An anonymous reader quotes a report from DroidLife: When the FCC cleared Verizon of its 60-day device unlock policy a week ago, we talked about how the government agency, which is as anti-consumer as it has ever been at the moment, was giving Verizon the power to basically create whatever unlock policy it wanted. We also expected Verizon to make a change to its policies in a hurry and they did not disappoint. Again, the FCC provided them a waiver 7 days ago and they are already starting to update policies.
As of this morning, Verizon has implemented a new device unlock policy across its various prepaid brands and I’d imagine their postpaid policy change is right around the corner. Brands like Visible, Total Wireless, Tracfone, and StraightTalk, all have an updated device unlock policy today that extends to 365 days of paid and active service before they’ll free your phone from the Verizon network. Starting January 20, Verizon says that devices purchased from their prepaid brands will only be unlocked upon request after 365 days and if you meet several requirements […].
What exactly is changing here? Well, if you purchased a device from Verizon’s value brands previously, they would automatically unlock them after 60 days. Now, you have to wait 365 days, request the unlock because it doesn’t happen automatically, and also have active service. […] The FCC mentioned in their waiver that by allowing Verizon to create whatever unlock policy they wanted that this would “benefit consumers.” How does any of this benefit consumers?
The fourth race of Zwift Racing League 2025/26 Round 3 happens Tuesday, January 27, and it’s a TTT on France’s Roule Ma Poule route. With a sizeable climb bookending the race, this route presents particular pacing predicaments for team time trialists!
Let’s dig into crucial segments, bike choice tips, and more…
Looking at the Route
We last raced Roule Ma Poule as a ZRL TTT back in September of 2023, but even if you didn’t race it back then, these roads are probably familiar to you.
The route totals 26.1km including the lead-in, and all categories will race the same distance. It is largely flat, apart from the climb up the backside of the Petit KOM, which will be done twice (once on the lead-in and once at the end of the race).
Here’s the route profile of Roule Ma Poule:
This profile doesn’t tell the whole story, though, because it doesn’t include the lead-in! The lead-in is almost entirely uphill, and in fact, we made a Strava segment for it:
The lead-in is 3.11km long, averaging 3.4%. It takes you from the start pens up the backside of the Petit KOM (or the foot of Ventoux, if you want to think of it that way) and dumps you off at the Petit KOM banner, which is the official start and finish line for Roule Ma Poule.
After finishing the climb for the first time, you get a bit of recovery on the Petit KOM descent before settling into your TTTrain for the flat portion of the event. Yes, you’ve got the Aqueduc KOM (0.42 km, 0.9%) to tackle, but it’s more of a sprint than a climb, with only a ~200-meter length of uphill road.
Following 17.4 flat kilometers, you will pass the start pens and arrive at the foot of the final climb. This is where teams may wisely choose to drop slower climbers as the four fastest go all-out for the line. But don’t drop your riders too soon – this is a very draftable climb, so it may make sense for them to do one last “suicide pull” before falling off.
Bike choice here is simple: go aero. (Looking at our TT performance charts, a climbing frame like the Felt IA 2.0 will save you less than 1 second on the climb vs the top aero frames, while a more aero frame like the CADEX Tri will save you ~3 seconds on the flats of this race.)
The best setup by far is the CADEX Tri frame paired with the DT Swiss Disc wheels, but you’ll need to be at level 40+ to access this sweet rig:
Many recon rides are planned each week on the upcoming ZRL route. If you’re unfamiliar with this course, jump into an event and familiarize yourself with the route! Find a list of upcoming ZRL recon rides at zwift.com/events/tag/zrlrecon.
Additionally, riders in the Zwift community do a great job every week creating recon videos that preview the courses and offer tips to help you perform your best on the day. Here are the recons I’ve found (comment if you find another!):
Most ZRL TTTs are on flatter routes than this week’s, allowing teams with big pure-power riders keep speeds high straight onto the podium. While it’s still vital to ride efficiently on all the fast flat roads in this race, properly pacing the climb, especially on the lead-in, is of utmost importance. You want to push as hard as you can while still retaining all of your team members over the top!
On a course like this week’s, consider having all team members set their Trainer Difficulty to the same value so you’re all feeling the gradient changes similarly. (When one rider has it set to 100% and another 25%, the first rider may ramp up power much more than the second when a climb hits, which can make a mess of your team formation.)
Your goal in a ZRL TTT is to get four riders across the line in the shortest time possible. That means every team’s pace plan will differ based on each rider’s abilities. I highly recommend having an experienced DS on Discord directing your team, especially if your team contains some inexperienced TTT riders.
Lastly, if you want to go further down the TTT rabbit hole and plan your race more precisely, check out Dave Edmond’s popular Zwift TTT Calculator tool.
On Saturday, tech entrepreneur Siqi Chen released an open source plugin for Anthropic’s Claude Code AI assistant that instructs the AI model to stop writing like an AI model. Called “Humanizer,” the simple prompt plugin feeds Claude a list of 24 language and formatting patterns that Wikipedia editors have listed as chatbot giveaways. Chen published the plugin on GitHub, where it has picked up over 1,600 stars as of Monday.
“It’s really handy that Wikipedia went and collated a detailed list of ‘signs of AI writing,'” Chen wrote on X. “So much so that you can just tell your LLM to … not do that.”
The source material is a guide from WikiProject AI Cleanup, a group of Wikipedia editors who have been hunting AI-generated articles since late 2023. French Wikipedia editor Ilyas Lebleu founded the project. The volunteers have tagged over 500 articles for review and, in August 2025, published a formal list of the patterns they kept seeing.
After testing the feature for the last six months or so, Netflix said it will bring vertical videos to its mobile app sometime later in 2026, TechCrunch reported. So far, the feature has been used to show clips promoting Netflix films and TV shows, letting you swipe to move to the next one à la TikTok or YouTube Shorts.
Going forward, though, it could also serve as a promotion tool for new types of programs. “You can imagine us bringing more clips based on new content types, like video podcasts,” co-CEO Greg Peters said in an earnings call.
That was another subject of discussion, as Netflix is taking on YouTube with new video podcasts. The company debuted the first of those originals last week, including shows from sports commentator Michael Irvin and comedian Peter Davidson. It’s also offering hosting content like the Bill Simmons Podcast and other shows from The Ringer.
Despite increasing competition from YouTube and other social media networks, Netflix is doing all right. In 2025, the company saw $45.2 billion revenue including $1.5 billion in ad dollars from its lower tier subscriptions. The streamer counted 325 million paid subscribers around the world at the end of last year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/netflix-mobile-app-redesign-will-offer-deeper-integration-of-vertical-video-120000820.html?src=rss
It’s typically rare these days for the ATA subsystem updates in the Linux kernel to contain anything really noteworthy. But today some important fixes were merged for the ATA code to deal with a reported power management regression affecting the past number of Linux kernel releases over the last year. ATAPI devices with dummy ports weren’t hitting their low-power state and in turn preventing the CPU from reaching low-power C-states but thankfully that is now resolved with this code…
A new patch posted to the Linux kernel mailing list aims to address the high wake-up latency experienced on modern Intel Xeon server platforms. With Sapphire Rapids and newer, “excessive” wakeup latencies with the Linux menu governor and NOHZ_FULL configuration can negatively impair Xeon CPUs for latency-sensitive workloads but a 16 line patch aims to better improve the situation. That is, changing one line of actual code and the rest being code comments…
Prominent Intel Linux engineer H. Peter Anvin has posted a new patch series working to clean-up the Linux x86/x86_64 kernel boot code. Besides cleaning up the code, the kernel configuration would drop options around EFI stub mode and relocatable kernels in making those features now always enabled…
For those using the powerful PHPStan tool for static analysis on PHP code, this week’s PHPStan 2.1.34 is promoting optimized performance with projects seeing around 25% to 40% faster analysis times…
When Italian cyclist Moreno Argentin won the 1986 Road World Championship in Colorado Springs, he was riding a steel bike with toe clips and no helmet.
It’s a sight that feels a million miles away from today’s racing, but one thing Argentin had that feels a lot more contemporary was his Rudy Project Super Performance glasses.
Rudy Project was founded in 1985 and the Super Performance cycling glasses were its first wraparound model.
Fast-forward 40 years, and the Italian company says Argentin’s victory was its “true launch”, which it is now honouring with a hyper limited-edition model, the Performance 40.
The glasses have a 3D-printed titanium frame. Rudy Project
Limited to only 100 pieces, the Performance 40 cycling glasses share a similar shape to the original Super Performance model.
But the new glasses have a modern twist. Rudy Project has 3D printed the Performance 40’s frame from titanium, labelling it a “technological jewel” and saying the frame’s hollow internal structure “delivers exceptional lightness”.
Sitting in the titanium frame is a toric lens that replicates the curvature of the Super Performance. The lens is also etched with the Rudy Project logo, founder Rudy Barbazza’s signature and the individual number of each piece.
Moreno Argentin (left) wearing the Rudy Project Super Performance glasses next to Stephen Roche. Rudy Project
With a claimed weight of 36g and an adjustable nose piece, the Performance 40 might have the appeal of the best cycling glasses, but at €950 this is certainly a collector’s piece.
“The past inspires, the future innovates: these sunglasses celebrate an iconic model that defined an era, carrying forward its soul and design while using cutting-edge materials and technologies,” says Simone Barbazza, marketing and sustainability director at Rudy Project.
“It’s a tribute to our past and to the people – my father above all – who paved the way for us. Performance 40 is our way of looking ahead while honouring the journey behind us. It represents the long story of a brand with its eyes set firmly on the future.”
Snap has settled a social media addiction lawsuit just days before trial, while Meta, TikTok, and Alphabet remain defendants and are headed to court. “Terms of the deal were not announced as it was revealed by lawyers at a California Superior Court hearing, after which Snap told the BBC the parties were ‘pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner.'” From the report: The plaintiff, a 19-year old woman identified by the initials K.G.M., alleged that the algorithmic design of the platforms left her addicted and affected her mental health. In the absence of a settlement with the other parties, the trial is scheduled to go forward against the remaining three defendants, with jury selection due to begin on January 27. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify, and until Tuesday’s settlement, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel was also set to take the stand.
Snap is still a defendant in other social media addiction cases that have been consolidated in the court. The closely watched cases could challenge a legal theory that social media companies have used to shield themselves. They have long argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects them from liability for what third parties post on their platforms. But plaintiffs argue that the platforms are designed in a way that leaves users addicted through choices that affect their algorithms and notifications. The social media companies have said the plaintiffs’ evidence falls short of proving that they are responsible for alleged harms such as depression and eating disorders.
More packaging options for the leading all-FOSS browserIf you can’t wait to get the bleeding-edge version of Firefox, we have good news. Mozilla is offering native RPM packages of Firefox Nightly for Linux distros in the greater Red Hat and SUSE families.…
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: Thanks to a giant eruption on the Sun and a large opening in its atmosphere, we’re currently experiencing G4 conditions — a severe geomagnetic storm strong enough to disrupt power grids as energy from space weather disturbances drives electric currents through Earth’s magnetic field and the ground. Experts say the storm could even reach G5 levels, the extreme category responsible for the spectacular auroral activity seen in May 2024. In fact, space weather bureaus around the world are forecasting powerful aurora conditions, with some suggesting aurora could be visible at unusually low latitudes, potentially rivaling the reach of 2024’s historic superstorm. A livestream of the Northern Lights is available on YouTube. The Aurora forecast is available here.
In this article, you will learn how to install R and RStudio in your preferred Linux distribution and how to run your first program using RScript or RStudio, with practical examples.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy” that is harming billions of people, a UN report has declared. The overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently, the report’s lead author said, because no one knew when the whole system could collapse, with implications for peace and social cohesion. All life depends on water but the report found many societies had long been using water faster than it could be replenished annually in rivers and soils, as well as over-exploiting or destroying long-term stores of water in aquifers and wetlands. This had led to water bankruptcy, the report said, with many human water systems past the point at which they could be restored to former levels. The climate crisis was exacerbating the problem by melting glaciers, which store water, and causing whiplashes between extremely dry and wet weather.
Prof Kaveh Madani, who led the report, said while not every basin and country was water bankrupt, the world was interconnected by trade and migration, and enough critical systems had crossed this threshold to fundamentally alter global water risk. The result was a world in which 75% of people lived in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure and 2 billion people lived on ground that is sinking as groundwater aquifers collapse. Conflicts over water had risen sharply since 2010, the report said, while major rivers, such as the Colorado, in the US, and the Murray-Darling system, in Australia, were failing to reach the sea, and “day zero” emergencies — when cities run out of water, such as in Chennai, India — were escalating. Half of the world’s large lakes had shrunk since the early 1990s, the report noted. Even damp nations, such as the UK, were at risk because of reliance on imports of water-dependent food and other products. “This report tells an uncomfortable truth: many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” said Madani, of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health. “It’s extremely urgent [because] no one knows exactly when the whole system would collapse.”
About 70% of fresh water taken by human withdrawals was used for agriculture, but Madani said: “Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted or disappearing water sources. Water bankruptcy in India or Pakistan, for example, also means an impact on rice exports to a lot of places around the world.” More than half of global food was grown in areas where water storage was declining or unstable, the report said. Madani said action to deal with water bankruptcy offered a chance to bring countries together in an increasingly fragmented world. “Water is a strategic, untapped opportunity to the world to create unity within and between nations. It is one of the very rare topics that left and right and north and south all agree on its importance.” The UN report, which is based on a forthcoming paper in the peer-reviewed journal Water Resources Management, sets out how population growth, urbanization and economic growth have increased water demand for agriculture, industry, energy and cities. “These pressures have produced a global pattern that is now unmistakable,” it said.
The BentoIO CMX0 is a low-profile IO-carrier board designed for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, combining a compact footprint with onboard cooling and expansion support. It is intended for space-constrained systems that require access to standard Raspberry Pi interfaces while maintaining a reduced overall height. The CMX0 supports both Compute Module 5 Lite and […]
Ancient Slashdot reader jantangring shares a report from Swedish electronics industry news site Elektroniktidningen (translated to English), writing: “Open source code library cURL is removing the possibility to earn money by reporting bugs, hoping that this will reduce the volume of AI slop reports,” reports etn.se. “Joshua Rogers — AI wielding bug hunter of fame — thinks it’s a great idea.” cURL maintainer Daniel Stenberg famously reported on the flood AI-generated bad bug reports last year — “Death by a thousand slops.” Now, cURL is removing the bounty payouts as of the end of January.
“We have to try to brake the flood in order not to drown,” says cURL maintainer Daniel Stenberg […]. “Despite being an AI wielding bug hunter himself, Joshua Rogers — slasher of a hundred bugs — thinks removing the bounty money is an excellent idea. […] I think it’s a good move and worth a bigger consideration by others. It’s ridiculous that it went on for so long to be honest, and I personally would have pulled the plug long ago,” he says to etn.se.
Guardians Frontline released a major update on all platforms offering new tools for players to create their own campaigns.
Almost three years after its release Guardians Frontline recently launched its ninth update, focusing on player-built campaigns. Developer VirtualAge working with Fast Travel Games said the goal is to allow its community to create their own adventures in this core system in a beta state.
Devs say they are open to suggestions with the new tools letting map makers create custom campaigns and even giving the ability to place narrative texts and custom lines for more personalized experiences. The community-focused update also adds a new map reporting system to address any content that does not adhere to their guidelines.
The level editor makes the process of tying them up to full-blown campaigns all the more appealing, and the developer encouraged players to share their campaign creations on the Discord with fellow fans. Other than general bug fixes, the sizable patch also includes the implementation of trophies, a new mission system to guide new players through the main and daily campaigns, and more cosmetic skins to support the studio.
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A Guardians Frontline video with examples of community-generated levels.
The first-person bug shooter with tinges of Halo, Starcraft, and Helldivers 2 was a hit with UploadVR in our initial review, with “engaging multiplayer modes and the potential for a swathe of community-generated content, Guardians Frontline is easy to recommend.”
An upcoming sequel called Guardians Planetfall is planned to release in 2026. Guardians Frontline is out now for Quest and Steam.
