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The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The Tsurugi project has released Tsurugi Linux 25.11, a major update of the Ubuntu-based specialist distribution designed for digital forensics and incident response investigations (DFIR), malware analysis and open-source intelligence (OSINT) activities. The new version is based on Ubuntu's latest long-term support release. From the changelog: "Totally rebuilt....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. AlmaLinux OS, which is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, has a new version, AlmaLinux OS 10.1. The new release introduces the ability to install the distribution on a Btrfs storage volume. "AlmaLinux 10.1 also includes support for the Btrfs filesystem, which has already been available in AlmaLinux....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. Jaiden Riordan has announced the release of Ultramarine Linux 43, a new version of the project's Fedora-based desktop distribution with a choice of KDE Plasma, Budgie, GNOME and Xfce desktops: "Ultramarine 43 brings some gas-fired polish and a few surprise features. Budgie has been our (rather acclaimed) Flagship....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. This week in DistroWatch Weekly:
Review: MX Linux 25
News: systemd experiments with musl libc support, Debian Libre Live publishes media for Trixie, Xubuntu reviews website hack
Questions and answers: Why are video drivers special?
Released last week: Finnix 251, Aurora 43, Proxmox 9.1 "Virtual Environment"
Torrent corner: KDE neon, Proxmox
Opinion poll:....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. Proxmox Virtual Environment is an open-source virtualisation platform for running virtual appliances and virtual machines. The company's latest release, version 9.1, continues to refine the 9.x branch, which is based on Debian 13 "Trixie". The release announcement reports: "We're proud to present the next iteration of our Proxmox....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. Juha Uotila has announced the release of Aurora 43, an important update of the project's Fedora-based immutable Linux distribution made for general desktop use. This version updates the underlying system to Fedora 43 and the KDE Plasma desktop to version 6.5: "Aurora 'Stable' has been updated and is....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. Colin Percival has announced the availability of the first release candidate for the upcoming FreeBSD 15.0, scheduled for final release in early December. The new version will introduce a large number of changes, including the deprecation of fdisk in favor of gpart. Also new in this release is....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux distribution for system administrators, based on Debian's "Testing" branch. The project's latest version, Finnix 251, introduces OCI container images: "Finnix 251 is the first release to distribute official OCI container images. The official Finnix container contains all the same software as....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. This week in DistroWatch Weekly:
Review: Zorin OS 18
News: NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD makes system upgrades more resilient, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu, Debian publishes updated media for Trixie
Questions and answers: Deleting a file with a weird name
Released last week:....

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCMag: Four new features are coming to Google Maps, including a way to hide your identity in reviews. Maps will soon let you use a nickname and select an alternative profile picture for online reviews, so you can rate a business without linking it to full name and Google profile photo. Google says it will monitor for "suspicious and fake reviews," and every review is still associated with an account on Google's backend, which it believes will discourage bad actors. Look for a new option under Your Profile that says Use a custom name & picture for posting. You'll then be able to pick an illustration to represent you and add a nickname. Google didn't explain why it is introducing anonymous reviews; it pitched the idea as a way to be a business's "Secret Santa." Some users are nervous to publicly post reviews for local businesses as it may be used to track their location or movements. It may encourage more people to contribute honest feedback to its platform, for better or worse. Further reading: Gemini AI To Transform Google Maps Into a More Conversational Experience

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sundar Pichai sits down with Logan Kilpatrick to discuss Gemini 3 on the Google AI: Release Notes podcast.

Poland has launched a new antitrust investigation into Apple's App Tracking Transparency rules, questioning whether Apple misled users about privacy while giving its own apps a competitive advantage over third-party developers. AppleInsider reports: On November 25, Poland's UOKiK has started another investigation into App Tracking Transparency, and whether Apple had restricted competition in mobile advertising. Reuters reports that, to the anti-monopoly regulator, ATT may have limited advertisers' ability to collect user data for advertising purposes while simultaneously favoring Apple's ad program. On November 25, Poland's UOKiK has started another investigation into App Tracking Transparency, and whether Apple had restricted competition in mobile advertising. Reuters reports that, to the anti-monopoly regulator, ATT may have limited advertisers' ability to collect user data for advertising purposes while simultaneously favoring Apple's ad program. This is not the first time that Poland has looked into ATT rules. In December 2021, the regulator held a similar probe following criticism from advertisers. It's not clear what that complaint determined, or if it is still ongoing. Regardless, in the new complaint, the logic is that Apple had a competitive advantage since its own apps were not subject to ATT rules, but third-party apps did have to deal with ATT. Since Apple didn't visibly ask for consent for its first-party apps in the same way, there is a presumption that Apple's rules only applied to other companies. This is despite Apple's repeated insistence that it doesn't use the same kinds of collected data in its own apps and services for marketing purposes, as well as its stance on privacy in general. In short, Apple apps don't use the data, so it doesn't pop up a dialog box asking the user if the app can use the data. There is also the argument that, in setting up an account with Apple, users are providing blanket consent to the company. Implementing ATT on its own apps would therefore be a waste of time, since that consent was already granted. Apple said that it will work with the regulator on the matter, but warned that it could force them to withdraw the feature "to the detriment of European consumers."

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In an essay published in The Verge, Benjamin Riley argues that today's AI boom is built on a fundamental misunderstanding: language modeling is not the same as intelligence. "The problem is that according to current neuroscience, human thinking is largely independent of human language -- and we have little reason to believe ever more sophisticated modeling of language will create a form of intelligence that meets or surpasses our own," writes Riley. Slashdot reader RossCWilliams shares the report, writing: The article goes on to point out that we use language to communicate. We use it to create metaphors to describe our reasoning. That people who have lost their language ability can still show reasoning. That human beings create knowledge when they become dissatisfied with the current metaphor. Einstein's theory of relativity was not based on scientific research. He developed it as thought experiment because he was dissatisfied with the existing metaphor. It quotes someone who said, "common sense is a collection of dead metaphors." And that AI, at best, can rearrange those dead metaphors in interesting ways. But it will never be dissatisfied with the data it has or an existing metaphor. A different critique (PDF) has pointed out that even as a language model AI is flawed by its reliance on the internet. The languages used on the internet are unrepresentative of the languages in the world. And other languages contain unique descriptions/metaphors that are not found on the internet. My metaphor for what was discussed was the descriptions of the kinds of snow that exist in Inuit languages that describe qualities nowhere found in European languages. If those metaphors aren't found on the internet, AI will never be able create them. This does not mean that AI isn't useful. But it is not remotely human intelligence. That is just a poor metaphor. We need a better one. Benjamin Riley is the founder of Cognitive Resonance, a new venture to improve understanding of human cognition and generative AI.

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Proton and Linux are 'vectors for cheat developers,' Rust dev Alistair McFarlane says  TweakTown

Proton and Linux are 'vectors for cheat developers,' Rust dev Alistair McFarlane says  TweakTown

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Several U.S. banking giants and mortgage lenders are reportedly scrambling to assess how much of their customers' data was stolen during a cyberattack on a New York financial technology company earlier this month. SitusAMC, which provides technology for over a thousand commercial and real estate financiers, confirmed in a statement over the weekend that it had identified a data breach on November 12. The company said that unspecified hackers had stolen corporate data associated with its banking customers' relationship with SitusAMC, as well as "accounting records and legal agreements" during the cyberattack. The statement added that the scope and nature of the cyberattack "remains under investigation." SitusAMC said that the incident is "now contained," and that its systems are operational. The company said that no encrypting malware was used, suggesting that the hackers were focused on exfiltrating data from the company's systems rather than causing destruction. According to Bloomberg and CNN, citing sources, SitusAMC sent data breach notifications to several financial giants, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. SitusAMC also counts pension funds and state governments as customers, according to its website. It's unclear how much data was taken, or how many U.S. banking consumers may be affected by the breach. Companies like SitusAMC may not be widely known outside of the financial world, but provide the mechanisms and technologies for its banking and real estate customers to comply with state and federal rules and regulations. In its role as a middleman for financial clients, the company handles vast amounts of non-public banking information on behalf of its customers. According to SitusAMC's website, the company processes billions of documents related to loans annually.

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Linux GPU benchmarks impress in Windows gaming alternative Bazzite, but Nvidia is inconsistent  Notebookcheck

Linux GPU benchmarks impress in Windows gaming alternative Bazzite, but Nvidia is inconsistent  Notebookcheck

Up to 3 million low-skilled jobs could disappear in the UK by 2035 because of automation and AI, according to a report by a leading educational research charity. The Guardian: The jobs most at risk are those in occupations such as trades, machine operations and administrative roles, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) said. Highly skilled professionals, on the other hand, were forecast to be more in demand as AI and technological advances increase workloads "at least in the short to medium term." Overall, the report expects the UK economy to add 2.3 million jobs by 2035, but unevenly distributed. The findings stand in contrast to other recent research suggesting AI will affect highly skilled, technical occupations such as software engineering and management consultancy more than trades and manual work.

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Chinese automakers may not be able to sell their electric vehicles in the United States due to steep tariffs and software restrictions, but they have found an alternative path to American eyeballs through a coordinated campaign targeting car influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. The effort, the Verge reports, is largely organized by DCar Studio, a platform that invites US-based creators to Los Angeles to test-drive vehicles from brands like BYD, Geely and Xiaomi. DCar is actually Dongchedi, a car trading platform owned by TikTok parent ByteDance that raised $600 million on a $3 billion valuation in 2024. The strategy appears aimed at building global brand awareness rather than direct US sales. Mark Greeven, professor at IMD Business School, told The Verge that American influencers still shape opinions across the Western world. "The charm offensive is to work with American influencers about Chinese EV cars because we still have a dominant opinion in the Western world, which is formed by English-speaking influential figures on social media," he said. Several creators told The Verge they have heard rumors of undisclosed payments for positive coverage.

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