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Comment Re: Thinkpad parts and screen swaps. (Score 1) 28

by couchslug (#66261318) Attached to: Review Roundup: Framework Laptop 13 Pro

Before buying a top or donor Thinkpad I check to see if a better panel donor is available. I've built many Thinkpads from wrecks because it's generally so easy. I don't care about warranty service because I don't own a corporate fleet and keep my machines long past warranty expiration and EOS.

The HMM are free downloads from Lenovo making it even easier to work on Thinkpads. Their community is large, dedicated and helpful. I rarely damage mine but if I do I've plenty of spares, and thanks to easy drive removal (I never buy notebooks with soldered storage or RAM) I can toss the drive into another Thinkpad then sort out the first at leisure.

Those advantages are why the Thinkpad community like them. Of course some models suck but not buying those is effortless.

Comment "Thinkpad" is not specific. Models/specs matter. (Score 1) 28

by couchslug (#66261296) Attached to: Review Roundup: Framework Laptop 13 Pro

Always post the MODEL and SPECS because as with any make that matters greatly.

Wise notebook buyers study specific models under consideration. Wiser buyers do not buy new notebooks and let the rich beta test.
The classic way to buy Thinkpads is choosing used, proven models the Thinkpad community knows well.

I rarely buy new notebooks (and even then only established models) because I get far better bang for buck letting someone else take the hit then buying opportunistically.

Submission + - AI Co's bulk-buying rare books, remove spine, high speed scan and shredding them (x.com) 3

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."

This is irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.

"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026.

Submission + - Diving suits allow cyborg cockroaches to also search for survivors underwater (smithsonianmag.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Smithsonian Magazine and Popular Science are reporting on newly developed diving suits for cyborg cockroaches, that would allow them to search underwater for disaster survivors.

Previously, researchers created electrical implants to control cockroaches’ movements for search-and-rescue missions. Now, they’ve made 3D-printed suits that provide oxygen, allowing the critters to survive submerged for up to three hours.

Scientists have developed tiny diving suits for cockroaches with electrical implants to control their movements. The technology, described in the journal Nature Communications on June 29, builds on previous research that created remote-controlled insects. The goal is to deploy them to survey damage and search for survivors after natural disasters, but they were limited to dry land.

Now, a team led by engineer Hirotaka Sato has fashioned Madagascar hissing cockroaches that can survive underwater for up to three hours, allowing them to be used in a wider range of scenarios.

“Our new insect diving suit works like the oxygen tank used by human divers. It generates oxygen and delivers it directly to the insect’s breathing holes, allowing the cyborg cockroach to survive and move in underwater or low-oxygen environments,” says Sato, of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, in a statement.

Cockroaches could be a helpful rescue tool. They’ve evolved over millions of years to wiggle into tight spaces and survive harsh environmental conditions. The research team specifically worked with Madagascar hissing cockroaches because of their durability, lack of wings and large size of up to four inches long.

Submission + - Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency And LLM-Generated Code Projects (hackaday.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Community-led open source project hosting site Codeberg has formally announced that projects whose code is largely or fully machine-generated through LLMs and other ‘AI’ tools will no longer be welcome. This follows on the heels of a similar ban on cryptocurrency-related projects.

The community vote was on two issues, the first being the notion that scraping of project code for the use in LLMs should be forbidden, which was a motion that easily passed. The second motion was on disallowing projects whose code was substantially generated by LLMs like Claude, OpenAI Codex, and similar. This motion passed with 358 in favor versus 144 against.

In the earlier linked blog post the reasoning behind especially this second issue is expanded upon, covering not only ‘license whitewashing’, but also the direct and indirect hardware costs, with the expanding ‘AI’ datacenter hyperscaling having massively increased hardware costs for Codeberg over the past years, as the costs have been largely externalized.

Submission + - NASA replaces Vulcan Centaur with SpaceX Falcon Heavy for space weather mission (space.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Vulcan is losing more launches to ULA's competitors.

The six satellites of NASA's Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) mission are poised to launch to Earth orbit soon, to serve as an early warning system for incoming solar storms. They were originally slated to lift off on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket but have now been assigned a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, according to a NASA mission update.

SunRISE will fly to space as part of a rideshare mission sponsored by the U.S. Space Force's (USSF's) Space Systems Command (SSC). Though it's not stated specifically in the NASA release, that may be a hint as to why the mission's rocket was changed. On its most recent launch, USSF-87, Vulcan experienced an anomaly in one of its solid rocket boosters — the second such incident to occur during the rocket's four launches to date.

Vulcan succeeded in delivering the USSF-87 payload to its designated orbit on that launch, but the recurrence of the booster issue during ascent prompted the Space Force to pause national security launches on Vulcan until it could be addressed. Which mission SunRISE will be manifested on has not yet been released, but SSC has already shifted other launches between Vulcan and SpaceX's Falcon 9 , so NASA's change in rockets for SunRISE could indicate either that the mission has been remanifested on a different SSC rideshare, or that another SSC mission has been shifted from Vulcan entirely.

Submission + - A Parasite Makes Ants Live 10x Longer And Tricks Others Into Worshipping Them (sciencealert.com) 2

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: When ant larvae of this species are fed woodpecker droppings, they can become infected with the tapeworm Anomotaenia brevis â" and so begins an insidious cycle.

Infected ants start to change color, becoming pale yellow rather than their usual darker brown. They tend not to grow as big as their nest mates, and even start to smell different â" in fact, they seem to emit pheromones that other ants interpret as being from a queen.

Submission + - The Most Controversial Firefox Bug (mozilla.org)

Submitted by BrendaEM
BrendaEM writes: Mozilla/Firefox claims to honor and protect privacy, yet it collects data by default. Perhaps it's better than the rest, but with data collection on after installation, Firefox claims of privacy don't ring quite true.

Submission + - Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him (nytimes.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: The New York Times is reporting that Federal officials said in court documents that they halted billions of dollars in funding for energy projects to states “based solely” on whether they backed President Trump in the 2024 election.

In little-noticed court documents, federal officials acknowledged this month that they had terminated the funding “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, in the 2024 election.

After reviewing its spending, the Energy Department last fall created a list that recommended canceling more than 600 grants awarded by the Biden administration for a wide range of novel energy projects. That list included funding for projects in states represented by both Republicans and Democrats.

“With one exception,” a lawyer for the Energy Department conceded in a court filing this month, “the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators.”

The lawyer acknowledged that none of the grants were included in the October terminations “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor.”

In contrast, the administration left untouched hundreds of additional energy grants in states that were represented by Republicans and had backed Mr. Trump in the last election, even though the Energy Department had recommended canceling them, the government confirmed in the July court filing.

The filings also appeared to undermine the congressional testimony of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who spoke about the cancellations in a June House hearing: “No decisions were made on politics.”

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