12 Feb 2026

feedSlashdot

With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet

Ring's Super Bowl ad on Sunday promoted "Search Party," a feature that lets a user post a photo of a missing dog in the Ring app and triggers outdoor Ring cameras across the neighborhood to use AI to scan for a match. 404 Media argues the cheerful premise obscures what the Amazon-owned company has become: a massive, consumer-deployed surveillance network. Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who left in 2023 and returned last year, has since moved to re-establish police partnerships and push more AI into Ring cameras. The company has also partnered with Flock, a surveillance firm used by thousands of police departments, and launched a beta feature called "Familiar Faces" that identifies known people at your door. Chris Gilliard, author of the upcoming book Luxury Surveillance, called the ad "a clumsy attempt by Ring to put a cuddly face on a rather dystopian reality: widespread networked surveillance by a company that has cozy relationships with law enforcement." Further reading: No One, Including Our Furry Friends, Will Be Safer in Ring's Surveillance Nightmare, EFF Says

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

12 Feb 2026 1:45am GMT

feedHacker News

Heroku is not dead

Comments

12 Feb 2026 12:20am GMT

feedArs Technica

Trump orders the military to make agreements with coal power plants

The administration's "reasoning" for doing so has little connection to reality.

12 Feb 2026 12:02am GMT

11 Feb 2026

feedArs Technica

El Paso airport closed after military used new anti-drone laser to zap party balloon

"I want to be very, very clear that this should've never happened."

11 Feb 2026 11:50pm GMT

feedHacker News

GPT-5 outperforms federal judges in legal reasoning experiment

Comments

11 Feb 2026 11:37pm GMT

Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass

Comments

11 Feb 2026 10:56pm GMT

feedSlashdot

Is Linux Mint Burning Out? Developers Consider Longer Release Cycle

BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Mint developers say they are considering adopting a longer development cycle, arguing that the project's current six month cadence plus LMDE releases leaves too little room for deeper work. In a recent update, the team reflected on its incremental philosophy, independence from upstream decisions like Snap, and heavy investment in Cinnamon and XApp. While the release process "works very well" and delivers steady improvements, they admit it consumes significant time in testing, fixing, and shipping, potentially capping ambition. Mint's next release will be based on a new Ubuntu LTS, and the team says it is seriously interested in stretching the development window. The stated goal is to free up resources for more substantial development rather than constant release management. Whether this signals bigger technical changes or simply acknowledges bandwidth limits for a small team remains unclear, but it marks a notable rethink of one of desktop Linux's most consistent release rhythms.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11 Feb 2026 10:45pm GMT

feedArs Technica

Once-hobbled Lumma Stealer is back with lures that are hard to resist

ClickFix bait, combined with advanced Castleloader malware, is installing Lumma "at scale."

11 Feb 2026 10:11pm GMT

feedSlashdot

A Hellish 'Hothouse Earth' Getting Closer, Scientists Say

The world is closer than thought to a "point of no return" after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said. From a report: Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish "hothouse Earth" climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed. At just 1.3C of global heating in recent years, extreme weather is already taking lives and destroying livelihoods across the globe. At 3-4C, "the economy and society will cease to function as we know it," scientists said last week, but a hothouse Earth would be even more fiery. The public and politicians were largely unaware of the risk of passing the point of no return, the researchers said. The group said they were issuing their warning because while rapid and immediate cuts to fossil fuel burning were challenging, reversing course was likely to be impossible once on the path to a hothouse Earth, even if emissions were eventually slashed. It was difficult to predict when climate tipping points would be triggered, making precaution vital, said Dr Christopher Wolf, a scientist at Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates in the US. Wolf is a member of a study team that includes Prof Johan Rockstrom at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

11 Feb 2026 9:00pm GMT

feedLinuxiac

Mesa 26.0 Released With RADV Ray Tracing Performance Gains

Mesa 26.0 Released With RADV Ray Tracing Performance Gains

Mesa 26.0 improves RADV ray tracing performance and updates multiple Vulkan drivers with new extensions and maintenance promotions.

11 Feb 2026 7:55pm GMT

Linux Mint January 2026 Report Highlights Record Donations

Linux Mint January 2026 Report Highlights Record Donations

Linux Mint raised $47,312 from 1,393 donors in December and is developing a new Cinnamon screensaver that will work natively on both X11 and Wayland.

11 Feb 2026 3:58pm GMT

Tails 7.4.2 Released with Emergency Kernel Fix

Tails 7.4.2 Released with Emergency Kernel Fix

Tails 7.4.2 is an emergency release that patches Linux kernel security flaws that could be chained to gain administrative access.

11 Feb 2026 3:10pm GMT