185605320
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
Linux Mint is expanding its collection of homegrown software with Xepub, a new EPUB reader, and Clockenstein, a new calendar application supporting Google Calendar and CalDAV. The projects were revealed in the Linux Mint August monthly update, which was published on September 11.
NERDS.xyz argues that this growing collection of apps raises a bigger question about Linux Mint priorities. With Mint already based on Ubuntu, which itself is based on Debian, should its developers spend resources creating more applications that duplicate existing Linux software, or concentrate on Cinnamon, Wayland, hardware compatibility, upgrades, and the operating system experience itself?
185471396
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki has published an unusually stark warning about the direction of artificial intelligence. Pachocki says internal results give him a strong expectation that todayâ(TM)s pace of AI progress could continue into recursive self-improvement, with increasingly capable systems helping drive their own development. He warns that nobody is prepared for a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence and says AI is becoming increasingly difficult to fully understand as capabilities grow.
Pachocki also warns that AI models are becoming superhuman at breaking into and out of computer systems, while future agents could bargain with, trick, or blackmail people while pursuing objectives. His conclusion is particularly striking: he currently believes no AI lab has solved alignment and monitoring well enough to responsibly continue scaling at maximum speed for much longer. He expects voluntary slowdowns and argues that international coordination on AI development should become a top government priority.
185403546
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
Audacity 4.0 has been released with a rebuilt Qt interface, a new clip-editing model, customizable workspaces, native high-DPI rendering, and a new AUP4 project format. The open source audio editor also adds ASIO playback and recording support to official Windows builds, while bringing major changes to recording, playback, plugins, and project handling.
The overhaul comes with some tradeoffs. Audacity 4.0 currently lacks several features found in Audacity 3, including Time Tracks, Note and MIDI tracks, Mixer, Macro Manager and scripting pipe, VAMP and LADSPA plugin hosting, and play-at-speed. The developers say they plan to bring the missing functionality back in future releases.
185380838
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
Perplexity has built a local artificial intelligence engine designed specifically for Apple silicon and the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B model. Called Lily, the engine uses a Rust runtime and custom Metal kernels, with neither PyTorch nor MLX in its execution path. Perplexity says Lily averaged 23 percent faster prompt processing and 35 percent faster token generation than MLX-LM on an M5 Max MacBook Pro with 128GB of unified memory.
Lily is more specialized than MLX-LM, which supports a much wider range of models and architectures. Perplexity says it plans to release Lily as open source, but the code is not available yet, leaving its performance claims dependent on internal testing for now.
185321260
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
SNICKERS has launched Digital SNICKERS, a promotion that asks users to feed a virtual candy bar to an AI chatbot when it starts hallucinating, becoming overly agreeable, or otherwise acting strangely. The joke goes considerably deeper than an image of candy. The Digital SNICKERS directs the AI to a lengthy set of instructions for a one-turn role-play game, including looking back at the previous conversation, reconsidering its last answer, adopting a temporary personality, and answering again after supposedly taking a bite.
The campaign is essentially a user-initiated form of prompt injection turned into advertising. Mars even includes an extensive safety gate and acknowledges that its instructions cannot override an LLMs existing policies. It is a strange example of an AI security concept entering mainstream marketing, complete with free physical SNICKERS bars available through a related promotion.
185285740
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
Debian developers have rejected proposals that would have banned or strongly discouraged the use of artificial intelligence within the project. Instead, members selected a proposal called Responsible Use of Generative AI, which says Debian neither endorses nor prohibits generative AI for software development, packaging, documentation, and other project work.
Under the new policy, contributors remain responsible for the quality, correctness, maintainability, licensing, and legal compliance of anything they submit, including AI-assisted work. Human review and testing are expected, while disclosure of AI use is encouraged but not required. The ballot included several more restrictive alternatives, including proposals to ban LLM contributions through the Debian Social Contract and to declare that Debian is created by humans.
185167374
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
Microsoft is deepening its AI ties with Saudi Arabia through HUMAIN, a state-backed AI company chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The partnership could bring HUMAINs Arabic-language ALLAM models into Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft 365 Copilot. HUMAIN engineers will also work alongside Microsoft engineers to help organizations deploy AI systems.
The relationship deserves scrutiny. Human rights groups have previously raised concerns about Microsofts Saudi expansion, including privacy, surveillance, and government access to data.
Microsoft says its technology can meet enterprise and public-sector security and governance requirements. But as the company gets closer to a Saudi state-backed AI operation, questions remain about what happens when those requirements collide with Microsofts privacy and human rights commitments.
185148230
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
Citrix has introduced a dual boot capability for UniconOS that installs a separate Linux based recovery environment alongside Windows. If ransomware, a failed update, or operating system corruption leaves Windows unavailable, an employee can reboot into UniconOS and reconnect to company applications through Citrix DaaS and SecurAccess. The feature is available with Citrix UniconOS Release 7 2607.
The recovery environment sits on its own partition and remains isolated from the Windows filesystem. It does not repair Windows, and it cannot help with failed hardware, missing network access, or unavailable Citrix infrastructure. However, it could give enterprises a faster way to keep employees working while IT investigates or repairs affected Windows installations.
185120614
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
An OpenAI product leader has somehow become a rockstar among Codex users. Thibault Tibo Sottiaux has more than 500,000 followers, and his repeated usage resets have become such a big part of Codex culture that some developers actually plan their AI usage around his promises.
I am one of them. I have notifications turned on for his posts, and his resets have helped me keep building with Codex while staying on ChatGPT Plus instead of paying for Pro. Here is how the guy with the reset button became one of the most recognizable faces in the Codex community.
185105460
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
DHH has launched the Omacom Foundation with $8 million from Michael Dell, Jack Dorsey, Tobi Lutke, Patrick Collison, Matthew Prince, Brendan Iribe, Jason Fried, and DHH himself. The nonprofit is meant to support Omarchy, fund infrastructure, hold trademarks, promote the project, and back the open source software it depends on.
The foundation is already putting money to work by becoming the exclusive sponsor of Hyprland creator Vaxry under a three year deal with an option for two more years. Omarchy is an Arch Linux based operating system built around Hyprland and Quickshell, with a keyboard driven workflow aimed heavily at developers and power users.
185057700
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
PINE64 has some very bad news for Linux hardware fans
PINE64 says it has no plans to produce additional Linux devices in the near future because of the ongoing DRAM and eMMC shortage. Future production will depend on component pricing after mid 2027, while existing PineNote and PineTab2 inventory could run out in roughly three months.
The company says PineTime, PineVoice, and Pinecil production will continue as usual, but the outlook for its Linux hardware is much less certain.
185018506
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
GEEKOM has connected four of its A9 Mega Mini PCs over USB4 to create a local AI cluster running Ubuntu Linux and an optimized version of DeepSeek V4 Flash. Each system is powered by an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor with 16 Zen 5 CPU cores, Radeon 8060S graphics, and unified memory. The software stack uses Ubuntu, AMD ROCm, and DwarfStar, while an OpenAI-compatible API lets applications and AI agents communicate with the cluster.
GEEKOM says the four-node setup delivered about 14.61 tokens per second at single concurrency and has operated with contexts up to 250K tokens. The company is pitching the cluster for private AI workloads where documents, source code, credentials, and other sensitive information can remain local rather than being sent to a public cloud. One big unanswered question is cost, as buying four Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Mini PCs could make the economics less attractive compared with a workstation or dedicated AI server.
184870624
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
Slashdot reader Brian Fagioli has released Veridenz, an iPhone app that creates a cryptographic witness for photos without uploading the original image. The app hashes the file, signs the hash using a dedicated identity stored in Apple Keychain, and publishes the witness to Nostr relays while keeping the photo inside the app unless the user chooses to export it.
Rather than trying to determine whether a scene was genuine, Veridenz answers a narrower question by verifying whether a photo file matches the one that was originally witnessed. Users do not need a Nostr account because the app creates its own signing identity, keeping private documentation separate from a public Nostr profile.
184839302
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
Sandisk and SK hynix have published the first open technical specification for High Bandwidth Flash through the Open Compute Project. HBF is designed to create a new memory tier between High Bandwidth Memory and traditional SSD storage, giving AI inference systems more near compute capacity without relying entirely on expensive HBM.
The specification supports capacities up to 512GB using 8 high and 16 high NAND stacks, with bandwidth tiers ranging from about 0.4TB per second to 3.0TB per second. It also uses the UCIe chiplet interface, which could make HBF easier to integrate with CPUs, GPUs, and other accelerators. Google and Tenstorrent participated in the standardization effort, but commercial products and independent benchmarks are still missing.
184786762
submission
BrianFagioli writes:
A firmware flaw affecting COLDCARD hardware wallets may have caused some devices to generate predictable Bitcoin wallet seeds. Block researchers traced the issue to firmware that used a deterministic software generator instead of the STM32 processor hardware random number generator.
Coinkite says COLDCARD Mk3 devices that generated seeds while running firmware version 4.0.1 through 5.0.3 may be affected. Installing newer firmware does not repair an existing seed, so users must create a new seed on an unaffected device and transfer their Bitcoin. Block also questions whether newer COLDCARD models provide enough secure randomness, although Coinkite disputes that those devices are affected.
