Feed aggregator
'NY Orders Apps To Lie About Social Media Addiction, Will Lose In Court'
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed S4505, a law that requires websites to display warnings claiming that features like algorithmic feeds, push notifications, infinite scroll, like counts, and autoplay cause addiction -- despite, as TechDirt argues, the absence of scientific consensus supporting such claims.
State Senator Andrew Gounardes sponsored the legislation. The law's constitutional footing appears precarious. Courts have already rejected nearly identical compelled-speech schemes, most notably in the Texas pornography age-verification case that reached the Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit, in that case, refused to uphold mandatory health warnings about pornography, ruling that such public health claims were "too contentious and controversial to receive Zauderer scrutiny" -- the legal standard that sometimes permits government-mandated disclosures.
The science around social media's purported addictiveness is even more disputed than the pornography research the Fifth Circuit rejected. Hochul's signing statement asserts that studies link increased social media use to anxiety and depression, but researchers in the field note these studies demonstrate correlation rather than causation. Some experts have suggested the causal relationship may run in the opposite direction: teenagers struggling with mental health issues turn to social media for community and coping mechanisms. The law's broad definitions could sweep in far more than major platforms like Facebook and TikTok. News sites, recipe apps, fitness trackers, and email clients could theoretically face enforcement if they employ the targeted features. New York's Attorney General holds sole authority to grant exemptions.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Transparent Hugepage Performance On Linux 6.18 LTS: Madvise vs. Always Review - Phoronix
Categories: Linux
Razer Thinks You'd Rather Have AI Headphones Instead of Glasses
Razer today unveiled Project Motoko, a concept pair of over-ear headphones equipped with dual cameras that the gaming peripherals company believes could serve as an alternative to the smart glasses that have proliferated across the wearable AI market. The headphones feature two 4K cameras positioned on the earcups along with near and far field microphones, all powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. Users can point the cameras at objects and ask questions to AI assistants including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and Microsoft.
Basic queries run locally on the device while more complex requests require a phone or PC connection. Razer's pitch centers on battery life: the wireless headset has achieved up to 36 hours on a charge during testing, according to the company, compared to the eight hours rated for Meta's second-generation Ray-Ban AI glasses. The company also argues that over-ear headphones offer more privacy since audio responses aren't audible to bystanders.
The concept remains unfinished, Bloomberg News cautioned. During a product demonstration, the headset's dual cameras failed occasionally to recognize objects even in a moderately lit room. Razer has not committed to final pricing but indicated the headphones would command a "slight premium" over other high-end headphones and would be available later this year. The company's most expensive current headset costs $400.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NVIDIA Brings GeForce NOW To Linux And Fire TV With RTX 5080‑Class Cloud Gaming - HotHardware
Categories: Linux
Microsoft Office Is Now 'Microsoft 365 Copilot App'
Longtime reader joshuark shares a report: As spotted by Bluesky user DodgerFanLA, going to Office.com now greets you with the following helpful explainer: "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share, and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps now including Copilot.*"
Never has an asterisk been more relevant to me than following the words "your favorite apps now including Copilot."
About a decade ago, hardware company Corsair attempted to pivot from its classic logo -- a subtle trio of ship sails -- to a newer, edgier look, a pair of crossed swords that gave off regrettable '2000s tribal tattoo' energy. The rebrand didn't last long: after a fierce outcry from people who correctly thought the new logo sucked, Corsair swapped to a refreshed take on the sail logo, which it's been using ever since. Corsair was established in 1994, and made about $1.4 billion last year -- which I bring up because today Microsoft, a slightly bigger company, has slipped on its own rebranding banana peel. The company is seemingly all but ditching the Office name -- which it introduced four years before Corsair existed, and which drove more than $30 billion in revenue just last quarter -- with a catchy new name: "Microsoft 365 Copilot app."
The company had already downplayed the Office name, despite it being perhaps the most universally recognized software in existence, by renaming its cloud version of Word, Powerpoint, etc. Office 365 in 2010, then Microsoft 365 in 2017. Now when you want to open up a Word document, you can get to them by launching the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Intuitive!
Should Microsoft just go ahead and rebrand Windows, the only piece of its arsenal more famous than Office, as Copilot, too? I do actually think we're not far off from that happening. Facebook rebranded itself "Meta" when it thought the metaverse would be the next big thing, so it seems just as plausible that Microsoft could name the next version of Windows something like "Windows with Copilot" or just "Windows AI."
Copilot is the app for launching the other apps, but it's also a chatbot inside the apps. Any questions? Correction: Office hasn't been renamed to "Microsoft 365 Copilot app." The Verge adds: The confusion comes from Microsoft's own Office.com domain, which for the past year has acted as a way to push businesses and consumers to use the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. This app is a hub app that provides access to Copilot, as well as all the Office apps. Microsoft used to call this app simply Office, before the company rebranded Office to Microsoft 365 in 2022.
If you visit Office.com you'll see a big welcome to the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, and a note from Microsoft that would confuse anyone not following the company's confusing branding: "The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office)..." That mention of "formerly Office" is Microsoft referring to the very old Office app that launched in 2019 as a way to try and convince people to use online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Until a year ago it used to be called the Microsoft 365 app. Microsoft then announced it was rebranding its Microsoft 365 app in November 2024 to a Copilot one, which I and everyone else were very confused at. The new app icon and name -- Microsoft 365 Copilot -- then rolled out on January 15th last year to Windows, iOS, and Android users.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This is the tiniest Linux distro I've ever seen - How-To Geek
This is the tiniest Linux distro I've ever seen How-To Geek
Categories: Linux
Nvidia Announces DLSS 4.5 and GeForce Now Apps for Linux and Fire TV - Thurrott.com
Categories: Linux
StarBook Horizon Linux Laptop Now on Sale with 32GB RAM, Wi-Fi 6E, and Coreboot - 9to5Linux
Categories: Linux
StarBook Horizon Linux Laptop Now on Sale with 32GB RAM, Wi-Fi 6E, and Coreboot - 9to5Linux
Categories: Linux
Stratechery Pushes Back on AI Capital Dystopia Predictions
Stratechery's Ben Thompson has published a lengthy rebuttal to Dwarkesh Patel and Philip Trammell's widely discussed winter break essay "Capital in the 22nd Century," arguing that even in a world where AI can perform all human jobs, people will still prefer human-created content and human connection.
Patel and Trammell's thesis draws on Thomas Piketty's work to argue that once AI renders capital a true substitute for labor, wealth will concentrate among those richest at the moment of transition, making a global progressive capital tax the only solution to prevent extreme inequality. The logic is sound, writes Thompson, but he remains skeptical on several fronts.
His first objection: if AI can truly do everything, then everyone can have everything they need, making the question of who owns the robots somewhat moot. His second: a world where AI is capable enough to replace all human labor yet still obeys human property law seems implausible. He finds the AI doomsday scenario -- where such powerful AI becomes uncontrollable -- more realistic than a stable capital-hoarding dystopia.
Thompson points to agricultural employment in the U.S., which dropped from 81% in 1810 to 1% today, as evidence that humans consistently create new valuable work after technological displacement. He argues that human preferences for human connection -- from podcasting audiences to romantic partners -- will sustain an economy for human labor simply because it is human. Sora currently ranks 59th in the App Store behind double-digit human-focused social apps, for instance.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Revised Steam Survey For December 2025 Puts Linux Gaming Marketshare At 3.58% - Phoronix
Categories: Linux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high - GamingOnLinux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high GamingOnLinux
Categories: Linux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high - GamingOnLinux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high GamingOnLinux
Categories: Linux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high - GamingOnLinux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high GamingOnLinux
Categories: Linux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high - GamingOnLinux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high GamingOnLinux
Categories: Linux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high - GamingOnLinux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high GamingOnLinux
Categories: Linux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high - GamingOnLinux
Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high GamingOnLinux
Categories: Linux