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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
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- Debian Trixie: FFmpeg Critical Denial of Service and Code Exec DSA-6073-1
Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the FFmpeg multimedia framework, which could result in denial of service or potentially the execution of arbitrary code if malformed files/streams are processed. For the stable distribution (trixie), this problem has been fixed in version 7:7.1.3-0+deb13u1.
- Debian: libpng Critical DoS Update DLA-4396-1 CVE-2025-64505
Multiple vulnerabilties have been found in libpng, the official PNG reference library, allowing information disclosure via out-of-bounds read, denial of service via application crash, or heap corruption with potential for arbitrary code execution.
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- PSoC Edge E84-Based Handheld Runs RT-Thread for Local Machine Learning
RT-Thread has launched a Crowd Supply campaign for the Edgi-Talk, a handheld reference platform built for hardware-accelerated machine learning. Based on Infineon’s PSoC Edge E84 architecture, it targets smart home, wearable, and industrial interfaces that rely on local inference and responsive voice interaction. The core of the system is the Infineon PSoC Edge E84, which […]
- Flowblade Video Editor May Go Wayland-Only As Part Of GTK4 Port
Flowblade 2.24 released today as the newest version of this open-source, non-linear video editing application. Flowblade 2.24 brings a number of refinements while also interesting is their commentary concerning the future with Wayland and GTK4 porting...
- Palm-sized Mini PC NAS offers four M.2 bays and dual 2.5GbE ports
Youyeetoo has introduced the NestDisk, a compact mini-PC NAS built around Intel’s Alder Lake-N architecture. The system integrates four M.2 NVMe slots in a chassis similar to an external drive enclosure, targeting home lab, soft routing, and media server deployments. The device is powered by the Intel Processor N150, a quad-core CPU within the Alder […]
- Linux Distros Designed for Former Windows Users Are Picking Up Steam
For years, Windows users frustrated with constant changes, aggressive updates, and growing system bloat have flirted with switching to Linux. But 2025 marks a noticeable shift: a new generation of Linux distributions built specifically for ex-Windows users is gaining real traction. One of the standout examples is Bazzite, a gaming-optimized Fedora-based distro that has quickly become a go-to choice for people abandoning Windows in favor of a cleaner, more customizable experience.
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- All of Russia's Porsches Were Bricked By a Mysterious Satellite Outage
An anonymous reader shared this report from Autoblog:Imagine walking out to your car, pressing the start button, and getting absolutely nothing. No crank, no lights on the dash, nothing. That's exactly what happened to hundreds of Porsche owners in Russia last week. The issue is with the Vehicle Tracking System, a satellite-based security system that's supposed to protect against theft. Instead, it turned these Porsches into driveway ornaments. The issue was first reported at the end of November, with owners reporting identical symptoms of their cars refusing to start or shutting down soon after ignition. Russia's largest dealership group, Rolf, confirmed that the problem stems from a complete loss of satellite connectivity to the VTS. When it loses its connection, it interprets the outage as a potential theft attempt and automatically activates the engine immobilizer. The issue affects all models and engine types, meaning any Porsche equipped with the system could potentially disable itself without warning. The malfunction impacts Porsche models dating back to 2013 that have the factory VTS installed... When the VTS connection drops, the anti-theft protocol kicks in, cutting fuel delivery and locking down the engine completely.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Can This Simple Invention Convert Waste Heat Into Electricity?
Nuclear engineer Lonnie Johnson worked on NASA's Galileo mission, has more than 140 patents, and invented the Super Soaker water gun.But now he's working on "a potential key to unlock a huge power source that's rarely utilized today," reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. [Alternate URL here.] Waste heat...The Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter, or JTEC, has few moving parts, no combustion and no exhaust. All the work to generate electricity is done by hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. Inside the device, pressurized hydrogen gas is separated by a thin, filmlike membrane, with low pressure gas on one side and high pressure gas on the other. The difference in pressure in this "stack" is what drives the hydrogen to compress and expand, creating electricity as it circulates. And unlike a fuel cell, it does not need to be refueled with more hydrogen. All that's needed to keep the process going and electricity flowing is a heat source. As it turns out, there are enormous amounts of energy vented or otherwise lost from industrial facilities like power plants, factories, breweries and more.Between 20% and 50% of all energy used for industrial processes is dumped into the atmosphere and lost as waste heat, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The JTEC works with high temperatures, but the device's ability to generate electricity efficiently from low-grade heat sources is what company executives are most excited about.Inside JTEC's headquarters, engineers show off a demonstration unit that can power lights and a sound system with water that's roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit — below the boiling point and barely warm enough to brew a cup of tea, said Julian Bell, JTEC's vice president of engineering. Comas Haynes, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute specializing in thermal and hydrogen system designs, agrees the company could "hit a sweet spot" if it can capitalize on lower temperature heat... For Johnson, the potential application he's most excited about lies beneath our feet.Geothermal energy exists naturally in rocks and water beneath the Earth's surface at various depths. Tapping into that resource through abandoned oil and gas wells — a well-known access point for underground heat — offers another opportunity."You don't need batteries and you can draw power when you need it from just about anywhere," Johnson said. Right now, the company is building its first commercial JTEC unit, which is set to be deployed early next year. Mike McQuary, JTEC's CEO and the former president of the pioneering internet service provider MindSpring, said he couldn't reveal the customer, but said it's a "major Southeast utility company." "Crossing that bridge where you have commercial customers that believe in it and will pay for it is important," McQuary said... On top of some initial seed money, the company brought in $30 million in a Series A funding in 2022 — money that allowed the company to move to its Lee + White headquarters and hire more than 30 engineers. McQuary said it expects to begin another round of fundraising soon. "Johnson, meanwhile, hasn't stopped working on new inventions," the article points out. "He continues to refine the design for his solid-state battery..."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Why Meetings Can Harm Employee Well-Being
Phys.org republishes this article from The Conversation:On average, managers spend 23 hours a week in meetings. Much of what happens in them is considered to be of low value, or even entirely counterproductive. The paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings... in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones... A 2015 handbook laid the groundwork for the nascent field of "Meeting Science". Among other things, the research revealed that the real issue may not be the number of meetings, but rather how they are designed, the lack of clarity about their purpose, and the inequalities they (often unconsciously) reinforce... Faced with what we call meeting madness, the solution is not to eliminate meetings altogether, but to design them better. It begins with a simple but often forgotten question: why are we meeting...? The goal should not be to have fewer meetings, but better ones. Meetings that respect everyone's time and energy. Meetings that give a voice to all. Meetings that build connection. Slashdot reader ShimoNoSeki shares an obligatory XKCD comic...
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- EU Urged to Soften 2035 Ban on Internal Combustion Engine Cars
Friday six European Union countries "asked the European Commission to water down an effective ban on the sale of internal combustion engine cars slated for 2035," reports ReutersThe countries have asked the EU Commission to allow the sale of hybrid cars or vehicles powered by other, existing or future, technologies "that could contribute to the goal of reducing emissions" beyond 2035, a joint letter seen by Reuters showed on Friday. The letter was signed by the prime ministers of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. They also asked for low-carbon and renewable fuels to be included in the plan to reduce the carbon emissions from transportation... Since they adopted a regulation that all new vehicles from 2035 should have zero emissions in March 2023, EU countries are now having second thoughts. Back then, the outlook for battery electric vehicles was positive, but carmakers' efforts have later collided with the reality of lower-than-expected demand and fierce competition from China. Car and Drive reports that Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany also "wants to allow exceptions for plug-in hybrids, extended-range EVs, and 'highly efficient' combustion vehicles beyond the current 2035 deadline." They cite a report in Automotive News.The European Commission hasn't made any official changes yet, but mounting pressure suggests that a revised plan could be coming soon.... Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, was cited by the German paper Handelsblatt as saying that the EU "will take all technological advances into account when reassessing fleet emission limits, including combustion engines running on e-fuels and biofuels." And these renewable products will apparently be key pieces of the puzzle. BMW uses a vegetable-oil-derived fuel called HVO 100 in its diesel products throughout Europe. The plant-oil-based fuel reportedly reduces tailpipe emissions by 90 percent compared with traditional diesel. For its part, Porsche has been working on producing synthetic fuel at a plant in Chile since 2022. The European Commission is set to meet on December 10. At that time, the body is expected to assemble a package of proposals to help out the struggling European automotive industry, though the actual announcement may be pushed to a later date. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- College Students Flock To A New Major: AI
AI is the second-largest major at M.I.T. after computer science, reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here and here.) Though that includes students interested in applying AI in biology and health care — it's just the beginning:This semester, more than 3,000 students enrolled in a new college of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity at the University of South Florida in Tampa.At the University of California, San Diego, 150 first-year students signed up for a new A.I. major. And the State University of New York at Buffalo created a stand-alone "department of A.I. and society," which is offering new interdisciplinary degrees in fields like "A.I. and policy analysis...." [I]nterest in understanding, using and learning how to build A.I. technologies is soaring, and schools are racing to meet rising student and industry demand. Over the last two years, dozens of U.S. universities and colleges have announced new A.I. departments, majors, minors, courses, interdisciplinary concentrations and other programs. "This is so cool to me to have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this," one 18-year-old told the New York Times. Their article points out 62% of America's computing programs reported drops in undergraduate enrollment this fall, according to a report in October from the Computing Research Association. "One reason for the dip: student employment concerns." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- No Rise in Radiation Levels at Chernobyl, Despite Damage from February's Drone Strike
UPDATE (12/7): The New York Times clarifies today that the damage at Chernobyl hasn't led to a rise in radiation levels:"If there was to be some event inside the shelter that would release radioactive materials into the space inside the New Safe Confinement, because this facility is no longer sealed to the outside environment, there's the potential for radiation to come out," said Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace who has monitored nuclear power plants in Ukraine since 2022 and last visited Chernobyl on October 31. "I have to say I don't think that's a particularly serious issue at the moment, because they're not actively decommissioning the actual sarcophagus." The I.A.E.A. also said there was no permanent damage to the shield's load-bearing structures or monitoring systems. A spokesman for the agency, Fredrik Dahl, said in a text message on Sunday that radiation levels were similar to what they were before the drone hit. But "A structure designed to prevent radioactive leakage at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine is no longer operational," Politico reported Saturday, "after Russian drones targeted it earlier this year, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog has found."[T]he large steel structure "lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability" when its outer cladding was set ablaze after being struck by Russian drones, according to a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Beyond that, there was "no permanent damage to its load-bearing structures or monitoring systems," it said. "Limited temporary repairs have been carried out on the roof, but timely and comprehensive restoration remains essential to prevent further degradation and ensure long-term nuclear safety," IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in astatement. The Guardian has pictures of the protective shield — incuding the damage from the drone strike. The shield is the world's largest movable land structure, reports CNN:The IAEA, which has a permanent presence at the site, will "continue to do everything it can to support efforts to fully restore nuclear safety and security," Grossi said.... Built in 2010 and completed in 2019, it was designed to last 100 years and has played a crucial role in securing the site. The project cost €2.1 billion and was funded by contributions from more than 45 donor countries and organizations through the Chernobyl Shelter Fund, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which in 2019 hailed the venture as "the largest international collaboration ever in the field of nuclear safety."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- OpenAI Insists Target Links in ChatGPT Responses Weren't Ads But 'Suggestions' - But Turns Them Off
A hardware security response from ChatGPT ended with "Shop for home and groceries. Connect Target." But "There are no live tests for ads" on ChatGPT, insists Nick Turley, OpenAI's head of ChatGPT. Posting on X.com, he said "any screenshots you've seen are either not real or not ads." Engadget reportsThe OpenAI exec's explanation comes after another post from former xAI employee Benjamin De Kraker on X that has gained traction, which featured a screenshot showing an option to shop at Target within a ChatGPT conversation. OpenAI's Daniel McAuley responded to the post, arguing that it's not an ad but rather an example of app integration that the company announced in October. [To which De Kraker responded "when brands inject themselves into an unrelated chat and encourage the user to go shopping at their store, that's an ad. The more you pretend this isn't an ad because you guys gave it a different name, the less users like or trust you."] However, the company's chief research officer, Mark Chen, also replied on X that they "fell short" in this case, adding that "anything that feels like an ad needs to be handled with care." "We've turned off this kind of suggestion while we improve the model's precision," Chen wrote on X. "We're also looking at better controls so you can dial this down or off if you don't find it helpful."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- How Home Assistant Leads a 'Local-First Rebellion'
It runs locally, a free/open source home automation platform connecting all your devices together, regardless of brand. And GitHub's senior developer calls it "one of the most active, culturally important, and technically demanding open source ecosystems on the planet," with tens of thousands of contributors and millions of installations. That's confirmed by this year's "Octoverse" developer survey...Home Assistant was one of the fastest-growing open source projects by contributors, ranking alongside AI infrastructure giants like vLLM, Ollama, and Transformers. It also appeared in the top projects attracting first-time contributors, sitting beside massive developer platforms such as VS Code... Home Assistant is now running in more than 2 million households, orchestrating everything from thermostats and door locks to motion sensors and lighting. All on users' own hardware, not the cloud. The contributor base behind that growth is just as remarkable: 21,000 contributors in a single year... At its core, Home Assistant's problem is combinatorial explosion. The platform supports "hundreds, thousands of devices... over 3,000 brands," as [maintainer Franck Nijhof] notes. Each one behaves differently, and the only way to normalize them is to build a general-purpose abstraction layer that can survive vendor churn, bad APIs, and inconsistent firmware. Instead of treating devices as isolated objects behind cloud accounts, everything is represented locally as entities with states and events. A garage door is not just a vendor-specific API; it's a structured device that exposes capabilities to the automation engine. A thermostat is not a cloud endpoint; it's a sensor/actuator pair with metadata that can be reasoned about. That consistency is why people can build wildly advanced automations. Frenck describes one particularly inventive example: "Some people install weight sensors into their couches so they actually know if you're sitting down or standing up again. You're watching a movie, you stand up, and it will pause and then turn on the lights a bit brighter so you can actually see when you get your drink. You get back, sit down, the lights dim, and the movie continues." A system that can orchestrate these interactions is fundamentally a distributed event-driven runtime for physical spaces. Home Assistant may look like a dashboard, but under the hood it behaves more like a real-time OS for the home... The local-first architecture means Home Assistant can run on hardware as small as a Raspberry Pi but must handle workloads that commercial systems offload to the cloud: device discovery, event dispatch, state persistence, automation scheduling, voice pipeline inference (if local), real-time sensor reading, integration updates, and security constraints. This architecture forces optimizations few consumer systems attempt. "If any of this were offloaded to a vendor cloud, the system would be easier to build," the article points out. "But Home Assistant's philosophy reverses the paradigm: the home is the data center..." As Nijhof says of other vendor solutions, "It's crazy that we need the internet nowadays to change your thermostat."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Why Gen Z is Using Retro Tech
"People in their teens and early 20s are increasingly turning to old school tech," reports the BBC, "in a bid to unplug from the online world."Amazon UK told BBC Scotland News that retro-themed products surged in popularity during its Black Friday event, with portable vinyl turntables, Tamagotchis and disposable cameras among their best sellers. Retailers Currys and John Lewis also said they had seen retro gadgets making a comeback with sales of radios, instant cameras and alarm clocks showing big jumps. While some people scroll endlessly through Netflix in search of their next watch, 17-year-old Declan prefers the more traditional approach of having a DVD in his hands. He grew up surrounded by his gran's collection and later bought his own after visiting a shop with a friend. "The main selling point for me is the cases," he says. Streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ dominate the market but Declan says he values ownership. "It's nice to have something you own instead of paying for subscriptions all the time," he says. "If I lost access to streaming tomorrow, I'd still have my favourite movies ready to watch." He admits DVDs are a "dying way of watching movies" but that makes them cheaper. "I think they're just cool, there's something authentic about having DVDs," he says. "These things are generations old, it's nice to have them available." The BBC also writes that one 21-year-old likes the "deliberate artistry" of traditional-camera photography — and the nostalgic experience of using one. They interview a 20-year-old who says vinyl records have a "more authentic sound" — and he appreciates having the physical disc and jacket art. And one 21-year-old even tracked down the handheld PlayStation Portable he'd used as a kid...
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Is Netflix Trying to Buy Warner Bros. or Kill It?
Why does Netflix want to buy Warner Bros, asks the chief film critic at the long-running motion-picture magazine Variety. "It is hard, at this moment, to resist the suspicion that the ultimate reason... is to eliminate the competition."[Warner Bros. is] one of the only companies that's keeping movies as we've known them alive... Some people think movies are going the way of the horse-and-buggy. A company like Warner Bros. has been the tangible proof that they're not. Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, has a different agenda. He has been unabashed about declaring that the era of movies seen in movie theaters is an antiquated concept. This is what he believes — which is fine. I think a more crucial point is that this is what he wants. The Netflix business strategy isn't simply about being the most successful streaming company. It's about changing the way people watch movies; it's about replacing what we used to call moviegoing with streaming. (You could still call it moviegoing, only now you're just going into your living room.) It in no way demonizes Sarandos — he'd probably take it as a compliment — to say that there's a world-domination aspect to the Netflix grand strategy. Sarandos's vision is to have the entire planet wired, with everyone watching movies and shows at home. There's a school of thought that sees this an advance, a step forward in civilization. "Remember the days when we used to have to go out to a movie theater? How funny! Now you can just pop up a movie — no trailers! — with the click of a remote...." Once he owns Warner Bros., will Sarandos keep using the studio to make movies that enjoy powerful runs in theaters the way Sinners and Weapons and One Battle After Another did? In the statement he made to investors and media today, Sarandos said, "I'd say right now, you should count on everything that is planned on going to the theater through Warner Bros. will continue to go to the theaters through Warner Bros." He added, "But our primary goal is to bring first-run movies to our members, because that's what they're looking for." Not exactly a ringing declaration of loyalty to the religion of cinema. And given Sarandos's track record, there is no reason to believe that he will suddenly change his spots. A letter sent to Congress by a group of anonymous Hollywood producers, who voiced "grave concerns" about Netflix buying Warner Bros., stated, "They have no incentive to support theatrical exhibition, and they have every incentive to kill it." If that happens, though, I have no doubt that Sarandos will be smart enough to do it gradually. Warner Bros. films will probably be released in a "normal" fashion...for a while. Maybe a year or two. But five years from now? There is good reason to believe that by then, a "Warner Bros. movie," even a DC comic-book extravaganza, would be a streaming-only release, or maybe a two-weeks-in-theaters release, all as a more general way of trying to shorten the theatrical window, which could be devastating to the movie business. Do we know all this to be true? No, but the indicators are somewhat overpowering. (He's been explicit about the windows...) An anonymous group of "concerned feature film producers" sent an open letter to Congress warning Netflix would "effectively hold a noose around the theatrical marketplace," reports Variety. And CNN also got this quote from Cinema United, a trade association that represents more than 30,000 movie screens in the United States. "Netflix's stated business model does not support theatrical exhibition," Cinema United President/CEO Michael O'Leary said in a statement. "In fact, it is the opposite."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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- China’s first reusable rocket explodes, but its onboard Ethernet network flew
PLUS: South Korea to strengthen security standards; Canon closes Chinese printer plant; APAC datacenter capacity to triple by 2029; And more
Asia In Brief Chinese rocketry outfit LandSpace last week flew what it hoped would be the country’s first reusable rocket, only to watch it explode while attempting to land.…
- Death to one-time text codes: Passkeys are the new hotness in MFA
Wanna know a secret?
Whether you're logging into your bank, health insurance, or even your email, most services today do not live by passwords alone. Now commonplace, multifactor authentication (MFA) requires users to enter a second or third proof of identity. However, not all forms of MFA are created equal, and the one-time passwords orgs send to your phone have holes so big you could drive a truck through them.…
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