US measles cases reach 5-year high; 15 states report cases, Texas outbreak grows

The US has now recorded over 300 measles cases just three months into 2025, exceeding the yearly case counts for all years after 2019. The bulk of this year’s cases are from an outbreak that erupted in an undervaccinated county in West Texas in late January, which has since spread to New Mexico and Oklahoma. As of the afternoon of March 14, Texas reports 259 cases across 11 counties, 34 hospitalizations, and one death, which occurred in an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl. New Mexico reports 35 cases across two counties, two hospitalizations, and one death. That death occurred in an unvaccinated adult who did not seek medical treatment and tested positive for the virus posthumously. The cause of death is still under investigation. Oklahoma reports two probable cases linked to the outbreak. In addition to Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, 12 other states have reported at least one confirmed measles case since the start of the year: Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this year has seen three measles outbreaks, defined as three or more related cases. Read full article Comments

Tired of AI slop on Instagram? These alternative apps are for human artists only

Baby Elon Musk. Shrimp Jesus. The Titanic colliding with an iceberg lettuce. Social media is saturated with AI slop — low-quality, often ridiculous and sometimes disturbing images, videos, or words created using generative artificial intelligence.  While some AI slop is glaringly fake, a lot isn’t. I remember the first time AI hoodwinked me. It was a striking video I saw on Instagram of a pair of snowy owls in the Arctic with a brood of six little chicks. Amazed by the scene, I instantly shared it with my wife. Her response was: “Surely that can’t be real?!”  It wasn’t. A… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Instagram

Dutch startup Skylark takes off to give non-technical founders wings

A new startup called Skylark has taken flight today — with TNW lending an extra set of wings. The company launches with a central mission: empowering non-technical founders to quickly create high-quality Minimum Viable Products (MVPs). To bring their plans to life, Skylark has created an AI-enhanced framework that promises rapid, efficient iteration cycles. Freelance developers apply the framework to build the MVP. While they code, Skylark’s internal team handles the client acquisition. Every solution is customised for the founder’s objectives. By drawing from a pool of freelancers, Skylark can then find developers that fit each project’s specific needs.  The… This story continues at The Next Web

How I used guilt as a motivator for good

How I used guilt as a motivator for good its-surya Fri, 04/28/2023 – 03:00 Recently, I was asked by a friend and colleague if I were interested in speaking together at a conference. I was pleasantly surprised because I hadn’t contributed much to the project they were presenting, but I expressed interest. We met to discuss the presentation, and that’s when I learned the real reason I was asked to participate: The conference’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives required there to be at least one speaker that does not identify as a man. I was offended; it felt like I was approached only because of my gender, not based on merit. My friend assured me that wasn’t the only reason I’d been asked. They needed new contributors to the project because there was a lot of work to be done, and they were hoping I could help fill that gap. [ Want to create your own event? Read the 10-step guide for a successful hackathon ] I gave it some thought and tried to understand why the DEI initiatives were in place.  I also thought about the other side of the coin, where the people who wanted to present couldn’t, unless they found someone from a minority group to present alongside them. As I thought about the bigger picture and the benefits this opportunity would bring to me, I decided to forego my ego being hurt. Once I let go of feeling offended, I realized that I was also feeling very uncomfortable presenting something that I hadn’t contributed directly to. My ethics didn’t agree with that. How could I possibly step onto a stage and act as the face of something I hadn’t worked on? Resolving to help more I did some research on the project. The technology was not totally alien to me, and I had a good grasp of the fundamentals it was trying to achieve. In fact, its overall goal made me

3 key open source challenges in developing countries

3 key open source challenges in developing countries Ahmed Sobeh Thu, 04/27/2023 – 03:00 When I go back home and talk to people in the tech industry, or any other industry for that matter, about what I do and the topics I’m involved in daily, I’m usually met with bemusement at the idea of an Open Source Programs Office (OSPO). The concept of a company contributing to an open source project without obvious immediate financial benefit can be culturally strange to understand or explain. As someone born and raised in a country that has been trying to develop for quite some time, I understand and relate to that. There was a point in time when my only understanding of open source was that it was software that I could use without paying and without needing to wait for a specific issue or additional feature to be released. I could just do whatever I needed myself, locally. Open source faces many struggles in developing countries that make how it’s perceived and its associations inaccurate and out of touch. I will discuss these struggles in this article. Open source challenges in developing countries The challenges that open source faces in these regions can be divided into three main areas: Society and culture Resources and infrastructure Governance Society and culture It’s no secret that the culture of tech in general, and specifically the open source part of it, feeds off the culture of the society where it exists. That’s why, in today’s world, open source has a better chance of being sustained and maintained in the more developed parts of the world. But imagine a perfect society, optimal for open source to grow, be sustained, and maintained. What does the culture of that society look like? What are its main characteristics? Open and transparent For open source to thrive, the society’s culture must be as open and transparent as possible. Information must be freely and publicly accessible, which

Run a virtual conference using only open source tools

Run a virtual conference using only open source tools mairin Thu, 04/27/2023 – 03:00 The Fedora Design Team discovered that using open source tools to run a virtual conference can be quite effective by hosting the first Creative Freedom Summit in January 2023. In this article, I’ll share some background on the conference, why using open source tools to run it was important to us, and the specific tools and configurations our team used to make it all work. I’ll also talk about what worked well and what will need improvement at our next summit in 2024. What is Creative Freedom Summit? The Creative Freedom Summit was an idea Marie Nordin came up with after reviewing talk submissions for Flock, the annual Fedora users and contributors conference. She received many talk submissions for the August 2022 Flock relating to design and creativity in open source—far more than we could possibly accept. With so many great ideas for open source design-related talks out there, she wondered if there would be space for a separate open source creativity conference focused on creatives who use open source tools to produce their work. Marie brought this idea to the Fedora Design Team in the fall of 2022, and we started planning the conference, which took place January 17-19, 2023. Since it was our first time running a new conference like this, we decided to start with invited speakers based on some of the Flock submissions and our own personal network of open source creatives. Almost every speaker we asked gave a talk, so we didn’t have room to accept submissions. We will need to figure out this next year, so we don’t have an open source CFP (Call for Papers) management tool for that to tell you about yet. Skip to bottom of list More Linux resources Linux commands cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Free online course: RHEL technical overview Linux networking cheat sheet SELinux cheat sheet

5 open ways to help UX designers and developers collaborate better

5 open ways to help UX designers and developers collaborate better kriker Wed, 04/26/2023 – 03:00 Ideally, designers have a good relationship with their product team and users. However, the relationship between designers and developers is more difficult to build and maintain. The lack of a close relationship makes it difficult to solve problems or improve. In my experience, the open source Open Decision Framework can overcome many of these obstacles. The Open Decision Framework asserts that open decision-making is transparent, inclusive, and customer-centric. It involves clearly sharing problems, requirements, and constraints with affected parties. It enables collaboration with multiple stakeholders to secure diverse opinions and comprehensive feedback. Most importantly, it manages relationships and expectations across competing needs and priorities. These principles probably resonate with anyone involved in the many decisions around designing a product, feature, or service. For a designer, developers are key stakeholders in making the best design decisions. If you’re a designer, it’s time to embrace the opportunity to get diverse opinions. The backend and the user experience Developers are key stakeholders because a user’s product or service experience is more than just the pixels on the screen or the workflow designs. It encompasses the service’s performance, the speediness of API calls, the way user data is treated, and even the design of the data for scalability. When they’re considered full stakeholders in the design, developers can contribute their expertise on the backend and architecture of services to assist the overall design of the experience. A user experience (UX) designer is a stakeholder for the items the dev team is responsible for. A performance deficit, or the effects of an architecture on what data is available, can hinder the user experience. An open, collaborative relationship between dev and design allows for trust and transparency in all areas. Skip to bottom of list Our favorite resources about open source Git cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Open source alternatives Free online course: RHEL

What caused the X outage that Musk is blaming on Ukraine?

Social media platform X was hit by a series of outages yesterday in what its owner Elon Musk has called a “massive cyberattack” stemming from Ukraine. Analysts believe the disruption was caused by botnets — but finding the culprits will be a tall order.   The outages began at around 14:00 CET and lasted for most of the afternoon, trailing off at around 18:00, according to Down Detector. While the outages appeared to have flatlined overnight, there was an uptick in reports of downtime starting from 08:00AM today up until the time of writing. “We’re not sure exactly what happened,”… This story continues at The Next Web

4 European satellite firms are vying to replace Starlink in Ukraine

EU governments are in talks with four European satellite firms about providing a back-up service for Starlink in Ukraine, as the region pushes to boost tech sovereignty amid mounting transatlantic tensions.  Starlink has provided a vital communications system to Ukraine’s military since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022. It allows the armed forces to coordinate drone strikes, identify targets, and stream battlefield data to troops on the ground in real-time. However, European leaders are increasingly concerned about relying on Starlink — fears stoked by a Reuters report that US officials had threatened to cut off the system in Ukraine if… This story continues at The Next Web

European cloud hosts are offering an escape from AWS, Azure, and GCP

When the modern-day internet began emerging in the early 2000s, finding hosting services and resources to run the new wave of dynamic web applications was hard. You needed a database to store application data. These were slow, expensive, and unreliable, regularly bringing applications to a grinding halt when a single instance failed. You needed a server to run interpreted languages like PHP, Python, or Ruby. These were equally expensive, often needed configuration, had security issues, and frequently ran out of memory or CPU resources, again bringing applications to a grinding halt. For anyone on a small budget, running web 2.0-era… This story continues at The Next Web

DOJ move against Chrome renews calls for Google to sell Android

Renewed calls for Google to sell Chrome have reignited demands for the company to also divest Android. An executive at Murena, a French smartphone startup, said today that breaking up the businesses is the only way to end Google’s “cycle of domination”. The appeal follows a Friday court filing from the US Department of Justice (DOJ). The filing reaffirmed a proposal for Google to divest its Chrome browser and sell it to a competitor, in a bid to break up the tech giant’s alleged search engine monopoly.  “Through its sheer size and unrestricted power, Google has robbed consumers and businesses… This story continues at The Next Web Or just read more coverage about: Google