Comment Dogs displace human obstacles (Score 1) 25
Robotic dogs can be high visibility and include spoken audio warnings. They can carry objects allowing hands free navigation.
Submission + - Milwaukee Tool's owner Techtronic Industries sabotages repairability. (youtube.com)
couchslug writes: Skilled technicians and serious DIYers could rely on Milwaukee power tools to last decades and be reasonably easy to repair as many Slashdotters doubtless have done. Replacement parts which kept expensive tools from becoming ewaste are now unavailable or blatantly overpriced to make repair uneconomic. These are not inexpensive equipment.
Comment Re:Modernize the environment? (Score 4, Insightful) 68
To be fair, the entire governmental apparatus of the United States seems to be going "Ideology? Super. Caring about reality? Fuck off."
Giving a shit about the details right now is forest for trees stuff. The electorate has handed over the keys to the child in the backseat, thinking, "Well it can't be that bad, and the adults were telling us stuff we didn't like to hear. Yee haw, cut those programs! Tax us less! Money is magic!"
Comment Re: Porn (Score 1) 256
No one is born a bigot. You elect to be stupid enough to be one.
Submission + - Mozilla accuses Microsoft of sabotaging Firefox with Windows and Copilot tactics (nerds.xyz) 1
BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla is accusing Microsoft of stacking the deck against Firefox, arguing that design choices in Windows steer users toward Edge even when they explicitly choose another browser. According to Mozilla, parts of Windows still open links in Edge regardless of the default browser setting, including results from the taskbar search and links launched from apps like Outlook and Teams. Mozilla says this means Firefox often never even gets the opportunity to handle those links, which quietly shifts user activity back into Microsoftâ(TM)s ecosystem.
The company also points to Microsoftâ(TM)s aggressive rollout of Copilot as another example of platform power being used to push Microsoft services. Copilot appeared pinned to the taskbar, arrived automatically on many systems with Microsoft 365, and even received a dedicated keyboard key on some laptops. Mozilla argues that when the maker of the dominant desktop operating system promotes its own browser and AI tools at the system level, it becomes far harder for independent browsers like Firefox to compete.
The company also points to Microsoftâ(TM)s aggressive rollout of Copilot as another example of platform power being used to push Microsoft services. Copilot appeared pinned to the taskbar, arrived automatically on many systems with Microsoft 365, and even received a dedicated keyboard key on some laptops. Mozilla argues that when the maker of the dominant desktop operating system promotes its own browser and AI tools at the system level, it becomes far harder for independent browsers like Firefox to compete.
Submission + - Meta Cafeteria Workers Take on ICE (wired.com)
joshuark writes: Staff at a Meta café in Bellevue, Washington, had made a pact that they would rally together if the Trump administration's immigration crackdown affected any one of them.
Under a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, federal authorities detained Serigne, a Senegalese asylum seeker and the brother of dishwasher Abdoul Mbengue in December.
"I didn't know what to do at first, but we had this community, and I told them this news," Mbengue says through a coworker who is translating his French.
A number of the cooks, dishwashers, and front-of-house staff at the Meta café known as Crashpad are from Africa, the Caribbean, or Ukraine. Some, like Mbengue, are in the U.S. on temporary authorizations while awaiting the resolution of asylum or immigration cases.
Mbengue's colleagues launched a fundraising campaign to pay for the legal defense of his brother.
Thousands of dollars altogether came in from Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon workers. On February 24, a judge ordered the release of Mbengue's brother.
"He is back because of the efforts," Mbengue says.
This activism inside the tech industry may shift as big tech companies become less responsive to worker petitions and decline to take public stands against Trump policies. A decade ago, thousands of tech workers protested against Trump's immigration bans alongside executives.
Workers allege that on January 29, two agents in "DHS" clothing looking for a specific non-Microsoft employee working at the company's headquarters campus in Redmond were turned away at the reception of the Commons building. Microsoft could not confirm that the visitors were law enforcement.
Meta declined to comment for this story. Amazon and Google didn't respond to requests for comment.
Under a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement program, federal authorities detained Serigne, a Senegalese asylum seeker and the brother of dishwasher Abdoul Mbengue in December.
"I didn't know what to do at first, but we had this community, and I told them this news," Mbengue says through a coworker who is translating his French.
A number of the cooks, dishwashers, and front-of-house staff at the Meta café known as Crashpad are from Africa, the Caribbean, or Ukraine. Some, like Mbengue, are in the U.S. on temporary authorizations while awaiting the resolution of asylum or immigration cases.
Mbengue's colleagues launched a fundraising campaign to pay for the legal defense of his brother.
Thousands of dollars altogether came in from Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon workers. On February 24, a judge ordered the release of Mbengue's brother.
"He is back because of the efforts," Mbengue says.
This activism inside the tech industry may shift as big tech companies become less responsive to worker petitions and decline to take public stands against Trump policies. A decade ago, thousands of tech workers protested against Trump's immigration bans alongside executives.
Workers allege that on January 29, two agents in "DHS" clothing looking for a specific non-Microsoft employee working at the company's headquarters campus in Redmond were turned away at the reception of the Commons building. Microsoft could not confirm that the visitors were law enforcement.
Meta declined to comment for this story. Amazon and Google didn't respond to requests for comment.
Submission + - Little Snitch comes to Linux to expose what your software is really doing (nerds.xyz)
BrianFagioli writes: Little Snitch, the long-time macOS network monitoring tool, is now getting a Linux version. The developer says the idea came from experimenting with Linux personally and realizing how strange it felt not knowing what connections the system was making. Existing Linux tools like OpenSnitch and various command-line utilities exist, but none offered the same simple workflow of seeing which process is connecting where and blocking it instantly. The new Linux version uses eBPF for kernel-level traffic interception, with the core written in Rust and a web-based interface that even allows monitoring remote Linux servers from another device.
During testing on Ubuntu, the developer noticed something interesting. Over the course of a week, only nine system processes made internet connections. On macOS, similar testing reportedly showed more than 100 processes communicating externally. Of course, applications behave similarly across platforms, and launching Firefox immediately triggered connections to telemetry and advertising endpoints, while LibreOffice made no network connections at all. The project is still early and not positioned as a full security firewall, but rather a transparency tool designed to show what software is actually doing on the network and let users block connections if they choose.
During testing on Ubuntu, the developer noticed something interesting. Over the course of a week, only nine system processes made internet connections. On macOS, similar testing reportedly showed more than 100 processes communicating externally. Of course, applications behave similarly across platforms, and launching Firefox immediately triggered connections to telemetry and advertising endpoints, while LibreOffice made no network connections at all. The project is still early and not positioned as a full security firewall, but rather a transparency tool designed to show what software is actually doing on the network and let users block connections if they choose.
Comment Call it what it is, a Christian Zionist surcharge (Score 2) 74
While a large proportion of observant, fundamentalist Jewry in Israel do not support Zionism or fight in its wars, a vast number of American Christian Zionists consider themselves obliged to serve the Chosen by helping kill their enemies.
A sufficient proportion of Americans and Israelis don't care about Muslim lives to let this preference guide policy. Islamist backlash will increase that number.
Comment Re:No victims (Score 1) 47
Yeah well, we can't all be a person who doesn't understand how things work. Kudos to you for being simple minded!
Comment Journalism (Score 1) 47
" The Kathmandu Post"
Ah we don't to pay for journalism, says a planet of suckers
Comment Lowered standards exist to avoid the draft. (Score 1) 74
The proportion of Americans fit for service is tiny. While the USAF (which never drafted) and Space Force easily meet recruiting goals they also don't require the number of mundane jobs other services do. The enormous support tail enabling modern warfighting can often be manned by lower quality troops.
The late draft era was a military disaster. One day some leadership imbeciles will bring it back but it's so easy to disqualify yourself from service without provable malingering mostly greater imbeciles would be drafted.
Comment Mod parent up for truthiness. (Score 1) 45
The "home lab" hobby proves their point. There is a large selection of used, reiliable tthin clients for very light appliance use and a wide range of "tiny" PCs (and other architectures) for users wanting as or more capable options complete with power supplies, cases etc and with good community support for mods and upgrades including 3D printed parts. Rugged industrial computers and network appliances are also abundant and increasingly well known thanks to enthusiast channels.
If I bought a bare Pi board I'd need much more than that to make it usable. I'd need to buy, scrounge or make those components. OTOH I can choose from any of many complete and partial prebuilt enterprise quality commercial systems made in vast quantiities and enabled by many options, accessory configurations, 3D-printed community parts.
and parts.
Pi moved to compete in a very competitive space. It's original niche was more specialized rather than being intended as a general purpose PC in a world full of used performant thin clients and tiny office PCs often powerful enough to game or easily modded. Enthusiasts wanting small size but higher performance often assemble small rack systems with each same-form factor tiny PCs.
For example they can quickly, easily and cheaply assemble a main PC for desktop use, a file server and a network appliance of choice. Even a rack or larger case is optional. (I stick my Lenovo tiny PCs together with flat magnets held to their parent component with double-sided industrial tapes like 3M VHB (also used in building Class 8 dry van and other trailer bodies instead of mechanical fasteners).
Comment Slashdot's owners seem to hate making money. (Score -1, Offtopic) 47
Why do the mods never discuss why they're choosing to lazily enshittify Slashdot? The owners clearly fail to understand they would make vastly more profit by shitcanning these lazy saboteurs and choosing to return to Slashdot being a quality tech site.
People are turning down profit for whatever the reward is from an irrelevant, rudderless Slashdot that could make far more than the several million bucks it generated last year. That's not quite as hilariously stupid as Kaplan shutting down fuckedcompany in an age where it's highly relevant, but it's impressively silly.
Submission + - Python blood could hold the secret to healthy weight loss (colorado.edu)
fahrbot-bot writes: CU Boulder researchers are reporting that they have discovered an appetite-suppressing compound in python blood that helps the snakes consume enormous meals and go months without eating yet remain metabolically healthy. The findings were published in the journal Natural Metabolism on March 19, 2026.
Pythons can grow as big as a telephone pole, swallow an antelope whole, and go months or even years without eating—all while maintaining a healthy heart and plenty of muscle mass. In the hours after they eat, research has shown, their heart expands 25% and their metabolism speeds up 4,000-fold to help them digest their meal.
The team measured blood samples from ball pythons and Burmese pythons, fed once every 28 days, immediately after they ate a meal. In all, they found 208 metabolites that increased significantly after the pythons ate. One molecule, called para-tyramine-O-sulfate (pTOS) soared 1,000-fold.
Further studies, done with Baylor University researchers, showed that when they gave high doses of pTOS to obese or lean mice, it acted on the hypothalamus, the appetite center of the brain, prompting weight loss without causing gastrointestinal problems, muscle loss or declines in energy.
The study found that pTOS, which is produced by the snake’s gut bacteria, is not present in mice naturally. It is present in human urine at low levels and does increase somewhat after a meal. But because most research is done in mice or rats, pTOS has been overlooked.
Pythons can grow as big as a telephone pole, swallow an antelope whole, and go months or even years without eating—all while maintaining a healthy heart and plenty of muscle mass. In the hours after they eat, research has shown, their heart expands 25% and their metabolism speeds up 4,000-fold to help them digest their meal.
The team measured blood samples from ball pythons and Burmese pythons, fed once every 28 days, immediately after they ate a meal. In all, they found 208 metabolites that increased significantly after the pythons ate. One molecule, called para-tyramine-O-sulfate (pTOS) soared 1,000-fold.
Further studies, done with Baylor University researchers, showed that when they gave high doses of pTOS to obese or lean mice, it acted on the hypothalamus, the appetite center of the brain, prompting weight loss without causing gastrointestinal problems, muscle loss or declines in energy.
The study found that pTOS, which is produced by the snake’s gut bacteria, is not present in mice naturally. It is present in human urine at low levels and does increase somewhat after a meal. But because most research is done in mice or rats, pTOS has been overlooked.
Comment Re: Why can't the pre-compiled ones be distributed (Score 1) 61
Oh, that's pretty neat. Microsoft is definitely the right level to address this at - they already have permission to enumerate the HW, own the hardware and software infra to tackle this, enjoy economy of scale other players are not privvy too, and can deliver a solution in a vendor agnostic way. Thanks for the heads up. It's the right thing to happen.
Slashdot Top Deals
You can't have everything... where would you put it? -- Steven Wright
