fidzu : geek

A Chinese man who cryogenically preserved his wife after her death has sparked a heated online debate after it emerged he began dating a new partner in 2020. Some argue it's natural for him to move on, while others say he's being selfish or disrespectful to both his late wife and his current partner. The BBC reports: As a sign of his devotion, Gui Junmin decided to freeze his wife Zhan Wenlian's body after she died from lung cancer in 2017, aged 49, making her China's first cryogenically preserved person. But after a November interview revealed he had been dating a different partner since 2020, Chinese social media has been torn on Mr Junmin's predicament. Whilst some asked why the 57-year-old didn't just "let go" another commenter remarked he appeared to be "most devoted to himself." After Zhan Wenlian was given months to live by doctors, Gui Junmin decided to use cryonics - which is scientifically unproven - to preserve her body once she died. Following her death, he signed a 30-year agreement to preserve his wife's frozen body with the Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute. Since then, Zhan's body has been stored in a 2,000-litre container at the institute in a vat of -190C liquid nitrogen. Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly revealed that although Mr Junmin lived alone for two years after the procedure, in 2020 he began dating again, despite his wife remaining in cryopreservation. He told the newspaper that a severe gout attack which left him unable to move for two days began to change his mind about the benefits of living alone. Soon after, he started seeing his current partner Wang Chunxia, although Mr Junmin suggested to the paper the love was only "utilitarian" and that she hadn't "entered" his heart.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

19 Nov 2025 7:00am GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The Trump administration will provide Constellation Energy with a $1 billion loan to restart the Crane Clean Energy Center nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, Department of Energy officials said Tuesday. Previously known as Three Mile Island Unit 1, the plant is expected to start generating power again in 2027. Constellation unveiled plans to rename and restart the reactor in Sept. 2024 through a power purchase agreement with Microsoft to support the tech company's data center demand in the region. Three Mile Island Unit 1 ceased operations in 2019, one of a dozen reactors that closed in recent years as nuclear struggled to compete against cheap natural gas. It sits on the same site as Three Mile Island Unit 2, the reactor that partially melted down in 1979 in the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. The loan would cover the majority to the project's estimated cost of $1.6 billion. The first advance to Constellation is expected in the first quarter of 2026, said Greg Beard, senior advisor to the Energy Department's Loan Programs Office, in a call with reporters. The loan comes with a guarantee from Constellation that it will protect taxpayer money, Beard said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

19 Nov 2025 3:30am GMT

MI5 has warned U.K. lawmakers that Chinese intelligence operatives are using LinkedIn and recruitment fronts to target them for information gathering and long-term cultivation. PBS reports: Writing to lawmakers, House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle said a new MI5 "espionage alert" warned that Chinese nationals were "using LinkedIn profiles to conduct outreach at scale" on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security. "Their aim is to collect information and lay the groundwork for long-term relationships, using professional networking sites, recruitment agents and consultants acting on their behalf," he said. MI5 issued the alert because the activity was "targeted and widespread," he added. The MI5 alert cited LinkedIn profiles of two women, Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, and said other similar recruiters' profiles were acting as fronts for espionage. Home Office Minister Dan Jarvis said that apart from parliamentary staff, others including economists, think tank consultants and government officials have been similarly targeted. Jarvis said the government is rolling out a series of measures to tackle the risk, including investing 170 million pounds ($224 million) to renew encrypted technology used by civil servants to safeguard sensitive work. Opposition parties say authorities are not doing enough and are too wary of jeopardizing trade ties with China.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

19 Nov 2025 2:20am GMT

Microsoft has just announced a whole slew of new "AI" features for Windows, and this time, they'll be living in your taskbar. Microsoft is trying to transform Windows into a "canvas for AI," with new AI agents integrated into the Windows 11 taskbar. These new taskbar capabilities are designed to make AI agents feel like an assistant in Windows that can go off and control your PC and do tasks for you at the click of a button. It's part of a broader overhaul of Windows to turn the operating system into an "agentic OS." Microsoft is integrating a variety of AI agents directly into the Windows 11 taskbar, including its own Microsoft 365 Copilot and third-party options. "This integration isn't just about adding agents; it's about making them part of the OS experience," says Windows chief Pavan Davuluri. ↫ Tom Warren at The Verge These "AI" agents will control your computer, applications, and files for you, which may make some of you a little apprehensive, and for good reason. "AI" tools don't have a great track record when it comes to privacy - Windows Recall comes to mind - and as such, Microsoft claims this time, it'll be different. These new "AI" agents will run in what are essentially dedicated Windows accounts acting as sandboxes, to ensure they can only access certain resources. While I find the addition of these "AI" tools to Windows insufferable and dumb, I'm at least glad Microsoft is taking privacy and security seriously this time, and I doubt Microsoft would repeat the same mistakes they made with the entirely botched rollout of Windows Recall. in addition, after the Cloudstrike fiasco, Microsoft made clear commitments to improve its security practices, which further adds to the confidence we should all have these new "AI" tools are safe, secure, and private. But wait, what's this? Additionally, agentic AI applications introduce novel security risks, such as cross-prompt injection (XPIA), where malicious content embedded in UI elements or documents can override agent instructions, leading to unintended actions like data exfiltration or malware installation. ↫ Microsoft support document about the new "AI" features Microsoft's new "AI" features can go out and install malware without your consent, because these features possess the access and privileges to do so. The mere idea that some application - which is essentially what these "AI" features really are - can go out onto the web and download and install whatever it wants, including malware, "on your behalf", in the background, is so utterly dystopian to me I just can't imagine any serious developer looking at this and thinking "yeah, ship it". I'm living in an insane asylum.

18 Nov 2025 11:34pm GMT

Cities and counties call Congressional plan an "unprecedented federal intrusion."

18 Nov 2025 10:42pm GMT

Two felony charges for filming man inside his house.

18 Nov 2025 10:27pm GMT

Elimination status is lost if the virus spreads continuously for 12 months.

18 Nov 2025 10:01pm GMT

The contents of this repository allow older versions of UNIX (ancient UNIX) to run easily on modern Unix-like systems (Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, among others). ↫ Run ancient UNIX GitHub page With the guides in this repository, you can easily run Versions 1/5/7 UNIX and 2.11BSD UNIX for the PDP-11 and Version 7 UNIX for x86 (ported to x86 by Robert Nordier in 1999, with patches in 2006-2007). That's it.

18 Nov 2025 8:58pm GMT

After Gandi was bought up and started taking extortion level prices for their domains I've been looking for an excuse to migrate registrar. Last week I decided to bite the bullet and move to Porkbun as I have another domain renewal coming up. However after setting up an account and paying for the transfer for 4 domains, I realized their DNS services are provided by Cloudflare! I personally do not use Cloudflare, and stay far away from all of their products for various reasons.

18 Nov 2025 12:00am GMT

In my lifetime, there's been one ecosystem I deeply regret having missed out on: the Sun Microsystems ecosystem of the late 2000s. At that time, the company offered a variety of products that, when used together, formed a comprehensive ecosystem that was a fascinating, albeit expensive alternative to Microsoft and Apple. While not really intended for home use, I've always believed that Sun's approach to computing would've made for an excellent computing environment in the home. Since I was but a wee university student in the late 2000s living in a small apartment, I did not have the financial means nor the space to really test this hypothesis. Now, though, Sun's products from that era are decidedly retro, and a lot more approachable - especially if you have incredibly generous readers. So sit down and buckle up, because we've got a long one today. If you wish to support OSNews and longform content like this, consider becoming a Patreon or donating to our Ko-Fi. Note that absolutely zero generative "AI" was used in the writing of this article. No "AI" writing aids, no "AI" summaries, no ChatGPT, no Gemini search nonsense, nothing. I take pride in doing research and writing properly, without the "aid" of digital parrots with brain damage, and if there's any errors, they're mine and mine alone. Take pride in your work and reject "AI". The Ultra 45: the central hub In the early 2000s, it had already become obvious that the future of workstations lied not with custom architectures, bespoke processors, and commercial UNIX variants, but with standard x86, off-the-shelf Intel and AMD processors, and Windows and Linux. The writing was on the wall, everyone knew it, and the ensuing consolidation on x86 turned into a veritable bloodbath. In the '80s and '90s, many of these ISAs were touted as vastly superior x86 killers, but fast-forward a decade or two, and x86 had bested them all in both price and performance, leaving behind a trail of dead ISAs. Never bet against x86. Virtually none of the commercial UNIX variants survived the one-two punch of losing the ISA they were married to and the rising popularity of Linux in the workstation space. HP-UX was tied to HP's PA-RISC, and both died. SGI's IRIX was tied to MIPS, and both died. Tru64 was tied to Alpha, and both died. The two exceptions are IBM's AIX and Sun's Solaris. AIX workstations were phased out, but AIX is still nominally in development for POWER servers, but wholly inaccessible to anyone who doesn't wear a suit and has a massive corporate spending budget. Solaris, meanwhile, which had long been available on x86, saw its "own" ISA SPARC live on in the server space until roughly 2017 or so, and was even briefly available as open source until Oracle did its thing. As a result, Solaris and its derivative Illumos are still nominally in active development, but in the grand scheme of things they're barely even a blip on the radar in 2025. Never bet against Linux. During these tumultuous times, the various commercial UNIX vendors all pushed out systems that would become the final hurrahs of their respective UNIX workstation lines. DEC, then owned by HP, released its AlphaStation ES47 in 2003, marking the end of the road for Alpha and Tru64 UNIX. HP's own PA-RISC architecture and HP-UX met their end with the HP c8000 (which I own), an all-out PA-RISC monster with two dual-core processors running at 1.1GHz. SGI gave its MIPS line of machines running IRIX a massive send-off with the enigmatic and rare Tezro in 2003. In 2005, IBM tried one last time with the IntelliStation POWER 285, followed a few months later by the heavily cut-down 185, the final AIX workstation. And Sun unveiled the Ultra 45, its final SPARC workstation, in 2006. Sun was already in the middle of its transition to x86 with machines like the Sun Java Desktop System and its successors, the Ultra 20 and 40, and then surprised everyone by reviving their UltraSPARC workstation line with the Ultra 25 and 45, which shared most - all? - of their enclosures with their x86 brethren. They were beautiful, all-aluminium machines with gorgeous interior layouts, and a striking full-grill front, somewhat inspired by the PowerMac G5 of that era. And ever since the Ultra 45 was rumoured in late 2005 and then became available in early 2006, I've been utterly obsessed with it. It's taken almost two decades, but thanks to an unfathomably generous donation from KDE e.V. board member and FreeBSD contributor Adriaan de Groot, a very unique and storied Sun Ultra 45 and a whole slew of accessories showed up at my doorstep only a few weeks ago. Let's look back upon this piece of history that is but a footnote to most, but a whole book to me - and experience Sun's ecosystem from around 2006, today. First and foremost, I want to express my deep gratitude to Adriaan de Groot. Without him, none of this would have been possible, and I can't put into words how grateful I am. He donated this Ultra 45 to me at no cost - not even the cost of shipping - and he also shipped another box to me containing a few Sun Ray thin clients, completing the late 2000s Sun ecosystem I now own. Since the Ultra 45 was technically owned by KDE e.V. - more on that below - I'd also like to thank the KDE e.V. Board for giving Adriaan permission for the donation. I'd also like to thank Volker A. Brandt, who sent me a Sun Ray 3, a few Ultra 45 hard drive brackets, and some other Sun goodies. The Sun Ultra 45 De Groot sent me was a base model with an upgraded GPU. It had a single UltraSPARC IIIi 1.6Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, and the most powerful GPU Sun ever released for its SPARC workstation line, the Sun XVR-2500, a rebadged 3Dlabs Wildcat Realizm with

16 Nov 2025 9:27am GMT

The waydroid package prior to version 1.5.4-2 (including aur/waydroid) creates Python byte-code files (.pyc) at runtime which were untracked by pacman. This issue has been fixed in 1.5.4-3, where byte-compiling these files is now done during the packaging process. As a result, the upgrade may conflict with the unowned files created in previous versions. If you encounter errors like the following during the update:

error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/app_manager.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem

You can safely overwrite these files by running the following command: pacman -Syu --overwrite /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/\*__pycache__/\*

06 Nov 2025 12:00am GMT

The dovecot 2.4 release branch has made breaking changes which result in it being incompatible with any <= 2.3 configuration file. Thus, the dovecot service will no longer be able to start until the configuration file was migrated, requiring manual intervention. For guidance on the 2.3-to-2.4 migration, please refer to the following upstream documentation: Upgrading Dovecot CE from 2.3 to 2.4 Furthermore, the dovecot 2.4 branch no longer supports their replication feature, it was removed. For users relying on the replication feature or who are unable to perform the 2.4 migration right now, we provide alternative packages available in [extra]:

• dovecot23
• pigeonhole23
• dovecot23-fts-elastic
• dovecot23-fts-xapian

The dovecot 2.3 release branch is going to receive critical security fixes from upstream until stated otherwise.

31 Oct 2025 12:00am GMT