Shameless Plug

System76 CEO Sees 'Real Possibility' Colorado's Age-Verification Bill Excludes Open-Source Published on 2026-03-14T18:34:00Z Last week System76 CEO Carl Richell criticized age-verification laws for operating systems — but he now sees a "real possibility" Colorado's law might exclude open-source. Phoronix reports that the System76 CEO met with the state Senator who co-authored Colorado's bill, and then posted on X.com that the Senator "suggested excluding open source software from the bill." Richell: This appears to be a real possibility. Amendments are expected... It's my hope we can move fast enough to influence excluding open source.. No illusions, it's an uphill battle, but we have an open door to advocate for the open source community. Vague language has been a recurring problem with new state age-verification legislation. Richell pointed out later that "In one proposed bill, Garmin would have to verify the age of their watch c...

Qatar Helium Shutdown Puts Chip Supply Chain On a Two-Week Clock Published on 2026-03-13T22:00:00Z Iranian drone strikes shut down a major helium facility in Qatar, removing about 30% of global helium supply and raising concerns for the semiconductor industry, which relies on the gas for chip fabrication. "QatarEnergy declared force majeure on existing contracts on March 4, freeing it from supply obligations to customers," reports Tom's Hardware. The industry outlet Gasworld reports that no imminent restart is planned. From the report: Helium consultant Phil Kornbluth, speaking at a Gasworld webinar on March 4, said that if the outage extends beyond roughly two weeks, industrial gas distributors could be forced to relocate cryogenic equipment and revalidate supplier relationships, a process that could stretch over months regardless of when Qatari output resumes. South Korea is among the most exposed countries, which, according to the Korea International Trade Associatio...

Don't Get Used To Cheap AI Published on 2026-03-13T21:00:00Z AI services may not stay cheap for long, as companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are currently subsidizing usage to rapidly grow market share. As these companies move toward profitability and potential IPOs, Axios reports that investors will likely push them to increase prices and improve margins. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Flashback: Silicon Valley has seen this movie before. The so-called "millennial lifestyle subsidy" meant VC money helped underwrite cheap Uber rides and DoorDash deliveries. Before that, Amazon built its base with low prices, free shipping and, for years, no sales tax in most states. Eventually, all of these companies had to charge enough to cover costs -- and make a profit. Follow the money: The current iteration of AI subsidies won't last forever. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are widely expected to go public. Public investors will demand earnings growth and exp...

Digg Relaunch Fails Published on 2026-03-13T20:00:00Z sdinfoserv writes: After running a Reddit clone for a couple of months, the Digg beta shut down again. The website is a splash memo from CEO Justin Mezzell, blaming the latest "Hard Reset" on bots. "Building on the internet in 2026 is different," writes Mezzell. "We learned that the hard way. Today we're sharing difficult news: we've made the decision to significantly downsize the Digg team..." The decision was made after struggling to gain traction and an overwhelming influx of AI-driven bots and spam. "When the Digg beta launched, we immediately noticed posts from SEO spammers noting that Digg still carried meaningful Google link authority," says Mezzell. "Within hours, we got a taste of what we'd only heard rumors about. The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts. We knew bots were part of the landscape, but we did...

Backblaze Hosts 314 Trillion Digits of Pi Online Published on 2026-03-13T19:00:00Z BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Cloud storage company Backblaze has partnered with StorageReview to make a massive dataset containing 314 trillion digits of Pi publicly accessible. The digits were calculated by StorageReview in December 2025 after months of heavy computation designed to stress modern hardware. The dataset now hosted in the cloud weighs in at over 130TB, while the full working dataset used during the calculation reached about 2.1PB when intermediate checkpoints were included. The report notes that the Pi digits have been broken into roughly 200GB chunks to make it more practical for researchers or enthusiasts to download. Here's what StorageReview founder Brian Beeler said about the project: "Pushing [Pi] to 314 trillion digits was far more than a headline number. It was a sustained, months-long computational challenge that stressed every layer of modern infrastruc...

Adobe CEO to Step Down After 18 Years Published on 2026-03-12T22:00:00Z Shantanu Narayen announced he will step down as CEO of Adobe once a successor is appointed, ending an 18-year tenure during which he transformed the company from boxed software to the Creative Cloud subscription model. Narayen said he will remain board chair as Adobe continues pushing into generative AI products. CNBC reports: Narayen joined Adobe in 1988 as a vice president and general manager, and he became CEO in 2007. Under Narayen, Adobe pushed from software licenses to subscriptions to its Creative Cloud application bundle, and the company is now working to expand through generative artificial intelligence. He sought to acquire fast-growing design software company Figma, but regulators pushed back, and the companies called off the deal, resulting in Adobe paying Figma a $1 billion breakup fee. [...] Narayen, 62, is lead independent director of Pfizer in addition to his responsibilities at Adobe, where he re...

Apple's MacBook Neo Makes Repairs Easier, Cheaper Than Other MacBooks Published on 2026-03-12T21:00:00Z Apple's new MacBook Neo is "easier to repair than other modern MacBooks," according to Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham. It introduces a more repairable internal design that makes components like the battery and keyboard easier and cheaper to replace. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the report: Replacements for pretty much any component in the Neo are simpler and involve fewer steps and tools than in the M5 MacBook Air. That includes the battery, which in the MacBook Air is attached to the chassis with multiple screws and adhesive strips but which in the Neo comes out relatively easily after you get some shielding and flex cables out of the way. But the most significant change in the Neo is that the keyboard is its own separate component. For essentially all modern MacBooks, going back at least as far as the late-2000s unibody aluminum MacBook desig...