geek

29 Apr 2026

Slashdot

New Sam Bankman-Fried Trial Would Be Huge Waste of Court's Time, Judge Says

A federal judge denied Sam Bankman-Fried's request for a new trial, calling his claims of DOJ witness intimidation "wildly conspiratorial" and unsupported by the record. Judge Lewis Kaplan said (PDF) the FTX founder's motion appeared tied to a pre-indictment plan to recast himself as a Republican victim of Biden's DOJ in hopes of gaining sympathy, leniency, or even a Trump pardon. Ars Technica reports: Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 for "masterminding one of the largest financial frauds in American history," US District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his order. He was convicted on all charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering. There is already an appeal pending in another court, the judge noted. But Bankman-Fried filed a separate motion for a new trial, claiming that there were "newly discovered" witnesses and evidence that might have helped his defense, if Joe Biden's Department of Justice hadn't intimidated them into refusing to testify or, in one case, lying on the stand. He also asked for a new judge, wanting Kaplan to recuse himself. However, Kaplan pointed out that "none of the witnesses" were "newly discovered." And more concerningly, Bankman-Fried offered no evidence that the witnesses could prove the "wildly conspiratorial" theory the FTX founder raised, claiming that their absence at the trial was a "product of government threats and retaliation," the judge wrote. Bankman-Fried's theory is "entirely contradicted by the record," Kaplan said. He emphasized that granting Bankman-Fried's request "would be a large waste of judicial resources as it could require another judge to familiarize himself or herself with an extensive and complicated record." Additionally, all three witnesses that Bankman-Fried claimed could give crucial testimony in his defense were known to him throughout the trial, and he never sought to compel their testimony. And the "self-serving social-media posts" of one witness who now claims that he lied when testifying against Bankman-Fried -- "Ryan Salame, who pleaded guilty" -- must be met with "utmost suspicion," Kaplan said. "If one were to take Salame at his current word, he lied under oath when pleading guilty before this Court," Kaplan wrote. Even if taken seriously, "his out-of-court, unsworn statements could not come anywhere close to clearing the bar to warrant a new trial," Kaplan said, deeming Salame's credibility "highly questionable." Further, "even if these individuals had testified for Bankman-Fried, his protestations that one or more of them would have supported his claims that FTX was not insolvent and that his victims all were compensated fully in the bankruptcy proceedings are inaccurate or misleading," Kaplan concluded. In the order, Kaplan's frustration seems palpable, as there may have been no need for him to rule on the motion at all after Bankman-Fried requested to withdraw it. But the judge said the ruling was needed after Bankman-Fried waited to file his withdrawal request until after the DOJ and the court wasted time responding and reviewing filings, the judge said. Troublingly, Bankman-Fried's request to withdraw his request without prejudice would have allowed him to potentially request a new trial after the appeal ended. Based on the substance of the filing, that risked wasting future court resources, Kaplan determined. To prevent overburdening the justice system, Kaplan deemed it necessary to deny Bankman-Fried's motion and request for recusal, rather than allow him to withdraw the filing without prejudice.

Ubuntu's AI Plans Have Linux Users Looking For a 'Kill Switch'

Canonical's plan to add AI features to Ubuntu has sparked pushback from users who are concerned it could follow Windows 11's AI-heavy direction. "After Canonical's announcement earlier this week that it's bringing AI features to Ubuntu, replies included requests for an AI 'kill switch' or a way to disable the upcoming features," reports The Verge. Canonical says it has no plans for a "global AI kill switch" but it will allow users to remove any AI features they don't want. From the report: In his original post, [Canonical's VP of engineering, Jon Seager] said the upcoming AI features will include accessibility tools like AI speech-to-text and text-to-speech, along with agentic AI features for tasks like troubleshooting and automation. Canonical is also encouraging its engineers to use AI more and plans to begin introducing AI features in Ubuntu "throughout the next year." In a follow-up comment, Seager clarified that, "my plan is to introduce AI-backed features as a 'preview' on a strictly opt-in basis in [Ubuntu version] 26.10. In subsequent releases, my plan is to have a step in the initial setup wizard that allows the user to choose whether or not they'd like the AI-native features enabled." Ultimately, he said, "All of these capabilities will be delivered as Snaps to the OS, layered on top of the existing Ubuntu stack. That means there will always be the option of removing those Snaps." Users who prefer to avoid AI entirely could switch to other distros like Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, or Zorin OS. "These distros have some similarities to Ubuntu, but may not necessarily adopt the new AI features Canonical is rolling out," adds The Verge.

Joby Demos Its Air Taxi In NYC

Joby Aviation has completed demonstration flights of its electric air taxi over New York City, testing real routes between JFK and Manhattan helipads as it prepares for a future commercial service. The company says its eVTOL could turn a 60- to 120-minute airport trip into a flight of under 10 minutes, though commercial launch still depends on FAA certification. Electrive reports: To launch operations in New York City, Joby acquired Blade Urban Air Mobility last year. Blade already enables helicopter flights for affluent travelers between Manhattan and airports such as JFK or Newark in just five minutes, avoiding up to two hours of traffic and typical airport hassles. Joby aims to replace this service with quiet, electric air taxis as soon as possible, transitioning Blade's existing customers to the new technology. However, introducing a new aircraft into commercial service requires a years-long certification process, overseen in the US by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Joby is now in the final phase of FAA certification. Following a series of demonstration flights in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company has tested its air taxi in New York City on real flight routes and under real-world conditions. During these tests, Joby demonstrated the acoustics and performance metrics critical for entering the urban air taxi market. During these demonstration flights, Joby's air taxi took off from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and landed at various helipads across the city, including Downtown Skyport and the helipads at West 30th Street and East 34th Street in Midtown, where Blade Air Mobility's premium passenger lounges are located. These locations represent some of the commercial routes Joby plans for New York [...]. Fun fact: Joby's eVTOL aircraft are over 100 to 1,000 times quieter than a conventional helicopter, operating at roughly 55-65 dB during takeoff and landing compared to 90+ dB for helicopters.

OSnews

Earliest 86-DOS and PC-DOS code released as open source

Microsoft is continuing its efforts to release early versions of DOS as open source, and today we've got a special one. We're stoked today to showcase some newly available source code materials that provide an even earlier look into the development of PC-DOS 1.00, the first release of DOS for the IBM PC. A dedicated team of historians and preservationists led by Yufeng Gao and Rich Cini has worked to locate, scan, and transcribe the stack of DOS-era source listings from Tim Paterson, the author of DOS. The listings include sources to the 86-DOS 1.00 kernel, several development snapshots of the PC-DOS 1.00 kernel, and some well-known utilities such as CHKDSK. Not only were these assembler listings, but there were also listings of the assembler itself! This work offers rare insight into how MS-DOS/PC-DOS came to be, and how operating system development was done at the time, not as it was later reconstructed. ↫ Stacey Haffner and Scott Hanselman It's wild that the source code had to be transcribed from paper, including notes and changes. You can find more information about the process on Gao's website and Cini's website.

29 Apr 2026 8:55pm GMT

Apple gives up on Vision Pro, disbands Vision Pro team

When Apple unveiled the Vision Pro, almost three (!) years ago, I concluded: If there's one company that can convince people to spend $3500 to strap an isolating dystopian glowing robot mask onto their faces it's Apple, but I still have a hard time believing this is what people want. ↫ Thom Holwerda at OSNews (quoting myself is weird) MacRumors' Juli Clover, today: Apple has all but given up on the Vision Pro after the M5 model failed to revitalize interest in the device, MacRumors has learned. Apple updated the Vision Pro with a faster M5 chip and a more comfortable band in October 2025, but there were no other hardware changes, and consumers still weren't interested. Apple has apparently stopped work on the Vision Pro and the Vision Pro team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple. Some former Vision Pro team members are working on Siri, which is not a surprise as Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell has been leading the Siri team since March 2025. ↫ Juli Clover at MacRumors VR - what the Vision Pro is, whether Apple's marketing likes to say it or not - has proven to be good for exactly two things: games and porn. The Vision Pro has neither. It was destined to be a flop from the start, as nobody wants to strap an uncomfortable computer to their face that does less than all of the other computers they already have, and what it does do, it does worse. I do wonder if this makes the Vision Pro the most expensive flop in human history. Has any company ever spent more on a product that failed this spectacularly?

29 Apr 2026 8:44pm GMT

Ars Technica

ABC can beat Trump FCC's license threat if owner Disney is willing to fight

Broadcast license renewals are "all but automatic" due to 1996 change in US law.

29 Apr 2026 7:14pm GMT

OpenAI Codex system prompt includes explicit directive to "never talk about goblins"

Directions also include system instructions to act like "you have a vivid inner life."

29 Apr 2026 7:00pm GMT

Howdy's dated $3/month ad-free streaming service said to have 1M subscribers

Most are keeping their subscriptions after signing up, too, research firm says.

29 Apr 2026 6:02pm GMT

28 Apr 2026

OSnews

Apple wants to kill your Time Capsule, but they run NetBSD so they can’t

It seems like Apple is finally going to remove support for AFP from macOS, twelve years after first moving from AFP to SMB for its default network file-sharing technology. This change shouldn't impact most people, as it's highly unlikely you're using AFP for anything in 2026. Still, there is one small group of people to whom this change has an actual impact: owners of Apple's Time Capsule devices. Time Capsules only support AFP and SMB1, and with SMB1 being removed from macOS ages ago, and now AFP being on the chopping block as well, macOS 27 would render your Time Capsule more or less unusable. It's important to note that the last Time Capsule sold by Apple, the fifth generation, was released in 2013, and the product line as a whole was discontinued in 2018. If you bought a Time Capsule in the twilight years of the line's availability, I think you have a genuine reason to be perturbed by Apple cutting you off from your product if you upgrade to macOS 27, but at least you have the option of keeping an older version of macOS around so you can keep interacting with your time Capsule. It still feels like a bit of a shitty move though, as those fifth generation models came with up to 3TB of storage, which can still serve as a solid NAS solution. Thank your lucky stars, then, that open source can, as usual, come to the rescue when proprietary software vendors do what they always do and screw over their customers. Did you know every generation of Time Capsule actually runs NetBSD, and that it's trivially easy to add support for Samba 4 and SMB3 authentication to your Time Capsule, thereby extending its life expectancy considerably? TimeCapsuleSMB does exactly that. If the setup completes successfully, your Time Capsule will run its own Samba 4 server, advertise itself over Bonjour (show up automatically in the "Network" folder on macOS), and accept authenticated SMB3 connections from macOS. You should then be able to open Finder, choose Connect to Server, and use a normal SMB URL instead of relying on Apple's legacy stack. You should also be able to use the disk for Time Machine backups. ↫ TimeCapsuleSMB It's compatible with both NetBSD 4 and NetBSD 6-based Time Capsules, although you'll need to run a single SMB activation command every time a NetBSD 4-based Time Capsule reboots. This will also disable any AFP and SMB1 support, but that is kind of moot since those are exactly the technologies that don't and won't work anymore once macOS 27 is released. The installation is also entirely reversible if, for whatever reason, you want to undo the addition of Samba 4. This whole saga is such an excellent example of why open source software protects users' rights, by design.

28 Apr 2026 8:54pm GMT