Over 100 mid-market software companies are [1]caught in a dangerous "squeeze" between AI-native startups and tech giants, according to a new AlixPartners study released Monday. The consulting firm warns many face "threats to their survival over the next 24 months" as generative AI fundamentally reshapes enterprise software.

The squeeze reflects a dramatic shift: AI agents are evolving from mere assistants to becoming applications themselves, potentially rendering traditional SaaS architecture obsolete. High-growth companies in this sector plummeted from 57% in 2023 to 39% in 2024, with further decline expected. Customer stickiness is also deteriorating, with median net dollar retention falling from 120% in 2021 to 108% in Q3 2024.



[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/software-companies-squeezed-by-ai-alixpartners-2025-4

Pope Francis has [1]died at the age of 88 , the Vatican said Monday. The pontiff, who was Bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church, became pope in 2013 after his predecessor Benedict XVI resigned. On February 14, the Pope was admitted to hospital for bronchitis treatment. From a report:

> Born in 1936, Francis was the first pope from South America. His papacy was marked by his championing of those escaping war and hunger, as well as those in poverty, earning him the moniker the "People's Pope." In 2016, he washed the feet of refugees from different religions at an asylum centre outside Rome in a "gesture of humility and service."

>

> He also made his views known on a wide range of issues, from climate change to wealth inequality and the role of women in the Catholic Church.



[1] https://news.sky.com/story/pope-francis-has-died-the-vatican-says-12890455

Global alcohol consumption has entered what [1]appears to be a permanent decline , with total volume peaking at 25.4 billion liters in 2016 and falling approximately 13% since then, according to data from market research firm IWSR.

Per-capita consumption has dropped dramatically from 5 liters of pure alcohol per adult annually in 2013 to 3.9 liters in 2023. Wine production, which reached its maximum of 37.5 million metric tons in 1979, has already decreased by 27%. Beer production peaked more recently in 2016 at 190 million tons and has since declined 2.6%.

Industry experts attribute this shift to changing generational habits, with younger consumers preferring event-driven drinking rather than habitual consumption. The proliferation of non-alcoholic alternatives, increased marijuana availability, and health consciousness accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic have further driven moderation trends.



[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-04-20/peak-booze-alcohol-consumption-may-be-in-terminal-decline

Chad Anderson is the founder/managing partner of the early-stage VC Space Capital (and an investor in SpaceX, along with dozens of other space companies). Space Capital produces quarterly reports on the space economy, and he says today, unlike 2021, "the froth is gone. But so is the hype. What's left is [1]a more grounded — and investable — space economy ."

On Yahoo Finance he shares several of the report's insights — including the emergence of "investable opportunities across defense-oriented startups in space domain awareness, AI-driven command systems, and hardened infrastructure."

> The same geopolitical instability that's undermining public markets is driving national urgency around space resilience. China's simulated space " [2]dogfights " prompted the US Department of Defense to double down on orbital supremacy, with the proposed " [3]Golden Dome " missile shield potentially unleashing a new wave of federal spending...

>

> Defense tech is on fire, but commercial location-based services and logistics are freezing over. Companies like Shield AI and Saronic raised monster rounds, while others are relying on bridge financings to stay afloat...

>

> Q1 also saw a breakout quarter for geospatial artificial intelligence ( [4]GeoAI ). Software developer Niantic launched a spatial computing platform. SkyWatch partnered with GIS software supplier Esri. Planet Labs collaborated with Anthropic. And Xona Space Systems inked a deal with Trimble to boost precision GPS. This is the next leg of the space economy, where massive volumes of satellite data is finally made useful through machine learning, semantic indexing, and real-time analytics.

>

> Distribution-layer companies are doing more with less. They remain underfunded relative to infrastructure and applications but are quietly powering the most critical systems, such as resilient communications, battlefield networks, and edge-based geospatial analysis. Don't let the low round count fool you; innovation here is quietly outpacing capital.

The article includes several predictions, insights, and possible trends (going beyond the fact that defense spending "will carry the sector...")

"AI's integration into space (across geospatial intelligence, satellite communications, and sensor fusion) is not a novelty. It's a competitive necessity."

"Focusing solely on rockets and orbital assets misses where much of the innovation and disruption is occurring: the software-defined layers that sit atop the physical backbone..."

"For years, SpaceX faced little serious competition, but that's starting to change." [He cites Blue Origin's [5]progress toward approval for launching U.S. military satellites, and how Rocket Lab and Stoke Space "have also joined the competition for lucrative government launch contracts." Even Relativity Space may make a comeback, with former GOogle CEO Eric Schmidt [6]acquiring a controlling stake .]

"An infrastructure reset is coming. The imminent ramp-up of SpaceX's Starship could collapse the cost structure for the infrastructure layer. When that happens, legacy providers with fixed-cost-heavy business models will be at risk. Conversely, capital-light innovators in station design, logistics, and in-orbit servicing could suddenly be massively undervalued."



[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-honeymoon-is-over-for-space-investors-150718534.html

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/21/china/china-space-force-dogfighting-satellites-intl-hnk/index.html

[3] https://spacenews.com/space-force-chief-golden-dome-is-a-missile-shield-built-in-pieces-not-a-single-system/

[4] https://www.spacecapital.com/publications/geospatial-ai-intersection-of-data-intelligence-and-opportunity

[5] https://spacenews.com/spacex-ula-blue-origin-win-13-5-billion-in-u-s-military-launch-contracts-through-2029/

[6] https://spacenews.com/relativity-names-eric-schmidt-as-ceo-as-it-updates-terran-r-development/

With more companies requiring workers to return to an office five days a week, " [1]Anxiety is rising for some of the millions of people who identify as neurodivergent ," writes the Washington Post.

They raise the possibility that "strict office mandates have the potential to deter neurodivergent people who may approach problems differently," the article notes — affecting peoiple "whose brains function differently, such as with ADHD, autism or dyslexia."

> While many neurodivergent people excel in an office, others struggle with sensory issues, an inability to focus and exhaustion, workers say... About a fifth of U.S. adults self-identify as neurodivergent, with a majority saying they always or usually feel that their brain works differently, according to a recent survey by research and analytics firm YouGov. They cite issues such as starting tasks before finishing others, being overwhelmed by social situations and struggling to focus...

>

> Some neurodivergent workers discovered success working remotely during the pandemic and don't feel comfortable disclosing their diagnoses due to fear of and prior instances of discrimination. Sometimes being one of the few remote workers makes it easier to be forgotten.... Neurodivergent workers who spoke about their office struggles say even part-time remote work can be a game changer. They also wish leaders would seek input from them and trust them to get their work done.



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/careers/remote-working/the-workers-who-feel-left-behind-by-return-to-office-policies/ar-AA1De3Xh

In February tech journalist Nicholas Carr published [1] Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart .

A University of Virginia academic journal says the book "appraises the past and present" of information technology while issuing " [2]a warning about its future ." And specifically Carr argues that the government ignored historic precedents by not regulating the early internet sometime in the 1990s.

> But as he goes on to remind us, the early 1990s were also when the triumphalism of America's Cold War victory, combined with the utopianism of Silicon Valley, convinced a generation of decision-makers that "an unfettered market seemed the best guarantor of growth and prosperity" and "defending the public interest now meant little more than expanding consumer choice." So rather than try to anticipate the dangers and excesses of commercialized digital media, Congress gave it free rein in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which, as Carr explains,

>

> "...erased the legal and ethical distinction between interpersonal communication and broadcast communications that had governed media in the twentieth century. When Google introduced its Gmail service in 2004, it announced, with an almost imperial air of entitlement, that it would scan the contents of all messages and use the resulting data for any purpose it wanted. Our new mailman would read all our mail."

>

> As for the social-media platforms, Section 230 of the Act shields them from liability for all but the most egregiously illegal content posted by users, while explicitly encouraging them to censor any user-generated content they deem offensive, "whether or not such material is constitutionally protected" (emphasis added). Needless to say, this bizarre abdication of responsibility has led to countless problems, including what one observer calls a "sociopathic rendition of human sociability." For Carr, this is old news, but he warns us once again that the compulsion "to inscribe ourselves moment by moment on the screen, to reimagine ourselves as streams of text and image...[fosters] a strange, needy sort of solipsism. We socialize more than ever, but we're also at a further remove from those we interact with."

Carr's book suggests "frictional design" to slow posting (and reposting) on social media might "encourage civil behavior" — but then decides it's too little, too late, because our current frictionless efficiency "has burrowed its way too deeply into society and the social mind."

Based on all of this, the article's author looks ahead to the next revolution — AI — and concludes "I do not think it wise to wait until these kindly bots are in place before deciding how effective they are. Better to roll them off the nearest cliff today..."



[1] https://www.nicholascarr.com/?page_id=664

[2] https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/after-neoliberalism/articles/taking-tech-to-task

While college applicants are often required to write a personal essay for their applications, political scientist/author/academic [1]Yascha Mounk argues that's " [2]a deeply unfair way to select students for top colleges , one that is much more biased against the poor than standardized tests."

> The college essay wrongly encourages students to cast themselves as victims, to exaggerate the adversity they've faced, and to turn genuinely upsetting experiences into the focal point of their self-understanding. The college essay, dear reader, should be banned and banished and burned to the ground.

>

> There are many tangible, "objective" reasons to oppose making personal statements a key part of the admissions process. Perhaps the most obvious is that they have always been the easiest part of the system to game. While rich parents can hire SAT tutors they can't sit the standardized test in the stead of their offspring; they can, however, easily write the admissions essay for their kid or hire a "college consultant" who "works with" the applicant to "improve" that essay. Even if rich parents don't cheat in those ways, their class position gives rich kids a huge advantage in the exercise... [W]riting a good admissions essay is to a large extent an exercise in demonstrating one's good taste — and the ability to do so has always depended on being fluent in the unspoken norms of an elite community...

>

> Many on the left oppose standardized tests on the grounds that they have a class bias, and that hiring a tutor can make you perform better at them. But studies on the subject consistently suggest that the class bias of personal essays is far stronger than the class bias of standardized tests.... But the thing I truly hate about the college essay is not that it is part of a system that keeps deserving kids out of top colleges while rewarding privileged kids who (to add insult to injury) get to flatter themselves that they have been selected for showcasing such superior personality in their 750-word statements composed by their college consultant or ghostwritten by ChatGPT... [W]hat I truly hate about the college essay is the way in which it shapes the lives of high school students and encourages the whole elite stratum of society — including some of its most affluent, privileged and sheltered members — to conceive of themselves in terms of the hardships they have supposedly suffered...

>

> [I]t is the bizarre spectacle of those kids from comparatively privileged backgrounds being effectively coerced by the admissions system to self-exoticize as products of great hardship which I find to be truly unseemly... And this is why I suspect that the seemingly innocuous institution of the college essay is more deeply damaging — to the high school experience, to the self-conception of millions of Americans, and even to the country's ability to sustain a trusted elite — than it appears... [I]t drains the souls of teenagers and encourages a deeply pernicious brand of fakery and breeds widespread mistrust in social elites.

>

> The college essay is absurd and unfair and — ironically — unforgivably cringe. It's time to put an end to its strange hold over American society, and liberate us all from its tyranny.



[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yascha_Mounk

[2] https://yaschamounk.substack.com/p/the-college-essay-is-everything-thats

Slashdot reader [1]yeokm1 is the Singapore-based embedded security researcher whose side projects include [2]installing Linux on a 1993 PC and [3]building a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS .

He's now sharing his latest project — [4]installing Llama 2 on DOS :

> Conventional wisdom states that running LLMs locally will require computers with high performance specifications especially GPUs with lots of VRAM. But is this actually true?

>

> Thanks to an open-source llama2.c project [original created by [5]Andrej Karpathy ], I ported it to work so vintage machines running DOS can actually inference with Llama 2 LLM models. Of course there are severe limitations but the results will surprise you.

"Everything is open sourced with [6]the executable available here ," according to the [7]blog post . (They even addressed an early "gotcha" with DOS filenames being limited to eight characters.)

"As expected, the more modern the system, the faster the inference speed..." it adds. "Still, I'm amazed what can still be accomplished with vintage systems."



[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~yeokm1

[2] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/01/07/228222/can-you-install-linux-on-a-1993-pc

[3] https://slashdot.org/story/23/03/26/1811249/developer-builds-a-chatgpt-client-for-ms-dos

[4] https://yeokhengmeng.com/2025/04/llama2-llm-on-dos/

[5] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/07/16/2039236/former-tesla-openai-exec-andrej-karpathy-founds-ai-native-education-startup

[6] https://github.com/yeokm1/dosllam2

[7] https://yeokhengmeng.com/2025/04/llama2-llm-on-dos/

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

> Five years ago, [2]Airbus made a bold bet : The plane maker would launch a zero-emissions, hydrogen-powered aircraft within 15 years that, if successful, would mark the biggest revolution in aviation technology since the jet engine. Now, Airbus is pulling the brakes. The company has cut the project's budget by a quarter, reallocated staff and sent remaining engineers back to the drawing board, delaying its plans by as much as a decade...

>

> Airbus has spent more than $1.7 billion on the project, according to people familiar with the matter, but over the past year concluded that technical challenges and a slow uptake of hydrogen in the wider economy meant the jet wouldn't be ready by 2035... Airbus says the past five years of work and money haven't been wasted. The company has established that hydrogen is technically feasible and delaying the project will give it more time to fine-tune the technology, executives said...

>

> Airbus shifted focus to hydrogen-fuel cells, which use a chemical reaction to generate energy for an electric motor. It would produce only water vapor, but would require a more radical redesign of the airframe and propulsion system. The plane would carry only 100 passengers about 1,000 nautical miles. Over time, even that proved challenging because of the extra weight of the fuel cells and their limited electricity generation. Instead of a short-haul narrow-body — the workhorse of the aviation industry — at best the aircraft would be more akin to a less appealing regional turboprop.

Airbus received a multi-billion Covid-era support package from the French government that "required Airbus to spend a portion of the money on bringing green aircraft to market by the 2030s," according to the article.

"The hydrogen project helped Airbus access additional government funding, as well as private green financing... Airbus ultimately assigned the project an annual budget of about €400 million, primarily funded through its own coffers, according to people familiar with its financing arrangements."



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/aviation/airbus-promised-a-green-aircraft-that-bet-is-now-unraveling/ar-AA1DgoDh

[2] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/09/22/0235206/airbus-reveals-plans-for-zero-emission-aircraft-fueled-by-hydrogen

For the first time, astronomers have confirmed the existence of a lone black hole," [1]reports Science News — "one with no star orbiting it."

> It's "the only one so far," says Kailash Sahu, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. [2]In 2022 , Sahu and his colleagues discovered the dark object coursing through the constellation Sagittarius. A second team disputed the claim, saying the body might instead be a neutron star. New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope now confirm that the object's mass is so large that it must be a black hole, Sahu's team [3]reports in the April 20 Astrophysical Journal .... [And that second team [4]has revised its assessment and now agrees: the object is a black hole.]

>

> While solitary black holes should be common, they are hard to find. The one in Sagittarius revealed itself when it passed in front of a dim background star, magnifying the star's light and slowly shifting its position due to the black hole's gravity. This passage occurred in July 2011, but the star's position is still changing. "It takes a long time to do the observations," Sahu says. "Everything is improved if you have a longer baseline and more observations." The original discovery relied on precise Hubble measurements of star positions from 2011 to 2017. The new work incorporates Hubble observations from 2021 and 2022 as well as data from the Gaia spacecraft.

>

> The upshot: The black hole is about seven times as massive as the sun, give or take 0.8 solar masses.... Located 5,000 light-years from Earth, this black hole is much closer than the [5]supermassive one at the Milky Way's center , which also lies in Sagittarius but about 27,000 light-years from us. The star-rich region around the galactic center provides an ideal hunting ground for solitary black holes passing in front of stars. Sahu hopes to find additional lone black holes by using the [6]Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope , slated for launch in 2027.



[1] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lone-black-hole-sagittarius-hubble

[2] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/black-hole-rogue-wandering-mass-sun-gravity-neutron-star

[3] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/adbe6e/pdf

[4] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aced4a

[5] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/eht-magnetic-fields-milky-way-black-hole

[6] https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/

There was excitement when biotech company Collosal [1]announced genetically modified grey wolves (first hailed as a "de-extinction" of the Dire wolf species after several millennia). "But bioethicists and conservationists are expressing unease with the kind of scientific research," [2]writes the Chicago Tribune . [ [3]Alternate URL here .]

> "Unfortunately, as clever as this science is ... it's can-do science and not should-do science," said Lindsay Marshall, director of science in animal research at Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society of the U.S.... Ed Heist, a professor at Southern Illinois University and a conservation geneticist, said the news bothered him. "This is not conservation, but people conflate it," he said. "The point is entertainment...."

>

> Naomi Louchouarn [program director of wildlife partnerships at Humane World for Animals], has dedicated her studies and research to the relationship between humans and animals, specifically carnivores like gray wolves. "The reason our current endangered species are becoming extinct is because we don't know how to coexist with them," she said. "And this doesn't solve that problem at all." Humans can treat the symptoms of wildlife conflict with "big, flashy silver bullets" and "in this case, advanced, inefficient science," she said, but the real solution is behavioral change. "Assuming that we could actually bring back a full population of animals," Louchouarn said, "which is so difficult and so crazy — that's a big if — I don't understand the point of trying to bring back a woolly mammoth when we already [4]can't coexist with elephants ."

The article notes that even Colossal's chief science officer says their technology is at best one of several tools for fighting biodiversity loss, calling it a battle which humans are 'not close to winning'... We as a global community need to continue to invest in traditional approaches to conservation and habitat preservation, as well as in the protection of living endangered species."

But the article adds that the Trump administration " [5]is citing the case of the dire wolf as it moves to reduce federal protections under the Endangered Species Act of 1973." (Wednesday U.S. interior secretary Doug Burgum has even [6]posted on X "The concept of 'de-extinction' can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.")

And the article adds that "During a [7]livestreamed town hall with Interior Department employees on April 9, Burgum said: "If we're going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back. Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal.

> Ken Angielczyk, curator of mammal fossils at the Field Museum who researches extinct species that lived 200 to 300 million years ago, said it's a misguided approach. "If that's the basis ... for changing regulations related to the endangered species list, that is very, very premature," he said. "Because we can't resurrect things.... If the purpose is to restore the damage to the shared ecosystem, we have that opportunity right now," she said. "And that's the necessity immediately...."

>

> "This whole idea that extinction is reversible is so dangerous," Marshall said, "because then it stops us caring."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [8]walterbyrd for sharing the news.



[1] https://slashdot.org/submission/17335391/the-return-of-an-extinct-wolf-is-not-the-answer-to-saving-endangered-species

[2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/04/18/wildlife-extinction-dire-wolf-endangered-species/

[3] https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/04/20/wildlife-extinction-dire-wolf-endangered-species/

[4] https://www.ifaw.org/journal/human-elephant-conflict-major-threat

[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/10/trump-endangered-species-protections-dire-wolves/

[6] https://x.com/SecretaryBurgum/status/1909345951069651032

[7] https://www.doi.gov/live

[8] https://slashdot.org/~walterbyrd

TechCrunch looks at [1]Mechanize , an ambitious new startup "whose founder — and the non-profit AI research organization he founded called Epoch — is being skewered on X..."

> Mechanize was launched on Thursday via [2]a post on X by its founder, famed AI researcher Tamay Besiroglu. The startup's goal, Besiroglu wrote, is "the full automation of all work" and "the full automation of the economy."

>

> Does that mean Mechanize is working to replace every human worker with an AI agent bot? Essentially, yes. The startup wants to provide the data, evaluations, and digital environments to make worker automation of any job possible. Besiroglu even calculated Mechanize's total addressable market by aggregating all the wages humans are currently paid. "The market potential here is absurdly large: workers in the US are paid around $18 trillion per year in aggregate. For the entire world, the number is over three times greater, around $60 trillion per year," he wrote.

>

> Besiroglu did, however, clarify to TechCrunch that "our immediate focus is indeed on white-collar work" rather than manual labor jobs that would require robotics...

>

> Besiroglu argues to the naysayers that having agents do all the work will actually enrich humans, not impoverish them, through "explosive economic growth." He points to a [3]paper he published on the topic. "Completely automating labor could generate vast abundance, much higher standards of living, and new goods and services that we can't even imagine today," he told TechCrunch.

TechCrunch wonders how jobless humans will produce goods — and whether wealth will simply concentrate around whoever owns the agents.

But they do concede that Besiroglu may be right that "If each human worker has a personal crew of agents which helps them produce more work, economic abundance could follow..."



[1] https://www.mechanize.work/

[2] https://x.com/tamaybes/status/1912905467376124240

[3] https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.11690

"Honeybee colonies are under siege across much of North America..." reported [1]the New York Times last week. [ [2]Alternate URL here .] Last winter beekeepers across America "began reporting massive beehive collapses. More than half of the roughly 2.8 million colonies collapsed, costing the industry about $600 million in economic losses..."

America's Department of Agriculture says "sublethal exposure" to pesticides remains one of the biggest factors threatening honeybees, according to the article — but it's one of several threats. "Parasites, loss of habitat, climate change and pesticides threaten to wipe out as much as 70% or more of the nation's honeybee colonies this year, potentially the most devastating loss that the nation has ever seen."

> Some years are worse than others, but there has been a steady decline over time. Scientists have named the phenomenon colony collapse disorder: Bees simply disappear after they fly out to forage for pollen and nectar. Illness disables their radar, preventing them from finding their way home. The queen and her brood, if they survive, remain defenseless.

>

> The precise causes remain unknown.

>

> Bee colonies have become even more vulnerable because of the increase in extreme weather conditions, including droughts, heat waves, monster hurricanes, explosive wildfires and floods that have damaged or destroyed the bees and the vegetation they pollinate. If that isn't bad enough, parasites — and other creatures researchers refer to as "biotic" threats that prey on bees — proliferate when there is damage to ecosystems.

>

> All that means that the U.S. beekeeping industry has contracted by about 2.9% over the past five years, according to data collected by IBISWorld, a research firm. Annual loss rates have been increasing among all beekeepers over the past decade with the most significant colony collapses in commercial operations happening during the past five years.

The article notes that "compounding the troubles for the bee industry are recent federal cuts" proposed by DOGE to America's Department of Agriculture, "where researchers were studying ways to protect the nation's honeybees." And while federal policies like tariffs could make farming more expensive, "Beekeepers also often depend on immigrants to manage their hives and to help produce commercial honey..."



[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/12/business/honeybees-colony-collapse.html

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/beekeepers-struggling-with-climate-change-now-face-new-challenges/

Matt Asay [1]answered questions from Slashdot readers in 2010 (as the then-COO of Canonical). He currently runs developer relations at MongoDB (after holding similar positions at AWS and Adobe).

This week he [2]contributed an opinion piece to InfoWorld arguing that DeepSeek "may have originated in China, but it stopped being Chinese the minute it was released on Hugging Face with an [3]accompanying paper detailing its development."

> Soon after, a range of developers, including the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI), scrambled to replicate DeepSeek's success but this time as open source software. BAAI, for its part, [4]launched OpenSeek , an ambitious effort to take DeepSeek's open-weight models and create a project that surpasses DeepSeek while uniting "the global open source communities to drive collaborative innovation in algorithms, data, and systems."

>

> If that sounds cool to you, it didn't to the U.S. government, which promptly [5]put BAAI on its "baddie" list . Someone needs to remind U.S. (and global) policymakers that no single country, company, or government can contain community-driven open source... DeepSeek didn't just have a moment. It's now very much a movement, one that will frustrate all efforts to contain it. DeepSeek, and the open source AI ecosystem surrounding it, has rapidly evolved from a brief snapshot of technological brilliance into something much bigger — and much harder to stop. Tens of thousands of developers, from seasoned researchers to passionate hobbyists, are now working on enhancing, tuning, and extending these open source models in ways no centralized entity could manage alone.

>

> For example, it's perhaps not surprising that [6]Hugging Face is actively attempting to reverse engineer and publicly disseminate DeepSeek's R1 model. Hugging Face, while important, is just one company, just one platform. But Hugging Face has attracted hundreds of thousands of developers who actively contribute to, adapt, and build on open source models, driving AI innovation at a speed and scale unmatched even by the most agile corporate labs.

>

> Hugging Face by itself could be stopped. But the communities it enables and accelerates cannot. Through the influence of Hugging Face and many others, variants of DeepSeek models are already finding their way into a wide range of applications. Companies like Perplexity are embedding these powerful open source models into consumer-facing services, proving their real-world utility. This democratization of technology ensures that cutting-edge AI capabilities are no longer locked behind the walls of large corporations or elite government labs but are instead openly accessible, adaptable, and improvable by a global community.

"It's Linux all over again..." Asay writes at one point. "What started as the passion project of a lone developer quickly blossomed into an essential, foundational technology embraced by enterprises worldwide," winning out "precisely because it captivated developers who embraced its promise and contributed toward its potential."

> We are witnessing a similar phenomenon with DeepSeek and the broader open source AI ecosystem, but this time it's happening much, much faster...

>

> Organizations that cling to proprietary approaches ( [7]looking at you, OpenAI! ) or attempt to exert control through restrictive policies ( [8]you again, OpenAI! ) are not just swimming upstream — they're attempting to dam an ocean. (Yes, OpenAI has now started to talk up open source, but it's a long way from releasing a DeepSeek/OpenSeek equivalent on GitHub.)



[1] https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/10/03/02/186206/matt-asay-answers-your-questions-about-ubuntu-and-canonical

[2] https://www.infoworld.com/article/3960764/deepseeks-open-source-movement.html

[3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.12948

[4] https://github.com/FlagAI-Open/OpenSeek

[5] https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3303997/beijing-research-lab-says-inclusion-export-control-list-undermines-global-ai-cooperation

[6] https://siliconangle.com/2025/01/28/hugging-face-wants-reverse-engineer-deepseeks-r1-reasoning-model/

[7] https://medium.com/@glonav.net/openai-how-open-are-you-really-with-proprietary-ai-models-a9442a3b93dc

[8] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-calls-deepseek-state-controlled-162130551.html

"Seismologist Deborah Kilb was wading through California earthquake records from the past four decades when she noticed something odd," [1]reports CNN , "a series of deep earthquakes that had occurred under the Sierra Nevada at a depth where Earth's crust would typically be too hot and high pressure for seismic activity..."

> Kilb flagged the data to Vera Schulte-Pelkum, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and an associate research professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder... Using the newfound data, the researchers imaged the Sierra Nevada through a technique known as receiver function analysis, which uses seismic waves to map Earth's internal structure. The scientists found that in the central region of the mountain range, Earth's crust is currently peeling away, a process scientifically known as lithospheric foundering. Kilb and Schulte-Pelkum reported the findings in December [2]in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

>

> The hypothesis lined up with previous speculation that the area had undergone lithospheric foundering, which happens when Earth's outermost layer sinks into the lower layer of the mantle. Now, the study authors believe that the process is ongoing and is currently progressing to the north of the mountain range, according to the study... What's happening under the Sierra Nevada could offer rare insight into how the continents formed, Schulte-Pelkum said. The finding could also help scientists identify more areas where this process is happening as well as provide a better understanding of earthquakes and how our planet operates, she added...

>

> Evidence for this process has been hard to come by. It is not visible from above ground, and it's an extremely slow process. Scientists theorize that the south Sierra finished the process of lithospheric foundering about 4 million to 3 million years ago, according to the study. It appears that these natural events happen occasionally around the world, Schulte-Pelkum said. "Geologically speaking, this is a pretty quick process with long periods of stability in between. ... This (lithosphere foundering) probably started happening a long time ago when we started building continents, and (the continents) have gotten bigger over time. So it's just sort of this punctuated, localized thing," she added...

>

> Further study within this area could also help scientists better understand how the Earth evolves on long timescales. If the lithospheric foundering continues underneath the mountain range, one can speculate that the land will continue to stretch vertically, changing the way the landscape looks now [said Mitchell McMillan, a research geologist and postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech, who was not involved with the study]. But that could take anywhere from several hundred thousand to a few million years, he added.



[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/18/science/lithospheric-foundering-earth-peeling-sierra-nevada/index.html

[2] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL111290

"Using electrochemistry, University of Oregon researchers have developed a way to make iron metal for steel production without burning fossil fuels..." [1]the University of Oregon wrote last year . "Decarbonizing this step would do roughly as much to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as converting every gas-guzzling vehicle on the roads to electric... If scaled up, the process could help decarbonize one of the largest and most emissions-intensive industries worldwide," replacing carbon-spewing industrial blast furnaces.

Paul Kempler, their research assistant chemistry professor, added "The reason we got excited about this chemistry, is that our reactants are two things that are very cheap: saltwater and iron oxide." And [2]this week he announced that "We actually have [3]a chemical principle , a sort of guiding design rule, that will teach us how to identify low-cost iron oxides that we could use in these reactors."

"Those reactions conveniently also produce chlorine, a commercially valuable byproduct," writes SciTechDaily , [4]in a new follow-up report this week :

> In their latest study, the researchers focused on improving the process by identifying which types of iron oxides make the reaction more cost-effective, an essential step toward scaling the method for industrial use.... In lab tests, the difference was striking: "With the really porous particles, we can make iron really quickly on a small area," Goldman said. "The dense particles just can't achieve the same rate, so we're limited in how much iron we can make per square meter of electrodes...."

>

> To take their process beyond the lab, Kempler's lab is working with researchers in other fields. A collaboration with civil engineers at Oregon State University is helping them better understand what's needed for the product to work in real-world applications. And collaboration with an electrode manufacturing company is helping them address the logistical and scientific challenges of scaling up an electrochemical process. "I think what this work shows is that technology can meet the needs of an industrial society without being environmentally devastating," Goldman said.

>

> "We haven't solved all the problems yet, of course, but I think it's an example that serves as a nucleation point for a different way of thinking about what solutions look like. We can continue to have industry and technology and medicine, and we can do it in a way that's clean — and that's awesome!"



[1] https://news.uoregon.edu/content/uo-researchers-use-electrochemistry-decarbonize-iron-production

[2] https://news.uoregon.edu/uo-scientists-advance-greener-way-produce-iron

[3] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.5c00166

[4] https://scitechdaily.com/the-chemistry-trick-poised-to-slash-steels-carbon-footprint/

The Trump administration is "taking measures to restrict the sale of AI chips by Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel," especially in China, [1]reports the New York Times . But that's triggered a series of dominoes. "In the two days after the limits became public, shares of Nvidia, the world's leading AI chipmaker, fell 8.4%. AMD's shares dropped 7.4%, and Intel's were down 6.8%." (AMD expects up to $800 million in charges after the move, [2]according to CNBC , while NVIDIA said it would take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion.)

The Times notes hopeful remarks Thursday from Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, during a meeting with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. "We're going to continue to make significant effort to optimize our products that are compliant within the regulations and continue to serve China's market." But America's chipmakers also have a greater fear, according to the article: "that their retreat could turn the Chinese tech giant Huawei into a global chip-making powerhouse."

> "For the U.S. semiconductor industry, China is gone," said Handel Jones, a semiconductor consultant at International Business Strategies, which advises electronics companies. He projects that Chinese companies will have a majority share of chips in every major category in China by 2030... Huang's message spoke to one of his biggest fears. For years, he has worried that Huawei, China's telecommunications giant, will become a major competitor in AI. He has warned U.S. officials that blocking U.S. companies from competing in China would accelerate Huawei's rise, said three people familiar with those meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

>

> If Huawei gains ground, Huang and others at Nvidia have painted a dark picture of a future in which China will use the company's chips to build AI data centers across the world for the Belt and Road Initiative, a strategic effort to increase Beijing's influence by paying for infrastructure projects around the world, a person familiar with the company's thinking said...

>

> Nvidia's previous generation of chips perform about 40% better than Huawei's best product, said Gregory C. Allen, who has written about Huawei in his role as director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But that gap could dwindle if Huawei scoops up the business of its American rivals, Allen said. Nvidia was expected to make more than $16 billion in sales this year from the H20 in China before the restriction. Huawei could use that money to hire more experienced engineers and make higher-quality chips. Allen said the U.S. government's restrictions also could help Huawei bring on customers like DeepSeek, a leading Chinese AI startup. Working with those companies could help Huawei improve the software it develops to control its chips. Those kinds of tools have been one of Nvidia's strengths over the years.

TechRepublic [3]identifies this key quote from an earlier article:

> "This kills NVIDIA's access to a key market, and they will lose traction in the country," Patrick Moorhead, a tech analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, [4]told The New York Times . He added that Chinese companies will buy from local rival Huawei instead.



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/markets/us-chipmakers-fear-they-are-ceding-chinas-ai-market-to-huawei/ar-AA1DcU6x

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/16/amd-800-million-export-us-chip-restrictions-china.html

[3] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-us-block-nvidia-chip-sales-china/

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/technology/nvidia-h20-chip-china-restrictions.html

A new Star Wars movie — starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Shawn Levy — will be released in 2027, the two announced Friday at the "Star Wars Celebration" (a fan event in Japan). [1]CNN reports :

> Set to begin production this fall, the movie will be set approximately five years after "Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker," released in 2019, but will sit outside the Skywalker story as a standalone film. "The film... is an entirely new adventure featuring all-new characters set in a period of time that has not been explored on screen," said a statement from Lucasfilm, the owner of the "Star Wars" franchise...

>

> "The script is just so good, the story, it has so much adventure, so much heart and original character. It's an opportunity to shine the light into a side of the universe that we may not have seen," Gosling said. Levy, the director of "Deadpool & Wolverine," told the crowd the film would have all the "fun of 'Star Wars'" but it would be done "in ways that are new and original...."

>

> The next movie in the franchise, "The Mandalorian & Grogu," a spin-off of "The Mandalorian" series, directed by Jon Favreau, will hit cinemas in May 2026.

[2]USA Today notes that more new Star Wars movies have also been announced:

> Daisy Ridley is set to star in a film that will see her character, Rey, building a new Jedi Order after the events of "The Rise of Skywalker." [This is sometimes referred to as " Star Wars Episode X: New Jedi Order ."]

>

> "Logan" filmmaker [3]James Mangold has also been tapped to direct a movie about the dawn of the Jedi, and [Dave] Filoni is directing one [4]said to "close out the interconnected stories " told in the live-action Disney+ shows like "The Mandalorian."



[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/18/entertainment/star-wars-starfighter-announcement-intl-hnk/index.html

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2025/04/18/star-wars-starfighter-cast-ryan-gosling-announced/83154075007/

[3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2016/12/29/deadpool-logan-wolverine-ryan-reynolds-hugh-jackman/95959150/

[4] https://www.starwars.com/news/swce-2023-new-star-wars-films

Billions of years ago Mars "had a warm, habitable climate with liquid water in [1]lakes and flowing rivers," [2]writes Ars Technica .

But "In order for Mars to be warm enough to host liquid water, there must have been a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," says Benjamin Tutolo, a researcher at the University of Calgary. "The question we've been asking for at least 30 years was where the record of all this carbon is."

> Tutolo led [3]a new study of rock samples collected by the Curiosity rover that might have answered this question...

>

> Curiosity rover was called Mars Science Laboratory for a reason. It went to the red planet fitted with a suite of instruments, some of which even the newer Perseverance was lacking. These enabled it to analyze the collected Martian rocks on the spot and beam the results back to Earth. "To get the most bang for the buck, NASA decided to send it to the place on Mars called the Gale Crater, because it was the tallest stack of sediments on the planet," Tutolo says. The central peak of Gale Crater was about 5 kilometers tall, created by the ancient meteorite impact... The idea then was to climb up Mount Sharp and collect samples from later and later geological periods at increasing elevations, tracing the history of habitability and the great drying up of Mars.

>

> On the way, the carbon missed by the satellites was finally found...

>

> It turned out the samples contained roughly between 5 and 10 percent of siderite... The siderite found in the samples was also pure, which Tutolo thinks indicates it has formed through an evaporation process akin to what we see in evaporated lakes on Earth. This, in turn, was the first evidence we've found of the ancient Martian carbon cycle. "Now we have evidence that confirms the models," Tutolo claims. The carbon from the atmosphere was being sequestered in the rocks on Mars just as it is on Earth. The problem was, unlike on Earth, it couldn't get out of these rocks... A large portion of carbon that got trapped in Martian rocks stayed in those rocks forever, thinning out the atmosphere.

"While it's likely the red planet had its own carbon cycle, it was an imperfect one that eventually turned it into the lifeless desert it is today," the article points out.

But the study still doesn't entirely explain what warmed the atmosphere of Mars — or why Martian habitability "was seemingly intermittent and fluctuating".



[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/mars-rover-finds-signs-of-seasonal-floods/

[2] https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/rover-finds-hints-of-an-ancient-martian-carbon-cycle/

[3] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado9966

"The time has come for me to step away," ArcoLinux lead Erik Dubois posted last week. ("After eight years of dedication to the ArcoLinux project and the broader Linux community...")

'Learn, have fun, and enjoy' was our motto for the past eight years — and I really had fun doing all this," Dubois says in [1]a video version of his farewell post . "And if we reflect back on this teaching and the building and promoting of Linux, it was fun. But the time has come for me to step away..."

Over its eight years ArcoLinux "accomplished several important milestones," [2]reports Linux magazine , "such as creating over 5,000 educational videos; the creation of ArcoInstall; the Carli education project; the Arch Linux Calamares Installer (ALCI); the ArcoPlasma, ArcoNet, ArcroPro, and Ariser variants; and much more."

> According to Dubois, they weren't just creating a distribution but a mindset.

>

> Dubois says that the code will remain online so others can learn from, fork, or remix the distro. He also indicated that ArcoLinux will supply users with a transition package to help them convert their existing ArcoLinux systems to Arch Linux. That package will remove ArcoLinux branding, replace pacman.conf with an Arch and Chaotic-AUR focused config file, and change the arcolinux-mirrorlist to a single source.

[3] It's FOSS News describes ArcoLinux as one of those "user-friendly Arch-based distros that give you a bleeding-edge experience."

> The reasoning behind this move, as shared by Erik, is his advancing age and him realizing that he doesn't have the same level of mental focus or stamina he used to have before. He has found himself making small mistakes, the kind that can negatively affect a major undertaking like this... Come July 1, 2025, the transition period will end, marking a stop to all development, including the deactivation of the ArcoLinux social media handles. The Telegram and Discord communities will stay a bit longer but will close up eventually.

"I want to leave ArcoLinux while it's still strong , and while I can look back with pride at everything we've accomplished together," Dubois [4]says in their post ...



[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMQ_-77JRM

[2] https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/So-Long-ArcoLinux

[3] https://news.itsfoss.com/arcolinux-discontinued/

[4] https://slashdot.org/ArcoLinuxLeadStepsDownAfterEightYears