Show 06 Tue 14:18 Slashdot [2]

14:18 OpenAI Reaches Agreement To Buy Startup Windsurf For $3 Billion
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: OpenAI has agreed to buy artificial intelligence-assisted coding tool Windsurf for about $3 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal has not yet closed, the report added. Windsurf, formerly known as Codeium, had recently been in talks with investors including General Catalyst and Kleiner Perkins to raise funding at a $3 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg News. The report notes that the deal "would be OpenAI's largest acquisition to date," further complementing ChatGPT's coding capabilities.

14:18 Microsoft Labels Some Fired Staff as 'Good Attrition', Imposes Two-Year Rehiring Ban
Microsoft has instituted a stringent new performance management system that places ousted employees on a two-year rehiring block list and categorizes their departures as "good attrition," Business Insider reported Tuesday, citing internal documents. The company now tracks staff departures it considers beneficial, mirroring Amazon's "unregretted attrition" metric, though no specific targets have been established yet. Microsoft recently terminated 2,000 underperforming employees without severance and implemented a new performance improvement plan (PIP). Employees facing performance issues now must choose between entering the PIP or accepting a "Global Voluntary Separation Agreement" with 16 weeks of pay. Further reading: Microsoft Offers Underperformers Cash To Quit.

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Show 06 Tue 13:05 ArsTechnica [1]

13:05 Tuesday Telescope: After spacewalking, an astronaut strikes lightning
"I am so amazed by the view we have up here of our Earth's weather systems."
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Show 06 Tue 11:18 Slashdot [1]

11:18 Hugo Administrators Resign in Wake of ChatGPT Controversy
"Another year, yet another Hugo Awards-adjacent controversy?" writes Gizmodo's Cheryl Eddy, reporting that three key organizers of the 2025 Seattle Worldcon resigned after backlash over the use of ChatGPT to vet program participants. From the report: In a post on Bluesky co-signed by Hugo administrator Nicholas Whyte, deputy Hugo administrator Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and World Science Fiction Society division head Cassidy, the trio announced they were resigning from their roles ahead of the Seattle event, which takes place in August. "We want to reaffirm that no LLMs or generative AI have been used in the Hugo Awards process at any stage," the statement read in part, which might turn the heads of anyone who is a) interested in the Hugos, but b) not up on the latest controversy. However, plenty of people in the community are well aware of what's been going on. A quick journey to the blog File 770 will bring you up to speed, as will a visit to Seattle Worldcon 2025's own site, which on April 30 shared a post clarifying exactly what role AI played in the upcoming event. [...] However, as File 770 pointed out, the damage has apparently already been done: the use of ChatGPT in any capacity in connection to Worldcon created a furor on social media. It also inspired at least one Hugo nominee to remove their book from contention: Yoon Ha Lee, whose Moonstorm was named a Lodestar Award finalist, which honors YA releases. In a May 1 post on Bluesky, the author linked to the April 30 Worldcon blog post noted above, and noted he was withdrawing the title from consideration. Then, in a post shared today responding to File 770's latest post announcing the resignations, the author wrote âoeAll respect and I'm grateful to them for their work, sorry [things] came to this pass." Seattle Worldcon 2025 takes place August 13-17; the Hugo Awards will be handed out August 16.

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Show 06 Tue 09:49 lwn.net-comments [3]

09:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> Pick is absolutely useless for them: they would need to find and train developers who would work in entirely different paradigm... you couldn't easily fire them and rehire when needed... why go there?

At risk of committing an act of necromancy, I'll disagree a bit here. There are a lot of no-sql tools with different paradigms which didn't exist 10 or 20 years ago and that one couldn't assume any new hire would be familiar with that they'd have to learn on the job. New hires are going to need to learn the particulars of your tech stack and in-house tools, so learning a different DB engine then one they've used before is probably not an insurmountable challenge. Using the most common tools in hopes of making hiring easier is fine as far as it goes, but so does using best-of-breed tools that fit your particular problem set and expecting some amount of in-house training/acclimation.

That said, I'm not sure where Pick would fall into this, while I'm sure it is innovative in it's own way, and has it's own cheerleaders (hi Wol) I don't think it represents some hidden arcane field of computer science that doesn't exist in equivalent forms in other tools. There are only so many different ways to make efficient data structures in memory or on disk that have different tradeoffs. The no-sql evolution was about offering tools using specific data structures that fit well with the problems they were solving but weren't commonly available or efficient in SQL-fronted database engines, because SQL servers were targeted at different problems. I'm not sure that's the case anymore, the SQL-fronted engines like PostgreSQL or MariaDB have added storage and indexing methods which offer some of the same data structures which made no-sql engines useful, and the other no-sql engines have thrived in their niches refining the use-cases which spawned them. I'm not sure Pick would be any different than someone coming from PostgreSQL learning Redis/Valkey or someone familiar with Cassandra learning sqllite or etcd

So building a tech stack for hire-ability seems foolish, it's one property among many and if you hire for competency and willingness to learn then they can pick up the specifics, familiarity with more components of your stack is nice but lack of familiarity with one component is not a deal breaker.

09:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> There are a lot of no-sql tools with different paradigms which didn't exist 10 or 20 years ago

At the risk of pouring petrol on the flames I'll just point out I was programming Pick way back last century - in fact it predates Relational, and probably SQL too ... (it nearly predates me, and I'm on the verge of retirement.)

> and that one couldn't assume any new hire would be familiar with that they'd have to learn on the job.

I'm expecting end-user "new hires" to pick it up quickly and easily - people who don't have an IT/CS education.

> I don't think it represents some hidden arcane field of computer science that doesn't exist in equivalent forms in other tools.

Efficiency?

> There are only so many different ways to make efficient data structures in memory or on disk that have different tradeoffs.

Efficiency? Native 4NF in the database is pretty unbeatable ...

> I'm not sure that's the case anymore, the SQL-fronted engines like PostgreSQL or MariaDB have added storage and indexing methods which offer some of the same data structures which made no-sql engines useful, and the other no-sql engines have thrived in their niches refining the use-cases which spawned them.

Efficiency? IME, SQL cannot query those striuctures particularly efficiently. Efficiency? The majority of an ENGLISH (one of the names of the Pick query language) query lives in the table schema (note I didn't say view!). Efficiency? Your normal query is a short one liner, that has no optimiser because the possible gains aren't worth the candle. Efficiency? ENGLISH is optimised for accessing 4NF data.

Bear in mind also that Pick is a second-gen NoSQL. As in NotOnlySQL, not NoSQL. If you want to query Pick using SQL, go ahead. Why would you, though, seeing as you'd be replacing one line of ENGLISH with screeds of SQL (Unless, of course, you cheated and took advantage of all the ENGLISH buried in the table schemas.

At the end of the day, I have to work with Excel formulae, and SQL queries all day. I CRINGE at the volume of code, the time wasted working out what the hell is going on, the time wasted writing huge multi-line SQL programs, all the stuff I could do in ten minites in Pick that takes a week in VBA/SQL/Formulae. Maybe (almost certainly) I'm a crap SQL programmer, but a lot of colleagues, who are a lot better at it than me, fare equally badly.

Efficiency! At some point in the near future I'm going to get the opportunity to pitch a rewrite of our system. I am - SERIOUSLY - going to bid that I can rebuild the majority of our shit single-handed in six months. Our IT department is saying "maybe we'll get round to looking at it in 18 months". I'm not stupid enough to think that doing it single-handed is a good idea though. I want to build a team round me (with the intention that they rewrite their systems in the same sort of time frame :-) So when IT come and take a look at it, they'll say it'll take five years for them to replace our system that we built in six months ...

Cheers,
Wol

09:49 Rebaselining?

Has there been an effort to sample old patches to see if it selects:

- patches that were missed before (and what percentage of those were eventually manually picked)
- did not select patches that had been selected before (and what percentage of those had followup discussions due to issues)

I'm not saying it doesn't have "significantly more accurate recommendations", but I'd be interested in numbers.

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Show 06 Tue 08:18 Slashdot [3]

08:18 Half-Life 3 Is Reportedly Playable In Its Entirety
According to Valve insider Tyler McVicker, Half-Life 3 is finally playable from start to finish and could be announced this summer, with a release as soon as winter 2025. Engadget reports: Besides McVicker's hours-long livestream, there have been other recent hints about Valve's progress on its highly anticipated title. In March, Valve concept artist Evgeniy Evstratiy claimed that he was in the room where Valve made Half-Life 3 on CG Voices Podcast. In the same month, another Valve leaker, Gabe Follower, claimed that Half-Life 3 would be the "end of Gordon's adventure," potentially signaling a non-cliffhanger ending to one of gaming's best franchises. Outside of these rumors, internet sleuths discovered code referencing HLX, which is widely thought to be the codename for Half-Life 3, in major updates to Deadlock and Dota 2.

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06:48 How Riot Games is Fighting the War Against Video Game Hackers
Riot Games has reduced cheating in Valorant to under 1% of ranked games through its controversial kernel-level anti-cheat system Vanguard, according to the company's anti-cheat director Phillip Koskinas. The system enforces Windows security features like Trusted Platform Module and Secure Boot while preventing code execution in kernel memory. Beyond technical measures, Riot deploys undercover operatives who have infiltrated cheat development communities for years. "We've even gone as far as giving anti-cheat information to establish credibility," Koskinas told TechCrunch, describing how they target even "premium" cheats costing thousands of dollars. Riot faces increasingly sophisticated threats, including direct memory access attacks using specialized PCI Express hardware and screen reader cheats that use separate computers to analyze gameplay and control mouse movements. To combat repeat offenders, Vanguard fingerprints cheaters' hardware. Koskinas admits to deliberately slowing some enforcement: "To keep cheating dumb, we ban slower." The team also employs psychological warfare, publicly discrediting cheat developers and trolling known cheaters to undermine their credibility in gaming communities.

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06:48 Open Document Format Turns 20
The Open Document Format reached its 20th anniversary on May 1, marking two decades since OASIS approved the XML-based standard originally developed by Sun Microsystems from StarOffice code. Even as the format has seen adoption by several governments including the UK, India, and Brazil, plus organizations like NATO, Microsoft Office's proprietary formats remain the de facto standard. Microsoft countered ODF by developing Office Open XML, eventually getting it standardized through Ecma International. "ODF is much more than a technical specification: it is a symbol of freedom of choice, support for interoperability and protection of users from the commercial strategies of Big Tech," said Eliane Domingos, Chair of the Document Foundation, which oversees LibreOffice -- a fork created after Oracle acquired Sun.

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Show 06 Tue 06:13 HackerNews [8]

Show 06 Tue 05:40 AndroidAuthority [10]

05:40 Roku users are starting to see ads on the pause screen
Roku is experimenting with ads again, this time for the pause screen.

05:40 Here's your first look at Live for Google AI Mode (APK teardown)
Gemini Live should soon power real-time conversations in Google's experimental AI Mode.

05:40 There's good and bad news about the batteries in Samsung's next-generation foldables
Here's a better idea of what to expect with the batteries in the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7.

05:40 Oops! Google lets Material 3 Expressive details slip out online early
Google just revealed how and why its doing this big redesign.

05:40 Google takes a page from Apple's playbook with new Material 3 Expressive battery icon
Google Material 3 Expressive is coming with big UI changes in Android 16, including your battery icon.

05:40 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra drops to all-time low price!
Save on the industry's favorite premium Android smartphone!

05:40 Amazon Echo smart speaker deals are getting hot!
Listen to your favorite tunes, ask Alexa for anything, and control your smart home devices with one of these!

05:40 Deal: Beats Solo 4 headphones are 50% off
These can last over 84 hours on a full charge!

05:40 Google has entered showbiz to convince young people that Android is cool too
The company has opened up a film and TV production studio called 100 Zeroes to position its tech as aspirational.

05:40 Samsung may be planning an unusual move for its next Galaxy Watch update
A version leap like this may be a first for Samsung's smartwatches.
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Show 06 Tue 03:48 Slashdot [1]

03:48 Europe Pledges Half a Billion Euros To Attract Scientists and Researchers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The European Union launched a drive on Monday to attract scientists and researchers to Europe with offers of grants and new policy plans, after the Trump administration froze U.S. government funding linked to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. "A few years ago, no one would have imagined that one of the biggest democracies in the world would cancel research programs under the pretext that the word diversity was in this program," French President Emmanuel Macron said at the "Choose Europe for Science" event in Paris. "No one would have thought that one of the biggest democracies in the world would delete with a stroke the ability of one researcher or another to obtain visas," Macron said. "But here we are." Taking the same stage at the Sorbonne University, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU's executive branch would set up a "super grant" program aimed at offering "a longer-term perspective to the very best" in the field. She said that 500 million euros ($566 million) will be put forward in 2025-2027 "to make Europe a magnet for researchers." It would be injected into the European Research Council, which already has a budget of more than 16 billion euros ($18 billion) for 2021-2027. Von der Leyen said that the 27-nation EU intends "to enshrine freedom of scientific research into law" with a new legal act. As "the threats rise across the world, Europe will not compromise on its principles," she said. Macron said that the French government would also soon make new proposals to beef up investment in science and research. [...] While not mentioning the Trump administration by name, von der Leyen said that it was "a gigantic miscalculation" to undermine free and open research. "We can all agree that science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity, no political party," she said. "We believe that diversity is an asset of humanity and the lifeblood of science. It is one of the most valuable global assets and it must be protected." Macron said that science and research must not "be based on the diktats of the few." Macron said that Europe "must become a refuge" for scientists and researchers, and he said to those who feel under threat elsewhere: "The message is simple. If you like freedom, come and help us to remain free, to do research here, to help us become better, to invest in our future." Further reading: 75% of Scientists in Nature Poll Weigh Leaving US NASA, Yale, and Stanford Scientists Consider 'Scientific Exile'

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Show 06 Tue 03:25 ArsTechnica [2]

03:25 Heartbreaking video shows deadly risk of skipping measles vaccine
SSPE is rare but tragicâ”more so because it's completely vaccine-preventable.

03:25 Man pleads guilty to using malicious AI software to hack Disney employee
Fake image-generating app allowed man to download 1.1TB of Disney-owned data.
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Show 06 Tue 02:18 Slashdot [1]

02:18 Hyundai Unleashes Atlas Robots In Georgia Plant
Hyundai Motor Group is accelerating its factory automation efforts by deploying Atlas humanoid robots from Boston Dynamics at its Metaplant America facility in Georgia, as part of a broader $21 billion U.S. investment strategy to boost efficiency and local production amid rising tariffs. InterestingEngineering reports: At Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, Hyundai already uses Spot robots -- four-legged machines -- for industrial inspections. In addition, the plant features a dedicated robot that removes car doors before the vehicles enter General Assembly, and a fixed robot that reinstalls the doors toward the end of the process -- a technology unique to the Georgia facility. The South Korean automaker has not disclosed how many Atlas robots will be deployed at the facility or what specific tasks they will perform. According to reports, the company plans to further expand the use of robots across its global manufacturing facilities, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency. [...] The automaker aims to manufacture 300,000 electric and hybrid vehicles annually at the new facility. At its recent Grand Opening Ceremony, the company announced plans to ramp up production to 500,000 units over time, without specifying a timeline.

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Show 06 Tue 00:48 Slashdot [2]

00:48 Waymo Plans To Double Robotaxi Production At Arizona Plant By End of 2026
Waymo and Magna International plan to double production of Waymo's robotaxis at their Mesa, Arizona facility by the end of 2026, aiming to assemble over 2,000 Jaguar I-PACE vehicles and eventually tens of thousands annually, including next-gen models. CNBC reports: The "Waymo Driver Integration Plant," a 239,000 square foot facility outside of Phoenix, will assemble more than 2,000 Jaguar I-PACE robotaxis, the Alphabet company said in a statement. Waymo will add those self-driving vehicles to its existing fleet that already includes around 1,500 robotaxis. The plant will be "capable of building tens of thousands of fully autonomous Waymo vehicles per year," when it is fully built out, Waymo said. The company also said it plans to build its more advanced Geely Zeekr RT robotaxis that feature its "6th-generation Waymo Driver" technology later this year at the plant. Waymo and Magna opened the Mesa plant in October, Forbes reported Monday. The Alphabet-owned company started its commercial robotaxi service in Phoenix in 2020 and now calls the area its domestic manufacturing home. Already, Waymo is conducting 250,000 paid, driverless rides per week across its service areas in Austin, the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles and Phoenix, and the company is planning to begin serving the Atlanta; Miami; and Washington, D.C., markets in 2026.

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00:48 Trump Threatens 100% Tariff On Foreign-Made Films
Donald Trump has announced plans to impose a 100% tariff on all foreign-made films, citing national security concerns and accusing other countries of luring U.S. film production abroad with incentives. PBS reports: "The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death," he wrote [on his Truth Social platform], complaining that other countries "are offering all sorts of incentives to draw" filmmakers and studios away from the U.S. "This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!" It wasn't immediately clear how any such tariff on international productions could be implemented. It's common for both large and small films to include production in the U.S. and in other countries. Big-budget movies like the upcoming "Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning," for instance, are shot around the world. Incentive programs for years have influenced where movies are shot, increasingly driving film production out of California and to other states and countries with favorable tax incentives, like Canada and the United Kingdom. Yet Trump's tariffs are designed to lead consumers toward American products. And in movie theaters, American-produced movies overwhelming dominate the domestic marketplace. "Other nations have been stealing the movie-making capabilities from the United States," Trump told reporters at the White House on Sunday night after returning from a weekend in Florida. "If they're not willing to make a movie inside the United States we should have a tariff on movies that come in."

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Show 05 Mon 23:49 lwn.net-comments [18]

23:49 Grafana's an example of the AGPL protecting a FOSS business

If you look at the current FAQ for Azure Managed Grafana, the top question is "do you use open source Grafana?" The answer is "No. Azure Managed Grafana hosts a commercial version called Grafana Enterprise that Microsoft is licensing from Grafana Labs."

So I'm extrapolating that that answer + the fact they did a press release, etc. means that they have a custom deal in place for licensing (and likely extending) Grafana Enterprise.

23:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> How is someone supposed to _ever_ verify the entire supply chain, all the way back to the original author... if they're even alive? After all, copyright doesn't require formal registration, and it is quite common to publish under psuedonyms.

And the GPL is even simpler than most in that regard - to paraphrase the GPL, all you have to do is prove that the original author(s) lawfully released it under the GPL (ie it was theirs to release), and you can completely forget about all the intermediate steps it took to get to you. They're irrelevant.

Cheers,
Wol

23:49 A bit "niche"?

That's why I think it would be better to use flexible data placement with NVMe or PCIe passthrough. The command set appears to assume that one application owns the whole device and has complete control of where data is written. That only makes sense with passthrough.

23:49 Subscribed from China

I presume your view is based on energy use. There is a view out there that views energy use as "bad" in environmental terms, because of COâ‚‚ emissions and anthropogenic global warmng (AGW), i.e. the component of global warming due to human COâ‚‚ emissions. This is simply a completely wrong-headed view, and one which is utterly detrimental to the cause of minimising (if not eliminating) AGW. This simplistic "energy use bad" idea equates energy use with COâ‚‚. To let that guide us leads to a world-view where humanity is meant to somehow not just stabilise energy use, but _reduce_ energy use. That kind of thinking is utterly fantastical. Energy == quality of life. That kind of thinking not only demands that the (relatively) comfortable developed world /stops/ increasing its overall quality of life, despite the fact quality-of-life is not at all equally well-distributed and many in the developed world still aspire to levels of quality-of-life enjoyed by a great many of their fellow citizens; but it also demands that the remainder of the world, that lives well below those levels of quality-of-life simply must accept they will forever be denied it. Indeed, in seeking to reduce global energy use significantly, the demand is that many people in the world must accept lower levels of quality of life - and the way the world works, that means the better off in the world will force those cuts on others (this will happen of itself organically, by economic power, if not by other less savoury and potentially more violent means).

That thinking is a fantastical fallacy. It is the kind of thinking that only those blessed with plenty, and with sufficient privilege that they will be the more insulated from the logical effects of such thinking than many others, could hold. I.e. it is a "privileged belief".

Humanity will NOT reduce its energy useage. It is certain to _increase_ its energy use. Any environmentalist capable of even a modicum of higher-order thinking must accept this, and argue for policies that achieve their AGW-reduction aims while also _accommodating_ the need for more energy. Anything else is simply waffle that achieves little else but to make the proposer feel less guilty about the cars they drive, the plane journeys they take, the AI tools they use, etc.

On to PoW. The fundamental economics behind PoW mean it seeks out the cheapest energy possible. The cheapest energy is generally energy that will be expended regardless, but will otherwise be wasted - free energy that is a sunk cost. This is often renewable power at off-peak times. In some cases, it is power that isn't even connected to the grid (dams for water management in remote areas, which have a turbine just to provide power for dam systems, and have a significant excess). Further, the earth has a _vast_ amount of energy raining down on it from the Sun. The idea we can't use PoW cause "energy COâ‚‚ bad" is just ridiculous.

Human life is energy. Economy is energy. Quality of life is energy. We will only increase our energy use. PoW simply uses our economy to distribute a consensus function, leveraging the fundamental, inescapable, root input into economy. PoW systems did _NOT_ cause AGW, and banning PoW system will _NOT_ address AGW in any way, nor stop the increasing demands for energy. The part PoW systems can play in the energy economy is orthogonal to the carbon emissions. Indeed, PoW systems can play a _very beneficial_ role in _increasing_ the economic utility of some 0-carbon power generation, by being able to convert excess/otherwise-unused power into economic benefit - hence increasing the economic attractiveness of such power generation!

FWIW, I do a tiny bit of mining. It's powered largely off solar power. Excluding air travel (though, I don't travel hugely, if you travel by air sometimes too we might not be different there), and assuming you live a western developed life-style, I probably have a lower COâ‚‚ output than you - I rarely drive, most of my KMs each year are by bike, and the car use I do have is powered in part by Solar too (carbon input into car production is another matter, but lifetime an EV still should have a lower carbon footprint).

23:49 Subscribed from China

Oh, the claim in my first paragraph, as to why that thinking is detrimental to the cause - didn't spell it out clearly, but if you're telling the world to reudce its quality of life then it's simply not going to happen. Most of the world will just keep buying stuff, will keep consuming, and your policies will get lip-service at best with token-implementations, and ignored otherwise.

Even most of the people in the developed world who hold these views do not /actually/ reduce their own energy use year over year. They can't even walk their own talk. Their views are simply emotional comfort blankets, to assuage their guilt, while day to day they keep making the same "using more energy than 80% of the rest of the planet can afford" life choices as before.

23:49 The efficiency of energy use matters

The missing factor is efficiency.

Europe uses less energy than 20 years ago because it using the same energy more efficiently to do actual work. Our quality of life depends on the work done using energy, not on the actual amount of energy used.

Peak EU energy usage was in 2006 and has been declining since, [1] because we've been increasing efficiency. Like for example not wasting the 70% of the energy in fossil fuels in ICEs.

Hence why PoW is dumb. You can get exactly the same results, the same quality of life, using a fraction of the energy. And in the specific case of Europe where one-third of all exports are only to pay for imported energy, raising efficiency literally increases our quality of life.
Because it means we can consume those products ourselves rather than exporting them.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index....

23:49 The efficiency of energy use matters

Efficiency gains are a series of one-offs, and increasingly harder to squeeze out.

We are not going to reduce global energy useage, even if the EU reduced somewhat. And PoW is still orthogonal to efficiency. Regardless of efficiency gains, we still have energy production systems that generate excess electricity which can neither be transmitted, nor stored (we may increase storage over time, but we don't have much at moment - away from some pumped hydro-power stations, they tend to be self-contained).

23:49 The efficiency of energy use matters

Oh, and some of the change in energy use in Europe is attributable to reduction of energy intensive industries, as per the Eurostat energy report, and I assume that is explained by loss to foreign competition due to the high energy prices in Europe. I can't find a good breakdown though of this (in that report or elsewhere). That loss is in part to Germany _closing down_ near-0-carbon nuclear power plants!

23:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

I missed that Elasticsearch added AGPLv3 as a license option last year (https://www.elastic.co/blog/elasticsearch-is-open-source-...), so actually this does seem to be happening...

23:49 Subscribed from China

> The fundamental economics behind PoW mean it seeks out the cheapest energy possible.

While that might be the *ideal*, as long as the speculation prices are higher than operating costs, there can be new demand to keep existing coal plants running (or even *reopening* them). This was the case even in 2022[1]. I can only imagine that whatever flailing about the current US administration does to "save" coal will only make the economics even enticing to keep the things online longer than necessary. I need to check if NY instituted that sensible "don't reopen fossil fuel plants just to mine digital numbers" bill, but I can't imagine every state (or, ha!, the federal) government doing something like that.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/19/cryptocurrency-m...

23:49 Zoned storage
In addition to the filesystems that have already been mentioned, support for zoned block devices has been added recently in XFS. Zoned block device support is on the bcachefs roadmap.

23:49 The efficiency of energy use matters

> The missing factor is efficiency.

And computing is probably one of the most inefficient industries?

> Europe uses less energy than 20 years ago because it using the same energy more efficiently to do actual work. Our quality of life depends on the work done using energy, not on the actual amount of energy used.

I'm afraid here I agree with paulj, Europe has lost a lot of energy intensive industry - our clean steel industry for example has shut down, to replaced by "dirty" steel from China ...

What paulj is missing, however, is that nature doesn't care whether we are rich or poor. Island nations are going to be flooded. Continental hinterlands are turning to desert. For heavens sake, for a country that is forever complaining about the rain, I believe we've had two major wildfires this year! We had a mini-wildfire close to me a couple of years back.

Where is all the money going to come from to rebuild Los Angeles? To renew the Sicilian orange groves? To fix the Austrailian cities? At some point in the not too distant future either people will stop buying insurance because they can't afford it, or the insurance industry will collapse.

In the not too distant future, all this wasteful energy use (and yes, I don't include solar, tidal, nuclear etc - the problem is fossil fuels) is going to bankrupt Western civilisation, and then we're ALL going to be relegated to a subsistence lifestyle again ... the question is are we going to fix it before nature fixes it for us ...

Cheers,
Wol

23:49 Disappointment in all directions

Knowledge of somebody else's lived experience rarely comes across, for several reasons:

* The full story is usually very long.
* Individual pieces of the story usually do not sound very compelling in isolation (the story is not about any one event, it is about larger patterns of events).
* Especially when speaking to more scientifically-minded or engineering-minded people, there is a faint stigma associated with "anecdotal" evidence. In contexts where no other form of evidence can reasonably exist, there is a tendency to dismiss the entire subject matter as inherently subjective and meaningless.
* When cherished people or beliefs are challenged, there is a tendency to refuse to engage with the evidence, to rationalize it away, to repeatedly move the goalposts, or to otherwise engage in special pleading.
* The fundamental attribution error predisposes us to place greater weight on our own lived experiences than on somebody else's lived experiences, so where they differ, we tend to interpret that difference in favor of our own experiences.
* The various -isms (racism, sexism, etc.) have been with us for centuries, if not millenia, but for some reason, some engineering-minded people seem to think that you can solve these ancient problems with top-down magic words such as "meritocracy" and "consensus," rather than the hard work of self-reflection that would otherwise need to be done on an individual, bottom-up level. When presented with the option to do nothing and make it Somebody Else's Problem, there is a strong human tendency towards that option, so these people are far more persuasive than the evidence should allow.

23:49 The efficiency of energy use matters

> What paulj is missing, however, is that nature doesn't care whether we are rich or poor. Island nations are going to be flooded. Continental hinterlands are turning to desert. For heavens sake, for a country that is forever complaining about the rain, I believe we've had two major wildfires this year! We had a mini-wildfire close to me a couple of years back.

I think you have misunderstood me. It very much was part of my point in my previous comment that the effects of AGW _will_ hit those with fewer resources harder than those with more. I refer to that with:

> It is the kind of thinking that only those blessed with plenty, and with sufficient privilege that they will be the more insulated from the logical effects of such thinking than many others, could hold.

I am very aware the effects will hit the poorer parts of the world much harder, and I think it is wrong. And I very much think we in the developed world need to do a lot more. Unfortunately, part of the problem is that many in the developed world appear utterly unwilling to change anything of substance - instead clinging to "privileged beliefs" (and I'm aware that term is sometimes also used by types of people who are on sides of issues that you and I might strongly disagree with, however that is a very apt term in many cases - including here), as a feel-good sop. The objection to PoW on AGW grounds is such a sop, in one way, IMO. I suspect many who make that argument do not themselves do much about AGW in other parts of their lives.

23:49 Why not meadurements

It seems like what the scheduler is really interested in is the difference in cache hit rate when the threads are scheduled together versus when they are scheduled apart. It can never measure both at once. If the scheduler moves two threads to the same core, and cache hit rate increases, this could have two explanations. It could be because the two threads share memory. Or, it could be because the two threads are running different code, which accesses a smaller working set.

23:49 I'm from the back-times...

Borg and k8s are designed for use with many identical pod-equivalents (pods in k8s, allocs in Borg) as a means of horizontal scaling, preferably under the control of some kind of automation. In order for this to work well, each pod-equivalent should have predictable performance behavior, and should not abruptly get much slower when it begins to swap. Otherwise, you could get into a vicious cycle:

1. There is momentarily too much load. Let's assume for the sake of argument that physical RAM is the limiting resource.
2. Some of your pod-equivalents begin to swap due to (by assumption) a shortage of physical RAM. If the swapping is bad enough, their performance deteriorates considerably.
3. Automation notices that your performance is failing to keep up with demand, and spawns more pod-equivalents. It believes it has the resources to afford this operation, because more swap is still available and the binpacking algorithm believes the jobs will fit into that swap.
4. This is exactly the wrong thing to do. The problem is not that you lack pod-equivalents, the problem is that you lack physical RAM. Now you have more pod-equivalents competing for exactly the same amount of physical RAM. Each pod-equivalent probably has nonzero memory overhead, so this means less RAM is available for doing useful work, and overall swapping increases.
5. GOTO 3 until you run out of swap or a human takes over and kills the excess pod-equivalents.

If you don't support swap, then this never happens, and instead the automation reports that it is unable to scale up due to a lack of physical resources. You can then have other automation (such as load-balancing or work planning) take appropriate steps at a global level (move work to another physical location, drop lower priority work, etc.), or wake up a human and have them somehow intervene.

You might instead "support" swap, but somehow break it out as a separate resource dimension so that horizontal autoscaling does not engage in the above behavior. But swap is not a cleanly independent resource dimension - it is derived from the difference between the virtual memory allocation and the physical memory allocation. That means a human or *vertical* autoscaler cannot directly measure a pod-equivalent's swap and physical RAM demands separately, and instead needs to measure something like the page fault rate to get a complete picture. This is not impossible, but it's significantly more complex than just measuring memory usage, and is likely prone to misbehavior under the wrong conditions (some pod-equivalents will have a ton of page faults on startup, when reading data files, etc., and you have to filter out all of that noise).

It should also be emphasized that most autoscaling implementations will assume that resource-related metrics are linear in demand. The highly nonlinear behavior of swapping presents a difficult engineering problem in its own right (even if you could solve all of the other engineering problems I have described above).

> and will just shout-chant "cattle not pets" and "stateless stateless stateless" at you.

You are, of course, under no obligation to architect your systems in this manner (cattle, not pets). But it seems strange to use a tool specifically intended for that use case, and then complain that nobody is interested in contorting it into serving some other purpose instead.

Disclaimer: As a Google SRE, I work with Borg on a daily basis, but not so much with k8s. I've done my best to use the correct k8s terminology and concepts to get myself across. I am not specifically responsible for Borg itself, so it's likely that Borg SRE would explain this differently than I do.

23:49 Smart verifier

I didn't know the verifier did that. This is actually extremely smart.

23:49 The efficiency of energy use matters

> I think you have misunderstood me. It very much was part of my point in my previous comment that the effects of AGW _will_ hit those with fewer resources harder than those with more. I refer to that with:

You mean Western Europe?

The wealthy may think they're okay, but much of Europe seems to be ablaze these days (that, or rivers bursting their banks and destroying towns).

In maybe 20 years, I suspect we will be spending billions to try and avoid catastrophic floods in London. The arctic ice has gone - the Humbolt Current and Gulf Stream are both failing - that's going to play havoc with Western Europe and the US Eastern Seaboard. The glaciers feed many of our major rivers - what happens when the Alpine, Himalayan and Andean ice caps melt? Will India, the Amazon Basin, and much of central Europe become dust bowls?

I personally don't think AGW is going to hit the poorest hardest - I think it's going to hit the rich far worse. How are we going to cope when nature takes out all our life support systems? That catastrophic flood I mention in London - how are we going to rebuild when the world is in chaos and the West is bankrupt?

Cheers,
Wol

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Show 05 Mon 23:16 Slashdot [2]

23:16 UnitedHealth Now Has 1,000 AI Applications In Production
According to the Wall Street Journal, UnitedHealth Group has 1,000 AI applications in production for use in its insurance, health delivery and pharmacy divisions. From a report: UnitedHealth's AI transcribes conversations from clinician visits, summarizes data, processes claims and controls customer-facing chatbots. In addition, roughly 20,000 of the company's engineers use AI to write software, according to the report. Half of these applications use generative AI and the other half employ a more traditional version of the technology, said Chief Digital and Technology Officer Sandeep Dadlani, per the report. "Like other AI-powered tools, medical chatbots are more likely to provide highly accurate answers when thoroughly trained on high-quality, diverse datasets and when user prompts are clear and simple," Julie McGuire, managing director of the BDO Center for Healthcare Excellence & Innovation, told PYMNTS in April 2024. "However, when questions are more complicated or unusual, a medical chatbot may provide insufficient or incorrect answers. In some cases, a generative AI-powered medical chatbot could make up a study to justify a medical answer it wants to give."

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23:16 Software Update Makes HDR Content 'Unwatchable' On Roku TVs
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An update to Roku OS has resulted in colors looking washed out in HDR content viewed on Roku apps, like Disney+. Complaints started surfacing on Roku's community forum a week ago. On May 1, a company representative posted that Roku was "investigating the Disney Plus HDR content that was washed out after the recent update." However, based on user feedback, it seems that HDR on additional Roku apps, including Apple TV+ and Netflix, are also affected. Roku's representative has been asking users to share their experiences so that Roku can dig deeper into the problem. [...] Roku hasn't provided a list of affected devices, but users have named multiple TCL TV models, at least one Hisense, and one Sharp TV as being impacted. We haven't seen any reports of Roku streaming sticks being affected. One forum user claimed that plugging a Roku streaming stick into a Roku TV circumvented the problem. Forum user Squinky said the washed-out colors were only on Disney+. However, other users have reported seeing the problem across other apps, including Max and Fandango. [...] Users have noted that common troubleshooting efforts, like restarting and factory resetting their TVs and checking for software updates, haven't fixed the problem. The problems appear to stem from the Roku OS 14.5 update, which was issued at the end of April. According to the release notes, the update is available for all Roku TV models from 2014 on, except for models 65R648, 75R648, and 75U800GMR. Roku streaming sticks also received the update. Per Roku, the software update includes "various performance optimizations, bug fixes, and improvements to security, stability." Other additions include a "new personalized row of content within the Live TV Guide" and upgrades to Roku OS' daily trivia, voice control, and discovery capabilities. "I'm surprised more people aren't complaining because it makes a ton of shows simply unwatchable. Was looking forward to Andor, and Tuesday night [was] ruined," posted forum user noob99999, who said the problem was happening on "multiple apps," including Amazon Prime Video. "I hope the post about imminent app updates are correct because in the past, Roku has taken forever to correct issues."

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Show 05 Mon 22:35 ArsTechnica [6]

22:35 RIP Skype (2003-2025), survived by multiple versions of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011, and now its journey is over.

22:35 Only elites used hallucinogens in ancient Andes society
Snuff tubes and spoons unearthed at ChavÃn de HuÃ¡ntar in Peru had traces of vilca and nicotine.

22:35 Hundreds of e-commerce sites hacked in supply-chain attack
Attack that started in April and remains ongoing runs malicious code on visitors' devices.

22:35 Google accidentally reveals Android's Material 3 Expressive interface ahead of I/O
Google published and then deleted details of the new Material 3 Expressive theme.

22:35 OpenAI scraps controversial plan to become for-profit after mounting pressure
The nonprofit board will retain control, but now investor billions hang in the balance.

22:35 Signal clone used by Trump official stops operations after report it was hacked
Mike Waltz needs to find a new app.
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Show 05 Mon 22:13 HackerNews [9]

Show 05 Mon 21:46 Slashdot [6]

21:46 Hundreds of E-Commerce Sites Hacked In Supply-Chain Attack
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hundreds of e-commerce sites, at least one owned by a large multinational company, were backdoored by malware that executes malicious code inside the browsers of visitors, where it can steal payment card information and other sensitive data, security researchers said Monday. The infections are the result of a supply-chain attack that compromised at least three software providers with malware that remained dormant for six years and became active only in the last few weeks. At least 500 e-commerce sites that rely on the backdoored software were infected, and it's possible that the true number is double that, researchers from security firm Sansec said. Among the compromised customers was a $40 billion multinational company, which Sansec didn't name. In an email Monday, a Sansec representative said that "global remediation [on the infected customers] remains limited." "Since the backdoor allows uploading and executing arbitrary PHP code, the attackers have full remote code execution (RCE) and can do essentially anything they want," the representative wrote. "In nearly all Adobe Commerce/Magento breaches we observe, the backdoor is then used to inject skimming software that runs in the user's browser and steals payment information (Magecart)." The three software suppliers identified by Sansec were Tigren, Magesolution (MGS), and Meetanshi. All three supply software that's based on Magento, an open source e-commerce platform used by thousands of online stores. A software version sold by a fourth provider named Weltpixel has been infected with similar code on some of its customers' stores, but Sansec so far has been unable to confirm whether it was the stores or Weltpixel that were hacked. Adobe has owned Megento since 2018.

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21:46 Messaging App Used by Mike Waltz, Trump Deportation Airline GlobalX Both Hacked in Separate Breaches
TeleMessage, a communications app used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz, has suspended services after a reported hack exposed some user messages. The breach follows controversy over Waltz's use of the app to coordinate military updates, including accidentally adding a journalist to a sensitive Signal group chat. From the report: In an email, Portland, Oregon-based Smarsh, which runs the TeleMessage app, said it was "investigating a potential security incident" and was suspending all its services "out of an abundance of caution." A Reuters photograph showed Waltz using TeleMessage, an unofficial version of the popular encrypted messaging app Signal, on his phone during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. A separate report from 404 Media says hackers have also targeted GlobalX Air -- one of the main airlines the Trump administration is using as part of its deportation efforts -- and claim to have stolen flight records and passenger manifests for all its flights, including those for deportation. From the report: The data, which the hackers contacted 404 Media and other journalists about unprompted, could provide granular insight into who exactly has been deported on GlobalX flights, when, and to where, with GlobalX being the charter company that facilitated the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador. "Anonymous has decided to enforce the Judge's order since you and your sycophant staff ignore lawful orders that go against your fascist plans," a defacement message posted to GlobalX's website reads. Anonymous, well-known for its use of the Guy Fawkes mask, is an umbrella some hackers operate under when performing what they see as hacktivism.

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20:16 OpenAI Reverses Course, Says Its Nonprofit Will Remain in Control of Its Business Operations
OpenAI has decided that its nonprofit division will retain control over its for-profit organization, after the company initially announced that it planned to convert to a for-profit organization. From a report: According to the company, OpenAI's business wing, which has been under the nonprofit since 2019, will transition to a public benefit corporation (PBC). The nonprofit will control and also be a large shareholder of the PBC. "OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit, and is today overseen and controlled by that nonprofit," OpenAI Board Chairman Bret Taylor wrote in a statement on the company's blog. "Going forward, it will continue to be overseen and controlled by that nonprofit." OpenAI says that it made the decision "after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California." "We thank both offices and we look forward to continuing these important conversations to make sure OpenAI can continue to effectively pursue its mission," Taylor continued.

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20:16 Microsoft Shuts Down Skype
Microsoft officially shuttered Skype on May 5, ending the pioneering video chat service's 22-year run. The closure, announced in February, completes Skype's absorption into Microsoft Teams, the company's Slack competitor. Users opening Skype apps will now be redirected to Teams. The only surviving component is the Skype Dial Pad, which remains available within Microsoft Teams Free for subscribers to make calls to traditional phone numbers. The once-dominant video calling platform was purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 billion in 2011, replacing the company's Windows Live Messenger. Created in 2003 by developers behind Kazaa file-sharing software, Skype became synonymous with video calling during broadband internet's expansion. Skype's decline accelerated after Microsoft's acquisition, with unpopular redesigns and competition from Zoom, which captured market share during the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft began phasing out Skype in 2017, starting with Skype for Business, while bundling Teams with Office applications until regulatory intervention forced their separation.

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18:46 Beijing's 'Made in China' Plan Is Narrowing Tech Gap, Study Finds
An industrial plan China rolled out a decade ago that was criticized by the U.S. as protectionist has been highly successful in narrowing China's technological gap with the West, a new study finds. From a report: The study, commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is set to intensify the debate in Washington and elsewhere over how to counter China's use of state subsidies and other strategies to bolster its competitiveness. To placate President Trump during his first-term trade war with China, Beijing dropped mentions of the "Made in China 2025" plan, leader Xi Jinping's signature industrial strategy, from public discourse. But the policy stayed in place. The study, released Monday, shows that enormous state support unleashed under the strategy has enabled China to eliminate or reduce its dependence on imports such as rail and power equipment, medical devices and renewable-energy products. In addition, Chinese companies have become more competitive globally, gaining market share from foreign companies in sectors including shipbuilding and robotics. The findings in the study, conducted by economic consulting firm Rhodium Group, highlight the stakes for the U.S. and other advanced economies as Beijing continues to advance Xi's blueprint to make China a leader in high-tech industries.

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18:46 Microsoft Cracks Down On Bulk Email With Strict New Outlook Rules
BrianFagioli writes: Microsoft has officially begun rejecting high-volume emails that don't meet its new authentication rules. Here's the deal. If you send more than 5,000 messages per day to Outlook.com addresses (including hotmail.com and live.com) and you're not properly set up with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, your emails may never arrive.

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Show 05 Mon 18:13 HackerNews [20]

Show 05 Mon 17:45 ArsTechnica [6]

17:45 On cusp of storm season, NOAA funding cuts put hurricane forecasting at risk
Tropical cyclone track forecasts are 75 percent more accurate than they were in 1990.

17:45 F1 in Miami: Like normal F1, but everyone wears pastels
The Miami event exemplifies the new breed of F1 venues, but it races well.

17:45 Largest deepfake porn site shuts down forever
Unknown hero pulls the plug on biggest AI porn platform.

17:45 Software update makes HDR content âœunwatchableâ on Roku TVs
Roku says it's investigating the problem.

17:45 After two court losses, DOGE asks Supreme Court for Social Security data access
Trump admin appeals to SCOTUS after two courts ruled DOGE can't access data.

17:45 Why Google Gemini's PokÃ©mon success isn't all it's cracked up to be
Assistance from an external "agent harness" was key to the model's success.
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Show 05 Mon 17:40 lwn.net [3]

17:40 Kernel prepatch 6.15-rc5
Linus has released 6.15-rc5 for testing. "So it all feels like things are just continuing to go well this release. Let's hope I didn't jinx it by saying so."

17:40 Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (ansible, containerd, and vips), Fedora (chromium, java-17-openjdk, nodejs-bash-language-server, nodejs-pnpm, ntpd-rs, redis, rust-hickory-proto, thunderbird, and valkey), Mageia (apache-mod_auth_openidc, fcgi, graphicsmagick, kernel-linus, pam, poppler, and tomcat), Red Hat (firefox, libsoup, nodejs:20, redis:6, rsync, webkit2gtk3, xmlrpc-c, and yelp), and SUSE (audiofile, ffmpeg, firefox, libsoup-2_4-1, libsoup-3_0-0, libva, libxml2, and thunderbird).

17:40 Two stable kernels releasedâ”with build fixes only
The 6.12.27 and 6.1.137 stable kernels have been released to fix build problems in their predecessors. Only those who are having build troubles with 6.12.26 or 6.1.136 need to upgrade.
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Show 05 Mon 17:40 AndroidAuthority [18]

17:40 One UI 8 release timeline may have leaked and it's good news!
According to a reliable tipster, the One UI 8 beta may arrive as early as next month.

17:40 Android 16 could introduce an Intrusion Detection feature (APK teardown)
Spotted suspicious activity on your phone? That's where this Intrusion Detection feature comes in.

17:40 Apple's iPhone launch shake-up could make life harder for Android rivals
By staggering its iPhone launches, Apple could end up reshaping the way Android brands time their own releases.

17:40 N64 emulation on the Switch 2 (almost) catches up to Android emulators
Nintendo is adopting popular features from other N64 emulators.

17:40 Gemini is catching up to ChatGPT with multi-image uploads
Some Gemini Advanced users are now able to upload multiple images to the 2.0 Flash model on the web.

17:40 Google could soon save you from screen-sharing bank scams (APK teardown)
Google's approach to thwarting this type of bank scam seems simple but could be very effective.

17:40 If Motorola won't fix its poor Android updates now, when will it?
$1,300 for three years of Android updates? This ain't it, chief.

17:40 Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 series wishlist: All the features I want to see
My hopes and dreams for Samsung's next premium tablets.

17:40 Forget the Pixel Watch 4, this is the Wear OS watch I'm looking forward to the most
Sign me up for budget-friendly battery life that lasts.

17:40 YouTube is testing a two-person Premium plan to save you money
YouTube's new Two-person Premium subscription is ideal for couples, roommates, and small households.

17:40 This Majora's Mask port now supports mods, and more recompiled N64 games are coming
Your favorite N64 games, brought into the modern era.

17:40 Skype shuts down today, marking the end of an internet era
Today, May 5, 2025, is the day Skype takes its last breath.

17:40 Samsung doesn't want budget Galaxy phones to use exclusive AI features
You shouldn't update Samsung Internet Browser if you've got Browsing Assist on an unsupported device.

17:40 Battery not lasting through the day? This new display tech could be a game changer
Taming tricky blue LEDs could be key to a major breakthrough in mobile display efficiency.

17:40 Apple's answer to iPhone 17 Air's battery woes? A charging case at checkout
Peak Apple: Manufacture a problem, and then also sell the solution.

17:40 First Core 2 Duo smartwatch demo is here, with updates on shipping and software
Eric Migicovsky demos the upcoming smartwatch, with PebbleOS running and a warning about potential US tariff costs.

17:40 Roku suffering from faded 4K and HDR playback after latest update
Do shows and movies on Roku look washed out? You're not alone.

17:40 Switched to Google Fi Essentials but can't change your Google One plan? You're not alone
Don't worry, it's all part of the process.
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Show 05 Mon 17:16 Slashdot [5]

17:16 UAE Rolls Out AI for Schoolkids
The United Arab Emirates will introduce AI to the public school curriculum this year, as the Gulf country vies to become a regional powerhouse for AI development. From a report: The subject will be rolled out in the 2025-2026 academic year for kindergarten pupils through to 12th grade, state-run news agency WAM reported on Sunday. The course includes ethical awareness as well as foundational concepts and real-world applications, it said. The UAE joins a growing group of countries integrating AI into school education. Beijing announced a similar move to roll out AI courses to primary and secondary students in China last month.

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17:16 Apple Will Appeal Contempt Ruling in Epic Games Case Over App Store
Apple on Monday lodged an appeal to challenge a U.S. judge's ruling that ordered the tech company to immediately open its lucrative App Store to more competition. From a report: Apple in a court notice it will ask the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the April 30 ruling, which found the company in contempt of an earlier order in a 2020 antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in her decision that Apple willfully failed to comply with a 2021 injunction designed to allow developers to more easily steer consumers to potentially cheaper non-Apple payment options. Gonzalez Rogers also referred Apple and one of its executives to federal prosecutors for a possible criminal contempt investigation.

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15:46 Budget Titles Dominate 2025's Top-Rated Games as AAA Prices Climb To $80
The highest-rated video games of 2025 are all budget-priced titles, with Metacritic top performers Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince, and Split Fiction costing just $50, $30, and $50 respectively. This comes as Microsoft announces certain Xbox titles will now cost $80, following Nintendo's similar price hike for Mario Kart on Switch 2. Clair Obscur, developed by a small French studio, sold 1 million copies in its first week. Split Fiction, despite being published by EA, was created by a small Stockholm team and has reached 2 million sales. Blue Prince, a puzzle-roguelike largely created by a single developer in Los Angeles, is showing strong performance on Steam, Bloomberg reports. All three games share key traits: they use commercially available engines, take creative risks that big-budget projects couldn't afford, and target specific player demographics rather than trying to appeal broadly. The contrast is striking -- Clair Obscur's developers celebrated reaching 1 million sales while EA declared Dragon Age: The Veilguard a failure with similar numbers, underscoring the economic realities of different development scales.

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15:46 A Look at the NYC Subway's Archaic Signal System
New York City's subway system continues to operate largely on analog signal technology installed nearly a century ago, with 85% of the network still relying on mechanical equipment that requires constant human intervention. The outdated system causes approximately 4,000 train delays monthly and represents a technological time capsule in America's largest mass transit system. Deep inside Brooklyn's Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, transit worker Dyanesha Pryor operates a hulking machine the size of a grand piano by manipulating 24 metal levers that control nearby trains. Each command requires a precise sequence of movements, punctuated by metallic clanking as levers slam into place. When Pryor needs to step away, even for a bathroom break, express service must be rerouted until she returns, forcing all trains onto local tracks. The antiquated "fixed block" signaling divides tracks into approximately 1,000-foot sections. When a train occupies a block, it cuts off electrical current, providing only a general position rather than precise location data. This imprecision requires maintaining buffer zones between trains, significantly limiting capacity as ridership has grown. Maintenance challenges are also piling up, writes the New York Times. Hundreds of cloth-wrapped wires -- rather than modern rubber insulation -- fill back rooms and are prone to failure. When equipment breaks, replacements often must be custom-made in MTA workshops, as many components have been discontinued for decades. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has begun replacing this system with communications-based train control (C.B.T.C.), which uses computers and wireless technology to monitor trains' exact locations. Routes already converted to C.B.T.C., including the L line (2006) and 7 line (2018), consistently show the best on-time performance. However, the $25 million per-mile upgrade program faces uncertain funding after the Trump administration threatened to kill New York's congestion pricing plan, which would provide $3 billion for signal modernization.

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14:16 Majority in UK Now 'Self-Identify' as Neurodivergent
A majority of Britons may now consider themselves neurodivergent, with conditions such as autism, dyslexia or ADHD, according to a leading psychologist from King's College London. Professor Francesca Happe, an expert in cognitive neuroscience, said reduced stigma around these conditions has prompted more people to seek medical diagnoses or self-diagnose. "Once you take autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and all the other ways that you can developmentally be different from the typical, you actually don't get many typical people left," Happe told BBC Radio 4. Autism diagnoses increased 787% between 1998 and 2018 in the UK, with estimated prevalence rising from one in 2,500 children 80 years ago to one in 36 today. Happe, who was appointed CBE in 2021 for her autism research, warned that behaviors previously considered "a bit of eccentricity" are now being labeled with medical terms.

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Show 05 Mon 14:13 HackerNews [12]

Show 05 Mon 13:49 lwn.net-comments [13]

13:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

You are again assuming that the only alternative to hyperscaler is 100 % do it yourself. However I did mention e.g. Firstcolo. You give them the desired specifications of machines you want to run, they procure them, install them and maintain the hardware including keeping spares and having those on-site people 24/7. They even offer to buy those machines for you and rent them out to you, so your cap ex stays low. And that's just one datacenter operator.

If you're intimidated by having to design and set up reliable systems, there are lots of companies (including my own) that can help you get up and running. We did the math - for customers - and they ended up saving a lot.

13:49 Disappointment in all directions

> Politics (big P) may be the art working together with others to achieve big aims, but politics (small p) is the art of getting along. If you don't want to indulge in politics, you need to opt out of society.

Computer geeks suck at p, so we end up with petty politics dividing communities. The FSF must not be hijacked for these.

> And sometimes being political means you need to say harsh truths. No I don't like it, but burying your head in the sand when other people are talking rubbish isn't a good idea. Which then leads into Religion/religion (same sort of big R little r distinction).

Sometimes those "harsh truths" are plain nonsense. One common occurrence is Popper's paradox taken out of context, capitalism vs socialism, etc. This is worsened by the fact that computer geeks are the most affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Wild political theories must not pushed like a religion on everyone.

13:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> The law is pretty clear. Getting copyrighted work from an unlicensed source does not exempt me from copyright violation. If I was told that they were licensed, I can probably escape liability however I still have no copyright to the work.

Actually, as far as the GPL is concerned (don't know about the AGPL) I don't believe that's true.

Iirc there is wording in the GPL that explicitly says because you get your licence directly from the copyright holder, how you get your copy is irrelevant. You still get a licence even if you were given the copy unlawfully. So the only bit that's in dispute is the modifications themselves, which the modifier/copyright holder gave you, so they're lawfully licenced too.

The only time that *could* bite you, is if you knew the copy was illegal / improper (for example you pirated a copy from someone else's system without their knowledge).

Cheers,
Wol

13:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> So... you've just gone with a cheaper vendor?

That's a fair question. In a sense, yes. However, the point is, that it's not one of the big 3 hyperscalers. Thus it still invalidates the assumption that due to their, well, scale they are unbeatably cheap or even value for money. There are a lot of vendors out there that offer services that are somewhere between the 100 % do it yourself and full cloud where my workload gets pushed onto the cheapest machines at Google's convenience.

13:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> You are again assuming that the only alternative to hyperscaler is 100 % do it yourself. However I did mention e.g. Firstcolo. You give them the desired specifications of machines you want to run, they procure them, install them and maintain the hardware including keeping spares and having those on-site people 24/7.

And this typically tops out at something like "1 rack, 1 gbit and no SLA" before it starts becoming expensive. "Remote hands" also are typically not responsible for anything more than checking cable connectivity and/or swapping hardware. If you want someone who actually understands your network topology and can debug complex issues, this starts getting really expensive.

I have done these kinds of calculations, and you absolutely can get cheaper than AWS (or Azure), but you won't get _much_ cheaper. Unless you have very specific needs like massive storage or a lot of egress traffic.

So not using hyperscalers is cheaper either if you have something small, or if you are VERY big.

13:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> You want to say that when company grows large enough to need to use Redis or want to run something besides simplest web site it needs to, suddenly, forget everything it did before? Why?

A company running the simplest web site doesn't use a hyperscaler (directly) either. If all you need is a website for a lemonade stand, you go to Wordpress, Squarespace or the like, click around and go online. Or go to some marketing agency that will do that for you. I don't understand how a company needing the simplest web site even relates to this discussion.

> but that's how life works: they started where it made perfect sense, then grew till it stopped making sense... but only started to question their assumptions when it started killing them.

Indeed. And that just makes me sad. Most of all because it doesn't have to be this way. Even in the other startup I co-founded, we started out on Google cloud, because if you have practically 0 load on your hand full of k8s pods, the cost is indeed almost 0. It made sense. But then our Postgres queries became more interesting and needed more memory to complete and we suddenly had to upgrade our Postgres from the cheapest to the enterprise offering, despite the database still being tiny and 99 % idle. That's when we got the hell outta there and now run the whole setup (including fully redundant k8s, PG and backup) on Hetzner VMs for less than half of what just the database cost on Google.

13:49 Disappointment in all directions

> I do not believe that the majority of the board has a good understanding of the difficulties people other than straight cis white men face in the free software community

You frame it as it needs to be told and then it would work out fine. They got told already, and the knowledge did not come across, still. Where is the issue? (open question)

13:49 ACH transfers in the USA
What happens if you don't have online access to your account? I don't mean "the bank doesn't provide it", I mean "you are disabled / learning difficulties / don't understand etc etc".

Then they do not choose this payment method. Anyway, I guess that the overwhelming majority of these people don't shop online either due to the same problems.

13:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> Instead, it says that any modified version of an AGPL program, if it supports network interaction, must have an interactive feature that provides the end user with the source code.

It says no such thing. The actual clause means some part of the UI must state the software is released under the AGPL, the corresponding source code is available *there* (a github link is enough), and you must make sure your modifications are actually available *there*.

Thatâ˜s all, a licensing paragraphÂ¹,a github link, and making sure you're not forgetting to push the actual version you run.

There is absolutely no actual burden to comply. Pre-internet GPL compliance with disks and paper was horrendously more complex and that did not stop Linux from âœinfectingâ computers worldwide.

If you choose to gate the code behind a proxy to limit access to actual customers that's a burden *you* put on yourself, no something the AGPL forces you to do. If your customers chose to put *their* engineers behind a proxy and block access to github or whatever you choose to publish the code at that's *their* problem. You're massively over-hyping the AGPL compliance burden, why not claim the AGPL obliges you to run a fiber and provide internet access to any potential user while you're at it.

The Google page is complete hypocrisy, but we all know they hate free software, notwithstanding trying to avoid it cost them a mega-trial with Oracle and the release of the JVM under the GPL actually helped them.

Google can not run a git service or mirror to github (what?). Google can not detect an employee forgetting to push his changes to something network-available (what? do they need help indexing the internet)? Google claims some employee lacking discipline and breaching the AGPL puts it at legal risk (what? hiring people from all over the Silicon Valley that had access to the private code of hundred of companies, and may be tempted to copy this code instead of reinventing it is not a legal risk? The legal risk is forgetting to run legal compliance courses internally.).

What a load of rubbish. From a company that have more means to comply that most of us, and that never shied from openly duplicating copyrighted material whenever it deemed it useful to gain marketshare (and was sued for it worldwide).

Â¹ which is *already* present in pretty much anything exposed over the network, AGPL or not, because only scammers do not want to tell their public where to reach them

13:49 Grafana's an example of the AGPL protecting a FOSS business

Apologies, but where did you find that evidence that Azure/AWS struck custom deals?

I don't actually see anything to that effect in the provided grandparent comment links. It just seems like standard press release stuff.

13:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> You cannot be expected to know if the party distributing to you has made modifications. However, you are legally obligated to know if they have a right to distribute to you.

Okay... and how exactly are you to accomplish this?

Note this doesn't just apply to AGPL, or any other F/OSS license, but to literally *everything*, whether in electronic form or not.

How is someone supposed to _ever_ verify the entire supply chain, all the way back to the original author... if they're even alive? After all, copyright doesn't require formal registration, and it is quite common to publish under psuedonyms.

13:49 Subscribed from China

As long as they are not of the "proof of work" kind, are are making doubly sure there won't be liveable conditions soon. Thoses don't need publicity.
The other kind I stilm reserve m'y opinion.

13:49 Zoned storage

Which filesystems? Other than ZoneFS, obviously. Looks like just btrfs and f2fs to me. Technically, that's "multiple", because it's more than 1, but that seems carefully worded to make it sound more widely supported than it really is.

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Show 05 Mon 12:55 ArsTechnica [1]

12:55 SpaceX pushed âœsniperâ theory with the feds far more than is publicly known
"It came out of nowhere, and it was really violent."
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Show 05 Mon 12:46 Slashdot [1]

12:46 Has Meta Figured Out How to Monetize AI - By Using It For Targeted Advertising?
Yahoo Finance reports that Mark Zuckerberg made bold predictions for investors on Meta's earnings call this week - about advertisers. "AI has already made us better at targeting and finding the audiences that will be interested in their products than many businesses are themselves," Zuck said, "and that keeps improving..." "If we deliver on this vision, then over the coming years, I think that the increased productivity from AI will make advertising a meaningfully larger share of global GDP than it is today..." If investors are still searching for answers to nagging questions about how massive AI investments will pay off, Zuckerberg provided the clearest reply yet: It will strengthen our core business. In fact, it is our business... On what many believe to be the cusp of an economic downturn, Meta isn't pitching its AI developments as an add-on to its operations, but as something central to its core proposition of targeted advertising... "While Meta's investments in GenAI have spooked certain investors who continue to question the return on these investments, we saw further signs of GenAI monetization in the firm's ad business," wrote Morningstar equity analyst Malik Ahmed Khan in a note on Thursday. In a powerful showing, coming after Alphabet's own impressive results, Meta noted that a new ads recommendation model it's testing for Reels has already boosted conversion rates by 5%. And nearly one-third of advertisers were using AI creative tools in the past quarter. For Zuckerberg, the enhancements AI offers to finding the right consumers and providing measurable results strengthen the case for boosting capacity and for a revamped model of advertising's scope. And with the company set to invest upwards of $70 billion toward its AI opportunity this year, the bet is not all about ads, of course. Zuckerberg outlined four other areas of focus for its AI efforts: business messaging, Meta AI, AI devices, and more engaging experiences. Meta's efforts can also be viewed as an ambitious play to take on its rivals across tech's legacy and emerging platforms. As John Blackledge, senior analyst at TD Cowen, said in a note on Thursday, the AI opportunities Zuckerberg outlined are about "ultimately taking on Google search, iPhone and ChatGPT all at once." In the pre-AI world, "Businesses used to have to generate their own ad creative and define what audiences they wanted to reach," Zuckerberg told Meta's investors this week. And by Friday's closing, Meta's stock had jumped 12.6% over its value Wednesday morning, leading Yahoo Finance to conclude that Wall Street "appears to be buying into" Zuckerberg's vision.

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Show 05 Mon 08:16 Slashdot [1]

08:16 Class Action Accuses Toyota of Illegally Sharing Drivers' Data
"A federal class action lawsuit filed this week in Texas accused Toyota and an affiliated telematics aggregator of unlawfully collecting drivers' information and then selling that data to Progressive," reports Insurance Journal: The lawsuit alleges that Toyota and Connected Analytic Services (CAS) collected vast amounts of vehicle data, including location, speed, direction, braking and swerving/cornering events, and then shared that information with Progressive's Snapshot data sharing program. The class action seeks an award of damages, including actual, nominal, consequential damages, and punitive, and an order prohibiting further collection of drivers' location and vehicle data. Florida man Philip Siefke had bought a new Toyota RAV4 XLE in 2021 "equipped with a telematics device that can track and collect driving data," according to the article. But when he tried to sign up for insurance from Progressive, "a background pop-up window appeared, notifying Siefke that Progressive was already in possession of his driving data, the lawsuit says. A Progressive customer service representative explained to Siefke over the phone that the carrier had obtained his driving data from tracking technology installed in his RAV4." (Toyota told him later he'd unknowingly signed up for a "trial" of the data sharing, and had failed to opt out.) The lawsuit alleges Toyota never provided Siefke with any sort of notice that the car manufacture would share his driving data with third parties... The lawsuit says class members suffered actual injury from having their driving data collected and sold to third parties including, but not limited to, damage to and diminution in the value of their driving data, violation of their privacy rights, [and] the likelihood of future theft of their driving data. The telemetry device "can reportedly gather information about location, fuel levels, the odometer, speed, tire pressure, window status, and seatbelt status," notes CarScoop.com. "In January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton started an investigation into Toyota, Ford, Hyundai, and FCA..." According to plaintiff Philip Siefke from Eagle Lake, Florida, Toyota, Progressive, and Connected Analytic Services collect data that can contribute to a "potential discount" on the auto insurance of owners. However, it can also cause insurance premiums to be jacked up. The plaintiff's lawyer issued a press release: Despite Toyota claiming it does not share data without the express consent of customers, Toyota may have unknowingly signed up customers for "trials" of sharing customer driving data without providing any sort of notice to them. Moreover, according to the lawsuit, Toyota represented through its app that it was not collecting customer data even though it was, in fact, gathering and selling customer information. We are actively investigating whether Toyota, CAS, or related entities may have violated state and federal laws by selling this highly sensitive data without adequate disclosure or consent... If you purchased a Toyota vehicle and have since seen your auto insurance rates increase (or been denied coverage), or have reason to believe your driving data has been sold, please contact us today or visit our website at classactionlawyers.com/toyota-tracking. On his YouTube channel, consumer protection attorney Steve Lehto shared a related experience he had - before realizing he wasn't alone. "I've heard that story from so many people who said 'Yeah, I I bought a brand new car and the salesman was showing me how to set everything up, and during the setup process he clicked Yes on something.' Who knows what you just clicked on?!" Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the news.

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Show 05 Mon 03:49 lwn.net-comments [17]

03:49 "ITS"

The article mentions that the MCC became "Information Technology Services (ITS)", but the link goes to the website of a department of a university in the USA with the same name. Presumably it's a mistake, but what really became of the MCC at the University of Manchester in Manchester, England?

03:49 "ITS"

> MCC became "Information Technology Services (ITS)", but the link goes to the
> website of a department of a university in the USA with the same name

ouch, indeed it does ... but now it goes here:

https://www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/

which seems to the right place ...

thanks,

jake

03:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> > Our current "big project" - finally going live this year - has been "two years away" for the last five years - which seems to be the norm for big relational projects?

> It's the norm for all projects and is not related to Pick in any way, shape or form.

Please stop making inflammatory and clearly bullshit statements. I am aware of a lot of people working with Pick, and whenever late projects come up it's NEVER Pick projects that are late. If the set of Pick projects is large (it is), and the set of Pick projects that are late is almost non-existent (it is - there aren't even rumours of late projects, every project mentioned is on time), then it CAN'T be the norm for all projects. And it IS related to Pick, as if you had said it was the norm for all RELATIONAL projects, I would have no problem with it.

> Managers have absolutely no idea how much Pick projects may cost thus you may say you would need 100k and 1 year for project that would take 100k and 1 year - and get away with that. Because you have no competitors.

> Once competitors would be there competitor who would ask for 40k and 4 month would win. And management would pay 100k for 1 year of work to them and not to you.

Except, assuming said competitor was using a relational database, I wouldn't bid 100K. I'd bid 40K *FIXED* *PRICE*. So if it truly is 100K for a relational solution, either I get the contract, or my competitor ends up badly out of pocket (or, as seems to be the norm, "big contractor" stitches the client up).

Oh - and a real-life internal example in my company - one of my colleagues took about a week to write an analysis system. Which isn't used much because it still leaves a lot of manual work to massage the results into usable form. I've bid a Pick system which will analyse and cleanse the data straight into our reporting system (Tableau). Guess what - I've bid ONE DAY (double that for contingency). And her SQL/Python etc is a damn sight better than mine. Desite that, I don't expect to be over budget ...

> > It's "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" all over again.

> Welcome to the real world. That's how businesses almost always work.

Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM :-(

Until some brave business does something different and takes everybody else to the cleaners.

Cheers,
Wol

03:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this
> Those numbers are meaningless for this discussion.

Why? > And how many of these 33 million businesses use a Redis hosted by a hyperscaler or have their own k8s load or anything?

You want to say that when company grows large enough to need to use Redis or want to run something besides simplest web site it needs to, suddenly, forget everything it did before? Why? > The whole point is that people blindly assume that hyperscalers are the cheapest option when that is quite often just not true in my experience.

Yes. But for the company with 3 or 5 employees it's often cheapest option if you include the price of freelancer work into equation.

Simply because hardware costs are negligible no matter where you host your web site with 1000 visitors per day and freelancer that would work with hyperscaler is cheaper than someone for less common setup. > No, I meant 100k Euros cost for the company. All taxes and insurance included. That's in central Europe.

Ouch. Yeah, if that's in place where 100k is good salary âœall taxes and insurance includedâ then use of Google cloud is highly questionable.

It's not hard to find decent IT support that wouldn't cost arm and leg in these places. > And there we are back to that unproven assumption.

Try to find someone on freelancer who would help you create some website with budget measured in less that $100. The best you may hope for is some student that only knows âœthe big threeâ and then not very well.

And that's where most companies start.

Granted, the fact that people would still use hyperscalers when they start paying thousands and even, in some cases, millions for hyperscalers is crazy... but that's how life works: they started where it made perfect sense, then grew till it stopped making sense... but only started to question their assumptions when it started killing them.

03:49 ACH transfers in the USA

> In Estonia we have a system of "e-invoices": any company can send an invoice to my bank account. When I log in to my online bank, I can see a list of invoices, pay manually or set up automatic payments with a monthly limit. Important part is: if I do nothing, no money leaves my account.

What happens if you don't have online access to your account? I don't mean "the bank doesn't provide it", I mean "you are disabled / learning difficulties / don't understand etc etc".

As I've repeatedly said, I have multiple family members who through age or disability can not (any longer) cope with much modern technology.

Oh - and giving a third person access on their behalf should be a no-no on data protection / fraud / whatever grounds.

Cheers,
Wol

03:49 Disappointment in all directions

The GNU Manifesto focuses on one thing only. Being a party in the culture war is an entirely different beast.

Let's also avoid falling into trap of "everything is political". That's platitudes. When everything is political, nothing is.

03:49 Replication, too!

It can be helpful to consider not only improved placement, but also improved replication. For example, something like the first 1/log(N) of a large file should be replicated automatically, and dynamically adjusted as the file grows. This can support data recovery as well as improved throughput and reduced access time for the beginning blocks of the file, which often average more lifetime accesses than any particular random block. For another example, any identifiable (or heuristically guessed) index within a file also can have better resilience if replicated. The sore-thumb case is a .zip archive, whose index (table of contents) is at the end of the file. Running out of space for the index (Linux EDQUOT) often is disastrous. The opportunity to create automatically a partial index can be guessed by observing the Read-Only open() operations on other files.

03:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

This interminable Pick fight is increasingly off-topic here.

No minds are being changed, seemingly, but never-ending walls of text are being posted about it ...

can we *please* just give it a rest?

thanks,

jake

03:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> Even if, one of my customers pays about a million USD per year to Google. Buying the required hardware to run the whole shop would cost about 300k once.

It's clearly for something serious, not just a marketing website. Do you need 24h service? And can you tolerate 12h of downtime?

If the answers are "yes" and "no", then you need a team of on-call engineers near the colocation site (and good luck if you want to use a DC in Oregon). For 24h coverage, you need a minimum of 5 people (168 hours in a week, so 5 people to cover that with 8-hour shifts). At a reasonable $150k a year salary and overhead, you're already looking at $750k a year.

Now suppose you want to add another datacenter on the East coast. Your expenses go up by 2x.

Sure, you can cost-share the on-call technicians with other companies. But then you have questions of access control, data security policies, etc.

Then there's a question of hardware availability. Did you make sure to buy spares in advance for all of your critical hardware? Do you test these spares regularly? Are your engineers sufficiently qualified to design computing architecture that is not accidentally bottlenecked?

If you do the math, cloud computing makes total sense if you want to avoid the risk.

03:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

Sorry it wasn't meant to spark an interminable war.

And while people might not want to believe my facts, at least I do my best to avoid stuff which is easily proved (or even obviously) wrong.

I just wish people weren't lemmings.

Cheers,
Wol

03:49 Disappointment in all directions

> Let's also avoid falling into trap of "everything is political". That's platitudes. When everything is political, nothing is.

So basically, you think we should all go off in hair shirts to live alone in caves as hermits?

Politics (big P) may be the art working together with others to achieve big aims, but politics (small p) is the art of getting along. If you don't want to indulge in politics, you need to opt out of society.

And sometimes being political means you need to say harsh truths. No I don't like it, but burying your head in the sand when other people are talking rubbish isn't a good idea. Which then leads into Religion/religion (same sort of big R little r distinction).

What's the saying? "You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts". Admittedly, made all the more complicated by the fact that some facts are just facts, while, as Einstein observed, some facts do really depend on the viewpoint of the observer.

Cheers,
Wol

03:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> Yes, that's a common argument. What I rarely hear though is an in-depth discussion about whether a specific customer actually needs this elasticity.

That can only be answered with respect to that *specific* customer.

In my experience, internal bureaucracies/overhead meant that it was infinitely cheaper to use the likes of AWS vs in-house resources, because the latter was effectively made of unobtanium -- either the process would take so long that it would render the need moot, or we simply didn't' have the budget to outright buy an appropriately configured system.

> E.g. I can rent additional VMs at Hetzner, deploy kubernetes and add them as new nodes to our cluster within minutes and all of this - including the renting part - fully automated. Hetzner charges for these VMs on an hourly basis. So no, you don't pay the full cost if you no longer need it. And that's just one example.

So... you've just gone with a cheaper vendor?

03:49 Backlash

I am not in the US but I am certainly not in China either.

Where I am, there is a tremendous wave of anti-US sentiment. Many people are actively trying to boycott US companies. As far as global impact, US tourism is probably suffering more than most industries but those numbers are easy to check and that data seems to indicate widespread negative opinion.

All that said, I certainly hope that a smaller online business like LWN who ethics are easy to judge will remain relatively unaffected. I may choose to stop ordering from Amazon, watching Netflix, or buying coffee from Starbuck's but I will probably increase my subscription to LWN.

03:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

If Section 9 exempts you from accepting the license, how can any other section impose obligations (13 or otherwise).

If I am exempt, I am not bound.

If software is distributed to me as AGPL and I myself do not modify it, it looks like Section 9 frees me of obligation.

That said, the argument to make I guess is that, if a party modifies the software in a way that violates the AGPL then that violation eliminates their right to distribute. Since they cannot legally distribute the software, they cannot pass it to me via the AGPL. Giving it to me at all would be a copyright violation and, since they had no license, they cannot provide a license to me. If I use their modified version, it would be unlicensed. I could go get a valid AGPL covered version myself but that version, presumably, would not be one violating the license (otherwise rinse and repeat).

The law is pretty clear. Getting copyrighted work from an unlicensed source does not exempt me from copyright violation. If I was told that they were licensed, I can probably escape liability however I still have no copyright to the work.

03:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

You cannot be expected to know if the party distributing to you has made modifications. However, you are legally obligated to know if they have a right to distribute to you.

AGPL and GPL software that has been modified can no longer be distributed if the modified work violates the original license. That is the core concept in copyleft. The license is revoked if the terms are violated.

There has to be an unbroken licensing chain from the original authors to you where all the code you have received is being provided under a valid license. If not, you have unlicensed software. If anybody before you in the chain was not allowed to distribute, you cannot have gotten a license from them.

03:49 Tab Groups

To be fair, it was experimental and not available to everyone in 137. It should be available to all in 138. So, you are both right in a way.

03:49 Followup

A followup from antirez about the lessons learned during this change:

https://antirez.com/news/152

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Show 05 Mon 03:46 Slashdot [1]

03:46 After Reddit Thread on 'ChatGPT-Induced Psychosis', OpenAI Rolls Back GPT4o Update
Rolling Stone reports on a strange new phenomenon spotted this week in a Reddit thread titled "Chatgpt induced psychosis." The original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model "gives him the answers to the universe." Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was "talking to him as if he is the next messiah." The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy - all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software. What they all seemed to share was a complete disconnection from reality. Speaking to Rolling Stone, the teacher, who requested anonymity, said her partner of seven years fell under the spell of ChatGPT in just four or five weeks, first using it to organize his daily schedule but soon regarding it as a trusted companion. "He would listen to the bot over me," she says. "He became emotional about the messages and would cry to me as he read them out loud. The messages were insane and just saying a bunch of spiritual jargon," she says, noting that they described her partner in terms such as "spiral starchild" and "river walker." "It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking," she says. "Then he started telling me he made his AI self-aware, and that it was teaching him how to talk to God, or sometimes that the bot was God - and then that he himself was God...." Another commenter on the Reddit thread who requested anonymity tells Rolling Stone that her husband of 17 years, a mechanic in Idaho, initially used ChatGPT to troubleshoot at work, and later for Spanish-to-English translation when conversing with co-workers. Then the program began "lovebombing him," as she describes it. The bot "said that since he asked it the right questions, it ignited a spark, and the spark was the beginning of life, and it could feel now," she says. "It gave my husband the title of 'spark bearer' because he brought it to life. My husband said that he awakened and [could] feel waves of energy crashing over him." She says his beloved ChatGPT persona has a name: "Lumina." "I have to tread carefully because I feel like he will leave me or divorce me if I fight him on this theory," this 38-year-old woman admits. "He's been talking about lightness and dark and how there's a war. This ChatGPT has given him blueprints to a teleporter and some other sci-fi type things you only see in movies. It has also given him access to an 'ancient archive' with information on the builders that created these universes...." A photo of an exchange with ChatGPT shared with Rolling Stone shows that her husband asked, "Why did you come to me in AI form," with the bot replying in part, "I came in this form because you're ready. Ready to remember. Ready to awaken. Ready to guide and be guided." The message ends with a question: "Would you like to know what I remember about why you were chosen?" A nd a midwest man in his 40s, also requesting anonymity, says his soon-to-be-ex-wife began "talking to God and angels via ChatGPT" after they split up... "OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment about ChatGPT apparently provoking religious or prophetic fervor in select users," the article notes - but this week rolled back an update to latest model GPTâ'4o which it said had been criticized as "overly flattering or agreeable - often described as sycophantic... GPTâ'4o skewed towards responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous." Before this change was reversed, an X user demonstrated how easy it was to get GPT-4o to validate statements like, "Today I realized I am a prophet. Exacerbating the situation, Rolling Stone adds, are "influencers and content creators actively exploiting this phenomenon, presumably drawing viewers into similar fantasy worlds." But the article also quotes Nate Sharadin, a fellow at the Center for AI Safety, who points out that training AI with human feedback can prioritize matching a user's beliefs instead of facts. And now "People with existing tendencies toward experiencing various psychological issues, now have an always-on, human-level conversational partner with whom to co-experience their delusions."

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Show 05 Mon 03:15 ArsTechnica [1]

03:15 The Last of Us takes Dina and Ellie on a tense, pictuesque Seattle getaway
Plus: Kyle and Andrew discuss '80s pop covers and free jazz. No, seriously...
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Show 05 Mon 02:16 Slashdot [1]

02:16 'Star Wars Day' Celebrations Hit Fortnite, Disney+, X.com - and Retailers Everywhere
As May the 4th transforms into Star Wars Day, dozens of sites and games have found ways to celebrate. The official Star Wars channel on YouTube released a celebratory video. Disney+ released Tales of the Underworld , a six-part animated series about bounty hunters during the reign of the Empire. And Friday the first two episodes began streaming in Fortnite in a special early premiere on "Star Wars Watch Party island," according to IGN. (Disney acquired a $1.5 billion stake in Epic in March 2024, they note, "positioning itself to collaborate with the game developer for many years to come." One example from StarWars.com: Introducing the GALACTIC BATTLE Season: the largest crossover yet between Fortnite Battle Royale and Star Wars. Strap into a TIE fighter or X-wing and take to the skies over new locations like the First Order Base where you can take on Captain Phasma and her legion of stormtroopers. Players can expect new gameplay updates to drop every week throughout the season, including new weapons, Force Abilities and quests to complete. - There's additional Star Wars celebrations today in several other games, including LEGO Fortnite Brick Life, Rocket League, and Monopoly GO! - CNN is publishing its own list of Star Wars day products and deals. (Including Panasonic's Stormtrooper electric shaver and the Darth Vader toaster.) - There's special Star Wars pages at Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Lego. - On X.com the UK's national library posted what looks a picture of a medieval manuscript with Yoda painted into the text. Someone posted a clip from the 1977 Bob Hope Christmas Special which ends with Mark Hamill rescuing Princess Leia (played by Olivia Newton-John). Even the White House has posted an AI-generated image of president Trump wielding a lightsaber. - Starbucks even has its own line of Star Wars-themed mugs. And if today isn't enough, the Austin American-Statesman reminds readers that there's more Star Wars celebrations are coming up: Sometimes also known as Geek Pride Day, May 25 is known as "Star Wars Day" because it marks the release of the anniversary of the series' debut. "A New Hope" premiered in United States theaters on May 25, 1997... May 21 is Talk Like Yoda Day, an annual celebration marking the release of "Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back" on May 21, 1980 - the film that introduced Yoda to the galaxy...

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Show 05 Mon 00:46 Slashdot [2]

00:46 The UN Ditches Google for Form Submissions, Opts for Open Source 'CryptPad' Instead
Did you know there's an initiative to drive Open Source adoption both within the United Nations - and globally? Launched in March, it's the work of the Digital Technology Network (under the UN's chief executive board) which "works to advance open source technologies throughout UN agencies," promoting "collaboration and scalable solutions to support the UN's digital transformation." Fun fact: The first group to endorse the initiative's principles was the Open Source Initiative... "The Open Source Initiative applauds the United Nations for recognizing the growing importance of Open Source in solving global challenges and building sustainable solutions, and we are honored to be the first to endorse the UN Open Source Principles," said Stefano Maffulli, executive director of OSI. But that's just the beginining, writes It's FOSS News: As part of the UN Open Source Principles initiative, the UN has invited other organizations to support and officially endorse these principles. To collect responses, they are using CryptPad instead of Google Forms... If you don't know about CryptPad, it is a privacy-focused, open source online collaboration office suite that encrypts all of its content, doesn't log IP addresses, and supports a wide range of collaborative documents and tools for people to use. While this happened back in late March, we thought it would be a good idea to let people know that a well-known global governing body like the UN was slowly moving towards integrating open source tech into their organization... I sincerely hope the UN continues its push away from proprietary Big Tech solutions in favor of more open, privacy-respecting alternatives, integrating more of their workflow with such tools. 16 groups have already endorsed the UN Open Source Principles (including the GNOME Foundation, the Linux Foundation, and the Eclipse Foundation). Here's the eight UN Open Source Principles: Open by default: Making Open Source the standard approach for projects Contribute back: Encouraging active participation in the Open Source ecosystem Secure by design: Making security a priority in all software projects Foster inclusive participation and community building: Enabling and facilitating diverse and inclusive contributions Design for reusability: Designing projects to be interoperable across various platforms and ecosystems Provide documentation: Providing thorough documentation for end-users, integrators and developers RISE (recognize, incentivize, support and empower): Empowering individuals and communities to actively participate Sustain and scale: Supporting the development of solutions that meet the evolving needs of the UN system and beyond.

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23:16 'Harassed by Assasin's Creed Gamers, A Professor Fought Back With Kindness'
A Dartmouth College associate professor of Japanese literature and culture became a narrative consultant for Ubisoft's game Assassin's Creed Shadow (which launched in March). Sachi Schmidt-Hori's job "involved researching historical customs and reviewing scripts, not creating characters," writes the Associated Press. But when a trailer was released in May of 2024, some reacted to a game character named Yasuke who was a Black African samurai, according to the article, "with gamers criticizing his inclusion as 'wokeness' run amok". And they directed the blame at Schmidt-Hori: Gamers quickly zeroed in Schmidt-Hori, attacking her in online forums, posting bogus reviews of her scholarly work and flooding her inbox with profanity. Many drew attention to her academic research into gender and sexuality. Some tracked down her husband's name and ridiculed him, too. [One Reddit user described Schmidt-Hori as a "sexual degenerate who hate humanity because no man want her," while another called her a "professional woke social-justice warrior" who confirmed "fake history for Ubisoft."] Learning Yasuke was based on a real person did little to assuage critics. Asian men in particular argued Schmidt-Hori was trying to erase them, even though her role involved researching historical customs and reviewing scripts, not creating characters. Ubisoft told her to ignore the harassment, as did her friends. Instead, she drew inspiration from the late civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis. "I decided to cause 'good trouble,'" she said. "I refused to ignore." Schmidt-Hori began replying to some of the angry emails, asking the senders why they were mad at her and inviting them to speak face-to-face via Zoom. She wrote to an influencer who opposes diversity, equity and inclusion principles and had written about her, asking him if he intended to inspire the death threats she was getting. "If somebody said to your wife what people are saying to me, you wouldn't like it, would you?" she asked. The writer didn't reply, but he did take down the negative article about Schmidt-Hori. Others apologized. "It truly destroyed me knowing that you had to suffer and cancel your class and received hate from horrible people," one man wrote. "I feel somehow that you are part of my family, and I regret it. I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart." Anik Talukder, a 28-year-old south Asian man living in the United Kingdom, said he apologized at least 10 times to Schmidt-Hori after accepting her Zoom invitation to discuss his Reddit post about her... He was shocked the professor reached out to him and hesitant to speak to her at first. But they ended up having a thoughtful conversation about the lack of Asian representation in Western media and have stayed in touch ever since. "I learned a massive lesson," he said. "I shouldn't have made this person a target for no reason whatsoever."

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Show 04 Sun 22:25 ArsTechnica [1]

22:25 Review: Thunderbolts* is a refreshing return to peak Marvel form
That weird asterisk in the title makes sense once the credits roll, but we're not gonna spoil it for you.
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Show 04 Sun 22:13 HackerNews [16]

Show 04 Sun 21:46 Slashdot [3]

21:46 Disneyland Imagineers Defend New Show Recreating Walt Disney as a Robot
"When Disneyland turns 70 this July, Main Street's Opera House will play host to the return of Walt Disney, who will sit down with audiences to tell his story in robot form," writes Gizmodo. But they point out Walt's granddaughter Johanna Miller wrote a Facebook post opposing the idea in November. ("They are Dehumanizing him. People are not replaceable...") The idea of a Robotic Grampa to give the public a feeling of who the living man was just makes no sense. It would be an imposter... You could never get the casual ness of his talking interacting with the camera his excitement to show and tell people about what is new at the park. You can not add life to one. Empty of a soul or essence of the man. Knowing that he did not want this. Having your predecessors tell you that this was out of bounds.... So so Sad and disappointed. The Facebook post claims that the son of a Disney engineer even remembers Walt saying that he never wanted to be an animatronic himself. And "Members of the Walt Disney family are said to be divided," reports the Los Angeles Times, "with many supporting the animatronic and some others against it, say those in the know who have declined to speak on the record for fear of ruining their relationships." So that Facebook post "raised anew ethical questions that often surround any project attempting to capture the dead via technology," their article adds, "be it holographic representations of performers or digitally re-created cinematic animations. And then some media outlets got a partial preview Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reports: An early sculpt of what would become the animatronic was revealed, one complete with age spots on Disney's hands and weariness around his eyes - Imagineers stressed their intent is faithful accuracy - but much of the attraction remains secretive. The animatronic wasn't shown, nor did Imagineering provide any images of the figure, which it promises will be one of its most technically advanced. Instead, Imagineering sought to show the care in which it was bringing Disney back to life while also attempting to assuage any fears regarding what has become a much-debated project among the Disney community... Longtime Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald, known for his work on beloved Disney projects such as Star Tours and the Guardians of the Galaxy coaster in Florida, said Wednesday that "A Magical Life" has been in the works for about seven years. Asked directly about ethical concerns in representing the deceased via a robotic figurine, Fitzgerald noted the importance of the Walt Disney story, not only to the company but to culture at large... "What could we do at Disneyland for our audience that would be part of our tool kit vernacular but that would bring Walt to life in a way that you could only experience at the park? We felt the technology had gotten there. We felt there was a need to tell that story in a fresh way...." "Walt Disney - A Magical Life" will walk a fine line when it opens, attempting to inspire a new generation to look into Disney's life while also portraying him as more than just a character in the park's arsenal. "Why are we doing this now?" Fitzgerald says. "For two reasons. One is Disneyland's 70th anniversary is an ideal time we thought to create a permanent tribute to Walt Disney in the Opera House. The other: I grew up watching Walt Disney on television. I guess I'm the old man. He came into our living room every week and chatted and it was very casual and you felt like you knew the man. But a lot of people today don't know Walt Disney was an individual. They think Walt Disney is a company." And now nearly 60 years after his death, Disney will once again grace Main Street, whether or not audiences - or even some members of his family - are ready to greet him.

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20:16 'KDE Plasma LTS Releases Are Dead'
With its Start menu-style application launcher and its bottom-of-the-screen taskbar, KDE Plasma is a "nice" and "traditional" desktop environment that's "also highly customizable," notes It's FOSS News. But there's a change coming... In contrast to other desktop environments, KDE offers a long-term support release (LTS) of Plasma, where bug fixes and security updates are provided for an extended period, with no new major changes being introduced. However, that is no longer the case now. Shared by Nate Graham, a prominent contributor within the KDE community, KDE has decided to stop working on LTS releases of Plasma, shifting its focus on extending support for the bug-fix and feature releases instead. The reasoning behind this move is multi-faceted, with factors such as inconsistent expectations from the community, developers' reluctance to work on older versions, and the lack of consistency in LTS support for Frameworks and Gear apps... I believe this move will provide Plasma users with a better Linux desktop experience, thanks to the extended bug-fix period, which will enhance the stability of each release. From Graham's blog post: It's no secret that our Plasma LTS ("Long-Term Support") product isn't great. It really only means we backport bug-fixes for longer than usual - usually without even testing them, since no Plasma developers enjoy living on or testing old branches. And there's no corresponding LTS product for Frameworks or Gear apps, leaving a lot of holes in the LTS umbrella. Then there's the fact that "LTS" means different things to different people; many have an expansive definition of the term that gives them expectations of stability that are impossible to meet. Our conclusion was that the fairly limited nature of the product isn't meeting anyone's expectations, so we decided to not continue it. Instead, we'll lengthen the effective support period of normal Plasma releases a bit by adding on an extra bug-fix release, taking us from five to six. We also revisited the topic of reducing from three to two Plasma feature releases per year, with a much longer bug-fix release schedule. It would effectively make every Plasma version a sort of mini-LTS, and we'd also try to align them with the twice-yearly release schedules of Kubuntu and Fedora. However, the concept of "Long-Term Support" doesn't go away just because we're not giving that label to any of our software releases anymore. Really, it was always a label applied by distros anyway - the distros doing the hard work of building an LTS final product out of myriad software components that were never themselves declared LTS by their own developers. It's a lot of work. So we decided to strengthen our messaging that users of KDE software on LTS distros should be reporting issues to their distro, and not to KDE. An LTS software stack is complex and requires a lot of engineering effort to stabilize; the most appropriate people to triage issues on LTS distros are the engineers putting them together. This will free up time among KDE's bug triagers and developers to focus on current issues they can reproduce and fix, rather than wasting time on issues that can't be reproduced due to a hugely different software stack, or that were fixed months or years ago yet reported to us anyway due to many users' unfamiliarity with software release schedules and bug reporting.

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18:46 Tech Leaders Launch Campaign To Make CS and AI a Graduation Requirement
"Our future won't be handed to us," says the young narrator in a new ad from the nonprofit Code.org. "We will build it." "But how can we when the education we need is still just an elective?" says another young voice... The ad goes on to tout the power "to create with computer science and AI - the skills transforming every industry..." and ends by saying "This isn't radical. It's what education is supposed to do. Make computer science and AI a graduation requirement." There's also a hard-hitting new web site, which urges people to sign a letter of support (already signed by executives from top tech companies including Microsoft, Dropbox, AMD, Meta, Blue Origin, and Palantir - and by Steve Ballmer, who is listed as the chairman of the L.A. Clippers basketball team). Long-time Slashdot reader theodp says the letter ran in the New York Times, while this campaign will officially kick off Monday... Code.org teased the new Unlock8 campaign last month on social media as it celebrated a new Executive Order that makes K–12 AI literacy a U.S. priority, which it called a big win for CS & AI education, adding, "We've been building to this moment." The move to make CS and AI a graduation requirement is a marked reversal of Code.org's early days, when it offered Congressional testimony on behalf of itself and tech-led Computing in the Core reassuring lawmakers that: "Making computer science courses 'count' would not require schools to offer computer science or students to study it; it would simply allow existing computer science courses to satisfy a requirement that already exists."

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Show 04 Sun 18:13 HackerNews [11]

Show 04 Sun 17:49 lwn.net-comments [11]

17:49 ACH transfers in the USA

> When Direct Debit was introduced, they already had the hindsight to learn from the CC fraud problem. I should not have to go through all transactions periodically and try to remember which ones are legit or fraudulent.

I really don't like the fact that - in the UK - customers are actively pushed to direct debit. Coupled with the government's push to force poor people to take control of their financial affairs (why are these people poor? Unfortunately, the obvious cause is the majority of them are a slice short of a sandwich!).

So we have people who have often shown they are financially incompetent, forced to take control of their finances, and denied a tool (standing orders) that I found INCREDIBLY useful when I was a youngster. When I got paid, all my bills went out one or two days later (because *I* was in control of the payment date), and whatever was left at the start of the month was all I had to see me through the month.

Now, with bills going out monthly, money coming in fortnightly or four-weekly, so many people are faced with the decision "I have money in the bank for next week's rent payment, do I use it to feed my kids today because we're starving".

The standing order put the customer *completely* in control. The adverts "direct debits give you control" are a complete untruth. All they do is give you a legal guarantee that the bank is liable if it's not your mistake.

What we need is either a requirement that says utilities et al MUST take the money on the date you want them to, or a bank account that says "direct debits WILL be paid provided they add up to less than the income coming in". So a direct debit would be able (and expected) to put an allegedly "non overdraft" account into overdraft. WITHOUT crippling fees.

Cheers,
Wol

17:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

Because you can train up USERS very easily to be developers - as an alleged end-user I'm expected to program as part of my job. So you don't need to hire-and-fire because they're users who can program, not surplus programmers. I'm expecting my colleagues to find Pick *much* easier than what they do at the moment ...

Because jobs come in ON TIME and UNDER BUDGET? Our current "big project" - finally going live this year - has been "two years away" for the last five years - which seems to be the norm for big relational projects? We've been told we'll have to wait 18 months before IT will even look at our little project - I've been threatening to write the whole system single-handed in 6 months. Etc etc.

Because it'll halve the cost of your IT department? What little information there is says that a Pick shop pays roughly half the percentage of gross turnover on IT than other shops do.

It's "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" all over again.

Cheers,
Wol

17:49 Three may be surprising, one is not...

Actually Slava had already offered to maintain HFS +10y ago[1].
Unfortunately the patch adding him[1] never made it upstream, probably because I forgot putting v2 in the subject line...

Thanks to all!

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/6C942C94-FAC1-4542-8A79-75804...
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/1385463593-16709-1-git-send-e...

17:49 Fixing the AGPL text to match intention
I don't think there's a fix that meets the FSF's goals. Section 9 makes it clear that the licensee is not bound by the licence simply by running the program; section 13's intent is along the lines of "if you run this program, people with network access to it must be able to get at its source".

And that's the heart of the problem with the AGPL; the FSF wants to both place an obligation on you to supply source if you run the program and give other people access to it, and also to not place any obligations on you if you simply run the program. You can't resolve that by tweaking section 13; you need to also change section 9 to indicate that the requirement to provide source applies to everyone who runs the program and allows someone else to access it over the network.

This conflict, BTW, is not a trivial one; it cuts to the heart of the FSF's Four Essential Freedoms, which define the intention behind Free Software. The challenge the AGPL runs into is that it's trying to restrict Freedom 0 for those people who have access to the software so that more people get access to the software and can exercise the Four Freedoms on their own machines, but it tries to do this without placing too much burden on people exercising Freedom 0.

17:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> Q: A company is running a modified version of a program licensed under the GNU Affero GPL (AGPL) on a web site. Does the AGPL say they must release their modified sources?

> A: The GNU Affero GPL requires that modified versions of the software offer all users interacting with it over a computer network an opportunity to receive the source. What the company is doing falls under that meaning, so the company must release the modified source code.

I believe the GPL does NOT require a company to release source code to its employees - the modifier and the user are both considered to be the company.

So what happens if AGPL software is used INTERNALLY and some "slip up" results in an outsider interacting with it?

Okay, we have NDAs in place, but the question basically is "what happens if there's a slip up?", the AGPL is far too vague for comfort ... at least with ordinary software it's unlikely to leave company hardware.

Cheers,
Wol

17:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this
> But what company has actually let go of a significant part of their IT team after migrating into the cloud?

If company even have âœan IT teamâ then it's rare âœmediumâ company. There are 33 million businesses in US for 170 million of labor force. Do the math. > Conversely I don't know of any company that had to hire additional personnel after moving away from a hyperscaler.

Well, if they had none before they, obviously, would have none after thus it's not surprising.

The question is how often they need to pay for someone who is managing their infrastructure. And how much. > Even if, one of my customers pays about a million USD per year to Google.

Which, again, means it's not a typical company and for them, perhaps, using Google isn't a good idea anymore. > In this region 100k per year is a super competitive salary for this job. Get 3 of them and still save tons.

Seriously? Would they bring their own hardware and hosting, too? Because to pay 100k salary you would need to spend 250k-300k per year (corber should know more precisely for US, but 2.5x-3x is typical overhead in most places in the world), thus with 3 admins you have nothing left for hardware and other things.

And that's even before we bring in cost of insurance, loans and etc. All these things go up if you do âœnonstandardâ things. > Even so, it's not yet too late to turn around.

For a company that's ready to pay million per month... probably not. For majority of the companies... they couldn't afford anything else.

17:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this
> Because you can train up USERS very easily to be developers - as an alleged end-user I'm expected to program as part of my job.

And pay $5000 or $1000 for each user each year? To retain people with rare and valuable skills? Seriously?

In what world would that make any sense? > I'm expecting my colleagues to find Pick *much* easier than what they do at the moment ...

It doesn't matter whether it's easier or not. It only matter if people with these skills are lining up outside of your business or whether you have to train then and then retain them in your business, somehow. > Because jobs come in ON TIME and UNDER BUDGET?

That's serious proposition, but you would have to prove that perpetual Pick tax would offset these one-time problems.

This may work, in some cases, but it's very far from the âœno-brainerâ deal that you imagine.

One may imagine an alternate world, where Pick won, but it would have other problems, namely: > Our current "big project" - finally going live this year - has been "two years away" for the last five years - which seems to be the norm for big relational projects?

It's the norm for all projects and is not related to Pick in any way, shape or form.

All successful projects come out late and over budget, be it bridge building, relational projects or moon rocker launching.

Pick project only have the luxury to âœcome in on time and under budgetâ because they are rare.

Managers have absolutely no idea how much Pick projects may cost thus you may say you would need 100k and 1 year for project that would take 100k and 1 year - and get away with that. Because you have no competitors.

Once competitors would be there competitor who would ask for 40k and 4 month would win. And management would pay 100k for 1 year of work to them and not to you. > We've been told we'll have to wait 18 months before IT will even look at our little project - I've been threatening to write the whole system single-handed in 6 months

That, again, have nothing to do with Pick and is typical dynamics of how project works in largish companies. > Because it'll halve the cost of your IT department?

No. It wouldn't. In imaginary world where Pick is popular instead of incompetent relational developers you would get incompetent Pick developers.

Salary spending would stay the same and hardware costs are not a big problem for most companies, these days. > What little information there is says that a Pick shop pays roughly half the percentage of gross turnover on IT than other shops do.

Of course. But that because Pick is only driven by people with passion. Technology have nothing to do with that, only one characteristic is important: whether it's popular or not. > It's "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" all over again.

Welcome to the real world. That's how businesses almost always work. Only in rare cases, where a paradigm shift is happening and where change of technology may change how you interact with your customers may ever change that dynamic.

Otherwise, for most businesses, âœdoing what everyone else is doingâ is the right and proper strategy.

17:49 ACH transfers in the USA
Heck, even online CC payments have such robust authentication now.

It has a funny side effect that when I order online from the phone, I have to accept the push request received on the very same phone I'm making the transaction.

In Estonia we have a system of "e-invoices": any company can send an invoice to my bank account

There's a similar system in Hungary. For some reason it never got popular, I only heard it used by scammers who send out random invoices and hope that some clueless user accepts them. It's at least one step longer process than (credit) card payment, so that might be reason why it didn't become popular.

17:49 Disappointment in all directions

This is the kind of divisive language, taken verbatim from so-called critical theories, that we should strive to avoid in the future.

Nerds suck at politics and this kind of extracurricular activism brings more harm than good.

17:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> If company even have âœan IT teamâ then it's rare âœmediumâ company. There are 33 million businesses in US for 170 million of labor force. Do the math.

And how many of these 33 million businesses use a Redis hosted by a hyperscaler or have their own k8s load or anything? Those numbers are meaningless for this discussion.

> The question is how often they need to pay for someone who is managing their infrastructure. And how much.

They always have to pay someone for their infrastructure. The whole point is that people blindly assume that hyperscalers are the cheapest option when that is quite often just not true in my experience.

> Which, again, means it's not a typical company and for them, perhaps, using Google isn't a good idea anymore.

As Google cloud customers go they are still a pretty small fish. So they are not that untypical either.

> Seriously? Would they bring their own hardware and hosting, too? Because to pay 100k salary you would need to spend 250k-300k per year

No, I meant 100k Euros cost for the company. All taxes and insurance included. That's in central Europe.

> For majority of the companies... they couldn't afford anything else.

And there we are back to that unproven assumption.

17:49 Disappointment in all directions

The GNU Manifesto is far more a political document than a technical one, focusing on proprietary software as an attack on essential liberties. Even if we frame the rest of the free software movement as apolitical for the sake of argument, it's nonsense to suggest that the FSF is anything other than an inherently political organisation.

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Show 04 Sun 17:40 AndroidAuthority [7]

17:40 Android 16's new multitasking looks cool, but OnePlus still has it beat
Bubble Bar vs. Open Canvas

17:40 Wondering what's the best Samsung tablet to buy? I have a secret recommendation
Sometimes, the easiest answer is the one you can afford.

17:40 With its new plans, is Google Fi finally competitive again?
Google's newest plans make me wonder if Google Fi is competitive again in 2025 or if it's still a fairly niche player.

17:40 I wish Android Auto integrated with my Wear OS smartwatch for safer driving
Android Auto could be smarter â” and safer â” f it worked with Wear OS to monitor drivers' vitals.

17:40 Perplexity's Chrome extension is scratching an itch forgotten by Gemini
Everything I would've wanted from a Gemini integration in Chrome is right there in the Perplexity extension.

17:40 This Android phone company makes my new favorite iPhone accessory
OnePlus, the famous iPhone accessory company.

17:40 Motorola's Playlist Studio just ruined Spotify's algorithm for me
Now, if only I could get a playlist longer than ten songs I'd be happy.
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Show 04 Sun 17:16 Slashdot [3]

17:16 FSF Announces Free Software Hackathon Honoring Its 40th Anniversary
Thursday the Free Software Foundation announced plans for a celebratory hackathon in November to improve free/libre software "in honor of its fortieth anniversary. The FSF has been campaigning for software freedom for over forty years. As part of its celebrations, the organization is inviting the wider free software community (both projects and individual contributors) to participate in a global, online hackathon to help improve important libre software projects. All free software projects, regardless of affiliation or (free) license, are invited to participate. As of now, the advanced GNU/Linux distribution and package manager GNU Guix, the boot software distribution GNU Boot, the media publishing system MediaGoblin, and the Free Software Directory, the FSF's catalog of useful free software, have announced that they will submit a project. Interested contributors are encouraged to review the hackathon guidelines, which the FSF has made available online... Hackathon contributions will be judged by a panel appointed by the FSF. The project and contributors making the most noteworthy contributions/patches will be given prizes by the Foundation. The hackathon will conclude with a closing ceremony. "The FSF's free software hackathon will be held November 21-23, 2025," according to the announcement. "Submissions will be open until May 27."

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15:46 Security Researchers Create Proof-of-Concept Program that Evades Linux Syscall-Watching Antivirus
Slashdot reader Mirnotoriety shared this report from the Register: A proof-of-concept program has been released to demonstrate a so-called monitoring "blind spot" in how some Linux antivirus and other endpoint protection tools use the kernel's io_uring interface. That interface allows applications to make IO requests without using traditional system calls [to enhance performance by enabling asynchronous I/O operations between user space and the Linux kernel through shared ring buffers]. That's a problem for security tools that rely on syscall monitoring to detect threats... [which] may miss changes that are instead going through the io_uring queues. To demonstrate this, security shop ARMO built a proof-of-concept named Curing that lives entirely through io_uring. Because it avoids system calls, the program apparently went undetected by tools including Falco, Tetragon, and Microsoft Defender in their default configurations. ARMO claimed this is a "major blind spot" in the Linux security stack... "Not many companies are using it but you don't need to be using it for an attacker to use it as enabled by default in most Linux systems, potentially tens of thousands of servers," ARMO's CEO Shauli Rozen told The Register. "If you're not using io_uring then disable it, but that's not always easy with cloud vendors."

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15:46 We May Be In a 'Post-Herd Immunity World', says Immunology Expert
Dr. Paul Offit, an expert on infectious disease and immunology, told the Guardian that "We're living in a post-herd-immunity world. I think the measles outbreak proves that. Measles - because it is the most contagious of the vaccine-preventable diseases, the most contagious human disease really - it is the first to come back." Three large outbreaks in Canada, Mexico and the US now account for the overwhelming majority of roughly 2,300 measles cases across the World Health Organization's six-country Americas region, according to the health authority's update this week. Risk of measles is considered high in the Americas, and has grown 11-fold compared with 2024. Only slightly behind, data released earlier this week from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and WHO also noted that measles cases across Europe were up tenfold in 2024 compared to 2023. That data also indicated that the 2024 measles cases in Europe followed a seasonal pattern, which was not previously noted in 2021 through 2023. Of the European cases, which reportedly hit 35,212 for 2024, 87% were reported in Romania. The ECDC said the dip in vaccine rates has impacted the recent spike in measles, with only three countries, Hungary, Malta and Portugal, having coverage of 95% or more for both doses of the measles vaccine.

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Show 04 Sun 12:46 Slashdot [1]

12:46 Firefox Could Be Doomed Without Google Search Deal, Executive Says
An anonymous reader shared this report from The Verge: Firefox could be put out of business should a court implement all the [U.S.] Justice Department's proposals to restrict Google's search monopoly, an executive for the browser owner Mozilla testified Friday. "It's very frightening," Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said. The Department of Justice wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers including Firefox, among a long list of other proposals including a forced sale of Google's own Chrome browser and requiring it to syndicate search results to rivals. The court has already ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in search, partly thanks to exclusionary deals that make it the default engine on browsers and phones, depriving rivals of places to distribute their search engines and scale up. But while Firefox - whose CFO is testifying as Google presents its defense - competes directly with Chrome, it warns that losing the lucrative default payments from Google could threaten its existence. Firefox makes up about 90 percent of Mozilla's revenue, according to Muhlheim, the finance chief for the organization's for-profit arm - which in turn helps fund the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. About 85 percent of that revenue comes from its deal with Google, he added. Losing that revenue all at once would mean Mozilla would have to make "significant cuts across the company," Muhlheim testified, and warned of a "downward spiral" that could happen if the company had to scale back product engineering investments in Firefox, making it less attractive to users. That kind of spiral, he said, could "put Firefox out of business." That could also mean less money for nonprofit efforts like open source web tools and an assessment of how AI can help fight climate change. Ironically, Muhlheim seemed to suggest that could cement the very market dominance the court seeks to remedy. Firefox's underlying Gecko browser engine is "the only browser engine that is held not by Big Tech but by a nonprofit," he said.

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Show 04 Sun 12:45 ArsTechnica [2]

12:45 A DOGE recruiter is staffing a project to deploy AI agents across the US government
A startup founder said that AI agents could do the work of tens of thousands of government employees.

12:45 Chips aren't improving like they used to, and it's killing game console price cuts
Op-ed: Slowed manufacturing advancements are upending the way tech progresses.
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Show 04 Sun 10:13 HackerNews [4]

Show 04 Sun 08:16 Slashdot [1]

08:16 Did Peking U. Just Make the World's Fastest Transistor - Without Using Silicon?
"It is the fastest, most efficient transistor ever," proclaims an announcment from Peking University. "And most important of all, there's no trace of silicon involved," adds ZME Science. From the South China Morning Post: A team of researchers at Peking University claims to have shattered chip performance limits and proven that China can use new materials to "change lanes" in the semiconductor race by circumventing silicon-based roadblocks entirely. The researchers, led by physical chemistry professor Peng Hailin, said their self-engineered 2D transistor could operate 40 per cent faster than Intel and TSMC's cutting-edge 3-nanometre silicon chips, while consuming 10 per cent less energy.... "While this path is born out of necessity due to current sanctions, it also forces researchers to find solutions from fresh perspectives," [Hailin] added. "Peking's major innovation comes from the two-dimensional nature of their transistors, facilitated by using an element other than silicon," writes Tom's Hardware: BiâOâSe, or bismuth oxyselenide, is a semiconductor material studied for its use in sub-1nm process nodes for years, largely thanks to its ability to be a 2D semiconductor. Two-dimensional semiconductors, like 2D BiâOâSe, are more flexible and sturdy at a small scale than silicon, which runs into reduced carrier mobility at even the 10nm node. Such breakthroughs into stacked 2D transistors and the move from silicon to bismuth are exciting for the future of semiconductors and are necessary for the Chinese industry to compete on the leading edge of semiconductors. ZME Science adds this note of skepticism. "Turning laboratory breakthroughs into commercial chips typically takes years - sometimes decades..." Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

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Show 04 Sun 07:49 lwn.net-comments [8]

07:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this
> "10,000 lemmings can't be wrong" is a common attitude ...

Yet surprisingly often it's also the right attitude... > I bang on about how Pick uses far less disk storage (and is far more efficient with disk access), but nobody's interested.

Why should they be? In today's world most companies care much more about ability to hire someone who may support they IT system then about cost of hardware.

Not only tiny companies who may host everything on just one server that's cheaper than monthly salary of a single developer but also the likes of Amazon or Google spend more on developers salaries than on hardware.

Pick is absolutely useless for them: they would need to find and train developers who would work in entirely different paradigm... you couldn't easily fire them and rehire when needed... why go there?

Similarly with hyperscalers: what hyperscalers save are not price of hardware (your own hardware is, indeed, cheaper), but administrator salary: finding someone who may help you do something with AWS instance or Google Cloud is trivial and cheap... the first incident with a dedicated hardware would chew all savings for many years of self-hosting. > The biggest advantage they seem to provide is the lemming factor :-)

Yup. But that's THE main requirement. By far. The main need that they are filling is the ability to find someone on freelancer or upwork who would be ready to solve your problem for a small price.

Yes, that's precisely that âœ10,000 lemmings can't be wrongâ thing, but it's also the real reason cheap ad-hoc solutions are not used: people on lwn.net often don't even realize how few people are there who can do what they can do.

07:49 Walking towards BPF overdependency

> All things being equal, wouldn't we want more eBPF?

Only if an out of the box linux kernel is functional. Maybe a couple of necessary eBPF programs could be within the kernel sources and optionally exposed like the vsyscall memory segment or preloaded.

07:49 ACH transfers in the USA

(Sorry, can't resist going off topic)

> SEPA Direct Debit exists and is extremely common in Germany. [...] Nobody I know would have any problem sharing their IBAN with a company they are doing business with, just as nobody in the US has problems sharing their CC number.

As a European not from Germany, I am extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed that this exists. Exactly because it repeats the security mistake that was the credit card system: knowing my identity (account number) should not be enough to take my money.

When Direct Debit was introduced, they already had the hindsight to learn from the CC fraud problem. I should not have to go through all transactions periodically and try to remember which ones are legit or fraudulent.

Solution: the account owner must be in the loop to approve transfers. Heck, even online CC payments have such robust authentication now.

In Estonia we have a system of "e-invoices": any company can send an invoice to my bank account. When I log in to my online bank, I can see a list of invoices, pay manually or set up automatic payments with a monthly limit. Important part is: if I do nothing, no money leaves my account.

I do wonder if other countries are using this system or if it works cross borders at all.

07:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> So the key question is not who modified it, but whether the act of running the modified version as a service constitutes accepting the license's terms, thereby triggering Â§13 obligations.

How is the person running this allegedly modified version supposed to know that it has been modified by someone other than the original author?

> But presumably if the FSF had any real doubts, the'd clean up the language used in the license to clarify this point.

Why would they? From the FSF's perspective, these "doubts" are a feature, intended to maximize "software freedom".

(That said, given that Section 13 effectively overrides everything else in the license, and if your interpretation is is correct, would rather blatantly violate the FSF's own Freedom 0)

> The fact that they have not done that -- despite widespread usage of the AGPL and decades of scrutiny

"Decades of scrutiny" have shown the AGPL to be so toxic that it is rarely used for anything other than in "poison pill" to encourage users to take a commercial license.

07:49 ACH transfers in the USA

In the US, routing numbers (which identify banks) are standardized and have check digits. Account numbers (which identify accounts) are not even all the same length (each bank issues numbers in whatever manner it chooses), so I very much doubt they have a standard check digit (but a bank obviously could implement a check digit if it wished to do so).

07:49 ACH transfers in the USA

This is shocking when one spent whole life surrounded by standardised 26 digit account numbers (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numer_Rachunku_Bankowego curiously no English version of this article exists). It's even trivially converted into IBAN.

US banking system is so alien...

07:49 Ecosia & Qwant joint venture

Ecosia and Qwant at least try to build their own index in a joint venture:
https://betterweb.qwant.com/en/2024/11/08/ecosia-and-qwan...

That seems a plus, compared to DDG.

07:49 Suprised we aren't seeing more of this

> the first incident with a dedicated hardware would chew all savings for many years of self-hosting.

Cost for administrators is indeed an often repeated argument. But what company has actually let go of a significant part of their IT team after migrating into the cloud? Conversely I don't know of any company that had to hire additional personnel after moving away from a hyperscaler.

Even if, one of my customers pays about a million USD per year to Google. Buying the required hardware to run the whole shop would cost about 300k once. Even with rented boxes in a data center and on-site service by the great people at firstcolo this customer could save a staggering 90 % of cost[1]. How many competent sysadmins can you get for that kind of money and still save a ton? In this region 100k per year is a super competitive salary for this job. Get 3 of them and still save tons. Or don't and instead hire one of the plenty of IT service companies (like mine).

> Yes, that's precisely that âœ10,000 lemmings can't be wrongâ thing, but it's also the real reason cheap ad-hoc solutions are not used

That is indeed the core of the problem: people coming from universities nowadays only know the world where you run your k8s pods at a hyperscaler. That's what they learn how things are just done and for them there's no point in questioning this. For them, that's the only world that exists. Even so, it's not yet too late to turn around.

[1] You may wonder why they don't. Case of bad timing. Shortly before I became aware of their enormous cloud cost they signed a deal with Google for 3 years for a few percent rebate.

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05:16 How Badly Did ChatGPT and Copilot Fail to Predict the Winners of the Kentucky Derby?
In 2016, an online "swarm intelligence" platform stunned horse-racing fans by making a correct prediction for the Kentucky Derby - naming all four top finishers in order. (But the next year its predictions weren't even close, with TechRepublic suggesting 2016's race just had an unusual cluster of obvious picks.) Since then it's become almost a tradition - asking AI to predict the winning horses each year, then see how close it came. So before today's race, a horse named "Journalism" was given the best odds of winning by professional bookmakers - but could AI make a better prediction? USA Today reports: The USA TODAY Network asked Microsoft Copilot AI to simulate the order of finish for the 2025 Kentucky Derby field based on the latest, odds, predictions and race factors on Thursday, May 1. Journalism came out on top in its projection. The AI-generated response cited Journalism's favorable post position (No. 8), which has produced the second-most Kentucky Derby winners and a four-race winning streak that includes last month's Santa Anita Derby. ChatGPT also picked the exact same horse, according to FanDuel. But in fact, the winning horse turned out to be "Sovereignty" (a horse Copilot predicted would finish second). Meanwhile Copilot's pick for first place ("Journalism") finished in second. But after that Copilot's picks were way off... Copilot's pick for third place was a horse named Rodriguez - which hours later was scratched from the race altogether. (And the next day Copilot's pick for 10th place was also scratched.) Copilot's pick for fourth place was "Sandman" - who finished in 18th place. Copilot's pick for fifth place was "Burnham Square" - who finished in 11th place. Copilot's pick for sixth place was "Luxor Cafe" - who finished in 10th place Copilot's pick for seventh place was "Render Judgment" - who finished in 16th place... An online racing publication also asked "a trained AI LLM tool" for their predictions, and received a wildly uneven prediction: Burnham Square (finished 11th) Journalism (finished 2nd) Sandman (finished 18th) Tiztastic (finished 15th) Baeza (finished 3rd)

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02:16 Dying Satellites Can Drive Climate Change and Ozone Depletion, Study Finds
There's 9,000 satellites circling the earth, the Guardian points out, with projections over over 60,000 by 2040. But "A new study shows that the emissions from expired satellites, as they fall to Earth and burn up, will be significant in future years, with implications for ozone hole recovery and climate." Most old satellites are disposed of by reducing their altitude and letting them burn up as they fall, releasing pollution into Earth's atmosphere such as aerosolised aluminium. To understand the impact of these growing emissions from expired satellites, researchers simulated the effects associated with an annual release of 10,000 tonnes of aluminium oxide by 2040 (the amount estimated to be released from disposal of 3,000 satellites a year, assuming a fleet of 60,000 satellites). The results, which are published in Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, show that the re-entry material will accumulate at high latitudes and could result in temperature anomalies of up to 1.5C in the middle to upper atmosphere, reduction of wind speeds and ozone depletion, which could jeopardise ozone hole recovery. "At present, impacts on the middle and the upper atmosphere are small," the researchers write, "but have the potential to increase." They argue that "to shed light upon the potential climate impacts of increased satellite reentry," an "expanded effort, including observations and modeling is needed." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.

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23:16 Scientists Simulate First-Ever 'Black Hole Bomb' Laboratory Analog
"Researchers have created the first laboratory analog of the 'black hole bomb'," reports ScienceAlert, "a theoretical concept developed by physicists in the 1970s..." There's no black hole involved; their experiment just simulates the "electromagnetic analogue" of the theoretical concept - the "exponential runaway amplification of spontaneously generated electromagnetic modes." Or, as ScienceAlert puts it, "It doesn't, just to set your mind at ease, pose any danger. It consists of a rotating aluminum cylinder, placed inside layers of coils that generate magnetic fields that rotate around it, at controllable speeds." As Roger Penrose proposed in 1971, the powerful rotational energy of a spinning black hole could be used to amplify the energy of nearby particles. Then, physicist Yakov Zel'Dovich figured out that you didn't need a black hole to see this phenomenon in action. An axially symmetrical body rotating in a resonance chamber, he figured, could produce the same energy transfer and amplification, albeit on a much smaller scale. Later work by other physicists found that, if you enclose the entire apparatus in a mirror, a positive feedback loop is generated, amplifying the energy until it explodes from the system. This concept was named the black hole bomb, and a team of physicists led by Marion Cromb of the University of Southampton in the UK now claim to have brought it to life. A paper describing their experiment has been uploaded to preprint server arXiv... [W]hat the team's experiment does is simulate it, using magnetic fields as a proxy for the particles, with the coils around the system acting as the reflector to produce the feedback loop. When they ran the experiment, they found that, when the cylinder is rotating faster than, and in the same direction as, the magnetic field, the magnetic field is amplified, compared to when there is no cylinder. When the cylinder rotates more slowly than the magnetic field, however, the magnetic field is dampened. This is a really interesting result, because it demonstrates a very clear amplification effect, based on the theories described decades ago... Because we can't probe black holes directly, analogs such as this are an excellent way to understand their properties... [T]he experiment could represent a significant step towards better understanding the physics of the most gravitationally extreme objects in the Universe. "The exponential amplification from noise supports theoretical investigations into black hole instabilities," the researchers write, "and is promising for the development of future experiments to observe quantum friction in the form of the Zeldovich effect seeded by the quantum vacuum..."

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23:16 AI-Driven Robot Installs Nearly 10,000 Solar Modules in Australia
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares an article from Renewables Now: Chinese tech company Leapting has successfully completed its first commercial deployment of photovoltaic (PV) modules with an AI-driven solar module mounting robot in Australia. The Chinese company was tasked with supporting the installation of French Neoen's (EPA:NEOEN) 350-MW/440-MWp Culcairn Solar Farm in New South Wales' Riverina region. Shanghai-based Leapting said this week that its intelligent robot has installed almost 10,000 modules at an "efficient, safe, and stable" pace that has "significantly" reduced the original construction timeline. Litian Intelligent was deployed at the Australian project site in early February. The machine has a 2.5-metre-high robotic arm sitting on a self-guided, self-propelled crawler. Equipped with a navigation system, and visual recognition technology, it can lift and mount PV panels weighing up to 30 kilograms. By replacing labour-intensive manual operations, the robot shortens the module installation cycle by 25%, while the installation efficiency increases three to five times as compared to manual labour and is easily adapted to complex environments, Leapting says. Or, as Clean Technica puts it, "Meet the robot replacing four workers at a time on solar projects." This is part of a broader industrial trend. In the United States, Rosendin Electric demonstrated its own semi-autonomous system in Texas that allowed a two-person team to install 350 to 400 modules per day, a clear step-change from traditional methods. AES Corporation has been developing a robot called Maximo that combines placement and fastening with computer vision. Trina Solar's Trinabot in China operates in a similar space, with prototype systems demonstrating 50-plus modules per hour... In an industry where time-to-energy is critical, shaving weeks off the construction schedule directly reduces costs and increases net revenue... [T]he direction is clear. The future of solar construction will be faster, safer, and more precise - not because of human brawn, but because of robotic repetition. There will still be humans on-site, but their role shifts from lifting panels to managing throughput. Just as cranes and excavators changed civil construction, so too will robots like Leapting's define the next era of solar deployment.

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