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A recent Microsoft Patch Tuesday update has introduced a bug in Windows 11 23H2 that causes some PCs to refuse to shut down or hibernate, "no matter how many times you try," reports The Register. From the report: In a notice on its Windows release health dashboard, Microsoft confirmed that some PCs running Windows 11 23H2 might fail to power down properly after installing the latest security updates. Instead of slipping into shutdown or hibernation, affected machines stay stubbornly awake, draining batteries and ignoring shutdown like they have a mind of their own and don't want to experience temporary non-existence. The bug appears to be tied to Secure Launch, a security feature that uses virtualization-based protections to ensure only trusted components load during boot. On systems with Secure Launch enabled, attempts to shut down, restart, or hibernate after applying the January patches may fail to complete. From the user's perspective, everything looks normal -- until the PC keeps running anyway, refusing to be denied life. Microsoft says that entering the command "shutdown /s /t 0" at the command prompt will, in fact, force your PC to turn off, whether it wants to or not. "Until this issue is resolved, please ensure you save all your work, and shut down when you are done working on your device to avoid the device running out of power instead of hibernating," Microsoft said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Trump administration urged the largest electricity grid in the U.S. to make big tech companies pay for new power plants to support the surging electricity demand from AI and data centers. CNBC reports: Electricity prices have exploded in recent years on PJM Interconnection due in part to the data centers that tech companies are building to train and power artificial intelligence. The PJM grid serves more than 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. Its service area includes northern Virginia, the largest data center market in the world. The Trump administration and several states signed a pact that calls for tech companies to pay for new power plants built in PJM. Leading tech companies have agreed to fund $15 billion of new generation for the grid, according to an administration statement. The Trump administration and the states urged PJM to hold an emergency capacity auction to procure this power, according to the Department of Energy. PJM should also cap the amount that existing power plants can charge in the grid's capacity market to protect ratepayers, according to the administration. "We have to get out from underneath this bureaucratic system that we have in the regional grid operators and we've got to allow markets to work," said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum at the White House. "One of the ways markets can work is to have the hyperscalers actually rapidly building power."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Last week, Nicholas Moore, 24, a resident of Springfield, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to repeatedly hacking into the U.S. Supreme Court's electronic document filing system. At the time, there were no details about the specifics of the hacking crimes Moore was admitting to. On Friday, a newly filled document -- first spotted by Court Watch's Seamus Hughes -- revealed more details about Moore's hacks. Per the filing, Moore hacked not only into the Supreme Court systems, but also the network of AmeriCorps, a government agency that runs stipend volunteer programs, and the systems of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides healthcare and welfare to military veterans. Moore accessed those systems using stolen credentials of users who were authorized to access them. Once he gained access to those victims' accounts, Moore accessed and stole their personal data and posted some online to his Instagram account: @ihackthegovernment. In the case of the Supreme Court victim, identified as GS, Moore posted their name and "current and past electronic filing records." [...] According to the court document, Moore faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a maximum fine of $100,000.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cloudflare has acquired the core team behind the open source JavaScript framework Astro, bringing its creators in-house while pledging to keep Astro fully open source. The New Stack reports: Astro is used by major brands like IKEA, Unilever, Visa and OpenAI to build fast, content-driven websites. Search engines prioritize fast-loading and clean pages, the Cloudflare statement noted. Websites that rely heavily on JavaScript for initial rendering often struggle to deliver the required speed, which hinders search rankings and customer conversions. Pages on Astro serve up only the code needed to display a page in a browser. That's in part because of its Island architecture, which it introduced in 2021. Astro's Islands allow developers to create "islands" of interactive client-side components, while most of the page is generated statically in HTML. Server Islands extend the same architecture to the server. Astro is also UI-agnostic, meaning that while it has its own independent engine, it allows developers to bring in components from React, Svelte, Vue and other frameworks. This makes Astro a preferred choice for building high-performance, content-driven websites optimized for speed, according to Cloudflare. "Over the past few years, we've seen an incredibly diverse range of developers and companies use Astro to build for the web," said Astro's former CTO, Fred Schott, in a post with Cloudflare senior product manager Brendan Irvine-Broque. "At Cloudflare, we use Astro, too -- for our developer docs, website, landing pages and more." They said that the acquisition will allow them to "double down" on making Astro the best framework for content-driven websites.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader hackingbear shares a report from the Washington Times: Breaking with the United States, Canada has agreed to cut its 100% tariff [back to 6.1%] on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday after meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. He said there would be an initial annual cap of 49,000 vehicles on Chinese EV exports to Canada, growing to about 70,000 over five years. Prior to the 100% tariff, China exported about 41,000 vehicles to Canada in 2023. In exchange, China will reduce its total tariff on canola seeds, a major Canadian export, from 84% to about 15%, he told reporters. Carney said China has become a more predictable partner to deal with than the U.S, the country's neighbor and longtime ally. [hackingbear writes: "After helping the U.S. arrest Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, who was later released without admitting guilty by the Biden administration after bickering with China, Canada had followed the U.S. in putting tariffs of 100% on EVs from China and 25% on steel and aluminum under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Carney's predecessor."] China responded by imposing duties of 100% on Canadian canola oil and meal and 25% on pork and seafood. It added a 75.8% tariff on canola seeds last August. Collectively, the import taxes effectively closed the Chinese market to Canadian canola, an industry group has said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reported record fourth-quarter earnings and said it expects AI chip demand to continue for years. During an earnings call, CEO C.C. Wei told investors that while he cannot predict the semiconductor industry's long-term trajectory, he remains bullish on AI. "All in all, I believe in my point of view, the AI is real -- not only real, it's starting to grow into our daily life. And we believe that is kind of -- we call it AI megatrend, we certainly would believe that," Wei said during the call. "So another question is 'can the semiconductor industry be good for three, four, five years in a row?' I'll tell you the truth, I don't know. But I look at the AI, it looks like it's going to be like an endless -- I mean, that for many years to come." TSMC posted net income of NT$505.7 billion (about $16 billion) for the quarter, up 35 percent year over year and above analyst expectations. Revenue hit $33.7 billion, a 25.5 percent increase from the same period last year. The company expects nearly 30 percent revenue growth in 2026 and plans to spend between $52 billion and $56 billion on capital expenditures this year, up from $40.9 billion in 2025.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The prospect of Britain realigning its financial rules with the European Union has passed, and the country should avoid linking its regulations to any single jurisdiction, the ambassador for London's financial services sector told Reuters. Nearly a decade after Brexit, newly appointed Lady Mayor of London Susan Langley said that while maintaining dialogue with the EU remained important -- particularly on defence -- Britain should work with all nations that share its values and respect the rule of law. "We've still got huge alignment with Europe, cash flows between us are huge... Would we ever go back in terms of regulation? I think we've moved away from that," she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study from Cornell and University of Toronto researchers has found that polyester microfibers shed from synthetic clothing during laundry can interfere with cherry tomato plant development [non-paywalled source] when these particles accumulate in agricultural soil. Plants grown in contaminated soil were 11% less likely to emerge, grew smaller and took several days longer to flower and ripen. Household laundry is a leading source of this contamination. Treated sewage sludge retains roughly 90% of microfibers from washers, and farmers in some countries apply this material to up to 75% of cropland as fertilizer. Some scientists have questioned the methodology. Willie Peijnenburg, a professor of environmental toxicology at Leiden University, told WaPo the microfiber concentration used was much higher than field observations. His research suggests plants primarily absorb microplastics through airborne particles entering leaf stomata rather than through soil.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A researchers' propensity for risky projects is passed down to their doctoral students -- and stays with trainees after they leave the laboratory, according to an analysis of thousands of current and former PhD students and their mentors. From a report: Science involves taking risks, and some of the most impactful discoveries require taking big bets. However, scientists and policymakers have raised concerns that the current academic system's emphasis on short-term outcomes encourages researchers to play it safe. Studies have shown, for example, that risky research is less likely to be funded. Anders Brostrom, an economist studying science policy at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and his colleagues decided to examine the role of doctoral education in shaping risk-related behaviour -- an area that Brostrom says has been largely overlooked. "We often focus on thinking about how we can change the funding systems to make it more likely for people to take risks, but that's not the only lever we have," says Chiara Franzoni, an economist at the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy. This study is "refreshing" because "we've discussed policy interventions a lot, but we haven't discussed training," she adds. [...] The team found that students' risk-taking dispositions matched those of their supervisors. This link was stronger when students and their supervisors communicated frequently, and weaker when students were also mentored by scientists outside their lab.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A hit song has been excluded from Sweden's official chart after it emerged the "artist" behind it was an AI creation. I Know, You're Not Mine -- or Jag Vet, Du Ar Inte Min in Swedish -- by a singer called Jacub has been a streaming success in Sweden, topping the Spotify rankings. However, the Swedish music trade body has excluded the song from the official chart after learning it was AI-generated. "Jacub's track has been excluded from Sweden's official chart, Sverigetopplistan, which is compiled by IFPI Sweden. While the song appears on Spotify's own charts, it does not qualify for inclusion on the official chart under the current rules," said an IFPI Sweden spokesperson. Ludvig Werber, IFPI Sweden's chief executive, said: "Our rule is that if it is a song that is mainly AI-generated, it does not have the right to be on the top list."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI said Friday that it will begin testing ads on ChatGPT in the coming weeks, as the $500 billion startup seeks new revenue streams to fund its continued expansion and compete against rivals Google and Anthropic. The company had previously resisted embedding ads into its chatbot, citing concerns that doing so could undermine the trustworthiness and objectivity of responses. The ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT answers on the free tier and the $8-per-month ChatGPT Go subscription in the U.S., showing only when relevant to the user's query. Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions will remain ad-free. OpenAI expects to generate "low billions" of dollars from advertising in 2026, FT reported, and more in subsequent years. The revenue is intended to help fund roughly $1.4 trillion in computing commitments over the next decade. The company said it will not show ads to users under 18 or near sensitive topics like health, mental health, or politics.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seattle was late to the light rail party -- the city rejected transit ballot measures in 1968 and 1971, missing out on federal funding that built Atlanta's MARTA, and didn't approve a plan including rail until 1996 -- but the Pacific Northwest city is now in the middle of a multibillion-dollar building boom that has produced the highest post-pandemic ridership recovery of any US light rail system. The Link system opened its first line in 2009, funded largely by voter-approved tax measures from 2008 and 2016. The north-south 1 Line now stretches 41 miles after a $3 billion extension to Lynnwood opened in June 2025 and a $2.5 billion leg to Federal Way debuted in December. Ridership is up 24% since 2019, and 3.4 million people rode Link trains in October 2025. Test trains have been running since September across the I-90 floating bridge over Lake Washington -- what Sound Transit claims is the world's first light rail on a floating structure -- preparing for a May 31 opening. The Crosslake Connection is part of the 2 Line, a 14-mile, $3.7 billion extension voters approved in 2008 that was originally slated to open in 2020. The expansion hasn't come without problems. Sound Transit faces a roughly $30 billion budget shortfall, and a planned Ballard extension has ballooned to $22 billion, double original estimates.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Welcome to my regular weekly update on what’s been happening at the GNOME Foundation. As usual, this post just covers highlights, and there are plenty of smaller and in progress items that haven’t been included.

Board meeting

The Board of Directors had a regular meeting this week. Topics on the agenda included:

• switching to a monthly rather than bi-monthly meeting schedule, which will give more time for preparation and follow-up
• creating an Audit Committee, which is a requirement for the upcoming audit
• performing a routine evaluation of how the organisation is being managed

According to our new schedule, the next meeting will be on 9th February.

New finance platform

As mentioned last week, we started using a new platform for payments processing at the beginning of the year. Overall the new system brings a lot of great features which will make our processes more reliable and integrated. However, as we adopt the tool we are having to deal with some ongoing setup tasks which mean that it is taking additional time in the short term.

GUADEC 2026 planning

Kristi has been extremely busy with GUADEC 2026 planning in recent weeks. She has been working closely with the local team to finalise arrangements for the venue and accommodation, as well as preparing the call for papers and sponsorship brochure.

If you or your organisation are interested in sponsoring this fantastic event, just reach out to me directly, or email guadec@gnome.org. We’d love to hear from you.

FOSDEM preparation

FOSDEM 2026 is happening over the weekend of 31st January and 1st February, and preparations for the event continue to be a focus. Maria has been organising the booth, and I have been arranging the details for the Advisory Board meeting which will happen on 30 January. Together we have also been hunting down a venue for a GNOME social event on the Saturday night.

Digital Wellbeing

This week the final two merge requests landed for the bedtime and screen time parental controls features. These features were implemented as part of our Digital Wellbeing program, and it’s great to see them come together in advance of the GNOME 50 release. More details can be found in gnome-shell!3980 and gnome-shell!3999.

Many thanks to Ignacy for seeing this work through to completion!

Flathub

Among other things, Bart recently wrapped up a chunk of work on Flathub’s build and publishing infrastructure, which he’s summarised in a blog post. It’s great to see all the improvements that have been made recently.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

Version:next-20260116 (linux-next) Released:2026-01-16

UFW looks simple until you put it on a long-lived server and real traffic hits it. This focuses on the gap between what ufw status shows and what packets are actually doing on production hosts, after rules have already been set up and systems have been up for a while.

gedit 49.0 has been released! Here are the highlights since version 48.0 which dates back from September 2024. (Some sections are a bit technical).

File loading and saving enhancements

A lot of work went into this area. It's mostly under-the-scene changes where there was a lot of dusty code. It's not entirely finished, but there are already user-visible enhancements:

• Loading a big file is now much faster.
• gedit now refuses to load very big files, with a configurable limit (more details).

Improved preferences

There is now a "Reset All..." button in the Preferences dialog. And it is now possible to configure the default language used by the spell-checker.

Python plugins removal

Initially due to an external factor, plugins implemented in Python were no longer supported.

During some time a previous version of gedit was packaged in Flathub in a way that still enabled Python plugins, but it is no longer the case.

Even though the problem is fixable, having some plugins in Python meant to deal with a multi-language project, which is much harder to maintain for a single individual. So for now it's preferable to keep only the C language.

So the bad news is that Python plugins support has not been re-enabled in this version, not even for third-party plugins.

More details.

Summary of changes for plugins

The following plugins have been removed:

• Bracket Completion
• Character Map
• Color Picker
• Embedded Terminal
• Join/Split Lines
• Multi Edit
• Session Saver

Only Python plugins have been removed, the C plugins have been kept. The Code Comment plugin which was written in Python has been rewritten in C, so it has not disappeared. And it is planned and desired to bring back some of the removed plugins.

Summary of other news

• Lots of code refactorings have been achieved in the gedit core and in libgedit-gtksourceview.
• A better support for Windows.
• Web presence at gedit-text-editor.org: new domain name and several iterations on the design.
• A half-dozen Gedit Development Guidelines documents have been written.

Wrapping-up statistics for 2025

The total number of commits in gedit and gedit-related git repositories in 2025 is: 884. More precisely:

138 enter-tex 310 gedit 21 gedit-plugins 10 gspell 4 libgedit-amtk 41 libgedit-gfls 290 libgedit-gtksourceview 70 libgedit-tepl

It counts all contributions, translation updates included.

The list contains two apps, gedit and Enter TeX. The rest are shared libraries (re-usable code available to create other text editors).

If you do a comparison with the numbers for 2024, you'll see that there are fewer commits, the only module with more commits is libgedit-gtksourceview. But 2025 was a good year nevertheless!

For future versions: superset of the subset

With Python plugins removed, the new gedit version is a subset of the previous version, when comparing approximately the list of features. In the future, we plan to have a superset of the subset. That is, to bring in new features and try hard to not remove any more functionality.

In fact, we have reached a point where we are no longer interested to remove any more features from gedit. So the good news is that gedit will normally be incrementally improved from now on without major regressions. We really hope there won't be any new bad surprises due to external factors!

Side note: this "superset of the subset" resembles the evolution of C++, but in the reverse order. Modern C++ will be a subset of the superset to have a language in practice (but not in theory) as safe as Rust (it works with compiler flags to disable the unsafe parts).

Onward to 2026

Since some plugins have been removed, this makes gedit a less advanced text editor. It has become a little less suitable for heavy programming workloads, but for that there are lots of alternatives.

Instead, gedit could become a text editor of choice for newcomers in the computing science field (students and self-learners). It can be a great tool for markup languages too. It can be your daily companion for quite a while, until your needs evolve for something more complete at your workplace. Or it can be that you prefer its simplicity and its not-going-in-the-way default setup, plus the fact that it launches quickly. In short, there are a lot of reasons to still love gedit ❤️ !

If you have any feedback, even for a small thing, I would like to hear from you :) ! The best places are on GNOME Discourse, or GitLab for more actionable tasks (see the Getting in Touch section).

Many years ago when I was a kid, I took typing lessons where they introduced me to a program called Mecawin. With it, I learned how to type, and it became a program I always appreciated not because it was fancy, but because it showed step by step how to work with a keyboard.

Now the circle of life is coming back: my kid will turn 10 this year. So I started searching for a good typing tutor for Linux. I installed and tried all of them, but didn’t like any. I also tried a couple of applications on macOS, some were okish, but they didn’t work properly with Spanish keyboards. At this point, I decided to build something myself. Initially, I  hacked out keypunch, which is a very nice application, but I didn’t like the UI I came up with by modifying it. So in the end, I decided to write my own. Or better yet, let Kiro write an application for me.

Mecalin is meant to be a simple application. The main purpose is teaching people how to type, and the Lessons view is what I’ll be focusing on most during development. Since I don’t have much time these days for new projects. I decided to take this opportunity to use Kiro to do most of the development for me. And to be honest, it did a pretty good job. Sure, there are things that could be better, but I definitely wouldn’t have finished it in this short time otherwise.

So if you are interested, give it a try, go to flathub and install it: https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.nacho.mecalin

In this application, you’ll have several lessons that guide you step by step through the different rows of the keyboard, showing you what to type and how to type it.

This is an example of the lesson view.

You also have games.

The falling keys game: keys fall from top to bottom, and if one reaches the bottom of the window, you lose. This game can clearly be improved, and if anybody wants to enhance it, feel free to send a PR.

The scrolling lanes game: you have 4 rows where text moves from right to left. You need to type the words before they reach the leftmost side of the window, otherwise you lose.

For those who want to support your language, there are two JSON files you’ll need to add:

1. The keyboard layout: https://github.com/nacho/mecalin/tree/main/data/keyboard_layouts
2. The lessons: https://github.com/nacho/mecalin/tree/main/data/lessons

Note that the Spanish lesson is the source of truth; the English one is just a translation done by Kiro.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

When I started writing this blog, I didn’t fully understand what “think about your audience” really meant. At first, it sounded like advice meant for marketers or professional writers. But over time, I’ve realized it’s one of the most important lessons I’m learning, not just for writing, but for building software and contributing to open source.

Who I’m Writing (and Building) For

When I sit down to write, I think about a few people.

I think about aspiring developers from non-traditional backgrounds, people who didn’t follow a straight path into tech, who might be self-taught, switching careers, or learning in community-driven programs. I think about people who feel like they don’t quite belong in tech yet, and are looking for proof that they do.

I also think about my past self, about some months ago. Back then, everything felt overwhelming: the tools, the terminology, the imposter syndrome. I remember wishing I could read honest stories from people who were still in the process, not just those who had already “made it.”

And finally, I think about the open-source community I’m now part of: contributors, maintainers, and users who rely on the software we build.

Why My Audience Matters to My Work

Thinking about my audience has changed how I approach my work on Papers.

Papers isn’t just a codebase, it’s a tool used by researchers, students, and academics to manage references and organize their work. When I think about those users, I stop seeing bugs as abstract issues and start seeing them as real problems that affect real people’s workflows.

The same applies to documentation. Remembering how confusing things felt when I was a beginner pushes me to write clearer commit messages, better explanations, and more accessible documentation. I’m no longer writing just to “get the task done”. I’m writing so that someone else, maybe a first-time contributor, can understand and build on my work.

Even this blog is shaped by that mindset. After my first post, someone commented and shared how it resonated with them. That moment reminded me that words can matter just as much as code.

What My Audience Needs From Me

I’ve learned that people don’t just want success stories. They want honesty.

They want to hear about the struggle, the confusion, and the small wins in between. They want proof that non-traditional paths into tech are valid. They want practical lessons they can apply, not just motivation quotes.

Most of all, they want representation and reassurance. Seeing someone who looks like them, or comes from a similar background, navigating open source and learning in public can make the journey feel possible.

That’s a responsibility I take seriously.

How I’ve Adjusted Along the Way

Because I’m thinking about my audience, I’ve changed how I share my journey.

I explain things more clearly. I reflect more deeply on what I’m learning instead of just listing achievements. I’m more intentional about connecting my experiences, debugging a feature, reading unfamiliar code, asking questions in the GNOME community, to lessons others can take away.

Understanding the Papers user base has also influenced how I approach features and fixes. Understanding my blog audience has influenced how I communicate. In both cases, empathy plays a huge role.

Moving Forward

Thinking about my audience has taught me that good software and good writing have something in common: they’re built with people in mind.

As I continue this internship and this blog, I want to keep building tools that are accessible, contributing in ways that lower barriers, and sharing my journey honestly. If even one person reads this and feels more capable, or more encouraged to try, then it’s worth it.

That’s who I’m writing for. And that’s who I’m building for.

Thelasko shares a report from Forbes: We have not seen this before. Iran's digital blackout has now deployed military jammers, reportedly supplied by Russia, to shut down access to Starlink Internet. This is a game-changer for the Plan-B connectivity frequently used by protesters and anti-regime activists when ordinary access to the internet is stopped. "Despite reports that tens of thousands of Starlink units are operating inside Iran," says Iran Wire, "the blackout has also reached satellite connections." It is reported that about 30 percent of Starlink's uplink and downlink traffic was (initially) disrupted," quickly rising "to more than 80 percent" within hours. The Times of Israel reports "the deployment of (Starlink) receivers is now far greater in Iran" than during previous blackouts. "That's despite the government never authorizing Starlink to function, making the service illegal to possess and use." "While it's not clear how Starlink's service was being disrupted in Iran," The Times says, "some specialists say it could be the result of jamming of Starlink terminals that would overpower their ability to receive signals from the satellites." Multiple reports suggest Russia's military technology may be responsible. Channel 4 News describes Russia's activities as a "technological race with Starlink," which it says "is known to deploy trucks which deploy radio noise to disrupt satellite signals." Simon Migliano, Head of Research at Top10VPN.com, said "Iran's current nationwide blackout is a blunt instrument intended to crush dissent," and this comes at a stark cost to the country, underpinning the regime's desperation. "This 'kill switch' approach comes at a staggering price, draining $1.56 million from Iran's economy every single hour the internet is down." He added: "Iranian authorities have proven they are prepared to weaponize connectivity, even at a tremendous domestic cost. We are looking at losses already exceeding $130 million. If the 2019 shutdown is any indicator, the regime could maintain this digital siege for days, prioritizing control over their own economic stability."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Version:next-20260114 (linux-next) Released:2026-01-14