fidzu : computers

OpenAI, alongside Anthropic and Block, have launched the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation, describing it as a neutral home for standards as agentic systems move into real production. It may sound well-meaning, but Slashdot reader and NERDS.xyz founder BrianFagioli isn't buying the narrative. In a report for NERDS.xyz, Fagioli writes: Instead of opening models, training data, or anything that would meaningfully shift power toward the community, the companies involved are donating lightweight artifacts like AGENTS.md, MCP, and goose. They're useful, but they're also the safest, least threatening pieces of their ecosystem to "open." From where I sit, it looks like a strategic attempt to lock in influence over emerging standards before truly open projects get a chance to define the space. I see the entire move as smoke and mirrors. With regulators paying closer attention and developer trust slipping, creating a Linux Foundation directed fund gives these companies convenient cover to say they're being transparent and collaborative. But nothing about this structure forces them to share anything substantial, and nothing about it changes the closed nature of their core technology. To me, it looks like Big Tech trying to set the rules of the game early, using the language of openness without actually embracing it. Slashdot readers have seen this pattern before, and this one feels no different.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Dec 2025 2:02am GMT

Netflix's $72 billion bid to buy Warner Bros Discovery has triggered a consumer class action claiming the merger would crush competition, erase HBO Max as a rival, and hand Netflix control over major franchises. Reuters reports: The proposed class action (PDF) was filed on Monday by a subscriber to Warner Bros-owned HBO Max who said the proposed deal threatened to reduce competition in the U.S. subscription video-on-demand market. "Netflix has demonstrated repeated willingness to raise subscription prices even while facing competition from full-scale rivals such as WBD," the lawsuit said. [...] The lawsuit said the Warner Bros deal would eliminate one of Netflix's closest rivals, HBO Max, and give Netflix control over Warner Bros marquee franchises including Harry Potter, DC Comics and Game of Thrones. On Monday, Paramount Skydance launched a $108 billion hostile bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery with an all-cash, $30-per-share offer.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Dec 2025 1:25am GMT

Longtime Slashdot reader Randseed writes: With the likes of Google Nest, Ring, and others cooperating with law enforcement, I started to look for affordable wireless IP security cameras that I can put around my house. Unfortunately, it looks like almost every thing now incorporates some kind of cloud-based slop. All I really want is to put up some cameras, hook them up to my LAN, and install something like ZoneMinder. What are the most economical, wireless IP security cameras that I can set up with my server?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Dec 2025 12:45am GMT

16 cases are linked to a church, which followed exposures at four schools last week.

09 Dec 2025 10:34pm GMT

The Agentic AI Foundation launches to support MCP, AGENTS.md, and goose.

09 Dec 2025 9:08pm GMT

If you're old enough, you no doubt remember that up until the 2.6.0 release of the Linux kernel, an odd number after the first version number indicated a pre-release, development version of the kernel. Even though this scheme was abandoned with the 2.6.0 release in 2003 and since then every single release has been a stable release, it seems the ghosts of this old versioning scheme still roam the halls, because prominent Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman just published an explainer about Linux kernel versions. Despite having a stable release model and cadence since December 2003, Linux kernel version numbers seem to baffle and confuse those that run across them, causing numerous groups to mistakenly make versioning statements that are flat out false. So let's go into how this all works in detail. ↫ Greg Kroah-Hartman I genuinely find it difficult to imagine what could possibly be unclear about Linux kernel version numbers. The Linux kernel uses a very generic major.minor scheme, but that's not where the problems lie - it's the actual development process of each of these numbered release that's a bit more complex. This is where we have to talk about things like the roughly 10-week release cycle, containing a 2-week merge window, as well as Torvalds handing off the stable branch to the stable kernel maintainers. The other oddity is when the major version number gets incremented - the first number in the version number. There's no real method to this, as Kroah-Hartman admits Torvalds increments this number whenever the remaining numbers get too high and unwieldy to deal with. Very practical, but it does mean that going from, say, 5.x to 6.x doesn't really imply there's any changes in there that are any bigger or more disruptive than when going from 6.8.x to 6.9.x or whatever. There's a few more important details in here, of course, like where LTS releases come from, but that's really it - nothing particularly groundbreaking or confusing.

09 Dec 2025 8:43pm GMT

Conservative justices seem ready to back Trump control of independent agencies.

09 Dec 2025 6:53pm GMT

With the current, rapidly deteriorating state of the Windows operating system, you have to take the small wins you can get: Microsoft is now offering the option of removing "AI" actions from Windows 11's context menus. buried deep in the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7344 release notes, there's this nugget: If there are no available or enabled AI Actions, this section will no longer show in the context menu. ↫ Windows Insider Preview release notes If you then go to Settings > Apps > Actions and uncheck all the "AI" actions, the entire submenu in Windows 11's context menus will vanish. While this is great news for those Windows users who don't want to be bothered by all the "AI" nonsense, I wish Microsoft would just give users a proper way to edit the context menu that doesn't involve third party hackery. KDE's Dolphin file manager gives me full control over what does and does not appear in its context menu, and I can't imagine living without this functionality - there's so many file-related operations I never use, and having them clutter up the context menu is annoying and just slows me down. There's more substantial and important changes in this Insider Preview Build too, most notably the rollout of the Update Orchestration Platform, which should make downloading and installing application updates less cumbersome, but since it's a new feature, application won't support it right away. This release also brings the new Windows MIDI Services, and Microsoft hopes this will improve the experience for musicians using MIDI 1.0 or MIDI 2.0 on Windows. There's a slew of smaller changes, too, of course. I'm not exactly sure when these new features will make their way to production installations - who does, honestly, with Microsoft's convoluted release processes - but I hope it's sooner rather than later.

08 Dec 2025 12:08pm GMT

When Mac OS X was designed, it switched to the bundle structure inherited from NeXTSTEP. Instead of this multitude of resources, apps consisted of a hierarchy of directories containing files of executable code, and those with what had in Mac OS been supporting resources. Those app bundles came to adopt a standard form, shown below. ↫ Howard Oakley A short, but nonetheless informative overview of the structure of a macOS application. I'm sure most people on OSNews are aware that a macOS application is a bundle, which is effectively a glorified directory containing a variety of files and subdirectories that together make up the application. I haven't used macOS in a while, but I think you can right-click on an application and open it as a folder to dig around inside of it. I'm trying to remember from my days as a Mac OS X user - 15-20 years ago - if there was ever a real need to do so, but I'm sure there were a few hacks you could do by messing around with the files inside of application bundles. These days, perhaps with all the code-signing, phoning-home to Apple, and other security trickery going on, such acts are quite frowned upon. Does making any otherwise harmless changes inside an application bundle set off a ton of alarm bells in macOs these days?

08 Dec 2025 11:52am 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