# NASA Announces It's Looking for New Astronauts
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 08:22:02 2026-11-08
Saturday NASA officials announced it's accepting applications for a new astronaut class, reports the Associated Press:
With only 32 active astronauts, the space agency needs more recruits as it looks to expand humanity's presence beyond low-Earth orbit as quickly as possible... "We have far more work than we have astronauts," Artemis III commander Randy Bresnik told The Associated Press on Saturday. Aspiring astronauts have between now and Dec. 3 to submit their applications... [They'll begin their training by early 2028]. By then "we're going to have people on the moon — so don't delay," Bresnik urged potential candidates.
Bresnik and his three crewmates will blast into orbit next summer to practice docking their capsule with a pair of lunar landers, one built by Elon Musk's SpaceX and the other by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Their mission will stick close to Earth — no lunar flyby — and serve as a dress rehearsal for the following year's Artemis IV mission that will attempt to land two astronauts near the lunar south pole. The moon base will materialize as more rovers, robots, structures and power grids are launched.
The article notes NASA's last call for new astronauts was two years ago, and "More than 8,000 applied, with 10 making the final cut in September 2025."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/11/08/0629226/nasa-announces-its-looking-for-new-astronauts?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 08:22:02 2026-11-08
Saturday NASA officials announced it's accepting applications for a new astronaut class, reports the Associated Press:
With only 32 active astronauts, the space agency needs more recruits as it looks to expand humanity's presence beyond low-Earth orbit as quickly as possible... "We have far more work than we have astronauts," Artemis III commander Randy Bresnik told The Associated Press on Saturday. Aspiring astronauts have between now and Dec. 3 to submit their applications... [They'll begin their training by early 2028]. By then "we're going to have people on the moon — so don't delay," Bresnik urged potential candidates.
Bresnik and his three crewmates will blast into orbit next summer to practice docking their capsule with a pair of lunar landers, one built by Elon Musk's SpaceX and the other by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Their mission will stick close to Earth — no lunar flyby — and serve as a dress rehearsal for the following year's Artemis IV mission that will attempt to land two astronauts near the lunar south pole. The moon base will materialize as more rovers, robots, structures and power grids are launched.
The article notes NASA's last call for new astronauts was two years ago, and "More than 8,000 applied, with 10 making the final cut in September 2025."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/11/08/0629226/nasa-announces-its-looking-for-new-astronauts?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# Scifi Magazine 'Starlog' Relaunches, and Back Issues Return to Internet Archive
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 04:22:02 2026-11-08
Slashdot reader sandbagger brings news about the classic science ficdtion magazine Starlog. It's 33-year run from 1976 to 2009 is now available on the Internet Archive.
And 17 years after publishing its final issue, Starlog is relaunching, publishing one issue a year starting November 13, according to The Hollywood Reporter:
The magazine launched in 1976 and gained a fanbase for being one of the few places to get reliable news and interviews about geek culture. It launched with a cover focusing on Star Trek, one of its key areas of expertise, but the magazine's editors and writers also pioneered coverage of Star Wars. (The new issue chronicles some of the rumors it put out a year before the movie opened). In all, Starlog published 374 issues and more than 25,000 pages... In addition to the film and TV-focused features Starlog was known for, the new Starlog will also delve into futurism, as the cover from Gabriel Yeganyan highlights. The opening story of issue No. 1 looks at the viability of humans farming crops on planets outside of Earth, for example... The revival was announced earlier this year, and includes a podcast hosted by Jordan Hoffman, a veteran journalist who has contributed to The Hollywood Reporter.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/11/08/041209/scifi-magazine-starlog-relaunches-and-back-issues-return-to-internet-archive?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 04:22:02 2026-11-08
Slashdot reader sandbagger brings news about the classic science ficdtion magazine Starlog. It's 33-year run from 1976 to 2009 is now available on the Internet Archive.
And 17 years after publishing its final issue, Starlog is relaunching, publishing one issue a year starting November 13, according to The Hollywood Reporter:
The magazine launched in 1976 and gained a fanbase for being one of the few places to get reliable news and interviews about geek culture. It launched with a cover focusing on Star Trek, one of its key areas of expertise, but the magazine's editors and writers also pioneered coverage of Star Wars. (The new issue chronicles some of the rumors it put out a year before the movie opened). In all, Starlog published 374 issues and more than 25,000 pages... In addition to the film and TV-focused features Starlog was known for, the new Starlog will also delve into futurism, as the cover from Gabriel Yeganyan highlights. The opening story of issue No. 1 looks at the viability of humans farming crops on planets outside of Earth, for example... The revival was announced earlier this year, and includes a podcast hosted by Jordan Hoffman, a veteran journalist who has contributed to The Hollywood Reporter.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/11/08/041209/scifi-magazine-starlog-relaunches-and-back-issues-return-to-internet-archive?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
# AlpineBSD Announced - an AI-free FOSS OS
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 01:22:01 2026-11-08
Lproven (Slashdot reader #6,030) shares his article about a new OS in the BSD family "combining NetBSD's kernel and libc with a port of the Alpine Linux userland" — and promising it won't use AI-generated code:
AlpineBSD is so new that it barely exists yet. There are no installation media available, though it's possible to manually bootstrap an installation. What AlpineBSD does already have is an AI policy, and the plan is to avoid "the output of generative AI models (e.g. LLMs)" as far as possible:
"Any software whose code, documentation, binaries, or other assets include, in any part, the output of a generative AI tool such as an LLM, is considered 'tainted' for our purposes...."
Back in 2024, the NetBSD project made its position on AI plain. Its commit guidelines say that "code generated by a Large Language Model [...] is presumed to be tainted code...."
AlpineBSD's ports repository and source code are hosted on Sourcehut, under the account of sircmpwn, better known as Drew DeVault... We will follow AlpineBSD with interest. There's strong appeal in the plan of combining perhaps the best-known, longest-established AI-free Unix-like kernel with the user-facing parts of pretty much the smallest and cleanest Linux distro there is. The AI advocates often warn LLM skeptics that they risk being left behind. Well, here's an OS for those who don't want to surf the AI wave.
The article does acknowledge difficulty installing software using the pkgin package manager (an optional extra), explaining that since 1993 the NetBSD community has had "its own ideas about what is normal... Some folks on the mailing list told us that they never use binary packages anyway — they compile what they need from source code."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/26/11/08/0044219/alpinebsd-announced---an-ai-free-foss-os?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 01:22:01 2026-11-08
Lproven (Slashdot reader #6,030) shares his article about a new OS in the BSD family "combining NetBSD's kernel and libc with a port of the Alpine Linux userland" — and promising it won't use AI-generated code:
AlpineBSD is so new that it barely exists yet. There are no installation media available, though it's possible to manually bootstrap an installation. What AlpineBSD does already have is an AI policy, and the plan is to avoid "the output of generative AI models (e.g. LLMs)" as far as possible:
"Any software whose code, documentation, binaries, or other assets include, in any part, the output of a generative AI tool such as an LLM, is considered 'tainted' for our purposes...."
Back in 2024, the NetBSD project made its position on AI plain. Its commit guidelines say that "code generated by a Large Language Model [...] is presumed to be tainted code...."
AlpineBSD's ports repository and source code are hosted on Sourcehut, under the account of sircmpwn, better known as Drew DeVault... We will follow AlpineBSD with interest. There's strong appeal in the plan of combining perhaps the best-known, longest-established AI-free Unix-like kernel with the user-facing parts of pretty much the smallest and cleanest Linux distro there is. The AI advocates often warn LLM skeptics that they risk being left behind. Well, here's an OS for those who don't want to surf the AI wave.
The article does acknowledge difficulty installing software using the pkgin package manager (an optional extra), explaining that since 1993 the NetBSD community has had "its own ideas about what is normal... Some folks on the mailing list told us that they never use binary packages anyway — they compile what they need from source code."
[ Read more of this story ]( https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/26/11/08/0044219/alpinebsd-announced---an-ai-free-foss-os?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.