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Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney has signed an agreement with Alberta's premier that will roll back certain climate rules to spur investment in energy production, while encouraging construction of a new oil pipeline to the West Coast. From a report: Under the agreement, which was signed on Thursday, the federal government will scrap a planned emissions cap on the oil and gas sector and drop rules on clean electricity in exchange for a commitment by Canada's top oil-producing province to strengthen industrial carbon pricing and support a carbon capture-and-storage project. The deal, which was hailed by the country's oil industry but panned by environmentalists, signaled a shift in Canada's energy policy in favour of fossil fuel development and is already creating tensions within Carney's minority government. Steven Guilbeault, who served as environment minister under Carney's predecessor Justin Trudeau, said he was quitting the cabinet over concerns that Canada's climate plan was being dismantled.

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued new guidelines outlining when inventions created with the help of AI can be patented. From a report: USPTO Director John Squires said on Wednesday in a notice set to be published Friday, that the office considers generative AI systems to be "analogous to laboratory equipment, computer software, research databases, or any other tool that assists in the inventive process." "They may provide services and generate ideas, but they remain tools used by the human inventor who conceived the claimed invention," the office said. "When one natural person is involved in creating an invention with the assistance of AI, the inquiry is whether that person conceived the invention under the traditional conception standard." The office reiterated its guidance from last year that AI itself cannot be considered an inventor under U.S. patent law. However, it rejected the approach taken by the PTO during former President Joe Biden's administration for deciding when AI-assisted inventions are patentable, which relied on a standard normally used to determine when multiple people can qualify as joint inventors.

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Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Gains 9% Performance Boost on Linux After One Year  eTeknix

One Of Intel's Xe Open-Source Linux Graphics Driver Maintainers Is Departing  Phoronix

The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, has argued that platforms like Steam should not label games that are made using AI. From a report: Responding to a post on Twitter from a user who suggested that storefronts drop this tag, the industry exec said that it "makes no sense" to flag such content. Sweeney added that soon AI will be a part of the way all games are made. "The AI tag is relevant to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and to digital content licensing marketplaces where buyers need to understand the rights situation," Sweeney said. "It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production."

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Platforms including Meta and TikTok will be held liable for financial fraud for the first time under new rules agreed by EU lawmakers in the early hours of Thursday. From a report: The Parliament and Council agreed on the package of rules after eight hours of negotiations to strengthen safeguards against payment fraud. The deal adds another layer of EU regulatory risk for U.S. tech giants, which have lobbied the White House to confront Brussels' anti-monopoly and content moderation rules. [...] Social media has become rife with financial scams, and MEPs pushed hard to hold both Big Tech and banks liable during legislative negotiations. EU governments, meanwhile, believed banks should be held responsible if their safeguards aren't strong enough. As a compromise, lawmakers agreed that banks should reimburse victims if a scammer, impersonating the bank, swindles them out of their money, or if payments are processed without consent.

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quonset writes: Australia last updated their weather site a decade ago. In October, during one of the hottest days of the year, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) revealed its new web site and was immediately castigated for doing so. Complaints ranged from a confusing layout to not being able to find information. Farmers were particularly incensed when they found out they could no longer input GPS coordinates to find forecasts for a specific location. When it was revealed the cost of this update was A$96.5 million ($62.3 million), 20 times the original cost estimate, the temperature got even hotter. With more than 2.6 billion views a year, Bom tried to explain that the site's refresh -- prompted by a major cybersecurity breach in 2015 -- was aimed at improving stability, security and accessibility. It did little to satisfy the public. Some frustrated users turned to humour: "As much as I love a good game of hide and seek, can you tell us where you're hiding synoptic charts or drop some clues?" Malcolm Taylor, an agronomist in Victoria, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the redesign was a complete disaster. "I'm the person who needs it and it's not giving me the information I need," the plant and soil scientist said. As psychologist and neuroscientist Joel Pearson put it, "First you violate expectations by making something worse, then you compound the injury by revealing the violation was both expensive and avoidable. It's the government IT project equivalent of ordering a renovation, discovering the contractor has made your house less functional, and then learning they charged you for a mansion."

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Happy Thanksgiving! I wouldn’t say this has been the best year ever, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still many things to be thankful for. I started keeping a text file of good things, and here’s what I have at the moment. Thank you for reading, whether you are new or old, as it is certainly one of the things I am grateful for.

Mornings when I can wake up without an alarm clock,

Hot showers on a cold day,

All showers, really.

Drinking coffee in the morning in the backyard, listening to the world wake up.

Cold drinks on a hot day, especially iced coffee.

Not having a job where you dread going to work,

Feeling externally appreciated for the work you do,

Feeling an internal purpose for the work you do.

Being able to pick up the kids after school and listen to them unwind a bit with a snack and no other expectations in the backyard before they have to start homework, sports, etc.

The eternal good attitude of dogs.

The feeling after a long run (without injury).

Moments when the kids are playing together harmoniously, laughing.

All laughter, really. (Baby laughs are the absolute best.)

Cooking a dinner that makes the house smell good,

Eating dinner each night as a family and sharing stories about our day,

Any food with friends and family, really.

Goodnight hugs when they don’t want to go to bed just yet and will put up with extra questions and longer hugs and deeper discussions.

All hugs, really.

Twenty years after surgeons in France performed the world's first face transplant, the experimental field that procedure launched is now confronting a troubling record of patient deaths, buried negative data and a healthcare system that leaves recipients financially devastated and medically vulnerable. About 50 face transplants have been performed globally since Isabelle Dinoire received her partial face graft at University Hospital CHU Amiens-Picardie in November 2005. A 2024 JAMA Surgery study reported five-year graft survival of 85% and 10-year survival of 74%, concluding that the procedure is "an effective reconstructive option for patients with severe facial defects." The study did not track psychological wellbeing, financial outcomes, employment status or quality of life. Roughly 20% of face transplant patients have died from rejection, kidney failure, or heart failure. The anti-rejection medications that keep transplanted faces alive can destroy kidneys and weaken immune systems to the point where routine infections become life-threatening. In the United States, the Department of Defense has funded most operations, treating them as a frontier for wounded veterans, because private insurers refuse to cover the costs. Patients who survive the surgery often find themselves unable to afford medications, transportation to follow-up appointments or basic caregiving. The field's long-term grants cover surgical innovation but not the lifelong needs of the people who receive these transplants.

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Windows vs macOS vs Linux: the time to switch is now | by Kostas Farkonas | Turn On | Press Play | Nov, 2025  Medium

Valve just fixed several broken games on Linux with a Proton Experimental update  How-To Geek

The UK government will levy a pay-per-mile tax on electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles starting April 2028, UK's finance minister Rachel Reeves announced, a measure designed to offset some of the fuel duty revenue that will disappear as drivers shift away from petrol and diesel cars. Electric vehicles will be charged 3 pence per mile and plug-in hybrids 1.5 pence per mile, payable annually alongside car tax. An average driver covering 8,000 miles a year would pay around $320, roughly half what a petrol or diesel driver pays in fuel duty. The Office for Budget Responsibility expects the tax to generate $1.45 billion in its first year and $2.51 billion by 2030-31, offsetting about a quarter of the revenue losses projected from the EV transition by 2050. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders warned the new charge would "suppress demand" and make sales targets harder to achieve. New Zealand and Iceland have already introduced road pricing for EVs; demand dropped in the former but held steady in the latter.

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Intel Battlemage Graphics Enjoyed Nice GPU Compute Performance Gains In 2025  Phoronix

KDE Plasma 6.8 to Drop X11 Support, Goes All-In on Wayland  It's FOSS

Silicon Synchronicity: How Qualcomm’s Day-Zero Linux Support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Rewrites the Rules of Hardware Adoption  WebProNews

Silicon Synchronicity: How Qualcomm’s Day-Zero Linux Support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Rewrites the Rules of Hardware Adoption  WebProNews

Google is testing a new Wi-Fi hotspot configuration in the latest Android Canary build that pairs the 6 GHz band's superior throughput with the 2.4 GHz band's broad device compatibility, eliminating the trade-off users previously faced when choosing between speed and legacy support. Android's default hotspot setting uses 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies, omitting 6 GHz because most devices lack support for the newer standard and because U.S. regulations previously prohibited smartphones from creating 6 GHz hotspots. Recent regulatory changes and a Pixel update unlocked standalone 6 GHz hotspots, but that option cuts off older devices entirely. The new "2.4 and 6 GHz" dual-band mode, spotted in Android Canary, is expected to arrive in an upcoming Android 16 QPR3 beta.

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KDE Plasma Linux DE Drops X11 Support in 6.8 Release  TechPowerUp

KDE Plasma Linux DE Drops X11 Support in 6.8 Release  TechPowerUp

Ubuntu is replacing some legacy tools in 26.04 LTS  How-To Geek