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An anonymous reader shares a report: [...] the rise in China of open technology, which relies on transparency and decentralisation, is awkward for an authoritarian state. If the party's patience with open-source fades, and it decides to exert control, that could hinder both the course of innovation at home, and developers' ability to export their technology abroad. China's open-source movement first gained traction in the mid-2010s. Richard Lin, co-founder of Kaiyuanshe, a local open-source advocacy group, recalls that most of the early adopters were developers who simply wanted free software. That changed when they realised that contributing to open-source projects could improve their job prospects. Big firms soon followed, with companies like Huawei backing open-source work to attract talent and cut costs by sharing technology. Momentum gathered in 2019 when Huawei was, in effect, barred by America from using Android. That gave new urgency to efforts to cut reliance on Western technology. Open-source offered a faster way for Chinese tech firms to take existing code and build their own programs with help from the country's vast community of developers. In 2020 Huawei launched OpenHarmony, a family of open-source operating systems for smartphones and other devices. It also joined others, including Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, to establish the OpenAtom Foundation, a body dedicated to open-source development. China quickly became not just a big contributor to open-source programs, but also an early adopter of software. JD.com, an e-commerce firm, was among the first to deploy Kubernetes. AI has lately given China's open-source movement a further boost. Chinese companies, and the government, see open models as the quickest way to narrow the gap with America. DeepSeek's models have generated the most interest, but Qwen, developed by Alibaba, is also highly rated, and Baidu has said it will soon open up the model behind its Ernie chatbot.

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The Kyiv attack, which killed at least 15 people and left 139 injured, was 'one of the most terrifying strikes' of the bombardment, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said.

CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Back in the days when we laughed openly at foreigners and their peculiar ways, the strangest sight on television was a game show called Endurance

The hitmaker, 43, wore a T-shirt featuring two blackbirds, in a nod to The Beatles 1968 song Blackbird, which she recorded a cover of last year.

Footage taken by a fellow bar-goer shows the unnamed Brit being slammed to the floor by another man in the Spanish resort on Sunday night.

Mason McGarry, 19, was jailed earlier this month after he drove at 60mph in a 40mph zone during a police chase before mounting the pavement and hitting a lorry.

After the mix-up, Sir Keir said Britain had a 'good strong relationship' with South Korea and 'want to strengthen it even further' in areas including 'the enhancement of our free trade agreement'.

Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin writes: Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.4. This fresh new release improves on nearly every front, with progress being made in accessibility, color rendering, tablet support, window management, and more. Plasma already offered virtual desktops and customizable tiles to help organize your windows and activities, and now it lets you choose a different configuration of tiles on each virtual desktop. The Wayland session brings some new accessibility features: you can now move the pointer using your keyboard's number pad keys, or use a three-finger touchpad pinch gesture to zoom in or out. Plasma file transfer notification now shows a speed graph, giving you a more visual idea of how fast the transfer is going and how long it will take to complete. When any applications are in full screen mode Plasma will now enter Do Not Disturb mode and only show urgent notifications. When you exit full-screen mode, you'll see a summary of any notifications you missed. Now, when an application tries to access the microphone and finds it muted, a notification will pop up. A new feature in the Application Launcher widget will place a green New! tag next to newly installed apps, so you can easily find where something you just installed lives in the menu. The Display and Monitor page in System Settings comes with a brand new HDR calibration wizard. Support for Extended Dynamic Range (a different kind of HDR) and P010 video color format has also been added. System Monitor now supports usage monitoring for AMD and Intel graphic cards -- it can even show the GPU usage on a per-process basis. Spectacle, the built-in app for taking screenshots and screen recordings, has a much-improved design and more streamlined functionality. The background of the desktop or window now darkens when an authentication dialog shows up, helping you locate and focus on the window asking for your password. There's a brand-new Animations page in System Settings that groups all the settings for purely visual animated effects into one place, making them easier to find and configure. Aurorae, a newly added SVG vector graphics theme engine, enhances KWin window decorations. You can read more about these and many other other features in the Plasma 6.4 announcement and complete changelog.

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Every night since last Friday, when Israel launched surprise military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, I've gone to bed at night braced for the alert that will send me racing down to the shelter.

A cruise expert has issued a warning to Britons as more than 2.4 million passengers are to set sail this year.

Bethan James, 21, daughter of ex-England and Glamorgan batsman Steve James had visited hospital multiple times in the days leading up to her death.

Answering questions on his YouTube channel, commercial pilot Steve Schreiber was questioned about whether he was ever on edge when flying.

Police failed to arrest an American spy after she killed motorcyclist Harry Dunn, 19, in a head-on collision because they prioritised her welfare over a 'prompt' investigation', a review has found.

The Chartered Trading Standards Institute said there is a need for urgent Government action over unregulated and unlicensed practitioners and treatments, alongside where they can be offered.

A registration 'bottleneck' means dentists who trained overseas but want to work in the UK are being forced to make a living in fast food restaurants.

Dubbed a 'silent killer' due to its subtle symptoms only one in 20 patients currently diagnosed with this cancer are expected to survive a decade after diagnosis with many dying in just months.

A survey of almost 4,000 teachers found many pupils are abusing drugs and alcohol on school grounds - with ketamine and cocaine also rife.

At least 224 people have been killed in Iran since Israel began its bombing campaign last week in an attempt to stop the regime from producing a nuclear weapon.

In a memo to employees on Tuesday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the company's corporate workforce will shrink in the coming years as it adopts more generative AI tools and agents. "We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs," Jassy said. "It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce." CNBC reports: Jassy wrote that employees should learn how to use AI tools and experiment and figure out "how to get more done with scrappier teams." The directive comes as Amazon has laid off more than 27,000 employees since 2022 and made several cuts this year. Amazon cut about 200 employees in its North America stores unit in January and a further 100 in its devices and services unit in May. Amazon had 1.56 million full-time and part-time employees in its global workforce as of the end of March, according to financial filings. The company also employs temporary workers in its warehouse operations, along with some contractors. Amazon is using generative AI broadly across its internal operations, including in its fulfillment network where the technology is being deployed to assist with inventory placement, demand forecasting and the efficiency of warehouse robots, Jassy said. [...] In his most recent letter to shareholders, Jassy called generative AI a "once-in-a-lifetime reinvention of everything we know." He added that the technology is "saving companies lots of money," and stands to shift the norms in coding, search, financial services, shopping and other areas. "It's moving faster than almost anything technology has ever seen," Jassy said.

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John Harvey, 51, who was an assistant head teacher at Penryn College, is said to have formed a relationship with the girl while she was still a student.