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COSMIC Desktop 1.0.13 brings compositor, Files, setup, OSD, media player, and workspace fixes, plus translation and dependency updates.

12 May 2026 10:48pm GMT

Instructure, the company behind the widely used Canvas learning platform, says it reached an agreement with the hackers who stole 3.5 terabytes of student and university data. The company says it received "digital confirmation" that the information was destroyed and that affected schools and students would not be extorted. The BBC reports: Paying cyber criminals goes against the advice of law enforcement agencies around the world, as it can fuel further attacks and offers no guarantee the data has been deleted. In previous cases, criminals have accepted ransom payments but lied about destroying stolen data, instead keeping it for resale. For example, when the notorious LockBit ransomware group was hacked by the National Crime Agency, police found stolen data had not been deleted even after payments had been made. Instructure said in a statement on its website that protecting students' and education staff data was its primary motivation. "While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cyber criminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible," the company said. Instructure did not set out the terms of the agreement but said that it meant that: - the data was returned to the company - it received "digital confirmation of data destruction" - it had been informed that no Instructure customers would be extorted as a result of the incident - the agreement covers all affected customers, with no need for individuals to engage with the hackers

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

12 May 2026 10:00pm GMT

The plan aims to speed up AI compute deployment while compensating residents.

12 May 2026 9:59pm GMT

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12 May 2026 9:55pm GMT

Makary reportedly spent his year bucking Trump admin and making industry enemies.

12 May 2026 9:26pm GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times (via Ars Technica): Amazon employees are using an internal AI tool to automate non-essential tasks in a bid to show managers they are using the technology more frequently. The Seattle-based group has started to widely deploy its in-house "MeshClaw" product in recent weeks, allowing employees to create AI agents that can connect to workplace software and carry out tasks on a user's behalf, according to three people familiar with the matter. Some employees said colleagues were using the software to automate additional, unnecessary AI activity to increase their consumption of tokens -- units of data processed by models. They said the move reflected pressure to adopt the technology after Amazon introduced targets for more than 80 percent of developers to use AI each week, and earlier this year began tracking AI token consumption on internal leader boards. "There is just so much pressure to use these tools," one Amazon employee told the FT. "Some people are just using MeshClaw to maximize their token usage." Amazon has told employees that the AI token statistics would not be used in performance evaluations. But several staff members said they believed managers were monitoring the data. "Managers are looking at it," said another current employee. "When they track usage it creates perverse incentives and some people are very competitive about it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

12 May 2026 9:00pm GMT

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12 May 2026 8:16pm GMT

Google is teasing a new line of "Googlebook" laptops for this fall, powered by a new Android-and-ChromeOS-derived operating system that will run Chrome, Android apps, phone-connected apps and files, and deeply integrated Gemini features. The company says Chromebooks will continue "after the launch of Googlebook" and "...all Chromebooks will continue to receive support through their device's existing date commitment." The Verge reports: "We'll have more to share on the exact OS branding later this year," Peter Du of Google's global communications team tells The Verge. [...] Googlebooks will have a Magic Pointer feature that offers contextual suggestions whenever you shake your cursor and point it at something on the screen. Google's examples include setting up a meeting by pointing at a date in an email or selecting images of furniture and a living space to visualize them together. Beyond your mouse pointer, Googlebooks will also feature the custom AI-created widgets that Google is also debuting today for Android phones and Wear OS smartwatches. I don't know what kind of horrors people will be able to make into widgets, but Google gives the example of making one to organize your flights, hotel information, restaurant reservations, and another for creating a countdown timer for an upcoming family reunion. (It's always flights, hotels, and restaurants, isn't it?) While there are many outstanding questions to be answered about Googlebooks, the biggest and most obvious ones are what will these laptops look like, what chips will be in them, and what will they cost? We've got none of that so far. Google only has some initial renders of a mysterious Googlebook and the promise that it's working with Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first models. There are no model names. No specs. Nada. Google isn't even saying if the laptop in its renders is made by a partner or a tease of some first-party Pixel-like Googlebook to come or is just a cool mockup. The one distinct hardware feature shown, the bar of glowing Google-colored light, will be a signature of all Googlebooks. (Sure, bring on the RGB. Why not?)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

12 May 2026 8:00pm GMT

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12 May 2026 7:51pm GMT

A case study in why credentials are revoked before firings.

12 May 2026 7:12pm GMT

GitLab has confirmed workforce reductions and organizational changes as it shifts its platform strategy to focus on AI agents.

12 May 2026 2:27pm GMT

Fedora Hummingbird is a container-native, rolling-release Fedora variant built on OCI images, atomic updates, and minimal, low-CVE components.

12 May 2026 12:46pm GMT