geek

11 May 2026

Slashdot

Open Source Project Shuts Down Over Legal Threats from 3D Printer Company Bambu Lab

The free/open source project OrcaSlicer is a popular fork of 3D printer slicing software from Bambu Lab. But Tuesday independent developer Pawel Jarczak shuttered the project "following legal threats from Bambu Lab," reports Tom's Hardware: Jarczak's fork of OrcaSlicer would have allowed users to bypass Bambu Connect, a middleware application that severely limits OrcaSlicer's access to remote printer functions in the name of security. Jarczak said in a note on GitHub that Bambu Lab threatened him with a cease and desist letter and accused him of reverse engineering its software in order to impersonate Bambu Studio. From Bambu Lab's blog post: Bambu Studio is an open-source project under the AGPL-3.0 license. Anyone can take its code, modify it, and distribute it... That's what OrcaSlicer does, and 734 other forks do as well. We have no issue with that and never have. At the same time, a license for code is not a pass to our cloud infrastructure... Our cloud is a private service. Access to it is governed by a user agreement, not the AGPL license... [T]he modification in question worked by injecting falsified identity metadata into network communication. In simple terms: it pretended to be the official Bambu Studio client when communicating with our servers... If this method were widely adopted or incorrectly configured, thousands of clients could simultaneously hit our servers while impersonating the official client. "User-Agent is not authentication," counters OrcaSlicer's developer. "It is only self-declared client metadata. Any program can set any User-Agent." And "the User-Agent construction comes directly from Bambu Lab's own public AGPL Bambu Studio code.... So on what basis can anyone claim that I am not allowed to use this specific part of AGPL-licensed code under the AGPL license...? My work was based on publicly available Bambu Studio source code together with my own integration layer." But the bottom line is that Bambu Lab "contacted me directly and demanded removal of the solution." I asked whether I could publish the private correspondence in full for transparency. That request was refused... They also referred to legal materials and stated that a cease and desist letter had been prepared... I removed the repository voluntarily. That removal should not be interpreted as an admission that all legal or technical allegations made against the project were correct. I removed it because I have no interest in maintaining a prolonged dispute around this particular implementation, and no interest in continuing to distribute it. YouTuber and right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossmann reviewed the correspondence from Bambu Lab - then pledged $10,000 for legal expenses if the developer returned his code online. ("I think that their legal claim is bullshit," Rossman said Saturday in a YouTube video for his 2.5 million subscribers. "I'm not a lawyer, but I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.") The video now has over 129,000 views so far. "Rossman has not started a crowdfunding site yet," Tom's Hardware notes, "stating in the comments that he wants to prove to Jarczak that he has supporters willing to put their money where their mouth is. The video had over 129,000 views so far, with commenters vowing to back the case as requested."

Most Polymarket Users Lose Money, While Top 1% Claim 76.5% of Gains, Study Finds

In Polymarket's prediction market, "most people end up losing money," reports the Washington Post - typically a few bucks. "Since Polymarket launched in 2022, a few thousand people have lost the bulk of the money... and an even smaller group - .05 percent of users - has gone home with most of the overall profits, according to a new analysis from finance researcher Pat Akey and colleagues." A lot of users aren't that good at predicting the future. They're losing money at roughly the same rate as online gamblers betting on sports and other real-life events at traditional sportsbooks, according to the U.K. gambling regulator's analysis of 2024 data. On Polymarket, the odds of making a profit are slightly higher on weather and tech markets - and a little lower on sports... On Polymarket, just 1,200 people took more than half the profits - $591 million, or more than $100,000 each. ["The top 1% of users capture 76.5% of all trading gains," the researchers write.] When you dabble in prediction markets, you're competing against these sophisticated players who consistently win. Most of those 1,200 big winners didn't place just a few smart bets. They appear to be pros making thousands of trades, mostly in the past year and a half, that were probably automated. One user made $3 million since January on more than a million trades about the Oscars, according to TRM Labs... The most profitable participants are also just good at picking what to bet on, Akey found, winning so often it was statistically unlikely to be dumb luck. They had some sort of edge - expertise, deep research or, perhaps, inside knowledge. "Our results suggest that the informational benefits of prediction markets come at a cost to unsophisticated participants," the researchers conclude.

PlayStation3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask Contributors to Stop Submitting 'AI Slop' Pull Requests

Open-source PS3 emulator RPCS3 "has been around since 2011," Kotaku notes, and has made 70% of the PlayStation 3's library fully playable, "bolstered in part by the many users who contribute to its GitHub page." But their dev team "took to X today to very kindly and civilly request that users 'stop submitting AI slop code pull requests' to its GitHub page." Then they immediately proceeded to tell the AI-brain-rotted tech bros attempting to justify their vibe-coding nonsense to kick rocks in the replies, which is somewhat less civil but far more entertaining to read... My favorite one was when someone asked how the team was certain they weren't rejecting human-written code, to which RPCS3 replied: "You can't possibly handwrite the type of shit AI slop we have been seeing."

10 May 2026

OSnews

Sculpt OS 26.04 released

Sculpt OS, the operating system based on the various components that make up Genode, has seen a new release, 26.04. A lot of the new features and changes to Genode that we've been talking about for a while now are part of this release, most notably the new human-inclined data syntax that replaces XML as the configuration language for Genode. That's not the only major improvement, though. Regarding technical advances of the new version and device support in particular, all Linux-based drivers have been updated to kernel version 6.18, making the system compatible with most modern Intel-PC hardware. Laptop users may appreciate the new USB networking option that is now offered by default. Software-wise, the new version comes with a longed-after update of Qt6 along with the Chromium-based Falkon browser, downloadable at the depot of cproc. In the same menu, one can find the experimental first version of the Goa SDK running natively on Sculpt OS without the need of a Linux VM. For the first time, Genode components can now be developed, compiled, and tested using Sculpt OS on its own. The amazement of walking without crutches. ↫ Sculpt OS 26.04 release notes This new release is available for common PC hardware, the PinePhone, and the MNT Reform.

10 May 2026 11:28pm GMT

Sprite scaling on the Master System: building the new on the ruins of the old

Sprite scaling. It is the coolest effect of the 2D arcade era, a must-have for games from Space Harrier to Real Bout Fatal Fury Special. Home consoles pretty much lacked it- sorry, Nintendo, but Mode 7 only scales a background, not sprites. So therefore you might be surprised to hear that Sega's plucky underdog Master System could do it. Well, don't get your hopes up; this is far too limited- calling it scaling is overstating things. But let's dig in anyway! ↫ Nicole Branagan Nicole Branagan has the best articles on obscure console features, and this one is no exception.

10 May 2026 11:18pm GMT

Ars Technica

Do you take after your dad’s RNA?

Evidence is growing that sperm carries marks of a father's life experiences, influencing traits in offspring.

10 May 2026 11:15am GMT

Huge landslide created a 500-meter-high tsunami in a major tourist area

Fortunately, it happened early in the morning, so nobody was around.

10 May 2026 11:00am GMT

09 May 2026

Ars Technica

The new Wild West of AI kids’ toys

These connected companions could disrupt everything from make-believe to bedtime stories. No wonder some lawmakers want them banned.

09 May 2026 11:00am GMT

08 May 2026

OSnews

Google is tying reCAPTCHA to Google Play Services, screwing over de-Googled Android users

The ways in which Google can lock you into their ecosystem are often obvious, but sometimes, they're incredibly sneaky and easily missed. CAPTCHA tests are annoying, but at the same time, they can help protect websites from bots. While these tests are already the bane of our internet existence, they are going to get worse for some Android users. A requirement for Google's next-generation reCAPTCHA system will make it a lot harder for de-Googled phones to browse the web. A Reddit user has highlighted a seemingly innocuous support page for Google's reCAPTCHA system. The page in question relates to troubleshooting reCAPTCHA verification on mobile. In the document, it says that you'll need to use a compatible mobile device to complete verification. If you have an Android phone, then that means you'll need to be running Google Play Services version 25.41.30 or higher. ↫ Ryan McNeal at Android Authority When was the last time you actively thought about reCAPTCHA being a Google property? Even then, when was the last time you imagined something as annoying but ultimately basic as a captcha prompt could be used to tie people to Google Play Services, and thus to "blessed" Android? Every time we manage to work around one of these asinine ties to Google Play Services, another one pops up to ruin our day. We're so stupidly tied down to and entirely dependent on two very mid - at best - mobile operating systems, and it's such a stupid own goal for especially everyone outside of the US to just sit there and do nothing about it. Worse yet, it seems we're only tying ourselves down further, while paying for the privilege. At the very least we should be categorising certain services - government ID services, payment services, popular messaging platforms, and a few more - as vital infrastructure, and legally mandate these services have clearly defined and well-documented APIs so anyone is free to make alternative clients. The fact that many people are tied to either iOS or "blessed" Android because of something as stupid as what bank they use or the level of incompetency of their government ID service should be a major crisis in any country that isn't the US. I don't want to use iOS or Android, but nobody is leaving me any choice. It's infuriating.

08 May 2026 11:36pm GMT