Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the that's-not-good-hackers department: July saw the news that Meta had launched a powerful open-source AI model, Llama 3.1.
But the Free Software Foundation evaluated Llama 3.1's license agreement, and announced this week that "this is not a free software license and you should not use it, nor any software released under it."
Not only does it deny users their freedom, but it also purports to hand over powers to the licensors that should only be exercised through lawmaking by democratically-elected governments.
Moreover, it has been applied by Meta to a machine-learning (ML) application, even though the license completely fails to address software freedom challenges inherent in such applications....
We decided to review the Llama license because it is being applied to an ML application and model, while at the same time being presented by Meta as if it grants users a degree of software freedom. This is certainly not the case, and we want the free software community to have clarity on this.
In other news, the FSF also announced the winner of the logo contest for their big upcoming 40th anniversary celebration.
Posted by AzT from TFW2005
TFNation makes
another guest announcement: voice actor Neil Kaplan. Kaplan portrayed the ultimate hero for the 2001
RID cartoon (in which he also voiced Ro-Tor!) He is also the actor behind many anime and cartoon characters, including the likes of Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto on Bleach, Madara Uchiha on Naruto, Vulcan Haestus in Promare, and Emperor Zarkon on Voltron: Legendary Defender. You may also know him from video games, such as Starcraft II, Destiny II, Midnight Suns, Fallout 76, and a few entries in the Final Fantasy series. Tickets will be available Saturday, February 1st 2025, from 12pm (
» Continue Reading.
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Neil Kaplan To Attend TFNation 2025 appeared first on
Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the road-behind department: Friday Bill Gates shared an excerpt from his upcoming memoir Source Code: My Beginnings. Published in the Wall Street Journal, the excerpt includes pictures of young Bill Gates when he was 12 (dressed for a hike) and 14 (studying a teletype machine).
Gates remembers forming "a sort of splinter group" from the Boy Scouts when he was 13 with a group of boys who "wanted more freedom and more risk" and took long hikes around Seattle, travelling hundreds of miles together on hikes as long as "seven days or more." (His favorite breakfast dish was Oscar Mayer Smokie Links.) But he also remembers another group of friends — Kent, Rick, and... Paul — who connected to a mainframe computer from a phone line at their private school. Both hiking and programming "felt like an adventure... exploring new worlds, traveling to places even most adults couldn't reach."
Like hiking, programming fit me because it allowed me to define my own measure of success, and it seemed limitless, not determined by how fast I could run or how far I could throw. The logic, focus and stamina needed to write long, complicated programs came naturally to me. Unlike in hiking, among that group of friends, I was the leader.
When Gates' school got a (DEC) PDP-8 — which cost $8,500 — "For a challenge, I decided I would try to write a version of the Basic programming language for the new computer..." And Gates remembers a long hike where "I silently honed my code" for its formula evaluator:
I slimmed it down more, like whittling little pieces off a stick to sharpen the point. What I made seemed efficient and pleasingly simple. It was by far the best code I had ever written...
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Posted by Black Convoy from TFW2005
Threezero website have been updated with new listings for reissues of their DLX War For Cybertron Trilogy: Siege Optimus Prime And Megatron high-quality action figures. Originally released in 2020, both DLX WFC Siege Optimus Prime and Megatron will be on sale again on 28th, January 2025 at 9:00 am HKT (8:00 PM ET). While Megatron shows no discernible differences compared to the
original release, Optimus Prime
green chest windows are now blue on this reissue. Both figures are planned for release by the 2nd quarter of 2025. Price is yet to be revealed, but
Threezero Japan Twitter/X specified that retail
» Continue Reading.
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Threezero DLX War For Cybertron Trilogy: Siege Optimus Prime And Megatron To Be Reissued appeared first on
Transformer World 2005 - TFW2005.COM.
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the art-of-the-deal department: A plan to keep TikTok available in the U.S. "involves tapping software company Oracle and a group of outside investors," reports NPR, "to effectively take control of the app's global operations, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks..."
"[P]otential investors who are engaged in the talks include Microsoft."
Under the deal now being negotiated by the White House, TikTok's China-based owner ByteDance would retain a minority stake in the company, but the app's algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle, which already provides the foundation of TikTok's web infrastructure... "The goal is for Oracle to effectively monitor and provide oversight with what is going on with TikTok," said the person directly involved in the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the deliberations. "ByteDance wouldn't completely go away, but it would minimize Chinese ownership...." Officials from Oracle and the White House held a meeting on Friday about a potential deal, and another meeting has been scheduled for next week, according to the source involved in the discussions, who said Oracle is interested in a TikTok stake "in the tens of billions," but the rest of the deal is in flux...
Under a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, TikTok must execute what is known as "qualified divestiture" from ByteDance in order to stay in business in the U.S... A congressional staffer involved in talks about TikTok's future, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said binding legal agreements from the White House ensuring ByteDance cannot covertly manipulate the app will prove critical in winning lawmakers' approval. "A key part is showing there is no operational relationship with ByteDance, that they do not have control," the Congressional staffer said. "There needs to be no backdoors where China can potentially gain access...."
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the loving-Linux department: Two computer scientists at the University of Waterloo in Canada believe changing 30 lines of code in Linux "could cut energy use at some data centers by up to 30 percent," according to the site Data Centre Dynamics.
It's the code that processes packets of network traffic, and Linux "is the most widely used OS for data center servers," according to the article:
The team tested their solution's effectiveness and submitted it to Linux for consideration, and the code was published this month as part of Linux's newest kernel, release version 6.13. "All these big companies — Amazon, Google, Meta — use Linux in some capacity, but they're very picky about how they decide to use it," said Martin Karsten [professor of Computer Science in the Waterloo's Math Faculty]. "If they choose to 'switch on' our method in their data centers, it could save gigawatt hours of energy worldwide. Almost every single service request that happens on the Internet could be positively affected by this."
The University of Waterloo is building a green computer server room as part of its new mathematics building, and Karsten believes sustainability research must be a priority for computer scientists. "We all have a part to play in building a greener future," he said. The Linux Foundation, which oversees the development of the Linux OS, is a founder member of the Green Software Foundation, an organization set up to look at ways of developing "green software" — code that reduces energy consumption.
Karsten "teamed up with Joe Damato, distinguished engineer at Fastly" to develop the 30 lines of code, according to an announcement from the university. "The Linux kernel code addition developed by Karsten and Damato was based on research published in ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review" (by Karsten and grad student Peter Cai).
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the friend-requests department: An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:
The developer behind Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup, open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, respectively, is now raising funds on Kickstarter to fuel the apps' further development. The trio is part of the growing open social web, also known as the fediverse, powered by the same ActivityPub protocol used by X alternative Mastodon... [and] challenge Meta's social media empire... "Help us put control back into the hands of the people!" [Daniel Supernault, the Canadian-based developer behind the federated apps] said in a post on Mastodon where he announced the Kickstarter's Thursday launch.
As of the time of writing, the campaign has raised $58,383 so far. While the goal on the Kickstarter site has been surpassed, Supernault said that he hopes to raise $1 million or more so he can hire a small team... A fourth project, PubKit, is also a part of these efforts, offering a toolset to support developers building in the fediverse... The stretch goal of the Kickstarter campaign is to register the Pixelfed Foundation as a not-for-profit and grow its team beyond volunteers. This could help address the issue with Supernault being a single point of failure for the project... Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko made a similar decision earlier this month to transition to a nonprofit structure. If successful, the campaign would also fund a blogging app as an alternative to Tumblr or LiveJournal at some point in the future.
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the power-plays department: CleanTechnicareports that last year Americans "bought 37% more air source heat pumps than the next most popular heating appliance — gas furnaces."
And Americans bought 21% more heat pumps than they did in 2023.
Canary Media is quick to point out that in many homes, more than one heat pump is required, so that data should be interpreted with that in mind. Typically, a home uses only one furnace. Nevertheless, the trend for heat pumps is up. Russell Unger, the head of decarbonizing buildings at RMI, said, "There's just been this long term, consistent trend."
It's easy to understand why heat pumps are gaining in popularity. In addition to providing heated air in the winter and cool air in the summer, they are far more efficient than conventional heat sources — delivering three to four times more heat per dollar spent than oil- or gas-fired heating equipment or old fashioned electric baseboard heat. They also create far less carbon pollution. How much less depends on the source of electricity in the local area,
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the TikTokker-born-every-minute department: TikTok is still not available for download from U.S.-based app stores, reports CBS News. So "Some fast-acting entrepreneurs are selling phones with TikTok preloaded on devices for thousands of dollars online." The Associated Press notes that New York-based Nicholas Matthews "listed an iPhone 14 Plus with TikTok for $10,000. As of Friday, Matthews said his highest bid was for $4,550."
Another example from The New York Times:
An information technology engineer, Mr. Gustab listed his iPhone 15 Pro with TikTok downloaded onto it for $3,000 on Facebook Marketplace. That's about three times the cost of a brand-new iPhone 16 Pro. On Thursday night, he had an offer for $1,200, still more than almost every brand-new iPhone and nearly twice as much as a refurbished iPhone 15 Pro without TikTok.
Business Insider reports the search term iPhone TikTok "yielded more than 45,000 results" on eBay...
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the Microsoft-is-my-copilot department: ZDNET's senior editor sees an "overwhelmingly negative" response to Microsoft's surprise price hike for the 84 million paying subscribers to its Microsoft 365 software suite. Attempting the first price hike in more than 12 years, "they made it a 30% price increase" — going from $10 a month to $13 a month — "and blamed it all on artificial intelligence."
Bad idea. Why? Because...
No one wants to pay for AI...
If you ask Copilot in Word to write something for you, the results will be about what you'd expect from an enthusiastic summer intern. You might fare better if you ask Copilot to turn a folder full of photos into a PowerPoint presentation. But is that task really such a challenge...?
The announcement was bungled, too... I learned about the new price thanks to a pop-up message on my Android phone... It could be worse, I suppose. Just ask the French and Spanish subscribers who got a similar pop-up message telling them their price had gone from €10 a month to €13,000. (Those pesky decimals.) Oh, and I've lost count of the number of people who were baffled and angry that Microsoft had forcibly installed the Copilot app on their devices. It was just a rebranding of the old Microsoft 365 app with the new name and logo, but in my case it was days later before I received yet another pop-up message telling me about the change...
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by from MMO Champion
Plunderstorm Creator Royale 2025
The Plunderstorm Creator Royale has returned for a second time, with streams on both
Twitch and
YouTube! Tune in to watch 60 content creators compete head-to-head in Plunderstorm Duos for the title of Plunderstorm Champion and the $50,000 USD prize pool!
Originally Posted by Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Avast ye sailors, scallywags, and spectators alike— the Plunderstorm® Creator Royale lies dead ahead! Prepare for pirates, prizes, and plenty of plundering as sixty of your favorite content creators clash once more within the storm-plagued peaks of Arathi Highlands. This unique event sets sail on
Twitch and
YouTube on January 25, starting at 10:00 am PST / 18:00 GMT.
Event Overview
The Plunderstorm Creator Royale is a single-day event featuring a roster of sixty popular streamers competing to earn the most points and emerge victorious!
Points are awarded per match based on each duo’s total eliminations and final placement, with a greater number of points awarded for either eliminating other duos or placing among the top ranks. The first five matches of the day are played purely for points, while later matches provide the top teams with an opportunity to secure an overall victory as follows:
Match 6: Any of the Top 3 ranking teams can win the event by securing a victory here!
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the all-hat-and-no-cattle department: 2021: "Automotive Startup Canoo Debuts a Snub-Nosed Electric Pickup"
2025: Canoo "Goes Belly-Up After Moving to Texas"
"Its production volumes paled in comparison to Canoo's rate of cash burn, which was substantial, with net losses in 2023 totaling just over $300 million..." reports AutoWeek. "It was able to deliver small batches of vans to a few customers, but apparently remained distant from anything approaching volume production."
"Back in 2020, electric vehicle maker Canoo snagged a $2.4 billion valuation before it had shipped a single car," remembers SFGate. "Now, just months after yanking its headquarters from Los Angeles County to Texas, the company has gone belly-up."
In its four-year span as a public company, Canoo battled investor lawsuits, Securities and Exchange Commission charges, executive departures and a mixed reception of its cars. Auto tech blogger Steven Symes recently likened Canoo's cargo-style van to an "eraser on wheels."
"Canoo is the latest EV startup to go bankrupt after merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) as a shortcut to going public," notes TechCrunch. "Electric Last Mile Solutions was the first in June 2022. But since then, Fisker, Lordstown Motors, Proterra, Lion Electric, and Arrival all filed for different levels of bankruptcy protection in their various home countries."
In the years since it went public, [Canoo] made a small number of its bubbly electric vans and handed them over to partners — some paying — willing to trial the vehicles. The U.S. Postal Service, Department of Defense, and NASA all have or had Canoo vehicles.
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the TikTokker-born-every-minute department: TikTok is still not available for download from U.S.-based app stores, reports CBS News. So "Some fast-acting entrepreneurs are selling phones with TikTok preloaded on devices for thousands of dollars online." The Associated Press notes that New York-based Nicholas Matthews "listed an iPhone 14 Plus with TikTok for $10,000. As of Friday, Matthews said his highest bid was for $4,550."
Another example from The New York Times:
An information technology engineer, Mr. Gustab listed his iPhone 15 Pro with TikTok downloaded onto it for $3,000 on Facebook Marketplace. That's about three times the cost of a brand-new iPhone 16 Pro. On Thursday night, he had an offer for $1,200, still more than almost every brand-new iPhone and nearly twice as much as a refurbished iPhone 15 Pro without TikTok.
Business Insider reports the search term iPhone TikTok "yielded more than 45,000 results" on eBay...
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the printer-net-service-providers department: Slashdot reader jenningsthecat writes:
3D printer manufacturer Bambu Labs has faced a storm of controversy and protest after releasing a security update which many users claim is the first step in moving towards an HP-style subscription model.
Bambu Labs responded that there's misinformation circulating online, adding "we acknowledge that our communication might have contributed to the confusion." Bambu Labs spokesperson Nadia Yaakoubi did "damage control", answering questions from the Verge:
Q: Will Bambu publicly commit to never requiring a subscription in order to control its printers and print from them over a home network?
A: For our current product line, yes. We will never require a subscription to control or print from our printers over a home network...
Q: Will Bambu publicly commit to never putting any existing printer functionality behind a subscription?
Yes...
Bambu's site adds that the security update "is beta testing, not a forced update. The choice is yours. You can participate in the beta program to help us refine these features, or continue using your current firmware."
Hackaday notes another wrinkle:
This follows the original announcement which had the 3D printer community up in arms, and quickly saw the new tool that's supposed to provide safe and secure communications with Bambu Lab printers ripped apart to extract the security certificate and private key... As the flaming wreck that's Bambu Lab's PR efforts keeps hurtling down the highway of public opinion, we'd be remiss to not point out that with the security certificate and private key being easily obtainable from the Bambu Connect Electron app, there is absolutely no point to any of what Bambu Lab is doing.
The Verge asked Bambu Labs about that too:
Q: Does the private key leaking change any of your plans?
No, this doesn't change our plans, and we've taken immediate action.
< This article continues on their website >
Posted by EditorDavid from Slashdot
From the off-the-grid department: "For years, renewable energy proponents have hoped to build a U.S. electric grid powered by wind, solar, geothermal and — to a lesser extent — nuclear power..." writes the Washington Post. In America's power markets "the economics of clean energy are strong," with renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuel plants in many jurisdictions.
But the Post spoke to the "electricity modeling" director at nonpartisan clean energy think tank Energy Innovation, who offered this assessment. "The technology is ready, and the financial services are ready — but the question nobody really put enough thought into was, could the government keep up? And at the moment, the answer is no."
[R]enewable developers say that the new technologies are stymied by complicated local and federal regulations, a long wait to connect to the electricity grid, and community opposition... "The U.S. offshore wind business is at a very nascent stage versus Europe or China," Rob Barnett, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said in an email. "With the new permitting pause, it's doubtful much progress for this emerging industry will be made...." After the Inflation Reduction Act passed, Rhodium Group — an independent clean energy research firm — estimated that between 2023 and 2025, on average, the country would add between 36 and 46 gigawatts of clean electricity to the grid every year. Late last year, however, the group found that the country only installed around 27 gigawatts in 2023. The U.S.'s renewable growth is now expected to fall on the low end of that range — or miss it entirely.
< This article continues on their website >
This week’s hodgepodge of gaming tips, helpful info, and other stuff kicks off with a look at the best deals in Steam’s first big sale of the year. We also have a look at Xbox Game Pass’s strong assortment of new additions to close out the month, a recommendation for the best way to learn Disney Lorcana, and some…
