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Received — 2 October 2026 ⏭ Tech

An overview off emdash as WP alternative

✇WordPress
By: /u/bitdoze
2 October 2026 at 22:54

Made a video with emdash cms. Created today a theme on it https://emdashhq.com and looks to do the job. Will be useful for the ones that needs a CMS to do things. I prefer astro with mdx files :)

Curios to see how much usage will get a small website.
For the overview you can see https://youtu.be/1X6KwMjbv-Y?is=UpQcDb8XU4vU\_D-9

Next tutorial already up. Will continue next week

submitted by /u/bitdoze
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Best CRM for a growing escrow company with field sales reps + RBJ integration?

✇CRM - Customer Relationship Managment
By: /u/OBQ23_
2 October 2026 at 22:59

I’m helping an established independent escrow company in California modernize and scale its sales/marketing stack, and I’d love some CRM advice.
The setup is roughly:
Growing sales organization with a sales manager and field reps
Primary customers are real estate agents and mortgage professionals
Website/landing pages will capture leads and track which rep generated them
ShareFile will handle secure document uploads
RBJ Evolution is the escrow production system
RBJ can send scheduled custom CSV exports with fields like escrow number, status, escrow officer, open/close dates, marketing rep, source of business, etc.
The CRM needs to manage contacts, sales rep attribution, pipelines, follow-up, automation, reporting, and eventually update records from those RBJ exports
We don’t need the CRM to replace the escrow software. RBJ will remain the transaction system of record.
What matters most is:
Easy enough for field reps to actually use
Strong custom fields and reporting
Good automation
API/webhook flexibility
Able to scale as the sales team grows
Good contact/relationship history
Ideally easy to integrate with ShareFile and scheduled RBJ data
So far I’m looking at Pipedrive, Zoho, HubSpot, and Rechat, but I’m open to other platforms.
For a growing real-estate-adjacent sales organization like this, what would you choose and why? Anything you’d avoid?

submitted by /u/OBQ23_
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I built a Clio alternative CRM that runs fully offline on your PC – no subscription, no cloud

✇CRM - Customer Relationship Managment
By: /u/Important_Topic2002
2 October 2026 at 22:41

Hey everyone,

I kept seeing solo lawyers and small firms asking for a Clio alternative that doesn't send client data to a cloud server and doesn't charge a monthly fee. There wasn't a straightforward local option, so I built one. It's called OffLegal.

It runs entirely on your Windows machine. No accounts, no cloud sync, no recurring subscription. Clients, matters, documents, and billing all live in a local, encrypted database that never leaves your PC.

What it handles:

  • Clients & matters, with bulk import if you're migrating from a spreadsheet
  • Time tracking tied automatically to the right matter
  • Invoicing and payment/transaction tracking, with PDF invoice generation
  • Document management with version history, plus a built-in e-signature tool so you don't need a separate signing service
  • Calendar with court dates, deadlines, and native reminders
  • One-click backup/restore: export your whole database and documents folder to any drive

Pricing: $49 one-time, single machine per license. Windows only for now.

If you run a solo or small practice, I'd really like to know: would the tradeoffs above be dealbreakers, and what's missing from your day-to-day workflow? Happy to answer any questions about how it handles practice workflows.

submitted by /u/Important_Topic2002
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New Mexico Wants Meta To Pay $40 Billion In Penalties For Cambridge Analytica Scandal

✇Slashdot
By: BeauHD
2 October 2026 at 22:30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The state of New Mexico asked a judge on Thursday to order Meta Platforms to pay between $35 billion and $40 billion in penalties after a jury found the company had misled consumers about the privacy of their data on Facebook in a case that came out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Attorneys for New Mexico made the request at a hearing in a lawsuit brought following revelations that the British political consulting firm, which worked on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app without their consent. The jury returned its verdict on September 25. Judge Francis Mathew, who oversaw the trial in Santa Fe, will decide how much Meta must pay in financial penalties. [...] State law allows the judge to decide how much to fine Meta per violation, up to $5,000. At the hearing on Thursday, Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, said applying the full $5,000 penalty to the number of violations would create too large of a penalty under the US Constitution's protections on due process. But the judge should order a significant payment that will impact the company, McGinn said. "This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price," McGinn said. She said $35 billion to $40 billion, which represents about 20% of the possible penalties that could be awarded under state law from the verdict, would impact the stock price while complying with Meta's right to due process under the Constitution. At the hearing on Thursday, Matt Nicholson, a lawyer for Meta, called the state's request an "astronomical penalty that would obviously violate a host of constitutional provisions." In court filings, Meta urged Mathew to cap the penalties at $3.45 billion. The jury may have said it found Meta's statements misleading, but the evidence shows that Meta does not sell user data and New Mexico did not prove that any consumer had actually been misled, the company said in court filings. The judge said he expected to issue a ruling later this month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our site got hacked, but I found the hacker’s credentials

✇WordPress
By: /u/dfreeezzz
2 October 2026 at 19:53

we ran into a weird issue, where multiple links (buttons) on our site would lead to a gambling site (while masking themselves as our website. The URL was correct).

After a couple of hours I managed to clear out all malicious code and found a VERY interesting file.

So apparently we got hacked by a group called „chinafans“. They were even so kind to leave links to their telegram behind.

So yeah.. Not sure if it’s good that i post this? But felt like sharing an interesting discovery.

submitted by /u/dfreeezzz
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Anyone actually using Figma Make to design Elementor sites, or is it just YouTube hype?

✇WordPress
By: /u/Beginning_Search585
2 October 2026 at 18:19

Hey everyone,

I'm not a designer. I'm more on the technical side of WordPress, so most of my sites so far were built by hand in Elementor or WPBakery, or I bought a template kit on Envato and adjusted it. Works fine for me, but design was never my strong point.

Lately my feed is full of "AI will replace web designers" videos. Everyone is hyping Claude and Figma Make and promising pixel perfect sites in 10 minutes... and honestly I don't trust most of those guys.

A lot of them are selling a course.

To be clear, I'm not a Figma Make user. I'm only thinking about paying for it, and I don't want to burn an hour and a bunch of money to find out it's garbage.

here's what I actually want to know. Can I describe a layout in text prompts in Figma Make, similar to what a good Elementor template kit looks like, clean that up as a proper Figma design, and then rebuild it in Elementor with a decent result? Or does it fall apart somewhere in the middle (spacing, responsive, global styles, that kind of things?

Is there chance to get solid results?

Correct me, please

And is this whole thing a real workflow people use now, or should I just keep paying for Envato Elements and save myself the headache?

Would really appreciate honest experiences, including the bad ones. Thanks!

submitted by /u/Beginning_Search585
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Company Site has 2 SEO Plugins, Need to Remove One.

✇WordPress
By: /u/garce818
2 October 2026 at 18:06

I understand that we should not be using 2 SEO plugins, but the company wordpress site's maintenance was handed off to a new employee after I changed roles, and they installed a second SEO plugin. The one we originally were using was Rank Math SEO , and about a year ago they installed All in One SEO.

I recently jumped back in to help them out with some questions they had and noticed both plugins were running.

I'm planning on keeping Rank Math. My question is, is there anything I need to consider when deactivating one of the plugins? Is it is simply a matter of deactivating the All in One plugin? Or is there anything else I need to do? Are there any unintended consequences I should consider?

submitted by /u/garce818
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AI Has Finally Learned To Play Stratego

✇Slashdot
By: BeauHD
2 October 2026 at 18:00
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, NYU, and Stanford have built an AI called Ataraxos that finally cracked Stratego, beating four-time world champion Pim Niemeijer 15 games to one with four draws. Its key advantage was a second neural network that estimates the identities of hidden enemy pieces, letting the system search plausible game states rather than brute-force a massive hidden-information space. Ars Technica reports: Just like [DeepMind's DeepNash, introduced in 2022], Ataraxos learned by playing against itself -- 163 million games in total. In these self-play sessions, moves that led to wins were reinforced and played more often in future matches, while moves that led to losses were played less, which was the same simple training idea. The difference was in how much Ataraxos adjusted after each game, because hidden information tends to send self-play learning algorithms around in circles. The team addressed this by making big, bold changes in strategy early in training and small, careful ones later. The even bigger innovation was something DeepNash never had: thinking ahead before each move. AIs like AlphaGo refine their general strategy with a search just before acting. DeepMind couldn't make that work in Stratego because the search space was too large, leaving it an open question whether it was worth trying. "This is one of the things that we did figure out how to do," Farina said. The solution was a second neural network, a belief model, trained to guess the opponent's hidden pieces based on how they had been moving. This way, instead of iterating through every possible arrangement, Ataraxos samples plausible ones, plays out candidate moves in each, and picks based on how they turned out. And it shows in its playstyle. [...] DeepNash was trained for two to three months on 1,024 of Google's specialized chips, a run the Ataraxos team estimates would cost $3 million to $4.5 million at 2025 prices. Ataraxos, in contrast, needed 16 GPUs for a week, plus an additional four GPUs for four days to train the belief model. Farina and lead author Samuel Sokota achieved this efficiency by writing a simulator that runs millions of moves per second on graphics cards. "At the scale that we are in academia, we don't really have access to an entire field of GPUs," Farina said. The algorithm also learned far faster -- it played about 34 times fewer games than DeepNash, and still ended up much stronger. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Small Computer Repair Services Company - Boss has task me with a CRM

✇CRM - Customer Relationship Managment
By: /u/Loukey95
2 October 2026 at 17:04

Hi all, complete novice here.

My boss has tasked me with looking into getting a CRM sorted for our small, 4 man band computer repair business in the countryside in the UK.

We absolutely require QuickBooks integration.

The aim is to use a CRM to streamline our operation and ultimately help to grow the business.

My boss is also quite tight with money.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

submitted by /u/Loukey95
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The University of Washington Is Moving a Graduate Program to Microsoft's Campus

✇Slashdot
By: BeauHD
2 October 2026 at 17:00
Longtime Slashdot submitter theodp writes: GeekWire reports that the University of Washington has moved its Global Innovation Exchange {GIX) program to Microsoft's campus in a rent-free deal (UW News release). GIX, an institute supporting tech leaders that offers an MS in Technology Innovation, is the first UW program to set up full-time operations at Microsoft, whose headquarters are just across Lake Washington from the university's main campus. Microsoft provided a $42 million in-kind donation to establish the embedded facility; the UW is leasing the new 48,500-square-foot GIX space in Microsoft's Building 92 rent-free. GIX debuted in 2015 as a partnership of the UW and China's Tsinghua University and received $70 million in Microsoft support at the now-abandoned GIX location in Bellevue (the Steve Ballmer Building), although indications are that a long-term arrangement did not come together as intended. In a Thursday LinkedIn post, Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote: "Last night we opened a door unlike any other. At the heart of Microsoft's campus, step into the new home of the UW's Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) and you cross from Microsoft into the University of Washington. No one has ever put a great research university and a leading technology company under the same roof quite like this. As far as I know, no one has even tried. The timing matters. Artificial intelligence is advancing fast. The question is whether the people building it understand the world it's changing. This calls for a new style of education and leadership. We need leaders who understand the technology deeply and see things through other people's eyes. Leaders who learn by collaborating on real projects with people from different countries and disciplines. That's what GIX is built for. Students will learn from faculty across the UW, take classes taught by Microsoft employees, and be mentored by people from across our industry here in the Pacific Northwest." Interestingly, Smith's contention that UW GIX students will benefit from a 'new style' of Microsoft and industry-influenced education sounds a lot like Smith's contention that K-12 school children are better off thanks to a new style of Microsoft and industry-influenced education. In an interview last month, Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools author Natasha Singer told NPR (podcast, transcript), "For my book, I spoke to Brad Smith, who's the president of Microsoft, and he has been one of the leaders in the tech industry pushing for [K-12] computer science [and now AI literacy] in schools. [...] And Brad Smith said, philanthropy in the private sector is doing this work because public schools have failed to do what they were supposed to do. And his view is that public schools should be teaching modern subjects like computer science, and they were not equipped to do it fast enough and the tech industry stepped in to help. And is it better than if schools were able to do this themselves? He said, no, but it's certainly better than nothing. And he said to me, you know, think about where we would be on computer science if the tech industry hadn't stepped up. [...] Well, I've been having this conversation with him for 10 years, and when we started having it 10 years ago, I said to him, I get that, but when big tech companies put their finger on the scale, it tips education in certain ways that not only favor the tech industry but can obscure equally or more important things." So, is "The University of Washington at Microsoft" a good or bad idea?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[PROMO] I built a free WordPress plugin for embedding BTC, ETH and BNB market-regime status

✇WordPress
By: /u/Feriman22
2 October 2026 at 16:41

FerimanEdge Regime Widget

I recently published a small free/open-source WordPress plugin for crypto-focused sites.

It adds a Gutenberg block and shortcode for displaying the current BTC, ETH or BNB market regime (BULL / SIDEWAYS / BEAR), individually or together.

There are a few things that I have deliberately kept simple:

  • no API keys
  • no server-side API requests
  • no bundled third-party JS/CSS
  • dark, light and visitor OS themes
  • compact/standard/large layouts

The plugin itself just outputs the iframe. The market-regime data is served directly by FerimanEdge.

WordPress Plugin:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/ferimanedge-regime-widget/

Feedback on the block/shortcode UX would be useful, especially from people building crypto or finance sites. Thanks!

submitted by /u/Feriman22
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Apple Tightens macOS 'Full Disk Access' Controls As AI Agents 'Substantially' Increase Risk

✇Slashdot
By: BeauHD
2 October 2026 at 16:00
Apple says it will tighten macOS Full Disk Access controls as increasingly capable AI agents raise the risks of apps gaining broad access to users' files, messages, mail, and browsing history. TechCrunch reports: Days after a journalist claimed that Meta's Muse app on Mac read their private messages -- a claim that Meta disputed -- Apple announced that it's introducing additional controls around a setting called "Full Disk Access" on macOS. The feature was designed to allow backups to function properly, but AI agents have now increased "the risks associated with this level of access," Apple said. [...] In Muse's case, the AI optionally allows users to enable Full Disk Access. This setting, Apple explains, gives an app permission to access files, mail, messages, and even browsing history. "Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems... without users' full knowledge and understanding," Apple said in a new blog post aimed at developers. The company says that, going forward, it will introduce new controls aimed at ensuring that users who "genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access" can do so only with "every explicit user action." "Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy," Apple wrote.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Developers running your plugins through AI should be a basic requirement

✇WordPress
By: /u/seahorsetech
2 October 2026 at 15:21

I'm not a developer by any means and don't know how to code. I do however use Claude mainly for designing pages in the block editor, and for troubleshooting WP issues. Before updating plugins/themes I also the entire plugin stack and theme the site in question is using through Claude to check for any compatibility issues before updating. What I've also been doing is running them through Claude to find security vulnerabilities and with just the basic Pro plan, the number of vulnerabilities I have found in commercial plugins is unfortunate. Especially when my prompt is as simple as just asking Claude to find any security vulnerabilities. I'm sure someone educated in security could prompt it to find even more. Anyway, I think it should be a requirement for dev's to run their code through an AI agent to find these vulnerabilities before production sites install them. Luckily the vulnerabilities I have reported have all been addressed, but these things really should be addressed before its released.

submitted by /u/seahorsetech
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[PROMO] I built a standalone WooCommerce admin panel for a client — free and open source

✇WordPress
By: /u/shantz-khoji
2 October 2026 at 13:35

I got tired of opening wp-admin for checking orders and clients are usually don't take efforts to understand this woocommerce, so I built WooOps.

It handles orders, products, stock, customer notes, shipment tracking and basic reports. Self-hosted, open source, and connects to your existing store—no extra database or plugin.

Still in development with coming more features into it, I would love to hear your feedbacks so I can improve it and make it better for the community.

https://github.com/shantz1/wooops

submitted by /u/shantz-khoji
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Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery to Become Skydance

✇Slashdot
By: BeauHD
2 October 2026 at 15:00
Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will operate under the Skydance name once their roughly $110 billion merger closes, which is expected on October 6. The combined company will bring together Paramount+, HBO Max, CBS, CNN, MTV and other networks, along with major franchises including The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, DC and Yellowstone. Ellison said the Paramount and Warner Bros. brands will remain prominent. "We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter or overshadow either one. Instead, we wanted a name that would give the combined company an identity of its own while allowing Paramount and Warner Bros. -- and all our extraordinary brands -- to remain in the spotlight."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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