fidzu : geek

Microsoft is reportedly shifting Windows 11 app development back toward fully native apps. Rudy Huyn, a Partner Architect at Microsoft working on the Store and File Explorer, said in a post on X that he is building a new team to work on Windows apps. "You don't need prior experience with the platform.. what matters most is strong product thinking and a deep focus on the customer," he wrote. "If you've built great apps on any platform and care about crafting meaningful user experiences, I'd love to hear from you." Huyn later said in a reply on X that the new Windows 11 apps will be "100% native." TechSpot reports: The description stands out at a time when many of Microsoft's built-in tools, including Clipchamp and Copilot, rely on web technologies and Progressive Web App architectures. The company's commitment to native performance suggests that some long-standing frustrations around responsiveness, memory use, and interface consistency could finally be addressed. For Windows developers, Huyn's comments hint at a change in direction. Microsoft's recent development priorities have leaned heavily on web-based approaches, with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) replacing or supplementing many native programs. [...] Exactly which applications will be rebuilt, or how strictly "100% native" will be enforced, remains unclear. Some current Microsoft apps classified as native still depend on WebView for specific features. But the renewed emphasis already has developers paying attention.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Mar 2026 11:00pm GMT

The water utility highlighted unsubstantiated health concerns.

30 Mar 2026 10:32pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last year, just before the Fourth of July holiday, the US Space Force officially took ownership of a new operating system for the GPS navigation network, raising hopes that one of the military's most troubled space programs might finally bear fruit. The GPS Next-Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, is designed for command and control of the military's constellation of more than 30 GPS satellites. It consists of software to handle new signals and jam-resistant capabilities of the latest generation of GPS satellites, GPS III, which started launching in 2018. The ground segment also includes two master control stations and upgrades to ground monitoring stations around the world, among other hardware elements. RTX Corporation, formerly known as Raytheon, won a Pentagon contract in 2010 to develop and deliver the control system. The program was supposed to be complete in 2016 at a cost of $3.7 billion. Today, the official cost for the ground system for the GPS III satellites stands at $7.6 billion. RTX is developing an OCX augmentation projected to cost more than $400 million to support a new series of GPS IIIF satellites set to begin launching next year, bringing the total effort to $8 billion. Although RTX delivered OCX to the Space Force last July, the ground segment remains nonoperational. Nine months later, the Pentagon may soon call it quits on the program. Thomas Ainsworth, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, told Congress last week that OCX is still struggling. The GAO found the OCX program was undermined by "poor acquisition decisions and a slow recognition of development problems." By 2016, it had blown past cost and schedule targets badly enough to trigger a Pentagon review for possible cancellation. Officials also pointed to cybersecurity software issues, a "persistently high software development defect rate," the government's lack of software expertise, and Raytheon's "poor systems engineering" practices. Even after the military restructured the program, it kept running into delays and overruns, with Ainsworth telling lawmakers, "It's a very stressing program" and adding, "We are still considering how to ensure we move forward."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Mar 2026 10:00pm GMT

Why do so many people keep falling for the same trick over and over again? With an over $400 billion gap between the money invested in AI data centers and the actual revenue these products generate, Silicon Valley slowly returned to the tested and trusted playbook: advertising. Now, ads are starting to appear in pull requests generated by Copilot. According to Melbourne-based software developer Zach Manson, a team member used the AI to fix a simple typo in a pull request. Copilot did the job, but it also took the liberty of editing the PR's description to include this message: "⚡ Quickly spin up Copilot coding agent tasks from anywhere on your macOS or Windows machine with Raycast." ↫ David Uzondu at Neowin It turns out that Microsoft has added ads to over 1.5 million Copilot pull requests on GitHub, and they're even appearing on GitLab, one of the GitHub alternatives. The reasoning is clear, too, of course: "AI" companies and investors have poured ungodly amounts of money in "AI" that is impossible to recover, even with paying customers. As such, the logical next step is ads, and many "AI" companies are already starting to add advertising to their pachinko machines. It was only a matter of time before Copilot would start inserting ads into the pull requests it ejaculates over all kinds of projects. This isn't the first time a once-free service turns on its users, but it's definitely one of the quickest turnarounds I've ever seen. Usually it takes much longer before companies reach the stage of putting ads in their products to plug any financial bleeding, but with the amount of money poured into this useless black hole, it really shouldn't be surprising we're already there. I'm sure Copilot's competitors, like Claude, will soon follow suit. They're enshittifying Git, and developers are just letting it happen. No wonder worker exploitation is so rampant in Silicon Valley.

30 Mar 2026 9:14pm GMT

By reimplementing these features using capabilities, we made the kernel simpler by moving complex scheme and namespace management out of it which improved security and stability by reducing the attack surface and possible bugs. At the same time, we gained a means to support more sandboxing features using the CWD file descriptor. This project leads the way for future sandboxing support in Redox OS. As the OS continues to move toward capability-based security, it will be able to provide more modern security features. ↫ Ibuki Omatsu Redox seems to be making the right decisions at, crucially, the right time.

30 Mar 2026 9:02pm GMT

Samsung is reportedly planning to roll out AirDrop-style file sharing for older Galaxy phones via a Quick Share update. Early reports suggest the feature is appearing on devices from the Galaxy S22 through the S25, though it is not actually working yet. Android Central reports: As spotted by Reddit users (via Tarun Vats on X), a Quick Share app update is rolling out via the Galaxy Store on older Samsung devices that appears to add support for AirDrop file sharing with Apple devices. Users report seeing the same new "Share with Apple devices" section we first saw on Galaxy S26 devices in the Settings app after updating Quick Share. The update is reportedly showing up on Galaxy models ranging from the Galaxy S22 to last year's Galaxy S25 series. The catch, however, is that the feature doesn't seem to be working yet. It's appearing on devices running One UI 8 as well as the One UI 8.5 beta, but enabling the toggle doesn't activate the functionality for now. Users say that turning on the feature doesn't make their device visible to Apple devices, and no Apple devices show up in Quick Share either. It's possible Samsung or Google still needs to enable it server-side, but it does confirm that broader rollout to older Galaxy devices is coming. The feature could arrive fully with the One UI 8.5 update.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Mar 2026 9:00pm GMT

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the time-honoured tradition of the demoscene also got infected by "AI". For me personally, generative AI ruins much of the fun. I still enjoy creating pixel art and making little animations and demos. My own creative process remains satisfying as an isolated activity. Alas, obvious AI generated imagery - as well as middle-aged men plagiarizing other, sometimes much younger, hobbyist artists - makes me feel disappointed and empty. It's not as much about effort as it is about the loss of style and personality; soul, if you will. The result is defacement, to echo T. S. Eliot, rather than inspired improvement. Even in more elaborate AI-based works, it's hard to tell where the prompt ends and the pixelling begins. ↫ Carl Svensson A wonderful explanation of the rather unique views on originality, stealing, plagiarism, and related topics within the demoscene, which certainly diverge from many other places.

30 Mar 2026 8:35pm GMT

"Defendants must immediately cease" actions to integrate and consolidate the firms.

30 Mar 2026 8:18pm GMT

Judge gave authors an easier attack on Meta's torrenting. Meta hopes SCOTUS ruling will block it.

30 Mar 2026 7:04pm GMT

All I wanted was to learn how to play guitar, but ended up building a DIY kit for it.

28 Mar 2026 12:00am 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