fidzu : computers

"When Hugo Parra was arrested last year on felony charges, his pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears," reports the Times of San Diego: San Diego police had a description of the Alfa Romeo car he was riding in [but no license plate number] and a witness who identified him during a curbside lineup as the man who brandished a handgun in Golden Hill. They had also checked the city's automatic license plate camera system, run by the private company Flock, and got a "hit," substantiating the claim. The problem, says attorney Alex Coolman, was that Parra was five miles away from Golden Hill at the time of the crime, and the so-called hit from the license plate reader was captured before any police pursuit began. "This Flock hit was obviously the wrong car, as it could not have been in both places simultaneously," said Coolman, who represents Parra and the driver, 23-year-old Ariel Beltran. Despite the signs pointing to it being a different Alfa Romeo, police arrested Beltran and Parra... [An officer had informed dispatch that one of the men "matched the victim's description, other than having a different-colored hooded sweatshirt."] Parra spent nearly one month behind bars, missing Thanksgiving and other special events with his family, before the assault with a firearm and evasion charges were dropped. Parras says he was incarcerated with actual murderers, according to the article, and Parra and Beltran are now preparing to sue the city, seeking $1.5 million each in damages for civil rights violations and negligence. Their claim notes they'd driven past several other Flock cameras which officers could've used to corroborate their story (not to mention location data on their cell phones). Meanwhile, the article also notes that last month the Institute for Justice "identified at least 17 cases in the United States of officers allegedly using Automated License Plate Reader technology to keep tabs on partners, exes, and strangers who had caught their eye..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

08 Jun 2026 1:34am GMT

Italian fashion house Prada "unveiled on Sunday the inner-layer garment set to be worn by NASA astronauts heading to the moon," reports Reuters. "The body-hugging suit, created in collaboration with Houston-based space infrastructure developer Axiom Space, features ventilation tubes knitted into the garment." Expertise for developing space exploration products "can come from lots of seemingly unrelated industries," said Jonathan Cirtain, CEO of Axiom Space... The new product follows Prada's splashy foray into space fashion in 2024 with the unveiling of a spacesuit that is expected to be used for NASA's anticipated Artemis 4 moon landing in 2028... Other fashion and apparel companies have jumped on the space bandwagon. Under Armour has partnered with spaceflight company Virgin Galactic to create space apparel, while Columbia Sportswear has worked with space exploration company Intuitive Machines on space fabric technology. The new "Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment" was displayed on a mannequin at an event at Prada's Manhattan store.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

07 Jun 2026 11:27pm GMT

People are disabling the "recording light" on Meta's Ray-Ban smartglasses - "by my count, thousands of people," says tech journalist Joanna Stern in a new video report: STERN: "They're hiring people on Facebook Marketplace to drill out the light for as much as $100. According to our reporting, folks are offering this service in at least 30 states - despite Meta's attempts to stop it... In most states, we found multiple listings. In the New York and New Jersey area alone there were 23 listings." Stern watched a man in New Jersey disable and then conceal the light with a drill and dental probe in a New Jersey garage (a skill he learned watching YouTube and TikTok videos). He said the same day he'd already been contacted by eight more interested customers, and Stern also found at least 10 other people willing to do the same thing, just in New Jersey. "But what we found is they're all over the country." Meta sold 7 million smartglasses in 2025, but a Meta spokesperson insisted to the videomaker that a "majority" of their smartglasses owners aren't blocking the recording light. And furthermore, they added "We aggressively target anyone advertising tampering tools, have removed thousands of violating ads and Marketplace listings for these services, and pursue legal action when appropriate." (The reporter acknowledges "many" of the Marketplace ads disappeared after they brought them to Meta's attention - and Meta also said they were working with other retailers and sellers to take down listings for smartglasses-tampering parts.) The reporter also heard from one journalist who said they'd used it so they could record the activities of federal immigration agents without being targeted. "Others told me they just don't want people asking questions when they're recording." (There's video of one young man saying "It's already difficult enough to film in public. I don't want to have a blinking light on my face.") Tampering with smartglasses isn't illegal - though it is against Meta's Terms of Service, and could void your warranty. But a lawyer in the report says recording others without consent may be illegal, depending on a wide range of "jurisdictional nuances" like whether you live in an all-party consent state or a one-party consent state. "This seems to be our new reality," the report concludes: "more cameras, more microphones everywhere, and less certainty about who and what is recording." (Tech blogger John Gruber offered this assessment. "Using a Meta platform to find people to hack a Meta device so you can surreptitiously record strangers. So perfectly Meta.") Stern's report points out that "People are trying to fight back. Apps have popped up that use Bluetooth to scan for nearby camera glasses." (In the video one app-maker wonders why Meta isn't offering the same service themselves. "There are technical solutions to these problems.") Ironically, when I watched the report on YouTube, it was preceded by... an ad for Meta's Ray-Ban AI smartglasses.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

07 Jun 2026 10:17pm GMT

Head's true genius-and that of his character, Giles-lay in quietly filling in the gaps in every scene

07 Jun 2026 7:34pm GMT

I've been using Fedora Silverblue on my desktop and laptop for the past, what, five years? Silverblue is Fedora's main atomic variant, a spiritual counterpart to Fedora Workstation. I also make niri, a scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor. In other words, a core system component that you cannot properly test from inside a container or VM-you really want it directly on the host. So, why would I choose an… immutable distro? How does that even work? ↫ Ivan Molodetskikh That's a great question, and as immutable or immutable-like Linux distributions become more popular and widespread - and eventually the default download option for many distributions, I'm sure - articles like these are quite important. I'm sure quite a few developers discarded the idea of using something like Silverblue because they assumed it wouldn't be fit for purpose, but if the developer of Niri makes it work, I'm fairly sure anybody can.

07 Jun 2026 6:05pm GMT

x86CSS is a working CSS-only x86 CPU/emulator/computer. Yes, the Cascading Style Sheets CSS. No JavaScript required. What you're seeing above is a C program that was compiled using GCC into native 8086 machine code being executed fully within CSS. ↫ Lyra Rebane Hand-written CSS, no JavaScript, and effectively no HTML. Wizardry.

07 Jun 2026 5:57pm GMT

How accurate does an AI system need to be?

07 Jun 2026 11:08am GMT

Those ousted included ADA journal editor-in-chief Steven Kahn and former ADA president Desmond Schatz

06 Jun 2026 8:53pm GMT

RISC-V has been in the "promising" phase for a long time now, especially for general purpose computing, never really breaking through into the mainstream in any measurable way. While I think that breakthrough is still relatively far away, we now do have newer RISC-V SoCs on the market supporting the RVA23 baseline RISC-V profile. One of them is the SpacemiT Key Stone KЗ, which promises to deliver a massive performance increase over previous RISC-V offerings. It's exactly this chip that's finding its way into complete, turnkey mini PC solutions, like this one from a company called Firefly. The base model comes with 8GB of LDDPR5 RAM and 128GB of storage, at a price of about €300 or so (there's also a 32GB/128GB model at well over €600). This is the first time I'm looking at a complete RISC-V solution where I feel like it might actually make for a good moment to jump in for us enthusiasts. No, the performance won't rival anything Intel or AMD has to offer, but it seems capable enough for a lot of day-to-day tasks, and I'm curious to see just how far along the Linux world is when it comes to RISC-V support. It's not part of our current set of fundraiser incentives, but if you'd like to see this RISC-V mini PC reviewed here on OSNews, you can always donate and add a note that you specifically want to see such a review (so I can gauge interest not just from our few commenters, but also from the more than 99% of our readers who only lurk). As always, you can donate through Ko-Fi, or, if you're European, via a SEPA direct bank transfer (Name: Thom Holwerda - IBAN: SE08 8000 0820 1684 4657 8414 - BIC: SWEDSESS).

05 Jun 2026 3:49pm GMT

Good morning from JetBrains Berlin office!

01 Jun 2026 12:00am GMT

Just trying to answer one simple question: What if the terminal was 3D?

11 May 2026 12:00am GMT

Break the pattern today or the loop will repeat tomorrow.

18 Apr 2026 12:00am GMT