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jelizondo writes:A very interesting article was published by The New Republic, which centers on the intersection of social media, government censorship and activism, China style. It is a long read but very much worth you while, as the "spring" of public freedom becomes the hard, cold winter at the hands of an authoritarian regime.A very interesting article was published by The New Republic, which centers on the intersection of social media, government censorship and activism, China style. It is a long read but very much worth you while, as the "spring" of public freedom becomes the hard, cold winter at the hands of an authoritarian regime.Weibo, the Chinese uber social media platform, is an unlikely vehicle for protests, demand for change and surprisingly results, in the form of government reform, changes to the law and favorable judgments in courts.While China, and its famous Great Firewall, (built using "American bricks" in the form of technology from Cisco and others) is known for its unforgiving censorship of citizen's protests, something changed with social media. This is not to say that China has given up on censorship, some subjects are very much forbidden, for example the so called "Three Ts": Tibet, Tiananmen and Taiwan. No criticism or protest on those subjects is allowed, not even a suggestion of a protest.Other subjects are open for debate. Some examples follow:

hubie writes:Linux From Scratch Abandoning SysVinit Support:

fliptop writes:The chief safety officer for a leading self-driving car company admitted during a Senate hearing Wednesday that it hires remote human operators overseas to guide cars in "difficult driving situations:"

hubie writes:"We should not forget the lessons of history. And the lesson is those regulations have been very important."

upstart writes:France might seek restrictions on VPN use in campaign to keep minors off social media:

hubie writes:Used electric vehicles currently are a comparative bargain that could help more drivers reduce their carbon footprints:

canopic jug writes:Spotted via Simon Willison's blog, the plug has been pulled very suddenly on the CIA World Factbook. The old pages all redirect and the CIA has only some short comments and offer no explanation for the bizarre act of cultural vandalism.

upstart writes:The JUMPSEAT satellites loitered over the North Pole to spy on the Soviet Union:

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:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

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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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

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: