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I switched to a lightweight Windows mod, and it's faster than many Linux distros I've tried  MakeUseOf

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's been more than eight years since Amazon bought Whole Foods, but the two companies still haven't aligned their setup for the Microsoft software their employees use. That disconnect was flagged in an 8-week Deloitte review of Whole Foods' use of Microsoft 365 apps earlier this year, according to an internal document obtained by Business Insider. Deloitte found that Whole Foods relies on "fragmented" Microsoft toolsets, has loose security and data-retention practices, and employs a complex user-management setup -- all of which contribute to inefficiencies and lower productivity when working with Amazon employees. The consulting firm recommended a 24-month integration plan that would first move Whole Foods' corporate employees onto Amazon's backend system, followed by its frontline workers. The phased approach would ensure a "smooth transition for users and minimal disruption to business processes," while generating cost savings, the document said. The review, completed in May, highlights Amazon's ongoing challenges in integrating Whole Foods. Since acquiring the chain in 2017, the company has struggled to scale the business and integrate operations, resulting in frequent reorganizations and shifting strategic priorities.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the late 1980s, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary sat on the New York Times best-seller list for 155 consecutive weeks and eventually sold 57 million copies, a figure believed to be second only to the Bible in the United States -- but those days are thoroughly gone. Stefan Fatsis's new book "Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary" chronicles what Louis Menand describes in The New Yorker as "a losing struggle" for legacy dictionaries to survive in the internet age. The profession has been decimated: an estimated 200 full-time lexicographers worked in the US 25 years ago, and Fatsis believes that number is "probably closer to thirty" today. "By the time I finished this book," Fatsis writes, "it wasn't clear how long flesh-bone-and-blood lexicographers would be needed to chronicle the march of the English language." Merriam-Webster is now owned by Encycloaedia Britannica, another print-era giant that stopped publishing physical volumes in 2012. The company's free website draws about a billion page views annually, but the content has shifted dramatically -- word games, trending slang and ads dominate rather than lexicographic depth. The scale of the challenge facing dictionaries is staggering. One study of digitized library books found the English lexicon grew from about 600,000 words in 1950 to over a million by 2000, and concluded that 52% of English words in printed books are "lexical dark matter" that appears in no standard reference work.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Open-Source Linux Driver Christmas Surprise For 20~23 Year Old Radeon GPUs  Phoronix

European public institutions are quietly migrating away from American cloud providers and office software, driven less by policy ambitions in Brussels than by the mundane legal reality that GDPR-mandated risk assessments keep flagging the US CLOUD Act as an unacceptable threat to citizen data. Austria's Federal Ministry for Economy, Energy and Tourism moved 1,200 employees to the open-source platform Nextcloud in four months. Germany's Schleswig-Holstein has already transitioned 24,000 of its 30,000 civil servants to LibreOffice, Nextcloud and Thunderbird. The International Criminal Court in The Hague announced in November 2025 that it would replace Microsoft office software after chief prosecutor Karim Khan was temporarily locked out of his Outlook account. Competition economist Cristina Caffarra estimates that 90% of Europe's digital infrastructure is now controlled by non-European companies. Forrester predicts no European enterprise will fully abandon US hyperscalers in 2026, but these targeted migrations for sensitive government applications are already underway.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Samsung is breaking new ground with its 2026 lineup of gaming monitors, with the Odyssey 3D G90XH becoming the first to feature a 6K display with "glasses-free 3D." The new monitor comes with a 32-inch IPS panel, offering real-time eye-tracking that "adjusts depth and perspective" based on your position, along with a speedy 165Hz refresh rate that you can boost to 330Hz with a Dual Mode feature that switches to 3K. [...] A 6K 3D display isn't the only notable upgrade coming to Samsung's lineup; the company is launching the Odyssey G6 G60H, which it says is the "world's first" 1,040Hz gaming monitor. The 27-inch monitor only supports this ultra-fast refresh rate in HD, while its native 1440p resolution still offers speeds up to a very fast 600Hz. It's also compatible with AMD FreeSync Premium and NVIDIA G-Sync.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The great return-to-office battle has effectively concluded and a clear pecking order has emerged, according to Sander van 't Noordende, the CEO of Randstad, a staffing giant that places around half a million workers in jobs every week. Remote work is becoming a status symbol reserved for star performers and those possessing rare skills. "You have to be very special to be able to demand a 100% remote job," van 't Noordende told Fortune. "That's increasingly the story. You have to have very special technology skills or some expertise." The equilibrium appears to be settling at a hybrid model of three to four days in office for most workers. Van 't Noordende noted that apart from some banks in major cities, the five-day office week isn't returning as the norm despite hardline mandates from companies like Amazon and JPMorgan. Korn Ferry predicted this "hybrid hierarchy" at the start of 2025, forecasting that flexibility would become a perk reserved for top talent. At some companies, high performers are already being offered flexible schedules as a bonus while mid-range employees don't get the privilege, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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Updated new bonus details, stackable. Crypto exchange OKX is currently offering a few different bonuses which may be stackable. Details below.

• New customers: up to $400 referral bonus Should auto-populate the promo code 79795662. Thanks mine, thanks if you use it!
• New and existing customers: Up to 250 USDG deposit match, via 5% match for every 1,000 USDG you deposit (buy) and hold for 90 days, up to a max reward of 250 USDG. Be sure to opt-in before making your big deposit!
• New and existing customers: 5% APY on USDG while you hold.
• New and existing customers: Free crypto via X Drops Club. Must maintain a $1,000+ portfolio of crypto (cash, USDC, and USDG stablecoin does not count). BTC, ETH, and other stablecoins do count. You must also “join” each airdrop before the window closes. More details here and here.

Up to $400 New customer bonus details. Here are the steps for the $150 + $250 bonus for new OKX customers:

• Sign up via special referral link. I think they allow either smartphone or browser sign-up, but identity verification may be easier on a smartphone. That’s my referral link, which should auto-populate with the promo code 79795662. Thanks if you use it!
• Complete identity verification (driver’s license and smartphone selfie).
• $150 BTC Bonus if you deposit $200+ of either cash (link bank account via Plaid) or crypto within 30 days, trade that $200 or more of crypto (can purchase stablecoin like USDG), and hold the assets for at least 30 days within a 90-day period. After 90 days, the bonus will be tradable and withdrawable.
• Additional $250 BTC Bonus bonus if you deposit at least $10,000.
• Stablecoins such as USDG, USDT, and USDC qualify for deposit, trading volume, and AUM holding requirements.

You should get confirmation of the bonus shortly after linking a bank account and making the trade. Here’s some app screenshots regarding my bonus, which are pretty clear. I did mine on 10/21/25 and so mine unlocks on 1/19/26. (The bonus used to be $200, but it went down to $50 and is currently $150. Not sure if it will ever go back to $200.)

5% Deposit match details. Here are the details on the 5% deposit match starting December 2025. This is a new promotion, separate from the previous 10% deposit match. Existing OKX customers can participate in this new one with new deposits.

• Be sure to “join” the offer before making your deposits, to get the match!
• Get a 5% match for every 1,000 USDG you deposit (buy) and hold for 90 days, up to a max reward of 250 USDG after depositing 5000 USDG (pegged 1:1 = $5,000). On-chain deposits of crypto and direct purchases of crypto via ACH bank transfer, debit card, or Apple Pay and Google Pay also count.
• This works in increments of 1,000. So if you buy/deposit 1,200 USDG, you’ll only get 50 USDG for meeting the 1,000 USDG tier. You can make multiple deposits and it will track them and add them up. See my screenshot of the tracker below.
• Your rewards make take up to 5 minutes to reflect.
• Rewards must be held for 90 days within a 180-day window before you can use, trade, or withdraw them.

Deposit match tiers and available rewards are defined as follows:
$1,000 to $1,999 -> 50 USDG
$2,000 to $2,999 -> 100 USDG
$3,000 to $3,999 -> 150 USDG
$4,000 to $4,999 -> 200 USDG
$5,000 and above -> 250 USDG

OKX is also paying 5% APY on USDG deposits currently. The deposit bonus works out to a payout of 5% over 90 days, or 20% annualized + 5% APY = 25% total annualized return over 90 days. In other words, if I put in $5,000, in 90 days I’ll expect to take out an extra $250 + ~$62 in interest = $312.

The app does a good job of showing you exactly how many days you have left in the hold period. If you see a date that is 180 days out, that refers to the 180-window. You have to meet the tier for 90 days within a 180-day window.

USDG stablecoin is not FDIC-insured. They claim to be fully backed by US Treasury Bills with monthly audits and regulated by Singapore, but I still plan to withdraw my USDG out into a real bank as soon as the holding period is over.

Please perform your own due diligence on crypto apps. They are not regulated on the same level as bank account or brokerage accounts. I usually don’t like to keep significant funds in there any longer than is required for the bonus to clear, but in this case the reward/risk ratio is acceptable to me. Here is the OKX Wikipedia page and they are profiled in the Forbes article “The World’s Most Trustworthy Crypto Exchanges”. (Also see: Kraken and Gemini bonuses.)

Note: OKX does not allow customers to be individuals residing in New York, Texas, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands.

Australia is on track for a significant expansion of desalination capacity -- converting seawater to freshwater -- to meet the needs of a swelling population at a time of declining average rainfall. From a report: The world's driest inhabited continent is projected to build or expand 11 desalination plants worth more than A$23 billion ($15 billion) over the next 10 years, according to a research report by Dominic McNally at Oxford Economics. "Our population growth forecasts imply an additional 190GL/year in household water demand across major cities by 2035, while the booming data center industry also threatens to rapidly expand urban water use," he said. "This growing demand coincides with falling average rainfall in major population centers, increasing the vulnerability of existing infrastructure." Water construction activity slowed after 2010 as a severe drought receded. However, recent dry periods have reignited interest in water security and coincide with a new boom in water infrastructure investment, including desalination, McNally said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel NPU Firmware Published For Panther Lake - Completing The Linux Driver Support  Phoronix

Legacy AMD GPUs receive 30% performance boost in Linux with new drivers — latest kernel update finally drops obsolete Radeon graphics driver after more than two decades  Tom's Hardware

Legacy AMD GPUs receive 30% performance boost in Linux with new drivers — latest kernel update finally drops obsolete Radeon graphics driver after more than two decades  Tom's Hardware

Legacy AMD GPUs receive 30% performance boost in Linux with new drivers — latest kernel update finally drops obsolete Radeon graphics driver after more than two decades  Tom's Hardware

Legacy AMD GPUs receive 30% performance boost in Linux with new drivers — latest kernel update finally drops obsolete Radeon graphics driver after more than two decades  Tom's Hardware

Asus has been showcasing its new 5K 27-inch ROG Strix 27 Pro gaming monitor running at 5,120 x 2,880 resolution and up to 180Hz, but even Nvidia's flagship RTX 5090 struggles to deliver smooth frame rates at this demanding pixel count. In testing conducted by Asus, the RTX 5090D -- a Chinese-exclusive variant with weaker AI performance -- achieved just 51 frames per second in a Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark at ultra ray traced settings. The test system ran an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D processor, had DLSS set to balanced, and kept frame generation disabled. The same configuration running at 4K managed 77 fps, around 50% higher. The underlying math is simple: 5K resolution requires rendering 78% more pixels than 4K. That 218 PPI pixel density delivers impressive sharpness up close, but Asus chose an IPS panel over OLED technology to reach it, trading away deeper black levels and faster response times. Asus appears to be positioning the monitor as a dual-mode display -- 5K for productivity and video, 1440p at up to 330Hz for gaming. Early Chinese listings have it priced at the equivalent of $800, roughly what you'd pay for a larger 4K OLED panel.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Void Phone VX1 is Linux phone with enterprise management features  Liliputing

7 ways to create an empty file in Linux (and what each one teaches you)  Yahoo! Tech

Learn more about Nano Banana Pro, Google’s state-of-the-art image generation and editing model, and where you can use it now.Learn more about Nano Banana Pro, Google’s state-of-the-art image generation and editing model, and where you can use it now.

This year saw new AI models, transformative products and new breakthroughs in science and robotics.This year saw new AI models, transformative products and new breakthroughs in science and robotics.

Facebook deploys the Steam Deck's Linux scheduler across its data centers — Valve's low-latency scheduler perfect for managing Meta's workloads at massive data centers  Tom's Hardware