All the News that Matters

• Bcachefs goes to "externally maintained"
  Linus Torvalds has quietly changedthe maintainer status of bcachefs to "externally maintained",indicating that further changes are unlikely to enter the mainline anytimesoon. This change also suggests, though, that the immediate removal ofbcachefs from the mainline kernel is not in the cards.

• [$] The challenge of maintaining curl
  Keynote sessions at Open Source Summit events tend not to allow much time fordetailed talks, and the 2025 OpenSource Summit Europe did not diverge from that pattern. Even so,Daniel Stenberg, the maintainer of the curlproject, managed to cram a lot into the 15 minutes given to him.Like the maintainers of many other projects, Stenberg is feeling somestress, and the problems appear to be getting worse over time.

• [$] Highlights from systemd v258: part one
  The next release of systemd has been percolating for an unusuallylong time. Systemd releases are usually about six months apart, butv257 came out inDecember 2024, and v258 just now seems to be nearing the finishline; the third release candidate for v258 was published onAugust 20 (releasenotes). Now is a good time to dig in and take a look at some ofthe new features, enhancements, and removals coming soon tosystemd. These include new workload-management features, a concept formultiple home-directory environments, and the final, once-and-for-allremoval of support for controlgroups version 1.
  

• Security updates for Friday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (aide, fence-agents, firefox, kernel-rt, python-cryptography, and thunderbird), Debian (golang-github-gin-contrib-cors, libxml2, and udisks2), Fedora (chromium), Oracle (postgresql16, postgresql:16, python3.11, and thunderbird), Red Hat (lz4 and mpfr), SUSE (chromium, docker, dpkg, firefox, gdk-pixbuf, git, git, git-lfs, obs-scm-bridge, python-PyYAML, gnutls, kernel, libarchive, libxml2, net-tools, netty, perl-Crypt-CBC, polkit, postgresql14, postgresql15, sqlite3, thunderbird, tomcat10, and udisks2), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.14, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-6.14, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.14, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-gcp, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.8, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-azure, linux-fips, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gke, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-raspi, linux-gke, linux-kvm, linux-oem-6.14, linux-realtime, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-raspi-realtime, openldap, and udisks2).

• Python: The Documentary
  Attendees at EuroPython had the chance to preview part ofPython: The Documentary during akeynote panel. The full film, created by CultRepo, is now available on YouTube:
  
  This is the story of the world's most beloved programming language:Python. What began as a side project in Amsterdam during the 1990sbecame the software powering artificial intelligence, data science andsome of the world's biggest companies. But Python's future wasn'tcertain; at one point it almost disappeared.
  
  This 90-minute documentary features Guido van Rossum, TravisOliphant, Barry Warsaw, and many more, and they tell the story ofPython's rise, its community-driven evolution, the conflicts thatalmost tore it apart, and the language's impact on... well...everything.
  
  The videoof the keynote is also available.
  
  
  

• Seven stable kernels for Thursday
  Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.16.4, 6.12.44, 6.6.103, 6.1.149, 5.15.190, 5.10.241, and 5.4.297 stable Linux kernels. Each onecontains important fixes.
  
  
  

• [$] Changing GNOME technical governance?
  The GNOME project, which recently celebrated its28th birthday, has never had a formal technical governance; progresshas been driven by individuals and groups that advocated for—and workedtoward—a particular goal in an ad hoc fashion. Longtime GNOME contributorEmmanuele Bassi would like to see that change by adding cross-project teamsand a steering committee for the project; to that end, he gave a talk (YouTubevideo) at GUADEC 2025in late July on his idea to establish some technical governance for theproject. He also put together a blogpost with his notes from the talk. The audience reaction wasfavorable, so he has followed up on the GNOME discussion forum with an RFC ongovernance to try to move the effort along.

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (aide, firefox, kernel, and mod_http2), Debian (chromium and unbound), Fedora (mod_auth_openidc), Oracle (fence-agents and kernel), SUSE (ignition, jetty-minimal, kernel, libmozjs-128-0, matrix-synapse, postgresql13, postgresql15, postgresql16, and postgresql17), and Ubuntu (kernel).

• [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for August 28, 2025
  Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
  Front: Groklaw takeover; CRL cache sharing; browsers and XSLT; Microdot; restartable sequences; shadow-stack control Briefs: Android restrictions; Arch services; GhostBSD 25.02; FFmpeg 8.0; PyCon videos; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

• Rosenzweig: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end
  Alyssa Rosenzweig has written a blog postabout her work to help ship a "great driver" for the Apple M1GPU that supports OpenGL, Vulkan, and enables gaming with Proton.
  
  We've succeeded beyond my dreams. The challenges I chased, I havetackled. The drivers are fully upstream in Mesa. Performance isn't toobad. With the Vulkan on Apple myth busted, conformant Vulkan is nowcoming to macOS via LunarG'sKosmicKrisp project building on my work.
  
  Satisfied, I am now stepping away from the Apple ecosystem. Myfriends in the Asahi Linux orbit will carry the torch from here.
  
  Rosenzweig indicates her next project will be working on Intel'scovered her talk on AppleM1/M2 GPU drivers in October 2024.
  
  
  

• [$] The tangled web of XSLT browser support
  The ExtensibleStylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) language is used by webbrowsers to style XML content to make it easily readable; XSLT is part of theHTML livingstandard that is maintained by the Web Hypertext Application TechnologyWorking Group (WHATWG). Only a small fraction of web sites servecontent that requires web browsers to support XSLT, in part becausemajor browser implementations have neglected the technology over the past 25years. Now, it seems, they would like to rid themselves of itentirely. A planto disable XSLT in Blink (Chrome's rendering engine) and a pull request bya Google Chrome developer to remove mentions of the specification fromthe HTML standard have been met with opposition, but arguments infavor of XSLT have proven ineffective.
  

• GhostBSD 25.02 released
  The GhostBSD project has released version 25.02 of theFreeBSD-based desktop operating system. This release brings GhostBSDup to date with FreeBSD 14.3,includes enhancements for the Software Station package managementapplication, and introduces an "OS X-like" desktop environmentbased on GNUstep called Gershwin:
  
  This early preview includes:
  GNUstep-based desktop environment with familiar OS X-styleinterfaceSeamless integration with GhostBSD tools through wrappers forinstaller, Software Station, Backup Station, and Update StationSupport for running non-GNUstep applications alongside GNUstepappsSeveral included GNUstep applications to get you started
  LWN covered GhostBSDin June 2024.
  

• [$] The need to reliably preserve our community history
  The Internet is a wonderful thing; it allows anybody to look upinformation of interest. Included in all of that is the history of thefree-software development community; how we got to where we are says a lotabout why things are the way they are and what might come next. So thetakeover of Groklaw rings a loud alarm; we have been reminded that historystored on the Internet is an ephemeral thing and cannot be expected toremain available forever.

• Security updates for Wednesday
  Security updates have been issued by Debian (node-cipher-base), Fedora (keylime-agent-rust and libtiff), Oracle (aide, kernel, mod_http2, pam, pki-deps:10.6, python-cryptography, python3, python3.12, and thunderbird), SUSE (cheat, ffmpeg, firebird, govulncheck-vulndb, postgresql17, tomcat, tomcat10, tomcat11, ucode-intel-20250812, and v2ray-core), and Ubuntu (binutils, gst-plugins-base1.0, gst-plugins-good1.0, and linux-raspi-realtime).

• [$] Shadow-stack control in clone3()
  Shadow stacks are a control-flow-integrity feature designed to defendagainst exploits that manipulate a thread's call stack. The kernel firstgained support for hardware-implemented shadowstacks, for the x86 architecture, in the 6.6 release; 64-bit Armsupport followed in 6.13. This feature does not give user space muchcontrol over the allocation of shadow stacks for new threads, though; a patchseries from Mark Brown may, after many attempts, finally be aboutto change that situation.

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

• TuxCare’s In-Memory CVE Scanner Enhances Linux Security With Radar
  TuxCare Radar is an in-memory CVE scanner that reduces false positives, speeds compliance, and delivers real-time Linux vulnerability detection. The post TuxCare’s In-Memory CVE Scanner Enhances Linux Security With Radar appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Linux Patch Blind Spot Exposes Critical Cybersecurity Risks
  Linux patch delays leave enterprises exposed to long-standing vulnerabilities. Experts warn automation and consistent management are essential to closing this critical security gap. The post Linux Patch Blind Spot Exposes Critical Cybersecurity Risks appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• The Year of the Linux Desktop? This Time, the Data Says Yes
  Linux is making real gains on the desktop. New data shows its market share passing 5% in the U.S., signaling a long-awaited breakthrough. The post The Year of the Linux Desktop? This Time, the Data Says Yes appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• From Kernel to Cloud: Open Source Takes On Security Trade-Offs
  Open-source systems are adopting live patching and isolation technologies to support always-on security and meet enterprise compliance demands in the cloud. The post From Kernel to Cloud: Open Source Takes On Security Trade-Offs appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Kubernetes Cost Optimization May Be Doing More Harm Than Good
  Slashing Kubernetes costs sounds smart — until it backfires. Here’s how to reduce spend safely while improving platform stability and speed. The post Kubernetes Cost Optimization May Be Doing More Harm Than Good appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Is a Security Baseline Enough for Open-Source Software?
  The OpenSSF’s new baseline sets minimum security expectations for open-source projects — but not all developers agree it’s practical, scalable, or sufficient. The post Is a Security Baseline Enough for Open-Source Software? appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• DOD Raises Software Security Expectations With SWFT Initiative
  Open-source software may be in the crosshairs of military and government agencies as the U.S. Department of Defense evaluates the risks of both free and proprietary software. The post DOD Raises Software Security Expectations With SWFT Initiative appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Edera and CIQ Advance Linux Security With Hardened Tools
  With Edera Protect and CIQ's RLC-H, open-source innovators are redefining Linux security through stronger isolation and proactive threat defense. The post Edera and CIQ Advance Linux Security With Hardened Tools appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Powerful Mini-PCs Provide Efficient Replacement for Desktop Computers
  I’d been curious about the performance of mini-PCs, so I finally bit the bullet and replaced an aging laptop and failing desktop with much smaller units. The post Powerful Mini-PCs Provide Efficient Replacement for Desktop Computers appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Open Source Security at Risk From Poor Oversight
  As attacks grow more sophisticated, the open-source community is racing to close critical security gaps and stop malicious code before it spreads. The post Open Source Security at Risk From Poor Oversight appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• AMD Ryzen CPUs fry twice in the face of heavy math load, GMP says
  GMP library test meltdown has AMD looking for answers
  Chipmaker AMD is looking into a report from the GMP project about two Ryzen processors that failed during testing. Could too much math be to blame?…
  

• AI web crawlers are destroying websites in their never-ending hunger for any and all content
  But the cure may ruin the web....
  With AI's rise, AI web crawlers are strip-mining the web in their perpetual hunt for ever more content to feed into their Large Language Model (LLM) mills. How much traffic do they account for? According to Cloudflare, a major content delivery network (CDN) force, 30% of global web traffic now comes from bots. Leading the way and growing fast? AI bots.…
  

• AWS catches Russia's Cozy Bear clawing at Microsoft credentials
  Look who's visiting the watering hole these days
  Amazon today said it disrupted an intel-gathering attempt by Russia's APT29 to trick Microsoft users into unwittingly granting the Kremlin-backed cyberspies access to their accounts and data.…
  

• GitHub engineer claims team was 'coerced' to put Grok into Copilot
  Platform's staffer complains security review was 'rushed'
  Microsoft-owned collaborative coding platform GitHub is deepening its ties with Elon Musk's xAI, bringing early access to the company's Grok Code Fast 1 large language model (LLM) into GitHub Copilot. However, a whistleblower has claimed that the rollout suffers from inadequate security testing and an engineering team operating under duress.…
  

• Pentagon ends Microsoft's use of China-based support staff for DoD cloud
  'It blows my mind,' says SecDef
  The Pentagon has formally kiboshed Microsoft's use of China-based employees to support Azure cloud services deployed by US government agencies, and it's demanding Microsoft do more of its own digging to determine whether any sensitive data was compromised. …
  

• Intel’s deal with Trump includes a penalty clause against selling off its fabs
  The $5.7B check has cleared, CFO says
  Intel's agreement with the US government incudes a clause that would allow the feds to take an additional five percent stake in the chipmaker if it ceases to have a controlling share in its foundry business.…
  

• FTC chair accuses Google of treating GOP's emails as spam
  Chocolate Factory says people keep marking them as such, so QED
  The Trump administration has accused Google of discriminating against Republicans' emails and warned that the tech giant could be in line for a crackdown.…
  

• RefreshOS 2.5: The Debian remix that borrows from every desk in the house
  A remarkable mixture of different components, but it works
  RefreshOS is a Debian and KDE-based distro with a difference: it casts its net a lot wider for tools and components.…
  

• 30 years later, Doom returns to SNES with Raspberry Pi RP2350 muscle
  Limited Run Games swaps in silicon to emulate Super FX chip and hit 20 fps
  Forget Windows 95, it's 30 years since Doom was released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. And thanks to the Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller, the game is back in cartridge form.…
  

• Enterprise password management outfit Passwordstate patches Emergency Access bug
  Up to 29,000 organizations and potentially 370,000 security and IT pros affected
  Australian development house Click Studios has warned users of its Passwordstate enterprise password management platform to update immediately if not sooner, following the discovery of an authentication bypass vulnerability that opens the doors to an emergency administration account with nothing more than a "carefully crafted URL."…
  

• HP bottom line fattens up on a diet of AI PCs and Windows 11
  Nobody knows why they need one, but folk seem to be buying them
  HP says AI PCs now make up a quarter of its sales, boosting revenue thanks to their higher price tags and the Windows 11 refresh.…
  

• UK government dragged for incomplete security reforms after Afghan leak fallout
  Senior officials summoned to science and tech committee to explain further
  Senior officials are being summoned to the UK's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee to explain why the government has not fully implemented the security recommendations made in a secret review following the 2021 Afghan data breach.…
  

• Windows Mobile Plans app to be disconnected in 2026
  Microsoft shifts cellular management to Settings and the web
  Microsoft is to permanently hang up on its Mobile Plans app, directing users to the web and the Windows Settings app in the future.…
  

• UK datacenter developers turn to gas rather than wait for grid power for builds
  Hang on, what happened to gov.UK's bitbarn-favoring Industrial Strategy?
  Datacenter developers in the UK are turning to gas for power generation amid lengthy wait times for a connection to the electricity grid.…
  

• How Windows 11 is breaking from its bedrock and moving away
  The once mighty Wintel supercontinent is cracking in more ways than you might think
  Opinion Say what you like about its role in the destruction of civilization, the net is still good for a few party games. Take bets on when the "Wintel Empire" was first reported as under attack, and by what. Then go and find out.…
  

• Cloud computing has become so normal, it's invisible
  Maybe someday we'll just call it 'data processing' again
  Feature In IT, terms and categories come and go. Distinctions disappear as computing evolves and as something that was shiny and new simply becomes the way that we do things.…
  

• Techie fooled a panicked daemon and manipulated time itself to get servers in sync
  Network Time Protocol sometimes needs help from a temporal cops
  On Call Why, look at the time! 7:30 AM on Friday morning, the moment at which The Register regularly runs a fresh instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that shares your finest tech support stories.…
  

• China turns on giant neutrino detector that took a decade to build
  700 meters under a mountain, a 20,000-tonne detector and a giant sphere await elusive particles
  More than a decade after construction began, China has commenced operation of what it claims is the world’s most sensitive neutrino detector.…
  

• China’s KylinOS Linux takes a great leap forward to v11 and kernel 6.6
  Supports several Chinese chips and GPUs – and of course it has AI inside
  China’s KylinSoft has delivered a major update to its flagship Linux, which Beijing hailed as a great leap forward for the nation’s ambition to develop operating systems that match and exceed the capabilities of western products.…
  

• FBI cyber cop: Salt Typhoon pwned 'nearly every American'
  Plus millions of other people across 80+ countries
  China's Salt Typhoon cyberspies hoovered up information belonging to millions of people in the United States over the course of the years-long intrusion into telecommunications networks, according to a top FBI cyber official.…
  

• Older developers are down with the vibe coding vibe
  They use AI more but also check it more
  For those who thought AI vibe coding was just for the youngsters, newly published research shows that developers with over 10 years of experience are more than twice as likely to do it.…
  

• Microsoft unveils home-made ML models amid OpenAI negotiations
  Microsoft AI honcho insists partnership with Sam Altman's brainbox behemoth is alive and well
  Microsoft has introduced two home-grown machine learning models, potentially complicating negotiations with its current favored model supplier, OpenAI.…
  

• Five years – that's how long Anthropic will store Claude chats unless you opt out
  My brain hurts a lot
  Claude creator Anthropic has given customers using its Free, Pro, and Max plans one month to prevent the engine from storing their chats for five years by default and using them for training.…
  

• DOGE delayed deals, says Nutanix
  But private cloud contender sees upside in its modernization mission
  Donald Trump's DOGE cost-cutting unit has made it harder to do business with the US federal government, according to private cloud contender Nutanix.…
  

• vSphere upgrades are not near the top of VMware's to-do list
  Nor is its Arm port
  When VMware delivered its Cloud Foundation 9 suite in June, it marked the end of a two-year push to integrate its compute, storage, and networking products. What’s next for the Broadcom business unit? At the VMware Explore conference this week, The Register sniffed out a few other items on its to-do list.…
  

• DHS says it needs $100M worth of counter-drone tech to protect America
  Our drones are OK, but those other drones?
  The US Department of Homeland Security has revealed plans to spend more than $100 million on systems designed to take out hostile drones.  …
  

• Not in my browser! Vivaldi capo doubles down on generative AI ban
  Web browsing belongs to the people, not the bots
  Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Norway-based browser maker Vivaldi, believes the tech industry's efforts to automate web browsing using generative AI models have gone too far.…
  

• FBI, Dutch cops seize fake ID marketplace that sold identity docs for $9
  $6.4M VerifTools marketplace offline
  The FBI and Dutch police today said that they seized two domains and a blog tied to VerifTools, an international criminal marketplace that sold identity documents for as little as $9.…
  

• How does China keep stealing our stuff, wonders DoD group responsible for keeping foreign agents out
  'The homeland is no longer secure,' says Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency leader
  The Pentagon outfit responsible for preventing foriegn agents from infiltrating defense agencies says the US isn't doing a very good job of preventing state secrets from falling into Chinese hands.…
  

• Dialing Earth: Skylo set to leapfrog T-Mobile and offer voice calls via satellite
  Only a few Android phones will be able to support the service
  Users of Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones could soon find themselves able to make voice calls via a satellite connection, if Skylo Technologies can get all its ducks in a row.…
  

• Whisper it: FFmpeg 8 can now subtitle your videos on the fly
  Media multitool taps Vulkan for GPU encoding, adds VVC support, and dusts off some ancient formats
  FFmpeg 8.0 brings GPU-accelerated video encoding via Vulkan – and can now subtitle your videos automatically using integrated speech recognition.…
  

• AmiBrowser brings 21st century web to 20th century Amigas
  Also, not one but two new models of the classic 1200
  The new native 68K AmigaOS web browser leans on the machines' underlying emulation system to offer modern facilities on a retro OS.…
  

• 'It isn't designed to solve privacy concerns,' Grafana CTO says of Bring Your Own Cloud
  Think BYOC will solve all your sovereignty and privacy worries? You might be missing the point
  INTERVIEW Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) is a concept gaining traction as companies seek ways to resolve sovereignty and privacy issues, but its implementation can vary widely depending on interpretation.…
  

• Google and Zed push protocol to pry AI agents out of VS Code's clutches
  Because not every bot wants to live inside Microsoft's walled garden
  Google and code editor company Zed Industries have introduced the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) as a standard way for AI agents to integrate with an IDE, with the idea that this will prevent developers getting locked into VS Code.…
  

• SK Telecom walloped with $97M fine after schoolkid security blunders let attackers run riot
  Regulator points to lack of 'basic access controls' between internet-facing systems, internal network
  South Korea's privacy watchdog has slapped SK Telecom with a record ₩134.5 billion ($97 million) fine after finding that the mobile giant left its network wide open to hackers through a catalog of bungles.…
  

• Firefly reckons thermal tweaks will stop next rocket tearing itself apart
  Company cleared to launch again after April failure
  Firefly Aerospace has been given the green light to resume launches after its April failure.…
  

• TransUnion admits 4.5M affected after third-party support app breached
  Credit agency offers own services as compensation
  Credit scoring and monitoring biz TransUnion says that it recently suffered a breach affecting nearly 4.5 million individuals.…
  

• Thousands of Citrix NetScaler boxes still sitting ducks despite patches
  Shadowserver counts more than 13,000 appliances still wide open – including thousands in US, Germany, and UK
  Thousands of Citrix NetScaler appliances remain exposed to a trio of security flaws that the vendor patched this week, one of which is already being actively exploited in the wild.…
  

• Ransomware crooks knock Swedish municipalities offline for measly sum of $168K
  Miljödata meltdown leaves 200 local authorities scrambling over 1.5 BTC
  Sweden's municipal governments have been knocked offline after ransomware crooks hit IT supplier Miljödata, reportedly demanding the bargain-basement sum of $168,000.…
  

• Good morning, Brit Xbox fans – ready to prove your age?
  Microsoft blames incoming UK Online Safety Act, says you have until 2026
  Microsoft has begun emailing users of its Xbox gaming platform with likely unwelcome news: users will need to verify their age if they want to keep access to the company's various social services, and it's blaming the UK Online Safety Act.…
  

• Euro banks block billions in rogue PayPal direct debits after fraud glitch
  US payments platform back in action, says it's informing affected customers
  Shoppers and merchants in Germany found themselves dealing with billions of euros in frozen transactions this week, thanks to an apparent failure in PayPal's fraud-detection systems.…
  

• Law firm email blunder exposes Church of England abuse victim details
  Apology issued after names tied to redress scheme revealed in mass mailing
  A London law firm leaked the details of nearly 200 people who requested to receive updates about the redress scheme set up for victims of abuse at the hands of the Church of England (CoE).…
  

• UK unions want 'worker first' plan for AI as people fear for their jobs
  Labor group says new technologies could increase inequality if we're not careful
  AI-Pocalypse Over half of the British public are worried about the impact of AI on their jobs, according to employment unions, which want the UK government to adopt a "worker first" strategy rather than simply allowing corporations to ditch employees for algorithms.…
  

• Wastewater monitoring project could catch next pandemic early, says health agency
  UK starts early warning system combing through stuff that folks flush away
  The UK Health Security Agency is looking to set up an early warning system ahead of future pandemics, launching a £1.3 million (around $1.75 million) program to identify "cutting-edge technologies" which could turn people's pee and poop into valuable data on the spread of viruses.…
  

• Solo.io boss: I was wrong, I made mistakes – and that made me a better CEO
  Idit Levine on going from startup to a billion-dollar valuation
  Interview "I feel that a founder always needs to be a little bit stupidly optimistic." Solo.io CEO Idit Levine has been on an interesting journey in cloud computing since starting the networking and API management company in 2017.…
  

• If you thought China's Salt Typhoon was booted off critical networks, think again
  13 governments sound the alarm about ongoing unpleasantness
  China's Salt Typhoon cyberspies continue their years-long hacking campaign targeting critical industries around the world, according to a joint security alert from cyber and law enforcement agencies across 13 countries.…
  

• Online property ad reveals looted Nazi war art, triggers police raid
  Stolen painting still missing, sadly
  Police in Argentina reportedly raided a home in a coastal town on Monday after someone spotted a real estate ad that included images of art the Nazis looted in the Second World War.…
  

• Japan exploring whether AI could help inspect its nuclear power plants
  If regulators heed the lessons of Fukushima, testing will have to jump Godzilla-sized hurdles
  Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has requested extra funds to experiment with AI-powered nuclear plant inspectors.…
  

• ChatGPT hates LA Chargers fans
  Harvard researchers find model guardrails tailor query responses to user's inferred politics and other affiliations
  OpenAI's ChatGPT appears to be more likely to refuse to respond to questions posed by fans of the Los Angeles Chargers football team than to followers of other teams.…
  

• AI arms dealer Nvidia laments the many billions lost to US-China trade war
  China would be a $50 billion a year market for Nvidia if Uncle Sam would let us sell competitive products, says Jensen Huang
  Nvidia's top brass urged Washington to approve the sale of Blackwell accelerators to China during the GPU giant's Q2 earnings call on Wednesday.…
  

• GNOME Executive Director Steps Down After Four Months
  It was barely four months ago that the GNOME Foundation announced its new Executive Director, Steven Deobald, who was taking over afterHolly Million stepped down after less than one year. Today Deobald announced he is stepping down as the Executive Director...

• Linus Torvalds Marks Bcachefs As Now "Externally Maintained"
  Linus Torvalds has finally come to a decision following his plans to part ways with the Bcachefs file-system and then not merging any Bcachefs updates for Linux 6.17...

• Fwupd 2.0.14 Brings New Framework & SteelSeries Hardware Support
  Fwupd 2.0.14 is out today as the newest version of this open-source firmware updating utility that is widely-used on Linux systems for BIOS/system firmware updates as well as an ever increasing array of different peripheral devices...

• Switching From i915 To Xe Linux Drivers Can Yield Some Big Gains For Intel Arc A-Series
  For those using Intel Arc A-Series graphics cards on Linux, the i915 kernel driver remains the default but switching over to the Xe driver can yield some incremental performance benefits. For OpenCL / GPU compute workloads especially, switching to the Xe kernel driver can be rather dramatic.

• Qualcomm Packet Processing Engine "PPE" Going Upstream For Linux 6.18
  Recently queued into the Linux networking subsystem's net-next branch ahead of the Linux 6.18 merge window is the Qualcomm PPE driver to support their Packet Processing Engine on select SoCs...

• Genode OS 25.08 Introduces New Kernel Scheduler, Updates Linux Drivers
  Version 25.08 of the Genode OS Framework has been released for this open-source operating system framework designed for software safety and security...

• Armbian 25.8.1 Brings Expanded Board Support, Linux 6.16 Option For Many Boards
  Armbian 25.8.1 is now available as a significant update over the Armbian 25.5 release for this Debian-based Linux distribution focused on offering broad support for ARM64 and RISC-V single board computers as well as other devices...

• OBS Studio 32 Beta Introduces A Plugin Manager, Hybrid MOV Support
  Released overnight in beta form is OBS Studio 32.0, the next feature release for this widely-used, open-source and cross-platform application for desktop streaming/recording...

• Linux 6.17 Showing Off Some Nice Gains For 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin" Performance
  Earlier this week I provided benchmarks looking at the Linux 5.15 LTS through Linux 6.17 Git kernel performance using the latest stable and development kernels compared to the Long Term Support (LTS) kernels over the past four years. For having hardware support back to Linux 5.15 I was using an AMD EPYC Milan-X server. In those benchmarks there were some nice gains and even from Linux 6.16 to 6.17 Git was around a 3% geo mean improvement. So I was curious to run some benchmarks on the latest-generation AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors to see if there was similar uplift there...

• TrueNAS 25.10 Beta Brings Installation Improvements, NVIDIA Blackwell Support
  The engineers over at iXsystems announced today the beta release of TrueNAS 25.10 "Goldeneye" as the latest iteration of this formerly BSD-based OS that has transitioned to making use of the Linux kernel while unifying both the TrueNAS CORE and SCALE offerings...

• Apple M2 Pro / Max / Ultra Device Trees Under Review For The Linux Kernel
  While the Asahi Linux project has faced some setbacks, such as most recently with Alyssa Rosenzweig leaving the project and still working to bring-up M3/M4 support, the upstreaming effort by Asahi Linux developers to get their changes to the upstream Linux kernel continues...

• AMD ISP4 Driver Updated As It Nears The Mainline Linux Kernel
  Posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list was the patch series for introducing the AMD ISP4 driver to the mainline kernel. This supports the image signal processor IP that to date is found with HP's Strix Halo powered ZBook Ultra G1a laptop. With time, future AMD Ryzen laptops will also likely be leveraging this ISP technology for offloading more webcamera work from the CPU, but for now the HP ZBook Ultra G1a is the main beneficiary of this open-source driver...

• Ubuntu 25.10 Questing Snapshot 4 Released For Monthly Testing
  The newest monthly snapshot of Ubuntu 25.10 is now available for testing and is the final planned monthly snapshot prior to the October release of the Questing Quokka...

• Mesa9s LLVMpipe Driver Adds Support For 8x MSAA
  The newest feature addition for Mesa 25.3 is enabling support 8x multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) within the LLVMpipe software rasterizer...

• Linux Patches To Unconditionally Enable Architecture-Optimized BLAKE2s Support
  While Linus Torvalds doesn't too often like new kernel options being enabled by default, one area where it has proven beneficial and otherwise an oversight by those configuring their own kernel builds is the architecture-optimized crypto algorithm implementations. Some will enable support for different kernel crypto algorithms only to forget or be unaware that there are CPU architecture specific implementations that can also typically be enabled for much better performance over the common code. Google engineer Eric Biggers has been cleaning this up and BLAKE2s is the latest receiving treatment...

• Agama 17 OS Installer Preps For SUSE Linux Enterprise 16.0
  Ahead of the upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise 16.0 release, SUSE engineers are busy finishing up work on their new "Agama" operating system installer. Agama 17 is now available as what will be the installer powering SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 installations or a version very similar to this latest milestone...

• VESA DRM Driver Ready With 8-Bit Color Palette Mode For Linux 6.18
  This week's drm-misc-next pull of feature updates to the small Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver bring a few updates worth pointing out ahead of the Linux 6.18 cycle...

• Linux Foundation Networking Releases Essedum 1.0 For AI-Native Network Apps
  LF Networking, the networking group within the Linux Foundation, announced from the Open-Source Summit Europe today the release of Essedum 1.0. Essedum 1.0 is for integrating AI into networking environments...

• x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group Aligning On FRED, AVX10 & APX
  Last year Intel and AMD formed an x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group "EAG" in collaboration with key partners. The x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group is to collaborate and innovate further around the x86_64 ISA. With AMD and Intel in agreement, FRED (Flexible Return Event Delivery), AVX10, and Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) are some of the early areas where they are finding common ground and interest...

• Mesa 25.1.9 Released To End Out The Mesa 25.1 Series
  With Mesa 25.2.1 recently having been released, the prior quarter's Mesa 25.1 series is now drawing to a close. Excellent Mesa release manager Eric Engestrom released Mesa 25.1.9 as one last point release for Mesa 25.1 before ending this branch...

• Framework Desktop Power Mode Tuning For Better Performance Or Power Efficiency
  Continuing on with our Framework Desktop benchmarking powered by AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo", today we are looking at the performance and power impact of power mode tuning for this review sample powered by the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 SoC. A wide variety of benchmarks were done across the power saver / balanced / performance power modes for looking at the impact on performance as well as thermals and power consumption.

• Patches Posted To Allow Writing USB Rust Drivers For Linux
  An initial set of Linux kernel patches were posted this week for allowing USB Rust kernel drivers to be developed for Linux...

• RADV Vulkan Driver Lands Untyped Pointers Support
  Introduced earlier this month with the Vulkan API 1.4.325 spec update was the introduction of the untyped pointers extension with VK_KHR_shader_untyped_pointers and SPIR-V's underlying SPV_KHR_untyped_pointers for providing an alternative option to strongly-typed pointers. As of yesterday the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" is now supporting this untyped pointers extension...

• AI Is Now Being Used To Help Determine Patches For Backporting In The Linux Kernel
  Generative AI "GenAI" is now being used in part to help determine the Linux kernel patches that should be back-ported to prior current stable Linux kernel releases such as the all-important Linux Long Term Support (LTS) branches...

• The Former Lead For Apple Graphics Drivers On Linux Is Now Working At Intel
  There's a follow-up to yesterday's surprising story of Alyssa Rosenzweig stepping away from Asahi Linux and that ARM graphics driver work where she led reverse engineering and development of the Asahi Gallium3D and HoneyKrisp Vulkan drivers within Mesa. She's now working at Intel on their Linux graphics drivers...

• Latest NOVA Patches From NVIDIA Get The GSP Booting To RISC-V Active State
  The NOVA open-source kernel graphics driver continues getting slowly built-up for the NVIDIA RTX 20 "Turing" and newer GPUs that sport the GPU System Processor (GSP) for easing the hardware initialization and management of modern NVIDIA GPUs within the mainline kernel. This Rust-written kernel driver now has patches pending for booting up the NVIDIA GSP to its RISC-V active state...

• QEMU 10.1 Released With Intel TDX Improvements, Support For Compiling To WASM
  QEMU 10.1 was released overnight as the latest iteration of this open-source machine emulator that plays an important role in the Linux virtualization stack...

• With Apple M1/M2 Graphics Driver Code Working, Alyssa Rosenzweig Stepping Away From Asahi Linux
  As another very unfortunate setback for the Asahi Linux project moving forward after Hector Martin left the project as did Asahi Lina pausing work on open-source Apple driver development, Alyssa Rosenzweig announced today that she is stepping away from the project following the successes in bringing up Apple M1 and M2 graphics drivers for Linux...

• A Number Of Fedora 43 Features/Changes Delayed To Fedora 44
  A number of yet-to-be-completed changes/features have been delayed from Fedora 43 to Fedora 44 while permission is granted for a few features to still land late in the Fedora 43 cycle...

• Rusticl vs. Intel Compute Runtime Performance For OpenCL On Battlemage
  Earlier this month I ran some benchmarks of Mesa9s Rusticl OpenCL driver against AMD ROCm on Strix Halo. Those benchmarks caught many by surprise with how well that Rust-based open-source OpenCL driver was working on AMD GPUs for being a generic OpenCL implementation built atop Mesa9s Gallium3D. For those curious about the potential of Rusticl on the Intel graphics side, here are some Battlemage benchmarks for Rusticl up against Intel9s official Compute Runtime driver stack.

• Framework Laptop 16 Upgrade Announced With Ryzen AI 300 Series, GeForce RTX 5070
  While the Framework 13 was upgraded earlier this year with a motherboard upgrade for the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point", the larger Framework 16 has been stuck in the Zen 4 era. But today Framework announced a new upgrade path for this 16-inch modular laptop for the Ryzen AI 300 series as well as NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 discrete graphics...

• LLVM 21.1 Released With AMD GFX1250 Target, Improved RISC-V, New C/C++ Features
  LLVM 21.1 is out today as the first stable version of the LLVM 21 compiler stack. This half-year stable release to the open-source LLVM compiler software brings new hardware support, new language features, and a lot of other enhancements throughout this massive and widely-used codebase...

• Blocky Planet: making Minecraft spherical
  Blocky Planet is a tech demo I created in the`Unity game engine`that attempts to map Minecraft’s cubic voxels onto a spherical planet. The planet is procedurally generated and fully destructible, allowing players to place or remove more than 20 different block types. While much of the implementation relies on common techniques you’d expect from your average Kirkland brand Minecraft clone, the spherical structure introduces a number of unique design considerations. This post will focus on these more novel challenges. ↫ Bowerbyte What a great read. Turning a flat earth game like Minecraft into something taking place on a spherical world seems impossible at first, but it seems Bowerbyte managed to do it. If youve ever wondered what it would be like to play a Minecraft-like game on an actual sphere, this is it.

• Genode OS Framework 25.08 released
  Genode 25.08 is ripe with deeply technical topics that have been cooking since the beginning of the year or even longer. In particular our new kernel scheduler as the flagship feature of this release has been in the works since February 2024. Section`Kernel scheduling for fairness and low latency`tells its background story and explains the approach taken. Another culmination of a long-term endeavor is the introduction of an alternative to XML syntax, specifically designed for the usage patterns of Genode and Sculpt OS. Section`Consideration of a lean alternative to XML`kicks off the practical evaluation of an idea that gradually evolved over more than two years. Also the holistic storage optimizations presented in Section`Block-storage stack renovations`are the result of careful long-term analysis, planning, and execution. ↫ Genode 25.08 release notes While these are the three tentpole features for this release, theres a whole lot more here, as well. Genodes Linux-based PC device drivers have all been updated to Linux 6.12, there are a ton of fixes related to USB, optional EFI boot support in VirtualBox 6, and tons more.

• The EU needs a corporate open source contribution tax! to fund open source maintainers
  Open source, the thing that drives the world, the thing Harvard says has an economic value of 8.8 trillion dollars (also a big number). Most of it is one person. And I can promise you not one of those single person projects have the proper amount of resources they need. If you want to talk about possible risks to your supply chain, a single maintainer that’s grossly underpaid and overworked. That’s the risk. The country they are from is irrelevant. ↫ Josh Bressers If the massive corporations that exploit the open source world for massive personal profit dont want to contribute back, perhaps its time we start making them. I envision an European Economic Area-wide open source contribution tax!, levied against any technology corporation operating within the European Economic Area, whether they actually make use of open source code or not, not entirely unlike how insurance works  you pay into it even if you dont make any claims. Such tax could be based on revenue, number of users, or any combination thereof or other factors. The revenue from this open source contribution tax is put into an EEA-wide fund and redistributed to EEA-based open source maintainers in the form of a monetary subsidy. Such types of taxes and money redistribution frameworks already exist in virtually every country for a whole wide variety of purposes and in a wide variety of forms, both in non-commercial and commercial settings. While it may seem complicated at first, it really isnt. The most difficult aspect is definitely figuring out who, exactly, would be eligible to receive the subsidy and how much, but that, too, is a question both governments and commercial entities answer every single day. No, it will never be perfect, and some people will receive a subsidy who shouldnt, and some who should receive it will not, but if thats a valid reason not to implement a tax like this, no tax or insurance should be implemented. The benefits are legion. Of course, there is the primary benefit of alleviating the thousands of open source maintainers who form the backbone of pretty much out entire digital infrastructure, which in and of itself should be reason enough. On top of that, it would also strengthen the open source world  on which, I wish to reiterate, our entire digital infrastructure is built  against the kind of infiltration we saw with XZ Utils. And to put another top on top of that, it would cement Europe, or the EEA more specifically, as the hub for open source development, innovation, and leadership, and would surely attract countless open source maintainers to relocate to Europe. In other words, it would serve the grander European ambition to become less dependent on the criminal behaviour US tech giants and the erratic behaviour of the US government. We can either wait indefinitely for those who exploit the free labour of open source maintainers to contribute, or we make them.

• In-application browsers: the worst erosion of user choice you havent heard of
  A long, long time ago, Android treated browser tabs in a very unique way. Individual tabs were were seen as applications, and would appear interspersed with the recent applications list as if they were, indeed, applications. This used to be one of my favourite Android features, as it made websites feel very well integrated into the overall user experience, and gave them a sense of place within your workflows. Eventually, though, Google decided to remove this unique approach, as we cant have nice things and everything must be bland, boring, and the same, and now finding a website you have open requires going to your browser and finding the correct tab. More approachable to most people, Id wager, but a reduction in usability, for me. I still mourn this loss. Similarly, weve seen a huge increase in the use of in-application browsers, a feature designed to trap users inside applications, instead of letting them freely explore the web the moment they click on a link inside an application. Application developers dont want you leaving their application, so almost all of them, by default, will now open a webview inside the application when you click on an outbound link. For advertising companies, like Google and Facebook, this has the additional benefit of circumventing any and all privacy protections you may have set up in your browser, since those wont apply to the webview the application opens. This sucks. I hate in-application browsers with a passion. Decades of internet use have taught me that clicking on a link means Im opening a website in my browser. Thats what I want, thats what I expect, and thats how it should be. In-application webviews entirely break this normal chain of events; not because it improves the user experience, but because it benefits the bottom line of others. Its also a massive security risk. Worst of all, this switch grants these apps the ability to spy and manipulate third-party websites. Popular apps like Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Facebook have all been caught injecting JavaScript via their in-app browsers into third party websites. TikTok was running commands that were essentially a keylogger. While we have no proof that this data was used or exfiltrated from the device, the mere presence of JavaScript code collecting this data combined with no plausible explanation is extremely concerning. ↫ Open Web Advocacy Open Web Advocacy has submitted a detailed and expansive report to the European Commission detailing the various issues with these in-application browsers, and suggests a number of remedies to strengthen security, improve privacy, and preserve browser choice. I hope this gets picked up, because in-application browsers are just another way in which were losing control over our devices.

• Word to save new files on Microsofts servers by default
  You already need custom scripts and third-party applications that make custom Windows ISOs to make installing Windows somewhat bearable  unless you enjoy spending hours manually disabling all the anti-user settings in Windows  and now theres another setting to add to the massive, growing list of stuff you have to fix after setting up a new Windows installation. Microsoft has announced that Word will start saving every new file to OneDrive (or another provider if youve installed one) by default. We are modernizing the way files are created and stored in Word for Windows! Now you don’t have to worry about saving your documents: Anything new you create will be saved automatically to OneDrive or your preferred cloud destination. ↫ Raul Munoz on the Microsoft 365 Insider Blog Theres the usual spiel of how this is safer and supposedly more convenient, but I suspect the real reason Microsoft is doing this is listed right there at the end of the list of supposed benefits: this enables the use of Copilots AI! features right from the beginning. In other words, by automatically saving your new Word documents to OneDrive by default, youre giving Microsoft access to whatever you write for AI! training purposes. The setting can be changed, but defaults matter and few people change them. Its also possible to set another provider than OneDrive as your online storage, but again  defaults matter. In fact, I wouldnt be surprised if few people will even realise their Word documents will be stored not on their local PC, but on Microsofts servers.

• Dick Picks unique database operating system
  We usually at least recognize old computer hardware and software names. But Asianmoetry taught us a new one: Pick OS. This 1960s-era system was sort of a database and sort of an operating system for big iron used by the Army. The request was for an English-like query language, and TRW assigned two guys, Don Nelson and Dick Pick, to the job. The planned query language would allow for things like “list the title, author, and abstract of every transportation system reference with the principal city ‘Los Angeles’.” This was GIM or generalized information management, and, in a forward-looking choice, it ran in a virtual machine. ↫ Al Williams at Hackaday The linked article is a short summary of a YouTube video by the YouTube channel Asianometry, which goes into a lot more detail about Pick OS, where it came from, what it can do, who the people involved were, and where Pick OS eventually ended up. I had never heard of this system before, and its easy to see why  not only was it used almost exclusively in vertically integrated complete solutions, it was also whitelabeled, so it existed under countless different names. Regardless, it seems the people who actually had to use it were incredibly enthusiastic about it, and to this day you can read new comments from people fondly remembering how easy to use it was. It has always been proprietary, and still is to this day, apparently owned by a company called Rocket Software, who dont seem to actually be doing anything with it.

• Guix gets a new Rust packaging model
  While Nix and NixOS get all the attention when it comes to declarative package management, there are other, competing implementations of the same general idea. Guix, developed as part of the GNU Project, was originally based on Nix, but grew into its own thing. The project recently announced a major change to how it packages Rust and its countless dependencies and optional crates. We have changed to a simplified Rust packaging model that is easier to automate and allows for modification, replacement and deletion of dependencies at the same time. The new model will significantly reduce our Rust packaging time and will help us to improve both package availability and quality. ↫ Hilton Chain at the Guix blog I hear people talk about Nix and NixOS all the time  I tried it myself, too, but I felt I was using an IBM z17 mainframe to watch a YouTube video  and in fact, Nix has kind of become a meme in and of itself, but you never hear people talk about Guix. With this being OSNews, Im assuming theres going to be people here using it, and Im incredibly curious about your experiences. What are the features and benefits that make you use it? If youre curious  the best way to try Guix is probably to install the GNU Guix System, the Linux distribution built around Guix and Shepard, GNUs alternative init system. Its available for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, and AArch64, and can be virtualised too, of course.

• The size of Adobe Reader installers through the years
  The following chart shows how the Adobe Reader installer has grown in size over the years. When possible, 64-bit versions of installers were used. ↫ Alexander Gromnitsky Disk space is cheap, sure, but this is insanity.

• My OpenBSD home network setup!
  I recently moved to an area with more internet provider options, all of which were not satellite-based. This change allowed me leave my current provider (Starlink) and also freed my network from being locked behind CGNAT. The jump from ~150Mbps to 1Gbps has been fantastic, but the real benefit in this switch has been the ability to overhaul my home network setup. ↫ Bradley Taunt OpenBSD is generally the way to go for custom router setups, it seems, and if it wasnt for my own full Ubiquiti setup, Id definitely consider this too.

• Google to require developer certification to install Android applications, even outside of the Play Store
  Googles grip on Android keeps tightening. In what will certainly be another step that we will look back upon as just another nail in the coffin, Google is going to require every Android developer to register with Google, even if they dont publish anything in the Play Store. In other words, even if you develop Android applications ad only make them available through F-Droid or GitHub, youll still have to register with Google and hand over a bunch of personal information and a small fee of $25. Google is effectively recreating Apples Gatekeeper for macOS, but on Android. It wont come as a surprise to you that Google is doing this in the name of security and protecting users. The company claims that its own analysis found over 50 times more malware from internet-sideloaded sources than on apps available through Google Play!, and the main reason is that malware developers can hide behind anonymity. As such, Googles solution is to simply deanonymise every single Android developer. Starting next year, Android will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed by users on certified Android devices. This creates crucial accountability, making it much harder for malicious actors to quickly distribute another harmful app after we take the first one down. Think of it like an ID check at the airport, which confirms a travelers identity but is separate from the security screening of their bags; we will be confirming who the developer is, not reviewing the content of their app or where it came from. This change will start in a few select countries specifically impacted by these forms of fraudulent app scams, often from repeat perpetrators. ↫ Suzanne Frey at the Android Developer Blog This new policy will only apply to certified Android devices!, which means Android devices that ship with Google Play Services and all related Google stuff preinstalled. How this policy will affect devices running de-Googled Android ROMs like GrapheneOS where the user has opted to install the Play Store and Google Play Services is unclear. Google does claim the personal information you hand over as part of your registration will remain entirely private and not be shown to anyone, but thats not going to reassure anyone. To its small credit, Google intends to create an Android Developer Console explicitly for developers who only operate outside of the Play Store, and a special workflow for students and hobbyists that waives the $25 fee. First tests will start in October of this year, with an official rollout in a number of countries later in 2026, which will then expand to cover the whole world. The first countries seeing the official rollout will be countries hit especially hard by scams (according to Googles research, at least): Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. Google has been trying to claw back control over Android for years now, and it seems the pace is accelerating lately. None of these steps should surprise you, but they should highlight just how crucially important it is that we somehow managed to come to a viable third way, something not controlled by either Apple or Google.

• I revived pkgsrc on AIX!
  Earlier this year, I was trying to get actual daily work done on HP-UX 11.11 (11i v1) running on HPs last and greatest PA-RISC workstation, the HP c8000. After weeks of frustration caused first by outdated software no longer working properly with the modern web, and then by modern software no longer compiling on HP-UX 11.11, I decided to play the ace up my sleeve: NetBSDs pkgsrc has support for HP-UX. Sadly, HP-UX is obviously not a main platform or even a point of interest for pkgsrc developers  as it should be, nobody uses this combination  so various incompatibilities and more modern requirements had snuck into pkgsrc, and I couldnt get it to bootstrap. I made some minor progress here and there with the help of people far smarter than I, but in the end I just lacked the skills to progress any further. This story will make it to OSNews in a more complete form, I promise. Anyway, in May of this year, it seems Brian Robert Callahan was working on a very similar problem: getting pkgsrc to work properly on IBMs AIX. The state of packages on AIX genuinely surprises me. IBM hosts a`repository`of open source software for AIX. But it seems pretty sparse compared to what you`could`get with pkgsrc. Another`website`offering AIX packages seems quite old. I think pkgsrc would be a great way to bring modern packages to AIX. I am not the first to think this. There are AIX 7.2 pkgsrc packages available at`this repository, however all the packages are compiled as 32-bit RISC System/6000 objects. I would greatly prefer to have everything be 64-bit XCOFF objects, as we could do more with 64-bit programs. There also arent too many packages in that repository, so I think starting fresh is in our best interest. As we shall see, this was not as straightforward as I would have hoped. ↫ Brian Robert Callahan Reading through his journey getting pkgsrc to work properly on AIX, I cant help but feel a bit better about myself not being to get it to work on HP-UX 11.11. Callahan was working with AIX 7.2 TL4, which was released in November 2019 and still actively supported by IBM on a maintained architecture, while I was working with HP-UX 11.11 (or 11i v1), which last got some updates in and around 2005, running on an architecture thats well dead and buried. Looking at what Callahan still had to figure out and do, its not surprising someone with my lack of skill in this area couldnt get it working. Im still hoping someone far smarter than I stumbles upon a HP c8000 and dives into getting pkgsrc to work on HP-UX, because I feel pkgsrc could turn an otherwise incredibly powerful HP c8000 from a strictly retro machine into something borderline usable in the modern world. HP-UX is much harder to virtualise  if its even possible at all  so real hardware is probably going to be required. The NetBSD people on Mastodon suggested I could possibly give remote access to my machine so someone could dive into this, which is something Ill keep under consideration.

• Windows 11 to get ability to resume applications from Android which nobody will implement
  The history of Android applications on Windows is convoluted, with various failed and cancelled attempts by Microsoft to allow Windows users to run Android applications behind us. Now that these attempts are well dead and buried, Microsoft is going at it from a different perspective: what if you could continue where you left off on your Android phone, right on your Windows machine, but without having to run an Android applications on Windows? We are beginning to gradually roll out the ability to seamlessly resume using your favorite apps from your Android phone on your Windows 11 PC to Windows Insiders in the Dev and Beta Channels. To start with, you will be able to resume or continue listening to your favorite Spotify tracks and episodes right from where you left off on the Spotify app on your Android phone. First, start listening to one of your favorite songs or episodes in the Spotify app on your Android phone. On your PC (running the latest Insider Preview builds in the Dev or Beta Channels) a ‘Resume alert’`will appear on`your taskbar. When you click on that alert, Spotify’s desktop app will open and the same track will now continue playing on your PC. ↫ Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc So basically, the Spotify application on Windows will know where you left off on the Spotify application on Android, and resume playback. This is table-stakes for most services, and it doesnt seem like it would warrant such a big announcement from Microsoft, and while I dont use Spotify, I assume it was already built into the service anyway. It seems all Microsoft is doing is providing a nice little notification to expose that functionality a little bit more clearly, but it also explains that you need to manually link your device and the Spotify Android application to the Windows PC and Spotify Windows application, which seems like a lot of manual steps. Does this mean every application developer needs to opt into this and add this feature, thereby making it dead on arrival? Well, yes, youll need to add support on both sides of the equation, which I can guarantee you very few developers will do. Not only does this feature require you to already have a Windows version of your application  which, statistically, you dont  it also requires you to do the work yourself, and manually apply to Microsoft to even gain access to the required APIs and SDKs. The odds of this feature making it beyond a few very big names Microsoft can give money to is slim.

• My other email client is a daemon
  I have a slight problem wherein every time I start up a game of NetHack, I completely lose touch with my surroundings for hours on end. Thankfully`The DevTeam Thinks Of Everything`and there’s a solution that allows communication with the outside world without breaking immersion: the mail daemon! If compiled with`-DMAIL`and`OPTIONS=mail`is set in your runtime configuration (the default on Linux), NetHack will periodically check a user specified mbox file (MAIL) for new mail, and upon receiving an email a mail daemon will spawn in and deliver a scroll of mail to the player. Upon reading this scroll a mail program (MAILREADER) will be executed, which hopefully allows you to read your mail. ↫ George Huebner I love everything about this.

• Nitro: a tiny but flexible init system and process supervisor
  The most unlikely subsystem of contention is definitely the init system used by Linux, with most popular distributions opting for systemd, while a vocal minority prefers to use something else. Neither of these two groups are wrong or right, as we live in a free world and different people have different needs and desires. Personally, I dont think theres a more utterly pointless and meaningless debate than this, and people who make the init system they use their entire personality more often than not come across as really, really sad. Its a tool; use the one you like and move on with life. A brand new init system was recently released by Leah Neukirchen, who among a ton of other things, contributes to Void Linux. Its called nitro, and its a tiny process supervisor that also can be used as pid 1 on Linux!, and it also can be used on FreeBSD supervised by FreeBSDs init. Theres some overlap with runit here, so Neukirchen published a blog post detailing the differences between the two, which should help in getting a better understanding of what makes nitro stand apart. While both use a directory of services managed by small scripts, nitro seems to opt for a more contained, monolithic approach, as it keeps everything in a single process. On top of that, Nitro contains some new features runit doesnt have. The focus seems to be on integrating a few capabilities that on runit require hacks, but on nitro are just built-in, like support for one-shot services, i.e. running scripts on up/down without a process to supervise (e.g. persist audio volume, keep RNG state)!, running service directories multiple times, and more. Nitro also maintains its runtime state in RAM and provides an IPC service to query it, meaning it can be run on read-only filesystems without special configuration. Theres a lot more information in Neukirchens blog post, including a look at some of the current limitations of Nitro. I highly suggest reading it, and perhaps we will see nitro as another valid alternative to the popular systemd.

• The AI! bubble is showing cracks, and Microsoft ruins Excel
  Its not AI winter just yet, though there is a distinct chill in the air. Meta is shaking up and downsizing its artificial intelligence division. A new report out of MIT finds that 95 percent of companies generative AI programs have failed to earn any profit whatsoever. Tech stocks tanked Tuesday, regarding broader fears that this bubble may have swelled about as large as it can go. Surely, there will be no wider repercussions for normal people if and when Nvidia, currently propping up the market like a load-bearing matchstick, finally runs out of fake companies to sell chips to. But getting in under the wire, before were all bartering gas in the desert and people who can read become the priestly caste, is Microsoft, with the single most Who asked for this?! application of AI Ive seen yet: Theyre jamming it into Excel. ↫ Barry Petchesky at Defector Im going to skip over the mounting and palpable uneasiness that the cracks in the AI! bubble are starting to form, and go right to that thing about Excel. Quite possible one of the most successful applications of all time, and the backbone of countless small, medium, and even large business, it started out as a Mac program to supplant Microsofts MultiPlan, which was being clobbered in the market by Lotus 1-2-3. It wasnt until version 2.0 that it came to Intel, as an application that contained a Windows runtime. It was a port of Excel 2.0 for the Mac. Anyway, it took a few years, but Excel took over the market, and I dont think any other spreadsheet program has ever even remotely threatened its market dominance ever since. Well, not until Google Sheets arrived on the scene  its hard to find any useful numbers, but it seems Google Sheets is insanely popular in all kinds of sectors, at least according to Statista. They claim Googles online office suite has a 49% market share, with Microsoft Office sitting at 29%. I have no idea how that translates into the usage shares of Google Sheets versus Microsoft Excel, but its a sign of the times, regardless. One of the things youd expect a spreadsheet to do is calculate numbers and tabulate data, and to do so accurately. The core competency of a computer is to compute, do stuff with numbers, and wed flip out collective shit if our computers failed to do such basic arithmetic. So, what if I told you that Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to add AI! to Excel, and as such, has to add a disclaimer that this means Excel may not do basic arithmetic correctly? Look, we can all disagree on the use of AI!, where it makes sense, where it doesnt, if it even does anything useful, and so on, but I would assume  for the worlds sake  that we can at least agree that using AI! in an application used to do very important calculations for a lot of business is a really, really dumb idea? Is the person doing the bookkeeping in Excel at Windmill Restaurant, in Spearville, Kansas, properly aware of the limitations of AI!, or are they not following technology that closely, and as such only hear the marketing and hype? A spreadsheet should give accurate outcomes based on the input given by humans. The moment you let a confabulator loose on your spreadsheet, it ceases being a tool that can be used for anything even remotely serious. The fact that Microsoft is adding this nonsense to Excel and letting it loose on the unsuspecting public at large is absolutely wild to me, and I can assure you its going to have serious consequences for a lot of people. Microsoft, of course, will be able to point at the disclaimer buried in some random support document and absolve itself of any and all responsibility. Id like to point out that Lotus 1-2-3 probably still runs on Windows 11, for no reason at all.

• Why is my device a touchpad and a mouse and a keyboard?
  If you have spent any time around HID devices under Linux (for example if you are an avid mouse, touchpad or keyboard user) then you may have noticed that your single physical device actually shows up as multiple device nodes (for free! and nothing happens for free these days!). If you havent noticed this, run libinput record and you may be part of the lucky roughly 50% who get free extra event nodes. ↫ Peter Hutterer Ive honestly always wondered about this, since some of my laptops shows both a trackpad and a mouse configuration panel even when theres no mouse plugged in. Thanks to this article, I now know why this happens.

• AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
  Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for two weeks.
  

• RingReaper Malware Poses Danger to Linux Systems
  A new kind of malware exploits modern Linux kernels for I/O operations.
  

• Happy Birthday, Linux
  On August 25, Linux officially turns 34.
  

• VirtualBox 7.2 Has Arrived
  With early support for Linux kernel 6.17 and other new additions, VirtualBox 7.2 is a must-update for users.
  

• Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Available for Testing
  Some interesting new additions and improvements are coming to Linux Mint. Check out the Linux Mint 22.2 Beta to give it a test run.
  

• Debian 13.0 Officially Released
  After two years of development, the latest iteration of Debian is now available with plenty of under-the-hood improvements.
  

• Upcoming Changes for MXLinux
  MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.
  

• A New Linux AI Assistant in Town
  Newelle, a Linux AI assistant, works with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
  The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.
  

• EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
  OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.
  

• FreeBSD Promises a Full Desktop Installer
  FreeBSD has lacked an option to include a full desktop environment during installation.
  

• Linux Hits an Important Milestone
  If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
  

• Plasma Bigscreen Returns
  A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
  

• CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
  Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
  

• Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
  Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
  

• Bugs Found in sudo
  Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
  

• Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
  In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
  After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
  

• ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
  Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
  

• Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
  Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.