An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In January, the European Commission began an initial investigation, known as a specification proceeding, into how Google has implemented AI in the Android operating system. The results are in, and the EU says Android needs to be more open, which is not surprising. Meanwhile, Google says this amounts to "unwarranted intervention," which is equally unsurprising. Regardless of Google's characterization of the investigation, the commission may force Google to make Android AI changes this summer. This action stems from the continent's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a sweeping law that designates seven dominant technology companies as "gatekeepers" that are subject to greater regulation to ensure fair competition. Google has consistently spoken against the regulations imposed under the DMA, but it and the other gatekeepers have been subject to the law for several years now, and there's little chance the commission backs away from it.

The issue before the commission currently is the built-in advantage for Gemini on Android. When you turn on any Google-powered Android phone, Gemini is already there and gets special treatment at the system level. The European Commission is taking aim at the lack of features available to third-party AI services. The commission believes that there are too many experiences on Android that only work with Google's Gemini AI, and as a gatekeeper, Google must change that. "As we navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of AI, it is clear that interoperability is key to unlocking the full potential of these technologies," said Commission VP for Tech Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen in a statement. "These measures will open up Android devices to a wider range of AI services, so that users will have the freedom to choose the AI services that best meet their needs and values, without sacrificing functionality."

The commission does have a solid track record pushing for openness so far. Since the DMA came into force, Google has been required to make numerous changes to its business in Europe, like implementing search choice screens on Android, allowing alternative payment methods in the Play Store, and limiting data sharing across services. Now, the EU wants Google to make the Android platform more hospitable to third-party AI services. Google's objection focuses on preserving the autonomy for device makers (including Google) to customize AI services. "This unwarranted intervention would strip away that autonomy, mandate access to sensitive hardware and device permissions; unnecessarily driving up costs while undermining critical privacy and security protections for European users," said Google senior competition counsel Claire Kelly. The problem isn't that you can't install ChatGPT or Grok; it's that these chatbots don't have the same access to data and features as Gemini.

To address that imbalance, the EU is considering several requirements that would force Google to give third-party AI assistants deeper access to Android, closer to what Gemini currently enjoys. The proposed requirements include:
- Letting alternative AI tools be launched system-wide through hot words, gestures, or button presses.
- Allowing third-party assistants to see screen context when users invoke them.
- Giving non-Gemini AI tools access to local device data, with user permission, so they can generate proactive suggestions, summaries, and contextual help.
- Allowing other AI services to control installed apps and Android system features on the user's behalf.
- Ensuring third-party developers can access the necessary device hardware to run local AI models with strong performance, availability, and responsiveness.
- Requiring Google to create APIs that let outside AI providers plug into Android more deeply.
- Requiring Google to provide technical assistance to those AI providers.
- Making those APIs and support available free of charge.

The biotech industry's engineered cells could become an $8 trillion market by 2035, notes Phys.org. But how do you keep them from being stolen? Their article notes "an uptick in the theft and smuggling of high-value biological materials, including specially engineered cells." In Science Advances, a team of U.S. researchers present a new approach to genetically securing precious biological material. They created a genetic combination lock in which the locking or encryption process scrambled the DNA of a cell so that its important instructions were non-functional and couldn't be easily read or used. The unlocking, or decryption, process involves adding a series of chemicals in a precise order over time — like entering a password — to activate recombinases, which then unscramble the DNA to their original, functional form...

They created a biological keypad with nine distinct chemicals, each acting as a one-digit input. By using the same chemicals in pairs to form two-digit inputs, where two chemicals must be present simultaneously to activate a sensor, they expanded the keypad to 45 possible chemical inputs without introducing any new chemicals. They also added safety penalties — if someone tampers with the system, toxins are released — making it extremely unlikely for an unauthorized person to access the cells.
"The researchers conducted an ethical hacking exercise on the test lock and found that random guessing yielded a 0.2% success rate, remarkably close to the theoretical target of 0.1%."

A 17,000-word expose in the New Yorker reveals "several executives connected to OpenAI have expressed ongoing reservations about Altman's leadership." Reporters Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz spoke to "a hundred people with firsthand knowledge of how Altman conducts business," including current and former OpenAI employees and board members.

Among other revelations, internal messages from a few years ago show that OpenAI executives and board members "had come to believe that Altman's omissions and deceptions might have ramifications for the safety of OpenAI's products..." At the behest of his fellow board members, [OpenAI cofounder] Sutskever worked with like-minded colleagues to compile some seventy pages of Slack messages and H.R. documents, accompanied by explanatory text... The memos, which we reviewed, have not previously been disclosed in full. They allege that Altman misrepresented facts to executives and board members, and deceived them about internal safety protocols. One of the memos, about Altman, begins with a list headed "Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of . . ." The first item is "Lying"....

In a tense call after Altman's firing, the board pressed him to acknowledge a pattern of deception. "This is just so fucked up," he said repeatedly, according to people on the call. "I can't change my personality." Altman says that he doesn't recall the exchange.... He attributed the criticism to a tendency, especially early in his career, "to be too much of a conflict avoider." But a board member offered a different interpretation of his statement: "What it meant was 'I have this trait where I lie to people, and I'm not going to stop.' " Were the colleagues who fired Altman motivated by alarmism and personal animus, or were they right that he couldn't be trusted?
Friday Altman responded in part to the article. ("I am not proud of being conflict-averse, which has caused great pain for me and OpenAI," he wrote in a blog post. "I am not proud of handling myself badly in a conflict with our previous board that led to a huge mess for the company.")

But the article also assembled similar stories from throughout Altman's career: - At Altman's earlier startup Loopt, "groups of senior employees, concerned with Altman's leadership and lack of transparency, asked Loopt's board on two occasions to fire him as C.E.O.," according to Keach Hagey, author of the Altman biography The Optimist.

- During Altman's time as president of Y Combinator, "several Silicon Valley investors came to believe that his loyalties were divided. An investor told us that Altman was known to 'make personal investments, selectively, into the best companies, blocking outside investors.'" The article adds that in private, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham "has been unambiguous that Altman was removed because of Y.C. partners' mistrust... On one occasion, Graham told Y.C. colleagues that, prior to his removal, 'Sam had been lying to us all the time.'"

- "In a meeting with U.S. intelligence officials in the summer of 2017, he claimed that China had launched an 'A.G.I. Manhattan Project,'" the article points out, "and that OpenAI needed billions of dollars of government funding to keep pace...." But one intelligence official "after looking into the China project, concluded that there was no evidence that it existed: 'It was just being used as a sales pitch.'"

- As California lawmakers considered safety testing for AI model, one legislative aide complained of "increasingly cunning, deceptive behavior from OpenAI". OpenAI later subpoenaed some of the bill's top supporters (and OpenAI critics), in some cases asking for their private communications to investigate whether Elon Musk was funding them. [The article notes an ongoing animosity between Altman and Musk. "When Altman complained on X about a Tesla he'd ordered, Musk replied, 'You stole a non-profit.'"]

And "Multiple prominent investors who have worked with Altman told us that he has a reputation for freezing out investors if they back OpenAI's competitors." [M]ost of the people we spoke to shared the judgment of Sutskever and Amodei: Altman has a relentless will to power that, even among industrialists who put their names on spaceships, sets him apart. "He's unconstrained by truth," the board member told us. "He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone."

The board member was not the only person who, unprompted, used the word "sociopathic." One of Altman's batch mates in the first Y Combinator cohort was Aaron Swartz, a brilliant but troubled coder who died by suicide in 2013 and is now remembered in many tech circles as something of a sage. Not long before his death, Swartz expressed concerns about Altman to several friends. "You need to understand that Sam can never be trusted," he told one. "He is a sociopath. He would do anything."

Multiple senior executives at Microsoft said that, despite [CEO Satya] Nadella's long-standing loyalty, the company's relationship with Altman has become fraught. "He has misrepresented, distorted, renegotiated, reneged on agreements," one said... The senior executive at Microsoft said, of Altman, "I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer."

America's cable TV industry "is undergoing its most dramatic collapse in history," reports Cord Cutters News, "with operators large and small waving the white flag on traditional TV service and pointing their customers toward streaming platforms instead." Just in 2025 Comcast lost 1.25 million pay-TV subscribers (ending the year with just 11.3 million), while Charter Spectrum also lost hundreds of thousands of customers each quarter.

But "for smaller regional operators, who lack the scale and diversified revenue streams of giants like Comcast, those kinds of losses are simply unsurvivable," they write. And "the companies that once delivered hundreds of channels through coaxial cables are now either shutting down entirely or reinventing themselves as internet providers." Pay-TV subscriptions have plummeted from nearly 90% of U.S. households in the mid-2010s to roughly half by the end of 2025, resulting in billions in lost revenue and forcing many smaller operators to conclude that continuing linear TV services is no longer viable... [This year over U.S. 50 cable TV companies — primarily smaller and midsize providers — are "expected to cease operations entirely or shut down their television services," Cord Cutters News reported earlier.] YouTube TV's pricing is so competitive that the platform is projected to have close to 12.6 million subscribers by the end of 2026, positioning it to become the largest paid TV distributor in the United States. Exclusive content deals, such as YouTube TV's acquisition of NFL Sunday Ticket rights, have further eroded the value proposition of traditional cable at every level of the market... As older cable subscribers age out of the market, there is no new generation of customers waiting to replace them...

[Cable TV] operators like WOW! are betting that their physical infrastructure — now increasingly upgraded to fiber — is more valuable as an internet delivery system than as a cable TV platform. [WOW! serves customers across Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Alabama — but is "phasing out its proprietary streaming live TV service and directing all customers toward YouTube TV," the article notes.] Industry observers see this as part of a broader trend: operators shedding unprofitable video segments to focus on broadband, where returns and network investments are prioritized.

By the end of 2026, non-pay-TV households are expected to surge to 80.7 million, outnumbering traditional pay-TV subscribers at 54.3 million — a milestone that would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago. For the cable companies still standing, the math is now inescapable: the era of the cable bundle is ending, and the only real question left is how gracefully each operator manages its exit.

Within the last month two U.S> judges have effectively declared AI bots are not human, writes Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik: On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to take up a lawsuit in which artist and computer scientist Stephen Thaler tried to copyright an artwork that he acknowledged had been created by an AI bot of his own invention. That left in place a ruling last year by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which held that art created by non-humans can't be copyrighted... [Judge Patricia A. Millett] cited longstanding regulations of the Copyright Office requiring that "for a work to be copyrightable, it must owe its origin to a human being"... She rejected Thaler's argument, as had the federal trial judge who first heard the case, that the Copyright Office's insistence that the author of a work must be human was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court evidently agreed...

[Another AI-related case] involved one Bradley Heppner, who was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly looting $150 million from a financial services company he chaired. Heppner pleaded innocent and was released on $25-million bail. The case is pending.... Knowing that an indictment was in the offing, Heppner had consulted Claude for help on a defense strategy. His lawyers asserted that those exchanges, which were set forth in written memos, were tantamount to consultations with Heppner's lawyers; therefore, his lawyers said, they were confidential according to attorney-client privilege and couldn't be used against Heppner in court. (They also cited the related attorney work product doctrine, which grants confidentiality to lawyers' notes and other similar material.) That was a nontrivial point. Heppner had given Claude information he had learned from his lawyers, and shared Claude's responses with his lawyers.

[Federal Judge Jed S.] Rakoff made short work of this argument. First, he ruled, the AI documents weren't communications between Heppner and his attorneys, since Claude isn't an attorney... Second, he wrote, the exchanges between Heppner and Claude weren't confidential. In its terms of use, Anthropic claims the right to collect both a user's queries and Claude's responses, use them to "train" Claude, and disclose them to others. Finally, he wasn't asking Claude for legal advice, but for information he could pass on to his own lawyers, or not. Indeed, when prosecutors tested Claude by asking whether it could give legal advice, the bot advised them to "consult with a qualified attorney."
The columnist agrees AI-generated results shouldn't receive the same protections as human-generated material. "The AI bots are machines, and portraying them as though they're thinking creatures like artists or attorneys doesn't change that, and shouldn't."

He also seems to think their output is at best second-hand regurgitation. "Everything an AI bot spews out is, at more than a fundamental level, the product of human creativity."

In a blog post on Thursday, System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized new state laws in California, Colorado, and New York that would require operating systems to verify users' ages and expose that information to apps, arguing the rules are easy for kids to bypass and ultimately undermine privacy and freedom more than they protect minors.

"System76's position is interesting given that they sell Linux-loaded desktops, workstations and laptops plus being an operating system vendor with their in-house Pop!_OS distribution and COSMIC desktop environment," adds Phoronix's Michael Larabel, noting that they're also based out of Colorado. Here's an excerpt from the post: "A parent that creates a non-admin account on a computer, sets the age for a child account they create, and hands the computer over is in no different state. The child can install a virtual machine, create an account on the virtual machine and set the age to 18 or over. It's a similar technique to installing a VPN to get around the Great Firewall of China (just consider that for a moment). Or the child can simply re-install the OS and not tell their parents. ... In the case of Colorado's and California's bills, effectiveness is lost. In the case of New York's bill, liberty is lost. In the case of centralized platforms, potential is lost. ... The challenges we face are neither technical nor legal. The only solution is to educate our children about life with digital abundance. Throwing them into the deep end when they're 16 or 18 is too late. It's a wonderful and weird world. Yes, there are dark corners. There always will be. We have to teach our children what to do when they encounter them and we have to trust them." "We are accustomed to adding operating system features to comply with laws," writes Richell, in closing. "Accessibility features for ADA, and power efficiency settings for Energy Star regulations are two examples. We are a part of this world and we believe in the rule of law. We still hope these laws will be recognized for the folly they are and removed from the books or found unconstitutional."

fjo3 shares a report from Reason Magazine: Effective January 1, 2027, providers of computer operating systems in California will be required to implement age verification. That's just part of a wave of state and national laws attempting to limit children's access to potentially risky content without considering the perils such laws themselves pose. Now, not a moment too soon, over 400 computer scientists have signed an open letter warning that the rush to protect children from online dangers threatens to introduce new risks including censorship, centralized power, and loss of privacy. They caution that age-verification requirements "might cause more harm than good." The group of computer scientists from around the world cautions that "those deciding which age-based controls need to exist, and those enforcing them gain a tremendous influence on what content is accessible to whom on the internet." They add that "this influence could be used to censor information and prevent users from accessing services."

"Regulating the use of VPNs, or subjecting their use to age assurance controls, will decrease the capability of users to defend their privacy online. This will not only force regular users to leave a larger footprint on the network, but will leave a number of at-risk populations unprotected, such as journalists, activists, or domestic abuse victims." It continues: "We note that we do not believe that trying to regulate VPN use for non-compliant users would be any more effective than trying to forbid the use of end-to-end encrypted communication for criminals. Secure cryptography is widely available and can no longer be put back into a box."

"If minors or adults are deplatformed via age-related bans, they are likely to migrate to find similar services," warn the scientists. "Since the main platforms would all be regulated, it is likely that they would migrate to fringe sites that escape regulation." With data on everyone collected in order to restrict the activites of minors, data abuses and privacy risks increase. "This in itself increases privacy risks, with data being potentially abused by the provider itself or its subcontractors, or third parties that get access to it, e.g., after a data breach, like the 70K users that had their government ID photos leaked after appealing age assessment errors on Discord."

Instead of mandated age restrictions, the letter urges lawmakers to consider the dangers and suggest regulating social media algorithms instead. They also recommend "support for parents to locally prevent access to non-age-appropriate content or apps, without age-based control needing to be implemented by service providers."

"Most Go developers are now using AI-powered development tools when seeking information (e.g., learning how to use a module) or toiling (e.g., writing repetitive blocks of similar code)." That's one of the conclusions Google's Go team drew from September's big survey of 5,379 Go developers.

But the survey also found that among Go developers using AI-powered tools, "their satisfaction with these tools is middling due, in part, to quality concerns." Our survey suggests bifurcated adoption — while a majority of respondents (53%) said they use such tools daily, there is also a large group (29%) who do not use these at all, or only used them a few times during the past month. We expected this to negatively correlate with age or development experience, but were unable to find strong evidence supporting this theory except for very new developers: respondents with less than one year of professional development experience (not specific to Go) did report more AI use than every other cohort, but this group only represented 2% of survey respondents. At this time, agentic use of AI-powered tools appears nascent among Go developers, with only 17% of respondents saying this is their primary way of using such tools, though a larger group (40%) are occasionally trying agentic modes of operation...

We also asked about overall satisfaction with AI-powered development tools. A majority (55%) reported being satisfied, but this was heavily weighted towards the "Somewhat satisfied" category (42%) vs. the "Very satisfied" group (13%)... [D]eveloper sentiment towards them remains much softer than towards more established tooling (among Go developers, at least). What is driving this lower rate of satisfaction? In a word: quality. We asked respondents to tell us something good they've accomplished with these tools, as well as something that didn't work out well. A majority said that creating non-functional code was their primary problem with AI developer tools (53%), with 30% lamenting that even working code was of poor quality.

The most frequently cited benefits, conversely, were generating unit tests, writing boilerplate code, enhanced autocompletion, refactoring, and documentation generation. These appear to be cases where code quality is perceived as less critical, tipping the balance in favor of letting AI take the first pass at a task. That said, respondents also told us the AI-generated code in these successful cases still required careful review (and often, corrections), as it can be buggy, insecure, or lack context... [One developer said reviewing AI-generated code was so mentally taxing that it "kills the productivity potential".]

Of all the tasks we asked about, "Writing code" was the most bifurcated, with 66% of respondents already or hoping to soon use AI for this, while 1/4 of respondents didn't want AI involved at all. Open-ended responses suggest developers primarily use this for toilsome, repetitive code, and continue to have concerns about the quality of AI-generated code.
Most respondents also said they "are not currently building AI-powered features into the Go software they work on (78%)," the surveyors report, "with 2/3 reporting that their software does not use AI functionality at all (66%)." This appears to be a decrease in production-related AI usage year-over-year; in 2024, 59% of respondents were not involved in AI feature work, while 39% indicated some level of involvement. That marks a shift of 14 points away from building AI-powered systems among survey respondents, and may reflect some natural pullback from the early hype around AI-powered applications: it's plausible that lots of folks tried to see what they could do with this technology during its initial rollout, with some proportion deciding against further exploration (at least at this time).

Among respondents who are building AI- or LLM-powered functionality, the most common use case was to create summaries of existing content (45%). Overall, however, there was little difference between most uses, with between 28% — 33% of respondents adding AI functionality to support classification, generation, solution identification, chatbots, and software development.

NVIDIA has officially launched a native GeForce NOW client for Linux as a Flatpak, giving Linux gamers access to cloud-rendered RTX gaming. Phoronix reports: While confined to a Flatpak, for now NVIDIA is just "officially" supporting it on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. Granted, thanks to Flatpak it should run on other non-Ubuntu distributions too but in terms of the official support and where they are qualifying their builds they are limiting it just to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. [...] At launch the Flatpak build is also just for x86_64 Linux with no AArch64 Linux builds or similar at this time.

Running GeForce NOW on Linux while games are rendered in NVIDIA's cloud with Blackwell GPUs, you still need to be using a modern GPU with H.264 or H.265 Vulkan Video support NVIDIA isn't yet supporting Vulkan Video AV1 with GeForce NOW on Linux but just H.264/H.265. If you are using NVIDIA graphics the NVIDIA R580 series or newer is recommended while using the X.Org session. If you are using Intel or AMD Radeon graphics, Mesa 24.2+ is recommended and using the Wayland session.

When you are up and running with GeForce NOW on Linux, you have access to over 4,500 games. The free tier of GeForce NOW provides standard access to the gaming servers and limited session caps for an introductory-level experience. It's with the performance tier where you can enjoy RTX ray-tracing and 1440p @ 60 FPS performance and up to six hour sessions. With GeForce NOW's Ultimate tier is where you are running on GeForce RTX 5080 GPU servers with support for up to 5K @ 120 FPS gaming or 1080p @ 360 FPS with up to eight hour gaming sessions in length.

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: Led by Texas and New Hampshire, U.S. states across the national map, both red and blue in political stripes, are developing bitcoin strategic reserves and bringing cryptocurrencies onto their books through additional state finance and budgeting measures. Texas recently became the first state to purchase bitcoin after a legislative effort that began in 2024, but numerous states have joined the "Reserve Race" to pass legislation that will allow them to ultimately buy cryptocurrencies. New Hampshire passed its crypto strategic reserve law last May, even before Texas, giving the state treasurer the authority to invest up to 5% of the state funds in crypto ETFs, though precious metals such as gold are also authorized for purchase. Arizona passed similar legislation, while Massachusetts, Ohio, and South Dakota have legislation at various stages of committee review...

Similarities in the actions taken across states to date include include authorizing the state treasurer or other investment official to allow the investment of a limited amount of public funds in crypto and building out the governance structure needed to invest in crypto... [New Hampshire] became the first state to approve the issuance of a bitcoin-backed municipal bond last November, a $100 million issuance that would mark the first time cryptocurrency is used as collateral in the U.S. municipal bond market. The deal has not taken place yet, though plans are for the issuance to occur this year... "What's different here is it's bitcoin rather than taxpayer dollars as the collateral," [said University of Chicago public policy professor Justin Marlowe]. In numerous states, including, Colorada, Utah, and Louisiana,crypto is now accepted as payment for taxes and other state business...

"For many in the state/local investing industry, crypto-backed assets are still far too speculative and volatile for public money," Marlowe said. "But others, and I think there's a sort of generational shift in the works, see it as a reasonable store of value that is actually stronger on many other public sector values like transparency and asset integrity," he added.
Public policy professor Marlowe "sees the state-level trend as largely one of signaling at present," according to the article. (Marlowe says "If you're a governor and you want to broadcast that you are amenable to innovative business development in the digital economy, these are relatively low-cost, low-risk ways to send that signal.") But the bigger steps may reflect how crypto advocates have increasing political power in the states. The article notes that the cryptocurrency industry was the largest corporate donor in a U.S. election cycle in 2024, "with support given to candidates on both sides."

"It is already amassing a war chest for the 2026 midterms."

Norway has released its December and full year 2025 automotive sales numbers and the world's leading EV haven has broken records once again. The country had previously targeted an end to fossil car sales in 2025, and it basically got there. From a report: In 2017, Norway set a formal non-binding target to end fossil car sales in the country by 2025 -- a target earlier than any other country in the world by several years. Norway was already well ahead of the world in EV adoption, with about a third of new cars being electric at the time -- but it wanted to schedule the final blow for just 8 years later, fairly short as far as automotive timelines go.

At the time, many (though not us at Electrek) considered this to be an optimistic goal, and figured that it might get pushed back. But Norway did not budge in its target (unlike more cowardly nations). And it turns out, when you set a realistic goal, craft policy around it, and don't act all wishy-washy or change your mind every few years, you can actually get things done. (In fact, Europe currently has around the same EV sales level as Norway did 10 years ahead of its 100% goal -- which means Europe's former 100% 2035 goal is still eminently achievable)

Gentoo Linux posted its 2025 project retrospective this week. Some interesting details: Mostly because of the continuous attempts to force Copilot usage for our repositories, Gentoo currently considers and plans the migration of our repository mirrors and pull request contributions to Codeberg. Codeberg is a site based on Forgejo, maintained by a non-profit organization, and located in Berlin, Germany. Gentoo continues to host its own primary git, bugs, etc infrastructure and has no plans to change that...

We now publish weekly Gentoo images for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), based on the amd64 stages, see our mirrors. While these images are not present in the Microsoft store yet, that's something we intend to fix soon...

Given the unfortunate fracturing of the GnuPG / OpenPGP / LibrePGP ecosystem due to competing standards, we now provide an alternatives mechanism to choose the system gpg provider and ease compatibility testing...

We have added a bootstrap path for Rust from C++ using Mutabah's Rust compiler mrustc, which alleviates the need for pre-built binaries and makes it significantly easier to support more configurations. Similarly, Ada and D support in gcc now have clean bootstrap paths, which makes enabling these in the compiler as easy as switching the useflags on gcc and running emerge.
Other interesting statistics for the year:

• Gentoo currently consists of 31,663 ebuilds for 19,174 different packages.
• For amd64 (x86-64), there are 89 GBytes of binary packages available on the mirrors.
• Gentoo each week builds 154 distinct installation stages for different processor architectures and system configurations, with an overwhelming part of these fully up-to-date.
• The number of commits to the main ::gentoo repository has remained at an overall high level in 2025, with a slight decrease from 123,942 to 112,927.
• The number of commits by external contributors was 9,396, now across 377 unique external authors.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Heraklit for sharing the 2025 retrospective.

An R&D lab under America's Energy Department annnounced this week that "Neuromorphic computers, inspired by the architecture of the human brain, are proving surprisingly adept at solving complex mathematical problems that underpin scientific and engineering challenges."

Phys.org publishes the announcement from Sandia National Lab: In a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, Sandia National Laboratories computational neuroscientists Brad Theilman and Brad Aimone describe a novel algorithm that enables neuromorphic hardware to tackle partial differential equations, or PDEs — the mathematical foundation for modeling phenomena such as fluid dynamics, electromagnetic fields and structural mechanics. The findings show that neuromorphic computing can not only handle these equations, but do so with remarkable efficiency. The work could pave the way for the world's first neuromorphic supercomputer, potentially revolutionizing energy-efficient computing for national security applications and beyond...

"We're just starting to have computational systems that can exhibit intelligent-like behavior. But they look nothing like the brain, and the amount of resources that they require is ridiculous, frankly," Theilman said.For decades, experts have believed that neuromorphic computers were best suited for tasks like recognizing patterns or accelerating artificial neural networks. These systems weren't expected to excel at solving rigorous mathematical problems like PDEs, which are typically tackled by traditional supercomputers. But for Aimone and Theilman, the results weren't surprising. The researchers believe the brain itself performs complex computations constantly, even if we don't consciously realize it. "Pick any sort of motor control task — like hitting a tennis ball or swinging a bat at a baseball," Aimone said. "These are very sophisticated computations. They are exascale-level problems that our brains are capable of doing very cheaply..."

Their research also raises intriguing questions about the nature of intelligence and computation. The algorithm developed by Theilman and Aimone retains strong similarities to the structure and dynamics of cortical networks in the brain. "We based our circuit on a relatively well-known model in the computational neuroscience world," Theilman said. "We've shown the model has a natural but non-obvious link to PDEs, and that link hasn't been made until now — 12 years after the model was introduced." The researchers believe that neuromorphic computing could help bridge the gap between neuroscience and applied mathematics, offering new insights into how the brain processes information. "Diseases of the brain could be diseases of computation," Aimone said. "But we don't have a solid grasp on how the brain performs computations yet." If their hunch is correct, neuromorphic computing could offer clues to better understand and treat neurological conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Dell has reversed course and resurrected the XPS brand as its "premium consumer" brand of laptops, admitting it was a mistake to kill it in the first place. Slashdot reader joshuark shares a report from Gizmodo: At last year's CES, Dell made the eyebrow-raising decision to ax all its legacy laptop brand names and instead opt for Apple-like conventions. Instead of XPS, we were forced to comprehend the differences between a "Dell," a "Dell Pro," a "Dell Premium," and a "Dell Pro Max." "This complicated brand we called Dell last year was trying to cover this very large consumer space with lots of similar products," Jeff Clarke, Dell's chief operating officer said. Now those non-XPS products are mostly dedicated to the base consumer and entry-level laptops, "no pluses, minuses, squares, or whatever the hell else we called them."

"We won't chase every competitor down every rabbit hole," he added. What that means is we probably won't see any kind of handheld PC from Alienware, like that age-old UFO design showed off back in 2020. Just as well, Dell isn't remodeling its entire laptop lineup for a second time in two years. The company isn't bringing back brand names like Inspiron (which became mere "Dells) or Latitude (which transformed into "Dell Pro). According to Clarke, Dell Pro "still tests well."

Anna's Archive lost control of its primary .org domain after it was placed on registry-level serverHold -- "an action that's typically taken by the domain name registry," reports TorrentFreak. Despite mounting legal pressure and speculation tied to its Spotify backup, the site remains accessible via multiple alternative domains, underscoring the resilience of shadow libraries. From the report: A few hours ago, the site's original domain name suddenly became unreachable globally. The annas-archive.org domain status was changed to "serverHold," which is typically done by the domain registry. This status effectively means that the domain is suspended and under investigation. Similar action has previously been taken against other pirate sites.

It is rare to see a .org domain involved in domain name suspensions. The American non-profit Public Interest Registry (PIR), which oversees the .org domains, previously refused to suspend domain names voluntarily, including thepiratebay.org. The registry's cautionary stance suggests that the actions against annas-archive.org are backed by a court order.

PIR's marketing director, Kendal Rowe, informs TorrentFreak that "unfortunately, PIR is unable to comment on the situation at this time." It is possible that, in response to the 'DRM-circumventing' Spotify backup, rightsholders requested an injunction targeting the domain name. However, we have seen no evidence of that. In the WorldCat lawsuit, OCLC requested an injunction to force action from intermediaries, including domain registries, but as far as we know, that hasn't been granted yet.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Growing support for far-right parties is pressuring European governments to introduce stricter controls on immigration. Switzerland is set to vote on a proposal that would take the idea to the next level -- imposing a cap on its population [non-paywalled link]. The initiative could lead eventually to a blanket ban on new arrivals if the number of residents rises from around 9 million currently to above 10 million, with little distinction made between refugees, skilled workers and top managers on six-figure salaries.

Citizens will likely vote on the proposal next year under the country's unique system of plebiscites on constitutional amendments and policy, and polls suggest there's a chance they'll approve it. The risk is it could lead to shortages of critical skills that end up harming Switzerland's competitiveness. The outcome will show how far citizens are willing to go to preserve some of the traits that made their country such an appealing destination. [...] The right-wing Swiss People's Party, or SVP, won 28% of the vote in the last election with a campaign that presented Swiss citizenship as a privilege, not a right. It came up with the idea of a population limit in 2023, presenting it as a way to preserve the Swiss lifestyle and protect its environment from excessive human activity.

Long-time Slashdot reader jenningsthecat shared this article from IEEE Spectrum: By dropping a nuclear reactor 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) underground, Deep Fission aims to use the weight of a billion tons of rock and water as a natural containment system comparable to concrete domes and cooling towers. With the fission reaction occurring far below the surface, steam can safely circulate in a closed loop to generate power.

The California-based startup announced in October that prospective customers had signed non-binding letters of intent for 12.5 gigawatts of power involving data center developers, industrial parks, and other (mostly undisclosed) strategic partners, with initial sites under consideration in Kansas, Texas, and Utah... The company says its modular approach allows multiple 15-megawatt reactors to be clustered on a single site: A block of 10 would total 150 MW, and Deep Fission claims that larger groupings could scale to 1.5 GW. Deep Fission claims that using geological depth as containment could make nuclear energy cheaper, safer, and deployable in months at a fraction of a conventional plant's footprint...

The company aims to finalize its reactor design and confirm the pilot site in the coming months. [Company founder Liz] Muller says the plan is to drill the borehole, lower the canister, load the fuel, and bring the reactor to criticality underground in 2026. Sites in Utah, Texas, and Kansas are among the leading candidates for the first commercial-scale projects, which could begin construction in 2027 or 2028, depending on the speed of DOE and NRC approvals. Deep Fission expects to start manufacturing components for the first unit in 2026 and does not anticipate major bottlenecks aside from typical long-lead items.
In short "The same oil and gas drilling techniques that reliably reach kilometer-deep wells can be adapted to host nuclear reactors..." the article points out. Their design would also streamline construction, since "Locating the reactors under a deep water column subjects them to roughly 160 atmospheres of pressure — the same conditions maintained inside a conventional nuclear reactor — which forms a natural seal to keep any radioactive coolant or steam contained at depth, preventing leaks from reaching the surface."

Other interesting points from the article:

• They plan on operating and controlling the reactor remotely from the surface.

• Company founder Muller says if an earthquake ever disrupted the site, "you seal it off at the bottom of the borehole, plug up the borehole, and you have your waste in safe disposal."

• For waste management, the company "is eyeing deep geological disposal in the very borehole systems they deploy for their reactors."

• "The company claims it can cut overall costs by 70 to 80 percent compared with full-scale nuclear plants."

"Among its competition are projects like TerraPower's Natrium, notes the tech news site Hackaday, saying TerraPower's fast neutron reactors "are already under construction and offer much more power per reactor, along with Natrium in particular also providing built-in grid-level storage.

"One thing is definitely for certain..." they add. "The commercial power sector in the US has stopped being mind-numbingly boring."

Animal testing in science would be phased out faster under a new plan to increase the use of artificial intelligence and 3D bioprinted human tissues, a UK minister has said. The Guardian: The roadmap unveiled by the science minister, Patrick Vallance, backs replacing certain animal tests that are still used where necessary to determine the safety of products such as life-saving vaccines and the impact pesticides have on living beings and the environment. The strategy says phasing out the use of animals in science can only happen when reliable and effective alternative methods with the same level of safety for human exposure can replace them.

The government said new funding for researchers and streamlined regulation would help develop methods such as organ-on-a-chip systems -- tiny devices that mimic how human organs work using real human cells. Greater use of AI to analyse vast amounts of data about molecules and predict whether new medicines will be safe and work well on humans would be deployed, while 3D bioprinted tissues could create realistic human tissue samples, from skin to liver, for testing.

Other plans under the strategy include an end to regulatory testing on animals to assess the potential for skin and eye irritation and skin sensitisation by the end of 2026. By 2027, researchers are expected under the strategy to end tests of the strength of botox on mice, while by 2030 pharmacokinetic studies -- which track how a drug moves through the body over time -- on dogs and non-human primates will be reduced.

Nothing has announced that it will allow users to delete Facebook, Instagram and other Meta services from its mid-range and entry-level phones after users objected to the company's decision to pre-install these apps. The update will arrive by the end of November for devices running the Android 16-based OS 4.0 on the Phone (3a) series. Nothing said it will continue to pre-install partner apps on non-flagship devices in most regions.

Devices in the United Kingdom, European Union and Japan will also come with TikTok installed by default. The company defended the practice by saying most users rely on these apps and that pre-installing them allows faster cold starts. Carl Pei's company blamed razor-thin margins on mid-range devices for the decision to bundle third-party software. Nothing did not address whether users can uninstall the service that powers newly introduced lock screen advertisements, which the company previously described as disabled by default and standard across the industry.

London police finally understand why 80,000 phones disappeared from the city's streets last year. The answer involves budget cuts [non-paywalled source] that hollowed out British policing in the 2010s, the arrival of electric bikes that made theft easy, and a lucrative black market in China where stolen British phones retain full functionality. The Metropolitan Police discovered an industrial-scale operation in December when officers traced a woman's iPhone to a Heathrow warehouse on Christmas Eve. Boxes labeled as batteries and bound for Hong Kong contained almost 1,000 stolen iPhones. The police arrested two men in their thirties in September as suspected ringleaders of a group that sent up to 40,000 stolen phones to China.

The epidemic took root after Conservative-led austerity measures reduced police numbers and budgets. In 2017 the Metropolitan Police announced it would stop investigating low-level crimes to focus resources on serious violence and sexual offenses. Thieves on rented electric bikes began mounting sidewalks to snatch phones at high speed while wearing balaclavas and hoods. Police data shows only 495 people were charged out of 106,000 phones reported stolen between March 2024 and February 2025. Thieves earn up to $401 per device. The phones sell for up to $5,000 in China because Chinese network providers do not subscribe to the international blacklist for stolen devices.