Monthly Archives: October 2025

Qualcomm gobbles up Arduino

Source: OSNews

Article note: This is probably not good. Qualcomm's record with sustained community engagement is not good, with open source is not good, etc. Just on the basis of the Arduino platform targeting a large variety of target micros from a large variety of vendors, and having one of that set of vendors in control of the platform is likely to introduce unfortunate biases in compatibility and resource decisions.

It was good while it lasted, I guess.

Arduino will retain its independent brand, tools, and mission, while continuing to support a wide range of microcontrollers and microprocessors from multiple semiconductor providers as it enters this next chapter within the Qualcomm family. Following this acquisition, the 33M+ active users in the Arduino community will gain access to Qualcomm Technologies’ powerful technology stack and global reach. Entrepreneurs, businesses, tech professionals, students, educators, and hobbyists will be empowered to rapidly prototype and test new solutions, with a clear path to commercialization supported by Qualcomm Technologies’ advanced technologies and extensive partner ecosystem.

↫ Qualcomm’s press release

Qualcomm’s track record when it comes to community engagement, open source, and long-term support are absolutely atrocious, and there’s no way Arduino will be able to withstand the pressures from management. We’ve seen this exact story play out a million times, and it always begins with lofty promises, and always ends with all of them being broken. I have absolutely zero faith Arduino will be able to continue to do its thing like it has.

Arduino devices are incredibly popular, and it makes sense for Qualcomm to acquire them. If I were using Arduino’s for my open source projects, I’d be a bit on edge right now.

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Denmark Aims To Ban Social Media For Children Under 15, PM Says

Source: Slashdot

Article note: We really need to start making some distinctions separating algorithmic feeds (which are pure brainrot and propaganda) and participating in society. It's _really good_ for young people to encounter enthusiast communities and professions and communicating-like-adults online. Algorithmic feeds are almost certainly bad for ...all of us.

The Danish government wants to introduce a ban on several social media platforms for children under the age of 15, as Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced Tuesday. From a report: "Mobile phones and social media are stealing our children's childhood," she said in her opening speech to the Danish parliament, the Folketing. "We have unleashed a monster," Frederiksen said, noting that almost all Danish seventh graders, where pupils are typically 13 or 14 years old, own a cellphone. "I hope that you here in the chamber will help tighten the law so that we take better care of our children here in Denmark," she added. However, Frederiksen did not give further details on what such a ban would entail, nor does a bill on an age limit appear in the government's legislative program for the upcoming parliamentary year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Deloitte refunds Aussie gov after AI fabrications slip into $440K welfare report

Source: The Register

Article note: Lol. The major consulting firms were always slop machines to create fake justifications and outsource responsibility, but if people start finding out they're genuinely just sending unchecked AI slop, the grift will fall apart.

Big Four consultancy billed Canberra top dollar, only for investigators to find bits written by a chatbot

Deloitte has agreed to refund part of an Australian government contract after admitting it used generative AI to produce a report riddled with fake citations, phantom footnotes, and even a made-up quote from a Federal Court judgment.…

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Laptops create systems. Phones feed algorithms. The asymmetry determines power

Source: Hacker News

Article note: There are some interesting exceptions to the rule (in both directions), but the broad distinction between consumptive and creative use of technology is something we should be way more careful about as a society. I've been harping on the difference between general-purposes computers as devices for empowerment (Kay's "Bicycle for the mind" bit is clever, especially in context, even if it was later and more famously used by Steve Jobs who went on to be one of the people most to blame for ruining it), and locked down media-consumption machines as devices for coercion for more than a decade.
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I spent the day teaching seniors how to use an iPhone

Source: Hacker News

Article note: iOS really is fucking ghastly if you aren't used to it. I don't own an iOS device but regularly try to help other people with them, and Apple seem to have done their absolute best to make nothing discoverable. Did I just make a gesture by how I was holding the device? What did it do? Can that feature only be accessed by a gesture? Can I long press this control for more options? What's tied to the effectively-mandatory vendor account? Why is it auto-completing wrong passwords from the integrated password manager and how do I change them? What the hell information did it autofill on this site/service when I "Signed in with apple?" How do I do "back" in this app, the method I used in the other app doesn't seem to apply? ...
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Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Oh look, a timely example of why notarization / any flavor of blocking user installation of apps not specifically approved by the vendor like Apple has been doing and Google is barreling towards is unacceptable. If the vendor (and hence any entity that can leverage the vendor) can control what you do with a device, it isn't yours, and it isn't a viable platform to participate in society from since the mechanism is now literally being used to control political speech.
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Windows 7 marketshare jumps to nearly 10% as Windows 10 support is about to end

Source: Hacker News

Article note: ...Yeah. If you're going to run an unsupported OS, you might as well run a good one. It really is a hilarious degree of validation for the claims (that I wholly agree with) that Windows has been getting steadily worse since 7 in almost every meaningful user-facing way.
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