28 Sep 2026
Slashdot
TikTok to Pay Alabama $100 Million, Limit Teen Use In First State Settlement
TikTok has agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million and adopt new restrictions for teenage users, including a two-hour daily limit, overnight access restrictions, stronger age verification, a ban on beauty filters, and an option for a non-personalized feed. The settlement could grow to as much as $300 million if enough other state attorneys general join similar agreements. The Guardian reports: A trial had been set to begin on Monday in the southern US state over claims by Alabama that TikTok misled parents about tools meant to shield children from harmful content. [...] Attorney general Steve Marshall hailed Friday's settlement as "a great day for Alabama parents." He said: "Tonight, they can rest easier knowing real protections are in place to shield their children from the dangers of social media addiction." Under the settlement, TikTok will send $100m to Alabama and could possibly pay up to $300m in total if 40 other attorneys general sign similar agreements with the company within a specified timeframe. In addition, the Alabama deal includes a conditional restriction that Meta also agreed to: expanding the night-time shutdown period to 10pm to 7am if other platforms also commit to do the same. "TikTok's priority has always been fostering a safe and positive space where people can be creative, discover what they love, and connect with their community," a company spokesperson told AFP. "This builds on our commitment and core objective to continually enhance our robust safety tools to protect teens," the spokesperson added. More than a dozen other states, including California and New York, still have suits against TikTok.
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28 Sep 2026 9:00pm GMT
Ars Technica
New device captures carbon dioxide by pumping it across a battery
The design requires less energy to capture CO2 than current systems.
28 Sep 2026 8:31pm GMT
Slashdot
Data Center Developer Offers $10,000 Checks To Nearby Households
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: NorthPoint Development wants to build a data center on 1,300 acres in the Pocono foothills, near Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. As well as seeking to charm the local government with various funding packages, it has proposed paying checks of $10,000 per household. Despite the Pennsylvania town's median income of $60,000, the offer isn't being warmly welcomed by locals, reports the Wall Street Journal. Those interviewed were widely against the data center development plans and cited several reasons for being averse to accepting the payout. The major concerns regarded potential impacts on property values, the specter of noise pollution, and a distrust of both the AI moguls and local government representatives. Offer letters began to be received by Hazle Township back in June. The WSJ recently talked to several residents about NorthPoint's $10,000 offer. While some say the $10,000 would be handy, it couldn't find many residents who were "eager to welcome the data center for the payout," in the journal's words. [...] Traditionally, developers have offered towns and cities packages worth tens of millions, including funding for local services. But direct cash payments to residents represent a new phase of their charm offensive, the WSJ indicates. Perhaps the idea for the direct payments to residents came after "a raucous public meeting last year, where angry locals asked what they had to gain by supporting the data center," ponders the source. The locals won't just get the direct payout, though. Other funds up to $120 million over the next 15 years have been dangled like a carrot for community and local services investments -- improved schools, emergency services, and so on. Meanwhile, Hazle Township's government already rejected the data center project on zoning grounds last year, and it has enacted a temporary moratorium on data center construction. Finally, the $10,000 offer to households is simply not enough in many interviewed folks' opinions. Residents could feel insulted by it, regarding the offer as a bribe, concludes the WSJ report.
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28 Sep 2026 8:00pm GMT
Ars Technica
To keep drug prices high, pharma has been piling up the patents
Add-on patents have increased drug patent periods from two years to over six.
28 Sep 2026 7:53pm GMT
Trump cuts fuel economy standards back to 2014 levels
In 2020, Trump cut CAFE to 40 mpg. Now he's cut it again to just 35 mpg.
28 Sep 2026 7:35pm GMT
Slashdot
Meta Taps MongoDB CEO Desai to Drive Enterprise AI Push
Meta has hired MongoDB CEO Chirantan "CJ" Desai to lead a new enterprise AI business aimed at turning Meta's models, agents and tools into products companies can deploy themselves. Reuters reports: Desai, a veteran technology executive, took over the role from Dev Ittycheria. MongoDB has appointed Ittycheria as interim CEO as it searches for a permanent replacement. "While the departure is disappointing, we believe MongoDB remains well-positioned strategically and view the share-price reaction as overdone," brokerage Piper Sandler said in a note. [...] Desai will directly report to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the newly created role of chief enterprise platform officer and will focus on turning the company's AI stack into products and services that companies can deploy for their own businesses. Before joining MongoDB, Desai led product and engineering at Cloudflare and spent nearly eight years at ServiceNow, including as president and chief operating officer.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
28 Sep 2026 7:00pm GMT
25 Sep 2026
OSnews
Amiga screens: a primer
One of the unwritten rules of the Internet seems to be that whenever something Amiga-related is mentioned, at least one Amiga fan (myself included) must show up and try to explain the concept of screens. Amiga screens can have different resolutions, we'll tell you, and one can drag them, we'll say, and other Amiga users rally in agreement, while non-Amiga users probably still don't get what's so great about screens. Until now, when this text has been written, in the hope of converting unsuspecting normies into full-blown Amiga screen lovers. ↫ Carl Svensson A deeply technical look at not just how the Amiga managed to achieve this stunning functionality way back in the '80s on machines with 7MHz and less RAM than a keyfob, but also how this functionality can be useful. I've always found the concept of screens on the Amiga quite interesting, and Svensson's article does a great job at demystifying the whole concept. Of course, expect a lot of lovely Amiga OS screenshots.
25 Sep 2026 11:10pm GMT
Redox runs Qemu, gets multicore support for ARM
It's time for an overview of another month of Redox OS progress, and over the month of August - they're a bit late, don't believe the publication date - they've implemented multicore support for ARM, and considerably improved the I/O performance for the NVMe driver, RedoxFS, and RAMFS by implementing a ring buffer communication API. There's also initial support for NUMA-based memory management, QEMU is now working on Redox, and much more. Of course, there's also the usual long list of improvements to the kernel, relibc, drivers, and more.
25 Sep 2026 10:44pm GMT
JagOS ‘Spot’ turns Atari Jaguar into the unreleased Atari Painter prototype computer
Can you run an operating system with a graphical user interface and applications on the Atari Jaguar? Well, you can. A long time running idea and work-in-progress, I'd like to finally announce the current version of JagOS 'Spot' for the Atari Jaguar, running from the RetroHQ GameDrive. I'm slow at releasing things and try not to announce in-progress stuff due to lack of free time but would like to push this along. Maybe it'll motivate me to work on it more if the interest is there or just release it as-is if not. The idea is based on the unreleased Atari Jaguar Painter Computer prototype, that a merged Falcon with Jaguar chipset-based computer would have found its way into consumer hands after the Falcon030. ↫ Clint Thompson The screenshots and YouTube video are quite impressive, but as it's not actually released, it's difficult to really say anything more about this project for now. I hope there's enough interest to get this project's code out there so it can be further improved and expanded.
25 Sep 2026 10:38pm GMT
09 Aug 2026
Planet Arch Linux
On scripts and hooks
Over the last few weeks, we have been doing research on the integration of our official distribution packages when installed on a target system. In this context we have been looking at the current uses of alpm-install-scriptlet(5) files and alpm-hooks(5) in around 120 package source repositories (alpm-source-repo(7)) to better understand the underlying functionality and use-cases these two integrations offer and target. In this article we are going to look at how these two systems work, how Arch Linux is currently using them and attempt to provide suggestions for when to use which. Learning about alpm-hooks(5) and alpm-install-scriptlet(5) files …
09 Aug 2026 12:00am GMT
01 Aug 2026
Planet Arch Linux
Resigning from Arch Linux
This is just a short note on my blog that I have resigned from Arch Linux a package maintainer, developer and security team. I've spent around 10 years as an AUR maintainer, security team, Package Maintainer and then Developer. I implemented support for debug packages, did the initial POC work that would become the git migration and even somehow managed to pull of an online conference during The Plague with the help of others.
01 Aug 2026 12:00am GMT
01 Jun 2026
Planet Arch Linux
Today is my first day at JetBrains
Good morning from JetBrains Berlin office!
01 Jun 2026 12:00am GMT