An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A controversial bill in Colorado that would have undone some repair protections in the state has failed. The bill had been the target of right-to-repair advocates, who saw it as a bellwether for how tech companies might try to undo repair legislation more broadly in the US. Colorado's landmark 2024 repair law, the Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment, went into effect in January 2026 and ensured access to tools and documentation people needed to modify and fix digital electronics such as phones, computers, and Wi-Fi routers. The new bill, SB26-090, would have carved out an exception to those repair protections for "critical infrastructure," a loosely defined term that repair advocates worried could be applied to just about any technology.

SB26-090 was introduced during a Colorado Senate hearing on April 2 and was supported by lobbying efforts from companies such as Cisco and IBM. It passed that hearing unanimously. The bill then passed in the Colorado Senate on April 16. On Monday evening, the bill was discussed in a long, delayed hearing in the Colorado House's State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee. Dozens of supporters and detractors gave public comments. Finally, the bill was shot down in a 7-to-4 vote and classified as postponed indefinitely. "While we were making progress at chipping away at the momentum for it, we had still been losing," said Danny Katz, executive director of the local nonprofit consumer advocacy group CoPIRG. "So, we took nothing for granted, and I believe the incredible testimony from the broad range of cybersecurity experts, businesses, repair advocates, recyclers, and people who want the freedom to fix their stuff made a big difference."

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Hashicorp co-founder Mitchell Hashimoto says GitHub's frequent outages have made it "no longer a place for serious work," prompting him to move his Ghostty terminal emulator project elsewhere after 18 years on the platform. The Register reports: "I've been angry about it. I've hurt people's feelings. I've been lashing out. Because GitHub is failing me, every single day, and it is personal. It is irrationally personal," he wrote. The reason for his ire is the service has become unreliable. "For the past month I've kept a journal where I put an 'X' next to every date where a GitHub outage has negatively impacted my ability to work," he wrote. "Almost every day has an 'X'. On the day I am writing this post, I've been unable to do any PR review for ~2 hours because there is a GitHub Actions outage."

Hashimoto penned his post a few days before an April 28 incident that saw pull requests fail to complete due to an Elasticsearch SNAFU. Incidents like that mean Hashimoto has decided GitHub "is no longer a place for serious work if it just blocks you out for hours per day, every day." "It's not a fun place for me to be anymore," he lamented. "I want to be there but it doesn't want me to be there. I want to get work done and it doesn't want me to get work done. I want to ship software and it doesn't want me to ship software."

The developer says he wants GitHub to improve, but "I also want to code. And I can't code with GitHub anymore. I'm sorry. After 18 years, I've got to go." He's open to a return if GitHub can deliver "real results and improvements, not words and promises." But for now, he's working to move Ghostty to another collaborative code locker. "We have a plan but I'm also very much still in discussions with multiple providers (both commercial and FOSS)," Hashimoto wrote. "It'll take us time to remove all of our dependencies on GitHub and we have a plan in place to do it as incrementally as possible."

He's doing the equivalent of leaving a toothbrush at a former partner's house by leaving a read-only mirror of Ghostty on GitHub, and by keeping his personal projects on the Microsoft-owned service. But Hashimoto's moving his day job somewhere new. "Ghostty is where I, our maintainers, and our open source community are most impacted so that is the focus of this change. We'll see where it goes after that," he concluded.

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Tony Isaac shares a report from NPR: Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade. Some educators and parents say this is a good thing -- students shouldn't spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated. Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework perform better than their peers. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.

Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed. More homework was also associated with negative attitudes about school for younger children in the study. "The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control," and that's what happens during the school day, Superintendent Garrett said, not homework. "There has been a shift away from it naturally anyway, and I felt like this made it equitable across our entire school system." "The best argument for homework is that mathematical procedures require practice, and you don't want to waste classroom time on practice, so you send that home," said Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher who has studied homework.

Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, said: "The thing they point to is that it's an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students. I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that's an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice." Kids, she said, "need more practice ... Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math."

"The interesting issue for folks to consider is not should there be more homework, but should there be better homework," said Joyce Epstein, who has studied homework and is the co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. "Better homework in math might be knowing the fact that kids don't have to be practicing for hours, 10 to 20 examples," when they could establish mastery in less time.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Humanoid robots are getting a new gig as baggage handlers and cargo loaders at Tokyo's Haneda Airport -- part of a Japan Airlines experiment to address a human labor shortage as airport visitor numbers have surged in recent years. The demonstration, set to launch in May 2026, could eventually test humanoid robots in a wide range of airport tasks, including cleaning aircraft cabins and possibly handling ground support equipment such as baggage carts, according to a Japan Airlines press release. The trials are scheduled to run until 2028, which suggests that travelers flying into or out of Tokyo may spot some of the robots at work.

[...] Japan Airlines is interested in testing whether humanoid robots powered by some of the latest AI models can adapt more readily to human work environments -- such as airports -- without requiring dedicated work stations or other significant workplace modifications. The airline's subsidiary, JAL Ground Service, has teamed up with GMO AI & Robotics Corporation to oversee the demonstration. The Japanese companies will test the G1 robot and Walker E robot from Chinese companies Unitree Robotics and UBTECH Robotics, according to The Asia Business Daily. Humanoid robots still typically cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit despite Chinese robotics manufacturers scaling up mass production, although the Unitree G1 robot costs as low as $13,500 for the baseline model.

A new video from an apparently staged demonstration in an aircraft hangar shows one of the humanoid robots tottering up to a large, metal cargo container and making a vague pushing gesture. But the cargo container only begins to move once a human worker starts the conveyor belt to move the container toward the aircraft. Presumably, the robots will need to put in much more effective work if they're to prove as productive as human airport workers. Having robots working directly alongside humans will also introduce new safety considerations for airports like Haneda Airport, which is Japan's second-largest airport, with flights arriving approximately every two minutes. The first step in the pilot program will involve identifying which airport areas will be safest for humanoid robots.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Esthero

Portishead

Sneaker Pimps

Microsoft readies the axe once again for yesterday's security

Microsoft has warned users still clinging to legacy TLS versions that the end is nigh for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 on POP3 and IMAP4 connections to Exchange Online.…

Authors say it acquired an LLM that was trained on their copyrighted data, and judge keeps asking for more info

Databricks cannot shake a class action lawsuit targeting its LLM, which several book authors contend was created with a database that contained pirated versions of some of their copyrighted books – and about 196,000 titles in all.…

New sealed bootable container images and Stratis storage, too

Fedora Linux 44 has arrived – in multiple formats and for several CPU families, including some new container formats and storage options.…

Oprecht interessante bespreking btw: 'wanneer mag je jezelf een expert noemen?'

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Na een meerdaags redactieberaad is de conclusie als volgt: Mauro Matt moet blijven. Onderstaand een samenvatting van de notulen: 

- Ze doceert geen genderstudies, maar biochemie, en op zulke faculteiten lopen van oudsher de minst gekalibreerde paradijsvogels rond. 
- Ze kan blijkbaar lesgeven want in 2022 won ze met twee collega's de 'Vice-Chancellor’s Education Award' voor hun eerstejaars workships. 
- Maar laten we eerlijk wezen: Matts prothetische borstenharnas ipv implantaten is niet zozeer een kwestie van genderidentiteit, maar van een zeer publiekelijk geëtaleerde fetisj te weten 'Autogynephilia', wat overigens ook geldt voor heel veel transgenders, maar dat is een andere discussie.
- Om bovengenoemde redenen is er maar één conclusie mogelijk: Matt mag inclusief prothetische borstenharnas blijven, maar moet zich voortaan wel volledig in niqaab hullen, het blijft immers een islamitisch land en die gebruiken heeft hij te respecteren.

Ja is echt

Van Dexter Morgan/Pewdiepie naar... iets nieuws

Ja is wel zo

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Doe het maar na bolleboos!

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In weerwil van wat boze oma's op Feesboek en een enkele verwarde boswachter in onze inbox denkt, hebben wij al geruime tijd helemaal niets met PowNed vandoen, zeg maar, meer dan vijftien jaar. Aangezien wij het ontzettend leuk vinden om met het Hilversumse aan de enkels af te zagen zijn wij dus de aangewezen personen om met professionele distantie naar hun werk te kijken, want dat is soms gewoon: ontzettend goed. 

Neem de Powcast, die aanvankelijk werd gepresenteerd door Sarah Bakker en een co-host wiens naam, stem en inbreng we weer zijn vergeten. Sarah Bakker is misschien wel het grootste Hilversumse mediatalent sinds Rutger Castricum ooit en er zit nu ene Abel Bijlsma naast die ook uitstekend te doen is. Afgelopen weekend was met Raymond Mens, die eindelijk eens ergens mocht vertellen wat nu precies het verschil is tussen hoe andere mensen Trump percipiëren en hoe Raymond Mens dat doet. Waardevol! In eerdere afleveringen zaten iets boeiendere gasten - selectie na de breek, serieuze kijkluistertip.

Bikkerrrr

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Agema

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Ene Schaepman

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Markuszower

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Greg Adams Photography posted a photo:

... well, Detroit actually, in an abandoned car factory... and while we are at it, it is not really a tree... but if you squint tightly you can see roots, a trunk, leaves...

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

conspectus_bs posted a photo:

Kodak Ektar 100 with Mamiya 645 Pro and Sekor 150 mm

Op meerdere plekken in het land is de luchtkwaliteit niet optimaal, laten metingen van het Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid (RIVM) op luchtmeetnet.nl zien.

Een militaire oefening bij ’t Harde veroorzaakte een brand die zich door de felle wind snel uitbreidde. Rookwolken joegen bewoners van de Veluwerand hun huizen in. „De natuur is op dit moment superbrandbaar. Moet je dan wel oefenen met explosieven?”

A thirtysomething woman with the easy smile of your favorite neighbor sits in her earth-tone living room, natural light washing over a gray couch so long it could easily fit four children. The woman speaks of a friend, a married mother, who was frustrated that she had to constantly remind her germophile husband to wash his hands. Hearing this, the woman cautioned her friend: "I think it would be better for your entire family to get the black plague and die ... than for you to continue treating your husband like a toddler by reminding him to wash his hands." Welcome to Wife School, a video masterclass led by Tilly Dillehay, a 38-year-old Baptist writer, podcaster and pastor's wife who teaches women how to "become the kind of woman who inspires a godly leader".