Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. AI ‘Crashes the Party’ at This Year’s Cannes Film Festival - Including Multi-Year Meta Partnership
  2. FreeBSD Foundation Executive Director Tries Daily Driving FreeBSD On Laptop
  3. Canonical Is Shutting Down Ubuntu Pastebin
  4. Mozilla Brings Web Serial Workflows to Firefox, Collaborates With Adafruit
  5. Disney’s ‘Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Opens to ‘Mixed’ Box Office Results
  6. Apple Preparing New ‘Gen AI’ Website Ahead of WWDC — and New AI Features?
  7. Wind and Solar Generated More Power Than Gas Globally in April
  8. Scammers Are Abusing an Internal Microsoft Account to Send Spam Links
  9. Lenovo, Dell, and HP Financially Support Linux Vendor Firmware Service
  10. More Videogames Developers Consider Unionization - Some Spurred By Changes to Remote Work Policies
  11. ‘Underminr’ CDN Vulnerability Hides Malicious Traffic Behind Trusted Domains
  12. Tesla’s Electric Cybercab is Certified as the Most Efficient EV Ever
  13. Linus Torvalds on How AI is Impacting the Hunt for Linux Kernel Bugs
  14. Is America Closer to Ending Daylight Saving Time?
  15. AMD (Xilinx) is Excluding Linux From the Free Tier For Its FPGA Dev Tool

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.

AI ‘Crashes the Party’ at This Year’s Cannes Film Festival - Including Multi-Year Meta Partnership

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
AI “crashed the party” at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, writes The Hollywood Reporter. The festival exposed “the fault lines reshaping cinema,” their article argues, including how “AI is here — and the industry has stopped pretending otherwise.”
A humanoid robot spotted marching up and down the Croisette seemed to sum up the worst AI fears of the film industry — the machines have arrived and they are taking your place. But inside the Palais and the market tents, the conversation over artificial intelligence had moved beyond fear into something more like uneasy acceptance. Fighting AI “is a battle we will lose,” said Demi Moore, a Cannes jury member this year, at the festival’s opening press conference, suggesting the film industry needs to “find ways in which we can work with it.”

That’s not the official Cannes line. The festival has banned films using generative artificial intelligence from its competition lineup. But at the Cannes film market, and in discussions at industry events over the past two weeks, the tone has shifted. AI-friendly tech giant Meta signed on as an official partner to the festival in a multiyear deal. Its AI tools were used to help produce an [out of competition] festival entry: Steven Soderbergh’s documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview. [Meta’s press release announcing the partnership touts “our creator partnerships,” their Meta AI assistant, and “our latest AI and wearable technologies” including Ray-Ban Meta AI features for smartglasses like “AI-powered translations that break down language barriers in real-time”.] At the Marché du Film [film market], there was an “AI for Talent Summit” that took the AI revolution as given, focusing instead on ethical AI use, data sovereignty and on the ways the technology can be used to enhance, rather than replace, creativity.

For the indie film industry, it felt like a turning point.

FreeBSD Foundation Executive Director Tries Daily Driving FreeBSD On Laptop

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Phoronix reports on a presentation about trying FreeBSD on modern Framework laptop from last week’s Open Source Summit hosted by the Linux Foundation:
With FreeBSD having worked on improving its laptop support over the past two years with some big changes and ongoing efforts for making a nice KDE desktop experience on FreeBSD, FreeBSD Foundation’s Executive Director has been trying to daily drive FreeBSD on laptops…

With the Framework Laptop, the touchscreen “just worked” as did other basic functionality from the KDE desktop on FreeBSD, including peripherals like a wireless mouse. Among the challenges were Zoom failing for video calls but eventually working, the web camera took steps to enable, and Microsoft Teams only partially worked. With the help of online resources, ultimately she was able to succeed in her journey of running FreeBSD daily on a laptop.

Re:Horses for courses

By darkain • Score: 5, Informative Thread

I’m not sure what you mean by “poorly” and “constant handholding”? Its full blown KDE on a very capable base operating system. Its at the point where Steam gaming is working, it has all the great server/developer tools needed for productivity, and pretty much any F/OSS app you can name on Linux is also on FreeBSD, but without most of the headaches of modern Linux.

Having more options for end-users is a good thing, not a bad thing.

I love that FreeBSD exists

By sarren1901 • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

I think it’s great we have FreeBSD as a more “unix-like” operating system that is freely available and of solid quality. I remember playing with FBSD 20 years ago and even then, it felt pretty solid and would of very likely made a great server platform, depending on your particular service needs.

Trying to use it on a laptop or as my main desktop driver seems like a step to far but then again, that entirely depends on what you need it to do. If you can get it to work with your hardware and it has the apps you need for your work flow, then why not!

If I used my laptop regularly, I might very well try out BSD just to feed them some data. I sort of feel one year, possibly The Year Of The Linux Desktop, I’ll be moving over to BSD to escape the enshitification of Linux. I could probably do that now if I didn’t want to play games. It’s rather ironic, 20 years ago, I could not move over to Linux because “games” and now I can’t move over to BSD because of “games”.

No surprise

By Auchmithie • Score: 5, Funny Thread

“Microsoft Teams only partially worked”.

No surprise. Teams only partly works on Windows.

Canonical Is Shutting Down Ubuntu Pastebin

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“Canonical says Ubuntu Pastebin will be decommissioned at the end of May 2026,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, “as part of an infrastructure modernization effort.”
The announcement only appeared this week, giving the Linux community barely any warning before a service that has been tied to Ubuntu support culture for years suddenly disappears.

Ubuntu Pastebin has long been used for sharing logs, crash reports, config files, and terminal output across IRC, Ask Ubuntu, forums, bug reports, Reddit, and countless troubleshooting guides scattered around the internet. The bigger concern is link rot. Once the shutdown happens, years of old support discussions could lose critical debugging information overnight. Community members have already pointed out that some Ubuntu packages and scripts still reference paste.ubuntu.com directly.

While it is understandable that aging services eventually get retired, the extremely short transition period is rubbing many Linux users the wrong way, especially in a community where old documentation and archived troubleshooting threads still regularly help people solve problems a decade later.

Responsible action

By spaceman375 • Score: 3 Thread

Canonical should pay the Internet Archive to keep a read only copy available.

They should leave it running read-only

By segin • Score: 3 Thread
to avoid link rot.

New admins

By skogs • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

The new admins don’t know how to maintain a simple file server anymore.

They can vibe code something else to use the power though.

Not good, but good to know.

By demon driver • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

And funny that this coincides with my starting to move my servers from Ubuntu Server to Debian. I don’t want to trust a company that, on May 22, announces the shutdown of a service on May 31 that was supposed to store data for up to one year (guaranteed or not)…

Mozilla Brings Web Serial Workflows to Firefox, Collaborates With Adafruit

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
The Web Serial API lets websites write to (and read from) serial devices using JavaScript, including USB and Bluetooth devices with virtual serial ports. And this week’s Firefox 151 release introduced support for the Web Serial API on desktop.

“Most folks won’t use this API,” acknowledges Mozilla’s blog, “but for our community of builders and tinkerers, it unlocks the ability to use Firefox to communicate directly with compatible hardware devices like microcontrollers, development boards, and other serial-connected devices…”
With Firefox’s browser engine, Gecko, now supporting Web Serial, users can now connect, code, configure, and control compatible hardware directly from the browser in many workflows, often without additional software or complicated setup…

As part of this week’s launch, Adafruit, one of the internet’s most beloved open-source hardware communities, is collaborating with us to test and validate what browser-based hardware development can look like in Firefox with Web Serial support… With Web Serial support in Firefox 151, Adafruit’s browser-based hardware workflows now work directly in Firefox as well, with no additional software or complicated setup required for many projects. We invite you to give it a try

We want the web to be open, flexible, and shaped by the diversity of people building on it. If you’re wiring up your first board, experimenting with hardware projects, or dusting off an old electronics kit, give Adafruit and Web Serial in Firefox a try. Build something amazing. Make something useful. Tell us what works. Tell us what breaks. Most of all, make it your own.
Mozilla’s "Hacks” blog demonstrates with an Adafruit ESP32-S2 based board “where messages sent from web code can be directly displayed on the device over Web Serial.”

And Mozilla engineer Alex Franchuk even built a handheld device that changes a web page’s CSS properties.

This Is Great News

By crunchy_one • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Now I can dump Chrome in the trash where it belongs. Web Serial support was the sole reason I’ve kept it on my machines.Thank you Mozilla, thank you Adafruit!

This is great.

By Kamineko • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I do love it when malware advert javascripts can upload random new firmware updates into my mouse and keyboard turning them into stealth keyloggers. This is great.

This feels like when Flash sandbox breaks became a thing, but worse. At least in those days we got smooth fullscreen vector animations and games to enjoy. I’d rather Flash had just been bloody fixed instead of browsers themselves becoming Shit Flash But Holy Cow It Runs Worse And Gets Worse.

Years ago…

By LordHighExecutioner • Score: 3 Thread

…a way to freeze Internet explorer was by inserting a < img src=lpt1: > tag in the html code.

Re:This is great.

By Kamineko • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

All keyboards are serial. In fact, almost every keyboard ever is a giant parallel to serial convertor.

it’s about firggin time

By mmiscool • Score: 3 Thread
Sites like https://serialterminal.com/ will work in firefox. It was like pulling teeth to finally get brave to support this also. Now the only one left is safari.

Disney’s ‘Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Opens to ‘Mixed’ Box Office Results

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
It’s “the first time in seven years that a new Star Wars film has launched on the big screen,” writes CNBC. And Variety notes it’s expected to earn $102 million through Monday:
[B]ox office analysts are mixed on the results. On one hand, it’s significant for any film to debut above $100 million in post-pandemic times. On the other, “Star Wars” is one of Hollywood’s preeminent film properties, so there’s an expectation of a certain level of box office. And this start is the worst for “Star Wars” since Disney bought the franchise in 2012.
CNBC cites reports 41% of tickets were sold for more expensive large-format screenings like IMAX and DolbyCinema.

So how’s the movie? Rotten Tomatoes shows an 89% positive rating from moviegoers on its “popcornmeter” and a 62% average score from professional movie critics. And Ars Technica writes that “The plot is predictable, the fight scenes are meh, but you can’t beat the charm of that little green Grogu.” So while there’s “a paint-by-numbers plot,” they add that “the little green puppet pretty much carries the entire film.”
The new film is … fine. It’s an average Star Wars outing, and it will give families a solid Memorial Day Weekend entertainment option. It’s just not the spectacular home run that might have helped launch the flagging franchise into an exciting new era, and diehard Star Wars fans hoping for more are probably going to be disappointed.
Of course, not everyone agrees. “How many nails can we realistically drive into Star Wars’s coffin before it’s time to give up hope of resuscitation?” writes Clarisse Loughrey for The Independent, calling it "the dullest and most inconsequential ‘Star Wars’ ever made.” (She argues that the movie “stitches together what is clearly three episodes of the previously planned fourth season of The Mandalorian and calls it a day. There’s not a whiff of effort here.”)

And a reviewer at RogerEbert.com gave it one-and-a-half stars, complaining that “There’s no reason for anything in this movie except the wish to make even more money....”
I’m on record as despising the word “content,” which was pushed by early tech moguls to devalue art as interchangeable goo in a virtual pipeline, but this washed-out, video-game-looking movie, with its murky night scenes and lack of visual depth, deserves the word. You’ve seen everything in it before, from the equipment, spacecraft, armor, and tactical maneuvers to the species and various types of terrain (earthlike, but cartoony)…

Even Grogu taxes our patience. Some of his cute bits could’ve ended with him facing the camera and doing jazz hands.

Wait, what?

By haruchai • Score: 3 Thread

This has to be the most stealth opening of anything related to Star Wars since 1977

Are people

By Valgrus Thunderaxe • Score: 3 Thread
not sick of Stars Wars already?

Not working for me

By Shakes Fist • Score: 3 Thread
To watch this in the cinema: I’d want collected from my door, tickets and snacks paid for and a $100 bill awarded for stealing my time after being returned home.
Seriously. There’s no way I could care less about Disney’s tripe.

Gonna be great

By Slashythenkilly • Score: 4, Informative Thread
I cant wait to never watch anything Star Wars again. Lucas put it in the coffin and Disney buried it.

They lost me on this shit ages ago

By Richard_at_work • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

I watched The Mandalorian season 1 and enjoyed it.

I watched The Mandalorian season 2 and … yeah, it was good but I was mildly disappointed in the whole “you should know these characters from other Star Wars media, otherwise they are mildly uninteresting side characters that everyone else is raving about for some reason” thing.

Then .... The Mandalorian season 3 - holy fuck. You had to actually watch an entirely different season of something else first in order to pick this one up, otherwise the ending to season 2 and the start of season 3 do not join up at all. Im out. Im not bouncing between different things just to maintain a hope in hell of understanding whats going on.

Apple Preparing New ‘Gen AI’ Website Ahead of WWDC — and New AI Features?

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Apple just registered a new subdomain record: genai.apple.com.

The domain was spotted by a MacRumors contributing researcher, and though it doesn’t yet lead to a live web page, they believe it’s tied to Apple’s annual developers conference WWDC which starts June 8, “where the company has promised to announce ‘AI advancements' across its software platforms.”

The blog 9to5Mac speculates that “All signs point to WWDC 2026 being Apple’s major AI renaissance, where the company will live up to the promises it made back at WWDC 2024, as well as a few additional new announcements.”
[I]it goes without saying that this is probably related to Apple’s upcoming generative AI announcements at WWDC… Siri should finally be able to understand more personal context, have on screen awareness, and be able to take action in apps for you. This’ll finally be made possible thanks to Apple’s new partnership with Google, where Apple will be using Gemini-diffused models hosted on Private Cloud Compute to power Siri… Apple will also reportedly be introducing a new Siri app. This’ll allow you to access your previous Siri conversations, as well as have text-based conversations with Siri.

Other Apple Intelligence upgrades coming at WWDC 2026 include the ability to generate wallet passes from physical tickets, new editing features in the Photos app, and additional functionality for Visual Intelligence…

Registered a subdomain?

By Sethra • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Since when did anyone have to register a subdomain?

Wind and Solar Generated More Power Than Gas Globally in April

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Last month saw a world first, reports Electrek. Wind and solar generated more power globally than gas:
According to new analysis from independent energy think tank Ember, wind and solar produced 22% of the world’s electricity in April 2026, compared to 20% from gas. Together, the two renewable sources generated a record 531 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity during the month, 54 TWh more than gas plants generated globally, at 477 TWh…

Five years ago, in April 2021, gas generation was almost identical to today’s level at 476 TWh. But back then, wind and solar combined generated just 245 TWh — less than half of what they produced this April…

Wind and solar generation increased across nearly every major market reporting April data… April tends to be the strongest month for this kind of milestone because spring weather in the Northern Hemisphere usually brings a combination of strong wind generation, rising solar output, and lower electricity demand between heating and cooling seasons. Still, the broader trend is clear. Ember’s recent Global Electricity Review found that wind and solar met all global electricity demand growth in 2025.
“Governments around the world are also ramping up renewable energy targets to reduce dependence on volatile fossil fuel imports…”

Re:This must piss off

By ArchieBunker • Score: 5, Funny Thread

I really wish Scotland would seize his golf course and rename it the Trump/Epstein nature preserve.

Re:“Governments around the world”....

By denbesten • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Political leadership (or lack thereof) is not the only thing incentivizing wind and solar. Low operational costs also play a huge factor.

Ember (the quoted source) reports the US at 19%. Effectively, the US is about 3 years behind the average given that wind and solar has been growing in the US at about 1% a year for the past dozen years or so. Although below average, the US is by no means out of the game.

Re:This must piss off

By AmiMoJo • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

Fun fact, to get to net zero the UK needs to dedicate a bit less than all the land currently used for golf courses to solar.

Just sayin’.

The only thing stopping us

By rsilvergun • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
From an immediate switch is billionaires want to be in control of the energy supply so they are slowing the transition in order to make sure that they control the solar farms and the wind farms and you have to go to them to get electricity still just like you did when they controlled the coal mines and the oil wells. This is acceptable because the alternative is to make energy production publicly owned and people really really really really hate public utilities and the concept of just having something that we all benefit from. It doesn’t feel Fair because they can’t own it.

Also it’s hard to explain to people that just because you won’t let Elon Musk own the electric grid doesn’t mean somebody is going to snatch your car and your toothbrush… It’s really hard to get people to grasp any level of nuance. It doesn’t help that 60% of them read at the level of a 12-year-old…

Re:Possibly the only good thing…

By thegarbz • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

People realizing they need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels is probably the only good thing to come out of the Trump regime’s Iran sh*t-show.

Sorry but this has nothing to do with Iran. The trend for wind and solar has been moving this way steady for years before anyone knew where on the map the Strait of Hormuz was. Sure it’s not negative, but at best it cements something that that people were already doing.

Scammers Are Abusing an Internal Microsoft Account to Send Spam Links

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
“For months, scammers have been taking advantage of a loophole that allows them to send spammy emails from an internal Microsoft email address typically used for sending legitimate account alerts,” TechCrunch reports:
[The scammers] have been able to set up new Microsoft accounts as if they are new customers and use that access to send out emails purportedly from the tech giant, potentially tricking people into thinking these emails are genuine…

Last week, I received several, similarly structured emails containing subject lines and web links to scammy sites from Microsoft across different email accounts. These crudely made emails were sent from msonlineservicesteam@microsoftonline.com, an email account that Microsoft uses to send important notifications to users, such as two-factor authentication codes and other critical alerts about their online account. Some of these emails’ subject lines resembled official emails that would alert users to fraudulent transactions, while other emails claimed to have a private message waiting for the recipient at a web address mentioned in the email body.

In a social post on Tuesday, anti-spam nonprofit The Spamhaus Project said it had also seen Microsoft’s account notification email address being abused to send spam and that the activity dated back “several months.”
A PR representative told TechCrunch that Microsoft was “actively investigating” and “taking action against these phishing reports to help keep customers protected,” with measures that include “removing accounts that violate our Terms of Use” and “further strengthening our detection and blocking mechanisms.”

TechCrunch suggests the issue may not be limited to Microsoft. “Other users commenting on social media say that other companies’ email addresses are also being used to send out spam.”

Taking action against phishing reports

By ffkom • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Microsoft was “actively investigating” and “taking action against these phishing reports

Microslop taking action against phishing reports, rather than closing security holes, is exactly what I would have expected of them. And I would not be surprised if the scamming originates from inside Microslop.

This is one of the major problems with DKIM et.al.

By Arrogant-Bastard • Score: 5, Informative Thread
For those who don’t deal with email infrastructure: there are several technologies (DKIM, SPF, etc.) that have been deployed in attempts to stop email forgery. Each works slightly differently, but the overall concept is that a receiving email server can check that a sending email server is authorized to send messages from the message sender’s domain (e.g., “this message presented by mail3.example.net claims to be from joe@example.com; is mail3.example.net allowed to originate email from example.com?”) and that messages are cryptographically signed by the sending domain’s email server(s). I’m oversimplifying a lot but that’s the general idea.

Worth noting is that tells you nothing about the message, i.e., it’s of no value in figuring out if the message is spam or ham. That’s because spammers can set up all of this too, and most of them have. It’s of no help with the big email providers either: the two biggest sources of spam observed here are Gmail and Outlook, and of course all of those messages pass every one of these checks.

Which brings me to this problem. And that is: if someone gains control of an email account (or an email server) then they can send whatever they want from it until someone notices and shuts it down. And all of those messages will pass all of these checks — which means that they’re highly likely to be accepted by recipient email servers and highly likely to be read by the addressees. And then it gets worse: some of those addressees are using email clients that check message validity and signal it to the user with a green checkmark or the word “verified” or something like that. So even if the message content seems a little sketchy, that might well be enough to convince the person reading it that is IS legitimate…and then bad things happen.

We’ve spent decades trying to train users to be suspicious of anything that doesn’t look right — with mixed results, of course. But the combination of these technologies and email user interfaces that use them is undoing that training. Users are being conditioned to believe what their email client tells them to believe, and this is going to have dire consequences.

Re:Taking action against phishing reports

By Zocalo • Score: 5, Informative Thread
See my post above for a bit more detail, but this looks like it could be an SPF include failure. They have included “_spf-ssg-a.microsoft.com” in the SPF, which in turn includes “spf.protection.outlook.com”. AFAIK, that’s basically the Outlook.com webmail service, so quite possibly at least some, and possibly any, users of that service could impersonate “microsoftonline.com” and get an SPF pass.

If so then yeah, that’s *totally* the kind of lack of attention to detail you tend to expect from Microsoft.

The tip off!

By oldgraybeard • Score: 5, Funny Thread
I’m from Microsoft and I’m here to help!

LOL Classic Microsoft

By sarren1901 • Score: 3 Thread

I can’t be the only one that just laughs when they read stuff like this. If there was any doubt left in your mind that you should switch from Windows to Linux or Apple, just take the dive. You can always run whatever version of Windows in a VM just fine.

If this is how Microsoft conducts its business, do you really want them in charge of your computer?

Lenovo, Dell, and HP Financially Support Linux Vendor Firmware Service

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
The It’s FOSS blog has news about the Linux Vendor Firmware Service, which gives hardware vendors a secure portal to upload firmware updates “which can then be downloaded and installed by users through clients such as GNOME Software or fwupdmgr.” (Originally developed in 2015 by GNOME maintainer Richard Hughes…)
The issue, however, obviously, had been funding with the largest contributors being the usual suspects, Framework and Open Source Framework Foundation, at $10K a year. Recently, however, Lenovo and Dell joined suite as Premier sponsors, which is the highest tier at $100K a year each, making the project more sustainable and manageable.

These companies contributing makes a lot of sense, considering they are two of the bigger computer companies which offer Linux by default in some cases, especially with Lenovo’s ThinkPads being the Linux users’ favorite for decades. And now… HP has followed suit as a Premier sponsor, also providing $100K a year, right alongside Dell and Lenovo…

The question still remains, however, where are the other vendors? What are they waiting for… This major move by these three companies should not only be seen as a sign of relief and wider acceptance of the usage of Linux, but as a beacon for other vendors to follow, who ought to make their hardware more accessible to the open-source community.

Malware distribution in 3.. 2.. 1..

By devslash0 • Score: 3 Thread

I can easily see how this central firmware delivery service will become the target of a malicious actor at some point. Just a matter of time.

More Videogames Developers Consider Unionization - Some Spurred By Changes to Remote Work Policies

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Developers for several top videogames have joined unions under the Communication Workers of America — including Call of Duty, Fallout, Overwatch, Diablo and World of Warcraft. Last month workers on the online game Magic: The Gathering Arena team announced their own CWA union.

The gaming news site Aftermath shares some interesting details:
Owner Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast could have voluntarily agreed to the union, but instead the issue is going to an official vote with the National Labor Relations Board in June… [O]ne Arena developer shared on Bluesky that one of the reasons they were inspired to organize was because Wizards changed its remote work policy, requiring them to move across the country or to a more expensive state to remain employed. (Changes to remote work have been one of the big drivers of unionization and union action among video game developers.) If the union is successful, the company wouldn’t be able to unilaterally change working conditions like remote work; it would have to negotiate with the union over the decision. There’s no guarantee unionized employees would get what they want, but they’d have more of a say, and the opportunity to directly influence their work situation, than they would without a union.

Re: WFH again?

By fluffernutter • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
Time to switch to a company that must post all job opportunities and interview for them without bias.

Re: Game Dev and Remote Work

By Baron_Yam • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

I provide IT support to insurance brokerages - you may or not be surprised to find that since COVID, they’re continuing to convert to WFO.

Especially for the boutique shops, I doubt an RTO office can compete financially with one structured under a WFH model.

Re:Game Devs are DEI and Marxist. Unions are Marxi

By ClickOnThis • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Unions are the new National Socialists, basically, same as 1939. Note: National SOCIALISTS were socialist. And, don’t bother trying to persuade me they were somehow right wing.

The National Socialists in 1930s-40s Germany called themselves “socialists” for branding purposes. They wanted to appeal to the working class. And it worked. But they were anything but socialists.

North Korea calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Does that mean it’s a democratic country?

Re:WFH again?

By PleaseThink • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Not everyone lives to work. If you’re saving enough, the life improvements from working from home far outweigh the promotion and networking ‘opportunities’.

If you were fully remote you could have moved to a lower cost of living area, closer to friends/family, or to a part of the country you preferred. The savings from that can drastically reduce the amount of years before retirement or improve your social life with the people you actually care about.

If your employees can’t listen to their boss then they should be fired. Being only an avatar shouldn’t matter. Everyone’s supposed to be adults working towards a common goal. Granted I know real life isn’t always like that, but that’s what you should be working towards.

Re: WFH again?

By fluffernutter • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
I suspect people who need networking that badly don’t really have the skills and use socialization to manipulate people and get by.

‘Underminr’ CDN Vulnerability Hides Malicious Traffic Behind Trusted Domains

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Slashdot reader wiredmikey writes:
Threat actors are exploiting a vulnerability in shared content delivery network (CDN) infrastructure to hide connections to malicious domains. Researchers say the vulnerability could impact roughly 88 million domains and can bypass DNS filtering and protective DNS controls, potentially enabling stealthy command-and-control communications and other evasive attacks.
Dubbed “Underminr,” the exploit “presents the SNI and HTTP Host of a domain,” writes SecurityWeek, “while forcing a request to the IP address of another tenant on the same shared edge.”
The mismatch, ADAMnetworks reports, has been exploited in attacks targeting large-scale hosting providers, including those that have implemented mitigations against domain fronting…

Threat actors’ increased reliance on AI is expected to lead to a surge in attacks. “Once Underminr becomes parametric information for AI-generated malware, we could expect to see it in every attack that needs to evade protective DNS as part of the attack chain,” ADAMnetworks CEO David Redekop says.

The whole internet is full of backdoors

By xack • Score: 3 Thread
With the proliferation of illegal proxies, vpns and scrapers you can’t trust the authenticity of traffic anymor. It also means that the internet is getting “ossified” as only a small amount of trusted protocols and clients are allowed now. With malware finding even more back doors the internet basically is an untrustable medium now. Cybersecurity has become pointless because the maniac is in the mailbox.

Unsurprising, To Me.

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

This is quite unsurprising to me. I’ve always regarded CDNs as a problem and more recently I’ve added the hyper scalers to the problem list.

DNS filtering a is a waste of time when we have to trust massive blocks of IPs that should not be trusted and when DNS records can flux(change) instantly and constantly.

This is just one area where we seem to trust the infrastructure because we’re stupid or no one has gotten around to exploiting obvious weaknesses, yet.

Don’t even get me started on Docker repos and/or people’s eagerness to
# curl -fsSL https // randomshit.site/InstallUnknownSource.sh | bash

What the absolute fuck?

Tesla’s Electric Cybercab is Certified as the Most Efficient EV Ever

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Tesla’s upcoming Cybercab “has been certified at 165 Wh/mi,” reports Electrek — which makes it “the most efficient electric vehicle ever produced — by a wide margin.”

The next most efficient EV on the market, the Lucid Air Pure, consumes 28% more energy per mile. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy confirmed the figure, which represents a certified rating — not a marketing claim or internal target.

It’s an impressive achievement, but it comes with a massive asterisk: Tesla accomplished this by building a tiny two-seat robotaxi with no steering wheel, no pedals, and a sub-50 kWh battery pack… Even Tesla’s own Model 3 — one of the most efficient passenger EVs you can buy — needs nearly a third more energy to cover the same distance… Where the 165 Wh/mi figure genuinely matters is in the economics of running a robotaxi fleet. Energy cost per mile is one of the biggest operating expenses for any ride-hailing service, and the Cybercab’s efficiency gives Tesla a structural cost advantage over competitors…

The small battery pack also means faster charging times and lower per-vehicle battery costs — both critical for fleet economics. Tesla has said the Cybercab will cost $30,000, and the efficient powertrain is a big part of hitting that price target. Tesla confirmed Cybercab production has started at Giga Texas in April, though the ramp is expected to be slow initially. The company still hasn’t solved unsupervised autonomous driving — the first steering wheel-less unit rolled off the line in February, but Tesla’s supervised robotaxi fleet currently crashes at roughly four times the rate of human drivers.

Not including Chinese vehicles

By mkwan • Score: 5, Informative Thread

If you read the Electrek article, the ratings are performed by the EPA, which only tests cars available in the US. So no Chinese EVs, which are the most advanced.

Typical Americans, assuming the world ends at their borders.

Enough with these stupid backwards unit

By madbrain • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

It is 9.7km/kWh, which is indeed impressive.
My 2025 Equinox EV is 5.1 km/kWh, but is a much bigger car. My husband’s smaller 2017 Bolt EV is rated at 5.7 km/kWh. In the real world, the Equinox actually uses less than the Bolt because of the heat pump.

Aptera is more efficient

By vyvepe • Score: 4, Informative Thread

Tesla’s upcoming Cybercab “has been certified at 165 Wh/mi,” reports Electrek — which makes it “the most efficient electric vehicle ever produced — by a wide margin.”

Aptera needs only about 110 Wh/mi. It is more efficient than Cybercab by a wide margin :-)
Though Aptera has only 3 wheels :-/

Re:My e-bike uses 23Wh/mi unassisted

By dfghjk • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

The Aptera is a two seat EV “car” closer to production than this Tesla is. It is infamously low in function yet more functional than the Tesla, yet its target (at a similar stage in development) was 100 Wh/mile. It doesn’t deliver that, but it likely delivers what this Tesla will. That’s with an off-the-shelf drivetrain.

It might be hard to compare real world vehicles to lies, but this isn’t even a good lie. Elon Musk is a fraud and that’s been plainly clear for a long time.

Re:It’s a really light car

By drinkypoo • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Presumably it’s aimed at being a Driverless Taxi, not a consumer car.

It’s just completely incorrect for cars without controls to even exist. Cars with controls are easier to manage in breakdowns. Not even being able to steer without the computer means it will be difficult to get disabled vehicles onto rollbacks in some circumstances. The correct infrastructure for vehicles without steering wheels is rail.

Linus Torvalds on How AI is Impacting the Hunt for Linux Kernel Bugs

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
Linus Torvalds spoke this week at the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit North America, reports ZDNet — and described how AI is impacting Linux kernel development:
“In the last six months, we’ve seen a lot more commits,” Torvalds noted, estimating that “the last two releases, it’s been about 20% more commits than we had in the previous releases over many years.... The real change that happened in the last six months was that the AI tools actually got good enough for a lot of people… we’re seeing a definite uptick in just development on pretty much all fronts....”

On the positive side, he framed AI-discovered bugs as “short-term pain” with long-term benefits: “When AI finds a bug in any source code… long term is you found a bug, we fixed it, that the end result is better for it.” After all, he continued, “I think finding bugs is great, because the real problem is all the bugs you didn’t find…” For small teams or solo maintainers, he said, flood-style AI bug reports can cause real burnout, especially when “it’s a bug report, and when you ask for more information, the person has done a drive-by and doesn’t even answer your questions anymore.”
The AI news site Techstrong notes this quote from Torvalds. “I have a love-hate relationship with AI. I actually really like it from a technical angle, I love the tools, I find it very useful and interesting, but it is definitely causing pain points.”
The chief challenge with AI is that it forces people to change how they work, he found. People get into a rut, and AI challenges their norm. The Linux security mailing list got the brunt of this new wave of AI-generated commits. Not all bugs are security issues, but when “people think that when they find a bug with AI, the first reaction seems to sometimes be let’s send it to the security list, because this may have security implications,” Torvalds said. As a result, the security list — watched over by a small group of maintainers — was overrun by duplicate entries…

The Linux project learned to manage the bug influx with a set number of tools to sort out and deprioritize the obvious drive-by reports (ones where the person submitting the report won’t even answer any questions). One tool, Sashiko, reviews all the patches submitted on the mailing list. “Sometimes the review is not great, but quite often it finds issues and it asks questions and says, ‘Hey, what about this issue?’" he said.
Linux also updated their documentation, partly just to address “an uptick in bug and security reports from discoveries made in full or in part with AI.”

Security Researchers want/need attention

By williamyf • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

Not only they crave it, but also, the job itself demands it.
And part of the attention is the severity of the Bug, with security bugs with working exploit code being the “best-est”.

So, In the same address, Torvads asked security researchers to not publish exploit code, but this goes against the incentive structure of security research including payment.

Luckily, fixing that problem is easy. Linux is taling about a (current) private security mailing list, and a (future) Public list.

Well, if you are a security researcher, subbmit your bug to both lists, first to the private mailing list, with the example exploit code, then to the public list, sans the exploit code, but with an adendum that says “exploit code avaialable in the private security list under security bug report # xx.yy.zz”. When the security hole you reported is patched, and the details of the private mailing list become public, and the exploit code is shown to work, the infosec researcher (if s/he responded and did follow-up work) will be dully cretited, which is nice and works for everyone.

JM2C YMMV

Is America Closer to Ending Daylight Saving Time?

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot Skip
A proposal to make daylight saving time permanent has advanced in the U.S. House of Representative, reports California news station KCRA:
A proposal to make daylight saving time permanent has advanced in the House, reigniting an age-old American debate around the twice-annual clock changes. And this time, the proposal has the president’s backing. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will work “very hard” to sign the so-called Sunshine Protection Act into law after the House Energy and Commerce Committee overwhelmingly approved the bill by a 48-1 vote.

The bill still needs to pass the full U.S. House, and then the U.S. Senate would consider taking up the measure.
The bill would allow U.S states to decide whether to “exempt themselves” from Daylight Saving Time, according to the article.

The bill’s sponsor described the annual clock-switching as “inconvenient, unnecessary, and out of step with the needs of today’s families and economy,” while finally creating a permanent Daylight Saving would bring “more usable daylight hours throughout the year.”

Think of the school children

By bosef1 • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I would be interesting in hearing from people who _want_ the twice-annual clock change. Why do you want that? How does it benefit you?

I may just be confused, but I thought one of the primary advocates for the clock shift was parents with school-age children. Shifting the clocks helped prevent the children from having wait for the bus in the dark, or walk home in the dark, something like that. But that may be me mis-remembering something I heard a while ago.

My preference would be year-round Standard time (noon is noon). My second preference would be year-round Daylight Saving. I dislike the twice-annual clock change, find it of no value, and support eliminating it.

Re:Think of the school children

By timepilot • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

Every time I hear the “think of the children” argument against year-round DST, I ask myself why schools don’t just start an hour later instead of dragging the rest of the world along with them. Year round DST FTW.

Re:Think of the school children

By ShanghaiBill • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I ask myself why schools don’t just start an hour later

Because parents have to go to work, and after-school programs have a set schedule.

Of course, employers and after-school programs could also adjust their start times for the seasons, and we could agree to switch those start times on the same day.

But that’s just reimplementing DST.

Re:No.

By Tony Isaac • Score: 5, Informative Thread

This bill doesn’t kill DST. It allows states to make it permanent, if they want to.

Re:No.

By markdavis • Score: 5, Informative Thread

>“This bill doesn’t kill DST. It allows states to make it permanent, if they want to.”

I came to post the same thing. This: “The bill would allow U.S states to decide whether to “exempt themselves” from Daylight Saving Time, according to the article.” That is 100% INCORRECT. States can ALREADY exempt themselves from Alternating Daylight Saving Time and stay on permanent Standard Time. And only two do (Arizona and Hawaii). What they cannot do is opt for permanent (year-round) Saving Time, which the bill seeks to allow. And that would be a very good thing to have. Then States can decide which of the three time schemes works best for them.

What we would probably find is that States will mostly decide based on neighboring States and we will see “clumps” of areas on one scheme or another. Latitude will probably be the most determining factor, with more northern ones leaning towards Alternating Daylight Saving Time (current scheme) and more southern ones leaning towards permanent Saving Time. The two that are on permanent Standard Time will probably remain on it and no other State change to that. Would probably take several years for things to sort out after trials and such.

AMD (Xilinx) is Excluding Linux From the Free Tier For Its FPGA Dev Tool

Posted by EditorDavid View on SlashDot
Long-time Slashdot reader Sun writes:
AMD has announced a change to the way they are licensing Vivado, their FPGA development tool… Hidden between the lines of the announcement [of a new model starting with the 2026.1 release] is the change to the free of charge tier. AMD is adding more devices to be supported in this tier, which is supposedly the carrot. The stick, however, is the removal of certain debug features.

The thing that’s likely to hit the hobbist community the worst, however, is that the free tier will now not be available on Linux.

AMD are saying that old licenses are still in effect, so it appears that if you hurry to install Vivado now, you’d still be able to use it moving forward. It is not clear, however, whether it’ll still be possible to install Vivado 2025.2 after Vivado 2026.1 becomes available.
“Almost all our surveys show… close to 70% of the customers are still using Windows,” explained AMD senior product application engineer Anatoli Curran on the tool’s support forum. “Vivado ML Standard Edition v2025.2 is going to be officially supported (I mean if there are any bugs found, these can be fixed) until v2026.3 release… Any release older than the current 3 released versions of Vivado then becomes unsupported (meaning no bugs will be fixed with Vivado Standard Edition v2025.2 after Vivado v2026.3).

“However, users can continue using V2025.2 forever, if they wish to do so… Also, Vivado ML Standard Edition v2025.2 is license-free… Users only need to obtain and use any IP Core related licenses, or Vivado Model Composer (for SysGen).”