For Better Performance
The GNU C Library’s malloc implementation is now enabling 2MB Transparent Huge Pages (THP) by default for AArch64 Linux. This is being done in the name of better performance – a healthy 6.25% performance improvement is noted for SPEC with this change… ⌘ Read more

Luigi Mangione’s alleged notes to self: ‘Pluck eyebrows’, ‘Keep momentum’
A to-do list and travel plans shed light on the steps the 27-year-old may have taken — or planned to take — to avoid capture after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killing last year. ⌘ Read more

Scheduler Woes: Bisecting Early Performance Regressions Found In Linux 6.19
Yesterday I noted some early performance regressions I’ve found on the Linux 6.19 kernel compared to Linux 6.18 LTS stable. Those initial benchmarks were on an AMD EPYC server. Since then I’ve seen many of the same workloads regressing similarly on an AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation between Linux 6.18 and Linux 6.19 Git. Given the significant impact and AMD Threadripper processors always helping out to speed-up Linux kernel build time … ⌘ Read more

Early Benchmarks Of Linux 6.19 Git Showing Some Concerns
While just half-way through the Linux 6.19 merge window, over the weekend I began running some benchmarks of the current Linux 6.19 Git state compared to Linux 6.18 LTS stable. There are some minor performance improvements to note in a few of the tests on the first system I tested but also some regressions at this very early pre-RC1 state of the Linux 6.19 kernel… ⌘ Read more

New FreeBSD 15 Retires 32-Bit Ports and Modernizes Builds
FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE arrived this week, notes this report from The Register, which calls it the latest release “of the Unix world’s leading alternative to Linux.”

As well as numerous bug fixes and upgrades to many of its components, the major changes in this version are reductions in the number of platforms the OS supports, and in how it’s built and how its … ⌘ Read more

This is an example of the kind of garbage release notes from this conventional commit autogenerated crap 🤣

Netflix To Buy Warner Bros. In $72 Billion Cash, Stock Deal
Netflix is buying Warner Bros. Discovery in an $82.7 billion deal that gives it HBO, iconic franchises, and major studio infrastructure. “Warner Bros. shareholders will receive $27.75 a share in cash and stock in Netflix,” notes Bloomberg. “The total equity value of the deal is $72 billion, while the enterprise value of the deal is about $82.7 billio … ⌘ Read more

Wong will not say if further Islamic State family members on track to return
The Coalition seizes on meeting notes from June to claim the government is working to return Australian children and partners of Islamic State fighters. ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net Mate, I don’t know how you do it, but the frequency of words I haven’t come across before is actually quite high in your work. I noticed it in your twtxt messages in the past, but your notes are also full of them. I love it, always learning something new. Thank you for teaching me without knowing. In case you’re wondering, “yesternight” and “squalid” are the ones I stumbled across today. :-)

Kubernetes Is Retiring Its Popular Ingress NGINX Controller
During last month’s KubeCon North America in Atlanta, Kubernetes maintainers announced the upcoming retirement of Ingress NGINX. “Best-effort maintenance will continue until March 2026,” noted the Kubernetes SIG Network and the Security Response Committee. “Afterward, there will be no further releases, no bugfixes, and no updates to resolve any security vu … ⌘ Read more

Amazon To Use Nvidia Tech In AI Chips, Roll Out New Servers
AWS is deepening its partnership with Nvidia by adopting “NVLink Fusion” in its upcoming Trainium4 AI chips. “The NVLink technology creates speedy connections between different kinds of chips and is one of Nvidia’s crown jewels,” notes Reuters. From the report: Nvidia has been pushing to sign up other chip firms to adopt its NVLink technology, with Intel, Qualco … ⌘ Read more

Michael and Susan Dell Donate $6.25 Billion To Encourage Families To Claim ‘Trump Accounts’
Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25 billion to boost participation in the new “Trump Accounts” child investment program. “The historic gift has little precedent, with few single charitable commitments in the past 25 years exceeding $1 billion, much less multiple billions,” notes the Associate … ⌘ Read more

Apple AI Chief Retiring After Siri Failure
Apple’s longtime AI chief John Giannandrea is retiring, with former Microsoft and Google AI leader Amar Subramanya stepping in to take over. MacRumors notes the retirement comes after the company’s repeated delays in delivering its revamped Siri and internal turmoil that led to an AI team exodus. From the report: Giannandrea will serve as an advisor between now and 2026, with former Micro … ⌘ Read more

Rust Updates For Linux 6.19, Rust Minimum Baseline To Likely Follow Debian Stable
Miguel Ojeda has already submitted the core Rust programming language infrastructure updates intended for the Linux 6.19 merge window. In the pull request he also notes that moving forward the minimum supported Rust version for compiling the Linux kernel will likely follow whatever the minimum Rust version currently in use by the latest Debian stable release… ⌘ Read more

‘Spine-tingling’: Strangers find Tasmanian convict connection
A  Victorian tourist has been “blown away” after discovering a connection with a volunteer at the Hobart Penitentiary, with the volunteer noting people seem more open to discussing their convict histories. ⌘ Read more

AI Helps Drive Record $11.8B in Black Friday Online Spending
Earlier this month MasterCard noted that even Walmart now allows its customers to make purchases through ChatGPT. And after polling more than 4,000 consumers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and UAE, they found “more than four in 10 consumers already use AI tools to help them shop, including 61% of Gen Z and 57% of millennials.”

Many (50% of Gen Z and 49% of millenn … ⌘ Read more

New Hyperloop Projects Continue in Europe
Hyperloop One ceased operations in December 2023, notes CNN. “Yet nearly two years on, in other parts of the world, hyperloop projects are ongoing.” For example, Rotterdam-based Hardt Hyperloop has a cool web site — and the company’s managing director tells CNN that hyperloops are the only “actionable, sustainable solution to replace short-haul air travel” over distances greater than 300 mil … ⌘ Read more