ConfigFS is seeing a new maintainer step up to manage this RAM-based file-system. With Andreas Hindborg taking over maintainership of ConfigFS he's also landing patches authored by him for adding Rust programming language support to this file-system...

"Do we need publicly-owned social networks to escape Silicon Valley?" asks an opinion piece in Spain's El Pais newspaper. It argues it's necessary because social media platforms "have consolidated themselves as quasi-monopolies, with a business model that consists of violating our privacy in search of data to sell ads..." Among the proposals and alternatives to these platforms, the idea of public social media networks has often been mentioned. Imagine, for example, a Twitter for the European Union, or a Facebook managed by media outlets like the BBC. In February, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for "the development of our own browsers, European public and private social networks and messaging services that use transparent protocols." Former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — who governed from 2004 until 2011 — and the left-wing Sumar bloc in the Spanish Parliament have also proposed this. And, back in 2021, former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn made a similar suggestion. At first glance, this may seem like a good idea: a public platform wouldn't require algorithms — which are designed to stimulate addiction and confrontation — nor would it have to collect private information to sell ads. Such a platform could even facilitate public conversations, as pointed out by James Muldoon, a professor at Essex Business School and author of Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech (2022)... This could be an alternative that would contribute to platform pluralism and ensure we're not dependent on a handful of billionaires. This is especially important at a time when we're increasingly aware that technology isn't neutral and that private platforms respond to both economic and political interests. There's other possibilities. Further down they write that "it makes much more sense for the state to invest in, or collaborate with, decentralized social media networks based on free and interoperable software" that "allow for the portability of information and content." They even spoke to Cory Doctorow, who they say "proposes that the state cooperate with the software systems, developers, or servers for existing open-source platforms, such as the U.S. network Bluesky or the German firm Mastodon." (Doctorow adds that reclaiming digital independence "is incredibly important, it's incredibly difficult, and it's incredibly urgent." The article also acknowledges the option of "legislative initiatives — such as antitrust laws, or even stricter regulations than those imposed in Europe — that limit or prevent surveillance capitalism." (Though they also figures showing U.S. tech giants have one of the largest lobbying groups in the EU, with Meta being the top spender...)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Around the world fungal infections kill an estimated 2.5 million people a year, notes a report from CNN. But new research predicts that certain species of infection-causing Aspergillus fungi could spread into new areas as the earth's temperature rises. ("The study, published this month, is currently being peer reviewed...") Aspergillus fungi grow like small filaments in soils all over the world. Like almost all fungi, they release huge numbers of tiny spores that spread through the air. Humans inhale spores every day but most people won't experience any health issues; their immune system clears them. It's a different story for those with lung conditions including asthma, cystic fibrosis and COPD, as well as people with compromised immune systems, such as cancer and organ transplant patients, and those who have had severe flu or Covid-19. If the body's immune system fails to clear the spores, the fungus "starts to grow and basically kind of eat you from the inside out, saying it really bluntly," said Norman van Rijn, one of the study's authors and a climate change and infectious diseases researcher at the University of Manchester. Aspergillosis has very high mortality rates at around 20% to 40%, he said. It's also very difficult to diagnose, as doctors don't always have it on their radar and patients often present with fevers and coughs, symptoms common to many illnesses. Fungal pathogens are also becoming increasingly resistant to treatment, van Rijn added. There are only four classes of antifungal medicines available... Aspergillus flavus, a species that tends to prefer hotter, tropical climates, could increase its spread by 16% if humans continue burning large amounts of fossil fuels, the study found... [Mainly in parts of Europe and the northernmost edges of Scandinavia, Russia, China, and Canada, and the western edge of Alaska.] This species can cause severe infections in humans and is resistant to many antifungal medications. It also infects a range of food crops, posing a potential threat to food security. The World Health Organization added Aspergillus flavus to its critical group of fungal pathogens in 2022 because of its public health impact and antifungal resistance risk... Conversely, temperatures in some regions, including sub-Saharan Africa, could become so hot they are no longer hospitable to Aspergillus fungi. This could bring its own problems, as fungi play an important role in ecosystems, including healthy soils. As well as expanding their growing range, a warming world could also be increasing fungi's temperature tolerance, allowing them to better survive inside human bodies. Extreme weather events such as drought, floods and heatwaves can affect fungi, too, helping to spread spores over long distances. Thanks to Slashdot reader quonset for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A year ago, the original creator of SerenityOS posted that "for the past two years, I've been almost entirely focused on Ladybird, a new web browser that started as a simple HTML viewer for SerenityOS." So it became a stand-alone project that "aims to render the modern web with good performance, stability and security." And they're also building a new web engine. "We are building a brand-new browser from scratch, backed by a non-profit..." says Ladybird's official web site, adding that they're driven "by a web standards first approach." They promise it will be truly independent, with "no code from other browsers" (and no "default search engine" deals). "We are targeting Summer 2026 for a first Alpha version on Linux and macOS. This will be aimed at developers and early adopters." More from the Ladybird FAQ: We currently have 7 paid full-time engineers working on Ladybird. There is also a large community of volunteer contributors... The focus of the Ladybird project is to build a new browser engine from the ground up. We don't use code from Blink, WebKit, Gecko, or any other browser engine... For historical reasons, the browser uses various libraries from the SerenityOS project, which has a strong culture of writing everything from scratch. Now that Ladybird has forked from SerenityOS, it is no longer bound by this culture, and we will be making use of 3rd party libraries for common functionality (e.g image/audio/video formats, encryption, graphics, etc.) We are already using some of the same 3rd party libraries that other browsers use, but we will never adopt another browser engine instead of building our own... We don't have anyone actively working on Windows support, and there are considerable changes required to make it work well outside a Unix-like environment. We would like to do Windows eventually, but it's not a priority at the moment. "Ladybird's founder Andreas Kling has a solid background in WebKit-based C++ development with both Apple and Nokia,," writes software developer/author David Eastman: "You are likely reading this on a browser that is slightly faster because of my work," he wrote on his blog's introduction page. After leaving Apple, clearly burnt out, Kling found himself in need of something to healthily occupy his time. He could have chosen to learn needlepoint, but instead he opted to build his own operating system, called Serenity. Ladybird is a web project spin-off from this, to which Kling now devotes his time... [B]eyond the extensive open source politics, the main reason for supporting other independent browser projects is to maintain diverse alternatives — to prevent the web platform from being entirely captured by one company. This is where Ladybird comes in. It doesn't have any commercial foundation and it doesn't seem to be waiting to grab a commercial opportunity. It has a range of sponsors, some of which might be strategic (for example, Shopify), but most are goodwill or alignment-led. If you sponsor Ladybird, it will put your logo on its webpage and say thank you. That's it. This might seem uncontroversial, but other nonprofit organisations also give board seats to high-paying sponsors. Ladybird explicitly refuses to do this... The Acid3 Browser test (which has nothing whatsoever to do with ACID compliance in databases) is an old method of checking compliance with web standards, but vendors can still check how their products do against a battery of tests. They check compliance for the DOM2, CSS3, HTML4 and the other standards that make sure that webpages work in a predictable way. If I point my Chrome browser on my MacBook to http://acid3.acidtests.org/, it gets 94/100. Safari does a bit better, getting to 97/100. Ladybird reportedly passes all 100 tests. "All the code is hosted on GitHub," says the Ladybird home page. "Clone it, build it, and join our Discord if you want to collaborate on it!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Whether General Motors survives "depends in part on whether its bets on battery technology pay off," writes the Wall Street Journal. At $33,600 the company's Chevy Equinox is one of the cheapest EVs in America (only $5,000 more than the gas-powered model). "But it also recently announced a novel type of battery that promises to be significantly cheaper, while still providing long range, due to be rolled out in 2028..." Like many of its competitors, GM has made huge investments in EV battery factories, and in production lines for the vehicles themselves, and it faces challenges in generating a return on investment in the short term... In the long run, however, GM's focus on creating a North American supply chain for batteries could prove savvy, says David Whiston, U.S. auto equities analyst at Morningstar. The company is investing $625 million to mine lithium in Nevada. It is working on sourcing every material and every part in its batteries domestically, down to the copper and aluminum foils that go into its cells, says [battery and sustainability lead Kurt] Kelty... GM recently unveiled a new type of battery the company has been working on for a decade called lithium manganese-rich batteries, or LMR. These batteries combine the low cost of LFP batteries with the longer range of conventional, expensive lithium-ion batteries. What makes LMR batteries more affordable is that they use far less nickel, cobalt and other minerals that have become increasingly expensive. Instead, they use more manganese, a common element... The company's next initiative, says Kelty, is to further drive down the cost of its batteries by putting more of another common element, silicon, into them. "If GM can continue to grow demand for its EVs, in a few years the rollout of its latest tech could give it a price and performance advantage..." the article points out. While the EV transition is happening more slowly than projected in the U.S., GM hiring Kelty is a bet that the country's current EV struggles are temporary, and that technologists like Kelty will help GM get past them. "When we reach cost parity with [internal combustion engine] vehicles, I think that's one big milestone," says Kelty. "When you get there, then you're really going to see the transition happen very quickly — and we're not that far away from it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bon clairement, pas beaucoup de changements cette semaine, c'est BORING. Chez Intel nous avons un seul et unique changement, sur le 14700K qui baisse de 7 euros. Chez AMD, nous avons tout de même plus de mouvements. Le 7900X baisse de 10 euros, le 7800X3D recule de 26 euros, le 7950X3D baisse de 40 euros, le 9600X fait - 24 euros, le 9700X perd 10 euros et le 9950X3D baisse de 33 euros. […]

Lire la suite

Le principe reste simple : on est le week-end, on vous montre une configuration, pas forcément un mod, mais plutôt des montages hors normes, farfelus, ou encore ultra sobres. La seule chose que l'on félicite ici, c'est le travail ! On vous laisse critiquer le goût et les couleurs dans les commentaires. Durant cette section, nous allons sûrement déterrer de vieilles configurations et nous n'aurons pas forcément de hardware musclé. Le but réel est de vous montrer qu'on peut tout faire en matière de montage. Alors, n'hésitez pas à nous proposer vos configurations via Lucas en MP, peut-être seront-elles éditées ? […]

Lire la suite

Ahead of the Linux 6.16 merge window opening, several early pull requests were already sent out this week in advance of Linux 6.15 expected for release later today. Among those early feature pulls was Btrfs maintainer David Sterba sending out updates to this advanced copy-on-write file-system...

Avec le Computex, la semaine fut plutôt légère en articles, tests et dossiers. Il y a néanmoins de la lecture, voici un point pour les retardataires ! Nul doute que les jours à venir seront plus chargés, ici comme ailleurs. Alors on profite du calme avant l'overdose. […]

Lire la suite

Besides pressure on Apple to make iPhones in the U.S., CEO Tim Cook "is facing off against two U.S. judges, European and worldwide regulators, state and federal lawmakers, and even a creator of the iPhone," writes the Wall Street Journal, "to say nothing of the cast of rivals outrunning Apple in artificial intelligence." Each is a threat to Apple's hefty profit margins, long the company's trademark and the reason investors drove its valuation above $3 trillion before any other company. Shareholders are still Cook's most important constituency. The stock's 25% fall from its peak shows their concern about whether he — or anyone — can navigate the choppy 2025 waters. What can be said for Apple is that the company is patient, and that has often paid off in the past. They also note OpenAI's purchase of Jony Ive's company, with Sam Altman saying internally they hope to make 100 million AI "companion" devices: It is hard to gauge the potential for a brand-new computing device from a company that has never made one. Yet the fact that it is coming from the man who led design of the iPhone and other hit Apple products means it can't be dismissed. Apple sees the threat coming: "You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now, as crazy as that sounds," an Apple executive, Eddy Cue, testified in a court case this month... The company might not need to be first in AI. It didn't make the first music player, smartphone or tablet. It waited, and then conquered each market with the best. A question is whether a strategy that has been successful in devices will work for AI. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Dell Latitude 7455 (X1E-80-100) is the latest laptop powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC seeing patches for enabling Linux support...

With Linux 6.15 there are many exciting new features for this kernel version expected to debut as stable later today. Following the Linux 6.15 stable release, the Linux 6.16 merge window will then open. Here is an early look at a portion of the changes anticipated to be submitted and more than likely merged for this next kernel version...

Ahead of the Linux 6.15 kernel stable release expected later today, more input driver updates have been merged for this new kernel version that include introducing compatibility with some newer gaming controllers...

Alors que la fête battait son plein à Taipei, le monde du matériel était en ébullition. Or, pas facile pour les rédactions d’assurer des tests en quantité tout en étant présent sur site pour couvrir l’évènement ! Fort heureusement, la RTX 5060 était là pour essaimer ça et là ses performances — et so...

Marque récente, Ocypus a déjà un catalogue bien rempli, et les choses devraient s'accélérer dans les mois à venir. Après avoir proposé des produits avec un affichage discret sous forme de points, la marque passe à l'écran et ne fait pas les choses à moitié avec trois produits originaux. Le premier et le second mettent en avant un style réussi, ou du moins qui change : le Sigma L PRO mise sur du carré avec un effet flottant, tandis que le Sigma L va vers le circulaire tout en intégrant un écran rectangulaire, mais avec un arceau en aluminium très sympathique sur le haut. […]

Lire la suite

Alors que la descente aux enfers de Scythe est désormais terminée en Europe, la marque japonaise affichait un petit stand sur le Computex... Avec des nouveautés. Nous ne nous y attendions pas, et quel plaisir de revoir des séries emblématiques revenir, à l'image du Big Shuriken en quatrième version ou encore d'un Mugen 6 aux couleurs TUF Gaming. La disponibilité chez nous n'étant pas vraiment à l'ordre du jour, voici juste quelques photos. De toute façon, aucune fiche technique n'était présente. […]

Lire la suite

Il y a quelques années, SilverStone a dû faire un virage à 180° et stopper quelques productions emblématiques. Et onéreuses, bien trop même. Mais pour ce Computex, la marque a décidé de nous faire plaisir avec des modèles qui rappellent de suite d'anciennes séries, dont la célèbre Temjin. Un retour dans le passé qui fait plaisir, même si on vise ici plus le serveur ou la station de travail que le PC pour un particulier. Mais quand on aime, on ne compte pas, y compris pour un HTPC ! N'écrivons plus, mettons juste des photos. […]

Lire la suite

Chez ID-COOLING, deux nouveautés attiraient le regarde avec des choix originaux. D'un côté, un ventilateur fin, et de l'autre un radiateur trop large. Commençons par ce second, avec un concept finalement très simple malgré une question tout aussi simple et évidente : pourquoi faire un radiateur assez large pour un ventilateur de 120 mm et, justement, rester sur du 120 ? Pour garder une compatibilité 360 mm sur la longueur dans les boitiers, tout en passant de 12 à 15 passages pour le liquide. Des jupes sont ainsi disposées à gauche et à droite des ventilateurs pour compléter le design, qui reste assez moyen ; il faut le dire. Mais si ça rentre dans tous les boitiers et que les performances grimpent un peu, pourquoi pas ? […]

Lire la suite

Chaque année, le stand de Noctua est l'occasion de voir des prototypes et des révisions de prototypes déjà vu l'année passée, ou même les années précédentes. Mais pour cette dernière édition du Computex, les choses étaient différentes... Noctua veut tenir un peu mieux sans roadmap tout en avançant à son rythme sur plusieurs projets, dont des collaborations. Et la première est simple, puisqu'il s'agit d'une souris Pulsar Feinman F01 qui intègre un ventilateur afin de refroidir la main du joueur. L'idée est loin d'être innovante, mais la souris Pulsar à la base est réputée et le petit ventilateur de 40 mm de Noctua n'alourdit pas trop l'ensemble et se montre silencieux si on se base sur le modèle retail. Attendue pour la fin de l'année, la souris devrait représenter un nouveau palier dans le haut de gamme de Pulsar : coque en alliage de magnésium, ventilateur, capteur XS-1 à 32000 dpi, station de charge et fréquence d'interrogation de 8000 Hz... Plus couleur marron ! […]

Lire la suite

Un boitier de 750 x 288 x 563 mm ? Ca se passe chez Geometric Future avec le prochain Model 9, un boitier énorme et surtout très... Organique dans son style ? Avec ses rondeurs, le boitier ne passe pas inaperçu et l'effet serait le même sur une version plus petite ; c'est original et réussi, mais ça ne semble pas le meilleur boitier pour une intégration facile des composants. Car si l'agencement est simple, malgré la présence d'une chambre à part dans le haut pour le watercooling, ce qui permet d'avoir trois niveaux pour installer des ventilateurs, les panneaux semblent massifs et plutôt lourds. A voir donc, si on a les moyens, le boitier étant attendu pour une somme rondelette. Il faudra ensuite mettre des composants imposants (et chers ?) pour le remplir, et pourquoi pas charger les quatorze emplacements pour des ventilateurs. […]

Lire la suite