Harvard University on Monday announced that tuition will be free for students from families with annual incomes of $200,000 or less starting in the 2025-26 academic year. From a report: "Putting Harvard within financial reach for more individuals widens the array of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives that all of our students encounter, fostering their intellectual and personal growth," Harvard University President Alan M. Garber said in a statement. "By bringing people of outstanding promise together to learn with and from one another, we truly realize the tremendous potential of the University."

The new plan will enable about 86% of U.S. families to qualify for Harvard financial aid and expand the Ivy League college's commitment to providing all undergrads the resources they need to enroll and graduate, according to Garber.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/1740242/harvard-says-tuition-will-be-free-for-families-making-200k-or-less?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Xbox 360 modders have discovered a new way to get homebrew apps and games running on the console. A new software-only exploit known as BadUpdate allows you to use a USB key to hack past Microsoft's Hypervisor protections and run unsigned code and games.

Modern Vintage Gamer has tested BadUpdate and found that you don't even have to open up your Xbox 360 console to get it running. Unlike the RGH or JTAG exploits for the Xbox 360, this BadUpdate method just requires a USB key. If you have the time and patience to get this running successfully, you'll be able to run the Xbox 360 homebrew store which includes games, apps, emulators, utilities, and even custom dashboards.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/1747227/xbox-360-consoles-can-now-be-hacked-with-just-a-usb-key?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Huawei will no longer be able to produce or sell Windows-based PCs as Microsoft's supply license to the Chinese tech company expires this month, according to Chinese tech site MyDrivers. The restriction comes as Huawei remains on the U.S. Department of Commerce's Entity List, requiring American companies to obtain special export licenses to conduct business with the firm.

Richard Yu, executive director of Huawei's consumer business unit, said the company is preparing to pivot to alternative operating systems. Huawei had previously announced plans to abandon Windows for future PC generations. The Chinese tech giant will introduce a new "AI PC" laptop in April running its own Kunpeng CPU and HarmonyOS, alongside a MateBook D16 Linux Edition, its first Linux-based laptop.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/183209/huawei-to-pivot-to-linux-harmonyos-as-microsoft-windows-license-expires?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Last week, Google expanded access to its Gemini 2.0 Flash model's image generation feature, which lets the model natively generate and edit image content. It's a powerful capability, by all accounts. But it also appears to have few guardrails. Gemini 2.0 Flash will uncomplainingly create images depicting celebrities and copyrighted characters, and -- as alluded to earlier -- remove watermarks from existing photos.

As several X and Reddit users noted, Gemini 2.0 Flash won't just remove watermarks, but will also attempt to fill in any gaps created by a watermark's deletion. Other AI-powered tools do this, too, but Gemini 2.0 Flash seems to be exceptionally skilled at it -- and free to use. To be clear, Gemini 2.0 Flash's image generation feature is labeled as "experimental" and "not for production use" at the moment, and is only available in Google's developer-facing tools like AI Studio. The model also isn't a perfect watermark remover. Gemini 2.0 Flash appears to struggle with certain semi-transparent watermarks and watermarks that canvas large portions of images.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/1939254/people-are-using-googles-new-ai-model-to-remove-watermarks-from-images?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Most mobile apps fail to reach $1,000 in monthly revenue within their first two years, according to a new report from RevenueCat examining data from over 75,000 mobile apps. Across all categories, only about 20% of apps achieve the $1,000 threshold, while just 5% reach $10,000 monthly.

In 2025, the top 5% of apps generate 500 times more revenue than the remaining 95% -- up from 200 times in 2024. After one year, elite performers in gaming, photo and video, health and fitness, and social categories exceed $5,000 monthly, while those in the 25th percentile earn a meager $5-20 per month. The report also highlights North American developers' heavy iOS dependence, with 76.1% making over 80% of their revenue from Apple's platform. Subscription retention presents another challenge, with barely 10% of monthly subscribers staying beyond the first year.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/1946256/sobering-revenue-stats-of-70k-mobile-apps-show-why-devs-beg-for-subscriptions?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

GIMP 3.0 has been released after over a decade of development. Highlights include a refined GTK3 interface with scroll wheel tab navigation, a new splash screen, improved HiDPI icon support, enhanced color management, a stable public API, and support for more file formats. 9to5Linux reports: GIMP 3.0 also brings improvements to non-destructive editing by introducing an optional "Merge Filters" checkbox at the bottom of NDE filters that merges down the filter immediately after it's committed, along with non-destructive filters on layer groups and the implementation of storing version of filters in GIMP's XCF project files. Among other noteworthy changes, the GEGL and babl components have been updated with new features and many improvements, such as Inner Glow, Bevel, and GEGL Styles filters, some plugins saw small enhancements, and it's now possible to export images with different settings while leaving the original image unchanged.

There's also a new PDB call that allows Script-Fu writers to use labels to specify filter properties, a brand new named-argument syntax, support for loading 16-bits-per-channel LAB PSD files, support for loading DDS images with BC7 support, early-binding CMYK support, and support for PSB and JPEG-XL image formats. On top of that, GIMP 3.0 introduces new auto-expanding layer boundary and snapping options, an updated search pop-up to show the menu path for all entries while making individual filters searchable, a revamped alignment tool, and support for "layer sets," replacing the older concept of linked layers. You can download GIMP 3.0 from the official website.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/1948219/gimp-30-released?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Apple will introduce a slimmer iPhone 17 "Air" this fall, marking a strategic shift toward potentially port-free devices in future product lines, according to a Bloomberg report.

The new model will feature a 6.6-inch display with ProMotion scrolling, Dynamic Island interface, and a Camera Control button while measuring approximately 2 millimeters thinner than current models -- roughly a 20% reduction in depth, the report said.

Despite its slimmer profile, the device will maintain battery life comparable to existing iPhones through redesigned display and silicon components. It will incorporate Apple's power-efficient C1 in-house modem chip but will retain USB-C connectivity, despite earlier internal discussions about eliminating ports entirely.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/206213/apple-to-launch-thinner-iphone-17-air-as-step-toward-port-free-design?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Google's parent company Alphabet is reportedly in talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for approximately $30 billion. Last July, negotiations had advanced on a $23 billion deal, but the talks were put on hold to prioritize Wiz's IPO. Around the same time, Alphabet also walked away from a potential acquisition of online marketing software company HubSpot. Reuters reports: The startup provides cloud-based cybersecurity solutions powered by artificial intelligence that help companies identify and remove critical risks on cloud platforms. A buyout of this size will most likely face regulatory scrutiny as tech giants are kept under close watch for possible monopolistic practices.

If the deal goes through, it could help Alphabet tap into the cybersecurity industry and expand its booming cloud infrastructure segment, which generated more than $43 billion in revenue last year. Wiz was last valued at $12 billion in a private funding round in May 2024.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/215231/alphabet-back-in-talks-to-buy-wiz-for-30-billion?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: A top Commerce Department official sent a blistering email to his former colleagues on his way out the door Sunday warning that the Trump administration is poised to unduly enrich Elon Musk's satellite internet company with money for rural broadband. The technology offered by Starlink ... is inferior, wrote Evan Feinman, who had directed the $42.5 billion broadband program for the past three years. "Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world's richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington," Feinman said.

Feinman's lengthy email, totaling more than 1,100 words and shared with POLITICO, is a sign of deep discomfort about the changes underway that will likely transform the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently pledged a vigorous review of BEAD, with an aim to rip out what he sees as extraneous requirements and remove any preference for particular broadband technologies like fiber. The program, created in the 2021 infrastructure law program, became a source of partisan fighting last year on the campaign trail as Republicans attacked the Biden administration for its slow pace. No internet expansion projects have begun using BEAD money, although some states were close at the beginning of this year. Feinman's critique: In his email, Feinman notes Friday was his last day leading BEAD and that he's "disappointed not to be able to see this project through."

Feinman's email warns the Trump administration could undermine BEAD and he encourages people to fight to retain its best aspects. Feinman said the administration should "NOT change it to benefit technology that delivers slower speeds at higher costs to the household paying the bill," adding that this isn't what rural America, congressional Republicans or Democrats, the states or the telecom industry wants. "Reach out to your congressional delegation and reach out to the Trump Administration and tell them to strip out the needless requirements, but not to strip away from states the flexibility to get the best connections for their people," Feinman wrote. He said he's not worried about the Trump administration nixing requirements around climate resiliency, labor and middle class affordability, saying those issues "were inserted by the prior administration for messaging/political purposes, and were never central to the mission of the program." Feinman warns that changes to the BEAD program under the Trump administration could stall state-level broadband progress, with Louisiana, Delaware, and Nevada already stuck in review.

Meanwhile, no specific guidance or timeline for these changes has been provided, and Arielle Roth's confirmation as NTIA head is still pending in the Senate.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/2117212/top-broadband-official-exits-commerce-department-with-warning-about-starlink?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Roku is testing autoplaying video ads that play before users can access the home screen. While Roku claims this is just an experiment, users are threatening to abandon the platform if the change becomes permanent. Ars Technica reports: Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS' home screen started appearing online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted yesterday: "I just turned on my Roku and got an unskippable ad for a movie, before I got to the regular Roku home screen." Multiple apparent users reported seeing an ad for the movie Moana 2. When reached for comment, a Roku spokesperson shared a company statement that confirms that the autoplaying ads are expected behavior but not a permanent part of Roku OS currently. Instead, Roku claimed, it was just trying the ad capability out.

Roku's representative said that Roku's business "has and will always require continuous testing and innovation across design, navigation, content, and our first-rate advertising products," adding: "Our recent test is just the latest example, as we explore new ways to showcase brands and programming while still providing a delightful and simple user experience."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/2122232/roku-tests-autoplaying-ads-loading-before-the-home-screen?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

According to The Verge, legacy G Suite accounts will soon lose their individual storage allotment perks and be transitioned to pooled storage, which will be "shared across all users within your organization." The changes will come into effect starting May 1st. From the report: G Suite was rebranded as Workspace in 2020. G Suite legacy free edition, which Google stopped offering in 2012, provides each user with 15GB of free allocated storage and was offered for personal use -- making it ideal for families or groups that need to share a collective domain. Existing users have been permitted to access Workspace services at no additional charge, but Google says it's now making this change because pooled storage provides a "simpler and more flexible way to manage storage." "Google Workspace customers have had the benefit of pooled storage for years, and now we're rolling it out to users with this legacy offering," Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson told The Verge.

No action is required for the switch according to Google, and users cannot opt out of the pooled storage transition. The total amount of storage allocated to the entire G Suite account won't be reduced, but if more storage is required then it can be purchased "at a discount" starting at increments of 100GB, which typically costs $15. Google hasn't specified how large this discount will be. Storage limitations can still be set for each user within the G Suite account after the transition to prevent the collective storage pool from being hogged by individual users. These limits will have to be manually assigned by an account admin, however.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/2129257/google-is-switching-legacy-g-suite-users-to-pooled-workspace-storage?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Reuters: BYD on Monday unveiled a new platform for electric vehicles (EVs) that it said could charge EVs as quickly as it takes to pump gas and announced for the first time that it would build a charging network across China. The so-called "super e-platform" will be capable of peak charging speeds of 1,000 kilowatts (kW), enabling cars that use it to travel 400 km (249 miles) on a 5-minute charge, founder Wang Chuanfu said at an event livestreamed from the company's Shenzhen headquarters.

Charging speeds of 1,000 kW would be twice as fast as Tesla's superchargers whose latest version offers up to 500 kw charging speeds. The new charging architecture will be initially available in two new EVs -- Han L sedan and Tang L SUV priced from 270,000 yuan ($37,328.91) and BYD said it would build over 4,000 ultra-fast charging piles, or units, across China to match the new platform. "In order to completely solve our user's charging anxiety, we have been pursuing a goal to make the charging time of electric vehicles as short as the refuelling time of petrol vehicles," Wang said.

"This is the first time in the industry that the unit of megawatt (charge) has been achieved on charging power," he said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/2350228/byd-unveils-new-super-charging-ev-tech-with-peak-speeds-of-1000-kw?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: More than 400 Hollywood creative leaders signed an open letter to the Trump White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, urging the administration to not roll back copyright protections at the behest of AI companies. The filmmakers, writers, actors, musicians and others -- which included Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Erivo, Cate Blanchett, Cord Jefferson, Paul McCartney, Ron Howard and Taika Waititi -- were submitting comments for the Trump administration's U.S. AI Action Plan. The letter specifically was penned in response to recent submissions to the Office of Science and Technology Policy from OpenAI and Google, which asserted that U.S. copyright law allows (or should allow) allow AI companies to train their system on copyrighted works without obtaining permission from (or compensating) rights holders.

"We firmly believe that America's global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries," the letter says in part. The letter claims that "AI companies are asking to undermine this economic and cultural strength by weakening copyright protections for the films, television series, artworks, writing, music and voices used to train AI models at the core of multibillion-dollar corporate valuations." [...] The letter says Google and OpenAI "are arguing for a special government exemption so they can freely exploit America's creative and knowledge industries, despite their substantial revenues and available funds. There is no reason to weaken or eliminate the copyright protections that have helped America flourish." You can read the full statement and list of signatories here.

The letter was issued in response to recent submissions from OpenAI (PDF) and Google (PDF) claiming that U.S. law allows, or should allow, AI companies to train their programs on copyrighted works under the fair use legal doctrine.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/000234/hollywood-urges-trump-to-not-let-ai-companies-exploit-copyrighted-works?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A newly FDA-approved form of adaptive deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson's disease adjusts electrical stimulation in real time based on an individual's brain signals, improving symptom control and reducing medication dependence. Scientific American: For decades, Keith Krehbiel took high doses of medications with a debilitating side effect -- severe nausea -- following his diagnosis with early-onset Parkinson's disease at age 42 in 1997. When each dose wore off, he experienced dyskinesia -- involuntary, repetitive muscle movements. In his case, this consisted of head bobbing and weaving. Krehbiel is among one million Americans who live with this progressive neurological disorder, which causes slowed movements, tremors and balance problems. But soon after surgery to implant electrodes into specific areas of his brain in 2020, his life dramatically improved. "My tremor went away almost entirely," says Krehbiel, now age 70 and a professor emeritus of political science at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, whose Parkinson's symptoms began at age 40 and were initially misdiagnosed as repetitive stress injury from computer use. "I reduced my Parkinson's meds by more than two thirds," he adds. "And I no longer have a sensation of a foggy brain, nor nausea or dyskinesia."

Krehbiel was the first participant to enroll in a clinical trial testing a new form of deep-brain stimulation (DBS), a technology that gained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Parkinson's tremor and essential tremor in 1997 (it was later approved for other symptoms and conditions). The new adaptive system adjusts stimulation levels automatically based on the person's individual brain signals. In late February it received FDA approval for Parkinson's disease "based on results of the international multicenter trial, which involved participants at 10 sites across a total of four countries -- the U.S., the Netherlands, Canada and France. This technology is suitable for anyone with Parkinson's, not just individuals in clinical trials, says Helen Bronte-Stewart, the recent trial's global lead investigator and a neurologist specializing in movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. "Like a cardiac pacemaker that responds to the rhythms of the heart, adaptive deep-brain stimulation uses a person's individual brain signals to control the electric pulses it delivers," Bronte-Stewart says. "This makes it more personalized, precise and efficient than older DBS methods."

"Traditional DBS delivers constant stimulation, which doesn't always match the fluctuating symptoms of Parkinson's disease," adds neurologist Todd Herrington, another of the trial's investigators and director of the deep-brain stimulation program at Massachusetts General Hospital. With adaptive DBS, "the goal is to adjust stimulation in real time to provide more effective symptom control, fewer side effects and improved patient quality of life." Current FDA approval of this adaptive system is for the treatment of Parkinson's only, not essential tremor, dystonia (a neurological disorder that causes excessive, repetitive and involuntary muscle contractions) or epilepsy, which still rely on traditional, continuous DBS, Herrington says.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/0443229/new-form-of-parkinsons-treatment-uses-real-time-deep-brain-stimulation?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

HR software startup Rippling has sued competitor Deel, alleging that Deel orchestrated corporate espionage by recruiting an employee within Rippling to steal trade secrets, including customer data, sales strategies, and internal records. The lawsuit (PDF) claims the spy shared confidential information with Deel executives and a reporter, leading to legal action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Deel denies wrongdoing and plans to counter the claims. CNBC reports: The two startups are among the most world's most valuable. Investors valued Rippling at $13.5 billion in a funding round announced last year, while Deel told media outlets in 2023 that it was worth $12 billion. Deel ranked No. 28 on CNBC's 2024 Disruptor 50 list. "Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and seeding falsehoods about Deel, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims," a Deel spokesperson told CNBC in an email. "We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims."

Rippling confirmed its findings earlier this month. The company's general counsel sent a letter to three Deel executives that referred to a new Slack channel, and the Deel spy quickly looked for it. Rippling subsequently served a court order to the spy at its office in Dublin, Ireland requiring him to preserve information on his mobile phone. "Deel's spy lied to the court-appointed solicitor about the location of his phone, and then locked himself in a bathroom -- seemingly in order to delete evidence from his phone -- all while the independent solicitor repeatedly warned him not to delete materials from his device and that his non-compliance was breaching a court order with penal endorsement," Rippling said in Monday's filing. "The spy responded: 'I'm willing to take that risk.' He then fled the premises." "We always prefer to win by building the best products and we don't turn to the legal system lightly," Parker Conrad, Rippling's co-founder and CEO, said in a Monday X post. "But we are taking this extraordinary step to send a clear message that this type of misconduct has no place in our industry."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/0436243/software-startup-rippling-sues-competitor-deel-claiming-a-spy-carried-out-corporate-espionage?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания Google объявила перед конференцией GDC (Game Developers Conference) о придании графическому API Vulkan статуса официального в платформе Android. Google работает над использованием Vulkan в качестве основного уровня абстракции для GPU (HAL, Hardware Abstraction Layer), рекомендованного для использования и играх и приложениях, работающих с GPU. Поверх Vulkan также будут функционировать внутренние API и компоненты, такие как HWUI, Skia и WebGPU.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62900

Google parent Alphabet has agreed to buy cyber security start-up Wiz for $32 billion, the biggest acquisition in the search group's history, according to Financial Times, which cites sources. From the report: Alphabet held talks over a $23 billion acquisition of Wiz last year, although the negotiations collapsed after some of the cyber security company's directors and investors became worried about antitrust hurdles.

The deal, which will rank as the biggest deal of the year so far, will be announced on Tuesday morning, a person said. It will probably still face scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission under President Donald Trump, whose new chair Andrew Ferguson has maintained guidelines giving the agency the ability to block large deals used by his predecessor Lina Khan.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/1117215/google-parent-alphabet-agrees-to-buy-cyber-security-group-wiz-for-32-billion?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

19-20 июня в РЭУ им. Г.В. Плеханова пройдет ежегодная конференция [ OS DAY 2025 ]( http://osday.ru/ )

Тема встречи — технологии и методы изоляции в современных операционных системах, преимущества и безопасность использования изолированных сред выполнения.

Заявки на участие принимаются до 10 мая по темам:

• Современные способы построения изолированной среды исполнения в ОС.

• Изоляция процессов в операционных системах: виртуализация, контейнеризация, аппаратная изоляция, гипервизоры, изоляция приложений внутри ОС и пр.

• Изоляция как механизм защиты информации, основа обеспечения безопасности ОС.

• Модели информационной безопасности в изолированных средах исполнения.

• Механизмы обеспечения политик безопасности ОС.

• Цифровые отечественные платформы: перспективы отечественных операционных систем.

• Прикладное программное обеспечение и операционные системы.

• Жизненный цикл создания операционных систем: от разработки до сертификации.

• Иные темы, связанные с системным программированием.

>>> [ Подробности на сайте конференции ]( https://osday.ru/announcement.html )

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/conference/17916148

В проекте [ Repka Pi ]( http://repka-pi.ru ) стали доступными и открытыми репозитории с исходными кодами загрузчика [ U-Boot (с DeviceTree) ]( https://gitflic.ru/project/npo_rbs/repka-os_boot-loader ) и [ ядра Linux (также с DT) ]( https://gitflic.ru/project/npo_rbs/repka-os_kernel ) на GitFlic — это российском аналоге GitHub.

Пока для Repka Pi 4, скоро будет для Repka Pi 3.

Repka Pi является российской альтернативой и аналогом одноплатников [ Raspberry Pi ]( https://www.raspberrypi.com/ ) , выполнен в идентичном форм-факторе, включая размеры, расположение портов, крепления, распиновку 40 pin разъема. При этом Repka Pi оснащается более производительной оперативной памятью DDR, а не LP DDR, как у аналогов, что позволяет получать производительность на 15-20% выше, чем у аналогичных моделей (Raspberry Pi и других).

Repka Pi — одноплатные компьютеры отечественной разработки, со 100% локализацией производства с использованием комплектующих материковой части КНР. Применяя Repka Pi вы получаете прямые поставки без посредников из России, гарантийные обязательства, возможности сервиса, замены и ремонта, возможности адаптации под свои задачи и получения необходимых консультаций.

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/russia/17916072

The rumors were right: Google parent Alphabet has agreed to buy cyber security start-up Wiz for $32 billion, the biggest acquisition in the search group's history. From the report: Alphabet held talks over a $23 billion acquisition of Wiz last year, although the negotiations collapsed after some of the cyber security company's directors and investors became worried about antitrust hurdles.

The deal, which will rank as the biggest deal of the year so far, was announced on Tuesday morning. It will probably still face scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission under President Donald Trump, whose new chair Andrew Ferguson has maintained guidelines giving the agency the ability to block large deals used by his predecessor Lina Khan.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/1117215/google-parent-alphabet-acquires-wiz-for-32-billion?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan said startups are reaching $1-10 million annual revenue with fewer than 10 employees due to "vibe coding," a term coined by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy in February.

"You can just talk to the large language models and they will code entire apps," Tan told CNBC (video). "You don't have to hire someone to do it, you just talk directly to the large language model that wrote it and it'll fix it for you." What would've once taken "50 or 100" engineers to build, he believes can now be accomplished by a team of 10, "when they are fully vibe coders." He adds: "When they are actually really, really good at using the cutting edge tools for code gen today, like Cursor or Windsurf, they will literally do the work of 10 or 100 engineers in the course of a single day."

According to Tan, 81% of Y Combinator's current startup batch consists of AI companies, with 25% having 95% of their code written by large language models. Despite limitations in debugging capabilities, Tan said the technology enables small teams to perform work previously requiring dozens of engineers and makes previously overlooked niche markets viable for software businesses.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/1428226/vibe-coding-is-letting-10-engineers-do-the-work-of-a-team-of-50-to-100-says-yc-ceo?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple lost an appeal on Tuesday against a regulatory assessment that opens the iPhone maker up to stricter controls in Germany, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday, following years of debate over the company's market position. Federal judges backed the German cartel office's 2023 designation of Apple as a "company of paramount cross-market significance for competition".

[ Read more of this story ]( https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/1528219/apple-loses-german-antitrust-appeal-opening-door-for-greater-controls?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Meta's open AI model family Llama has reached 1 billion downloads, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday, marking a 53% increase from the 650 million reported in early December. Llama, which powers Meta's AI assistant across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, operates under a proprietary license that some developers consider commercially restrictive despite its free availability. Major corporations including Spotify, AT&T and DoorDash currently deploy Llama models in production environments.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/161237/metas-llama-ai-models-hit-1-billion-downloads-zuckerberg-says?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Despite spending hundreds of millions on blockbuster films, Netflix continues to churn out critically panned big-budget fare with its latest $300 million flop, "The Electric State," starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown. While the streaming giant has produced acclaimed films by giving talented directors creative freedom -- resulting in successes like "The Irishman," "Marriage Story" and "The Power of the Dog" -- it has repeatedly failed to create genuinely compelling blockbusters despite attracting major talent and pouring massive resources into productions like "Red Notice," "The Gray Man" and now "The Electric State."

These expensive Netflix "mockbusters" lack the overwhelming sensations that theatrical blockbusters deliver, instead feeling like glorified content designed primarily for home viewing. The Russo brothers' "Electric State," with its drab visuals and lifeless performances, exemplifies how Netflix's biggest productions feel infused with the knowledge they're merely "content first."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/1634231/why-are-the-most-expensive-netflix-movies-also-the-worst?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Представлена бета-версия дистрибутива Fedora Linux 42, ознаменовавшая переход на финальную стадию тестирования, при которой допускается только исправление критических ошибок. Релиз запланирован на 22 апреля. Выпуск охватывает Fedora Workstation, Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop, Fedora Server, Fedora IoT, Fedora CoreOS, Fedora Cloud Base, Fedora IoT Edition, Fedora Silverblue, Fedora Kinoite и Live-сборки, поставляемые в форме спинов c пользовательскими окружениями Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE, Phosh, Miracle, LXQt, Budgie, Sway и Cosmic. Сборки сформированы для архитектур x86_64, Power64 и ARM64 (AArch64).

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62902

Eric Migicovsky, founder of Pebble, will release two new smartwatches running the newly open-sourced Pebble operating system through his company Core Devices. The Core 2 Duo, priced at $149 and shipping in July, utilizes unused Pebble 2 frames with the same black-and-white E Ink display.

The device features a 30-day battery life -- quadruple its predecessor's -- and incorporates a speaker for AI assistant interaction. Approximately 10,000 units will be available. The Core Time 2, arriving in December at $225, adds touchscreen functionality to the classic Pebble design while maintaining physical buttons and month-long battery life.

Both devices face iPhone integration challenges. Migicovsky cautioned potential tariff increases would be passed to consumers, stating, "We're going to charge more if it costs more." "I'm not building a company to sell millions of these," Migicovsky said. "The goal is to make something I really want."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/1621244/the-first-new-pebble-smartwatches-are-coming-later-this-year?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance text for hampering American innovation in a speech to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on Tuesday, arguing that offshoring has eroded U.S. technological leadership. "Our workers have been failed by the government of the last 40 years," Vance told the American Dynamism Summit, criticizing two "conceits" of globalization: that nations manufacturing products wouldn't eventually design them too, and that cheap foreign labor benefits innovation.

"As they got better at the low end of the value chain, they also started catching up on the higher end. We were squeezed from both ends," Vance said, adding that "cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch" that inhibits technological advancement. The Trump administration recently rolled back Biden-era AI regulations, with Vance emphasizing their goal to "incentivize investment in our own borders, in our own businesses, our own workers and our own innovation." Vance, a former venture capitalist, dismissed fears about AI eliminating jobs, comparing it to ATMs which ultimately created more financial sector roles.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/1734252/vance-slams-globalization-for-hampering-american-innovation?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Компания Red Hat опубликовала стабильный релиз пакета Cygwin 3.6.0, включающего DLL-библиотеку для эмуляции базового Linux API в Windows, позволяющую с минимальными изменениями собирать созданные для Linux программы. В пакет также входят непосредственно собранные для выполнения в Windows стандартные Unix-утилиты, серверные приложения, компиляторы, библиотеки и заголовочные файлы.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62903

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday affirmed that a work of art generated by artificial intelligence without human input cannot be copyrighted under U.S. law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted.

Tuesday's decision marks the latest attempt by U.S. officials to grapple with the copyright implications of the fast-growing generative AI industry. The Copyright Office has separately rejected artists' bids for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney. The artists argued they were entitled to copyrights for images they created with AI assistance -- unlike Thaler, who said that his "sentient" system created the image in his case independently. [...]

U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel on Tuesday that U.S. copyright law "requires all work to be authored in the first instance by a human being." "Because many of the Copyright Act's provisions make sense only if an author is a human being, the best reading of the Copyright Act is that human authorship is required for registration," the appeals court said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/1918240/us-appeals-court-rejects-copyrights-for-ai-generated-art?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Nvidia unveiled its next wave of AI processors at GTC on Tuesday, announcing Blackwell Ultra chips that will ship in the second half of 2025, followed by the Vera Rubin architecture in 2026. CEO Jensen Huang also revealed that its 2028 chips will be named after physicist Richard Feynman.

The Blackwell Ultra maintains the same 20 petaflops of AI performance as standard Blackwell chips but increases memory from 192GB to 288GB of HBM3e. Nvidia claims these chips can process 1,000 tokens per second -- ten times faster than its 2022 hardware -- enabling AI reasoning tasks like running DeepSeek-R1 models with 10-second response times versus 1.5 minutes on H100 chips.

Vera Rubin will deliver a substantial leap to 50 petaflops in 2026, featuring Nvidia's first custom Arm-based CPU design called Olympus. Nvidia is also changing how it counts GPUs -- Rubin itself contains two dies working as one chip. The annual release cadence represents a strategic shift for Nvidia, which previously introduced new architectures every two years before the AI boom transformed its business.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/201213/nvidia-reveals-next-gen-ai-chips-roadmap-through-2028?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

General Motors is partnering with Nvidia to enhance its self-driving and manufacturing capabilities by leveraging Nvidia's AI chips, software, and simulation tools. "GM says it will apply several of Nvidia's products to its business, such as the Omniverse 3D graphics platform which will run simulations on virtual assembly lines with an eye on reducing downtime and improving efficiency," reports The Verge. "The automaker also plans to equip its next-generation vehicles with Nvidia's 'AI brain' for advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving. And it will employ the chipmaker's AI training software to make its vehicle assembly line robots better at certain tasks, like precision welding and material handling." From the report: GM already uses Nvidia's GPUs to train its AI software for simulation and validation. Today's announcement was about expanding those use cases into improving its manufacturing operations and autonomous vehicles, GM CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. (Dave Richardson, GM's senior VP of Software and Services Engineering will be joining NVIDIA's Norm Marks for a fireside chat at the conference.) "AI not only optimizes manufacturing processes and accelerates virtual testing but also helps us build smarter vehicles while empowering our workforce to focus on craftsmanship," Barra said. "By merging technology with human ingenuity, we unlock new levels of innovation in vehicle manufacturing and beyond."

GM will adopt Nvidia's in-car software products to build next-gen vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities. That includes the company's Drive AGX system-on-a-chip (SoC), similar to Tesla's Full Self-Driving chip or Intel's Mobileye EyeQ. The SoC runs the "safety-certified" DriveOS operating system, built on the Blackwell GPU architecture, which is capable of delivering 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of high-performance compute, the company says. [...] In a briefing with reporters, Ali Kani, Nvidia's vice president and general manager of automotive, described the chipmaking company's automotive business as still in its "infancy," with the expectation that it will only bring in $5 billion this year. (Nvidia reported over $130 billion in revenue in 2024 for all its divisions.)

Nvidia's chips are in less than 1 percent of the billions of cars on the road today, he added. But the future looks promising. The company is also announcing deals with Tier 1 auto supplier Magna, which helped build Sony's Afeela concept, to use Drive AGX in the company's next-generation advanced driver assist software. "We believe automotive is a trillion dollar opportunity for Nvidia," Kani said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/200223/gm-taps-nvidia-to-boost-its-self-driving-projects?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Dutch parliament approved motions urging the government to reduce reliance on U.S. software companies by developing a sovereign cloud platform and reconsidering contracts with American firms. Reuters reports: While such initiatives have foundered in the past due to a lack of viable European alternatives, lawmakers said changing relations with the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump have given the issue fresh urgency. "The question we as Europeans must ask ourselves is: do we feel comfortable with people like Trump, (Meta CEO Mark) Zuckerberg and (X owner Elon) Musk ruling over our data?" said Marieke Koekkoek of the pro-European Volt party, who authored one of the eight motions, in an email to Reuters.

In addition to launching a sovereign cloud services platform, the motions called on the government to re-examine a decision to use Amazon's web services for the Netherlands' internet domain hosting, and to develop alternatives to U.S. software and preferential treatment for European firms in public tenders. [...] Bert Hubert, a Dutch technology expert who has advocated for reducing dependency on the U.S., said: "This is only the first step in potentially doing something." But he said one important outcome would be forcing agencies to publicly report on risks related to their reliance on U.S. cloud firms. "With the advent of Trump 2.0, it has become clear that this is not something you can harmlessly sign off on," he said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/209246/dutch-parliament-calls-for-end-to-dependence-on-us-software-companies?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Volkswagen's ultra-cheap EV called the ID EVERY1 -- a small four-door hatchback revealed Wednesday -- will be the first to roll out with software and architecture from Rivian, according to a source familiar with the new model. The EV is expected to go into production in 2027 with a starting price of 20,000 euros ($21,500). A second EV called the ID.2all, which will be priced in the 25,000 euro price category, will be available in 2026. Both vehicles are part of the automaker's new category of electric urban front-wheel-drive cars that are being developed under the "Brand Group Core" that makes up the volume brands in the VW Group. And both vehicles are for the European market.

The EVERY1 will be the first to ship with Rivian's vehicle architecture and software as part of a $5.8 billion joint venture struck last year between the German automaker and U.S. EV maker. The ID.2all is based on the E3 1.1 architecture and software developed by VW's software unit Cariad. VW didn't name Rivian in its reveal Wednesday, although there were numerous nods to next-generation software. Kai Grunitz, member of the Volkswagen Brand Board of Management responsible for technical development, noted it would be the first model in the entire VW Group to use a "fundamentally new, particularly powerful software architecture." "This means the future entry-level Volkswagen can be equipped with new functions throughout its entire life cycle," he said. "Even after purchase of a new car, the small Volkswagen can still be individually adapted to customer needs." Volkswagen says the ID EVERY1 concept is a compact electric vehicle with a 70 kW motor, a top speed of 130 km/h, a minimum range of 250 km (150 miles), seating for four, and a 305-liter luggage capacity.

Volkswagen has a press release with additional information.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2015234/vws-cheapest-ev-is-first-to-use-rivian-software?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission has removed over 300 business guidance blogs published during former President Biden's term, including consumer protection information on AI and privacy lawsuits against Amazon and Microsoft, WIRED reported Tuesday, citing current and former FTC employees.

Deleted posts included guidance about Amazon's alleged use of Ring camera data to train algorithms, Microsoft's $20 million settlement over Xbox children's data collection, and compliance standards for AI chatbots. New FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has pledged to pursue tech companies but with focus on alleged conservative censorship rather than data collection practices.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2040214/ftc-removes-posts-critical-of-amazon-microsoft-and-ai-companies?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-9 has returned to Earth safely after a stay of more than nine months aboard the International Space Station. The crew remained in space longer than expected due to issues with Boeing's Starliner capsule, which was originally scheduled to bring them home sooner.

While the mission has been politically fraught, the astronauts said in a rare space-to-earth interview last month that they were neither stranded nor abandoned. "That's been the rhetoric. That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck -- and I get it. We both get it," [NASA astronaut Butch] Wilmore said. "But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded." Wilmore added a request: "If you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let's change it to 'prepared and committed.' That's what we prefer..." CNN has more details on the arrival: Williams and Wilmore, alongside NASA's Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, safely splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida at 5:57 p.m. ET. The crew's highly anticipated return came after the crew climbed aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and departed the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET. Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov spent Tuesday morning and afternoon in orbit in the roughly 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide), gumdrop-shaped SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Gradually descending, the capsule carried the astronauts from the space station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, toward the thick inner layer of our planet's atmosphere.

Around 5 p.m. ET, the Crew Dragon capsule began firing its engines to begin the final phase of the journey: reentry. This leg of the journey is considered the most dangerous of any flight home from space. The jarring physics of hitting the atmosphere while traveling more than 22 times the speed of sound routinely heats the exterior of returning spacecraft to more than 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,926 degrees Celsius) and can trigger a communication blackout. After plunging toward home, the Crew Dragon spacecraft deployed two sets of parachutes in quick succession to further slow its descent. The capsule decelerated from orbital speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,359 kilometers per hour) to less than 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour) as the vehicle hit the ocean.

After the vehicle hit the ocean, a SpaceX rescue ship waiting nearby worked to haul the spacecraft out of the water. Williams and Wilmore and their crewmates will soon exit Dragon and take their first breaths of earthly air in nine months. Medical teams will evaluate the crew's health, as is routine after astronauts return from space, before deciding next steps. Ultimately, the NASA crew members will return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston. You can watch a recording of the re-entry and splashdown here.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2258246/starliner-astronauts-return-to-earth-after-more-than-9-months-in-space?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

U.S. music streaming services surpassed 100 million subscribers in 2024 [PDF] while industry revenue hit a record $14.9 billion, up 4% from the previous year, according to the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Physical media sales outpaced digital growth, with vinyl records increasing 7% to $1.4 billion, outselling CDs ($541 million) for the third consecutive year. Digital downloads plummeted 14.9%, now representing just 2% of industry revenue.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2052244/us-music-streaming-tops-100-million-subscribers-vinyl-outsells-cds-for-third-year?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Сегодня состоялся выпуск очередной стабильной версии браузера Vivaldi 7.2 от бывших разработчиков Opera Presto. В данном выпуске разработчики уделили много внимания как повышению скорости работы самого браузера, так и добавлению опций, повышающих скорость взаимодействия пользователей с браузером.
В частности, в новой версии были отмечены следующие изменения:

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Был полностью переработан выпадающий список адресной строки, включающий поисковые запросы, закладки, ранее введённые адреса и прочие данные. Помимо этого была оптимизирована обработка скорости поиска запрашиваемых доменов, что позволило значительно увеличить скорость загрузки страниц.

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В настройки быстрых клавиш добавлен новый раздел для рабочих пространств, позволяющий назначать комбинации клавиш для действий с пространствами.

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В настройках клавиатуры появился список приоритета команд, который позволяет сохранить за браузером указанные комбинации клавиш, даже если сайт может пытаться их использовать.

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Во встроенном почтовом клиенте также произошли изменения – теперь можно создавать из полученного сообщения задачу или событие календаря прямо из контекстного меню. Дополнительно была добавлена опция ручной сортировки почтовых учётных записей в списке.

Браузер распространяется бесплатно под закрытой лицензией, но исходный код доступен для изучения на сайте разработчиков.

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/proprietary/17916750

According to Politico, Gov. Gavin Newsom has distributed prepaid burner phones to around 100 California business leaders, giving them direct access to him and reinforcing his pro-business stance. "If you ever need anything, I'm a phone call away," read one of the notes. From the report: It was Newsom's idea, a representative said, and has already yielded some "valuable interactions." That arrangement surprised some people POLITICO spoke with, largely because Newsom is already known as an inveterate texter whose digits live in many business titans' contacts. He's also long been seen as more aligned with business interests than the Legislature, the proverbial adult in the room when private pillars like Silicon Valley need a sympathetic ear or a veto. But Newsom wanted to convey that he's intent on maintaining California's competitive edge. Phones are still going out.

The California Protocol Foundation picked up the tab. That organization gets money from businesses and nonprofits for gubernatorial expenses like trips abroad -- or, evidently, burner phones -- so taxpayers aren't on the hook. It also drew leftover funds from Newsom's inauguration account, which itself drew business, so in a roundabout way California's private sector helped fund phones nurturing ties with the private sector.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2220249/gavin-newsom-is-reportedly-sending-burner-phones-to-tech-ceos?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Trend Micro uncovered an eight-year-long spying campaign exploiting a Windows vulnerability involving malicious .LNK shortcut files, which attackers padded with whitespace to conceal commands. Despite being reported to Microsoft in 2023, the company considers it a UI issue rather than a security risk and has not prioritized a fix. The Register reports: The attack method is low-tech but effective, relying on malicious .LNK shortcut files rigged with commands to download malware. While appearing to point to legitimate files or executables, these shortcuts quietly include extra instructions to fetch or unpack and attempt to run malicious payloads. Ordinarily, the shortcut's target and command-line arguments would be clearly visible in Windows, making suspicious commands easy to spot. But Trend's Zero Day Initiative said it observed North Korea-backed crews padding out the command-line arguments with megabytes of whitespace, burying the actual commands deep out of sight in the user interface.

Trend reported this to Microsoft in September last year and estimates that it has been used since 2017. It said it had found nearly 1,000 tampered .LNK files in circulation but estimates the actual number of attacks could have been higher. "This is one of many bugs that the attackers are using, but this is one that is not patched and that's why we reported it as a zero day," Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at the Zero Day Initiative, told The Register. "We told Microsoft but they consider it a UI issue, not a security issue. So it doesn't meet their bar for servicing as a security update, but it might be fixed in a later OS version, or something along those lines."

After poring over malicious .LNK samples, the security shop said it found the vast majority of these files were from state-sponsored attackers (around 70 percent), used for espionage or information theft, with another 20 percent going after financial gain. Among the state-sponsored crews, 46 percent of attacks came from North Korea, while Russia, Iran, and China each accounted for around 18 percent of the activity.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2226205/microsoft-isnt-fixing-8-year-old-shortcut-exploit-abused-for-spying?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Italian newspaper Il Foglio claims to have published the world's first entirely AI-generated edition as part of a month-long experiment to explore AI's impact on journalism. The special four-page supplement, available in print and online, features AI-written articles, headlines, and reader letters. The only thing the human journalists provided were prompts. The Guardian reports: The front page of the first edition of Il Foglio AI carries a story referring to the US president, Donald Trump, describing the "paradox of Italian Trumpians" and how they rail against "cancel culture" yet either turn a blind eye, or worse, "celebrate" when "their idol in the US behaves like the despot of a banana republic." The front page also features a column headlined "Putin, the 10 betrayals," with the article highlighting "20 years of broken promises, torn-up agreements and words betrayed" by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

In a rare upbeat story about the Italian economy, another article points to the latest report from Istat, the national statistics agency, on the redistribution of income, which shows the country "is changing, and not for the worse" with salary increases for about 750,000 workers being among the positive effects of income tax reforms. On page 2 is a story about "situationships" and how young Europeans are fleeing steady relationships. The articles were structured, straightforward and clear, with no obvious grammatical errors. However, none of the articles published in the news pages directly quote any human beings.

The final page runs AI-generated letters from readers to the editor, with one asking whether AI will render humans "useless" in the future. "AI is a great innovation, but it doesn't yet know how to order a coffee without getting the sugar wrong," reads the AI-generated response.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2231255/italian-newspaper-says-it-has-published-worlds-first-ai-generated-edition?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Состоялся релиз проприетарного браузера Vivaldi 7.2, разрабатываемого на базе движка Chromium бывшими разработчиками движка Opera Presto. Сборки Vivaldi подготовлены для Linux, Windows и macOS. Изменения, вносимые в кодовую базу Chromium, проект распространяет под открытой лицензией. Интерфейс браузера написан на языке JavaScript с использованием библиотеки React, платформы Node.js, Browserify и различных готовых NPM-модулей. Реализация интерфейса доступна в исходных текстах, но под проприетарной лицензией.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62904

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [A] team of Korean researchers [describe] how they've engineered a bacterial strain that can make a useful polymer starting with nothing but glucose as fuel. The system they developed is based on an enzyme that the bacteria use when they're facing unusual nutritional conditions, and it can be tweaked to make a wide range of polymers. The researchers focused on the system bacterial cells use for producing polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). These chemicals are formed when the bacterial cells continue to have a good supply of carbon sources and energy, but they lack some other key nutrients needed to grow and divide. Under these circumstances, the cell will link together small molecules that contain a handful of carbons, forming a much larger polymer. When nutritional conditions improve, the cell can simply break down the polymer and use the individual molecules it contained.

The striking thing about this system is that it's not especially picky about the identity of the molecules it links into the polymer. So far, over 150 different small molecules have been found incorporated into PHAs. It appears that the enzyme that makes the polymer, PHA synthase, only cares about two things: whether the molecule can form an ester bond (PHAs are polyesters), and whether it can be linked to a molecule that's commonly used as an intermediate in the cell's biochemistry, Coenzyme A. Normally, PHA synthase forms links between molecules that run through an oxygen atom. But it's also possible to form a related chemical link that instead runs through a nitrogen atom, like those found on amino acids. There were no known enzymes, however, that catalyze these reactions. So, the researchers decided to test whether any existing enzymes could be induced to do something they don't normally do. [...]

Overall, the system they develop is remarkably flexible, able to incorporate a huge range of chemicals into a polymer. This should allow them to tune the resulting plastic across a wide range of properties. And, considering the bonds were formed via enzyme, the resulting polymer will almost certainly be biodegradable. There are, however, some negatives. The process doesn't allow complete control over what gets incorporated into the polymer. You can bias it toward a specific mix of amino acids or other chemicals, but you can't entirely stop the enzyme from incorporating random chemicals from the cell's metabolism into the polymer at some level. There's also the issue of purifying the polymer from all the rest of the cell components before incorporating it into manufacturing. Production is also relatively slow compared to large-scale industrial production. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2243230/researchers-engineer-bacteria-to-produce-plastics?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Доступен корректирующий выпуск Firefox 136.0.2, в котором устранено несколько проблем.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62906

Опубликован выпуск дистрибутива elementary OS 8.0.1, позиционируемого в качестве быстрой, открытой и заботящейся о конфиденциальности альтернативы Windows и macOS. Основное внимание в проекте уделяется качественному дизайну, нацеленному на создание простой в использовании системы, потребляющей минимальные ресурсы и обеспечивающей высокую скорость запуска. Пользователям предлагается собственное окружение рабочего стола Pantheon. Для загрузки подготовлены загрузочные iso-образы (3.3 ГБ), доступные для архитектуры amd64 (для бесплатной загрузки с сайта проекта в поле с суммой пожертвования необходимо ввести 0).

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62908

During the company's GTC 2025 keynote today, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced Isaac GR00T N1 -- the company's first open-source, pre-trained yet customizable foundation model designed to accelerate the development and capabilities of humanoid robots. "The age of generalist robotics is here," said Huang. "With Nvidia Isaac GR00T N1 and new data-generation and robot-learning frameworks, robotics developers everywhere will open the next frontier in the age of AI." The Verge reports: Huang demonstrated 1X's NEO Gamma humanoid robot performing autonomous tidying jobs using a post-trained policy built on the GR00T N1 model. [...] Other companies developing humanoid robots who have had early access to the GR00T N1 model include Boston Dynamics, the creators of Atlas; Agility Robotics; Mentee Robotics; and Neura Robotics. Originally announced as Project GR00T a year ago, the GR00T N1 foundation model utilizes a dual-system architecture inspired by human cognition.

System 1, as Nvidia calls it, is described as a "fast-thinking action model" that behaves similarly to human reflexes and intuition. It was trained on data collected through human demonstrations and synthetic data generated by Nvidia's Omniverse platform. System 2, which is powered by a vision language model, is a "slow-thinking model" that "reasons about its environment and the instructions it has received to plan actions." Those plans are passed along to System 1, which translates them into "precise, continuous robot movements" that include grasping, moving objects with one or two arms, as well as more complex multistep tasks that involve combinations of basic skills.

While the GR00T N1 foundation model is pretrained with generalized humanoid reasoning and skills, developers can customize its behavior and capabilities for specific needs by post-training it with data gathered from human demonstrations or simulations. Nvidia has made GR00T N1 training data and task evaluation scenarios available for download through Hugging Face and GitHub.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2312229/nvidia-says-the-age-of-generalist-robotics-is-here?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Представлен выпуск проекта OpenSilver 3.2, продолжающего развитие платформы Silverlight и позволяющего создавать интерактивные web-приложения при помощи технологий C#, F#, XAML и .NET. Скомпилированные при помощи OpenSilver приложения Silverlight могут работать в любых настольных и мобильных браузерах с поддержкой WebAssembly. Для разработки могут использоваться среда Visual Studio и редактор кода VS Code, поддерживающий работу в Windows, macOS и Linux. Код проекта написан на языке C# и распространяется под лицензией MIT.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62911

Проект SDL3Lite нацелен на воссоздание библиотеки SDL3 с поддержкой старых архитектур и операционных систем, при сохранении совместимости с SDL3 на уровне C API. С ограниченной функциональностью SDL3Lite уже поддерживает работу в Linux, начиная с Debian 3, и Windows, начиная с Windows 95. Из системных требований для работы графического API заявлена поддержка OpenGL 1.0, а 2D-отрисовки - OpenGL 1.2. В будущем автор планирует добавить поддержку Windows 3.1 и MS-DOS. Код написан на С++ и распространяется под лицензией BSL (Boost Software License).

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62909

Опубликованы результаты оценки влияния на производительность пересборки пакетов для Ubuntu с различными опциями и реализациями функций выделения памяти. Экспериментатору удалось на 90% (в 1.9 раза) повысить производительность пакета jq с инструментарием для обработки данных в формате JSON, путём обычной пересборки из того же пакета с исходным кодом, без внесения изменений в сам код. Производительность оценивалась через измерение времени выполнения типового фильтрующего запроса над данными GeoJSON, размером 500МБ.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=62912

16 марта, после семи лет активной разработки, состоялся значительный выпуск 3.0 графического редактора [ GIMP ]( https://www.gimp.org ) . Несмотря на то, что изначально основное внимание уделялось обновлению библиотеки графического интерфейса, этот релиз содержит множество новых функций и улучшений.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/multimedia/17917041#cut ) )

The abstract of a paper published on National Bureau of Economic Research: Ensuring broad access to the patent system is crucial for fostering innovation and promoting economic growth. To support this goal, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office offers reduced fees for small and micro entities. This paper investigates whether fee rates affect the filing of applications by small and micro entities. Exploiting recent fee reforms, the study evaluates the relationship between fee changes and the number of new entrants, controlling for potential confounding factors such as legislative changes. The findings suggest that fee reductions alone are insufficient to significantly increase participation in the patent system among small and micro entities.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/03/18/2047251/the-effect-of-application-fees-on-entry-into-patenting?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.