|
1825 Monetary Lane Suite #104 Carrollton, TX
Do a presentation at NTLUG.
What is the Linux Installation Project?
Real companies using Linux!
Not just for business anymore.
Providing ready to run platforms on Linux
|
Show Descriptions... (Show All)
(Single Column)
|
|
- ARCTIC Cooling Publishes ARCTIC Fan Controller Driver For Linux
A Linux driver has been published for the ARCTIC Fan Controller to be able to read fan speeds under Linux as well as setting the PWM fan speed for each of the ten fans supported by this controller. Making this driver all the more exciting is that ARCTIC Cooling is directly working on this driver rather than just being a community/third-party creation. Furthermore, ARCTIC Cooling is working on getting this driver to the upstream Linux kernel...
- Steam Survey Results Published For February 2026
Valve just published the latest Steam Survey monthly figures to provide insight on various software and hardware trends across this dominant gaming ecosystem. One of the most interesting measurements is the monthly changes in the size of the Linux gaming marketshare...
- DFI IRN556 3.5-inch SBC supports Atom x7000RE and Twin Lake CPUs
DFI has introduced the IRN556, a 3.5-inch single board computer supporting Intel Atom x7000RE “Amston Lake” processors and Intel Processor N-series “Twin Lake” parts. The board targets industrial and embedded deployments requiring extended temperature operation and flexible I/O expansion. The IRN556 supports Intel Atom x7211RE, x7433RE, and x7835RE processors with up to eight cores and […]
- Linux 7.0 Shows Off Nice Performance Gains For Databases In Small AMD EPYC Servers
Last week with my ongoing testing of the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel I found nice performance improvements for PostgreSQL and other workloads when testing on a 128-core AMD EPYC 9755 "Turin" server. Curious if those wins were due to optimizations focused on better scalability with today's "big" servers, I also ran some comparison Linux 7.0 benchmarks on the smaller AMD EPYC 4005 class servers too. Some nice wins carried over...
- More ASUS Desktop Motherboards Will Support Sensor Monitoring With Linux 7.1
ASUS desktop motherboards have been seeing broader sensor monitoring support on Linux in recent years. ASUS motherboards for Intel and AMD processors have been seeing more support added thanks to the open-source community with new additions to the likes of the ASUS-EC-Sensors driver and other hardware monitoring (HWMON) driver code. This is continuing for Linux 7.1...
- Firefox 149 beta develops a split personality
A handy feature you can already try in recent versionsThe new beta of the next version of Firefox lets you view two web pages side by side, with a split you can drag with your mouse.…
- Linux in Space: It's taking off
Linux has become the most popular operating system in the known universe. It may be ready to take off — again. In a big way.
- 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: March 1st, 2026
The 281st installment of the 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup is here for the week ending March 1st, 2026, keeping you updated on the most important developments in the Linux world.
- Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576 video decoder support lands in mainline Linux
Collabora has announced that support for the VDPU381 and VDPU383 video decoder IP cores used in Rockchip’s RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs has been merged into the upstream Linux kernel. The update brings improved hardware decoding support for H.264 and HEVC to mainline Linux on these platforms. The VDPU381 decoder is found in the RK3588, while […]
| |
|
|
- Apple Launches New M5 Chips, MacBook Pro, and First New Monitors In Years
Today, Apple updated the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air with support for its new M5 chips. It also unveiled a pair of all-new Studio Display XDR monitors. Longtime Slashdot reader jizmonkey shares details about the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, which look to be fairly major updates from the previous generation: Apple announced its newest CPUs today, which it claims has the fastest single-threaded performance in the world. Both the M5 Pro and M5 Max have eighteen-core designs, versus twelve or fourteen in the M4 Pro and fourteen or sixteen in the M4 Max. However, the number of higher-performing cores has been reduced significantly. In the older M4 designs, the chips had eight, ten, or twelve "performance" cores and four "efficiency" cores. In the M5 design, there are now only six higher-performing cores (now called "super" cores) and twelve lower-performing cores (now called "performance" cores). [Apple positions this "reduction" as a redesigned architecture with new core types.] The maximum amount of RAM remains the same at 128GB for the M5 Max (64GB for the M5 Pro), and GPU performance has increased. [The M5 Pro features up to a 20-core GPU, while the M5 Max scales up to 40 cores, each equipped with a Neural Accelerator. Apple also says the new architecture delivers over 4x peak GPU compute for AI compared to the previous generation, along with up to 35 percent faster performance in ray-traced graphics workloads.] Laptops with the new chips are available to order starting tomorrow and will be delivered starting March 11. As for the new XDR monitors, MacRumors highlights some of the key features in its reporting: Apple today introduced an all-new Studio Display XDR monitor with a 27-inch screen, mini-LED backlighting, 5K resolution, peak brightness of 2,000 nits for HDR content, up to a 120Hz refresh rate, Thunderbolt 5, and more. The new Studio Display XDR replaces Apple's former Pro Display XDR, which has been discontinued. Going forward, there are now two Studio Display models. Both new Studio Display models have the same overall design as the original model. Both models have a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera, but it now supports Desk View on the new models. Both models also feature an upgraded six-speaker system, with Apple advertising "30 percent deeper bass" compared to the previous model. Only the higher-end Studio Display XDR received a 120Hz refresh rate, mini-LED backlighting, increased brightness, and faster 140W pass-through charging. The regular Studio Display still has a 60Hz refresh rate and up to 600 nits of brightness. Both models have 27-inch displays with a 5K resolution. The new Studio Displays can be pre-ordered starting Wednesday, March 4, ahead of a Wednesday, March 11 launch. In the U.S., the regular Studio Display continues to start at $1,599, while the Studio Display XDR starts at $3,299.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- AI-Generated Art Can't Be Copyrighted After Supreme Court Declines To Review the Rule
The Supreme Court of the United States declined to review a case challenging the U.S. Copyright Office's stance that AI-generated works lack the required human authorship for copyright protection, leaving lower court rulings intact. The Verge reports: The Monday decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist from Missouri, appealed a court's decision to uphold a ruling that found AI-generated art can't be copyrighted. In 2019, the U.S. Copyright Office rejected Thaler's request to copyright an image, called A Recent Entrance to Paradise, on behalf of an algorithm he created. The Copyright Office reviewed the decision in 2022 and determined that the image doesn't include "human authorship," disqualifying it from copyright protection. After Thaler appealed the decision, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled in 2023 that "human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright." That ruling was later upheld in 2025 by a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. As reported by Reuters, Thaler asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling in October 2025, arguing it "created a chilling effect on anyone else considering using AI creatively." The U.S. federal circuit court also determined that AI systems can't patent inventions because they aren't human, which the U.S. Patent Office reaffirmed in 2024 with new guidance. The UK Supreme Court made a similar determination.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- ChatGPT Uninstalls Surged By 295% After Pentagon Deal
After OpenAI announced a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. uninstalls of ChatGPT surged 295% in a single day. Meanwhile, rival Anthropic "gained enough popularity to earn the number one spot on the App Store's Top Free Apps leaderboard," reports Engadget. TechCrunch reports: This data, which comes from market intelligence provider Sensor Tower, represents a sizable increase compared with ChatGPT's typical day-over-day uninstall rate of 9%, as measured over the past 30 days. [...] In addition, ChatGPT's download growth was impacted by the news of its DoD partnership, with its U.S. downloads dropping by 13% day-over-day on Saturday, shortly after the news of its deal went public. Those downloads continued to fall on Sunday, when they were down by 5% day-over-day. (Before the partnership was announced, the app's downloads had grown 14% day-over-day on Friday.) [...] Consumers are also sharing their opinions about OpenAI's deal in the app's ratings, where 1-star reviews for ChatGPT surged 775% on Saturday, then grew 100% day-over-day on Sunday, Sensor Tower said. Five-star reviews declined during the same period, dropping by 50%. Other third-party data providers back up Sensor Tower's findings.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Hacked Tehran Traffic Cameras Fed Israeli Intelligence Before Strike On Khamenei
An anonymous reader shares a CTech article with the caption: "A brilliantly executed operation." From the report: Years before the air strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Israeli intelligence had been quietly mapping the daily rhythms of Tehran. According to reporting by the Financial Times (paywalled), nearly all of the Iranian capital's traffic cameras had been hacked years earlier, their footage encrypted and transmitted to Israeli servers. One camera angle near Pasteur Street, close to Khamenei's compound, allowed analysts to observe the routines of bodyguards and drivers: where they parked, when they arrived and whom they escorted. That data was fed into complex algorithms that built what intelligence officials call a "pattern of life," detailed profiles including addresses, work schedules and, crucially, which senior officials were being protected and transported. The surveillance stream was one of hundreds feeding Israel's intelligence system, which combines signals interception from Unit 8200, human assets recruited by the Mossad and large-scale data analysis by military intelligence. When US and Israeli intelligence determined that Khamenei would attend a Saturday morning meeting at his compound, the opportunity was judged unusually favorable. Two people familiar with the operation told the FT that US intelligence provided confirmation from a human source that the meeting was proceeding as planned, a level of certainty required for a target of such magnitude. Israeli aircraft, reportedly airborne for hours, fired as many as 30 precision munitions. The strike was carried out in daylight, which the Israeli military said created tactical surprise despite heightened Iranian alertness. The Financial Times reports that the assassination was a political decision as much as a technological feat. Even during last year's 12-day war, when Israeli strikes killed more than a dozen Iranian nuclear scientists and senior military officials and disabled air defences through cyber operations and drones, Israel did not attempt to kill Khamenei. The capability to do so, however, had been built over decades. Former Mossad official Sima Shine told the FT that Israel's strategic focus on Iran dates back to a 2001 directive from then-prime minister Ariel Sharon instructing intelligence chief Meir Dagan to make the Islamic Republic the priority target. What distinguishes the latest operation, according to the FT, is the scale of automation. Target tracking that once required painstaking visual confirmation has increasingly been handled by algorithm-driven systems parsing billions of data points. One person familiar with the process described it as an "assembly line with a single product: targets." Further reading: America Used Anthropic's AI for Its Attack On Iran, One Day After Banning It
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Amazon Cloud Unit's Data Centers In UAE, Bahrain Damaged In Drone Strikes
sizzlinkitty shares a Reuters report detailing how drone strikes in the Middle East conflict with Iran damaged AWS data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, disrupting core cloud services and causing "prolonged" outages. Following the initial report, where Reuters said "objects" had triggered a fire at the data centers, the article was updated with additional information: A strike on the UAE facility marks the first time a major U.S. tech company's data center has been disrupted by military action. It raises questions around Big Tech's pace of expansion in the region. "In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impact to our infrastructure," Amazon's cloud unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) said in an update on its status page. "These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage," AWS said. "We are working to restore full service availability as quickly as possible, though we expect recovery to be prolonged given the nature of the physical damage involved," it added. Financial institutions that use AWS services have been affected by the outage, one person with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "Even as we work to restore these facilities, the ongoing conflict in the region means that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable," AWS said. The AWS outage disrupted a dozen core cloud services and the company advised customers to back up critical data and shift operations to servers in unaffected AWS regions. Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank said its platforms and mobile app were unavailable due to a region-wide IT disruption, although it did not directly link the outage to the AWS incident. "In previous conflicts, regional adversaries such as Iran and its proxies targeted pipelines, refineries, and oil fields in Gulf partner states. In the compute era, these actors could also target data centers, energy infrastructure supporting compute, and fiber chokepoints," Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies said last week.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- The 19th Century Silent Film That First Captured a Robot Attack
The Library of Congress has restored Gugusse et l'Automate, an 1897 short by Georges Melies that likely features the first robot ever shown on film. Long thought lost, the reel was discovered in a box of decaying nitrate films donated from a Michigan family collection. NPR reports: The film, which can be viewed on the Library of Congress' website, depicts a child-sized robot clown who grows to the size of an adult and then attacks a human clown with a stick. The human then decimates the machine with a hammer. In an Instagram post, Library of Congress moving image curator Jason Evans Groth said the film represents, "probably the first instance of a robot ever captured in a moving image." (The word "robot" didn't appear until 1921, when Czech dramatist Karel Capek coined it in his science fiction play R.U.R..) "Today, many of us are worried about AI and robots," said archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger, in an email to NPR. "Well, people were thinking about robots in 1897. Very little is new."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Superagers' 'Secret Ingredient' May Be the Growth of New Brain Cells
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: According to a study of 38 adult human brains donated to science, superagers -- people who retain exceptional memory as they age -- have roughly twice as many immature neurons as their peers who age more typically. Moreover, people with Alzheimer's disease show a marked reduction in neurogenesis compared to a normal baseline. [...] Led by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago, the team set out to examine a variety of postmortem hippocampal tissue samples to see if they could identify markers of neurogenesis -- and if different groups had any notable differences. The brain samples were donated from five groups: eight healthy young adults, aged between 20 and 40; eight healthy agers, aged between 60 and 93; six superagers, aged between 86 and 100; six individuals with preclinical Alzheimer's pathology, aged between 80 and 94; and 10 individuals with an Alzheimer's diagnosis, aged between 70 and 93. The young healthy adult brain tissue was first analyzed to establish the neurogenesis pathways in the adult brain. Then, they analyzed 355,997 individual cell nuclei isolated from the hippocampus, searching for three different stages of cell development: Stem cells, which can develop into neurons; neuroblasts, which are stem cells in the process of that development; and immature neurons, on the verge of functionality. The results were striking. "Superagers had twice the neurogenesis of the other healthy older adults," [says neuroscientist Orly Lazarov of the University of Illinois Chicago]. "Something in their brains enables them to maintain a superior memory. I believe hippocampal neurogenesis is the secret ingredient, and the data support that." That's an interesting result on its own, but the data from the individuals with preclinical Alzheimer's pathology and Alzheimer's diagnoses is where the real meat of the study sits. In the preclinical group, subtle molecular changes hinted that the system supporting new neuron growth was beginning to falter. In the Alzheimer's group, a clear drop in immature neurons was evident. A genetic analysis of the nuclei also showed that superager neural cells have increased gene activity linked to stronger synaptic connections, greater plasticity, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a critical protein for neural survival, growth, and maintenance. Taken together, these three things can be interpreted as resilience. The research has been published in the journal Nature.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Iowa County Rolls Out Extensive Zoning Rules For Data Centers
Linn County, Iowa has adopted what may be one of the nation's strictest local zoning ordinances for data centers, requiring detailed water studies, formal water-use agreements, 1,000-foot residential setbacks, noise and light limits, and infrastructure compensation. "But seated beneath a van-sized American flag hanging from the rafters of the drafty Palo Community Center gymnasium, residents asked for even stronger protections," reports Inside Climate News. "One by one, they approached the microphone at the front of the gym to voice concerns about water use, electricity rates, light pollution, the impacts of low-frequency noise on livestock, and the county's ability to enforce the terms of the ordinance. Some, including Dorothy Landt of Palo, called for a complete moratorium on new data center development." Landt asked: "Why has Linn County, Iowa, become a dumping ground for soon-to-be obsolete technology that spoils our landscape and robs us of our resources? While I admire the efforts of the Board of Supervisors to propose a data center ordinance, I would prefer to see all future data centers banned from Linn County." From the report: The county is already home to two major data center projects, operated by Google and QTS. Both are located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa's second-largest city, and are therefore subject to its laws. The new ordinance would apply only to unincorporated areas of the county, which make up more than two-thirds of its geographic footprint. [...] In drafting the ordinance, [Charlie Nichols, director of planning and development for Linn County] and his staff drew on the experiences of communities nationwide, meeting with local government officials in regions that have seen massive booms in data center development, including several counties in northern Virginia, the "data center capital of the world." As data center development balloons, many communities that initially zoned the operations as warehouses or standard commercial users are abandoning that practice, Nichols noted. The extreme energy and water demands of data centers simply cannot be accounted for by existing zoning frameworks, he said. "These are generational uses with generational infrastructure impacts, and treating them as a normal warehouse or normal commercial user is just not working." [...] The Linn County, Iowa, ordinance goes one step further than tightening existing zoning rules. Instead, it creates a new, exclusive-use zoning district for data centers, granting county officials the power to set specific application requirements and development standards for projects. No other counties in the state have introduced similar zoning requirements, said Nichols. In fact, few jurisdictions nationwide have. [...] From its first reading to final adoption, the ordinance has expanded to include language setting light pollution standards, requiring a waste management plan, including the Iowa DNR in the water-use agreement to address potential well interference issues and requiring an applicant-led public meeting before any zoning commission meetings. "I am very confident that no ordinance for data centers in Iowa is asking for more information or asking for more requirements to be met than our ordinance right now," said Nichols at the final reading. The Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance has said that it strongly supports current and future data center development in the area. The new ordinance is not an effective moratorium, Nichols said. He said he "strongly believes" that a data center can be built within the adopted framework.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- British Columbia To End Time Changes, Adopt Year-Round Daylight Time
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: The B.C. government says this Sunday will be the last time British Columbians have to change their clocks. The province will be permanently adopting daylight time and the March 8 "spring forward" will be the last time change, Premier David Eby announced Monday. "We are done waiting. British Columbia is going to change our clocks just one more time -- and then never again," Eby said. Residents will have eight months to prepare for Nov. 1, 2026, when the clocks would have been turned back one hour, but will now remain the same. B.C.'s new time zone will be called "Pacific Time," according to the province. Further reading: Permanent Standard Time Could Cut Strokes, Obesity Among Americans
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Apple Might Use Google Servers To Store Data For Its Upgraded AI Siri
Apple has reportedly asked Google to look into "seting up servers" for a Gemini-powered upgrade to Siri that meets Apple's privacy standards. The Verge reports: Apple had already announced in January that Google's Gemini AI models would help power the upgraded version of Siri it delayed last year, but The Information's report indicates Apple might lean even more on Google so it can catch up in AI. The original partnership announcement said that "the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology," and that the models would "help power future Apple Intelligence features," including "a more personalized Siri." While the announcement noted that Apple Intelligence would "continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute," it didn't specify if the new Siri would run on Google's cloud. Apple's Private Cloud Compute is not only underpowered but it's also underutilized in its current state, notes 9to5Mac, "with the company only using about 10% of its capacity on average, leading to some already-manufactured Apple servers to be sitting dormant on warehouse shelves."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- HBO Max and Paramount+ To Merge Into One Streaming Service
Paramount Skydance plans to combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single streaming platform following its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. "As we said, we do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers," said David Ellison, the company's CEO. "We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space." The deal still needs regulatory approval. The Washington Post reports: He added that Paramount didn't want to make changes to the HBO brand. "Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO," Ellison said, noting that his favorite HBO product is "Game of Thrones." If Justice Department regulators allow the deal to go through, it would place recent HBO Max hits, such as "The Pitt" and "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," alongside Paramount offerings including "South Park" and "Yellowstone." "They built a phenomenal brand," he said. "They are a leader in the space, and we just want them to continue doing more of it." The deal to buy Warner Bros., valued at about $110 billion, will almost surely attract regulatory scrutiny from the Justice Department because -- without divestments -- it places major swaths of the film, television and news industries under one roof: Warner Bros. and Paramount studios, HBO Max and Paramount+, and CBS and CNN would all have the same parent company. Ellison expressed confidence on the call that the deal wouldn't face hurdles with regulators.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Charter Gets FCC Permission To Buy Cox, Become Largest ISP In the US
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter Communications, operator of the Spectrum cable brand, has obtained Federal Communications Commission permission to buy Cox and surpass Comcast as the country's largest home Internet service provider. Charter has 29.7 million residential and business Internet customers compared to Comcast's 31.26 million. Buying Cox will give Charter another 5.9 million Internet customers. The FCC approved the deal on Friday, but the companies still need Justice Department approval and sign-offs from states including California and New York. Opponents of Charter's $34.5 billion acquisition told the FCC that eliminating Cox as an independent entity will make it easier for Charter and Comcast to raise prices. But the FCC dismissed those concerns on the grounds that Charter and Cox don't compete directly against each other in the vast majority of their territories. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's primary demand from companies seeking to merge has been to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies. In a press release (PDF), the Carr-led FCC said that "Charter has committed to new safeguards to protect against DEI discrimination," and that Charter's network-expansion plans will bring "faster broadband and lower prices" to rural areas. The merger was approved one day after Charter sent a letter to Carr outlining its actions to end DEI. Charter offers broadband and cable service in 41 states, while Cox does so in 18 states.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Microsoft Bans 'Microslop' On Its Discord, Then Locks the Server
Over the weekend, Windows Latest noticed that Microsoft's official Copilot Discord server began automatically blocking the term "Microslop." As shown in a screenshot, any message containing the word is automatically prevented from posting, and users receive a moderation notice explaining that the message includes language deemed inappropriate under the server's rules. From the report: Windows Latest found that sending a message with the word "Microslop" inside the official Copilot Discord server immediately triggers an automated moderation response. The message does not appear publicly in the channel, and instead, only the sender sees the notice stating that the content is blocked by the server because it contains a phrase deemed inappropriate. Of course, the internet rarely leaves things there. Shortly after Windows Latest posted about Copilot Discord server blocking Microslop on X, users began experimenting in the server with variations such as "Microsl0p" using a zero instead of the letter "o." Predictably, those versions slipped past the filter. Keyword moderation has always been something of a cat-and-mouse game, and this isn't any different. What started as a simple keyword filter quickly snowballed into users deliberately testing the restriction and posting variations of the blocked term. Accounts that included "Microslop" in their messages first got banned from messaging again. Not long after, access to parts of the server was restricted, with message history hidden and posting permissions disabled for many users.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Motorola Partners With GrapheneOS
At MWC 2026, Motorola announced a partnership with the GrapheneOS Foundation to bring the hardened, Google-free Android variant to future devices. Until now, the OS had been designed exclusively for Google Pixel phones. "We are thrilled to be partnering with Motorola to bring GrapheneOS's industry-leading privacy and security-focused mobile operating system to their next-generation smartphone," a GrapheneOS statement reads. "This collaboration marks a significant milestone in expanding the reach of GrapheneOS, and we applaud Motorola for taking this meaningful step towards advancing mobile security." GrapheneOS is a privacy and security focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility developed as a non-profit open source project. It's often referred to as the "de-Googled OS" because Google apps are not available by default. However, users can install them via a sandboxed version of Google Play Services.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Editor At 184-Year-Old Ohio Newspaper Pushes To Let AI Draft News Articles
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's largest newspaper, has begun to feature a new byline. On recent articles about an ice carving festival, a medical research discovery and a roaming pack of chicken-slaying dogs, a reporter's name is paired with the words "Advance Local Express Desk." It means: This article was drafted by artificial intelligence. "This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff," reads a note at the bottom of each robot-penned piece, differentiating it from those still written primarily by journalists. The disclosure has done little to stem the backlash that caromed across the news industry after the paper's editor, Chris Quinn, published a Feb. 14 column lamenting that a fresh-out-of-college job applicant withdrew from a reporting fellowship when they found out the position included no writing -- just filing notes to an AI writing tool. "Artificial intelligence is not bad for newsrooms. It's the future of them," Quinn wrote, adding that "by removing writing from reporters' workloads, we've effectively freed up an extra workday for them each week." [...] Quinn, for his part, says his paper's use of AI to find, draft and edit stories is a success story that others must emulate if they want to survive. "It's a tool," he said in a phone interview last week. "If AI can do part of our job, then why not let it -- and have people do the part it can't do?" He added that the paper's embrace of technology -- including using AI to write stories summarizing its reporters' podcasts and its readers' letters to the editor -- is already boosting its bottom line, helping it retain staff at a time when other newspapers are shrinking or even shutting down. Just 130 miles east of Cleveland, the 240-year-old Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said in January that it will close its doors this spring. Quinn, who has led the Plain Dealer's newsroom since 2013, said its newsroom has shrunk from some 400 employees in the late 1990s to just 71 today. Over the past three years, Quinn has implemented a suite of AI tools with various purposes: transcribing local government meetings, scraping municipal websites for story leads, cleaning up typos in story drafts, suggesting headlines and helping reporters draft follow-ups to articles they've already written. He said he is particularly pleased with an AI tool that turns podcasts by the paper's reporters into stories for the website, which he said generated more than 10 million page views last year. He has documented those efforts in letters to readers and sought their feedback. But the paper's latest experiment -- using AI to turn reporters' notes into full story drafts -- has aroused indignation online and anxiety within the paper's ranks.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
|
- Accenture down to buy Downdetector as part of $1.2 billion deal
The deal includes all Ookla assets including Speedtest, Ekahau, and RootMetrics
Accenture is going to get a closer look into how web traffic is moving...or not moving. The company has announced plans to buy Downdetector parent company Ookla from Ziff Davis as part of a package deal with other software for $1.2 billion.…
- Turns out most cybercriminals are old enough to know better
Law enforcement data shows profit-driven cybercrime is dominated by 35- to 44-year-olds, not script kiddies
Contrary to what some believe, cybercrime is not a kids' game. Middle-aged adults, not teenagers, now make up the biggest chunk of people getting busted.…
- Western governments seek to lock down 6G before it even exists
Telecoms coalition wants to avoid another 5G-style vendor scramble with early security guardrails
A group of Western governments has launched a fresh bid to shape 6G before it's even standardized, unveiling a set of security and resilience principles to bake supply chain controls and cyber safeguards into the next generation of mobile networks.…
- AWS backs Open VSX as Rust survey shows VS Code decline
AI-first editors and agent-driven tooling intensify competition in the IDE market
The Open VSX registry, used for installing extensions in editors compatible with Visual Studio Code (VS Code), will run on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure in Europe as part of a "strategic investment" from the cloud giant.…
- Bank of England says it can run £431M settlement system without Accenture
Deputy governor tells MPs central bank now has in-house skills and IP to maintain revamped RTGS
As the last Accenture employee clocked off from supporting the Bank of England's £431 million Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street was assured it would no longer depend on the global consultancy.…
- Chrome Gemini panel became privilege escalator for rogue extensions
High-severity flaw let malicious add-ons access system via browser's embedded AI feature
Security boffins have discovered a high-severity bug in Google Chrome that allowed malicious extensions to hijack its Gemini Live AI panel and inherit privileges they were never meant to have.…
- Brussels urged to pay 'sovereignty premium' to narrow China battery gap
Analysis claims €500 per EV could secure local production and cut reliance on foreign supply chains
Europe's EV battery cost gap with China – currently around 90 percent – could shrink to roughly 30 percent by 2030 if Brussels is willing to pay what campaigners call a "sovereignty premium."…
- Gamers furious as Brit studio Cloud Imperium quietly admits to data breach
Slow disclosure and odd reassurance that exposing names and contact details won't be a problem isn't going down well
Gamers are ready to unleash their mightiest virtual weapons and point them at British games studio Cloud Imperium, after it sat on news of a data breach and then announced it without fanfare.…
- Nvidia burns $4B to light up American photonics manufacturing
Coherent, Lumentum each walk away with $2B in cash and a multi-billion purchase commitment
Nvidia is dipping into its war chest once again this week, investing $2 billion each in Coherent and Lumentum to lock in supply of the vendors' respective silicon photonics technologies.…
- Iran's cyberwar has begun
Expect elevated activity for the foreseeable future
Iranian hackers have launched spying expeditions, digital probes, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in the wake of the US and Israel launching missile strikes over the weekend, and security researchers urge organizations to expect more cyber intrusions as the war continues.…
- Motorola partners with GrapheneOS for future phones
Don't expect to see compatible hardware before 2027
GrapheneOS is headed to Motorola smartphones in 2027, pending hardware from the Lenovo-owned brand that satisfies the privacy-focused Android fork's requirements.…
- US struck Iran with copies of its own drones
Iran's own technology reverse engineered and used against it.
The Pentagon has confirmed that US forces struck Iranian targets using weapons that are copies of Iran's own Shahed 136 suicide drones.…
- UK businesses told to brace cyber defenses amid Iran conflict risk
NCSC urges all to review posture as escalating tensions increase risk of indirect digital spillover
The UK's cybersecurity agency is warning British organizations to brace for potential digital blowback as the Middle East conflict spills further into the online world.…
- Singapore eyes barge-based hydrogen power for datacenters
Saves real estate by putting the power on the water
Datacenters increasingly want dedicated power, and Singapore has a unique solution. Bridge Data Centres (BDC) and Concord New Energy (CNE) are working to put hydrogen power generators on barges, saying that this arrangement is particularly suited to the local environment.…
- Stop macOS 26 nagging with one tiny policy tweak
Trick uses a simple configuration profile to convince your Mac that upgrading isn't allowed
Averse to "liquid glass"? Are you happy enough with your Mac as it is? Try this local policy and banish those upgrade nag screens for a few months.…
- Fly me to the Moon: NASA reshuffles the Artemis card deck
Artemis III now to follow in Apollo 9's footsteps, 2028 landing still planned for Artemis IV
NASA has reshuffled its Artemis program, pushing the first crewed lunar landing in more than half a century back to Artemis IV, with Artemis III performing a check-out of the lunar lander in Earth orbit.…
- SAP writes $480M check to finally end IP legal spat with Teradata
A joint venture from 2008 led to years of claims and counter-claims between the data whizzkids
Data warehousing and analytics biz Teradata and SAP have ended their long-running legal dispute after the German ERP vendor agreed to cough up $480 million to bring the fighting to a close.…
- Memory scalpers hunt scarce DRAM with bot blitz
We can remember it for you wholesale, and sell it back to you for big bucks
Web scraping bots are increasing the pressure on the tech supply chain by scouring sites for DRAM, so their minders can snap up increasingly scarce inventory and resell it for a quick profit.…
- Firefox 149 beta develops a split personality
A handy feature you can already try in recent versions
The new beta of the next version of Firefox lets you view two web pages side by side, with a split you can drag with your mouse.…
- Iran all but vanishes from the global internet amid US-Israel strikes
Official monitoring shows connectivity collapsing to near-zero
Iran's internet has plunged into a near-total blackout, with traffic down to around 1 percent of normal levels and connectivity described as "close to zero" as authorities curb access amid widening regional conflict.…
- Server crashes traced to one very literal knee-jerk reaction
Oh, the contortions required to debug strange errors!
Who, Me? A weekend of unwinding is behind us, so The Register returns to work on Monday with a fresh installment of "Who, Me?" – the reader-contributed column that reveals how you got in a tangle, and then extricated yourself.…
- OpenAI’s Altman says Pentagon set ‘scary precedent’ binning Anthropic
Signs a deal with Washington anyway, says he’s kept control of killer robots by allowing only cloudy AI, with guardrails
OpenAI has signed a deal with the United States Department of War (DoW) that allows use of its advanced AI systems in classified environments, and urged the Pentagon to make the same terms available to its rivals.…
- Lenovo shows off snap-together laptop with removable keyboard, screen, and ports
New ThinkPads also come in blue, get perfect fixability score
If you own a desktop computer, you're used to swapping parts and peripherals around, but most laptops are closed boxes with few ways to modify them. Lenovo's new ThinkBook Modular AI PC concept shows what happens when you can remove a screen, a keyboard, and even blocks of ports from a mobile PC.…
- OpenClaw, but in containers: Meet NanoClaw
A smaller, security-conscious take on the viral AI agent platform
Interview Ideally, you shouldn't have to defend yourself against your own AI agent. But we don't live in an ideal world and an unrestrained agent can cause a ton of damage.…
- SaaS-pocalypse chatter is doomster pr0n. It would be nice if enterprise IT were boring again
Lost among the investor froth, someone has to do all the boring stuff. And they'll probably be around for the next spin of the hype cycle
Opinion Say goodbye to the SaaS-pocalypse theory, which posits that advances in AI will bring the software-as-a-service market to its knees. Say hello to "a feedback loop with no natural brake." Or doomster porn, as others would have it.…
- Double whammy: Steaelite RAT bundles data theft, ransomware in one evil tool
Credential and cryptocurrency theft, live surveillance, ransomware - an attacker's Swiss Army knife
A new remote access trojan (RAT) being sold on cybercrime networks enables double extortion attacks on Windows machines by bundling ransomware and data theft, along with credential and cryptocurrency stealers, live surveillance, and a whole host of other illicit capabilities, all controllable from a centralized dashboard.…
| |
|
|
|
