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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."

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Emmabuntüs DE 6: A newbie-friendly Linux to help those in need  theregister.com

This Unlikely Microsoft Prediction Might Just Hit The Mark  Hackaday

Pebblebed Ventures’ AI tool analyzes 20 years of Linux bugs  The New Stack

Six Linux Distros Set To Lead 2026  findarticles.com

This month saw results from a yearlong global study of "potential negative risks that generative AI poses to student". The study (by the Brookings Institution's Center for Universal Education) also suggests how to prevent risks and maximize benefits: After interviews, focus groups, and consultations with over 500 students, teachers, parents, education leaders, and technologists across 50 countries, a close review of over 400 studies, and a Delphi panel, we find that at this point in its trajectory, the risks of utilizing generative AI in children's education overshadow its benefits. "At the top of Brookings' list of risks is the negative effect AI can have on children's cognitive growth," reports NPR — "how they learn new skills and perceive and solve problems." The report describes a kind of doom loop of AI dependence, where students increasingly off-load their own thinking onto the technology, leading to the kind of cognitive decline or atrophy more commonly associated with aging brains... As one student told the researchers, "It's easy. You don't need to (use) your brain." The report offers a surfeit of evidence to suggest that students who use generative AI are already seeing declines in content knowledge, critical thinking and even creativity. And this could have enormous consequences if these young people grow into adults without learning to think critically... Survey responses revealed deep concern that use of AI, particularly chatbots, "is undermining students' emotional well-being, including their ability to form relationships, recover from setbacks, and maintain mental health," the report says. One of the many problems with kids' overuse of AI is that the technology is inherently sycophantic — it has been designed to reinforce users' beliefs... Winthrop offers an example of a child interacting with a chatbot, "complaining about your parents and saying, 'They want me to wash the dishes — this is so annoying. I hate my parents.' The chatbot will likely say, 'You're right. You're misunderstood. I'm so sorry. I understand you.' Versus a friend who would say, 'Dude, I wash the dishes all the time in my house. I don't know what you're complaining about. That's normal.' That right there is the problem." AI did have some advantages, the article points out: The report says another benefit of AI is that it allows teachers to automate some tasks: "generating parent emails ... translating materials, creating worksheets, rubrics, quizzes, and lesson plans" — and more. The report cites multiple research studies that found important time-saving benefits for teachers, including one U.S. study that found that teachers who use AI save an average of nearly six hours a week and about six weeks over the course of a full school year... AI can also help make classrooms more accessible for students with a wide range of learning disabilities, including dyslexia. But "AI can massively increase existing divides" too, [warns Rebecca Winthrop, one of the report's authors and a senior fellow at Brookings]. That's because the free AI tools that are most accessible to students and schools can also be the least reliable and least factually accurate... "[T]his is the first time in ed-tech history that schools will have to pay more for more accurate information. And that really hurts schools without a lot of resources." The report calls for more research — and make several recommendations (including "holistic" learning and "AI tools that teach, not tell.") But this may be their most important recommendation. "Provide a clear vision for ethical AI use that centers human agency..." "We find that AI has the potential to benefit or hinder students, depending on how it is used."

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Xbox gaming makes the jump to Windows on Arm, but can it stem the tide of gamers turning to Linux?  Tom's Guide

The 6 Linux distros I expect to rule 2026 - as someone who's tested hundreds of them  ZDNET

Focusrite Forte USB Audio Interface To Be Supported By Linux 7.0  Phoronix

DAXFS Proposed as a Zero-Copy Shared Memory Filesystem for Linux  Linuxiac

An anonymous reader shared this article from the blog Linuxiac In a blog post, Alan Pope, a longtime Ubuntu community figure and former Canonical employee who remains an active Snap publisher... [warns of] a persistent campaign of malicious snaps impersonating cryptocurrency wallet applications. These fake apps typically mimic well-known projects such as Exodus, Ledger Live, or Trust Wallet, prompting users to enter wallet recovery phrases, which are then transmitted to attackers, resulting in drained funds. The perpetrators had originally used similar-looking characters from other alphabets to mimic other app listings, then began uploading "revisions" to other innocuous-seeming (approved) apps that would transform their original listing into that of a fake crypto wallet app. But now they're re-registering expired domains to take over existing Snap Store accounts, which Pope calls "a significant escalation..." I worked for Canonical between 2011 and 2021 as an Engineering Manager, Community Manager, and Developer Advocate. I was a strong advocate for snap packages and the Snap Store. While I left the company nearly five years ago, I still maintain nearly 50 packages in the Snap Store, with thousands of users... Personally, I want the Snap Store to be successful, and for users to be confident that the packages they install are trustworthy and safe. Currently, that confidence isn't warranted, which is a problem for desktop Linux users who install snap packages. I report every bad snap I encounter, and I know other security professionals do the same — even though doing so results in no action for days sometimes... To be clear: none of this should be seen as an attack on the Snap Store, Canonical, or the engineers working on these problems. I'm raising awareness of an issue that exists, because I want it fixed... But pretending there isn't a problem helps nobody.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this article from the blog Linuxiac In a blog post, Alan Pope, a longtime Ubuntu community figure and former Canonical employee who remains an active Snap publisher... [warns of] a persistent campaign of malicious snaps impersonating cryptocurrency wallet applications. These fake apps typically mimic well-known projects such as Exodus, Ledger Live, or Trust Wallet, prompting users to enter wallet recovery phrases, which are then transmitted to attackers, resulting in drained funds. The perpetrators had originally used similar-looking characters from other alphabets to mimic other app listings, then began uploading "revisions" to other innocuous-seeming (approved) apps that would transform their original listing into that of a fake crypto wallet app. But now they're re-registering expired domains to take over existing Snap Store accounts, which Pope calls "a significant escalation..." I worked for Canonical between 2011 and 2021 as an Engineering Manager, Community Manager, and Developer Advocate. I was a strong advocate for snap packages and the Snap Store. While I left the company nearly five years ago, I still maintain nearly 50 packages in the Snap Store, with thousands of users... Personally, I want the Snap Store to be successful, and for users to be confident that the packages they install are trustworthy and safe. Currently, that confidence isn't warranted, which is a problem for desktop Linux users who install snap packages. I report every bad snap I encounter, and I know other security professionals do the same — even though doing so results in no action for days sometimes... To be clear: none of this should be seen as an attack on the Snap Store, Canonical, or the engineers working on these problems. I'm raising awareness of an issue that exists, because I want it fixed... But pretending there isn't a problem helps nobody.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian: Google's search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions, according to research that raises fresh questions about a tool seen by 2 billion people each month. The company has said its AI summaries, which appear at the top of search results and use generative AI to answer questions from users, are "reliable" and cite reputable medical sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Mayo Clinic. However, a study that analysed responses to more than 50,000 health queries, captured using Google searches from Berlin, found the top cited source was YouTube. The video-sharing platform is the world's second most visited website, after Google itself, and is owned by Google. Researchers at SE Ranking, a search engine optimisation platform, found YouTube made up 4.43% of all AI Overview citations. No hospital network, government health portal, medical association or academic institution came close to that number, they said. "This matters because YouTube is not a medical publisher," the researchers wrote. "It is a general-purpose video platform...." In one case that experts said was "dangerous" and "alarming", Google provided bogus information about crucial liver function tests that could have left people with serious liver disease wrongly thinking they were healthy. The company later removed AI Overviews for some but not all medical searches... Hannah van Kolfschooten, a researcher specialising in AI, health and law at the University of Basel who was not involved with the research, said: "This study provides empirical evidence that the risks posed by AI Overviews for health are structural, not anecdotal. It becomes difficult for Google to argue that misleading or harmful health outputs are rare cases. "Instead, the findings show that these risks are embedded in the way AI Overviews are designed. In particular, the heavy reliance on YouTube rather than on public health authorities or medical institutions suggests that visibility and popularity, rather than medical reliability, is the central driver for health knowledge."

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Mecha Comet is an open-source hardware, modular Linux handheld computer (Crowdfunding)  CNX Software

Mecha Comet is an open-source hardware, modular Linux handheld computer (Crowdfunding)  CNX Software

Mecha Comet is an open-source hardware, modular Linux handheld computer (Crowdfunding)  CNX Software

Mecha Comet is an open-source hardware, modular Linux handheld computer (Crowdfunding)  CNX Software

Mecha Comet is an open-source hardware, modular Linux handheld computer (Crowdfunding)  CNX Software

CachyOS is the latest Linux distro to put Wayland first in its new update  XDA