Category Archives: News

Source: Slashdot

The German Sovereign Tech Fund has invested 1.2 million euros ($1.4 million USD) in KDE Plasma technologies to help strengthen the structural reliability and security of the desktop environment's core infrastructure, including Plasma, KDE Linux, and the frameworks underlying its communication services. Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin shares an excerpt from the announcement: For 30 years, KDE has been providing the free and open-source software essential for digital sovereignty in personal, corporate, and public infrastructures: operating systems, desktop environments, document viewers, image and video editors, software development libraries, and much more. KDE's software is competitive, publicly auditable, and freely available. It can be maintained, adapted, and improved in-house or by local software companies. And modifications (along with their source code) can be freely distributed to all users and departments within an organization. KDE will use Sovereign Tech Fund's investment to push its essential software products to the next level, providing every individual, business, and public administration with the opportunity to regain their privacy, security, and control over their digital sovereignty. Slashdot reader Elektroschock also shared a statement from Fiona Krakenburger, Technical Director at the Sovereign Tech Agency. "We have long invested in desktop technologies for a reason: they are the primary way people access and use digital services in everyday life," says Krakenburger. "The desktop holds personal data and mediates nearly every service we depend on, from booking the next medical appointment, to education, to the way we work. We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technology. Strengthening KDE's testing infrastructure, security architecture, and communication frameworks is how we invest in the resilience and reliability of the core digital infrastructure that modern society depends on."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Ars Technica

Google took its first swing at laptops with Chromebooks way back in 2011. These web-first laptops have seen success over the years, mostly in enterprise and education. Google insists Chromebooks aren't going away, but the company's focus has shifted to something new: Googlebooks. That's what Google has decided to call the new line of Android-powered laptops, which will begin shipping later this year.

If you thought other Google products were steeped in Gemini, you haven't seen anything yet.

Google says it designed Googlebooks from the ground up with Gemini Intelligence, and it all starts with the cursor. Google calls this the Magic Pointer. Just wiggle the cursor back and forth, and it will activate a full-screen Gemini experience. The AI will see what's on your screen so it can make contextual suggestions and pull in data from multiple apps.

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Source: The Verge - All Posts

The Instructure-owned learning management platform, Canvas, is now online again after it went down following a massive data breach that impacted student names, email addresses, ID numbers, and messages. Before systems were restored, students who attempted to access the system on Thursday saw a message from the hacking group ShinyHunters, which claimed responsibility for the attack:

ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again). Instead of contacting us to resolve it they ignored us and did some "security patches." If any of the schools in the affected list are interested in preventing the release of their data, please consult with a cyber …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Source: Published articles

I mean, fuck Aramark, UK's food quality has been declining since they privatized out to them. But also, I don't think that's why they were dropped. Compass, rumored to be the replacement, is currently doing UK Healthcare and Athletics food (because, as we know, UK is a hospital network with a sports franchise who also operates a university on the side), so there's probably some dealing.

Source: OSNews

When Apple unveiled the Vision Pro, almost three (!) years ago, I concluded:

If there’s one company that can convince people to spend $3500 to strap an isolating dystopian glowing robot mask onto their faces it’s Apple, but I still have a hard time believing this is what people want.

↫ Thom Holwerda at OSNews (quoting myself is weird)

MacRumors’ Juli Clover, today:

Apple has all but given up on the Vision Pro after the M5 model failed to revitalize interest in the device, MacRumors has learned. Apple updated the Vision Pro with a faster M5 chip and a more comfortable band in October 2025, but there were no other hardware changes, and consumers still weren’t interested.

[…]

Apple has apparently stopped work on the Vision Pro and the Vision Pro team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple. Some former Vision Pro team members are working on Siri, which is not a surprise as Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell has been leading the Siri team since March 2025.

↫ Juli Clover at MacRumors

VR – what the Vision Pro is, whether Apple’s marketing likes to say it or not – has proven to be good for exactly two things: games and porn. The Vision Pro has neither. It was destined to be a flop from the start, as nobody wants to strap an uncomfortable computer to their face that does less than all of the other computers they already have, and what it does do, it does worse.

I do wonder if this makes the Vision Pro the most expensive flop in human history. Has any company ever spent more on a product that failed this spectacularly?

Source: Ars Technica

All 22 members of the National Science Board were terminated by the Trump administration via a terse email Friday.

The administration has provided no explanation for purging the board, which helps steer the National Science Foundation and acts as an independent advisory body for the President and Congress on scientific and engineering issues, providing reports throughout the year. The ousters represent another severe blow to the NSF and the overall scientific enterprise in America.

On Friday, members received a two-sentence email saying that, "On behalf of President Donald J. Trump," their positions were "terminated, effective immediately."

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Source: Hacker News

Source: Hacker News

Source: Hacker News

Source: Hacker News