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An anonymous reader shared 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.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

4 interesting Linux distributions that first appeared in 2025  How-To Geek

6 reasons 2026 could finally be the year of desktop Linux—for real this time  How-To Geek

Laptop makers are facing record-setting memory prices next year. The site Notebookcheck catalogs how different companies are responding: Sources told [Korean business newspaper] Chosun Biz that some manufacturers have signed preliminary contracts with Samsung, 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 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 Dell and 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 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.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel Xe vs. i915 Driver Performance On Linux 6.19 For Arc Alchemist GPUs  Phoronix

The Register reports on 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 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 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 replacing its Microsoft office software with a European alternative. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is replacing Microsoft products with open-source alternatives for 30,000 civil servants Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

5 Linux distros that work with Windows Secure Boot—and how to choose the right one  How-To Geek

5 best Windows-like Linux desktops for a familiar look and feel  How-To Geek

New Intel Xe3_LPD Firmware Binaries For Linux Ahead Of Panther Lake Laptops Launching  Phoronix

CrunchBang Linux Lives on With GreenBang  The New Stack

I made Linux Mint look like macOS with these tweaks  How-To Geek

Nvidia 590 Driver Drops Pascal GPU Support, Breaks Arch Linux Systems  WebProNews

4 Linux terminal text editors I use instead of nano  Yahoo! Tech

4 Linux terminal text editors I use instead of nano  How-To Geek

Schleswig-Holstein will save €15 million in 2026 by dropping Microsoft software in favor of free Linux by  ProVideo Coalition

Schleswig-Holstein will save €15 million in 2026 by dropping Microsoft software in favor of free Linux by  ProVideo Coalition

Schleswig-Holstein will save €15 million in 2026 by dropping Microsoft software in favor of free Linux by  ProVideo Coalition

Schleswig-Holstein will save €15 million in 2026 by dropping Microsoft software in favor of free Linux by  ProVideo Coalition

7 reasons learning the Linux terminal is worth it (even for beginners)  How-To Geek

New Patches Bring Linux Driver Support To 25+ SteelSeries Arctis Gaming Headsets  Phoronix