Before Mass Layoffs, Meta Reassigns 7,000 Workers To Focus On AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Meta told employees on Monday that it was reassigning 7,000 workers to focus on new initiatives around artificial intelligence, the latest change in a company transformation spurred by the powerful technology. Employees will be moved to four new organizations focused on building new A.I. … ⌘ Read more

Amazon’s Alexa+ Now Produces AI-Generated Podcasts
Amazon is adding AI-generated “podcasts” to Alexa+, letting users request custom audio explainers on any topic featuring two synthetic co-hosts. Variety reports: Seemingly to dispel the notion that these “podcasts” will be AI audio slop, Amazon emphasized that it has deals with major news organizations to ensure “accurate, real-time news and information.” Those inclu … ⌘ Read more

Tom Steyer Wants to Save California From Billionaires. But Also Doesn’t Want Them to Leave
The hedge fund billionaire turned gubernatorial candidate wants to tax California’s ultrawealthy, regulate AI, and keep Silicon Valley happy at the same time. Good luck with that. ⌘ Read more

Willis targets agency mergers, 8,700 fewer public service jobs
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has announced a “fundamental overhaul of the public service”, targeting 8,700 fewer core public service jobs by July 2029 alongside a major reduction in the number of government agencies.

In a pre-Budget speech to Business North Harbour, Willis said the Government would reduce core public service numbers to no more than 55,000 full-time-equivalent staff by July 2029 … ⌘ Read more

More Intel Open-Source Projects Formally Sunset: BigDL Time Series Toolkit & Others
Yet more open-source Intel software projects have been formally archived. Over the past year Intel has formally discontinued a number of open-source projects it formally maintained. Many of them were already dormant and not too noteworthy but there were also some more notable ones discontinued like their legendary Clear Linux, Software Defined Silicon, Optane Memory software projects, and then other efforts like open ecosystem … ⌘ Read more

Our naughty time ⌘ Read more

Tower plugs Amazon Connect AI into its call centres in global pilot
Seven months in, Tower Insurance says it has saved about 550 days of call time through Amazon’s pilot AI call centre programme.

The insurer is the only business in either New Zealand or Australia to take part in the global pilot of Amazon Connect, a cloud-based AI contact centre as a service (CCaaS.) Only six other organisations worldwide are involved. ⌘ Read more

WHO Declares Ebola Outbreak a Global Health Emergency
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The World Health Organization declared on Saturday that the spread of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda was a global health emergency. The announcement was made a day after Africa’s leading public health authority reported that an outbreak in a province in the northeast of the … ⌘ Read more

[$] Swap tables, flash-friendly swap, swap_ops, and more
The kernel’s swap subsystem is charged with managing anonymous pages in
secondary storage when those pages are (hopefully) not being used and the
memory they occupy is needed elsewhere. This long-unloved subsystem has
seen a resurgence of developer interest in recent times, so it is not
surprising that it was the topic of three separate sessions in the
memory-management track at the
2026 [Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit](https://events.linuxfoundat … ⌘ Read more

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Booed During Graduation Speech About AI
Today former Google CEO Eric Schmidt “was booed multiple times,” reports NBC News, “while discussing AI during a commencement speech at the University of Arizona.”

Schmidt had started by remembering how computer platforms “gave everyone a voice” but also “degraded the public square… They rewarded outrage. They amplified our worst instin … ⌘ Read more

Kernel prepatch 7.1-rc4
The 7.1-rc4 kernel prepatch is out for
testing.

Some of the documentation updates might be worth highlighting: the
continued flood of AI reports has basically made the security list
almost entirely unmanageable, with enormous duplication due to
different people finding the same things with the same
tools. People spend all their time just forwarding things to the
right people or saying “that was already fixed a week/month ago”
and pointing to the public … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Exchange Server Vulnerability Actively Exploited, in a Bad Week for Microsoft
Forbes describes it as “definitely already out there, and under active exploitation according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, urging all organizations to prioritize timely remediation as the attack vector poses a significant risk.”

“We have issued CVE-2026-42897 to address … ⌘ Read more

Us Math/Reading Scores Continue 13-Year Decline. Researchers Blame Reduced Testing and Social Media
Test scores “are lower than they were a decade ago in school districts across the U.S.,” reports Times magazine, citing new data released Wednesday by Stanford researchers. “Reading scores were down roughly 0.6 grades in 2025 compared to 2015, and math scores were down about 0.4 … ⌘ Read more

Sysadmin Creates ‘ModuleJail’ To Automatically Blacklist Unused Kernel Modules
Long-time Slashdot reader internet-redstar shares an interestging response to “the recent wave of Linux kernel privilege escalation vulnerabilities like ‘Copy Fail’ and ‘Dirty Frag’”:

Belgian Linux sysadmin and Tesla Hacker “Jasper Nuyens” got tired of the idea of manually blacklisting dozens or even hundreds of obscure … ⌘ Read more

Python Stays #1, R Rises in Popularity, Says TIOBE
Are statistical programmers coalescing around a handful of popular languages? That’s the question asked by the CEO of software assessment site TIOBE, which every month estimates the popularity of programming languages based on their frequency in search results:

This month, the programming language R matched its all-time high by reaching position #8 in the TIOBE index on … ⌘ Read more

Emilia and Subaru quality time (@co_depend) [Re: Zero] ⌘ Read more

How I Added an LLM-Based Grammar Checking + TeX Math Import To LibreOffice
Former Microsoft programmer Keith Curtis “wrote and self-published After the Software Wars to explain the caliber of free and open source software,” according to his entry on Wikipedia, “and why he believes Linux is technically superior to any proprietary OS.”

He’s also KeithCu (long-time Slashdot reader #925,649), and has wri … ⌘ Read more

Asteroid 2026 JH2 Is About to Fly Right Past Earth—Relatively Speaking
On May 18, an asteroid about the size of Chicago’s Cloud Gate will fly four times closer to Earth than the moon. ⌘ Read more

The Best Outdoor Deals From the REI Anniversary Sale 2026
It’s the best time of year to pick up all the outdoor gadgets, tents, sleeping bags, and other gear you’ll need for summer fun. ⌘ Read more

[$] HugeTLB preservation over live update
Recent times have seen a lot of effort put into the implementation of the kexec handover and live update orchestrator
features in the Linux kernel. But that work is not yet complete. At the
2026 Linux Storage,\
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Pratyush Yadav led a
memory-management-track session on adding the ability to preserve [hugetlbfs](https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.html … ⌘ Read more

Coreboot + AMD openSIL Powered Firmware Published For The Gigabyte MZ33-AR1
3mdeb announced on Thursday their release of Dasharo v0.9 for the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 EPYC server motherboard. This is the first time seeing AMD openSIL and Coreboot available for a readily-available AMD EPYC server motherboard!.. ⌘ Read more

AI start-up boss who faked millions in revenue faces jail time
The former chief executive has been told by his own lawyer that a jail sentence is unavoidable after pleading guilty to fraud. ⌘ Read more

Best Early Memorial Day Mattress Deals: Helix, Saatva (2026)
It’s one of the best times of the year to buy a mattress, and deals on our favorite models have already started. ⌘ Read more

Princeton Will Supervise Exams For First Time In 133 Years Because of AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: Princeton University will soon require exams to be supervised for the first time in 100 years – all thanks to students using artificial intelligence to cheat. For 133 years, the Ivy League school’s honor code allowed students to take exams without a professor present, but … ⌘ Read more

Best Early Memorial Day Mattress Deals: Helix, Saatva (2026)
It’s one of the best times of the year to buy a mattress, and deals on our favorite models have already started. ⌘ Read more

bed time is the best time ⌘ Read more

Linux’s KVM With CET Virtualization Is Causing Some Hosts To Hang
Introduced to the Linux kernel last year was Control-flow Enforcement Technology “CET” virtualization for modern AMD and Intel CPUs. This complements CET that has existed in Linux for quite some time but it’s new now to the KVM virtualization world, but some yet to be diagnosed problems are causing some hosts to hang when making use of this virtualization security feature… ⌘ Read more

HelloFresh Meal Kit Review (2026): Vast Options, Good Execution
The HelloFresh meal kit has harnessed AI and modern logistics to field the most impressively gigantic menu I have ever seen. Recipe times are still lies, though. ⌘ Read more

@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).

Teen tits you can enjoy any time ⌘ Read more

[$] Friction in Fedora’s over AI developer desktop initiative
A push by Red Hat employees to create a Fedora “AI Developer
Desktop” with support for out-of-tree kernel drivers and AI toolkits
has been met with objections from some long-time members of the Fedora
community. After more than a month of sometimes heated discussion, the
Fedora\
Council had voted
to approve the initiative; however, a last-minut … ⌘ Read more

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Got Its Drill Stuck on a Rock. Here’s How They Freed It
This is the first time NASA has encountered a situation like this, and it took nearly a week to resolve. ⌘ Read more

Iran soll noch Großteil seiner Raketen haben
US-Medienberichten zufolge soll der Iran weiterhin über den Großteil seiner Bestände an mobilen Abschussrampen und Raketen verfügen. Unter Berufung auf US-Geheimdienste berichtete zuletzt die „New York Times“, dass der Iran noch jeweils rund 70 Prozent hat. US-Präsident Donald Trump nannte die Medienberichte „Verrat“. Unterdessen steigen die Kosten für das US-Militär deutlich. ⌘ Read more

South Korea Floats ‘Citizen Dividend’ Using AI Profits
South Korea’s presidential policy chief is calling for a “citizen dividend” that would return some AI-driven profits and tax revenue to the public. The Straits Times. From the report: Presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom said in a Facebook post that a portion of the profits and tax revenue derived from the artificial intelligence boom “should be structurally returned to … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Employees Are ‘Tokenmaxxing’ Due To Pressure To Use AI Tools
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times (via Ars Technica): Amazon employees are using an internal AI tool to automate non-essential tasks in a bid to show managers they are using the technology more frequently. The Seattle-based group has started to widely deploy its in-house “MeshClaw” product in recent weeks, allowing emplo … ⌘ Read more

eBay Rejects GameStop’s $56 Billion Takeover As ‘Neither Credible Nor Attractive’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: EBay on Tuesday rejected a $56 billion takeover bid from the much smaller GameStop over financing doubts, calling the proposal “neither credible nor attractive.” EBay, which has roughly four times GameStop’s market value, also underscored that its turnaround efforts under … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

So, it’s plenty good enough for them.

Yeah, but on the other hand, you can’t even log in normally to a Matrix/Element account. I mean using username + password. It’s not expected that you ever log out or lose your browser session. If you do, you must use a one-time backup code (that you must create and save beforehand) to log in again.

To be fair, I can’t say that I fully understand what Matrix is doing in the first place. The text that I quoted reads like they have your keys. But they also claim that they only store this stuff encryped: https://element.io/en/help#encryption5 So … encrypted with what? Only option here is my password, isn’t it? (But if my password was good enough to reclaim an account … why do all the other stuff …)

Matrix takes end-to-end encryption seriously. When I ran a Matrix server for the family, the family members would regularly lose their keys, because they didn’t pay attention to something. That’s on purpose! Or rather, that was on purpose. Maybe it’s different these days?

No clue.

First Real-Time Brain-Controlled Hearing Device
Researchers at Columbia demonstrated the first real-time brain-controlled hearing system that can identify which speaker a listener is focusing on in a noisy environment and automatically amplify that voice while suppressing others. “This breakthrough addresses the ‘cocktail party effect,’ a major limitation of conventional hearing aids, which often struggle to distinguish betw … ⌘ Read more

Against Coyote Time ⌘ 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.

30% Off Samsung Promo Code | May 2026
Save 30% or 10% with Samsung coupon codes, up to $1,000 on appliances, plus limited-time deals on the Galaxy Z Fold7, Flip7, and S25. ⌘ Read more

Noom Promo Codes: 50% Off Best Deals & Free Trials for April 2026
Discover the best ways to save on Noom subscriptions, including free trials, limited-time offers for GLP-1Rx Plus, and essential tips for redeeming your Noom discount. ⌘ Read more

Digg Tries Again, This Time As an AI News Aggregator
Digg is relaunching again, this time as an AI-focused news aggregator rather than the Reddit-style community site it recently abandoned. TechCrunch reports: On Friday evening, the founder previewed a link to the newly redesigned Digg, which now looks nothing like a Reddit clone and more like the news aggregator it once was. This time around, the site is focused on rankin … ⌘ Read more

It’s vacation time ⌘ Read more

Google Says Hackers Used AI To Create Zero Day Security Flaw For the First Time
Google says it has seen the first evidence of cybercriminals using AI to create a zero-day vulnerability. “Google reported its findings to the unnamed firm affected by the vulnerability before releasing its report,” reports Politico. “The company then issued a patch to fix the issue.” From the report: Google Threat I … ⌘ Read more

Motorboatin time ⌘ Read more

Debian to require reproducible builds
Paul Gevers has slipped an interesting bit of news into a “ bits from the release\
team” message:

Aided by the efforts of the Reproducible Builds project, we’ve
decided it’s time to say that Debian must ship reproducible
packages. Since yesterday, we have enabled our migration software
to block migration of new packages that can’t be reproduced or
existing packages (in testing) that regress in reproducibility.

As Gioe … ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Starts Retiring Support for AMD’s 30-Year-Old K5 CPUs
Linux 7.1 started phasing out support for Intel’s 37-year-old i486 processor. Linux 7.2 removed drivers for the old AMD Elan 32-bit systems on a chip.

And now some i586 and i686 class processors are being removed, reports Phoronix:

Supporting those vintage GPUs without the Time Stamp Counter “TSC” instruction are becoming a burden… TSC-ca … ⌘ Read more

Keyboard Shortcuts I Learned From My Cat
Every time my cat Mira walks across a keyboard, I learn a few new Mac and PC keyboard shortcuts I never knew about. ⌘ Read more

it’s time for you to eat ⌘ Read more