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Upcoming Steam update should fix lag spikes on Linux when the Steam Overlay is disabled  GamingOnLinux

Upcoming Steam update should fix lag spikes on Linux when the Steam Overlay is disabled  GamingOnLinux

Upcoming Steam update should fix lag spikes on Linux when the Steam Overlay is disabled  GamingOnLinux

NVIDIA 570.153.02 driver released for Linux with a couple fixes  GamingOnLinux

Go-Based Malware Deploys XMRig Miner on Linux Hosts via Redis Configuration Abuse  The Hacker News

Best Commands for Digging Up Information about Your Linux System  TechRepublic

I’ve written a little about about Multi-year guaranteed annuity (MYGA) fixed deferred annuities in the past, and I actually bought one as one of my “$10,000 Experiments” way back in 2015. I bought the MYGA with the highest available interest rate at the time from a company called Sentinel Security Life. Owning a MYGA is very quiet, I only get a mailed statement once a year and the only action required is to roll it over every 5 years. In 2020, Sentinel still offered the highest rate, so I rolled it over to them again. More quiet…

Fast forward to early 2025, and after my recent post about private equity entering the world of MYGAs, I decided to check in on ole’ Sentinel Security Life. Turns out they have been going through some major drama recently!

• In December 2024, the Utah Insurance Department issued an emergency order prohibiting Sentinel Security Life, along with its affiliates Haymarket Insurance and Jazz Reinsurance, from issuing new policies after December 31, 2024.
• In mid-March 2025, a Utah judge paused this emergency order, and allowed them to start issuing policies again, pending the result of a trial to start in May 2025.
• In March 2025, Utah Insurance Commissioner Jonathan Pike petitioned for Sentinel to be placed into “rehabilitation”, stated that it had a “years-long history of self-dealing, conflicts of interest, and obfuscation.” For example, allegedly, Sentinel Insurance would make substantial risky loans to entities also owned by the same controlling party (Kenneth King and Advantage Capital Partners, known as A-Cap). They also have additional insurance companies in South Carolina that are having similar issues with regulators.

“Drama” and your insurance/annuity provider are not a good combo. I knew that going for the highest interest would involve buying from a riskier insurance company, but went for it anyway because that was the entire point of the experiment. The reason to go for a MYGA instead of an FDIC-insured bank CD is to earn a significantly higher net rate due to the combination of the rate gap and the tax deferral benefits during accumulation. Along with that is the assumption that insurance department will require the insurance companies have proper reserves, and that your state guaranty association will cover you in the unlikely case that your insurance company does fail.

While in the accumulation stage, I feel that I can be more aggressive in using a higher-interest-paying, lower-credit-rating company since my exposure will be limited to the next 5 years. But eventually if I choose to convert the final amount to an annuitized income stream, I would be more conservative since my exposure would be potentially for decades. If I was relying on Sentinel to provide my monthly paycheck in retirement, that would be very stressful.

As it stands, my current 5-year MYGA contract ends in less than 5 months (September 2025), and I will be looking to transfer to another 5-year MYGA from a different insurance provider. Honestly, I’ll still probably be comparison shopping amongst the highest rates. I worry that if I tried to buy only from some old, stodgy traditional insurance company, these days it could be bought out by some private equity firm and transformed within a year anyway.

In the end, like many insurance and annuity products, MYGAs are very complex with a lot of variables and grey areas. As a finance geek, this actually intrigues me, but on the flip side this means they are not very consumer-friendly. I personally don’t view their benefits to justify the added complexity to my overall portfolio, so I have not bought any additional MYGAs since my first and only purchase.

If you do decide to pursue MYGAs, I encourage you to research State Guaranty Associations and be careful to stay under your applicable state limits. Since their beginnings in the 1970s, no state guaranty association has failed to pay a covered claim. However, nobody knows what would happen if there was a large crisis. They are not backed by any Federal guarantee like FDIC or NCUA insurance.

Microsoft Open-Sources Windows Subsystem for Linux  OMG! Ubuntu

Microsoft Open-Sources Windows Subsystem for Linux  OMG! Ubuntu

Microsoft Open-Sources Windows Subsystem for Linux  OMG! Ubuntu

SAG-AFTRA has filed a labor complaint against Fortnite developer Epic Games, alleging the game improperly used AI to replicate James Earl Jones' Darth Vader voice without bargaining with the union, despite the estate's approval. Gizmodo reports: The union has now filed an unfair labor practice charge (link to the PDF is on the SAG-AFTRA website) that calls out "Fortnite's signatory company, Llama Productions" for "[replacing] the work of human performers with AI technology" without "providing any notice of their intent to do this and without bargaining with us over appropriate terms." The union notes that it's not against the general idea here: "We celebrate the right of our members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas and welcome the use of new technologies to allow new generations to share in the enjoyment of those legacies and renowned roles." The problem is that the AI being used here makes human voice actors obsolete, and "we must protect our right to bargain terms and conditions around uses of voice that replace the work of our members, including those who previously did the work of matching Darth Vader's iconic rhythm and tone in video games." So far there's been no response from Epic Games on the filing. The Hollywood Reporter notes that despite the SAG-AFTRA's still-ongoing Interactive Media Agreement strike, which has been stuck for months on negotiating "AI protections for voice actors in video games," actors can actually work on Fortnite without violating the strike, since the game falls under an exception for titles that were in production before August 2023.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows Subsystem for Linux officially goes open source  FoneArena.com

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: There's a lot of matter around, which ensures that any antimatter produced experiences a very short lifespan. Studying antimatter, therefore, has been extremely difficult. But that's changed a bit in recent years, as CERN has set up a facility that produces and traps antimatter, allowing for extensive studies of its properties, including entire anti-atoms. Unfortunately, the hardware used to capture antiprotons also produces interference that limits the precision with which measurements can be made. So CERN decided that it might be good to determine how to move the antimatter away from where it's produced. Since it was tackling that problem anyway, CERN decided to make a shipping container for antimatter, allowing it to be put on a truck and potentially taken to labs throughout Europe. [...] Overall, the hardware stayed cold, generally at a bit over 5 Kelvin. The exception was when the system was reconnected to the antimatter source hardware and the system reconnected to the electrical system at CERN. While those actions show up as temperature spikes, the superconducting magnets remained well under 7 Kelvin. An accelerometer was in place to track the forces experienced by the hardware while the truck was moving. This showed that changes in the truck's speed produced turbulence in the liquid helium, making measurements of its presence unreliable. Levels had dropped from about 75 percent of maximum to 30 percent by the time the system was reconnected, suggesting that liquid helium presents the key limiting factor in shipping. Measurements made while the system was in transit suggest that the whole process occurred losslessly, meaning that not a single proton escaped during the entire transport. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled), Apple has big plans to turn Siri into a true ChatGPT competitor. "A next-generation, chatbot version of Siri has reportedly made significant progress during testing over the past six months; some executives allegedly now see it as 'on par' with recent versions of ChatGPT," reports MacRumors. "Apple is also apparently discussing giving Siri the ability to access the internet to gather and synthesize data from multiple sources, just like ChatGPT." From the report: The report added that Apple now has artificial intelligence offices in Zurich, where employees are working on an all-new software architecture for Siri. This "monolithic model" is entirely built on an LLM engine that will eventually replace Siri's current "hybrid" architecture that has been incoherently layered up with different functionality over many years. The new model will make Siri more conversational and better at synthesizing information. Google's Gemini is expected to be added to iOS 19 as an alternative to ChatGPT in Siri, but Apple is also apparently in talks with Perplexity to add their AI service as another option in the future, for both Siri and Safari search.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Debian's APT 3.1 Released With Why/Why-Not Commands, New Solver Default On Ubuntu  Phoronix

Sony has begun mass suspensions of PlayStation accounts linked to Russian users, including those registered in other countries like Turkiye and Kazakhstan, in an effort to crack down on circumvention of regional restrictions like PS Plus access. This move follows Sony's 2022 exit from the Russian market due to the war in Ukraine. Ukrainska Pravda reports: Russians are trying to bypass the blocks and are contacting PlayStation support, but these attempts are to no avail. Users with purchased accounts encounter the most problems -- Sony checks IP addresses for verification. There are already many similar reports. In some cases, accounts with thousands of roubles worth of games purchased have been blocked. Russian media outlets like RT are reporting the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm announced plans to re-enter the data center market with custom CPUs designed to integrate with Nvidia GPUs and software. As CNBC reports, the move supports Qualcomm's broader strategy to diversify beyond smartphones and into high-growth areas like data centers, PCs, and automotive chips. From the report: "I think we see a lot of growth happening in this space for decades to come, and we have some technology that can add real value added," Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm, told CNBC in an interview on Monday. "So I think we have a very disruptive CPU." Amon said the company will make an announcement about the CPU roadmap and the timing of its release "very soon," without offering specifics. The data center CPU market remains highly competitive. Big cloud computing players like Amazon and Microsoft already design and deploy their own custom CPUs. AMD and Intel also have a strong presence. Addressing the competition, Amon said that there will be a place for Qualcomm in the data center CPU space. "As long as ... we can build a great product, we can bring innovation, and we can add value with some disruptive technology, there's going to be room for Qualcomm, especially in the data center," Amon said. "[It] is a very large addressable market that will that will see a lot of investment for decades to come." Last week, Qualcomm signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi-based AI frim Humain to develop data centers, joining a slew of U.S. tech companies making deals in the region. Humain will operate under Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: While using website data to build a Google Search topped with artificial intelligence-generated answers, an Alphabet executive acknowledged in an internal document that there was an alternative way to do things: They could ask web publishers for permission, or let them directly opt out of being included. But giving publishers a choice would make training AI models in search too complicated, the company concludes in the document, which was unearthed in the company's search antitrust trial. It said Google had a "hard red line" and would require all publishers who wanted their content to show up in the search page to also be used to feed AI features. Instead of giving options, Google decided to "silently update," with "no public announcement" about how they were using publishers' data, according to the document, written by Chetna Bindra, a product management executive at Google Search. "Do what we say, say what we do, but carefully." "It's a little bit damning," said Paul Bannister, the chief strategy officer at Raptive, which represents online creators. "It pretty clearly shows that they knew there was a range of options and they pretty much chose the most conservative, most protective of them -- the option that didn't give publishers any controls at all." For its part, Google said in a statement to Bloomberg: "Publishers have always controlled how their content is made available to Google as AI models have been built into Search for many years, helping surface relevant sites and driving traffic to them. This document is an early-stage list of options in an evolving space and doesn't reflect feasibility or actual decisions." They added that Google continually updates its product documentation for search online.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has launched the NotebookLM app for Android and iOS, offering a native mobile experience with offline support, audio overviews, and integration into the system share sheet for adding sources like PDFs and YouTube videos. 9to5Google reports: This native experience starts on a homepage of your notebooks with filters at the top for Recent, Shared, Title, and Downloaded. The app features a light and dark mode based on your device's system theme with no manual toggle. Each colorful card features the notebook name, emoji, number of sources, and date, as well as a play button for Audio Overviews. There's background playback and offline support for the podcast-style experience (the fullscreen player has a nice glow), while you can "Join" the AI hosts (in beta) to ask follow-up questions. You get a "Create new" button at the bottom of the list to add PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, and text. Notably, the NotebookLM app will appear in the Android and iOS share sheet to quickly add sources. When you open a notebook, there's a bottom bar for the list of Sources, Chat Q&A, and Studio. It's similar to the current mobile website, with the native client letting users ditch the Progressive Web App. Out of the gate, there are phone and (straightforward) tablet interfaces. You can download the app for iOS and Android using their respective links.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NordVPN Linux App Updated with New GUI  OMG! Ubuntu