social.gl-como.it
"This paper presents implementations that match and, where possible, exceed current quantum factorisation records using a VIC-20 8-bit home computer from 1981, an abacus, and a dog.
We hope that this work will inspire future efforts to match any further quantum factorisation records, should they arise."
Note that this is three attempts to match current quantum computing records, not a single attempt utilizing all three tools.
(The IACR is a legit cryptology organization. Been around for years and years.)
(h/t @cstross )
so, #sysadmin sorts: chill your quantum computing worries
The Man Who Beat IBM
every.to/feeds/b0e329f3048258e…
Compaq’s Rod Canion broke Big Blue’s hold on the PC market — & changed computing forever
<- very few computing histories make me LOL. This did. Superb!
Compaq’s Rod Canion broke Big Blue’s hold on the PC market—and changed computing foreverevery.to
@resl
Does something have to be funny, i.e. a joke, to make you laugh? It does not for me.
These things made me laugh...
> “You crazy bastards,” Sevin said.
> It needed to look like an Osborne 1, but “less army surplus.”
> In February 1984, IBM finally revealed the specifications of the IBM Portable. It was heavier and less powerful than the Compaq Portable. Almost overnight, Compaq’s sales rebounded beyond even the level it had been at before. IBM’s big announcement had whet the market appetite for portables. The tractor trailers sitting in Houston parking lots were sent out onto the road.
> Then, in 1986, IBM did something very silly indeed.
There were others.
This surprised me:
> “The Microsoft DOS you are currently selling us and everyone else isn’t compatible with PC DOS.”
> After a pause, Gates smiled and admitted that Canion was correct.
I knew that EMM386.EXE came out of Compaq CEMM.EXE, and the big FAT16 partitions in DOS 4 used the filesystem from Compaq DOS 3.31, but that's all.
@cjwatson from #Freexian gave a great talk at #DebConf25:
“Using Debusine to pre-test your unstable uploads”
debconf25.debconf.org/talks/29…
Learn what Debusine is, why we built it, and how you can use the features we have built to do QA work in Debian right now, including dput-ng integration, and scaling into clouds. Understand how Debusine runs builds & reverse-dependency tests before your package hits the archive — ideal for safer uploads and smoother transitions to Testing.
Watch the recording:
meetings-archive.debian.net/pu…
Chemical educator and Compound Interest blogger Andy Brunning shines a light on some chemical reactions triggered by the sun’s raysAndy Brunning, special to C&EN (American Chemical Society)
Mastercard said it has not 'evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms,' but Valve begs to differ.Chris Kerr (Game Developer)
Urgent help for OpenPrinting needed!
As many here know, I am co-founder and lead of OpenPrinting since 2001, known as the print guru for Linux and free software by many. I also got one of the 8 fellows of the Linux Foundation for this.
Up to now I was working at Canonical, hired back in 2006 just to run OpenPrinting and also to maintain printing-related Ubuntu packages.
... 🧵
Please boost.
Thanks a lot to everybody who has boosted my initial post of this thread!
I have amazing news now:
The Sovereign Tech Agency @sovtechfund is investing in OpenPrinting!
See
ubuntu.social/@till/1154984651…
Amazing News!The Sovereign Tech Agency @sovtechfund is investing in OpenPrinting!
My full-time work at OpenPrinting will get funded until the end of 2026, by the Sovereign Tech Fund! Because printing is an essential part of the IT infrastructure. So printing will continue to just work!
See details in my blog:
openprinting.github.io/OpenPri…Thanks a lot to @tarakiyee and @hzulla !
OpenPrinting News - Sovereign Tech Agency is investing in OpenPrinting
I am covered to work on OpenPrinting full-time until end-2026OpenPrinting
scienzainrete.it/articolo/cond…
La storia era ben spiegata in questo fumetto editions-delcourt.fr/bd/series… da cui è stato tratto un film: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Algu…
Tutto questo per dare un'idea degli effetti di un'industria agroalimentare talmente accentrata da diventare un potere economico fuori controllo.
Arch Linux users told to purge Firefox forks after AUR malware scare
theregister.com/2025/07/22/arc…
The distro's greatest asset is arguably also its greatest weakness
<- by me on @theregister
: The distro's greatest asset is arguably also its greatest weaknessLiam Proven (The Register)
I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.
Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett
It’s not every day you watch a company faceplant so theatrically in public, but Cloud Innovation’s latest stunt deserves a slow clap. Cloud Innovation, which you’d probably never heard of unless yo…Techdirt
@bortzmeyer is reporting in bortzmeyer.org/menaces-de-clou… that Cloud Innovation, the Chinese company that has paralyzed #AFRINIC with legal actions, is threatening people who share links to this article: medium.com/@emmanuelvitus/afri… .
I expect that the Streisand effect will manifest...
@joebeone too has received a threatening letter from Cloud Innovation, and his counsel's reply is instructive and fun:
techpolicy.social/@joebeone/11…
I have retained counsel, Albert Sellars LLP, to respond. I will not be taking down my social media posts. My response is here [1]. No further comment at this time. These views are mine and mine alone. 2/ [1]: https://drive.google.techpolicy
You know, Confy: the Gnome-based, mobile-friendly Conferences schedule viewer
Some days ago I posted a screenshot about an experiment I was doing with #confy , which atm is on hold.
I'm still looking about the best way to draw a calendar view which can be zoomed in and out fast.
This is using Gtk.Snapshot to draw boxes and Pango.Layout to draw text.
It's still not fast enough with large conferences (mostly because I want to keep the text the same size and just change the boxes...)
Meanwhile I made some other things: some are papercuts, some are to try to have cleaner code, and some are quite big changes:
Actions get enabled/disable correctly per context
"search" action is disabled until an event is opened, and "copy" action is enabled only while a details page is shown.
Small change but prevents some errors.
Update recent list when deleting custom event from menu
Custom event in the "open" window can be removed. Now the entry is also removed from the recent events list.
Navigation sidebar has been updated
Now items does not get out of order after opening an Event with one already opened. Previously, items not needed (eg. 'Traks' where the Event has no tracks) were removed and re-added, which caused them to appear out of order.
Now the items are hidden and shown as needed, thus they do not change order anymore. Plus they are now defined in sidebar widget template. More clear and nice.
Navigation between pages has been revisited.
Originally, every talk details page opened was simply pushed on the stack. This caused some trouble as details page can link to other details pages via overlapping talks, which where pushed on the stack too. But overlapping talks are 'circular' as if Talk A overlaps with Talk B, also Talk B overlaps with Talk A, which can lead to very long stack to navigate back, e.g.:
List -> Talk A -> Talk B -> Talk C -> Talk A -> Talk C List -> Talk A
user clicks on overlapping Talk B
List -> Talk BList -> Talk A
user clicks on overlapping Talk B
List -> Talk A -> Talk B
user clicks on overlapping Talk C
List -> Talk A -> Talk B -> Talk C
user clicks on overlapping Talk A
List -> Talk AThis is also relevant for the new Search page navigation.
Search can be toggled
Search action now is toggleable (is this a word?), the "search" button in the headerbar is now a togglebutton. One click opens the search, another click closes the search (as does ctrl-f).
When search is opened, the search page is pushed on the stack. Closing the search pop the page (and popping the page closes the search).
From the search page, talk details pages follow the same logic as before, but in a separate 'group'. That is, if the search page is opened from a detail page, and from the search page the same talk is clicked, we don't pop back to the already pushed page (which closes the search) but a new detail page is pushed on the stack:
List -> Talk A -> Talk B
user clicks the "search" button
List -> Talk A -> Talk B -> Search
user clicks talk C
List -> Talk A -> Talk B -> Search -> Talk C
user clicks overlapping talk A
List -> Talk A -> Talk B -> Search -> Talk C -> Talk A
user clicks the "search" button
List -> Talk A -> Talk B( btw: the search entry still get focused when the search page pops in. I'm quite proud I managed to keep that :) )
Updated Preference dialog
The design has been moved to template, with a simple custom widget to set caches duration.
Option to clear the recent opened events list has been added.
Everything is in git if anyone want to test it, maybe on some mobile devices, maybe during one of the upcoming conferences...
That story about an AI startup collapsing after it turned out to be 700 Indian developers in a Trenchcoat? It was a made up story by a crypto guy that became clickbait, published unchecked by tech media everywhere. Read the real story behind Builder.ai here: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/bui…
1/3
The claim that the AI startup “faked AI” with hundreds of engineers went viral – and I also fell for it, initially. The reality is much more sobering: Builder.Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer)
All employees at the Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs are to work without Microsoft. Instead, Linux and LibreOffice will be used, says the minister.Martin Holland (heise online)
Mh.
last update of #archlinux defaults to #GTK4 #GSK #Vulcan Renderer:
GDK_BACKEND=wayland because the terminal is in VSCode, which runs on XWayland and define GDK_BACKEND=x11. In VSCode because gnome console was a black rectangle too)Yes, that white rectangle is the window.
I had to set GSK_RENDERER=ngl in .config/environment.d/gtk4.conf
Really enjoyed David Gerard's amusing take on how programming with AI becomes like a gambling addiction for many.
"Large language models work the same way as a carnival psychic. Chatbots look smart by the Barnum Effect — which is where you read what’s actually a generic statement about people and you take it as being personally about you. The only intelligence there is yours."
"With ChatGPT, Sam Altman hit upon a way to use the Hook Model with a text generator. The unreliability and hallucinations themselves are the hook — the intermittent reward, to keep the user running prompts and hoping they’ll get a win this time."
"This is why you see previously normal techies start evangelising AI coding on LinkedIn or Hacker News like they saw a glimpse of God and they’ll keep paying for the chatbot tokens until they can just see a glimpse of Him again. And you have to as well. This is why they act like they joined a cult. Send ’em a copy of this post."
pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/05/gen…
You’ll have noticed how previously normal people start acting like addicts to their favourite generative AI and shout at you like you’re trying to take their cocaine away. Matthias Döpm…Pivot to AI
@cstross It does look money!
Breaking news, a new startup has announced they will produce new *AI* infused technology to insert as many brainslugs into any machine you want.
*Five*years*later*: Brainslugz has declared bankruptcy after years of complaints revealed that Brainslugz were not aware that half the slugs froze to death while kept on the floor.
I'm probably trying to approach this the wrong way (trying to understand the cause of this error)
I don't get where the 0.21 result is coming from 🤯
Just for fun i asked ChatGPT the same question and now the answer is "correct" (it was wrong but it "corrected" itself)
Funny enough, when pressing it that it was wrong and the right answer was 0.21 I got this
Mario non sa fare il lavoro, Paolo sí.
Paolo con il macchinario di Mario potrebbe fare il grosso e poi fare gli aggiustamenti di fino che é in grado di fare con l'esperienza.
Io uso da due anni e mi ha velocizzato molte fasi del lavoro noiose senza impattare sul risultato finale, anzi a volte ho visto approci nuovi e interessanti facendo crescere le mie conoscenze di tubarolo.
É il vibe piping che é una 💩
@𝓜𝓪𝓾𝓻𝓸 𝓥𝓮𝓷𝓲𝓮𝓻 mi unisco agli utenti di friendica che scrivono “la prima”
prima di aver sentito come @Diego Roversi è arrivato al risultato, che è un sistema molto più furbo di quello con cui ero arrivata io
Climate change and energy: We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.
technologyreview.com/2025/05/2…
The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.
— MIT Technology Review
2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Automatic Treat Dispenser Makes Kitty Work For It
hackaday.com/2025/05/14/2025-p…
Treat dispensers are old hat around here, but what if kitty doesn’t need the extra calories — and actually needs to drop some pounds? [MethodicalMaker] decided to link the treat dispens…Hackaday
We just got Post Quantum SSH
openssh.com/pq.html
do we need to worry about post-VIC20 SSH?
😆
@cstross
OpenSSH: Post-Quantum Cryptography
www.openssh.com