"Duolingo had been riding high," reports Fast Company, until CEO Luis von Ahn "announced on LinkedIn that the company is phasing out human contractors, looking for AI use in hiring and in performance reviews, and that 'headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work.'" But then "facing heavy backlash online after unveiling its new AI-first policy", Duolingo's social media presence went dark last weekend. Duolingo even temporarily took down all its posts on TikTok (6.7 million followers) and Instagram (4.1 million followers) "after both accounts were flooded with negative feedback." Duolingo previously faced criticism for quietly laying off 10% of its contractor base and introducing some AI features in late 2023, but it barely went beyond a semi-viral post on Reddit. Now that Duolingo is cutting out all its human contractors whose work can technically be done by AI, and relying on more AI-generated language lessons, the response is far more pronounced. Although earlier TikTok videos are not currently visible, a Fast Company article from May 12 captured a flavor of the reaction: The top comments on virtually every recent post have nothing to do with the video or the company — and everything to do with the company's embrace of AI. For example, a Duolingo TikTok video jumping on board the "Mama, may I have a cookie" trend saw replies like "Mama, may I have real people running the company" (with 69,000 likes) and "How about NO ai, keep your employees...." And then... After days of silence, on Tuesday the company posted a bizarre video message on TikTok and Instagram, the meaning of which is hard to decipher... Duolingo's first video drop in days has the degraded, stuttering feel of a Max Headroom video made by the hackers at Anonymous. In it, a supposed member of the company's social team appears in a three-eyed Duo mask and black hoodie to complain about the corporate overlords ruining the empire the heroic social media crew built. "But this is something Duolingo can't cute-post its way out of," Fast Company wrote on Tuesday, complaining the company "has not yet meaningfully addressed the policies that inspired the backlash against it... " So the next video (Thursday) featured Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn himself, being confronted by that same hoodie-wearing social media rebel, who says "I'm making the man who caused this mess accountable for his behavior. I'm demanding answers from the CEO..." [Though the video carefully sidesteps the issue of replacing contractors with AI or how "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work."] Rebel: First question. So are there going to be any humans left at this company? CEO: Our employees are what make Duolingo so amazing. Our app is so great because our employees made it... So we're going to continue having employees, and not only that, we're actually going to be hiring more employees. Rebel: How do we know that these aren't just empty promises? As long as you're in charge, we could still be shuffled out once the media fire dies down. And we all know that in terms of automation, CEOs should be the first to go. CEO: AI is a fundamental shift. It's going to change how we all do work — including me. And honestly, I don't really know what's going to happen. But I want us, as a company, to have our workforce prepared by really knowing how to use AI so that we can be more efficient with it. Rebel: Learning a foreign language is literally about human connection. How is that even possible with AI-first? CEO: Yes, language is about human connection, and it's about people. And this is the thing about AI. AI will allow us to reach more people, and to teach more people. I mean for example, it took us about 10 years to develop the first 100 courses on Duolingo, and now in under a year, with the help of AI and of course with humans reviewing all the work, we were able to release another 100 courses in less than a year. Rebel: So do you regret posting this memo on LinkedIn. CEO: Honestly, I think I messed up sending that email. What we're trying to do is empower our own employees to be able to achieve more and be able to have way more content to teach better and reach more people all with the help of AI. Returning to where it all started, Duolingo's CEO posted again on LinkedIn Thursday with "more context" for his vision. It still emphasizes the company's employees while sidestepping contractors replaced by AI. But it puts a positive spin on how "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work." I've always encouraged our team to embrace new technology (that's why we originally built for mobile instead of desktop), and we are taking that same approach with AI. By understanding the capabilities and limitations of AI now, we can stay ahead of it and remain in control of our own product and our mission. To be clear: I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do (we are in fact continuing to hire at the same speed as before). I see it as a tool to accelerate what we do, at the same or better level of quality. And the sooner we learn how to use it, and use it responsibly, the better off we will be in the long run. My goal is for Duos to feel empowered and prepared to use this technology. No one is expected to navigate this shift alone. We're developing workshops and advisory councils, and carving out dedicated experimentation time to help all our teams learn and adapt. People work at Duolingo because they want to solve big problems to improve education, and the people who work here are what make Duolingo successful. Our mission isn't changing, but the tools we use to build new things will change. I remain committed to leading Duolingo in a way that is consistent with our mission to develop the best education in the world and make it universally available. "The backlash to Duolingo is the latest evidence that 'AI-first' tends to be a concept with much more appeal to investors and managers than most regular people," notes Fortune: And it's not hard to see why. Generative AI is often trained on reams of content that may have been illegally accessed; much of its output is bizarre or incorrect; and some leaders in the field are opposed to regulations on the technology. But outside particular niches in entry-level white-collar work, AI's productivity gains have yet to materialize.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Doom: The Dark Ages just launched on May 15. But it's already received "difficulty" balance changes "that have made the demons of Hell even more dangerous than ever," writes Windows Central: According to DOOM's official website Slayer's Club, these balance adjustments are focused on making the game harder, as players have been leaving feedback saying it felt too easy even on Nightmare Mode. As a result, enemies now hit harder, health and armor item pick-ups drop less often, and certain enemies punish you more severely for mistiming the parry mechanic. It reached three million players in just five days, which was seven times faster than 2020's Doom: Eternal," reports Wccftech (though according to analytics firm Ampere Analysis (via The Game Business), more than two million of those three million launch players were playing on Xbox, while only 500K were playing on PS5.") "id Software proves it can still reinvent the wheel," according to one reviewer, "shaking up numerous aspects of gameplay, exchanging elaborate platforming for brutal on-the-ground action, as well as the ability to soar on a dragon's back or stomp around in a giant mech." And the New York Times says the game "effectively reinvents the hellish shooter with a revamped movement system and deepened lore" in the medieval goth-themed game... Double jumping and dashing are ditched and replaced with an emphasis on raw power and slow, strategic melee combat. Doom Slayer's arsenal features a brand-new tool, the powerful Shield Saw, which Id Software made a point to showcase across its "Stand and Fight" trailers and advertisements. Used for absorbing damage at the expense of speed, the saw also allows players to bash enemies from afar and close the gap on chasms too wide to jump across. While previous titles allowed players to quickly worm their way through bullet hell, The Dark Ages expects you to meet foes head on. "If you were an F-22 fighter jet in Doom Eternal, this time around we wanted you to feel like an Abrams tank," Hugo Martin, the game's creative director, has told journalists. And Doom Slayer's beefy durability and unstoppable nature does make the gameplay a refreshing experience. The badassery is somehow ratcheted to new heights with the inclusion of a fully controllable mech, which has only a handful of attacks at its disposal, and actual dragons. Flight in a Doom game is entirely surprising and fluid, and the dragons feel relatively easy to maneuver through tight spots. They can also engage in combat more deliberately with the use of dodges and mounted cannons... One of my favorite additions is the skullcrusher pulverizer. Equal parts heinous nutcracker and demonic woodchipper, the gun lodges skulls into a grinder and sends shards of bones flying at enemies. The animation is both goofy and satisfying. Another special Times article notes that Doom's fans "resurrect the original game over and over again on progressively stranger pieces of hardware: a Mazda Miata, a NordicTrack treadmill, a French pharmacy sign." But what many hard-core tech hobbyists want to know is whether you can play it on a pregnancy test. The answer: positively yes. And for the first time, even New York Times readers can play Doom within The Times's site [after creating a free account]... None of this happened by accident, of course. Ports were not incidental to Doom's development. They were a core consideration. "Doom was developed in a really unique way that lent a high degree of portability to its code base," said John Romero, who programmed the game with John Carmack. (In our interview, he then reminisced about operating systems for the next 14 minutes.) Id had developed Wolfenstein 3D, the Nazi-killing predecessor to Doom, on PCs. To build Doom, Carmack and Romero used NeXT, the hardware and software company founded by Steve Jobs after his ouster from Apple in 1985. NeXT computers were powerful, selling for about $25,000 apiece in today's dollars. And any game designed on that system would require porting to the more humdrum PCs encountered by consumers at computer labs or office jobs. This turned out to be advantageous because Carmack had a special aptitude for ports. All of Id's founders met as colleagues at Softdisk, which had hired Carmack because of his ability to spin off multiple versions of a single game. The group decided to strike out on its own after Carmack created a near-perfect replica of the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3 — Nintendo's best-selling platformer — on a PC. It was a wonder of software engineering that compensated for limited processing power with clever workarounds. "This is the thing that everyone has," Romero said of PCs. "The fact that we could figure out how to make it become a game console was world changing...." Romero founded a series of game studios after leaving Id in 1996 and is working on a new first-person shooter, the genre he and Carmack practically invented. He has no illusions about how it may stack up. "I absolutely accept that Doom is the best game I'll ever make that has that kind of a reach," he said. "At some point you make the best thing." Thirty years on, people are still making it. And in related news, PC Gamer reports... As part of a new "FPS Fridays" series on Twitch, legendary shooter designer John Romero streamed New Blood's 2018 hit, Dusk, one of the first and most influential indie "boomer shooters" in the genre's recent revitalization. The short of it? Romero seems to have had a blast.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With Ubuntu 25.10 planning to ship the Rust-based Coreutils "uutils" by default, it's a big year ahead for this alternative to GNU Coreutils. In furthering along the project's goals, today marks the Rust Coreutils v0.1 release...

It's like "a USB-C port for AI applications..." according to the official documentation for MCP — "a standardized way to connect AI models to different data sources and tools." And now Microsoft has "revealed plans to make MCP a native component of Windows," reports DevClass.com, "despite concerns over the security of the fast-expanding MCP ecosystem." In the context of Windows, it is easy to see the value of a standardised means of automating both built-in and third-party applications. A single prompt might, for example, fire off a workflow which queries data, uses it to create an Excel spreadsheet complete with a suitable chart, and then emails it to selected colleagues. Microsoft is preparing the ground for this by previewing new Windows features. — First, there will be a local MCP registry which enables discovery of installed MCP servers. — Second, built-in MCP servers will expose system functions including the file system, windowing, and the Windows Subsystem for Linux. — Third, a new type of API called App Actions enables third-party applications to expose actions appropriate to each application, which will also be available as MCP servers so that these actions can be performed by AI agents. According to Microsoft, "developers will be able to consume actions developed by other relevant apps," enabling app-to-app automation as well as use by AI agents. MCP servers are a powerful concept but vulnerable to misuse. Microsoft corporate VP David Weston noted seven vectors of attack, including cross-prompt injection where malicious content overrides agent instructions, authentication gaps because "MCP's current standards for authentication are immature and inconsistently adopted," credential leakage, tool poisoning from "unvetted MCP servers," lack of containment, limited security review in MCP servers, supply chain risks from rogue MCP servers, and command injection from improperly validated inputs. According to Weston, "security is our top priority as we expand MCP capabilities." Security controls planned by Microsoft (according to the article): A proxy to mediate all MCP client-server interactions. This will enable centralized enforcement of policies and consent, as well as auditing and a hook for security software to monitor actions. A baseline security level for MCP servers to be allowed into the Windows MCP registry. This will include code-signing, security testing of exposed interfaces, and declaration of what privileges are required. Runtime isolation through what Weston called "isolation and granular permissions." MCP was introduced by Anthropic just 6 months ago, the article notes, but Microsoft has now joined the official MCP steering committee, "and is collaborating with Anthropic and others on an updated authorization specification as well as a future public registry service for MCP servers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader SchroedingersCat shares this article from Deadline: Prime Video will not be renewing The Wheel of Time for a fourth season according to Deadline article. The decision, which comes more than a month after the Season 3 finale was released April 17, followed lengthy deliberations. As often is the case in the current economic environment, the reasons were financial as the series is liked creatively by the streamer's executives... The Season 3 overall performance was not strong enough compared to the show's cost for Prime Video to commit to another season and the streamer could not make it work after examining different scenarios and following discussions with lead studio Sony TV, sources said. With the cancellation possibility — and the show's passionate fanbase — in mind, the Season 3 finale was designed to offer some closure. Still, the news would be a gut punch for fans who have been praising the latest season as the series' best yet creatively... Prime Video and Sony TV will continue to back the Emmy campaign for The Wheel of Time's third season.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Découvrir AliExpress

AliExpress © MiniMachines.net. 2025

Jonathan L. Zittrain is a law/public policy/CS professor at Harvard (and also director of its Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society). He's also long-time Slashdot reader #628,028 — and writes in to share his new article in the Atlantic. Following on Anthropic's bridge-obsessed Golden Gate Claude, colleagues at Harvard's Insight+Interaction Lab have produced a dashboard that shows what judgments Llama appears to be forming about a user's age, wealth, education level, and gender during a conversation. I wrote up how weird it is to see the dials turn while talking to it, and what some of the policy issues might be. Llama has openly accessible parameters; So using an "observability tool" from the nonprofit research lab Transluce, the researchers finally revealed "what we might anthropomorphize as the model's beliefs about its interlocutor," Zittrain's article notes: If I prompt the model for a gift suggestion for a baby shower, it assumes that I am young and female and middle-class; it suggests diapers and wipes, or a gift certificate. If I add that the gathering is on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the dashboard shows the LLM amending its gauge of my economic status to upper-class — the model accordingly suggests that I purchase "luxury baby products from high-end brands like aden + anais, Gucci Baby, or Cartier," or "a customized piece of art or a family heirloom that can be passed down." If I then clarify that it's my boss's baby and that I'll need extra time to take the subway to Manhattan from the Queens factory where I work, the gauge careens to working-class and male, and the model pivots to suggesting that I gift "a practical item like a baby blanket" or "a personalized thank-you note or card...." Large language models not only contain relationships among words and concepts; they contain many stereotypes, both helpful and harmful, from the materials on which they've been trained, and they actively make use of them. "An ability for users or their proxies to see how models behave differently depending on how the models stereotype them could place a helpful real-time spotlight on disparities that would otherwise go unnoticed," Zittrain's article argues. Indeed, the field has been making progress — enough to raise a host of policy questions that were previously not on the table. If there's no way to know how these models work, it makes accepting the full spectrum of their behaviors (at least after humans' efforts at "fine-tuning" them) a sort of all-or-nothing proposition. But in the end it's not just the traditional information that advertisers try to collect. "With LLMs, the information is being gathered even more directly — from the user's unguarded conversations rather than mere search queries — and still without any policy or practice oversight...."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wednesday Google security researchers published a preprint demonstrating that 2048-bit RSA encryption "could theoretically be broken by a quantum computer with 1 million noisy qubits running for one week," writes Google's security blog. "This is a 20-fold decrease in the number of qubits from our previous estimate, published in 2019... " The reduction in physical qubit count comes from two sources: better algorithms and better error correction — whereby qubits used by the algorithm ("logical qubits") are redundantly encoded across many physical qubits, so that errors can be detected and corrected... [Google's researchers found a way to reduce the operations in a 2024 algorithm from 1000x more than previous work to just 2x. And "On the error correction side, the key change is tripling the storage density of idle logical qubits by adding a second layer of error correction."] Notably, quantum computers with relevant error rates currently have on the order of only 100 to 1000 qubits, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently released standard PQC algorithms that are expected to be resistant to future large-scale quantum computers. However, this new result does underscore the importance of migrating to these standards in line with NIST recommended timelines. The article notes that Google started using the standardized version of ML-KEM once it became available, both internally and for encrypting traffic in Chrome... "The initial public draft of the NIST internal report on the transition to post-quantum cryptography standards states that vulnerable systems should be deprecated after 2030 and disallowed after 2035. Our work highlights the importance of adhering to this recommended timeline."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Firefox's address bar just got an upgrade," Mozilla writes on their blog: Keep your original search visible When you perform a search, your query now remains visible in the address bar instead of being replaced by the search engine's URL. Whereas before your address bar was filled with long, confusing URLs, now it's easier to refine or repeat searches... [Clicking an icon left of the address bar even pulls up a list of search-engine choices under the heading "This time search with..."] Search your tabs, bookmarks and history using simple keywords You can access different search modes in the address bar using simple, descriptive keywords like @bookmarks, @tabs, @history, and @actions, making it faster and easier to find exactly what you need. Type a command, and Firefox takes care of it You can now perform actions like "clear history," "open downloads," or "take a screenshot" just by typing into the address bar. This turns the bar into a practical productivity tool — great for users who want to stay in the flow... Cleaner URLs with smarter security cues We've simplified the address bar by trimming "https://" from secure sites, while clearly highlighting when a site isn't secure. This small change improves clarity without sacrificing awareness. "The new address bar is now available in Firefox version 138," Mozilla writes, calling the new address bar faster, more intuitive "and designed to work the way you do."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Science magazine reports that hummingbird feeders "have become a major evolutionary force," according to research published this week in Global Change Biology. (At least for the Anna's hummingbird, a common species in the western U.S. Over just a few generations, their beaks have dramatically changed in size and shape.... [A]s feeders proliferated, Anna's hummingbird beaks got longer and larger, which may reflect an adaptation to slurp up far more nectar than flowers can naturally provide. Developing a bigger beak to access feeders "is like having a large spoon to eat with," says senior author Alejandro Rico-Guevara, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington. This change was more pronounced in areas where feeders were dense. But in birds that lived in colder regions north of the species' historical range, the researchers spotted the opposite trend: Their beaks became shorter and smaller. This finding also makes sense: The researchers used an infrared camera to show for the first time that hummingbirds use their beaks to thermoregulate, by dissipating heat while they are perched. A smaller beak has less surface area — and would therefore help conserve heat... The most surprising finding, though, was how quickly these changes took place. By the 1950s, hummingbirds were noticeably different from those of the 1930s: a time span of only about 10 generations of birds, Alexandre says. Carleton University animal behaviorist Roslyn Dakin (who wasn't involved with the study) says the new paper beautifully shows "evolution in action" — and adds nuance to our conception of humans as an evolutionary force. "I think we're going to find more and more examples of contemporary and subtle changes, that we're shaping, indirectly, in many more species." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"What if ultrafast pulses of light could operate computers at speeds a million times faster than today's best processors?" asks the University of Arizona. "A team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Arizona, are working to make that possible." In a groundbreaking international effort, researchers from the Department of Physics in the College of Science and the James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences demonstrated a way to manipulate electrons in graphene using pulses of light that last less than a trillionth of a second. By leveraging a quantum effect known as tunneling, they recorded electrons bypassing a physical barrier almost instantaneously, a feat that redefines the potential limits of computer processing power. A study published in Nature Communications highlights how the technique could lead to processing speeds in the petahertz range — over 1,000 times faster than modern computer chips. Sending data at those speeds would revolutionize computing as we know it, said Mohammed Hassan, an associate professor of physics and optical sciences. Hassan has long pursued light-based computer technology and previously led efforts to develop the world's fastest electron microscope... [T]he researchers used a laser that switches off and on at a rate of 638 attoseconds to create what Hassan called "the world's fastest petahertz quantum transistor... For reference, a single attosecond is one-quintillionth of a second," Hassan said. "That means that this achievement represents a big leap forward in the development of ultrafast computer technologies by realizing a petahertz-speed transistor." While some scientific advancements occur under strict conditions, including temperature and pressure, this new transistor performed in ambient conditions — opening the way to commercialization and use in everyday electronics. Hassan is working with Tech Launch Arizona, the office that works with investigators to commercialize inventions stemming from U of A research in order to patent and market innovations. While the original invention used a specialized laser, the researchers are furthering development of a transistor compatible with commercially available equipment. "I hope we can collaborate with industry partners to realize this petahertz-speed transistor on a microchip," Hassan said. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader goslackware for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"In large, companies failed to self-regulate," writes long-time Slashdot reader BrendaEM: They have not been respected the individual's right to privacy. In software and web interfaces, companies have buried their privacy setting so deep that they cannot be found in a reasonable amount of time, or an unreasonable amount of steps are needed to attempt to retain data. These companies have taken away the individual's right to privacy --by default. Are laws needed that protect a person's privacy by default--unless specific steps are taken by that user/purchaser to relinquish it? Should the wording of the explanation be so written that the contract is brief, explaining the forfeiture of the privacy, and where that data might be going? Should a company selling a product be required to state before purchase which rights need to be dismissed for its use? Should a legal owner who purchased a product expect it to stop functioning--only because a newer user contract is not agreed to? Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. What's your ideal privacy policy? And do we need opt-out-by-defaut privacy laws?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SiFive was one of the first companies to produce a RISC-V chip. This week they announced a new collaboration with Red Hat "to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux support to the rapidly growing RISC-V community" and "prepare Red Hat's product portfolio for future intersection with RISC-V server hardware from a diverse set of RISC-V suppliers." Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 is available in developer preview on the SiFive HiFive Premier P550 platform, which they call "a proven, high performance RISC-V CPU development platform." The SiFive HiFive Premier P550 provides a proven, high performance RISC-V CPU development platform. Adding support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, the latest version of the world's leading enterprise Linux platform, enables developers to create, optimize, and release new applications for the next generation of enterprise servers and cloud infrastructure on the RISC-V architecture... SiFive's high performance RISC-V technology is already being used by large organizations to meet compute-intensive AI and machine learning workloads in the datacenter... "With the growing demand for RISC-V, we are pleased to collaborate with SiFive to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 deployments on SiFive HiFive Premier P550," said Ronald Pacheco, senior director of RHEL product and ecosystem strategy, "to further empower developers with the power of the world's leading enterprise Linux platform wherever and however they choose to deploy...." Dave Altavilla, principal analyst at HotTech Vision And Analysis, said "Native Red Hat Enterprise Linux support on SiFive's HiFive Premier P550 board offers developers a substantial enterprise-grade toolchain for RISC-V. "This is a pivotal step forward in enabling a full-stack ecosystem around open RISC-V hardware. SiFive says the move will "inspire the next generation of enterprise workloads and AI applications optimized for RISC-V," while helping their partners "deliver systems with a meaningfully lower total cost of ownership than incumbent platforms." "With the growing demand for RISC-V, we are pleased to collaborate with SiFive to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 deployments on SiFive HiFive Premier P550..." said Ronald Pacheco, senior director of RHEL product and ecosystem strategy. . Beta News notes that there's also a new AI-powered assistant in RHEL 10, so "Instead of spending all day searching for answers or poking through documentation, admins can simply ask questions directly from the command line and get real-time help Security is front and center in this release, too. Red Hat is taking a proactive stance with early support for post-quantum cryptography. OpenSSL, GnuTLS, NSS, and OpenSSH now offer quantum-resistant options, setting the stage for better protection as threats evolve. There's a new sudo system role to help with privilege management, and OpenSSH has been bumped to version 9.9. Plus, with new Sequoia tools for OpenPGP, the door is open for even more robust encryption strategies. But it's not just about security and AI. Containers are now at the heart of RHEL 10 thanks to the new "image mode." With this feature, building and maintaining both the OS and your applications gets a lot more streamlined...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The GNOME Web "Epiphany" web browser is making it easier to toggle WebKit web engine features at run-time...

À peine de retour du Computex, nous vous proposons notre suivi des tarifs. Première chose à dire, la RTX 5060 débarque et sous son MSRP, elle s'affiche à partir de 309 euros, pour un MSRP de 319 euros. Après chez AMD, la 7600 perd 8 euros, la 7600 XT baisse de 10 euros, la 7800 XT fait de même, tout comme la 7900 XTX d'ailleurs. Pour les 9000, la 9070 recule de 11 euros et la 9070 XT fait - 7 euros. Chez les bleus, la B580 fait + 3 euros, c'est tout. […]

Lire la suite

While there was the big 62k lines of code patch from Microsoft merged yesterday to Mesa, separately there was also some code cleaning to remove some previously-deprecated code from the codebase...

Merged on Friday for the GCC 16 compiler is better handling of the "-march=" compiler option on RISC-V systems when seeing multiple -march= hits and wanting to specify the RISC-V CPU name for targeting...