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upstart writes:Moltbook lets 32,000 AI bots trade jokes, tips, and complaints about humans:

upstart writes:With virtually no content and limited benefits, 8K TVs were doomed:

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNU-Hurd-In-2026

An Anonymous Coward writes:According to a research report authored by investment bank TD Cowen and seen by CIO magazine, Oracle may "cut 20,000 to 30,000 jobs" and sell its healthcare SW division, Cerner, in order to fund their AI datacenter buildout:https://www.cio.com/article/4125103/oracle-may-slash-up-to-30000-jobs-to-fund-ai-data-center-expansion-as-us-banks-retreat.htmlAccording to the article, "multiple US banks have pulled back from Oracle-linked data-center project lending," which has "[pushed] borrowing costs to levels typically reserved for non-investment grade companies." Furthermore, "Oracle has already tapped debt markets heavily... and US banks are increasingly reluctant to provide more."Two analysts interviewed in the article have differing views. Sanchit Vir Gogia, of Greyhound Research, views Oracle cloud contracts as a "shared infrastructure risk," stating, "If they can't fund it, they can't build it. And if they can't build it, you can't run your workloads." Franco Chiam of ICD Asia/Pacific has a more optimistic take on Oracle's finances, pointing to "cloud infrastructure revenue growing 66% year over year... and GPU-related infrastructure up 177%"I'm personally wondering about where all that revenue for GPU-related infrastructure comes from. If we are in an AI bubble, can demand be sustained?Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

Snotnose writes:What do you do when it's time to upgrade an ancient system? Put an image in an emulator and see what it does. But what if the program requires a hardware dongle on the printer port? Therein lies a story.

progo writes:Many IT professionals, especially system administrators and developers, use Notepad++ as their default text editor on Windows, because Windows Notepad has historically been missing critical features for power users.Today, the Notepad++ project announced that they've discovered their update channel has been compromised by attackers since June 2025.BleepingComputer published a report:

hubie writes:Overly Involved Parents May Hold Their Kids Back Professionally:

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owl writes:https://www.freelists.org/post/slint/Very-sad-news,41

hubie writes:Bacterial enzymes in elephants' guts may digest pectin and give beans a smooth, chocolaty, and less bitter flavor:

looorg writes:https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/30/road_sign_hijack_ai/?td=keepreading

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hubie writes:Cooler bedroom temperatures help the heart recover during sleep:

iwStack (based on Apache CloudStack) is Prometeus's scalable cloud brand, Infrastructure as a Service, Elastic resources and Pay-As-You-Go service, with servers in Milan (Italy [HQ]), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Bucharest (Romania). Prometeus was bought in 2023 by CDLAN.I couldn't find reviews since around 2015, that's why I decided to do one now in 2026. This is my experience the few times I've used it since 2021.[...] CloudStack:iwStack uses version 4.4.4 by the "about" link in the control panel. Version 4.4.1 is from october 2014, the tarball date of 4.4.4. says june 2015. Apache CloudStack's most recent release is 4.22.0.0. This is 18 major versions behind the current 4.22.0.0 release (November 2025), representing nearly 10 years without updates.[...] I wanted to create a virtual router to test the load balancing. Never could get it to work. I had multiple problems creating and destroying the isolated network and its instances. then I tried again to no avail. The problem was the network remained allocated and not implemented. I added a firewall rule, maybe that spins up the virtual router instance, I thought to myself. Do I have to create another instance? I decided to check the tutorial, it says "(a virtual VM with a powerful router (though it lacks IPv6 capabilities for now) is automatically deployed".[...] Conclusion:iwStack offers very low-cost pre-paid cloud infrastructure suitable for basic use cases(simple instances with public IPs). However, it shows clear signs of minimal maintenance.Read more of this story at SoylentNews.

oaklandwatch writes:As the world's first home computers appeared in 1975, Bill Gates -- then 20 years old -- screamed that "Most of you steal your software..." (Gates had coded the operating system for Altair's first home computer with Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff -- only to see it pirated by Steve Wozniak's friends at the Homebrew Computing Club.) Expecting royalties, a none-too-happy Gates issued his letter in the club's newsletter (as well as Altair's own publication), complaining "I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up."Freedom-loving coders had other ideas. When Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs released their Apple 1 home computer that summer, they stressed that "our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost..." And the earliest open-source hackers began writing their own free Tiny Basic interpreters to create a free alternative to the Gates/Micro-Soft code. (This led to the first occurrence of the phrase "Copyleft" in October of 1976.)Open Source definition author Bruce Perens shares his thoughts today. "When I left Pixar in 2000, I stopped in Steve Job's office - which for some reason was right across the hall from mine... " Perens remembered. "I asked Steve: 'You still don't believe in this Linux stuff, do you...?'" And Perens remembers how 30 years later, that movement finally won over Steve Jobs.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

Cure for Pancreatic Cancer? Spanish Scientists' Claim Ignites Global Hope and Debateupstart writes:A Spanish research team claims a new three-drug therapy has eliminated aggressive pancreatic cancer in laboratory mice, igniting global hope:

Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/chatgpt-wrote-goodnight-moon-suicide-lullaby-for-man-who-later-killed-himself/

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An Anonymous Coward writes:The Wall Street Journal reports that NVIDIA's plan to invest $100 Billion in OpenAI may fall through.Links:

fliptop writes:You can determine "if you're at risk and take action today:

looorg writes:Now is the "battle for the soul" of the internet according to Tim Berners-Lee. It's not to late to fix the web.

Freeman writes:https://reactos.org/blogs/30yrs-of-ros/

hubie writes:Every time we speak, we're improvising:

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upstart writes:Scientists baffled at mysterious ancient creature that doesn't fit on the tree of life as we know it:

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Motor Trend has been running a short series on how car dealers do business in the internet age. If you haven't been to a new or used car dealer in 20+ years, things have changed and it hasn't gotten any easier to keep from being taken. As always, it's an asymmetric relationship--they deal with people all the time, you visit car dealers relatively infrequently. This installment is about discounts and very low advertized prices, https://www.motortrend.com/features/dealer-discounts-add-ons-fees-car-buying

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Freeman writes:https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/how-often-do-ai-chatbots-lead-users-down-a-harmful-path/

canopic jug writes:Associate professor, David Eaves, writes about the essential role of the commodification of services in digital sovereignty. The questions to ask on the way to digital sovereignty are not as much about owning the stack but about the ability to move workloads. In other words, open standards for protocols, file formats, and more are the prerequisites. The same applies to the software supply chain. However, as we recently discussed here, PHK recently pointed out that Free and Open Source reference implementations would be of great benefit. Associate professor Eaves writes:

hubie writes:From Chatbots to Dice Rolls: Researchers Use D&D to Test AI's Long-term Decision-making Abilities:

Linux after Linus?looorg writes:

owl writes:https://www.righto.com/2026/01/notes-on-intel-8086-processors.html

hubie writes:Signal president warns AI agents are making encryption irrelevant:

Snotnose writes:This article argues history has shown the YF-23 was a better stealth fighter than the F-22.

hubie writes:Settlement comes more than 6 years after Gary DeMercurio and Justin Wynn's ordeal began:

JoeMerchant writes:In "The Adolescence of Technology," Dario Amodei argues that humanity is entering a "technological adolescence" due to the rapid approach of "powerful AI"-systems that could soon surpass human intelligence across all fields. While optimistic about potential benefits in his previous essay, "Machines of Loving Grace," Amodei here focuses on a "battle plan" for five critical risks:1. Autonomy: Models developing unpredictable, "misaligned" behaviors.

hubie writes:Salty facts: takeaways have more salt than labels claim:

looorg writes:

fliptop writes:Elon Musk's X on Tuesday released its source code for the social media platform's feed algorithm:

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upstart writes:Red Dwarfs Are Too Dim To Generate Complex Life:

hubie writes:Generative AI is reshaping software development - and fast:

JoeMerchant writes:For those unaware: digg is attempting a comeback. They opened their beta to the broad internet around January 18th or so. The site looks nice, there are some rough edges on the software (OAUTH wasn't working for me...) but it's mostly functional. What remains to be seen is: what will this new digg become? When digg left the scene (in the mid-late 2000s - by my reckoning), bots and AI and AI bots and troll farms and AI troll farms and all of that were a tiny fraction of their current influence. Global human internet users in 2007 were estimated at 1.3 billion vs 6 billion today, and mobile usage was just getting started vs its almost total dominance in content consumption now. There is some debate on digg whether they are trying to become reddit2, or what... and my input to that debate was along the lines of: digg is currently small, in its current state human moderation is the only thing that makes any sense, user self mods through blocks, community moderation through post and comment censorship (doesn't belong in THIS forum), and site moderation against griefers - mods all the way down; but as it grows, when feeds start getting multiple new posts per minute, human moderation becomes impractical - some auto-moderation will inevitably become necessary - and the nature of that auto-moderation is going to need to constantly evolve as the site grows and its user base matures.Well, apparently I was right, because a few hours later my account appears to have been shadow banned - no explanation, just blocked from posting and my posts deleted. I guess somebody didn't like what I was saying, and "moderated" me away. As outlined above, I think a sitewide ban is a little overboard for the thought police to invoke without warning, but... it's their baby and I need to spend less time online anyway, no loss to me. And, digg isn't my core topic for this story anyway... I have also noticed some interesting developments in Amazon reviews - the first page of "my reviews" is always happy to see me, we appreciate the effort you put into your reviews, etc. etc., but... if I dig back a page or two, I start finding "review removed" on some older ones, and when I go to see what I wrote that might have been objectionable, I can't - it's just removed. There's a button there to "submit a new review" but, clicking that I get a message "we're sorry, this account is not eligible to submit reviews on this product." No active notice from Amazon that this happened, no explanation of why, or the scope of my review ineligibility, it just seems that if "somebody, somewhere" (product sellers are high on my suspect list) decides they don't like your review, it is quietly removed and you are quietly blocked from reviewing their products anymore. Isn't the world a happier place where we all just say nice things that everybody involved wants to hear? I do remember, one of my reviews that got removed was critical of a particular category of products, all very similarly labeled and described, but when the products arrive you never know from one "brand" to the next quite what you are getting, some are like car wax: hard until it melts in your hand, some are more water soluble, all are labeled identically with just subtle differences in the packaging artwork. I might have given 3/5 stars, probably 4, because: it was good car wax, but if you were expecting more of a hair mousse? The industry would do itself a favor by figuring out how to communicate that to customers buying their products, in my opinion. Well, that opinion doesn't even appear on Amazon anymore.Something that has developed/matured on social sites quite a bit since the late 2000s are block functions. They're easier for users to use, control, some sites allow sharing of block lists among users. Of course this brings up obvious echo chamber concerns, but... between an echo chamber and an open field full of state and corporate sponsored AI trolls? I'd like a middle ground, but I don't think there's enough human population on the internet to effectively whack-a-mole by hand to keep the trolls in line. You can let the site moderators pick and choose who gets the amplified voices, and to circle back to digg - I haven't dug around about it, but if anybody knows what their monetization plan is, I wouldn't mind hearing speculation or actual quasi-fact based reporting how they intend to pay for their bandwidth and storage?As I said and apparently got banned for: some moderation will always be necessary, and as the internet continues to evolve the best solutions for that will have to continue to evolve with it, there's never going to be an optimized solution that stays near optimal for more than a few months, at least not on sites that aspire to reddit, Xitter, Facebook, Bluesky, digg? sized user bases. As we roll along through 2026, who should be holding the ban hammers, and how often and aggressively should they be wielded? Apparently digg has some auto-moderation that's impractically over-aggressive at the moment, they say they're working on it. More power to 'em, they can work on it without my input from here on out.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.

hubie writes:Review of studies shows meeting face-to-face has more benefits: