geek

24 May 2026

Slashdot

Disney's 'Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu' Opens to 'Mixed' Box Office Results

It's "the first time in seven years that a new Star Wars film has launched on the big screen," writes CNBC. And Variety notes it's expected to earn $102 million through Monday: [B]ox office analysts are mixed on the results. On one hand, it's significant for any film to debut above $100 million in post-pandemic times. On the other, "Star Wars" is one of Hollywood's preeminent film properties, so there's an expectation of a certain level of box office. And this start is the worst for "Star Wars" since Disney bought the franchise in 2012. CNBC cites reports 41% of tickets were sold for more expensive large-format screenings like IMAX and DolbyCinema. So how's the movie? Rotten Tomatoes shows an 89% positive rating from moviegoers on its "popcornmeter" and a 62% average score from professional movie critics. And Ars Technica writes that "The plot is predictable, the fight scenes are meh, but you can't beat the charm of that little green Grogu." So while there's "a paint-by-numbers plot," they add that "the little green puppet pretty much carries the entire film." The new film is ... fine. It's an average Star Wars outing, and it will give families a solid Memorial Day Weekend entertainment option. It's just not the spectacular home run that might have helped launch the flagging franchise into an exciting new era, and diehard Star Wars fans hoping for more are probably going to be disappointed. Of course, not everyone agrees. "How many nails can we realistically drive into Star Wars's coffin before it's time to give up hope of resuscitation?" writes Clarisse Loughrey for The Independent, calling it "the dullest and most inconsequential 'Star Wars' ever made." (She argues that the movie "stitches together what is clearly three episodes of the previously planned fourth season of The Mandalorian and calls it a day. There's not a whiff of effort here.") And a reviewer at RogerEbert.com gave it one-and-a-half stars, complaining that "There's no reason for anything in this movie except the wish to make even more money...." I'm on record as despising the word "content," which was pushed by early tech moguls to devalue art as interchangeable goo in a virtual pipeline, but this washed-out, video-game-looking movie, with its murky night scenes and lack of visual depth, deserves the word. You've seen everything in it before, from the equipment, spacecraft, armor, and tactical maneuvers to the species and various types of terrain (earthlike, but cartoony)... Even Grogu taxes our patience. Some of his cute bits could've ended with him facing the camera and doing jazz hands.

Apple Preparing New 'Gen AI' Website Ahead of WWDC — and New AI Features?

Apple just registered a new subdomain record: genai.apple.com. The domain was spotted by a MacRumors contributing researcher, and though it doesn't yet lead to a live web page, they believe it's tied to Apple's annual developers conference WWDC which starts June 8, "where the company has promised to announce 'AI advancements' across its software platforms." The blog 9to5Mac speculates that "All signs point to WWDC 2026 being Apple's major AI renaissance, where the company will live up to the promises it made back at WWDC 2024, as well as a few additional new announcements." [I]it goes without saying that this is probably related to Apple's upcoming generative AI announcements at WWDC... Siri should finally be able to understand more personal context, have on screen awareness, and be able to take action in apps for you. This'll finally be made possible thanks to Apple's new partnership with Google, where Apple will be using Gemini-diffused models hosted on Private Cloud Compute to power Siri... Apple will also reportedly be introducing a new Siri app. This'll allow you to access your previous Siri conversations, as well as have text-based conversations with Siri. Other Apple Intelligence upgrades coming at WWDC 2026 include the ability to generate wallet passes from physical tickets, new editing features in the Photos app, and additional functionality for Visual Intelligence...

Wind and Solar Generated More Power Than Gas Globally in April

Last month saw a world first, reports Electrek. Wind and solar generated more power globally than gas: According to new analysis from independent energy think tank Ember, wind and solar produced 22% of the world's electricity in April 2026, compared to 20% from gas. Together, the two renewable sources generated a record 531 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity during the month, 54 TWh more than gas plants generated globally, at 477 TWh... Five years ago, in April 2021, gas generation was almost identical to today's level at 476 TWh. But back then, wind and solar combined generated just 245 TWh - less than half of what they produced this April... Wind and solar generation increased across nearly every major market reporting April data... April tends to be the strongest month for this kind of milestone because spring weather in the Northern Hemisphere usually brings a combination of strong wind generation, rising solar output, and lower electricity demand between heating and cooling seasons. Still, the broader trend is clear. Ember's recent Global Electricity Review found that wind and solar met all global electricity demand growth in 2025. "Governments around the world are also ramping up renewable energy targets to reduce dependence on volatile fossil fuel imports..."

23 May 2026

OSnews

“Long-term support” does not mean what you think it does

You may think you know what "long-term support" means when picking a Linux distribution and version, but judging by the multitude of utterly wrong takes and deeply confused users I come across online, I'm starting to get the feeling that in fact, no, you don't know what it means. KDE's Nate Graham is seeing the same confusion, and has published a blog post going over what LTS really means in the Linux world. People seem to think that an LTS release means it's going to be more stable, have fewer bugs, and receive support for a certain set period of time. The reality is that only that last one really applies, sort-of. LTS generally means you're going to be using a Linux distribution version where you'll get security fixes and possibly maintenance updates for a set number of years, but you won't be getting updates with new features or other updates that aren't security fixes. The purpose of an LTS release is to more or less freeze itself and its packages in time, so that users know exactly what they're getting. However, part of being frozen in time means any bugs, crashes, and hardware support are also frozen in time. The end result is that LTS releases will often have wildly outdated package versions, and those outdated package versions will most likely contain a ton of bugs and issues that have long been fixed in subsequent releases - subsequent releases you're not getting, because you're on an LTS release. LTS releases are fairly stable and reliable as long as you use the most popular software from their included software repositories. So in the circumstances when this stops being the case, I think sometimes people can feel betrayed. They think, "I thought this was supposed to be stable! Why didn't anyone fix this bug yet? Where's my long-term support?" But Debian, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu never promised any level of stability, reliability, or absence of bugs. They promised that the version-locked software in their repos would receive security fixes for a certain number of years. Ubuntu and Kubuntu also offered a certain amount of non-guaranteed best-effort hardware compatibility improvements and non-security bug fixes. ↫ Nate Graham This causes major problems for upstream developers. People who use an LTS release will be using versions of packages that are out of date and full of bugs that have already been fixed in later versions, but they don't know that, so they end up reporting these old bugs that have been fixed ages ago as if they're new. If you're an LTS user and you experience a persistent bug and subsequent crash in Kwin, you're most likely going to complain at the Kwin developers, even if the Kwin developers have already fixed this bug 18 months ago. Every week there's at least a few developers in my Fedi timeline rolling their eyes at Debian users reporting bugs fixed ages ago and getting mad when told they should complain at Debian developers for not backporting the fix. So many LTS users seem to think that LTS equals increased stability, fewer bugs, and fewer crashes, but that's just not what LTS is for or what it claims to offer. Sticking to specific (major) versions of packages means not you're not only missing out on new features and changes - which might be desirable for you - but also on bug fixes. With LTS, as they say, the bugs are also stable.

23 May 2026 11:36pm GMT

Gnutella: a protocol outliving the world that created it

Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Gnutella is a file sharing protocol that many have forgotten and it has the story of a decentralized technology adopted by millions of casual users who did not care to learn what a peer-to-peer system was. Users showed up because the protocol solved real problems at scale and the solution just so happened to be decentralized. No one ever pretended to use Gnutella in hopes their GnutellaCoinTM would go up in value later. They just downloaded MP3s. The network exploded in popularity, then plateaued for almost a decade, then settled into a permanent long tail state of continued but diminished use. Welcome to my overly enthusiastic love letter to Gnutella. ↫ Rick Carlino I genuinely didn't know - or I had forgotten, more likely - that Gnutella formed the backbone of LimeWire, another name I haven't heard in a long time. I'm quite sure I used LimeWire over 25 years ago, but details are fuzzy and I might be confusing it with other filesharing networks of a similar vintage. I was an avid CD buyer and MiniDisc user (I used MD well into the smartphone age), so I didn't have much need for downloading MP3s. Gnutella is also apparently still active, and there are still clients you can download and use. Of course, it's a mere shadow of its former self, but this, too, was news to me. I'm kind of inclined to see if it's still hosting MP3s.

23 May 2026 10:03pm GMT

Ars Technica

SpaceX's Starship V3—still a work in progress—mostly successful on first flight

SpaceX has more to prove before flying Starship all the way to low-Earth orbit.

23 May 2026 5:54pm GMT

Two space shuttle-era spacewalkers enter Astronaut Hall of Fame

"Two astronauts whose careers embody excellence, leadership, and service."

23 May 2026 11:30am GMT

China’s shark finning could lead to US seafood sanctions

A formal petition to the US government calls for sanctions on Chinese seafood imports.

23 May 2026 11:00am GMT

22 May 2026

OSnews

Migrating from Ubuntu 16.04 to FreeBSD

Bruno Croci's blog had been running on Ubuntu 16.04 for a long time, well past the Linux distribution's expiration date. As such, it was time to upgrade, but instead of opting for something standard like another Ubuntu release, he opted for FreeBSD instead. This blog has been running on a Digital Ocean VPS for over ten years. A machine hosted in New York City, running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. An LTS that hasn't been in support for at least 5 years. It was about time to change it. After some considerations, I migrated to a Hetzner virtual machine that is way better than my old Ubuntu one, less than half the price of what I used to pay, and just across the country from me. Not only that, but I took the challenge to move my stack to FreeBSD. It's a long text, but stay for a cool introduction of FreeBSD Jails with Bastille and some interesting site load benchmarks. ↫ Bruno Croci I absolutely adore the recent surge in people (re)discovering the BSDs as a valid alternative to Linux in both the server and desktop space. In this particular case, it was FreeBSD's Jails and ZFS support that won Corci over, and it's easy to see why. While there are countless alternatives to Jails in the Linux world, ZFS is harder to come by as it can't be part of the kernel due to licensing issues. With how powerful and capable ZFS is, it makes sense to want to use it on your server, and in that case, FreeBSD is probably a better choice than most Linux distributions. There are countless reasons to choose one of the BSDs over a Linux distribution, and I'm glad we're seeing an uptick.

22 May 2026 7:00pm GMT