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upstart writes:

Google confirms AI search will have ads, but they may look different:

Google Ads are not going anywhere. Eventually, AI Search results on Google and likely other properties will have ads.

Google recently reported $56.57 billion in revenue from ads on Search and YouTube. You obviously can't expect ads to disappear from its search business.

Right now, Google has two AI features.

The first is AI Overviews, which appears at the top of the search results with answers scraped from publishers that Google does not want to pay.

The second and more powerful feature is AI Mode, which offers a ChatGPT-like personalized experience.

Google has already confirmed it plans to integrate services like Gmail and Drive into Google AI Mode to create a new personalized experience where AI knows everything about you.

In a podcast [28:12 --JE], Google's Robby Stein argued that the Google Ads business is not going anywhere, but it will evolve to support the new landscape.

Robby Stein says Google does not see them [ads] going away, but the experience could change.

"...you could take a picture of your shoes and say, 'Hey, these are my shoes. What are other cool shoes like this?' And we could answer that now or help provide you context with that. Or you could ask about this really cool restaurant question. It can be five sentences about all your allergies, issues with this. I have this big group. I want to make sure it's got light. What can I book in advance? And you can put that into Google now too," Robby argues while explaining where ads could fit into the AI experience.

"I think that's an opportunity for the future to be even more helpful for you, particularly in an advertising context. And so we started some experiments on ads within AI Mode and within Google AI experiences," he added.

At this point, it looks like Google wants you to use AI Mode for personal questions, and based on those questions, it could show personalized ads.

Google is already testing ads in AI Search in a limited form, and we'll likely learn more about its plans next year.

Related: Google's Gemini Deep Research Can Now Read Your Gmail and Rummage Through Google Drive

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/russian-hackers-abuse-hyper-v-to-hide-malware-in-linux-vms/

The Russian hacker group Curly COMrades is abusing Microsoft Hyper-V in Windows to bypass endpoint detection and response solutions by creating a hidden Alpine Linux-based virtual machine to run malware.

Inside the virtual environment, the threat actor hosted its custom tools, the CurlyShell reverse shell and the CurlCat reverse proxy, which enabled operational stealth and communication.

Curly COMrades is a cyber-espionage threat group believed to be active since mid-2024. Its activities are closely aligned with Russian geopolitical interests.

[...] The researchers found that in early July, after gaining remote access to two machines, Curly COMrades executed commands to enable Hyper-V and disable its management interface.

Microsoft includes the Hyper-V native hypervisor technology that provides hardware virtualization capabilities in Windows (Pro and Enterprise) and Windows Server operating systems, allowing users to run virtual machines (VMs).

"The attackers enabled the Hyper-V role on selected victim systems to deploy a minimalistic, Alpine Linux-based virtual machine. This hidden environment, with its lightweight footprint (only 120MB disk space and 256MB memory), hosted their custom reverse shell, CurlyShell, and a reverse proxy, CurlCat," Bitdefender explains in a report shared with BleepingComputer.

By keeping the malware and its execution inside a virtual machine (VM), the hackers were able to bypass traditional host-based EDR detections, which lacked network inspection capabilities that could detect the threat actor's command and control (C2) traffic from the VM.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.makeuseof.com/worn-out-keyboard-keys-reveal-more-than-you-think/

If you've been using the same keyboard for a while, you must have noticed some patterns coming up. That faded E key on your keyboard isn't just wear and tear, it's your fingerprint in plastic.

Deep cleaning your keyboard may be worth the effort, but it doesn't hide the massive amount of information your keyboard can give away. The worn-out keys on your keyboard know more about you than you think, and they can easily reveal that information.

What most people don't realize is that your keyboard doesn't deteriorate randomly. It's a direct reflection of how you use it and, by extension, of your digital life. If you're a writer cranking out articles for hours on end, your vowels are going to take the most beating. The letter E, the most frequently used letter in English, gets hammered so relentlessly that it is often the first casualty.

[...] Researchers have known for decades that typing patterns can reveal identities. Even all the way back in the 1860s, experienced telegraph operators realized they could recognize each other by everyone's unique tapping rhythm. The same concept applies to modern-day keyboards.

[...] Over time, the repeated friction of millions of keystrokes literally wears away the paint, leaving behind shiny, faded letters that give your keyboard that worn-out look. But it gets more interesting when you start looking at which keys wear out for different people.

For example, a programmer's keyboard will look entirely different from the one used by a writer. Their most used keys might be backspace, brackets, colons, and semicolons—the unglamorous tools of code. Meanwhile, the gamer's keyboard will show a disproportionate amount of wear on the WASD keys. These four keys are the most commonly used control keys for most games, and if you look at a keyboard a gamer has used for a while, you'll easily be able to tell the difference.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/bombshell-report-exposes-how-meta-relied-on-scam-ad-profits-to-fund-ai/

Internal documents have revealed that Meta has projected it earns billions from ignoring scam ads that its platforms then targeted to users most likely to click on them.

In a lengthy report, Reuters exposed five years of Meta practices and failures that allowed scammers to take advantage of users of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
[...]
Instead of promptly removing bad actors, Meta allowed "high value accounts" to "accrue more than 500 strikes without Meta shutting them down," Reuters reported. The more strikes a bad actor accrued, the more Meta could charge to run ads, as Meta's documents showed the company "penalized" scammers by charging higher ad rates. Meanwhile, Meta acknowledged in documents that its systems helped scammers target users most likely to click on their ads.
[...]
Internally, Meta estimates that users across its apps in total encounter 15 billion "high risk" scam ads a day. That's on top of 22 billion organic scam attempts that Meta users are exposed to daily, a 2024 document showed. Last year, the company projected that about $16 billion, which represents about 10 percent of its revenue, would come from scam ads.
[...]
"Hey it's me," one scam advertisement using Elon Musk's photo read. "I have a gift for you text me." Another using Donald Trump's photo claimed the US president was offering $710 to every American as "tariff relief." Perhaps most depressingly, a third posed as a real law firm, offering advice on how to avoid falling victim to online scams.

Meta removed these particular ads after Reuters flagged them, but in 2024, Meta earned about $7 billion from "high risk" ads like these alone, Reuters reported.
[...]
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters that its collection of documents—which were created between 2021 and 2025 by Meta's finance, lobbying, engineering, and safety divisions—"present a selective view that distorts Meta's approach to fraud and scams."
[...]
"We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don't want this content, legitimate advertisers don't want it, and we don't want it either," Stone said.

Despite those efforts, this spring, Meta's safety team "estimated that the company's platforms were involved in a third of all successful scams in the US," Reuters reported.
[...]
Eventually, Meta "substantially expanded" its teams that track scam ads, Stone told Reuters. But Meta also took steps to ensure they didn't take too hard a hit while needing vast resources—$72 billion—to invest in AI, Reuters reported.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Even with more info, web giant says agent can't be trusted to keep you healthy, wealthy, and wise

Google's Gemini Deep Research tool can now reach deep into Gmail, Drive, and Chat to obtain data that might be useful for answering research questions.

Gemini Deep Research is Gemini 2.5 Pro (presently) deputized as an agent, meaning it embarks on a multistep process to respond to a directive rather than spitting out an immediate response. Deep Research systems incorporate knowledge discovery, workflow automation, and research orchestration.

Google is not the only provider of such systems. OpenAI and Perplexity also offer deep research tools, and various open source implementations are also available.

"After you enter your question, it creates a multi-step research plan for you to either revise or approve," explained Dave Citron, senior director of product management for Google's Gemini service, in a blog post last year. "Once you approve, it begins deeply analyzing relevant information from across the web on your behalf."

Now Gemini Deep Research can, if allowed, access data in your Gmail, Drive (e.g. Docs, Slides, Sheets, and PDFs), and Google Chat for added context. If the data you have stored in Google Workspace might be relevant to your research question, granting Gemini access to that data may lead to better results.

There is precedent for this sort of data access among other AI vendors, since providing AI models with access to personal files and data tends to make them more useful – at the expense of privacy and security. Anthropic's Claude, for example, has web-based connectors for accessing Google Drive and Slack. Its iOS incarnation can access certain apps like Maps and iMessage. And Claude Desktop supports desktop extensions for access to the local file system.

Nonetheless, it's worth considering Google's expansive privacy notice for Gemini Apps. On the linked Google Privacy & Terms page, the company says it uses "publicly available information to help train Google's AI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Gemini Apps, and Cloud AI capabilities."

As the wording of that passage says nothing about private data, The Register asked Google to clarify. A company spokesperson confirmed that information available to Gemini via connected apps such as Gmail and Drive is not used to improve the company's generative AI.

upstart writes:

The once fearsome process killer is now a leaker of resources:

Microsoft's ability to add bugs in the most unexpected of places has continued into its latest update to Windows 11, which spawns multiple copies of Task Manager, sucking down resources you'd normally use Task Manager to kill.

The issue, which turned up in the non-security preview update for Windows 11 (KB5067036), manifests itself as multiple versions of the utility.

Close the process killer via the close button on the window, and then reopen it, and... a new process is spawned. While initially amusing, it can quickly consume resources, particularly for users (such as this writer) who are accustomed to using the Task Manager to terminate errant processes.

The previous incarnations of Task Manager, which reside in the background list, can be terminated with a single click of End Process, but it is disconcerting to see the list increase every time Task Manager is opened.

It's not clear precisely what is happening, but it might be connected to a fix rolling out in the update for Task Manager: "Some apps might unexpectedly not be grouped with their processes." If somebody were tinkering with Task Manager, we'd hope a thorough dose of testing would be administered afterward. But then again, this is Microsoft, and the company has a particular reputation when it comes to quality control, as many an administrator looking glumly at their Azure management portal this week will confirm.

[...] Over on X (formerly Twitter), the author of the original Task Manager, Dave Plummer, commented, "Code so good, it refuses to die!" It's unclear how much of Plummer's code remains in the current iteration of the Task Manager. We'd wager not much, since Plummer comes from an era at Microsoft when applications needed to be lean and mean, rather than buggy and bloated.

Plummer told El Reg, "You could always run the NT4 task manager, it still works! But it can only display the first 8 CPUs, then it wraps the others into those graphs. So if you have 16 cores, each graph represents TWO cpus.  But that it works at all is kinda neat. Other than that, not sure what they broke or why it went wrong! There's some code in Task Manager that causes it to hide when you press ESC instead of exiting, maybe they broke that!"

Original Submission

hubie writes:

UBC study finds that purposeful hand gestures can boost persuasiveness and perceived competence:

Words matter — but your hands might matter more, according to a new UBC study which found that purposeful hand gestures can make speakers appear more competent and persuasive.

The UBC Sauder School of Business research, analyzed 2,184 TED Talks using AI and automated video analysis. Researchers isolated more than 200,000 hand gestures into 10-second clips and compared them against audience engagement metrics, such as 'likes' on social media while controlling for factors like gender, occupation, language, video length and more.

The team also ran randomized experiments in which participants watched videos of sales pitches where speakers delivered identical scripts but varied their hand movements. Viewers then rated the speakers and the products being pitched.

The verdict: More hand movement can significantly boost impact — but not all gestures are created equal.

Researchers categorized gestures into types, including "illustrators," which visually depict spoken content, for example, demonstrating the size of a fish while describing it, and "highlighters," such as pointing to an object mentioned in the speech. They also examined random, unrelated movements and the absence of gestures.

Illustrators had the strongest effect, making speakers seem more knowledgeable and improving audience understanding. Highlighters and random gestures, however, showed little to no impact.

[...] According to Dr. Zhou, audiences interpret illustrative gestures as a sign of mastery. "If a person uses their hands to visually illustrate what they're talking about, the audience perceives that this person has more knowledge and can make things easier to understand," she said.

[...] "Sometimes we just move our hands without a purpose. It's a habit," said Dr. Zhou. "But if you pay more attention and understand the impact, it can make a big difference."

Journal Reference: Rizzo, G. L. C., Berger, J., & Zhou, M. (2025). EXPRESS: Talking with Your Hands: How Hand Gestures Influence Communication. Journal of Marketing Research, 0(ja). https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437251385922

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

A $5 billion bet on a failing technology?

In a move that defies the growing consumer rejection of electric vehicles, Hyundai has doubled down on its multi-billion dollar wager. The automaker has opened Georgia's first purpose-built EV training facility, a massive 89,000-square-foot center intended to churn out hundreds of workers for its adjacent Metaplant. This grand opening on November 5 in Ellabell comes at a moment of profound crisis for the electric vehicle industry, raising serious questions about the wisdom of investing in a technology the free market is already abandoning.

The Hyundai Mobility Training Centre, strategically located next to the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Bryan County, represents a colossal investment in the EV supply chain. The facility can train 824 workers simultaneously, preparing them for roles at the massive plant. Governor Brian Kemp celebrated the project, stating, "The Hyundai Mobility Training Center of Georgia will give thousands of people over the years the knowledge they need to benefit from this generational project."

[...] This massive push for EV workforce development stands in contrast to the reality unfolding across the automotive landscape. While Hyundai prepares to train thousands for EV assembly, Ford is reportedly on the verge of scrapping its flagship F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck. Hailed by CEO Jim Farley as a "modern Model T," the Lightning has become a symbol of EV failure, with demand described as horrendous and mounting EV losses totaling $13 billion since 2023.

Previously: Ford Will Lose $3 Billion on Electric Vehicles in 2023, It Says

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Analysis of data from ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft from the solar south pole region reveals a surprise: The magnetic field is carried towards the pole faster than expected:

In March, ESA's spacecraft Solar Orbiter had its first clear view of the Sun's south pole. A first analysis has now been published.

The Sun is governed by a strict rhythm. The magnetic activity of the Sun displays a cyclic variation, reaching a maximum approximately every eleven years. Two enormous plasma circulations, each in one solar hemisphere, set the pace for this rhythm thus defining the Sun's eleven-year cycle: near the surface the plasma flows carry the magnetic field lines from the equator to the poles; in the solar interior, the plasma flows back to the equator in a huge cycle spanning the entire hemisphere.

Important details of this solar "magnetic field conveyor belt" are still poorly understood. The exact processes at the Sun's poles are likely to be crucial. From Earth, scientists have only a grazing view of this region making it impossible to determine the properties of the magnetic field. Most space probes have a similarly limited perspective.

Since February 2020, ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been travelling in elongated ellipses around the Sun. In March of this year, it left for the first time the plane in which the planets – and almost all other space probes – orbit the Sun. From a trajectory tilted by 17 degrees, Solar Orbiter now for the first time has a better view of the Sun's poles.

In the new publication, which appears today in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers led by MPS analyze data from Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) and Extreme-Ultraviolet Imager (EUI). The PHI data are from March 21 of this year; the EUI data cover the period from March 16 to 24. The measurements provide information about the direction of plasma flows and the magnetic field on the solar surface.

The data reveal a refined picture of the supergranulation and magnetic network of the Sun at the south pole for the first time. Supergranules are cells of hot plasma, about two to three times the size of Earth, which densely cover the surface of the Sun. Their horizontal surface flows wash magnetic field lines to their edges, creating the Sun's magnetic network: a web of strong magnetic fields.

To the surprise of the researchers, the magnetic field is seen to drift toward the poles at approximately 10 to 20 meters per second, on average, almost as fast as their counterparts at lower latitudes. Previous studies based on the ecliptic-plane observations have seen much slower drifts of the magnetic field near the high polar latitudes. Their motion offers important clues about the Sun's global plasma and magnetic field circulation.

It is still unclear whether the Sun's global "magnetic conveyor belt" does truly not slow down near the poles. The data now published only show a brief snapshot of the entire solar cycle. Further observational data, ideally covering longer time periods, are needed.

Journal Reference: L. P. Chitta et al [OPEN] 2025 ApJL 993 L45 DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/ae10a3

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A bitter new drink swept through the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the early 1500s – and ignited one of the fiercest religious debates of the late-medieval Islamic world:

A new study, published in Darah: Journal of Arabian Peninsula Studies, explores how the arrival of coffee transformed the sacred landscape of the Hijaz. Drawing on chronicles, fatwas, poetry, and eyewitness travel accounts, historian Reda Asaad Sharif reveals how what is now a daily ritual was once denounced as a dangerous novelty — banned from marketplaces and even burned in the streets of Mecca.

Sharif traces coffee's journey from Abyssinia to Yemen, where Sufi mystics used it to stay awake for night-time dhikr (remembrance of God), before it reached Mecca around the year 1500 (AH 905). Its rapid popularity with pilgrims and townspeople provoked suspicion from conservative jurists. The very word qahwa — traditionally a poetic synonym for wine — cast a shadow over the new beverage.

According to Sharif, tensions came to a head in 1509 when Meccan scholars convened at the Mujāhidiyya hall near Bāb al-ʿUmra to debate coffee's legality. The chief Shāfiʿī judge Shaykh Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Nāṣir issued a fatwa permitting coffee, praising its ability to sharpen alertness for worship.

Opponents countered that it altered the mind; two witnesses even swore it was intoxicating. The Mamluk governor responded by ordering the arrest of coffee-sellers and the burning of their coffee husks.

In June 1511, the market inspector Khāʾir Beg enforced a sweeping ban, citing reports that people were gathering in coffeehouses "in a manner similar to taverns, where certain people gather over it, pawn their possessions, and partake in other activities that are forbidden."

Sharif notes that the dispute escalated to the top of the Mamluk state. Sultan Qānṣūh al-Ghūrī issued a decree declaring:

As for coffee, we have been informed that certain people drink it in a manner similar to wine, mixing intoxicants into it, singing to it with instruments, dancing, and swaying. It is well known that even the water of Zamzam, if consumed in such a manner, would be forbidden. Therefore, its consumption and its circulation in the markets must be prevented.

Violators were punished with "around ten lashes or more," and some were paraded through the market as a warning.

When the Ottomans replaced the Mamluks in 1517 they, too, tried to curb the spread of coffee. Several times during the 16th century orders were sent from Constantinople banning not only the drink but coffeehouses too, as they were accused of promoting immoral behaviour.

[...] Various scholars also criticized the Ottoman ban, noting that these authorities were more lenient to the use of wine and hashish. However, it was the sheer number of people who enjoyed coffee that would soon turn the tide in favour of the drink. By the end of the 16th century, the debate was practically over, not only in the Hijaz, but throughout the Middle East and Ottoman territories, with coffee and coffeehouses becoming very popular.

Journal Reference: Sharif, R. A. (2025). The Role of Hijaz Coffeehouses in Serving Pilgrims from Their Emergence until the Beginning of the 20th Century. [OPEN] Darah Journal of Arabian Peninsula Studies, 3(2), 214-255. https://doi.org/10.1163/29501768-20250203

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA confirms Voyager spacecraft has encountered a "wall of fire" at the edge of the Solar System:

After nearly half a century of traveling through space, NASA's Voyager mission has made another astonishing discovery — one that could redefine where our Solar System truly ends.

Voyager 1, launched 47 years ago, continues to send back data from farther away than any other human-made object. The spacecraft's long journey has allowed scientists to glimpse regions of space no probe has ever reached before, offering new insight into the outermost layers of the Solar System.

According to NASA, Voyager 1 has now encountered what researchers describe as a "wall of fire," a zone where temperatures reach between 30,000 and 50,000 kelvin — roughly 30,000 degrees Celsius. The finding was made as part of ongoing efforts to understand the boundary separating our Solar System from interstellar space.

Scientists have long debated where the Solar System actually ends. Some define it by the limits of the planets' orbits; others, by the reach of the Sun's gravitational and magnetic influence. The most accepted boundary is the heliopause — the outer edge of the heliosphere, the vast bubble created by the Sun's constant stream of charged particles, known as the solar wind.

"The Sun emits a constant stream of charged particles called the solar wind, which eventually travels past all the planets to a distance three times greater than that of Pluto before being stopped by the interstellar medium," NASA explains. "This forms a giant bubble around the Sun and its planets, known as the heliosphere."

The heliopause, then, is the frontier where the solar wind's strength fades and the interstellar medium begins. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have now crossed this line, making them the only spacecraft ever to venture into true interstellar space.

One of the most striking findings from this mission concerns the alignment of magnetic fields beyond the Solar System's edge. NASA said that Voyager 2's measurements confirm what Voyager 1 had detected years earlier — that the magnetic field just outside the heliopause runs parallel to the field inside the heliosphere.

"An observation made by Voyager 2 confirms a surprising result from Voyager 1: the magnetic field in the region just beyond the heliopause is parallel to the magnetic field inside the heliosphere," NASA noted. With data from both spacecraft, scientists can now confirm that this alignment is not a coincidence but a defining characteristic of the boundary region.

[Editor's Comment: I am confused - how did Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 pass through this wall of 30,000 Celsius? Can anyone explain please?--JR]

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.404media.co/fbi-tries-to-unmask-owner-of-infamous-archive-is-site/
https://archive.ph/TFqAx

The FBI is attempting to unmask the owner behind archive.today, a popular archiving site that is also regularly used to bypass paywalls on the internet and to avoid sending traffic to the original publishers of web content, according to a subpoena posted by the website. The FBI subpoena says it is part of a criminal investigation, though it does not provide any details about what alleged crime is being investigated. Archive.today is also popularly known by several of its mirrors, including archive.is and archive.ph.

The subpoena, which was posted on X by archive.today on October 30, was sent by the FBI to Tucows, a popular Canadian domain registrar. It demands that Tucows give the FBI the "customer or subscriber name, address of service, and billing address" and other information about the "customer behind archive.today."

"THE INFORMATION SOUGHT THROUGH THIS SUBPOENA RELATES TO A FEDERAL CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION BEING CONDUCTED BY THE FBI," the subpoena says. "YOUR COMPANY IS REQUIRED TO FURNISH THIS INFORMATION. YOU ARE REQUESTED NOT TO DISCLOSE THE EXISTENCE OF THIS SUBPOENA INDEFINITELY AS ANY SUCH DISCLOSURE COULD INTERFERE WITH AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION AND ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAW."

The subpoena also requests "Local and long distance telephone connection records (examples include: incoming and outgoing calls, push-to-talk, and SMS/MMS connection records); Means and source of payment (including any credit card or bank account number); Records of session times and duration for Internet connectivity; Telephone or Instrument number (including IMEI, IMSI, UFMI, and ESN) and/or other customer/subscriber number(s) used to identify customer/subscriber, including any temporarily assigned network address (including Internet Protocol addresses); Types of service used (e.g. push-to-talk, text, three-way calling, email services, cloud computing, gaming services, etc.)"

The subpoena was issued on October 30 and was reported Wednesday by the German news outlet Heise. The FBI, Archive.today, and Tucows did not respond to a request for comment.

The site, which is known by both archive.today, archive.is, or any number of other mirrors, started in the early 2010s but rose to prominence during the GamerGate movement.

GamerGaters would take snapshots of articles using archive.is in order to avoid sending traffic directly to the websites that published them.

They also used the service to document changes to articles. The site has since become a widely used archiving tool and internet resource, with hundreds of millions of pages saved. It is often used to bypass website paywalls, but it is also used to save snapshots of articles or government websites that are likely to change or be deleted. It is still also widely used to avoid sending traffic to the original publisher of content.

A 2013 blog post on archive.today explains that once a page has been archived, it is very difficult to delete, and that the only way to get a page deleted from the site is to email the webmaster there: "It would be ridiculous if the site which goal is to fight the dead link problem has dead links itself."

Very little is known about the person or people who work on archive.today, though there have been numerous attempts to identify the webmasters. The most interesting is this article on a site called Gyrovague, whose crawling through various archive.today blogs and web presences suggests "it's a one-person labor of love, operated by a Russian of considerable talent and access to Europe."

A FAQ page, which has not been updated since 2013, states the site "is privately funded; there are no complex finances behind it." A post on the site's blog from 2021 says "it is doomed to die at any moment."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://9to5linux.com/trinity-desktop-environment-r14-1-5-released-with-support-for-debian-trixie

This release also adds support for the openSUSE Leap 16, Ubuntu 25.10, Fedora Linux 43, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 operating systems.

Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) R14.1.5 desktop environment has been released for nostalgic KDE 3.5 users as the fifth maintenance release of the R14.1.x series with various new features and enhancements.

Coming almost six and a half months after Trinity Desktop Environment R14.1.4, the Trinity Desktop Environment R14.1.5 release introduces support for recent GNU/Linux distributions, including Debian 13 "Trixie", Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka), openSUSE Leap 16, Fedora Linux 43, and RHEL 10.

The nightly builds also support the upcoming Debian 14 "Forky" operating system (Debian Testing). Support for older distributions that are no longer supported has been dropped in this release, including Ubuntu 23.10 (Mantic Minotaur), openSUSE Leap 15.5, and Fedora Linux 41.

New features in Trinity Desktop Environment R14.1.5 include tiling support on multi-monitor setups, along with user-friendly tiling band settings, support for a paste command to the KRDC remote desktop client to let you send clipboard content as text, and FFmpeg 8.0 support to the K9Copy DVD backup and DVD authoring program.

This release also brings various aesthetic improvements and new blur options to the Kicker application menu, a mute toggle button to Codeine's volume slider, support for the unzip v6 date format to the Ark file archiver, and improvements to various TDE-branded artwork and a new Flying Konqi wallpaper.

Last but not least, Trinity Desktop Environment R14.1.5 adds a new option to center the pop-up menu when using the Baghira style, support for the libgpgme 2.0 library to the tdepim component, support for OpenLDAP 2.5, and smooth resize as the default selection at start to the KolourPaint paint program.

Of course, numerous bugs were fixed, so check out the full release notes for more details about the changes included in TDE R14.1.5, which you can download for Linux distros, as well as BSD and DilOS systems from the official website.

Has anybody here used it? Any comments?

- Previously:

Trinity Desktop Environment 14.1.4 Released

Original Submission

Life is full of negotiations. Techies focused on their career specialty may not be well prepared to negotiate, but at MIT there is a highly respected class - https://betterworld.mit.edu/spectrum/issues/spring-2025/unlocking-unique-negotiation-playbooks

Introduction to negotiation theory and practice. Applications in government, business, and nonprofit settings are examined. Combines a hands-on personal skill-building orientation with a look at pertinent tactical and strategic foundations.

Preparation insights, persuasion tools, ethical benchmarks, and institutional influences are examined as they shape our ability to analyze problems, negotiate agreements, and resolve disputes in social, organizational, and political circumstances characterized by interdependent interests.
[...]
Verdini [the Prof] received the Institute's first-ever interdisciplinary PhD in negotiation, communication, diplomacy, and leadership in 2015. "I had fallen in love with these four fields because they ask for a full presence," he says. "You can't negotiate or lead effectively if you don't know what you stand for, and you can only figure out what you stand for if you're committed in a lifelong process of self-discovery and curiosity about oneself and each other."
[...]
Maya Makarovsky '25 [...] immediately saw how the course had "altered brain chemistry" for the better. One example: in the midst of passionate, defensive arguments in a business meeting, she was able to steer the discussion back to a more productive place.

"Before speaking, I took a moment to think of how to create value through our different interpretations of reality, and how we could convert an adversarial critical stance to one of mutual respect to work towards progress," she says. "11.011 empowered me to step back in the heated situation and think about what I should prioritize for all stakeholders involved, which was the long-term success of the project rather than short-term ego defense."

MIT OpenCourseWare offers this class (free, online), but it appears to be taught by the previous prof, not the rockstar noted in the Spectrum link above https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/11-011-the-art-and-science-of-negotiation-spring-2006/

Are you able to negotiate effectively? How did you learn? Your AC submitter learned by working with a couple of family members who were very good at negotiating--but it wasn't efficient, it took many years for their negotiating skills to rub off.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://9to5linux.com/mx-linux-25-infinity-is-now-available-for-download-based-on-debian-13-trixie

This release introduces new Conky configurations, along with a default Conky configuration to change between 12h (AM/PM) and 24h for the locale.

The MX Linux 25 (codename Infinity) distribution has been released today for download based on the latest Debian 13 "Trixie" operating system stable series.

MX Linux 25 features the long-term supported Linux 6.12 LTS kernel series for the standard editions and a Liquorix-flavored Linux 6.15 kernel for the KDE Plasma edition and the Xfce-based AHS (Advanced Hardware Support) edition, offering both systemd and SysVinit flavors for the Xfce and Fluxbox editions.

Highlights of MX Linux 25 include support for Debian's new deb822 format for managing sources, a Qt 6 port of the MX Tools app, a new mx-updater tool that replaces the apt-notifier package updater tool, and Wayland by default for the KDE Plasma edition.

This release also features an updated installer that now includes a function to help "replace" an existing Linux installation and support for 64-bit UEFI Secure Boot installations. Moreover, MX Linux 25 introduces systemd-cryptsetup on the systemd-based ISOs to improve support for encrypted /home partitions.

New Conky configurations have been added as well in this release, along with a default Conky configuration, allowing users to change between 12h (AM/PM) and 24h for the locale, depending on the 12h/24h time display. MX Linux 25 also updates to the mx-ease and mx-matcha themes.

The Xfce edition got an improved Whisker Menu that has been updated to the new settings format. On the other hand, the KDE Plasma edition received root actions and other service menus for the Dolphin file manager, while TLP has been removed in favor of the power-profiles-dameon to fix an issue with the power profile widget.

The Fluxbox edition received many new configuration options, a revised panel configuration, revised root-level menus, revamped "appfinder" configurations for the Rofi tool, adjustments to the default toolbar configurations and the default styles, and Audacious as the default audio player instead of DeaDBeeF.

Among other changes, the Nvidia-installer (ddm-mx) received a fallback mode for the NVIDIA developer repository function and enhanced compatibility with Wayland, while the mx-updater utility was improved to make "automatic" updates work as expected.

MX Linux 25 is available for download right now from the official website as Xfce, KDE Plasma, and Fluxbox editions featuring the Xfce 4.20, KDE Plasma 6.3.6, and Fluxbox 1.3.7 graphical environments.

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