Hangs & Performance Regression On Large Systems Fixed For Linux 7.0-rc4
This week’s “sched/urgent” pull request was sent out today of scheduler updates for the ongoing Linux 7.0 cycle. Notable this week are fixing some hangs as well as a possible performance regression on large systems… ⌘ Read more
KDE Linux Adds Apple APFS File-System Support, Workaround For Frustrating AMDGPU Issue
In addition to GNOME OS seeing recent improvements, KDE Linux continues seeing more enhancements too for this leading reference platform for showcasing the KDE Plasma desktop… ⌘ Read more
Does Canada Need Nationalized, Public AI?
While AI CEOs worry governments might nationalize AI, others are advocating for something similar. Canadian security professional Bruce Schneier and Harvard data scientist Nathan Sanders published this call to action in Canada’s most widely-read newspaper (with a readership over 6 million): “Canada Needs Nationalized, Public AI.”
While there are Canadian AI companies, they remain for-profit e … ⌘ Read more
SuperTux 0.7 Released With Enhanced Graphics, Level Redesign
SuperTux 0.7 officially released overnight for this nostalgic open-source game now seeing its first new release since December 2021. SuperTux 0.7 brings many significant improvements for this open-source game inspired by Super Mario… ⌘ Read more
New Freenet Network Launches, Along With ‘River’ Group Chat
Wikipedia describes Freenet as “a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication,” released in the year 2000. “Both Freenet and some of its associated tools were originally designed by Ian Clarke,” Wikipedia adds. (And in 2000 Clarke answered questions from Slashdot’s readers…)
And now Ian Clarke (aka Sanity — Slashdot reader #1,431 … ⌘ Read more
Will AI Bring ‘the End of Computer Programming As We Know It’?
Long-time tech journalist Clive Thompson interviewed over 70 software developers at Google, Amazon, Microsoft and start-ups for a new article on AI-assisted programming. It’s title?
“Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It.”
Published in the prestigious New York Times Magazine, the article even cites long-time programm … ⌘ Read more
America’s First Large-Scale Offshore Wind Project Finally Finishes Construction
It’s America’s first large-scale offshore wind project, reports WBUR — enough clean energy to power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts from 62 offshore wind turbines generating 800 megawatts.
But it took a while… The plant’s first construction delay happened back in 2019, they point out — and then “Just three months ag … ⌘ Read more
Open-Source “GreenBoost” Driver Aims To Augment NVIDIA GPUs vRAM With System RAM & NVMe To Handle Larger LLMs
An open-source, independently developed Linux kernel module called GreenBoost aims to augment the dedicated video memory on NVIDIA discrete GPUs with system memory and NVMe storage. The intent here with GreenBoost is a CUDA caching layer to more easily run larger AI models for LLMs that otherwise won’t fit solely in your graphics card’s dedicated vRAM… ⌘ Read more
How a Raspberry Pi Saved the Super Nintendo’s Infamously Inferior Version Of ‘Doom’
“Just the anachronism of seeing Doom, one of the poster children for the moral panic around violent video games, on a Nintendo console is novel,” writes Kotaku — especially with the console’s underpowered “Super FX” coprocessor
Hampered by a nearly unplayable framerate, especially in later levels, and mired by … ⌘ Read more
Are U.S. Utilities Trying to Delay Easy-to-Use Solar ‘Balcony’ Panels?
Plug-in (or “balcony”) solar panels can also be hung out a window or be set up in a backyard, reports NPR. They channel energy from the sun straight into a home’s electrical outlet, generating enough electricity to power a refrigerator or microwave while “displacing electricity that otherwise would come in from the grid…”
But what’s hol … ⌘ Read more
Gaming Site Editor Jailbreaks an Amazon Echo Show
“A few developers found a way, for now, to turn a few of these increasingly mediocre Amazon Show devices into friendly, useful, open computers,” writes the co-founder of the gaming/tech news site Aftermath. For under $50 each, he bought some used versions of the devices and tested their instructions, partly to escape the full-screen ads Amazon began showing late last year, an … ⌘ Read more
Should Keycaps Use Text or Glyphs for Delete, Return, Tab, Caps Lock, and Shift?
“The new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models feature a keyboard change,” reports MacRumors:
On the U.S. English version of the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro keyboards, the tab, caps lock, shift, return, and delete keycaps now have glyphs on them. On previous-generation models, these keys are labeled with text instead … ⌘ Read more
GIMP 3.2 Released With Many Improvements
Just under one year since the long-awaited GIMP 3.0 release, GIMP 3.2 is out today as the first feature release building off the GIMP 3.0 foundation… ⌘ Read more
System76 CEO Sees ‘Real Possibility’ Colorado’s Age-Verification Bill Excludes Open-Source
Last week System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized age-verification laws for operating systems — but he now sees a “real possibility” Colorado’s law might exclude open-source.
Phoronix reports that the System76 CEO met with the state Senator who co-authored Colorado’s bill, and then posted on X.com t … ⌘ Read more
US Set To Receive $10 Billion Fee For Brokering TikTok Deal
The deal to take control of TikTok’s U.S. business came with an unusual condition, according to people familiar with the matter. The investors — which include Oracle, Abu Dhabi investor MGX, and private-equity firm Silver Lake — “paid the Treasury Department about $2.5 billion when the deal closed in January,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “and are set t … ⌘ Read more
How a Species Evolved Fast Enough to Save Itself from Extinction
California saw its worst drought in 10,000 years between 2012 and 2015, remembers the Washington Post. And yet genetic analyses of California’s scarlet monkeyflower “found that many rapidly evolved… allowing them to cope with water scarcity and rebound from decline.”
“The fact that certain organisms are able to adapt just because of genetics t … ⌘ Read more
Debian 13.4 Released With Dozens Of Fixes
Debian 13.4 rolled out today with dozens of security fixes and other general bug fixes with the updated install media for Debian 13 Trixie… ⌘ Read more
AI’s Productivity Boost? Just 16 Minutes Per Week, Claims Study
“A new study suggests the productivity boost from AI may be far smaller than executives claim,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli:
According to research cited in Foxit’s State of Document Intelligence report, while 89% of executives and 79% of end users say AI tools make them feel more productive, the actual time savings shrink dramatically once peo … ⌘ Read more
U.S. State Bans on Lab-Grown Meats Challenged in Court
Last June Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement that Texans “have a God-given right to know what’s on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It’s plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives.”
But California company Wildtype sells lab-grown … ⌘ Read more
Trying Out Snapdragon X Elite With The Acer Swift 14 AI Laptop On Ubuntu 26.04
This week I tried out the current Ubuntu 26.04 development state on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite with the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop I have been using for my X Elite benchmarks over the past year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a smooth experience with new issues encountered for this Windows On ARM laptop… ⌘ Read more
OpenRazer 3.12 Released With Support For Newer Razer Products On Linux
OpenRazer 3.12 was just released today as the newest update to these independently-maintained, open-source drivers for Razer devices on Linux. Paired with the likes of the Polychromatic GUI, OpenRazer allows for a pleasant experience for the Razer gaming peripherals under Linux… ⌘ Read more
Trying Out Snapdragon X Elite With The Acer Swift 14 AI Laptop On Ubuntu 26.04
This week I tried out the current Ubuntu 26.04 development state on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite with the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop I have been using for my X Elite benchmarks over the past year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a smooth experience with new issues encountered for this Windows On ARM laptop… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 Will Bring Power Estimate Reporting For AMD Ryzen AI NPUs
This week’s round of drm-misc-next patches bring a few improvements to the AMDXDNA accelerator driver used for supporting the Ryzen AI NPUs. Plus some new panel additions and various other minor Direct Rendering Manager driver changes… ⌘ Read more
Meta Plans Sweeping Layoffs As AI Costs Mount
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers. No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has … ⌘ Read more
Google Now Using AutoFDO To Enhance Android’s Linux Kernel Performance
Google’s Android LLVM toolchain team shared publicly this week that they have begun making use of AutoFDO for automatic feedback directed optimizations of their Linux kernel build used by Android… ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.6.3 Fixing Direct Scan-Out When Using Fractional Scaling
KDE developers continue being very busy working on Plasma 6.7 feature development as well as continuing to drive new fixes and refinements to the current Plasma 6.6 stable series… ⌘ Read more
GNOME OS Switches To KMSCON Enabled By Default
GNOME OS as the Linux-based OSTree-using distribution that serves as the leading-edge, reference platform of GNOME desktop development is now using KMSCON by default… ⌘ Read more
Two Long-Lost Episodes of ‘Doctor Who’ Found
Longtime Slashdot reader tsuliga writes: Two new episodes of Doctor Who that were previously lost have been found. The original Doctor Who episodes were wiped or deleted by the BBC because they were not aware of the future use of re-runs of these shows. Ninety-five of the 253 episodes from the program’s first six years are currently missing. How many more episodes are out there … ⌘ Read more
ChatGPT, Other Chatbots Approved For Official Use In the Senate
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A top Senate administrator on Monday gave aides the green light to use three artificial intelligence chatbots for official work, a reflection of how widespread the use of the products has become in workplaces around the globe. The chief information officer for the Senate sergeant-at-arms, w … ⌘ Read more
Instagram Discontinues End-To-End Encryption For DMs
Meta plans to remove end-to-end encryption (E2EE) from Instagram direct messages by May 8, 2026. “Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we’re removing this option from Instagram in the coming months,” says Meta. “Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.” The Hacker News reports: The … ⌘ Read more
Qatar Helium Shutdown Puts Chip Supply Chain On a Two-Week Clock
Iranian drone strikes shut down a major helium facility in Qatar, removing about 30% of global helium supply and raising concerns for the semiconductor industry, which relies on the gas for chip fabrication. “QatarEnergy declared force majeure on existing contracts on March 4, freeing it from supply obligations to customers,” reports Tom’s Hardwar … ⌘ Read more
debauit Announced As Debian Source Package Auditor
Announced today was debaudit, a new set of tools and services designed to verify the integrity and reproducibility of Debian source packages… ⌘ Read more
Don’t Get Used To Cheap AI
AI services may not stay cheap for long, as companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are currently subsidizing usage to rapidly grow market share. As these companies move toward profitability and potential IPOs, Axios reports that investors will likely push them to increase prices and improve margins. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Flashback: Silicon Valley has seen this movie before. The so-called “mil … ⌘ Read more
Digg Relaunch Fails
sdinfoserv writes: After running a Reddit clone for a couple of months, the Digg beta shut down again. The website is a splash memo from CEO Justin Mezzell, blaming the latest “Hard Reset” on bots. “Building on the internet in 2026 is different,” writes Mezzell. “We learned that the hard way. Today we’re sharing difficult news: we’ve made the decision to significantly downsize the Digg team…”
The decision was made after struggling … ⌘ Read more
Backblaze Hosts 314 Trillion Digits of Pi Online
BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Cloud storage company Backblaze has partnered with StorageReview to make a massive dataset containing 314 trillion digits of Pi publicly accessible. The digits were calculated by StorageReview in December 2025 after months of heavy computation designed to stress modern hardware. The dataset now hosted in the cloud weighs in at over … ⌘ Read more
NVIDIA 595.44.03 Linux Driver Released With VK_KHR_device_address_commands
Less than a week after their prior NVIDIA Vulkan beta driver in the R595 driver series, today NVIDIA released another new Vulkan beta driver for Linux and Windows systems… ⌘ Read more
Meta Delays Rollout of New AI Model After Performance Concerns
Meta has delayed the release of its next major AI model after internal tests showed it lagging behind competing systems from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The New York Times reports: The model, code-named Avocado, outperformed Meta’s previous A.I. model and did better than Google’s Gemini 2.5 model from March, two of the people said. But it has not … ⌘ Read more
Panther Lake Tuning For The Intel Idle Driver In Linux 7.1
While the Linux support for Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake is largely in good shape as shown in my numerous articles over the past month and a half, there are occasional missing remnants landing in the kernel. As the latest example, or the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel, the unified Panther Lake C-States table is being added for the Intel Idle driver… ⌘ Read more
Live Nation Execs Brag About ‘Robbing’ Ticket Buyers In Slack DMs
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Pitchfork: Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice and Live Nation reached a settlement in the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit against the concert giant. During the trial, which lasted only a week, representatives for Live Nation had moved to exclude a collection of Slack direct messages from 2022 between … ⌘ Read more
Linux Kernel API Specification Framework Advances Past RFC Stage
After going through five rounds of review under a Request For Comments (RFC) flag, today the latest round of Kernel API Specification Framework patches were sent out with the RFC flag removed… ⌘ Read more
Apple’s App Store In China Gets Lower 25% Commission To Appease Regulators
Apple will cut its App Store commission in China from 30% to 25% starting March 15, with small-business and mini-app rates dropping from 15% to 12%. AppleInsider reports: Chinese regulators have been back and forth with Apple in recent years over the 30% App Store commission. The latest publicly known pressure occurred after Pre … ⌘ Read more
Facial Recognition Error Jails Innocent Grandmother For Months
Mr. Dollar Ton shares a report from the Guardian: Angela Lipps, 50, spent nearly six months in jail after Fargo police identified her as a suspect in an organized bank fraud case using facial recognition software, according to south-east North Dakota news outlet InForum. Lipps told the outlet she had never been to North Dakota and did not commit the c … ⌘ Read more
Linux 6.12 Through Linux 7.0 File-System Benchmarks For EXT4 + XFS
Earlier this month were various Linux 7.0 file-system benchmarks showing how XFS is leading the race in the overall upstream Linux file-system performance on this forthcoming kernel. Stemming from that testing some premium supporters requested a fresh look at the historical performance of XFS as well as EXT4. So today’s article is a look at how XFS and EXT4 have performed on every kernel release going back to Linux 6.12 LTS. ⌘ Read more
Italian Prosecutors Seek Trial For Amazon, Four Execs Over Alleged $1.4 Billion Tax Evasion
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Milan prosecutors have requested trial for Amazon’s European unit and four of its managers over alleged tax evasion worth around $1.38 billion, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Thursday. The move is unprecedented for a case o … ⌘ Read more
Intel Xe Driver In Linux 7.1 Preps For Intel Nova Lake P, Introduces VM_BIND DECOMPRESS
Sent out this week were more Intel Xe driver feature patches to DRM-Next for queuing ahead of next month’s Linux 7.1 merge window… ⌘ Read more
FreeRDP 3.24 Released With Security Fixes & Improved X11 Client Support
FreeRDP as this open-source and cross-platform Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) implementation is out with FreeRDP 3.24 to ship new security fixes as well as other improvements… ⌘ Read more
Apple MacBook Neo Beats Ever Single x86 PC CPU For Single-Core Performance
Early benchmarks show the A18 Pro-powered MacBook Neo beating every current x86 CPU in single-core Cinebench performance, including chips from Intel and AMD. Notebookcheck reports: We have performed a couple of benchmarks and were particularly impressed by the single-core performance. Not in the short Geekbench test, but in … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 AMDGPU Fixing Idle Power Issue For RDNA4 GPUs After Compute Workloads
A fix is on the way to the Linux 7.0 kernel today for addressing an idle power issue with AMD RDNA4 GPUs reporting high power consumption and full utilization even after being “idle” following compute workloads like Llama.cpp… ⌘ Read more
GNOME Infrastructure Now Battling Bots & AI Scrapers Using Fastly
GNOME’s GitLab infrastructure has already been using Anubis for a while to help fend off bots and AI scraper traffic from wreacking havoc on their server resources and also their hosting budget. GNOME recently began redirecting some GitLab traffic to their GitHub repositories as another step in dealing with bots/scrapers. Now they have taken an added step of using the commercial, closed-source Fastly in their battle with bots… ⌘ Read more
Intel Updates LLM-Scaler-vLLM With Support For More Qwen3/3.5 Models
Intel’s LLM-Scaler project that makes it easy to deploy various large language models on modern Arc Graphics hardware is out with a new test release to expand its LLM coverage… ⌘ Read more