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Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Just months after his 20th birthday, Bill Gates had already angered the programmer community," remembers this 50th-anniversary commemoration of Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists. "As the first home computers began appearing in the 1970s, the world faced a question: Would its software be free?"
Gates railed in 1976 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 — onl
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Reports of Bill Gates' connections with Jeffrey Epstein grow more lurid with each dump of documents from the Department of Justice. The latest includes somewhat confusing emails that Epstein may have been drafting on behalf of someone named Boris, who worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The messages claim that Bill contracted an […] Read more ›
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Gary Cohn, a former chief economic adviser to Trump, said Americans at the top are seeing "massive wealth" while those at the bottom are "suffering." Read more ›
798 fresh
ICE is enlisting ten companies for a widespread immigrant surveillance program. Read more ›
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Apex Legends developer Respawn said it's ending Nintendo Switch support for the game this summer, with the release of Season 30. After that point, it'll work with the Switch 2 and all other currently supported platforms, but not the original Switch. "Season 29 will be the final update for Apex Legends on Nintendo Switch," the team wrote in a post on X.Hey legends, we want to share an important update... Read more ›
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Just like buying a new iPhone through Apple's online store, you now select each spec of your new Mac device when purchasing through the website. As first spotted by MacWorld, Apple updated its online configuration tool for purchasing a Mac. Compared to the previous design that allowed you to pick between several prebuilt options, the new configurator lets you choose one spec after another instead. It's not a major difference... Read more ›
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The director and creator of Ashes of Creation, the MMORPG brought to life via the $3.2 million donated by almost 20,000 backers in 2017, has quit "in protest" against decisions his board was making that he could "not ethically agree with or carry out". Read more Read more ›
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The cult classic 'Upgrade' almost got a continuation with a TV show, but real-world events kept getting in its way. Read more ›
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Today, in 1982, Intel introduced its “showstopping” 80286 processor. This 16-bit fully x86 software compatible CPU delivered some major performance and architectural advancements over the 8086 and 8088, and would continue to be produced and feature in PC systems well into the 1990s. Read more ›
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A mom shares what it's like raising kids with deeply involved great-grandparents and why she now realizes how rare that bond is. Read more ›
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October saw Bitcoin reach $123,742. But less than four months later, "The world's largest cryptocurrency slipped below $76,000..." Bloomberg reports, "dropping about 40% from its 2025 peak..." "What began as a sharp crash in October has morphed into something more corrosive: a selloff shaped not by panic, but by absence of buyers, momentum and belief." Unlike the October drawdown, there's been no obvious spark, cascading liquidations or systemic shock —... Read more ›
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A computing enthusiast has assembled one of the most bizarre low-capacity USB drives we have ever seen. Read more ›
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Commentary: This off-kilter cooking show is a fun binge if you like things seasoned with a heaping helping of chaos, comedy and charm. Read more ›
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After protests broke out in early January, the Iranian regime shut down the internet, starting the longest blackout in Iranian history. Despite this attempt to stop the protests from spreading, they did not stop. Still, the internet shutdown slowed down the spread of information both inside and outside Iran. Behind the heavily policed borders and […] Read more ›
219 fresh
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 2 #967 Read more ›
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We may not have a concrete release date for the first foldable iPhone, but Apple may already be looking into a smaller device that will follow it up. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is exploring a "square, clamshell-style foldable phone," with the caveat that this potential device is "far from guaranteed to reach the market" and only "under consideration" right now. If this eventually leads to a smaller foldable... Read more ›
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Vineyard Wind (powering Massachusetts) is one of five offshore wind projects "that the Trump administration tried to hold up in December," reports The Hill. This week it became the fourth of those wind projects allowed by a judge to resume construction, the article notes, while even the fifth project "is still awaiting court proceedings." Federal Judge Brian Murphy, a Biden appointee, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the administration's stop work... Read more ›
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Last year, Apple launched CarPlay Ultra, the long-awaited next-generation version of its CarPlay software system for vehicles. Nearly nine months later, CarPlay Ultra is still limited to Aston Martin's latest luxury vehicles, but that should change fairly soon. In May 2025, Apple said many other vehicle brands planned to offer CarPlay Ultra, including Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis. At the time, it said CarPlay Ultra would begin expanding to more vehicles... Read more ›
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The Ukrainian government has successfully blocked unauthorized Starlink terminals from operating within its borders, stopping Russian drones from using the internet service to strike targets deep within the country. Read more ›
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Bitcoin’s sharp weekend drop triggered fresh liquidations, with analyst Eric Crown warning the market may face months of further downside. Read more ›
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Highguard's launch this week would've probably passed by largely unremarked if it wasn't for its appearance at last year's The Game Awards. Unusually for a game with no prior hype or obvious pedigree, it featured as the show's big "and finally" reveal, immediately subjecting it to intense, and slightly bewildered, scrutiny. After that, even as hard facts on the game remained scarce, it continued to draw scorn, purely for the... Read more ›
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France will replace the American platforms Microsoft Teams and Zoom with its own domestically developed video conferencing platform, which will be used in all government departments by 2027, the country said. From a report: The move is part of France's strategy to stop using foreign software vendors, especially those from the United States, and regain control over critical digital infrastructure. It comes at a crucial moment as France, like Europe,... Read more ›
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Dan Goodin: Two security professionals who were arrested in 2019 after performing an authorized security assessment of a county courthouse in Iowa will receive $600,000 to settle a lawsuit they brought alleging wrongful arrest and defamation. The case was brought by Gary DeMercurio and Justin Wynn, two penetration testers who at the time were employed by Colorado-based security firm... Read more ›
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Mike Swanson: What if your car worked like so many apps? You're driving somewhere important...maybe running a little bit late. A few minutes into the drive, your car pulls over to the side of the road and asks: "How are you enjoying your drive so far?" Annoyed by the interruption, and even more behind schedule, you dismiss the prompt and merge back into traffic. A minute later it does it... Read more ›
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The Daily Beast: "Salacious claims from Jeffrey Epstein that Bill Gates contracted an STD following 'sex with Russian girls,' and colluded with the disgraced financier on a plot to secretly slip his wife antibiotics, were revealed in the latest Epstein files release." The New York Times. (Alternate URL) "A representative of the Gates Foundation said, 'These claims — from a proven, disgruntled liar — are absolutely absurd and completely false.... Read more ›
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Apple's call-screening feature, introduced in iOS 26 last year, was designed to combat the more than 2 billion robocalls placed to Americans every month, but as WSJ is reporting, it is now creating friction for the rich and powerful who find themselves subjected to automated interrogation when dialing from unrecognized numbers. The feature uses an automated voice to ask unknown callers for their names and reasons for calling, transcribes the... Read more ›
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Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from CBS News: A former Google engineer has been found guilty on multiple federal charges for stealing the tech giant's trade secrets on artificial intelligence to benefit Chinese companies he secretly worked for, federal prosecutors said. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, a jury on Thursday convicted Linwei Ding on seven counts of economic espionage and seven... Read more ›
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DuckDuckGo recently asked its users how they felt about AI in search. The answer has come back loud and clear: more than 90% of the 175,354 people who voted said they don't want it. The privacy-focused search engine has since set up two versions of its tool: noai.duckduckgo.com for the AI-averse and yesai.duckduckgo.com for the curious. Users can also tweak settings on the main site to disable AI summaries, AI-generated... Read more ›
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Apple quietly released its first update to iOS 12 since 2023 to keep iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation working on older hardware through January 2027. The update applies to legacy devices like the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6/6 Plus, and 2013-era iPads. Macworld reports: The update appears to be related to a specific issue. According to Apple's "About iOS 12 Updates" page, iOS 12.5.78 "extends the certificate required by features such... Read more ›
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Citigroup has rolled out mandatory AI training for all 175,000 of its employees across 80 locations worldwide, a sweeping initiative that CEO Jane Fraser describes as helping workers "reinvent themselves" before the technology permanently alters what they do for a living. The $205 billion bank sent out an internal memo last year requiring staffers to learn prompting skills specifically. Fraser told the Washington Post at Davos that AI "will change... Read more ›
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Amazon announced on Wednesday that it is eliminating approximately 16,000 roles across the company as part of organizational changes that began in October 2025 and are only now being finalized by certain teams. Senior Vice President Beth Galetti shared the news in a memo to employees, framing the reductions as an effort to reduce layers, increase ownership, and remove bureaucracy. The memo follows another memo that the company accidentally sent... Read more ›
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01.02.2026 18:16
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