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Long-time tech journalist Clive Thompson interviewed over 70 software developers at Google, Amazon, Microsoft and start-ups for a new article on AI-assisted programming. It's title? "Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It." Published in the prestigious New York Times Magazine, the article even cites long-time programming guru Kent Beck saying LLMs got him going again and he's now finishing more projects than ever, calling AI's unpredictability "addictive, in a slot-machine way." In fact, the article concludes "many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they're doing is deeply, deeply weird..." Brennan-Burke chimed in: "You remember seeing the research that showed the more rude you were to models, the better they performed?" They chuckled. Computer programming has been through many changes in its 80-year history. But this may be the strangest one yet: It is now becoming a conversation, a back-and-forth talk fest between software developers and their bots... For decades, being a software developer meant mastering coding languages, but now a language technology itself is upending the very nature of the job... A coder is now more like an architect than a construction worker... Several programmers told me they felt a bit like Steve Jobs, who famously had his staffers churn out prototypes so he could handle lots of them and settle on what felt right. The work of a developer is now more judging than creating... If you want to put a number on how much more productive A.I. is making the programmers at mature tech firms like Google, it's 10 percent, Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, has said. That's the bump that Google has seen in "engineering velocity" — how much faster its more than 100,000 software developers are able to work. And that 10 percent is the average inside the company, Ryan Salva, a senior director of product at the company, told me. Some work, like writing a simple test, is now tens of times faster. Major changes are slower. At the start-ups whose founders I spoke to, closer to 100 percent of their code is being written by A.I., but at Google it is not quite 50 percent. The article cites a senior principal engineer at Amazon who says "Things I've always wanted to do now only take a six-minute conversation and a 'Go do that." Another programmer described their army of Claude agents as "an alien intelligence that we're learning to work with." Although "A.I. being A.I., things occasionally go haywire," the article acknowledges — and after relying on AI, "Some new developers told me they can feel their skills weakening." Still, "I was surprised by how many software developers told me they were happy to no longer write code by hand. Most said they still feel the jolt of success, even with A.I. writing the lines... " A few programmers did say that they lamented the demise of hand-crafting their work. "I believe that it can be fun and fulfilling and engaging, and having the computer do it for you strips you of that," one Apple engineer told me. (He asked to remain unnamed so he wouldn't get in trouble for criticizing Apple's embrace of A.I.) He went on: "I didn't do it to make a lot of money and to excel in the career ladder. I did it because it's my passion. I don't want to outsource that passion"... But only a few people at Apple openly share his dimmer views, he said. The coders who still actively avoid A.I. may be in the minority, but their opposition is intense. Some dislike how much energy it takes to train and deploy the models, and others object to how they were trained by tech firms pillaging copyrighted works. There is suspicion that the sheer speed of A.I.'s output means firms will wind up with mountains of flabbily written code that won't perform well. The tech bosses might use agents as a cudgel: Don't get uppity at work — we could replace you with a bot. And critics think it is a terrible idea for developers to become reliant on A.I. produced by a small coterie of tech giants. Thomas Ptacek, a Chicago-based developer and a co-founder of the tech firm Fly.io... thinks the refuseniks are deluding themselves when they claim that A.I. doesn't work well and that it can't work well... The holdouts are in the minority, and "you can watch the five stages of grief playing out." "How things will shake out for professional coders themselves isn't yet clear," the article concludes. "But their mix of exhilaration and anxiety may be a preview for workers in other fields... Abstraction may be coming for us all."

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It's America's first large-scale offshore wind project, reports WBUR — enough clean energy to power 400,000 homes in Massachusetts from 62 offshore wind turbines generating 800 megawatts. But it took a while... The plant's first construction delay happened back in 2019, they point out — and then "Just three months ago, when the project was 95% complete, the U.S. Interior Department issued a stop-work order." But after successfully challenging that order in court, and "with a stretch of good weather offshore, the developers behind the $4.5 billion project managed to get over the finish line." The Associated Press notes it was "one of five major East Coast offshore wind projects the Trump administration halted construction on days before Christmas, citing national security concerns." Developers and states sued, and federal judges allowed all five to resume construction, essentially concluding that the government did not show that the national security risk was so imminent that construction must halt. Another one of the five, Revolution Wind, began sending power for the first time to New England's electric grid on Friday and will scale up in the weeks ahead until it is fully operational. "That project is nearly complete as well," notes WBUR, "and will eventually be capable of powering up to 350,000 homes."

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Last week was the end of Malika' internship within Papers about signatures that I had the pleasure to mentor. After a post about the first phase of Outreachy, here is the sequel of the story.

Nowadays, people expect to be able to fill and sign PDF documents. We previously worked on features to insert text into documents and signatures needed to be improved.

There is actually some ambiguity when speaking about signatures in PDFs: there are cryptographic signatures that guarantee that a certificate owner approved a document (now denoted by "digital" signatures) and there are also signatures that are just drawings on the document. These latter ones of course do not guarantee any authenticity but are more or less accepted in various situations, depending on the country. Moreover, getting a proper certificate to digitally sign documents may be complicated or costly (with the notable exception of a few countries providing them to their residents such as Spain).

Papers lacked any support for this second category (that I will call "visual" signatures from now on). On the other hand, digital signing was implemented a few releases ago, but it heavily relies on Firefox certificate database 1 and in particular there is no way to manage personal certificates within Papers.

During her three months internship, Malika implemented a new visual signatures management dialog and the corresponding UI to insert them, including nice details such as image processing to import signature pictures properly. She also contributed to the poppler PDF rendering library to compress signature data.

Then she looked into digital signatures and improved the insertion dialog, letting users choose visual signatures for them as well. If all goes well, all of this should be merged before Papers 51!

Malika also implemented a prototype that allows users to import certificates and also deal with multiple NSS databases. While this needs more testing and code review2, it should significantly simplify digital signing.

I would like to thank everyone who made this internship possible, and especially everyone who took the time to do calls and advise us during the internship. And of course, thanks to Malika for all the work she put into her internship!

1

or on NSS command line tools.

2

we don't have enough NSS experts, so help is very welcomed.

The Debian project is pleased to announce the fourth update of its stable distribution Debian 13 (codename trixie). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available.

Version:6.19.8 (stable) Released:2026-03-13 Source:linux-6.19.8.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.19.8.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.19.8

Version:6.18.18 (longterm) Released:2026-03-13 Source:linux-6.18.18.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.18.18.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.18.18

Version:6.12.77 (longterm) Released:2026-03-13 Source:linux-6.12.77.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.12.77.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.12.77

Version:next-20260313 (linux-next) Released:2026-03-13

Linux shows up in places most people stop noticing. Web servers, Kubernetes nodes, build runners, database backends. Start tracing how modern platforms actually run, and a large portion of that infrastructure lands on Linux systems, which quietly turns linux server security into a much bigger conversation than protecting individual hosts.

Authorities have dismantled SocksEscort, a service that sold access to a large proxy network built from compromised residential routers. Investigators say much of the infrastructure sat on infected SOHO networking devices, many running embedded Linux firmware.

Another slow cycle, same as last time. Still, a few new things to showcase.

Sidebars

The most visible addition is the new sidebar widget. This is a bit confusing, because we already had widgets for creating windows with sidebars - AdwNavigationSplitView and AdwOverlaySplitView, but nothing to actually put into the sidebar pane. The usual recommendation is to build your own sidebar using GtkListBox or GtkListView, combined with the .navigation-sidebar style class.

This isn't too difficult, but the result is zero consistency between different apps, not unlike what we had with GtkNotebook-based tabs in the past:

It's even worse on mobile. In the best scenario it will just be a strangely styled flat list. Sometimes it will also have selection, and depending on how it's implemented it may be impossible to activate the selected row, like in libadwaita demo.

So we have a pre-built one now. It doesn't aim to support every single use case (sidebars can get very complex, see e.g. GNOME Builder), but just to be good enough for the basic situations.

How basic is basic? Well, it has selection, sections (with or without titles), tooltips, context menus, a drop target, suffix widgets at the end of each item's row, auto-activation when hovered during drag-n-drop.

A more advanced feature is built-in search filter - via providing a GtkFilter and a placeholder page.

And that's about it. There will likely be more features in future, like collapsible sections and drag source on items, rather than just a drop target, but this should already be enough for quite a lot of apps. Not everything, but that's not the goal here.

Internally, it's using GtkListBox. This means that it doesn't scale to thousands of items the way GtkListView would, but we can have much tighter API and mobile integration.

Now, let's talk about mobile. Ideally sidebars on mobile wouldn't really be sidebars at all. This pattern inherently requires a second pane, and falls apart otherwise. AdwNavigationSplitView already presents the sidebar pane as a regular page, so let's go further and turn sidebars into boxed lists. We're already using GtkListBox, after all.

So - AdwSidebar has the mode property. When set to ADW_SIDEBAR_MODE_PAGE, it becomes a page of boxed lists - indistinguishable from any others. It hides item selection, but it's still tracked internally. It can still be changed programmatically, and changes when an item is activated. Once the sidebar mode is set back to ADW_SIDEBAR_MODE_SIDEBAR, it will reappear.

Internally it's nothing special, as it just presents the same data using different widgets.

The adaptive layouts page has a detailed example for how to create UIs like this, as well as the newly added section about overlay sidebars that don't change as drastically.

View switcher sidebar

Once we have a sidebar, a rather obvious thing to do is to provide a GtkStackSidebar replacement. So AdwViewSwitcherSidebar is exactly that.

It works with AdwViewStack rather than GtkStack, and has all the same features as existing view switcher, as well as an extra one - sections.

To support that, AdwViewStackPage has new API for defining sections - the :starts-section and :section-title properties, while the AdwViewStack:pages) model is now a section model.

Like regular sidebars, it supports the boxed list mode and search filtering.

Unlike other view switchers or GtkStackSidebar, it also exposes AdwSidebar's item activation signal. This is required to make it work on mobile.

Demo improvements

The lack of sidebar was the main blocker for improving libadwaita demo in the past. Now that it's solved, the demo is at last, fully adaptive. The sidebar has been reorganized into sections, and has icons and search now.

This also unblocks other potential improvements, such as having a more scalable preferences dialog.

Reduced motion

While there isn't any new API, most widgets with animations have been updated to respect the new reduced motion preference - mostly by replacing sliding/scaling animations with crossfades, or otherwise toning down animations when it's impossible:

• AdwDialog open/close transitions are crossfades except for the swipe-to-close gesture
• AdwBottomSheet transition is a crossfade when there's no bottom bar, and a slide without overshooting if there is
• AdwNavigationView transition is a crossfade except when using the swipe gestures
• AdwTabOverview transition is a crossfade

AdwOverlaySplitView is unaffected for now. Same for toasts, those are likely small enough to not cause motion sickness. If it turns out to be a problem, it can be changed later.

I also didn't update any of the deprecated widgets, like AdwLeaflet. Applications still using those should switch to the modern alternatives.

The prefers-reduced-motion media feature is available for use from app CSS as well, following the GTK addition.

Other changes

• AdwAboutDialog rows that contain links have a context menu now. Link rows may become a public widget in future if there's interest.

• GTK_DEBUG=builder diagnostics are now supported for all libadwaita widgets. This can be used to find places where <child> tags are used in UI when equivalent properties exist.

• Following GTK, all GListModel implementations now come with :item-type and :n-item properties, to make it easier to use them from expressions.

• The AdwTabView:pages model implements sections now: one for pinned pages and one for everything else.

• AdwToggle has a new :description property that can be used to set accessible description for individual toggles separately from tooltips.

• Adrien Plazas improved accessibility in a bunch of widgets. The majority of this work has been backported to 1.8.x as well. For example, AdwViewSwitcher and AdwInlineViewSwither now read out number badges and needs attention status.

• AdwNoneAnimationTarget now exists for situations where animations are used as frame clock-based timers, as an alternative to using AdwCallbackAnimationTarget with empty callback.

• AdwPreferencesPage will refuse to add children of types other than AdwPreferencesGroup, instead of overlaying them over the page and then leaking them after the page is destroyed. This change was backported to 1.8.2 and subsequently reverted in 1.8.3 as it turned out multiple apps were relying on the broken behavior.

• Maximiliano made non-nullable string setter functions automatically replace NULL parameters with empty strings, since allowing NULL breaks Rust bindings, while rejecting them means apps using expressions get unexpected criticals - for example, when accessing a non-nullable string property on an object, and that object itself is NULL.

• As mentioned in the 1.8 blog post, style-dark.css, style-hc.css and style-hc-dark.css resources are now deprecated and apps using them will get warnings on startup. Apps are encouraged to switch to a single style.css and conditionally load styles using media queries instead.

• While not a user-visible change (hopefully!), the internal stylesheet has been refactored to use prefers-contrast media queries for high contrast styles instead of 2 conditionally loaded variants - further reducing the need on SCSS, even if not entirely replacing it just yet. (the main blocker is @extend, as well nesting and a few mixins, such as focus ring)

Future

A big change in works is a revamp of icon API. GTK has a new icon format that supports stateful icons with animated transitions, variable stroke weight, and many other capabilities. Currently, libadwaita doesn't make use of this, but it will in future.

In fact, a few smaller changes are already in 1.9: all of the internal icons in libadwaita itself, as well as in the demo and docs, have been updated to use the new format.

Thanks to the GNOME Foundation for their support and thanks to all the contributors who made this release possible.

Because 2026 is such an interesting period of time to live in, I feel I should explicitly say that libadwaita does not contain any AI slop, nor does allow such contributions, nor do I have any plans to change that. Same goes for all of my other projects, including this website.

sinij shares a report from Car and Driver: Honda is making a monumental shift in its business plans. The automaker is canceling the development and launch of the 0 Series SUV, the 0 Series saloon, and the Acura RSX, and as a result, expects to take a significant financial hit in 2026 [of up to $15.8 billion]. The automaker was blunt in its announcement of the changing plans, citing American tariff policies and the unpredictable nature surrounding American EV incentives and fossil fuel regulations. In its release marking the announcement, Honda made it clear that it expected to incur further financial losses over the long term if it went through with launching the cars. Honda also called out changing customer values in China, with buyers focusing more on software features and less on things like fuel efficiency and cabin space. In its release regarding the changing product plans, Honda was shockingly blunt about its situation, saying that it was simply unable to deliver products that offer a better value than that of newer Chinese manufacturers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anthropic updated Claude so it can automatically generate charts, diagrams, and other interactive visualizations directly inside conversations, rather than only in a side panel. The new visualizations are rolling out now to all users. The Verge reports: As an example, Anthropic says a conversation about the periodic table could lead Claude to generate a visualization of it, featuring interactive elements that let you click inside the table for more information. Another example shows how Claude can generate a visual related to a question about how weight travels through a building. Though Claude will automatically determine whether it should generate a visualization in your chat, Anthropic notes that you can also ask the chatbot to generate a diagram, table, or chart directly. [...] Anthropic already allows you to create charts, documents, tools, and apps through Claude's "artifacts" feature, which opens in a side panel where you can interact, share, and download the AI-generated creation. But, as noted by Anthropic, artifacts are persistent, while the visualizations created within Claude's conversations will change or disappear as the conversation progresses. You can also ask Claude to make changes to the visualizations it creates.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Version:next-20260312 (linux-next) Released:2026-03-12

Google Maps is rolling out its biggest update in more than a decade, introducing a Gemini-powered chatbot and a new "Immersive Navigation" interface. "Ask Maps" lets users plan trips, ask questions, and refine travel suggestions conversationally within the app. "The new chatbot will be accessible via a button up near the search bar," notes Ars Technica. "You can ask it anything you're likely to find in Google Maps without jumping into another app. You can ask for directions, of course, but it can also plan out road trips and vacations from a single prompt. Ask Maps works like a chatbot, so it accepts follow-up prompts to refine and expand on its suggestions." Meanwhile, Google is promising a "complete transformation" of the navigation experience in Maps with what they're calling "Immersive Navigation." It brings detailed 3D visuals, smarter route previews, and improved guidance powered by data from Street View and aerial imagery. "You'll see accurate overpasses, crosswalks, landmarks, and signage in the new navigation experience," reports Ars. "Google also aims to solve some of the biggest usability issues with turn-by-turn navigation in this update. [...] Immersive Navigation tries to show you more of the route as you drive, using smart zoom and transparent buildings to help you plan ahead. Voice guidance will also reference turns after the next one where appropriate." Immersive Navigation will also highlights the tradeoffs between different route options, such as longer routes that avoid traffic or tolls. And, as you approach your destination, it will uses Street View imagery, building entrances, and parking information to help you orient yourself. The features are launching on Android and iOS first, with broader platform support coming later.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Atlassian plans to cut 1,600 jobs or a 10th of its global workforce, joining rivals in slashing staffing to cope with the advent of AI and a broader post-Covid industry slowdown. Australian billionaire founder Mike Cannon-Brookes explained the reductions in a staff memo, while also announcing his chief technology officer was leaving the Sydney-based company. "It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas," Cannon-Brookes said. "It does."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Asian governments are implementing emergency measures like four-day workweeks and work-from-home mandates to cope with a fuel shortage triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. "Asia is particularly dependent on oil exports from the Middle East; Japan and South Korea respectively source 90% and 70% of their oil from the region," notes Fortune. From the report: On March 10, Thailand ordered civil servants to take the stairs rather than the elevator, and to work-from-home for the duration of the crisis. It increased the air-conditioning temperature to 27 degrees Celsius, and will tell government employees to wear short-sleeved shirts over suits. (Thailand has about 95 days of energy reserves left, according to Reuters). Vietnam also called on businesses to let people work-from-home to "reduce the need for travel and transportation." The Philippines is pushing for a four-day work week, and has ordered officials to limit travel "to essential functions only." South Asia is getting hit hard too. Bangladesh brought forward the Eid-al-fitr holiday, allowing universities to close early in a bid to save fuel. Pakistan also instituted a four-day week for government offices and closed schools. India suspended shipments of liquefied petroleum gas to commercial operators to prioritize supplies for households, leading to worries from hotels and restaurants that they may be forced to close without fuel supplies. Countries across the region are also considering price caps, subsidies, and tapping strategic oil reserves. On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency "unanimously" agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil and refined products from its reserves. The Associated Press offers a look at the energy supplies that countries hold and when they tap them.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was a "strategic mistake," European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday, as governments grapple with an energy crunch from the Iran war. Europe produced around a third of electricity from nuclear power in 1990 but that has fallen to 15%, she told an event in Paris, leaving it reliant on oil and gas imports whose prices have surged in recent days. Being "completely dependent on expensive and volatile imports" of fossil fuels puts Europe at a disadvantage to other regions, von der Leyen said in a speech. "This reduction in the share of nuclear was a choice. I believe that it was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emissions power." The report notes that the EU does not directly fund nuclear energy projects because all 27 member states have not unanimously supported the technology. However, von der Leyen said the Commission plans to provide a 200-million-euro guarantee from the EU's carbon market to help attract private investment in innovative nuclear technologies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Version:6.19.7 (stable) Released:2026-03-12 Source:linux-6.19.7.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.19.7.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.19.7

Version:6.18.17 (longterm) Released:2026-03-12 Source:linux-6.18.17.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.18.17.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.18.17