Technology

Just what I want in my distro.

After weeks of debate, code to record user age was finally merged into the Linux world's favorite system management daemon.

Pull request #40954 to the systemd project is titled "userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records." It's a new function for the existing userdb service, which adds a field to hold the user's date of birth:

Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.

The contents of the field will be protected from modification except by users with root privileges.

The change comes after the recent release of systemd 260 but unless it is reverted for some reason, it will be part of systemd 261. One of the justifications is to facilitate the new parental controls in Flatpak, which are still in the draft stage.

There was a post earlier about the NEMA 1-15 plug that was, unfortunately, just spam. However, it's kind of an interesting topic, and better yet made me remember this delightfully old-school website: The Digital Museum of Plugs and Sockets. The history and overview sections for plug standards in different parts of the world are genuinely interesting, and the site as a whole is impressively comprehensive and is a well constructed HTML website (I don't know how it looks on mobile but on desktop it's a very clean looking site)

A patent granted to Google on January 27, 2026 titled “AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user” describes a system that evaluates your company’s landing page in real time and, if it decides the page won’t perform well enough for a specific user, replaces it with an AI-generated version assembled on the fly. The user never sees what your team built, they see what Google's machine learning model thinks they should see instead.

This isn’t a feature announcement, it’s a patent, meaning Google has legally protected the ability to do this. Whether and when they deploy it is a separate question, but the direction is unmistakable – your website may soon be optional.

The system described in the patent is more sophisticated than a simple redirect. When a user submits a query, Google generates a standard search result page. But simultaneously, the system scores the most relevant landing page using signals like conversion rate, bounce rate, click-through rate, and design quality. If that score falls below a threshold – or if the page simply lacks the desired content – search results maybe be updated to include a navigation link to an AI-generated alternative.

That alternative page isn’t a cached copy of your site. It’s a dynamically assembled page built from the user’s current query, their search history, their account context, and whatever Google can extract from your original page. The patent describes possible elements including personalized headlines, suggested product filters, a product feed, sitelinks to product detail pages, and even an embedded AI chatbot. In other words, a complete brand experience built by Google. Not you.

On the plus side, this kills the SEO market.

The tech giant says it's listening to user feedback.

Finding a NEMA 1-15 power cord is like spotting that one relative who refuses to retire because they are actually the only person who knows how the family business runs. The two-prong, ungrounded devices that people consider outdated from garage sales are actually essential components of modern technology.

The NEMA 1-15 power cable becomes the most important item in the room when people discover their specialized devices cannot recharge without it. It is frankly hilarious how much we obsess over liquid cooling and fiber optics while our daily sanity relies on a design that has barely changed since the dawn of the lightbulb.

Survival of the fittest usually applies to the jungle, but in the hardware world, it applies to whatever fits into a wall socket without blowing the fuse. The NEMA 1-15 cable has stood the test of time because it cuts the nonsense and delivers power to low-draw devices without asking for a trophy.

Basics of NEMA 1-15 Power Cords

NEMA 1-15 power cords lack clear identification, making it difficult for users to determine the cause of a server failure at 3 AM that occurred without a visible reason. This standard refers to the two-prong electrical connector, which remains the industry standard.

It handles 125 volts and 15 amps without requiring an additional third grounding pin because the connected equipment is double-insulated. You will find this NEMA 1-15 cable powering everything from your essential networking switches to that ancient printer that still somehow works.

These cords are the lean, mean, ungrounded machines of the cable world. They remove excess bulk while keeping your equipment running smoothly. Using a reliable NEMA 1-15 power cable shows that sometimes the simplest tool in the shed is actually the smartest.

Safety and Quality Considerations

Selecting the right NEMA 1-15 power cord is about more than basic compatibility; safety standards and build quality are critical to protecting both equipment and the environment.

Safety of NEMA 1-15 power cords with compatible devices

People can safely use a NEMA 1-15 power cord when connecting hardware that does not require a ground connection. The cables conduct electrical power while maintaining structural integrity, meeting their operational load requirements. People need to match the voltage because basic physics explains the process and does not require advanced knowledge of rocket science.

Essential safety certifications like UL and CSA

Only a glutton for punishment would buy a NEMA 1-15 cable without UL or CSA certification. These certifications prove the copper inside isn't just repurposed coat hangers. Look for the labels or enjoy the smell of ozone when things inevitably go south.

Risks of low-quality or uncertified power cords

Cheap, uncertified junk is a fire hazard waiting for an invite to the party. A bargain NEMA 1-15 power cable might save a few pennies today, but costs a fortune when the server room turns into a bonfire. Do not let a pathetic cable be the weak link in a million-dollar network.

Maintenance Tips Replace the NEMA 1-15 power cord as soon as the outer jacket shows cracks or loose internal wires begin to protrude. Watch for scorched plastic or localized heat near the prongs, because a melting NEMA 1-15 cable is just a house fire in training. Bent or loose blades are a one-way ticket to electrical arcing, so replace the cord before it welds itself to your expensive equipment. Stop wrapping cables around your arm like a garden hose; use the "over-under" technique to prevent internal copper fatigue that kills a NEMA 1-15 power cable from the inside. Keep your cords away from high-traffic floor zones where office chairs can crush them, because a flattened cable is a dead cable. Final Thoughts

The NEMA 1-15 power cord remains a vital connection method for high-performance equipment, eliminating the need for cumbersome equipment.

The NEMA 1-15 power cable delivers essential power through its basic design, ensuring the operation of high-performance systems. Your equipment remains safe from electrical hazards when you choose a high-quality NEMA 1-15 power cable, which helps protect against electrical fires.

Your safety and convenience remain essential when protecting your valuable gaming system or server rack. It is high time to stop treating power delivery like an afterthought. Pick up a reliable NEMA 1-15 cable from SF Cable and give your devices the stable connection they actually deserve.

Original Blog :- https://www.sfcable.com/blog/why-nema-1-15-power-cords-still-matter-for-everyday-devices

[...]

OpenClaw [AI] simultaneously addresses two massive psychological needs in China today: for the employed, it’s a perceived “cure” for overwork; for the unemployed, it’s a new opportunity outside of the usual delivery and ride-hailing grind.

[...]

When Rep. Leigh Finke spoke last month before the Minnesota House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee to testify against HF1434, a broad-sweeping proposal to age-gate the internet, she began with something disarming: agreement.

“I want to support the basic part of this,” she said, the shared goal of protecting young people online. Because that is not controversial: everyone wants kids to be safe. But HF1434, Minnesota’s proposed age-verification bill, simply won’t “protect children.” It mandates that websites hosting speech that is protected by the First Amendment for both adults and young people to verify users’ identities, often through government IDs or biometric data. As we’ve discussed before, the bill’s definition of speech that lawmakers deem “harmful to minors” is notoriously broad—broad enough to sweep in lawful, non-pornographic speech about sexual orientation, sexual health, and gender identity.

Rep. Finke, an openly transgender lawmaker, next raised a point that her critics have since tried to distort: age-verification laws like the Minnesota bill are already being used to block young LGBTQ+ people from exercising their First Amendment rights to access information that may be educational, affirming, or life-saving. Referencing the Supreme Court case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, she noted that state attorneys general have been “almost jubilant” about the ability to use these laws to restrict queer youth from accessing content. “We know that ‘prurient interest’ could be for many people, the very existence of transgender kids,” she added, referring to the malleable legal standard that would govern what content must be age-gated under the law.

But despite years’ worth of evidence to back her up, Finke has faced a wave of attacks from countless media outlets and religious advocacy groups for her statements. Rep. Finke’s testimony was repeatedly mischaracterized as not having young people’s best interests in mind, when really she was accurately describing the lived reality of LGBTQ+ youth and advocating in support of their access to vital resources and community.

One morning last year, Jacobus Louw set out on his daily neighborhood walk to feed the seagulls he finds along the way. Except this time, he recorded several videos of his feet and the view as he walked on the pavement. The video earned him $14, about 10 times the country’s minimum wage, or for Louw, a 27-year-old based in Cape Town, South Africa, half a week’s worth of groceries.

The video was for an “Urban Navigation” task Louw found on Kled AI, an app that pays contributors for uploading their data, such as videos and photos, to train artificial intelligence models. In a couple of weeks, Louw made $50 by uploading pictures and videos of his everyday life.

Thousands of miles away in Ranchi, India, Sahil Tigga, a 22-year-old student, regularly earns money by letting Silencio, which crowdsources audio data for AI training, access his phone’s microphone to capture ambient city noise, such as inside a restaurant or traffic at a busy junction. He also uploads recordings of his voice. Sahil travels to capture unique settings, like hotel lobbies not yet documented on Silencio’s map. He earns over $100 a month doing this, enough to cover all his food expenses.

And in Chicago, Ramelio Hill, an 18-year-old welding apprentice, made a couple hundred dollars by selling his private phone chats with friends and family to Neon Mobile, a conversational AI training platform that pays $0.50 per minute. For Hill, the calculation was simple: he figured tech companies already capture so much of his private data, so he might as well get a cut of the profit.

These gig AI trainers – who upload everything from scenes around them to photos, videos and audio of themselves – are at the frontlines of a new global data gold rush. As Silicon Valley’s hunger for high-quality, human-grade data outpaces what can be scraped from the open internet, a thriving industry of data marketplaces has emerged to bridge the gap. From Cape Town to Chicago, thousands of people are now micro-licensing their biometric identities and intimate data to train the next generation of AI.

This ends well.

Shy Girl, a horror novel by Mia Ballard, was one of those buzzy books that leapt from self-published prominence into full-on trade publication. Until yesterday, that is, when publisher Hachette pulled the book from the UK market and canceled plans to bring it to the US.

The move came after a New York Times investigation suggested that AI had been used in significant parts of the work.

Shy Girl was self-published in 2025 and quickly found an audience on social media. The novel follows a depressed, OCD woman named Gia who, down on her luck, encounters a “sugar daddy” who pays off her debts. All she has to do? Live as his literal pet. Eventually, of course, living like an animal makes her into an animal, and things apparently get nasty.

Creepy. And the prose? “I’m obsessed with the way Mia Ballard writes,” said one reviewer on Goodreads.

Not everyone thought the book was good, though, or even well-written. Another reviewer on the site called the book “absolute f—ing garbage. overwritten, repetitive, poorly executed, atrocious formatting. nothing to do with actual feminine rage and revenge.”

Just another domino.

Search is being enshittified to push for AI as nextgen search. Nextgen search can map individuals behaviour, in a reactive, but also an probing manner. This forms the basis of a real time info tool, shown in google glass type devices. Tells you your opponents weaknesses and summarises facts and counterarguments and when threats are to be made, they are built to a detailed personal profile for a person who was nobody. Really tailored blaickmail to everyone, everywhere. Mapped out from the day they were born and mamma put the pics on facebook. Every goofy thing they have ever posted anywhere. Every transaction in a bank, or a credit card, or a Tesla, Uber, Waymo, wikipedia read and more. The sum total of your, and everyone elses digital footprint.

Every flavour of authoritarian government wants this ability and almost everyone else for that matter. Imagine going into the "diplomatic trades" either corporate, government, criminal or personal, with a google-glass partial vr data feed projecting your opponent's every weakness. Epstein isn't the only way to manipulate the powerful.

Search as well as forums like this and especially AI feed into the interface and can probe and map your attitudes, motivations and reactions so LLMs can become better socio-econo-political machines.

Datacentres are being built to have a lifetime, tailored LLM mapping every single human who has intereacted with a networked device in any way in a corporate, government, military, retail, personal manner and map their personality individually. You and everything about you are the LLM's training data, as is everyone else to theirs. A group controlling this information in real time, can manipulate people in power in real time. 24/7 LLM that simulates you, based on your whole life, and others for everyone you know and eventually everyone on earth.

The holders of this information, impossibly few in number, would have the information advantage of every contest for power at any level and a blackmail machine. Having an affair? Didn't pay your taxes? Who should we interview and what questions should we ask them as a "reporter". What threat should we make to optimise his compliance. How can we Cambridge analytica our wsy to absolute power, without offering any coherent or logical platform. Just scientifically engineered by people smart enough to work at a Big Three consulting firm. Like Bannon from Bain, or like everyone from McKinsey, Blackkrock, Goldman Sachs, Musk, Thiel and all the others. At the very least, they would know what kind of hooker to blackmail the general with at the Defence conference in Dubai, France, China or the US or singapore or Switzerland or Germany or Canada and all the others. Get em drunk or drugem lightly, present the perfect hooker based on pornhub search history and voila! A general willing to compromise via blackmail. Scientifically engineered blackmail.

The "AI" would also provide intelligent analysis expert systems real key analysis to consolidate power in retail, wholesale and manufacturing markets. Private equity firm will literally pirate the corporate seas, right out of monty python. It's usefull as fuck now, with improvements it can be more powerful than nukes.

This is more consequential, but not entirely different than 1984. But as brutal as Orwell's warning was, it was, the reality we see today. Like the book was an old instruction manual and we just perfected it to be like, 5000% more dystopian than anything Orwell thought.

Hence the AI/DataCentre bonanza from technofascists and others. Tada! We made it worse than our most brutal sci-fi cautionary tale, then IMPROVED UPON IT.

Shit.

This is admittedly somewhat redundant to the earlier post about the taskbar, but there's enough additional information that I find it worth posting.

If you were eating in a restaurant and the head chef came out from the back multiple times to loudly proclaim that the kitchen was deeply committed to the quality of the food, would you find that reassuring? Or would you start wondering why the chef felt the need to keep saying it?

That’s the conundrum facing the Windows team at Microsoft right now. Windows VP Pavan Davuluri has gone on the record several times since the start of the year to insist that Microsoft is committed to Windows 11’s quality, most recently in a post today titled “our commitment to Windows quality.” Windows 11 is an operating system that many people use but that few enthusiasts seem to love, either because of recent high-profile bugs or the steadily increasing flow of annoying add-ons, notifications, “helpful” “reminders,” and ads for other Microsoft products and services that coat most of the operating system’s virtual surfaces.

“Every day, we hear from the community about how you experience Windows,” Davuluri wrote. “And over the past several months, the team and I have spent a great deal of time analyzing your feedback. What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better.”

Today’s post at least shows Microsoft attempting to put its money where its mouth is, as it included a short list of specific changes the company will begin rolling out to Windows Insider Program testers between now and the end of April.

The company is reducing Copilot entry points on Windows, starting with Photos, Widgets, Notepad, and other apps.

The publisher of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the Irish Independent has suspended one of its senior journalists after he admitted using AI to “wrongly put words into people’s mouths”.

That is an interesting portfolio.

Peter Vandermeersch, the former head of the Irish operations at Mediahuis, said he “fell into the trap of hallucinations” – the term for AI-generated errors – when using the technology.

Vandermeersch, a fellow of “journalism and society” at the European publishing group, has been suspended from his role.

The experienced journalist said he had summarised reports using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s NotebookLM, and not checked whether the quotes from those summaries were accurate. He subsequently published them in his Substack newsletter.

The errors were highlighted by an investigation by one of Mediahuis’s own titles, NRC, where Vandermeersch had been editor-in-chief in the 2010s. NRC alleged Vandermeersch had published “dozens” of quotes that were false and that seven quoted individuals in his posts said they had not made the statements attributed to them.

Again, this is a cockroach situation; there are many more cases of such things across industries that never get caught and don't make the news.

Lithium-ion batteries represent a new technological hazard that one fire science expert has said keeps him awake at night, as fire service chiefs warn the ubiquity of the batteries in everyday products is outpacing public understanding and safety regulations.

The blaze that devastated a historic building in Glasgow and resulted in the closure of Central Station, Scotland’s largest rail interchange, is believed to have started in a shop selling vapes, which are powered by lithium-ion batteries. Glasgow’s Central Station has since reopened.

The latest data reveals a sharp increase in battery-related fires across Scotland, while firefighters in London attend an e-bike or e-scooter fire every other day.

Paul Christensen, a professor of pure and applied electrochemistry at the University of Newcastle, underlined that, while the probability of a fire from a lithium-ion battery is very low, the hazard is “very, very high, as we’ve seen with this fire in Glasgow”.

The system learned to translate brain activity to physical intent after just 30 sentences. Typing speeds reached 22 words per minute with few errors, nearly matching speeds of able-bodied smartphone users.

Automobile dashboards now join Nokia phones, blood pressure cuffs, and battery packs made from potatoes: they can all run DOOM!