"The Internet's Own Boy" was inscribed below the bust, according to the San Francisco Standard, adding that the 312-pound marble statue "was crafted using a mix of AI-driven robotic milling and traditional hand carving."

It was unveiled Friday at the Internet Archive auditorium for a crowd of around 300 people. "Aaron's legacy is bringing people together to make change, said Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "There's a renaissance happening now in Aaron Swartz-land," said Lisa Rein, the co-founder of Creative Commons, a nonprofit devoted to expanding public access to information. She founded Aaron Swartz Day in 2013, an annual hackathon and tribute held on his birthday. There's now an Aaron Swartz Institute in Brazil, a documentary, multiple books and podcasts — even an Aaron Swartz memecoin ("Do not buy," she warned).

"It's great that people idolize him as long as they get the story right: He was not a martyr," Rein said, her eyes welling with tears. "He stood for freedom of access to information, especially for scientific research — things the public had already paid for."

The evening included a number of video tributes, which Rein played on a large screen behind the stage. They included commentary from science fiction author Cory Doctorow, members of the Aaron Swartz Institute in Brazil, and Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation... Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch and a partner at Y Combinator, was one of the few people who knew Swartz personally. "I'm glad he's become a symbol, he would approve of that," he shared, his voice slightly breaking. "I really miss him."

Starting next week, the bust will be moved to the [Internet Archive] lobby, where it will remain until Peniche secures a permit to place it in a local park [said Evan Sirchuk, the Internet Archive's community and events coordinator]... "Aaron really means something to the San Francisco community," [Rein said]. "He can keep inspiring generations — even the ones who weren't alive when he was."
Tech blogger John Gruber thinks Swartz would appreciate that the bust came from people "aligned with Aaron's own righteous obsessions." But at the same time "I think he'd be a little weirded out. He wasn't a 'I hope they erect a larger-than-life statue of me' sort of guy.

"And if he had been, we wouldn't have loved him like we did. It's just a terrible thing that we lost him so young."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Telegraph: Volkswagen has teased plans for a "China-killer" electric vehicle that will cost just €20,000 ($20,664 USD or £16,700) as the German carmaker gears up to take on a flood of Beijing-backed low-cost rivals. The company on Thursday shared its first images of a new vehicle expected to be called the ID.1, which will go into production from 2027.

The low-cost EV is intended to go head to head with all-electric brands from Chinese carmakers such as BYD, which overtook Tesla in British sales for the first time last month. Previous images of the vehicle suggest it will be an electric hatchback. Thomas Schäfer, the VW chief executive, said the new model would be "an affordable, high-quality, profitable electric Volkswagen from Europe, for Europe". Quentin Willson, the motoring journalist and founder of FairCharge, said the car could be a "possible China EV killer". Dan Caesar, of Electric Vehicles UK, added: "Cheaper EVs are exactly what legacy auto-makers need to be competitive during this critical time. We would expect the ID.1 to be warmly welcomed by motorists." Ginny Buckley, of consumer advice website Electrifying, said Volkswagen had been "clear about its intent to compete with China's low-cost EVs"...

The German carmaker is planning to cut 35,000 jobs by 2030 as it grapples with stalled demand for EVs in Europe and growing competition from Chinese rivals.
Volkswagen executives describe the upcoming EV will be a "true Volkswagen for everyone," according to the article

It also notes that the number of EVs sold across Europe "fell by 3% to 3 million during 2024, according to data from analysts Rho Motion."

Apple has announced Apple Invites, a new iPhone app designed to help you manage your social life. Engadget reports: The idea behind Apple Invites is that you can create and share custom invitations for any event or occasion. You can use your own photos or backgrounds in the app as an image for the invite. Image Playground is built into Invites and you can use that to generate an images for the invitation instead. Other Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools are baked in as well, in case you need a hand to craft the right message for your invitation. The tech giant also said it was increasing AppleCare+ subscription prices for the iPhone, "raising the cost by 50 cents for all models in the United States," according to MacRumors. From the report: Standard AppleCare+ for the iPhone 16 models is now priced at $10.49 per month, for example, up from the prior $9.99 per month price. The 50 cent price increase applies to all available AppleCare+ plans for Apple's current iPhone lineup, and it includes both the standard plan and the Theft and Loss plan. The two-year AppleCare+ subscription prices have not changed, nor have the service fees and deductibles. The increased prices are only applicable when paying for AppleCare+ on a monthly basis. Apple has not raised the prices of AppleCare+ subscription plans for the iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch.

An anonymous reader writes: Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries via their digital catalogs, forcing librarians who are already understaffed to either sort through a functionally infinite number of books to determine what is written by humans and what is generated by AI, or to spend taxpayer dollars to provide patrons with information they don't realize is AI-generated.

Public libraries primarily use two companies to manage and lend ebooks: Hoopla and OverDrive, the latter of which people may know from its borrowing app, Libby. Both companies have a variety of payment options for libraries, but generally libraries get access to the companies' catalog of books and pay for customers to be able to borrow that book, with different books having different licenses and prices. A key difference is that with OverDrive, librarians can pick and choose which books in OverDrive's catalog they want to give their customers the option of borrowing. With Hoopla, librarians have to opt into Hoopla's entire catalog, then pay for whatever their customers choose to borrow from that catalog. The only way librarians can limit what Hoopla books their customers can borrow is by setting a limit on the price of books. For example, a library can use Hoopla but make it so their customers can only borrow books that cost the library $5 per use.

On one hand, Hoopla's gigantic catalog, which includes ebooks, audio books, and movies, is a selling point because it gives librarians access to more for cheaper price. On the other hand, making librarians buy into the entire catalog means that a customer looking for a book about how to diet for a healthier liver might end up borrowing Fatty Liver Diet Cookbook: 2000 Days of Simple and Flavorful Recipes for a Revitalized Liver. The book was authored by Magda Tangy, who has no online footprint, and who has an AI-generated profile picture on Amazon, where her books are also for sale. Note the earring that is only on one ear and seems slightly deformed. A spokesperson for deepfake detection company Reality Defender said that according to their platform, the headshot is 85 percent likely to be AI-generated. [...] It is impossible to say exactly how many AI-generated books are included in Hoopla's catalog, but books that appeared to be AI-generated were not hard to find for most of the search terms I tried on the platform. "This type of low quality, AI generated content, is what we at 404 Media and others have come to call AI slop," writes Emanuel Maiberg. "Librarians, whose job it is in part to curate what books their community can access, have been dealing with similar problems in the publishing industry for years, and have a different name for it: vendor slurry."

"None of the librarians I talked to suggested the AI-generated content needed to be banned from Hoopla and libraries only because it is AI-generated. It might have its place, but it needs to be clearly labeled, and more importantly, provide borrowers with quality information."

Sarah Lamdan, deputy director of the American Library Association, told 404 Media: "Platforms like Hoopla should offer libraries the option to select or omit materials, including AI materials, in their collections. AI books should be well-identified in library catalogs, so it is clear to readers that the books were not written by human authors. If library visitors choose to read AI eBooks, they should do so with the knowledge that the books are AI-generated."

An aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy tested "vastly increased" levels of internet connectivity, reports the defense-news web site TWZ, callling it "a game-changer for what a ship, and its sailors, can do while at sea." The F-35 Joint Strike Fighters assigned to the carrier offer a case in point for what more shipboard bandwidth — provided by commercial providers like Starlink and OneWeb — can mean at the tactical level. Jets with the embarked Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 took on critical mission data file updates in record time last fall due to the carrier's internet innovations, a capability that is slated to expand across the fleet. "This file offers intelligence updates and design enhancements that enable pilots to identify and counter threats in specific operational environments," the Navy said in an October release announcing the feat. "The update incorporated more than 100 intelligence changes and multiple design improvements, significantly enhancing the aircraft's survivability and lethality...." [Capt. Kevin White, then the Lincoln's combat systems officer] noted how the F-35 "eats and breathes data daily," and it has to be shared with commands ashore. The connectivity innovations he's pioneered will enable such data transfers, which will only grow more complex over time. "If you can't get the data onboard, you're probably going to be at a loss," White said. "So large file transfer capability increases combat readiness...."

When the system was on, it provided not only mission benefits, but benefits to the hard-working Lincoln crew as well, which was at sea for 107 days at one point with no port calls [Capt. Pete "Repete" Riebe, told WEST conference attendees]... White said the average age of an embarked Lincoln sailor was 20.8, and Riebe noted that to attract young people into service, the Navy needs to recognize the innate connection they have to their devices. "The next generation of sailors grew up with a cell phone in their hand, and they are uncomfortable without it," Riebe said. "I don't necessarily like that, but that's reality, and if we want to compete for the best folks coming into the Navy, we need to offer them bandwidth at sea." Having better connectivity also helped with the ship's administrative functions, Riebe said, making medical, dental and other work far easier than they have been in the past...

A sailor who can FaceTime with his family back home carries less non-Navy stress with them as they focus on the life-or-death duties at hand, White said... This beefed-up bandwidth allowed 38 sailors to witness the birth of their child, while others were able to watch their kids' sporting events, White said. Several crew members pursued doctorate and master's degrees while deployed due to better internet, while others were able to deal with personal or legal issues they had left behind back home. One officer was able to commission his wife remotely from the ship... On the operational side, from "the most desolate waters," Lincoln used its bandwidth to connect with a command in Norfolk, which undertook the ship's annual cybersecurity scans "from halfway around the world," White said... Taxpayer dollars can also be saved if a ship isn't paying for WiFi access while in port, White noted, and the crew was able to start getting to know Italian allies online before an exercise, enhancing the personal aspects of such partnerships.

More bandwidth also means more onboard training, meaning some sailors who don't have to leave to go to the school house, and sailors were able to get answers to maintenance questions from ashore commands faster as well. "Just by being able to have more reliable access to support resources, we definitely become more effective at maintenance," White said.
Every day the aircraft carrier averaged four to eight terabytes of transferred data, according to the article (with a team of two full-time system administrators managing 7,000 IP addresses), and ultimately saw 780 terabytes of data transferred over five-and-a-half months. The article notes it's part of the Navy's larger "Sailor Edge Afloat and Ashore" (SEA2) program to provide all its warships with high-bandwidth connectivity around the world.

The program "involves moving some communications aspects away from proprietary Defense Department satellites, while leaning on commercial satellite constellations and even cellular providers to keep ships more connected at sea for both personal and tactical uses."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.

A recent video from retro tech YouTuber Clint "LGR" Basinger takes a deep dive into the history of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium, exploring how former Air Force pilot Jim Sachs transformed a lackluster Windows 95 screensaver into a 25-year digital phenomenon. PC Gamer reports: The story centers on Jim Sachs, a man with one of those "they don't make this type of guy anymore" life stories so common to '80s and '90s computing, one Sachs recounted to the website AmigaLove back in 2020. After a six-year career in the US Air Force flying C-141 Starlifters, Sachs taught himself programming and digital art and began creating games for Commodore 64 and Amiga computers. From his first game, Saucer Attack, to later efforts like Defender of the Crown or his large portfolio of promotional and commissioned pieces, Sach's pixel art remains gorgeous and impressive to this day, and he seems to be a bit of a legend among Commodore enthusiasts.

It's with this background in games and digital art that Sachs looked at Microsoft's simple aquarium-themed screensaver for Windows 95 and 98 and thought he could do better. "Microsoft had an aquarium that they gave away with Windows where it was just bitmaps of fish being dragged across the screen," Sachs told the Matt Chat podcast back in 2015. "And they had that for like, three or four years. And I thought, I've given them enough time, I'm taking them to market. I'm gonna do something which will just blow that away."

Using reference photographs of real aquariums -- Sachs thanked a specific pet shop that's still around in an early version of his website" -- Sachs created the 3D art by hand and programmed the screensaver in C++, releasing the initial version in July 2000. Even looking at it all these years later, the first iteration of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium is pretty gorgeous, and it has the added charm of being such a distinctly Y2K, nostalgic throwback.

The standalone screensaver sold well, but then things came full circle with Microsoft licensing a version of the Marine Aquarium for the Windows XP Plus Pack and later standard releases of the OS. Since that time, the Marine Aquarium has continued to see new releases, and a section on the SereneScreen website keeps track of its various appearances in the background of movies and TV shows like Law and Order. Over on the SereneScreen website, you can purchase a real time, 3D-accelerated version of the Marine Aquarium for Mac, iOS, Android, and the original Windows. Echoing the Windows XP deal, Roku actually licensed this 3.0 version for its TVs, bringing it to a new generation of users.

jjslash shares a report from TechSpot: Atari teamed up with luxury watch brand Nubeo to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Asteroids with a collection of five limited-edition timepieces. Each watch, originally priced at $1,650 but discounted to $499, was limited to 125 pieces -- and they sold out almost immediately. The watches feature a unique Japanese automatic movement, where three rotating discs replace traditional hands. The smallest disc, featuring the classic Asteroids spaceship, acts as the second hand, while the minute and hour hands are represented by asteroid-filled outer discs.

While they're not smartwatches, the timepieces feature Swiss Super-LumiNova glow-in-the-dark ink sitting underneath a sapphire lens within a stainless-steel case. They're water resistant up to 21 ATM (atmospheres) and have a screw-down crown, so you can show them off while at the beach or diving.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple-designed chips powering Macs, iPhones, and iPads contain two newly discovered vulnerabilities that leak credit card information, locations, and other sensitive data from the Chrome and Safari browsers as they visit sites such as iCloud Calendar, Google Maps, and Proton Mail. The vulnerabilities, affecting the CPUs in later generations of Apple A- and M-series chip sets, open them to side channel attacks, a class of exploit that infers secrets by measuring manifestations such as timing, sound, and power consumption. Both side channels are the result of the chips' use of speculative execution, a performance optimization that improves speed by predicting the control flow the CPUs should take and following that path, rather than the instruction order in the program. [...]

The researchers published a list of mitigations they believe will address the vulnerabilities allowing both the FLOP and SLAP attacks. They said that Apple officials have indicated privately to them that they plan to release patches. In an email, an Apple representative declined to say if any such plans exist. "We want to thank the researchers for their collaboration as this proof of concept advances our understanding of these types of threats," the spokesperson wrote. "Based on our analysis, we do not believe this issue poses an immediate risk to our users." FLOP, short for Faulty Load Operation Predictor, exploits a vulnerability in the Load Value Predictor (LVP) found in Apple's A- and M-series chipsets. By inducing the LVP to predict incorrect memory values during speculative execution, attackers can access sensitive information such as location history, email content, calendar events, and credit card details. This attack works on both Safari and Chrome browsers and affects devices including Macs (2022 onward), iPads, and iPhones (September 2021 onward). FLOP requires the victim to interact with an attacker's page while logged into sensitive websites, making it highly dangerous due to its broad data access capabilities.

SLAP, on the other hand, stands for Speculative Load Address Predictor and targets the Load Address Predictor (LAP) in Apple silicon, exploiting its ability to predict memory locations. By forcing LAP to mispredict, attackers can access sensitive data from other browser tabs, such as Gmail content, Amazon purchase details, and Reddit comments. Unlike FLOP, SLAP is limited to Safari and can only read memory strings adjacent to the attacker's own data. It affects the same range of devices as FLOP but is less severe due to its narrower scope and browser-specific nature. SLAP demonstrates how speculative execution can compromise browser process isolation.

July saw the news that Meta had launched a powerful open-source AI model, Llama 3.1.

But the Free Software Foundation evaluated Llama 3.1's license agreement, and announced this week that "this is not a free software license and you should not use it, nor any software released under it." Not only does it deny users their freedom, but it also purports to hand over powers to the licensors that should only be exercised through lawmaking by democratically-elected governments.

Moreover, it has been applied by Meta to a machine-learning (ML) application, even though the license completely fails to address software freedom challenges inherent in such applications....

We decided to review the Llama license because it is being applied to an ML application and model, while at the same time being presented by Meta as if it grants users a degree of software freedom. This is certainly not the case, and we want the free software community to have clarity on this.
In other news, the FSF also announced the winner of the logo contest for their big upcoming 40th anniversary celebration.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple executive Kim Vorrath, a company veteran known for fixing troubled products and bringing major projects to market, has a new job: whipping artificial intelligence and Siri into shape. Vorrath, a vice president in charge of program management, was moved to Apple's artificial intelligence and machine learning division this week, according to people with knowledge of the matter. She'll be a top deputy to AI chief John Giannandrea, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the change hasn't been announced publicly. The move helps bolster a team that's racing to make Apple a leader in AI -- an area where it's fallen behind technology peers. [...]

Vorrath, who has spent 36 years at Apple, is known for managing the development of tough software projects. She's also put procedures in place that can catch and fix bugs. Vorrath joins the new team from Apple's hardware engineering division, where she helped launch the Vision Pro headset. Over the years, Vorrath has had a hand in several of Apple's biggest endeavors. In the mid-2000s, she was chosen to lead project management for the original iPhone software group and get the iconic device ready for consumers. Until 2019, she oversaw project management for the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems, before taking on the Vision Pro software. Haley Allen will replace Vorrath overseeing program management for visionOS, the headset's operating system, according to the people.

Prior to joining Giannandrea's organization, Vorrath had spent several weeks advising Kelsey Peterson, the group's previous head of program management. Peterson will now report to Vorrath -- as will two other AI executives, Cindy Lin and Marc Schonbrun. Giannandrea, who joined Apple from Google in 2018, disclosed the changes in a memo sent to staffers. The move signals that AI is now more important than the Vision Pro, which launched in February 2024, and is seen as the biggest challenge within the company, according to a longtime Apple executive who asked not to be identified. Vorrath has a knack for organizing engineering groups and creating an effective workflow with new processes, the executive said. It has been clear for some time now that Giannandrea needs additional help managing an AI group with growing prominence, according to the executive. Vorrath is poised to bring Apple's product development culture to the AI work, the person said.

"Engineers have showcased a prototype electric vehicle that can drive for up to 40 miles (64 kilometers) per day using just solar power," reports LiveScience. The production-ready "Aptera Launch Edition" made its first appearance this month at CES 2025, and "also offers up to 400 miles (640 km) of range from a single charge via an electrical output, company representatives said in a statement."

LiveScience describes the vehicle as "lighter and more energy-efficient than conventional EVs, while offering a 50% reduction in aerodynamic resistance," with an energy efficiency rating of 100 Watt-hours per mile (Wh/mile). By contrast, a Tesla Model S (released in 2022) consumes 194 Wh/mile in the city in mild weather and 288 Wh/mile on the highway in mild weather, according to the EV Database. At a maximum range of 440 miles — including 40 miles using solar power and 400 miles using electricity — the Aptera EV may also overtake the current longest-range vehicles in production. The Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ has a maximum range of 425 miles (684 km), according to the EV Database, followed by the Lucid Air Grand Touring at 410 miles (660 km).
Aptera says it's raised $135 million "through equity crowdfunding" to fund its pre-production progress. "Since its launch, the Company has accepted $1.7 billion in pre-orders with nearly 50,000 vehicles reserved by future Aptera owners in the U.S. and internationally."

MotorTrend writes that "nearly two decades in the making, the otherworldly three-wheel Aptera is headed to production this year as a $40,000, 400-mile EV that can capture up to 40 miles worth of free solar energy every day. Maybe." The California startup made similar promises in 2008, 2009, 2012, and 2022 and yet it has never delivered a single vehicle. Is anything different this time...?

At CES, co-CEO (and one of Aptera's original founders) Chris Anthony told MotorTrend it will take another $60 million to finish the development work, buy the tooling, and build out the Carlsbad, California, assembly plant. "We're still in fundraising mode and we hope that we inspire some people in this beautiful building (Las Vegas Convention Center) to invest in Aptera," Anthony said. "We're trying to raise $20 million in the first quarter of this year. That will basically kick off all the long-lead items to get into production, but it's a $60 million plan to get into volume production." Anthony said the company has already made one of its largest purchases, the molds for the carbon-fiber sheet-molding composite body structure and the fiberglass sheet-molding composite body panels that will be made in Italy. The next $20 million will cover the tooling for the diecast metal suspension arms and the injection-molded interior components...

It would be relatively easy for Aptera to hand build cars in a garage and announce the start of production, but the plan calls for building up to 80 cars per day per the guidance of engineering consultant and YouTuber Sandy Munro, who is an Aptera investor and adviser. "He really helped shepherd the design from what was an early prototype prove-out design into how to make the most manufacturable vehicle ever," Anthony said. The structure is built from just six parts and the entire car has been designed to be put together in a factory with just 12 stations. But that radical simplicity complicates the job at hand right now. In addition to developing the car, the small engineering team also has to create the machine that makes it. Anthony's plan has the factory ramping up to build 20,000 vehicles a year within nine months of starting production at the end of 2025.

Before that can happen, Aptera needs to clear the same hurdle that tripped it up in 2011 and sent the company stumbling into liquidation — the money. "We would love one investor to be so inspired by what we're doing that they just hand us a $60 million check," Anthony told MotorTrend. "But it could be something that's kind of piecemeal over the next nine months to get that $60 million into the company." Are you convinced?

The JavaScript runtime Node.js can execute TypeScript (Microsoft's JavaScript-derived language with static typing).

But now it can do it even better, explains Marco Ippolito of the Node.js steering committee: In August 2024 Node.js introduced a new experimental feature, Type Stripping, aimed at addressing a longstanding challenge in the Node.js ecosystem: running TypeScript with no configuration. Enabled by default in Node.js v23.6.0, this feature is on its way to becoming stable.

TypeScript has reached incredible levels of popularity and has been the most requested feature in all the latest Node.js surveys. Unlike other alternatives such as CoffeeScript or Flow, which never gained similar traction, TypeScript has become a cornerstone of modern development. While it has been supported in Node.js for some time through loaders, they relied heavily on configuration and user libraries. This reliance led to inconsistencies between different loaders, making them difficult to use interchangeably. The developer experience suffered due to these inconsistencies and the extra setup required... The goal is to make development faster and simpler, eliminating the overhead of configuration while maintaining the flexibility that developers expect...

TypeScript is not just a language, it also relies on a toolchain to implement its features. The primary tool for this purpose is tsc, the TypeScript compiler CLI... Type checking is tightly coupled to the implementation of tsc, as there is no formal specification for how the language's type system should behave. This lack of a specification means that the behavior of tsc is effectively the definition of TypeScript's type system. tsc does not follow semantic versioning, so even minor updates can introduce changes to type checking that may break existing code. Transpilation, on the other hand, is a more stable process. It involves converting TypeScript code into JavaScript by removing types, transforming certain syntax constructs, and optionally "downleveling" the JavaScript to allow modern syntax to execute on older JavaScript engines. Unlike type checking, transpilation is less likely to change in breaking ways across versions of tsc. The likelihood of breaking changes is further reduced when we only consider the minimum transpilation needed to make the TypeScript code executable — and exclude downleveling of new JavaScript features not yet available in the JavaScript engine but available in TypeScript...

Node.js, before enabling it by default, introduced --experimental-strip-types. This mode allows running TypeScript files by simply stripping inline types without performing type checking or any other code transformation. This minimal technique is known as Type Stripping. By excluding type checking and traditional transpilation, the more unstable aspects of TypeScript, Node.js reduces the risk of instability and mostly sidesteps the need to track minor TypeScript updates. Moreover, this solution does not require any configuration in order to execute code... Node.js eliminates the need for source maps by replacing the removed syntax with blank spaces, ensuring that the original locations of the code and structure remain intact. It is transparent — the code that runs is the code the author wrote, minus the types...
"As this experimental feature evolves, the Node.js team will continue collaborating with the TypeScript team and the community to refine its behavior and reduce friction. You can check the roadmap for practical next steps..."

Chinese social-networking site RedNote became the #1 most-downloaded app in America, reports the Associated Press, with some new users considering it a way to protest America's possible TikTok ban.

So what happened next? They were met with surprise, curiosity and in-jokes on Xiaohongshu — literally, "Little Red Book" — whose users saw English-language posts take over feeds almost overnight. Americans introduced themselves with hashtag TikTok refugees, ask me anything attitude and posting photos of their pets to pay their hosts' "cat tax." Parents swapped stories about raising kids and Swifties from both countries, of course, quickly found each other. It's a rare moment of direct contact between two online worlds that are usually kept apart by language, corporate boundaries, and China's strict system of online censorship that blocks access to nearly all international media and social media services... Xiaohongshu's 300 million monthly active users are overwhelmingly Chinese — so much so that parts of its interface have no English-language version... [Press reports suggest about a million of TikTok's 170 million users tried switching to RedNote this week...]

On the platform, two versions of the TikTok refugee hashtag have over 24 million posts, with related posts appearing at the top of many users' feeds. A large number of American users say they've received a warm welcome from the community, with #TikTokrefugee. "Welcome the global villagers" remains the top one trending topic on Xiaohongshu, with 8.9 million views on Thursday. Users from both countries are comparing notes on grocery prices, rent, health insurance, medical bills and the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Parents talk about what the kids learn in school in two countries. Some have already joined book clubs and are building up a community. American users asked how Chinese see the LGBTQ community and got warned that it was among sensitive topics, Chinese users taught Americans what are sensitive topics and key words to avoid censorship on the app. Chinese students pulled out their English homework, looking for help.

Chinese state media, which have long dismissed U.S. allegations against TikTok, have welcomed the protest against the ban. People's Daily [the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party], said in an op-ed about TikTok refugees on Thursday that says the TikTok refugees found a "new home," and "openness, communication, and mutual learning are the unchanging themes of mankind and the heartfelt desires of people from all countries."
Making the most of the moment is Jianlu Bi, who is apparently a senior content producer for Beijing's state-run China Global Television Network, which Wikipedia describes as "under the control of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party". Friday Jianlu Bi crafted an article claiming "surprising" and "stark contrasts" were revealed: While the United States is often portrayed as a land of limitless opportunity, many American netizens have shared their struggles with high living costs, particularly in urban areas. One common theme is the exorbitant cost of healthcare. "I just got a simple bill for a routine checkup and it was over $500," shared one American user. "I can't imagine what a serious illness would cost! I feel like I'm constantly on the brink of financial ruin due to medical expenses." In contrast, Chinese netizens often express surprise at the affordability of many goods and services in their home country. For instance, the cost of housing, particularly in smaller cities, is often significantly lower in China compared to the United States.... This disparity is often attributed to factors such as government policies, economic development, and cultural differences...

Traditional media narratives often present simplified and often biased portrayals of China and the United States. For example, the U.S. is often portrayed as a land of opportunity with limitless possibilities, while China is sometimes depicted as a country with limited freedoms. Xiaohongshu, on the other hand, provides a platform for ordinary people to share their authentic experiences and perspectives... A Chinese student studying in the U.S. shared, "I was surprised to learn that many of my classmates are working part-time jobs to cover their tuition and living expenses. This is very different from the image of affluent American students I had in my mind. It really opened my eyes to the realities of life for many young people in the U.S."
"As social media continues to evolve, these platforms will undoubtedly play an increasingly important role in shaping global perceptions..." the article concludes.

Article suggested by long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council held a meeting to discuss the dangers of commercial spyware, which marks the first time this type of software -- also known as government or mercenary spyware -- has been discussed at the Security Council. The goal of the meeting, according to the U.S. Mission to the UN, was to "address the implications of the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware for the maintenance of international peace and security." The United States and 15 other countries called for the meeting. While the meeting was mostly informal and didn't end with any concrete proposals, most of the countries involved, including France, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, agreed that governments should take action to control the proliferation and abuse of commercial spyware. Russia and China, on the other hand, dismissed the concerns.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at The Citizen Lab, a human rights organization that has investigated spyware abuses since 2012, gave testimony in which he sounded the alarm on the proliferation of spyware made by "a secretive global ecosystem of developers, brokers, middlemen, and boutique firms," which "is threatening international peace and security as well as human rights." Scott-Railton called Europe "an epicenter of spyware abuses" and a fertile ground for spyware companies, referencing a recent TechCrunch investigation that showed Barcelona has become a hub for spyware companies in the last few years.

Representatives of Poland and Greece, countries that had their own spyware scandals involving software made by NSO Group and Intellexa, respectively, also intervened. Poland's representative pointed at local legislative efforts to put "more control, including by the judiciary, on the relevant operational activities of the security and intelligence services," while also recognizing that spyware can be used in a legal way. "We are not saying that the use of spyware is never justified or even required," said Poland's representative. And the Greek representative pointed to the country's 2022 bill to ban the sale of spyware.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced a playful giveaway for kernel contributors: he'll hand-build a guitar effects pedal for one lucky developer selected at random, using his holiday hobby skills with pedal kits. To qualify, developers must have a 2024 commit in Torvalds' kernel git tree and email him with the subject "I WANT A GUITAR PEDAL". He'll pick a winner at random, use his own money to buy a pedal kit from a company called Aion FX, and then 'build it with my own shaky little fingers, and send it to the victim by US postal services.'" The Register reports: The odd offer appeared in his weekly state-of-the-kernel post, which on Sunday US time informed the Linux world that release candidate (rc) seven for version 6.13 of the Linux kernel "is slightly bigger than normal, but considering the timing, it's pretty much where I would have expected, and nothing really stands out." Torvalds therefore expects version 6.13 to debut next week, meaning it will arrive after his preferred seven release candidates and without delays caused by the usual holiday-period slowdown. Torvalds then added a postscript in which he revealed that he often uses the holiday season to build LEGO, which he frequently receives for Christmas and his late December birthday.

He kept up that tradition last year, but "also ended up doing a number of guitar pedal kit builds" which he described as "LEGO for grown-ups with a soldering iron." [...] Torvalds doesn't play guitar, but did the builds "because I enjoy the tinkering, and the guitar pedals actually do something and are the right kind of "not very complex, but not some 5-minute 555 LED blinking thing.'" He enjoyed the experience and wants to build more pedals, so has decided to give one away to a random kernel developer -- both as an act of generosity and to "check to see if anybody actually ever reads these weekly rc announcements of mine." Torvalds rated his past pedal-building efforts a "good success so far" but warned entrants "I'm a software person with a soldering iron."

"I will test the result to the best of my abilities, and the end result may actually work ... but you should set your expectations along the lines of "quality kit built by a SW person who doesn't know one end of a guitar from the other.'"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch, written by Ivan Mehta: Decentralized social network organization Mastodon said Monday that it is planning to create a new nonprofit organization in Europe and hand over ownership of entities responsible for key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components. This means one person won't have control over the entire project. The organization is trying to differentiate itself from social networks controlled by CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. While exact details are yet to be finalized, this means that Mastodon's current CEO and creator, Eugen Rochko, will hand over management bits of the organization to the new entity and focus on the product strategy.

The organization said that it will continue to host the mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers, which users can sign up for and join the ActivityPub-based network. Mastodon currently has 835,000 monthly active users spread across thousands of servers. [...] Last year, the company formed a U.S.-based nonprofit to get more funds and grants with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on the board. At the same time, the organization lost its nonprofit status in Germany. [...] The blog post noted that the new Europe-based nonprofit entity will wholly own the Mastodon GmbH for-profit entity. The organization is in the process of finalizing the place where the new entity will be set up. "We are taking the time to select the appropriate jurisdiction and structure in Europe. Then we will determine which other (subsidiary) legal structures are needed to support operations and sustainability,â Mastodon said in a blog post. "Throughout, we will focus on establishing the appropriate governance and leadership frameworks that reflect the nature and purpose of Mastodon as a whole, and responsibly serve the community."

Slashdot reader rzack writes: Since 1999, I've written a huge amount of PHP code, for dozens of applications and websites. Most of it has been continually updated, and remains active and in-production, in one form or another.

Here's the thing. It's all hand-written using vi, even to this day.

Is there any benefit to migrating this codebase to a more modern PHP framework, like Laravel? And is there an easy and minimally intrusive way this can be done en-masse, across dozens of applications and websites?

Or at this point should I just stick with vi?
Share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

What's the best way to transfer legacy PHP code to a modern framework?

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times: Russia fined TikTok for not removing prohibited content. The results of a presidential election in Romania were thrown out over concerns the app had been used to spread foreign influence. Albania banned TikTok for a year following the stabbing death of a teenager by another one after the two quarreled online... That was all in just the last month...

TikTok has confronted legal and political scrutiny around the world in recent years, facing outright or partial bans in at least 20 countries, as governments have grown alarmed by its ties to China and its wide influence, especially among young people... [A]s TikTok's algorithm captured attention spans around the world, it alarmed lawmakers, who say TikTok has quickly turned from a domain of cat videos and dance trends into a potentially disruptive social, political and economic force. Officials from Montana to New Zealand have warned that TikTok could be used to incite violence, spread false information and worsen mental health. Lawmakers also worry TikTok could share user data like location and browsing history with the Chinese government. Young people need to be protected from "the frightening pitfalls of the algorithm," [Albania prime minister Edi] Rama said.
TikTok lost its largest audience (India) "after India's simmering geopolitical conflict with China boiled over into hand-to-hand combat along their shared border" — resulting in a total ban in the world's single most-populous country. And the article notes TikTok is also blocked on government devices in Taiwan, Britain, Australia, France, and Canada, "as well as the executive arm of the European Union and New Zealand's Parliament..."

But "Despite the mounting scrutiny, TikTok remains incredibly popular worldwide. More than a billion people use the app every month."

WordPress co-creator (and Automattic CEO) Matt Mullenweg "has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members," reports TechCrunch, "some of whom have been spearheading a push to create a new fork of the open source WordPress project." Joost de Valk — creator of WordPress-focused SEO tool Yoast (and former marketing and communications' lead for the WordPress Foundation) — last month published his "vision for a new WordPress era," alluding to a potential fork in the form of "federated and independent repositories." Karim Marucchi, CEO of enterprise web consulting firm Crowd Favorite, echoed these thoughts in a separate blog post. WP Engine indicated it was on standby to lend a corporate hand. Mullenweg, for his part, has publicly supported the notion of a new WordPress fork.
But when Automattic slashed its contributions to Wordpress.org, things heated up: This spurred de Valk to take to X.com on Friday to indicate that he was willing to lead on the next release of WordPress, with Marucchi adding that his "team stands ready." Collectively, de Valk and Marucchi contribute around 10 hours per week to various aspects of the WordPress open source project. However, in a sarcasm-laden blog post published this morning, Mullenweg said that to give their independent effort the "push it needs to get off the ground," he was deactivating their WordPress.org accounts. "I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort," Mullenweg wrote.

At the same time, Mullenweg also revealed he was deactivating the accounts of three other people, with little explanation given: Sé Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen. Reed, it's worth noting, is president and CEO of a newly established non-profit called the WP Community Collective, which is setting out to serve as a "neutral home for collaboration, contribution, and resources" around WordPress and the broader open source ecosystem. Burns, a former contributor to the WordPress project, took to X this morning to express surprise at her deactivation, noting that she hadn't been involved in the project since 2020...

It's worth noting that deactivating a WordPress.org account prevents affected users from contributing through that channel, be it to the core project or any other plugins or themes they may be involved with.
Rand-Hendriksen posted on BlueSky: So why is he targeting Heather and me? Because we started talking about the need for proper governance, accountability, conflict of interest policies, and other things back in 2017. We both left the project in 2019, and apparently he still holds a grudge.
And while Mullenweg headlined his blog post "Joost/Karim Fork," Rand-Hendriksen wrote on BlueSky "there is no fork in the works as far as I know. He made that up, as he has done before. Heather and I have no involvement with any of this so I don't know why he grouped the five of us together like this. It smells like attempted harassment."

Later Rand-Hendriksen claimed "this is not the first time he's accused critics of forking WordPress" and that he's "convinced any fork will fail... I think he thinks saying someone is forking WordPress is an epic burn that discredits them in the eyes of the community."

Christie Wilcox reports via Science.org: Both longhorn crazy ants (Paratrechina longicornis) and humans can figure out how to work together to move an unwieldy object through a series of obstacles. So scientists pitted the two against each other. They had individuals and groups of different sizes of both species maneuver a T-shaped object through holes in walls (as seen in the video above), both of which were scaled to the body size of the participants. This kind of puzzle is hard for ants because their pheromone-based communication doesn't account for the kind of geometry needed to get the object through the doors. To make the experiments even more comparable, the team also took away the humans' communication in some of the trials by making them wear sunglasses and masks and forbidding talking and gestures. So the people, like the ants, had to work together without language, relying on the forces generated by their fellow participants to figure out how to move the T-shaped piece.

The groups of ants were much better at solving the puzzle than individual ants, exhibiting what the researchers described as "emergent" collective memory -- an intelligence greater than the sum of its parts. The groups of humans, on the other hand, often didn't do better when working together, especially if they weren't allowed to talk. In fact, multiple people sometimes performed worse than individuals -- and worse than the ants. The researchers posit that, in the absence of the ability to discuss and debate, individuals attempt to reach a consensus quickly rather than fully assessing the problem. This "groupthink," they suggest, leads people toward fruitless "greedy" efforts where they directly pull the T toward the gaps in the wall, rather than the less obvious, correct solution of pulling the object into the space between first. Whereas the ants "excel in cooperation," they write, humans need to be able to talk through their reasoning to avoid simply going with what they think the crowd wants. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.