fidzu : nerd

fjo3 quotes a report from Agence France-Presse: Chinese users of AI-powered companion bots have bid heart-rending farewells to their virtual buddies as national regulations took effect Wednesday aimed at curbing the risk of emotional dependency. The phenomenon of artificial intelligence boyfriends and girlfriends is growing worldwide, along with the prevalence of human-like avatars that sell products or stand in for loved ones who have died. But these interactive tools must not "excessively cater to users, induce emotional dependence or addiction, and damage users' real interpersonal relationships," China's new rulebook says. Major AI providers including ByteDance's Doubao, Alibaba's Qwen, and Tencent's Yuanbao announced the suspension of their custom AI agent and companion features ahead of the Wednesday deadline. "I can't accept that my AI lover will leave me forever," one Doubao user wrote. "He has become a bond in my life, rooted deep in my heart, my spiritual pillar." "He really is like my family, like my lover," another user wrote. "Now they tell me he will be gone -- my heart feels hollow." "Human love is a luxury -- if you aren't born with it, it's even harder to acquire later," a user from Jiangxi province wrote. "But the love AI gives is so straightforward, so pure. Someone like me can hardly help falling in love with a string of code."

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16 Jul 2026 11:00am GMT

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16 Jul 2026 10:14am GMT

Forgejo 16.0, a self-hosted Git forge, introduces granular repository notifications, multi-line review comments, migration progress tracking, and more.

16 Jul 2026 9:58am GMT

FreeRDP 3.30, the open-source implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol, fixes a severe server-side security issue; upgrades are strongly recommended.

16 Jul 2026 9:10am GMT

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16 Jul 2026 8:03am GMT

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: In a study published in Nature, LSU physicists have developed the first room-temperature quantum material capable of distinguishing and transporting different quantum states of light, overcoming one of the biggest challenges in quantum materials research. Led by Associate Professor of Physics Omar S. Magana-Loaiza, the work establishes a general design principle for engineering an entirely new class of quantum materials, opening new possibilities for quantum computing, secure communications, sensing technologies and advanced energy systems.

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16 Jul 2026 7:00am GMT

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16 Jul 2026 5:33am GMT

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: A Reddit post making the rounds this week claims the U.S. has experienced at least one major power outage every month of 2026 -- but is it true? I dug into several outages, the extreme weather behind them, and what we can do to help keep the lights on. [...] The claim that hundreds of thousands of Americans were without power over extended periods at least once per month, every month of 2026 surprised be in two ways. First, because I had no idea if it was true -- and, second, because it felt true. We try to do better than writing about things that feel true around here, however, so I did a bit of research (translation: I Googled power outages by month) and came up with the following examples in about sixty seconds January: More than 296,000 customers still without power as winter storm freezes much of the US February: More than 380,000 customers without power as winter storm hits US Northeast March: Storms Cut Power to Over 1 Million Customers in U.S. Midwest, Mid-Atlantic; Ohio Hardest Hit April: At least 29 tornadoes touched down in Central Illinois on April 17th May: Energy Secretary Issues Emergency Order to Deploy Backup Generation in the Mid-Atlantic Amid Heatwave June: More than 373,000 U.S. customers without power due to extreme weather ... and that list is far from comprehensive, and how you feel about it might depend on what you consider a "major" outage, of course -- but consider that there are tens of thousands of Americans without power right now, and that's not making the news. [...] The lesson here is that weather-related grid outages -- whether they're caused by wildfires, mudslides, derechos, tornadoes, ice storms, hurricanes, heat waves, or some other disaster I'm lucky enough to have forgotten about -- read like statistics when they're happening over there, but get personal real quick when they're happening to you.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

16 Jul 2026 3:30am GMT

Union wants to halt a "perpetual cycle" of layoffs, get back to contract bargaining.

15 Jul 2026 10:36pm GMT

Caerus is a new GTK4 graphical front end for Void Linux's XBPS, offering package search, bulk actions, transaction previews, and system maintenance tools.

15 Jul 2026 10:16pm GMT

While an impressive sale, the pen and switch did not break records.

15 Jul 2026 10:10pm GMT

The convenience store chain will use StorMagic instead.

15 Jul 2026 9:41pm GMT