Linux gaming "has gotten to the point where some people claim that Linux runs their games better than Windows does," according to the Android site XDA Developers. And there's a new surprise on ProtonDB, an "unofficial" community website with crowdsourced data about videogame compatability with the Linux software/gaming compatability layer Proton: On ...

NBC News investigates North Korea's "wide-ranging effort to place remote workers at U.S. companies in order to funnel money back to its coffers and, in some cases, steal sensitive information." And working with the FBI, one corporate security/investigations company decided to knowingly hire one of North Korea's remote workers — then "ship him a laptop ...

There's a surprise in a new documentary about that Bigfoot film shot in 1967 by Roger Patterson, reports the Wall Street Journal. Capturing Bigfoot "builds to a big reveal: freshly surfaced film that appears to show a woodsy dress rehearsal for one of the world's most enduring hoaxes." In the new footage — from a Kodak reel dating to 1966 — ...

Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick launched a new venture that "will focus on creating 'gainfully employed robots' for the food, mining and transport industries," Bloomberg reports. "I left Uber in 2017 heartbroken," writes Kalanick on the new company's web site. Kalanick resigned under pressure in 2017, and complains he was "torn away from an idea and a ...

He's "the most famous anonymous man in the world," suggests Reuters. But investigating Banksy's artworks in a bombed Ukrainian village (and other clues in the U.K. and Manhattan) have led them to "a hand-written confession by the artist to a long-ago misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct — a document that revealed, beyond dispute, Banksy's true ...

"Emerging evidence indicates that agential AI might validate or amplify delusional or grandiose content, particularly in users already vulnerable to psychosis," writes Dr Hamilton Morrin, a psychiatrist and researcher at King's College in London, in a paper published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry. Morrin and a colleague had already noticed patients ...

While AI CEOs worry governments might nationalize AI, others are advocating for something similar. Canadian security professional Bruce Schneier and Harvard data scientist Nathan Sanders published this call to action in Canada's most widely-read newspaper (with a readership over 6 million): "Canada Needs Nationalized, Public AI." While there are Canadian ...

Wikipedia describes Freenet as "a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication," released in the year 2000. "Both Freenet and some of its associated tools were originally designed by Ian Clarke," Wikipedia adds. (And in 2000 Clarke answered questions from Slashdot's readers...) And now Ian Clarke (aka Sanity — Slashdot reader ...

"Just the anachronism of seeing Doom, one of the poster children for the moral panic around violent video games, on a Nintendo console is novel," writes Kotaku — especially with the console's underpowered "Super FX" coprocessor Hampered by a nearly unplayable framerate, especially in later levels, and mired by sacrifices, like altered levels, no floor or ...

Long-time tech journalist Clive Thompson interviewed over 70 software developers at Google, Amazon, Microsoft and start-ups for a new article on AI-assisted programming. It's title? "Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It." Published in the prestigious New York Times Magazine, the article even cites long-time programming ...

It's America's first large-scale offshore wind project, reports WBUR — enough clean energy to power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts from 62 offshore wind turbines generating 800 megawatts. But it took a while... The plant's first construction delay happened back in 2019, they point out — and then "Just three months ago, when the project was 95% ...

"Just the anachronism of seeing Doom, one of the poster children for the moral panic around violent video games, on a Nintendo console is novel," writes Kotaku — especially with the console's underpowered "Super FX" coprocessor Hampered by a nearly unplayable framerate, especially in later levels, and mired by sacrifices, like altered levels, no floor or ...

Plug-in (or "balcony") solar panels can also be hung out a window or be set up in a backyard, reports NPR. They channel energy from the sun straight into a home's electrical outlet, generating enough electricity to power a refrigerator or microwave while "displacing electricity that otherwise would come in from the grid..." But what's holding up their ...

"A few developers found a way, for now, to turn a few of these increasingly mediocre Amazon Show devices into friendly, useful, open computers," writes the co-founder of the gaming/tech news site Aftermath. For under $50 each, he bought some used versions of the devices and tested their instructions, partly to escape the full-screen ads Amazon began showing ...

"The new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models feature a keyboard change," reports MacRumors: On the U.S. English version of the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro keyboards, the tab, caps lock, shift, return, and delete keycaps now have glyphs on them. On previous-generation models, these keys are labeled with text instead... Given the U.S. English keyboard ...

Last week System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized age-verification laws for operating systems — but he now sees a "real possibility" Colorado's law might exclude open-source. Phoronix reports that the System76 CEO met with the state Senator who co-authored Colorado's bill, and then posted on X.com that the Senator "suggested excluding open source software ...

The deal to take control of TikTok's U.S. business came with an unusual condition, according to people familiar with the matter. The investors — which include Oracle, Abu Dhabi investor MGX, and private-equity firm Silver Lake — "paid the Treasury Department about $2.5 billion when the deal closed in January," reports the Wall Street Journal, "and are ...

California saw its worst drought in 10,000 years between 2012 and 2015, remembers the Washington Post. And yet genetic analyses of California's scarlet monkeyflower "found that many rapidly evolved... allowing them to cope with water scarcity and rebound from decline." "The fact that certain organisms are able to adapt just because of genetics that are ...

"A new study suggests the productivity boost from AI may be far smaller than executives claim," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli: According to research cited in Foxit's State of Document Intelligence report, while 89% of executives and 79% of end users say AI tools make them feel more productive, the actual time savings shrink dramatically once people ...

Last June Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement that Texans "have a God-given right to know what's on their plate, and for millions of Texans, it better come from a pasture, not a lab. It's plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives." But California company Wildtype sells ...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers. No date has been set for the ...

Longtime Slashdot reader tsuliga writes: Two new episodes of Doctor Who that were previously lost have been found. The original Doctor Who episodes were wiped or deleted by the BBC because they were not aware of the future use of re-runs of these shows. Ninety-five of the 253 episodes from the program's first six years are currently missing. How many more ...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A top Senate administrator on Monday gave aides the green light to use three artificial intelligence chatbots for official work, a reflection of how widespread the use of the products has become in workplaces around the globe. The chief information officer for the Senate sergeant-at-arms, who ...

Meta plans to remove end-to-end encryption (E2EE) from Instagram direct messages by May 8, 2026. "Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we're removing this option from Instagram in the coming months," says Meta. "Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp." The Hacker ...

Iranian drone strikes shut down a major helium facility in Qatar, removing about 30% of global helium supply and raising concerns for the semiconductor industry, which relies on the gas for chip fabrication. "QatarEnergy declared force majeure on existing contracts on March 4, freeing it from supply obligations to customers," reports Tom's Hardware. The ...