The Trump administration has fired the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, two sources familiar with the situation confirmed to CBS News Saturday. 

The firing of Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter came after Perlmutter and her office earlier this week issued part three of a lengthy report about artificial intelligence and expressed some concerns and questions about the usage of copyrighted materials by AI technology.

…

Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, said in a statement that Perlmutter's firing was "a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis." 

Morelle speculated that there was "surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk's efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models," in reference to the report released by the Copyright Office this week.

A probe launched from the Soviet Union more than five decades ago has plummeted back to Earth, splashing down in the Indian Ocean. Kosmos 482 had been bound for Venus but never reached its destination.

Russian space agency Roscosmos on Saturday said a Soviet space probe that took off in March 1972 to explore the planet Venus crashed into the Indian Ocean.

Planetary lander Kosmos 482 never made it to Earth's sister planet because it was dragged off course after a malfunction in its launch vehicle's upper stage.

Originally Posted By u/HumusSapien At 2025-05-11 02:00:02 AM | Source

Donald Trump is accustomed to getting his own way. That could change next week when he’s confronted by the mess he’s making in the Middle East. As he begins a three-day trip to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, the US president is promising great things. As ever, he’s delusional. The reality is that reckless, incoherent and neglectful US regional policies are failing across the board. A fundamental course correction is urgently required.

Gulf leaders have the leverage to set Trump straight, if they decide to use it. He relies on them to an unprecedented degree – far more than on Europe – as diplomatic interlocutors, security partners and financial backers. His approach to Palestine, which is on the brink of a second Nakba (catastrophe), is a mix of prejudice, cruelty and sheer ignorance. Without Arab help, the US and Israel may remain trapped indefinitely in a destructive policy cul-de-sac.

Trump knows he cannot afford to ignore the views of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and his Gulf counterparts on Gaza, Syria and Yemen. They oppose war with Iran, as previously threatened by the US and Israel. Trump needs them as allies in his trade and tariff feud with China. Gulf diplomats hosted the Ukraine-Russia peace talks he personally promoted. He is desperate to keep oil prices low. And he covets multibillion dollar Middle East investment deals and arms sales.

The Trump administration must halt much of its dramatic downsizing of the federal workforce, a California judge ordered Friday.

Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the emergency order in a lawsuit filed last week by labor unions and cities, one of multiple legal challenges to Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of a federal government he calls bloated and expensive.

“The Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime,” Illston wrote in her order.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29371672

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29459679

A while ago I had the good fortune of organizing a fair-sized interview with one member of the team behind Lutris.

Lutris itself is an open gaming platform for Linux (obviously, including the Steam Deck!). Lutris helps you install and play video games from all eras and from most gaming systems. By leveraging and combining existing emulators, engine re-implementations and compatibility layers, it gives you a central interface to launch all your games. The client can connect with existing services like Humble Bundle, GOG and Steam to make your game libraries easily available. Game downloads and installations are automated and can be modified through user made scripts.

You can find more information about Lutris before you read this little interview (or after, that’s up to you!) by visiting these links:

• Lutris official website
• Their Discord link
• Their own forum on their site
• The GitHub page

One last thing to note before posting this is that I did this interview some months ago, back when I was a stalwart Reddit user and contributing a lot to the Steam Deck / Linux scene on there.

Nothing here is out-of-date, and it’s still a damn fine interview (if I may say so myself!), I just wanted it shared here on Lemmy.

I hope you enjoy it :)

This interview is held with Mathieu Comandon.

---

Introduction and Background:

---

Can you tell us a bit about yourself, Lutris and how it got started? I see that you initially made Oblivion Launcher, so this has clearly been your passion for a long time. What sparked you to jump from that to Lutris?

Mathieu Comandon: "I had recently switched to Linux as my main OS, after using it on secondary machines for a while. I still wanted to play my games but at the time, it meant reading tutorials that would get outdated really fast or only worked on one distro. Getting games to run on Linux could become a very frustrating experience at times but it seemed that this could be considerably improved."

In a more broad sense, what was the inspiration behind creating Lutris?

"Around that time I was using Cedega, a proprietary fork of Wine with a nice GUI. I wanted something similar but open source but I didn't want to limit myself to Wine games like Cedega or PlayOnLinux did. I wanted support for all games that could run on Linux, which included native games and emulators."

Can you give us a brief overview of your team's background and how you came together to develop it?

"These days, the team is mostly Daniel Johnson, who does an enormous amount of user support on Github and GloriousEggroll who provides builds for Proton-GE. Then there's the Open Wine Components project that encompasses other gaming projects and regular contributors on Github.

There's also a very active moderation team on the Discord server.

There's no fixed team structure, anyone can just come and go, do their own thing."

How has Lutris itself evolved since its initial release?

"15 years ago, gaming on Linux was very experimental. With the evolution that happened in the past years, it's now something we have integrated in our lives. Games running on Linux is now the norm. So instead of tinkering, we can shift our focus on making sure games keep running in the years to come, particularly games that are no longer being sold."

Please tell me about your logo for Lutris!

"The initial logo (the version with the Atari joystick) was designed by a friend of mine at the time and later received some updates to make it more readable at small sizes. It was always meant to take inspiration from Mozilla's logos. A lot of projects have an animal as their logo: PHP, Postgres, Firefox... so I wanted my own animal mascot. I picked the otter because it's an animal that likes to play!"

---

Features and Functionality:

---

What are the key features that set Lutris apart from other game launchers? There is a few now who offer similar capabilities, what makes Lutris so unique?

"Lutris is the only launcher on Linux to support such a wide array of games from all platforms. Most launchers focus on Wine but Wine is only one of the 54 runners we currently support. The idea is to be able to build a collection of all the games you have played during your lifetime, easily accessible and playable."

How does Lutris integrate with Steam, especially on the Steam Deck?

"The Steam integration is much more basic now than it once was when we used to run Steam in Wine. Running Steam games from Lutris only calls Steam with the correct Steam ID, the options in Lutris don't apply to the Steam game. For the Steam Deck, it's the opposite: Running Lutris games in Steam. We have a feature for creating shortcuts for Lutris games in the Steam UI. In the next release of Lutris, we'll also have better support for running games with umu on the Steam Deck (it makes it possible to use Proton instead of Wine)."

Could you explain how Lutris handles the management and optimization of non-native games?

"We call runner any program that can launch games, native games being the only games that don't require one. We provide binaries for those runners, which get updated on a more or less regular basis. The important is not using the latest version but having a version that can run games really well. For example, we ship DOSBox Staging to provide a better experience for DOS games. Wine / Proton is the only runner that receives some patching."

What features do you think are the most underappreciated by users?

"Certainly the collection management and non Wine games aspects. I often see people with less than 10 games on Lutris and all mostly Wine based. On my end, I have over 1300 installed games for a variety of platforms. Sadly, the fact that people have switched from HDDs to SSDs doesn't help building a large video game collection."

---

Development and Community:

---

How do you prioritize and manage feature requests and bug reports from the community? I see you have such a sizable community built up around you (which speaks volumes to your skills as a programmer), can you describe what goes into prioritizing bugs or features?

"If something is broken and impacts significantly the usage of Lutris then that gets the highest priority. Then comes the pull requests submitted by contributors. Bugs that can't be reproduced or features that would only interest a small portion of users get the lowest priority."

Can you share any interesting stories or challenges you faced during the development of Lutris?

"Between 2011 and 2012, the development of Lutris had crawled almost to a halt because of a game called Minecraft.

At numerous times, maintaining the project felt very overwhelming and it was often difficult to deal with that. I often resorted to measures that were more or less clumsy but however gave me some breathing space (for a few months, reporting issues was only allowed to previous contributors, for example). Nowadays, managing the project is much easier. I put less pressure on myself to try and micro-manage everything and I get some precious help from the community to help me with Github."

How important has community feedback been in shaping Lutris? Can you give an example of a community-driven feature that you ended up implementing?

"The community has a tendency to push for the adoption of newer technologies while I have a tendency to hold back a bit before we adopt anything new. Some people use lutris on quite outdated systems and we try not breaking anything until a distribution gets really old. Finding the right balance is quite an art but the community helps in knowing what is needed and which systems can be dropped.

Also, a few runners we have were entirely written by community members. Translations are another aspect that is heavily driven by the community."

How do you foster a positive and engaged community around Lutris? Your discord in particular are so positive about your product, how do you encourage your users to participate and contribute

"I don't have the time to do much on Discord but there is an amazing moderation team. Troublemakers are kicked out really fast which keeps the vibe on the server positive. Personally, I tend to engage more with the community on Github and Mastodon."

---

Technical Aspects:

---

What technologies and programming languages is Lutris built on?

"The desktop client is using Gtk 3, the website uses Django. Both are written in Python. We also have a moderation dashboard written in VueJS."

Can you discuss the challenges and solutions in ensuring compatibility across various Linux distributions?

"We've been shipping a set of libraries with Lutris trying to increase compatibility across distros. This isn't a perfect solution but works for the most part. This is the approach Steam used to have. Now, similarly to Steam, we are transitioning to a container based approach, whether it's pressure vessel with umu or Flatpak."

How do you approach optimizing performance for different hardware configurations, especially for the Steam Deck?

"We don't really have anything in place that target specific devices. We do however provide many option to let users find the best possible setting for their games."

How do you handle the rapid changes and updates, do the Steam Deck's updates ever affect what you do?

"There are some breakages once in a while but so far the Steam Deck with its immutable OS has been pretty stable. We're still working on providing support for using Proton on the Deck's game mode but it's coming soon."

---

Future Plans:

---

What are your short-term and long-term goals for Lutris?

"Short term is the release of Lutris 0.5.18. It will contain all the fixes and improvements made during the past few months, but nothing really groundbreaking. In the longer term, we're going to start working on a "Big picture mode" (integration with OpenGamepadUI) and cloud saves."

Are there any upcoming features or improvements you’re particularly excited about?

"The 2 I mentioned earlier, cloud saves and fullscreen UI are very important. We also need a better rating system and better support for Flatpak (by making the Lutris Flatpak very thin and using other Flatpaks to run games)"

How do you see Lutris evolving with the advancements in gaming technology and hardware?

"That mostly depends on upstream projects like Gamescope, VKD3D, Mesa or Plasma. We used to lack a lot of features of newer hardware like HDR or ray tracing. Now, we have pretty much every feature used in games like DLSS, FSR3, HDR, etc... Now, we're only lacking in anti-cheat support."

What is your vision for the future of gaming on Linux?

"Projects like the Steam Deck and Playtron are going to help push gaming on Linux outside of the Linux community and make it available to a wider audience. Maybe we'll finally see game consoles for the TV using Linux. The new trend of handhelds is nice but it's not the best way to experience games with graphics pushed to their highest settings."

---

Community and Support:

---

What are the best ways for users to get involved with the Lutris community?

"Easiest way is to join the Discord server. That's where most of the non-development stuff happens. We might get a bridged Matrix room at some point too."

How can users contribute to the development or support of Lutris?

"For development, we have a list of open tickets on Github, and if someone wants to implement something new, I recommend creating a ticket if one doesn't exist. Sometimes, some contributors send a patch which doesn't fit the project and we don't merge it. We want to avoid that kind of situation, especially for substantial patches. Supporting the project financially is very much appreciated. There are Patreon, Paypal and Liberapay Lutris accounts that can be used for donations. We don't accept cryptocurrency though."

What resources do you offer for new users to get started with Lutris?

"The goal for Lutris is to not require any ressources to get started so if anything is missing or unclear, report it as a bug."

How do you address user support and ensure issues are resolved efficiently?

"In a lot of user support for Lutris means troubleshooting generic Linux issues. That's we have both a Lutris Support and Linux Support channels in our Discord server. Usually, when something is broken in Lutris, we'll start getting multiple reports for it and we prioritize those issues first."

---

Closing Thoughts:

---

What advice would you give to aspiring developers who want to create their own game launchers or similar tools?

"Build a very small project that solves a real and specific issue you have and try to make it work. If it solves your problem, it may continue evolving into something bigger."

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers about Lutris or your team?

"When I started working on Lutris, I had no idea it would reach this size. I initially imagined it would mostly be picked up by the community and I would focus on other project. But then Linux gaming got really big (Vulkan happened) and with it Lutris got bigger too and at this point it was clear no one was going to take over. Lutris was becoming a recognized open source project and I was invited to events like WineConf and Ubuntu Summit. After a lot of perceverance, it really paid off!"

What has been the most rewarding aspect of developing Lutris for you personally?

"It has been an excellent learning experience in plenty of fields. And it has certainly helped me get jobs more easily. But the best reward is Lutris itself. Being able to manage a large library of games spreading over decades and multiple systems."

---

I hope you enjoyed this, and coming up (once I write the questions up and get them all done) I have:

• AA of Decky Loader
• Eben of Junk Store
• Gardiner Bryant of YouTube

...and some more I won't name just yet! Thanks again for giving me a space I can share these :)

A U.S. congressional official on May 9 announced that Washington had given the green light for Germany to transfer the weapons to Kyiv, the NYT reported. The shipment includes 125 long-range artillery rockets and 100 Patriot air defense missiles.

Today's game is some more Oblivion. I nearly went back to Daggerfall, but i went to that wanting to be a brief break from Oblivion for fun. I wasn't expecting to get hooked on it lol. I ended up having to sit myself down and basically go "No more Daggerfall until you finish Oblivion". I went ahead and did some more of the Shivering Isles questline today. I ended up getting in deep shit with the law after i got caught trespassing trying to get the Duke of Mania to Overdose on a drug so i can steal his blood to replace him. I ran out of the city to wait for it to blow over and got this screenshot of the waterfall.

While i was looking to kill the Duke of Mania, i found him in his garden painting. For someone who's about to die, i'm glad he's found something to do before i kill him and take his place. We all need some hobbies.

The whole ritual has you visiting this church with an altar that has some really pretty showcases of the new lighting. I love how soft it looks. I feel like a lot of modern games try to go for Sharp shadows, so seeing these nice soft shadows is really nice and refreshing. It kind of reminds me of how Uncharted 1's art style was.

I initially took this while i killed the Duchess and took her place. I only went back to see how the Duke's quest was after doing it. The only issue was, when i went back into town (after i ran out of the city to wait), i was arrested and went to jail. Somehow i became over encumbered and i started eating food to clean out my inventory. I accidentally ate the poison apple though and died. I had to load a save way before i planted the drugs on the kings food. Only, Oblivion decided that it was in the mood to crash for a second time. I ended up stopping there because i didn't feel like doing that all over (not to mention i was starting to feel tired).

I plan to try and wrap up the Shivering Isles quest line tomorrow, as i'm starting to miss Cyrodiil. The whole Alice in Wonderland-esque aesthetic of the Shivering Isles is a bit like chocolate for me, i can only have a little bit before i start to feel sick.

At the South Carolina department of public health, for example, more than 70 staff were laid off in March due to funding cuts.

“Disease surveillance is how we know when something unusual is happening with people’s health, like when there are more food-poisoning cases than usual, or a virus starts spreading in a community,” an epidemiologist at the department, whose role was eliminated, said. “It’s the system that lets us spot patterns, find outbreaks early, and respond before more people get sick.”

“When you lose public health staff, you lose time, you lose accuracy, you lose responsiveness, and ultimately that affects people’s health,” they added. “Without us, outbreaks can fly under the radar, and the response can be delayed or disorganized. That’s the real danger when these roles get cut.

The number and diversity of insects is declining worldwide. Some studies suggest that their biomass has almost halved since the 1970s. Among the main reasons for this are habitat loss—for example through agriculture or urbanization—and climate change.

These threats have long been known. What is less well-known is how these global change drivers interact and how their effects can become even more severe that way. For example, insects that have been deprived of their natural habitat could be even more affected by higher temperatures in a new environment.

Researchers at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) have investigated precisely this serious interaction at 179 locations throughout Bavaria. The study is part of the LandKlif research cluster, coordinated by Professor Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter within the Bavarian Climate Research Network bayklif.

They published their results in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Siwar Ashour was born into war and hunger and has known nothing else. She is now in real danger of dying without ever having known a moment of peace or contentment.

The six-month-old Palestinian girl, whose painfully emaciated body symbolised the deliberate starvation of Gaza when she appeared on the BBC this week, was only 2.5kg when she was born on 20 November last year.

From birth, Siwar had a problem with her oesophagus that has made it hard for her to drink breast milk and left her dependent on specialised formula, which is in critically short supply.

Her parents’ home in al-Nuseirat, halfway up the coast on the Gaza Strip, was bombed earlier in the war, which began in October 2023 when Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel, leading to an Israeli assault that has so far killed more than 52,000 people in Gaza. They lived in tents for a while but it was almost impossible to get food or water in the camp and it also came under Israeli fire.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29465173

• Care homes will no longer be allowed to recruit staff from abroad as part of the UK's strategy to reduce net migration, with an emphasis on hiring those already in the country and extending existing visas.
• New rules will also facilitate deportation of foreign criminals regardless of sentence length, and the Home Office will be informed of all foreign nationals convicted of crimes.
• The government plans to introduce stricter controls on lower-skilled worker visas and place greater requirements on companies to recruit from the UK workforce, with potential repercussions for non-compliance.

The Federal Trade Commission has delayed the start of a rule that aims to make the process of canceling subscriptions less of a nightmare. Last year, the FTC voted to ratify amendments to a regulation known as the Negative Option Rule, adding a new "click-to-cancel" rule that requires companies to be upfront about the terms of subscription signups and prohibits them "from making it any more difficult for consumers to cancel than it was to sign up." Surprising no one, telecom companies were not happy, and sued the FTC. While the rule was nevertheless set to be implemented on May 14, the FTC now says enforcement has been pushed back 60 days to July 14.

Some parts of the updated Negative Option Rule went into effect on January 19, but the enforcement of certain provisions were deferred to May 14 by the previous administration to give companies more time to comply. Under the new administration, the FTC says it has "conducted a fresh assessment of the burdens that forcing compliance by this date would impose" and decided it "insufficiently accounted for the complexity of compliance."

Once the July 14 deadline hits, the FTC says "regulated entities must be in compliance with the whole of the Rule because the Commission will begin enforcing it." But, the statement adds, "if that enforcement experience exposes problems with the Rule, the Commission is open to amending" it.

Archive link: https://archive.is/7XDVE

Because almost everyone ends up with more than they can use and it would be a chance to see what stuff other people grow.