fidzu : computers

A gauge of risk on Oracle debt "reached a three-year high in November," reports Bloomberg. "And things are only going to get worse in 2026 unless the database giant is able to assuage investor anxiety about a massive artificial intelligence spending spree, according to Morgan Stanley." A funding gap, swelling balance sheet and obsolescence risk are just some of the hazards Oracle is facing, according to Lindsay Tyler and David Hamburger, credit analysts at the brokerage. The cost of insuring Oracle's debt against default over the next five years rose to 1.25 percentage point a year on Tuesday, according to ICE Data Services. The price on the five-year credit default swaps is at risk of toppling a record set in 2008 as concerns over the company's borrowing binge to finance its AI ambitions continue to spur heavy hedging by banks and investors, they warned in a note Wednesday. The CDS could break through 1.5 percentage point in the near term and could approach 2 percentage points if communication around its financing strategy remains limited as the new year progresses, the analysts wrote. Oracle CDS hit a record 1.98 percentage point in 2008, ICE Data Services shows... "Over the past two months, it has become more apparent that reported construction loans in the works, for sites where Oracle is the future tenant, may be an even greater driver of hedging of late and going forward," wrote the analysts... Concerns have also started to weigh on Oracle's stock, which the analysts said may incentivize management to outline a financing plan on the upcoming earnings call... Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Nov 2025 7:35pm GMT

27 million people live in Australia. But there's a big change coming if you're under 16, reports CNN: From December 10, sites that meet the Australian government's definition of an "age-restricted social media platform" will need to show that they're doing enough to eject or block children under 16 or face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32 million). The list includes Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube... Meta says it'll start deactivating accounts and blocking new Facebook, Instagram and Threads accounts from December 4. Under-16s are being encouraged to download their content. Snap says users can deactivate their accounts for up to three years, or until they turn 16... There's another sting in the ban, too, coming at the end of the Australian school year before the summer break in the southern hemisphere. For eight weeks, there'll be no school, no teachers - and no scrolling. For millions of children, it could be the first school break they spend in years without the company of time-killing social media algorithms, or an easy way to contact their friends. Even for parents who support the ban, it could be a very long summer. "There's every chance that bans will spread..." the article argues. "Other countries around the world are taking notes as Australia explores new territory that some say mirrors safety evolutions of years past - the dawning realization that maybe cars need safety belts, and that perhaps cigarettes should come with some kind of health warning." And according to the Associated Press, Malaysia "has also announced plans to ban social media accounts for children under 16 starting in 2026." But CNN reports few teenagers in Australia knew about its impending ban on social media, judging by a show of hands at one high school auditorium. Teenagers in the audience had two questions. "Can you get your account back when you turn 16?" "What if I lie about my age?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Nov 2025 6:34pm GMT

"Amazon suggested its engineers eschew AI code generation tools from third-party companies in favor of its own ," reports Reuters, "a move to bolster its proprietary Kiro service, which it released in July, according to an internal memo viewed by Reuters." In the memo, posted to Amazon's internal news site, the company said, "While we continue to support existing tools in use today, we do not plan to support additional third party, AI development tools. "As part of our builder community, you all play a critical role shaping these products and we use your feedback to aggressively improve them," according to the memo. The guidance would seem to preclude Amazon employees from using other popular software coding tools like OpenAI's Codex, Anthropic's Claude Code, and those from startup Cursor. That is despite Amazon having invested about $8 billion into Anthropic and reaching a seven-year $38 billion deal with OpenAI to sell it cloud-computing services..."To make these experiences truly exceptional, we need your help," according to the memo, which was signed by Peter DeSantis, senior vice president of AWS utility computing, and Dave Treadwell, senior vice president of eCommerce Foundation. "We're making Kiro our recommended AI-native development tool for Amazon...." In October, Amazon revised its internal guidance for OpenAI's Codex to "Do Not Use" following a roughly six month assessment, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters. And Claude Code was briefly designated as "Do Not Use," before that was reversed following a reporter inquiry at the time. The article adds that Amazon "has been fighting a reputation that it is trailing competitors in development of AI tools as rivals like OpenAI and Google speed ahead..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Nov 2025 5:34pm GMT

DOS platformers didn't have a reputation for being fun, but this one is a blast.

30 Nov 2025 12:10pm GMT

Only a few weeks ago, the CHRP variants of Mac OS 7.6 and 8 were discovered and uploaded to the internet for posterity, but we're already seeing the positive results of this event unfold: Mac OS 7.x can now run on the Mac Mini G4 - natively. The very short of it is as follows. First, the CHRP release of Mac OS 8 contains a ROM file that allows Mac OS 8 to boot on the G4 Mac Mini. Second, the CHRP release of 7.6 contains a System Enabler that allows 7.6 earlier versions to run by using the aforementioned ROM file. Third, the ROM has been modified to add compatibility with as many Mac models as possible. There's a lot more to it, of course, but the end result is that quite a few more older, pre-9.x versions of Mac OS can now run on G4 and G3 Macs, which is quite cool. Of course, there are limitations. Note that, although I describe many of these as "stable", I mean you can use much of it normally (sound/video/networking aside) without it crashing or misbehaving, at least not too hard, but that is not to say everything works, because that is just not the case. For example, when present, avoid opening the Apple System Profiler, unless you want a massive crash as it struggles trying to profile and gather all the information about your system. Some other apps or Control Panels might either not work, or work up to a certain point, after which they might freeze, requiring you to Force Quit the Finder to keep on going. And so on. ↫ Jubadub at Mac OS 9 Lives Issues or no, this is amazing news, and great work by all involved.

30 Nov 2025 8:28am GMT

Promising trials using engineered antibodies suggest that "functional cures" may be in reach.

29 Nov 2025 12:15pm GMT

The release 25.11 wraps up our year of "rigidity, clarity, performance" with a bouquet of vast under-the-hood improvements. Genode's custom kernel received special tuning of its new CPU scheduler for Sculpt-OS workloads, and became much more scalable with respect to virtual-memory management. Combined, those efforts visibly boost the performance of Sculpt OS on performance-starved hardware like the PinePhone or the i.MX8-based MNT Reform laptop. On account of improving clarity, our new configuration format - now named human-inclined data (HID) - proliferates throughout Genode's tooling. We are also happy to report that almost all Genode components have become interoperable with both XML and HID by now. ↫ Genode OS Framework 25.11 release notes The Genode Framework 25.11 also brings a major change to how important shared components that aren't strictly part of the framework are handled, such as ports like libSDL, sqlite, or gnutls. Before, these could only be built with the Genode build system, which was suboptimal because this isn't designed for building individual components. Several changes have been made to now enable the use of multiple build systems and the Goa SDK, which should make it a lot easier to these crucial components to become the responsibility of wider parts of the community. There's way more, of course, such as the usual driver improvements, including the addition of support for serial-to-USB adapters.

29 Nov 2025 9:48am GMT

During a Dell earnings call, the company mentioned some staggering numbers regarding the amount of PCs that will not or cannot be upgraded to Windows 11. "We have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven't been upgraded," said Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke on a Q3 earnings call earlier this week, referring to the overall PC market, not just Dell's slice of machines. "And we have another 500 million that are four years old that can't run Windows 11." He sees this as an opportunity to guide customers towards the latest Windows 11 machines and AI PCs, but warns that the PC market is going to be relatively flat next year. ↫ Tom Warren at The Verge The monumental scale of the Windows 10 install base that simply won't or cannot upgrade to Windows 11 is massive, and it's absolutely bonkers to me that we're mostly just letting them get away with leaving at least a billion users out in the cold when it comes to security updates and bug fixes. The US government (in better times) and the EU should've 100% forced Microsoft's hand, as leaving this many people on outdated, unsupported operating system installations is several disasters waiting to happen. Aside from the dangerous position Microsoft is forcing its Windows 10 users into, there's also the massive environmental and public health impact of huge swaths of machines, especially in enterprise environments, becoming obsolete overnight. Many of these will end up in landfills, often shipped to third-world countries so we in the west don't have to deal with our e-waste and its dangerous consequences directly. I can get fined for littering - rightfully so - but when a company like Microsoft makes sweeping decisions which cause untold amounts of dangerous chemicals to be dumped in countless locations all over the globe, governments shrug it off and move on. At least we will get some cheap eBay hardware out of it, I guess.

28 Nov 2025 9:57pm GMT

"We are going to learn just how important the ISS is to leadership."

28 Nov 2025 4:16pm GMT

Over the course of 2025, every single major cloud provider has failed. In June, Google Cloud had issues taking down Cloud Storage for many users. In late October, Amazon Web Services had a massive outage in their main hub, us-east-1, affecting many services as well as some people's beds. A little over a week later Microsoft Azure had a [widespread outage][Azure outage] that managed to significantly disrupt train service in the Netherlands, and probably also things that matter. Now last week, Cloudflare takes down large swaths of the internet in a way that causes non-tech people to learn Cloudflare exists. And every single time, people share that one XKCD comic.

24 Nov 2025 12:00am GMT

After Gandi was bought up and started taking extortion level prices for their domains I've been looking for an excuse to migrate registrar. Last week I decided to bite the bullet and move to Porkbun as I have another domain renewal coming up. However after setting up an account and paying for the transfer for 4 domains, I realized their DNS services are provided by Cloudflare! I personally do not use Cloudflare, and stay far away from all of their products for various reasons.

18 Nov 2025 12:00am GMT

The waydroid package prior to version 1.5.4-2 (including aur/waydroid) creates Python byte-code files (.pyc) at runtime which were untracked by pacman. This issue has been fixed in 1.5.4-3, where byte-compiling these files is now done during the packaging process. As a result, the upgrade may conflict with the unowned files created in previous versions. If you encounter errors like the following during the update:

error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/app_manager.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem

You can safely overwrite these files by running the following command: pacman -Syu --overwrite /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/\*__pycache__/\*

06 Nov 2025 12:00am GMT