Intel’s Vulkan Linux Driver Lands New Feature To Boost DX12 Game Performance
Intel’s open-source “ANV” Vulkan driver for Linux systems enabled a new feature called BTP+BTI RCC Keying. You may be wondering what it means or stands for, but long story short it helps with the performance of Direct3D 12 (DX12) games running on Linux by way of Valve’s Steam Play with Proton + VKD3D-Proton… ⌘ Read more

In the interest of fairness and hopefully for the last time, I ever have to address this, Google has flip-flopped again and promised “sideloading” will not be removed from their version of Android, but instead have to be enabled in the developer settings, using the following “advanced flow”:

To be perfectly clear, this still falls short of what I wanted, but at this point, it is a compromise I’m willing to take, over further pursuing this, through the various available European courts, myself.

Here is their full statement:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html

SaaS Apocalypse Could Be OpenSource’s Greatest Opportunity
Longtime Slashdot reader internet-redstar writes: Nearly a trillion dollars has been wiped from software stocks in 2026, with hedge funds making billions shorting Salesforce, HubSpot, and Atlassian. At FOSDEM 2026, cURL maintainer Daniel Stenberg shut down his bug bounty program after AI-generated slop overwhelmed his team. A new article on HackerNoon argues … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net H-Blockx covered it, the original was by Snap! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_(Snap!_song) But it’s actually not my type of music at all. The high pitch refrain “I’ve got the power” is iconic and has somehow burned itself into my brain. Must have been a short circuit.

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

The 19th Century Silent Film That First Captured a Robot Attack
The Library of Congress has restored Gugusse et l’Automate, an 1897 short by Georges Melies that likely features the first robot ever shown on film. Long thought lost, the reel was discovered in a box of decaying nitrate films donated from a Michigan family collection. NPR reports: The film, which can be viewed on the Library of Congress’ websi … ⌘ Read more

The AI Case Against Indian IT Ignores What Indian IT Actually Does
A fictional memo set in June 2028, published by short seller Citrini Research, wiped roughly $10 billion off Indian IT stocks in a single trading session on February 24 and sent the Nifty IT index down as much as 5.3% – its worst single-day fall since August 2023 – on the argument that AI coding agents have collapsed the cost advantage of Indian … ⌘ Read more

Pro-Gamer Consumer Movement ‘Stop Killing Games’ Will Launch NGOs in America and the US
The consumer movement Stop Killing Games “has come a long way in the two years since
YouTuber Ross Scott got mad about Ubisoft’s
destruction of The Crew in 2024,” writes the gaming news site PC Gamer. “The short version is, he won: 1.3 million people signed the group’s petition, mandating its considerati … ⌘ Read more

Is ‘Brain Rot’ Real? How Too Much Time Online Can Affect Your Mind.
Can being “very online” really affect our brains, asks the Washington Post:

Research suggests that scrolling through short videos on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube Shorts is affecting our attention, memory and mental health. A recent meta-analysis of the scientific literature found that increased use of short-form video was linked with poorer co … ⌘ Read more

AMC Theatres Will Refuse To Screen AI Short Film After Online Uproar
An anonymous reader shares a report: When will AI movies start showing up in theaters nationwide? It was supposed to be next month. But when word leaked online that an AI short film contest winner was going to start screening before feature presentations in AMC Theatres, the cinema chain decided not to run the content.

The issue … ⌘ Read more

Study of 12,000 EU Firms Finds AI’s Productivity Gains Are Real
A study of more than 12,000 European firms found that AI adoption causally increases labour productivity by 4% on average across the EU, and that it does so without reducing employment in the short run.

Researchers from the Bank for International Settlements and the European Investment Bank used an instrumental variable strategy that matched EU firms … ⌘ Read more

Bitcoin Dropped Nearly 30% This Week. But Why?
Last Sunday, Bitcoin had dropped 13% in three days, to $76,790.

By Thursday it had dropped another 21%, to $60,062.

This morning it’s at $69,549 — up from Thursday, down from Sunday, but 44% lower than its all-time high in October of $123,742. In short, Bitcoin “is down almost 30% this week alone,” reports CNBC:

“This steady selling in our view signals that traditional investors are los … ⌘ Read more

Also the short documentary ‘John Was Trying to Contact Aliens’ was really heartfelt and great. Didn’t know the story of John Shepherd yet. Discovered some great music thanks to this short film. Inkl. Harmonia

I think I’ll never eat McDonald’s fries/chips ever again 😱 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ITRtnPPJPsY

Security Researchers Find Current RISC-V CPU Implementations Coming Up Short
While many open-source enthusiasts like to flaunt RISC-V as not having the security challenges as x86_64 CPUs have seen over the past several years with various speculative execution / side-channel attacks and arguing for the benefits of an open-source ISA in stronger security, in practice it’s not so clear-cut. Security researchers at Germany’s CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security have found current RISC-V CPU impleme … ⌘ Read more

Google’s Project Genie Lets You Generate Your Own Interactive Worlds
Google is letting outsiders experiment with DeepMind’s Genie 3 “world model” via Project Genie, a tool for generating short, interactive AI worlds. The caveat: it requires a $250/month AI Ultra subscription, is U.S.-only, and has tight limits that make it more of a tech demo than a game engine. Engadget reports: At launch, Project Genie o … ⌘ Read more

I’ve got sore muscles. The sticky snow couldn’t be pushed, it had to be laborously cleared shovel by shovel. :-D

In my lunch break, I went on a short stroll. Oh boy, walking through deep damp snow is exhausting! There were sections with easily 30 centimeters and more. Some big wind drifts had piled up. Despite melting off quickly in the 4°C, especially turning the trees brown again, the white landscape still looks so nice. I’m glad these road marking sticks finally came in handy for the snow plow guys. :-) The black and orange stripes are 30 cm high.

https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2026-01-26/

That’s probably it. There’s no significant snowfall announced for the rest of the week and temperatures are supposed to stay in the 2-4°C range by day.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Hehe. :-) This steep footpath connects a hiking parking lot outside the village and the edge of the village in a fairly straight line. Garden owners are allowed to drive their vehicles down from the village to their lots on this pathway and up again. These two poles are placed about a third up from the botton on a short, comparatively flat section to stop people from taking this shortcut to get down to the country road. Said road goes through the village but there are hairpins getting up and down. The road markings have been added recentlyish. I suspect to warn shooting down cyclists of the danger ahead. I haven’t seen something like this anywhere else either. :-)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org All that short brown grass, almost looks like Scotland. 🤔 (I’ve never been there. 😅)

What the heck is 06.jpg?

Astronauts Splash Down To Earth After Medical Evacuation From ISS
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Four astronauts evacuated from the International Space Station (ISS) have landed back on Earth after their stay in space was cut short by a month due to a “serious” medical issue. The crew’s captain, Nasa astronaut Mike Fincke, exited the spacecraft first, smiling and wobbling slightly on his … ⌘ Read more

YouTube Will Now Let You Filter Shorts Out of Search Results
YouTube is updating search filters so users can explicitly choose between Shorts and long-form videos. The change also replaces view-count sorting with a new “Popularity” filter and removes underperforming options like “Sort by Rating.” The Verge reports: Right now, a filter-less search shows a mix of longform and short form videos, which can be annoying … ⌘ Read more

Study Casts Doubt on Potential For Life on Jupiter’s Moon Europa
Jupiter’s moon Europa is on the short list of places in our solar system seen as promising in the search for life beyond Earth, with a large subsurface ocean thought to be hidden under an outer shell of ice. But new research is raising questions about whether Europa in fact has what it takes for habitability. Reuters: The study assessed the pot … ⌘ Read more

AMD Releases GAIA 0.15 - Positioning It As A Framework/SDK For Building AI PC Agents
Last year AMD announced GAIA as short for “Generative AI Is Awesome”. It started off as a Windows-only AI demo but over time added Linux support along with introducing different AI agents. For going along with AMD’s AI announcements at CES 2026, AMD released GAIA 0.15 where they are now positioning this software as a framework/SDK for building AI PC agents… ⌘ Read more

Ending three luxurious do-what-I-please weeks; tomorrow is back to work. What do you all do during your break (and this assumes you had one, even if short)? I mostly did nothing, which in itself was truly something! So much, I long to do it all over again. A man can dream, right? Haha!

Furiosa’s Energy-Efficient ‘NPU’ AI Chips Start Mass Production This Month, Challenging Nvidia
The Wall Street Journal profiles “the startup that is now one of a handful of chip makers nipping at the heels of Nvidia.”

Furiosa’s AI chip is dubbed “RNGD” — short for renegade — and slated to start mass production this month. Valued at nearly $700 million based on its most recent fun … ⌘ Read more

Google’s $250M Deal with California to Fund Newsrooms May Be Stalled
Remember how California’s government negotiated a 2024 deal where Google contributed millions to California’s local newsrooms to offset advertisers moving to the search engine?

“A year after it was cemented — and billed as a model that could succeed where entire countries and continents had fallen short — the agreement is tangled in budget … ⌘ Read more

Reading is a Vice
The International Publishers Association spent the past year promoting the slogan “Democracy depends on reading,” but Atlantic senior editor Adam Kirsch argues that this utilitarian pitch fundamentally misunderstands why people become readers in the first place.

The most recent Survey of Public Participation in the Arts found that less than half of Americans read a single book in 2022, and only 38% read a novel or short story. A Universi … ⌘ Read more

Israel Deploys World’s First Drone Defense Laser
Israel has operationally deployed Iron Beam, a 100,000-watt laser air-defense system capable of shooting down drones, rockets, and mortars at negligible per-shot cost. According to Tom’s Hardware, it marks the first real-world deployment of a high-energy laser as part of a modern, multi-layered missile defense network. From the report: The Iron Beam is a short-range line-of-sigh … ⌘ Read more

An Amateur Codebreaker May Have Just Solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac Killings
Los Angeles Times (non-paywalled source): When police questioned Marvin Margolis following the murder of Elizabeth Short – who became known as the Black Dahlia – he lied about how well he had known her. The 22-year-old Short had been found mutilated in a weedy lot in South Los Angeles, severed neatly in half with … ⌘ Read more

25.2% of Energy EU Used in 2024 Came From Renewables
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2024, 25.2% of gross final energy consumption in the EU came from renewable sources, up by 0.7 percentage points compared with 2023. This share is 17.3 pp short of meeting the 2030 target (42.5%), which would require an annual average increase of 2.9 pp from 2025 to 2030.

Among the EU countries, Sweden recorded the highest shar … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.337 Debuts With Long Vector & 3D ASTC Compression Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.337 released a short time ago as what could be the last Vulkan API spec update of 2025 depending upon how much time the working group takes off or not around the holidays. In any case, it’s a nice holiday treat with the new VK_EXT_texture_compression_astc_3d and VK_EXT_shader_long_vector extensions… ⌘ Read more

Micron Says Memory Shortage Will ‘Persist’ Beyond 2026
Micron, one of the world’s three largest memory suppliers, expects the global shortage of DRAM and NAND flash memory to “persist through and beyond” 2026 as AI-driven demand continues to outstrip supply. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra made the forecast during the company’s latest earnings call on Wednesday, saying that “supply will remain substantially short of the demand for the … ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patch Confirms: Rust Experiment Is Done, Rust Is Here To Stay
Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda posted the patch a short time ago to “conclude the Rust experiment”. The “experiment” of Rust programming language code in the Linux kernel is over as it’s now accepted to be a success and “Rust is here to stay” in the kernel… ⌘ Read more

Disney Puts $1 Billion Into OpenAI, Licenses 200+ Characters for AI-Generated Videos and Images
Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and has entered into a three-year licensing deal that will let users generate AI-powered short videos and images featuring more than 200 characters from its Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar franchises.

The new features are expected to launch in 2026 … ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Vulkan Linux Driver Merges Shader VMA Allocator For Ray-Tracing Capture/Replay
Merged today to the Intel open-source “ANV” Vulkan driver in Mesa 26.0 is introducing a shader VMA allocator. Long story short this new allocator steps toward enabling Vulkan ray-tracing capture/replay support, which can come in hand for debugging issues with Vulkan ray-tracing on Intel graphics hardware under Linux and similarly to assist in optimizing for better performance… ⌘ Read more

Changes are coming for short-term rentals in Brisbane’s suburban areas
Up to 500 short-term rental operators will be told to return to the long-term rental market under major reforms announced by Brisbane City Council. ⌘ Read more

Council announces crackdown on short-stay accommodation
Hundreds of properties in low and low-to-medium residential-zoned areas of Brisbane will have to seek development approval or be banned from acting as short-stay accommodation. ⌘ Read more

Proposed testing changes for imported raw prawns labelled ‘short-sighted’
The federal government is being accused of allowing “trade to trump biosecurity”, over proposed changes critics claim will “weaken” and “roll back” testing of potentially diseased raw prawn imports. ⌘ Read more

Smith denied first Australian Open title as Neergaard-Petersen claims win
Cameron Smith falls agonisingly short of winning his first Australian Open, as Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen scores a thrilling one-stroke victory at Royal Melbourne. ⌘ Read more

1girl ai_generated blue_submarine_no._6 breasts completely_nude female mutio nipples nude nude_female pointy_ears red_eyes shipwreck short_hair silver_hair siren-module solo underwater
1girl ai_generated blue_submarine_no._6 breasts completely_nude female mutio nipples nude nude_female pointy_ears red_eyes shipwreck short_hair silver_hair siren-module solo underwater ⌘ Read more

Live: Fires, heatwaves strike across Australia with extreme warnings issued
A broad heatwave is expected to spread across Australia, with short and sharp bursts of heat throughout the southern states. Follow live. ⌘ Read more

RAM Is So Expensive, Samsung Won’t Even Sell It To Samsung
A severe spike in global DRAM prices has pushed Samsung Semiconductor to refuse a long-term RAM order from its own sibling, Samsung Electronics. The move is forcing the smartphone division into short, expensive renegotiations, which will likely mean higher costs for consumer devices. PCWorld reports: Samsung subsidiaries are, naturally, going to look to Sa … ⌘ Read more

‘Read the fine print’: Insurers are short-changing patients, doctors say
A new report from Australia’s peak doctors’ body says private health insurance is increasingly failing to deliver value to the roughly 15 million Australians who hold a policy. ⌘ Read more

Missing Woogenellup farmer described as ‘irreplaceable’ by family
Great Southern man Mark Adams went on a short fishing trip on Monday afternoon and never returned. His family are devastated by the likely loss of their loved one. ⌘ 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

Breaking: Government projected to badly miss 2035 climate target, fall shy of 2030
The Climate Change Authority projects Australia is expected to fall well short of its commitment to cut emissions by 62 to 70 per cent by 2035 — though the minister notes that is before accounting for a number of recent commitments. ⌘ Read more

The science of swimming trunks – including tightness analysis
Feedback dives into a new piece of research on the merits of swimming briefs or looser swimming shorts – and raises an eyebrow at its conclusion ⌘ Read more

New Mars Orbiter Manuever Challenges Theory: That May Not Be an Underground Lake on Mars
In 2018 researchers claimed evidence of a lake beneath the surface of Mars, detected by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument (or Marsis for short).

But new Mars observations “are not consistent with the presence of liquid water in this location and an alternat … ⌘ Read more

Lost my boy Jango today, 2 years just feels too short. ⌘ Read more

Disney Loses Bid To Block Sling TV’s One-Day Cable Passes
A federal judge in New York denied Disney’s request to block Sling TV’s short-term passes, which give viewers the ability to stream live content for as little as one day. From a report: In a ruling on Tuesday, US District Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that Disney didn’t prove that Sling TV’s passes caused “irreparable harm” to the entertainment giant, a … ⌘ Read more