24 Jan 2026
Slashdot
Work-From-Office Mandate? Expect Top Talent Turnover, Culture Rot
CIO magazine reports that "the push toward in-person work environments will make it more difficult for IT leaders to retain and recruit staff, some experts say." "In addition to resistance, there would also be the risk of talent turnover," [says Lawrence Wolfe, CTO at marketing firm Converge]... "The truth is, both physical and virtual collaboration provide tremendous value...." IT workers facing work-from-office mandates are two to three times more likely than their counterparts to look for new jobs, according to Metaintro, a search engine that tracks millions of jobs. IT leaders hiring new employees may also face significant headwinds, with it taking 40% to 50% longer to fill in-person roles than remote jobs, according to Metaintro. "Some of the challenges CIOs face include losing top-tier talent, limiting the pool of candidates available for hire, and damaging company culture, with a team filled with resentment," says Lacey Kaelani, CEO and cofounder at Metaintro... There are several downsides for IT leaders to in-person work mandates, [adds Lena McDearmid, founder and CEO of culture and leadership advisory firm Wryver], as orders to commute to an office can feel arbitrary or rooted in control rather than in value creation. "That erodes trust quickly, particularly in IT teams that proved they could deliver remotely for years," she adds. The mandates can also create new friction for IT leaders by requiring them to deal with morale issues, manage exceptions, and spend time enforcing policy instead of leading strategy, she says. "There's also a real risk of losing experienced, high-performing talent who have options and are unwilling to trade autonomy for proximity without a clear reason," McDearmid adds. "When companies mandate daily commutes without a clear rationale, they often narrow their talent pool and increase attrition, particularly among people who know they can work effectively elsewhere." McDearmid has seen teams "sitting next to each other" who collaborate poorly "because decisions are unclear or leaders equate visibility with progress... Collaboration doesn't automatically improve just because people share a building." And Rebecca Wettemann, CEO at IT analyst firm Valoir, warns of return-to-office mandates "being used as a Band-Aid for poor management. When IT professionals feel they're being evaluated based on badge swipes, not real accomplishments, they will either act accordingly or look to work elsewhere." Thanks to Slashdot reader snydeq for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
24 Jan 2026 11:34pm GMT
Hacker News
Europe wants to end its dangerous reliance on US internet technology
24 Jan 2026 11:21pm GMT
Slashdot
Airlines Cancel Over 10,000 US Flights Due To Massive Winter Storm
"Airlines canceled more than 10,000 U.S. flights scheduled for this weekend," reports CNBC, "as a massive winter storm sweeps across the country, with heavy snow and sleet forecast, followed by bitter cold... set to snarl travel for hundreds of thousands of people for days." More than 3,500 flights on Saturday were canceled, according to flight tracker FlightAware. Many of Saturday's cancellations were in and out of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, with about 1,300 scrubbed flights, and at Dallas Love Field, with 186 cancellations, the majority of the schedule at each airport. American Airlines, based in Fort Worth, Texas, had canceled 902 Saturday flights, about 30% of its mainline schedule and Southwest Airlines canceled 571 flights, or 19%, according to FlightAware. U.S. flight cancellations nearly doubled to more than 7,000 [now up to 8,947] on Sunday when the storm is expected to hit the mid-Atlantic and Northeast U.S. As of midday on Saturday, most flights from Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina to Portland, Maine, were canceled. Major airline hubs were affected as far south as Atlanta, where Delta Air Lines is based.... American, Delta, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and other U.S. carriers said they are waiving change and cancellation fees as well as fare differences to rebook for customers with tickets to and from more than 40 airports around the country. The waivers include restrictive basic economy tickets. More than 80% of Sunday's flights at New York's LaGuardian Airport were cancelled, according to the article, at well as 90% of Sunday's flights at Viriginia's Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
24 Jan 2026 10:34pm GMT
Hacker News
ICE Releases RFI for User Tracking Tools
24 Jan 2026 10:23pm GMT
Linuxiac
Glibc 2.43 Released With ISO C23 Features and Performance Improvements

GNU C Library 2.43 introduces ISO C23 features, new memory APIs, math optimizations, Unicode 17 updates, and multiple security fixes.
24 Jan 2026 9:59pm GMT
Hacker News
I don't write code anymore – I sculpt it
24 Jan 2026 9:49pm GMT
Slashdot
Cheap Green Tech Allows Faster Path To Electrification For the Developing World
Slashdot reader Mr. Dollar Ton summarizes this article from Bloomberg: According to a new report from think tank "Ember", the availability of cheap green tech can have developing countries profit from earlier investment and skip steps in the transition from fossil to alternatives. India is put forward as an example. While China's rapid electrification has been hailed as a miracle, by some measures, India is moving ahead faster than China did when it was at similar levels of economic development. It's an indication that clean electricity could be the most direct way to boost growth for other developing economies. That's mainly because India has access to solar panels and electric cars at a much lower price than China did about a decade ago. Chinese investments lowered the costs of what experts call "modular technologies" - the production of each solar panel, battery cell and electric car enables engineers to learn how to make it more efficiently. The think tank's team even argues "that countries such as India, which don't have significant domestic fossil-fuel reserves, will become 'electrostates' that meet most of their energy needs through electricity generated from clean sources," according to the article: No country is an electrostate yet, [says Ember strategist Kingsmill Bond], but countries are increasingly turning to green electricity to power their economies. Nations that are less developed than India will see even more advantages as the cost of electricity technologies, from solar panels and electric vehicles to battery components and minerals, continue to fall. Neither India nor China is going electric purely to cut emissions or meet climate targets, says Bond. They're doing so because it makes economic sense, particularly for India, which imports more than 40% of its primary energy in the form of coal, oil and gas, according to the International Energy Agency. "To grow and have energy independence, India needs to reduce the terrible burden of fossil-fuel imports worth $150 billion each year," said Bond. "India needs to find other solutions...." [I]f countries like India find ways to grow electrotech manufacturing without absolute dependence on Chinese equipment, electrification could speed up further. With the U.S. and Europe continuing to add exclusions for Chinese-linked electrotech, countries like India will have an incentive to invest in their own manufacturing capacity. "We are probably at a moment of peak Chinese dominance in the electrotech system, as the rest of the world starts to wake up and realize that this is the energy future," he said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
24 Jan 2026 9:34pm GMT
Linuxiac
AerynOS Blocks LLM Use, Citing Ethical Training Data and Environmental Costs

AerynOS has revised its Contributing guidelines to reject AI-generated submissions, including code, docs, issues, and artwork.
24 Jan 2026 9:11pm GMT
GIMP 3.0.8 Delivers Bug Fixes Across Core, Tools, and Plugins

GIMP 3.0.8 image editor rolls out bug fixes, faster font loading, improved CLI behavior, and stability improvements across Linux, Windows, and macOS.
24 Jan 2026 7:46pm GMT
Ars Technica
Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware
Destructive payload unleashed on 10-year anniversary of Russia's attack on Ukraine's grid.
24 Jan 2026 7:08pm GMT
Did Edison accidentally make graphene in 1879?
Rice University chemists replicated Thomas Edison's seminal experiment and found a surprising byproduct.
24 Jan 2026 6:36pm GMT
A weird, itchy rash is linked to the keto diet—but no one knows why
While the rash has a clear link to ketones, the underlying mechanism remains elusive.
24 Jan 2026 12:00pm GMT