Arch-based CachyOS’s August 2025 update adds a package dashboard, switches the ISO to an LTS kernel, and improves stability with new bootloader fixes.
The post CachyOS August 2025 Release Brings Package Dashboard, LTS Kernel appeared first on Linux Today.
Calibre 8.9 is here to add support for embedded fonts to HTMLZ output, a color swatch in the results list of the Annotations browser to make seeing the type of highlight easier, and the ability to display the cover of the target book when merging books via drag and drop.
The post Calibre 8.9 E-Book Manager Adds Support for Embedded Fonts to HTMLZ Output appeared first on Linux Today.
The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) has said it “firmly condemns” the actions that led to the neutralisation of stage 11 of La Vuelta a España yesterday.
With roughly 20km to go on the 157.4km stage, starting and ending in Bilbao, the race organisers announced the stage would end 3km early due to pro-Palestine protesters.
In a statement released last night, the UCI said: “The UCI reiterates the fundamental importance of the political neutrality of sports organisations within the Olympic Movement, as well as the unifying and pacifying role of sport. Major international sporting events embody a spirit of unity and dialogue, transcending differences and divisions.”
“The UCI would also like to reiterate that sport, and cycling in particular, has a role to play in bringing people together and overcoming barriers between them, and should under no circumstances be used as a tool for punishment,” it went on.
The UCI added that staff and riders at La Vuelta should be able to “practise their profession and pursue their passion in optimal conditions of safety and serenity”.
La Vuelta decided not to award a stage winner or award points for the points classification, with only points obtained at the mountain passes and intermediate sprints retained.
The race organisers also “strongly condemned” the protests in a statement released after the stage, adding that: “La Vuelta respects and defends the right to peaceful demonstration within the context of the event, but cannot tolerate any acts that put at risk the physical safety of participants or any member of the race caravan.”
Britain’s Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team) was at the front of the race with general classification leader Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) when the decision to shorten the stage was announced.
After the stage, he expressed frustration at missing his chance for a stage win. “I’m not saying I would have won, but I think I had a good chance to win,” said Pidcock.
“I felt like today was my day, but I feel like there always should be a finish line,” he added. “We’re not riding a fucking sportive are we?”
“Putting us in danger isn’t going to help your cause. It’s not going to help what they’re protesting for,” Pidcock added. “Everyone’s got a right to protest whatever they want, but putting us in danger is not the way forward.”
The pro-Palestine protests at La Vuelta have primarily been against the participation of Israel–Premier Tech – the team co-owned by Sylvan Adams, a Canadian-Israeli businessman who is a vocal supporter of Israel and a citizen of the country.
Israel–Premier Tech said they would not withdraw from the race, saying the team “remains committed” to La Vuelta.
The team added: “Any other course of action sets a dangerous precedent in the sport of cycling not only for Israel–Premier Tech, but for all teams. Israel–Premier Tech has repeatedly expressed its respect for everyone’s right to protest, as long as those protests remain peaceful and do not compromise the safety of the peloton.
“We thank the race organizers and UCI for their continued support and cooperation, as well as the teams and riders that have expressed their support both publicly and privately and, of course, our fans.”
Israel–Premier Tech’s team time trial was disrupted by protestors last week, and other demonstrators entered the course on stage 10, after which Simone Petilli (Intermarché-Wanty) crashed.
Petilli, who fell but finished the stage, wrote on X: “I understand that is not a good situation, but yesterday I crashed because of a Protest on the road.”
“Please, we are just Cyclists and we are doing our Job, but if it will continue like this our safety is not guaranteed anymore, and we feel in danger! We just want to race! Please,” he added.
There were meetings between the riders’ union, the Cyclistes Professionels Associés (CPA), and the race organisers before stage 11, with riders saying they would ride as long as protests were peaceful.
There have been pro-Palestine protests at all three of this year’s Grand Tours.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement called for peaceful protests in April at this year’s Grand Tours against the participation of Israel–Premier Tech.
The BDS Movement said in April: “As Israel escalates its ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and its violent military occupation of the West Bank, international sporting bodies have a moral obligation to take all measures to prevent genocide, or risk being held criminally liable.”
There have also been objections to the inclusion of Israel–Premier Tech at La Vuelta from Spanish political parties. Izquierda Unida and EH Bildu both called for the team’s exclusion from the race.
BesGnuLinux calls itself lightweight, useful, and stable — but after a wild ride with version 3-0, you might find it’s got a lot more ‘fast and furious’ under the hood.
The post BesGnuLinux: a Lightweight, Fast, Furious, and Stable Distro appeared first on FOSS Force.
UNDERDOGS developer One Hamsa says the game’s PlayStation VR2 port is still “far from paying for itself”.
The revelation came in response to a question on X about whether it was worth bringing the game to Sony’s VR platform.
We’re really glad we could bring UNDERDOGS to PSVR2 players, but financially it’s far from paying for itself.
— One Hamsa (@One_Hamsa) August 31, 2025
The physics-based mech brawler originally released on Meta Quest and PC VR in early 2024, and on Pico later that year.
Earlier this year, One Hamsa brought the game to PlayStation VR2, with Perp Games as the publisher. So far, it doesn’t seem to be profitable.
UploadVRPete Austin
This reflects a general trend we’ve heard from developers in relation to their sales across VR platforms. In general, sales on Quest are significantly higher than elsewhere, even after Meta’s shifting discoverability priorities.
That’s not to say there aren’t exceptions to this. Max Mustard sold better on PS VR2 at launch than it did on Quest, and Amid Evil VR sold significantly better on Steam than on Quest. But these are outliers from the general trend.
UploadVRHenry Stockdale
Owing to the closed SDK, technical certification requirements, and other overheads, porting to PlayStation VR2 is more involved than releasing on PC or from one Android OpenXR headset to the other. While this year’s PS VR2 price cut will have helped bring in more potential buyers for games, could Sony also work to reduce the cost involved in porting in the first place?
Easily install Google Chrome on Debian 13 “Trixie” with this guide, including direct download and repository setup.
But it’s OK to use it for docs and translationsThe latest status report from the FreeBSD Project says no thanks to code generated by LLM-based assistants.…
Inside this week’s LWN.net Weekly Edition:
Switzerland has launched Apertus, a fully open-source, multilingual LLM trained on 15 trillion tokens and over 1,000 languages. “What distinguishes Apertus from many other generative AI systems is its commitment to complete openness,” reports CyberInsider. From the report: Unlike popular proprietary models, where users can only interact via APIs or hosted interfaces, Apertus provides open access to its model weights, training datasets, documentation, and even intermediate checkpoints. The source code and all training materials are released under a permissive open-source license that allows commercial use. Since the full training process is documented and reproducible, researchers and watchdogs can audit the data sources, verify compliance with data protection laws, and inspect how the model was trained. Apertus’ development explicitly adhered to Swiss data protection and copyright laws, and incorporated retroactive opt-out mechanisms to respect data source preferences.
From a privacy perspective, Apertus represents a compelling shift in the AI landscape. The model only uses publicly available data, filtered to exclude personal information and to honor opt-out signals from content sources. This not only aligns with emerging regulatory frameworks like the EU AI Act, but also provides a tangible example of how AI can be both powerful and privacy-respecting. According to ETH Zurich’s Imanol Schlag, technical lead of the project at ETH Zurich, Apertus is “built for the public good” and is a demonstration of how AI can be deployed as a public digital infrastructure, much like utilities or transportation. The model is available via Swisscom’s Sovereign Swiss AI Platform. It’s also available through Hugging Face and the Public AI Inference Utility.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After 26 years and over 1,000 episodes, Melvyn Bragg is stepping down as presenter of BBC Radio 4â(TM)s In Our Time, leaving behind a legacy of intellectual curiosity and broadcasting excellence. While he will no longer host the series, he will remain involved with the BBC and is set to launch a new project in 2026. The BBC reports: Over the last quarter of a century, Melvyn has skilfully led conversations about everything from the age of the Universe to âZenobiaâ(TM), Queen of the Palmyrene Empire. He has welcomed the company of the brightest and best academics in their fields, sharing their passion and knowledge with a fascinated audience right around the globe. While he will be much missed on In Our Time, Melvyn will continue to be a friend of Radio 4 with more to come to celebrate his extraordinary career, and a new series in 2026 (details to be announced soon).
Melvyn Bragg says: “For a program with a wholly misleading title which started from scratch with a six-month contract, it’s been quite a ride! I have worked with many extremely talented and helpful people inside the BBC as well as some of the greatest academics around the world. It’s been a great privilege and pleasure. I much look forward to continuing to work for the BBC on Radio 4. Thank you for listening.” […] In Our Time will be back on Radio 4 with a new presenter who will be announced in due course.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Just days before Apple’s expected launch of the satellite-enabled Apple Watch Ultra 3, Garmin unveiled its Fenix 8 Pro — the company’s first smartwatch with built-in inReach satellite and cellular connectivity, SOS features, and a blindingly bright 4,500-nit microLED display. MacRumors reports: With inReach, the Fenix 8 Pro can send location check-ins and text messages over satellite using the Garmin Messenger app. There is also included cellular connectivity, so the smartwatch can make phone calls, send 30-second voice messages, and provide LiveTrack links and weather forecasts when an LTE connection is available.
LiveTrack is a feature that allows the wearer’s family and friends to keep track of their location during an activity or adventure. For emergencies, there is an SOS feature that will send a message to the Garmin Response center over a satellite or cellular connection. Garmin Response will then communicate with the user, their emergency contacts, and search and rescue organizations to provide help. Garmin says that its Response team has supported over 17,000 inReach incident responses across over 150 countries. The Fenix 8 Pro smartwatch launches September 8, with the AMOLED model starting at $1,200 and the 51mm microLED version priced at $2,000. Both require a paid inReach satellite plan beginning at $7.99 per month for full functionality.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Earlier this year Canonical announced plans for using sudo-rs as the Rust-written sudo implementation by default for Ubuntu 25.10 along with Rust Coreutils and other Rust system components. The sudo-rs goal has been achieved with the newest Ubuntu 25.10 daily ISOs now using this sudo implementation by default…
The GNOME 49 release candidate “49.rc” was just released as we close in on the stable GNOME 49.0 release in two weeks…
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media, written by Jason Koebler: As I do most nights, I was listening to YouTube videos to fall asleep the other night. Sometime around 3 a.m., I woke up because the video YouTube was autoplaying started going “FEEEEEEEE.” The video was called “Boring History for Sleep | How Medieval PEASANTS Survived the Coldest Nights and more.” It is two hours long, has 2.3 million views, and, an hour and 15 minutes into the video, the AI-generated voice glitched. “In the end, Anne Boleyn won a kind of immortality. Not through her survival, but through her indelible impact on history. FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,” the narrator says in a fake British accent. “By the early 1770s, the American colonies simmered like a pot left too long over a roaring fire,” it continued. The video was from a channel I hadn’t seen before, called “Sleepless Historian.” I took my headphones out, didn’t think much of it at the time, rolled over, and fell back asleep.
The next night, when I went to pick a new video to fall asleep to, my YouTube homepage was full of videos from Sleepless Historian and several similar-sounding channels like Boring History Bites, History Before Sleep, The Snoozetorian, Historian Sleepy, and Dreamoria. Lots of these videos nominally check the boxes for what I want from something to fall asleep to. Almost all of them are more than three hours long, and they are about things I don’t know much about. Some video titles include “Unusual Medieval Cures for Common Illnesses,” “The Entire History of the American Frontier,” “What It Was Like to Visit a BR0THEL in Pompeii,” and “What GETTING WASTED Was Like in Medieval Times.” One of the channels has even been livestreaming this “history” 24/7 for weeks.
In the daytime, when I was not groggy and half asleep, it quickly became obvious to me that all of these videos are AI generated, and that they are part of a sophisticated and growing AI slop content ecosystem that is flooding YouTube, is drowning out human-made content created by real anthropologists and historians who spend weeks or months researching, fact-checking, scripting, recording, and editing their videos, and are quite literally rewriting history with surface-level, automated drek that the YouTube algorithm delivers to people. YouTube has said it will demonetize or otherwise crack down on “mass produced” videos, but it is not clear whether that has had any sort of impact on the proliferation of AI-generated videos on the platform, and none of the people I spoke to for this article have noticed any change. “It’s completely shocking to me,” Pete Kelly, who runs the popular History Time YouTube channel, told Koebler in a phone interview. “It used to be enough to spend your entire life researching, writing, narrating, editing, doing all these things to make a video, but now someone can come along and they can do the same thing in a day instead of it taking six months, and the videos are not accurate. The visuals they use are completely inaccurate often. And I’m fearful because this is everywhere.”
“I absolutely hate it, primarily the fact that they’re historically inaccurate,” Kelly added. “So it worries me because it’s just the same things being regurgitated over and over again. […] It’s worrying to me just for humanity. Not to get too high brow, but it’s not good for the state of knowledge in the world. It makes me worry for the future.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenAI has announced that it’s making its Projects feature available to free users of ChatGPT. Projects let you organize chats with the company’s AI assistant around a specific subject, and were previously one of several privileges only enjoyed by paid subscribers.
While on some level Projects are glorified folders for ChatGPT conversations, the ability to set custom instructions for how the AI responds or limit what information and files it can reference, makes the feature a useful option for power users. As part of this rollout, OpenAI is also increasing the number of files that can be added to a project for ChatGPT to reference. Free users can upload five, Plus subscribers can upload 25 and Pro subscribers can upload 40. Whether you pay for ChatGPT or not, you’ll also be able to customize the color and icon for your project, too.
OpenAI has made a habit of slowly trickling down paid features to its free users over the last few years. Things like Deep Research and ChatGPT Voice started off as exclusives for the company’s subscribers before becoming available to everyone. Offering a formerly premium feature with limits is itself a way to get free customers to become paid ones. OpenAI’s decision to make the recently released GPT-5 model available to everyone at launch, but with harsher limits on how many times free users can use it follows a similar logic.
Projects are available for free users on the web and in the ChatGPT app for Android. OpenAI says the iOS ChatGPT app will receive the feature “over the coming days.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-rolls-out-chatgpt-projects-to-free-users-215027802.html?src=rss
A man cutting a napkin with a misshapen fork seems a bit odd, even for the Fallout universe
The post Leaked <i>Fallout</i> Merch Appears To Use AI-Generated Slop appeared first on Kotaku.
Queen once asked, “Who wants to live forever?” And while the band’s frontman Freddie Mercury only made it into his 40s, the song’s question continues to haunt people—especially aging tyrants who fear that the icy hand of death is upon their shoulder and want far more time to ensure both national and personal glory.
At a Beijing gathering this week, China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un met to commemorate Japan’s defeat in World War II. The three men and their translators were caught on hot mics having an “unscripted moment” in which the conversation turned to life extensions and immortality.
“Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days at 70 years you are still a child,” Xi told the other two, according to Bloomberg.
Sometimes, rising prices for streaming services feels as inevitable as death and taxes. So when a serious discount is available, we tend to sit up and take notice. For a few weeks, you can get a whopping half off an annual subscription to Paramount+. A year of the Paramount+ Essential plan, which is ad-supported, will cost $30 compared to the usual $60. Paramount+ Premium, which is ad-free except for live tv programming, will cost $60 for a year instead of $120.
This is a substantial deal that both new and returning subscribers can take advantage of; it’s not uncommon for this type of serious discount to only be offered to a first-timer. Anyone who signs up for a year-long subscription to Paramount+ from now through September 18 will be able to get this pricing. The only real caveat with this deal is that you have to pay for the full year in advance; month-to-month subscriptions will still cost the usual rate.
Paramount+ has some great programming options, particularly if you’re a fan of anything involving RuPaul. It’s also the home of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Lower Decks, which are arguably the best modern additions to the sci-fi show’s canon, as well as the other past and present Star Trek series. The platform offers a solid lineup of sports as well. And if you opt to go for the Premium plan, you’ll also be granted access to Showtime titles such as Yellowjackets and the rebooted Dexter: Resurrection.
Check out our coverage of the best streaming deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/paramount-annual-subscriptions-are-on-sale-for-half-off-212655020.html?src=rss
Tesco is suing Broadcom and reseller Computacenter for at least $134 million, claiming that VMware’s perpetual license support agreements were breached after Broadcom’s acquisition. The supermarket giant warned it “may not be able to put food on the shelves if the situation goes pear-shaped,” writes The Register’s Simon Sharwood. From the report: Court documents seen by The Register assert that in January 2021 Tesco acquired perpetual licenses for VMware’s vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation products, plus subscriptions to Virtzilla’s Tanzu products, and agreed a contract for support services and software upgrades that run until 2026. Tesco claims VMware also agreed to give it an option to extend support services for an additional four years. All of this happened before Broadcom acquired VMware and stopped selling support services for software sold under perpetual licenses. Broadcom does sell support to those who sign for its new software subscriptions.
The supermarket giant says Broadcom’s subscriptions mean it must pay “excessive and inflated prices for virtualization software for which Tesco has already paid,” and “is unable any longer to purchase stand-alone Virtualization Support Services for its Perpetually Licensed Software without also having to purchase duplicative subscription-based licenses for those same Software products which it already owns.” The complaint also alleges that Tesco’s contracts with VMware include eligibility for software upgrades, but that Broadcom won’t let the retailer update its perpetual licenses to cover the new Cloud Foundation 9.
The filing names Computacenter as a co-defendant as it was the reseller that Tesco relied on for software licenses, and the retailer feels it’s breached contracts to supply software at a fixed price. Tesco’s filing also mentions Broadcom’s patch publication policy, which means users who don’t acquire subscriptions can’t receive all security updates and don’t receive other fixes. The retailer thinks its contracts mean it is entitled to those updates. The filing suggests that lack of support is not just a legal matter, but may have wider implications because VMware software, and support for it “are essential for the operations and resilience of Tesco’s business and its ability to supply groceries to consumers across the UK and Republic of Ireland.”
“VMware Virtualization Software underpins the servers and data systems that enable Tesco’s stores and operations to function, hosting approximately 40,000 server workloads and connecting to, by way of illustration, tills in Tesco stores,” the filing states. Tesco’s filing warns that Broadcom, VMware, and Computacenter are each liable for at least $134 million damages, plus interest, and that the longer the dispute persists the higher damages will climb.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The nRF54L15 Connect Kit is a compact platform for evaluating Nordic Semiconductor’s multiprotocol SoC, targeting low-power IoT with support for Bluetooth LE 6.0, Matter, Zigbee and other standards. It builds on the nRF52 Series with higher processing capability and improved efficiency. The kit is based on the nRF54L15-QFAA, which integrates a 128 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 […]