Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. ChatGPT Became So Obsessed With Goblins That OpenAI Had to Intervene
  2. South Africa’s Draft AI Policy Withdrawn Due to ‘Fictitious’ AI-Generated Citations
  3. Ransomware Is Getting Uglier As Cybercriminals Fake Leaks and Skip Encryption Entirely
  4. Smuggled Starlink Terminals are Beating Iran’s Internet Blackout
  5. Claude, Microsoft Copilot Fail Again to Predict the Winners of the Kentucky Derby
  6. Chinese Exports of Green Technologies Surged to Record Levels After Iran War Began
  7. Former NASA Engineers Create Ingenious Way To Save Homes From Wildfires Using Noise
  8. Ask Slashdot: Are YouTube’s Subtitles ‘Appallingly Bad’?
  9. The $19B “Nuclear AI” Energy Startup That Couldn’t Sign a Single Client
  10. Using Drones for Cloud-Seeding Can Trigger Rain, Company Claims
  11. What if Tech Company Layoffs Aren’t All About AI?
  12. An Amateur Just Solved a 60-Year-Old Math Problem - by Asking AI
  13. Costumed Crowd ‘Speedruns’ Scientology Building For Social Media Trend
  14. Retina Scan for Diabetes Could Also Reduce Deaths During Pregnancy in Developing Countries
  15. Linux Percentage of Steam Users Doubled in One Year

Alterslash picks up to the best 5 comments from each of the day’s Slashdot stories, and presents them on a single page for easy reading.

ChatGPT Became So Obsessed With Goblins That OpenAI Had to Intervene

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI “recently gave its popular ChatGPT strict instructions. Stop talking about goblins.”
Recent models of the artificial-intelligence chatbot have been bringing up the creatures in conversations with users seemingly out of the blue, as well as gremlins, trolls and ogres. The goblin-speak caught the attention of programmers, who are often heavy users of the bot. Barron Roth, a 32-year-old product manager at a tech company, said the bot referred to a flaw in his code as a “classic little goblin.” He said he counted more than 20 times it mentioned goblins, without any prompting…

Several users speculated that goblin terminology was how the model characterized itself, in lieu of identifying as a person with a soul. Then OpenAI decided enough was enough. “Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query,” reads an open source line in ChatGPT’s base instructions for its coding assistant.
The Journal calls this “a reminder that even as AI companies tout one advance after another in their technology, they are sometimes baffled by the things their own models do....” While training a “nerdy” personality for their model’s customization feature, “We unknowingly gave particularly high rewards for metaphors with creatures,” OpenAI explained in a log post. And “From there, the goblins spread.”
When we looked, use of “goblin” in ChatGPT had risen by 175% after the launch of GPT-5.1, while “gremlin” had risen by 52%… With GPT-5.4, we and our usersâ noticed an even bigger uptick in references to these creatures… Nerdy accounted for only 2.5% of all ChatGPT responses, but 66.7% of all “goblin” mentions in ChatGPT responses… The rewards were applied only in the Nerdy condition, but reinforcement learning does not guarantee that learned behaviors stay neatly scoped to the condition that produced them. Once a style tic is rewarded, later training can spread or reinforce it elsewhere, especially if those outputs are reused in supervised fine-tuning or preference data.
It all started because the “nerdy” personality’s prompt had said “You must undercut pretension through playful use of language. The world is complex and strange, and its strangeness must be acknowledged, analyzed, and enjoyed…” Now OpenAI calls this “a powerful example of how reward signals can shape model behavior in unexpected ways, and how models can learn to generalize rewards in certain situations to unrelated ones.”

But “fans of goblins don’t have to fear,” notes the Wall Street Journal. “OpenAI provided a command in its blog post that would remove its creature-suppressing instructions.”

South Africa’s Draft AI Policy Withdrawn Due to ‘Fictitious’ AI-Generated Citations

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
An official in South Africa withdrew a draft of the country’s national AI policy, reports a local newspaper, “after it was found the draft policy was compiled using AI, which cited academic articles that were ‘fictitious’.”
Earlier this month, minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni announced cabinet had approved the draft policy for public comment. [Ntshavheni] said the policy seeks to strengthen government’s ability to regulate and adopt AI responsibly, while fostering innovation, job creation, and skills access.
The article includes this quotes from the country’s minister of communications/digital technologies department. “This unacceptable lapse proves why vigilant human oversight over the use of artificial intelligence is critical.”

Thanks to Slashdot reader Tokolosh for sharing the article.

Ransomware Is Getting Uglier As Cybercriminals Fake Leaks and Skip Encryption Entirely

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
"Ransomware activity jumped again in Q1 2026,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, “with 2,638 victim posts on leak sites, up 22% year over year,” according to a report from cybersecurity company ReliaQuest.
But the bigger shift is how messy the ecosystem has become. Established groups like Akira and Qilin are still active, while newer players like The Gentlemen surged into the top tier with a 588 percent spike in activity. At the same time, questionable leak sites such as 0APT and ALP-001 are muddying the waters by posting possibly fake breach claims, forcing companies to investigate incidents that may not even be real.

Meanwhile, actors like ShinyHunters are showing that ransomware does not always need encryption anymore. By targeting identity systems and SaaS platforms, attackers can steal data using legitimate access, often through phishing or even phone-based social engineering, and then extort victims without deploying traditional malware. With a record 91 active leak sites and faster attack timelines, the report suggests defenders should focus less on tracking specific groups and more on stopping common tactics like credential theft, remote access abuse, and large-scale data exfiltration.

Smuggled Starlink Terminals are Beating Iran’s Internet Blackout

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC:
“If even one extra person is able to access the internet, I think it’s successful and it’s worth it,” says Sahand. The Iranian man is visibly anxious, speaking to the BBC outside Iran, as he carefully explains how he is part of a clandestine network smuggling satellite internet technology — which is illegal in Iran — into the country. Sahand, whose name we have changed, fears for family members and other contacts inside the country. “If I was identified by the Iranian regime, they might make those I’m in touch with in Iran pay the price,” he says.

For more than two months, Iran has been in digital darkness as the government maintains one of the longest-running national internet shutdowns ever recorded worldwide… Sahand says he has sent a dozen [Starlink terminals] to Iran since January and “we are actively looking for other ways to smuggle in more”. The human rights organisation Witness estimated in January that there are at least 50,000 Starlink terminals in Iran. Activists say the number is likely to have risen…

Last year, the Iranian government passed legislation that made using, buying or selling Starlink devices punishable by up to two years in prison. The jail term for distributing or importing more than 10 devices can be up to 10 years. State-affiliated media has reported multiple cases of people being arrested for selling and buying Starlink terminals, including four people — two of them foreign nationals — arrested last month for “importing satellite internet equipment”.
“The BBC contacted SpaceX for more details about the use of Starlink in the country but did not receive a response.”

Re:Should be easy to find the users

By bill_mcgonigle • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Yeah, this article is too cute by half.

Per reports SpaceX has been arming Ukraine with terminals for several years so Russia has put a lot of engineering into detecting, characterizing, and targeting the signals. They’ve provided this technology to Iran.

Trump recently bragged about CIA providing automatic weapons to the “protesters” ahead of the “protests” (over Bessent’s currency war) which Iran shut down using the SL detectors.

Allegedly large shipments of terminals by Mossad were interdicted and those agents were hanged.

These spooks are willing to “fight to the last Iranian”. Glorifying this is complicity in their entrapment.

There are much better ways to freedomtech than broadcasting a beacon unless a rapid color revolution is the goal.

Re:Getting caught with one can mean death

By drinkypoo • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Iran is not the innocent place the media portrays it as.

I’m not aware of anyone portraying Iran as an innocent place. The claims I’m seeing are about having Israel invade other countries with American support not being beneficial in the short or long term.

Re:Should be easy to find the users

By WaffleMonster • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Per reports SpaceX has been arming Ukraine with terminals for several years so Russia has put a lot of engineering into detecting, characterizing, and targeting the signals. They’ve provided this technology to Iran.

There was a guide for authorities circulating in Persian with details of using WiFi broadcasts to detect Starlink terminals. There is probably a lot of low hanging fruit finding people by not using Ethernet /w bypass mode in the starlink terminals.

Until recently (Thanks to SpaceX IPO) 3/4 of Starlink use in Ukraine was by Russians.

As /w Ukraine when used competently the terminals are not so easy to find.
https://www.skylinker.io/p/can…

Trump recently bragged about CIA providing automatic weapons to the “protesters” ahead of the “protests” (over Bessent’s currency war) which Iran shut down using the SL detectors.

The comments I remember were related to Kurds in Iraq not sharing their US supplied stashes with Iranians.

Allegedly large shipments of terminals by Mossad were interdicted and those agents were hanged.

Yea everything is CIA and Mossad.

These spooks are willing to “fight to the last Iranian”. Glorifying this is complicity in their entrapment.

Gotta love the rhetorical framing. Giving people something they want is now entrapment.

There are much better ways to freedomtech than broadcasting a beacon unless a rapid color revolution is the goal.

Satellite TV has the receive side broadcast mostly covered. For transmit you either need to send RF or operate some form of network internally. There are no risk free options and Starlink is not an unreasonable solution when used competently.

This is an astonishingly bad idea

By Arrogant-Bastard • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
All it would take is one phone call from Diaper Donnie to his pet fascist Elmo and every bit of data/metadata available on those terminals would be furnished to the Russians and thus would shortly be in the hands of the IRGC. (And if you’re about to ask why in the world he would do that: keep in mind that we’re talking about a moron with accelerating dementia who is incapable of understanding ANY concept, who cannot formulate a coherent plan for anything, and whose only values are his ego and his money.)

Less dramatically: if you’re an insurgent force in a modern country, the last thing in the world that you want to do is communicate by any form of electronic network. Surveillance and detection methods for these are well-known and readily available. And even if the communications themselves are encrypted, the metadata available enables traffic analysis, correlation with external events (including those arranged for the purpose), and endpoint identification.

In such an environment, it’s much better to use encrypted memory cards distributed by couriers and dead drops. The cost of attempting to disrupt such an effort is many orders of magnitude higher, both in terms of money and personnel, than the cost of disrupting electronic distribution.

Doesn’t matter

By rsilvergun • Score: 3 Thread
Any hope for the opposition in Iran to come to power went to shit when Trump first bombed a girls school and then has continuously said he plans on killing everyone in the country.

The whole country is going to rally behind the existing government because that’s how that works. When you are under attack like that and a very large and powerful opponent is threatening to kill everyone nobody cares who’s in charge as long as somebody is.

I’m sure someone who has already resigned told Trump and drunkie McDrunk face all of this because it’s extremely well known and all discussed in CIA manuals that are so old they have been declassified but between senility and incompetence nobody paid any attention to that.

Mark my words the goal of the Iran War was to trigger a second 9/11 Trump could ride into a third term like how Bush got a second term out of the first 911. Iran didn’t take the bait.

After 9/11 we didn’t need a draft because so many people signed up in the wake of the attack but since there was no large-scale terrorist attack on American soil we don’t have enough troops to even dream of invading Iran. Realistic estimates put it at about 3 million to occupy the country which is the total size of the US military. So unless Trump tacos out we are going to have a draft in a few years.

Claude, Microsoft Copilot Fail Again to Predict the Winners of the Kentucky Derby

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
In 2016 an online “swarm intelligence” platform generated a correct prediction for the Kentucky Derby — naming all four top finishers in order. (But its 2017 predictions weren’t even close.) Slashdot checked in again on how modern AI systems performed in 2023, 2024, and 2025 — but their predictions were still pretty bad. Would AI-generated Derby predictions be any better in 2026?

This year’s winner was 24-to-1 longshot "Golden Tempo" — though a lot of oddsmakers had favored a horse named Further Ado (which ultimately only finished 11th). So when USA Today prompted Microsoft Copilot for its own picks for the Kentucky Derby, Copilot also went with Further Ado. (Even worse, it predicted Golden Tempo would come in… 13th.)

Here’s how Copilot’s picks actually performed…
  1. Further Ado (finished 11th)
  2. Chief Wallabee (finished 4th)
  3. The Puma (SCRATCHED)
  4. Renegade (finished 2nd)
  5. Commandment (finished 7th)
  6. So Happy (finished 9th)
  7. Emerging Market (finished 10th)
  8. Danon Bourbon (finished 5th)
  9. Potente (finished 12th)
  10. Incredibolt (finished 6th)
  11. Robusta (finished 14th)
  12. Ocelli (finished 3rd)
  13. Golden Tempo (finished 1st)
  14. Pavlovian (finished 18th)
  15. Great White (SCRATCHED)
  16. Wonder Dean (finished 8th)
  17. Litmus Test (finished 17th)
  18. Albus (finished 15th)
  19. Six Speed (finished 13th)
  20. Intrepido (finished 16th)

Copilot was told to use the latest odds, conditions, and analysis of favorites, best bets, expert picks, previous results and race history with the post positions, according to USA Today. And meanwhile, Yahoo Sports asked Claude “to simulate the race using the opening odds, draw and potential track conditions. We also asked it to factor in some human predictions.”

Like Microsoft Copilot, Claude also picked Further Ado to finish first (though it came in 11th) — and predicted that Golden Tempo (the eventual first-place finisher) would finish 12th.

  1. Further Ado (finished 11th)
  2. The Puma (SCRATCHED)
  3. Commandment (finished 7th)
  4. Chief Wallabee (finished 4th)
  5. Renegade (finished 2nd)
  6. Emerging Market (finished 10th)
  7. So Happy (finished 9th)
  8. Incredibolt (finished 6th)
  9. Danon Bourbon (finished 5th)
  10. Potente (finished 12th)
  11. Pavlovian (finished 18th)
  12. Golden Tempo (finished 1st)
  13. Litmus Test (finished 17th)
  14. Albus (finished 15th)
  15. Wonder Dean (finished 8th)
  16. Six Speed (finished 13th)
  17. Intrepido (finished 16th)

How does AI do predicting lottery numbers?

By misnohmer • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
Whoever thought AI somehow magically knows the future? This is silly. Sure, there is some information in horse racing that can help skew the statistics from purely random flat distribution, but come on, do we really think AI is all knowing of all future outcomes?

Not fair

By Sloppy • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

The LLMs weren’t trained on a story about who won. How TF is it supposed to predict it in advance? That’s not how LLMs work. Just train it on one more thing, a story about who won in 2026, and I’m sure you’ll see its accuracy go up.

Chinese Exports of Green Technologies Surged to Record Levels After Iran War Began

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“The war in Iran has sent oil-starved countries scrambling for fuel,” CNN reported this week. And many of those countries now want renewable fuels, the article points out, “leaving them 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… A Thursday report from Ember said China exported 68 gigawatts of solar technology in March, surpassing the previous record set in August by 50%. Fifty countries set new records for Chinese solar imports, with the most significant growth coming from emerging markets in Asia and Africa hit hardest by the energy crisis, according to the think tank. “Fossil shocks are boosting the solar surge,” said Euan Graham, senior analyst at Ember, in the report. “Solar has already become the engine of the global economy, and now the current fossil fuel price shocks are taking it up a gear.”

Ember said exports of solar, batteries and EVs in total rose 70% in March year over year, according to Chinese customs data… China’s battery exports reached $10 billion in March, with particularly high growth rates in the European Union, Australia and India, Ember said. Uncertainty over when the Strait of Hormuz will reopen has spurred deeper regional anxieties about energy securi"ty, helping to hasten the transition to clean energy, analysts said.
The article notes how different countries are reacting to fuel

Thanks to Slashdot reader AleRunner for sharing the article.


Re:Making China Great Again.

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Just like all those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that mysteriously evaporated after we invaded.

Re:The new CATL batteries are wild

By saloomy • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
I was hesitant of the charge time fear, but having lives with an EV for 8 years (first Model X in 2018), I can say that the obsession with charge time is ridiculous unless you are a long haul trucker. My cars charge overnight, every night. I have a Tesla wall charger on every parking space in my garage, and my wife and I charge our cars to full, every night. I use a supercharger… 8 times a year? Seriously, how often do you drive 250+ miles a day? Even the Model 3’s standard range cars do that. It is such a better way to live where every day you have a “full tank of gas” when you turn on your car. Not everyone can afford the capital outlay for solar panels, but we did and it makes our drives effectively free. Seriously, the maintenance, the running expenses, has all been unbelievable. Stop squeezing every ounce of longevity from your batteries and just accept the fact that you MUST sleep at some point, which is a great time to charge up your cars.

Re:The new CATL batteries are wild

By thegarbz • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

This was always the bottleneck for a lot of people

Because people can’t separate the concept of a gas station with a vehicle. This has been a bottleneck for people who will eventually find themselves in a situation where they don’t actually ever fast charge their vehicle.

I was guilty of this. I thought EVs needed to charge in 10minutes. Then I got one, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve charged my EV at more than 40kW (the charger in my street and at work) in the past 2 years. I feel a bit silly for thinking that fast charging was an important metric, so do does everyone I know who got an EV.

Re:The new CATL batteries are wild

By AmiMoJo • Score: 5, Informative Thread

I hear that the infrastructure in the US is very bad, but then I see videos showing people using it for very long distance trips (driving in shifts) without issue.

Personally I just drive until the battery shows 20% and then pull into the next service area and use their chargers. Only happens a few times a year and doesn’t cost me any time because I’d stop for coffee and a snack anyway. Even a relatively modest (by modern standards) charge speed of 140kW is enough to refill the battery by the time I am done.

Re: Closet Environmentalist?

By Mr. Dollar Ton • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

the trump crime family is profiting nicely from their iranian entanglements.

those mysterious trades around every trump statement on the war, do you really think they are random?

then there are the Saudi payouts to inavnka’s cuckold, kushner.

etc etc.

Former NASA Engineers Create Ingenious Way To Save Homes From Wildfires Using Noise

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“Scientists have created a miraculous new way to stop fires from spreading through neighborhoods using nothing but sound,” reports the New York Post:
Former NASA engineers with California-based Sonic Fire Tech found that using sound waves can snuff out blazes and potentially be used to stop another Pacific Palisades inferno… The technology works by targeting oxygen molecules using low-frequency sound waves that vibrate them, stopping the fire from growing. “Sound waves vibrate the oxygen faster than the fuel can use it, and break the chemical reaction of the flame,” Remington Hotchkis, Chief Commercialization Officer at Sonic Fire Tech told The Post.

The San Bernardino County Fire Department recently tested out the equipment using a backpack version and the results were incredible. Video shows firefighters fighting small blazes on a shrub and a stove top fire with the technology putting it out… In the home application, the system would be alerted/activated if there was a fire, sending the sound waves through a home duct system, essentially snuffing out the blaze. The sound waves can reach as far as 30ft from a home, the report noted. The sound is also harmless to pets and humans.
The article includes this quote that an executive at the company gave local news station KMPH. “Our former NASA engineers are rocket scientists, and they say it seems like magic, but it’s just physics.”

“The sound is also harmless to pets and humans”

By haruchai • Score: 4, Funny Thread

good luck convincing all the anti wind farm people about that and they won’t be the only ones won’t believe it

Maybe. Or maybe not.

By SoftwareArtist • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Trust the New York Post to breathlessly repeat a company’s advertizing claims about the amazing things their technology can do. Here is a different article that treats it more skeptically:

But two experts who spoke with Ars raised serious questions about the potential for this technology to supplant traditional sprinklers in a home. They are even more skeptical as to whether the technique can be effective in an uncontrolled wildfire situation, where flames can grow very quickly.

[…]

Wittasek said that if Sonic Fire Tech is going to claim that its product is as good as or better than the NFPA 13D standard, it should be able to provide a whole range of specifics, such as “who validated it, what test protocols were used, what fire scenarios were included, and how success was defined.”

“I would want to see full-scale testing that includes typical residential fires like furniture and mattress fires, cooking fires, electrical fires, and attic or exterior ember exposures,” he added. “It should also cover different conditions like open and closed doors, varying ceiling heights, crosswinds, obstructed fuel packages, and whether the fire comes back after the system shuts off.”

Similarly, Michael Gollner, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert in fire dynamics, told Ars there’s simply not enough information yet to show that this technology works better than sprinklers.

He pointed to a 2018 academic paper, which found that “acoustics alone are insufficient to control flames beyond the incipient stage.”

Re: That is what I like about American units

By kenh • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Why would a bird fly thru a burning tree?

Re:Build fireproof structures, this is not difficu

By MrKaos • Score: 5, Informative Thread

It’s quite practical to build completely fireproof homes. Some Californians do, which proves the rest can do that too.

Californian’s are only at the beginning of their experience with eucalyptus trees, which are native to Australia. You’re quite right, it’s possible to build bushfire ( I think the US calls them wildfires) resistant homes. In Australia there are specific assessment and building requirements for a home likely to be affected by fire called BAL and I think you also have to get a planning permit

I had the experience of my neighborhood having a bushfire go through it. I realized how few people know just how terrifying the situation is when they asked “can’t you just put it out with a garden hose?”.
Not quite, the flames were 4-6 stories high, when it hit my neighborhood 18 houses burned down in about as many minutes. Generally a bush fire will have embers fly a few kilometres ahead of it, which is where you can try to stop it. The really bad ones create their own weather which looks like a firestorm and the worst ones creates a fire tornado, which is basically a small tornado throwing the stuff burning in it around.

This fire was stopped from getting my house by an empty block of land and a chopper hitting it with 10 tons of water. High BAL houses survived next to houses that were burning and have things like sprinkler systems on the roof that extinguish embers. However even if your house doesn’t burn, the heat melts curtains to the glass, paint peels off interior walls.

You have no idea it’s coming sometimes, we got about 5 minutes notice to evacuate, people literally escaped their homes with what they were wearing. I prepare my house for bushfires by cutting back the garden and we have go bags with clothes and important documents. I still have more to do though.

Fortunately there wasn’t a loss of human life, lots of people pets panicked, ran before their owners could grab them and died - few people saw that coming. My poor neighbor, came home from breakfast with his wife to see his house on fire, they lost everything. My neighborhood is a ghost town now, people I’ve know for a long time just gone and it’s a special kind of fucked to watch their houses being taken away in a skip bin.

If this thing helps even a little, I’d use it.

Ask Slashdot: Are YouTube’s Subtitles ‘Appallingly Bad’?

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Long-time Slashdot reader Anne Thwacks frequently uses YouTube’s subtitles “not to disturb others in the room, or because my hearing is not very good.” But they say there’s a new problem.

“The subtitling is terrible!”
Almost every sentence has a huge error. Proper names are more often wrong than right. Non-English place names are almost always mangled to barely recognizable. And no effort whatsoever is made to use context to figure out whether a place name is Russian or Arabic, and often complete garbage is used in place of a common French, Spanish or Italian name!

If AI actually works (I have my doubts about this), surely it would be possible to figure out language contexts. If it is about an event in Italy, then expect a lot of Italian names! If it is about the Russia-Ukraine war, then expect places in Russia or Ukraine to be more plausible than mindless gobbledygook! Does YouTube not know that there are places in the world that are not in America? (However, plenty of names of people and places famous in America are also regularly screwed up.)
They argue the subtitles are “appallingly bad” — and that “the situation seems to be getting worse,” wondering why the problem isn’t addressed with some basic spell-checking. (“I’m sure that the vast majority of foul-ups could be fixed by the use of a dictionary.”) Have any Slashdot readers seen similar problems? A friend of mine noticed that YouTube’s subtitles even bungled this innocuous song from the 1966.

ANNETTE FUNICELLO: “If your love is true love, you can tell by his touch.”
YOUTUBE SUBTITLE: “If your love is too lava, you can tell by his touch…”

Share your own experiences and thoughts in the comments. And do you think YouTube’s subtitles are “appallingly bad”?

Nah

By devslash0 • Score: 3, Insightful Thread

It’s just that the entire YouTube is appallingly bad.

Not all

By PPH • Score: 3 Thread

Some are OK.

Appallingly bad

By ConceptJunkie • Score: 3 Thread

I rarely see _any_ subtitles that are not appallingly bad, including YouTube.

tiny model?

By algaeman • Score: 3 Thread
I use Whisper to generates subtitles on occasion. If you use a tiny model, it is pretty terrible. If you use a large model, it does a pretty good job, even doing phonetic spellings of unusual names. The large model takes some real cpu time to do the analysis, and YouTube isn’t gonna burn money for free features.

The $19B “Nuclear AI” Energy Startup That Couldn’t Sign a Single Client

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“Nuclear AI startup” Fermi had hoped to build power plants generating 17 gigawatts of electricity, remembers Bloomberg, “three times the amount typically consumed by New York City.”
Hyperscalers could install their data centers on the site itself and tap directly into that power, which would come first from natural gas turbines and later from nuclear reactors. The pitch ticked so many boxes — artificial intelligence, nuclear energy, political connections — that some investors found it irresistible. Fermi went public in October worth more than $19 billion in market value, despite reporting no revenue or signed customers.

Now, the startup’s board has fired its top executive, Toby Neugebauer, after months of negotiations failed to secure a single client. Chief Financial Officer Miles Everson left as well… Fermi’s stock, meanwhile, has tumbled 84% from its peak. The company’s more than 5,000-acre site in the Texas panhandle — dubbed Project Matador, or the President Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus — remains mostly unfinished. And some analysts see a cautionary tale of the market’s AI enthusiasm running ahead of reality, with investors betting on companies whose grand projects may never get built…

The idea of giving data centers their own, dedicated power supply not dependent on the grid may sound tempting, but former US Department of Energy official Jigar Shah said banks don’t want to finance it. The grid, drawing power from many sources, is more reliable than a handful of expensive, on-site plants, he said. He considers Fermi a failure “of monumental proportions” and says similar, off-grid data center projects elsewhere deserve more skepticism than they’ve received… “We’re allowing these types of projects to continue to be viewed as viable when they most certainly are not,” said Shah, who ran the department’s Loan Programs Office during the Biden administration....

“It was a piece of dirt with a dream,” an investor who visited the site in February told the short sellers, Fuzzy Panda Research.

Solyndra story was always a lie.

By rbrander • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Sigh. Yes. Yes, I do, because for TWELVE FREAKING YEARS, I’ve been having to find and copy this excerpt from the NYT story on it, November 16, 2014:

“Here’s another: Remember Solyndra? It was a renewable-energy firm that borrowed money using Department of Energy guarantees, then went bust, costing the Treasury $528 million. And conservatives have pounded on that loss relentlessly, turning it into a symbol of what they claim is rampant crony capitalism and a huge waste of taxpayer money.
Defenders of the energy program tried in vain to point out that anyone who makes a lot of investments, whether it’s the government or a private venture capitalist, is going to see some of those investments go bad. For example, Warren Buffett is an investing legend, with good reason — but even he has had his share of lemons, like the $873 million loss he announced earlier this year on his investment in a Texas energy company. Yes, that’s half again as big as the federal loss on Solyndra.
The question is not whether the Department of Energy has made some bad loans — if it hasn’t, it’s not taking enough risks. It’s whether it has a pattern of bad loans. And the answer, it turns out, is no. Last week the department revealed that the program that included Solyndra is, in fact, on track to return profits of $5 billion or more.”

Because investors don’t get advice from Fox

By rbrander • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Investors can watch the nuclear industry trying hard with SMRs and thorium and traveling wave and pebble-bed, and NOT see industry getting the construction cost down below $10/watt. One hears tell that China is kicking reactors out the door in sixty months flat, at $4.50/watt. But then, China is an unreliable narrator about the greatness of China, and may be doing awful things to local environments. Even if they lean on our governments to ease up on nuclear (Trump sure would), halving the cost to $5/watt seems - well, unlikely: RISKY. And capital is a coward.

Meanwhile, investors are watching batteries and renewables get cheaper, steadily, are monitoring announcements from pilot plants and upstream to the labs, and must feel pretty confident that prices will KEEP getting cheaper, significantly so in the five-year minimum construction time for a reactor.

Nuclear is great, I was a champion for 50 years. But I can read an accounting ledger, and nuclear has been beaten.

color me shocked

By cpurdy • Score: 4, Funny Thread

“the President Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus — remains mostly unfinished.”

Wow. That’s so … um … surprising.

Re:“A startup in hot industry-

By tragedy • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Remember Solyndra?

Solyndra was a real product though. It came out just as solar panels were getting cheap and couldn’t compete with flat panels. They did do a number of things to bolster their apparent success, but they clearly were not created just to ride a financial bubble and bilk investors. Looking at their product, you can see how they could have reasonably thought they had a shot in the market.

Looking at Fermi, it is hard to see how anyone could have reasonably thought they had a shot. They never had a tangible product. On the other hand, they did make some effort to set up generation.

In the end, Solyndra sold actual product and Fermi didn’t. Maybe they can both fall under the category of being aspirational but unsuccessful, but the sheer lack of realism in the Fermi model makes me rate it much, much higher on the scam scale than I would Solyndra.

Re:Honestly Solyndra was blown out of proportion

By tragedy • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

The government lost about half a billion. Not chump change but a rounding error if you’re talking a serious attempt to get off oil.

Solyndra was just one part of the program. They made money overall.

Using Drones for Cloud-Seeding Can Trigger Rain, Company Claims

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Monday a company called Rainmaker announced their rain-triggering technology had produced 143 million gallons of freshwater for Utah and Oregon residents — making them “the first private company in history to validate the results of cloud seeding operations.”

The Deseret News reports:
Founded in 2023, Rainmaker uses drones to disperse silver iodide into clouds, then they track precipitation with advanced radar. However, Rainmaker — and every other rain-enhancement company — has been up against the notoriously difficult challenge of validation. Since there is no control set to test, and because the weather is chaotic and variable, the Government Accountability Office declares the benefits of the technology to be “unproven.” To overcome this evaluation challenge, Rainmaker flies drones in unique patterns when seeding. Then operators compare distinct radar and satellite features with where their drones operated.

As of April, Rainmaker found 82 unambiguous seeding signatures, which show their seeding operations directly caused precipitation. In Utah and Oregon alone, the company said its cloud-seeding efforts have added enough water to match the annual usage of about 1,750 households. However, “this figure likely represents only a small fraction of Rainmaker’s total generation this season,” the company said in their press release… Their drone precision, combined with their radar systems, have produced satellite images proving a direct correlation between the seeding and precipitation. Some images show cloud holes or regions of depressed cloud tops after seeding.
Rainmaker’s announcement promises they’ll “go forward and continue our mission to refill the Great Salt Lake, end drought in the American West and deliver water abundance wherever it is needed most around the world.” (Rainmaker currently operates in Utah, Idaho, Oregon, California and Colorado.)

The director of Utah’s Natural Resources Department told the Deseret News that with cloud seeding, “cost per unit of water is so low; it really is the smartest thing we can be doing with our money,” Ferry said.

What can go wrong?

By JcMorin • Score: 3 Thread
I’m sure there are no side effects of “dispersing silver iodide into clouds.”

Drones Are Irrelevant. This Is Advertisement.

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 3 Thread

We have long had the technology and ability to do cloud seeding. Yet the technique is rarely practiced. Why, because it is typically not enough and does not work where we would like or need.

The use of drones does not solve any problem regarding cloud seeding. We’ve been able to seed clouds from just after World War 2. Drones offer nothing that a Cessna or crop duster couldn’t do better.

Re:What can go wrong?

By thegarbz • Score: 5, Informative Thread

I’m sure there are no side effects of “dispersing silver iodide into clouds.”

There really aren’t. We’ve been doing this since the 50s. Every year some 11 tonnes of silver iodide is used for cloud seeding and has been for a long time. Incidentally this is less than 1% of emissions of this substance from industry. The impact of silver iodide (which is toxic) for cloudseeding (which is very low concentration) has been studied extensively since the 60s.

Here’s from a metastudy:
The potential environmental impacts of cloud seeding programs using silver iodide have
been studied since the 1960s. These studies have all concluded that ice-nucleating agents,
specifically silver iodide as used in cloud seeding, represent a negligible environmental hazard,
(i.e., findings of no significant effects on plants and animals), (e.g., Cooper & Jolly 1970; Howell
1977; Klein 1978; Dennis 1980; Harris 1981; Todd & Howell 1985; Berg 1988; Reinking et al.
1995; Eliopoulos & Mourelatos 1998; Ouzounidou & Constantinidou 1999; Di Toro et al. 2001;
Bianchini et al. 2002; Tsiouris et al. 2002a; Tsiouris et al. 2002b; Christodoulou et al. 2004;
Edwards et al. 2005; Keyes et al. 2006; Williams & Denholm 2009).

Water thieves

By Smonster • Score: 4 Thread
At best cloud seeding takes water that would likely fall in one location and cause it to fall in another. It does not create new water. As such, how is the different from someone upstream damming a river and then taking the water for themselves?

What if Tech Company Layoffs Aren’t All About AI?

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“Running a Big Tech company during Silicon Valley’s AI mania may not necessarily require fewer workers or cost less,” writes the Washington Post:
Amazon, Google and Meta together have roughly the same number of employees now as they did during an industry-wide hiring binge in 2022, company disclosures show. Growing costs for technical workers and related expenses have often outpaced sales recently. The tech giants’ big AI bet hasn’t yet paid for itself.

That means AI might be killing jobs not through its labor-saving wizardry but by increasing spending so much that CEOs are pressured to find savings, giving them cover to consciously uncouple from their workforces. Marc Andreessen, a prominent start-up investor and a Meta board director, put it bluntly on a recent podcast. Big company layoffs are a fix for overstaffing and changing economic conditions, he said, but AI provides a convenient scapegoat. “Now they all have the silver bullet excuse: ‘Ah, it’s AI,’" he said…

“Almost every company that does layoffs is blaming AI, whether or not it really is about AI,” Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT owner OpenAI, said at a March conference when he listed explanations for AI’s unpopularity in the United States.
“Recent history suggests Big Tech companies might not be moving toward a future with fewer workers,” the article concludes, “but recalibrating to spend the same, or more, on different people and projects.”

So in the end, “AI might soon reduce hiring,” the article acknowledges, “But the reluctance or inability of the largest tech firms to cut too deeply so far could also show that the path to making a workforce AI-ready — whatever that means — isn’t a predictable straight line charting declining headcount.”

Oh My God, this can’t be something that’s NEW

By Excelcia • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

The idea that all the “AI layoffs” aren’t actually because of AI, but are snow jobs… I thought this was so blatantly obvious as to be a tautology. This can’t be something that is just dawning on people, can it? Please tell me that this has been obvious to most people who can rub two thoughts together in a row.

layoffs happen because

By FudRucker • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Employees are like cattle as soon as you make the profit quotas for your corporate overlords for the year then your job is up for review and if you’re expendable then you get laid off or fired if they can come up with a good enough reason to fire you, the people you work for don’t give a damn about you and your family

There is no general solution.

By couchslug • Score: 3 Thread

There are only individual adaptations whose outcomes are not guaranteed. Be genuinely versatile for your own benefits. If all you do is one “job” then you’re helpless without it.

That’s why I have zero economically useless interests or hobbies. If one makes the effort it’s not difficult to learn to repair, modify and maintain nearly everything you own. Any techy should enjoy that stuff and many do.

If you’re smart enough to be competent using computers you’re smart enough to learn vehicle repair, home maintenance and repair and much more. Tools often pay for themselves at first use. No need to be deterred by lack of space. I and many others who lived in dorms and barracks while doing all our own vehicle work are proof. Learn one discipline and you’ll soon notice related uses for your learning.

Unemployment may take you off your job but skills can buy time to adapt and change. For example my businessman neighbor was a skilled wood worker for the fun of it. When he lost his job he kept up his house payments (not cheap in the NY metro area) doing handyman work, cabinetry etc for several years. Without his hobbies he and his family would have been homeless. While I’d not want to do auto mechanics as a career it’s saved be buckets of cash over a lifetime, ensured I never went without a vehicle and was able to help others who in turn helped me. Life is a team sport and being capable is a fine way to meet other capable, interesting humans.

Avoiding accountability is all too human

By tiqui • Score: 3 Thread

People love to shift the blame for bad results away from themselves and their actions; it’s very human (unfortunately).

Members of congress do it by passing laws that create some executive agency and then grant that agency the power to write “rules” that will be enforced as though they were laws. This makes it so when the FAA or the FCC or the EPA etc clamps down on somebody, and it gets the attention of the public and the public seems not to like it, the congress members can point at nameless, faceless, unelected bureaucrats and encourage the public to be mad at those guys (who wrote the stupid rule or enforced it ham-handedly) as though the congress had NOTHING to do with it…

Same thing here.

Some executive over-staffed, failed to get rid of the unproductive, blew a big sales contract, blew the roll-out of a new product, mis-managed the development of a product, spent too much and needs to find some cost-cutting, etc and ANY news that’s in the headlines and has the public attention becomes the go-to excuse. In 2020 and 2021 it was COVID-19. Plenty of corporations that were in big trouble BEFORE the pandemic finally admitted it and collapsed during the pandemic and blamed the pandemic. Think about it. If you’re the doofus who ran a company into the ground, and you hope to get a CEO job elsewhere, it’s GREAT to blame some big global thing or some huge cultural trend for the failure. The board of the next company you hope to helm is much more likely to give you the chance if the failure you presided over previously wasn’t your fault

I’ve seen many of these excuses over the decades… and there will be many more in the future. Investors need to learn to see through these excuses.

An Amateur Just Solved a 60-Year-Old Math Problem - by Asking AI

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Slashdot reader joshuark writes:
Scientific American reports that a ChatGPT AI has proved a conjecture with a method no human had developed. A 23-year-old student Liam Price just cracked a 60-year-old problem that world-class mathematicians have tried and failed to solve.

The new solution that Price got in response to a single prompt to GPT-5.4 Pro was posted on www.erdosproblems.com, a website devoted to the Erds problems. The question Price solved — or prompted ChatGPT to solve—concerns special sets of whole numbers, where no number in the set can be evenly divided by any other…

Price sent it to his occasional collaborator Kevin Barreto, a second-year undergraduate in mathematics at the University of Cambridge. The duo had jump-started the AI-for-Erds craze late last year by prompting a free version of ChatGPT with open problems chosen at random from the Erds problems website. Reviewing Price’s message, Barreto realized what they had was special, and experts whom he notified quickly took notice.

Re:Ahem

By JoshuaZ • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Mathematician here. This is highly unlikely to be the case. This was a moderately well known Erdos problem (not one of the famous ones but well known enough that I had seen it before this). If there were a solution on the internet we would likely have already found it, especially because there’s been a concerted effort to track down what is happening with all the Erdos problems in the last few years. Moreover, even after this problem was solved, people then went and tried hard to find a copy of the solution somewhere on the internet, and have all failed. Taken together with the fact that the solution uses a novel technique which is not used in the literature on this problem (well, a novel direction to go in even as it starts with the same basic starting point) that looks highly unlikely to be anything else. Furthermore, with similar prompting, another copy of the AI was able to make multiple different valid proofs of the result as discussed by Terry Tao here https://www.erdosproblems.com/forum/thread/1196#post-5565. The chance that there were multiple missed copies of different proofs of this result is extremely small.

Re:Just means none of the experts cared enough

By JoshuaZ • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Aside from them being almost certainly *not* correct here, given that there are a whole bunch of prior papers about this specific problem, you are confusing two different things. There’s having solved an Erdos problem which is different than having an Erdos number. An Erdos number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number comes from having a chain of collaborators going back to Erdos. Erdos has Erdos number 0. Anyone who wrote a paper with Erdos has Erdos number 1. If someone else then writes a paper with someone with Erdos number 1 (and that person is not Erdos and does not have Erdos number 1) then that person now has Erdos number 3, and so on. And having an Erdos number is not a big deal. I for example, have an Erdos number. Most working mathematicians in number theory and graph theory have some Erdos number, and many in other subfields do as well. Having a *low* Erdos number though is more impressive, but even then people care much more about what results one has proven (with or without Erdos) than one’s Erdos number. They really are a fun social thing and nothing more.

Re:Just means none of the experts cared enough

By JoshuaZ • Score: 5, Informative Thread

If you are a mathematician, you should be able to see the difference between “nobody cared enough” (my claim) and “no one cared” (your gross mis-statement of my claim).

Sigh. Why am I not surprised that you’ve responded this way. Let’s be clear then: You can replace my comment I wrote earlier with the word “enough” added just at the end and everything I wrote would still be true. Your statement is just wrong, and it is wrong for exactly the reasons I outlined.

Re:Pardon my mathematical ignornance, but

By JoshuaZ • Score: 5, Informative Thread
So, the problem is about primitive sets, sets where no element of the set is a multiple of another element. You do have a partially correct intuition here. The canonical example of a primitive set is the set of primes. Buy you can give other examples of primitive sets. For example, you could take the set of primes, remove 2 and 3, and then throw in 4, 6 and 9 into the set. Notice that if I compare this to the set of primes less than 10 which are just 2, 3, 5 and 7, whereas this new set has 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and so has one additional small element. But the problem in question is one of a series of conjectures which all together say in a certain sense that primitive sets cannot end up being much denser than the set of primes.

Re:Just means none of the experts cared enough

By JoshuaZ • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

It is fascinating which people get math degrees these days. Apparently logical thinking is not a requirement anymore.

“Logical thinking” is not synonymous with “agrees with gweihir” as much as you would like them to be.

Ok, let me spell it out for you: The information was out there and could be combined in a purely mechanical, no-insight-required way to provide the answer. Nobody cared enough to find it and try that. Is that clear enough or are you still bereft of understanding?

What you are spelling out and claiming here is just not true. The approach the AI took was *different* than the approach that the literature did. You don’t need just my opinion on this. Terry Tao (who is a Fields Medalist) and Jared Lichtman (who is one of the best of the young new number theorists who had previously published work on this and related problems) both disagree with you https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amateur-armed-with-chatgpt-vibe-maths-a-60-year-old-problem/. If the people who have looked at this in detail and are subject matter experts disagree with you, maybe you it should, possibly occur to you that are wrong here?

Costumed Crowd ‘Speedruns’ Scientology Building For Social Media Trend

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Last Saturday someone dressed as Jesus “was among the dozens of people in costumes and masks seen on a video forcing open the door of a Scientology building on Hollywood Boulevard,” reports the Los Angeles Times, “after a tug-of-war with a security guard.”
The footage posted on TikTok and Instagram shows the group sprinting up and down stairs and clashing with black-shirted security guards, giggling and gasping to catch their breath while church members scream at them to leave. On their way out — as security guards approach armed with fire extinguishers — one of the sprinters stops and dances to celebrate their successful escape, a move reminiscent of a taunt from the video game Fortnite. For weeks, groups of people have barged into two of the church’s Hollywood properties, racing through hallways and tussling with security guards, trying to see how far they can get before they are forced to leave by church staff…

Church officials say the incidents are not a game and have accused the speed runners of “hate crimes.” After dozens on Saturday stormed the Ivar Avenue building that houses an exhibit dedicated to the church’s founder, science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, the external door handles were removed from all three of Scientology’s properties on Hollywood Boulevard by Sunday morning. Guards could be seen blocking the doorway to one building on Monday afternoon…

No arrests have been made.
A report from the Associated Press cites a joke left on one of the videos: that if runners reach the top of the building, they’ll find Tom Cruise.
One commenter on a recent TikTok video of a speedrun asked why people are doing this, and another user simply replied, “because it’s fun.”
The 18-year-old who started the trend told the Hollywood Reporter his original video has been viewed over 100 million times. “From there on out, I pretty much knew that Scientology was like a free gateway to a lot of views.”

Vulture notes that “there’s even a Roblox re-creation of the trend, made using the ‘maps; drawn from actual videos”

Hey, that’s not nice

By RitchCraft • Score: 5, Funny Thread

Let’s be mindful of their religion and ask ourselves, “What would Tom Cruise do?”

Well, let’s think about that

By Excelcia • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

A sad commentary on some people’s morality that they think this is okay. What ever happened to the “golden rule?”

Well, on the other hand, if it was an actual “religion” rather than a sci-fi writer’s spoof of one I might have more sympathy. The thing is so bizarre that it is a living example of Poe’s law - you literally can’t tell the difference between Scientology and a spoof of Scientology.

So, sure, get all hot and bothered about the morality of this, but a group of people making fun of something that’s indistinguishable itself from making fun, is pretty morally neutral actually.

Re:I bet

By mr100percent • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Almost all mosques are open to the public and welcoming. If they tried it they’d be told to stop running, would they like to sit down and have some tea?

Re:Dangerously stupid stunt

By rsilvergun • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
They aren’t just litigious they are known to hire private investigators and outright thugs to hassle and intimidate people.

It’s not so much that this is dangerous anyone taking part in this knows damn well what they’re getting into.

This is what the cool kids call getting into good trouble. It’s protest meant to draw attention.

That said Scientology is really on the ropes right now with collapsing membership and because of the internet it’s difficult for their silly brand of nonsense to get much play. So there were probably better targets and better things for the protesters to do but it might have been personal if one of their friends or family members got stuck in the cult or themselves personally.

I know there are a lot of EX Jehovah witnesses trying to get people out.

Going into their house is morally wrong

By drnb • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
It’s not morally neutral, it’s a dehumanization based on ideology. It doesn’t really matter if the ideology is ridiculous, we are not entitled to be abusive to others over their beliefs in their own house. If they want to proselytize in public, debating them is entirely fair and reasonable. If they want to run for public offices of responsibility, questioning tenants of their ideology in an effort to determine if they are rational decision makers if fair game. But going into their house to mock them is morally wrong.

Retina Scan for Diabetes Could Also Reduce Deaths During Pregnancy in Developing Countries

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
This week Bill Gates wrote a blog post about a special camera from medtech startup Remidio, which delivers high-resolution images of a patient’s retina in seconds. The camera plugs into a phone running an AI system that watches for early signs of diabetes — all without needing a blood draw, eye dilation, or a dibetes specialist. It’s already been used in 40 countries for more than 15 million patients.
But that same hardware, with different software, can also flag the conditions that drive so many dangerous pregnancies. Gestational diabetes sharply increases the risk of pre-eclampsia [a spike in blood pressure during pregnancy responsible for half a million fetal deaths every year and 70,000 maternal deaths]… In most of rural sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia, it usually isn’t screened for at all, because the standard test requires a lab. A retinal scan offers a different way in.

Remidio’s device is currently being used in India to screen pregnant women for conditions that drive stillbirth. And researchers are now adapting the same hardware to screen for anemia and hypertension, too… [S]mall, portable, affordable diagnostics in the hands of community health workers are exactly the kind of lever that can start to move a number that hasn’t moved in a long time.

Blood sugar and eyeballs

By Hadlock • Score: 3 Thread

Apparently your blue sensing photoreceptors in your eye are super sensitive to blood sugar, and you could do a blood sugar test with a color calibrated phone app having people compare two shades of blue side by side. If you can’t tell them apart, your blood sugar meets/exceeds/is below a certain threshold. It’s not hyper accurate but useful for diabetics.

Linux Percentage of Steam Users Doubled in One Year

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot
Steam on Linux use in March “had skyrocketed to 5.33%…” reports Phoronix, “easily the highest level we’ve seen Steam on Linux at since its inception more than a decade ago.”

So what happened in April?
[April’s results] point to Linux having a 4.52% marketshare on Steam, a drop of 0.81% compared to March. Year-over-year it’s roughly double with Steam on Linux in April 2025 being at 2.27%. Or two years ago for April 2024, Steam on Linux was at 1.9%.

AI killed desktop Linux

By rsilvergun • Score: 3 Thread
The big push was going to come when the steam machine hit but that’s dead in the water for at least 5 years. Ordinarily somebody would step in and make more memory but because we don’t enforce antitrust law nobody can take that risk because you know that if you try one of the big memory manufacturers is just going to drop their prices and run you out of business.

It’s possible that America becoming a basket case will force Europe to switch to Linux. But there’s going to be a lot of money thrown at European politicians to stop that and even without that the world is taking a huge global economic hit and Microsoft can just give free software and support to Europe for a little while and with the economy and freefall everybody is going to be looking to cut costs anyway possible so little things like national security are going to be less important versus immediate economic security.

Also the billionaires are still in charge and they still want to surveil us and so an open source operating system where you can turn off that surveillance is going to face a lot of challenges. And like it or not a large percentage of people who claim to be libertarian when it comes time to pull the lever at The ballot box don’t vote for freedom they vote for whatever little moral panic or pet issue they’re obsessed with. Or they get confused by entertaining propaganda and the end result is the same.

If you want a viable competitor and more options you are going to have to change how you vote and you’re going to have to get some of your family members to change how they vote. Because at this point it’s not a technical issue it’s a political issue.

Of course except for politics nerds nerds in general really really really hate being told that there is a problem you can’t just fix with technology. Hell even the politics nerds will quote Harry Selden at you.

Steam enabled me to move to Linux

By infosinger • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

With some minor exceptions, gaming was the only thing keeping me on Windows. Steam broke this blockade. I still keep a Windows laptop that I use in the spring to run Turbotax.

Interesting Details

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 3 Thread

Yay! 4.32% blah blah blah.

But, it’s more interesting, to me, to see that Arch is the second most used distro. It’s second to a bunch of Ubuntu flavors.

Re: Steam enabled me to move to Linux

By ichthus • Score: 4, Informative Thread
Who needs a 90-day evaluation? Likely, your computer came with a Windows key. Use it. In Linux, you can extract it from the command line.

sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM

This key works fine when installing a VM.