computers

20 May 2026

Slashdot

Yearslong Fight Over Users' Right To Tweak Smart TV Software Heads To Trial

A long-running lawsuit over Vizio's Linux-based smart TV software is headed to trial in August, with the Software Freedom Conservancy arguing that GPL rules require Vizio to release complete source code owners could use to modify, maintain, or strip ads and tracking from their TVs. Ars Technica reports: The outcome could reverberate across the industry. Because many of today's popular smart TV operating systems are Linux-based, the case may help determine how much control many owners have over their sets. Access to the full code would allow users to make meaningful changes to how their TVs work, including limiting ads or deactivating automatic content recognition. [...] The Software Freedom Conservancy argues it has the right to Vizio OS's source code because it owns several Vizio TVs and because the operating system is based on Ubuntu, a Linux distribution. (SFC employees bought seven Vizio TVs from 2018 to 2021 after getting complaints about Vizio not sharing its TVs' source code, according to the complaint.) In general, the Linux kernel is provided under the terms of GPLv2, as noted by kernel.org, which is run by the Linux Kernel Organization. SFC's lawsuit alleges that Vizio breached GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 by failing to make available the complete source code for Vizio OS. The case is currently in the Orange County Superior Court of the State of California. The lawsuit targets Vizio specifically, but the impact could extend to other Linux-based smart TV OSes such as LG's webOS, Samsung's Tizen, and Roku's Roku OS. "We expect all companies who distribute Linux and other software using right-to-repair agreements like the GPL in their products would comply with these agreements," Denver Gingerich, the director of compliance at SFC, told Ars. [...] SFC expects a ruling within three to six months of the conclusion of the trial, which is currently scheduled for August 10.

Regional Winners of Prestigious Literary Prize Suspected of Using Chatbots

The 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is facing backlash after several winning entries were accused of being AI-generated, with one Caribbean winner's story flagged as fully AI-written by a detector that WIRED says it independently confirmed. From the report: Each year, the Commonwealth Foundation, a nongovernmental organization in London, awards its short story prize to one writer in each of five regions: Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. One overall winner is then selected from that short list. Regional winners take home [about $3,350], while the top winner, to be announced next month, claims [about $6,700]. On May 12, the respected UK literary magazine Granta published the top five 2026 entries -- all previously unpublished, per the rules of the contest -- on its website. (It has hosted the winning submissions for the prize since 2012.) Within days, however, one entry aroused suspicion. "The Serpent in the Grove," a story by Jamir Nazir of Trinidad and Tobago, which had taken honors for the Caribbean region, struck a few people as bearing the stylistic tells of AI-generated text. "Well, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize," wrote researcher and entrepreneur Nabeel S. Qureshi, a former visiting scholar of AI at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a post on X on Monday. "'Not X, not Y, but Z' sentences everywhere, the 'hums' trope, and plenty of other obvious markers of AI writing. A major milestone for AI, at any rate..." "They say the grove still hums at noon," Nazir's mysterious and atmospheric tale begins. In his screenshot of the opening paragraphs, Quereshi highlighted the second line as what he considered to be a signature example of AI syntax: "Not the bees' neat industry or the clean rasp of cutlass on vine, but a belly sound -- as if the earth swallows a shout and holds it there." As the literary community undertook a closer read of Nazir's story, many criticized its language and metaphors as nonsensical, wondering how the Commonwealth judges could have seen any merit to them. Others shared screenshots showing that the AI-detection tool Pangram flagged "The Serpent in the Grove" as 100 percent AI-generated, a result that WIRED independently confirmed. (While no AI-detection software is perfect, third-party analysis has consistently determined Pangram to be the most accurate, with a near-zero rate of false positives.) [...] Besides Nazir, two more winning authors have drawn allegations of using AI in their work. Pangram finds that "The Bastion's Shadow," by Maltese writer John Edward DeMicoli, winner for the Canada and Europe region, is fully AI-generated; it scans "Mehendi Nights," by Indian writer Sharon Aruparayil, winner for the Asia region, as partly AI-generated. Neither DeMicoli nor Aruparayil immediately returned requests for comment when reached through their respective social media accounts. The other two short-listed stories, by Holly Ann Miller of New Zealand and Lisa-Anne Julien of South Africa, deliver "fully human-written" results from Pangram. Wired also reports that one of the judges for the prize has been "accused of using AI to craft her descriptive blurb that accompanied the listing of 'The Serpent in the Grove' as a regional winner.'" Pangram labels the text as "AI-assisted."

Google's AI Studio Now Lets Anyone Build Android Apps In Minutes

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The AI coding boom is now coming directly for Android app development. On Tuesday at Google IO 2026, the company announced new native Android app creation capabilities in its web-based Google AI Studio, shrinking a process that takes weeks of setup and coding down to minutes. The company also said that consumers will be able to use Gemini AI to find the apps they need, both on the Play Store and the web, expanding opportunities for developers to have their apps discovered. Google says the new capabilities could make sense for anyone from a seasoned developer looking to prototype a new app quickly to a first-time creator. [...] The apps are built with the Kotlin programming language using Google's Jetpack Compose toolkit and with support integration with hardware sensors like GPS, Bluetooth, and NFC, the company says. However, the resulting creations, for now, are only meant to be used personally, as publishing for family and friends is still on the roadmap. The company suggests the technology could be used for the creation of personal utilities and simple social apps, hardware-enabled experiences, or AI-powered experiences. Google is also adding an "Ask Play" AI overlay to the Play Store that lets users discover apps through natural-language conversations. "Perhaps more importantly, apps will begin to be surfaced with users' conversations with Google's Gemini virtual assistant, exposing developers' apps to millions of users," adds TechCrunch.

Ars Technica

Man jailed for posting Trump meme wins $835,000 settlement

Sheriff loses fight with man he jailed for 37 days for posting a Trump meme on Facebook.

20 May 2026 2:50pm GMT

Russia's plan to advertise on rockets and spacecraft takes off

We now pause for a word from our sponsors.

20 May 2026 2:28pm GMT

Yearslong fight over users' right to tweak smart TV software heads to trial

Access to TV OS's source code could allow users to limit ads, tracking.

20 May 2026 1:32pm GMT

19 May 2026

OSnews

The Virtual OS Museum

This is a virtual museum of operating systems (and standalone applications) running under emulation, implemented as a Linux VM for QEMU, VirtualBox, or UTM. A custom emulator-independent launcher is provided, and all OSes and emulators are pre-installed and pre-configured. The launcher includes a snapshot feature to quickly revert broken installations back to a working state. Hypervisor installers and shortcuts to run the VM on Windows, macOS, and Linux are also included. ↫ Andrew Warkentin's Virtual OS Museum These types of preconfigured archives exist in the gaming world, but I've never seen something like this for operating systems. The amount of love, work, and care that have gone into this effort must've been immense, as it contains more than 1700 installs, more than 520 platforms, and more than 570 distinct operating systems, all wrapped into a single download, with a nice launcher on top to make using all of this as easy as possible. You can either download the full offline version at 121GB zipped, or a version that downloads each image as you fire them up for the first time at 14GB zipped. The contents span just about everything from early mainframes to desktop operating systems to all kinds of mobile platforms, from the late 1940s to today. I haven't yet found the time to download the whole thing, but I am absolutely going to, as there are so many names in here that I've been wanting to play around with for ages, but just never got the time to set up virtual machines or emulators for. This is going to be an amazing resource for the kinds of people who read OSNews.

19 May 2026 10:57pm GMT

Google kills its search engine

We can inter Google Search to the Google Graveyard. At its Google I/O conference on Tuesday, Google unveiled an AI-powered overhaul of Search centered around a reimagined "intelligent search box" - what the company describes as the biggest change to this entry point to the web since the search box debuted more than 25 years ago. Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch "information agents" to gather information on a user's behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs. ↫ Sarah Perez at TechCrunch The attack on online search has been ongoing for a long time, and it has already resulted in most people with a higher-than-average interest in technology to either no longer use Google, or just to not use online search at all. I used DuckDuckGo for a long time, until I switched to Startpage somewhere last year, and I have never looked back. Startpage (and many others like it) is a very simple, basic search engine: it just gives you a list of links. That's it. That's all I ever want from a search engine, as the task of then vetting each link for relevancy, accuracy, trustworthiness, and so on, is up to me, where it very well belongs. I do not want - and the world should not want - a massive technology corporation like Google, with a deeply vested, existential interest in guiding you towards websites from the companies that pay them for ads, to guide your online browsing experience. Google Search is already riddled with ads, but at least they're labeled and somewhat obvious. With these new "AI" chatbot-style interfaces, not only are its sources nebulous and tucked away, if they even exist at all, but they also just make shit up, fail at the most basic of tasks, and generally just suck at what they're supposed to be doing. This will make online search with Google worse. Worse yet, this will make it even easier for the billionaire Epstein class to sow dissent among the population, creating rifts and hatred where none should exist, solely to keep the peasants occupied fighting each other so they don't turn their anger towards the real reason their lives suck. Panem et circenses has transformed into divide et impera, and these nebulous chatbots with complex, invisible levers and dials will only make the divide easier.

19 May 2026 9:36pm GMT

Futhark by example

The following is a hands-on introduction to Futhark through a collection of commented programs, listed in roughly increasing order of complexity. You can load the programs into the interpreter to experiment with them. For a conventional introduction to the language, Parallel Programming in Futhark may be a better choice. For more examples, you can check our implemented benchmarks. We also maintain a list of projects using Futhark. Some of the example programs use directives for plotting or rendering graphics. ↫ Futhark homepage As a non-programmer, I just think the name is cool.

19 May 2026 9:13pm GMT