Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - 'Notepad++ For Mac' Release Is Disavowed By the Creator of the Original (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As its name implies, the venerable Notepad++ text editor began as a more capable version of the classic Windows Notepad, with features such as line numbering and syntax highlighting. It was created in 2003 by Don Ho, who continues to be its primary author and maintainer, and it has been a Windows-exclusive app throughout its existence (older Notepad++ versions support OSes as old as Windows 95; the current version officially supports everything going back to Windows 7). I’m not a devoted user of the app, but I was aware of its history, which is why I was surprised to see news of a “Notepad++ for Mac” port making the rounds last week, as though it were a port of the original available from the Notepad++ website.

Apparently, this news surprised Ho as well, who claims that the Mac version and its author, Andrey Letov, are “using the Notepad++ trademark (the name) without permission." “This is misleading, inappropriate, and frankly disrespectful to both the project and its users,” Ho wrote. “It has already fooled people—including tech media—into believing this is an official release. To be crystal clear: Notepad++ has never released a macOS version. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply riding on the Notepad++ name.”

Submission + - The issues with facial recognition systems in the UK

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: The Guardian has three articles today on the issue

Oversight lagging behind

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

The consequences of false positives

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

UK usage by police force

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

The obvious answer is that any victim of a false positive should receive £1000 for the first event, £2000 for the second etc...

Submission + - The war has the world buying clean energy. China is benefitting the most. (cnn.com)

Submitted by AleRunner
AleRunner writes: CNN is reporting that sales of renewables have surged hugely with 70% growth of solar, batteries and EVs as people and countries move away from the huge vulnerabilities and bankrupting costs of oil based economies.

The war in Iran has sent oil-starved countries scrambling for fuel. Many are opting for energy alternatives — and turning to the renewables king of the planet: China.

Chinese exports of solar technology, batteries and electric vehicles all reached record highs in March, according to energy think tank Ember, a sign that the historic oil supply shock is accelerating the adoption of clean energy around the world.

The Washington Post had a similar report recently however as CNN mentioned Reuters claims that there is still plenty of capacity for production. Last year already solar grow faster than any energy source ever.

Submission + - Particles seen emerging from empty space for first time (newscientist.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: A pair of rare particles produced in high-energy proton collisions may be the clearest evidence yet that mass can emerge from empty space. The finding could shed light on one of the biggest puzzles in physics: how particles acquire their mass.

According to quantum chromodynamics (QCD) – widely considered to be our best theory for describing the strong force, which binds quarks inside protons and neutrons – even a perfect vacuum isn’t truly empty. Instead, it is filled with short-lived disturbances in the underlying energy of space that flicker in and out of existence, known as virtual particles. Among them are quark-antiquark pairs.

Under normal conditions, these fleeting pairs vanish almost as soon as they appear. But if enough energy is injected into a vacuum, QCD predicts they can be promoted into real, detectable particles with measurable mass.

Now, the STAR collaboration – an international team of physicists working at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state – has observed this process for the first time.

The team smashed together high-energy protons in a vacuum, producing a spray of particles. Some of these particles should be quark-antiquark pairs pulled directly from the vacuum itself, but quarks can never exist alone and immediately combine into composite particles. Quarks and antiquarks are born with their spins correlated — a shared quantum alignment inherited from the vacuum.

The researchers found that this link persists even after the quarks and antiquarks become part of larger particles called hyperons, which decay in less than a tenth of a billionth of a second. Spotting these spin-aligned hyperons in the aftermath of the proton collisions allowed the researchers to confirm that the quarks within them came from the vacuum.

“This is the first time we’ve seen the entire process,” says Zhoudunming Tu, a member of the STAR collaboration.

Submission + - Many International Game Developers Plan To Skip GDC In US (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This week, tens of thousands of game developers and producers will once again gather in San Francisco, as they have since 1988, for the weeklong Game Developers Conference. But this year’s show will be missing many international developers who say they no longer feel comfortable traveling to the United States to attend, no matter how relevant the show is to their work and careers. Dozens of those developers who spoke to Ars in recent months say they’re wary of traveling to a country that has shown a callous disregard for—or outright hostility toward—the safety of international travelers. That’s especially true for developers from various minority groups, those with transgender identities, and those who feel they could be targeted for outspoken political beliefs. “I honestly don’t know anyone who is not from the US who is planning on going to the next GDC,” Godot Foundation Executive Director Emilio Coppola, who’s based in Spain, told Ars. “We never felt super safe, but now we are not willing to risk it.”

Submission + - A new California law says Linux must verify user age at startup (pcgamer.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The government of California is implementing a law that requires operating system providers to implement some form of age verification into their account setup procedures.

Assembly Bill No. 1043 was approved by California governor Gavin Newsom in October of last year, and becomes active on January 1, 2027 (via The Lunduke Journal). The bill states, among other factors, that "An operating system provider shall do all of the following:"

"(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.

"(2) Provide a developer who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies, at a minimum, which of the following categories pertains to the user."

The categories are broken into four sections: users under 13 years of age, over 13 years of age under 16, at least 16 years of age and under 18, and "at least 18 years of age."

Submission + - Galileo's handwritten notes found in ancient astronomy text (science.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: On a cloudy day in January, historian Ivan Malara sat in Italy’s National Central Library of Florence poring over seven 16th century printings of the ancient world’s most influential astronomy text. The pages belonged to The Almagest, in which second century polymath Claudius Ptolemy described his vision of an Earth-centered cosmos. As Malara flipped through the pages, he spotted something out of place. Someone had transcribed Psalm 145 on an otherwise blank page—in handwriting reminiscent of a very, very famous Tuscan astronomer.

That book, Malara came to realize, had been extensively annotated by none other than Galileo Galilei. Malara’s discovery, described in a paper now under review at the Journal for the History of Astronomy, promises new insights into one of the most famous ideological transitions in the history of science: the moment when Earth was thrust from the center of our universe.

Submission + - US Blocks All Offshore Wind Construction, Says Reason Is Classified (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it was pausing the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the US. The move comes despite the fact that these projects already have installed significant hardware in the water and on land; one of them is nearly complete. In what appears to be an attempt to avoid legal scrutiny, the Interior is blaming the decisions on a classified report from the Department of Defense.

The second Trump administration announced its animosity toward offshore wind power literally on day one, issuing an executive order on inauguration day that called for a temporary halt to issuing permits for new projects pending a re-evaluation. Earlier this month, however, a judge vacated that executive order, noting that the government has shown no indication that it was even attempting to start the re-evaluation it said was needed. But a number of projects have gone through the entire permitting process, and construction has started. Before today, the administration had attempted to stop these in an erratic, halting manner. Empire Wind, an 800 MW farm being built off New York, was stopped by the Department of the Interior, which alleged that it had been rushed through permitting. That hold was lifted following lobbying and negotiations by New York and the project developer Orsted, and the Department of the Interior never revealed why it changed its mind. When the Interior Department blocked a second Orsted project, Revolution Wind offshore of southern New England, the company took the government to court and won a ruling that let it continue construction.

Today’s announcement targets those and three other projects. Interior says it is pausing the permits for all five, which are the only projects currently under construction. It claims that offshore wind creates “national security risks” that were revealed in a recent analysis performed by the Department of Defense, which apparently neglected to identify these issues during the evaluations it did while the projects were first permitted. What are these risks? The Interior Department is being extremely coy. It notes that offshore wind turbines can interfere with radar sensing, but that’s been known for a while. In announcing the decision, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also noted “the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies.” But the announcement says that the Defense Department analysis is classified, meaning nobody is likely to know what the actual reason is—presuming one exists. The classification will also make it far more challenging to contest this decision in court.

Submission + - This AI finds simple rules where humans see only chaos (sciencedaily.com) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A new AI developed at Duke University can uncover simple, readable rules behind extremely complex systems. It studies how systems evolve over time and reduces thousands of variables into compact equations that still capture real behavior. The method works across physics, engineering, climate science, and biology. Researchers say it could help scientists understand systems where traditional equations are missing or too complicated to write down.

Submission + - Public Domain Day 2026

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!
By Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle CC BY 4.0
On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee.


—

Last year's Slashdot coverage included Tintin, Popeye Enter Public Domain as 1929 Works Released (Jan 1) and Internet Archive Celebrates New Public Domain Works with Remixes in Short Film Contest (Feb. 8).

Submission + - Crypto ATMs Are Largely For Crime (cnn.com) 1

Submitted by atrimtab
atrimtab writes: Cryptocurrency ATMs located in gas stations and convenience stores across the U.S. are increasingly associated with fraud, leaving victims with little recourse.

These machines, while advertising low service fees, often charge exorbitant transaction costs exceeding 20% by inflating the prices of current Crypto coins being bought by customers.

Victims of scams facilitated through these ATMs face challenges in recovering their funds, as Crypto ATM companies are often unwilling to reimburse losses. Law enforcement attempts to seize funds from these machines have been met with legal action from the companies, further hindering victim recovery.

Some industry insiders suggest the profitability of these Crypto ATM companies relies on illegal activity, and efforts are underway to influence state legislation, potentially making it even more difficult for victims to reclaim their money.

Submission + - Young Journalists Drone, Expose Russian Ships Off Dutch-German Coasts (digitaldigging.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Seven German journalism students, as a continuation of their OSINT course project, tracked the movements of ships with Russian crews off the coasts of the Netherlands and Germany and linked them to swarms of drones appearing over European military airfields and other strategic sites.

The guys not only analyzed thousands of data points, but also used leaked documents, established connections with sources in European agencies, and drove 2,500 km across three countries chasing one of the ships – even launching their own drone to fly over it.

At the end of the article, there’s precise data on the vessels, so you can follow them yourself.

Slashdot Top Deals

The first time, it's a KLUDGE! The second, a trick. Later, it's a well-established technique! -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics

Close