fidzu : geek

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The nervous system does an astonishing job of tracking sensory information, and does so using signals that would drive many computer scientists insane: a noisy stream of activity spikes that may be transmitted to hundreds of additional neurons, where they are integrated with similar spike trains coming from still other neurons. Now, researchers have used spiking circuitry to build an artificial robotic skin, adopting some of the principles of how signals from our sensory neurons are transmitted and integrated. While the system relies on a few decidedly not-neural features, it has the advantage that we have chips that can run neural networks using spiking signals, which would allow this system to integrate smoothly with some energy-efficient hardware to run AI-based control software. [...] There are four ways that these trains of spikes can convey information: the shape of an individual pulse, through their magnitude, through the length of the spike, and through the frequency of the spikes. Spike frequency is the most commonly used means of conveying information in biological systems, and the researchers use that to convey the pressure experienced by a sensor. The remaining forms of information are used to create something akin to a bar code that helps identify which sensor the reading came from. In addition to registering the pressure, the researchers had each sensor send a "I'm still here" signal at regular time intervals. Failure to receive this would be an indication that something has gone wrong with a sensor. The spiking signals allow the next layer of the system to identify any pressure being experienced by the skin, as well as where it originated. This layer can also do basic evaluation of the sensory input: "Pressure-initiated raw pulses from the pulse generator accumulated in the signal cache center until a predefined pain threshold is surpassed, activating a pain signal." This can allow the equivalent of basic reflex reactions that don't involve higher-level control systems. For example, the researchers set up a robotic arm covered with their artificial skin, and got it to move the arm whenever it experiences pressure that can cause damage. The second layer also combines and filters signals from the skin before sending the information on to the arm's controller, which is the equivalent of the brain in this situation. So, the same system caused a robotic face to change expressions based on how much pressure its arm was sensing. [...] The skin is designed to be assembled from a collection of segments that can snap together using magnetic interlocks. These automatically link up any necessary wiring, and each segment of skin broadcasts a unique identity code. So, if the system identifies damage, it's relatively easy for an operator to pop out the damaged segment and replace it with fresh hardware, and then update any data that links the new segment's ID with its location. The researchers call their development a neuromorphic robotic e-skin, or NRE-skin. "Neuromorphic" as a term is a bit vague, with some people using it to mean a technology that directly follows the principles used by the nervous system. That's definitely not this skin. Instead, it uses "neuromorphic" far more loosely, with the operation of the nervous system acting as an inspiration for the system.The findings have been published in the journal PNAS.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Dec 2025 3:33am GMT

Amid a global DDR5 shortage and soaring prices, Russian hardware enthusiasts are experimenting with do-it-yourself DDR5 RAM by sourcing empty PCBs and soldering memory chips by hand. Tom's Hardware reports: The idea comes from Russian YouTuber PRO Hi-Tech's Telegram channel, where a local enthusiast known as "Vik-on" already performs VRAM upgrades for GPUs, so this is a relatively safe operation for him. According to Vik-on, empty RAM PCBs can be sourced from China for as little as $6.40 per DIMM. The memory chips themselves, though, that's a different challenge. The so-called spot market for memory doesn't really exist at the moment, since no manufacturer has the production capacity to make more RAM, and even if they did, they'd sell to better-paying AI clients instead. Still, you can find SK Hynix and Samsung chips across Chinese marketplaces if you search for the correct part number, as shown in the attached screenshots. Moreover, the Telegram thread says it would cost roughly 12,000 Russian Rubles ($152) to build a 16 GB stick with "average" specs, which is about the same as a retail 16 GB kit. There's also a ZenTimings snapshot showing CL28 timings, claiming that even relatively high-end DDR5 RAM can be built using this method, but it won't be cost-effective. Therefore, it doesn't make too much sense just yet to get the BGA rework station out and assemble your own DDR5. Things are expected to get worse, though, so maybe these Russians are on to something.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Dec 2025 2:02am GMT

Phoronix's Michael Larabel is "reliving some of the best moments for Fedora Linux in 2025" by highlighting the year's most popular news around the distro. Throughout 2025, Fedora continued to lead upstream Linux innovation with bold changes like Wayland-only GNOME, newer kernels, architecture cleanups, and experimental features -- while openly grappling with controversial shifts such as dropping 32-bit support and modernizing long-standing subsystems. "Fedora Linux this year continued in punctually shipping the very latest upstream Linux innovations from the freshest Wayland components to Linux kernel features and continuing to leverage other improvements in the open-source world," writes Larabel. "Fedora enjoyed the successful Fedora 42 and Fedora 43 releases this year, including going with Wayland-noly GNOME and further phasing of 32-bit packages. Fedora's KDE spin continued improving too and the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution enjoyed a wealth of other improvements this year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

30 Dec 2025 1:25am GMT

On Monday, US officials must explain what steps they took to enforce shocking visa bans.

29 Dec 2025 9:30pm GMT

Yakisugi, a Japanese technique of burning wood surfaces, creates a protective carbonized layer

29 Dec 2025 7:30pm GMT

Information from sensors is transmitted using neural-style activity spikes.

29 Dec 2025 7:00pm GMT

There's been endless talk online about just how bad Apple's graphical user interface design has become over the years, culminating in the introduction of Liquid Glass across all of the company's operating systems this year. Despite all the gnawing of teeth and scathing think pieces before the final rollout, it seems the average Apple user simply doesn't care as much about GUI design as Apple bloggers thought they did, as there hasn't been any uproar or stories in local media about how you should hold off on updating your iPhone. The examples of just how bad Apple's GUI design has become keep on coming, though. This time it's Howard Oakley showing once again how baffling the macOS UI is these days. If someone had told me 12 months ago what was going to happen this past year, I wouldn't have believed them. Skipping swiftly past all the political, economic and social turmoil, I come to the interface changes brought in macOS Tahoe with Liquid Glass. After three months of strong feedback during beta-testing, I was disappointed when Tahoe was released on 15 September to see how little had been addressed. When 26.1 followed on 3 November it had only regressed, and 26.2 has done nothing. Here I summarise my opinions on where Tahoe's overhaul has gone wrong. ↫ Howard Oakley at The Eclectic Light Company Apple bloggers and podcasters are hell-bent on blaming Apple's terrible GUI design over the past 10 years on one man. Their first target was Jony Ive, who was handed control over not just hardware design, but also software design in 2012. When he left Apple, GUI design at Apple would finally surely improve again, and the Apple bloggers and podcasters let out a sigh of relief. History would turn out different, though - under Ive's successor, Alan Dye, Apple's downward trajectory in this area would continue unabated, culminating in the Liquid Glass abomination. Now that Alan Dye has left Apple, history is repeating itself: the very same Apple bloggers and podcasters are repeating themselves - surely now that Alan Dye is gone, GUI design at Apple will finally surely improve again. The possibility that GUI design at Apple does not hinge on the whims of just one person, but that instead the entire company has lost all sense of taste and craftmanship in this area does not cross their minds. Everyone around Jony Ive and Alan Dye, both below, alongside, and above them, had to sign off on Apple's recent direction in GUI design, and the idea that the entire company would blindly follow whatever one person says, quality be damned, would have me far more worried as an Apple fan. At this point, it's clear that Apple's inability to design and build quality user interfaces is not the fault of just one fall guy, but an institutional problem. Anyone expecting a turnaround just because Ive Dye is gone isn't seeing the burning forest through the trees.

28 Dec 2025 11:58am GMT

We're all familiar with things like marquee and blink, relics of HTML of the past, but there are far more weird and obscure HTML tags you may not be aware of. Luckily, Declan Chidlow at HTMLHell details a few of them so we can all scratch shake our heads in disbelief. But there are far more obscure tags which are perhaps less visually dazzling but equally or even more interesting. If you're younger, this might very well be your introduction to them. If you're older, this still might be an introduction, but also possibly a trip down memory lane or a flashback to the horrors of the first browser war. It depends. ↫ Declan Chidlow at HTMLHell I think my favourite is the dir tag, intended to be used to display lists of files and directories. We're supposed to use list tags now to achieve the same result, but I do kind of like the idea of having a dedicated tag to indicate files, and perhaps have browsers render these lists in the same way the file manager of the platform it's running on does. I don't know if that was possible, but it seems like the logical continuation of a hypothetical dir tag. Anyway, should we implement bgsound on OSNews?

28 Dec 2025 11:22am GMT

If you're building a package manager and git-as-index seems appealing, look at Cargo, Homebrew, CocoaPods, vcpkg, Go. They all had to build workarounds as they grew, causing pain for users and maintainers. The pull request workflow is nice. The version history is nice. You will hit the same walls they did. ↫ Andrew Nesbitt It's wild to read some of these stories. I can't believe CocoaPods had 16000 directories contained in a single directory, which is absolutely bananas when you know how git actually works. Then there's the issue that git is case-sensitive, as any proper file system should be, which causes major headaches on Windows and macOS, which are dumb and are case-insensitive. Even Windows' path length limits, inherited from DOS, cause problems with git. There just so many problems with using git for a package managers' database. The basic gist is that git is not a database, and shouldn't be used as such. It's incredulous to me that seasoned developers would opt for "solutions" like this.

27 Dec 2025 12:57pm GMT

With the update to driver version 590, the NVIDIA driver no longer supports Pascal (GTX 10xx) GPUs or older. We will replace the nvidia package with nvidia-open, nvidia-dkms with nvidia-open-dkms, and nvidia-lts with nvidia-lts-open. Impact: Updating the NVIDIA packages on systems with Pascal, Maxwell, or older cards will fail to load the driver, which may result in a broken graphical environment. Intervention required for Pascal/older users: Users with GTX 10xx series and older cards must switch to the legacy proprietary branch to maintain support:

• Uninstall the official nvidia, nvidia-lts, or nvidia-dkms packages.
• Install nvidia-580xx-dkms from the AUR

Users with Turing (20xx and GTX 1650 series) and newer GPUs will automatically transition to the open kernel modules on upgrade and require no manual intervention.

20 Dec 2025 12:00am GMT

Peter Jung via arch-announce wrote:

With the update to driver version 590, the NVIDIA driver no longer supports Pascal (GTX 10xx) GPUs or older. We will replace the 'nvidia' package with 'nvidia-open', 'nvidia-dkms' with 'nvidia-open-dkms', and 'nvidia-lts' with 'nvidia-lts-open'. Impact: Updating the NVIDIA packages on systems with Pascal, Maxwell, or older cards will fail to load the driver, which may result in a broken graphical environment. Intervention required for Pascal/older users: Users with GTX 10xx series and older cards must switch to the legacy proprietary branch to maintain support:

• Uninstall the official 'nvidia', 'nvidia-lts', or 'nvidia-dkms' packages.
• Install 'nvidia-580xx-dkms' from the AUR

Users with Turing (20xx and GTX 1650 series) and newer GPUs will automatically transition to the open kernel modules on upgrade and require no manual intervention.

https://archlinux.org/news/nvidia-590-d … l-modules/

20 Dec 2025 12:00am GMT

The following packages may require manual intervention due to the upgrade from 9.0 to 10.0:

• aspnet-runtime
• aspnet-targeting-pack
• dotnet-runtime
• dotnet-sdk
• dotnet-source-built-artifacts
• dotnet-targeting-pack

pacman may display the following error failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies) for the affected packages. If you are affected by this and require the 9.0 packages, the following commands will update e.g. aspnet-runtime to aspnet-runtime-9.0: pacman -Syu aspnet-runtime-9.0 pacman -Rs aspnet-runtime

11 Dec 2025 12:00am GMT