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alternative_right quotes a report from Phys.org: To teach robots how to become tomato pickers, Osaka Metropolitan University Assistant Professor Takuya Fujinaga, Graduate School of Engineering, programmed them to evaluate the ease of harvesting for each tomato before attempting to pick it. Fujinaga's new model uses image recognition paired with statistical analysis to evaluate the optimal approach direction for each fruit. The system involves image processing/vision of the fruit, its stems, and whether it is concealed behind another part of the plant. These factors inform robot control decisions and help it choose the best approach. The model represents a shift in focus from the traditional 'detection/recognition' model to what Fujinaga calls a 'harvest-ease estimation.' "This moves beyond simply asking 'can a robot pick a tomato?' to thinking about 'how likely is a successful pick?', which is more meaningful for real-world farming," he explained. When tested, Fujinaga's new model demonstrated an 81% success rate, far above predictions. Notably, about a quarter of the successes were tomatoes that were successfully harvested from the right or left side that had previously failed to be harvested by a front approach. This suggested that the robot changed its approach direction when it initially struggled to pick the fruit. "This is expected to usher in a new form of agriculture where robots and humans collaborate," said Fujinaga. "Robots will automatically harvest tomatoes that are easy to pick, while humans will handle the more challenging fruits." The findings are published in Smart Agricultural Technology.

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React2Shell Flaw Abused as PeerBlight Malware Turns Linux Hosts into Covert Proxy Nodes  Cyber Press

Linux Foundation Launches Agentic AI Foundation with Industry-Wide Support  It's FOSS

OpenAI, Anthropic donate OS projects to new foundation  The Stack

Linux 6.19 Gets Rid Of The Kernel's "Genocide" Function  Phoronix

Linux Foundation Launches Agentic AI Foundation to Standardize Open Agent Ecosystems  AI Insider

Linux Foundation Launches Agentic AI Foundation to Standardize Open Agent Ecosystems  AI Insider

Linux Foundation Launches Agentic AI Foundation to Standardize Open Agent Ecosystems  AI Insider

Anthropic, OpenAI, Block Move Agentic AI Infrastructure to Open Source Governance Under Linux Foundation  Open Source For You

OpenAI and Anthropic are Uniting Under Linux Foundation to Build a Common L  MobileAppDaily

A major scientific report published Tuesday argues that sending astronauts to Mars is justified by the quest to find life and conduct research that robots alone can't achieve. "We're searching for life on Mars," said Dava Newman, a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report. "The answer to the question 'are we alone' is always going to be 'maybe,' unless it becomes yes." Ars Technica reports: The report, two years in the making and encompassing more than 200 pages, was published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Essentially, the committee co-chaired by Newman and Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, director of the University of California, Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, was asked to identify the highest-priority science objectives for the first human missions to Mars. [...] "There's no turning back," Newman said. "Everyone is inspired by this because it's becoming real. We can get there. Decades ago, we didn't have the technologies. This would have been a study report." The goal of the report is to help build a case for meaningful science to be done on Mars alongside human exploration. The report outlines 11 top-priority science objectives. [...] The committee also looked at different types of campaigns to determine which would be most effective for completing the science objectives noted above. The campaign most likely to be successful, they found, was an initial human landing that lasts 30 days, followed by an uncrewed cargo delivery to facilitate a longer 300-day crewed mission on the surface of Mars. All of these missions would take place in a single exploration zone, about 100 km in diameter, that featured ancient lava flows and dust storms. Notably, the report also addresses the issue of planetary protection, a principle that aims to protect both celestial bodies (i.e., the surface of Mars) and visitors (i.e., astronauts) from biological contamination. [...] In recent years, NASA has been working with the International Committee on Space Research to design a plan in which human landings might occur in some areas of the planet, while other parts of Mars are left in "pristine" condition. The committee said this work should be prioritized to reach a resolution that will further the design of human missions to Mars. "NASA should continue to collaborate on the evolution of planetary protection guidelines, with the goal of enabling human explorers to perform research in regions that could possibly support, or even harbor, life," the report states.

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OpenAI, Anthropic form new group under Linux Foundation to standardise AI agents  The Hindu

OpenAI, Anthropic form new group under Linux Foundation to standardise AI agents  The Hindu

Save the Children looks at “bans” from the perspective of those who would be most affected: young people themselves.Save the Children looks at “bans” from the perspective of those who would be most affected: young people themselves.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes $5 billion of environmental damage per hour, according to a major UN report. Ending this harm was a key part of the global transformation of governance, economics and finance required "before collapse becomes inevitable," the experts said. The Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report, which is produced by 200 researchers for the UN Environment Program, said the climate crisis, destruction of nature and pollution could no longer be seen as simply environmental crises. "They are all undermining our economy, food security, water security, human health and they are also [national] security issues, leading to conflict in many parts of the world," said Prof Robert Watson, the co-chair of the assessment. [...] The GEO report is comprehensive -- 1,100 pages this year -- and is usually accompanied by a summary for policymakers, which is agreed by all the world's countries. However, strong objections by countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Turkey and Argentina to references to fossil fuels, plastics, reduced meat in diets and other issues meant no agreement was reached this time. [...] The GEO report emphasized that the costs of action were much less than the costs of inaction in the long term, and estimated the benefits from climate action alone would be worth $20 trillion a year by 2070 and $100 trillion by 2100. "We need visionary countries and private sector [companies] to recognize they will make more profit by addressing these issues rather than ignoring them," Watson said. [...] One of the biggest issues was the $45 trillion a year in environmental damage caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, and the pollution and destruction of nature caused by industrial agriculture, the report said. The food system carried the largest costs, at $20 trillion, with transport at $13 trillion and fossil-fuel powered electricity at $12 trillion. These costs -- called externalities by economists -- must be priced into energy and food to reflect their real price and shift consumers towards greener choices, Watson said: "So we need social safety nets. We need to make sure that the poorest in society are not harmed by an increase in costs." The report suggests measures such as a universal basic income, taxes on meat and subsidies for healthy, plant-based foods. There were also about $1.5 trillion in environmentally harmful subsidies to fossil fuels, food and mining, the report said. These needed to be removed or repurposed, it added. Watson noted that wind and solar energy was cheaper in many places but held back by vested interests in fossil fuel. The climate crisis may be even worse than thought, he said: "We are likely to be underestimating the magnitude of climate change," with global heating probably at the high end of the projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Removing fossil fuel subsidies could cut emissions by a third, the report said.

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The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The Parrot team have announced the availability of a new development snapshot. Parrot 7.0 Beta swaps out the MATE desktop for using Plasma by default, the base distribution has been updated to Debian 13, and several custom applications have received some updates: "This new version introduces numerous changes,....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The Univention team have announced the release of Univention Corporate Server 5.2-4. The new version introduces unifies locked account statuses, drops support for PXE Server installs, and introduces some fixes for Keycloak: "As always, the new release contains numerous updates and smaller improvements. A selection: Synchronization of the....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. This week in DistroWatch Weekly:
Review: FreeBSD 15.0
News: Canonical presents plans for Ubuntu 26.04, SparkyLinux publishes updated CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver
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Released last week: FreeBSD 15.0, Alpine Linux 3.23.0, GLF OS 26.05, Oracle Linux 10.1, CuerdOS 2.0
Torrent corner: BigLinux, GLF....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The CuerdOS team has released version 2.0 of its Debian-based operating system, upgrading its base to Debian 13 "Trixie" in the process. The new version includes the 6.12 Linux kernel and switches the default web brower to Vivaldi: "Update to the new Debian release: Trixie (13). New Fastfetch....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. Gursewak Sokhi has announced the release of Oracle Linux 10.1, an updated release of the company's enterprise-class Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux: "Oracle Linux 10.1 is now generally available for 64-bit Intel and AMD (x86_64) and 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platforms. This release includes the following....