Alterslash

the unofficial Slashdot digest
 

Contents

  1. Audacity 4 Rebuilds the Open Source Audio Editor But Leaves Some Features Behind
  2. Google Releases Gemini 3.8 Flash, Its Third Flash Model In Six Weeks
  3. Google Engineer Accused of Polymarket Insider Trading Says He Was Just Gambling
  4. Perplexity Will Open Source Its Faster Lily AI Engine For Apple Silicon
  5. Instrument Clusters Are Now Paid Extras In Two Hyundai Models
  6. Global Heating Will Hit At Least 1.8C, UN Warns, and There Are ‘No Good Outcomes’
  7. FCC Plans Robocall Scorecard to Grade Phone Companies On Spam Call Blocking
  8. 1Password Wades Into a Right-Wing Mess After Funding a Linux Project
  9. CERN Transitioning From RHEL To Debian
  10. OpenAI’s Altman Says the Use of AI is ‘Non-Negotiable’
  11. NYC Public Schools Ban AI Use Through Middle School
  12. Google Defeats US Bid to Force Ad Tech Sale
  13. Uber Is Laying Off 10% of Its Workforce
  14. FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses
  15. Dell Stock Surges On Record Orders For AI Servers

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.

Audacity 4 Rebuilds the Open Source Audio Editor But Leaves Some Features Behind

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
BrianFagioli writes:
Audacity 4.0 has been released with a rebuilt Qt interface, a new clip-editing model, customizable workspaces, native high-DPI rendering, and a new AUP4 project format. The open source audio editor also adds ASIO playback and recording support to official Windows builds, while bringing major changes to recording, playback, plugins, and project handling. The overhaul comes with some tradeoffs. Audacity 4.0 currently lacks several features found in Audacity 3, including Time Tracks, Note and MIDI tracks, Mixer, Macro Manager and scripting pipe, VAMP and LADSPA plugin hosting, and play-at-speed. The developers say they plan to bring the missing functionality back in future releases.

“bring the missing functionality back in future”

By KILNA • Score: 3 Thread

Whenever I see this sort of statement, it means it’s gone. If they could readily do it in a non-janky way, they’d have done it before release; the re-architecture was too fundamental to accommodate it. Particularly on an open source project, where nobody is forcing them to release on a specific schedule.

Google Releases Gemini 3.8 Flash, Its Third Flash Model In Six Weeks

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Google released Gemini 3.8 Flash, its third Flash model in six weeks, claiming it’s their best reasoning and coding model yet (topping the DeepSWE leaderboard). Ars Technica reports:
Gemini 3.8 Flash comes in two variations. There’s the standard Flash, which Google describes as a “workhorse” model that’s good for anything from agentic tasks to software development. Then we have Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, which runs on the same foundations but has been tuned for vulnerability detection and mitigation.

For developers, Google has the same pitch as it did for the 3.7 Flash release just a couple of weeks ago. API access to the model is available at an “introductory rate” through the end of the year: $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens. The regular price will be $1.50 / $7.50, but it’s likely there will be new models available long before the price changes. Google probably sees the lower prices as a necessity given that other AI labs have recently dropped token pricing to keep increasingly wary businesses engaged with AI tools.

[…] Gemini 3.8 Flash will be available across the Google ecosystem starting today, but Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber is currently limited to trusted testers and governments. Like the past Flash release, you’ll need a Pro or Ultra subscription to access Gemini 3.8 Flash in the Gemini app, but you can always visit AI Studio if you want to tinker with it for free.

Flash? Can I play all my old flash games?

By jfdavis668 • Score: 3 Thread
Glad I keep them.

Google Engineer Accused of Polymarket Insider Trading Says He Was Just Gambling

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired:
Michele Spagnuolo, the Google engineer arrested in May by U.S. authorities for alleged insider trading on Polymarket, is making a new bold bet. On Wednesday, his legal team filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him. Spagnuolo isn’t outright denying that he made money using internal information from Google. Instead, his legal team says that the wagers were not financial instruments subject to regulation by the United States’ Commodities Exchange Act but rather good old-fashioned international betting that the U.S. has no authority over.

Spagnuolo, who has been placed on leave from Google, is accused of committing commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Using the alias “AlphaRaccoon,” he allegedly made a series of wagers on Polymarket’s flagship platform that resulted in profits totaling over $1.2 million. According to the criminal complaint, “AlphaRaccoon” correctly wagered that the singer D4vd, who gained notoriety for his suspected connection to a grisly killing, would be Google’s most-searched person of the year in 2025. (D4vd was later charged with murder; he pleaded not guilty.) […] Spagnuolo’s lawyers argue that defining swaps to include wagers like who the most-searched person on Google will be each year “would fly in the face of the statute’s purpose and history” and lead to “absurd results.” They say it would make it so that any wager in the world, from a charity raffle to a local Ping-Pong match, could be classified as a financial instrument. “Spagnuolo is basically making the same argument as the states that are suing prediction markets,” says a financial services regulation expert Todd Phillips. “This is the issue that will likely go up to the Supreme Court.” Featured Video

In addition to disputing the idea that prediction markets offer swaps, Spagnuolo’s legal team argues that the U.S. government had no jurisdiction over him in the first place because he’s a non-U.S. citizen who was wagering on a non-U.S. platform. Although Polymarket is headquartered in New York, the company’s flagship prediction market is banned in the United States and technically is administered by an ostensibly Panama-based entity known as Adventure One QSS. Spagnuolo was living in Zurich, Switzerland, when he allegedly made the Google-related trades on Polymarket. “The extraterritorial argument is interesting and raises the question of whether the U.S. should be the world’s prediction markets cop,” Philipps says. Spagnuolo’s team also claims that the charges should be dismissed because the internal information he supposedly leveraged did not have any commercial value to Google.

good luck with that

By martin-boundary • Score: 3 Thread
Against a country that abducts foreign heads of state abroad and conducts show trials on them, I don’t think that Spagnuolo’s chances of succeeding (via a logical argument) are very high.

redefining insider trading

By Chundra • Score: 3 Thread

Traditional insider trading: The CFO reads a quarterly balance sheet before the earnings call and dumps his options.

Web3 insider trading: An engineer looks at the top -b process table of humanity’s morbid doomscrolling, sees a homicide spike, and places a decentralized wager from an apartment in Switzerland. We have truly achieved the cyber-dystopian future William Gibson warned us about, only it’s profoundly stupider than anticipated.

“Just gambling” is not a valid excuse

By gweihir • Score: 3 Thread

As soon as he had insider information, it becomes criminal. Somehow this person does not strike me as very smart.

Perplexity Will Open Source Its Faster Lily AI Engine For Apple Silicon

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
BrianFagioli writes:
Perplexity has built a local artificial intelligence engine designed specifically for Apple silicon and the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B model. Called Lily, the engine uses a Rust runtime and custom Metal kernels, with neither PyTorch nor MLX in its execution path. Perplexity says Lily averaged 23 percent faster prompt processing and 35 percent faster token generation than MLX-LM on an M5 Max MacBook Pro with 128GB of unified memory. Lily is more specialized than MLX-LM, which supports a much wider range of models and architectures. Perplexity says it plans to release Lily as open source, but the code is not available yet, leaving its performance claims dependent on internal testing for now.

Instrument Clusters Are Now Paid Extras In Two Hyundai Models

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
“Enshittification of car controls [is] rapidly accelerating,” writes longtime Slashdot reader sinij, pointing to a new report from Car and Driver. From the report:
Remember when iPhones used to come with free headphones and a phone charger (including the wall plug)? It didn’t feel so much like Apple giving you free goodies as it did that the company was providing you with the relevant hardware to use the device. Apple stopped including headphones and charging blocks in 2020. Now, Hyundai is pulling some of its standard hardware from the box, at least for two models.

Hyundai is charging customers extra for a driver’s display in the new Elantra generation (more specifically, the Korea-market Avante), as well as the Ioniq 3, Motor1 reported. Both models feature Pleos Connect, Hyundai’s new infotainment setup that pairs a center touchscreen with a slim 9.9-inch instrument cluster mounted above the dashboard — except where it doesn’t.

In its domestic market, the instrument cluster screen is offered as a 350,000 won ($255) option for the base trim. Not the most expensive optional extra in the world, but still kind of a slap in the face for a feature traditionally viewed as standard fare. Things are more expensive for the electric Ioniq 3. In the EV’s case, the base trim gives customers the full Tesla-screen experience, meaning if customers want the driver’s display, they’ll need to fork over the additional $5000 necessary to move up to the next-level trim. […] Hyundai plans to have the setup equipped in 20 million cars globally by the end of the decade.

Illegitimate offspring for $10k

By ElderOfPsion • Score: 5, Funny Thread

For an extra $10,000 they’ll make it look less like the illegitimate offspring of Doctor Disrespect and a Squirtel.

Re:Or they are giving a discount…

By jhoegl • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Most popular huh? bold claim without a relevant link.
At least its number 5.
https://www.wealthydriver.com/cars/the-20-most-popular-cars-around-the-world/3

Re:Or they are giving a discount…

By SteelCamel • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

What do they mean by “instrument cluster”? I’d consider the instrument cluster the thing with the speedometer, odometer, warning lights etc on it - and most of those are mandatory in most countries, so leaving it out would mean the car isn’t road legal.

Re:Or they are giving a discount…

By 93 Escort Wagon • Score: 5, Informative Thread

At least based on the photo in TFA, it appears Hyundai is doing an incredibly stupid thing and rolling all that info into the large central “infotainment” screen. If you’re the driver, by default there’s absolutely nothing straight in front of you except for bare dashboard.

Now, if you want a little pop-up display screen showing important info right in front of you, at the very top of that bare dashboard - think of it as a glorified spiritual successor to the reviled Apple Touchbar (or perhaps consider it a faux heads-up display) - they’re charging you extra.

Re:Or they are giving a discount…

By FictionPimp • Score: 5, Funny Thread

People complain a lot about the indicator stalks, but as someone who drives a BMW I can’t say I’ve ever used mine. So what is the big deal?

Global Heating Will Hit At Least 1.8C, UN Warns, and There Are ‘No Good Outcomes’

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:
Global heating will reach at least 1.8C under even the most optimistic future, well beyond the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C, according to a UN report that warns every fraction of temperature rise intensifies destructive extreme weather, glacier melt, ecosystem loss, and island and coastal city submersion. The report by the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program confirmed overshooting the 1.5C goal inscribed in the landmark Paris agreement of 2015 was now “unavoidable” and, despite some progress in addressing the human-caused climate crisis driven by burning fossil fuels, likely in the next few years. It said: “There are no good outcomes above 1.5C.”

Heating of up to 3C above preindustrial levels could lead to glaciers losing more than a quarter of their mass by 2100, raising sea levels by up to 13cm. Global food production could decline by up to 14% by 2050 if there are not effective strategies to adapt. Human health, water supplies, nature, cities, infrastructure and economies could all be severely damaged. Some losses would be irreversible. Many communities may have to relocate or change their livelihoods. The report said the best hope for humanity to limit damage was to adopt an “overshoot, peak and decline” pathway that required immediate and sustained greenhouse gas emissions cuts combined with steps to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

It described the goal of net zero emissions — increasingly politically contentious in some countries — as “an essential milestone that cannot be skipped” and stressed carbon dioxide removal through steps such as establishing vast new forests must occur alongside, not as an alternative to, deep cuts in fossil pollution. Crucially, the authors of the report, titled Limiting Overshoot, said the average global temperature could be returned to 1.5C this century only if heating stayed below about 1.8C. They warned nature’s capacity to store carbon was uncertain and would shrink the more the planet heats. […] The report’s authors cited earlier work that found limiting heating to about 1.8C required global emissions to be halved by 2035. They said existing national policies were projected to lead to at least 2.3C heating, but it would still be possible to limit stay below 2C if countries delivered on net zero emissions commitments by mid-century.

Re:we’re probably gonna bust past 1.8C

By jacks smirking reven • Score: 5, Informative Thread

acknowledging that burning fossils heats our world would mean giving up the F150, air conditioning, flying, consumerism, AI data centers, filthy eating habits and so much more

It never did, this is just what the denial-ism crowd wants to sell it as. To accept this framing is to accept their argument, it’s just a different kind of denialism… let’s call it it the nihilism-denial-ism.

Small changes years ago would have made all the difference. Changes today will have to be larger, yes but your scenario has never been the scientist’s answer it’s the pundit’s answer.

Re:For the smooth brains and kool aid drinkers

By Waffle Iron • Score: 5, Informative Thread

I’m old enough to remember the data before it was ‘adjusted’ to create warming trends that weren’t in the actual data from actual thermometers.

And I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t so goddamned hot.

Re: Depends on who you are I guess

By ThurstonMoore • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

And everyone knows it’s so much easier to terraform a planet than to keep a perfectly livable one livable.

Re: Nuclear

By Viol8 • Score: 5, Informative Thread

Unreliable in the sense that its provided 60% of france’s power since the 1960s? I’ll take that.

Re:we’re probably gonna bust past 1.8C

By jacks smirking reven • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

And on that note you’d have to ask why those views which represent a very thin slice of the electorate and a very thin slice of the politicians gets such a large and loud amount of media; because it’s sensational for the 24/7’s and for the conservative media is an easy way to paint your opponents as crazies.

Meanwhile Biden and the moderates passed the largest most comprehensive climate legislation in possibly world history that is anything but anti-abundance and anti-humanity and no one acknowledged it at the time or really at any point since, we punished Biden for it and now it’s getting dismantled piece by piece.

FCC Plans Robocall Scorecard to Grade Phone Companies On Spam Call Blocking

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
The FCC is proposing (PDF) a public “robocall mitigation scorecard” that would grade phone companies on how well they block illegal spam calls while avoiding false positives on the legitimate ones. “The Scorecard will empower consumers and encourage providers to continue to combat illegal robocalls by providing the public with an assessment of the effectiveness of voice service providers’ efforts to protect consumers from illegal robocalls,” the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said in a public notice. Ars Technica reports:
The scorecards could include call-blocking statistics along with data on customer complaints and enforcement actions. The FCC said scorecards could grade providers on a number scale, with letter grades, or by classifying providers as low risk, medium risk, or high risk. The proposed tool would rate wireless, wireline, and VoIP providers on efforts to block robocalls and their “actual results in protecting [consumers] from illegal robocalls,” the FCC said. “In practice, that means moving beyond a simple administrative checklist (i.e., did the provider file the right paperwork, did they offer the right tools) and toward a composite set of metrics that reflects both operational practices and measurable outcomes, including how often legitimate calls are blocked.”

Whether the tool is useful for consumers will depend on how it’s designed, how easy each provider’s scorecard is to find, and what data sources it relies on. The proposed scorecard would apply to domestic voice service providers with retail customers, but not telcos that operate solely as wholesale or intermediate providers. “Combatting the scourge of illegal robocalls remains the FCC’s top consumer protection priority… As proposed in today’s public notice, the FCC aims to develop a scorecard that will give consumers more information about the measures providers are taking to fight illegal robocalls, and it will also incentivize providers to improve their efforts,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a press release.

Something useful

By Anonymous Coward • Score: 3, Funny Thread

Keep it quiet everyone there’s something useful that they forgot to cancel from the Biden administration

1Password Wades Into a Right-Wing Mess After Funding a Linux Project

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
1Password is facing customer and internal employee backlash after pledging $300,000 to support a Linux distro created by David Heinemeier Hansson, who has regularly published racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. “The popular password manager is now a 'distinguished corporate patron' of Omacom, the nonprofit foundation that oversees a popular Linux distribution known as Omarchy,” reports The Verge. From the report:
One viral blog post declared that 1Password “Supports the Ethnic Cleansing of Europe” because of the donation. Others on social media asked for suggestions for alternative password managers so they would not support the funding of a project from Heinemeier Hansson, better known as DHH. The donation has also resulted in internal pushback from employees of 1Password who are disappointed by the affiliation, The Verge has learned. 1Password CEO David Faugno and cofounder Roustem Karimov have since posted internal messages addressing what Faugno describes as “concerns, both internally and externally” that have been raised “due to the polarizing nature” of DHH.

DHH is a Danish entrepreneur best known for creating Ruby on Rails, Basecamp, and the Hey email client. Omarchy is DHH’s “opinionated” version of Linux, meaning it’s Linux the way he likes to use it. It’s based on Arch Linux, with certain apps that install by default. It’s also, apparently, one of 1Password’s big customer environments. […] In an internal Slack message obtained by The Verge, 1Password’s Karimov downplayed the overtly racist comments from DHH, telling staff the following: “As I said, people have different personal opinions. You believe in your heart that DHH is evil, that you have the moral high ground, and that nothing will change your mind. However, not everyone believes that. It is not fair to claim a monopoly and ostracize team members who might disagree with you. There are people who are afraid to speak up simply because they will be personally attacked.”

1Password CEO Faugno took a different approach, trying to reassure staff that “1Password does not endorse hateful, dehumanizing, or exclusionary views, including those shared publicly by DHH.” Nonetheless, it seems the company has sacrificed a moral position for a “mission-driven” position. In the same message to staff, Faugno says “the scale and growth of [Omarchy’s] use among our customers is significant — Omarchy has grown to be the second most used Linux distribution among 1Password users.” Faugno then tries to create distance, telling staff that its contribution is “to the Omacom Foundation, not an individual.” Still, he says “we recognize that Omarchy is associated with DHH, its founder. Our donation is not in any way an endorsement of his personal views or conduct.”

Re: Just typical Partisan bullshit

By jacks smirking reven • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

There’s a reason Kirk mostly only dunked on college kids. When he (to his credit) sometimes did go up against someone knowledgeable it was a far different story.

Notice however Kirk was one of the only ones who might do that whereas today where are the conservatives and Trump supports standing up to adversarial debates? I mean Trump refused to debate his fellow Republican candidates and Republican voters rewarded him for it. Then he still refused to debate Harris a 2nd time. They support a man who when he gets a question he doesn’t like insults the reporter and then walks away.

Conservatives are the ultimate safe-spacers. They’ve built themself a nice little hugbox of Fox news and podcasters where they never have to be challenged, never have to defend their ideas and can just repeat the same talking points to each other and feel like they’re the smartest guys in the room. It’s absolutely pathetic.

Also the unmitigated gall to clutch your pearls about random Twitter users comments about Charlie Kirk when The actual Republican President is gleeful at the death of his political opponents like Mueller and basically took the side of the cancer killing Joe Biden. You support the most divisise and disgusting political figure in modern American history. You lot are absolutely shameless and fucking disgusting.

Re:Right Wing????

By serviscope_minor • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I’m a Brit born in London and I live there now and he’s full of shit.

My great grandparents were filthy non British culturally inferior immigrants. I also remember what British culture was like in, say the 90s. There are quite large bits of that culture I don’t miss. The rampant homophoia. Much more widespread casual racism. The blatant and widespread corruption of the MET. Ram raiding Dixons. We now have a Muslim mayor, son of an immigrant family who attends Pride marches and rides a bike. Well, when he can, but mostly rides in an armored convoy because of all the death threats from people who “don’t want their culture to change”. Should we put “send death threats to high profile brown people” as an integral part of British culture too?

Culture is changing, it ALWAYS changes. The [insert golden era time] was only golden for a small set of people, and generally pretty shitty for most others.

Re:Right Wing????

By AmiMoJo • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

To add some context, this false claim about London no longer being full of “native Brits” is… Well, if you add up all the people who identified as British at the 2021 census, it’s 71.1%. It’s just that only about 39% of them are white. There are lot of Black and Asian (which in English means from India, Pakistan, and countries in that region, not East Asian countries like China) British citizens there too. Lots of mixed race, because non-racist white Brits form relationships with non-white Brits.

That’s why the far right in the UK has pivoted to talking about “native Brits”. When you ask them exactly what that means, they tell you it’s white with a long lineage of white ancestors in the UK. That would exclude our king, and one of our most famous Prime Ministers, Winston Churchill, as well as many other notable British people. They rely on people not thinking that hard about it.

So TL:DR it’s a racist dog whistle.

Re: Just typical Partisan bullshit

By Rei • Score: 5, Informative Thread

“Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, it’s an initiation… What age should you start to see public executions?”
“We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.”
“You quote Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself. The chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters… in Leviticus 18, is that thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death.”
Stoning gay people to death is “God’s perfect law”
Trans people are to blame for inflation: “There’s a direct connection to inflation and the trans issue. You say, Charlie, come on. They couldn’t be further apart. No, they’re exactly the same. They’re the same in this aspect—when you believe that men can become women, why wouldn’t you also believe that you could print wealth? If you believe that someone can change their gender, why wouldn’t you also believe that money is wealth?”
Blacks “were actually better in the 1940s. It was bad. It was evil. But what happened? Something changed. They committed less crimes.” (yes, despite the Piers Morgan “fact check”, while his reasons for believing black people were better off under segregation was unrelated to segregation itself, he very much did repeatedly argue that black people were better off in the 1940s)
“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’"
Juneteenth: “It is a neo-segregationist federal holiday, is what it is… The entire point of it, as per postmodernists do and deconstructionists, is to subvert July 4.”
We should have “just took care of” trans people “the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and ‘60s”
“The Haitians that are in Huntsville that are raping your women and hunting you down at night - it’s only gonna get worse.. There will be hundreds of thousands of Haitians brought into Alabama, and they will become your masters.”
“Haiti is legitimately infested with demonic voodoo. I’ve talked to missionaries that have gone there and they say they’ve seen the darkest stuff… people levitating and turning into cats at night.”
“Jewish donors have a lot of explaining to do.. Because Jewish donors have been the No. 1 funding mechanism of radical, open border neoliberal quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions and nonprofits. This is a beast created by secular Jews. And now it’s coming for Jews.. It’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”
Calling Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown “affirmative action picks”.
Calling the man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer an “amazing patriot” and called on people to bail out the attacker.
“Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge. "
“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.”
“MLK was awful. He’s not a good person… We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”
“Transgenderism and gender ‘fluidity’ are lies that hurt people and abuse kids.” Transgender identity is a “throbbing middle finger to God.”
Gun violence as a “cost” to having no gun control: “I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
“The ‘Great Replacement’ is not a theory, it’s a reality.”
“The great replacement strategy, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”
“Islam is not compatible with Western civilization.”
“Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”

On and on. Man, such a moderate centrist who never espoused bigotry or promoted violence!

Re: Google the names yourself (don’t cry)

By jacks smirking reven • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

See, you’re doing the thing: you’re taking random social media crazies and comparing them against the actual Republican leadership and the President.

Show me the most prominent actual political figure who said the worst thing about Kirk.

CERN Transitioning From RHEL To Debian

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Longtime Slashdot reader Microsplat:
CERN plans to have all 2,200+ industrial computers and embedded systems in its accelerator-control infrastructure running Debian 13 by the end of 2026. These are systems used for accelerator control, laboratory equipment and other operational functions … They also generate and interact with a hefty amount of data, although this Linux.com article refers more broadly to CERN’s computing infrastructure. It’s unclear whether the Debian migration covers all server infrastructure or what scientific-research-based systems are included. Our shops have done much the same in recent years, mostly due to CentOS and CFEngine getting the can.
Phoronix adds some additional context in its article: CERN was a longtime RHEL/CentOS shop, previously co-maintained the Scientific Linux RHEL derivative, moved to CentOS in 2015, and later considered CentOS Stream. CERN says Red Hat’s adoption of the "-march=x86-64-v2” compiler flag by default, which it viewed as “forced obsolescence” of older hardware, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Rocky Linux

By KermodeBear • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

I’m a bit surprised they didn’t go for Rocky Linux. Nothing wrong with Debian, mind, but Rocky is downstream from CentOS/RHEL and would be an easier migration.

“I never thought I’d see a Resonance Cascade, let

By Joe_Dragon • Score: 4, Funny Thread

“I never thought I’d see a Resonance Cascade, let alone create one…”

RHEL versus Debian philosophy?

By ctilsie242 • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

With RHEL 10 adding more complex stuff like Lightspeed and immutable kernels, it is starting to have a lot more moving parts. RHEL used to be the production choice, but as time went on, there is a lot of oddball stuff, and oddball decisions made. For example, even though Fedora has btrfs, RHEL doesn’t have btrfs, even as a -supported- option. (Yes, you can slap ZFS on it, but supported is the big thing).

Debian, on the other hand, doesn’t have snaps, flatpaks, or other subsystems present by default. It “just works” out of the box. Plus, other systems like Proxmox can be installed on vanilla Debian with ease.

I would assert that because that fewer moving parts are needed, it makes things easier. You can take filesystem snapshots without Stratis, for example.

It’s a treadmill

By BentMetal • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
On the stated “straw that broke the camel’s back” for CPU architecture:-

RHEL 8 / Rocky 8 just needs x86-64-v1, which is really old and is essentially all 64-bit x86 CPUs
RHEL 9 / Rocky 9 requires x86-64-v2 (if you’re on x86), and I understand it’s supported until 2032 - if that featured in their decision
RHEL 10 / Rocky 10 requires x86-64-v3 (see https://docs.rockylinux.org/10… ) and can make 2013-era Xeons obsolete.

I’ve an older Dell R720 server that can’t run RHEL 10/ Rocky10 on bare metal, but it’s still quite functional otherwise. So I suppose it comes down to what hardware CERN have available and want to keep operational, whilst using the same OS across the whole campus.
If interested, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… has more details on the CPU levels.

And I’ll note for completeness that like Debian, AlmaLinux still only requires x86-64-v1, so CERN did have the option of an “almost clone” of RHEL.

Re:It’s a treadmill

By Anonymous Coward • Score: 5, Informative Thread

New Intel Elkhart Lake CPUs without x86-64-v3 and AVX2 were still being introduced as recently as 2023!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

OpenAI’s Altman Says the Use of AI is ‘Non-Negotiable’

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI adoption is “non-negotiable” for countries, comparing rejecting it to refusing electricity a century ago and predicting it will unleash an unprecedented boom in entrepreneurship. “The economic growth and benefit to people that can come from this, the value to a country, is too high to ignore,” he said. His comments were made during a fireside chat with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. CNBC reports:
Altman thinks the public won’t be talking as much about AI a decade from now — it’ll be expected everywhere. “A kid growing up today will never be smarter than AI, but he or she will also never have understood a world where every product and service that they interact with is not really smart and really capable and really helpful,” he said.

Altman referenced the adoption of electricity multiple times in his comments and drew a line between that and AI. “I think it would be approximately as bad of an idea to say we’re not going to have AI in our country as it was to say we’re not going to have electricity in our country, you know, back 100 plus years ago,” he said.

Altman called cybersecurity one of the biggest challenges to navigate in the age of AI and one that leaders shouldn’t sidestep. “I think some things are going to go very wrong with cybersecurity unless people act quite urgently,” he said. Altman said that falling short in cyber defense and other areas “could set this technology back a great deal.”
You can watch a recording of the chat on YouTube.

Re:Totally unbiased statement

By jacks smirking reven • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

For real, why is this news, it’s a press release. It’s like asking the owner of Kunkleman Chevrolet if we should all buy new cars and which brand is the best.

Re:Totally unbiased statement

By robot5x • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

“Rupert Murdoch says watching Fox News is ‘Non-Negotiable’"

Do we really need a Slashdot story on every single fucking mention of AI anywhere in the universe?? Nowadays it’s less ‘news for nerds’ and more recycling the same thin talking points so zealots on both sides can just argue as much as possible and inevitably end up insulting rsilvergun along with a history of all their posts.

AI is mandatory, vaccines are optional

By Required Snark • Score: 5, Insightful Thread
One is pure hype and the other is pure science.

We’re screwed.

Re:Same Altman: Snake Oil Salesman

By dfghjk • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

There will always be improvements, but AI is fundamentally more sociopathic than the worst human on the planet. That will not change because sociopaths control it.

Will AI be “worth the price” when deaths are part of the price? It’s coming.

It’s been 4 years! Where’s the entrepreneurship??

By Somervillain • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI adoption is “non-negotiable” for countries, comparing rejecting it to refusing electricity a century ago and predicting it will unleash an unprecedented boom in entrepreneurship.

You’ve been out for 4 years! Where is all the entrepreneurship? Where are all the startups leveraging AI to take over existing non-AI industries? There were several major startups revolutionizing non-computing segments of the business world 4 years after the introduction of commercial internet (1999)…as well as the iPhone (2011). All I hear about are pick and shovel vendors making money off FOMO. Every business who invests in AI is unsure if it’s saving them money.

To date, I can say AI has accomplished the following:

1. Given AI-is-my-religion zealots a cool toy to play with and dream about a future whenever this shit starts actually working
2. Made money for a half dozen players in a circular economy ponzi scheme
3. Been used to AI-wash layoffs without any evidence and suppress wages, masking big tech’s challenges with rising interest rates.
4. Made the cost of devices we want and actually use skyrocket.

AI has made the future pretty bleak, personally. It doesn’t work and is causing a RAMpocalypse…and if it ever actually does, it will cause a white-collar-jobpocalypse and massive social unrest. However, don’t take my word for it.

After 4 years, Steve Jobs didn’t have to go on press tours to convince people of the utility of an iPhone. No one had to sell the internet as a useful thing in 1999. The fact that Sam Altman has to sell his ware so hard shows even he’s not confident about his product. We’ve all used ChatGPT Sam…We know what it is. We weren’t impressed enough to pay for your massive investment to build it.

NYC Public Schools Ban AI Use Through Middle School

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
New York City Public Schools is banning generative AI for students from pre-K through eighth grade for the 2026-27 school year, affecting more than half a million students in the nation’s largest school district. ABC News reports:
In a statement to ABC News, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that the city is implementing a moratorium on generative AI for students in pre-school or 2-K through eighth grade and will spend the next year “studying the impacts of this technology.” Mamdani wrote in part, “the tech industry wants us to believe that A.I.-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary.” “We do not see it that way,” he added.

[…] The district said it is implementing the most expansive AI moratorium in the nation, eliminating software that uses student-facing AI and banning companion chatbots. The city’s AI moratorium does not apply to high school students. The district said it will offer twice-yearly AI literacy classes designed to help high school students “think critically” about the technology before they start to “rely” on it.

Good

By awwshit • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

I think for schools AI is kind of like digital clocks or calculators. You need to learn the basics before you automate the basics.

Re:Good

By OrangeTide • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

If no human being interacts with AI until age 20, what is the harm? We know this already works.

The burden of proof is on those who want to change the current status quo.

Re:Good

By Fly Swatter • Score: 4, Insightful Thread
But there is data just for having computers. They don’t help in the early years and only add distraction and harmful shortcuts.

No one asked, but I don’t think this ban goes far enough because it stops at ‘AI’. It should include computers in anything but computer class. Oh and phones.

Re:Good

By Touvan • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

Agreed - but this is the wrong target. They should ban computers and “smart” devices entirely, not just AI. Books and hand written tests/homework. Like you said, we already know this works.

Ah the romanticized 1960s / 70s

By drnb • Score: 4, Interesting Thread

If no human being interacts with AI until age 20, what is the harm?

Possibly producing another generation that has an even greater desire to vote for the party that wants to roll things back to some romanticized version of the past?.

True, the radical 1960s/70s is inaccurately romanticized. While the real protesters just wanted to see Civil Rights attained and the Vietnam War end, the self styled socialist revolutionaries and radicals crossed the line in arson, assassination, bombings, etc. They really were marxist and maoist inspired domestic terrorists who wanted to tear down the USA and build a communist order. Not my opinion, they admitted this, Weatherman, etc. After Vietnam ended they lost support, were very upset student were no longer rallying to their revolutionary cause, and decided to attack the system from the inside. In particular to enter academia and train the next generation of revolutionaries to undermine the system from the inside. Today we are seeing the fruits of their labors.

Google Defeats US Bid to Force Ad Tech Sale

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters:
Alphabet’s Google escaped a breakup of its advertising technology business on Wednesday, when a judge in Virginia rejected U.S. antitrust enforcers’ bid to force a sale of Google’s online advertising exchange. While the ad exchange is a small part of Google’s business, the ruling is the second powerful symbolic victory against the U.S. Department of Justice in its efforts to force Google to sell assets to address illegal monopolies. U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to make Google sell AdX, where publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. She accepted most of the parties’ proposed behavioral remedies.

The DOJ and a broad coalition of states sued Google in 2023 over its dominance in markets for advertising technology used by online publishers and websites. In April 2025, Brinkema ruled that Google holds illegal monopolies on servers that host publisher ads and ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers. Google unlawfully locked publishers on its ad server into using its AdX, the judge found. The tech giant’s anticompetitive conduct “substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” Brinkema said at the time.

At a trial last year on remedies in the case, the DOJ argued that Google cannot be trusted to run AdX, given its past behavior. Google argued that a forced sale would be technically difficult and result in a long and painful transition that would hurt customers. During the remedies trial, Google’s lawyers warned that forcing it to sell parts of its ad-tech business would cause disruption and damage. […] The ruling is the third time in a row that a judge has rejected a bid by U.S. antitrust enforcers to break up Big Tech in a crackdown that started during President Donald Trump’s first term. In another major Google antitrust case, a judge similarly rejected the DOJ’s push to force Google to sell Chrome. It is likely to fuel questions about whether courts are up to the task of checking the industry’s unprecedented power over the U.S. economy.

We Need to Strengthen Our Anti-Trust Laws

By machineghost • Score: 4, Insightful Thread

It’s insane that the judge ruled this way, but it’s not his fault: the law is ancient and terrible.

There’s a good chance we’re going to have a very different Congress next year: lets pressure them to strengthen anti-trust law.

Ummm

By CEC-P • Score: 3 Thread
Was their argument actually that Youtube and Google search would then be ripped off on pricing by the new ad company because they’d have a monopoly?

Re:We Need to Strengthen Our Anti-Trust Laws

By PPH • Score: 4, Funny Thread

So, she’s ancient and terrible too.

“illegal monopolies”?

By thegarbz • Score: 3 Thread

Monopolies aren’t illegal. Monopolising is illegal, that’s the actual word used in the law (3 times in quick succession, you can’t miss it), it’s a verb, it’s an act of doing something. A state of being isn’t illegal and in fact you don’t need to have a monopoly or even a duopoly or oligopoly in order to fall afoul of antitrust laws.

Part of the problem is that people don’t know how the law works, so they look to the wrong solutions, and the media isn’t helping. No Google isn’t holding an illegal monopoly anywhere that’s just Reuters fucked up reporting. Brinkema did not rule Google “holds illegal monopolies” in 2025, that is just again fucked up Reuters reporting.

Those cases rest on actual activities performed by Google and not Google’s state of being. The problem really with the USA’s antitrust law is the burden of proof that activities actually have an impact on the market affecting customers (in this case ad customers) directly. Most other areas in the world don’t have that burden of proof and they can simply apply antitrust law based on economic theory.

Uber Is Laying Off 10% of Its Workforce

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
Uber is laying off about 3,300 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring aimed at cutting management layers and redirecting investment toward ridesharing, delivery, and robotaxis. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the changes in an internal email that was also published online.TechCrunch reports:
According to the email, the layoffs are part of a restructuring exercise that would shrink the number of managers by 20%, and some personnel in these roles would work as individual contributors going forward.

The ridesharing giant is reducing the number of teams with one or two members by 50%, and letting go staff who are “more than seven layers down from the CEO,” per Bloomberg. Khosrowshahi’s email said the company is combining its engineering, science, and delivery divisions. The company is also bringing together its delivery operations across restaurants, retail, and direct divisions.

Remote jobs at the company are going away, too, with Uber only allowing less than 1% of its staff to work remotely.

We’ve built the company....

By Puls4r • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
And now it’s time to get rid of the builders and only keep the maintainers so we can turn a short term profit. Woooooo Investors.

The Zuck school of management

By sinkskinkshrieks • Score: 5, Interesting Thread
Round-after-round of layoffs to pause raises (suppressing wages) and demoralize remaining workers with maximum stress in order to do another stock buyback. Stock buybacks used to be illegal because they’re a form of stock manipulation from the Securities Exchange Act (SEA) of 1934 until repealed by SEC’s Rule 10b-18 under Reagan in 1982.

They have that many employees?

By sentiblue • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
Wow, I had no idea they were that big.. I’m guessing the infrastructure/application are stable enough that some jobs can be let go. Plus some of the jobs can truly be replaced by AI.

Are they making anything?

By Cyberax • Score: 3 Thread
Are they making anything, anyway? Their food delivery website is a disaster, and it’s been getting worse. The ride-hailing app has also not changed in years.

FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot Skip
A dark-web identity theft service called Nexus claims to be selling scans of more than 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver’s licenses, along with millions of other identity documents. “Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase through the service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely used Louisiana-based identity verification company,” reports KrebsOnSecurity. The outlet also reports that the FBI’s New Orleans field office has launched an official inquiry into the source of the images. From the report:
On Monday, Aug. 31, a source alerted KrebsOnSecurity to a service advertised by a new user on the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit, offering access to digital scans of identity documents on more than 170 million people in North America. The source brought it to my attention because the proprietor of this identity theft service offered my Virginia drivers license as a free sample in their initial sales thread on Exploit. The service, dubbed Nexus, claims to have more than 153 million drivers licenses for people in the United States and Canada, as well as more than 10 million identification cards; more than three million travel documents and/or international IDs; and at least 579,000 medical cards.

[…] The people behind Nexus claim the license images are coming from an active breach at “a major identity verification company” whose customers include multiple Fortune 500 companies. “We have been continuously exfiltrating new data for over a year into our private database,” the service enthused in its introductory post on Exploit. “Records are available to preview before purchase with pertinent information redacted. Customer photos are displayed if available.” Indeed, over the past 24 hours, the number of drivers license records listed as available in Nexus has increased by nearly 400,000, suggesting that freshly stolen license data is being harvested and uploaded to this service on a semi-regular basis.
KrebsOnSecurity traced the apparent source by comparing timestamps on stolen license images with when their owners had their IDs scanned, including at Hertz rental counters and a Planet13 dispensary. Both companies use identity-verification services from Louisiana-based idscan.net, whose technology also scans IDs using infrared and ultraviolet light.
Since the story was published, Krebs reports that the Nexus identity theft service website “vanished from the darkweb, replacing its login page with a plain text message that reads, ‘This service is no longer available.’"

In A Surpise To Only The Stupidest Of People

By SlashbotAgent • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

The KYC verified identities are leaking exactly was expected.

The present age verification laws are creating FAR more problems than they solve.

This will come as a surprise only to the stupidest and most moronic people around. A cohort that vastly outnumbers the rest.

Re:In A Surpise To Only The Stupidest Of People

By justMichael • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

including at Hertz rental counters and a Planet13 dispensary

These are not online age verifications, the dispensary may be age related, but it’s also residency so they know how much you can purchase, Hertz on the other hand is not going to rent you a car if you don’t have a valid license.

Holy crap!

By jenningsthecat • Score: 5, Interesting Thread

170 million? That’s fairly close to being half of the combined population of USA and Canada!

When you adjust for the people who don’t have driving licences, that would seem to be pretty close to the total number of legal drivers in the two countries. Ouch!

“Selling” isn’t the root problem

By pla • Score: 5, Informative Thread
Oh, goody, the website selling our licenses is down. Whelp, toothpaste back in the tube, we can all rest easy knowing that the day is saved!

Of course, the next obvious step if they can’t sell them is to simply release the entire batch into the wild. And how dare any of you think this might somehow be the fault of sweet innocent idscan.net for inadequately protecting the highly sensitive data they were grudgingly entrusted with in the first place.

We need a hell of a lot more CEOs in prison, and we need any politicians that requires / supports / allows this bullshit to join them. Of course, absolutely none of that is going to happen because Joe Sixpack has zero clue any of this is going on; and even if he somehow catches wind of it from a Facebook meme, oh well, it’s just one more breach, who cares, he gets notices of those on a monthly basis and has been intentionally trained to treat them as junk mail.

This is why

By nehumanuscrede • Score: 5, Insightful Thread

This right here is why people are so adamantly against giving websites a copy of their ID card
to prove their age.

These vendors then become priority targets for ID theft since the laws, as currently written, do
not force them to take security of said data very seriously. When there is a breach, the company
gets a slap on the wrist, a laughable fine and then it’s right back to business as usual.

In the meantime, everyone who gave their ID to said company is now on the hook for potential
ID thieves and the nightmare that goes with it should they draw the short straw.

Before we implement any sort of mandatory age verification that requires your ID going into any
sort of digital online storage, the laws need to be rewritten to make the financial penalties so painful,
that the company in question will find it cheaper to simply do security the right way the first time.

Dell Stock Surges On Record Orders For AI Servers

Posted by BeauHD View on SlashDot
Dell reported record fiscal Q2 results as AI server demand surged, booking $60.9 billion in AI server orders and ending the quarter with a $95 billion backlog. From a report:
The company posted record revenue of $47 billion, up 58% year over year. Earnings per share came in at $6.34, up 273% from a year ago. Adjusted earnings rose 203% to $7.04 per share.

“With AI momentum accelerating and our opportunity expanding across the portfolio, we’re raising our full-year FY27 revenue outlook by $25 billion to $192 billion, up nearly 70% year over year,” said Jeff Clarke, CEO of Dell Technologies, in the company’s earnings release.

Dell has seen its orders balloon as enterprise customers adopt artificial intelligence and use AI servers locally to run agentic AI queries. Dell stock is up more than 230% year to date. Peer Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which also moved up 110% since the start of the year, jumped in after-hours trading.

Makes sense

By Somervillain • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
Good for Dell and HP. I hope they use this windfall to strengthen their core businesses and realize that AI is a bubble that can’t pop soon enough. Obviously people will buy AI servers after the pop, AI is here to stay, but this massive surge isn’t long for the world. HP is the biggest disappointment in tech, rivaling Oracle for the least respected company in Silicon Valley, despite such a great history. They seem to do nothing well. Their printers are still good, but poisoned by a strategy of exploiting customers for toner/ink, including forcing DRM chips to ensure you spent $400 for a set of toner cartridges when they’re available 3rd party for about $60 now. HP computers? fuck that…they’re overpriced and mostly suck…occasionally I’ll notice a well built laptop from them, but it almost seems like an accident.

Dell is also just very disappointing to me. I always thought they’d be better than they are today. Their monitors are good and their offerings are OK…but they never seem to compete with the leaders. They have the resources to compete and take on Apple, but they don’t bother. They let Apple eat their lunch in the business world. From what I know, few companies ever gave out apple laptops 15+ years ago. Now in my area, most serious software companies give out macbook pros and even many businesses are doing it now for regular office workers.

I switched over to Mac 10 years ago from desktop Linux and am happy with it. I switched to the Apple ecosystem 5 years ago…all my devices will be coming from Apple for the next few years, but....fuck if I wish there were good alternatives. I with it was a hard choice. I wish Dell offered something 90% as good for 75% of the cost, like they used to 15 years ago. Now it’s like 75% as good for 90% of the cost.

No matter who I buy from, competition is good. I want Apple to earn my dollars, not win by default like they’re doing today. Also, Apple isn’t really a business hardware company. They sell luxury products that are good at business tasks…mostly because the business players fell asleep at the wheel and are selling you laptops that are nearly the same as they were 20 years ago, only without removable batteries. The world needs a serious business computing provider. Dell could easily be that, but they just don’t seem interested in being anything beyond mediocre.

I preferred it when Apple computing products were an indulgence and not the only (serious) game in town.

Corruption has nothing to do with this. Nothing.

By Required Snark • Score: 4, Interesting Thread
Dell wins a $9.7 billion Pentagon software deal after donating to Trump accounts.