computers

02 Jun 2026

Slashdot

GitHub Copilot Users React To New Usage-Based Pricing System

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In April, GitHub announced that it was moving subscribers from request-based billing to a usage-based model for its AI-powered Copilot service. As that new pricing model goes into effect today, many GitHub Copilot users are reporting some extreme sticker shock as they realize just how quickly their previous "normal" usage is burning through their newly limited monthly allotment of AI credits. Across social media and forums, many Copilot users are sharing personal statistics showing how just a few hours of AI usage can now account for a large chunk of their new monthly subscription caps. For some users, it reportedly took less than a day to use up a month's usage quota. That's a big change from previous months, when GitHub Copilot subscribers were allocated a certain number of "requests" and "premium requests" based on their payment tier. GitHub said that the old system meant that "a quick chat question and a multi-hour autonomous coding session [could] cost the user the same amount," forcing Copilot itself to "absorb much of the escalating inference cost behind that usage." [...] Indeed, some Copilot users have been sharing estimates from GitHub's own tool showing that their previous monthly usage would rack up bills in the thousands of dollars under the new pricing plan. Under GitHub's new usage-based pricing system, paid Copilot subscriptions instead grant users a certain number of AI "credits" each month, with one credit corresponding to $0.01 of usage. Subscribers also get bonus credits depending on their subscription level: the $10/month Pro plan includes 1,500 credits ($15 worth); the $39 Pro+ plan includes 7,000 credits ($70 worth); and the $100/month Copilot Max plan includes 20,000 credits ($200 worth). The precise number of Copilot credits used by a given prompt is determined by the number of input and output tokens used and the rates charged by the underlying large language model. That means pricing is highly dependent not just on the type of request but on the specific model that a user chooses. One million output tokens from OpenAI's GPT-5.4 nano would run just $1.25 on GitHub Copilot, but that same level of output would run $30 on the frontier GPT-5.5 model (Copilot users who rely on "Auto" mode to pick the most appropriate available model for any request should be extremely careful, as some users report it can switch to expensive models for extremely simple queries).

Ars Technica

Trump's DOE restarts energy rebate program with dumb conditions

Switching from fossil fuels to electricity for heating is no longer covered.

02 Jun 2026 1:29pm GMT

Impulse Space raises $500 million as orbital maneuvering race heats up

"The market's going to continue to find exciting new things."

02 Jun 2026 12:00pm GMT

Slashdot

Google Requests Permission to Release 32 Million Mosquitoes In California and Florida

Google has asked the EPA for permission to release up to 32 million sterile male mosquitoes in California and Florida over two years. The effort is part of the company's Debug program, which uses Wolbachia-infected males to reduce populations of disease-spreading Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Google cites a similar approach in Singapore that helped suppress mosquito populations and reduce dengue cases. The Guardian reports: As part of its successful "Debug" program, Google is tapping into its tech expertise to raise an army of sterile male mosquitoes to lower the number of illness-spreading bugs. Mosquitoes -- the world's deadliest animal -- kill more people than any other creature in the world every year by spreading lethal diseases such as dengue, West Nile virus, Zika, chikungunya and malaria. A notice (PDF) from the federal register shows the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing Google's request to release up to 16 million mosquitoes annually, in Florida and California, over the span of two years. The EPA will decide whether to greenlight Google's request for an experimental use permit after a public comment period, which ends on 5 June. Male mosquitoes don't bite or carry disease. One of the main approaches Google is testing involves rearing male mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacteria, called wolbachia, which stops them from having offspring with wild female mosquitoes. When an infected male tries to mate with a wild female, her eggs won't hatch; Google explains in a blog post: "the population gets smaller with each generation."

Texas Adds Another Huge Solar Farm As ERCOT Grid Demand Soars

Texas is adding another large solar project as ERCOT electricity demand rises. According to Electrek, Vesper Energy has secured $236 million in financing for its 201 MW Nazareth Solar farm in Swisher County, which will be capable of generating enough electricity for about 53,000 homes. The project is expected to begin construction in June 2026 and come online in fall 2027. From the report: Nazareth Solar will sit on more than 2,400 acres of private land and generate enough electricity to power around 53,000 homes annually. The project will neighbor Vesper's Hornet Solar (pictured above), another large solar farm the company developed. ERCOT faces growing demand from population growth, industrial expansion, and power-hungry data centers. And despite political attacks on renewables, solar continues getting built in this red state because it's one of the fastest and cheapest ways to add new electricity to the grid. Vesper says the project will bring new tax revenue to local schools, infrastructure, and emergency services, along with construction jobs and long-term operations roles. Participating landowners are also expected to receive long-term lease income from the solar farm.

01 Jun 2026

Ars Technica

AI costs how much? GitHub Copilot users react to new usage-based pricing system.

Some report burning through their whole monthly "AI credit" allotment in a single day.

01 Jun 2026 10:18pm GMT

OSnews

Microsoft is intentionally bricking all Office for Mac 2019/2021 installations

You're a smart cookie, so you opted to buy a copy of Microsoft Office for macOS back in 2019 or 2021, eschewing the Office 365 subscription, so you could keep on using Office 2019/2021 forever if you wanted to. Just like in the old days. I've got some bad news. Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion (2026) is a scheduled remote degradation of perpetually-licensed Microsoft Office software for macOS and iOS, set for July 13, 2026 when a license-validation certificate used by the Office apps expires. After Office 2019 for Mac reached end of support in October 2023, Microsoft assured customers their installed apps would "continue to function." The July 13, 2026 conversion instead drops the apps into a Microsoft-defined "reduced functionality mode," in which files can be opened and viewed but not edited or saved. By May 30, 2026, the original 2023 end-of-support page had been re-dated and rewritten on Microsoft's site; the "continue to function" clause was removed. ↫ Consumer Rights Wiki Microsoft's advice to the users they're stealing from is to keep using the applications as mere viewers, switch to the free Office 365 web applications, pay for a 365 subscription, or buy a brand new regular copy of Office 2024. None of these make any sense, and clearly, all of this should be illegal, but it's not because the software industry is a clown show. Proprietary software is unethical.

01 Jun 2026 5:52pm GMT

NVIDIA unveils RTX Spark chip for laptops and desktop PCs

It was an open secret that NVIDIA was working on an ARM-based system-on-a-chip for laptops and desktops, and today at Computex 2026 the company unveiled what it's been working on. It's surely a beast, and unsurprisingly, it's lathered in "AI" buzzwords. At full strength, this chip offers up to 20 Arm CPU cores, a Blackwell GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores, 128GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and up to 300 GB/s of memory bandwidth. That powerful CPU and GPU, connected over NVLink C2C, and the large memory pool give AI agents and 120-billion-parameter models plenty of power and space for long-running tasks with context lengths stretching to a million tokens, according to Nvidia. RTX Spark will power high-end laptops from partners including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, and MSI - and notably, a new Surface Ultra laptop from Microsoft. Nvidia says it's worked with those partners to create "the most extraordinary laptops ever built," with tandem OLED G-Sync displays, "all-day" battery life, premium aluminum chassis with large glass touchpads. ↫ Jeffrey Kampman at Tom's Hardware I couldn't care less about the "AI" nonsense, but the chip itself seems like an absolute monster for laptops and mini PCs. With that much power and a solid NVIDIA GPU, these are also great for gaming and creative tasks, making them feel like the first true competition in the PC space to Apple's M series of chips. They're planned for late 2026, and tellingly, there's no pricing information just yet.

01 Jun 2026 1:33pm GMT

You don’t love systemd timers enough

My favorite metonymic technology term is "cron job": even though cron may not literally be the daemon that executes actions on a schedule, we apply the term to anything that walks like a cron and quacks like a cron. As Patrick McKenzie likes to point out, cron jobs are one of the most eminently useful computing primitives. They offer utility that's almost immediately obvious for plenty of use cases that almost everybody has: do this every day; do that once a month. And yet. You probably shouldn't use literal cron (or its more modern cousins) for scheduled tasks! In 2026 there are more modern options available, and my favorite is the humble systemd timer. I love systemd timers. If you don't love them yet, maybe I can show you the reasons why you should love them, too. ↫ Tyler Langlois These are just timers. They are not consuming your computer or taking over the open source world. They do not phone home to Red Hat. These are just timers.

01 Jun 2026 1:16pm GMT