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Steam and Linux gaming is safe: Fedora will not drop 32-bit support after all — dev says proposal was 'not some conspiracy to break the gaming use case'  Tom's Hardware

Companies deliberately design customer service friction to discourage refunds and claims, according to research into a practice academics call "sludge." The term, coined by legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein and economist Richard H. Thaler in their updated version of "Nudge," describes tortuous administrative demands, endless wait times, and excessive procedural fuss that impede customers. ProPublica reported in 2023 that Cigna saved millions of dollars by rejecting claims without having doctors read them. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Toyota's motor-financing arm to pay $60 million for alleged misdeeds including deliberately setting up dead-end hotlines for canceling products and services. The 2023 National Customer Rage Survey found that the percentage of American consumers seeking revenge for customer service hassles had tripled in three years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

5 underrated Linux apps I can't live without  XDA

Apple plans to release a cheaper MacBook powered by the A18 Pro chip used in the iPhone 16 Pro line, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The laptop will be priced below $999 -- first time for a MacBook Air -- and go into production in late 2025 or early 2026 on the new laptop, the analyst noted. The device will feature the same 13-inch screen as the current MacBook Air, with the chip representing the primary difference between models. The A18 Pro chip delivers single-core performance around 3,500 on Geekbench, trailing the M4 chip only slightly, though multicore performance lags significantly at approximately 8,780 versus 15,000 for the M4. The A18's multicore performance matches the original 2020 M1 chip.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yoohoo! There is a New Rust-Based GPU Driver for Linux in Development  It's FOSS News

A founding member of the Xbox team says she believes Xbox hardware is "dead" and that Microsoft appears to be planning a "slow exit" from the gaming hardware business. Microsoft recently announced partnerships with external hardware companies including the ROG Xbox Ally, which runs Windows and functions as a portable PC that can run games from external stores like Steam. Laura Fryer, one of Microsoft Game Studios' first employees who worked as a producer on the original Gears of War games and served as director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, called the partnerships evidence of Microsoft's inability to ship hardware. "Personally, I think Xbox hardware is dead. The plan appears to be to just drive everybody to Game Pass," Fryer said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ubuntu and Tuxedo duke it out for Linux on Snapdragon X Elite laptops  PCWorld

The Best Boring Benchmarks: Rocky Linux 10 & AlmaLinux 10 Performance Against RHEL 10 Review  Phoronix

Nintendo pulled its products from Amazon's US site after a disagreement over unauthorized sales, meaning the e-commerce company missed out on the recent debut of Nintendo's Switch 2 -- the biggest game console launch of all time. From a report: The Japanese company stopped selling on Amazon after noticing that third-party merchants were offering games for sale in the US at prices that undercut Nintendo's advertised rates, according to a person familiar with the situation. Enterprising sellers were buying Nintendo products in bulk in Southeast Asia and exporting them to the US, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information. Nintendo product listings started disappearing from Amazon's US site last year, gaming news outlets reported at the time. The listings had previously appeared as "Sold by Amazon," which typically denotes merchandise the online retailer buys directly from brands. Some Nintendo products remained on the site, but they were listed by independent merchants who sell their goods on Amazon's sprawling online marketplace.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Fourth of July is right around the corner, so take a look below at some of the most popular places on Google Maps for watching firework shows across the U.S. Whether…

Our new agreement is designed to accelerate the development of fusion power.Our new agreement is designed to accelerate the development of fusion power.

The latest announcements from Google for Education at ISTE 2025.

The latest announcements from Google for Education at ISTE 2025.

The classroom’s getting an upgrade this school year with new software like Class tools and hardware like Chromebooks, Chromebook Plus and Chromebox OPS.The classroom’s getting an upgrade this school year with new software like Class tools and hardware like Chromebooks, Chromebook Plus and Chromebox OPS.

Along with Gemini in Classroom's new AI tools for education, we're announcing more than 50 new features in Google Classroom.Along with Gemini in Classroom's new AI tools for education, we're announcing more than 50 new features in Google Classroom.

Learn more about expanded access to Google Vids for all education users, and Gemini in Classroom, a new suite of no-cost AI tools available for educators.Learn more about expanded access to Google Vids for all education users, and Gemini in Classroom, a new suite of no-cost AI tools available for educators.

We’re announcing Gemini for Education, plus more AI tools for students and educators.We’re announcing Gemini for Education, plus more AI tools for students and educators.

This Debian-based Linux distro is an overlooked and user-friendly gem  ZDNET

"Earth's ozone layer blocks the Sun's shortest wave radiation, called UV-C, which is so damaging to cells in high doses that it's a go-to sterilizer in hospitals," writes Slashdot reader sciencehabit. "UV-C is such a killer, in fact, that scientists have questioned whether life can survive on worlds that lack an ozone layer, such as Mars or distant exoplanets. "But research published this month in Astrobiology suggests one hardy lichen, a hybrid organism made of algae and fungi, may have cracked the UV-C code with a built-in sunscreen, despite never experiencing these rays in its long evolutionary history." Science magazine explains: When scientists brought a sample of the species, the common desert dweller Clavascidium lacinulatum, back to the lab, graduate student Tejinder Singh put the lichen through the wringer. First, Singh dehydrated the lichen, to make sure it couldn't grow back in real time and mask any UV damage. Then he placed the lichen a few centimeters under a UV lamp and blasted it with radiation. The lichen seemed just fine. So Singh purchased the most powerful UV-C lamp he could find online, capable of sending out 20 times more radiation than the amount expected on Mars. When he tested the lamp on the most radiation-resistant life form on Earth, the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, it died in less than a minute. After 3 months—likely the highest amount of UV-C radiation ever tested on an organism—Singh pulled the sample so he could finish his master's thesis in time. About half of the lichen's algal cells had survived. Then, when the team ground up and cultured part of the surviving lichen, about half of its algal cells sprouted new, green colonies after 2 weeks, showing it maintained the ability to reproduce. The species may provide a blueprint for surviving on Mars or exoplanets, which don't have an ozone layer to protect them.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows loses 400 million users as mobile, Linux, and Mac use grows  TechSpot

AMD Instinct Accelerators With So Much vRAM Have Exposed Linux Hibernation Issues  Phoronix