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Britain said on Wednesday it would ban the resale of tickets to concerts, sport and other live events for profit, disrupting ticket touts and the platforms that benefit from their activities. From a report: Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said touts were ripping off fans by using bots to snap up batches of tickets for coveted shows and reselling them at sky-high prices. "Our new proposals will shut down the touts' racket and make world-class music, comedy, theatre and sport affordable for everyone," she said, after the government had promised action.

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Ubuntu Budgie vs. Pop!_OS: I've used both Linux distros - here's how to choose  ZDNET

Xen 4.21 Released With AMD CPPC & Resizable BAR Support  Phoronix

Chinese economist Gao Shanwen told a Washington panel in December that China's real GDP growth might be around 2% rather than the official figure near 5%. By January, Gao was no longer chief economist at SDIC Securities and went silent for almost a year. As FT points out in a long piece, China does not publish quarterly GDP breakdowns showing consumption, investment and net exports. Every other major economy produces these figures. The IMF in 2024 gave China a C grade for national accounts. The rating puts China on par with India and below Vietnam. Fixed asset investment data showed negative growth in 2025 for only the second time in decades. Property investment has fallen consistently since 2022. But official GDP investment data shows no signs of declining. The National Bureau of Statistics stopped publishing sectoral breakdowns of fixed asset investment in 2018. It discontinued a price series in 2021 and a land sales series in 2023. Beijing has restricted researcher access rather than addressing longstanding questions about data quality. China says it disagrees with the IMF's C rating. The government argued its production-side GDP approach is appropriate. Why does it matter? China is too large and too interconnected with the global economy for unreliable data to be a purely domestic issue. The lack of transparency creates problems for everyone trying to make decisions based on understanding China's economic trajectory. As Eswar Prasad, a professor at Cornell University and former IMF official, told FT: China is one of the two biggest economies in the world. "It would be nice to know what is really going on."

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Xen Project Delivers Xen 4.21, a Modernized Hypervisor with Broader Architecture Support and Improved Performance  PR Newswire

Today, we're extending our partnership with the McLaren Formula 1 Team, placing Gemini—now with Gemini 3, our most intelligent model that brings any idea to life—at the …

Slimbook and KDE Celebrate 8th Anniversary with KDE Slimbook VII Linux Laptop  9to5Linux

Slimbook and KDE Celebrate 8th Anniversary with KDE Slimbook VII Linux Laptop  9to5Linux

Slimbook and KDE Celebrate 8th Anniversary with KDE Slimbook VII Linux Laptop  9to5Linux

Boston Dynamics' Spot robot is now deployed by more than 60 bomb squads and SWAT teams across the US and Canada. The 75-pound four-legged machine starts at around $100,000 and has been used in armed standoffs, hostage rescues and hazardous materials incidents since its commercial debut five years ago. The Massachusetts State Police operates two Spot units purchased in 2020 and 2022. Each cost about $250,000 including add-ons funded through state grants. Last year one of the robots helped corner a suspect who had taken his mother hostage at knifepoint in Hyannis. Houston operates three units and Las Vegas has one. ICE recently spent around $78,000 on a similar robot from Canadian manufacturer Icor Technology that can also deploy smoke bombs. Civil liberties groups have raised concerns about normalizing militarized policing. The NYPD suspended its limited Spot program in 2021 after public backlash over cost and surveillance concerns before later reinstating it and purchasing two units. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says there should be state and federal laws providing guidance on appropriate use of such technology. About 2,000 Spot units now operate globally.

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AMD Threadripper 7980X Performance On Linux Two Years After Release  Phoronix

'I like boring, and boring to me is no super exciting new features that will break machines for millions of people around the world' says Linux creator Linus Torvalds  PC Gamer

'I like boring, and boring to me is no super exciting new features that will break machines for millions of people around the world' says Linux creator Linus Torvalds  PC Gamer

'I like boring, and boring to me is no super exciting new features that will break machines for millions of people around the world' says Linux creator Linus Torvalds  PC Gamer

Red Hat previews Project Hummingbird: impenetrable images boosting the software supply chain  SDxCentral

An anonymous reader shares a report: Federal health officials have linked two massive US measles outbreaks, confirming that the country is about two months away from losing its measles elimination status, according to a report by The New York Times. The Times obtained a recording of a call during which officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to state health departments that the ongoing measles outbreak at the border of Arizona and Utah is a continuation of the explosive outbreak in West Texas that began in mid- to late-January. That is, the two massive outbreaks are being caused by the same subtype of measles virus. This is a significant link that hasn't previously been reported despite persistent questions from journalists and concerns from health experts, particularly in light of Canada losing its elimination status last week. The loss of an elimination status means that measles will once again be considered endemic to the US, an embarrassing public health backslide for a vaccine-preventable disease.

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A look at Google’s first Colorado Impact Hackathon with UC Boulder and the Colorado Energy Office.A look at Google’s first Colorado Impact Hackathon with UC Boulder and the Colorado Energy Office.

AMD Begins Posting Open-Source Linux Patches For Their Next-Gen GPU IP  Phoronix

Tsinghua University collected 4,986 AI and machine learning patents between 2005 and the end of 2024. The Beijing institution has received more than 900 patents last year alone. The total exceeds the combined patent count from MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard during the same period. China now accounts for more than half of all active patent families globally in AI and machine learning fields, according to data analytics service LexisNexis. The university also has more AI research papers among the 100 most cited than any other school at last count. The US still holds the most influential AI patents and the top performing models. Harvard and MIT consistently rank ahead of Tsinghua in patent influence. American institutions produced 40 notable AI models in 2024 compared to 15 from Chinese organizations, according to Stanford's AI Index Report. China's share of the world's elite AI researchers -- the top 2% -- rose from 10% in 2019 to 26% in 2022. The US share fell from 35% to 28% during the same period, according to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

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An overview of Google’s 2025 Accelerator Impact Report.An overview of Google’s 2025 Accelerator Impact Report.