computers

01 Jun 2026

Slashdot

Something Made Earth's Molten Core Reverse Direction In 2010

ScienceAlert reports: In the molten ocean of iron churning in Earth's outer core, a section deep beneath the Pacific Ocean suddenly reversed direction and started moving eastward against the planet's usual westward flow. This happened in 2010, according to satellite measurements of Earth's magnetic field, and scientists are still trying to figure out what caused it... [I]t seemed to have a large, wave-like structure - as though a chunk of molten core material suddenly thought better of where it wanted to go, surging in the other direction... This finding suggests that there are processes that can influence it strongly enough to alter its behavior in bulk - and that our planet's interior may be more dynamic and variable than we thought. A new analysis captures what we know so far - and "It's from the roiling, molten, conducting metal at Earth's heart that the planetary magnetic field is generated... vital to our continued existence. It helps keep the atmosphere we breathe in and harmful cosmic radiation out."

US, Australia, and UK Plan New Unmanned Vehicles to Protect Undersea Data Cables

"Around 570 cables (plus a further 80 planned) carry between 95% and 99% of the world's intercontinental telecommunications data," reports CNN (since fiber cables offer speeds of terabits per second, carry much more data than satellite links). And "networks of green energy cables carrying electricity are also starting to sprawl across the world's seabeds." Now to protect them, the U.S., Australia and the U.K. "are planning to develop new unmanned undersea vehicles" as part of their trilateral security partnership. Western governments see a growing risk of Russian and Chinese sabotage of undersea cables and are also concerned that Iran may seek to exploit the many data networks running through the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. The "seabed is a battlefield" said Australia's Defence Minister, Richard Marles, in Singapore, calling for tougher action against so-called shadow-fleet vessels... The programme will improve the three nations' reconnaissance and strike capabilities, "and bolster superiority in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare," as well as mine countermeasures, [according to a statement from their trilateral AUKUS partnership]... The new AUKUS project will sharpen all three countries' ability to respond to threats, including those targeting underwater cables and pipelines, through a range of "cutting edge sensors and weapons systems for undersea drones," UK Defence Secretary John Healey said. Marles said undersea internet cables - "the arteries of modern civilization" - were being cut at an unprecedented rate, with island nations like Australia acutely vulnerable. "Over the past 18 months, we have witnessed a series of attacks against subsea critical infrastructure at a scale and frequency that is historically unprecedented," he said. The UK government has also highlighted the vulnerability of the world's digital highways. "Every international payment, every cross-border trade executed in milliseconds, every flow of data between businesses here in the UK and markets overseas - all travel along the seabed," Telecoms Minister Liz Lloyd said Friday... Last month, the UK said it had tracked three Russian submarines covertly surveying undersea cables in the north Atlantic... A UK parliamentary inquiry warned last year that UK infrastructure might be targeted in a crisis, adding it was "not confident that the UK could prevent such attacks or recover within an acceptable time period." The UK Navy is already exploring the creation of a hybrid force that incorporates the widespread use of underwater drones to combat Russian threats in the Atlantic.

31 May 2026

Slashdot

'The Oral Tradition That Built Software May Not Survive AI'

A historian-turned-software engineer warns that "so little is ever written down" by professional programmers in a new article for Fast Company: Perhaps there's an early design doc, but then it turns out that everything was substantially revised before work began. Maybe there are a few wiki pages explaining known issues, some of which were solved a long time ago and others that have been left to molder in the codebase. Somebody might have left a comment in the code itself, but typically it's a warning not to change something or else something else will break... Software engineering has an ambivalent relationship with documentation. Everyone agrees documentation matters in theory, but in practice it's inconsistent, outdated, or missing entirely. Part of that is simple inertia. Writing documentation is usually less interesting than writing the code itself. But it's also ideological. The Agile movement emerged in part as a reaction against the heavily documented Waterfall methodology, and one of Agile's core values explicitly prioritizes "working software over comprehensive documentation." In escaping bureaucratic overdocumentation, the industry also normalized underdocumentation. High turnover at software jobs always brings "a constant drain of domain knowledge." And he's he's skeptical that generative AI will be able to fill in those gaps: [H]aving it generate documentation on the codebase itself might sound like a solution to the absence of other written information. LLMs can certainly summarize code back to you. But hold up with that idea. Beyond hallucinations, there's a deeper problem: Writing documentation is itself part of the thinking process. Whether I'm writing history or software, putting an approach into words helps refine it before I sink hours into implementation. Documentation also captures intent. An LLM may be able to summarize what a codebase does, but it cannot reliably explain why a developer chose one approach over another, or what trade-offs shaped that decision... An LLM can read code that I've written. It might even scan a large codebase and accurately summarize what it's doing. But it can't assess authorial intent. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat for sharing the article.

OSnews

MorphOS 3.20 released

Almost exactly 18 months after 3.19, the MorphOS team has released MorphOS 3.20. This is a major release, as it adds support for the upcoming Mirari PowerPC motherboards, which we talked about when that project was first announced. I'm quite excited about the Mirari, and can't wait to have one, and MorphOS is the one operating system I really want to run it on. I have an almost mint condition PowerBook G4 17″ specifically for MorphOS, but the hardware is simply too outdated to keep up with modern demands, which is sad, because MorphOS can clearly keep up if it had modern hardware. So, MorphOS 3.20 adds support for the Mirari platform and its various components, like its thermal management solution, networking, and so on. MorphOS 3.20 also expands the number of support Radeon graphics cards, improved support for various HDMI and DisplayPort ports, better support for multiple monitors, and overall better graphics performance in general. There's also SFS2 support throughout the operating system so MorphOS now supports file sizes of up to 4GB and partition sizes of up to 2TB. The Ambient UI has also seen extensive work to improve performance and stability, as well as add a bunch of new features. Several new applications and utilities are included in MorphOS 3.20, such as DriveImager, MirrorBackup, SMARTDoctor, OFHTTP, OFHash, OFDNS, Replace, and Automator for scripting and controlling MUI applications. Iris has been updated to version 1.53 and now includes the new Contacts companion application for CalDAV-based address books. FlowStudio received extensive improvements for project management, printing, Markdown support, and development workflows. Networking and connectivity have also been improved with updates to OpenSSH 10.3p1, TLS 1.3 support in RDesktop, expanded SMB2 filesystem improvements, and improved USB, audio and multimedia subsystem stability. Numerous system libraries and frameworks including MUI, ixemul, Cairo, Harfbuzz, Freetype, OpenSSL4, and ObjFWRT have been updated or significantly modernized. ↫ MorphOS 3.20 release announcement Of course, there's also the long list of smaller changes, bugfixes, and performance improvements. MorphOS has wide support for Apple PowerPC hardware, which is probably your best bet for using the operating system for now, at least until the Mirari becomes available for purchase.

31 May 2026 9:21pm GMT

Accessibility input tool removes X11 support, doesn’t want to support Wayland; users caught in the middle

A sad, painful, and infuriating read for this calm Sunday. In recent years, a lot of attention has gone into improving the output side of the accessibility story on Wayland - screen readers and the like - but apparently, the input side has languished. People with reduced mobility need affordances and tools to use computers, but those aren't ready for Wayland. A popular set of tools here is Talon Voice, which allows people with reduced mobility to create powerful hands-free input methods. The examples the article gives are incredibly cool, and it's easy to see how Talon would become a cornerstone for people with reduced mobility who needs hands-free (or hands-fewer?) computer input methods. So what's going wrong here? Talon requires deep integration with the window manager and compositor to carry out even the most basic of its duties, and Wayland offers… Absolutely no way to perform any of those actions. Frustrated by the endless lack of progress towards a real set of solutions for the entire ecosystem, and inundated by an endless series of requests for Wayland support which he cannot provide, Aegis, the main (and only) developer of Talon, has made a declaration: Enough. Talon Voice will imminently remove ALL Linux support from the public release, as X11 continues to sunset and users are switched to an environment in which their system can no longer function, with no option to go back. ↫ Insane Rambles About Technology So not only will Talon not gain Wayland support any time soon, its developers are even removing X11 support from it. What this means is that even if you decide to stick to X11 because Wayland doesn't fulfill your needs, you're eventually going to run into a brick wall. This is merely annoying if you need to use a different application for remote desktop or whatever, but it's absolutely devastating when it involves the very input method you use to use your computer in the first place. There is some important nuance here though that the article doesn't mention. The article takes the word of Talon's developers as gospel, but in my conversations with KDE developers, a different story emerges. What they tell me is that Wayland implements all the APIs needed for Talon to work, but that Talon's developers are simply not interested in using them. Apparently, KDE developers and others have tried to contact Talon's developers, but their offers to help are being ignored. They're being told Talon is simply not interested in supporting Wayland, "end of story". So, the story here seems to be a lot more complex than just "Wayland bad", and I'm getting a bit of a vibe that the Talon developers are, despite claims to the contrary in the article, indeed removing X11 support out of spite. Talon is entirely within their right to not want to work on Wayland support, but then just be honest with your users and say so, instead of pinning everything on "Wayland bad", being dishonest about Wayland's capabilities, and ignoring offers of help and support from some of the most knowledgeable and capable developers in the field. Of course, that's absolutely of no relevance to people like the author of this article who depend on these tools to use their computers. They're caught in the middle of a transition and experiencing the worst byproducts, and that's a huge failure on everybody's end - Wayland, Talon, and desktop environments alike. I hope the parties involved can sort this out quickly, because everyone deserves equal access to computers, doubly so in the open source world.

31 May 2026 2:04pm GMT

Remember when people said open video codecs would never win?

The Alliance for Open Media has published the first version of the AV2 specification. AV2 is the next-generation video coding specification from the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). Building on the foundation of AV1, AV2 is engineered to provide superior compression efficiency, enabling high-quality video delivery at significantly lower bitrates. It is optimized for the evolving demands of streaming, broadcasting, and real-time video conferencing. This specification serves as the definitive technical reference for AV2 implementations. It outlines the bitstream syntax, semantics, and decoding processes required to ensure full conformance. AV2 provides enhanced support for AR/VR applications, split-screen delivery of multiple programs, improved handling of screen content, and an ability to operate over a wider visual quality range. ↫ AV2 website Do you remember when the video codec wars - open vs. closed - were raging all across the web, for years? Even back then I argued that open would win, as it usually does, and over 15 years later the most widely-used video codecs on the planet being open is just a normal fact of life nobody writes or talks about anymore. VP8, VP9, AV1, and now this upcoming AV2 are all open and royalty-free, the by far largest video platform, YouTube, serves them by default, and the video codec problem is a solved problem, relegated to the spinning disk drive of history. I was told I was an idealist and that this would never happen, and yet, here we are.

31 May 2026 1:09pm GMT