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"Canonical is no longer pretending that 4GB is enough," writes the blog How-to-Geek, noting Ubuntu 26.04 LTS "raises the baseline memory to 6GB, alongside a 2GHz dual-core processor, and 25GB of storage..." Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) set the floor at 1GB — a modest ask when it launched more than a decade ago in 2014. Then came the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) that pushed the number to 4GB, surviving quite well in the era of 16GB being considered standard for mid-range laptops.... Ubuntu's new minimum requirement lands in an interesting spot when compared against Windows 11. Microsoft's operating system requires just 4GB RAM, although real-world usage often tells a different story. Usually, 8GB is considered the sweet spot to handle modern apps and multitasking. The blog OMG Ubuntu argues this change is "not because Ubuntu requires 2GB more memory than it did, but more the way we compute does." it's more of an honesty bump. Components that make up the distro — the

Apple's 50th anniversary got celebrated in weird and wild ways. CEO Tim Cook posted a special 30-second video rewinding backwards through the years of Apple's products until it reaches the Apple I. Podcaster Lex Fridman noticed if you play the sound in reverse, "It's the Think Different ad music, pitched up." TechRadar played seven 50-year-old Apple I games on an emulator, including Star Trek, Blackjack, Lunar Lander, and of course, Conway's Game of Life. And Macworld ranked Apple's 50 most influential people. (Their top five?) 5. Tony Fadell (iPhone co-creator/"father of the iPod") 4. Sir Jony Ive 3. Steve Wozniak 2. Tim Cook 1. Steve Jobs One of the most thoughtful celebraters was David Pogue, who's spent 42 years of writing about Apple (starting as a MacWorld columnist and the author of Mac for Dummies, one of the first "...For Dummies" books ever published in the early 1990s.) Now 63 years old, Pogue spent the last two years working on a 608-page hardcover book titled Apple:

"Hackers briefly turned a widely trusted developer tool into a vehicle for credential-stealing malware that could give attackers ongoing access to infected systems," the news site Axios.com reported Tuesday, citing security researchers at Google. The compromised package — also named axios — simplifies HTTP requests, and reportedly receives millions of downloads each day: The malicious versions were removed within roughly three hours of being published, but Google warned the incident could have "far-reaching impacts" given the package's widespread use, according to John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group. Wiz estimates Axios is downloaded roughly 100 million times per week and is present in about 80% of cloud and code environments. So far, Wiz has observed the malicious versions in roughly 3% of the environments it has scanned. Friday PCMag notes the maintainer's compromised account had two-factor authentication enabled, with the breach ultimat

Nine days ago Microsoft released a non-security "preview" update for Windows 11 — not mandatory for the average Windows user, notes ZDNet, "but rather as optional, more for IT admins and power users who want to test them." TechRepublic adds that the update "was to bring 'production-ready improvements' and generally ensure system stability by optimizing different Windows services." So it's ironic that some (but not all) users reported instead that the update "blocks users at the door, refusing to install or crashing midway through the process." "It apparently impacted enough people to force Microsoft to take action," writes ZDNet. "Microsoft paused and then pulled the update," and then Tuesday released a new update "designed to replace the glitchy one. This one includes all the new features and improvements from the previous preview update, but also fixes the installation issues that clobbered that update." Meanwhile, as Windows 11 version 24H2 approaches its end of life this

A former U.S. spy spoke to The New Yorker about "years of clandestine work for the C.I.A. — which, he said, had 'prevented Iran from getting a nuke'." [Kevin] Chalker told me that, as he understood it, the Pentagon had suggested running commando operations to kill key Iranian scientists, as Israel subsequently did. But the C.I.A. proposed recruiting those scientists to defect, as U.S. spies had once courted Soviet physicists. Chalker paraphrased the agency's pitch: "We can debrief them and learn so much more — and, if they say no, then you can kill them." (A more senior agency official confirmed the broad strokes of his account.) The White House liked the agency's idea, and [president George W.] Bush authorized the C.I.A. to conduct clandestine operations to stop Iran from building a bomb. The C.I.A. program that Chalker described to me became publicly known in 2007, when the Los Angeles Times reported on the existence of an agency project called Brain Drain. But the detai

Slashdot reader Kirkman14 writes: A year before the Web opened to the public, Texas entrepreneur Don Lokke was trying to syndicate weekly political cartoons to bulletin board systems. His "telecomics," as he called them, represent an overlooked early experiment in online comics. Lokke launched his main series, "Mack the Mouse" at the height of the 1992 Clinton-Bush-Perot presidential race. His mouse protagonist voiced the frustrations felt by everyday Americans about rising taxes and the recession. Lokke gave away "Mack" for free, but sold subscriptions to his other telecomics, betting sysops would pay for exclusive content. The timing wasn't crazy: enthusiasm for BBSes as an industry was surging, with conferences like ONE BBSCON promoting "BBSing for profit." But the Web soon deflated those hopes, and Lokke left BBSes behind in 1995. Decades later, about half of his nearly 300 telecomics were recovered and preserved on 16colors.

MarketWatch looks at "surveillance wages," pay rates "based not on an employee's performance or seniority, but on formulas that use their personal data, often collected without employees' knowledge." According to Nina DiSalvo, policy director at labor advocacy group Towards Justice, some systems use signals associated with financial vulnerability — including data on whether a prospective employee has taken out a payday loan or has a high credit-card balance — to infer the lowest pay a candidate might accept. Companies can also scrape candidates' public personal social-media pages, she said... A first-of-its-kind audit of 500 labor-management artificial-intelligence companies by Veena Dubal, a law professor at University of California, Irvine, and Wilneida Negrón, a tech strategist, found that employers in the healthcare, customer service, logistics and retail industries are customers of vendors whose tools are designed to enable this practice. Published by the Wa

Anthropic's making a big and sudden change — and connecting its Claude AI to third-party agentic tools "is about to get a lot more expensive," writes the Verge: Beginning April 4th at 3PM ET, users will "no longer be able to use your Claude subscription limits for third-party harnesses including OpenClaw," according to an email sent to users on Friday evening. Instead, if users want to use OpenClaw with Claude, they'll have to use a "pay-as-you-go option" that will be billed separate from their Claude subscription. Anthropic's announcement added these extra usage bundles are "now available at a discount." Users can also try Anthropic's API, notes VentureBeat, "which charges for every token of usage rather than allowing for open-ended usage up to certain limits, as the Pro and Max plans have allowed so far. " The technical reality, according to Anthropic, is that its first-party tools like Claude Code, its AI vibe coding harness, and Claude Cowork, its business app interfac

"The April 1st timing should have been your first clue," writes Gadget Review. TechSpot's false story was just an April Fool's prank — although Gadget Review thinks it's still funny how "something about this particular piece of satire felt uncomfortably plausible." Maybe it's because AMD stock sits around $196 while Intel hovers near $41, or perhaps it's the poetic justice of the underdog finally eating the giant. The semiconductor world has witnessed stranger reversals, but none quite this dramatic. Your gaming rig's CPU battle represents decades of corporate warfare, legal grudges, and technological leapfrogging that makes Game of Thrones look like a friendly board game. Picture this: In 1975, AMD reverse-engineered Intel's 8080 processor, creating the Am9080 clone. The audacity was breathtaking — AMD spent 50 cents per chip to manufacture something they sold for $700. That's a 1,400% markup on borrowed technology, making today's GPU prices look reasonable. This rela

Amazon "must negotiate with a labor union representing some 5,000 workers at a company warehouse on Staten Island," reports Reuters, citing a ruling Wednesday from America's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The union formed in 2022, according to the article, and "has been seeking to negotiate with Amazon over pay, working conditions and other matters." The NLRB said in its ruling that Amazon "has engaged in unfair labor practices" by refusing to bargain with the labor group or to recognize its legitimacy... Amazon said on Thursday it disagreed with the NLRB's ruling. "Representatives of the NLRB improperly influenced this election," the company said in a statement, suggesting it planned to appeal. "We're confident an unbiased court will overturn the original certification, and we look forward to the opportunity for our team to fairly voice their opinions." An appeal would likely preclude Amazon from having to comply with the NLRB's order while it makes its way through the cou