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The political and personal case for Linux  The Johnstonian News

Linux 7.0 Showing Some Early Performance Regressions On Intel Panther Lake Review  Phoronix

A study of more than 12,000 European firms found that AI adoption causally increases labour productivity by 4% on average across the EU, and that it does so without reducing employment in the short run. Researchers from the Bank for International Settlements and the European Investment Bank used an instrumental variable strategy that matched EU firms to comparable US firms by sector, size, investment intensity and other characteristics, then used the AI adoption rates of those US counterparts as a proxy for exogenous AI exposure among European firms. The productivity gains, however, skewed heavily toward medium and large companies. Among large firms, 45% had deployed AI, compared to just 24% of small firms. The study also found that complementary investments mattered enormously: an extra percentage point of spending on workforce training amplified AI's productivity effect by 5.9%, and an extra point on software and data infrastructure added 2.4%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NAS and file server OS distribution Statistics 2026  commandlinux.com

What Is GRUB In Linux  commandlinux.com

Cleveland.com, the digital arm of Ohio's Plain Dealer newspaper, has removed writing from the workloads of certain reporters and handed that job to what editor Chris Quinn calls an "AI rewrite specialist" who turns reporter-gathered material into article drafts. The reporters on these beats -- covering Lorain, Lake, Geauga, and most recently Medina County -- are assigned entirely to reporting, spending their time on in-person interviews and meeting sources for coffee. Editors review the AI-produced drafts and reporters get the final say before publication. Quinn says the arrangement has effectively freed up an extra workday per week for each reporter. The newsroom adopted this model last year to expand local coverage into counties it could no longer staff with full teams, and Quinn described the setup in a February 14 letter after a college journalism student withdrew from a reporting role over the newsroom's use of AI. Quinn blamed journalism schools for the student's reaction, saying professors have repeatedly told students that AI is bad.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bank of America has a press release that their “Preferred Rewards” program is changing to “BofA Rewards” on May 27, 2026 (hat tip Bogleheads). Notable changes include the tier names, their required balances, and higher requirements for credit card rewards boosts. Here is a comparison of the old and new tiers.

Preferred Rewards Tiers (OLD; Current)

• Gold – $20,000 to < $50,000 combined balance
• Platinum – $50,000 to < $100,000 combined balance
• Platinum Honors – $100,000 to < $1,000,000 combined balance
• Diamond – $1,000,000 or more combined balance

BofA Rewards Tiers (NEW; Effective May 2026)

• Member – Less than $30,000 combined balance
• Preferred Plus – $30,000 to < $100,000 combined balance
• Preferred Honors – $100,000 to < $1,000,000 combined balance
• Premier – $1,000,000 or more combined balance

Combined balances refers to the three-month average account balance across qualifying Bank of America and Merrill accounts. Qualifying accounts include:

• Bank of America deposit accounts: Bank of America Advantage Banking, savings, money market savings, CD and IRA accounts
• Merrill® investment accounts, such as the Cash Management Account (CMA) and IRA accounts
• 529 plans appearing on your Merrill statement
• Revocable grantor trust accounts

The big negative change is that you now need the Premier ($1,000,000+) tier to get the maximum 75% boost in credit card rewards. That’s a huge 10X increase in the balance required.

New BofA Rewards Tiers x Credit Card Rewards Boosts

• Member – Credit card rewards boost: 10%
• Preferred Plus ($30k+) – Credit card rewards boost: 25%
• Preferred Honors ($100k+) – Credit card rewards boost: 50%
• Premier ($1M+) – Credit card rewards boost: 75%

Many people have moved over stock holdings to a self-directed brokerage account at Merrill Edge in order to qualify for some of these rewards. Going from a 75% boost to 50% boost may mean going from 2.6% cash back on everything to 2.25% cash back, unless your combined balances meet the $1 million mark. A disappointing change.

A possible positive offset are new monthly credits on the higher tiers if you make certain purchases on your BofA debit card linked to your BofA checking account.

New BofA Rewards Tiers x Monthly Debit Card Credits

• Member – No subscription credits
• Preferred Plus ($30k+) – No subscription credits
• Preferred Honors ($100k+) – Up to $8 per month in statement credits for “several pre-determined subscription services” (up to $96/year).
• Premier ($1M+) – Up to $15 per month in statement credits for “several pre-determined subscription services” (up to $180/year).

BofA has not announced the eligible subscriptions yet, but hopefully it is a flexible category. This will be an important detail, and it could offset a big part of lost cashback rewards for those with lower credit card spending.

Current Preferred Rewards members will be automatically enrolled in BofA Rewards. The terms state that current Gold and Platinum tier members will initially be changed to the Preferred Plus tier, even with the new balance mismatches.

Windows will never be atomic, and that gives Linux a permanent edge  XDA

Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate and longtime Universal Basic Income advocate, published a blog post this week warning that AI is about to displace millions of white-collar workers in the U.S. over the next 12 to 18 months, a wave he has taken to calling "the Fuckening." Yang cited a conversation with the CEO of a publicly traded tech company who said the firm is cutting 15% of its workforce now and plans another 20% cut in two years, followed by yet another 20% two years after that. The U.S. currently has about 70 million white-collar workers, and Yang expects that number to fall by 20 to 50% over the next several years. Underemployment among recent college graduates has already hit 52%, and only 30% of graduating seniors have landed a job in their field. Yang's proposed remedy remains the same one he ran on in 2020: Universal Basic Income.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

5 reasons to start using the Linux command line  How-To Geek

Linus Torvalds has told The Register how Linux went from a solo hobby project on a single 386 PC in Helsinki to a genuinely collaborative effort, and the path involved crowdsourced checks, an FTP mirror at MIT, and a licensing decision that opened the floodgates. Torvalds released the first public snapshot, Linux 0.02, on October 5, 1991, on a Finnish FTP server -- about 10,000 lines of code that he had cross-compiled under Minix. He originally wanted to call it "Freax," but his friend Ari Lemmke, who set up the server, named the directory "Linux" instead. Early contributor Theodore Ts'o set up the first North American mirror on his VAXstation at MIT, since the sole 64 kbps link between Finland and the US made downloads painful. That mirror gave developers on this side of the Atlantic their first practical access to the kernel. Another early developer, Dirk Hohndel, recalled that Torvalds initially threw away incoming patches and reimplemented them from scratch -- a habit he eventually dropped because it did not scale. When Torvalds could not afford to upgrade his underpowered 386, developer H. Peter Anvin collected checks from contributors through his university mailbox and wired the funds to Finland, covering the international banking fees himself. Torvalds got a 486DX/2. In 1992, he moved the kernel to the GPL, and the first full distributions appeared in 1992-1993, turning Linux from a kernel into installable systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linus Torvalds has told The Register how Linux went from a solo hobby project on a single 386 PC in Helsinki to a genuinely collaborative effort, and the path involved crowdsourced checks, an FTP mirror at MIT, and a licensing decision that opened the floodgates. Torvalds released the first public snapshot, Linux 0.02, on October 5, 1991, on a Finnish FTP server -- about 10,000 lines of code that he had cross-compiled under Minix. He originally wanted to call it "Freax," but his friend Ari Lemmke, who set up the server, named the directory "Linux" instead. Early contributor Theodore Ts'o set up the first North American mirror on his VAXstation at MIT, since the sole 64 kbps link between Finland and the US made downloads painful. That mirror gave developers on this side of the Atlantic their first practical access to the kernel. Another early developer, Dirk Hohndel, recalled that Torvalds initially threw away incoming patches and reimplemented them from scratch -- a habit he eventually dropped because it did not scale. When Torvalds could not afford to upgrade his underpowered 386, developer H. Peter Anvin collected checks from contributors through his university mailbox and wired the funds to Finland, covering the international banking fees himself. Torvalds got a 486DX/2. In 1992, he moved the kernel to the GPL, and the first full distributions appeared in 1992-1993, turning Linux from a kernel into installable systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Electric buses are proving unreliable this winter for Vermont's Green Mountain Transit, as it needs to be over 41 degrees for the buses to charge, but due to a battery recall the buses are a fire hazard and can't be charged in a garage. Spokesman for energy workers advocacy group Power the Future Larry Behrens told the Center Square: "Taxpayers were sold an $8 million 'solution' that can't operate in cold weather when the home for these buses is in New England." "We're beyond the point where this looks like incompetence and starts to smell like fraud," Behrens said. "When government rushes money out the door to satisfy green mandates, basic questions about performance, safety, and value for taxpayers are always pushed aside," Behrens said. "Americans deserve to know who approved this purchase and why the red flags were ignored." General manager at Green Mountain Transit (GMT) Clayton Clark told The Center Square that "the federal government provides public transit agencies with new buses through a competitive grant application process, and success is not a given."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Want to develop your Linux skills? I've found the perfect distro for you  ZDNET

Microsoft says a Microsoft 365 Copilot bug has been causing the AI assistant to summarize confidential emails since late January, bypassing data loss prevention (DLP) policies that organizations rely on to protect sensitive information. From a report: According to a service alert seen by BleepingComputer, this bug (tracked under CW1226324 and first detected on January 21) affects the Copilot "work tab" chat feature, which incorrectly reads and summarizes emails stored in users' Sent Items and Drafts folders, including messages that carry confidentiality labels explicitly designed to restrict access by automated tools. Copilot Chat (short for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat) is the company's AI-powered, content-aware chat that lets users interact with AI agents. Microsoft began rolling out Copilot Chat to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote for paying Microsoft 365 business customers in September 2025.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How I reduced context switching on Linux by redesigning my browser workflow  MakeUseOf

Firefox ends support for Windows 7: Upgrade to 10 or Linux  PCWorld

System76 Preparing To Introduce Redesigned Thelio Hardware  Phoronix

Ring's AI-powered "Search Party" feature, which links neighborhood cameras into a networked surveillance system to find lost dogs, was never intended to stop at pets, according to an internal email from founder Jamie Siminoff obtained by 404 Media. Siminoff told employees in early October, shortly after the feature launched, that Search Party was introduced "first for finding dogs" and that the technology would eventually help "zero out crime in neighborhoods." The on-by-default feature faced intense backlash after Ring promoted it during a Super Bowl ad. Ring has since also rolled out "Familiar Faces," a facial recognition tool that identifies friends and family on a user's camera, and "Fire Watch," an AI-based fire alert system. A Ring spokesperson told the publication Search Party does not process human biometrics or track people.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lyria 3 is now available in the Gemini app. Create custom, high-quality 30-second tracks from text and images.Lyria 3 is now available in the Gemini app. Create custom, high-quality 30-second tracks from text and images.