SlashdotNews for nerds, stuff that matters
May 31st 2026, 15:34 by EditorDavid
You can try 570 extinct operating systems at a new "virtual museum," according to a new article by ZDNet. Their reporter downloaded the ancient OS NeXTStep, and was "shocked" by how easy it was to run it, "and by the sheer number of operating systems to choose from." Essentially, what you do is download a zipped file, unzip it, change into the newly created directory, and run the executable. VirtualBox then opens to a Debian Linux instance, where you can select from a very long list of operating systems to run... You can run operating systems like Amiga, Apple I/II/III, Atari, Avigo, Commodore 64, Cray, DEC Alpha, Einstein, Game Boy Advance, GE 200, HP 3000, IBM 1130, iPod touch, Jupiter Ace, Lisa, Macintosh, MIPS-based SBCs, Neo, Newton, NeXT, NORC, Palm, and so many more. You can test the earliest mainframes, later mainframes and minicomputers, workstations and Unix variants, home computers, personal computer operating systems, mobile and embedded adOSes, and research-based and obscure systems. As far as Linux is concerned, you can run early Debian and its derivatives, Red Hat and its derivatives, early Slackware, and more... There are two editions of the Virtual OS Museum: full and lite. The full edition is currently 174GB and includes everything you need to run these old-school operating systems. The full version does not require a network connection to run. The Lite version is only 14GB and requires an internet connection because it downloads the full OS image you want to use. Gizmodo notes "this project is all the more remarkable for being the work of one man: Andrew Wartenkin, who has been collecting OS images for over two decades." Of course, Wartenkin didn't write all the emulation software himself, and he maintains a list of credits to give credit where it's due... The Museum itself runs in a virtual machine, which seems kinda fitting — it opens in a virtualized Linux installation and presents you with the full list of available operating systems. Did you know someone has written a GUI for the Commodore 64? Neither did I! There are simulations of ancient mainframes, like the IBM 1130 (yours for the low, low price of $32,280 — or $41,230 with a disk drive — back in 1965). There's also a YouTube channel. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00Kfor sharing the news.
 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
May 31st 2026, 14:34 by EditorDavid
The state of Ohio — one of America's hot regions for data center construction — "is suspending a tax break that has been critical to its competition with other states," reports the Associated Press. The move "comes as tax breaks for energy-hungry AI data centers are increasingly playing a role in state budgets," the article points out. But they also note the expanding data center industry "is under pressure to pay the full costs" The size of Ohio's tax break skyrocketed, dwarfing previous projections, as opposition to data centers is sweeping through cities, suburbs and towns there and prompting lawmakers to form a committee to study the impact. In the meantime, residents are trying to bypass the GOP-controlled Legislature and get a referendum on November's midterm election ballot that's designed to permanently ban hyperscale data centers, likely the strictest such statewide ban under consideration in the U.S... The state, in 2024, had used previous history in projecting that the exemption would total $136 million in fiscal 2025 and $142 million in fiscal 2026. It was $554 million in 2024 and nearly $1.6 billion in 2025, the state reported... State tax breaks for the massive data center industry are facing growing criticism by governors and lawmakers... Thirty-eight states have some form of a sales tax break for data centers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures... [Though many were passed before 2022, when data centers were smaller.] Ohio's exemption is fairly broad, applying not only to construction materials, but to the expensive equipment — such as server racks and cooling systems — used in data centers. Operators might buy new server racks every couple of years as the technology improves.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
May 31st 2026, 11:34 by EditorDavid
The Zig programming language wants to be a modern alternative to C (including better memory safety features). It's maintained by as an open-source project by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a network of contributors. But Business Insider notes that Zig bans the submission of AI-assisted code: On the JetBrains podcast, Zig President Andrew Kelley called AI-assisted contributions "invariably garbage." "People are sending us contributions that have no value whatsoever," Kelley said. "They have negative value, because they take review time away from the team...." There are more pull requests than reviewers. At the time of the recording, Kelley said that Zig had 200 open pull requests. Those AI-generated "slop contributions" slow the whole team down even more, Kelley said. "We've wasted everybody's time...." Big Tech companies have projected lofty goals for the percentage of code that should be — and already is — written with AI. Zig doesn't have a mandate to be maximally efficient like these public companies. Instead, "mentorship" is part of its core mission, Kelley said, making AI contributions counterproductive. "We're all trying to get better at programming," Kelley said. "People who are sending AI pull requests, those people are not helping this goal."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
May 31st 2026, 07:34 by EditorDavid
Rockstar Games has a 2,000-employee studio in Scotland called Rockstar North. And Thursday its workers announced they'd formed a union, reports the gaming news site Aftermath: The union [part of the wider Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) union] includes workers from Rockstar Games offices in Leeds, London, Edinburgh, Dundee, and Lincoln, the Rockstar Games Workers Union said in a YouTube video published on Thursday... Last year, Rockstar Games employees told Aftermath that the company's insistence on return-to-office policies was a problem for many workers. Rockstar Games, for its part, claimed the policies were related to productivity and security concerns... The video posted Thursday outlines what happened over the past several months, starting with the firing of more than 30 Rockstar Games employees in October 2025 for what the company said was "discussing confidential information in a public forum," a Rockstar Games spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg in November. The union disagreed: It said at the time that the workers were gathered in a private Discord server with employees and union organizers — the beginnings of the union announced Thursday. The IWGB is working to fight the firings in court. Workers and outside union supporters gathered globally after the employees were fired, in front of Rockstar Games' offices, to protest what the union called union busting by Rockstar Games... "We believe the [firings] were unlawful and retaliatory — connected to the workers' collective activity of organizing at Rockstar," IWGB Game Workers Union co-founder Austin Kelmore told Aftermath at the time. "This action by Rockstar came shortly after reaching 10 percent of eligible workers at Rockstar in the union...." [10% is the threshhold for legal recognition by the U.K. government.] The workers have received support from government officials; in December, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the firings of the unionizing workers "a deeply concerning case."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. By using Blogtrottr, you agree to our terms. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, edit this subscription, or manage all your subscriptions. |
Comments
Post a Comment