Artist Keith Thomson is a [1]modern (and whimsical) Edward Hopper . And Apple TV [2]says he created the "festive artwork" [3]shared on X by Apple CEO Tim Cook on Christmas Eve, "made on MacBook Pro."

Its intentionally-off picture of milk and cookies was meant to tease the season finale of Pluribus . ("Merry Christmas Eve, Carol..." Cook had posted.)

But others were convinced that the weird image was AI-generated.

[4]Tech blogger John Gruber was blunt . "Tim Cook posts AI Slop in Christmas message on Twitter/X, ostensibly to promote 'Pluribus'."

> As for sloppy details, the carton is labeled both "Whole Milk" and "Lowfat Milk", and the "Cow Fun Puzzle" maze is just goofily wrong. (I can't recall ever seeing a puzzle of any kind on a milk carton, because they're waxy and hard to write on. It's like a conflation of milk cartons and cereal boxes.)

Tech author Ben Kamens — who just days earlier had [5]blogged about generating mazes with AI — said the image showed the " [6]specific quirks " of generative AI mazes (including the way the maze couldn't be solved, expect by going around the maze altogether). Former Google Ventures partner [7]M.G. Siegler even wondered if AI use intentionally echoed the [8]themes of Pluribus — e.g., the creepiness of a collective intelligence — since otherwise "this seems far too obvious to be a mistake/blunder on Apple's part." ( [9]Someone on Reddit pointed out that in Pluribus 's dystopian world, [10]milk plays a key role — and the open spout of the "natural" milk's carton does touch a suspiciously-shining light on the Christmas tree...)

Slashdot [11]contacted artist Keith Thomson to try to ascertain what happened ...



[1] https://www.keiththomsonart.com/

[2] https://x.com/appletv/status/2003927243245203539

[3] https://x.com/tim_cook/status/2003873311504130173

[4] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/27/slopibus

[5] https://kamens.com/blog/generating-custom-mazes-with-ai

[6] https://x.com/kamens/status/2004441805962764779

[7] https://spyglass.org/apples-pluribus-ai/

[8] https://spyglass.org/pluribus-as-ai-allegory/

[9] https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1pv48uw/comment/nvtt3o2/

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Got_Milk_(Pluribus)

[11] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/12/28/2048225/did-tim-cook-post-ai-slop-in-his-christmas-message-promoting-pluribus#keith_thomson_says

An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from The Guardian :

> A Texas father used the parental controls on his teenage daughter's cell phone to find and help rescue her after she was kidnapped at knifepoint while walking her dog on Christmas, authorities allege... Her father subsequently located her phone through the device's parental controls, the agency's statement said. The phone was about 2 miles (3.2km) away from him in a secluded, partly wooded area in neighboring Harris county... She then managed to escape with a hand from her father, who called law enforcement officials, said the statement from the Montgomery sheriff's office.

The suspect has since been [2] arrested and charged .



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/28/texas-father-rescues-kidnapped-daughter-tracking-phone

[2] https://abc7chicago.com/post/porter-texas-kidnapping-giovanni-rosales-espinoza-arrested-charged-aggravated-mcso-says/18327940/

Even after its acquisition by Qualcomm, the EFF believes Arduino " [1]isn't imposing any new bans on tinkering with or reverse engineering Arduino boards ," (according to Mitch Stoltz, EFF director for competition and IP litigation). While Adafruit's managing editor Phillip Torrone had claimed to 36,000+ followers on LinkedIn that Arduino users were now "explicitly forbidden from reverse engineering," Arduino corrected him in [2]a blog post , noting that clause in their Terms & Conditions was only for Arduino's Software-as-a-Service cloud applications. " [3]Anything that was open, stays open ."

And this week EE Times spoke to Guneet Bedi, SVP of Arduino, "who was unequivocal in saying that Arduino's governance structure had remained intact even after the acquisition."

> "As a business unit within Qualcomm, Arduino continues to make independent decisions on its product portfolio, with no direction imposed on where it should or should not go," Bedi said. "Everything that Arduino builds will remain open and openly available to developers, with design engineers, students and makers continuing to be the primary focus.... Developers who had mastered basic embedded workflows were now asking how to run large language models at the edge and work with artificial intelligence for vision and voice, with an open source mindset," he said. According to Bedi, this was where Qualcomm's technology became relevant. "Qualcomm's chipsets are high performance while also being very low power, which comes from their mobile and Android phone heritage. Despite being great technology, it is not easily accessible to design engineers because of cost and complexity. That made this a strong fit," he said.

>

> The most visible outcome of this acquisition is [4]Uno Q , which Bedi described as being comparable to a mid-tier Android phone in capability, starting at a price of $44. For Arduino, this marked a shift beyond microcontrollers without abandoning them. "At the end of the day, we have not gone away from our legacy," Bedi said. "You still have a real-time microcontroller, and you still write code the way Arduino developers are used to. What we added is compute, without forcing people to change how they work." Uno Q combines a Linux-based compute system with a real-time microcontroller from the STM32 family. "You do not need two different development environments or two different hardware platforms," Bedi added... Rather than introducing a customized operating system, Arduino chose standard Debian upstream. "We are not locking developers into anything," Bedi said. "It is standard Debian, completely open...." Pre-built models covering tasks like object detection and voice recognition run locally on the board....

>

> While the first reference design uses Qualcomm silicon, Bedi was careful to stress that this does not define the roadmap. "There is zero dependency on Qualcomm silicon," he said. "The architecture is portable. Tomorrow, we can run this on something else." That distinction matters, particularly for developers wary of vendor lock-in following the acquisition. Uno Q does compete directly with platforms like Raspberry Pi and Nvidia Jetson, but Bedi framed the difference less in terms of raw performance and more in flexibility. "When you build on those platforms, you are locked to the board," he said. "Here, you can build a prototype, and if you like it, you can also get access to the chip and design your own hardware." With built-in storage removing the need for external components, Uno Q positions itself less as a faster board and more as a way to simplify what had become an increasingly messy development stack...

>

> Looking a year ahead, Bedi believes developers should experience continuity rather than disruption. The familiar Arduino approach to embedded and real-time systems remains unchanged, while extending naturally into more compute-intensive applications... Taken together, Bedi's comments suggest that Arduino's post-acquisition direction is less about changing what Arduino is, and more about expanding what it can realistically be used for, without abandoning the simplicity that made it relevant in the first place.

"We want to redefine prototyping in the age of physical artificial intelligence," Bedi said...



[1] https://thenewstack.io/adafruit-arduinos-rules-are-incompatible-with-open-source/

[2] https://blog.arduino.cc/2025/11/21/the-arduino-terms-of-service-and-privacy-policy-update-setting-the-record-straight/

[3] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/11/24/2144256/arduinos-new-terms-of-service-worries-hobbyists-ahead-of-qualcomm-acquisition

[4] https://www.arduino.cc/product-uno-q

The Register reports on [1]challenges facing Europe's pursuit of "digital sovereignty ":

> The US CLOUD Act of 2018 allows American authorities to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data, regardless of where that data is stored globally. This places European organizations in a precarious position, as it directly clashes with Europe's own stringent privacy regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)... Furthermore, these warrants often come with a [2]gag order , legally prohibiting the provider from informing their customer that their data has been accessed. This renders any contractual clauses requiring transparency or notification effectively meaningless. While technical measures like encryption are often proposed as a solution, their effectiveness depends entirely on who controls the encryption keys. If the US provider manages the keys, as is common in many standard cloud services, they can be [3]forced to decrypt the data for authorities, making such safeguards moot....

>

> American hyperscalers have recognized the market demand for sovereignty and now aggressively market 'sovereign cloud' solutions, typically by placing datacenters on European soil or partnering with local operators. Critics call this 'sovereignty washing'... [Cristina Caffarra, a competition economistand driving force behind the Eurostack initiative] warns that this does not resolve the fundamental problem. "A company subject to the extraterritorial laws of the United States cannot be considered sovereign for Europe," she says. "That simply doesn't work." Because, as long as the parent company is American, it remains subject to the CLOUD Act...

>

> Even when organizations make deliberate choices in favour of European providers, those decisions can be undone by market forces. A recent acquisition in the Netherlands illustrates this risk. In November 2025, the American IT services giant Kyndryl announced its intention to acquire Solvinity, a Dutch managed cloud provider. This came as an "unpleasant surprise" to several of its government clients, including the municipality of Amsterdam and the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. These bodies had specifically chosen Solvinity to reduce their dependence on American firms and mitigate CLOUD Act risks.

Still, The Register provides several examples of government systems that are "taking concrete steps to regain control over their IT."

Austria's Federal Ministry for Economy, Energy and Tourism now has 1,200 employees on the European open-source collaboration platform Nextcloud, leading several other Austrian ministries to also implement Nextcloud. (The Ministry's CISO tells the Register "We can see our input in Nextcloud releases. That is a feeling we never had with Microsoft.")

France's Ministry of Economics and Finance recently completed NUBO (which the Register describes as "an OpenStack-based private cloud initiative designed to handle sensitive data and services.")

In November the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced it was [4]replacing its Microsoft office software with a European alternative .

The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is [5]replacing Microsoft products with open-source alternatives for 30,000 civil servants

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [6]mspohr for sharing the article.



[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/22/europe_gets_serious_about_cutting/

[2] https://cyberscoop.com/microsoft-cloud-fourth-amendment-justice-department/

[3] https://cpl.thalesgroup.com/blog/encryption/cloud-encryption-key-management-byok-hyok

[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/31/international_criminal_court_ditches_office/

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/15/schleswig_holstein_open_source/

[6] https://www.slashdot.org/~mspohr

Laptop makers are facing record-setting memory prices next year. The site Notebookcheck catalogs [1]how different companies are responding :

> Sources told [Korean business newspaper] Chosun Biz that some manufacturers have signed preliminary contracts with [2]Samsung , [3]Micron , and SK Hynix. Even so, it won't prevent DDR5 RAM prices from soaring 45% higher by the end of 2026.... Before the memory shortage, PC sales had been on the upswing in part because of forced [4]Windows 11 upgrades . That trend will likely reverse in 2026, as buyers avoid Lenovo laptops and alternatives from its rivals.

>

> Realizing a slowdown in purchases is inevitable, postponed launches are one potential outcome. Other manufacturers, including [5]Dell and [6]Framework have already announced impending price hikes... [The article also cites reports that one laptop manufacturer "plans to raise the prices of high-end models by as much as 30%."] U.S.-based [7]Maingear now encourages customers to mail in their own modules to complete custom builds. Yet, without recycling parts from older systems, that won't result in significant savings for consumers.



[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/With-memory-prices-expected-to-rise-another-45-in-2026-Lenovo-may-delay-laptop-launches.1192702.0.html

[2] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsung-extends-DDR4-RAM-production-but-high-memory-prices-and-shortage-likely-to-continue.1192023.0.html

[3] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Crucial-will-honor-RAM-and-SSD-warranty-as-Micron-nixes-renowned-memory-brand-to-chase-AI-profits.1177680.0.html

[4] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-upgrade-possible-for-older-models-TPM-2-0-apparently-not-mandatory.1089854.0.html

[5] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-raises-PC-prices-by-up-to-20-as-Lenovo-warns-of-January-hikes-amid-soaring-DRAM-costs.1179336.0.html

[6] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Framework-warns-of-further-laptop-price-increases-as-DDR5-RAM-costs-surge-while-announcing-a-further-price-adjustment-a-week-after-its-last-hike.1192510.0.html

[7] https://maingear.com/blogs/promotions/maingear-byo-ram-program

An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from the CBC :

> Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he may have been defamed by Google after it recently produced an AI-generated summary falsely identifying him as a sex offender. The Juno Award-winning musician said he learned of the online misinformation last week after a First Nation north of Halifax confronted him with the summary and cancelled a concert planned for Dec. 19. "You are being put into a less secure situation because of a media company — that's what defamation is," MacIsaac said in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press, adding he was worried about what might have happened had the erroneous content surfaced while he was trying to cross an international border...

>

> The 50-year-old virtuoso fiddler said he later learned the inaccurate claims were taken from online articles regarding a man in Atlantic Canada with the same last name... [W]hen CBC News reached him by phone on Christmas Eve, he said he'd already received queries from law firms across the country interested in taking it on pro bono.



[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/ashley-macisaac-ai-accusation-9.7026786

An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from the BBC :

> There is growing controversy over recent evidence suggesting that a mysterious force known as dark energy might be changing in a way that challenges our current understanding of time and space. An analysis by a South Korean team has hinted that, rather than the Universe continuing to expand, galaxies could be pulled back together by gravity, ending in what astronomers call a "Big Crunch".

>

> The scientists involved believe that they may be on the verge of one of the biggest discoveries in astronomy for a generation. Other astronomers have questioned these findings, but these critics have not been able to completely dismiss the South Korean team's assertions...

>

> The controversy began in March with unexpected results from an instrument on a telescope in the Arizona desert called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (Desi)... The data hinted that acceleration of the galaxies had changed over time, something not in line with the standard picture, according to Prof Ofer Lehav of University College London, who is involved with the Desi project. "Now with this changing dark energy going up and then down, again, we need a new mechanism. And this could be a shake up for the whole of physics," he says. Then in November [2]the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) published research from a South Korean team that seems to back the view that the weirdness of dark energy is weirder still.

>

> Prof Young Wook Lee of Yonsei University in Seoul and his team went back to the kind of supernova data that first revealed dark energy 27 years ago. Instead of treating these stellar explosions as having one standard brightness, they adjusted for the ages of the galaxies they came from and worked out how bright the supernovas really were. This adjustment showed that not only had dark energy changed over time, but, shockingly, that the acceleration was slowing down... If, as Prof Lee's results suggest, the force that is pushing galaxies away from each other — dark energy — is weakening, then one possibility is that it becomes so weak that gravity begins to pull the galaxies back together.



[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17xe5kl78vo

[2] https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/544/1/975/8281988?login=false

"I believe artificial intelligence will displace workers at a scale many people don't yet realize," says Sal Kahn (founder/CEO of the nonprofit Khan Academy). But in an op-ed in the New York Times he also proposes a solution that "could change the trajectory of the lives of millions who will be displaced..."

"I believe that every company benefiting from automation — which is most American companies — should... [1]dedicate 1 percent of its profits to help retrain the people who are being displaced ."

> This isn't charity. It is in the best interest of these companies. If the public sees corporate profits skyrocketing while livelihoods evaporate, backlash will follow — through regulation, taxes or outright bans on automation. Helping retrain workers is common sense, and such a small ask that these companies would barely feel it, while the public benefits could be enormous...

>

> Roughly a dozen of the world's largest corporations now have a combined profit of over a trillion dollars each year. One percent of that would create a $10 billion annual fund that, in part, could create a centralized skill training platform on steroids: online learning, ways to verify skills gained and apprenticeships, coaching and mentorship for tens of millions of people. The fund could be run by an independent nonprofit that would coordinate with corporations to ensure that the skills being developed are exactly what are needed. This is a big task, but it is doable; over the past 15 years, online learning platforms have shown that it can be done for academic learning, and many of the same principles apply for skill training.

"The problem isn't that people can't work," Khan writes in the essay. "It's that we haven't built systems to help them continue learning and connect them to new opportunities as the world changes rapidly."

> To meet the challenges, we don't need to send millions back to college. We need to create flexible, free paths to hiring, many of which would start in high school and extend through life. Our economy needs low-cost online mechanisms for letting people demonstrate what they know. Imagine a model where capability, not how many hours students sit in class, is what matters; where demonstrated skills earn them credit and where employers recognize those credits as evidence of readiness to enter an apprenticeship program in the trades, health care, hospitality or new categories of white-collar jobs that might emerge...

>

> There is no shortage of meaningful work — only a shortage of pathways into it.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [2]destinyland for sharing the article.



[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/opinion/artificial-intelligence-jobs-worker-training.html?unlocked_article_code=1._08.sGPG.39XLXKSUfVyh&smid=url-share

[2] https://www.slashdot.org/~destinyland

An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from the Wall Street Journal :

> Sending drones and robots into battle, rather than humans, has become a tenet of modern warfare. Nowhere does that make more sense than in the frozen expanses of the Arctic. But the closer you get to the North Pole, the less useful cutting-edge technology becomes. Magnetic storms distort satellite signals; frigid temperatures drain batteries or freeze equipment in minutes; navigation systems lack reference points on snowfields.

>

> During a seven-nation polar exercise in Canada earlier this year to test equipment worth millions of dollars, the U.S. military's all-terrain arctic vehicles broke down after 30 minutes because hydraulic fluids congealed in the cold. Swedish soldiers participating in the exercise were handed $20,000 night-vision optics that broke because the aluminum in the goggles couldn't handle the minus 40 degree Fahrenheit conditions....

>

> An arctic conflict would force war planners back to basics. Extreme cold makes the most common components brittle. Low temperatures alter the physical properties of rubber, causing seals to lose their elasticity and leak. Traces of water or humidity freeze into ice crystals that can scratch pumps and create blockages. Wires should be insulated with silicone rather than PVC, which can crack. Oil and other lubricants thicken and congeal. In most standard hydraulic systems, fluid becomes syrupy and can affect everything from aircraft controls to missile launchers and radar masts. A single freeze-up can knock out an entire weapons platform or immobilize a convoy.

Even the Aurora Borealis interferes with radio communications and satellite-navigation systems, according to the article.



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/hardware-and-devices/where-drones-drop-dead-and-gps-goes-haywire/ar-AA1T81xB

An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from Engadget :

> OpenAI is looking for a new Head of Preparedness who can help it anticipate the potential harms of its models and how they can be abused, in order to guide the company's safety strategy.

>

> It comes at the end of a year that's seen OpenAI hit with numerous accusations about ChatGPT's impacts on users' mental health, including a few [2]wrongful death [3]lawsuits . In a post on X about the position, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman [4]acknowledged that the "potential impact of models on mental health was something we saw a preview of in 2025," along with other "real challenges" that have arisen alongside models' capabilities. The Head of Preparedness "is a critical role at an important time," he said.

>

> Per [5]the job listing , the Head of Preparedness (who will make $555K, plus equity), "will lead the technical strategy and execution of OpenAI's [6]Preparedness framework , our framework explaining OpenAI's approach to tracking and preparing for frontier capabilities that create new risks of severe harm."

"These questions are hard," Altman [7]posted on X.com , "and there is little precedent; a lot of ideas that sound good have some real edge cases... This will be a stressful job and you'll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately."

The [8]listing says OpenAI's Head of Preparedness "will lead a small, high-impact team to drive core Preparedness research, while partnering broadly across Safety Systems and OpenAI for end-to-end adoption and execution of the framework." They're looking for someone "comfortable making clear, high-stakes technical judgments under uncertainty."



[1] https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-is-hiring-a-new-head-of-preparedness-to-try-to-predict-and-mitigate-ais-harms-220330486.html?src=rss

[2] https://www.engadget.com/ai/lawsuit-accuses-chatgpt-of-reinforcing-delusions-that-led-to-a-womans-death-183141193.html

[3] https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-first-known-ai-wrongful-death-lawsuit-accuses-openai-of-enabling-a-teens-suicide-212058548.html

[4] https://x.com/sama/status/2004939524216910323?s=20

[5] https://openai.com/careers/head-of-preparedness-san-francisco/

[6] https://openai.com/careers/head-of-preparedness-san-francisco/

[7] https://x.com/sama/status/2004939524216910323?s=20

[8] https://openai.com/careers/head-of-preparedness-san-francisco/

An anonymous Slashdot reader shared [1]this story from Interesting Engineering :

> Cybersecurity specialists from the research group DARKNAVY have demonstrated how modern humanoid robots can be compromised and weaponised through weaknesses in their AI-driven control systems.

>

> In a controlled test, the team demonstrated that a commercially available humanoid robot could be hijacked with nothing more than spoken commands, exposing how voice-based interaction can serve as an attack vector rather than a safeguard, reports Yicaiglobal... Using short-range wireless communication, the hijacked machine transmitted the exploit to another robot that was not connected to the network. Within minutes, this second robot was also taken over, demonstrating how a single breach could cascade through a group of machines. To underline the real-world implications, the researchers issued a hostile command during the demonstration. The robot advanced toward a mannequin on stage and struck it, illustrating the potential for physical harm.



[1] https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics/security-flaw-could-allow-hackers-control-robots

Phoronix reports on "an exciting post-Christmas patch series out on the Linux kernel mailing list" [1]proposing "a new runtime standby ABI that is similar in nature to the 'Modern Standby' functionality found with Microsoft Windows..."

> Modern Standby is a low-power mode on Windows 11 for letting systems remain connected to the network and appear "sleeping" but will allow for instant wake-up for notifications, music playback, and other functionality. The display is off, the network remains online, and background tasks can wake-up the system if needed with Microsoft Modern Standby...

>

> "This series introduces a new runtime standby ABI to allow firing Modern Standby firmware notifications that modify hardware appearance from userspace without suspending the kernel," [according to the email about the proposed patch series]. "This allows userspace to set the inactivity state of the device so that it looks like it is asleep (e.g., flashing the power button) while still being able to perform basic computations..."

>

> Those interested can see the [2]RFC patch series for the work in its current form, in particular [3]the documentation patch outlines the proposed /sys/power/standby interface.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Runtime-ABI-Standby

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-acpi/20251226102656.6296-1-lkml@antheas.dev/

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-acpi/20251226102656.6296-2-lkml@antheas.dev/

An anonymous reader shared [1]this report from the Associated Press :

> Two NATO-nation intelligence services suspect Russia is developing a new anti-satellite weapon to target Elon Musk's Starlink constellation with destructive orbiting clouds of shrapnel, with the aim of reining in Western space superiority that has helped Ukraine on the battlefield. Intelligence findings seen by The Associated Press say the so-called "zone-effect" weapon would seek to flood Starlink orbits with hundreds of thousands of high-density pellets, potentially disabling multiple satellites at once but also risking catastrophic collateral damage to other orbiting systems.

>

> Analysts who haven't seen the findings say they doubt such a weapon could work without causing uncontrollable chaos in space for companies and countries, including Russia and its ally China, that rely on thousands of orbiting satellites for communications, defense and other vital needs. Such repercussions, including risks to its own space systems, could steer Moscow away from deploying or using such a weapon, analysts said. "I don't buy it. Like, I really don't," said Victoria Samson, a space-security specialist at the Secure World Foundation who leads the Colorado-based nongovernmental organization's [2]annual study of anti-satellite systems. "I would be very surprised, frankly, if they were to do something like that." [Later they suggested the research might just be experimental.]

>

> But the commander of the Canadian military's Space Division, Brig. Gen. Christopher Horner, said such Russian work cannot be ruled out in light of previous U.S. allegations that Russia also has been pursuing an indiscriminate [3]nuclear, space-based weapon . "I can't say I've been briefed on that type of system. But it's not implausible," he said... The French military's Space Command said in a statement to the AP that it could not comment on the findings but said, "We can inform you that Russia has, in recent years, been multiplying irresponsible, dangerous, and even hostile actions in space."

The article also points out that this month Russia "said it has fielded a new ground-based missile system, the S-500, which is capable of hitting low-orbit targets..."



[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-starlink-musk-ukraine-space-china-canada-c69c1fda5ffc93828712ab723e606a2c

[2] https://www.swfound.org/publications-and-reports/2025-global-counterspace-capabilities-report

[3] https://apnews.com/article/congress-national-security-6a4497fc2d74ebbe2ab3483ba43e09b3

NVIDIA has been "gradually dropping support for older videocards," [1]notes Hackaday , "with the Pascal (GTX 10xx) GPUs most recently getting axed."

"What's more surprising is the terrible way that this is being handled by certain Linux distributions, with Arch Linux currently a prime example.?"

> On these systems, updating the OS with a Pascal, Maxwell or similarly unsupported GPU will [2]result in the new driver failing to load and thus the user getting kicked back to the CLI to try and sort things back out there. This issue is summarized by [Brodie Robertson] [3]in a recent video .

"Users with GTX 10xx series and older cards must switch to the legacy proprietary branch to maintain support," explains an [4]announcement on the Arch Linux mailing list . But Hackaday [5]points out that using the legacy option "breaks Steam as it relies on official NVIDIA dependencies, which requires an additional series of hacks to hopefully restore this functionality.

"Fortunately the Arch Wiki provides a starting point on [6]what to do ."



[1] https://hackaday.com/2025/12/26/nvidia-drops-pascal-support-on-linux-causing-chaos-on-arch-linux/

[2] https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-announce@lists.archlinux.org/thread/AMPPOBL6ZQPEOQ722IE3O5BO3PPWCQNA/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-obijeo_bU

[4] https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-announce@lists.archlinux.org/thread/AMPPOBL6ZQPEOQ722IE3O5BO3PPWCQNA/

[5] https://hackaday.com/2025/12/26/nvidia-drops-pascal-support-on-linux-causing-chaos-on-arch-linux/

[6] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA

Waymo explained this week that its self-driving car technology is already "designed to handle dark traffic signals," and successfully handled over 7,000 last Saturday [1]during San Francisco's long power outage , properly treating those intersections as four-way stops. But while during the long outage their cars sometimes experienced a "backlog" when waiting for confirmation checks (leading them to freeze in intersections), Waymo said Tuesday they're implementing "fleet-wide updates" to provide their self-driving cars "specific power outage context, allowing it to navigate more decisively."

Ironically, two days later Waymo paused their service again in San Francisco. But this time it was due to a warning from the National Weather Service about a powerful storm bringing the possibility of flash flooding and power outages, [2]reports CNBC . They add that Waymo "didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, or say whether regulators required its service pause on Thursday given the flash flood warnings." And they also note Waymo still faces criticism over last Saturday's incident:

> The former CEO of San Francisco's Municipal Transit Authority, Jeffrey Tumlin, told CNBC that regulators and robotaxi companies can take valuable lessons away from the chaos that arose with Waymo vehicles during the PG&E power outages last week. "I think we need to be asking 'what is a reasonable number of [autonomous vehicles] to have on city streets, by time of day, by geography and weather?'" Tumlin said. He also suggested regulators may want to set up a staged system that will allow autonomous vehicle companies to rapidly scale their operations, provided they meet specific tests. One of those tests, he said, would be how quickly a company can get their autonomous vehicles safely out of the way of traffic if they encounter something that is confusing like a four-way intersection with no functioning traffic lights.

>

> Cities and regulators should also seek more data from robotaxi companies about the planned or actual performance of their vehicles during expected emergencies such as blackouts, floods or earthquakes, Tumlin said.



[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/21/2048257/confused-waymos-stopped-in-intersections-during-san-francisco-power-outage

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/25/waymo-pauses-robotaxis-in-sf-again-due-to-flash-flood-warnings-on-christmas-day.html

The nonprofit Open Source Initiative offers "enriched" [1]license pages with "relevant metadata to provide deeper insights and better support".

So which pages got the most pageviews in 2025? The MIT license, Apache 2.0 license, BSD licenses (3-clause and 2-clause), and GNU General Public license:

[2]mit

(1.5M)

[3]apache-2-0

(344k)

[4]bsd-3-clause

(214k)

[5]bsd-2-clause

(128k)

[6]gpl-2-0

(76k)

[7]gpl-3-0

(55k)

[8]isc-license-txt

(35k)

[9]lgpl-3-0

(34k)

[10]OFL-1.1

(31k)

[11]lgpl-2-1

(24k)

.

. From [12]the Open Source Initiative's announcement :

> Please note that these are aggregated pageviews from actual humans along the year of 2025... Actual humans (presumably) because the number of requests by bots or crawlers is several orders of magnitude higher (e.g. requests just for the MIT license are on the range of 10M per month).

>

> We do provide an [13]API service that gives access to the canonical list of OSI Approved Licenses — this is a very new service, which hopefully will be adopted by automated requests from CI/CD pipelines. One final observation is that the number of human pageviews is likely higher because we are using Plausible as our [14]data source and a high percentage of our target audience uses Ad blockers, which by design are not accounted by Plausible. Users from China are also likely undercounted by Plausible for the same reason.



[1] https://opensource.org/license

[2] https://opensource.org/license/mit

[3] https://opensource.org/license/apache-2-0

[4] https://opensource.org/license/bsd-3-clause

[5] https://opensource.org/license/bsd-3-clause

[6] https://opensource.org/license/gpl-2-0

[7] https://opensource.org/license/gpl-3-0

[8] https://opensource.org/license/isc-license-txt

[9] https://opensource.org/license/lgpl-3-0

[10] https://opensource.org/license/OFL-1.1

[11] https://opensource.org/license/lgpl-2-1

[12] https://opensource.org/blog/top-open-source-licenses-in-2025

[13] https://opensource.org/blog/introducing-the-new-api-for-osi-approved-licenses

[14] https://plausible.io/opensource.org/pages?f=contains,page,license&period=12mo&keybindHint=L

The 2011 meltdown at Fukushima's nuclear plant "was the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986," CNN remembers.

But this week Japanese authorities "have approved a decision to restart the world's biggest nuclear power plant," [1]reports CNN , "which has sat dormant for more than a decade following the Fukushima nuclear disaster."

> Despite nerves from many local residents, the Niigata prefectural assembly, home to the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, approved a bill on Monday that clears the way for utility company Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to restart one of the plant's seven reactors. The company plans to bring the No. 6 reactor back online around January 20, Japan's public broadcaster [2]NHK reported ...

>

> Following the [2011] disaster, Japan shut down all 54 of its nuclear power stations including Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, which sits in the coastal and port region of Niigata about 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of Tokyo on Japan's main island of Honshu. Japan has since restarted 14 of the 33 nuclear reactors that remain operable, according to the World Nuclear Association. The Niigata plant will be the first to reopen under the operation of TEPCO, the company that ran the Fukushima Daiichi power station. It has been trying to reassure residents of the restart plan is safe...

>

> About 60-70% of Japan's power generation comes from imported fossil fuels, which cost the country about 10.7 trillion yen ($68 billion) last year alone... Japan is the world's fifth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, the United States, India and Russia, according to the International Energy Agency. But it has committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, and renewable energy was at the center of its latest energy plan published earlier this year, with a push for greater investments in solar and wind. The country's energy demands are also expected to increase in the coming years due to a boom in energy-hungry data centers that power AI infrastructure. To achieve its energy and climate goals, Japan aims to double the share of nuclear power in its electricity mix to 20% by 2040...

>

> On its website, TEPCO said Kashiwazaki-Kariwa had undergone multiple inspections and upgrades and that the company had learned "the lessons of Fukushima." The company said new seawalls and watertight doors would provide "stronger protection against tsunamis" and that mobile generators and more fire trucks would be on hand for "cooling support" in an emergency. It also said the plant now had "upgraded filtering systems designed to control the spread of radioactive materials."

A survey published by the prefecture in October "found 60% of residents did not think conditions for the restart had been met," [3]reports Reuters , adding that "Nearly 70% were worried about TEPCO operating the plant."



[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/22/asia/japan-nuclear-reactor-restart-kashiwazaki-kariwa-intl-hnk

[2] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20251218_04/

[3] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/japan-prepares-restart-worlds-biggest-nuclear-plant-15-years-after-fukushima-2025-12-21/

An astrophysicist at the University of Rochester writes that "many" of his colleagues in physics "have [1]come to believe that a mystery is unfolding in every microbe, animal, and human ." And it's a mystery that:

- "Challenges basic assumptions physicists have held for centuries"

- "May even help redefine the field for the next generation"

- "Could answer essential questions about AI."

In short, while physicists have favored a "reductionist" philosophy about the fundamental laws controlling the universe (energy, mattery, space, and time), "long-promised 'theories of everything' such as string theory, [2]have not borne significant fruit :

> There are, however, ways other than reductionism to think about what's fundamental in the universe. Beginning in the 1980s, physicists (along with researchers in other fields) began developing new mathematical tools to study what's called "complexity" — systems in which the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. The end goal of reductionism was to explain everything in the universe as the result of particles and their interactions. Complexity, by contrast, recognizes that once lots of particles come together to produce macroscopic things — such as organisms — knowing everything about particles isn't enough to understand reality...

>

> Physicists have always been good at capturing the essential aspects of a system and casting those essentials in the language of mathematics... Now those skills must be brought to bear on an age-old question that is only just getting its proper due: What is life? Using these skills, physicists — working together with representatives of all the other disciplines that make up complexity science — may crack open the question of how life formed on Earth billions of years ago and how it might have formed on the distant alien worlds we can now explore with cutting-edge telescopes. Just as important, understanding why life, as an organized system, is different at a fundamental level from all the other stuff in the universe may help astronomers design new strategies for finding it in places bearing little resemblance to Earth. Analyzing life — no matter how alien — as a self-organizing information-driven system may provide the key to detecting biosignatures on planets hundreds of light-years away.

>

> Closer to home, studying the nature of life is likely essential to fully understanding intelligence — and building artificial versions. Throughout the current AI boom, researchers and philosophers have debated whether and when large language models might achieve [3]general intelligence or even become [4]conscious — or whether, in fact, some already have. The only way to properly assess such claims is to study, by any means possible, the sole agreed-upon source of general intelligence: life. Bringing the new physics of life to problems of AI may not only help researchers predict what software engineers can build; it may also reveal the limits of trying to capture life's essential character in silicon.



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-truth-physics-can-no-longer-ignore/ar-AA1SnSgH

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/a-crisis-at-the-edge-of-physics.html

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/12/neurips-ai-bubble-agi/685250/

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/ai-consciousness/683983/

On Wednesday (Christmas Eve), the Free Software Foundation [1]announced it had received two major contributions totaling around $900,000 USD — in the cryptocurrency Monero.

The two donations "are among some of the largest private gifts ever made to the organization," the FSF [2]said in a statement .

"The donors wish to remain anonymous," according to the FSF's statement:

> The organization is in its annual winter [3]fundraising drive , currently at three-quarters of its $400,000 USD winter goal, and will now switch its focus to a member drive thanks in part to these donations... The donation will support the organization's technical team and infrastructure capacity, as well as strengthen its campaigns, education, licensing, and advocacy initiatives, and future opportunities. The FSF is seeking [4]donations until year-end after which they aim to gain [5]100 associate members through its year-end fundraising ending January 16.

The FSF's executive director said the donations prove "that software freedom is recognized more and more as a principal issue today, at the core of several other social movements people care about like privacy, ownership, and the right to repair...

"We are proudly supported by a large variety of contributors who care about digital rights. All donations matter, whether $5 or $500,000."



[1] https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-receives-historic-private-donations

[2] https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-receives-historic-private-donations

[3] https://www.fsf.org/appeal

[4] https://my.fsf.org/donate

[5] https://www.fsf.org/join

Taiwan's iPass has released a limited-edition prepaid payment card [1]shaped exactly like a 3.5-inch floppy disk . The company, perhaps rightly so, felt the need to include a warning on the product listing: "This product only has a card function and does not have a 3.5mm [sic] disk function, please note before purchasing."

The NFC-enabled novelty card went on sale starting Christmas Eve and comes in black or yellow finishes at 1:1 scale. It works across Taiwan's public transport network -- buses, trains, subways, taxis, and bike rentals -- as well as convenience stores like 7-Eleven and FamilyMart, supermarkets, pharmacies, and fast-food chains including McDonald's and Burger King.

The floppy disk joins an increasingly absurd lineup of iPass form factors. Previous releases have included, Tom's Hardware reports, a Motorola DynaTAC replica, model trains, a flip-flop, an LED-lit Godzilla snow globe, and a blood bag. Taiwan's PCHome24 online store currently lists 838 different iPass card designs. A standard card costs NT$100 (about $3.20) and comes without stored value.



[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/floppy-disk-pre-paid-cash-card-launched-in-taiwan-nfc-payment-method-only-has-a-card-function-warns-supplier-so-keep-it-out-of-your-fdd