iRobot is laying off staff for the second time this year
Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
iRobot, the parent company of robovac maker Roomba, is laying off around 105 employees. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission spotted by TechCrunch, iRobot says the job cuts will impact 16 percent of its current workforce.
The company announced the news as part of its earnings report released on Wednesday. “These moves, while challenging, have fundamentally changed the way we work with our partners to efficiently develop and build our robots,” iRobot CEO Gary Cohen said during an earnings call.
In January, iRobot laid off 350 workers after Amazon’s deal to acquire the company fell through. The company also appointed Cohen as CEO, who shut down Roomba’s subscription service iRobot Select.
Additionally, Cohen said the...
How Trump Plans to Upend Immigration
In January, former President Donald Trump will reclaim the White House after years of vowing to unleash an unprecedented overhaul of the immigration system in the United States. With mass deportation as a central promise of his campaign, Trump will undoubtedly build on the sweeping crackdown that marked his first term. He has already pledged […]
Star Wars is reportedly getting a new film trilogy
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
The future of Star Wars movies just got a little more confusing. Deadline and Variety both report that Lucasfilm has tapped Simon Kinberg, best-known for his work on the X-Men films, to write and develop a new Star Wars trilogy. Kinberg will be working alongside Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy to produce them, according to the reports.
Just what that trilogy will look like is unclear. Deadline says it could a continuation of the Skywalker story, which would make these episodes 10-12. But it could also be a brand-new saga that is tied in part to the other three Star Wars movies that Lucasfilm announced last year, which will be directed by James Mangold, Dave Filoni, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. Lucasfilm previously said that Obaid-Chinoy’s...
Reblogged by mbrubeck@mefi.social:
djm62@beige.party ("серафими многоꙮчитїи") wrote:
SF micro-genre: single sentence description of the colour of the sky above the port
The Fitbit Inspire 3 is down to just $70, its best price yet
The Fitbit Inspire 3 offers a bright, easy-to-read OLED display, which is a nice perk at this price. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Google’s Pixel Watch 3 is still down to a record low price, but honestly not everybody wants to — or even needs to — fork out $275 on a smartwatch. That’s especially true if all you really need is something to help you keeps tabs on basic health and fitness metrics basics. The Fitbit Inspire 3 is a better, more affordable alternative, one that’s currently down to its best price of $69.95 ($30 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Google.
The comfortable tracker does a good job of delivering the essentials, helping you accurately keep tabs of basic health and fitness metrics while lasting up to 10 days on a single charge. It also comes with some extra conveniences found in pricier trackers, from a bright OLED screen to features like irregular...
How the 1874 Freedman's Bank collapse connects to economic disparities we see today
In Savings and Trust, historian Justene Hill Edwards tells the story of the Freedman's Bank. Created for formerly enslaved people following the Civil War, its collapse cost depositors millions.
Immigrant rights groups ready to challenge President-elect Trump’s policies
Civil and immigration rights groups say they are better prepared this time for potential Trump border policies. But they also expressed disappointment with Democrats on immigration issues.
Need a break from politics? Marvel at the 'Vanishing Treasures' of the natural world
With 23 short essays on creatures ranging from the wombat to the spider, Katherine Rundell's new book is essential reading for anyone whose wonder could use a jumpstart.
Take-Two Boss Isn't 'Worried' About GTA 6 On Xbox Series S
Grand Theft Auto 6 is easily the most anticipated video game release of 2025. The open-world game is likely to push consoles hard, which is why some fans have been nervous about the game’s performance on Xbox Series S. But according to the boss of Rockstar Games’ parent company Take-Two Interactive, he’s not worried…
Reblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
hal_pomeranz@infosec.exchange ("Hal Pomeranz") wrote:
Wow has the advice I’m giving to others shifted in the last 24 hours.
- move to Signal for comms
- use non-US hosting providers
- use non-US registrars
- consider ProtonMailIs there a privacy-respecting DNS service out there that does DoH?
Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
bisonrimant@piaille.fr ("Bison") wrote:
Honk and Bonk
Attachments:
- Woodcarved humanoid goose wearing plate armour. She's holding a shield and a flanged mace. On the handle of the mace, a red robin landed. The eyes of the goose are made of glass. The feet and the beak are painted in burnt yellow, as the breast of the red robin. The upper part of the robin is painted in brown/grey and its eyes and beak in black. (remote)
- Another point of view (remote)
- Another point of view (remote)
- Another point of view (remote)
Reblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
darnell@one.darnell.one ("Darnell Clayton :verified:") wrote:
Trump Attorney General Hopeful Vows to Drag Bodies Through the Street 🔛 @darnell@flipboard.com (Flipboard) 🐬📰 https://newrepublic.com/post/188127/trump-attorney-general-hopeful-mike-davis-drag-bodies-street?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic/politics
jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
yup:
“Thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, Trump faces few, if any, legal constraints, and we’re about to find out what still stands in his way.”
Reblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
Memewrangler@newsie.social ("Basketherder") wrote:
I've heard that regret is a particularly useless emotion since by the time you get it there is nothing you can do about it.
I regret not leaving Twitter completely sooner. After the election it occurred to me that thinking a part of Twitter is good while Musk manipulated it to elect Trump is like thinking part of a gun is good while the other part of it shoots you.
Reblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
HannahHowe@toot.wales ("Hannah Howe") wrote:
@CindyWeinstein A view from Britain. I’m a long-time admirer of America and American culture. However, in this election the American people knew exactly what they were voting for, and they will get what they voted for. I know that there are still good people in America, but the image now projected of the country as a whole is not a good one. I sometimes look at history and wonder “how did the people allow that to happen?” Now, I know the answer, and it’s disturbing in the extreme.
Google could add AI replies to its handy call-screening feature
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Google could soon add “AI Replies” to the Phone app’s call-screening feature. A line of code spotted by 9to5Google suggests the app will generate “new AI-powered smart replies” based on how someone responds to the call screen.
Google widely rolled out its call-screening feature in Android 12. It allows you to filter calls and have Google Assistant respond with an audio message to ask who’s calling, rather than having to pick up the call yourself. Late last year, Google added “contextual replies,” which use the context of someone’s call to serve up customized audio responses. It also updated its call-screening feature in March with a way to respond even when the caller is silent.
Image: Google
These are some of the...
jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
“His win… demonstrated Trump’s keen ear for what stirs emotions, especially the sense of millions of voters of being left out — whether because someone else cheated or got special treatment or otherwise fell to the ravages of the enemy within.
That’s whom Americans decisively chose.
The centuries-old democracy delivered power to the presidential candidate who gave voters fair warning he might take core elements of that democracy apart.” [2/2]
jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
“In Trump’s telling, the economy was in shambles, even when almost every measure said otherwise, and the border was an open sore leeching murderous migrants, when the actual number of crossings had dropped precipitously. All this came wrapped in his signature language of catastrophism.” [1/2]
No Man's Sky Just Got Its Best New Feature In Years
Years after the cross-save revolution began sweeping across gaming, No Man’s Sky is finally joining the party. The space exploration sim is getting cloud saves that will let players take their bases, ships, resources, and progress to any platform they want.
Everything You Need To Know About Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake
It’s been nearly four decades since Dragon Quest III first landed and it rapidly became one of the most adored RPGs out there. Whether you’ve played the highly-praised original or want to dive into the game for the first time, you’re in luck! Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake brings the experience to modern hardware with…
4 election takeaways — from Democrat and Republican strategists
With a race that was expected to be historically tight behind us, the question is: How did Trump win so decisively?
Microsoft Outlook now has dynamic AI-powered themes
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft is adding AI-powered themes to Outlook today. Dubbed “Themes by Copilot,” this AI-powered feature will require a Copilot Pro or business license to add a more personalized look to Microsoft’s email client.
The themes will appear across Outlook for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and on the web, and they’re designed to make “Outlook more beautiful and approachable,” according to Microsoft.
You’ll be able to create a theme based on the weather or locations, and they can dynamically update every few hours, each day, weekly, or monthly. “If you’ve enabled location permissions in Outlook, the My Location theme will bring you imagery uniquely inspired by your locale, dynamically updating for you as you head out the door on a trip or...
The gorgeous Mononoke movie is coming to Netflix later this month
Netflix
Toei’s Mononoke the Movie: Phantom in the Rain from director Kenji Nakamura is one of this year’s most visually stunning anime films, and it’s making its way to Netflix in just a few weeks.
Like the Mononoke series, Phantom in the Rain tells the tale of an unnamed merchant (Hiroshi Kamiya) who, in addition to selling medicines, specializes in exorcizing “mononoke” — malevolent spirits who terrorize the living. When the Medicine Seller arrives at the imperial palace, his senses tell him that a mononoke is lurking somewhere deep within the building’s innermost chambers.
As a man, the Medicine Seller is forbidden from stepping foot inside of the imperial harem of women like Asa (Tomoyo Kurosawa) and Kame (Aoi Yūki), who have gathered in...
Terrible Borderlands Movie Still Helped Sell More Games
The Borderlands movie arrived in 2024, after years in development, only to rake in $15 million at the domestic box office. It was an epic flop, only overshadowed later on went Joker: Folie à Deux went “hold my beer” and failed even more spectacularly. At least with Borderlands, there was a video game franchise…
jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
the best handling of this issue I have ever heard +100
xor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins") wrote:
Beans and leeks and greens slowly going bad in my fridge but I will not look at NYT Cooking, @NYTGuildTech
Reblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
lutzray@mamot.fr ("Les capsules du prof Lutz") wrote:
Francesca Albanese (U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory) was asked this question by a canadian 'journalist':
"Do you believe Israel has the right to exist?"
Attachments:
Reblogged by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
Memewrangler@newsie.social ("Basketherder") wrote:
Donated to Wikipedia again.
Personally I use it just about every day.
If you aren't learning, you're dying.
xor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins") wrote:
In solidarity with @NYTGuildTech I snapped my 1643 day crossword streak on Monday. No NYT Cooking or NYT Games until the strike is over!
Attachments:
Reblogged by xor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins"):
hoffm ("Michael Hoffman") wrote:
This is a reminder that @NYTGuildTech is still on strike. We’re out here picketing every day, all day. Support us:
1. Don’t play NYT Games. Don’t use NYT cooking.
2. Strike fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/nyt-tech-strike-fund
3. Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-the-ny-times-to-agree-to-a-fair-contract-with-times-tech
4. TELL YOUR FRIENDS
What will Trump's presidency mean for Russia's war on Ukraine?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy congratulated Trump and praised his “peace through strength” approach, but concerns in Ukraine loom over Washington's continued commitment to Kyiv.
What’s really behind Big Tech’s return-to-office mandates?
Image: The Verge; Getty Images
Today, we’re talking about work. Specifically, where we work, how our expectations of working remotely were radically changed by the covid-19 pandemic, and how those expectations feel like they’re on the verge of changing yet again. For many people, the pendulum has swung wildly between working fully remote and now a push to return to the office from their bosses, and there are a lot of theories about what might be motivating big companies to try and bring everyone back.
Here on Decoder, I’ve talked to lots of CEOs about the benefits of working fully remote versus hybrid or having everybody back in the office over the past several years, and I’ve heard the full spectrum of responses. Some executives are adamant that people need to be in...
No Man’s Sky adds cross-saves and PS5 Pro support
Image: Hello Games
The developers at Hello Games are back with yet another update for No Man’s Sky. Starting today, a select number of users will have the ability to play around in their NMS universe across a collection of platforms with the new cross-save functionality. According to the announcement, adding cross-saving was a bit of an undertaking for the development team.
“It’s very common for players to rack up thousands of hours of saves,” the announcement reads. “Adding cross-save for us is a little bit like moving house, the longer people have lived there the more complicated it is to move them.”
No Man’s Sky now supports cross-saves across PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Series S/X, Xbox Game Pass, PC, Steam Deck, PSVR 1 / 2, PCVR, GOG, and Nintendo...
Nikon’s entry-level Z50II adds a dedicated button for color styles
The Nikon Z50II uses the same APS-C sensor as the original, but upgraded with a faster image processing engine. | Image: Nikon
Nikon has announced a new version of its entry-level Z50 mirrorless camera. The Z50II offers improved shooting capabilities thanks to a new image processing engine, and a selection of 31 “film-inspired looks” quickly accessible through a dedicated button. It will be available starting in late November for $909.95 for the camera body alone, but can also be bundled with lenses. Adding a 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens will boost the price to $1049.95, while a bundle with both a 16-50mm and a 50-250mm f/4.5-6.3 VR lens will be $1,299.95.
That dedicated Picture Control button — the first on any Nikon camera — is the Z50II’s most exciting upgrade. Pressing it enables a real-time preview of “up to 31 built-in color presets” so you can see how each...
Dance Upon The Graves Of Your Enemies With This Brutal Diablo 4 Rogue Build
Welcome to my Rogue “Dance of Knives” build guide, where I’ll show you the build that made me fall in love with the Rogue class in Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred.
Apple’s new AirPlay options for macOS add a little more privacy
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
The latest macOS beta changes the options you’ll see when you use AirPlay to mirror your screen. As reported by MacRumors, the new beta version of macOS Sequoia 15.2 lets you select a single window or app on your Mac to display on another screen, like your TV — or maybe something else, like a Vision Pro headset or Apple’s rumored smart display.
macOS 15.2 is expected to be released publicly in early December. It also brings new Apple Intelligence features, including Image Playground and ChatGPT integration for Siri. It’s also getting a new weather menu item that can give you the outside temperature at a glance.
The new AirPlay experience includes a new menu pop-up asking “what do you want to show” on Apple TV, with three large buttons...
pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:
We've got an obvious topic for the Freethoughtblogs monthly podcast.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/11/07/life-goes-on-2/
Max is getting ready for its own password-sharing crackdown
Cath Virginia / The Verge
Max will kick off its password-sharing crackdown over the next few months with “very soft messaging” surrounding the change. During Warner Bros. Discovery’s Q3 earnings call on Thursday, chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said this initial rollout will be followed by more progress in 2025 and 2026.
Wiedenfels called password sharing “a form of price rises,” as the company is “asking members who have not signed up, or multi-household members to pay a little bit more.” This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Max’s interest in password sharing, but now we have more details about when — and how — it will all begin.
In March, JB Perrette, Warner Bros. Discovery’s head of global streaming and games, said Max will start its crackdown...
Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
camille@praxis.nyc ("Camille lives at Praxis Now") wrote:
For anyone considering getting involved in activism for the first time, I offer a talk I gave years ago about how to decide whether to get involved in a project or not
https://vimeo.com/202061452Happy to answer any questions!
Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:
I too have something for #DefaidodonDay. I've met these two a couple of months ago on a farm in the Langdale Valley.
📷 Pentax KX
🎞️ Kodak Portra 400
🔭 Pentax M 50mm/1.7
⚗️ Come Through Lab#BelieveInFilm #FilmPhotography #AnalogPhotography #35mm #Defaidodon #TheLakes #LakeDistrict #Cumbria
Attachments:
President Biden will speak this morning following the 2024 election
President Biden plans to address the nation on Thursday at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the election results and the transition, the White House told reporters.
Death Stranding gets a surprise launch on Xbox
Image: Kojima Productions
It took a few years, but Sam Porter Bridges has finally trekked his way to Xbox. Kojima Productions announced today that the director’s cut of Death Stranding is now available on the Xbox Series X / S. At launch, for “a limited time,” the port will be available for 50 percent off.
Death Stranding first launched in 2019, as Hideo Kojima’s first release after going independent, following a messy split with Konami. The director’s cut — which isn’t really a director’s cut — launched two years later on the PS5, and the game has also been ported to PC, Mac, and iOS. As part of today’s announcement, the studio also launched the game on Luna, Amazon’s fledgling game streaming service.
The news comes as Kojima Productions is expanding quite a bit...
Apple Mac Mini M4 review: a tiny wonder
Now the best value in Apple’s lineup, the Mac Mini takes its ideal form with an impressively small design that compromises on very little.
Apple MacBook Pro M4 review: the Pro for everyone
More ports, more RAM, a nicer screen, and a better webcam for a little less money.
Nvidia to cap game streaming hours on GeForce Now instead of raising fees
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Nvidia is announcing some big changes to its GeForce Now cloud streaming service today. The existing Priority membership is being renamed to Performance, with 1440p streaming, ultrawide resolution support, and the ability to save graphics settings across streaming sessions. Nvidia is also introducing a 100-hour monthly playtime cap for new Performance or Ultimate GeForce Now members starting on January 1st, 2025.
New GeForce Now members that sign up for the service from 2025 onward will have a cap on monthly playtime set at 100 hours. That works out to around three hours of usage every day of the month, and Nvidia says it’s putting the cap in place to avoid increasing membership prices “in the foreseeable future.”
Image:...
Blink’s newest hub takes its security cameras beyond Wi-Fi
The Blink Sync Module XR extends the range of Blink’s flagship outdoor camera beyond Wi-Fi. | Image: Blink
Amazon’s budget smart security camera company Blink has announced the availability of its new Sync Module XR. The third generation of its system hub, the XR can extend the range of its battery-powered Blink Outdoor 4 cameras up to 400 feet, thanks to a new proprietary long-range radio embedded in its custom-built silicon. But the increase in range does come with a tradeoff in video quality.
The Sync Module XR costs $59.99 and, at launch, is being sold in a bundle with a free Outdoor 4 camera (regularly $99). A Wi-Fi bridge for Blink cameras, the module can extend coverage for new and existing Outdoor 4 cameras up to 250 feet in XR mode and 400 feet in XR Plus mode. That’s four times the range of Blink’s current Sync Module 2, Blink’s...
Reblogged by pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑"):
graydon@canada.masto.host ("Graydon") wrote:
SARS-CoV-2 infection makes everyone less intellectually capable.
So far as is now known, this is mostly invisible to those experiencing it and it stacks; multiple x damage by n infections.
It seems likely this has broad political consequences.
Death Stranding Finally Arrives On Xbox Series X, At $20
As the date of Death Stranding’s fifth anniversary sits hours from ticking over in Japan, the former PlayStation exclusive has been surprise-released on the Xbox Series X/S! And at the same time, it’s half-price, meaning you can now pick up Hideo Kojima’s adored falling over simulator for $20.
How Trump regained the White House. And, where the federal cases against him stand
President-elect Donald Trump has won a second term, securing victory in the race against Vice President Harris. Here's a look at how he did it. And, where the federal cases against him stand.
Archer Aviation gets another big order for its futuristic air taxis
Image: Archer
Archer Aviation, a leading electric flight company based in San Jose, California, is bringing its futuristic air taxis to Japan. The company will sell 100 of its Midnight battery-powered aircraft to Soracle, a joint venture between Japan Airlines and Sumitomo Corporation, in a deal valued approximately at $500 million.
Archer says that Soracle plans on deploying its aircraft — which look like a cross between a drone and a helicopter — “in cities where existing ground transportation is constrained by traffic or geographic barriers,” the company said. Still, Archer will need to achieve “certain milestones in advanced aircraft delivery” before Soracle approves pre-delivery payments.
“in cities where existing ground transportation is...
Matter 1.4 tries to set the smart home standard back on track
Illustration: The Verge
It’s been two long years since the launch of Matter — the one smart home standard designed to rule them all — and there’s been a fair amount of disappointment around a sometimes buggy rollout, slow adoption by companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google, and frustrating set-up experiences.
However, the launch of the Matter 1.4 specification this week shows some signs that the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the organization behind Matter) is using more sticks and fewer carrots to get the smart home industry coalition to cooperate.
The new spec introduces “enhanced multi-admin,” an improvement on multi-admin — the much-touted interoperability feature that means your Matter smart light can work in multiple ecosystems simultaneously....
Mike Tyson Has Already Knocked Out Jake Paul...In Mike Tyson's Punch-Out
On November 15, the fight none of us asked for will take place on Netflix between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson at AT&T Stadium. In promotion of the event, Netflix released the first two episodes of the three-part docuseries Countdown: Paul vs. Tyson, showing a behind-the-scenes look at the lead-up to the bout. It didn’t…
Reblogged by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
MicroSFF@mastodon.art ("Micro SF/F by O. Westin") wrote:
I have lost count of how many demons I summoned before I finally got the sigil and incantation right. An angel appeared.
"Tell me," I demanded, "why God created humans!"
"To make art."
"Wait, what? To glorify him?"
"If you wish. But all art you make delights and surprises Him."
Microsoft is bundling its AI-powered Office features into Microsoft 365 subscriptions
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft appears to be stepping back from charging Microsoft 365 Personal and Home subscribers another $20 per month to get access to AI-powered Office features. The software giant quietly announced it’s making Copilot Pro features part of its Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions last week, but only in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand for now.
“It’s been nine months since we introduced consumers to Copilot in our Microsoft 365 apps via Copilot Pro. We’ve spent that time adding new features, improving performance, and listening carefully to customer feedback,” says Microsoft in a press release spotted by ZDNet. “Based on that feedback, we’re making Copilot part of our Microsoft 365 Personal and...
Trump won. Here are 3 Biden priorities under scrutiny
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to roll back some of President Biden's signature policies. Here's what Trump's victory means for Biden policies on climate, the civil service and Ukraine.
Donald Trump “Will Take a Wrecking Ball to Global Climate Diplomacy”
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Donald Trump’s new term as US president poses a grave threat to the planet if it blows up the international effort to curb dangerous global heating, stunned climate experts have warned in the wake of his decisive election victory. Trump’s return […]
Not going back: how Harris failed to turn the page on Trump in her 107-day sprint
Vice President Harris started her 107-day race buoyed by Democratic optimism, but came up short against former President Donald Trump.
Australian breakdancer Raygun is retiring from the sport after her Olympics backlash
Raygun, whose real name is Rachael Gunn, said she had a hard time handling the criticism she received online about her performance. She said she will still dance leisurely.
Howard University students disappointed but resilient after Harris' election loss
Vice President Harris has credited her alma mater Howard University for her achievements,
We checked up on the states that promise transparency on opioid settlement funds
Victims of the opioid crisis, health advocates, and policy experts have called on state and local governments to clearly report how they’re using the funds they are receiving from settlements with opioid companies.
Australia proposes social media ban for children under the age of 16
If the legislation is passed, social media platforms including X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook would have one year to work out how to exclude Australian children.
Cuba's power grid goes down as Hurricane Rafael plows across island
The Category 3 storm knocked out the country's entire power grid just before making landfall, making it almost impossible for people to receive radio or television updates.
Canada orders TikTok's Canadian business to be dissolved but won't block app
Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the decision to dissolve TikTok of its Canadian business is meant to address risks perceived to be related to TikTok's Chinese parent company.
Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
tootbrute@fedi.arkadi.one wrote:
make sure you don't visit this website and download books that may become illegal or banned soon in the Bad Country
annas-archive.li/
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:
Newspaper: Why Harris Lost
Average Liberal: Control + F Latino *closes browser*
Reblogged by collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth"):
seldo.com@bsky.brid.gy ("Laurie Voss voted early") wrote:
True story: 14 years ago I wrote one of the letters of recommendation Guillermo needed to get a visa so he could live and work in this country. And now here he is congratulating the party of mass deportations. What the fuck, Guillermo. What the fuck.
Attachments:
How Donald Trump Won the White House, Again
Donald Trump’s return to the White House follows one of the most tumultuous election years in modern U.S. history: one that included an incumbent president dropping his reelection bid, Vice President Kamala Harris thrust into contention a few short months before Election Day, and two attempts on Trump’s life. Harris was unable to build a […]
Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
molly0xfff@hachyderm.io ("Molly White") wrote:
I must once again urge you: please do not record your abortions on the blockchain.
https://mollywhite.net/micro/entry/please-do-not-record-your-abortion-on-the-blockchain
Reblogged by mbrubeck@mefi.social:
annika@xoxo.zone ("Annika Backstrom") wrote:
*me eating an oreo* This isn't my first Oreo
Thousands in Southern California told to evacuate as wind-fed wildfire spreads
The Mountain Fire, northwest of Los Angeles, destroyed dozens of homes and forced thousands of residents to flee as forecasters warned of the potential for “extreme and life-threatening” blazes.
Amazon ordered to let workers vote on unionizing -- for the 3rd time
A federal administrative law judge says Amazon interfered in the last election on unionization at its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala.
Who's sending Trump back to the White House and why?
In the days leading up to election night, news outlets across the country were predicting a historically close race, one that could take days to call. But as election night progressed, it became clear former President Donald Trump was on a path to victory. So much so, that before anything was official, he thanked his supporters from his campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach.And then, Wednesday morning at about 5:30, it became official when the Associated Press called Wisconsin for Trump. We're still awaiting final tallies, but it appears Trump is on track to win the popular vote for the first time. Trump's agenda for a second term will be dissected over and over in the days ahead. Today, we break down how America sent him back to office --- how Trump won in 2024.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org
Google Summer of Code 2024 results
As we have previously announced, the Rust Project participated in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) for the first time this year. Nine contributors have been tirelessly working on their exciting projects for several months. The projects had various durations; some of them have ended in August, while the last one has been concluded in the middle of October. Now that the final reports of all the projects have been submitted, we can happily announce that all nine contributors have passed the final review! That means that we have deemed all of their projects to be successful, even though they might not have fulfilled all of their original goals (but that was expected).
We had a lot of great interactions with our GSoC contributors, and based on their feedback, it seems that they were also quite happy with the GSoC program and that they had learned a lot. We are of course also incredibly grateful for all their contributions - some of them have even continued contributing after their project has ended, which is really awesome. In general, we think that Google Summer of Code 2024 was a success for the Rust Project, and we are looking forward to participating in GSoC (or similar programs) again in the near future. If you are interested in becoming a (GSoC) contributor, check out our project idea list.
Below you can find a brief summary of each of our GSoC 2024 projects, including feedback from the contributors and mentors themselves. You can find more information about the projectshere.
Adding lint-level configuration to cargo-semver-checks
- Contributor: Max Carr
- Mentor: Predrag Gruevski
- Final report
cargo-semver-checks is a tool designed for automatically detecting semantic versioning conflicts, which is planned to one day become a part of Cargo itself. The goal of this project was to enable cargo-semver-checks to ship additional opt-in lints by allowing users to configure which lints run in which cases, and whether their findings are reported as errors or warnings. Max achieved this goal by implementing a comprehensive system for configuring cargo-semver-checks lints directly in the Cargo.toml manifest file. He also extensively discussed the design with the Cargo team to ensure that it is compatible with how other Cargo lints are configured, and won't present a future compatibility problem for merging cargo-semver-checks into Cargo.
Predrag, who is the author of cargo-semver-checks and who mentored Max on this project, was very happy with his contributions that even went beyond his original project scope:
He designed and built one of our most-requested features, and produced design prototypes of several more features our users would love. He also observed that writing quality CLI and functional tests was hard, so he overhauled our test system to make better tests easier to make. Future work on cargo-semver-checks will be much easier thanks to the work Max put in this summer.
Great work, Max!
Implementation of a faster register allocator for Cranelift
- Contributor: Demilade Sonuga
- Mentors: Chris Fallin and Amanieu d'Antras
- Final report
The Rust compiler can use various backends for generating executable code. The main one is of course the LLVM backend, but there are other backends, such as GCC, .NET or Cranelift. Cranelift is a code generator for various hardware targets, essentially something similar to LLVM. The Cranelift backend uses Cranelift to compile Rust code into executable code, with the goal of improving compilation performance, especially for debug (unoptimized) builds. Even though this backend can already be faster than the LLVM backend, we have identified that it was slowed down by the register allocator used by Cranelift.
Register allocation is a well-known compiler task where the compiler decides which registers should hold variables and temporary expressions of a program. Usually, the goal of register allocation is to perform the register assignment in a way that maximizes the runtime performance of the compiled program. However, for unoptimized builds, we often care more about the compilation speed instead.
Demilade has thus proposed to implement a new Cranelift register allocator called fastalloc, with the goal of making it as fast as possible, at the cost of the quality of the generated code. He was very well-prepared, in fact he had a prototype implementation ready even before his GSoC project has started! However, register allocation is a complex problem, and thus it then took several months to finish the implementation and also optimize it as much as possible. Demilade also made extensive use of fuzzing to make sure that his allocator is robust even in the presence of various edge cases.
Once the allocator was ready, Demilade benchmarked the Cranelift backend both with the original and his new register allocator using our compiler benchmark suite. And the performance results look awesome! With his faster register allocator, the Rust compiler executes up to 18% less instructions across several benchmarks, including complex ones like performing a debug build of Cargo itself. Note that this is an end-to-end performance improvement of the time needed to compile a whole crate, which is really impressive. If you would like to examine the results in more detail or even run the benchmark yourself, check out Demilade's final report, which includes detailed instructions on how to reproduce the benchmark.
Apart from having the potential to speed up compilation of Rust code, the new register allocator can be also useful for other use-cases, as it can be used in Cranelift on its own (outside the Cranelift codegen backend). What can we can say other than we are very happy with Demilade's work! Note that the new register allocator is not yet available in the Cranelift codegen backend out-of-the-box, but we expect that it will eventually become the default choice for debug builds and that it will thus make compilation of Rust crates using the Cranelift backend faster in the future.
Improve Rust benchmark suite
- Contributor: Eitaro Kubotera
- Mentor: Jakub Beránek
- Final report
This project was relatively loosely defined, with the overarching goal of improving the user interface of the Rust compiler benchmark suite. Eitaro tackled this challenge from various angles at once. He improved the visualization of runtime benchmarks, which were previously a second-class citizen in the benchmark suite, by adding them to our dashboard and by implementing historical charts of runtime benchmark results, which help us figure out how is a given benchmark behaving over a longer time span.
Another improvement that he has worked on was embedding a profiler trace visualizer directly within the rustc-perf website. This was a challenging task, which required him to evaluate several visualizers and figure out a way how to include them within the source code of the benchmark suite in a non-disruptive way. In the end, he managed to integrate Perfetto within the suite website, and also performed various optimizations to improve the performance of loading compilation profiles.
Last, but not least, Eitaro also created a completely new user interface for the benchmark suite, which runs entirely in the terminal. Using this interface, Rust compiler contributors can examine the performance of the compiler without having to start the rustc-perf website, which can be challenging to deploy locally.
Apart from the mentioned contributions, Eitaro also made a lot of other smaller improvements to various parts of the benchmark suite. Thank you for all your work!
Move cargo shell completions to Rust
- Contributor: shanmu
- Mentor: Ed Page
- Final report
Cargo's completion scripts have been hand maintained and frequently broken when changed. The goal for this effort was to have the completions automatically generated from the definition of Cargo's command-line, with extension points for dynamically generated results.
shanmu took the prototype for dynamic completions in clap (the command-line parser used by Cargo), got it working and tested for common shells, as well as extended the parser to cover more cases. They then added extension points for CLI's to provide custom completion results that can be generated on the fly.
In the next phase, shanmu added this to nightly Cargo and added different custom completers to match what the handwritten completions do. As an example, with this feature enabled, when you type cargo test --test= and hit the Tab key, your shell will autocomplete all the test targets in your current Rust crate! If you are interested, see the instructions for trying this out. The link also lists where you can provide feedback.
You can also check out the following issues to find out what is left before this can be stabilized:
Rewriting esoteric, error-prone makefile tests using robust Rust features
- Contributor: Julien Robert
- Mentor: Jieyou Xu
- Final report
The Rust compiler has several test suites that make sure that it is working correctly under various conditions. One of these suites is the run-make test suite, whose tests were previously written using Makefiles. However, this setup posed several problems. It was not possible to run the suite on the Tier 1 Windows MSVC target (x86_64-pc-windows-msvc) and getting it running on Windows at all was quite challenging. Furthermore, the syntax of Makefiles is quite esoteric, which frequently caused mistakes to go unnoticed even when reviewed by multiple people.
Julien helped to convert the Makefile-based run-make tests into plain Rust-based tests, supported by a test support library called run_make_support. However, it was not a trivial "rewrite this in Rust" kind of deal. In this project, Julien:
- Significantly improved the test documentation;
- Fixed multiple bugs that were present in the
Makefileversions that had gone unnoticed for years -- some tests were never testing anything or silently ignored failures, so even if the subject being tested regressed, these tests would not have caught that. - Added to and improved the test support library API and implementation; and
- Improved code organization within the tests to make them easier to understand and maintain.
Just to give you an idea of the scope of his work, he has ported almost 250 Makefile tests over the span of his GSoC project! If you like puns, check out the branch names of Julien's PRs, as they are simply fantestic.
As a result, Julien has significantly improved the robustness of the run-make test suite, and improved the ergonomics of modifying existing run-make tests and authoring new run-make tests. Multiple contributors have expressed that they were more willing to work with the Rust-based run-make tests over the previous Makefile versions.
The vast majority of run-make tests now use the Rust-based test infrastructure, with a few holdouts remaining due to various quirks. After these are resolved, we can finally rip out the legacy Makefile test infrastructure.
Rewriting the Rewrite trait
- Contributor: SeoYoung Lee
- Mentor: Yacin Tmimi
- Final report
rustfmt is a Rust code formatter that is widely used across the Rust ecosystem thanks to its direct integration within Cargo. Usually, you just run cargo fmt and you can immediately enjoy a properly formatted Rust project. However, there are edge cases in which rustfmt can fail to format your code. That is not such an issue on its own, but it becomes more problematic when it fails silently, without giving the user any context about what went wrong. This is what was happening in rustfmt, as many functions simply returned an Option instead of a Result, which made it difficult to add proper error reporting.
The goal of SeoYoung's project was to perform a large internal refactoring of rustfmt that would allow tracking context about what went wrong during reformatting. In turn, this would enable turning silent failures into proper error messages that could help users examine and debug what went wrong, and could even allow rustfmt to retry formatting in more situations.
At first, this might sound like an easy task, but performing such large-scale refactoring within a complex project such as rustfmt is not so simple. SeoYoung needed to come up with an approach to incrementally apply these refactors, so that they would be easy to review and wouldn't impact the entire code base at once. She introduced a new trait that enhanced the original Rewrite trait, and modified existing implementations to align with it. She also had to deal with various edge cases that we hadn't anticipated before the project started. SeoYoung was meticulous and systematic with her approach, and made sure that no formatting functions or methods were missed.
Ultimately, the refactor was a success! Internally, rustfmt now keeps track of more information related to formatting failures, including errors that it could not possibly report before, such as issues with macro formatting. It also has the ability to provide information about source code spans, which helps identify parts of code that require spacing adjustments when exceeding the maximum line width. We don't yet propagate that additional failure context as user facing error messages, as that was a stretch goal that we didn't have time to complete, but SeoYoung has expressed interest in continuing to work on that as a future improvement!
Apart from working on error context propagation, SeoYoung also made various other improvements that enhanced the overall quality of the codebase, and she was also helping other contributors understand rustfmt. Thank you for making the foundations of formatting better for everyone!
Rust to .NET compiler - add support for compiling & running cargo tests
- Contributor: Michał Kostrubiec
- Mentor: Jack Huey
- Final report
As was already mentioned above, the Rust compiler can be used with various codegen backends. One of these is the .NET backend, which compiles Rust code to the Common Intermediate Language (CIL), which can then be executed by the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR). This backend allows interoperability of Rust and .NET (e.g. C#) code, in an effort to bring these two ecosystems closer together.
At the start of this year, the .NET backend was already able to compile complex Rust programs, but it was still lacking certain crucial features. The goal of this GSoC project, implemented by Michał, who is in fact the sole author of the backend, was to extend the functionality of this backend in various areas. As a target goal, he set out to extend the backend so that it could be used to run tests using the cargo test command. Even though it might sound trivial, properly compiling and running the Rust test harness is non-trivial, as it makes use of complex features such as dynamic trait objects, atomics, panics, unwinding or multithreading. These features were especially tricky to implement in this codegen backend, because the LLVM intermediate representation (IR) and CIL have fundamental differences, and not all LLVM intrinsics have .NET equivalents.
However, this did not stop Michał. He has been working on this project tirelessly, implementing new features, fixing various issues and learning more about the compiler's internals every new day. He has also been documenting his journey with (almost) daily updates on Zulip, which were fascinating to read. Once he has reached his original goal, he moved the goalpost up to another level and attempted to run the compiler's own test suite using the .NET backend. This helped him uncover additional edge cases and also led to a refactoring of the whole backend that resulted in significant performance improvements.
By the end of the GSoC project, the .NET backend was able to properly compile and run almost 90% of the standard library core and std test suite. That is an incredibly impressive number, since the suite contains thousands of tests, some of which are quite arcane. Michał's pace has not slowed down even after the project has ended and he is still continuously improving the backend. Oh, and did we already mention that his backend also has experimental support for emitting C code, effectively acting as a C codegen backend?! Michał has been very busy over the summer.
We thank Michał for all his work on the .NET backend, as it was truly inspirational, and led to fruitful discussions that were relevant also to other codegen backends. Michał's next goal is to get his backend upstreamed and create an official .NET compilation target, which could open up the doors to Rust becoming a first-class citizen in the .NET ecosystem.
Sandboxed and deterministic proc macro using WebAssembly
- Contributor: Apurva Mishra
- Mentor: David Lattimore
- Final report
Rust procedural (proc) macros are currently run as native code that gets compiled to a shared object which is loaded directly into the process of the Rust compiler. Because of this design, these macros can do whatever they want, for example arbitrarily access the filesystem or communicate through a network. This has not only obvious security implications, but it also affects performance, as this design makes it difficult to cache proc macro invocations. Over the years, there have been various discussions about making proc macros more hermetic, for example by compiling them to WebAssembly modules, which can be easily executed in a sandbox. This would also open the possibility of distributing precompiled versions of proc macros via crates.io, to speed up fresh builds of crates that depend on proc macros.
The goal of this project was to examine what would it take to implement WebAssembly module support for proc macros and create a prototype of this idea. We knew this would be a very ambitious project, especially since Apurva did not have prior experience with contributing to the Rust compiler, and because proc macro internals are very complex. Nevertheless, some progress was made. With the help of his mentor, David, Apurva was able to create a prototype that can load WebAssembly code into the compiler via a shared object. Some work was also done to make use of the existing TokenStream serialization and deserialization code in the compiler's proc_macro crate.
Even though this project did not fulfill its original goals and more work will be needed in the future to get a functional prototype of WebAssembly proc macros, we are thankful for Apurva's contributions. The WebAssembly loading prototype is a good start, and Apurva's exploration of proc macro internals should serve as a useful reference for anyone working on this feature in the future. Going forward, we will try to describe more incremental steps for our GSoC projects, as this project was perhaps too ambitious from the start.
Tokio async support in Miri
- Contributor: Tiffany Pek Yuan
- Mentor: Oli Scherer
- Final report
miri is an intepreter that can find possible instances of undefined behavior in Rust code. It is being used across the Rust ecosystem, but previously it was not possible to run it on any non-trivial programs (those that ever await on anything) that use tokio, due a to a fundamental missing feature: support for the epoll syscall on Linux (and similar APIs on other major platforms).
Tiffany implemented the basic epoll operations needed to cover the majority of the tokio test suite, by crafting pure libc code examples that exercised those epoll operations, and then implementing their emulation in miri itself. At times, this required refactoring core miri components like file descriptor handling, as they were originally not created with syscalls like epoll in mind.
Suprising to everyone (though probably not tokio-internals experts), once these core epoll operations were finished, operations like async file reading and writing started working in miri out of the box! Due to limitations of non-blocking file operations offered by operating systems, tokio is wrapping these file operations in dedicated threads, which was already supported by miri.
Once Tiffany has finished the project, including stretch goals like implementing async file operations, she proceeded to contact tokio maintainers and worked with them to run miri on most tokio tests in CI. And we have good news: so far no soundness problems have been discovered! Tiffany has become a regular contributor to miri, focusing on continuing to expand the set of supported file descriptor operations. We thank her for all her contributions!
Conclusion
We are grateful that we could have been a part of the Google Summer of Code 2024 program, and we would also like to extend our gratitude to all our contributors! We are looking forward to joining the GSoC program again next year.
gccrs: An alternative compiler for Rust
gccrs is a work-in-progress alternative compiler for Rust being developed as part of the GCC project. GCC is a collection of compilers for various programming languages that all share a common compilation framework. You may have heard about gccgo, gfortran, or g++, which are all binaries within that project, the GNU Compiler Collection. The aim of gccrs is to add support for the Rust programming language to that collection, with the goal of having the exact same behavior as rustc.
First and foremost, gccrs was started as a project because it is fun. Compilers are incredibly rewarding pieces of software, and are great fun to put together. The project was started back in 2014, before Rust 1.0 was released, but was quickly put aside due to the shifting nature of the language back then. Around 2019, work on the compiler started again, led by Philip Herron and funded by Open Source Security and Embecosm. Since then, we have kept steadily progressing towards support for the Rust language as a whole, and our team has kept growing with around a dozen contributors working regularly on the project. We have participated in the Google Summer of Code program for the past four years, and multiple students have joined the effort.
The main goal of gccrs is to provide an alternative option for compiling Rust. GCC is an old project, as it was first released in 1987. Over the years, it has accumulated numerous contributions and support for multiple targets, including some not supported by LLVM, the main backend used by rustc. A practical example of that reach is the homebrew Dreamcast scene, where passionate engineers develop games for the Dreamcast console. Its processor architecture, SuperH, is supported by GCC but not by LLVM. This means that Rust is not able to be used on those platforms, except through efforts like gccrs or the rustc-codegen-gcc backend - whose main differences will be explained later.
GCC also benefits from the decades of software written in unsafe languages. As such, a high amount of safety features have been developed for the project as external plugins, or even within the project as static analyzers. These analyzers and plugins are executed on GCC's internal representations, meaning that they are language-agnostic, and can thus be used on all the programming languages supported by GCC. Likewise, many GCC plugins are used for increasing the safety of critical projects such as the Linux kernel, which has recently gained support for the Rust programming language. This makes gccrs a useful tool for analyzing unsafe Rust code, and more generally Rust code which has to interact with existing C code. We also want gccrs to be a useful tool for rustc itself by helping pan out the Rust specification effort with a unique viewpoint - that of a tool trying to replicate another's functionality, oftentimes through careful experimentation and source reading where the existing documentation did not go into enough detail. We are also in the process of developing various tools around gccrs and rustc, for the sole purpose of ensuring gccrs is as correct as rustc - which could help in discovering surprising behavior, unexpected functionality, or unspoken assumptions.
We would like to point out that our goal in aiding the Rust specification effort is not to turn it into a document for certifying alternative compilers as "Rust compilers" - while we believe that the specification will be useful to gccrs, our main goal is to contribute to it, by reviewing and adding to it as much as possible.
Furthermore, the project is still "young", and still requires a huge amount of work. There are a lot of places to make your mark, and a lot of easy things to work on for contributors interested in compilers. We have strived to create a safe, fun, and interesting space for all of our team and our GSoC students. We encourage anyone interested to come chat with us on our various communication platforms, and offer mentorship for you to learn how to contribute to the project and to compilers in general.
Maybe more importantly however, there is a number of things that gccrs is NOT for. The project has multiple explicit non-goals, which we value just as highly as our goals.
The most crucial of these non-goals is for gccrs not to become a gateway for an alternative or extended Rust-like programming language. We do not wish to create a GNU-specific version of Rust, with different semantics or slightly different functionality. gccrs is not a way to introduce new Rust features, and will not be used to circumvent the RFC process - which we will be using, should we want to see something introduced to Rust. Rust is not C, and we do not intend to introduce subtle differences in standard by making some features available only to gccrs users. We know about the pain caused by compiler-specific standards, and have learned from the history of older programming languages.
We do not want gccrs to be a competitor to the rustc_codegen_gcc backend. While both projects will effectively achieve the same goal, which is to compile Rust code using the GCC compiler framework, there are subtle differences in what each of these projects will unlock for the language. For example, rustc_codegen_gcc makes it easy to benefit from all of rustc's amazing diagnostics and helpful error messages, and makes Rust easily usable on GCC-specific platforms. On the other hand, it requires rustc to be available in the first place, whereas gccrs is part of a separate project entirely. This is important for some users and core Linux developers for example, who believe that having the ability to compile the entire kernel (C and Rust parts) using a single compiler is essential. gccrs can also offer more plugin entrypoints by virtue of it being its own separate GCC frontend. It also allows Rust to be used on GCC-specific platforms with an older GCC where libgccjit is not available. Nonetheless, we are very good friends with the folks working on rustc_codegen_gcc, and have helped each other multiple times, especially in dealing with the patch-based contribution process that GCC uses.
All of this ties into a much more global goal, which we could summarize as the following: We do not want to split the Rust ecosystem. We want gccrs to help the language reach even more people, and even more platforms.
To ensure that, we have taken multiple measures to make sure the values of the Rust project are respected and exposed properly. One of the features we feel most strongly about is the addition of a very annoying command line flag to the compiler, -frust-incomplete-and-experimental-compiler-do-not-use. Without it, you are not able to compile any code with gccrs, and the compiler will output the following error message:
crab1: fatal error: gccrs is not yet able to compile Rust code properly. Most of the errors produced will be the fault of gccrs and not the crate you are trying to compile. Because of this, please report errors directly to us instead of opening issues on said crate's repository.
Our github repository: https://github.com/rust-gcc/gccrs
Our bugzilla tracker: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&component=rust&product=gcc
If you understand this, and understand that the binaries produced might not behave accordingly, you may attempt to use gccrs in an experimental manner by passing the following flag:
-frust-incomplete-and-experimental-compiler-do-not-useor by defining the following environment variable (any value will do)
GCCRS_INCOMPLETE_AND_EXPERIMENTAL_COMPILER_DO_NOT_USE
For cargo-gccrs, this means passing
GCCRS_EXTRA_ARGS="-frust-incomplete-and-experimental-compiler-do-not-use"
as an environment variable.
Until the compiler can compile correct Rust and, most importantly, reject incorrect Rust, we will be keeping this command line option in the compiler. The hope is that it will prevent users from potentially annoying existing Rust crate maintainers with issues about code not compiling, when it is most likely our fault for not having implemented part of the language yet. Our goal of creating an alternative compiler for the Rust language must not have a negative effect on any member of the Rust community. Of course, this command line flag is not to the taste of everyone, and there has been significant pushback to its presence... but we believe it to be a good representation of our main values.
In a similar vein, gccrs separates itself from the rest of the GCC project by not using a mailing list as its main mode of communication. The compiler we are building will be used by the Rust community, and we believe we should make it easy for that community to get in touch with us and report the problems they encounter. Since Rustaceans are used to GitHub, this is also the development platform we have been using for the past five years. Similarly, we use a Zulip instance as our main communication platform, and encourage anyone wanting to chat with us to join it. Note that we still have a mailing list, as well as an IRC channel (gcc-rust@gcc.gnu.org and #gccrust on oftc.net), where all are welcome.
To further ensure that gccrs does not create friction in the ecosystem, we want to be extremely careful about the finer details of the compiler, which to us means reusing rustc components where possible, sharing effort on those components, and communicating extensively with Rust experts in the community. Two Rust components are already in use by gccrs: a slightly older version of polonius, the next-generation Rust borrow-checker, and the rustc_parse_format crate of the compiler. There are multiple reasons for reusing these crates, with the main one being correctness. Borrow checking is a complex topic and a pillar of the Rust programming language. Having subtle differences between rustc and gccrs regarding the borrow rules would be annoying and unproductive to users - but by making an effort to start integrating polonius into our compilation pipeline, we help ensure that the results we produce will be equivalent to rustc. You can read more about the various components we use, and we plan to reuse even more here. We would also like to contribute to the polonius project itself and help make it better if possible. This cross-pollination of components will obviously benefit us, but we believe it will also be useful for the Rust project and ecosystem as a whole, and will help strengthen these implementations.
Reusing rustc components could also be extended to other areas of the compiler: Various components of the type system, such as the trait solver, an essential and complex piece of software, could be integrated into gccrs. Simpler things such as parsing, as we have done for the format string parser and inline assembly parser, also make sense to us. They will help ensure that the internal representation we deal with will correspond to the one expected by the Rust standard library.
On a final note, we believe that one of the most important steps we could take to prevent breakage within the Rust ecosystem is to further improve our relationship with the Rust community. The amount of help we have received from Rust folks is great, and we think gccrs can be an interesting project for a wide range of users. We would love to hear about your hopes for the project and your ideas for reducing ecosystem breakage or lowering friction with the crates you have published. We had a great time chatting about gccrs at RustConf 2024, and everyone's interest in the project was heartwarming. Please get in touch with us if you have any ideas on how we could further contribute to Rust.
Take-Two is selling its indie games label Private Division
Pokemon developer Game Freak’s unreleased Project Bloom game is included in the sale. | Image: Private Division
Take-Two Interactive is selling off its indie games label Private Division, which published titles such as The Outer Worlds and OlliOlli World, following rumors over the summer that Take-Two laid off most of Private Division’s staff.
Take-Two did not disclose the buyer of Private Division or how much they paid. In an emailed statement to The Verge, Take-Two spokesperson Alan Lewis wrote:
We recently made the strategic decision to sell our Private Division label to focus our resources on growing our core and mobile businesses for the long-term. As part of this transaction, the buyer purchased our rights to substantially all of Private Division’s live and unreleased titles.
Take-Two will continue to support No Rest for the Wicked, which...
jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
key findings:
1. Support for Trump increased across genders in 2024
2. Turnout for Trump spiked among Hispanic/Latino, Asian voters
3. Trump's largest voter gains among Hispanic/Latino men and women
4. Young voters shifted away from Harris toward Trump
Where things stand in the race for control of Washington
Donald Trump will again take the White House, according to calls by the Associated Press in key states, and he appears to be on track to do so with full control of the political levers in Washington.
jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
Donald Trump's Black Support Soared, Doubling in Wisconsin - Newsweek
‘"…the numbers for Black men in some of these swing states are just 5 to 7 points off the mark of what Harris needed to win. In a world where the Democrats spent months, not two weeks, talking to this community directly through targeted ads, we get a different outcome."
Meanwhile, exit polls show that Harris is down among other key groups, including women and Latino voters.’
https://www.newsweek.com/black-voters-2024-election-donald-trump-1981244
Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
gwynnion ("Nowhere Girl") wrote:
Trump didn't significantly grow his coalition and he didn't have to since Harris lost a good chunk of Obama and Biden voters.
Democrats are going to blame non-voters. Fine.
But it's pretty clear Harris and Democrats in general bled support from Black voters, Latinos, Arabs, Muslims, young people, and others because of their pursuit of white conservatives and an economy people think sucks.
The "radicals" of the party like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib did just fine in comparison.
The FTC orders Sitejabber to stop faking product reviews
Image:Cath Virginia / The Verge
The Federal Trade Commission has charged Sitejabber, an online review platform, with violating its new fake reviews rules by using point-of-sale reviews to misrepresent what customers think about products. In one of its first enforcement actions under new rules banning companies from making or selling fake reviews, the FTC is ordering the company to stop.
The FTC says Sitejabber “deceptively” punched up businesses’ review counts by incorporating responses to point-of-sale questionnaires asking customers to rate and review their shopping experience, before they’d actually gotten any products or services. It also alleges that by giving its clients tools to publish that feedback on their own sites, Sitejabber enabled them to mislead people...
NYT tech workers are making their own games while on strike
Striking New York Times tech workers have created a “Guild Builds” page dedicated to strike-themed games you can play, including a spin on Wordle, a word search, and the custom Connections I reported on earlier today.
As part of its strike announcement on Monday, the New York Times Tech Guild requested that people don’t cross the digital picket line to play the NYT’s daily puzzle games. This collection of five other games offers an alternative if you want to support the striking workers but also do some brain teasers.
There are currently five games on the page:
- Strikle, the twist on Wordle
- Connections: Strike Edition, which is a puzzle made in a Connections creator
- Word Search
- Match Strike, a memory game
- Frogger 8th Avenue
They...
Insurrectionists Are Lining Up for the Pardons Trump Has Promised to Dispense
More than 1,500 people charged with or convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress are now presumably hoping to win pardons and commutations that the now president-elect has repeatedly, if vaguely, promised to give many of them. And they aren’t alone. Numerous people convicted since 2020 of federal crimes in […]
Germany's governing coalition is headed for collapse after Scholz fires finance chief
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has fired Finance Minister Christian Lindner, paving the way for a confidence vote by parliament in January that is expected to lead to early elections next March.
How personality trumped policy in this media election cycle
President-elect Trump has excelled at creating his own media image, from his earliest days as a real estate baron. His supporters find him entertaining and feisty, and even critics find it difficult not to talk about him.
Microsoft’s new emulator could bring more games to Windows on Arm
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Microsoft is testing a big Windows on Arm update to let more x64 software and games run under Prism emulation on Copilot Plus PC with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus processors. The capability comes as part of the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27744, rolling out to testers in the Canary Channel.
This way, Qualcomm’s new chips can run more kinds of apps that don’t have native ARM64 versions and, until now, weren’t usable with emulation. It could even enable games that use AVX2, like Starfield and Helldivers 2, to work on Windows on Arm.
With this update, Microsoft’s emulator will open up support for 64-bit x86 software to use processor extensions like AVX, AVX2, BMI, FMA, and F16C. However, it says 32-bit software still won’t...
Kamala Harris Concedes, Telling Supporters “Do Not Despair”
Kamala Harris conceded the presidential election to Donald Trump Wednesday afternoon in a speech at Howard University. Addressing a crowd of sometimes tearful supporters, Harris emphasized the need to accept Trump’s victory but continue “the fight for our country.” “While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” she […]
Avengers Endgame Directors Got $5 Million To Not Make A League Of Legends Film
In 2021, Netflix’s League of Legends animated TV show, Arcane, became one of the biggest hits for the streaming giant in years. However, beyond Arcane, LoL studio Riot Games has reportedly struggled to develop the MOBA game into a bigger entertainment franchise. Part of the problem seems to be a lack of experience,…
collinsworth@hachyderm.io ("Josh Collinsworth") wrote:
I don't know what this is. I really don't. I just knew the only way I could cope was to write, and this was what came out.
Reblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
sereeena@infosec.exchange ("serena 🌙") wrote:
apropos of nothing, BWB has kindly let me publish the full text of my 2020 essay on the spread of online fascism: https://serena.nz/writing/bwb-chapter-9/
Lateefah Simon, on Track to Be a New House Dem: “I’ve Never Shied Away From Any Fight”
Inside a museum in Oakland, not far from where Kamala Harris launched her first bid for the presidency back in 2019, Lateefah Simon, a Democrat whom Harris mentored, declared victory in her congressional race on Tuesday night. Early ballot returns showed her with 63 percent of the vote, though results were still coming in Wednesday […]
Here's What Bloodborne Looks Like As A Diablo-Style Action-RPG
We might never get a proper Bloodborne remake, or even a current-gen remaster, but that hasn’t stopped fans from continuing to experiment with their own spin-offs of FromSoftware’s dark fantasy action game. The latest is called Bloodborne Top Down Arena, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a Diablo-style reimagining…
Dragon Age: The Veilguard's Party Nearly Had An Unlikely Inquisition Villain
Dragon Age: The Veilguard has an excellent cast of characters, almost all of which are new to the series. However, it looks like there were once plans for a few characters from previous games to appear as party members. And now that fans know this, they’re in their feelings.
Roblox is banning kids from ‘social hangout’ spaces
Illustration: The Verge
Roblox is going to block kids from accessing certain types of experiences following reports alleging that the platform has enabled child abuse.
One new measure will stop kids under 13 from accessing experiences with “certain types of interactive features,” Roblox says in a post on its developer forum. Those include “social hangouts,” where the primary purpose is to communicate with others over text or voice chat, and “free-form 2D user creation” experiences, where players can do things like draw on a chalkboard or whiteboard. This change goes into effect beginning November 18th.
Another change stops kids under 13 from playing, searching for, or being able to discover unrated experiences. This change goes into effect after December 3rd....
Galaxy S25 ‘Slim’ rumors suggest a skinny phone showdown next year
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Samsung might be working on a “Galaxy S25 Slim” model, with similar rumors to the ones about a “Slim” iPhone 17 in 2025 that may replace the iPhone Plus. South Korea’s ET news first reported on it, saying Samsung might release a slim smartphone during the second quarter of 2025 (April – June) as a follow-up a few months after the rest of the Galaxy S25 family makes their debut.
And now Smartprix has shown the listing for a smartphone with the market name “Galaxy” and model number SM-S937U in the GSMA IMEI database. Smartprix says Samsung typically adds smartphones it’s working on testing internally to the database before launching it six to seven months later, and this model number lines up with others that line up with the usual Galaxy...
20 Years Later, Konami Finally Reveals Mystery MSG3 Voice Actor's Identity
When Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater launched back in 2004, fans quickly realized that Eva’s voice actress in the credits—Suzetta Minet—was a fake name. But for 20 years Konami kept the real identity of the person secret. Now, as part of the marketing push for the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater remake,…
Reblogged by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
danherbert ("Dan Herbert") wrote:
@timnitGebru As is common, The Onion predicted this pretty accurately. https://youtu.be/qBYmyYK4Kcg
This Conservative Texas Town Defeated an Extreme Abortion Travel Ban
The city of Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle, has emerged as one of the strongholds of the anti-abortion movement in that state and around the country, not least because its sole federal judge, a far-right Trump appointee, has been so willing to rubber-stamp conservative challenges to reproductive health options like the abortion pill and birth […]
The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data
Photo by James Bareham / The Verge
These days, we are all dealing with huge amounts of information, from meeting notes to social media, to photos and videos, to whatever else we’ve collected — and we are all trying to find some way to store it, organize it, and find it when we need it.
If you want to get really basic, you can use a spreadsheet or create a simple set of word-processing documents. Otherwise, you can try what is somewhat inaccurately described as a note-taking app. These apps, at their simplest, store your notes and other thoughts and, at their more complex, are capable of manipulating any and all content you want to drop into them.
One of the most well-known has been Evernote, which has gone through quite a few changes over the years, both financially and...