An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: In an interview, Lansweeper, an IT asset discovery and inventory company, revealed to ZDNET that, in its analysis of over 15 million identified consumer desktop operating systems, it found that Linux desktops currently account for just over 6% of PC market share. This news comes after several other studies have shown the Linux desktop is right around the 6% mark. Indeed, according to the US Federal Government Website and App Analytics count, the Linux desktop market share over the last 90 days has reached 6.3%, a new high. In July, according to StatCounter, the Linux desktop also set a record high by its metrics with 5.24%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump is set to sign an executive order opening up 401(k) retirements plans to alternative assets, like private equity, real estate, and cryptocurrency. The move has the potential to unlock trillions in new investment for asset managers outside of stocks, bonds, and cash, "though critics say it also could bring too much risk into retirement investments," reports Reuters. From the report: "The order directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to facilitate access to alternative assets for participant-directed defined-contribution retirement savings plans by revising applicable regulations and guidance," the White House official said on condition of anonymity. The order directs the Labor Secretary to consult with her counterparts at the Treasury Department, the SEC, and other federal "regulators to determine whether parallel regulatory changes should be made at those agencies," the official said. [...] The new investment options carry lower disclosure requirements and are generally less easy to sell quickly for cash than the publicly traded stocks and bonds that most retirement funds rely on. Investing in them also tends to carry higher fees. In defined contribution plans, employees make contributions to their own retirement account, frequently with a matching contribution from their employer. The invested funds belong to the employee, but unlike a defined benefit pension plan, there is no guaranteed regular payout upon retirement. Many private equity firms are hungry for the new source of cash that retail investors could offer after three years in which high interest rates shook their time-honored model of buying companies and selling them at a profit. Whatever results may come from Trump's order, it likely will not happen overnight, private equity executives say. Plaintiffs' lawyers are already preparing for lawsuits that could be filed by investors who do not understand the complexity of the new forms of investments.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft's $30 Extended Security Updates license for Windows 10 will cover up to 10 devices under a single Microsoft Account, the company confirmed in updated support documentation. The ESU program, which provides security updates through October 13, 2026, requires a Microsoft Account for all three enrollment options: the $30 one-time purchase, redemption of 1,000 Microsoft Reward points, or free enrollment for users who sync their PC settings to OneDrive. Windows 10's support ends October 14, 2025.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has quietly admitted defeat in selling advertising for its smart TV platform, returning ad inventory to publishers and accepting a revenue share instead of controlling ad spots directly, according to The Verge. The policy reversal comes as Google spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on Google TV without breaking even, while Amazon outspends the company on retail incentives that have already pushed Google TV sets out of Costco stores in favor of Fire TV models. Amazon pays up to $50 per activated television to retailers and manufacturers, The Verge reported. Google TV has grown to 270 million monthly active devices worldwide since unifying Android TV and Chromecast under a single brand in 2020, but many devices operate in overseas markets that generate little revenue or run customized versions controlled by pay-TV operators. YouTube's success in the living room -- generating $9.8 billion in quarterly ad revenue and accounting for 12.5% of all US television viewing -- has reduced internal support for Google TV, with sales teams prioritizing the video platform and some YouTube executives arguing the smart TV budget should be redirected, the report adds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI released GPT-5 on Thursday, ending a two-year development cycle that CEO Sam Altman called a "significant leap in intelligence" over previous models. The updated AI system achieved state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmarks, scoring 94.6% on AIME 2025 mathematics problems and 74.9% on SWE-bench Verified coding tasks. The model operates as a unified system combining a standard response mode with deeper reasoning capabilities that activate automatically based on query complexity. OpenAI reduced hallucinations by approximately 45% compared to GPT-4o and 80% compared to its previous reasoning model when using extended thinking modes. GPT-5 becomes available immediately to all ChatGPT users at no cost, with paid subscribers receiving higher usage limits and access to GPT-5 pro for more complex reasoning tasks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI is paying bonuses to around 1,000 employees on its technical research and engineering teams, or about a third of the company, ranging from the low hundreds of thousands to millions, as the company gears up to release its latest flagship GPT-5 model and faces an ever-rising battle for AI talent, according to a person with knowledge of the bonuses.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report: China's biggest solar firms shed nearly one-third of their workforces last year, company filings show, as one of the industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive economic growth grapples with falling prices and steep losses. The job cuts illustrate the pain from the vicious price wars being fought across Chinese industries, including solar and electric vehicles, as they grapple with overcapacity and tepid demand. The world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses, with most of them manufactured in China. Longi Green Energy, Trina Solar, Jinko Solar, JA Solar, and Tongwei, collectively shed some 87,000 staff, or 31% of their workforces on average last year, according to a Reuters review of employment figures in public filings.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Digital Foundry, the gaming hardware analysis publication known for its technical console breakdowns, has separated from IGN ownership as of today, with founder Richard Leadbetter purchasing the outlet and its complete archives. Leadbetter, who retained 50% ownership since selling half to Eurogamer in 2015, acquired an additional 25 percent from IGN while investor Rupert Loman, Eurogamer's original co-founder, purchased the remaining quarter. The five-person team will operate independently, maintaining its YouTube channel with 1.5 million subscribers and Patreon support generating approximately $200,000 annually. The publication plans to develop a full website for its written content and expand coverage while keeping most content free.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump on Thursday called on Intel's CEO to resign because of his past ties to China, the latest challenge for the troubled chip maker. From a report: "The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Thursday. The president appeared to be referencing Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan's past business dealings in China, which Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) called out in a letter to the company's board earlier this week. On Tuesday, Cotton wrote an open letter to Intel's board questioning Tan's ties to the Chinese government, including apparent connections to the country's military and investments in other semiconductor companies. "The new CEO of @intel reportedly has deep ties to the Chinese Communists," Cotton wrote in a post on X accompanying the letter. "U.S. companies who receive government grants should be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars and adhere to strict security regulations. The board of @Intel owes Congress an explanation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Electronic Arts faces a familiar challenge as it prepares to launch Battlefield 6 on October 10: breaking its dependence on the FIFA franchise, now called EA Sports FC, which drives roughly 70% of company profits despite disappointing sales this year. The company has poured unprecedented resources into Battlefield 6, treating it as a platform built for user-generated content rather than a traditional game release. Early signs appear promising -- the trailer hit nearly 5 million YouTube views in a week and shares climbed 5% after beta testing began -- but analysts remain cautious after last year's Dragon Age flop gutted subsidiary BioWare.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: PCI-SIG says PCI Express 8.0 will hit a raw bit rate of 256.0 GT/s, doubling what PCIe 7.0 offers. The spec is expected to be ready by 2028, and the goal is to support massive data loads from AI, machine learning, edge computing, and even quantum systems. The group says PCIe 8.0 will allow up to 1 terabyte per second of bidirectional throughput with a full x16 configuration. They're also looking at new connector designs, improving protocol efficiency, reducing power use, and maintaining backward compatibility.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Three nano-glass spheres cling to one another. They form a tower-like cluster, similar to when you pile three scoops of ice cream on top of one another -- only much smaller. The diameter of the nano cluster is ten times smaller than that of a human hair. With the help of an optical device and laser beams, researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in keeping such objects almost completely motionless in levitation. This is significant when it comes to the future development of quantum sensors, which, together with quantum computers, constitute the most promising applications of quantum research. As part of their levitation experiment, the researchers, led by adjunct professor of photonics Martin Frimmer, were able to eliminate the gravitational force acting on the glass spheres. However, the elongated nano object still trembled, similar to how the needle on a compass moves when settling into position. In the case of the nano cluster, the trembling motion was very fast but weak: the object made around one million deflections per second, each measuring only a few thousandths of a degree. This tiny rotational oscillation is a fundamental quantum motion exhibited by all objects, which physicists call zero-point fluctuation. To date, no one has been successful in detecting these tiny movements for an object of this size as precisely as the ETH researchers have now done. They achieved this because they were able to largely eliminate all motions that originate from the field of classical physics and obscure the observation of quantum movements. The ETH researchers attribute 92% of the cluster's movements in their experiment to quantum physics and 8% to classical physics; they therefore refer to a high level of quantum purity. And the records do not stop there: The researchers accomplished all of this at room temperature. Quantum researchers usually have to cool their objects to a temperature close to absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius) using special equipment. This was not required here. The research has been published in the journal Nature Physics.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Code should be clear and explain what it does, comments should explain why it does that." This aphorism is a decent enough guideline, though like any guidance short enough to fit on a bumper sticker, it can easily be overapplied or misapplied.

Today, we're going to look at a comment Salagir wrote. This comment does explain what the code does, can't hope to explain why, and instead serves as a cautionary tale. We're going to take the comment in sections, because it's that long.

This is about a stored procedure in MariaDB. Think of Salagir as our Virgil, a guide showing us around the circles of hell. The first circle? A warning that the dead code will remain in the code base:

/************************** Dead code, but don't delete! What follows if the history of a terrible, terrible code. I keep it for future generations. Read it in a cold evening in front of the fireplace.

My default stance is "just delete bad, dead code". But it does mean we get this story out of it, so for now I'll allow it.

**** XXX **** This is the story of the stored procedure for getext_fields. **** XXX **** Gets the english and asked language for the field, returns what it finds: it's the translation you want. Called like this: " SELECT getext('$table.$field', $key, '$lang') as $label " The function is only *in the database you work on right now*.

Okay, this seems like a pretty simple function. But why does this say "the function is only in the database you work on right now"? That's concerning.

***** About syntax!! The code below can NOT be used by copy and paste in SQL admin (like phpmyadmin), due to the multiple-query that needs DELIMITER set. The code that works in phpmyadmin is this: DELIMITER $$ DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS getext$$ CREATE FUNCTION (...same...) LIMIT 1; RETURN `txt_out`; END$$ However, DELIMITER breaks the code when executed from PHP.

Am I drowning in the river Styx? Why would I be copy/pasting SQL code into PhpMyAdmin from my PHP code? Is… is this a thing people were doing? Or was it going the opposite way, and people were writing delimited statements and hoping to execute them as a single query? I'm not surprised that didn't work.

***** About configuration!!! IMPORTANT: If you have two MySQL servers bind in Replication mode in order to be able to execute this code, you (or your admin) should set: SET GLOBAL log_bin_trust_function_creators = 1; Without that, adding of this function will fail (without any error).

I don't know the depths of MariaDB, so I can't comment on if this is a WTF. What leaps out to me though, is that this likely needs to be in a higher-level form of documentation, since this is a high-level configuration flag. Having it live here is a bit buried. But, this is dead code, so it's fine, I suppose.

***** About indexes!!!! The primary key was not used as index in the first version of this function. No key was used. Because the code you see here is modified for it's execution. And `field`=my_field becomes `field`= NAME_CONST('my_field',_ascii'[value]' COLLATE 'ascii_bin') And if the type of my_field in the function parameter wasn't the exact same as the type of `text`, no index is used! At first, I didn't specify the charset, and it became `field`= NAME_CONST('my_field',_utf8'[value]' COLLATE 'utf8_unicode_ci') Because utf8 is my default, and no index was used, the table `getext_fields` was read entirely each time! Be careful of your types and charsets... Also...

Because the code you see here is modified for its execution. What? NAME_CONST is meant to create synthetic columns not pulled from tables, e.g. SELECT NAME_CONST("foo", "bar") would create a result set with one column ("foo"), with one row ("bar"). I guess this is fine as part of a join- but the idea that the code written in the function gets modified before execution is a skin-peelingly bad idea. And if the query is rewritten before being sent to the database, I bet that makes debugging hard.

***** About trying to debug!!!!! To see what the query becomes, there is *no simple way*. I literally looped on a SHOW PROCESSLIST to see it! Bonus: if you created the function with mysql user "root" and use it with user "SomeName", it works. But if you do the show processlist with "SomeName", you won't see it!!

Ah, yes, of course. I love running queries against the database without knowing what they are, and having to use diagnostic tools in the database to hope to understand what I'm doing.

***** The final straw!!!!!! When we migrated to MariaDB, when calling this a lot, we had sometimes the procedure call stucked, and UNKILLABLE even on reboot. To fix it, we had to ENTIRELY DESTROY THE DATABASE AND CREATE IT BACK FROM THE SLAVE. Several times in the same month!!!

This is the 9th circle of hell, reserved for traitors and people who mix tabs and spaces in the same file. Unkillable even on reboot? How do you even do that? I have a hunch about the database trying to retain consistency even after failures, but what the hell are they doing inside this function creation statement that can break the database that hard? The good news(?) is the comment(!) contains some of the code that was used:

**** XXX **** The creation actual code, was: **** XXX **** // What DB are we in? $PGf = $Phoenix['Getext']['fields']; $db = $PGf['sql_database']? : ( $PGf['sql_connection'][3]? : ( $sql->query2cell("SELECT DATABASE()") ) ); $func = $sql->query2assoc("SHOW FUNCTION STATUS WHERE `name`='getext' AND `db`='".$sql->e($db)."'"); if ( !count($func) ) { $sql->query(<<<MYSQL CREATE FUNCTION {$sql->gt_db}getext(my_field VARCHAR(255) charset {$ascii}, my_id INT(10) UNSIGNED, my_lang VARCHAR(6) charset {$ascii}) RETURNS TEXT DETERMINISTIC BEGIN DECLARE `txt_out` TEXT; SELECT `text` INTO `txt_out` FROM {$sql->gt_db}`getext_fields` WHERE `field`=my_field AND `id`=my_id AND `lang` IN ('en',my_lang) AND `text`!='' ORDER BY IF(`lang`=my_lang, 0, 1) LIMIT 1; RETURN `txt_out`; END; MYSQL ); ... }

I hate doing string munging to generate SQL statements, but I especially hate it when the very name of the object created is dynamic. The actual query doesn't look too unreasonable, but everything about how we got here is terrifying.

**** XXX **** Today, this is not used anymore, because... **** XXX **** Because a simple sub-query perfectly works! And no maria-db bug. Thus, in the function selects() The code: //example: getext('character.name', `character_id`, 'fr') as name $sels[] = $this->sql_fields->gt_db."getext('$table.$field', $key, '$lang') as `$label`"; Is now: $sels[] = "(SELECT `text` FROM {$this->sql_fields->gt_db}`getext_fields` WHERE `field`='$table.$field' AND `lang` IN ('en', '$lang') AND `id`=$key AND `text`!='' ORDER BY IF(`lang`='$lang', 0, 1) LIMIT 1) as `$label`"; Less nice to look at, but no procedure, all the previous problems GONE! **** XXX The end. */

Of course a simple subquery (or heck, probably a join!) could handle this. Linking data across two tables is what databases are extremely good at. I agree that, at the call site, this is less readable, but there are plenty of ways one could clean this up to make it more readable. Heck, with this, it looks a heck of a lot like you could have written a much simpler function.

Salagir did not provide the entirety of the code, just this comment. The comment remains in the code, as a warning sign. That said, it's a bit verbose. I think a simple "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," would have covered it.

[Advertisement] BuildMaster allows you to create a self-service release management platform that allows different teams to manage their applications. Explore how!