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North America's Bird Populations Are Shrinking Faster. Blame Climate Change and Agriculture

Slashdot.org - Sun, 03/01/2026 - 12:34
"Billions fewer birds are flying through North American skies than decades ago," reports the Associated Press, "and their population is shrinking ever faster, mostly due to a combination of intensive agriculture and warming temperatures, a new study found." Nearly half of the 261 species studied showed big enough losses in numbers to be statistically significant and more than half of those declining are seeing their losses accelerate since 1987, according to Thursday's journal Science... The only consolation is that the birds that are shrinking in numbers the fastest are species — such as the European starling, American crow, grackle and house sparrow — with large enough populations that they aren't yet at risk of going extinct, said study lead author Francois Leroy, also an Ohio State ecologist... When it came to population declines — not the acceleration — the scientists noticed bigger losses further south. When they did a deeper analysis they statistically connected those losses to warmer temperatures from human-caused climate change. "In regions where temperatures increase the most, we are seeing strongest declines in populations," [said study co-author Marta Jarzyna, an ecologist at Ohio State University]. "On the other hand, the acceleration of those declines, that's mostly driven by agricultural practices." The scientists found statistical correlations between speeded-up decline rates and high fertilizer use, high pesticide use and amount of cropland, Leroy said. He said they couldn't say any of those caused the acceleration of losses, but it indicates agriculture in general is a factor. "The stronger the agriculture, the faster we will lose birds," said Leroy... McGill University wildlife biologist David Bird, who wasn't part of the study, said it was done well and that its conclusions made sense. With a growing human population, agriculture practices are intensified, more bird habitats are being converted to cropland, modern machinery often grind up nests and eggs and single crop plantings offer less possibilities for birds to find food and nests, said Bird, the editor of Birds of Canada. "The biggest impact of agricultural intensity though is our war on insects. Numerous recent studies have shown that insect populations in many places throughout the world, including the U.S., have crashed by well over 40 percent," Bird said in an email. "Many of the birds in this new study showing population declines depend heavily on insects for food." A 2019 study of the same bird species by Cornell University conservation scientist Kenneth Rosenberg also found that North America had 3 billion fewer birds than in 1970, the article points out.

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Collabora Clashes With LibreOffice Over Move To Revive LibreOffice Online

Slashdot.org - Sun, 03/01/2026 - 11:34
Slashdot reader darwinmac writes: The Document Foundation (TDF), the organization behind LibreOffice, has decided to bring back its LibreOffice Online project which been inactive since 2022. Collabora, a company that was a major contributor to the original LibreOffice Online, is not pleased with this development. After the original project went dormant, Collabora forked the code and created its own product, Collabora Online. Collaboras Michael Meeks, who also sits on the TDF board, reacted to the TDFs decision by saying that a fully supported, free online version already exists in the form of Collabora Online, and that resurrecting a dead repository makes little sense when an active, open community around the online suite already exists. For now, The Document Foundation plans to reopen the old repository for new contributions. The organization has issued a warning that the code is not ready for live deployment and users should wait until the development team confirms it is stable.

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Galileo's Handwritten Notes Discovered in a Medieval Astronomy Text

Slashdot.org - Sun, 03/01/2026 - 10:34
In a library in Florence, Italy, historian Ivan Malara noticed handwritten notes on a book printed in the 1500s — and recognized the handwriting as Galileo's. The finding "promises new insights into one of the most famous ideological transitions in the history of science," writes Science magazine — since the book Galileo annotated was a reprint of Ptolemy's second-century work arguing that the earth was the center of the universe. Galileo's notes, perhaps written around 1590, or roughly 2 decades before his groundbreaking telescope observations of the Moon and Jupiter, reveal someone who both revered and critically dissected Ptolemy's work. And they imply, Malara argues, that Galileo ultimately broke with Ptolemy's cosmos because his mastery of the traditional paradigm's reasoning convinced him that a heliocentric [sun-centered] system would better fulfill Ptolemy's own mathematical logic.

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Some Linux LTS Kernels Will Be Supported Even Longer, Announces Greg Kroah-Hartman

Linux.Slashdot.org - Sun, 03/01/2026 - 06:34
An anonymous reader shared this report from the blogIt's FOSS: Greg Kroah-Hartman has updated the projected end-of-life (EOL) dates for several active longterm support kernels via a commit. The provided reasoning? It was done "based on lots of discussions with different companies and groups and the other stable kernel maintainer." The other maintainer is Sasha Levin, who co-maintains these Linux kernel releases alongside Greg. Now, the updated support schedule for the currently active LTS kernels looks like this: — Linux 6.6 now EOLs Dec 2027 (was Dec 2026), giving it a 4-year support window. — Linux 6.12 now EOLs Dec 2028 (was Dec 2026), also a 4-year window. — Linux 6.18 now EOLs Dec 2028 (was Dec 2027), at least 3 years of support. Worth noting above is that Linux 5.10 and 5.15 are both hitting EOL this year in December, so if your distro is still running either of these, now is a good time to start thinking about a move.

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Categories: Linux

Some Linux LTS Kernels Will Be Supported Even Longer, Announces Greg Kroah-Hartman

Slashdot.org - Sun, 03/01/2026 - 06:34
An anonymous reader shared this report from the blogIt's FOSS: Greg Kroah-Hartman has updated the projected end-of-life (EOL) dates for several active longterm support kernels via a commit. The provided reasoning? It was done "based on lots of discussions with different companies and groups and the other stable kernel maintainer." The other maintainer is Sasha Levin, who co-maintains these Linux kernel releases alongside Greg. Now, the updated support schedule for the currently active LTS kernels looks like this: — Linux 6.6 now EOLs Dec 2027 (was Dec 2026), giving it a 4-year support window. — Linux 6.12 now EOLs Dec 2028 (was Dec 2026), also a 4-year window. — Linux 6.18 now EOLs Dec 2028 (was Dec 2027), at least 3 years of support. Worth noting above is that Linux 5.10 and 5.15 are both hitting EOL this year in December, so if your distro is still running either of these, now is a good time to start thinking about a move.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic's Claude Leaps to #2 on Apple's 'Top Apps' Chart After Pentagon Controversy

Slashdot.org - Sun, 03/01/2026 - 03:34
Anthropic's Claude AI assistant "jumped to the No. 2 slot on Apple's chart of top U.S. free apps late on Friday," reports CNBC: The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in news headlines, stemming from its refusal to have its models used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons... OpenAI's ChatGPT sat at No. 1 on the App Store rankings on Saturday, while Google's Gemini was at No. 3... On Jan. 30, [Claude] was ranked No. 131 in the U.S., and it bounced between the top 20 and the top 50 for much of February, according to data from analytics company Sensor Tower... [And Friday night, for 85.3 million followers] pop singer Katy Perry posted a screenshot of Anthropic's Pro subscription for consumers, with a heart superimposed over it. Friday Anthropic posted "We are deeply grateful to our users, and to the industry peers, policymakers, veterans, and members of the public who have voiced their support in recent days. Thank you. "

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