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VEIKK VK1200 V2 11.6" Drawing Tablet With Screen - 8192 Pressure Pen, 120% SRGB, For Windows/Mac/Linux  umlconnector.com

Adafruit managing director Phillip Torrone (also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone ) writes: Washington State lawmakers are proposing bills (HB 2320 and HB 2321) that would require 3D printers and CNC machines to block certain designs using software-based "firearms blueprint detection algorithms." In practice, this means scanning every print file, comparing it against a government-maintained database, and preventing "skilled users" from bypassing the system. Supporters frame this as a response to untraceable "ghost guns," but even federal prosecutors admit the tools involved are ordinary manufacturing equipment. Critics warn the language is overbroad, technically unworkable, hostile to open source, and likely to push printing toward cloud-locked, subscription-based systems—while doing little to stop criminals.

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A Real Linux Computer You Can Carry in Your Pocket  Hackster.io

An anonymous reader shared this report from The Verge: In early December, I brought you the news that Google has begun replacing Verge headlines, and those of our competitors, with AI clickbait nonsense in its content feed [which appears on the leftmost homescreen page of many Android phones and the Google app's homepage]. Google appeared to be backing away from the experiment, but now tells The Verge that its AI headlines in Google Discover are a feature, one that "performs well for user satisfaction." I once again see lots of misleading claims every time I check my phone... For example, Google's AI claimed last week that "US reverses foreign drone ban," citing and linking to this PCMag story for the news. That's not just false — PCMag took pains to explain that it's false in the story that Google links to...! What does the author of that PCMag story think? "It makes me feel icky," Jim Fisher tells me over the phone. "I'd encourage people to click on stories and read them, and not trust what Google is spoon-feeding them." He says Google should be using the headline that humans wrote, and if Google needs a summary, it can use the ones that publications already submit to help search engines parse our work. Google claims it's not rewriting headlines. It characterizes these new offerings as "trending topics," even though each "trending topic" presents itself as one of our stories, links to our stories, and uses our images, all without competent fact-checking to ensure the AI is getting them right... The AI is also no longer restricted to roughly four words per headline, so I no longer see nonsense headlines like "Microsoft developers using AI" or "AI tag debate heats." (Instead, I occasionally see tripe like "Fares: Need AAA & AA Games" or "Dispatch sold millions; few avoided romance.") But Google's AI has no clue what parts of these stories are new, relevant, significant, or true, and it can easily confuse one story for another. On December 26th, Google told me that "Steam Machine price & HDMI details emerge." They hadn't. On January 11th, Google proclaimed that "ASUS ROG Ally X arrives." (It arrived in 2024; the new Xbox Ally arrived months ago.) On January 20th, it wrote that "Glasses-free 3D tech wows," introducing readers to "New 3D tech called Immensity from Leia" — but linking to this TechRadar story about an entirely different company called Visual Semiconductor... Google declined our request for an interview to more fully explain the idea. The site Android Police spotted more inaccurate headlines in December: A story from 9to5Google, which was actually titled 'Don't buy a Qi2 25W wireless charger hoping for faster speeds — just get the 'slower' one instead' was retitled as 'Qi2 slows older Pixels.' Similarly, Ars Technica's 'Valve's Steam Machine looks like a console, but don't expect it to be priced like one' was changed to 'Steam Machine price revealed.' At the time, we believed that the inaccuracies were due to the feature being unstable and in early testing.... Now, Google has stopped calling Discover replacing human-written headlines as an "experiment." "Google buries a 'Generated with AI, which can make mistakes' message under the 'See more' button in the summary," reports 9to5Google, "making it look like this is the publisher's intended headline." While it is obvious that Google has refined this feature over the past couple of months, it doesn't take long to still find plenty of misleading headlines throughout Discover... Another article from NotebookCheck about an Anker power bank with a retractable cable was given a headline that's about another product entirely. A pair of headlines from Tom's Hardware and PCMag, meanwhile, show the two sides of using AI for this purpose. The Tom's Hardware headline, "Free GPU & Amazon Scams," isn't representative of the actual article, which is about someone who bought a GPU from Amazon, canceled their order, and the retailer shipped it anyway. There's nothing about "Amazon Scams" in the article.

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Linux 6.19-rc7 Released With Kernel Continuity Plan, A Few Important Fixes  Phoronix

Linuxiac Weekly Wrap-Up: Week 4, 2026 (Jan 19 – 25)  Linuxiac

Can Aircela's machine "create gasoline using little more than electricity and the air that we breathe"? Jalopnik reports... The Aircela machine works through a three-step process. It captures carbon dioxide directly from the air... The machine also traps water vapor, and uses electrolysis to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen... The oxygen is released, leaving hydrogen and carbon dioxide, the building blocks of hydrocarbons. This mixture then undergoes a process known as direct hydrogenation of carbon dioxide to methanol, as documented in scientific papers. Methanol is a useful, though dangerous, racing fuel, but the engine under your hood won't run on it, so it must be converted to gasoline. ExxonMobil has been studying the process of doing exactly that since at least the 1970s. It's another well-established process, and the final step the Aircela machine performs before dispensing it through a built-in ordinary gas pump. So while creating gasoline out of thin air sounds like something only a wizard alchemist in Dungeons & Dragons can do, each step of this process is grounded in science, and combining the steps in this manner means it can, and does, really work. Aircela does not, however, promise free gasoline for all. There are some limitations to this process. A machine the size of Aircela's produces just one gallon of gas per day... The machine can store up to 17 gallons, according to Popular Science, so if you don't drive very much, you can fill up your tank, eventually... While the Aircela website does not list a price for the machine, The Autopian reports it's targeting a price between $15,000 and $20,000, with hopes of dropping the price once mass production begins. While certainly less expensive than a traditional gas station, it's still a bit of an investment to begin producing your own fuel. If you live or work out in the middle of nowhere, however, it could be close to or less than the cost of bringing gas to you, or driving all your vehicles into a distant town to fill up. You're also not limited to buying just one machine, as the system is designed to scale up to produce as much fuel as you need. The main reason why this process isn't "something for nothing" is that it takes twice as much electrical energy to produce energy in the form of gasoline. As Aircela told The Autopian " Aircela is targeting >50% end to end power efficiency. Since there is about 37kWh of energy in a gallon of gasoline we will require about 75kWh to make it. When we power our machines with standalone, off-grid, photovoltaic panels this will correspond to less than $1.50/gallon in energy cost." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Quasar1999 for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Stallman spoke Friday at Atlanta's Georgia Institute of Technology, continuing his activism for free software while also addressing today's new technologies. Speaking about AI, Stallman warned that "nowadays, people often use the term artificial intelligence for things that aren't intelligent at all..." He makes a point of calling large language models "generators" because "They generate text and they don't understand really what that text means." (And they also make mistakes "without batting a virtual eyelash. So you can't trust anything that they generate.") Stallman says "Every time you call them AI, you are endorsing the claim that they are intelligent and they're not. So let's let's refuse to do that." "So I've come up with the term Pretend Intelligence. We could call it PI. And if we start saying this more often, we might help overcome this marketing hype campaign that wants people to trust those systems, and trust their lives and all their activities to the control of those systems and the big companies that develop and control them." "By the way, as far as I can tell, none of them is free software." When it comes to today's cars, Stallman says they contain "malicious functionalities... Cars should not be connected. They should not upload anything." (He adds that "I am hoping to find a skilled mechanic to work with me in a project to make disconnected cars.") And later Stallman calls the smartphone "an Orwellian tracking and surveillance device," saying he refuses to own one. (An advantage of free software is that it allows the removal of malicious functionalities.) Stallman spoke for about 53 minutes — but then answered questions for nearly 90 minutes longer. Here's some of the highlights...

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Nvidia challenges, overkill changes  overkill.wtf

LACT 0.8.4 Brings Improved Overclocking UI For GPUs On Linux  Phoronix

Mecha Comet Brings Real Modularity to Pocket-Sized Linux Computing, Hits Kickstarter  TechEBlog -

A Real Linux Computer You Can Carry in Your Pocket  Hackster.io

A Real Linux Computer You Can Carry in Your Pocket  Hackster.io

Newsweek reports on how the U.S. Congress is debating "kill switch" technology for vehicles, "which would be able to monitor diver behavior, detect impairment such as intoxication and intervene..." "While the technology is not yet a legal requirement in cars, Congress passed a law with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 that requires the Department of Transportation to create the mandate." Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced an amendment to a federal spending bill that would reverse the mandating of the technology. On Thursday, 160 Republicans voted in favor, but the legislation failed 164-268, according to the House Clerk's official roll call — with 57 Republicans joining 211 Democrats in voting against it... The House vote signals substantial Republican support for curbing any move toward mandated impaired-driving prevention systems, but not enough to pass such legislation. Critics of the kill switch technology see it as government overreach, while those in favor argue that it could prove to be lifesaving. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Not the Linux You Remember: 16 Every Day Tasks That No Longer Need the Terminal  It's FOSS

The "NexDock" (from Nex Computer) already turns your phone into a laptop workstation. Purism chose it as the docking station for their Librem 5 phones. But now Nex is offering its own smartphone "that runs Android 16, launches Debian, and dual-boots into Windows 11," according to the blog It's FOSS: Fourteen years after the first concept video was teased, the NexPhone is here, powered by a Qualcomm QCM6490, which, the keen-eyed among you will remember from the now-discontinued Fairphone 5. By 2026 standards, it's dated hardware, but Nex Computer doesn't seem to be overselling it, as they expect the NexPhone to be a secondary or backup phone, not a flagship contender. The phone includes an Adreno 643 GPU, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 512GB via a microSD card. In terms of software, the NexPhone boots into NexOS, a bloatware-free and minimal Android 16 system, with Debian running as an app with GPU acceleration, and Windows 11 being the dual-boot option that requires a restart to access. ["And because the default Windows interface isn't designed for a handheld screen, we built our own Mobile UI from the ground up to make Windows far easier to navigate on a phone," notes a blog post from Nex founder/CEO Emre Kosmaz]. And, before I forget, you can plug the NexPhone into a USB-C or HDMI display, add a keyboard and mouse to transform it into a desktop workstation. There's a camera plus "a comprehensive suite of sensors," according to the article, "that includes a fingerprint scanner, accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, and proximity sensor.... "NexPhone is slated for a Q3 2026 release (July-September)..." Back in 2012, explains Nex founder/CEO Emre Kosmaz, "most investors weren't excited about funding new hardware. One VC even told us, 'I don't understand why anyone buys anything other than Apple'..." Over the last decade, we kept building and shipping — six generations of NexDock — helping customers turn phones into laptop-like setups (display + keyboard + trackpad). And now the industry is catching up faster than ever. With Android 16, desktop-style experiences are becoming more native and more mainstream. That momentum is exactly why NexPhone makes sense today... Thank you for being part of this journey. With your support, I hope NexPhone can help move us toward a world where phones truly replace laptops and PCs — more often, more naturally, and for more people.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The "NexDock" (from Nex Computer) already turns your phone into a laptop workstation. Purism chose it as the docking station for their Librem 5 phones. But now Nex is offering its own smartphone "that runs Android 16, launches Debian, and dual-boots into Windows 11," according to the blog It's FOSS: Fourteen years after the first concept video was teased, the NexPhone is here, powered by a Qualcomm QCM6490, which, the keen-eyed among you will remember from the now-discontinued Fairphone 5. By 2026 standards, it's dated hardware, but Nex Computer doesn't seem to be overselling it, as they expect the NexPhone to be a secondary or backup phone, not a flagship contender. The phone includes an Adreno 643 GPU, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 512GB via a microSD card. In terms of software, the NexPhone boots into NexOS, a bloatware-free and minimal Android 16 system, with Debian running as an app with GPU acceleration, and Windows 11 being the dual-boot option that requires a restart to access. ["And because the default Windows interface isn't designed for a handheld screen, we built our own Mobile UI from the ground up to make Windows far easier to navigate on a phone," notes a blog post from Nex founder/CEO Emre Kosmaz]. And, before I forget, you can plug the NexPhone into a USB-C or HDMI display, add a keyboard and mouse to transform it into a desktop workstation. There's a camera plus "a comprehensive suite of sensors," according to the article, "that includes a fingerprint scanner, accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, and proximity sensor.... "NexPhone is slated for a Q3 2026 release (July-September)..." Back in 2012, explains Nex founder/CEO Emre Kosmaz, "most investors weren't excited about funding new hardware. One VC even told us, 'I don't understand why anyone buys anything other than Apple'..." Over the last decade, we kept building and shipping — six generations of NexDock — helping customers turn phones into laptop-like setups (display + keyboard + trackpad). And now the industry is catching up faster than ever. With Android 16, desktop-style experiences are becoming more native and more mainstream. That momentum is exactly why NexPhone makes sense today... Thank you for being part of this journey. With your support, I hope NexPhone can help move us toward a world where phones truly replace laptops and PCs — more often, more naturally, and for more people.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I tried playing my 90s Windows CD-ROM games on Linux, and it was surprisingly easy  How-To Geek

Photoshop 2021 And 2025 Now Run On Linux Thanks To New Wine Patches  Ubergizmo

Small modular nuclear reactors (or SMRs) are touted as "cheaper, safer, faster to build and easier to finance" than conventional nuclear reactors, reports CNN. Amazon has invested in X-Energy, and earlier this month, Meta announced a deal with Oklo, and in Michigan last month, Holtec began the long formal licensing process for two SMRs with America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission next to a nuclear plant it hopes to reactive. (And in 2024, California-based Kairos Power broke ground in Tennessee on a SMR "demo" reactor.) But "The reality, as ever, is likely to be messier and experts are sounding notes of caution..." All the arguments in favor of SMRs overlook a fundamental issue, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists: They are too expensive. Despite all the money swilling around the sector, "it's still not enough," he told CNN. Nuclear power cannot compete on cost with alternatives, both fossil fuels and increasingly renewable energy, he said." Some SMRs also have an issue with fuel. The more unconventional designs, those cooled by salt or gas, often require a special type of fuel called high-assay low-enriched uranium, known as HALEU (pronounced hay-loo). The amounts available are limited and the supply chain has been dominated by Russia, despite efforts to build up a domestic supply. It's a major risk, said Nick Touran [a nuclear engineer and independent consultant]. The biggest challenge nuclear has is competing with natural gas, he said, a "luxury, super expensive fuel may not be the best way." There is still stigma around nuclear waste, too. SMR companies say smaller reactors mean less nuclear waste, but 2022 research from Stanford University suggested some SMRs could actually generate more waste, in part because they are less fuel efficient... As companies race to prove SMRs can meet the hype, experts appear to be divided in their thinking. For some, SMRs are an expensive — and potentially dangerous — distraction, with timelines that stretch so far into the future they cannot be a genuine answer to soaring needs for clean power right now. Nuclear engineering/consultant Touran told CNN the small reactors are "a technological solution to a financial problem. No venture capitalists can say, like, 'oh, sure, we'll build a $30 billion plant.' But, if you're down into hundreds of millions, maybe they can do it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.