fidzu : computers

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Heise: Pay securely with an Android smartphone, completely without Google services: This is the plan being developed by the newly founded industry consortium led by the German Volla Systeme GmbH. It is an open-source alternative to Google Play Integrity. This proprietary interface decides on Android smartphones with Google Play services whether banking, government, or wallet apps are allowed to run on a smartphone. Obstacles and tips for paying with an Android smartphone without official Google services have been highlighted by c't in a comprehensive article. The European industry consortium now wants to address some problems mentioned. To this end, the group, which includes Murena, which develops the hardened custom ROM /e/OS, Iode from France, and Apostrophy (Dot) from Switzerland, in addition to Volla, is developing a so-called "UnifiedAttestation" for Google-free mobile operating systems, primarily based on the Android Open-Source Project (AOSP). According to Volla, a European manufacturer and a leading manufacturer from Asia, as well as European foundations such as the German UBports Foundation, have also expressed interest in supporting it. Furthermore, developers and publishers of government apps from Scandinavia are examining the use of the new procedure as "first movers." In its announcement, Volla explains that Google provides app developers with an interface called Play Integrity, which checks whether an app is running on a device with specific security requirements. This primarily affects applications from "sensitive areas such as identity verification, banking, or digital wallets -- including apps from governments and public administrations". The company criticizes that the certification is exclusively offered for Google's own proprietary "Stock Android" but not for Android versions without Google services, such as /e/OS or similar custom ROMs. "Since this is closely intertwined with Google services and Google data centers, a structural dependency arises -- and for alternative operating systems, a de facto exclusion criterion," the company states. From the consortium's perspective, this also leads to a "security paradox," because "the check of trustworthiness is carried out by precisely that entity whose ecosystem is to be avoided at the same time". The UnifiedAttestation system is built around three main components: an "operating system service" that apps can call to check whether the device's OS meets required security standards, a decentralized validation service that verifies the OS certificate on a device without relying on a single central authority, and an open test suite used to evaluate and certify that a particular operating system works securely on a specific device model. "We don't want to centralize trust, but organize it transparently and publicly verifiable. When companies check competitors' products, we can strengthen that trust," says Dr. Jorg Wurzer, CEO of Volla Systeme GmbH and initiator of the consortium. The goal is to increase digital sovereignty and break free from the control of any one, single U.S. company, he says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Mar 2026 3:30am GMT

Samsung says it's thinking about bringing "vibe coding" to future Galaxy phones, allowing users to describe apps or interface changes in plain language and have AI generate the code. TechRadar interviewed Won-Joon Choi, Samsung's head of mobile experience, to learn more about the plans. Here's an excerpt from their report: As noted by Won-Joon Choi, the usefulness of vibe coding on smartphones is that it opens up the "possibility of customizing your smartphone experience in new ways, not just your apps but your UX." He added, "Right now we're limited to premade tools, but with vibe coding, users could adjust their favorite apps or make something customized to their needs. So vibe coding is very interesting, and something we're looking into." [...] Samsung recently debuted the Galaxy S26 series of phones and made a point to not call them smartphones -- they're "AI phones" now. This certainly rang true with the majority of upgrades to the devices being AI software-focused, like the new Now Nudge and expanded Audio Eraser tools, with the biggest hardware bump for the base models coming via the 39% improved NPU processing (the processor in charge of on-device AI tasks). It also teased the debut of Perplexity on its phones, joining as an alternative to the Gemini assistant, and teased the possibility of other AI models getting the same treatment in the future.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Mar 2026 1:00am GMT

While IBM's OS/2 technically did die, its development was picked up again much later, first through eComStation, and later, after money issues at its parent company Mensys, through ArcaOS. eComStation development stalled because of the money issues and has been dead for years; ArcaOS picked up where it left off and has been making steady progress since its first release in 2017. Regardless, the developers behind both projects develop OS/2 under license from IBM, but it's unclear just how much they can change or alter, and what the terms of the agreement are. Anyway, ArcaOS 5.1.2 has just been released, and it seems to be a rather minor release. It further refines ArcaOS' support for UEFI and GPT-based disks, the tentpole feature of ArcaOS 5.1 which allows the operating system to be installed on a much more modern systems without having to fiddle with BIOS compatibility modes. Looking at the list of changes, there's the usual list of updated components from both Arca Noae and the wider OS/2 community. You'll find the latest versions of of the Panorama graphics drivers, ACPI, USB, and NVMe drivers, improved localisation, newer versions of the VNC server and viewer, and much more. If you have an active Support & Maintenance subscription for ArcaOS 5.1, this update is free, and it's also available at discounted prices as upgrades for earlier versions. A brand new copy of ArcaOS 5.1.x will set you back $139, which isn't cheap, but considering this price is probably a consequence of what must be some onerous licensing terms and other agreements with IBM, I doubt there's much Arca Noae can do about it.

09 Mar 2026 11:31pm GMT

"It's a big fat middle finger for those that thought they had something."

09 Mar 2026 11:00pm GMT

Electronic Arts has laid off staff across multiple Battlefield studios despite Battlefield 6 being the best-selling game in the U.S. in 2025 and the "biggest launch in franchise history." According to IGN, the layoffs include workers at Criterion, Dice, Ripple Effect, and Motive Studios. From the report: Individuals are being informed that the layoffs are taking place as part of a "realignment" across the Battlefield studios, as the team continues its ongoing, live service support for Battlefield 6 following launch. All four studios will remain operational, though the layoffs seem to be impacting a variety of teams across multiple studios and offices. IGN asked EA for comment on total number and types of roles impacted, as well as for the specific reasons for the layoffs. An EA spokesperson told IGN: "We've made select changes within our Battlefield organization to better align our teams around what matters most to our community. Battlefield remains one of our biggest priorities, and we're continuing to invest in the franchise, guided by player feedback and insights from Battlefield Labs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

09 Mar 2026 11:00pm GMT

Oh boy. Wikipedia editors have implemented new policies and restricted a number of contributors who were paid to use AI to translate existing Wikipedia articles into other languages after they discovered these AI translations added AI "hallucinations," or errors, to the resulting article. ↫ Emanuel Maiberg at 404 Media There seems to be this pervasive conviction among Silicon Valley techbro types, and many programmers and developers in general, that translation and localisation are nothing more than basic find/replace tasks that you can automate away. At first, we just needed to make corpora of two different languages kiss and smooch, and surely that would automate translation and localisation away if the corpora were large enough. When this didn't turn out to work very well, they figured that if we made the words in the corpora tumble down a few pachinko machines and then made them kiss and smooch, yes, then we'd surely have automated translation and localisation. Nothing could be further from the truth. As someone who has not only worked as a professional translator for over 15 years, but who also holds two university degrees in the subject, I keep reiterating that translation isn't just a dumb substitution task; it's a real craft, a real art, one you can have talent for, one you need to train for, and study for. You'd think anyone with sufficient knowledge in two languages can translate effectively between the two, but without a much deeper understanding of language in general and the languages involved in particular, as well as a deep understanding of the cultures in which the translation is going to be used, and a level of reading and text comprehension that go well beyond that of most, you're going to deliver shit translations. Trust me, I've seen them. I've been paid good money to correct, fix, and mangle something usable out of other people's translations. You wouldn't believe the shit I've seen. Translation involves the kinds of intricacies, nuances, and context "AI" isn't just bad at, but simply cannot work with in any way, shape, or form. I've said it before, but it won't be long before people start getting seriously injured - or worse - because of the cost-cutting in the translation industry, and the effects that's going to have on, I don't know, the instruction manuals for complex tools, or the leaflet in your grandmother's medications. Because some dumbass bean counter kills the budget for proper, qualified, trained, and experienced translators, people are going to die.

09 Mar 2026 9:40pm GMT

Every modifier key starts simple and humble, with a specific task and a nice matching name. This never lasts. The tasks become larger and more convoluted, and the labels grow obsolete. Shift no longer shifts a carriage, Control doesn't send control codes, Alt isn't for alternate nerdy terminal functions. Fn is the newest popular modifier key, and it feels we're speedrunning it through all the challenges without having learned any of the lessons. ↫ Marcin Wichary Grab a blanket, curl up on the couch with some coffee or tea, and enjoy.

09 Mar 2026 9:18pm GMT

A warehouse of guitar gear in the palm of your hand.

09 Mar 2026 8:36pm GMT

M5 Pro Max's "performance" CPU cores definitely aren't just rebranded E-cores.

09 Mar 2026 8:00pm GMT

On Friday, July 18th, 2025, the Arch Linux team was notified that three AUR packages had been uploaded that contained malware. A few maintainers including myself took care of deleting these packages, removing all traces of the malicious code, and protecting against future malicious uploads.

30 Jan 2026 12:00am GMT

While starting this post I realized I have been maintaining personal infrastructure for over a decade! Most of the things I've self-hosted is been for personal uses. Email server, a blog, an IRC server, image hosting, RSS reader and so on. All of these things has all been a bit all over the place and never properly streamlined. Some has been in containers, some has just been flat files with a nginx service in front and some has been a random installed Debian package from somewhere I just forgot.

19 Jan 2026 12:00am GMT

In the recent blog post on the work funded by Sovereign Tech Fund (STF), we provided an overview of the "File Hierarchy for the Verification of OS Artifacts" (VOA) and the voa project as its reference implementation. VOA is a generic framework for verifying any kind of distribution artifacts (i.e. files) using arbitrary signature verification technologies. The voa CLI ⌨️ The voa project offers the voa(1) command line interface (CLI) which makes use of the voa(5) configuration file format for technology backends. It is recommended to read the respective man pages to get …

11 Jan 2026 12:00am GMT