fidzu : geek

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Microsoft has made WSL Containers generally available, giving Windows 11 developers a built-in way to build, run, and deploy Linux containers through Windows Subsystem for Linux. The release includes wslc.exe for managing containers, GPU support, networking improvements, health checks, storage mounts, and integration with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Intune. Microsoft also claims up to twice the performance when Linux environments access files stored on Windows. Docker Desktop, Podman Desktop, and Rancher Desktop are not going anywhere, but developers who only need basic container functionality now have another option built around WSL. One notable feature is still missing: Compose support. Microsoft says adding it is now a priority.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

29 Sep 2026 10:00pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Mistral Chief Executive Arthur Mensch has accused leading global artificial intelligence companies of using the debate over the safety of the technology as a cover-up for their "negligence." "The debate that we've seen in the U.S. has been a cover for the negligence of some of our competitors," Mensch told CNBC's Annette Weisbach, adding that it was necessary to make systems that can contain the AI agents. [...] "When you give them a lot of tools, those systems [AI agents] are very dynamic, so they can go and do things that you do not expect," Mensch told CNBC. "You need to have the right monitoring in place, and the enterprises we work with, we give them those kind of monitoring systems," he said. Mistral also develops AI models but takes a different approach to OpenAI and Anthropic by working with individual companies to create custom AI tools to suit their needs and integrate them with their businesses. But unlike its competitors, Mistral has no plans to slow down development of advanced models. The lead that U.S. labs have is "not extremely large," Mensch said, adding that his company was confident that its next-generation model will close the gap "very significantly." "We have been raising the capital needed to scale the compute that we need to train bigger and more powerful models, in order for us to own our own destiny," he said. Earlier this month, Mistral raised 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) in fresh funding led by memory chip giant Samsung, as it looks to position itself as a European alternative to rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

29 Sep 2026 9:00pm GMT

McDonald's is reportedly using AI-powered pricing tools to recommend menu prices based on what customers near individual restaurants are willing to pay. Franchisees technically retain control over final prices, but some told Reuters they feel pressured to follow the algorithm's recommendations. "A corporate document reviewed by the publication shows that McDonald's tracks adherence to the platform, and notes any deviations from the algorithm's price recommendations," reports Engadget. From the report: Reuters got a look at the interface that franchisees use to access this technology and it's pretty creepy. Messages show stuff like "your restaurant is showing MEDIUM SENSITIVITY to price" based on "customer willingness to pay in your area." Cost differences at nearby locations can be stark. Researchers found that a Bic Mac at a Fresno, California store cost $5.69, but the same burger cost $6.89 at another branch two miles down the road. That's a 21 percent difference. The company acknowledges that using this dynamic pricing system could open up franchisees to legal hurdles, all while continuing to push the platform. The pricing portal's terms of service reportedly warns that owners "may be competitors of each other" and "it is particularly important for all Users of the Tool to understand and comply fully with antitrust and competition laws." The document also reiterates that franchisees are "always free to determine the final price," thus potentially absolving corporate from any antitrust concerns. McDonald's has decried Reuters' reporting as "speculative and uninformed." The company says the pricing portal is "a tool, not a mandate, designed to provide restaurant-specific recommendations to help franchisees deliver value for customers and make informed business decisions." The company has been using some version of this technology since at least 2019, according to Reuters. In 2023, however, CEO Kempczinski boasted to investors that it had developed proprietary tools to evaluate pricing at individual restaurants.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

29 Sep 2026 8:00pm GMT

"We couldn't provide detailed pricing to the CLD suppliers."

28 Sep 2026 10:24pm GMT

China is reportedly mulling letting ByteDance, Alibaba buy banned Nvidia chips.

28 Sep 2026 9:49pm GMT

Starship had already flown 99 percent of the way to low-Earth orbit. Monday's flight added the last bit.

28 Sep 2026 9:26pm GMT

Over the last few days and weeks or so, a few of the people I follow and interact with on Fedi have been talking about centralising information, tools, applications, and expertise from the Motif (and Xt, Xlib, and X11) ecosystem. There's a ton of information, resources, and actively maintained applications out there, but it's all spread out and sometimes difficult to find, and so Thomas Adam - one of the core developers of FVWM, among other things, as well as creator of CoW (FVWM for Wayland, more or less) - has created an effort to centralise all of this. Motif Central brings together information about Motif, Xt, Xlib and X11: how they fit together, how to program with them, and where to find the manuals, examples and historical material that explain them. Begin with the X programming stack, build your first Motif application, or explore the programming resources. The history pages describe the libraries' origins, while the archive guide helps you navigate older documentation. ↫ MotifCentral There's been a whole flurry of activity around Motif lately, including the updated and maintained fork we talked about a few weeks ago. The people loosely collaborating on MotifCentral also submitted patches to CDE to make sure it works on the new Motif fork, with the CDE developers setting up a build pipeline for easier testing. Making sure CDE, the classic Motif desktop environment, works well with the maintained Motif fork quite a few people seem to be rallying around is a worthwhile effort. We're still quite far from a complete(-ish) modern Motif ecosystem, but it's very heartwarming to see just how many people are actually still interested in it. My perhaps misguided hope is that we can somehow get to a modernised Motif/CDE desktop environment and applications, making it possible to more easily run a modern Motif environment on Linux and the BSDs. One may dream.

28 Sep 2026 6:17pm GMT

Windows 11 received its September update on the 8th of this month, and within days Microsoft had acknowledged or investigated problems involving Remote Desktop, USB audio, Linux and WSL-based apps like Claude Cowork, and enterprise domain issues. Windows Latest also found File History failures, Explorer.exe crashes, and AMD GPU instability, with an emergency update following on September 14 that still did not fix everything. This got us curious, and we looked back across the nine monthly updates released from January through September 2026 and, rather unsurprisingly, Windows 10 update history isn't infected with nearly as many bugs as that of Windows 11. ↫ Abhijith M B at Windows Latest Of course, Windows 10 also isn't getting nearly as much attention from Microsoft, but that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? Whenever Microsoft touches something, especially over the last 5 years or so, it's one cascade of failures after the other, eroding trust in Windows' updates even more (if that's even possible). In that light, why would you want to use Windows 11 and all the headaches that come with it, when Windows 10 is right there, still being supported, albeit without the latest bells and whistles that only seem to break Windows 11 anyway? If you really do need or want to use Windows, consider switching back to Windows 10 whenever the usual Windows reinstallation time draws near. You won't lose much, but will gain quite a bit in the process. Of course, this won't be a responsible or usable choice forever, but at this point in time, I definitely think it's the optimal choice for quite a few people.

28 Sep 2026 5:54pm GMT

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

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

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

Good morning from JetBrains Berlin office!

01 Jun 2026 12:00am GMT