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BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: LibreOffice 25.8 has landed, and while it packs in new features and speed improvements, the biggest headline is who just got left behind. If you are still running Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1, this is the end of the road. LibreOffice will not run on those systems anymore, and there are no workarounds. The suite has slammed the door shut. For years, LibreOffice kept older Windows users afloat while Microsoft and other developers moved on. That lifeline is gone. Anyone stubbornly clinging to Windows 7 or 8 now has two choices: upgrade or stay stuck on outdated software. LibreOffice has made it clear that it will not carry dead platforms any further. And the cuts do not stop there. 32-bit Windows builds are on their way out, with deprecation already in place. On the Mac side, 25.8 is the last release that runs on macOS 10.15. Starting with LibreOffice 26.2, only macOS 11 and newer will be supported. In other words, if your computer is too old to run modern systems, LibreOffice is walking away.

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Museum boffins find code that crashes in 2037

A stark warning about the upcoming Epochalypse, also known as the "Year 2038 problem," has come from the past, as National Museum Of Computing system restorers have discovered an unsetting issue while working on ancient systems.…

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: All the critical minerals the U.S. needs annually for energy, defense and technology applications are already being mined at existing U.S. facilities, according to a new analysis published in the journal Science. The catch? These minerals, such as cobalt, lithium, gallium and rare earth elements like neodymium and yttrium, are currently being discarded as tailings of other mineral streams like gold and zinc, said Elizabeth Holley, associate professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines and lead author of the new paper. To conduct the analysis, Holley and her team built a database of annual production from federally permitted metal mines in the U.S. They used a statistical resampling technique to pair these data with the geochemical concentrations of critical minerals in ores, recently compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey, Geoscience Australia and the Geologic Survey of Canada. Using this approach, Holley's team was able to estimate the quantities of critical minerals being mined and processed every year at U.S. metal mines but not being recovered. Instead, these valuable minerals are ending up as discarded tailings that must be stored and monitored to prevent environmental contamination. The analysis looks at a total of 70 elements used in applications ranging from consumer electronics like cell phones to medical devices to satellites to renewable energy to fighter jets and shows that unrecovered byproducts from other U.S. mines could meet the demand for all but two -- platinum and palladium. Among the elements included in the analysis are: - Cobalt (Co): The lustrous bluish-gray metal, a key component in electric car batteries, is a byproduct of nickel and copper mining. Recovering less than 10% of the cobalt currently being mined and processed but not recovered would be more than enough to fuel the entire U.S. battery market. - Germanium (Ge): The brittle silvery-white semi-metal used for electronics and infrared optics, including sensors on missiles and defense satellites, is present in zinc and molybdenum mines. If the U.S. recovered less than 1% of the germanium currently mined and processed but not recovered from U.S. mines, it would not have to import any germanium to meet industry needs.

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Google has released (PDF) a new analysis of its AI's environmental impact, showing that it has cut the energy use of AI text queries by a factor of 33 over the past year. Each prompt now consumes about 0.24 watt-hours -- the equivalent of watching nine seconds of TV. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from an Ars Technica article: "We estimate the median Gemini Apps text prompt uses 0.24 watt-hours of energy, emits 0.03 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (gCO2e), and consumes 0.26 milliliters (or about five drops) of water," they conclude. To put that in context, they estimate that the energy use is similar to about nine seconds of TV viewing. The bad news is that the volume of requests is undoubtedly very high. The company has chosen to execute an AI operation with every single search request, a compute demand that simply didn't exist a couple of years ago. So, while the individual impact is small, the cumulative cost is likely to be considerable. The good news? Just a year ago, it would have been far, far worse. Some of this is just down to circumstances. With the boom in solar power in the US and elsewhere, it has gotten easier for Google to arrange for renewable power. As a result, the carbon emissions per unit of energy consumed saw a 1.4x reduction over the past year. But the biggest wins have been on the software side, where different approaches have led to a 33x reduction in energy consumed per prompt. The Google team describes a number of optimizations the company has made that contribute to this. One is an approach termed Mixture-of-Experts, which involves figuring out how to only activate the portion of an AI model needed to handle specific requests, which can drop computational needs by a factor of 10 to 100. They've developed a number of compact versions of their main model, which also reduce the computational load. Data center management also plays a role, as the company can make sure that any active hardware is fully utilized, while allowing the rest to stay in a low-power state. The other thing is that Google designs its own custom AI accelerators, and it architects the software that runs on them, allowing it to optimize both sides of the hardware/software divide to operate well with each other. That's especially critical given that activity on the AI accelerators accounts for over half of the total energy use of a query. Google also has lots of experience running efficient data centers that carries over to the experience with AI. The result of all this is that it estimates that the energy consumption of a typical text query has gone down by 33x in the last year alone.

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Bluesky has blocked access to its service in Mississippi rather than comply with a new state law requiring age verification for all social media users. TechCrunch reports: In a blog post published on Friday, the company explains that, as a small team, it doesn't have the resources to make the substantial technical changes this type of law would require, and it raised concerns about the law's broad scope and privacy implications. Mississippi's HB 1126 requires platforms to introduce age verification for all users before they can access social networks like Bluesky. On Thursday, U.S. Supreme Court justices decided to block an emergency appeal that would have prevented the law from going into effect as the legal challenges it faces played out in the courts. As a result, Bluesky had to decide what it would do about compliance. Instead of requiring age verification before users could access age-restricted content, this law requires age verification of all users. That means Bluesky would have to verify every user's age and obtain parental consent for anyone under 18. The company notes that the potential penalties for noncompliance are hefty, too -- up to $10,000 per user. Bluesky also stresses that the law goes beyond child safety, as intended, and would create "significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harm smaller platforms and emerging technologies." To comply, Bluesky would have to collect and store sensitive information from all its users, in addition to the detailed tracking of minors. This is different from how it's expected to comply with other age verification laws, like the U.K.'s Online Safety Act (OSA), which only requires age checks for certain content and features. Mississippi's law blocks anyone from using the site unless they provide their personal and sensitive information. The company notes that its decision only applies to the Bluesky app built on the AT Protocol. Other apps may approach the decision differently.

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The funds were already allocated under the CHIPS Act and Secure Enclave program

Congratulations America, your government now owns 10 percent of troubled domestic chipmaker Intel.…

At its upcoming Connect conference next month, Meta is rumored to unveil its first consumer-ready smart glasses with a built-in display, alongside a neural wristband controller. The $800 device, codenamed Hypernova, will be able to show simple visual content like texts and support AI assistant interactions. CNBC reports: Connect is a two-day conference for developers focused on virtual reality, AR and the metaverse. It was originally called Oculus Connect and obtained its current moniker after Facebook changed its parent company name to Meta in 2021. The glasses are internally codenamed Hypernova and will include a small digital display in the right lens of the device, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential. The device is expected to cost about $800 and will be sold in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the people said. CNBC reported in October that Meta was working with Luxottica on consumer glasses with a display. [...] With Hypernova, Meta will finally be offering glasses with a display to consumers, but the company is setting low expectations for sales, some of the sources said. That's because the device requires more components than its voice-only predecessors, and will be slightly heavier and thicker, the people said. [...] Although Hypernova will feature a display, those visual features are expected to be limited, people familiar with the matter said. They said the color display will offer about a 20 degree field of view -- meaning it will appear in a small window in a fixed position -- and will be used primarily to relay simple bits of information, such as incoming text messages. The Hypernova glasses will also come paired with a wristband that will use technology built by Meta's CTRL Labs, said people familiar with the matter. CTRL Labs, which Meta acquired in 2019, specializes in building neural technology that could allow users to control computing devices using gestures in their arms. [...] In addition to Hypernova and the wristband, Meta will also announce a third-generation of its voice-only smart glasses with Luxottica at Connect, one person said.

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