cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17012596

While Plasma 6.0 was all about getting the migration to the underlying Qt 6 frameworks correct (and what a massive job that was), 6.1 is where developers start implementing the features that will take your desktop to a new level.

In this release, you will find features that go far beyond subtle changes to themes and tweaks to animations (although there is plenty of those too), as you delve into interacting with desktops on remote machines, become more productive with usability and accessibility enhancements galore, and discover customizations that will even affect the hardware of your computer.

These features and more are being built directly into Plasma's Wayland version natively, avoiding the need for third party software and hacky extensions required by similar solutions implemented in X.

Things will only get more interesting from here. But meanwhile enjoy what will land on your desktop with your next update.

Some of the new features:

• Improved remote desktop support with a new built-in server
• Overhauled desktop edit mode
• Restoration of open applications from the previous session on Wayland
• Synchronization of keyboard LED colors with the desktop accent color
• Making mouse cursor bigger and easier to find by shaking it
• Edge barriers (a sticky area for mouse cursor near the edge between screens)
• Explicit support eliminates flickering and glitches for NVidia graphics card users on Wayland
• Triple Buffering support for smoother animations and screen rendering

While Plasma 6.0 was all about getting the migration to the underlying Qt 6 frameworks correct (and what a massive job that was), 6.1 is where developers start implementing the features that will take you desktop to a new level.

In this release, you will find features that go far beyond subtle changes to themes and tweaks to animations (although there is plenty of those too), as you delve into interacting with desktops on remote machines, become more productive with usability and accessibility enhancements galore, and discover customizations that will even affect the hardware of your computer.

These features and more are being built directly into Plasma's Wayland version natively, avoiding the need for third party software and hacky extensions required by similar solutions implemented in X.

Things will only get more interesting from here. But meanwhile enjoy what will land on your desktop with your next update.

Some of the new features:

• Improved remote desktop support with a new built-in server
• Overhauled desktop edit mode
• Restoration of open applications from the previous session on Wayland
• Synchronization of keyboard LED colors with the desktop accent color
• Making mouse cursor bigger and easier to find by shaking it
• Edge barriers (a sticky area for mouse cursor near the edge between screens)
• Explicit support eliminates flickering and glitches for NVidia graphics card users on Wayland
• Triple Buffering support for smoother animations and screen rendering

Sorry for the interruption last week; I was on vacation. While I was vacating, my colleagues were in full-on fix-everything mode in preparation for the upcoming Plasma 6.1 release in a little over a week. And what a release it promises to be! I think this is going to be a good one, folks. Lots of great features, improved performance and smoothness, and oodles of fixes for all kinds of strange bugs with your wild and wacky hardware devices!

Amazon’s use of AI and robotics in its warehouses isolates workers and negatively impacts union organizing drives, a new report finds.

The report, conducted by Oxford University research team Fairwork and the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, aimed to explain how AI impacts warehouse workers by interviewing employees at robotic Amazon warehouses in the U.K.

In the wake of the pandemic, schools in the European Union have increasingly begun to implement digital services for online learning. While these modernisation efforts are a welcome development, a small number of big tech companies immediately tried to dominate the space – often with the intention of getting children used to their systems and creating a new generation of future “loyal” customers. One of them is Microsoft, whose 365 Education services violate children’s data protection rights. When pupils wanted to exercise their GDPR rights, Microsoft said schools were the “controller” for their data. However, the schools have no control over the systems.

In this article, I aim to take a different approach. We will begin by defining a laptop according to my understanding. The I will share my personal history and journey to this point, as well as my current situation with my home and work laptops. Using this perspective, we will explore the current dysfunctionality of the standby function in modern laptops, followed by a discussion of why this feature still has relevance and right to exist. Finally, we will draw conclusions on what we can learn and take away from this.

The Israeli military wanted to kill more Palestinians faster. They unleashed powerful technology to do it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16307984

Executive summary

The purpose of this primer is to publicly expose Microsoft’s complicity in Israeli apartheid and genocide against the people of Palestine, and to connect technology workers to the No Azure for Apartheid campaign. Introduction

We are No Azure for Apartheid, a group of technology workers within Microsoft and its subsidiaries seeking to expose and condemn the specific technologies complicit in the ongoing apartheid and genocide in Gaza, the West Bank, and Palestine as a whole. We are part of the broader No Tech for Apartheid movement, which began with opposing Project Nimbus at Google and Amazon. With Microsoft leading advances in AI technology, we, as Microsoft employees, are morally obligated to guide the ethics and lasting ramifications of these technologies for the future.

Multiple groups are working to keep Amazon, Google, and Microsoft from doubling the number of centers in the country, fearing environmental devastation.

• Over the past 12 years, 16 data centers have been approved in Santiago’s metropolitan area. Most use millions of liters of water annually to keep computers from overheating.
• Chile is in the midst of a drought, expected to last until 2040.
• The government has said it will launch a national data center plan to regulate the industry.

Twenty-five years. A quarter century. That's how long we've been working on Krita. Well, what would become Krita. It started out as KImageShop, but that name was nuked by a now long-dead German lawyer. Then it was renamed to Krayon, and that name was also nuked. Then it was renamed to Krita, and that name stuck.

I’m announcing a new initiative to improve our applications ecosystem. The goal is to improve the quality and quantity of KDE applications and the number of application contributors. For anybody who knows me, it is not that surprising. Inside KDE, I have been mainly involved in apps for many years. I worked on all areas, from development (maintaining or co-maintaining many apps like NeoChat, Kontrast, MarkNote, Tokodon, and Arianna, and contributing to numerous other apps, but also design, promotion, websites (e.g., apps.kde.org) and even a bit of packaging (Flatpak and to a lesser extent Windows). Hopefully, making this a bit more public and making this an initiative with a bit more coordination will encourage more people to help :)