La condamnation de X à 120 millions d’euros d’amende pour non-respect du Digital Services Act (DSA), prononcée vendredi par Bruxelles, n’est pas bien passée du côté d’Elon Musk et de ses équipes. Alors que le propriétaire de l’ex-Twitter a vitupéré contre la Commission européenne tout le week-end, appelant à sa dissolution, une mesure de rétorsion inattendue est venue de Nikita Bier, recruté cet été comme responsable du produit (head of product) chez X.

« Votre compte publicitaire a été résilié », a écrit ce dernier, dimanche, sur X, en citant le message d’annonce par lequel la Commission européenne relayait la condamnation du réseau social.

Nikita Bier dénonce le caractère ironique de l’annonce formulée par Bruxelles. Afin de médiatiser sa décision, l’exécutif européen aurait d’après lui réactivé un compte publicitaire inutilisé depuis 2021. Il aurait ensuite exploité une faille dans l’outil de composition des publicités, pour « publier un lien qui trompe les utilisateurs en leur faisant croire qu’il s’agit d’une vidéo et augmenter artificiellement sa portée ». La faille en question aurait depuis été corrigée.

Une chose est sûre : la publication d’origine de la Commission européenne a réalisé une audience nettement supérieure à la moyenne de ses posts des dernières semaines, avec une portée affichée, lundi matin, à 14 millions de vues. Elon Musk et Nikita Bier y ont d’ailleurs largement contribué : le retweet effectué par le responsable produit a, à lui seul, enregistré plus de 5,4 millions de vues…

Cette condamnation historique (la première prononcée sous le régime du DSA) n’a probablement pas fini de faire des vagues. Outre les imprécations de Musk à l’encontre du Vieux Continent, elle a aussi été reprise, et interprétée de façon discutable, dès vendredi par JD Vance, vice-président des États-Unis.

« Des rumeurs circulent selon lesquelles la Commission européenne infligerait une amende de plusieurs centaines de millions de dollars à X pour son inaction en matière de censure. L’UE devrait défendre la liberté d’expression au lieu de s’en prendre à des entreprises américaines pour des futilités», a publié ce dernier, toujours sur X.

Dans sa décision, la Commission européenne estime que X se rend coupable de trois manquements au DSA : un statut vérifié (coche bleue) octroyé sans vérification aux abonnés payants, un manque de transparence dans le référentiel des publicités expliquant les mécaniques de ciblage, et l’absence d’accès aux données publiques de la plateforme pour les chercheurs.

Le réseau social TikTok est sous le coup de plusieurs enquêtes de la Commission européenne dans le cadre des règlements sur les services numériques. Vendredi, l’Europe « a obtenu l’engagement de TikTok de fournir des répertoires publicitaires qui garantissent une transparence totale des publicités sur ses services ».

Les engagements sont contraignants et « répondent à toutes les préoccupations » affirme la Commission, qui était arrivée en 2025, à titre préliminaire, à la conclusion que la plateforme ne respectait pas le DSA.

Voici les engagements, que TikTok doit mettre en place dans un délai de 2 à 12 mois maximum en fonction des cas :

• fournir le contenu complet des publicités affichées aux utilisateurs
• mettre à jour son dépôt plus rapidement (24 h maximum)
• fournir les critères de ciblage et des données utilisateur agrégées
• introduire des options de recherche et des filtres supplémentaires

TikTok est sous le coup d’autres procédures en Europe, notamment « sur les effets négatifs découlant de la conception de TikTok, y compris ses systèmes algorithmiques, l’assurance de l’âge, l’accès aux données pour les chercheurs (constatations préliminaires adoptées en octobre 2025) et son obligation de protéger les mineurs, pour lesquelles l’enquête se poursuit ».

Il y a tout juste un an, la Commission ouvrait une procédure formelle à l’encontre de TikTok « concernant sa gestion des risques liés aux élections et au discours civique ». Il était notamment question des systèmes de recommandation et des publicités à caractère politique.

En France aussi TikTok est sous le coup de plusieurs procédures. La Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) l’a assignée devant le Tribunal judiciaire de Paris pour violation de droits d’auteur, tandis que le Parquet de Paris a ouvert une enquête sur la mise en avant de contenus poussant au suicide.

En septembre, un rapport parlementaire dézinguait pour rappel les réseaux sociaux et TikTok. En mai dernier, la plateforme écopait de 530 millions d’amende pour non respect du RGPD par la CNIL irlandaise.

• [Édito] Fabrique de la (dés)information : de TikTok à Emmanuel Macron

La condamnation de X à 120 millions d’euros d’amende pour non-respect du Digital Services Act (DSA), prononcée vendredi par Bruxelles, n’est pas bien passée du côté d’Elon Musk et de ses équipes. Alors que le propriétaire de l’ex-Twitter a vitupéré contre la Commission européenne tout le week-end, appelant à sa dissolution, une mesure de rétorsion inattendue est venue de Nikita Bier, recruté cet été comme responsable du produit (head of product) chez X.

« Votre compte publicitaire a été résilié », a écrit ce dernier, dimanche, sur X, en citant le message d’annonce par lequel la Commission européenne relayait la condamnation du réseau social.

Nikita Bier dénonce le caractère ironique de l’annonce formulée par Bruxelles. Afin de médiatiser sa décision, l’exécutif européen aurait d’après lui réactivé un compte publicitaire inutilisé depuis 2021. Il aurait ensuite exploité une faille dans l’outil de composition des publicités, pour « publier un lien qui trompe les utilisateurs en leur faisant croire qu’il s’agit d’une vidéo et augmenter artificiellement sa portée ». La faille en question aurait depuis été corrigée.

Une chose est sûre : la publication d’origine de la Commission européenne a réalisé une audience nettement supérieure à la moyenne de ses posts des dernières semaines, avec une portée affichée, lundi matin, à 14 millions de vues. Elon Musk et Nikita Bier y ont d’ailleurs largement contribué : le retweet effectué par le responsable produit a, à lui seul, enregistré plus de 5,4 millions de vues…

Cette condamnation historique (la première prononcée sous le régime du DSA) n’a probablement pas fini de faire des vagues. Outre les imprécations de Musk à l’encontre du Vieux Continent, elle a aussi été reprise, et interprétée de façon discutable, dès vendredi par JD Vance, vice-président des États-Unis.

« Des rumeurs circulent selon lesquelles la Commission européenne infligerait une amende de plusieurs centaines de millions de dollars à X pour son inaction en matière de censure. L’UE devrait défendre la liberté d’expression au lieu de s’en prendre à des entreprises américaines pour des futilités», a publié ce dernier, toujours sur X.

Dans sa décision, la Commission européenne estime que X se rend coupable de trois manquements au DSA : un statut vérifié (coche bleue) octroyé sans vérification aux abonnés payants, un manque de transparence dans le référentiel des publicités expliquant les mécaniques de ciblage, et l’absence d’accès aux données publiques de la plateforme pour les chercheurs.

Le réseau social TikTok est sous le coup de plusieurs enquêtes de la Commission européenne dans le cadre des règlements sur les services numériques. Vendredi, l’Europe « a obtenu l’engagement de TikTok de fournir des répertoires publicitaires qui garantissent une transparence totale des publicités sur ses services ».

Les engagements sont contraignants et « répondent à toutes les préoccupations » affirme la Commission, qui était arrivée en 2025, à titre préliminaire, à la conclusion que la plateforme ne respectait pas le DSA.

Voici les engagements, que TikTok doit mettre en place dans un délai de 2 à 12 mois maximum en fonction des cas :

• fournir le contenu complet des publicités affichées aux utilisateurs
• mettre à jour son dépôt plus rapidement (24 h maximum)
• fournir les critères de ciblage et des données utilisateur agrégées
• introduire des options de recherche et des filtres supplémentaires

TikTok est sous le coup d’autres procédures en Europe, notamment « sur les effets négatifs découlant de la conception de TikTok, y compris ses systèmes algorithmiques, l’assurance de l’âge, l’accès aux données pour les chercheurs (constatations préliminaires adoptées en octobre 2025) et son obligation de protéger les mineurs, pour lesquelles l’enquête se poursuit ».

Il y a tout juste un an, la Commission ouvrait une procédure formelle à l’encontre de TikTok « concernant sa gestion des risques liés aux élections et au discours civique ». Il était notamment question des systèmes de recommandation et des publicités à caractère politique.

En France aussi TikTok est sous le coup de plusieurs procédures. La Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) l’a assignée devant le Tribunal judiciaire de Paris pour violation de droits d’auteur, tandis que le Parquet de Paris a ouvert une enquête sur la mise en avant de contenus poussant au suicide.

En septembre, un rapport parlementaire dézinguait pour rappel les réseaux sociaux et TikTok. En mai dernier, la plateforme écopait de 530 millions d’amende pour non respect du RGPD par la CNIL irlandaise.

• [Édito] Fabrique de la (dés)information : de TikTok à Emmanuel Macron

Le 22 novembre 2025, Philips parlait du lancement proche d'un écran capable d'atteindre 1000 Hz de taux de rafraichissement. C'était lors de la WePlay Culture Expo 2025, qui se déroulait en Chine, à Shanghai. L'annonce officielle vient de son côté d'avoir lieu le 5 décembre, lors d'une présentation...

Nous vous en parlions en fin de semaine dernière, les drivers GeForce Game Ready 591.44 WHQL furent marqués par l'abandon de certaines cartes graphiques, NVIDIA a également opéré de la sorte pour les puces mobiles, les MX100, 200, 300, les séries 800M, 900M et 10 (laptop) ne bénéficient désormais plus des optimisations récentes pour les jeux. GeForce Game Ready 581.80 GeForce RTX 50 Series (Notebooks) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Laptop GPU GeForce RTX 40 Series (Notebooks) GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU GeForce RTX 30 Series (Notebooks) GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU, GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU GeForce RTX 20 Series (Notebooks) GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2080, GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2070, GeForce RTX 2060, GeForce RTX 2050 GeForce MX500 Series (Notebooks) GeForce MX570, GeForce MX550 GeForce MX400 Series (Notebooks) GeForce MX450 GeForce MX300 Series (Notebooks) GeForce MX350, GeForce MX330 GeForce MX200 Series (Notebooks) GeForce MX250, GeForce MX230 GeForce MX100 Series (Notebook) GeForce MX150, GeForce MX130, GeForce MX110 GeForce GTX 16 Series (Notebooks) GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, GeForce GTX 1650 Ti, GeForce GTX 1650 GeForce 10 Series (Notebooks) GeForce GTX 1080, GeForce GTX 1070, GeForce GTX 1060, GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, GeForce GTX 1050 GeForce 900M Series (Notebooks) GeForce GTX 980, GeForce GTX 980M, GeForce GTX 970M, GeForce GTX 965M, GeForce GTX 960M, GeForce GTX 950M, GeForce 945M, GeForce 940MX, GeForce 930MX, GeForce 920MX, GeForce 940M, GeForce 930M GeForce 800M Series (Notebooks) GeForce GTX 860M, GeForce GTX 850M, GeForce 845M, GeForce 840M, GeForce 830M […]

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Si vous êtes un ancien gamer, comme nous, l'annonce de Carmageddon: Rogue Shift ne devrait pas vous laisser insensible, dire que le jeu Carmageddon a marqué la fin des années 90 est un doux euphémisme, son style déjanté, ses courses sanglantes et la déformation des véhicules ont largement marqué nos esprits. Ce concept devrait perdurer avec le jeu Carmageddon: Rogue Shift, développé et édité par le studio 34BigThings srl, à qui l'on doit la série Redout.La date de sortie et le prix ne sont pas connus. L'INTERMINABLE NUIT Nous sommes en 2050, et le monde que vous connaissiez n'est plus qu'un désert post-apocalyptique. Des hordes de créatures cauchemardesques, les Décimés, assiègent l'humanité. Chaque nuit, ils envahissent les rues, obligeant les survivants à se barricader dans les gratte-ciel où ils ont élu domicile. Votre seule échappatoire : le Carmageddon. Ces courses mortelles promettent pouvoir, prestige et prix de valeur aux participants. Plus important encore, le champion gagne le droit de tenter le périlleux voyage qui mène au spatioport par-delà les montagnes. L'unique survivant, l'ultime espoir de fuir ce monde agonisant. Aux côtés d'innombrables pilotes, vous rejoignez le Carmageddon. Vous ne disposez que d'un tas de ferraille, de carburant récupéré et d'une arme de fortune. Face à vous : des gangs rivaux comme les Autoscums et autres desperados, dans une lutte à mort. Chaque course devient l'occasion de gagner des composants et des améliorations, vous permettant de faire un pas de plus vers la grande évasion. Quand la nuit tombe, les Décimés envahissent les rues, et vous aussi. […]

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Vous ne l'espériez sans doute plus, mais bonne nouvelle, le multijoueur pourrait bien débarquer dans le jeu Cyberpunk 2077 ! Tout cela grâce à une team de moders, car oui, le studio CD PROJEKT RED n'est pas revenu sur sa décision d'annuler un tel mode de jeu... La team nous dévoile deux vidéos, qui illustrent ce que donnerait leur mod, avec du deathmatch, le but n'étant pas de vous offrir l'opportunité de mener les quêtes en coopération. Espérons que le mod aboutisse et que la gestion de l'hébergement des parties multijoueur soit optimisée. […]

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An anonymous reader shared this report from Autoblog: Imagine walking out to your car, pressing the start button, and getting absolutely nothing. No crank, no lights on the dash, nothing. That's exactly what happened to hundreds of Porsche owners in Russia last week. The issue is with the Vehicle Tracking System, a satellite-based security system that's supposed to protect against theft. Instead, it turned these Porsches into driveway ornaments. The issue was first reported at the end of November, with owners reporting identical symptoms of their cars refusing to start or shutting down soon after ignition. Russia's largest dealership group, Rolf, confirmed that the problem stems from a complete loss of satellite connectivity to the VTS. When it loses its connection, it interprets the outage as a potential theft attempt and automatically activates the engine immobilizer. The issue affects all models and engine types, meaning any Porsche equipped with the system could potentially disable itself without warning. The malfunction impacts Porsche models dating back to 2013 that have the factory VTS installed... When the VTS connection drops, the anti-theft protocol kicks in, cutting fuel delivery and locking down the engine completely.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nuclear engineer Lonnie Johnson worked on NASA's Galileo mission, has more than 140 patents, and invented the Super Soaker water gun. But now he's working on "a potential key to unlock a huge power source that's rarely utilized today," reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. [Alternate URL here.] Waste heat... The Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter, or JTEC, has few moving parts, no combustion and no exhaust. All the work to generate electricity is done by hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. Inside the device, pressurized hydrogen gas is separated by a thin, filmlike membrane, with low pressure gas on one side and high pressure gas on the other. The difference in pressure in this "stack" is what drives the hydrogen to compress and expand, creating electricity as it circulates. And unlike a fuel cell, it does not need to be refueled with more hydrogen. All that's needed to keep the process going and electricity flowing is a heat source. As it turns out, there are enormous amounts of energy vented or otherwise lost from industrial facilities like power plants, factories, breweries and more. Between 20% and 50% of all energy used for industrial processes is dumped into the atmosphere and lost as waste heat, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The JTEC works with high temperatures, but the device's ability to generate electricity efficiently from low-grade heat sources is what company executives are most excited about. Inside JTEC's headquarters, engineers show off a demonstration unit that can power lights and a sound system with water that's roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit — below the boiling point and barely warm enough to brew a cup of tea, said Julian Bell, JTEC's vice president of engineering. Comas Haynes, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute specializing in thermal and hydrogen system designs, agrees the company could "hit a sweet spot" if it can capitalize on lower temperature heat... For Johnson, the potential application he's most excited about lies beneath our feet. Geothermal energy exists naturally in rocks and water beneath the Earth's surface at various depths. Tapping into that resource through abandoned oil and gas wells — a well-known access point for underground heat — offers another opportunity. "You don't need batteries and you can draw power when you need it from just about anywhere," Johnson said. Right now, the company is building its first commercial JTEC unit, which is set to be deployed early next year. Mike McQuary, JTEC's CEO and the former president of the pioneering internet service provider MindSpring, said he couldn't reveal the customer, but said it's a "major Southeast utility company." "Crossing that bridge where you have commercial customers that believe in it and will pay for it is important," McQuary said... On top of some initial seed money, the company brought in $30 million in a Series A funding in 2022 — money that allowed the company to move to its Lee + White headquarters and hire more than 30 engineers. McQuary said it expects to begin another round of fundraising soon. "Johnson, meanwhile, hasn't stopped working on new inventions," the article points out. "He continues to refine the design for his solid-state battery..."

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Phys.org republishes this article from The Conversation: On average, managers spend 23 hours a week in meetings. Much of what happens in them is considered to be of low value, or even entirely counterproductive. The paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings... in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones... A 2015 handbook laid the groundwork for the nascent field of "Meeting Science". Among other things, the research revealed that the real issue may not be the number of meetings, but rather how they are designed, the lack of clarity about their purpose, and the inequalities they (often unconsciously) reinforce... Faced with what we call meeting madness, the solution is not to eliminate meetings altogether, but to design them better. It begins with a simple but often forgotten question: why are we meeting...? The goal should not be to have fewer meetings, but better ones. Meetings that respect everyone's time and energy. Meetings that give a voice to all. Meetings that build connection. Slashdot reader ShimoNoSeki shares an obligatory XKCD comic...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Released today is a new version of Iced, the popular cross-platform GUI library for the Rust programming language. Iced is notably used by the COSMIC desktop environment and a growing variety of different Rust apps...

Friday six European Union countries "asked the European Commission to water down an effective ban on the sale of internal combustion engine cars slated for 2035," reports Reuters The countries have asked the EU Commission to allow the sale of hybrid cars or vehicles powered by other, existing or future, technologies "that could contribute to the goal of reducing emissions" beyond 2035, a joint letter seen by Reuters showed on Friday. The letter was signed by the prime ministers of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. They also asked for low-carbon and renewable fuels to be included in the plan to reduce the carbon emissions from transportation... Since they adopted a regulation that all new vehicles from 2035 should have zero emissions in March 2023, EU countries are now having second thoughts. Back then, the outlook for battery electric vehicles was positive, but carmakers' efforts have later collided with the reality of lower-than-expected demand and fierce competition from China. Car and Drive reports that Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany also "wants to allow exceptions for plug-in hybrids, extended-range EVs, and 'highly efficient' combustion vehicles beyond the current 2035 deadline." They cite a report in Automotive News. The European Commission hasn't made any official changes yet, but mounting pressure suggests that a revised plan could be coming soon.... Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism, was cited by the German paper Handelsblatt as saying that the EU "will take all technological advances into account when reassessing fleet emission limits, including combustion engines running on e-fuels and biofuels." And these renewable products will apparently be key pieces of the puzzle. BMW uses a vegetable-oil-derived fuel called HVO 100 in its diesel products throughout Europe. The plant-oil-based fuel reportedly reduces tailpipe emissions by 90 percent compared with traditional diesel. For its part, Porsche has been working on producing synthetic fuel at a plant in Chile since 2022. The European Commission is set to meet on December 10. At that time, the body is expected to assemble a package of proposals to help out the struggling European automotive industry, though the actual announcement may be pushed to a later date. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sinij for sharing the article.

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AI is the second-largest major at M.I.T. after computer science, reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here and here.) Though that includes students interested in applying AI in biology and health care — it's just the beginning: This semester, more than 3,000 students enrolled in a new college of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity at the University of South Florida in Tampa. At the University of California, San Diego, 150 first-year students signed up for a new A.I. major. And the State University of New York at Buffalo created a stand-alone "department of A.I. and society," which is offering new interdisciplinary degrees in fields like "A.I. and policy analysis...." [I]nterest in understanding, using and learning how to build A.I. technologies is soaring, and schools are racing to meet rising student and industry demand. Over the last two years, dozens of U.S. universities and colleges have announced new A.I. departments, majors, minors, courses, interdisciplinary concentrations and other programs. "This is so cool to me to have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this," one 18-year-old told the New York Times. Their article points out 62% of America's computing programs reported drops in undergraduate enrollment this fall, according to a report in October from the Computing Research Association. "One reason for the dip: student employment concerns." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UPDATE (12/7): The New York Times clarifies today that the damage at Chernobyl hasn't led to a rise in radiation levels: "If there was to be some event inside the shelter that would release radioactive materials into the space inside the New Safe Confinement, because this facility is no longer sealed to the outside environment, there's the potential for radiation to come out," said Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace who has monitored nuclear power plants in Ukraine since 2022 and last visited Chernobyl on October 31. "I have to say I don't think that's a particularly serious issue at the moment, because they're not actively decommissioning the actual sarcophagus." The I.A.E.A. also said there was no permanent damage to the shield's load-bearing structures or monitoring systems. A spokesman for the agency, Fredrik Dahl, said in a text message on Sunday that radiation levels were similar to what they were before the drone hit. But "A structure designed to prevent radioactive leakage at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine is no longer operational," Politico reported Saturday, "after Russian drones targeted it earlier this year, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog has found." [T]he large steel structure "lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability" when its outer cladding was set ablaze after being struck by Russian drones, according to a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Beyond that, there was "no permanent damage to its load-bearing structures or monitoring systems," it said. "Limited temporary repairs have been carried out on the roof, but timely and comprehensive restoration remains essential to prevent further degradation and ensure long-term nuclear safety," IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in astatement. The Guardian has pictures of the protective shield — incuding the damage from the drone strike. The shield is the world's largest movable land structure, reports CNN: The IAEA, which has a permanent presence at the site, will "continue to do everything it can to support efforts to fully restore nuclear safety and security," Grossi said.... Built in 2010 and completed in 2019, it was designed to last 100 years and has played a crucial role in securing the site. The project cost €2.1 billion and was funded by contributions from more than 45 donor countries and organizations through the Chernobyl Shelter Fund, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which in 2019 hailed the venture as "the largest international collaboration ever in the field of nuclear safety."

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A hardware security response from ChatGPT ended with "Shop for home and groceries. Connect Target." But "There are no live tests for ads" on ChatGPT, insists Nick Turley, OpenAI's head of ChatGPT. Posting on X.com, he said "any screenshots you've seen are either not real or not ads." Engadget reports The OpenAI exec's explanation comes after another post from former xAI employee Benjamin De Kraker on X that has gained traction, which featured a screenshot showing an option to shop at Target within a ChatGPT conversation. OpenAI's Daniel McAuley responded to the post, arguing that it's not an ad but rather an example of app integration that the company announced in October. [To which De Kraker responded "when brands inject themselves into an unrelated chat and encourage the user to go shopping at their store, that's an ad. The more you pretend this isn't an ad because you guys gave it a different name, the less users like or trust you."] However, the company's chief research officer, Mark Chen, also replied on X that they "fell short" in this case, adding that "anything that feels like an ad needs to be handled with care." "We've turned off this kind of suggestion while we improve the model's precision," Chen wrote on X. "We're also looking at better controls so you can dial this down or off if you don't find it helpful."

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It runs locally, a free/open source home automation platform connecting all your devices together, regardless of brand. And GitHub's senior developer calls it "one of the most active, culturally important, and technically demanding open source ecosystems on the planet," with tens of thousands of contributors and millions of installations. That's confirmed by this year's "Octoverse" developer survey... Home Assistant was one of the fastest-growing open source projects by contributors, ranking alongside AI infrastructure giants like vLLM, Ollama, and Transformers. It also appeared in the top projects attracting first-time contributors, sitting beside massive developer platforms such as VS Code... Home Assistant is now running in more than 2 million households, orchestrating everything from thermostats and door locks to motion sensors and lighting. All on users' own hardware, not the cloud. The contributor base behind that growth is just as remarkable: 21,000 contributors in a single year... At its core, Home Assistant's problem is combinatorial explosion. The platform supports "hundreds, thousands of devices... over 3,000 brands," as [maintainer Franck Nijhof] notes. Each one behaves differently, and the only way to normalize them is to build a general-purpose abstraction layer that can survive vendor churn, bad APIs, and inconsistent firmware. Instead of treating devices as isolated objects behind cloud accounts, everything is represented locally as entities with states and events. A garage door is not just a vendor-specific API; it's a structured device that exposes capabilities to the automation engine. A thermostat is not a cloud endpoint; it's a sensor/actuator pair with metadata that can be reasoned about. That consistency is why people can build wildly advanced automations. Frenck describes one particularly inventive example: "Some people install weight sensors into their couches so they actually know if you're sitting down or standing up again. You're watching a movie, you stand up, and it will pause and then turn on the lights a bit brighter so you can actually see when you get your drink. You get back, sit down, the lights dim, and the movie continues." A system that can orchestrate these interactions is fundamentally a distributed event-driven runtime for physical spaces. Home Assistant may look like a dashboard, but under the hood it behaves more like a real-time OS for the home... The local-first architecture means Home Assistant can run on hardware as small as a Raspberry Pi but must handle workloads that commercial systems offload to the cloud: device discovery, event dispatch, state persistence, automation scheduling, voice pipeline inference (if local), real-time sensor reading, integration updates, and security constraints. This architecture forces optimizations few consumer systems attempt. "If any of this were offloaded to a vendor cloud, the system would be easier to build," the article points out. "But Home Assistant's philosophy reverses the paradigm: the home is the data center..." As Nijhof says of other vendor solutions, "It's crazy that we need the internet nowadays to change your thermostat."

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Merged to the mainline Linux kernel last year was GPIB drivers in the kernel's "staging" area. GPIB is the General Purpose Interface Bus launched by HP back in 1972 for lab equipment and more. After a year of cleaning up the code in the kernel's staging area, for Linux 6.19 the GPIB drivers have been promoted out of the staging area and into the Linux kernel proper. The Linux kernel now has stable driver support for this 8 Mbyte/s parallel bus that was introduced 53 years ago...

"People in their teens and early 20s are increasingly turning to old school tech," reports the BBC, "in a bid to unplug from the online world." Amazon UK told BBC Scotland News that retro-themed products surged in popularity during its Black Friday event, with portable vinyl turntables, Tamagotchis and disposable cameras among their best sellers. Retailers Currys and John Lewis also said they had seen retro gadgets making a comeback with sales of radios, instant cameras and alarm clocks showing big jumps. While some people scroll endlessly through Netflix in search of their next watch, 17-year-old Declan prefers the more traditional approach of having a DVD in his hands. He grew up surrounded by his gran's collection and later bought his own after visiting a shop with a friend. "The main selling point for me is the cases," he says. Streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ dominate the market but Declan says he values ownership. "It's nice to have something you own instead of paying for subscriptions all the time," he says. "If I lost access to streaming tomorrow, I'd still have my favourite movies ready to watch." He admits DVDs are a "dying way of watching movies" but that makes them cheaper. "I think they're just cool, there's something authentic about having DVDs," he says. "These things are generations old, it's nice to have them available." The BBC also writes that one 21-year-old likes the "deliberate artistry" of traditional-camera photography — and the nostalgic experience of using one. They interview a 20-year-old who says vinyl records have a "more authentic sound" — and he appreciates having the physical disc and jacket art. And one 21-year-old even tracked down the handheld PlayStation Portable he'd used as a kid...

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Why does Netflix want to buy Warner Bros, asks the chief film critic at the long-running motion-picture magazine Variety. "It is hard, at this moment, to resist the suspicion that the ultimate reason... is to eliminate the competition." [Warner Bros. is] one of the only companies that's keeping movies as we've known them alive... Some people think movies are going the way of the horse-and-buggy. A company like Warner Bros. has been the tangible proof that they're not. Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, has a different agenda. He has been unabashed about declaring that the era of movies seen in movie theaters is an antiquated concept. This is what he believes — which is fine. I think a more crucial point is that this is what he wants. The Netflix business strategy isn't simply about being the most successful streaming company. It's about changing the way people watch movies; it's about replacing what we used to call moviegoing with streaming. (You could still call it moviegoing, only now you're just going into your living room.) It in no way demonizes Sarandos — he'd probably take it as a compliment — to say that there's a world-domination aspect to the Netflix grand strategy. Sarandos's vision is to have the entire planet wired, with everyone watching movies and shows at home. There's a school of thought that sees this an advance, a step forward in civilization. "Remember the days when we used to have to go out to a movie theater? How funny! Now you can just pop up a movie — no trailers! — with the click of a remote...." Once he owns Warner Bros., will Sarandos keep using the studio to make movies that enjoy powerful runs in theaters the way Sinners and Weapons and One Battle After Another did? In the statement he made to investors and media today, Sarandos said, "I'd say right now, you should count on everything that is planned on going to the theater through Warner Bros. will continue to go to the theaters through Warner Bros." He added, "But our primary goal is to bring first-run movies to our members, because that's what they're looking for." Not exactly a ringing declaration of loyalty to the religion of cinema. And given Sarandos's track record, there is no reason to believe that he will suddenly change his spots. A letter sent to Congress by a group of anonymous Hollywood producers, who voiced "grave concerns" about Netflix buying Warner Bros., stated, "They have no incentive to support theatrical exhibition, and they have every incentive to kill it." If that happens, though, I have no doubt that Sarandos will be smart enough to do it gradually. Warner Bros. films will probably be released in a "normal" fashion...for a while. Maybe a year or two. But five years from now? There is good reason to believe that by then, a "Warner Bros. movie," even a DC comic-book extravaganza, would be a streaming-only release, or maybe a two-weeks-in-theaters release, all as a more general way of trying to shorten the theatrical window, which could be devastating to the movie business. Do we know all this to be true? No, but the indicators are somewhat overpowering. (He's been explicit about the windows...) An anonymous group of "concerned feature film producers" sent an open letter to Congress warning Netflix would "effectively hold a noose around the theatrical marketplace," reports Variety. And CNN also got this quote from Cinema United, a trade association that represents more than 30,000 movie screens in the United States. "Netflix's stated business model does not support theatrical exhibition," Cinema United President/CEO Michael O'Leary said in a statement. "In fact, it is the opposite."

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