All the News that Matters

• [$] Debian Technical Committee overrides systemd change
  Debian packagers have a great deal of latitude when it comes to theconfiguration of the software they package; they may opt, for example,to disable defaultfeatures in software that they feel are a securityhazard. However, packagers are expected to ensure that their packagescomply with Debian Policy,regardless of the upstream's preferences. If a packager fails tocomply with the policy, the Debian TechnicalCommittee (TC) can step in to override them, which it hasdone in the case of a recent systemd change that broke severalprograms that depend on a world-writable /run/lockdirectory.
  

• Four new stable kernels
  Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.17.2, 6.16.12, 6.12.52, and 6.6.111 stable kernels. They each contain arelatively small set of important fixes. In addition: "Note, this is the LAST 6.16.y kernel release, this branch is nowend-of-life. Please move to the 6.17.y branch at this point in time."

• Security updates for Monday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (compat-libtiff3, iputils, kernel, open-vm-tools, and vim), Debian (asterisk, ghostscript, kernel, linux-6.1, and tiff), Fedora (cef, chromium, cri-o1.31, cri-o1.32, cri-o1.33, cri-o1.34, docker-buildx, log4cxx, mingw-poppler, openssl, podman-tui, prometheus-podman-exporter, python-socketio, python3.10, python3.11, python3.12, python3.9, skopeo, and valkey), Mageia (open-vm-tools), Red Hat (compat-libtiff3, kernel, kernel-rt, vim, and webkit2gtk3), and SUSE (distrobuilder, docker-stable, expat, forgejo, forgejo-longterm, gitea-tea, go1.25, haproxy, headscale, open-vm-tools, openssl-3, podman, podofo, ruby3.4-rubygem-rack, and weblate).

• Kernel prepatch 6.18-rc1
  Linus has released 6.18-rc1 and closed themerge window for this development cycle. "This was one of the goodmerge windows where I didn't end up having to bisect any particular problemon [any] of the machines I was testing. Let's hope that success mostlytranslates to the bigger picture too."

• [$] Enhancing FineIBT
  At the LinuxSecurity Summit Europe (LSS EU), Scott Constable and SebastianÖsterlund gave a talk on an enhancement to a control-flowintegrity (CFI)protection that was added to the kernel several years ago. The "FineIBT: Fine-grain Control-flowEnforcement with Indirect Branch Tracking" mechanism was merged forLinux 6.2 in early 2023 to harden the kernel against CFI attacks of varioussorts, but needed some fixes andenhancements more recently. The talk looked at the CFI vulnerabilityproblem, FineIBT, and an enhanced version that is hoped to be able to unifyall of the disparate hardware and software mitigations to address bothregular and speculative CFI vulnerabilities.

• Security updates for Friday
  Security updates have been issued by Debian (redis and valkey), Fedora (docker-buildkit, ibus-bamboo, pgadmin4, webkitgtk, and wordpress), Mageia (kernel-linus, kmod-virtualbox & kmod-xtables-addons, and microcode), Oracle (compat-libtiff3 and udisks2), Red Hat (rsync), Slackware (python3), SUSE (chromium, cJSON, digger-cli, glow, go1.24, go1.25, go1.25-openssl, grafana, libexslt0, libruby3_4-3_4, pgadmin4, python311-python-socketio, and squid), and Ubuntu (dpdk, libhtp, vim, and webkit2gtk).

• [$] Gccrs after libcore
  Despite its increasing popularity, the Rust programming language is stillsupported by a single compiler, the LLVM-based rustc. At the 2025 GNU ToolsCauldron, Pierre-Emmanuel Patry said that a lot of people are waitingfor a GCC-based Rust compiler before jumping into the language. Patry, whois working on just that compiler (known as "gccrs"), provided an update onthe status of that project and what is coming next.

• [$] Last-minute /boot boost for Fedora 43
  Sudden increases in the size of Fedora's initramfsfiles have prompted the project to fast-track a proposal to increasethe default size of the /boot partition for new installs ofFedora 43 and later. The project has also walked back a fewchanges that have contributed to larger initramfs files, but theever-increasing size of firmware means that the need for more room isunavoidable. The Fedora Engineering Steering Council (FESCo) hasapproved a last-minute changejust before the final freeze for Fedora 43 to increase thedefault size of the /boot partition from 1GB to 2GB; thiswill leave plenty of space for kernels and initramfs images if a useris installing from scratch, but it is of no help for users upgradingfrom Fedora 42.
  

• Ubuntu 25.10 released
  Ubuntu25.10, "Questing Quokka", has been released. This release includesLinux 6.17, GNOME 49, GCC 15, Python 3.13.7,Rust 1.85, and more. This release also features Rust-basedimplementations of sudo and coreutils; LWN covered the switch to theRust-based tools in March. The 25.10 version of Ubuntu flavorsEdubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Cinnamon, UbuntuKylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu have alsobeen released.
  
  
  

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gnutls, kernel, kernel-rt, and open-vm-tools), Debian (chromium, python-django, and redis), Fedora (chromium, insight, mirrorlist-server, oci-seccomp-bpf-hook, rust-maxminddb, rust-prometheus, rust-prometheus_exporter, rust-protobuf, rust-protobuf-codegen, rust-protobuf-parse, rust-protobuf-support, turbo-attack, and yarnpkg), Oracle (iputils, kernel, open-vm-tools, redis, and valkey), Red Hat (perl-File-Find-Rule and perl-File-Find-Rule-Perl), SUSE (expat, ImageMagick, matrix-synapse, python-xmltodict, redis, redis7, and valkey), and Ubuntu (fort-validator and imagemagick).

• [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 9, 2025
  Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
  Front: Kernel Rust features; systemd v258, part 2; Cauldron kernel hackers; BPF for GNU tools; 6.18 merge window, part 1; Lifetime-end pointer zapping; Robot Operating System. Briefs: OpenSSH 10.1; Firefox profiles; Python 3.14; U-Boot v2025.10; FSF presidency; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

• Better profile management coming to Firefox
  Firefox has long had support for multiple profilesto store personal information such as bookmarks, passwords, and userpreferences. However, Firefox did not make profiles particularlydiscoverable or easy to manage. That is about to change; Mozilla hasannouncedthat it is launching a profile-management feature that will make iteasier to create and switch between profiles. According to the supportpage for the feature, it will be rolled out to users graduallybeginning on October 14.
  
  
  

• [$] Upcoming Rust language features for kernel development
  TheRust for Linux project has been good for Rust, Tyler Mandry, one of theco-leads of Rust's language-design team, said. Hegave a talk atKangrejos 2025 covering upcoming Rust language features and thankingthe Rust for Linux developers for helping drive them forward. Afterward, Benno Lossin and Xiangfei Dingwent into more detail about their work on the three most important languagefeatures for kernel development: field projections, in-place initialization, and arbitrary self types.
  

• Security updates for Wednesday
  Security updates have been issued by Fedora (apptainer, civetweb, mod_http2, openssl, pandoc, and pandoc-cli), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, iputils, kernel, open-vm-tools, and podman), SUSE (cairo, firefox, ghostscript, gimp, gstreamer-plugins-rs, libxslt, logback, openssl-1_0_0, openssl-1_1, python-xmltodict, and rubygem-puma), and Ubuntu (gst-plugins-base1.0, linux-aws-6.8, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-nvidia, linux-gke, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, and linux-raspi).

• Python 3.14.0 released
  Version3.14.0 of the Python language has been released. There are a lot ofchanges this time around, including official support for free threading, template string literals, and much more; seethe announcement for details.

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

• Open-Source Model Near Breaking Point Despite Trillions in Value
  A coalition of open-source stewards warns that the software industry’s reliance on goodwill to maintain critical infrastructure is unsustainable, despite open source fueling trillions in global economic value. The post Open-Source Model Near Breaking Point Despite Trillions in Value appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• The Linux Foundation Expands Agentic AI Push With Third Major Project
  The Linux Foundation has launched its third major agentic AI initiative in three months, designed to secure communication, enhance interoperability, and drive open-source innovation in multi-agent environments. The post The Linux Foundation Expands Agentic AI Push With Third Major Project appeared first on 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.

• Nvidia's GB10 workstations arrive with 1 petaFLOPS of compute, 128GB of VRAM, and a $3K+ price tag
  Systems from Nvidia, Dell, and others available starting Oct. 15
  Nvidia's tiniest Grace-Blackwell workstation is finally making its way to store shelves this week, the better part of a year after the GPU giant first teased the AI mini PC, then called Project Digits, at CES.…
  

• Microsoft's OneDrive spots your mates, remembers their faces, and won't forget easily
  Then shalt thee change the setting three times, no more!
  Microsoft's OneDrive is increasing the creepiness quotient by using AI to spot faces in photos and group images accordingly. Don't worry, it can be turned off – three times a year.…
  

• Bose kills SoundTouch: Smart speakers go dumb in Feb
  Cloud support to be ditched on older hardware, customers left with pricey paperweights
  Audio equipment biz Bose is discontinuing cloud support for its SoundTouch product line, effectively reducing the premium devices to basic speakers with limited functionality.…
  

• Vodafone keels over, cutting off millions of mobile and broadband customers
  Outage knocks out phones, broadband – even telco's own status page
  Vodafone fell over in the UK this afternoon, with Register readers reporting that many services including mobile coverage, internet services, and even the company's own status page went down.…
  

• Broadcom cozies up to OpenAI for 10 GW custom chip love-in
  Every human deserves their own accelerator, says ChatGPT creator
  Broadcom has cuddled up with OpenAI as the ChatGPT outfit looks for ever more help building out the vast infrastructure it needs to deliver on its dreams of advanced intelligence – and possibly even a profit some day.…
  

• Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters rage-quit the internet (again), promise to return next year
  'We will never stop,' say crooks, despite retiring twice in the space of a month
  The Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters (SLSH) cybercrime collective - compriseed primarily of teenagers and twenty-somethings - announced it will go dark until 2026 following the FBI's seizure of its clearweb site.…
  

• Bun 1.3 stuffs everything and kitchen sink into JS runtime
  All-in-one toolkit or over-ambitious feature creep? You decide
  Version 1.3 of the Bun JavaScript runtime and toolkit has landed, pushing forward the project's goal to consolidate fragmented JavaScript toolchains into a single solution. Yet the rapid expansion has some developers questioning whether Bun is trying to do too much, too fast.…
  

• Benioff retreats from idea of sending troops in to clean up San Francisco
  Salesforce CEO praises Trump before walking back criticism of city's policing
  San Francisco’s political establishment rounded on Marc Benioff over the weekend after the Salesforce founder backed the idea of sending in the National Guard to clean up the city’s streets.…
  

• Android 'Pixnapping' attack can capture app data like 2FA codes
  GPU-based timing attack inspired by decade-old iframe technique
  Security researchers have resurrected a 12-year-old data-stealing attack on web browsers to pilfer sensitive info from Android devices.…
  

• Microsoft 'illegally' tracked students via 365 Education, says data watchdog
  Redmond argued schools, education authorities are responsible for GDPR
  An Austrian digital privacy group has claimed victory over Microsoft after the country's data protection regulator ruled the software giant "illegally" tracked students via its 365 Education platform and used their data.…
  

• SpaceX limbers up for Starship flight 11 as launch pad faces retirement
  Another flawless demonstration or unplanned explosion await
  SpaceX is counting down to today's 11th flight test of its monster Starship rocket, with weather looking suitable for the opening of the launch window at 18:15 CT (or around 17:00 CT, if the company's billionaire boss is to be believed).…
  

• Datacenter water use? California governor says don't ask, don't tell
  Bid for transparency on consumption evaporates with Newsom veto
  California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed legislation requiring data centers to disclose their water consumption, even as he champions efforts to address the state's water scarcity challenges.…
  

• China probes Qualcomm's Autotalks deal amid rising US trade tensions
  Beijing insists it's business as usual – Washington might see it differently
  China's competition regulator has launched an investigation into Qualcomm's purchase of Israeli firm Autotalks, the latest salvo in the escalating tech trade war between Washington and Beijing.…
  

• End of Windows 10 support is the perfect time for the Windows 11 installer to fail
  Microsoft admits its media creation tool 'might not work as expected'
  Microsoft has broken its own Windows 11 media creation tool just as millions of users face a deadline to abandon Windows 10 — and with less than 24 hours until support officially ends.…
  

• Fujitsu pumps £280M into UK arm to keep lights on after Horizon scandal
  Parent firm's cash keeps division afloat as Post Office inquiry nears final report
  Fujitsu's UK business has received £280 million ($374 million) in equity from its Japanese owner in the last two years to meet ongoing funding and capital requirements.…
  

• Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for pretending UK's Online Safety Act doesn't exist
  Regulator warns penalties will pile up until internet toilet does its paperwork
  Ofcom, the UK's Online Safety Act regulator, has fined online message board 4chan £20,000 ($26,680) for failing to protect children from harmful content.…
  

• Dutch government puts Nexperia on a short leash over chip security fears
  Minister invokes powers to stop firm shifting knowledge to China, citing governance shortcomings
  The Dutch government has placed Nexperia - a Chinese-owned semiconductor company that previously operated Britain's Newport Wafer Fab — under special administrative measures, citing serious governance failures that threaten European tech security.…
  

• We're all going to be paying AI's Godzilla-sized power bills
  Even if you never use it, you'll be paying for it thanks to datacenters' never-ending hunger for electricity
  Opinion When I was a wet-behind-the-ears developer running my programs on an IBM 360, a mainframe that was slower than a Raspberry Pi Zero W, my machine used about 50 kilowatts (kW). I thought that was a lot of power. Little did I know what was coming.…
  

• Senators try to save cyber threat sharing law, sans government funding
  Also, DraftKings gets stuffed, Zimbra collab software exploited again, and Apple bug bounties balloon
  in brief A bipartisan Senate duo has introduced a bill to revive and extend America's cyber threat-sharing law for another ten years after its authorization lapsed during the government shutdown.…
  

• Britain's biggest nuclear site looks set to outlast SAP support again
  Sellafield considers using legacy ECC software beyond extended 2030 cut-off
  The government-owned company that runs the UK's most important nuclear site is weighing up whether to keep its legacy SAP software running beyond the vendor's extended support deadline.…
  

• Arduino has a new job selling chips for its new owner. Let's not pretend otherwise
  Getting swallowed by a whale is a life-changing event no matter what the whale says
  Opinion The successful, sector-defining, open source Italian embedded platform provider Arduino had a little bash in Turin recently. It made a few announcements, including a new single-board computer (SBC) with a Qualcomm system on a chip (SoC). Oh, and that it had been bought by American dragon-themed mobile chip monster Qualcomm in a deal with total fealty (WTF).…
  

• UK waves £750M supercomputer contract at HPC builders
  Pre-market charm offensive begins for Edinburgh's next national number-cruncher
  The British government is putting out feelers to industry ahead of the procurement process for the country's most powerful supercomputer, set to begin next year.…
  

• Techies tossed appliance that had no power cord, but turned out to power their company
  Illicit colo cleanup seemed like a good way to get out of the house during Covid
  Who, Me? Welcome to another week of nimble newsifying from The Register, which as always kicks off the working week with a fresh instalment of Who, Me? It's the reader-contributed column in which you admit to mistakes that almost trashed your career.…
  

• Inside the belly of the beast: A technical walk through Intel's 18A production facility at Fab52
  Now if Lip Bu Tan can just find a willing customer
  deep dive Not long after rejoining Intel in 2021, former CEO Pat Gelsinger announced an ambitious plan to reinvent the chipmaker as a contract semiconductor manufacturing powerhouse.…
  

• Weird ideas welcome: VC fund looking to make science fiction factual
  Nuclear power is getting hot, but don't hold your breath for everlasting batteries
  A venture capital fund is looking for ideas that are out of bounds for traditional investors, seeding technology that may only come to fruition decades down the line, but where researchers can show real results in the lab.…
  

• Who gets a Mac at work? Here's how companies decide
  You can't always get what you want
  Most corporate laptop fleets consist primarily of PCs. However, there’s always a contingent of users who beg for Macs. Deciding who gets a Mac in your organization involves balancing IT’s need for simplicity, finance’s requirement to keep costs under control, and users’ desire to work with their preferred tools.…
  

• Chinese phishing kit helps scammers who send fake texts impersonate TikTok, Coinbase, others
  Researchers tracking 2,158 domains hosting YYlaiyu phishing pages
  Exclusive A Chinese-developed phishing kit hosted on thousands of domains and boasting 97 different brands to make criminals' scams look more believable is driving a surge in financial fraud around the globe, according to security researchers.…
  

• OpenAI GPT-5: great taste, less filling, now with 30% less bias
  AI model maker touts effort to depoliticize its product
  OpenAI says GPT-5 has 30 percent less political bias than its prior AI models.…
  

• Managers are throwing entry-level workers under the bus in race to adopt AI
  Does it work? Inconclusive. Still, 55% of business leaders say that adopting AI is worth the impact on workers
  ai-pocalypse Business leaders are racing to jump aboard the AI bandwagon, and a new study from the British Standards Institution suggests young college grads are being hit hardest.…
  

• Ransomware crims that exploited SharePoint 0-days add Velociraptor to their arsenal
  And they’re likely still abusing the same SharePoint flaws for initial access
  The ransomware gang caught exploiting Microsoft SharePoint zero-days over the summer has added a new tool to its arsenal: Velociraptor, an open-source digital forensics and incident response app not previously tied to ransomware incidents.…
  

• Kyndryl sued for firing non-white workers, disabled vet
  Security team cuts allegedly targeted workers based on race, national origin, age, and whistleblowing
  Five former members of Kyndryl's internal IT security team have sued the IBM spinoff alleging that they were terminated as part of a campaign targeting employees based on their race, national origin, age, disability, and whistleblowing activities.…
  

• Senate says Nvidia chips are for America first as China tightens import controls
  Xi to the left of me, Trump is to the right; Huang I am, stuck in the middle with GPUs
  The US Senate has passed a provision that would give US firms first dibs on advanced chips, just as China tightens customs checks on Nvidia GPUs, leaving the company caught between competing policies across the Pacific.…
  

• Zero-day in file-sharing software leads to RCE, and attacks are ongoing
  Usually we’d say patch up… not this time
  Security research firm Huntress is warning all users of Gladinet's CentreStack and Triofox file-sharing tools to urgently apply an available mitigation, as a zero-day is being actively exploited and there's no patch available.…
  

• Microsoft lets bosses spot teams that are dodging Copilot
  Viva Insights turns AI guzzling into a leaderboard
  Microsoft is adding Copilot adoption benchmarks to Viva Insights, a tool that lets managers monitor teams to spot those that are gulping down the AI Kool-Aid fastest.…
  

• Pro-Russia hacktivist group dies of cringe after falling into researchers' trap
  Forescout's phony water plant fooled TwoNet into claiming a fake cyber victory – then it quietly shut up shop
  Security researchers say they duped pro-Russia cybercriminals into targeting a fake critical infrastructure organization, which the crew later claimed - via their Telegram group - to be a real-world attack.…
  

• Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal
  High gas prices and surging AI demand send operators back to the dirtiest fuel in the stack
  US datacenters are experiencing a significant shift toward coal-powered energy due to elevated natural gas prices and rapidly growing electricity demand.…
  

• Microsoft warns of 'payroll pirate' crew looting US university salaries
  Crooks phish campus staff, slip into HR systems, and quietly reroute paychecks
  Microsoft's Threat Intelligence team has sounded the alarm over a new financially-motivated cybercrime spree that is raiding US university payroll systems.…
  

• 50 years in deep space, and Voyager still can't escape budget gravity
  Probes face 26% funding cut as NASA grapples with shutdown chaos
  NASA's Voyager project could be facing a 26 percent budget cut while the plug is pulled on other programs, according to insiders familiar with the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.…
  

• Microsoft 364 trips over its own network settings in North America
  Outage blamed on misconfigured infrastructure as users report hour-long disruption
  Microsoft 365 services toppled over in North America last night due to an infrastructure misconfiguration.…
  

• UK slaps 'strategic market status' on Google, unlocking power to pry open search
  Competition watchdog can now meddle in how the tech giant runs the biggest wing of its organization
  The UK's competition watchdog has officially slapped Google with "strategic market status," a new legal label that gives the regulator far-reaching powers to rein in how the search giant runs its empire.…
  

• Former UK prime minister Sunak becomes human Clippy for Microsoft, Anthropic
  Conservative MP told he must not lobby for corporations
  Rishi Sunak is ready to kick-start his career with a couple of openings in the tech industry, a year after the end of his internship as the prime minister of the world's sixth-largest economy.…
  

• Cops nuke BreachForums (again) amid cybercrime supergroup extortion blitz
  US and French fuzz pull the plug on Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters' latest leak shop targeting Salesforce
  US authorities have seized the latest incarnation of BreachForums, the cybercriminal bazaar recently reborn under the stewardship of the so-called Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, with help from French cyber cops and the Paris prosecutor's office.…
  

• UK techies' union warns members after breach exposes sensitive personal details
  Prospect apologizes for cyber gaffe affecting up to 160K members
  UK trade union Prospect is notifying members of a breach that involved data such as sexual orientation and disabilities.…
  

• Microsoft hypes PCs with NPUs, still can't offer a good reason to buy one
  AI tech not on the hardware compatibility list for now. But future Windows will need it
  Comment Microsoft has talked up the role played by neural processing units (NPUs) in making Windows more "intelligent," even though the silicon is not currently on the hardware requirements list.…
  

• Client defended engineer after oil baron-turned tech support entrepreneur lied about dodgy dealings
  Reputations earned over years of service can work wonders
  On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's weekly reader-contributed column that shares your stories from the frontlines of tech support.…
  

• RondoDox botnet fires 'exploit shotgun' at nearly every router and internet-connected home device
  56 bugs across routers, DVRs, CCTV systems, web servers … time to run for cover
  A new RondoDox botnet campaign uses an "exploit shotgun" - fire at everything, see what hits - to target 56 vulnerabilities across at least 30 different vendors' routers, DVRs, CCTV systems, web servers, and other network devices, and then infect the buggy gear with malware.…
  

• It's trivially easy to poison LLMs into spitting out gibberish, says Anthropic
  Just 250 malicious training documents can poison a 13B parameter model - that's 0.00016% of a whole dataset
  Poisoning AI models might be way easier than previously thought if an Anthropic study is anything to go on. …
  

• Amazon's Quick Suite is like agentic AI training wheels for enterprises
  Slow down there Andy; you wouldn't want to bump into any hallucinations
  Despite ongoing concerns over the accuracy, reliability, and trustworthiness of AI in the enterprise, Amazon believes that if it can just make building agents easier for the average worker, they'll be automating the boring parts of their job in no time.…
  

• Google rearranges Agentspace into Gemini Enterprise
  A new spin on workflow automation as Chocolate Factory tries to displace Microsoft as the enterprise go-to
  Google on Thursday announced the launch of Gemini Enterprise, a platform for automating business workflows using the company's Gemini family of machine learning models.…
  

• Crims had 3-month head start on defenders in Oracle EBS invasion
  The miscreants started their attack all the way back on July 10
  The raid on Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) likely began as early as July - about three months before any public detections - with extortionists compromising "dozens" of organizations, a Google investigation has determined.…
  

• AMD & Intel Mark x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group9s Anniversary: FRED, ACE, AVX10, ChkTag
  It's been one year already since Intel and AMD formed the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group in cooperation with other industry stakeholders. Today both companies are marking the first anniversary while reaffirming their commitment to the group...

• Intel Lands Big Linux GPU Driver Fix: Fixing Rendering Issues & Game Hangs/Crashes
  Problematic code dating back to 2017 has now been reverted within the Intel open-source Mesa driver code that led to various games having rendering/corruption issues as well as various hangs and crashes in other games. This affected a variety of Intel graphics hardware and software while now has finally been tracked down with the problematic code removed. This is a big improvement for Linux gamers on Intel graphics...

• AMD Dev Proposes Dynamic Mitigations For Linux: Run-Time Toggling Of CPU Mitigations
  A big patch series was posted today for the Linux kernel that would allow enabling/disabling CPU security mitigations at run-time rather than the current handling that can only be managed at boot-time via various Linux kernel command-line arguments. Thus due to changing security needs, differing workloads mandating different CPU security concerns and the like, this proposed feature would allow Spectre, Meltdown, and other CPU security mitigations to all be toggled at run-time...

• Linux Patches Updated For Apple Silicon USB3 Support
  While more code enabling Apple Silicon is reaching the mainline Linux kernel, a lot of important functionality so far remains under development or out-of-tree in the downstream Asahi Linux repository. One piece that's quite important for modern computing and still working its way to the mainline kernel is enabling USB3 functionality with Apple Silicon devices on Linux...

• Linux 6.18 Features: New AMD & Intel CPU Features, Rocket Driver, DM-PCACHE, Other New Drivers
  Now that the Linux 6.18 merge window is over with Linux 6.18-rc1 having released yesterday, here is a look at all the interesting new features and changes to find with this kernel. Making Linux 6.18 all the more exciting is that it9s expected to become the 2025 Linux LTS kernel once its stable release occurs in December.

• Mir 2.23 Released With New Documentation For Building A Desktop Environment
  Mir 2.23 is out today as the newest version of this Canonical-led library for crafting Wayland-based shells and for smaller desktops to ease the adoption of Wayland, with a focus on Ubuntu Linux platforms...

• Updated Intel Patches For Cache Aware Scheduling Net A 44% Win For AMD EPYC
  In the works the past number of months has been cache-aware load balancing / cache aware scheduling support for Linux. The latest iteration of those patches by Intel were posted this weekend and are enjoying the most uplift on AMD EPYC Genoa and newer platforms...

• Box64 0.3.8 Brings DynaCache As Disk Cache For Generated Native Code From x86_64
  Box64 0.3.8 is now available for this x86_64 user-space emulator for Linux that allows ARM64 and RISC-V 64-bit and LoongArch 64-bit systems to enjoy running x86_64 games and applications. Box64 along with the likes of FEX-Emu are the leading options for those needing to run x86_64 programs on ARM64 and elsewhere...

• Intel Removing AMX-TRANSPOSE From The GCC Compiler
  One year ago updated Intel documentation noted AMX-TRANSPOSE as one of the new ISA additions for Diamond Rapids. But in updated Intel architecture documentation last month, it oddly removed all references to AMX-TRANSPOSE. Confirming that the Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) addition for TRANSPOSE is now dead, an Intel engineer posted a patch to remove AMX-TRANSPOSE from the GCC compiler...

• ReactOS Making Progress On Windows WDDM Driver Support
  The ReactOS project that continues striving toward being an "open-source Windows" ABI compatible operating system has been seeing some activity recently around supporting Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) display drivers as the newer evolution of XDDM drivers...

• GNOME9s Flatpak Runtime Drops 32-bit Compatibility Extension
  With last month's GNOME 49 release, the 32-bit Compatibility extension for the GNOME Flatpak Runtime is no more. This is part of the broader effort of phasing out 32-bit support...

• Blender Experimenting With Vulkan Ray Queries
  As part of Blender continuing to build out the Vulkan API capabilities for this open-source 3D modeling software, a proof of concept merge request was opened for beginning to make use of Vulkan ray queries...

• Linux 6.18-rc1 Released With New Tyr & Rocket Drivers, Haptic Touchpads & DM-PCACHE
  Linux 6.18-rc1 is now available for testing with the Linux 6.18 merge window closed. Linux 6.18 will be out in December and is anticipated to become this year's Linux LTS kernel version...

• CLUDA Posted For Mesa: Gallium3D API Implemented Atop NVIDIA CUDA Driver API
  Well, here is a weekend surprise... Red Hat engineer and Rusticl lead developer Karol Herbst has opened a Mesa merge request for "CLUDA" as a compute-only driver that implements the Gallium3D API atop the NVIDIA CUDA driver API. Wow...

• Intel Posts Patches For New VFIO Xe PCI Linux Driver
  Intel engineers continue working on SR-IOV support for the Xe open-source kernel driver as part of Project Battlematrix for ensuring good virtualization support for the latest Intel GPUs on Linux...

• Linux Patches Posted For Microsoft9s ACPI Fan Extensions
  Patches were posted this week for implementing Microsoft's extensions around the ACPI fan device for allowing the operating system to set fan speed trip points. In turn this should help some HP systems and likely other OEMs too in getting fan information working under Linux...

• Git Developers Talk About Potentially Releasing Git 3.0 By The End Of Next Year
  Git developers have been talking in recent weeks around release plans for Git 3.0. If all goes well we could potentially see Git 3.0 released before the end of 2026...

• FreeBSD 15.0 Beta 1 Brings OpenZFS Upgrade, Performance Fix For TCP LRO
  The first beta release of the FreeBSD 15 operating system is now available for testing...

• Imagination PowerVR Mesa Vulkan Driver Enables Unofficial Support For More GPUs
  Merged today for the Mesa 25.3 graphics driver code is enabling support for more PowerVR Imagination GPUs within the "PVR" Vulkan driver albeit not officially supported nor in active development. Your mileage may vary but for some users with certain GPUs may work out well enough...

• Linux 6.18 Lands Retpoline Optimization To Help With Intel E Cores
  The Linux 6.18 merge window is winding down this weekend ahead of Linux 6.18-rc1 expected on Sunday. Merged today were some remaining x86 core updates, which includes a Retpoline optimization patch intended to help out Intel E core CPUs...

• Solus Linux Preparing To Remove Python 2, Big systemd Upgrade & Finish /usr Merge
  The Solus Linus project is preparing for an "epoch bump" so they can make breaking / high-impact changes to in effect bump the binary version of their package repository...

• Intel XPU Manager Deprecates Data Center GPU Max Series & GPU Flex Series
  Last week during the Intel Tech Tour in Arizona, the Intel XPU Manager 1.3.3 software was released. Intel XPU Manager is a management and monitoring tool focused on Intel data center GPUs for simplifying administration, reliability, and maximizing utilization. Somewhat surprisingly, the Intel XPU Manager now deprecated the Data Center GPU Max Series as well as the Data Center GPU Flex Series...

• Intel Simplifying P-State Driver9s Energy Model For Newer Core Ultra CPUs
  Intel engineer and Linux power management subsystem maintainer Rafael Wysocki posted a set of patches this week to simplify the energy model used by Core Ultra hybrid systems with a mix of P and E cores while lacking SMT support, such as with the current Lunar Lake SoCs and upcoming Panther Lake...

• Ubuntu 25.10 Fix Pending For Broken Flatpak Support
  Besides last-minute breakage with some executables over the switch to Rust Coreutils, Ubuntu 25.10 ended up shipping with broken Flatpak support...

• Phosh 0.50 Released, GNOME App Aims To Help You Learn Assembly
  For going along with the recent release of the GNOME 49 desktop, Phosh 0.50 has been released for this Wayland compositor focused on mobile devices...

• KDE Plasma 6.5 Fixing Some Of The Most Common Crashes, Other Bugs Fixed Too
  KDE developer Nate Graham describes this week as having seen a "massive amount of stability work" for the Plasma 6.5 desktop. Among the many fixes to land this week for this next Plasma desktop release were fixing the second and third most common causes of Plasma crashes. Additionally, the most prolific common crash scenario was discovered to be caused by third-party code...

• Coreboot 25.09 Released With 19 More Motherboards Supported, Better amdfwtool For Turin
  Coreboot 25.09 was released this evening as the latest feature update to this open-source solution common to Google Chromebooks and other select motherboards/systems as an alternative to proprietary BIOS / system firmware...

• Vulkan 1.4.329 Released With New Fused-Multiply Add Extension
  Vulkan 1.4.329 is now available with one notable new extension in tow...

• Linux Now Disabling TPM Bus Encryption By Default For Performance Reasons
  Introduced last year in Linux 6.10 was TPM bus encryption and integration protection for Trusted Platform Module 2 (TPM2) handling. The intent was on better TPM security after a prior security demonstration showed TPM key recovery from Microsoft Windows BitLocker as well as TPM sniffing attacks. Shortly after being merged it was limited to just an x86_64 default where it had been tested the most at the time. Now more than one year later, this feature is being disabled by default in the mainline Linux kernel...

• AMD ROCm 7.0.2 Released With Radeon RX 9060 Officially Supported
  AMD today released ROCm 7.0.2 as the newest update to the ROCm 7.0 compute stack...

• Python 3.14 Performance Looking Good In Benchmarks
  With this week9s release of Python 3.14 bringing performance improvements, debugging improvements, a new Zstd compression module, and other enhancements I have been eager to run some benchmarks seeing how Python 3.14 compares to prior Python releases.

• NVIDIA Posts Latest Linux Driver Patches For Open-Source vGPU Support
  Just over one year ago NVIDIA posted open-source Linux GPU driver code for GPU virtualization "vGPU" support. That NVIDIA vGPU driver work was recently revised while still posted under a request for comments (RFC) flag...

• 9front Release released
  The worlds best operating system, 9front, has released a new release called Release. 9front is a maintained fork of Plan 9. The new release Release brings atomic(2) functions for arm, arm64, mips, 386 and amd64, improved stability when the kernel runs out of memory, memdraw and devdraw now support affine warp primitive, and more. You can download Release from the usual mirrors.

• LineageOS 23 released
  The LineageOS project has released version 23 of their AOSP-based Android variant. LineageOS 23 is based on the initial release of Android 16  so not the QPR1 release that came later  because Google has not made the source code for that release available yet. Like other, similar projects, LineageOS also suffers from Googles recent further lockdown of Android; not only do they not have access to Android 16 QPR1s source code, they also cant follow along with the latest security patches for Android due to changes Google made to the patch release process, and without the device trees for Pixel devices, Pixels are now no longer supported any better than other Android devices. LineageOS 23 brings many of the same features Android 16 brought, and comes with updated versions of LineageOS own camera application and music player, as well as a new TV launcher. Theyve also worked hard to make it much easier to run LineageOS in QEMU, theyve improved support for running mainline kernels, theyve made it easier to merge security fixes and updates for various kernel versions, and much more. Update instructions can be found on the devices page, and specifically note that if youre using an unofficial LineageOS build, youll need to perform the original installation again. With LineageOS being the Debian of the Android world, you can expect a ton of these unofficial versions to pop up over the coming months for devices LineageOS does not officially support.

• Liquid Glass is cracked, and usability suffers in iOS 26
  With iOS 26, Apple seems to be leaning harder into visual design and decorative UI effects — but at what cost to usability? At first glance, the system looks fluid and modern. But try to use it, and soon those shimmering surfaces and animated controls start to get in the way. Let’s strip back the frost and look at how these changes affect real use. ↫ Raluca Budiu I have not yet used Apples new Liquid Glass! graphical user interface design, so heres the usual disclaimer that my opinions are, then, effectively meaningless. That being said, the amount of detailed articles about the problems with Liquid Glass  from bugs to structural design problems  are legion, and this article by Raluca Budiu is an excellent example. There are so many readability problems, spacing issues, odd animations that dont actually convey anything meaningful, performance issues, and tons of bugs. It feels like it was made not by user interface specialists, but by marketeers, who were given too little time to boot. It feels incoherent and messy, and its going to take Apple a long, long time to mold and shape it into something remotely workable.

• In bizarre move, Framework embraces deeply extremist views
  Framework, the maker of repairable laptops, is embroiled in a controversy, as the company and its CEO are openly supporting people with, well, questionable views. If you know a little bit about PR in social media space, you might note that, right out of the gate, a project by a vocal white nationalist known for splitting communities by their mere presence, is not a great highlight choice for an overtly non-left-right-political company like Framework. Does it get worse from here? Sadly, it does. ↫ Arya Bread Crumbs The questionable views were talking about here are0 Lets just say were not talking about milquetoast stuff like we should be a bit stricter with immigration! or lower taxes on the rich!, but views that are far, far outside of the mainstream in most places in the world. Framework has stated in no uncertain terms that it is supporting and embracing people like this. Thats a choice they are entirely free to make, but I, and many with me, then, are entirely free to choose not to buy and/or promote products by Framework. I still sincerely hope that all of this is just a massive breakdown of PR and common sense at Framework and its CEO, but since theyve already doubled-down, Im not holding my breath. This whole thing is going to haunt them, especially since Im fairly sure a huge chunk of their community and users  who are buying into hardware that is, in truth, overpriced  are not even remotely aligned with such extremist views. I care deeply about Frameworks mission, but I dont give a single rats ass about Framework itself. There are countless alternatives to Framework, some of which Ive even reviewed here (like the MNT Reform or the NovaCustom V54), and if you, too, feel a deep sense of the ick when it comes to supporting extremist views like the above, I urge you to take them into consideration.

• Running FreeBSD using Windows Subsystem for Linux
  What if you are forced to use Windows, but want to use a real operating system instead? You could use WSL2 to use Linux inside Windows, but what if FreeBSD is more your thing? It turns out someone is working on making FreeBSD usable using WSL2. This repository hosts work-in-progress efforts to run FreeBSD inside Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) with minimal to no changes to the FreeBSD base system. The project builds on the open-source components of WSL2 to enable FreeBSD to boot and run seamlessly in a Windows environment. ↫ WSL for FReeBSD GitHub page The project is experimental, and definitely not ready for production use. Its also important to note that this project is not part of Microsoft or FreeBSD. At this point in time, FreeBSD boots using WSL2 with basic functionality, and work is currently focused on networking, I/O, and process management.

• Fedoras AI! policy process highlights rift between IBM/Red Hat and Fedora
  A lot of open source projects are struggling what to do with the AI! bubble, and Fedora is no different. This whole past year, the projects been struggling to formulate any official policies on the use of AI!, and LWN.nets Joe Brockmeier has just done an amazing job summarising the various positions, opinions, and people influencing this process. His conclusion: There appears to be a growing tension between what Red Hat and IBM would like to see from Fedora versus what its users and community contributors want from the project. Red Hat and IBM have already come down in favor of AI as part of their product strategies, the only real questions are what to develop and offer to the customers or partners. The Fedora community, on the other hand, has quite a few people who feel strongly against AI technologies for various ethical, practical, and social reasons. The results, so far, of turning people loose with generative AI tools on unsuspecting open-source projects has not been universally positive. People join communities to collaborate with other people, not to sift through the output of large language models. It is possible that Red Hat will persuade Fedora to formally endorse a policy of accepting AI-assisted content, but it may be at the expense of users and contributors. ↫ Joe Brockmeier at LWN.net Reading through Brockmeiers excellent article, the various forces pulling and pushing on Fedora become quite clear, and the fact weve got IBM/Red Hat in favour of AI!, and Fedoras community of developers and users against it, shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone. Wherever AI! makes an appearance, its almost exclusively a top-down process with corporate interests pushing AI! hard on a largely indifferent userbase. It seems Fedora is no different. The massive rift between IBM/Red Hat on one side, and the Fedora community on the other is probably best illustrated by a remark from Graham White, technical lead for the Granite AI agents at IBM. One of the earlier policy proposals referenced AI! slop, and White was offended by this, stating: Ive been working in the industry and building AI models for a shade over 20 years and never come across AI slop!. This seems derogatory to me and an unnecessary addition to the policy. ↫ Graham White, as quoted by Joe Brockmeier at LWN.net Us regular users are bombarded with AI! slop every day, and I just cant understand how disconnected from reality you must be to not only deny its a problem, but to deny its existence entirely, when virtually every single Google query will drop you in AI! muck. If such denial is commonplace within IBM/Red Hat, its really no wonder theres such a big rift between them and Fedora. It is wholly unsurprising, then, that Fedora is having such a hard time formulating an AI! policy. The current version of the proposed policy seems to view AI! and its use in or by Fedora mildly positively, which certainly has me, as a Fedora/KDE user, on edge. I dont want AI! anywhere near my operating system for a whole variety of reasons, and if the upcoming vote on the new policy ends up in favour of it, I might have to consider moving away from Fedora.

• Microsoft closes another loophole to enable local accounts in Windows 11
  It seems like Microsoft is continuing its quest to force Windows users to use Microsoft accounts instead of local accounts, despite the fact Microsoft accounts on Windows are half-baked and potentially incredibly dangerous. In the most recent Windows 11 Insider Preview Build (26220.6772), the company has closed a few more loopholes people were using to trick the Windows installer into allowing local user accounts. We are removing known mechanisms for creating a local account in the Windows Setup experience (OOBE). While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use. Users will need to complete OOBE with internet and a Microsoft account, to ensure device is setup correctly. ↫ Amanda Langowski at the Windows Blogs It seems that the specific workaround removed with this change is executing the command start ms-cxh:localonly! in the command prompt during the installation process (you can access cmd.exe by pressing shift+F10 during installation). Several other workarounds have also been removed in recent years, making it ever harder for people forced to use Windows 11 to use a local account, like the gods intended. The only reason Microsoft is pushing online accounts this hard is that it makes it much, much easier for them to collect your data and wrestle control over your installation away from you. A regular, proper local account with additional online accounts for various services would work just as well for users, allowing them to mix and match exactly what kind of cloud services they want integrated into their operating system. However, leaving this choice to the user invariably means people arent going to be using whatever trash services Microsoft offers. And so, Microsoft will make that choice for you, whether you like it or not. There are a million reasons to stay away from the Windows version that must be making Dave Cutler cry, and the insistence on online accounts is but one of them. Its a perfect example of how Microsoft developers Windows not to make it better for its users, but to make it better for its bottom line. I wonder how much more Microsoft can squeeze its users before we see some sort of actual revolt. Windows used to just lack taste. These days, its also actively hostile.

• Servo GTK: a widget to embed Servo in GTK4
  Servo, the Rust-based browsing engine spun off from Mozilla, keeps making progress every month, and this made Ignacio Casal Quinteiro wonder: what if we make a GTK widget so we can test Servo and compare it to WebKitGTK? As part of my job at Amazon I started working in a GTK widget which will allow embedding a Servo Webview inside a GTK application. This was mostly a research project just to understand the current state of Servo and whether it was at a good enough state to migrate from WebkitGTK to it. I have to admit that it is always a pleasure to work with Rust and the great gtk-rs bindings. Instead, Servo while it is not yet ready for production, or at least not for what we need in our product, it was simple to embed and to get something running in just a few days. The community is also amazing, I had some problems along the way and they were providing good suggestions to get me unblocked in no time. ↫ Ignacio Casal Quinteiro The code is now out there, and while not yet ready for widespread use, this will make it easier for GTK developer to periodically assess the state of Servo, hopefully some day concluding it can serve as a replacement for WebKitGTK.

• Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs after NAS sales plummet
  Earlier this year, popular NAS vendor Synology announced it would start requiring some of its more expensive models to only use Synology-branded drives. It seems the uproar this announcement caused has had some real chilling effect on sales, and the company just cancelled its plans. Synology has backtracked on one of its most unpopular decisions in years. After seeing NAS sales plummet in 2025, the company has decided to lift restrictions that forced users to buy its own Synology hard drives. The policy, introduced earlier this year, made third-party HDDs from brands like Seagate and WD practically unusable in newer models such as the DS925+, DS1825+, and DS425+. That change didn’t go over well. Users immediately criticised Synology for trying to lock them into buying its much more expensive drives. Many simply refused to upgrade, and reviewers called out the move as greedy and shortsighted. According to some reports, sales of Synology’s 2025 NAS models dropped sharply in the months after the restriction was introduced. ↫ Hilbert Hagedoorn at Guru3D.com If you want to screw over your users to make a few more euros, its generally a good idea to first assess just how locked-in your users really are. Synology is but one of many companies making and selling NAS devices, and even building one yourself is stupidly easy these days. Theres an entire cottage industry of motherboards and enclosures specifically designed for this purpose, and there are countless easy-to-use software options out there, too. In other words, nobody is really locked into Synology, so any unpopular move by the company was bound to make people look elsewhere, only to discover there are tons of competing options to choose from. The market seems to have spoken, and Synology can only respond by reversing its decision. Honestly, I had almost forgotten what a healthy tech market with tons of competing options looks like.

• MicroPythonOS: an Android-like operating system for microcontrollers like the ESP32
  MicroPythonOS is a lightweight, fast, and versatile operating system designed to run on microcontrollers like the ESP32 and desktop systems. With a modern Android-like touch screen UI, App Store, and Over-The-Air updates, it’s the perfect OS for innovators and developers. ↫ MicroPytonOS website Its quite neat to see this running in such a constrained environment, especially considering it comes with a graphical user interface, some basic applications, and niceties like OTA updates and an application repository. As the name implies, MicroPythonOS uses native MicroPython for application and driver development, making cross-platform portability from microcontrollers to regular PCs a possibility. Its built on the MicroPython runtime, with LVGL for graphics, packaged by the lvgl_micropython project. Its still relatively early in development, but its completely open source so anyone can help out and improve the project. Im personally not too well-versed in the world of microcontrollers like the popular ESP32, so Im not entirely sure just how capable other operating systems and platforms built on top if it are. This particular operating system seems to make it rather easy and straightforward for anyone to build and distribute an application for such microcontrollers, to a point where even an idiot like myself could relatively easily buy, say, an ESP32 kit with a display and assemble my own collection of small applications. To repeat myself, it simply looks neat.

• Qualcomm gobbles up Arduino
  It was good while it lasted, I guess. Arduino will retain its independent brand, tools, and mission, while continuing to support a wide range of microcontrollers and microprocessors from multiple semiconductor providers as it enters this next chapter within the Qualcomm family. Following this acquisition, the 33M+ active users in the Arduino community will gain access to Qualcomm Technologies’ powerful technology stack and global reach. Entrepreneurs, businesses, tech professionals, students, educators, and hobbyists will be empowered to rapidly prototype and test new solutions, with a clear path to commercialization supported by Qualcomm Technologies’ advanced technologies and extensive partner ecosystem. ↫ Qualcomms press release Qualcomms track record when it comes to community engagement, open source, and long-term support are absolutely atrocious, and theres no way Arduino will be able to withstand the pressures from management. Weve seen this exact story play out a million times, and it always begins with lofty promises, and always ends with all of them being broken. I have absolutely zero faith Arduino will be able to continue to do its thing like it has. Arduino devices are incredibly popular, and it makes sense for Qualcomm to acquire them. If I were using Arduinos for my open source projects, Id be a bit on edge right now.

• That small sliver of time where a QNX desktop was a real thing we did
  Bradford Morgan White has published an excellent retrospective of QNX, the realtime microkernel operating system focused on embedded use cases. The final paragraph made me sad, though. QNX is a fascinating operating system. It was extremely well designed from the start, and while it has been rewritten, the core ideas that allowed it survive for 45 years persist to this day. While I am sad that Photon was deprecated, the reasoning is sound. Most vendors using QNX either do not require a GUI, or they implement their own. For example, while Boston Dynamics uses QNX in their robots, they don’t really need Photon, and neither do SpaceX’s Falcon rockets. While cars certainly have displays, most vehicle makers desire their screen interfaces to have a unique look and feel. Of course, just stating these use cases of robots, rockets, and cars speaks to the incredible reliability and versatility of QNX. Better operating systems are possible, and QNX proves it. ↫ Bradford Morgan White at Abort Retry Fail Way back in 2004, before I even joined OSNews properly, I wrote about QNX as a desktop operating system, because back then I went through a short stint where I used QNX and its amazing Photon MicroGUI as my primary desktop. Back then, there was a short-lived but very enthusiastic community using QNX on desktops, sharing tips and findings, supported by one or two QNX employees who tried their best to support this fledgling community in the face of corporate indifference. Eventually, these QNX employees left the company, and QNX started making it clearer than ever that they were not, in any way, interested in people using QNX on desktops, and in all honesty, they were most likely correct. However, I still think we had something special there, and had QNX management decided to help us out, it couldve grown into something more sustainable. An open source QNX and Photon couldve had an impact. Using QNX on the desktop back then was much easier than you might imagine, with graphical package managers, capable browsers and email clients, a massive pile of open source packages, pretty great performance, and little to no need to ever leave the GUI and use a CLI. If your hardware was properly supported, you could have a great experience. One of the very small what-ifs! form the early 2000s.

• Redox now multithreaded by default
  Can these months please stop passing us by this quickly? It seems were getting a monthly Redox update every other week now, and thats not right. Anyway, what have the people behind this Rust-based operating system been up to this past month? One of the biggest changes this month is that Redox is now multithreaded by default, at least on x86 machines. Unsurprisingly, this can enable some serious performance gains. Also contributing to performance improvements this month is inode data inlining for small files, and the installation is now a lot faster too. LZ4 compression has been added to Redox, saving storage space and improving performance. As far as ports go, theres a ton of new and improved ports, like OpenSSH, Nginx, PHP, Neovim, OpenSSL 3.x, and more. On top of that, theres a long list of low-level kernel improvements, driver changes, and relibc improvements, changes to the main website, and so on.

• The case against generative AI: the numbers just dont add up (i.e., its a scam)
  Every single “vibe coding is the future,” “the power of AI,” and “AI job loss” story written perpetuates a myth that will only lead to more regular people getting hurt when the bubble bursts. Every article written about OpenAI or NVIDIA or Oracle that doesn’t explicitly state that the money doesn’t exist, that the revenues are impossible, that one of the companies involved burns billions of dollars and has no path to profitability, is an act of irresponsible make believe and mythos. ↫ Edward Zitron The numbers are clear. People arent paying for AI!, and those that do, are using up way more resources than theyre actually paying for. The profits required to make all of this work just arent realistic in any way, shape, or form. The money being pumped around doesnt even exist. Its a scam of such utterly massive proportions, its easier for many of us to just assume it cant possibly be one. Too big to fail? Too many promises to be a scam. Its going to be a bloodbath, but as usual when the finance and tech bros scam entire sectors, its us normal folk who will be left to foot the bill. Lets blame immigrants some more while we implement harsh austerity measures to bail out the billionaire class. Again.

• Under pressure from US government, Apple removes ICEBlock application from the App Store
  Your lovely host, late last night: Google claims they won’t be sharing developer information with governments, but we all know that’s a load of bullshit, made all the more relevant after whatever the fuck this was. If you want to oppose the genocide in Gaza or warn people of ICE raids, and want to create an Android application to coordinate such efforts, you probably should not, and stick to more anonymous organising tools. ↫ Thom Holwerda Lets check in with how that other walled garden Google is trying to emulate is doing. Apple has removed ICEBlock, an app that allowed users to monitor and report the location of immigration enforcement officers, from the App Store. We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place to discover apps,! Apple said in a statement to Business Insider. Based on information weve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock, we have removed it and similar apps from the App Store.! ↫ Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert, Peter Kafka, and Kwan Wei Kevin Tan for Business Insider Oh. Apple and Google are but mere extensions of the state apparatus. Think twice about what device you bring with you the next time you wish to protest your governments actions.

• Google details Android developer certification requirement, and its as bad as we feared
  Google has been on a bit of a marketing blitz to try and counteract some of the negative feedback following its new developer verification requirement for Android applications, and while theyre using a lot of words, none of them seem to address the core concerns. It basically comes down to that they just dont care about the consequences this new requirement has for projects like F-Droid, nor are they really bothered by any of the legitimate privacy concerns this whole thing raises. If this new requirement is implemented in its current form, F-Droid will simply not be able to continue to exist in its current form. F-Droid builds the applications in its repository themselves and signs them, and developer verification does not fit into that picture at all. F-Droid works this way to ensure its applications are built from the publicly available sources, so developers cant sneak anything nefarious into any binaries they would otherwise be submitting themselves. The privacy angle doesnt seem to bother Google much, either, which shouldnt be a surprise to anyone. With this new requirement, Android application developers can simply no longer be anonymous, which has a variety of side-effects, not least of which is that anyone developing applications for, say, dissidents, can now no longer be anonymous. Google claims they wont be sharing developer information with governments, but we all know thats a load of bullshit, made all the more relevant after whatever the fuck this was. If you want to oppose the genocide in Gaza or warn people of ICE raids, and want to create an Android application to coordinate such efforts, you probably should not, and stick to more anonymous organising tools. Students and hobbyists are getting the short end of the stick, too, as Googles promised program specifically for these two groups is incredibly limited. Yes, it waves the $25 fee, but thats about the only positive here: Developers who register with Google as a student or hobbyist will face severe app distribution restrictions, namely a limit on the number of devices that can install their apps. To enforce this, any user wanting to install software from these developers must first retrieve a unique identifier from their device. The developer then has to input this identifier into the Android Developer Console to authorize that specific device for installation. ↫ Mishaal Rahman at Android Authority Google does waive the requirement for developer certification for one particular type of user, and in doing so, highlights the only group of users Google truly cares about: enterprise users. Any application installed by an enterprise on managed devices will not need to have its developer certified. Google states that in this particular use case, the enterprises IT department is responsible for any security issues that may arise. Isnt it funny how the only group of users who wont have to deal with this nonsense are companies who pay Google tons of money for their enterprise tools? The only way were going to get out of this is if any governments step up and put a stop to this. We can safely assume the United States government wont be on our side  theyre too busy with their recurring idiotic song-and-dance anyway  so our only hope is the European Commission stepping in, but Im not holding my breath. After all, Apples rules and regulations regarding installing applications outside of the App Store in the EU are not that different from what Google is going to do. While the EU is not happy with the details of Apples rules, their general gist seems to be okay with them. Im afraid governments wont be stepping in to stop this one.

• Cairo Dock 3.6 Now Available for More Compositors
  If you're a fan of third-party desktop docks, then the latest release of Cairo Dock with Wayland support is for you.
  

• System76 Unleashes Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta
  System76's first beta of Pop!_OS 24.04 is an impressive feat.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
  Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
  

• Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
  If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
  

• Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
  The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.
  

• Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
  Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
  

• USB4 Maintainer Leaves Intel
  Michael Jamet, one of the primary maintainers of USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers, has left Intel, leaving a gaping hole for the Linux community to deal with.
  

• Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
  The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.
  

• KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
  It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
  

• AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
  This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.
  

• AerynOS Alpha Release Available
  With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
  

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