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<title>Nautilus : slashdot selection</title>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php</link>
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<title><![CDATA[Firefox Redesign Brings Round Tabs, New Themes, and Compact Mode]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/09/29/194251</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/09/29/194251</link>
<pubDate>2026-09-29</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Firefox 157 is rolling out a major redesign across desktop and mobile, bringing rounded "bubble" tabs, a curved address bar, refreshed icons and colors, and a more consistent visual language across devices. Mozilla is also adding more themes and wallpapers while bringing back Compact Mode, which the company says "reduces the size of your tabs and toolbar to give more of your screen to the web, with an auto-compact option for smaller screens." The Verge reports:  According to Mozilla, the design changes will have "no cost to your browser performance." Mozilla says the overhauled design is a "renewal" for Firefox, following major updates over the last year, like homepage widgets, Split View, a built-in VPN, and controls for disabling the browser's AI features. 
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Iran Strikes On Amazon Data Centers Caused Permanent Loss of Customer Data ]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/09/17/0619253</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/09/17/0619253</link>
<pubDate>2026-09-17</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				 Ars Technica reports:

Half a year after Iranian drone strikes knocked out multiple Amazon data centers, the US tech company has acknowledged the permanent loss of some customer data that was hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. 
Amazon Web Services was "unable to restore access to the resources and data" hosted in some of the war-damaged data centers, according to an AWS dashboard update posted on September 15.  The development was first reported by Reuters and suggests that the Iranian strikes inflicted catastrophic damage on the data centers.
 Customer data was irretrievably lost in one of three AWS availability zones in the United Arab Emirates region, specifically the mec1-az2 availability zone.  
Each availability zone is serviced by one or more Amazon data centers.   The company is still working on "recovering regional resources" and restoring resources hosted in the other two availability zones in the United Arab Emirates...  But the destruction was apparently even more widespread for the data centers in the Bahrain region, because Amazon said it was unable to restore access to resources and data across all three availability zones there.   "The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand," the AWS update said.  
The company had already suspended customer billing in the affected AWS regions in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and has spent the past six months attempting to restore normal operations... [When the war began] AWS immediately urged customers to migrate resources to other cloud regions and use remote backups to restore any "inaccessible resources." The cloud service also reportedly issued $150 million in customer credits following the initial Iranian strikes in March.

		
	
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<title><![CDATA['Zuckoff' App Detects Meta Smartglasses, as Meta Plans Camera-Free Version, Loses Money, and Offers Social Media Subscriptions]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/09/17/045246</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/09/17/045246</link>
<pubDate>2026-09-17</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				The New York Post reports:
A new app called Zuckoff can detect if a user is near someone with Meta's creepy AI-powered glasses, which have drawn criticism for enabling creeps to record video of women without their consent.  Programmer Pawel Szydlowski says tales of dirtbags recording themselves perving on women or harassing strangers prompted him to launch the app...   
Zuckoff &mdash; which detects Bluetooth signatures broadcast by smart glasses and can estimate their distance &mdash; has gained some 5,000 users since it hit Apple's App Store last month, according to Business Insider.  "There's a need for such an application," the 30-year-old Polish techie told the outlet, adding that European Union regulators have contacted him for more info about his app. "We as a society have the right to at least know that someone is recording," Szydlowski said... 
Earlier this month, the tech giant disabled thousands of glasses it found had been tampered with to keep a small light off that indicates the device is recording. 
It's already #77 on the iPhone's list of best-selling utilities apps. 
In a related story, "After accusations of selling 'perv glasses,' Meta prepares to sell a pair without a camera," writes TechCrunch, citing a report from The Information.
 The glasses include six built-in microphones so users can communicate with the chatbot, as well as a button on the side of the glasses that, when pressed, activates the AI system... Meta's Reality Labs, which is responsible for developing its smart glasses line, is still losing a gargantuan amount of money, as its earnings report from April revealed.  
In fact, Meta stock is off 13% over the last 12 months, reports Yahoo Finance.   So Tuesday Meta announced subscription services for its social apps as "part of Meta's push to drive additional revenue from the billions it's investing in AI data centers and model development."
The plans, which start at $2.99 per month for single-product plans, $7.99 for individual bundles, and $14.99 for creator and business bundles, provide a number of features for users looking to get more out of their Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp accounts. Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus allow users to keep their stories up for 48 hours instead of 24, send animated super reactions and super hearts to stories, preview stories without showing up as a viewer in other users' lists, and more.  WhatsApp Plus lets you share exclusive stickers, get exclusive ringtones for contacts, and pin up to 20 different chats. 
Meta One also includes Core and Premium user plans that offer the features found in the single-product plans, along with increased AI usage limits for images and videos.  The social media giant is also offering creator and business plans...  that it says include capabilities such as enhanced profiles, automatic follow invitations to users that interact with your content, and increased access to the Meta Business Agent, which can respond on your behalf.   
When Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Threads that the plans brought "more features and more AI across Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Meta AI," writer Joe Hill drew 13,300 likes for  his response.  "That's sweet--so pay a fee, get more AI, pay nothing, get a little less AI. Can we work out a deal where you pay ME and I get no AI at all?"
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Boy Developed 'Toasted Skin' Condition From Using a Laptop Every Day]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/09/11/068223</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/09/11/068223</link>
<pubDate>2026-09-11</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				A medical report published earlier this week says a boy in the U.K. developed erythema ab igne, or "toasted skin syndrome," after resting a laptop on his abdomen for up to eight hours a day, often while it was charging. "The marks were described as being in a patch about 15 centimeters (six inches) wide, made of flat, reddish-brown 'interlacing lines forming irregular circles and a lace-like morphology,'" reports Ars Technica. From the report:  Based on the appearance, the doctors started reconsidering some sort of bruising and started asking him more questions. This is when he mentioned that he was homeschooled and used a laptop for his schoolwork. He said he typically did his work by resting his laptop on his abdomen while he worked, sometimes for up to eight hours a day, and often while the laptop was charging. Then they understood what it was.
 
The doctors diagnosed the boy with erythema ab igne (EAI), which translates from Latin as "redness from fire" and is also sometimes called "toasted skin syndrome." This is a skin condition caused by repeated, prolonged exposure to low-grade heat -- heat not hot enough to cause actual burns. It's most often seen in adults, and common causes include using heating pads or hot water bottles for chronic pain or sitting too close to space heaters. Some people also develop it from certain occupational hazards, like glassblowing and metal work. EAI produces a lace-like rash, just like the boy's.
 
It's unclear how EAI develops exactly. But researchers hypothesize that chronic heat exposure leads to damage to superficial blood vessels and the release of red blood cells, forming the tell-tale red reticulated pattern. While the boy's condition looked ominous, the good news is that EAI is generally benign and reversible -- once you remove the heat source. For severe or long-term conditions, some pigmentation and scarring can remain. But the boy's parents checked back in over several months, reporting that the rash faded and then completely resolved. Hopefully, he also got some sort of laptop stand.
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[AMD Working To 'Push Rust Deep into the GPU Stack']]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/09/07/086221</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/09/07/086221</link>
<pubDate>2026-09-07</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Phoronix reports:

AMD is building out what they are describing as an "elite" team of developers for driving Rust code "deep into the GPU stack" from firmware to drivers, shader compilers, and other GPU software in Rust.  AMD Senior Fellow Harsh Meno posted this week to LinkedIn about this new effort...  
And note this AMD job posting that's active for hiring a software development engineer to work on Rust code... 
"We are building next-generation systems software for AMD GPUs with Rust as a core technical direction. The work spans compilers, runtimes, low-level GPU software, firmware, developer tooling, and methods for improving the safety and correctness of complex hardware-software systems.  
"Rust is not incidental to this role. You will help establish how Rust is used in performance-sensitive and high-trust parts of the GPU stack, including the compiler and tooling support, system interfaces, engineering practices, and validation methods required for production deployment. You will have the opportunity to influence both near-term implementations and the longer-term architecture for using Rust across current and future AMD platforms." 
 
"AMD also isn't alone," the article points out, "as NVIDIA has also been pursuing similar Rust-based initiatives for their GPU software too, including the development of the Nova Linux kernel driver written in Rust."
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[CERN Transitioning From RHEL To Debian]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/09/02/2041220</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/09/02/2041220</link>
<pubDate>2026-09-02</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Longtime Slashdot reader Microsplat:  CERN plans to have all 2,200+ industrial computers and embedded systems in its accelerator-control infrastructure running Debian 13 by the end of 2026. These are systems used for accelerator control, laboratory equipment and other operational functions ... They also generate and interact with a hefty amount of data, although this Linux.com article refers more broadly to CERN's computing infrastructure. It's unclear whether the Debian migration covers all server infrastructure or what scientific-research-based systems are included. Our shops have done much the same in recent years, mostly due to CentOS and CFEngine getting the can. Phoronix adds some additional context in its article: CERN was a longtime RHEL/CentOS shop, previously co-maintained the Scientific Linux RHEL derivative, moved to CentOS in 2015, and later considered CentOS Stream. CERN says Red Hat's adoption of the "-march=x86-64-v2" compiler flag by default, which it viewed as "forced obsolescence" of older hardware, was the "straw that broke the camel's back."
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[France Bans Unsolicited Telemarking Calls]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/08/11/1657250</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/08/11/1657250</link>
<pubDate>2026-08-11</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Starting today, unsolicited telemarking calls are banned in France unless consumers explicitly consent to them. Companies that violate the law can face fines of up to 375,000 euros per call, though existing customers can still be contacted with related offers. Le Monde reports:  The government says the law is a response to years of consumer complaints. Authorities estimate that about three-quarters of people in France receive at least one unsolicited sales call every week, and many receive more. In 2024, 11 consumer organizations issued a joint call for a ban, denouncing "relentless harassment of consumers through countless unwanted telemarketing calls to both landlines and mobile phones -- an intrusion that has become a regular part of their daily lives."
 
Now, "businesses are prohibited from contacting consumers without their prior consent," said Alice Vilcot, chief of staff at the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Prevention of Fraud. "That consent can be withdrawn at any time." [...] Previously in France, people who wanted to avoid marketing calls had to register their number with a government-run service, but consumer groups said some call centers ignored the list. Vilcot noted that an Ireland-based company was fined 6 million euros ($6.9 million) last year for violating France's previous telemarketing rules by calling people on the no-call list.
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[New Images of the Sun Show Its Surface In the Finest Detail Yet]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/08/05/2226251</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/08/05/2226251</link>
<pubDate>2026-08-05</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Scientists have captured images of the sun's surface in the finest detail yet, revealing a strange and dynamic facade. It's dangerous to look directly at the sun without proper eye protection. But researchers were able to peek at its scorching surface with the help of the National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, located on the island of Maui in Hawaii.
 
Scientists originally took the images for a different reason: to fine-tune and test the limits of the telescope. But when they looked at the results, they realized they'd photographed the sun's bright outer shell at higher resolution than ever before. What's more, they saw strange feathery patterns rippling across the surface. "That reminds me of famous paintings, like the swirling skies in Van Gogh's Starry Night," said solar physicist Ruizhu Chen with Stanford University, who was not involved with the new research.
 
Researchers saw ripples of instability on the sun's surface caused by bits of magnetized plasma moving past each other at different speeds -- similar to waves that stir when a gust of wind blows over water. It's a well-known phenomenon that guides how fluids move. This has been glimpsed on Earth and other planets like Jupiter and Saturn, but "it has not been observed ever at that level on the solar surface," according to study co-author Friedrich Woger with the National Solar Observatory. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Linux Desktop Market Share Surpasses 10% in North America]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/08/02/0631208</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/08/02/0631208</link>
<pubDate>2026-08-02</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				The blog Linuxiac reports:
Linux has crossed a major milestone in North America, with the open-source operating system now accounting for 10.65% of desktop usage in the region, according to Statcounter's latest figures for July 2026.  The result places Linux firmly in double-digit territory for the first time in Statcounter's North American desktop operating system statistics. 
For comparison, Statcounter recorded Linux at 5.52% in June 2026, so the share nearly doubled in one month...  However, the sharp monthly increase needs context. Statcounter's June figures included an "Unknown" category that accounted for 9.24% of North American desktop usage. Its reduction seems to have coincided with Linux's rise, possibly indicating better identification of previously unclassified traffic... 
Statcounter is not the only major web measurement platform showing Linux with a substantial presence on North American desktops. Cloudflare Radar data, filtered to desktop HTTP traffic from North America over the previous 28 days, also places Linux at a notably high level [9.4%]. 
StatCounter's data also shows Linux with an even larger market share of 11.87% in just the United States &mdash; and a 14.73% market share in India.   Linux's market share in other world regions:
 Asia 7.17% 
 Africa 5.71% 
 Europe 5.49% 
 South America 4.35% 
 China 2.12% 
--!> 
And here's how the Linux market share on other countries compare to India and the U.S.
 India 14.73% 
 United States 11.87% 
 Germany 7.24% 
 UK 6.18% 
 Canada 3.83% 
 Australia 3.55% 
--!> 
Linux's surge could be due to its use in automation or headless browser workloads, Linuxiac points out.  But another possibility is "growing frustration with Windows hardware requirements, advertising, account integration, telemetry, and forced interface changes has pushed some users to explore alternatives..." 
"For now, the safest conclusion is that Linux has surpassed 10% of measured desktop web usage in North America according to Statcounter, not necessarily 10% of the region's installed desktop computer base."
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Qantas Plane Flies For More Than 24 Hours In Record-Breaking Flight]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/07/30/0022247</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/07/30/0022247</link>
<pubDate>2026-07-30</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Qantas completed a record-breaking 24-hour, 24-minute test flight from Melbourne to Toulouse on Tuesday. "The specially adapted A350-1000ULR airliner is due to debut with the Australian carrier's nonstop Sydney-London route from 2027," reports The Guardian. From the report:  Tuesday's flight is thought to be the longest ever by a commercial plane, beating the previous record of 22 hours and 42 minutes set by a Boeing 777-200LR in 2005 between Hong Kong and London via the Pacific in 2005.
 
Flight-tracking provider Flightradar24 said the trip was the second-most-tracked flight ever on its channels -- behind a 2022 flight carrying Queen Elizabeth II's coffin -- with more than 3.6 million people following its progress northwards via Canada. Qantas has ordered 12 modified A350-1000ULR aircraft, designed to connect Australia's east coast with London and New York in about 20 hours.
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Airbus Migrating 70 Critical Apps From AWS to France's Scaleway]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/07/21/2050242</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/07/21/2050242</link>
<pubDate>2026-07-21</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Airbus is moving 70 critical applications from AWS to French cloud provider Scaleway as part of a broader digital sovereignty push to keep sensitive data "under European control." Eventually, the migration will cover 900 applications, including ERP, CRM, manufacturing execution, and product lifecycle management systems. Airbus says it will, however, continue using U.S. providers for less sensitive workloads. "We do not intend to move away from all non European solutions; we balance our choices based on the criticality of the data," the company said. The Register reports:  Catherine Jestin, head of digital at Airbus, told us on Thursday: "The selection of Scaleway is a combination of a very strong technical answer and a very strong commercial offer making it competitive compared to hyperscalers' public cloud offerings. In addition, Scaleway is committed to involving Airbus in the definition of its future product roadmap." "The objective is to host Airbus's most critical applications (those required for the Minimum Viable Company). This represents 900 applications and we will start with 70 of them today hosted on AWS."
 
Applications being sent to Scaleway include ERP, manufacturing execution systems, CRM, and product lifecycle management. Finding a cloud provider to host its most sensitive applications for defense and industrial workloads was not a certainty when the process began, Airbus told us last year, because European cloud providers do not have the scale of their US rivals.
 
Jestin said Airbus will continue to work with AWS. Skywise, a platform that aggregates and analyzes aviation data, and Case Management Assistant for customers' technical queries will continue to be hosted by AWS. In a statement, she said: "By integrating a trusted, high performance, cloud environment that keeps our critical data assets shielded from foreign extraterritorial laws, we are ensuring that our digital infrastructure keeps pace with our aerospace innovation, while maintaining control and resilience of our industrial operations."
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Long After Pluto Fly-By, NASA's New Horizon's Probe Wakes Up Again, Starts Doing New Science]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/07/18/0537208</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/07/18/0537208</link>
<pubDate>2026-07-18</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Launched in 2006, NASA's New Horizons probe flew by the planet Pluto in 2015.  But this week it "awakened from its longest sleep ever," reports CNN.
It's now 5.9 billion miles (9.5 billion kilometers) from Earth...
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft went into a planned hibernation mode on August 7, 2025, and woke up on June 23 using commands stored on its main computer.  The mission's flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, confirmed that New Horizons is in great shape and ready to transmit a stream of science data gathered during hibernation from its location in the region of icy objects known as the Kuiper Belt. 
Pluto is the largest of thousands of frozen, rocky bodies called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs, that exist in the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system &mdash; remnants from its formation 4.5 billion years ago... The spacecraft is capturing data about the rotation rates, orientations and shapes...  The measurements provide insights into how planets are born from dust and pebbles, said Pontus Brandt, New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
"There seems to be more paired, snowman-shaped bodies, like Arrokoth, out there than anyone expected," Brandt wrote in an email. "Are such binaries the most common planetesimal and is this how larger planets have been built in our own and other stellar systems? These are very deep questions that New Horizons can help answer." 
The spacecraft also measures the distribution of gas in the outer heliosphere, the expansive, protective bubble formed by a steady stream of particles that release from the sun called the solar wind. Meanwhile, an instrument called the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation is measuring galactic cosmic rays, extremely fast particles created when stars explode. The particles pose one of the more severe threats for human activities in space, Brandt said, but the boundary of the heliosphere acts as a shield to protect our solar system from 70% of them. New Horizons' data could help scientists learn more about how this puzzling shielding works, he said.  
Another instrument, the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter, has collected data that has thrown New Horizon's team a curveball, Brandt said. The team expected dust abundance to be high within the Kuiper Belt due to the significant presence of small objects. But New Horizons has traveled beyond the known boundary of the Kuiper Belt &mdash; and it's still in a dusty environment.

		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/07/08/1728229</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/07/08/1728229</link>
<pubDate>2026-07-08</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				StatCounter's June 2026 data shows Windows made up 56.55% of global desktop OS usage, dropping Microsoft's share below 60% for the first time in years. Linux, meanwhile, reached 4.39%, "one of its strongest recent showings in the company's desktop OS statistics," reports Linuxiac. From the report:  Apple's desktop platforms also remain a major part of the picture. StatCounter lists OS X at 11.89% and macOS at 4.48% for June 2026, meaning Apple's combined desktop presence remains comfortably ahead of Linux in the global chart. Chrome OS follows with 1.21%.
 
Of course, StatCounter's numbers should be read for what they are: web usage statistics, not a direct count of installed operating systems. The company calculates its Global Stats from page views across websites using its tracking code, analyzing details such as browser, operating system, and screen resolution. In other words, the figures reflect measured web activity rather than the number of machines actually installed worldwide. 
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Valve Open-Sources Steam Machine's E-Ink Display]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/07/03/1633249</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/07/03/1633249</link>
<pubDate>2026-07-03</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Valve has open-sourced the design for a customizable e-ink front panel for the Steam Machine, dubbed the "Inkterface." "All of it is available on their GitLab under the MIT license, which goes over everything you need to make your own and stick it on the front of your fancy new Steam Machine," reports GamingOnLinux. From the report: 
They're now calling it the "Inkterface" and there's a good few things you'll need to make it including:
1 x Adafruit ESP32 Feather with 2MB PSRAM.
1 x Adafruit eInk Breakout Friend.
1 x Adafruit 5.83" Monochrome eInk Panel.
13 x M2.5 x 5mm Pan Head Machine Screws.
4 x 1/4" x 1/4" x 3/16" Stepped Magnet SB443-OUT.
 
Valve even provided a video on the GitLab showing it being put together [...].
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Godot Game Engine No Longer Accepts AI Code]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/07/02/1839237</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/07/02/1839237</link>
<pubDate>2026-07-02</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				The Godot Foundation will stop accepting AI-authored code, agent-submitted pull requests, and AI-generated text in contributor communications after maintainers were overwhelmed by low-effort submissions. "It is time for us to recognize that these problems aren't going away and therefore we need to take steps to reduce the burden on maintainers while ensuring we still have a pipeline to mentor new contributors to become future maintainers," the Godot Foundation said in a blog post. Contributors may still use AI for limited "menial things" if they disclose it, but humans must understand, own, and be able to fix the code they submit. PC Gamer reports:  The Foundation says the pileup of Godot pull requests pending review isn't all bad: It's a sign that interest in using and contribution to Godot is increasing. But the influx of contributions authored or submitted by AI is sapping the projects' maintainers of their willingness to confront the "already tedious" work of reviewing pull requests. "If your feedback on PRs is just being absorbed by a machine and not going towards mentoring a potential future maintainer, it becomes much harder to justify spending your free time on PR review," the Foundation said.
 
As the problem becomes increasingly unsustainable, the Godot Foundation says it's in the process of updating its contribution policies, focusing on "adding barriers to low-effort slop" contributions, encouraging maintainers to review code, developing new contributors into future maintainers, and crucially, requiring that all contributions come from humans who are accountable for their code -- and fixing it if it fails. "AI cannot take responsibility, and we can't trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it," the Foundation said.
 
The Foundation says we can expect Godot's contributing policy to soon include explicit rejections of AI-authored code, noting that contributors should only use AI assistance for "menial things" and must disclose its use. Additionally, the Foundation will reject any AI-generated text in human-to-human communications, saying it's "a basic principle of respect" -- though it says machine translations "are still acceptable" if the original text was human-authored. "Things change every day with respect to the current suite of AI tools available," the Foundation said. "We will continue taking a conservative approach in our policies towards them, but we will re-evaluate as things evolve."
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Ford Rehires 'Gray Beard' Engineers After AI Falls Short]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/06/29/0321238</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/06/29/0321238</link>
<pubDate>2026-06-29</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Ford executives said they've hired 350 veteran engineers &mdash; some of them former employees &mdash; after AI and automated systems failed to deliver the desired quality, reports TechCrunch:

Bloomberg reports the company's chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra told journalists that Ford had been "relying more and more on automated quality systems" with disappointing results. So the company "brought back technical specialists," and those specialists "hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor." 
Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, added, "Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product."
 
The article points out that Ford is using the rehired gray beard engineers to train younger staff &mdash; and, to reprogram its AI tools.
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Valve Will Finally Let You Build Your Own Steam Machine With SteamOS For Desktop]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/06/22/1922207</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/06/22/1922207</link>
<pubDate>2026-06-22</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				With the price of the new Steam Machine starting at $1,049, you might want to consider making your own Steam Machine instead. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Valve says that "starting with the SteamOS 3.8 release, you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want." SteamOS 3.8.10 launched last week with a slew of updates, including "improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms." Alongside that improved compatibility, Valve is giving gamers the green light to install SteamOS on their own desktops. In an interview with The Verge, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais said Valve has been "rolling out improvements to [SteamOS] so it's more compatible with desktop hardware," including eventual support for Nvidia graphics. Griffais says Valve has "a growing team" working on Nvidia driver support for SteamOS, adding, "We're collaborating with Nvidia very closely." While he mentioned that Nvidia support might not come this year, Griffais emphasized that "it's certainly something that we're working on in the background."
 
It's technically been possible to run SteamOS on your own hardware for a while now, but compatibility has been mostly limited to AMD systems. So far installing it has also required using a Steam Deck recovery image, a process that, speaking from experience, is much less straightforward than the installation process for most other Linux distributions. Trying to run SteamOS on Intel or Nvidia hardware has not been easy so far. According to Griffais, Valve is working to change that, which could mean that down the line, you'll be able to run SteamOS on just about any gaming PC hardware you want, including Nvidia.
 
For the more immediate future, Griffais says SteamOS in its current state should offer a "good experience" on console-like PC setups: "If you have something that is similar to the use case of a Steam Machine, where you have a PC that's gonna be plugged into a TV, and has a single hard drive that you're not going to try and dual boot [] you can put SteamOS on there, and you'll have an experience that is very similar to a Steam Deck docked or a Steam Machine, with some caveats, of course," like a lack of HDMI-CEC support. But "the core bits of the experience are there. The SteamOS graphics driver, the shader precompilation [...] you can get at all of that with the SteamOS." Griffais says SteamOS does not yet offer an easy way to dual-boot alongside Windows or another operating system, but envisions "a time where it's a better experience to install on your desktop and have it coexist with a different operating system."
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Commodore's Callback 8020 Is a $499 Flip Phone That Blocks Social Media and Browsers]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/06/16/201248</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/06/16/201248</link>
<pubDate>2026-06-16</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				Commodore has unveiled the Callback 8020, a $499 Sailfish OS flip phone that runs most Android apps but deliberately blocks social media, browsers, email, and workplace apps to discourage doomscrolling. The "not dumb dumbphone" still supports messaging, music, maps, ridesharing, hotspots, a removable battery, and plenty of Commodore nostalgia. "The phone uses T9-style texting with predictive input, includes Commodore SID ringtones, ships with a selection of Commodore and Sailfish games, and even includes Snake," reports TechSpot. From the report:  Commodore says it has developed patent-pending technology that prevents browsers and social media apps from being sideloaded, while DNS-level blocking should stop them from working even if someone finds a way to install them. Users can still sideload nearly anything else if it's not available on the Commostore, but apps designed for doomscrolling remain off limits. That means useful services such as WhatsApp, SMS, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, Spotify, Uber, Lyft, maps, podcasts, QR scanning, voice notes, and hotspot support work, but the likes of Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Gmail, and browsers do not.
 
The Callback 8020 has a 3.25-inch 480 x 640 internal display, a MediaTek Helio G81 chip, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a 48MP Sony rear camera, an autofocus front camera, dual SIM support, USB-C, a headphone jack, FM radio, and something many of us miss from flagships: a removable battery. There's no 5G as Commodore argues that 4G VoLTE and Wi-Fi better fit a device meant to discourage constant streaming and scrolling. [...] The main screen is touch-capable but disabled by default, while the outer display keeps things deliberately sparse, showing basics such as time, battery, signal, and notifications via dome LEDs.
 
The 8020 name is a nod to Commodore's 8010 modem from 1980. The phone comes in ProtoPET White, SX Silver, BASIC Beige, a translucent Starlight Edition, and a gold Founders Edition with a 24-karat gold-plated Commodore button. Standard models start at $499, the Starlight version is $549.99, and the Founders Edition costs $640. Preorders open June 30, with shipping targeted for winter. You can watch the launch ad on YouTube.
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[Vim Classic 8.3 Launched as an AI-Free Vim Fork]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/06/13/0524209</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/06/13/0524209</link>
<pubDate>2026-06-13</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				This month saw the release of Vim Classic 8.3, the first stable version of a new long-term support fork of Vim maintained without generative AI tools.     Linuxiac reports:
The release is based on Vim 8.2.0148 and includes selected bug fixes and patches backported from later upstream Vim releases. Vim Classic was first announced by [SourceHut's CEO/founder] Drew DeVault in March 2026 after he objected to LLM-assisted development in Vim and Neovim. In his announcement, DeVault said he no longer wanted to use software developed with LLM assistance and introduced Vim Classic as a fork for users who want to continue using Vim without that involvement... Vim Classic follows Vim's charityware model and continues to direct users toward Bram Moolenaar's long-running support for children in Uganda. The release is distributed as a signed source tarball from SourceHut, while future important announcements are expected through the project's mailing list.  
"Vim is important to me..." DeVault wrote in March. (DeVault even tattooed "hjkl" on his right arm.)  "[A]lmost every word I have ever committed to posterity, through this blog, in my code, all of the docs I've written, emails I've sent, and more, almost all of it has passed through Vim." 
But DeVault wrote that he also cares about AI's impact on air pollution, fresh water supplies, global supply chains, and the working conditions of miners in African companies:
And at a moment when the climate demands immediate action to reduce our footprint on this planet, the AI boom is driving data centers to consume a full 1.5% of the world's total energy production in order to eliminate jobs and replace them with a robot that lies... All this to enrich the few, centralize power, reduce competition, and underwrite an enormous bubble that, once it bursts, will ruin the lives of millions of the world's poor and marginalized classes.   
I don't think it's cute that someone vibe coded "battleship" in VimScript. I think it's more important that we stop collectively pretending that we don't understand how awful all of this is. I don't want to use software which has slop in it. I do what I can to avoid it, and sadly even Vim now comes under scrutiny in that effort as both Vim and NeoVim are relying on LLMs to develop the software...  To keep my conscience clear, and continue to enjoy the relationship I have with this amazing piece of software, I have forked Vim... 
Since forking from this base, I have backported a handful of patches, most of which address CVEs discovered after this release, but others which address minor bug fixes. I also penned a handful of original patches which bring the codebase from this time up to snuff for building it on newer toolchains... 
I invite you to use Vim Classic, if you feel the same way as me, and to maintain it with me, contributing the patches you need to support your own use cases.  
		
	
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<title><![CDATA[DuckDuckGo Installs Up 30% After Google Announced AI Search]]></title>
<guid isPermaLink="false">slashdot_26/05/30/0511236</guid>
<link>https://electriccafe.org/slashdot.php?id=slashdot_26/05/30/0511236</link>
<pubDate>2026-05-30</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[				After Google announced AI-emphasizing changes to its search results, many web surfers began defecting to DuckDuckGo, reports TechCrunch.  (They describe DuckDuckGo as "a privacy-focused alternative" that accounts for around 2% of the U.S. search market...)
DuckDuckGo said U.S. app installs went up 18.1% week-over-week on average during the May 20 to May 25 period, compared to May 13 to May 18. The company said that growth was sustained for six consecutive days and peaked at 30.5% on May 25. On iOS, the rate of install is even higher, with week-over-week growth hitting a 33% average, peaking at 69.9%... DuckDuckGo said the trend is stronger in the U.S, and that DuckDuckGo continued to gain users over the Memorial Day weekend, when it usually sees a dip in traffic.   Some of that data is backed up by third parties. App analytics company Apptopia found a 29% increase in average daily downloads in the U.S. and a 12% increase globally over the same period.  
DuckDuckGo also said visits to its AI-free search page, noai.duckduckgo.com averaged 22.7% week-over-week growth, peaking at 27.7% on May 24, according to the article.  ("DuckDuckGo also offers an AI Image Filter that filters out AI-created images from search results.") 
TechCrunch delves into the reason why:
I overheard a woman on the phone saying she was switching to DuckDuckGo because you can "opt out of using AI... Google just isn't Google anymore," she said. It seems that others had the same idea... Some have argued it will kill the open web, while others shared concerns that AI overviews surface inaccurate responses and take away control from users who might not want to use AI. It also overcomplicates simple things. 
A Google spokesperson pointed out that AI Mode isn't the default in their search results.  (And CNET notes Google include an AI-free "Web" choice in its results if you just want a page of ftraditional blue links.) 
TechCrunch adds that DuckDuckGo also offers a separate free tool called Duck.ai offering access to models including Claude, Meta's Llama and OpenAI's GPT-5 mini.  "All chats are private because DuckDuckGo strips the user's IP address before requests reach model providers, deletes conversations within 30 days, and prevents chats from being used for training."
		
	
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