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KDE Plasma 6.6 is almost here, and this Linux distro gave me an early look - here's how  ZDNET

Early hominins in Europe were creating tools from raw materials hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens arrived there, two new studies indicate, pushing back the established time for such activity. From a report: The evidence includes a 500,000-year-old hammer made of elephant or mammoth bone, excavated in southern England, and 430,000-year-old wooden tools found in southern Greece -- the earliest wooden tools on record. The findings suggest that early humans possessed sophisticated technological skills, the researchers said. Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tubingen in Germany and a lead author of the wooden-tool paper, which was published on Monday in the journal PNAS, said the discoveries provided insight into the prehistoric origins of human intelligence. Silvia Bello, a paleoanthropologist at London's Natural History Museum and an author on the elephant-bone study, which was published last week in Science Advances, concurred. The artifacts in both studies, recovered from coal-mine sites, were probably produced by early Neanderthals or a preceding species, Homo heidelbergensis. Homo sapiens emerged in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, and the oldest evidence of them in Europe is a 210,000-year-old fossil unearthed in Greece. By the time Homo sapiens established themselves in Britain 40,000 years ago, other hominins had already lived there for nearly a million years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux kernel community drafts contingency "plan for a plan" to replace Linus Torvalds  PC Guide

GParted Live 1.8 Released With Linux Kernel 6.18  Linuxiac

GPU Robotics Simulators  Trend Hunter

I found the perfect "portable" OS for remote work, and it’s not Windows  How-To Geek

Spectro Cloud Announces Hadron: A Lightweight, Security-First Linux Base for Modern Enterprise Edge Deployments  Business Wire

This incredibly weird 'astrological CPU scheduler' uses the signs of the zodiac and 'accurate geocentric planetary positions' to decide processor tasking  PC Gamer

UPS said today it plans to eliminate an additional 30,000 operational jobs this year as the shipping giant continues to wind down its partnership with Amazon -- previously its largest customer -- and push forward a broader turnaround strategy under CEO Carol Tome. CFO Brian Dykes said on an earnings call that the cuts will be accomplished through attrition and a voluntary separation program for full-time drivers. The company also plans to further deploy automation across its network. UPS has identified 24 buildings for closure in the first half of 2026 and expects to reduce operational hours by approximately 25 million as the Amazon relationship unwinds. Last year, UPS eliminated 48,000 jobs -- 34,000 operational and 14,000 management -- and closed 93 buildings. The company expects $3 billion in total savings from the Amazon unwind.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bug report filed on the Chromium Issue Tracker inadvertently exposed Google's desktop Android interface for the first time, revealing a system codenamed "Aluminum OS" running on existing Chromebook hardware. The report, ostensibly about Chrome Incognito tabs, included screen captures from an HP Elite Dragonfly 13.5 Chromebook running Android 16. The status bar has been redesigned for large screens -- taller than the tablet version, displaying time with seconds, date, battery, Wi-Fi, a notification bell, keyboard language indicator and a Gemini icon. The taskbar remains identical to the current implementation, though the mouse cursor now features a subtle tail. Chrome's interface includes an Extensions button, a feature currently exclusive to the desktop browser. Window controls mirror ChromeOS, placing minimize, fullscreen, and close buttons at the top-right.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel Arc "Alchemist" Linux Driver Update Can Yield Up to 260% Performance Boost  TechPowerUp

See the trailer for the new Ads Decoded podcast, a bridge between marketers and the product teams behind Google Ads.

A look at three AI strategies to master the future of marketing in 2026.

Welcome to the first full season of Ads Decoded, a podcast hosted by Ads Product Liaison Ginny Marvin to bring questions from advertisers straight to the people designin…

AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D Linux Performance Review  Phoronix

Amazon announced on Wednesday that it is eliminating approximately 16,000 roles across the company as part of organizational changes that began in October 2025 and are only now being finalized by certain teams. Senior Vice President Beth Galetti shared the news in a memo to employees, framing the reductions as an effort to reduce layers, increase ownership, and remove bureaucracy. The memo follows another memo that the company accidentally sent to employees.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New AppImage Offers an Easier Way to Run Affinity on Ubuntu  OMG! Ubuntu

Debian-Based GParted Live 1.8 Released with Linux Kernel 6.18 LTS, GParted 1.8  9to5Linux

Silicon Polish: KDE Plasma 6.6 Beta 2 Marks a Turning Point for Linux Desktop Reliability  WebProNews