World’s Largest Digital Human Rights Conference Suddenly ‘Postponed’
RightsCon, one of the world’s largest digital human rights conferences, was suddenly postponed by Zambia’s government just days before it was scheduled to begin in Lusaka. Officials cited unresolved speaker clearances and “thematic issues,” while Access Now said it had not yet received formal communication and was seeking an urgent meeting w … ⌘ Read more

Notepad++ Finally Lands On macOS as a Native App
BrianFagioli writes: Notepad++ has finally made its way to macOS, and this time it is not through a compatibility layer. A new community-driven port brings the long-standing Windows text editor over as a fully native Mac application, built with Cocoa and compiled for both Apple Silicon and Intel systems. Instead of relying on Wine or similar tools, the project replaces the Windo … ⌘ Read more

Community Votes to Deny Water to Nuclear Weapons Data Center
A Michigan township has voted to impose a one-year moratorium on providing water to hyperscale data centers, a move aimed at delaying a planned facility that would support Los Alamos National Laboratory’s nuclear weapons research. The moratorium may not be enough to stop the project, however: “the University and LANL plan to break ground on the data cent … ⌘ Read more

Intel Ends Open Ecosystem Community/Evangelism, Archives Other Open-Source Projects
Over the past number of months there has been a steady flow of Intel open-source projects archived on GitHub amid the corporate restructuring at the company and realigning of their open-source focus. This week another batch of Intel open-source projects were formally archived… ⌘ Read more

Google Unveils Two New AI Chips For the ‘Agentic Era’
Google announced two new tensor processing units (TPUs) for the “agentic era,” with separate processors dedicated to training and inference. “With the rise of AI agents, we determined the community would benefit from chips individually specialized to the needs of training and serving,” Amin Vahdat, a Google senior vice president and chief technologist for AI and infrast … ⌘ Read more

PlayStation To Require Age Verification For Messages and Voice Chat
A new email from Sony says that PlayStation will require players to verify their age later this year to keep using communication features like messages and voice chat. Insider-Gaming reports: The initiative comes from the goal of providing “safe, age-appropriate experiences for players and families while respecting their privacy” and provi … ⌘ Read more

Sperm Whales’ Communication Closely Parallels Human Language, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: We may appear to have little in common with sperm whales – enormous, ocean-dwelling animals that last shared a common ancestor with humans more than 90 million years ago. But the whales’ vocalized communications are remarkably similar to our own, researchers have discovered … ⌘ Read more

AlmaLinux OS Kitten 10 Adds i686 User-Space Packages
The community-based AlmaLinux OS alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) continues exploring ways to better differentiate it from upstream RHEL and other derivatives. The latest difference is AlmaLinux OS Kitten 10 adding i686 user-space packages for those wanting to run on a RHEL 10 based platform but still needing x86 32-bit user-space software compatibility… ⌘ Read more

Amazon Buys Globalstar For $10.8 Billion, Moving To Expand Its Satellite Internet Service
Amazon is buying satellite communications company Globalstar for $10.8 billion to expand its Leo satellite-internet network and compete more directly with SpaceX’s Starlink. The deal also includes a partnership with Apple to support satellite connectivity for iPhones and Apple Watches, with Amazon pl … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net Or maybe I’m just shitty at communication and maybe that’s why nobody at work understands my “arguments” against AI/LLMs. 🤪🤣

(I’m too tired to rephrase the OP. Maybe some other day. Actually, rest assured that I will complain about this again. 😅)

Chimpanzees In Uganda Locked In Vicious ‘Civil War’, Say Researchers
Researchers say the world’s largest known wild chimpanzee community in Uganda fractured into rival factions and has been locked in a vicious “civil war” for the last eight years. “It is not clear exactly why the once close-knit community of Ngogo chimpanzees at Uganda’s Kibale National Park are at loggerheads, but since 2018 the scientist … ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court Wipes Piracy Liability Verdict Against Grande Communications
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Following on the heels of the landmark Cox v. Sony ruling, the Supreme Court has vacated the contributory copyright infringement verdict against ISP Grande Communications, ordering the Fifth Circuit to reconsider its decision in light of the new precedent. […] The order … ⌘ Read more

Debian Is Figuring Out How Age Verification Laws Will Impact It
With age verification/attestation laws down to the OS level enacted by California and being decided upon by other US states, it’s been a hot topic of discussion in the open-source world. For the Debian project that is strictly volunteer/community-driven unlike various commercial Linux platforms, they are figuring out how such laws will impact them… ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Files To Go Public
Reuters reports that SpaceX has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO, reportedly targeting a valuation above $1.75 trillion. Reuters reports: SpaceX puts more rockets in space than any other company and promises a chance to invest in humanity’s return to the moon and attempt to colonize Mars. The company aspires to put artificial intelligence data centers in space, while running a lucrative satellite communications system that o … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Starlink Satellite Suffers Mysterious ‘Anomaly’ In Orbit
A Starlink satellite broke apart in orbit after suffering an unexplained “anomaly,” apparently due to an “internal energetic source” rather than a collision. “The incident appears to have created some debris, with fragments likely to fall to Earth over the next few weeks,” reports Scientific American. From the report: The satellite lost communication … ⌘ Read more

New Rust-Based BUS1 In-Kernel IPC In Development For The Linux Kernel
After KDBUS failed to make it into the mainline Linux kernel more than one decade ago as an in-kernel version of D-Bus, BUS1 was proposed as a clean sheet design for in-kernel, capability-based inter-process communication (IPC). BUS1 didn’t gain enough traction to make it to the mainline kernel and then many of the same developers devised Dbus-Broker as a more performant D-Bus user-space implementation. Well, as a big surprise now, a new version of BUS1 … ⌘ Read more

Framework Computer Steps Up Their Support For KDE
Framework Computer as the company behind the modular Framework laptops and incredible Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” Framework Desktop has stepped up their support for the KDE community… ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court Sides With Internet Provider In Copyright Fight Over Pirated Music
Longtime Slashdot reader JackSpratts writes: The Supreme Court unanimously said on Wednesday that a major internet provider could not be held liable for the piracy of thousands of songs online in a closely watched copyright clash. Music labels and publishers sued Cox Communications in 2018, saying the company had fa … ⌘ Read more

Unvanquished 0.56 Released With More Renderer Improvements, OpenMP Added To Engine
Unvanquished 0.56 is out today as the latest major update to this prominent open-source, community-driven shooter game. Unvanquished continues progressing after more than a decade in development for this open-source game and with today’s v0.56 release features improved visuals, OpenMP for CPU-based rendering of skeletal models, and other enhancements… ⌘ Read more

FCC Bans Imports of New Foreign-Made Routers, Citing Security Concerns
New submitter the_skywise shares a report from Reuters: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Monday it was banning the import of all new foreign-made consumer routers, the latest crackdown on Chinese-made electronic gear over security concerns. China is estimated to control at least 60% of the U.S. market for home rout … ⌘ Read more

LibreOffice 26.8 To Add A Donation Banner To Its Start Center
LibreOffice 26.8 merged initial support for adding a donation banner to its Start Center. This initial UI when launching LibreOffice aims to make users aware of the community-driven focus of the project and to hopefully solicit additional donations from the community… ⌘ Read more

AlmaLinux OS Kitten 10 Begins Supporting RISC-V
The community-focused, RHEL/CentOS-derived AlmaLinux distribution announced its support today for the RISC-V CPU ISA with AlmaLinux Kitten 10 builds being made available… ⌘ Read more

New ‘Vibe Coded’ AI Translation Tool Splits the Video Game Preservation Community
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” just over a year ago, we’ve seen a rapid increase in both the capabilities and popularity of using AI models to throw together quick programming projects with less human time and effort than ever before. … ⌘ Read more

CachyOS Dethrones Arch As ProtonDB’s Top Linux Gamer Desktop Distro
Linux gaming “has gotten to the point where some people claim that Linux runs their games better than Windows does,” according to the Android site XDA Developers. And there’s a new surprise on ProtonDB, an “unofficial” community website with crowdsourced data about videogame compatability with the Linux software/gaming compatability layer P … ⌘ 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

@bender@twtxt.net It is not yet lost, other than the ongoing communication with local politicians, the European Commission, (thanks to other developers) the U.S. Department of Justice, over 50 other organizations (see some of them, signed on the open letter, top of the before mentioned website), we’re also actively looking into possible workarounds and exploring other available legal options, while companies like Motorola, are already planning to offer GrapheneOS, on some phones.

AlmaLinux To Focus On Increased Testing & Other Goals For 2026
Developers behind AlmaLinux as this popular community alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) have drafted some new goals for 2026… ⌘ Read more

EFF, Ubuntu and Other Distros Discuss How to Respond to Age-Verification Laws
System76 isn’t the only one criticizing new age-verification laws. The blog 9to5Linux published an “informal” look at other discussions in various Linux communities.

Earlier this week, Ubuntu developer Aaron Rainbolt proposed on the Ubuntu mailing list an optional D-Bus interface (org.freedesktop.AgeVerification1) that … ⌘ Read more

TikTok Says End-To-End Encryption Makes Users Less Safe
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption (E2EE) – the controversial privacy feature used by nearly all its rivals – arguing it makes users less safe. E2EE means only the sender and recipient of a direct message can view its contents, making it the most secure form of communication available to the general … ⌘ Read more

Qualcomm CEO: ‘Resistance Is Futile’ As 6G Mobile Revolution Approaches
At Mobile World Congress, Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm argued that the coming 6G networks will power an AI-driven “agent economy,” where devices and AI assistants constantly communicate across the network. “AI will fundamentally change our mobile experiences,” Qualcomm chief executive, Cristiano Amon says. “It’s going to change how we th … ⌘ Read more

Sovereign Tech Fellowship Opens Up To Community Managers, Technical Writers
Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency announced a new and expanded Sovereign Tech Fellowship program that is now open to community managers and technical writers, beyond just FOSS maintainers from the prior round… ⌘ Read more

ARCTIC Cooling Publishes ARCTIC Fan Controller Driver For Linux
A Linux driver has been published for the ARCTIC Fan Controller to be able to read fan speeds under Linux as well as setting the PWM fan speed for each of the ten fans supported by this controller. Making this driver all the more exciting is that ARCTIC Cooling is directly working on this driver rather than just being a community/third-party creation. Furthermore, ARCTIC Cooling is working on getting this driver to the upstream Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Charter Gets FCC Permission To Buy Cox, Become Largest ISP In the US
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter Communications, operator of the Spectrum cable brand, has obtained Federal Communications Commission permission to buy Cox and surpass Comcast as the country’s largest home Internet service provider. Charter has 29.7 million residential and business Internet customers compared t … ⌘ Read more

‘The Death of Spotify: Why Streaming is Minutes Away From Being Obsolete’
An anonymous reader shares a column: I’m going to take the diplomatic hat off here and say with brutal honesty: basically everybody in the music business hates Spotify except for the people who work there. It’s a platform that sucks artists for everything they have, it actively prevents community building, and, despite all … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Execs Worry AI Will Eat Entry Level Coding Jobs
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich and VP of Developer Community Scott Hanselman have written a paper arguing that senior software engineers must mentor junior developers to prevent AI coding agents from hollowing out the profession’s future skills base.

The paper, Redefining the Engineering Profession for AI, is b … ⌘ Read more

New Microsoft Gaming CEO Has ‘No Tolerance For Bad AI’
In her first major interview as Microsoft’s new gaming chief, Asha Sharma said that “great games” must deliver emotional resonance and a distinct creative voice, while making clear that she has “no tolerance for bad AI.” Stepping in after Phil Spencer’s retirement, she’s pledging consistency, community trust, and a human-first approach to storytelling as Xbox enters … ⌘ Read more

Man Accidentally Gains Control of 7,000 Robot Vacuums
A software engineer tried steering his robot vacuum with a videogame controller, reports Popular Science — but ended up with “a sneak peak into thousands of people’s homes.”

While building his own remote-control app, Sammy Azdoufal reportedly used an AI coding assistant to help reverse-engineer how the robot communicated with DJI’s remote cloud servers. But he soo … ⌘ Read more

How Streaming Became Cable TV’s Unlikely Life Raft
Cable TV providers have spent the past decade losing tens of millions of households to streaming services, but companies like Charter Communications are now slowing that exodus by bundling the very apps that once threatened to replace them.

Charter added 44,000 net video subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2025, its first growth in that count since 2020, after integrating … ⌘ Read more

Idea Raised For Nicer DRM Panic Screen Integration On Fedora Linux
A proposal within the Fedora Linux community suggests improving the kernel’s DRM Panic screen to a more user-friendly, BSOD-style experience. Phoronix reports: Open-source developer Jose Exposito proposed today a nicer experience for DRM Panic integration on Fedora. Rather than using DRM Panic with just the kernel log contents being encoded … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Released
Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin writes: KDE Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile too) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.6.

In this new major release, Spectacle can recognize texts from screenshots, a new on-screen keyboard and new login manager a … ⌘ Read more

The Small English Town Swept Up in the Global AI Arms Race
Residents of Potters Bar, a small town just north of London, are trying to block what would be one of Europe’s largest data centers from being built on 85 acres of rolling farmland that separates their community from the neighboring village of South Mimms. Multinational operator Equinix acquired the land last October after the local council granted planning … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Sorry if I raised the wrong hope. Only the German talk is about the “why good people don’t want to work at your company” subject. Among the key points are the absolutely terrible job adverts, team leads not themselves looking for people to hire but letting other dudes do that, company cultures and communication.

Firefox Announces ‘AI Controls’ To Block Its Upcoming AI Features
The Mozilla executive in charge of Firefox says that while some people just want AI tools that are genuinely useful, “We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI…”

“Listening to our community, alongside our ongoing commitment to offer choice, led us to build AI controls.”

Starting with Firefox 148, which rolls out on Feb. 24, you’ll f … ⌘ Read more

The European Commission Is Testing an Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Teams
The European Commission is preparing to trial a communications platform built on Matrix, the open source messaging protocol already used by the French government, German healthcare providers and European armed forces, as a sovereign backup to Microsoft Teams.

Signal currently serves as the backup tool but has proven to … ⌘ Read more

Debian’s Challenge When Its Developers Quietly Drift Away
You may recall the news last month around no one was left on Debian’s data protection team and other volunteer staffing challenges with different Debian efforts in the past. Debian Project Leader Andreas Tille has been looking at the issue of the challenges that arise when Debian’s all-volunteer developers quietly drift away either due to time commitments, other interests, or other reasons but don’t properly communicate it to the Debian project… ⌘ Read more

Russian Spy Satellites Have Intercepted EU Communications Satellites
European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent. From a report: Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites … ⌘ Read more

Linux Dropping SMC TCP ULP Support For Being “Fundamentally Broken”
Merged four years ago to the Linux kernel networking subsystem’s Shared Memory Communications (SMC) code was TCP Upper Layer Protocol (ULP) support for allowing applications to replace TCP with the SMC protocol in-place as a transparent replacement. Except for the next kernel cycle it’s set to be reverted after realizing it’s “fundamentally broken.”.. ⌘ Read more

High-Speed Internet Boom Hits Low-Tech Snag: a Labor Shortage
The U.S. laid fiber-optic cables to a record number of homes last year as billions of dollars in federal broadband grants and a surge in data-center construction fueled an enormous buildout, but the industry does not have enough workers to sustain the pace.

A 2024 report by the Fiber Broadband Association and the Power & Communication Contractors Assoc … ⌘ Read more

EU Deploys New Government Satcom Program in Sovereignty Push
The EU “has switched on parts of its homegrown secure satellite communications network for the first time,” reports Bloomberg, calling it part of a €10.6 billion push to “wean itself off US support amid growing tensions.”

SpaceNews notes the new government program GOVSATCOM pools capacity from eight already on-oribit satellites from France, Spain, It … ⌘ Read more

When 20-Year-Old Bill Gates Fought the World’s First Software Pirates
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Just months after his 20th birthday, Bill Gates had already angered the programmer community,” remembers this 50th-anniversary commemoration of Gates’ Open Letter to Hobbyists. “As the first home computers began appearing in the 1970s, the world faced a question: Would its software be free?”
… ⌘ Read more