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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

LX 7G100 proves hype trumps performance:

Lisuan Tech often markets the LX 7G100 as a competitor to the GeForce RTX 4060. However, reviews have revealed that the LX 7G100 didn't hit the performance goal. Instead, it's more along the lines of a GeForce RTX 3060, one generation behind the target, and two generations behind the latest GeForce RTX 5060. The issue was that Lisuan Tech priced the LX 7G100 like a GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB; however, it seems the high price didn't impede its early adoption at all.

The LX 7G100 is only the beginning for Lisuan Tech, and June 18 will not only mark the highly anticipated restock of the Founders Edition but also serve as the official launch date for two new graphics cards: the LX Pro and the LX Ultra. The LX Pro specifically meets the demands of professional engineering applications, whereas the LX Ultra caters to cloud computing. Meanwhile, the LX Max, designed for creative professionals, has an uncertain launch date.

Lisuan Tech may be a startup in the graphics card market, but its leadership brings a wealth of experience and industry knowledge. Silicon Valley veterans Xuan Yifang, Kong Dehai, and Niu Yixin founded Lisuan Tech in 2021, all of whom had previously worked at the renowned but now-defunct S3 Graphics. It only took the company five years to put out a working graphics card that's competitive with models two generations behind. Everybody has to start from somewhere, and Lisuan Tech has a firm stepping stone.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

Nasa has released details of robotic landers, hopping drones and vehicles it aims to send to the Moon as part of US plans to build a lunar base.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin is one of several companies picked to build the machines.

The US wants to land Americans back on the Moon before President Donald Trump leaves office in 2029.

But most experts agree that Nasa's timeline is unrealistic.

"It would not surprise me at all if China gets there first," Dr Simeon Barber, Lunar Scientist at Open University, told BBC News, citing Nasa's setbacks in securing a craft that can land humans on the Moon.

What happens if China gets their first? Space Macau? Will they take all the good spots? After all I'm fairly sure that those websites that sells plots of lands on the moon are fake and the agreements will not hold up or be honored.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39228nxyr4o
https://www.nasa.gov/moonbase/

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AnonTechie writes:

An interesting essay on the Internet by Terry Godier

The internet you grew up on isn't dying. A commercial veneer glued on top of it is.
You have noticed that the internet is dying.

Twitter changed hands, changed names, and changed shape, and the version of it you knew is gone. Reddit went public. Google search now returns generated answers stapled to half a dozen ads. Instagram is bots making content for bots.

Discord servers you joined in 2019 have gone quiet. The blogs you read in 2012 redirect to parked domains. The forums where you learned what you know got bought, gutted, redesigned, and left to rot.

This is real. You are not imagining it.

The places you spent your younger years are gone or unrecognizable, and the places you use now are visibly straining under a flood of machine-generated text nobody asked for. There is a low ambient grief about it, and a faint guilt, something like: "I should be doing something. I should be somewhere else. I want the old thing back."

I want to tell you a thing that I think is true, and that I think will make you feel better.

[Source]: The Boring Internet

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/HP-Sponsoring-LVFS-Fwupd

That didn't take long. Mere days after Dell and Lenovo began sponsoring the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) as premiere sponsors in contributing $100k+ annually to this open-source firmware updating initiative, HP is also now a premiere sponsor.

Following LVFS calls for more sponsorship from the major OEMs/ODMs leveraging LVFS/Fwupd for delivering firmware updates to their Linux customers, more companies have been getting involved in sponsoring the project to help push the efforts forward for a better firmware updating story on Linux from system firmware to device/component firmware updates and peripherals.

Lead LVFS/Fwupd developer Richard Hughes of Red Hat announced today that HP is the third premier sponsor following Dell and Lenovo.

HP already supports LVFS/Fwupd on their hardware from some laptops like the ZBook Ultra G1a to different workstations like the Z6 G5 A and then some peripherals like USB docks. Hopefully this sponsorship leads to more HP devices seeing official LVFS/Fwupd support.

https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2026/05/20/lvfs-sponsorship-announcement-hp/

Some more great news: I'm pleased to announce that HP has also agreed to be premier sponsor for the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) as part of our sustainability effort.

With the industry support from HP (and our existing sponsors of Lenovo, Dell, Framework, OSFF and of course Linux Foundation and Red Hat) we can turbo-charge the growth of the LVFS even more. Thanks!

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Are we pilots or are we passengers? Aschbacher asks:

European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher has taken a swipe at NASA and US policy, while calling for autonomy in human spaceflight via an opinion post titled "Are we pilots or are we passengers?"

The May 18 post is emblematic of the hand-wringing within ESA over the last few years as NASA has lurched from plan to plan amid fluctuating priorities and funding. Aschbacher, it appears, has had enough.

"Europe has become too exposed to decisions beyond its control," he said.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman recently announced changes that would pause, and likely cancel, the Lunar Gateway space station project in favor of a Moon base. The decision, along with scrapping the over-budget and delayed Mars Sample Return mission, does not sit well with ESA, which had a hand in both. 

Aschbacher warned of the potential for dependence on third parties for programs including human spaceflight. ESA removed reliance on Russia for missions such as ExoMars, and turbulence in US space policy has given the agency pause for thought.

"Europe must decide whether it prefers to be dependent on others to send its explorers into space or to assume its role as a fully capable space power. As the head of the European Space Agency (ESA), I am convinced that autonomous human spaceflight is not a luxury. It is a necessary anchor for Europe to secure its freedom to unlock the scientific, economic, strategic and geopolitical benefits of space and to inspire a new generation to shape Europe's future."

In 2025, an agency insider referred to NASA as "an abusive spouse who could lash out at any moment in unpredictable ways." In 2026, Aschbacher's patience appears to be running out. 

"I'm glad," a source told The Register. "The US has fucked us around for too long."

Aschbacher and ESA would not put it so bluntly. However, one of ESA's strengths is also one of its weaknesses. The agency has 23 member states. Political and funding decisions are imminent: the ESA Council meets in June, the Intermediate Ministerial Council is in December, and a full Council at Ministerial level is due in 2028.

"If we started today," Aschbacher wrote, "it would still take us many years to build autonomous capability – we must act quickly. The cost of inaction would far outweigh the necessary investment."

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Researchers have visualized mosquito flight behavior for the first time, which could improve mosquito-control strategies:

After watching hundreds of mosquitoes buzzing around one of their colleagues and collecting 20 million data points, Georgia Tech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have created a mathematical model that predicts how and where female mosquitoes will fly to feast on humans.

The new study is the first to visualize mosquito flight patterns and provides hard data for improving capture and control strategies. In addition to being a nuisance, mosquitoes transmit diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and Zika, which cause more than 700,000 deaths every year.

The researchers also designed an interactive, public website to show the paths and behaviors.

The team used 3D infrared cameras to see how the insects moved around inanimate objects based on visual cues and carbon dioxide. Then they put a person in a chamber, dressed him in various shades of clothing, and tracked mosquito trajectories.

[...] Based on their data, the researchers said they don't think mosquitoes swarm because they're following the pack. Each appeared to pick up on the cues independently, then found themselves at the same place at the same time.

"It's like a crowded bar," said David Hu, a professor in Georgia Tech's George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biological Sciences. "Customers aren't there because they followed each other into the bar. They're attracted by the same cues: drinks, music, and the atmosphere. The same is true of mosquitoes. Rather than following the leader, the insect follows the signals and happens to arrive at the same spot as the others. They're good copies of each other."

The study included three experiments that varied visual cues and carbon dioxide. In the first, the researchers used a black sphere as a target. It attracted the mosquitoes, but only when they were flying toward the object. Once they arrived, they didn't stick around, often fluttering past.

When the researchers swapped the black target with something white and added carbon dioxide, mosquitoes slowly found the source, but only if they were nearby. Hu noticed the insects doing a "double take" before settling in around the source.

Introducing a black sphere and CO2 at the same time proved to be the most irresistible scenario: the mosquitoes swarmed, stayed, and attacked.

[...] Once he learned about their attraction to motionless clues, Zuo donned various outfits and stepped into a mosquito chamber. He dressed in all black, all white, or a combination.

Zuo stretched out his arms and let dozens of insects circle him as cameras captured their trajectories. The data was sent to MIT, which determined the mostly likely rules that generated those flight patterns.

[...] The researchers hope their findings can lead to better pest control.

"One tactic is using suction traps that rely on steady cues, such as continuous CO2 release or constant light sources, to attract mosquitoes," Zuo said. "Our study suggests using them intermittently, then activating suction at intervals, might be better. That's because mosquitoes don't tend to stick around their target when both clues aren't used at the same time."

Journal Reference: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adz7063

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/california-moves-to-exempt-linux-from-its-upcoming-age-verification-law-after-backlash-over-forcing-operating-systems-to-collect-users-ages-amendment-proposed-by-the-same-lawmaker-who-wrote-the-original-law

Assembly Bill 1856 (AB 1856), currently moving through California’s legislature ahead of committee reviews in June, would amend the state’s earlier age-assurance law by excluding software distributed under licenses that allow users to “copy, redistribute, and modify the software.”

The amendment follows months of backlash after California passed the original Assembly Bill 1043 (AB 1043), formally known as the Digital Age Assurance Act, in late 2025. The law sought to shift online age verification away from individual websites and apps and down to the operating-system level instead.

Under the original law, operating systems would be required to request a user’s age or birth date during device setup, then expose an “age bracket signal” to apps and app stores. The law, which defined brackets such as “under 13,” “13–15,” “16–17,” and “18+,” immediately raised questions about how such requirements would apply to decentralized, open-source software ecosystems.

Unlike Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android, most Linux distributions are not centrally controlled commercial platforms. Many are community-run projects maintained by volunteers, often without user accounts, telemetry systems, or even formal corporate ownership structures. Critics argued the law’s wording was so broad that it could technically force open-source operating systems to become age-verification platforms.

Privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized the legislation as invasive and warned it could create infrastructure for broader identity tracking online. Linux developers also questioned how California could realistically enforce such requirements on infinitely forkable open-source software projects.

The controversy became particularly heated after reports suggested platforms like SteamOS could still fall under the law due to their ties to proprietary application ecosystems. Valve

AB 1856 does not repeal the original Digital Age Assurance Act. Instead, it narrows the definition of who qualifies as an “operating system provider” under the law. Commercial platforms with proprietary app ecosystems could remain subject to California’s age-assurance requirements even if most open-source Linux distributions are ultimately exempted.

California Assembly Member Buffy Wicks introduced the amendment on February 11, 2026. However, the open-source exemption language appeared in later revisions that began drawing attention across Linux and privacy communities. The latest version is dated May 18, 2026, and as of May 19, 2026, the bill was read a second time and ordered to third reading.

Original Submission

Researchers Issue Warning About using WiFi routers as surveillance tech

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://gizmodo.com/researchers-issue-warning-about-tech-that-could-turn-every-router-into-a-potential-means-for-surveillance-2000763181

Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany say ordinary WiFi networks can be used to identify people with an eerie amount of accuracy.

In a study, the researchers describe using beamforming feedback information (BFI) and machine learning models to identify people walking within a network's range. The team found that this BFI-based technique was able to infer a person's identity with 99.5% accuracy. They presented their findings at the ACM's Conference on Computer and Communications Security last November.

Researchers Identify People Through Ordinary Wi-Fi Routers With 99.5% Accuracy

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/researchers-identify-people-through-ordinary-wi-fi-routers-with-99-percent-accuracy

The system, called BFId, requires no specialized hardware, no access to the target Wi-Fi network, and works even if the person being tracked isn't carrying a wireless device. The team tested the attack on 197 participants, the largest dataset ever used in Wi-Fi-based identification works, and plans to present its findings at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) in Taipei.

BFId exploits a different data source: beamforming feedback information (BFI). Introduced in Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), beamforming allows access points to steer transmissions toward specific clients. To do this, connected devices periodically measure the wireless channel and send compressed feedback back to the router, which is then broadcast unencrypted on the MAC layer, meaning any Wi-Fi adapter set to monitor mode can capture it passively.

A single eavesdropping device can record BFI from every client on a network simultaneously, capturing multiple perspectives of any person in the area. CSI-based attacks, by contrast, only capture one perspective per malicious node.

The researchers found that BFI substantially outperformed CSI in identification accuracy despite being a lossy, lower-resolution derivative of CSI data. On the same 170-person subset, BFI achieved 99.5% accuracy compared to 82.4% for CSI. The paper attributes this to BFI's compression acting as a form of noise filtering, and to higher spatial resolution, with each BFI data point containing 740 features versus 212 for CSI.

The team tested several potential mitigations, such as reducing the frequency of beamforming reports, which had minimal effect on BFI accuracy, even at heavily degraded sample rates. Encrypting BFI transmissions would require changes to the Wi-Fi standard and could break backward compatibility with existing devices.

"The technology is powerful, but at the same time entails risks to our fundamental rights, especially to privacy," Professor Thorsten Strufe from KASTEL, KIT's cybersecurity institute, said in a press release published on Science Daily.

The researchers noted that IEEE published the 802.11bf amendment in 2025, which formally standardizes Wi-Fi sensing for applications like presence detection and environment monitoring. The team argues the standard lacks adequate privacy protections and is calling for safeguards to be added before Wi-Fi sensing becomes widely deployed.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

5 ways Pope Leo says AI Could Warp Humanity

jelizondo writes:

Axios reports on the latest papal encyclical:

Pope Leo XIV is warning that the artificial intelligence race could become a new Tower of Babel — a dazzling human achievement that concentrates power, weakens truth and turns people into data points.

The long-awaited document, Magnifica Humanitas ("Magnificent Humanity"), signals that the Vatican is aggressively positioning itself as a central moral authority in the global tech debate.

Leo gave the following warnings:

AI can erode human judgment by offering instant answers that weaken creativity, discernment and the patience needed to seek truth.

AI can simulate care without relationship, making vulnerable users mistake artificial empathy for genuine human connection.

AI can deepen inequality because data, computing power and regulatory influence are concentrated among a small number of actors.

AI can destabilize democracy by amplifying disinformation and blurring the line between fact and fiction.

AI can make war easier by speeding up lethal decisions and distancing humans from responsibility. Leo's starkest line: "No algorithm can make war morally acceptable."

What they're saying: "Pope Leo has announced himself as one of the leading figures in AI ethics now with this document," Meghan Sullivan, director of Notre Dame's Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, tells Axios.

What would you add (or substract) from the point made by the Pope?

"c0lo" writes:

Power prices to fall for most customers, with bigger drops for businesses:

Surging levels of renewable energy and better reliability from coal-fired generators are set to give consumers a break, with benchmark power prices to fall up to 10 per cent for consumers and more for small businesses.

In what will be welcome news for power users weary from years of big tariff hikes, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has decided to cut the default market offer (DMO) in several states.

The offer acts as a safety net by setting the maximum, or ceiling, price retailers can charge affected customers.

Fewer than one in 10 households are on a default offer, but experts say they are a key reference by which all other power prices are measured.

Power prices will fall by up to 7.7 per cent in New South Wales, 10.7 per cent in south-east Queensland, and 1.1 per cent in South Australia.

Some customers in South Australia, however, will see an increase of 1.4 per cent.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said the price drops were proof that the growing amount of renewable energy in the grid was gaining momentum.

"We've just hit 50 per cent renewables, and renewables are the cheapest form of energy, and that puts downward pressure on prices," he said.

The falls come amid changes to the regulated pricing system, which now includes flat-rate tariffs and time-of-use charges, which vary during the day.

As well as this, Mr Bowen said the AER had stripped out unnecessary costs that could be recovered from consumers through the default offers.

"We reformed the default market offer to really make sure that only the absolute necessary prices or costs are included, [for example] very minimal allowances for energy companies to go and get new customers," he told AM.

"With a lot of pressure on energy costs, we looked at this and said it was very hard to justify [these sorts of costs] so took them out."

The range in prices is due to some people being on a flat rate, while others are on a time-of-use tariff, which changes throughout the day.

But small businesses in all three regions will see much bigger falls in their power bills, down as much as 12.8 per cent in South Australia, 14 per cent in south-east Queensland, and as much as 20.9 per cent in New South Wales.

In Victoria, which is covered by a separate regulatory regime, benchmark prices will fall by 5 per cent from mid-year under a decision by the Essential Services Commission.

AER chair Clare Savage said today's outcome reflected easing cost pressures in parts of the electricity supply chain.

hubie writes:

From insects to birds to mammals, communication signals follow a common tempo:

Animal communication can look wildly different — flashing lights, chirping calls, croaking songs and elaborate dances. But new research from Northwestern University suggests many of these signals share a surprising feature: They repeat at nearly the same tempo.

In a new study published in journal PLOS Biology, Northwestern scientists found that communication signals across a wide range of species tend to repeat at about 2 hertz, or roughly two beats per second.

The researchers propose this tempo might reflect a shared biological constraint. Animal brains, including humans, may be naturally tuned to process signals arriving at that pace. In other words, two beats per second may be a rhythmic "sweet spot" that enables brains to detect signals more easily and process communication more efficiently.

Understanding this potentially universal tempo could help scientists better interpret animal signaling and social behavior across species. The findings also hint that human perception of rhythms, including beats in popular music and the cadence of speech, may arise from the same neural timing principles found throughout nature.

"There seems to be an abundance of organisms signaling or communicating at a relatively narrow band of tempos," said Northwestern's Guy Amichay, who led the study. "They all seem to stay around 2 or maybe 3 hertz. In principle, they could communicate at other rhythms. Physically, there is nothing preventing them from communicating at, say, 10 hertz, yet they do not. To explain this phenomenon, we propose that this tempo of 2 hertz might be easier to understand because it resonates with your brain. It resonates with the human brain, firefly brain, sea lion brain, frog brain and so on."

"There's a somewhat subtle point here: we suspect that getting the 'carrier' signal in the right tempo range is key to communicating efficiently," said Northwestern's Daniel M. Abrams, the study's senior author. "It might not be that the tempo itself conveys any information, but it just serves as a baseline for getting attention, with actual content sent on top of it like musical notes following along with the beat in a song."

[...] Despite enormous differences in body sizes, habitats and communication methods, the team found that many species repeat signals within a narrow range of roughly 0.5 to 4 hertz (1 to 4 beats per second). The pattern spans animals that communicate through sound, light or movement, suggesting a common underlying principle.

"If you try to catch a firefly, it panics and flickers much faster," Amichay said. "Biomechanically, they are able to signal faster. So, we wondered if there might be a deeper reason why very different systems signal at this tempo and not any other tempo."

[...] According to Amichay, musicologists have long noted that popular songs cluster around 120 beats per minute, which is exactly 2 hertz.

"That rhythm fits our body; it fits our limbs," he said. "We walk roughly at 2 hertz, so it's easy for us to dance to music that's 2 hertz. Of course, more experimental music can have drastically different beats. But if you turn on the radio and hear Taylor Swift — that's often 2 hertz."

[...] "It's tempting to think there's a deeper connection here — that maybe we're all on the same shared wavelength," Amichay said. "But we're still exploring what this might mean."

Journal Reference: Amichay G, Balasubramanian V, Abrams DM (2026) A widespread animal communication tempo may resonate with the receiver's brain. PLoS Biol 24(4): e3003735. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003735

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/vast-space-seeks-to-diversify-by-building-satellites-as-well-as-space-stations/

As part of its plan to develop a private space station, Vast Space built and then launched a small demonstration spacecraft in early November. This vehicle then completed dozens of test objectives with flying colors before making a successful de-orbit three months later.

The mission, which tested power, propulsion, tracking, and a multitude of other technologies needed for Vast's Haven-1 space station, was evidently so successful that the company is ready to use its spaceflight capabilities for other purposes. The Long Beach, California-based company announced Tuesday that it plans to begin selling high-powered satellite buses.

"Every single successful space company is diversified in its products," said Max Haot, chief executive of Vast Space, in an interview. "So for us it really was a question of when, not if."

The company's first offering is a 15 kW-class satellite bus capable of supporting a variety of demanding missions. Each satellite is about 3 meters long and 4 meters tall, with a mass of 700 kg and payload capacity of at least 350 kg. They will have a design lifetime of five years and be intended to operate in areas ranging from low-Earth orbit out to lunar orbit. Vast aims to serve a variety of customers, from telecommunications to observation to data services. Haot added that Vast also plans to offer an NVIDIA Space-1 Vera Rubin Module to support orbital data center inferencing needs.

The Vast satellite bus—essentially a backbone providing power, propulsion, and navigation for various payoads—will be based largely on technology ported over from the company's Haven-1 space station, which is due to launch for the first time next year as the world's first private space station. However there will be some new elements needed for the satellite, and Haot said Vast is already moving forward with in-house development of electric propulsion and a deployable solar array for the satellite.

Vast has already signed a customer for four satellites, with an option to purchase up to 200 additional satellites. Haot said the company is targeting a launch of at least 10 Vast Satellites in the fourth quarter of 2027.

With this new product line, Vast is entering an increasingly crowded market. Historically, in the United States, a handful of large companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Maxar, and Sierra Space have manufactured medium and large satellites. Typically these were costly and often bespoke designs that cost tens to often hundreds of millions of dollars.

But a few trends have changed the landscape in recent years. The US government's Space Development Agency has signaled that it prefers proliferated constellations—many satellites spread out present less of a concentrated target than a few larger and more expensive satellites. With the Falcon 9 rocket's increased cadence, as well as rideshare missions, it became easier and sometimes cheaper to get smaller and medium-size satellites into orbit.

This has led to an influx of venture capital to back a new generation of companies seeking to build less expensive, more modular satellites that could fill a variety of purposes. There are several prominent, relatively new entrants in this area including K2 Space, Rocket Lab, True Anomaly, Blue Canyon, and Millennium Space Systems.

Haot said most of these companies are still emerging, with products that are not yet mature. In other words, he believes that if Vast Space can execute, it could become a market leader, especially with applications that are power-hungry. Vast has already invested $1 billion in facilities for spacecraft manufacturing, including clean rooms, which can be used for space stations as well as satellites, he said.

The number of satellites in space has exploded in recent years, largely due to the rapid expansion of SpaceX's Starlink constellation. For decades the total number of satellites orbiting Earth numbered about 4,000, but in the last five years that number has grown to about 14,000.

This is just the beginning. By some estimates, in another decade, there will be approximately 500,000 satellites in orbit for the purpose of communications, Earth observation, orbital data centers, and other applications.

Haot expects that about 90 percent of these will be satellites built by SpaceX, Amazon, Blue Origin, or other major players. But even 10 percent of that number, if available to commercial satellite bus manufacturers, would represent 50,000 satellites for Vast and other companies to compete for.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

'Star Wars' used to be the ultimate theatrical experience, but have years of Disney+ spin-offs dulled its multiplex appeal?

Remember "Meet Joe Black", Brad Pitt's remake of '30s drama "Death Takes a Holiday"? What about Bruce Willis's military drama "The Siege"? Or even Adam Sandler's American football comedy "The Waterboy"? They're rarely talked about now, but for a brief period in fall 1998, these three movies — along with Pixar's "A Bug's Life" — came to unexpected prominence in the lives of "Star Wars" fans.

With anticipation for "The Phantom Menace", George Lucas's first big-screen excursion to the Star Wars galaxy in 16 years, comfortably exceeding fever pitch, these films provided an unlikely route back to a galaxy far, far away. Knowing that the first "Episode I" teaser was attached to prints across the States, many "Star Wars" fans bought tickets to these Earth-bound movies, watched a certain red-hot trailer, and then walked out before the feature presentation had even begun.

[...] Yes, it's fair to say that the generations of moviegoers who'd queued around the block to watch the original trilogy in theaters or on VHS — as well as embracing the Special Edition theatrical re-releases in 1997 — were kind of excited about Darth Vader: The Early Years.

How Disney and Lucasfilm must be hoping they can recapture similar excitement ahead of "The Mandalorian and Grogu"'s multiplex debut this month. It may be easier said than done, however, especially with a report in Deadline suggesting that the movie is tracking for the worst opening weekend in "Star Wars" history.

[...] As Disney and Lucasfilm dragged their heels over a new movie, the streamer subsequently became the place to go for new "Star Wars" "content, with "The Book of Boba Fett", "Obi-Wan Kenobi", "Andor", "Ahsoka", "The Acolyte" and "Skeleton Crew" all following in "The Mandalorian"'s footsteps, to varying degrees of success. In the last six-and-a-half years, there have been more hours of live-action "Star Wars" TV than 11 movies had generated in the previous four decades.

kolie writes:

On May 19, 2026 -- Google I/O day -- Google pushed a mandatory, silent auto-update to all users of Antigravity, its six-month-old AI coding platform. When developers returned to their machines, their Integrated Development Environment (IDE) had been replaced with a standalone agent chat interface. No code editor. No file browser. No terminal. No extensions.

Antigravity launched in November 2025 as a free, Visual Studio Code-based IDE with a deeply integrated AI agent. It supported Remote Secure Shell (SSH), Development Containers, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and the full VS Code extension ecosystem. Google's own launch announcement described it as offering "a state-of-the-art, AI-powered IDE equipped with tab completions and inline commands for the synchronous workflow you already know" alongside its agent capabilities. The 2.0 update replaced that product with a multi-agent orchestration interface.

The installer bug. The 2.0 installer deposited its files into the same directory as the existing IDE. Electron applications load resources/app.asar before resources/app/ regardless of which executable is launched. By dropping its app.asar next to the IDE's existing files, the 2.0 installer caused both Antigravity.exe and Antigravity IDE.exe to silently launch the agent chat interface. An independent technical analysis on Hacker News diagnosed it:

Not an Electron bug. Location-based loading is documented behavior. This is a packaging mistake in Google's 2.0 installer assuming two separate Electron products can share an install directory.

Data loss. Google split the application's data directories without migrating user data or issuing any notice. Chat histories, session context, extensions, and workspace settings stored in %AppData%\Roaming\Antigravity were invisible to the new app, which reads only from %AppData%\Roaming\Antigravity IDE. piunikaweb.com documented the directory split. Recovery required eight manual steps: killing processes, backing up AppData folders, completely uninstalling both applications, downloading the IDE from a link buried at the bottom of the download page, and copying data between the two directories.

What is missing from the 2.0 standalone app. The new application does not include a code editor, file browser, integrated terminal, or extension support. Remote SSH is absent. Dev container support is not present. WSL support is broken: the required server binary, Antigravity-reh.tar.gz, was not published to Google's Content Delivery Network (CDN) at launch. Reddit user u/MarcSB1 documented the failed download URLs; u/ScythDreame confirmed: "Antigravity IDE 2.0.1 didn't publish the server binary for Remote-WSL -- 404 on the Google CDN. It is a bug on Google's side." The Google AI Developers Forum independently corroborated this.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/public-sector/2026/05/20/ai-sackings-reach-new-zealand-which-will-use-it-to-eject-14-percent-of-government-staff/5243076

The wave of layoffs attributable to the adoption of AI has washed up on the shores of New Zealand, which has announced an overhaul of its public service that will see the technology become a "basic expectation" for government agencies and help to make it possible to sack 9,000 staff - about 14 percent of current headcount.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced the job cuts yesterday, in a speech that saw her bemoan the fact that New Zealand's government comprises 39 departments and ministries, and compared that to the 16 in Australia and 24 in the UK.

She characterized the nation's public service as "scared of AI, slow to move to the cloud" and said it operates a "complex and fragmented set of overlapping IT solutions."

"Our government is as frustrated as you are by the fragmentation and silos, the complexity, the status-quo thinking and the dangerously slow take up of digital and AI technologies," she added.

Aotearoa's answer is to task its Chief Digital Officer "to embed AI deployment as a basic expectation for all public entities."

Minister Willis mentioned a "recent trial of an AI scribe tool in hospital emergency rooms which has reduced the amount of time clinicians have to spend on file notes and increased the time they spend with patients" as an example of the sort of thing she hopes to replicate.

She said the planned overhaul will therefore "reduce the number of government departments, increase the use of AI and other digital tools, and deliver significant savings."

The government plans to cap departmental budgets and says that combined with redundancies it will save NZ$2.4 billion ($1.4 billion) over four years – less than one percent of all core government spending.

Plenty of tech companies have made substantial redundancies that they justify as necessary to create an appropriate workforce for the age of AI, an explanation we've seen deployed to explain deep cuts at Cisco, Cloudflare, Atlassian, Meta, and Arctic Wolf.

Few governments have done likewise, but one early high-profile effort – the Elon-Musk-led "Department of Government Efficiency" – hoped to use AI to improve government operations but left behind little evidence it had succeeded.

New Zealand is blessed with many resources and extraordinary natural beauty, but has a modest tax base – yet residents expect a high level of government services. Minister Willis's plan is therefore a very big bet on AI.

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