Slashdot reader SysEngineer does embedded/IoT work, but "I want to pick a single system-on-a-chip architecture family and commit to it across multiple product lines — sensor nodes up through edge gateways... I've been on one platform for years and want to know what embedded engineers are actually running in production before I commit!"

And "the family needs to scale — cheap and small at the low end, capable of running Linux on the bigger variants!"

Their requirements?

• WiFi + BLE required
• LoRaWAN a nice-to-have.
• Low power modes that actually work in the field, not just on the datasheet.
• Full peripheral set — SPI, I2C, UART, ADC, timers, CAN.
• A toolchain and runtime support, support multi threads...

Slashdot reader Gravis Zero is skeptical all the requirements can be met. "If you want embedded, you get embedded. If you want to run a big OS, you get one that will run a big OS."

But Slashdot reader SysEngineer believes "The obvious architecture candidates are ARM, STM, and RISC-V" — and specifically they want to hear your experiences with the RISC-V choices. "What would you standardize on today if you were starting fresh? And how does real-world toolchain and community support hold up compared to the marketing?"

Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments.

What's the best all-purpose RISC-V system on a chip family?

How much time does it take to even begin booting, asks long-time Slashdot reader BrendaEM. Say you want separate Windows and Linux boot processes, and "You have Windows on one SSD/NVMe, and Linux on another. How long do you have to wait for a chance to choose a boot drive?"

And more importantly, why is it all taking so long? In a world of 4-5 GHz CPU's that are thousands of times faster than they were, has hardware become thousands of times more complicated, to warrant the longer start time? Is this a symptom of a larger UEFI bloat problem? Now with memory characterization on some modern motherboards... how long do you have to wait to find out if your RAM is incompatible, or your system is dead on arrival?
Share your own experiences (and system specs) in the comments. How long is it taking you to choose a boot drive?

And what's your boot time?

Another year wraps up, and with it comes the annual ritual of taking stock. What were the movies, TV shows and books from this year that stood out to you? Not necessarily the ones that dominated conversation or topped charts, but the ones you found yourself recommending to friends, or returning to for a second watch or read.

Share your picks and, if you're inclined, a line or two on what made them stick.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: What's the stupidest use of AI you encountered in 2025? Have you been called by AI telemarketers? Forced to do job interviews with a glitching AI?

With all this talk of "disruption" and "inevitability," this is our chance to have some fun. Personally, I think 2025's worst AI "innovation" was the AI-powered web browsers that eat web pages and then spit out a slop "summary" of what you would've seen if you'd actually visited the web page. But there've been other AI projects that were just exquisitely, quintessentially bad...

— Two years after the death of Suzanne Somers, her husband recreated her with an AI-powered robot.

— Disneyland imagineers used deep reinforcement learning to program a talking robot snowman.

— Attendees at LA Comic Con were offered that chance to to talk to an AI-powered hologram of Stan Lee for $20.

— And of course, as the year ended, the Wall Street Journal announced that a vending machine run by Anthropic's Claude AI had been tricked into giving away hundreds of dollars in merchandise for free, including a PlayStation 5, a live fish, and underwear.

What did I miss? What "AI fails" will you remember most about 2025?
Share your own thoughts and observations in the comments.

What's the stupidest use of AI you saw In 2025?

Longtime Slashdot reader Randseed writes: With the likes of Google Nest, Ring, and others cooperating with law enforcement, I started to look for affordable wireless IP security cameras that I can put around my house. Unfortunately, it looks like almost every thing now incorporates some kind of cloud-based slop. All I really want is to put up some cameras, hook them up to my LAN, and install something like ZoneMinder. What are the most economical, wireless IP security cameras that I can set up with my server?

Longtime Slashdot reader hadleyburg writes: For a user with an Android phone and who's happy to stick within the Google ecosystem, an Android tablet might seem like the more obvious choice over an iPad. Of course, iPads are a lot more popular, and asking about Android tablets is likely to invite advice about sticking with what everyone else has.

The Slashdot community on the other hand -- being a discerning and thoughtful crowd -- might have some experience in this area and be willing to share the pros and cons they have found.

The use case is someone not requiring any heavy usage -- no video editing or gaming -- just email, browsing, YouTube, video calls, and that sort of thing.

Panasonic's market value has remained flat at approximately $25 billion over the past decade while rivals Hitachi, Sony and NEC have increased their valuations sixfold during the same period. The Osaka-based conglomerate announced a restructuring plan in May 2025 to eliminate 10,000 positions and streamline operations across its six operating companies and hundreds of product lines. The company generates $57 billion in annual revenue and maintains dominant positions in several markets. Financial Times reports: Within Panasonic's six operating companies and hundreds of product lines are industrial technology gems. The company supplies 70 per cent of the world's in-flight entertainment systems, its facial recognition technology is being used to measure brain health, and its EV battery plants are among the world's most efficient, according to auto industry insiders. Panasonic chief said in January that AI-driven hardware and software solutions would constitute 30% of revenues by 2035, compared to approximately 10% currently. But Goldman Sachs analyst Ryo Harada wrote recently that investors are seeking a growth strategy beyond the announced reforms.

alternative_right writes: I use RSS to cover all of my news-reading needs because I like a variety of sources spanning several fields -- politics, philosophy, science, and heavy metal. However, it seems Google wanted to kill off RSS a few years back, and it has since fallen out of favor. Some of us are holding on, but how many? And what software do you use (or did you write your own XML parsers)?

"I wonder who actually uses AI and why," writes Slashdot reader VertosCay: Out of pure curiosity, I have asked various AI models to create: simple Arduino code, business letters, real estate listing descriptions, and 3D models/vector art for various methods of manufacturing (3D printing, laser printing, CNC machining). None of it has been what I would call "turnkey". Everything required some form of correction or editing before it was usable.

So what's the point?
Their original submission includes more AI-related questions for Slashdot readers ("Do you use it? Why?") But their biggest question seems to be: "Do you have to correct it?"

And if that's the case, then when you add up all that correction time... "Is it actually helpful?"

Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. Do you use AI — and is it actually helpful?

jalvarez13 writes: My venerable HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus is showing its age and it has become expensive to operate due to the cost of the original cartridges. I tried some alternative cartridges but the printer rejects them.

Now that schools still require kids to print stuff at home (mine are in 2nd and 4th grade), and my wife also needs to use the printer, I think it may be wise to invest in a good-quality printer that has a lower cost per page (maybe laser?).

In that context, I'd love to have unbiased information about brand quality, printing technology, cost efficiency, and other factors that I might have missed. Any thoughts?

Once upon a time, long-time Slashdot reader tgibson learned how to type on a manual typewriter, back in an 8th grade classroom.

And to this day, they write, "my bias is to nod approvingly at touch typists and roll my eyes at those who need to stare at the keyboard while typing..." But how true is that for computer professionals today? After 15 years I left industry and became a post-secondary computer science educator. Occasionally I rant to my students about the importance of touch-typing as a skill to have as a software engineer.

But I've been out of the game for some time now. Those of you hiring or working with freshly-minted software engineers, what's your take?
One anonymous Slashdot reader responded: Oh, you mean the kid in the next cubicle that has said "Hey Siri" 297 times this morning? I'll let you know when he starts typing. A minor suggestion to office managers... please purchase a very quiet keyboard. Fellow cube-mates who are accomplished typists would consider that struggling audibly to be akin to nails on a blackboard...
Share your own thoughts in the comments.

How important is it for programmers to learn touch typing?

Apple's end-to-end iCloud encryption product ("Advanced Data Protection") was famously removed in the U.K. after a government order demanded backdoors for accessing user data.

So now a Google software engineer wants to build an open source version of Advanced Data Protection for everyone. "We need to take action now to protect users..." they write (as long-time Slashdot reader WaywardGeek). "The whole world would be able to use it for free, protecting backups, passwords, message history, and more, if we can get existing applications to talk to the new data protection service." "I helped build Google's Advanced Data Protection (Google Cloud Key VaultService) in 2018, and Google is way ahead of Apple in this area. I know exactly how to build it and can have it done in spare time in a few weeks, at least server-side... This would be a distributed trust based system, so I need folks willing to run the protection service. I'll run mine on a Raspberry PI...

The scheme splits a secret among N protection servers, and when it is time to recover the secret, which is basically an encryption key, they must be able to get key shares from T of the original N servers. This uses a distributed oblivious pseudo random function algorithm, which is very simple.

In plain English, it provides nation-state resistance to secret back doors, and eliminates secret mass surveillance, at least when it comes to data backed up to the cloud... The UK and similarly confused governments will need to negotiate with operators in multiple countries to get access to any given users's keys. There are cases where rational folks would agree to hand over that data, and I hope we can end the encryption wars and develop sane policies that protect user data while offering a compromise where lives can be saved.
"I've got the algorithms and server-side covered," according to their original submission. "However, I need help." Specifically...

• Running protection servers. "This is a T-of-N scheme, where users will need say 9 of 15 nodes to be available to recover their backups."
• Android client app. "And preferably tight integration with the platform as an alternate backup service."
• An iOS client app. (With the same tight integration with the platform as an alternate backup service.)
• Authentication. "Users should register and login before they can use any of their limited guesses to their phone-unlock secret."

"Are you up for this challenge? Are you ready to plunge into this with me?"


In the comments he says anyone interested can ask to join the "OpenADP" project on GitHub — which is promising "Open source Advanced Data Protection for everyone."

"In large, companies failed to self-regulate," writes long-time Slashdot reader BrendaEM: They have not been respected the individual's right to privacy. In software and web interfaces, companies have buried their privacy setting so deep that they cannot be found in a reasonable amount of time, or an unreasonable amount of steps are needed to attempt to retain data. These companies have taken away the individual's right to privacy --by default.

Are laws needed that protect a person's privacy by default--unless specific steps are taken by that user/purchaser to relinquish it? Should the wording of the explanation be so written that the contract is brief, explaining the forfeiture of the privacy, and where that data might be going? Should a company selling a product be required to state before purchase which rights need to be dismissed for its use? Should a legal owner who purchased a product expect it to stop functioning--only because a newer user contract is not agreed to?
Share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. What's your ideal privacy policy?

And do we need opt-out-by-defaut privacy laws?

Amazon's AWS Labs has created LLRT an experimental, lightweight JavaScript runtime designed to address the growing demand for fast and efficient serverless applications.

Slashdot reader BitterEpic wants to know what you think of it: Traditional JavaScript runtimes like Node.js rely on garbage collection, which can introduce unpredictable pauses and slow down performance, especially during cold starts in serverless environments like AWS Lambda. LLRT's manual memory management, courtesy of Rust, eliminates this issue, leading to smoother, more predictable performance. LLRT also has a runtime under 2MB, a huge reduction compared to the 100MB+ typically required by Node.js. This lightweight design means lower memory usage, better scalability, and reduced operational costs. Without the overhead of garbage collection, LLRT has faster cold start times and can initialize in milliseconds—perfect for latency-sensitive applications where every millisecond counts.

For JavaScript developers, LLRT offers the best of both worlds: rapid development with JavaScript's flexibility, combined with Rust's performance. This means faster, more scalable applications without the usual memory bloat and cold start issues. Still in beta, LLRT promises to be a major step forward for serverless JavaScript applications. By combining Rust's performance with JavaScript's flexibility, it opens new possibilities for building high-performance, low-latency applications. If it continues to evolve, LLRT could become a core offering in AWS Lambda, potentially changing how we approach serverless JavaScript development.

Would you consider Javascript as the core of your future workflow? Or maybe you would prefer to go lower level with quckjs?

"Why can't we each have our own AI software that runs locally," asks long-time Slashdot reader BrendaEM — and that doesn't steal the work of others.

Imagine a powerful-but-locally-hosted LLM that "doesn't spy... and no one else owns it." We download it, from souce-code if you like, install it, if we want. And it assists: us... No one gate-keeps it. It's not out to get us...

And this is important: because no one owns it, the AI software is ours and leaks no data anywhere — to no one, no company, for no political nor financial purpose. No one profits — but you!
Their longer original submission also asks a series of related questions — like why can't we have software without AI? (Along with "Why is AMD stamping AI on local-processors?" and "Should AI be crowned the ultimate hype?") But this question seems to be at the heart of their concern. "What future will anyone have if anything they really wanted to do — could be mimicked and sold by the ill-gotten work of others...?"

"Could local, open-source, AI software be the only answer to dishearten billionaire companies from taking and selling back to their customers — everything we have done? Could we not...instead — steal their dream?!"

Share your own thoughts and answers in the comments. Where are the open-source, local-only AI solutions?