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Intel's Vulkan Linux Driver Finally Exposes VK_EXT_shader_object  Phoronix

NVIDIA's Open-Source Nova Driver Now Explicitly Requires 64-bit Support  Phoronix

What Do You Use to Install Software on Linux?  How-To Geek

A UK government trial of Microsoft's M365 Copilot found no clear productivity gains despite user satisfaction with tasks like summarizing meetings and writing emails. While the tool sped up some routine work, it actually slowed down more complex tasks like Excel analysis and PowerPoint creation, often producing lower-quality results. The Register reports: The Department for Business and Trade received 1,000 licenses for use between October and December 2024, with the majority of these allocated to volunteers and 30 percent to randomly selected participants. Some 300 of these people consented to their data being analyzed. An evaluation of time savings, quality assurance, and productivity was then calculated in the assessment (PDF). Overall, 72 percent of users were satisfied or very satisfied with their digital assistant and voiced disappointment when the test ended. However, the reality of productivity gains was more nuanced than Microsoft's marketing materials might suggest. Around two-thirds of the employees in the trial used M365 at least once a week, and 30 percent used it at least once a day -- which doesn't sound like great value for money. [...] According to the M365 Copilot monitoring dashboard made available in the trial, an average of 72 M365 Copilot actions were taken per user. "Based on there being 63 working days during the pilot, this is an average of 1.14 M365 Copilot actions taken per user per day," the study says. Word, Teams, and Outlook were the most used, and Loop and OneNote usage rates were described as "very low," less than 1 percent and 3 percent per day, respectively. "PowerPoint and Excel were slightly more popular; both experienced peak activity of 7 percent of license holders using M365 Copilot in a single day within those applications," the study states. The three most popular tasks involved transcribing or summarizing a meeting, writing an email, and summarizing written comms. These also had the highest satisfaction levels, we're told. Participants were asked to record the time taken for each task with M365 Copilot compared to colleagues not involved in the trial. The assessment report adds: "Observed task sessions showed that M365 Copilot users produced summaries of reports and wrote emails faster and to a higher quality and accuracy than non-users. Time savings observed for writing emails were extremely small. "However, M365 Copilot users completed Excel data analysis more slowly and to a worse quality and accuracy than non-users, conflicting time savings reported in the diary study for data analysis. PowerPoint slides [were] over 7 minutes faster on average, but to a worse quality and accuracy than non-users." This means corrective action was required. A cross-section of participants was asked questions in an interview -- qualitative findings -- and they claimed routine admin tasks could be carried out with greater efficiency with M365 Copilot, letting them "redirect time towards tasks seen as more strategic or of higher value, while others reported using these time savings to attend training sessions or take a lunchtime walk." Nevertheless, M365 Copilot did not necessarily make them more productive, the assessment found. This is something Microsoft has worked on with customers to quantify the benefits and justify the greater expense of a license for M365 Copilot.

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RISC-V Zalasr Support Now Under Review For The Linux Kernel  Phoronix

Cronos: The New Dawn releases today - Steam Deck Verified with Linux support  GamingOnLinux

CISA Warns of Linux Kernel Race Condition Vulnerability Exploited in Attacks  CybersecurityNews

CISA Warns of Linux Kernel Race Condition Vulnerability Exploited in Attacks  CybersecurityNews

CISA Warns of Linux Kernel Race Condition Vulnerability Exploited in Attacks  CybersecurityNews

CISA Warns of Linux Kernel Race Condition Vulnerability Exploited in Attacks  CybersecurityNews

Amazon's Project Kuiper has landed its first airline deal with JetBlue and plans to offer satellite-powered in-flight Wi-Fi starting in 2027. The Verge reports: Yesterday, Amazon's Panos Panay showed off a speed test using an "enterprise-grade customer terminal" (aka, dish) to achieve a download speed of just over a gigabit. Fine, but we'll have to wait to see how it performs once individuals using consumer dishes at scale. Amazon says the first customers will start using the service this year, ahead of a broader rollout in 2026. Project Kuiper-powered Wi-Fi will be available on "select" aircraft initially. Amazon says its satellites will provide lower latency and "more reliable service" for passengers, as they orbit between 367 and 391 miles above Earth -- far closer than the geostationary satellites that orbit around 22,369 miles above the planet. Amazon has also struck a deal with Airbus to build Project Kuiper's satellite internet service into its aircraft.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Fine-particulate air pollution can drive devastating forms of dementia by triggering the formation of toxic clumps of protein that destroy nerve cells as they spread through the brain, research suggests. Exposure to the airborne particles causes proteins in the brain to misfold into the clumps, which are hallmarks of Lewy body dementia, the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's disease. The finding has "profound implications" for preventing the neurodegenerative disorder, which affects millions worldwide, with scientists calling for a concerted effort to improve air quality by cutting emissions from industrial activity and vehicle exhausts, improving wildfire management and reducing wood burning in homes. The researchers began by analyzing hospital records of the 56.5 million US Medicare patients. They looked at those who were admitted for the first time between 2000 and 2014 with the protein damage. Armed with the patients' zip codes, the scientists estimated their long-term exposure to PM2.5 pollution, airborne particles that are smaller than 2.5 thousandths of a millimeter. These can be inhaled deep into the lungs and are found in the bloodstream, brain and other organs. They found that long-term exposure to PM2.5 raised the risk of Lewy body dementia, but had less of an impact on rates of another neurodegenerative brain disease that is not driven by the toxic proteins. Lewy bodies are made from a protein called alpha-synuclein. The protein is crucial for healthy brain functioning, but can misfold in various ways to produce different kinds of harmful Lewy bodies. These can kill nerve cells and cause devastating disease by spreading through the brain. To see if air pollution could trigger Lewy bodies, the team exposed mice to PM2.5 pollution every other day for 10 months. Some were normal mice, but others were genetically modified to prevent them making alpha-synuclein. The results were striking: in normal mice, nerve cells died off, leading to brain shrinkage and cognitive decline. The genetically modified mice were largely unaffected. Further work in mice showed that PM2.5 pollution drove the formation of aggressive, resilient and toxic clumps of alpha-synuclein clumps that looked very similar to Lewy bodies in humans. Although the work is in mice, the findings are considered compelling evidence. The work has been published in the journal Science.

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In a landmark collaboration across 22 labs, neuroscientists have created the first brain-wide map of decision-making in mice, tracking over 620,000 neurons across nearly 280 brain regions. They found that decision-making is distributed much more broadly than previously thought, involving not just "cognitive" centers but also regions linked to movement. From a report: The task was deceptively simple task. Mice sat in front of a screen that intermittently displayed a black-and-white striped circle for a brief amount of time on either the left or right side. A mouse could earn a sip of sugar water if they quickly moved the circle toward the center of the screen by operating a tiny steering wheel in the same direction, often doing so within one second. On some trials, the circle was faint, requiring the animal to rely on past experience to make a guess, which allowed researchers to study how expectations influence future decisions. While the mice performed the task, researchers recorded brain activity using high-density electrodes that allowed them to monitor hundreds of neurons across many regions simultaneously. The work was divided across the participating labs, so that each lab mapped a particular region of the mouse brain. The pooled dataset covers 620,000 neurons recorded from 139 mice in 12 labs, encompassing nearly the entire brain. The resulting map revealed that decision-making activity is distributed across the brain, including in areas traditionally associated with movement rather than cognition. The findings have been published in two papers in the journal Nature.

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An Indiana bankruptcy lawyer named Mark Zuckerberg is suing Meta after his Facebook page was repeatedly shut down for "impersonating" CEO Mark Zuckerberg, despite being his real legal name. TechCrunch reports: Mark Zuckerberg the lawyer uses a commercial Facebook page to advertise his legal practice and communicate with potential clients. But his page has been disabled five times in the last eight years, since Meta's moderation systems flag his account as falsely impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the platform. Mark Zuckerberg is not impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, because he, too, is Mark Zuckerberg. In his legal complaint, Mark Zuckerberg points out that he has been practicing law since Mark Zuckerberg was just three years old. "It's not funny," Mark Zuckerberg, the lawyer, said to Indianapolis' 13WTHR. "Not when they take my money. This really pissed me off." Mark Zuckerberg has spent over $11,000 to advertise his page on Mark Zuckerberg's Meta platforms, but when Mark Zuckerberg's account is disabled for allegedly impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg still has to pay for these advertisements. Zuckerberg created a website, iammarkzuckerberg.com, chronicling how his life has been shaped by being named Mark Zuckerberg. The lawsuit can be found here.

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Warner Bros. Discovery has filed a major copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, accusing the AI image generator of exploiting its movies and TV shows to train models and generate near-identical reproductions of iconic characters like Batman, Bugs Bunny, and Rick and Morty. From The Hollywood Reporter: The company "brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery's intellectual property" by letting subscribers produce images and videos of iconic copyrighted characters, alleges the complaint, filed on Thursday in California federal court. "The heart of what we do is develop stories and characters to entertain our audiences, bringing to life the vision and passion of our creative partners," said a Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson in a statement. "Midjourney is blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works, and we filed this suit to protect our content, our partners, and our investments." For years, AI companies have been training their technology on data scraped across the internet without compensating creators. It's led to lawsuits from authors, record labels, news organizations, artists and studios, which contend that some AI tools erode demand for their content. Warner Bros. Discovery joins Disney and Universal, which earlier this year teamed up to sue Midjourney. By their thinking, the AI company is a free-rider plagiarizing their movies and TV shows. In the lawsuit, Warner Bros. Discovery points to Midjourney generating images of iconic copyrighted characters. At the forefront are heroes who're at the center of DC Studios' movies and TV shows, like Superman, Wonder Woman and The Joker; others are Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo characters who've become ubiquitous household names; more are Cartoon Network characters, including those from Rick and Morty, who've emerged as something of cultural touchstones in recent years. [...] The lawsuit argues Midjourney's ability to return copyrighted characters is a "clear draw for subscribers," diverting consumers away from purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery-approved posters, wall art and prints, among other products that must now compete against the service. [...] Warner Bros. Discovery seeks Midjourney's profits attributable to the alleged infringement or, alternatively, $150,000 per infringed work, which could leave the AI company on the hook for massive damages. The thrust of the studios' lawsuits will likely be decided by one question: Are AI companies covered by fair use, the legal doctrine in intellectual property law that allows creators to build upon copyrighted works without a license? The lawsuit can be found here.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: According to a new medical survey, scrolling on your smartphone while using the toilet may dramatically increase your risk of hemorrhoids. The evidence is laid out in a study published on September 3 in the journal PLOS One. [...] Over the past 20 years, one single device has unequivocally lengthened the amount of time most people spend sitting. "We're still uncovering the many ways smartphones and our modern way of life impact our health," Harvard Medical School gastroenterologist and study co-author Trisha Pasricha said in a statement. "It's possible that how and where we use them -- such as while in the bathroom -- can have unintended consequences." To test this theory, Pasricha and colleagues oversaw a study of 125 adults who recently received a colonoscopy screening. The patients were surveyed on both their daily lifestyles and toilet traditions, while endoscopists subsequently evaluated them for hemorrhoids. Of those volunteers, 66 percent reported passing time in the bathroom while smartphone scrolling. After factoring in potential hemorrhoid influences like age, exercise habits, and fiber intake, the researchers determined that those who relied on this screentime had a 46 percent higher risk of hemorrhoid problems than non-users. "It's incredibly easy to lose track of time when we're scrolling on our smartphones -- popular apps are designed entirely for that purpose," added Pasricha. The survey's results made this abundantly clear: 37 percent of smartphone users spent over five minutes at a time on the toilet, while barely seven percent of non-users reported the same. In general, people opted for reading the news and checking their social media while in the bathroom. [...] Pasricha cautioned against drawing any definitive conclusions just yet, noting the preliminary study's comparatively small sample size. The team intends to investigate the issue further, possibly by tracking patients over longer periods of time, while also experimenting with ways to limit smartphone use. "We need to study this further, but it's a safe suggestion to leave the smartphone outside the bathroom when you need to have a bowel movement," said Pasricha. "If it's taking longer, ask yourself why. Was it because having a bowel movement was really so difficult, or was it because my focus was elsewhere?"

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Intel shelled out $16.5 billion on R&D in 2024, outspending Nvidia by 28% and AMD by 156%, with much of the cash going into chip design, fabrication tech, and the upcoming Nova Lake architecture. "When you compare the R&D expenditures to the amount of revenue, though, the story takes on a very different look," notes PC Gamer. "Intel spent 31% of its net revenue, and 26% for AMD, but Nvidia and Samsung got by on just 10% and 4%, respectively." From the report: An analysis of research and development expenditure by TechInsights was reported by Korea JoongAng Daily, but you can get the numbers yourself by pulling up each company's 2024 financial results. For example, AMD declared that it spent $6.456 billion last year (pdf, page 1) on R&D, whereas Nvidia forked out $12.914 billion. It's worth noting that Nvidia's financial statements are numbered one year ahead of the actual period (FY 2026 is 2025 and so on). Anyway, those figures pale in comparison to how much cash Intel burned through in 2024 to research and develop chip, fabrication technologies, software, and all kinds of tech stuffâ"a staggering $16.546 billion (pdf, page 25). That's 28% more than Nvidia and a frankly unbelievable 156% more than AMD. The nearest non-US semiconductor firm is Samsung Electronics, which spent a reported $9.5 billion on R&D. That would place third, comfortably ahead of AMD, and it strongly suggests that if you have your own foundries for making chips, you need to spend a lot of cash on finding ways to make better processors.

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Philips Hue is rolling out MotionAware, a new feature that turns its smart bulbs into motion sensors using radio-frequency (RF) Zigbee signals. The upgrade works with most Hue bulbs made since 2014, but requires the new $99 Bridge Pro hub to enable. The Verge reports: To create a MotionAware motion-sensing zone, you need Hue's new Bridge Pro and at least three Hue devices in a room. It works with all new and most existing mains-powered Hue products via a firmware update. That includes smart bulbs, light strips, and fixtures. Portable devices, such as the Hue Go or Table Lamp, and battery-powered accessories, such as Hue switches, aren't compatible. Neither is Hue's current smart plug. [...] "All of the functionality you get with our physical motion sensors -- including turning on when motion is detected or off when there's been no movement for a certain amount of time -- can be configured on motion-aware motion events," says George Yianni, Hue CTO and founder, in an interview with The Verge. "We've done something that's quite a lot better than what else is out there." MotionAware is occupancy sensing, not presence sensing; it requires movement. Yianni says it's comparable to the passive infrared sensing (PIR) Hue's physical sensors use. This means it can be triggered by pets or other motion. A sensitivity slider in the app helps fine-tune detection. According to Yianni, a key benefit over PIR is that a MotionAware zone can cover a larger area than a single PIR sensor, and it's also not limited to line of sight. MotionAware can't sense light levels, which Hue Motion Sensors can, but you can pair a light sensor to a motion zone to feed it that data. The positioning of the lights will also play a role in determining the effectiveness of the motion sensing. "We recommend that the lights surround an area which will roughly define the detection area in which motion will be detected," says Yianni. "It will sense around the lights and in the broader room thanks to reflections, but detection reliability will depend on lots of factors." Beyond lighting automation, MotionAware can also integrate with Hue Secure, Hue's DIY security platform that includes cameras, contact sensors, and a new video doorbell. Motion detection can trigger lights to flash red, activate Hue's new plug-in chime/siren, and send an alert to your phone with a button to call emergency services. [...] MotionAware is built on RF sensing -- a technology that uses wireless signals to "see" a space and detect disruptions within it. The data is then sent to the Bridge Pro, where AI algorithms are applied to figure out what is causing those disruptions, so the system can act accordingly. This is why it's limited to the Bridge Pro, the V2 bridge isn't powerful enough to run those algorithms, says Yianni.

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Linux 6.18 CFS Patch Defers Throttling to Slash Latency and Deadlocks  WebProNews

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Managers and supervisors brace yourselves: calling the boss a dickhead is not necessarily a sackable offense, a tribunal has ruled. The ruling came in the case of an office manager who was sacked on the spot when -- during a row -- she called her manager and another director dickheads. Kerrie Herbert has been awarded almost 30,000 pounds in compensation and legal costs after an employment tribunal found she had been unfairly dismissed. The employment judge Sonia Boyes ruled that the scaffolding and brickwork company she worked for had not "acted reasonably in all the circumstances in treating [her] conduct as a sufficient reason to dismiss her." "She made a one-off comment to her line manager about him and a director of the business," Boyes said. "The comment was made during a heated meeting. "Whilst her comment was not acceptable, there is no suggestion that she had made such comments previously. Further ... this one-off comment did not amount to gross misconduct or misconduct so serious to justify summary dismissal." [...] Boyes found that Herbert was summarily fired because of her use of the word "dickheads" and ruled that the company had failed to follow proper disciplinary procedures. She concluded that calling her bosses dickheads was not sufficient to fire Herbert and ordered the firm to pay 15,042.81 pounds in compensation. In her latest judgment she also ruled it had to pay 14,087 pounds towards her legal fees. "If it was anyone else in this position they would have walked years ago due to the goings-on in the office, but it is only because of you two dickheads that I stayed," said Herbert. Swannell retorted: "Don't call me a fucking dickhead or my wife. That's it, you're sacked. Pack your kit and fuck off."

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