fidzu : geek

A U.S. banking group just sued the government agency that issues America's federal bank charters, reports CoinDesk, "accusing it of exceeding its legal powers in granting national trust-bank status to crypto firms." The agency's move "creates a gaping hole in financial regulation," according to the lawsuit by The Independent Community Bankers of America, one of America's largest banking advocacy organizations. It argues the move will "perversely allow entities engaged in highly risky cryptocurrency and digital assets activities to enter the banking system under lightly regulated national charters" which actually preempt many state regulations, including consumer protection laws. But the move would also "place community banks at a severe competitive disadvantage," the lawsuit argues, "by allowing the national trust banks to offer many of the same services as community banks without complying with the same costly banking laws and regulations that apply to the community banks." This competitive advantage could "siphon deposits out of community banks and into deposit alternatives like cryptocurrency," which they describe as "highly volatile, prone to market crashes, cybercrime, and fraud" and lacking protections like deposit insurance. They also warn that America's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency "has not managed an uninsured bank receivership in nearly one hundred years. But failures of risky uninsured national trust banks could spread instability throughout the nation's financial system, including by spreading contagion risks to other traditional banks like community banks." CoinDesk reports: [The Independent Community Bankers of America] also played a significant role in pushing back against the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act that failed to advance in the U.S. Senate last month - in part due to the bankers' objections that its stablecoin provisions didn't protect them against direct competition with the deposit accounts that are core to their businesses. Now, the group is targeting the trust charters crypto firms are pursuing as an entry point into the U.S. banking and payments system. "Congress did not create the national trust charter as a side door into the banking system for crypto firms seeking the credibility of a federal bank charter," ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said in a statement..

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

04 Oct 2026 2:34pm GMT

Long-time Slashdot reader Andreas(R) announces Northstar, a "minimalist" web browser written entirely from scratch in C - now available in version 1.0.11: One window, one page, one process - about 160,000 lines of original C, small enough for one person to read and audit end-to-end. It carries no upstream browser engine: no Gecko, no WebKit, no Blink. It is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later, and it runs on Linux, macOS and Windows... Compliance is not inherited from an upstream engine; it is measured, section by section, against the specification text... Private by construction. No telemetry, no update pings, and no AI assistant or AI-style web APIs. Safe browsing checks a top-level navigation's host against a local SHA-256 blocklist before it is fetched - the check never leaves your machine. Cookies, storage and the cache are partitioned by origin. It's logo reminds me of the old Netscape logo. (And I love the "Best viewed in..." GIF at the upper-right of its web site.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

04 Oct 2026 11:21am GMT

The IEA and climate negotiators want to set a target for shifting the economy to run on electricity.

04 Oct 2026 11:05am GMT

Politico EU reports: The European Commission has rolled out an alternative to Microsoft Teams - but officials using it aren't impressed, with one describing the tool as "absolute shit." The Commission introduced Element Pro over the summer as a "sovereign back-up to Teams," according to an internal staff memo seen by POLITICO. The platform is intended to provide a fallback for Commission communications if U.S.-based Teams becomes unavailable.... But three officials have questioned why the Commission needs the new system - and whether it works well enough to serve as a genuine backup. "I don't understand the added value here," one official wrote on an internal staff message board, seen by POLITICO. Another described the tool as "absolute shit." A third official said that, judging matters on how well Element Pro works compared to Teams, the U.S. would "instantly win the war" if it ever decided to switch off its technology... The Commission hosts the Element system on its own infrastructure rather than relying on Microsoft's cloud. That gives the institution greater control over its communications data and systems... Element is a U.K. company whose software is used by governments and public-sector organizations in Europe... Element CEO Matthew Hodgson told POLITICO in a call using Element software that the Commission is still trialing it. "Obviously there are going to be some teething issues," he said, adding there will always be "cognitive dissonance" when switching to a new app, if only because the "buttons" are in a different place. He noted that the United Nations and NATO also use Element Pro. The article adds that earlier this year, France announced millions of civil servants will switch to home-grown alternatives to American video-conferencing tools including Microsoft Teams and Zoom by 2027, while Austria's military also replaced Microsoft Office with the German-made LibreOffice last year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

04 Oct 2026 7:21am GMT

"...we were making history."

03 Oct 2026 7:45pm GMT

The devices continue to show noticeable benefits for users in various real-world tasks.

03 Oct 2026 11:15am GMT

I like squirrels. Apparently, there's a SquirrelOS. It's a small hobby OS learning project from five years ago, developed by Immanuel Daviel A. Garcia. A simple DOS like OS made in Assembly and C with a ported version of Stephen Brennan's Shell. ↫ SquirrelOS GitHub page Why do I like squirrels? I don't know man, they're just cute.

02 Oct 2026 9:19pm GMT

Google launched its Googlebooks platform a week ago, and a lot of people were wondering what this meant for Chrome OS and Chromebooks. Since Googlebooks and its Android-based Googlebook OS lack the management frameworks markets like schools require, Chromebooks will continue to be available for now, until such time Googlebooks catch up in that regard. However, in a support document, Google states that update support for all Chromebook devices will end in 2034: ChromeOS devices will continue to receive regular updates and security patches through mid-2034. For qualifying devices purchased today whose 10-year support lifecycle extends beyond 2034, Google is committed to supporting your transition to Googlebook OS, with many devices offering direct migration paths. ↫ Google support document Google promised 10 years of updates for all Chromebooks, and it's now breaking that promise for anyone buying a Chromebook between now and whenever the last Chromebook rolls off the production line. Sadly, we live in a world where corporations are free to make and break whatever promises they want virtually free of consequences, and as society we're so used to it that anti-consumer behaviour like this barely elicits a shrug. Google does state that "many newer commercial Chromebook models will be capable of upgrading to Googlebook OS", but that, too, is just another promise - and a vague, one at that - so who knows how many devices will actually be capable of upgrading out in the real world. On top of that, we have no idea if Googlebooks will just be yet another in a long line of quickly abandoned Google tablet/laptop projects, further adding to the uncertainty. Stuff like this should not be legal.

30 Sep 2026 10:09pm GMT

In June 2008 Apple announced Mac OS X Snow Leopard, proudly boasting that it would have "no new features". Instead of piling on new things, Snow Leopard aimed to build on the success of its predecessor, Leopard, opting to focus on under-the-hood performance and stability improvements throughout the system. 18 years later, Apple is taking a similar approach with macOS 27. Golden Gate aims to fix the missteps of last year's Tahoe, promising an expansive set of improvements and "a more responsive and delightful experience". Does it hold up? Here are just some of the bugs I've encountered in my daily use over the past couple of weeks. ↫ Chester at SquareOrbits I'm getting some real Windows 11 vibes from this long list of bugs and issues, further underlining my perception that Apple completely lost the plot when it comes to Mac OS X (in the past) and MacOS (today). These are not the kind of things you'd find in the heydays of Mac OS X, back when I was a devout user, and makes me glad I abandoned ship long, long ago (around the time of the Intel transition). I don't see stuff like this in GNOME or KDE, and while not nearly as bad as Windows 11, the cracks are obvious. I am by no means an expert at how Apple is run and how it organises itself, but as a layperson I do wonder if the company is simply trying to do too much - too many different platforms, too many different crucial components it all develops internally, too many different markets to please. Things are going to fall through the cracks when you try to keep this many plates spinning.

30 Sep 2026 9:55pm 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