One thing I did a while back on Xubuntu, is uninstall the Firefox snap.
Then uninstall snap itself.
Then use the Ubuntu Mozilla Team repository to install the ESR version of Firefox.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt update

sudo apt install firefox-esr

That is it!
You don't have updates that are too frequent, and you don't get the bleeding edge features like this AI crap.

The idea is not new ...

It was proposed first in 2016 by Breakthrough Starshot.

I have been using Sony phones exclusively for over a decade and a half, since they were Sony Ericsson even.

The flagship phones are good quality, rugged, water proof, and have excellent cameras.
I used to buy them used, so I pay a fraction of the new price.

But that came to an end earlier this year when I could not locate used ones at reasonable prices.

So I went with a Motorola Edge 2024 that was provided free by my carrier (Fido in Canada, a subsidiary of Rogers). It is as good as a Sony. The camera is decent, though it has no telephoto lens (only a normal lens and a wide angle one with macro). There is no focus hunting like my last Sony did (Xperia 1).

They sell them directly, and no carrier provides them. That is why they are on the way to extinction.

I'm not an astronomer, but I recognize a hack when I see one. Dark matter was a hack. Dark energy was a hack on a hack. Now they're hacking the hack to the hack

The article is about Dark Energy, not Dark Matter ...
However ...

Dark matter is not a hack.

It is just like viruses.
When they were discovered (1890s?), they were yet to be seen for decades.
The basic story is that a solution from infected tobacco leaves caused mottling on healthy tobacco leaves. Bacteria were suspected, but the scientists used very fine filters that excluded bacteria, and the leaves were still infected!
They called it virus from the Latin word for poison.
It was not seen, because they were smaller than the wavelength of visible light, and that was what optical microscopes use.
It was only in the 1930s when they were actually seen by electron microscopes.

So Dark Matter says we observe effects of something unseen through its gravity.
It may turn out to be a particle, or primordial black hole, or something else.

Thanks for pointing this out.

It will do, but it also lacks any community input ("Oh, I have this problem but solved it by ...", or "Works for me ...", and so on ...

I emailed them, and got an autoreponse.

And it seems the RSS just started working again.

Hey Slashdot,

The RSS feeds are not working again.

Right now, the feed looks like this.

There are 6 more stories on the front page, newer than the SoftBank and OpenAI story.
The oldest that is not in the RSS feed is from last 23:30 on July 21st, and now it is 9:15am.

I reported this a few days ago, and was marked 'Troll', and 'OffTopic'.
For those who are hasty with moderation points, how else can someone report a site issue, when Slashdot has no place for it?

This attitude of tweaking things, reducing configurability, reducing stability, pushed me away from KDE.

Switched from Kubuntu to Xubuntu, and never looked back.

Hey Slashdot ...

The RSS feed stopped working on the 17th of July.

Check the feed out yourselves ...
Or the alternate feed, same problem.

Unless you don't care about traffic from the feed then ...

Here are some anecdotal data from my backyard weather station (Southern Ontario, Canada).
Absolute values are irrelevant, but it is the comparative values that matter.
Same sensor, same placement ...

2022: highest was 33.9C in June, with 17 days above 30C (2 in May, 6 in June, 6 in July, 2 in August, and 1 in September.

2023: highest was 33.4C in September, and 11 days above 30C (2 in May, 2 in June, 4 in July, none in August, and 3 in September.

2024: highest was 35.2C in June, and 21 days above 30C.

2025: already got 36.4C in June, and 6 days above 30C, with at least 2.5 months left in A/C season.

El Nino did end in early summer of 2024.

If records continue to be broken, then my guess is that we have already started on the runaway warming phase ...

I hope I am wrong about that ...

In 2013, the CO2 average hit 400 ppm
In 2025, it crossed the 430 ppm mark.

That is ~ 7.5% over a mere 12 years.

This is frightening for anyone who takes science and observations seriously.

You make it sound like "certain viruses can cause cancer" is hidden knowledge that is being actively suppressed by 'the establishment' for some nefarious reason.

The first virus found to cause cancer was Rous Sarcoma virus in 1911, in chicken. Since then, several cancer inducing viruses (oncoviruses) have been discovered.

They are all covered in virology textbooks. If you have the time, watch the Virology course of Dr. Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University. It is well covered there.

Viruses like Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer in women. Others like Hepatitis B and C cause liver cancer. Other common ones are Kaposi sarcoma, HIV, and Epstein-Barr.

All in all, viruses cause around 12% of cancer cases. So they are just one factor, not THE only factor.

There is no conspiracy here.

Anyone else wondering what are in these 18 Petabytes?

Is it Basecamp's HEY email service?
Other than that, it is project management software, chat, ...etc.
Can't imagine how those latter parts add up to 18 PB.

In this day and age, when someone says that they "did their research", they usually mean "did a search". That is the extent of the "research" these days.

I agree with your assessment.
There are several hard steps that made complex life possible on earth.

First there is photosynthesis that caused oxygen to increase in the atmosphere. A result of that was the Great Oxidation Event.

That oxygen gave rise to aerobic metabolism, which is orders of magnitude more efficient than anaerobic metabolism (the same glucose molecule makes 32 ATP molecules in aerobic metabolism, vs only 2 in an anaerobic environment [numbers may be inaccurate, but ballpark]).

Then there is the emergence of eukaryotes: an archean gobbled up a bacteria that can do aerobic metabolism, and it was not digested. It became the power house of the cell (mitochondria) and passed into the progeny of that combo. The result is endosymbiosis.

Later, a branch of eukaryotes experienced another engulfment event, and that resulted in all the algae and plants that we know. I recall that different branches of plants descent from different engulfment with different bacteria, so that may not be very rare, like the mitochondria event.

Then there is multicellular life, and from that complex life, and then us.

In addition to the above, lookup Dr. Pascal Lee on Youtube (planetary scientist). For example his talk: N ~ 1: Alone in the Milky Way. In it he solves the Drake Equation and comes up with the conclusion, that only one planet per galaxy has intelligent life on it.

Likewise it may be that what we dislike about MBAs isn't the particular training they receive, but the kind of person who gets attracted to an MBA program.

I fully agree with you on this.

There are certain jobs and sectors where certain personality types and characteristics are over represented.

MBAs are one such job.
  I can never forget interacting with three different MBA types in the span of two months, and they all showed a bold lack of morals. One said he liked to hire newcomers because they are poor and hungry (his words). Another was debating with me that starting a company is not about a product or service but is about getting bought out. When I lamented to a third what the latter said, he found nothing wrong with that, and affirmed that due diligence is on the buyer.

Another sector is politicians.
Similarly, the type that lies wins (guess who Exhibit A is?)