All the News that Matters

• Haas: Postgres 19 is late, and it's AI's fault
  PostgreSQL developer Robert Haas writesabout the struggles the project has encountered in putting together itsnext release.
  In the end, I don't think that the delay in shipping PostgreSQL 19 is particularly concerning. It is not a long delay in the grand scheme of things, and it emerges directly from the project's concern for quality.
  The long-term picture is less clear and in some ways more troubling: given that we have forty years of bugs that humans were unable to find but LLMs are quite capable of discovering, how are we ever going to catch up, and how will PostgreSQL continue to innovate? Right now, I'm not sure. What I do know is that I, and many others, are working really hard to figure it out.
  LWN looked at the PostgreSQL 19 releaseand its challenges in September.

• Remote code execution on Linux systems with multipath TCP
  On October 27, LLM provider Anthropicreportedon aremotely exploitable use-after-free bug affecting systems withmultipath TCP listeners open. The bug works by triggering a response to aretransmitted SYN packet at the same moment that the TCP connection isestablished in another thread, causing the first thread to access theconnection's options structure after the second thread has freed it. The firstthread can then disclose kernel memory or cause a buffer overflow, writing anattacker-controlled payload. The fix wasto only free the structure after an RCU grace period.On October 29, the Go security teamadvisedthat all programs written in Go use multipath TCP by default, so manysystems may be unknowingly vulnerable. And, of course, there is always thepossibility of related bugs in other sections of the TCP stack. Users may bewise to update to a patched kernel as soon as one becomes available for theirdistribution.
  

• [$] System-call wrappers for glibc
  In a followup to his session at the2025 Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC), Carlos O'Donell returned to the topicof system-callwrappers for the GNU C library (glibc) at this year's event. This timearound, he was joined by Florian Weimer, who is another glibc maintainer.The idea was to give an update on what has happened over the last year withregard to Linux system calls that lack a glibc wrapper, thus are onlyaccessible viasyscall(). In addition, they wanted to hear from attendees about theirneeds in this area.

• Eight more stable kernel updates
  Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.3.1,7.2.14,6.18.60,6.12.115,6.6.161,6.1.191,5.15.224, and5.10.273 stable kernels. As usual, he advisesall users to update—advice that seems especially wise given theincreased number of security-relevant bug fixes that the kernel is seeing these days.[Edit: the 7.2.15 stable release is already in review as well.]
  

• Security updates for Friday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (aspell, cjose, curl, gcc-toolset-15-gcc, httpd:2.4, ignition, java-21-openjdk, libX11, libXi, libXrender, libXtst, mariadb:10.11, nodejs:24, python-pillow, python3.12-urllib3, and webkit2gtk3), Debian (imagemagick, libdatetime-timezone-perl, python-git, tor, tzdata, vlc, and wordpress), Fedora (accessibility-inspector, akonadi-calendar, akonadi-calendar-tools, akonadi-contacts, akonadi-import-wizard, akonadi-mime, akonadi-search, akonadi-server, akonadiconsole, akregator, alligator, analitza, angelfish, applet-window-buttons, arianna, ark, artikulate, audex, audiocd-kio, audiotube, aurorae, baloo-widgets, blinken, bluedevil, bomber, bovo, breeze-gtk, brotli, bup, calendarsupport, calindori, calligra, cantor, colord-kde, cxx-rust-cssparser, dolphin, dolphin-plugins, dragon, elisa-player, eventviews, falkon, fcitx-configtool, ffmpegthumbs, filelight, firefox, flatpak-kcm, francis, ghostwriter, granatier, grantlee-editor, grantleetheme, grub2-breeze-theme, gwenview, incidenceeditor, isoimagewriter, itinerary, juk, k3b, kaccounts-integration, kaccounts-providers, kactivitymanagerd, kaddressbook, kajongg, kalarm, kalgebra, kalk, kalm, kalzium, kamera, kamoso, kanagram, kapman, kapptemplate, kasts, kate, katomic, kbackup, kblackbox, kblocks, kbounce, kbruch, kcachegrind, kcalc, kcalutils, kcharselect, kclock, kcolorchooser, kcron, kde-cli-tools, kde-connect, kde-dev-scripts, kde-dev-utils, kde-gtk-config, kde-inotify-survey, kde-partitionmanager, kdebugsettings, kdecoration, kdeedu-data, kdegraphics-mobipocket, kdegraphics-thumbnailers, kdenetwork-filesharing, kdenlive, kdepim-addons, kdepim-runtime, kdeplasma-addons, kdesdk-kioslaves, kdesdk-thumbnailers, kdevelop, kdevelop-php, kdevelop-python, kdf, kdialog, kdiamond, kdnssd, kdominate, keditbookmarks, keepsecret, keysmith, kf6-baloo, kfind, kfourinline, kgeography, kget, kglobalacceld, kgoldrunner, kgpg, kgraphviewer, khangman, khealthcertificate, khelpcenter, kidentitymanagement, kig, kigo, killbots, kimagemapeditor, kimap, kinfocenter, kio-admin, kio-extras, kio-gdrive, kirigami-gallery, kiriki, kiten, kitinerary, kjournald, kjumpingcube, kldap, kleopatra, klettres, klickety, klines, kmag, kmahjongg, kmail, kmail-account-wizard, kmailtransport, kmbox, kmenuedit, kmines, kmix, kmousetool, kmouth, kmplot, knavalbattle, knetwalk, knights, knighttime, knot, koko, kolf, kollision, kolourpaint, kompare, kongress, konqueror, konquest, konsole, kontact, kontactinterface, kontrast, konversation, kopeninghours, korganizer, kosmindoormap, kpat, kpimtextedit, kpipewire, kpkpass, kpmcore, kpublictransport, kqtquickcharts, krdc, krdp, krecorder, kreversi, krfb, kruler, ksanecore, kscreen, kscreenlocker, kshisen, ksirk, ksmtp, ksnakeduel, kspaceduel, ksquares, ksshaskpass, ksudoku, ksystemlog, ksystemstats, kteatime, ktimer, ktnef, ktorrent, ktouch, ktrip, ktuberling, kturtle, kubrick, kunifiedpush, kup-backup, kwalletmanager5, kwave, kwayland, kwayland-integration, kweather, kweathercore, kwin, kwin-zones, kwordquiz, kwrited, layer-shell-qt, libgravatar, libkcddb, libkdcraw, libkdegames, libkdepim, libkeduvocdocument, libkexiv2, libkgapi, libkleo, libkmahjongg, libkomparediff2, libksane, libkscreen, libksieve, libksysguard, libktorrent, libplasma, libquotient, lokalize, lskat, mailcommon, mailimporter, marble, markdownpart, massif-visualizer, mbox-importer, merkuro, messagelib, mimetreeparser, mingw-python-certifi, minuet, neochat, ocean-sound-theme, okular, oxygen-sounds, palapeli, pam-kwallet, parley, perl-Alien-Brotli, picmi, pim-data-exporter, pim-sieve-editor, pimcommon, plasma-activities, plasma-activities-stats, plasma-bigscreen, plasma-breeze, plasma-browser-integration, plasma-camera, plasma-desktop, plasma-dialer, plasma-discover, plasma-disks, plasma-drkonqi, plasma-firewall, plasma-integration, plasma-keyboard, plasma-login-manager, plasma-milou, plasma-mobile, plasma-nano, plasma-nm, plasma-oxygen, plasma-pa, plasma-phonebook, plasma-print-manager, plasma-sdk, plasma-settings, plasma-setup, plasma-systemmonitor, plasma-systemsettings, plasma-thunderbolt, plasma-union, plasma-vault, plasma-wayland-protocols, plasma-welcome, plasma-workspace, plasma-workspace-wallpapers, plasma5support, plasmatube, plymouth-kcm, plymouth-theme-breeze, polkit-kde, powerdevil, poxml, qmlkonsole, qqc2-breeze-style, qrca, rocs, sddm-kcm, signon-kwallet-extension, skanlite, skanpage, skladnik, spacebar, spectacle, step, svgpart, sweeper, tokodon, trafficserver, umbrello, xdg-desktop-portal-kde, yakuake, and zanshin), Mageia (cfitsio, libsolv, tomcat, and xrdp), Oracle (bind, cjose, curl, dogtag-pki, expat, gcc-toolset-15-gcc, ignition, kernel, libX11, libXrender, libXtst, php, python3.12-urllib3, and webkit2gtk3), SUSE (389-ds, aws-nitro-enclaves-binaryblobs-upstream, brotli, chromium, firefox, flatpak, gnutls, google-osconfig-agent, haproxy, hawk2, kernel, libapr1, libtcnative-1-0, tomcat, liboath-devel, libpcre2-16-0, librecad, libXi-devel, libXtst-devel, python311, python313, python313-markdown2, python313-xhtml2pdf, rabbitmq-server, roundcubemail, rust-keylime, and xen), and Ubuntu (dotnet8, dotnet10, dotnet11).

• [$] Containers as a recognized kernel object
  The foundation of the design for containers in the kernel is that thereisn't one; there is no container abstraction that the kernel recognizes.Instead, the kernel provides a long list of components — namespaces,control groups, sandboxing mechanisms, and more — along with a note thatsays, in effect, "some assembly required". There have been attempts (repeatedly) over the years to turn containersinto first-class objects with kernel support, but they have never gottenfar. Now Josef Bacik is making atry with a concept that he calls "cells".

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (cjose, emacs, expat, gcc-toolset-15-gcc, java-17-openjdk, java-25-openjdk, kernel, kernel-rt, libX11, libXi, libXrender, libXtst, mod_auth_openidc:2.3, pki-deps:10.6, thunderbird, webkit2gtk3, and yggdrasil), Debian (chromium, firefox-esr, and openjdk-25), Fedora (firefox, librabbitmq, libreswan, python-pillow, and unbound), Mageia (fio and python3, python-pip), Oracle (buildah, cjose, container-tools:ol8, emacs, flute, libbase, libfonts, libformula, liblayout, libloader, libreoffice, librepository, libserializer, pentaho-libxml, pentaho-reporting-flow-engine, and sac, kernel, libX11, libXi, libXrender, libXtst, podman, python-urllib3, thunderbird, and yggdrasil), Red Hat (firefox, goose, kernel, kernel package, kernel-rt, librsvg2, multiple packages, php:7.4, sudo, thunderbird, and xorg-x11-server), and SUSE (alsa, ca-certificates-mozilla, chromedriver, cifs-utils, coredns, coreutils, cpupower, curl, cyrus-sasl, docker, dpdk, haproxy, kernel, libpoppler-cpp3, libsndfile-devel, libzbar-devel, mozilla-nss, MozillaFirefox, nginx, openai-codex, and perl-Cpanel-JSON-XS).

• [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 29, 2026
  Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
  Front: Python JIT; Kernel clean up; Rust panics; Future Rust features; Northstar browser; 7.4 merge window; Smaller kernel stacks. Briefs: KeePassXC 2.8.0; Redox ring buffers; Rust in systemd; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

• A report from the LPC sched_ext microconference
  The Linux Plumbers Conference blog has areport from the sched_ext microconference held in Prague.
  Three main topics dominated the discussions Priority inversion and how to handle it in sched_ext: lock holder and lock waiter preemption, time slice extension, and making proxy execution work together with BPF schedulers. Paravirtualized scheduling: letting the host and guest schedulers cooperate across the VM boundary, with sched_ext as the policy engine on the host. Device and topology-aware scheduling: using hardware feedback (Intel HFI), device/accelerator locality and cache topology to drive task placement.

• [$] The campaign to push Northstar into Linux distributions
  There is not a broad selection of mature, open-source web-browser enginesfor Linux users. Most of the browsers available for Linux are based on one ofjust three projects: Chromium's Blink, Firefox'sGecko, or WebKit. A new entrant wouldgenerally be seen as a welcome alternative, but the recent campaign to push oneof the LLM-written Nordstjernen browsersinto Debian and Arch Linux has raised some questions aboutthe project's development and security processes.
  

• Redox OS ring buffers project summary
  The Redox OS project, which is aUnix-like microkernel-based operating system written in Rust, has published a report on the workthat it has done in the last year to implement io_uring-likeI/O.
  
  Last year, the Redox team received a grant to develop io_uring-like RingBuffer support at the system task level, as a first step towards ring buffercommunications between the application and the majority of system services. Thisphase of the work finished up in September, as the last pieces were put inplace.
  
  [...] In addition to implementing the Ring Buffer machinery for our systemservices and drivers that can support it, an io_uring andliburing-like API for applications was completed anddemonstrated. There was also substantial work done on support crates, includingan async executor for drivers.
  
  And there was some very exciting work on various performance improvements, toallow much faster switching between applications and their system services. ButI will let the team tell you all the technical details.
  
  
  

• Security updates for Wednesday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (emacs, thunderbird, and xdg-dbus-proxy), Debian (bind9, openjdk-21, pdns, php-mongodb, and thunderbird), Fedora (brotli, chromium, clevis, eog, flatpak, ghostscript, kernel, libinstpatch, libreswan, mingw-freetype, mingw-gstreamer1, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-base, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-good, openssh, perl-Alien-Brotli, perl-DBI, python3.12, rust-onefetch, stargz-snapshotter, util-linux, and webkitgtk), Mageia (cifs-utils, libxml2, packages, perl-Cpanel-JSON-XS, perl-Text-CSV_XS, sogo, util-linux, and weechat), Oracle (brotli, firefox, flatpak, gcc-toolset-15-gcc, kernel, libreswan, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, python-urllib3, skopeo, and xdg-dbus-proxy), Slackware (proftpd), SUSE (azure-storage-azcopy, containerd, corepack24, grok-build, ImageMagick, libsoup-2_4-1, matrix-synapse, podman, psqlODBC, python, python-M2Crypto-doc, python-Twisted-doc, and xen), and Ubuntu (authd).

• Robinson: Raspberry Pi 5 on Fedora
  Peter Robinson has written a blog post aboutthe current state of Fedora support for Raspberry Pi 5devices. According to Robinson, the upcoming Fedora 45 release willwork—with caveats—onall variants of the Raspberry Pi Model 5B; theCompute Module 5 and Pi 500+ are still works in progress.For Fedora 44 release you need to have a temporary workaround when booting. Ifyou update to the latest kernel/firmware straight away this isn't then neededbeyond the first boot. The workaround isn't needed for Fedora 45 so if you'regoing to try this out I suggest you go and grab your favourite flavour of Fedorafrom the Fedora 45 release candidates and jump straight in there! You will getan accelerated desktop with storage/network/USB. There's not currently anysupport for sound and a number of other things.
  See Robinson's post for instructions on creating an Fedora image to use witha Raspberry Pi 5.
  
  
  

• [$] Guidelines for panics in kernel code
  Alexandre Courbot spends most of his time working on the kernel doing codereviews. Recently, he's been wondering about what the standards should be forwhen Rust code is allowed to panic, and how it should do error handling moregenerally. Unlike many of the other talks at Kangrejos 2026, his talk was notpresenting some existing work, but rather hoping to solicit opinions on thetopic from the assembled Rust for Linux developers. He brought along a collection of trickycases that he had run into recently to prompt discussion.
  

• Security updates for Tuesday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, bind9.18, brotli, buildah, container-tools:4.0, container-tools:rhel8, firefox, flatpak, freeipmi, gcc, golang, grafana, httpd, kernel, kernel-rt, libreswan, libX11, lrzsz, nodejs:14, nodejs:18, oci-seccomp-bpf-hook, podman, python-urllib3, python3.9, python38:3.8 and python38-devel:3.8, skopeo, thunderbird, xorg-x11-server, and xz), Debian (inkscape, swupdate, thunderbird, and valkey), Fedora (brotli, dolphin, helix, kernel, libical, mingw-python3, nsd, perl-Alien-Brotli, perl-Plack, perl-Plack-Middleware-ReverseProxy, rust-dua-cli, rust-gengo-bin, rust-gitui, stgit, unshield, and webkitgtk), Mageia (evolution, freetype2, ghostscript, kronosnet, libde265, libical, libjxl, packages, perl-DBI, perl-ExtUtils-Typemaps-Default, perl-Imager, vim, and webkit2), Oracle (bind, bind9.18, brotli, buildah, ca-certificates, firefox, flatpak, freeipmi, grafana, httpd, kernel, libreswan, libX11, lrzsz, nodejs22, nodejs24, nodejs:22, oci-seccomp-bpf-hook, perl-DBI:1.641, perl:5.32, postfix, postgresql16-pgvector, postgresql18-pgvector, python3.9, skopeo, unbound, xorg-x11-server, and xz), Red Hat (grafana, grafana-pcp, python3.12-urllib3, and python3.14-urllib3), SUSE (ca-certificates-mozilla, chromium, gn, cifs-utils, containerd, cpupower, cyrus-sasl, gcc13, gcc7, go1.26, go1.27, google-osconfig-agent, kernel, kubernetes-old, libsoup, libX11, libXi, openssh, podman, python-nltk, python-PyJWT, python-social-auth-core, rekor, runc, suseconnect-ng, and unbound), and Ubuntu (brotli and nginx).

• Planet News Roundup
  This is a roundup of articles from the openSUSE community listed on planet.opensuse.org. This community blog feed aggregator lists the featured highlights below from Oct. 23 - 29. This week highlights five Tumbleweed snapshots for week 43 headlined by KDE Plasma 6.8.0, Qt 6.12.0, Linux Kernel 7.2.11 and PHP 8.5.12,0

• Another Week, Another Vibe Coded OS; Closed-Source In The Name Of Security
  With today's AI/LLM capabilities, there is almost a new operating system heard about each week "coded from scratch" predominantly via AI agents. This week was no exception with another project hitting our email inbox. Though most of them are open-source, this one is closed-source in the name of security0

• Best Linux Distros for Chromebooks in 2026 (10 Picks Compared)
  This guide covers the two ways to run Linux on a Chromebook, ten distros worth your time, and the checks that save you a wasted afternoon.

• Denmarks Digital Sovereignty Effort Stalls Amid Government Shakeup
  An unfinished Collabora trial has been cast as an open source failure. The timeline tells a different story.

• OuijaCNC
  Spooky season is officially upon us. Check out this self-playing Ouija board built by one of our colleagues.

• Gelly is a GTK desktop music player for Jellyfin and Navidrome
  If you run your own music streaming server via Jellyfin or Navidrome/Subsonic, youll want a decent desktop player  Gelly is a solid choice for GNOME. It bills itself as native, lightweight music player! for the aforementioned streaming servers (and compatible ones). Its written in Rust and GTK4/libadwaita and, as a good players should, it lets you browse, play and control music playback.0

• Yay 13.1 AUR Helper Released with Faster Dependency Resolution, Improved Search
  Yay 13.1 improves dependency resolution performance, package search accuracy, repository handling, and Lua scripting capabilities.

• TUXEDO Nano Pro Gen15 Mini Linux PC Launches with Intel CPU, Up to 128 GB RAM
  Linux hardware vendor TUXEDO Computers unveiled today the 15th generation (Gen15) of the TUXEDO Nano Pro mini PC powered by an Intel CPU and featuring full Linux support.

• FAT32 File-System Seeing As Much As 265x Improvement With Linux 7.4
  A change merged for Linux 7.4 is showing some mighty big speed-ups for the FAT32 file-system0

• LibreOffice 26.8.2 Open-Source Office Suite Released with More Than 30 Bug Fixes
  The Document Foundation announced today the general availability of LibreOffice 26.8.2 as the second maintenance update to the latest and greatest LibreOffice 26.8 office suite series with compatibility and text import improvements.

• NVIDIA Vera Single vs. Dual Socket CPU Performance
  For those curious how NVIDIA Vera is scaling between single and dual socket deployments, here are some benchmarks I carried out a while back exploring the power and performance from one to two Vera CPUs.

• Is Ubuntu Eyeing Immutability? Canonical Restarts Core Desktop and Eyes a Firmware Change for LTS
  Core Desktop could run apps that cant run natively in a sandbox, while linux-firmware-hwe is proposed as a safeguard against newer firmware causing problems.

• Fedora Linux 45 Shipping Next Week On 3 November
  Fedora 45 is ready to ship! It will be formally released on Tuesday, 3 November0

• Tiny Linux box packs Panther Lake, Arc graphics and dual 2.5GbE
  The Nano Pro Gen15 is a compact Linux mini PC powered by Intels Core Ultra X7 358H processor with integrated Arc B390 graphics. Developed by TUXEDO Computers, the system supports up to 128GB of DDR5 memory, dual NVMe SSDs, four 4K displays, and dual 2.5GbE connectivity. It can be used for software development, local AI0

• Matrix takes sovereign messaging into the realm of the tech giants
  Once more, with feeling: 'First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you'

• Tor Browser 16.0 Anonymous Browser Brings Native ARM Support on Linux
  The Tor project released Tor Browser 16.0 today as a major update to this open-source, cross-platform, and free web browser designed to protect you against tracking, surveillance, and censorship using the Tor anonymous network.

• KDE Plasma 6.8.2 Released With More KWin and Wayland Fixes
  The KDE Project has released KDE Plasma 6.8.2, delivering another round of stability improvements for its Wayland-based Linux desktop environment. Released on October 27, 2026, the update arrives one week after Plasma 6.8.1 and two weeks after the anniversary release of Plasma 6.8, which marked 30 years since the KDE project's founding. This second maintenance release concentrates on correcting0

• Xerxes Home Lab adds Jetson support, NVMe, and PoE
  Australian company Rapid Analysis has launched a new Kickstarter campaign for its Xerxes Home Lab platform, featuring updated carrier boards for Raspberry Pi Compute Modules and NVIDIA Jetson systems. The lineup includes the Xerxes Pi 2026, Xerxes Nano, and an RK3566-based compute module, targeting home servers, embedded systems, and local AI applications. The campaign follows0

• openEuler New Releases Come With a Heavy Dose of AI and Agents
  openEuler is pushing for a developer focused Linux distro with AI at its core. From PolyMind to Witty, the AI agents are part of the package.

• Powered by Raspberry Pi  from Stockholm to Sydney, South Korea to Slovakia
  From the practicalities of everyday life to creative endeavours, Raspberry Pi power is behind hundreds of products.

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• UK Social Media Ban May Lock Out More Than 100,000 Teens Without ID
  Under the UK's planned social media ban, more than 100,000 British teenagers aged 16 and 17 could initially be locked out of social media because they lack a passport or driving license that may be needed as a fallback for age verification. The Guardian reports: Ofcom, the UK's online watchdog, said about 150,000 16- to 17-year-olds do not own a passport or driving licence, which are likely to be needed to access age-restricted platforms. The Australia-style ban on under-16s accessing social media services, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, is due to come into force next spring. The head of Ofcom, Melanie Dawes, said "motivated children" would seek to bypass the restrictions, as has happened in Australia. On Thursday, Ofcom published an assessment of age verification measures that could underpin the ban, outlining four "highly effective" methods: checking a person's official ID against a live selfie, a bank verifying an account holder's age, an official digital ID service like the Young Scot card, or estimating someone's age via a selfie. However, the watchdog said a form of official ID would probably be needed as a "backstop" for other methods, such as facial age estimation, which could be inaccurate by several years. Ofcom said a cohort of 16- to 17-year-olds could miss out as a result. "This means that people without a form of photo ID will likely need to take steps to obtain one to access age-restricted services," the regulator said. The report notes that more than nine out of 10 Britons over 16 have passports or driving licenses. "We should expect that motivated children will seek to bypass the restrictions -- just like alcohol laws can't completely eradicate underage drinking -- but there'll be ways for platforms to mitigate this risk," said Dawes. "This will be a huge cultural shift for our society, so it'll take time to adjust, and everyone will have a part to play."
  
  
  Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  

• Reddit Will Force Everyone to Log In
  Reddit plans to require users to log in to browse the platform, ending its longstanding practice of allowing anonymous visitors to access posts and discussions. According to CEO Steve Huffman, a key reason behind the decision is to curb unauthorized scraping and automated traffic. "This is a big change for Reddit, where we've allowed logged-out access to basically all of Reddit for the last two decades," Huffman says. "And I don't know about you, but as someone whose life has been defined by the open internet, it's a big change for me. But I've come to the conclusion that this is the right decision for our platform and the right decision for our business." The Verge reports: There's no definitive timeline on when this change will roll out to all users, or how the site will work if you're logged out. (If I send my friend a link to a thread and they aren't logged in, what will they see?) To start, Reddit will test the logged-in requirement in "select markets outside the US" in the "coming months," according to CEO Steve Huffman. "We'll look at the impact on the user experience, on our business, and on the whole Reddit ecosystem, figure out where the right boundaries are, and go from there." Reddit has also rebuilt and is rereleasing the Reddit app's incognito mode. Huffman claims the login requirement is better for Reddit's user experience and its ads business and is "more protective of Reddit data." The "vast majority" of unauthorized Reddit access happens "through our logged-out experiences," though the company will still strike licensing deals of its data with companies, like the deals it made with OpenAI and Google in 2024. Huffman notes that Reddit does not need to know a logged-in user's identity -- "Honestly, we don't want to know" -- just that the user is logged in at all. And he says that more logged-in users lets the company deliver "more relevant ads."
  
  
  Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  

• Binance Suffers Biggest Crypto Hack In History With $6.3 Billion Affected [UPDATE]
  UPDATE 10/30/26: Binance has temporarily suspended customer withdrawals after suffering what investigators say is the biggest crypto hack in history. According to Binance CEO Yi He, the company estimates roughly $6.3 billion in funds were impacted, with roughly $3 billion in assets frozen on-chain so far. Rest assured, "your money is safe, and we're covering every loss," said co-CEO Richard Teng in a LinkedIn post. "This was a complex attack," said Teng. "The attacker also used a self-destruct mechanism that destroyed tooling and tracers, making it more difficult for us to trace." From a report: Teng said the incident was not carried out by one person. While the initial investigation indicated the involvement of a compromised laptop, further digging revealed additional points of breach. [...] Blockchain analysis firms TRM Labs and Elliptic have linked the theft to North Korean hackers, with TRM attributing it "with high confidence" to a group known as TraderTraitor, the same group responsible for last year's Bybit hack. Elliptic estimated Friday that about 44% of the stolen assets have been frozen, with stablecoins accounting for nearly all of those funds. The firm estimated that attackers still controlled over $3 billion in crypto that token issuers cannot directly freeze. The hackers appear to have compromised Binance's wallet-signing infrastructure, allowing them to authorize transactions that drained billions of dollars in cryptocurrency across multiple blockchains, according to the firms. Binance, in its preliminary stage, has conducted an investigation into the hack, which suggests the incident may have begun with a compromised engineer's laptop. The exchange added that it has found no evidence that wallet passwords were leaked. Below is the original story from yesterday, Oct. 29th. Binance is investigating a potential hack after more than $2 billion in crypto was drained from one of its wallets into a new external account, with Blockaid estimating nearly $3.3 billion was moved. "Our teams are aware of reports of a potential security issue and are actively investigating," said Binance on X. "User funds are safe," said Binance founder CZ. "It does look like a hack on Binance. Appreciate the quick freeze from Tether (~$971m) and Circle (~$823m). I don't manage Binance anymore, but as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered." At around the same time, crypto-based prediction market Polymarket reported its own security incident that wiped out around $2.7 million in user funds.
  
  
  Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  

• The Tragedy of Losing Your Wikipedia Page
  An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from a Wired article that explores the often-contentious process of nominating pages for deletion when their subjects fail to meet the encyclopedia's notability standards: What do you need to know -- need to know -- about Xavier Trudeau? The eldest son of former Canadian prime minister Justin, the teenage Trudeau has recently begun performing R&B under the mononym Xav. But, with all due respect to Xav, do those facts make him a person of note? Should you expect to be able to read about him on Wikipedia? What about Evanescence guitarist Tim McCord, or 2012 Yachtmaster of the Year Rainer Holtorff? All three have had a biography on Wikipedia; all three of those biographies were considered for deletion this year on the grounds that the subjects were not notable enough to warrant a biography at all. Every day, dozens, sometimes hundreds, of Wikipedia biographies -- of child actors turned LA realtors, retired ambassadors, soccer players who have played less than 10 minutes of professional soccer -- are purged from the world's free encyclopedia. It's not as though Wikipedia, which hosts over 7 million articles in the English language, doesn't have the space. But Wikipedia has only so many volunteers to monitor its contents. To this day, Wikipedia editors are discovering hoaxes that have gone undetected for decades. The time it takes to verify the release dates of Xav's three singles is better spent -- the logic goes -- by asking whether the American Civil War officer Nathaniel Lyon really drank mustard during battle, as was claimed in his Wikipedia biography for 17 years. Wikipedia removed the mustard claim, not because it was proven wrong, but because there was no reliable evidence for it. "We're not really looking for what's true," Britta Gustafson, who has been editing Wikipedia since 2001, told me. "We're looking for what's verifiable." Wikipedia editors do not themselves decide that a person is not notable, only that there is a lack of reliable evidence to support the claim...
  
  
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• First Wired XR Glasses Powered By Android XR
  XREAL has launched the AURA, its first wired augmented reality glasses powered by Google's Android XR platform. They feature transparent Micro-OLED displays, a 70-degree field of view, Gemini AI integration, and a Snapdragon Reality Elite processor. TechPowerUp reports: The device is built around a simple idea: your apps, screens, entertainment, and AI assistant should be able to come with you wherever you go. On day-one, users have access to millions of familiar mobile apps and games from Google Play, alongside many experiences specifically for XR. Android XR brings familiar hand and voice inputs to AURA, while Gemini makes the experiences more natural and intuitive by working across what users see and do. With Wired Mirroring, users can plug a computer or handheld gaming console directly into XREAL AURA via USB-C and instantly turn it into a massive private spatial window. That means a laptop, handheld gaming device, or other compatible USB-C device can sit alongside native Android XR apps in a user's spatial workspace. Whether turning a plane seat into a private multi-monitor setup, watching a movie on a large virtual screen, or playing Android and console games in an immersive spatial environment, XREAL AURA is designed to make spatial computing practical, portable, and useful. [...] For work, AURA creates a portable multi-window workspace without requiring a physical monitor. Users can open Android XR apps, mirror a laptop, place windows in virtual space, and use Gemini to help understand or act on what is on screen. For entertainment, AURA becomes a private theater on demand. Users can access familiar streaming apps, expand content into a large virtual display, and use electrochromic dimming to create a more immersive viewing experience while remaining aware of their surroundings when needed. For play, AURA supports Android games and compatible mirrored gaming devices, enabling users to play on a large and immersive private display. The glasses are available to order today, with limited-time pricing starting at $1,099 for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage model. Devices are expected to begin shipping in mid-November.
  
  
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• Proton CEO Is In 'Full AI Psychosis'
  According to 404 Media, Proton CEO Andy Yen is aggressively pushing AI adoption while fostering what workers describe as a culture of fear that discourages raising security concerns or challenging leadership. The investigation is based on interviews with eight current and one former Proton employees, as well as internal Slack chats, meeting recordings, and an AI manifesto written by the company's CTO. Longtime Slashdot reader devnulljapan summarizes the findings: Engineers at Proton, which makes the encrypted email service Proton Mail and a suite of privacy- and security-focused products, including an encrypted drive service, an authenticator app, and a password manager, are being pushed to "stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more." Workers describe an environment where employees have genuine concerns about security or being asked to develop security products with AI but feel unable to voice them, lest Yen berates them in front of everyone or threatens their employment at the company. "The CEO is in full AI psychosis and has been for a while now," one of the sources told 404 Media. Yen reportedly dismissed an employee's request for additional security testing before releasing new code, calling it "bullshit and loser thinking" and insisting that "only losers think like that." In a separate exchange over Proton's post-quantum encryption rollout, Yen criticized how the company communicated the feature's limitations and told employees that "perception is more important than truth, the truth doesn't matter if you don't win on perception." "The train is coming, get onboard or get crushed. Don't be the professional fax machine operator in the internet age," Yen wrote to the security Slack channel. "I think by the end of this year most developers stop programming and start writing specs for tests that AI will code and run, to validate AI written code that humans will no longer be able to review. This will be the last year that we hire engineers, and starting next year we hire what we used to call product managers, to build things with AI."
  
  
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• Polymarket Halted International Trading After Hackers Drained Accounts
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Trading has resumed on Polymarket's flagship international platform after a hack that drained money from the wallets of some traders. A third-party vendor based in the United Kingdom was breached, not the prediction market's website itself. Law enforcement in the UK have been notified of the incident, the company said. Trading was initially paused while the company investigated for several hours. On X, prominent traders complained that they had lost money; Blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps reported that around 700 users appear affected, with approximately $2.7 million stolen. Polymarket declined to comment when WIRED asked how many traders were impacted by the breach and how much money was lost, but said it will refund impacted traders. The hack did not impact users on Polymarket US, the company's newer platform for people within the United States. Polymarket runs two separate prediction markets; Polymarket US operates as a federally regulated financial exchange within the country, while the flagship Polymarket is a cryptocurrency-based platform that is banned in the United States and a number of other countries. This is not the first time that Polymarket traders have experienced losses like this. "A nearly identical vendor-compromise attack hit the platform in June, draining close to $3 million from at least 11 user wallets through the same kind of injected frontend script," reports StartupFortune. Hours before Polymarket halted trading, more than $2 billion in cryptocurrency was drained from Binance wallets in just 40 minutes.
  
  
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• Trump's CTFC Steps In to Defend Kalshi As Utah Brings Criminal Charges Against Execs
  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has sued Utah to defend its claimed exclusive authority over federally registered prediction markets, as the state files (PDF) 14 criminal charges against Kalshi and its co-founders for allegedly violating anti-gambling laws. The Verge reports: On Wednesday, Utah's Attorney General Derek Brown filed charges against Kalshi co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, including 12 counts of online gambling promotion, a third-degree felony, one count of a pattern of unlawful activity, a second-degree felony, and general gambling promotion, a Class A misdemeanor. The civil lawsuit calls Kalshi a "back-alley gambling den," and Attorney General Brown didn't mince words in a statement to Gizmodo. "Gambling is illegal in Utah, whether you place the bet, run the game, or promote it. Calling it a 'prediction market' doesn't change what it is, and being federally registered doesn't put a company above the law," said Brown. "A federal court has already ruled that Utah's gambling laws apply to Kalshi," continued Brown. "Kalshi kept taking bets from Utahns anyway. That is illegal, and we're putting a stop to it." [...] The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been jumping into action to protect Kalshi and Polymarket by filing lawsuits against any state that brings charges against the betting sites. President Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., is a paid advisor to both companies. The CFTC announced Wednesday that it was suing the state of Utah as part of its "commitment to maintaining its exclusive jurisdiction over CFTC-registered prediction markets." The argument is that the feds alone should be regulating these sites. "Utah seeks to shut down prediction markets across a wide variety of markets," CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said in a statement. "Event contracts do not just serve hedging and investment purposes -- they also provide the public with information about the outcome of future events. Congress entrusted the CFTC to be the federal regulator with sole responsibility to oversee these markets," continued Selig. "As I've said before, the CFTC has the expertise and responsibility to defend its exclusive jurisdiction over commodity derivatives, and that's exactly what we'll do."
  
  
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• Patrick Stewart, 'Star Trek' Captain and 'X-Men' Superhero, Dies At 86
  Slashdot readers Cpt_Kirks, eklektic, sconeu, and Vrallis share the unfortunate news of Patrick Stewart's passing. Longtime spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak said Stewart died Wednesday at the age of 86 at his home in Los Angeles following "a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia." "He has been held in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayer, tears, laughter and the kind of profound emotion that only he could inspire after a lifetime of devotion to us all," Bush Novak wrote. "We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace." The acclaimed British actor became a science-fiction icon as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films. Beyond those iconic roles, Stewart earned multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for performances in Moby Dick, The Lion in Winter, Extras, Hamlet, and Blunt Talk. He later returned to his most famous role in Star Trek: Picard.
  
  
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• Nvidia Chief Seen As Target of Chinese Spy Plot
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: American spy agencies had gathered striking intelligence. A top executive at a Singapore-based data center company was under scrutiny for possibly steering advanced Nvidia A.I. chips to China. And now American officials had concluded that she was a Chinese intelligence asset (source paywalled; alternative source), funneling information to Beijing. But what came next was even more alarming. Surveillance of the executive, Alice Huang or Huang Le, a Chinese citizen, revealed that she had developed a close relationship with Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive. For years, Washington has worked to deny China the technology needed to match or surpass the United States in the intense global competition for superiority in artificial intelligence. The discovery that Beijing was getting reports from someone with direct access to Mr. Huang, one of the most powerful figures in the A.I. revolution as well as an influential ally of President Trump's, set off alarms at the White House. Roughly a year ago, Mr. Trump was briefed about the intelligence findings, which have not been previously reported, and chose not to do anything with the information. Mr. Trump has been wary of disrupting Nvidia's chip sales, which are helping to drive the economy and the stock market, and of further complicating the trading relationship with China. This account is based on interviews with people briefed on the surveillance, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings are drawn from classified intelligence, as well as other officials and industry executives and analysts. American officials already suspected that Ms. Huang was helping China evade constraints on its ability to gain access to advanced A.I. chips. But the revelation that she was feeding information directly to Beijing raised more troubling possibilities, including that Mr. Huang had insights into Mr. Trump's thinking on an issue of vital importance to both nations, one likely to come up when the president visits China next month. And it left questions about whether she could be gleaning information about Nvidia, which as much as any company accounts for the lead the United States has maintained in developing cutting-edge A.I. models. The surveillance of Ms. Huang continues, they said, and companies that have been affiliated with her continued this year to purchase Nvidia chips. Nvidia said in a statement: "Jensen's interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected. Meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year." Nvidia is "confident that if the U.S. government believes that any person is a threat to American industry, it would let us know." Customers like Megaspeed, the company that employed Ms. Huang, "receive ordinary business information -- not sensitive Nvidia trade secrets -- and zero information relevant to national security," the company added. In a statement to The New York Times, Megaspeed said that its "current leadership" takes the matter "extremely seriously and is committed to getting to the facts behind these allegations." It added that "outside counsel has been retained to conduct a thorough internal investigation and has notified the U.S. government that we are fully committed to cooperating."
  
  
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• Alphabet Heads For a $500 Billion Drop In Market Value
  Yesterday, Google reported its Q3 results that showed searches made through its AI Mode generate less revenue than traditional search, even as overall search revenue grew 12% year over year to $63.25 billion. The news sent Alphabet shares plunging, with Bespoke Investment Group reporting that the stock is on track for its steepest post-earnings decline since the company went public in 2004. Yahoo Finance reports: At its low, Alphabet had lost $524 billion in stock market value, the second-biggest one-day loss ever for a US-listed company. Only Nvidia has lost more, about $593 billion on Jan. 27, 2025, the day China's DeepSeek rattled AI investors. Alphabet would need to close at about $274.75, down roughly 15%, to take Nvidia's record, by Yahoo Finance calculations. It has already blown past the $400 billion SpaceX lost on June 22, the previous No. 2. In dollars, it's Alphabet's worst day by far. Its previous worst was about $275 billion on July 23. It's also on track for the stock's steepest drop after an earnings report since the company went public, according to Bespoke Investment Group. The previous low was a slide of nearly 10% in July 2008. [...] US-listed stocks have shed $200 billion or more in a single session 18 times this year through Wednesday. That's up from 13 in all of 2025 and none before 2022, according to Yahoo Finance calculations from Bloomberg data. Alphabet alone has lost about $1.4 trillion since its record in May.
  
  
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• Canada to Join EU Network of Supercomputers
  Canada is joining the European Union's supercomputing network to give Canadian companies, startups, and researchers access to European computing resources for AI development. The partnership aims to strengthen AI cooperation and reduce dependence on US technology. Politico reports: The EU's supercomputing network is run by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, an EU public-private vehicle with an 8.2 billion-euro budget. The network consists of 14 supercomputers (some ranked in the global top 10), 19 AI-focused AI factories and 10 quantum computers. The vehicle will also run seven massive AI data center hubs, known as AI gigafactories, set to be built next year with a total investment cost of 30 billion euros. Experts praised a possible EU-Canadian compute power team-up, but warned it's only the start. "Compute cooperation is one of the most obvious short-term 'middle power' cooperation plays in AI," said Anton Leicht, technology and international affairs fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. But he added that for now "it doesn't put a dent into the actual dependence" on the U.S. "As long as the U.S. builds gigawatt-scale clusters, no amount of cooperation that doesn't result in massive buildouts will help," he said. Canada's engagement in the EU's supercomputer network builds further on Canada's previous partial involvement in the EU's flagship research and development program, Horizon Europe. Horizon Europe partially funds EuroHPC. To date, 38 countries have participated in the EU's supercomputing network: 27 EU member countries plus non-EU countries including Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Israel and Turkey.
  
  
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• DoorDash Strikes $17 Billion Deal For US Rival Instacart
  DoorDash has agreed to acquire Instacart for about $17 billion as it expands beyond restaurant delivery and deeper into the U.S. grocery market. The deal, expected to close in late 2027 or the first half of 2028, could face regulatory scrutiny over further consolidation in the delivery industry. Reuters reports: DoorDash has offered Instacart shareholders $65 per share held, representing a premium of about 26% to the stock's closing price on October 22 before reports of deal talks first emerged. The consideration will be at least 75% cash, with Instacart shareholders able to elect cash, DoorDash stock or a combination of the two, the companies said. [...] The transaction is expected to close at the end of 2027 or the first half of 2028. The deal could face scrutiny over its impact on competition, with New York City's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) saying on Wednesday that a potential merger continued a "troubling trend" of corporate consolidation. DoorDash, however, pledged on Thursday that local grocers could continue to work with any delivery platform they choose.
  
  
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• Reddit Is Getting a 'For You' Feed
  Reddit is overhauling its homepage with separate "For You" and "Following" feeds, with the former combining posts from subscribed communities and algorithmic recommendations based on users' interests and activity. The Verge reports: It's a big shift for the platform, but not an entirely surprising one, as Reddit hasn't been shy about wanting to switch up the homepage. Earlier this year, the company announced it would be deprecating r/all, which surfaced posts that were popular across the platform, as part of its "ongoing efforts to simplify Reddit and improve Home feed personalization." "This new feed experience is a first step in helping drive discovery that leads to something novel and relevant -- an idea, a connection, a unique perspective, or even a new interest," Reddit says. "A more human internet is not just something you sit back and watch, it is something you find value in and want to participate in."
  
  
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• 'Please Let the Internet Die'
  Slashdot reader fjo3 shares an article from Wired: The internet must be put out of its misery. Any rational observer can admit that the current iteration of the web -- and the social fabric woven there -- is not what they signed up for. Symptoms of advanced cultural decay can no longer be ignored. This thing is eating itself. Giants including Meta and Google have been forced to settle massive consumer lawsuits brought over privacy violations and mental health harms allegedly caused by the addictive mechanisms of their platforms. Schools are banning smartphones as multiple countries institute social media restrictions for under-16s. Parents are in a panic about their kids aspiring to careers as social media celebrities, losing themselves in a vast ecosystem of online casinos, or joining extremist movements. Generative AI, briefly considered an amusing novelty, is now a turbocharged slop engine for the web, filling feeds and comment sections with useless, grotesque content. As humans scroll past headlines about AI taking their jobs, confusing fantasy for reality, and contributing to cognitive decline, any consumer appeal the technology might have is turning to anguish. The data centers that power it have become increasingly unpopular, and politically radioactive. To be online, many now admit, is to be endlessly manipulated and exploited. In December, Oxford University Press declared rage bait to be the word of the year, noting that use of the term had tripled over the previous 12 months. The lexical spike represented a heightened awareness that monetized social accounts churn out bad-faith takes and extremist content, automating this abusive behavior with generative AI, simply to profit off hostile engagement. Billionaire oligarchs have opened the floodgates to such inauthentic activity, conspiracy-mongering, and hate speech by rolling back moderation. In short, when you hang around online in 2026, you see little worth saving. Perhaps a decade ago, you felt that the glimmers of community and joy, of artistic and intellectual exchange, were enough to balance out the toxic junk. No longer.
  
  
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• Security: Why Linux Is Better Than Windows Or Mac OS
  Linux is a free and open source operating system that was released in 1991 developed and released by Linus Torvalds. Since its release it has reached a user base that is greatly widespread worldwide. Linux users swear by the reliability and freedom that this operating system offers, especially when compared to its counterparts, windows and [0]

• Essential Software That Are Not Available On Linux OS
  An operating system is essentially the most important component in a computer. It manages the different hardware and software components of a computer in the most effective way. There are different types of operating system and everything comes with their own set of programs and software. You cannot expect a Linux program to have all [0]

• Things You Never Knew About Your Operating System
  The advent of computers has brought about a revolution in our daily life. From computers that were so huge to fit in a room, we have come a very long way to desktops and even palmtops. These machines have become our virtual lockers, and a life without these network machines have become unimaginable. Sending mails, [0]

• How To Fully Optimize Your Operating System
  Computers and systems are tricky and complicated. If you lack a thorough knowledge or even basic knowledge of computers, you will often find yourself in a bind. You must understand that something as complicated as a computer requires constant care and constant cleaning up of junk files. Unless you put in the time to configure [0]

• The Top Problems With Major Operating Systems
  There is no such system which does not give you any problems. Even if the system and the operating system of your system is easy to understand, there will be some times when certain problems will arise. Most of these problems are easy to handle and easy to get rid of. But you must be [0]

• 8 Benefits Of Linux OS
  Linux is a small and a fast-growing operating system. However, we can’t term it as software yet. As discussed in the article about what can a Linux OS do Linux is a kernel. Now, kernels are used for software and programs. These kernels are used by the computer and can be used with various third-party software [0]

• Things Linux OS Can Do That Other OS Cant
  What Is Linux OS?  Linux, similar to U-bix is an operating system which can be used for various computers, hand held devices, embedded devices, etc. The reason why Linux operated system is preferred by many, is because it is easy to use and re-use. Linux based operating system is technically not an Operating System. Operating [0]

• Packagekit Interview
  Packagekit aims to make the management of applications in the Linux and GNU systems. The main objective to remove the pains it takes to create a system. Along with this in an interview, Richard Hughes, the developer of Packagekit said that he aims to make the Linux systems just as powerful as the Windows or [0]

• What’s New in Ubuntu?
  What Is Ubuntu? Ubuntu is open source software. It is useful for Linux based computers. The software is marketed by the Canonical Ltd., Ubuntu community. Ubuntu was first released in late October in 2004. The Ubuntu program uses Java, Python, C, C++ and C# programming languages. What Is New? The version 17.04 is now available here [0]

• Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs In Windows With Regards To Colinux
  The problem with Windows is that there are various limitations to the computer and there is only so much you can do with it. You can access the Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs by using the coLinux tool. Download the tool from the  official site or from the  sourceforge site. Edit the connection to “TAP Win32 Adapter [0]

• AlpineBSD combines NetBSD with Alpines apk package manager
  AlpineBSD is an operating system based on the NetBSD kernel with a userspace inspired by Alpine Linux and the objective of making it possible to use as little AI-generated software as possible. There is no LLM output included in the base system or main package repository (AlpineBSD AI policy). ↫ AlpineBSDs website AlpineBSD uses the NetBSD kernel, libc, and essential tools, and combines them with Alpines apk-tools package manager, busybox, and generlaly preferring GNU tools over their BSD equivalents. It uses the s6 init system, but the project intends to add OpenRC as an alternative. The project is in its very early stages, so dont expect things like an installer; youre on your own, basically.

• My favourite PowerMac is a Nintendo Wii!
  The Nintendo Wii (and its related consoles) were already made to run the PowerPC version of Windows NT as well as Mac OS X, but now we can add another milestone to the list: classic Mac OS. So today I reached a nice milestone in one of my projects: my work porting classic Mac OS to PowerPC systems with what I affectionately call ArtX chipsets (Nintendo GameCube, Wii, eventually Wii U; the GameCube’s Flipper integrated chipset was very much designed by ArtX as it was effectively finished when ATI acquired the company, and the Wii’s Vegas (and its later revision Bollywood) and Wii U’s Latte are effectively straight successors) reached the desktop for the first time, most likely the first time since the CHRP clone era that someone outside of Apple brought up classic Mac OS on a new system to the desktop. Despite still being nowhere near ready for a public release, I want to talk about the challenges I faced with this project so far. ↫ Rairii at Virtuallyfun Various versions of Mac OS boot to the desktop, including Mac OS 9.2.2, the last ever version, but theres still a ton or work to be done before this is ready for release. Still, with Rairii amazing track record of porting all kinds of things to various PowerPC machines, including getting the PowerPC version of Windows NT to run on various PowerPC Macs, I have little doubt theyll manager to get this to a releasable state. I absolutely love this kind of work.

• Microsoft hopefully fixes Modern Standby and adds online Windows reinstallation
  I think its safe to say that Windows Modern Standby feature isnt exactly free from issues. The biggest problem seems to be that its not very good at actually determining when to transition between regular sleep and hibernation, often leaving users with an empty battery as they open their laptops lid. Microsoft has now released an update to hopefully address this long-standing problem. This update improves the adaptive hibernate policy to provide more instant-on resumes from Modern Standby while helping preserve battery life when the charge is low. Noticeable changes include less hibernation while the battery is above 80% and hibernating sooner when the battery is below 10%. ↫ KB5127936 Among other new features and changes this update brings are Cloud Rebuild, a way for devices to install Windows without needing a local image. Cloud Rebuild can be started form within an existing installation, remotely by administrators, or through the Windows Recovery Environment. Obviously, a working internet connection, wired or wireless, is required for this feature to work. This is the same update that introduces CLAT, which we talked about yesterday, to smooth the transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

• NetBSD adds nano-like text editor to base system
  Flag LinuxNetBSD made a seemingly small, but very welcome announcement today: theyre adding a more user-friendly, easier to use command-line text editor to the base install. To ease the transition for new users, NetBSD -current now includes an alternative editor to vi(1) and xedit(1) in its base system, atto(1). It is a modeless screen-based editor similar to nano, pico, xedit, or emacs. It is only 48 kilobytes, making it suitable for inclusion in the rescue system. ↫ NetBSD Foundation on Fedi Most guides and how-to article for operating systems like NetBSD assume the use of vi, and while I dont want to ignite a flamewar, vi isnt exactly the most approachable or friendly piece of software out there. My occassional text editing in the command line is all done through nano, but now Im definitely curious to give atto a go. While other tech news websites are plastered with articles about a PC maker adding a touch screen to one of their laptops, were talking about a new CLI text editor in NetBSDs base system. Priorities, folks.

• Windows CLAT is now generally available
  Windows 11 25H2, starting with build 26200.9550, now comes with something called CLAT. As organizations move toward IPv6-only and IPv6-mostly networks, some applications still depend on IPv4-only applications or services. Windows CLAT helps those applications continue to work when a network does not provide native IPv4 connectivity. CLAT is the client-side component of`464XLAT. It statelessly translates IPv4 traffic from the Windows client into IPv6 for transport across the network to a provider-side translator (PLAT), which provides stateful NAT64 translation to IPv4. ↫ Jim Alumbaugh at Microsofts Networking Blog Yet another important component of the long, neverending transition to IPv6. Like endlessly cutting a cucumber in half, youll never quite run out of cucumber to cut.

• Sylphide OS: an operating system for computers based on microcontrollers
  Do you want a hobby operating system with a desktop for a microcontroller-based computer? Sylphide OS is a new project aiming to build just that. For the last few weeks, I’ve worked on a new pet project: an operating system for computers based on microcontrollers. There aren’t many yet, but I expect them to be more and more common. Why MCU computers ? You get a relatively very simple platform, booting straight to your code (or almost), and you can understand the whole architecture. Exactly as it was with home computers long ago. And not at all what you get with modern computers. Even booting involves lot of very different systems, black magic, and even blog/proprietary software. ↫ Thomas Capricelli Its very early in development, but by building it atop FreeRTOS, Capricelli had a head-start. Its got a basic desktop, one that might need some changes to avoid the lawyers. The codes open source, of course.

• Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11
  Whats the oldest Windows GUI application you can still run on Windows 11 today, without any modifications? For now, the best answer Boris Popik can come up with is an innocuous application from build 347 of Windows NT 3.1, an early prerelease: CDPLAYER.EXE. You cant go any older than that, because earlier prerelease builds had not yet finalised its PE format and calling convention. Neat find. Popik also mentions a few other contenders, but I wont spoil those here.

• Another month of Redox improvements
  Another month has crumbled to dust under the oppressive boots of time, so its time for another month of Redox improvements. This past month, Redox build system gained support for Clang, SDL2 saw performance improvements, and WebKitGTK3s HTML layout rendering was fixed. Users of Intel Tiger Lake processors can now enjoy external display hot-plugging, and overall system performance has been improved in a variety of ways. And as always, theres the long lists of kernel, relibc, and driver improvements and fixes as well. Redox keeps making big strides every month, and its definitely one of the few alternative operating systems that actually feels like it might, one day, be an actual contender for general purpose use.

• Microsoft.UI.Reactor: a C#-first way to build WinUI apps
  Thew day ends in a Y, so Microsoft is launching a new way to build Windows applications. Get excited, Windows application developers! If you caught our session at Microsoft Build 2026 or you’ve been watching the repo, you’ve seen this one taking shape in public for a while now, and a lot has changed since Build. Here’s the longer tour: Microsoft.UI.Reactor, an experimental C# framework that brings the MVU (Model-View-Update) pattern to WinUI desktop apps. No XAML files, no code-behind, no ViewModels. Two things before the fun part. Reactor is experimental: no support policy, no API guarantees, published this early on purpose because we’d rather hear we got the design wrong now than once people have shipped on it. And it is not a replacement for XAML or MVVM, which we’ll come back to. ↫ Alexandre Zollinger Chohfi at Microsofts Dev Blogs At multiple points in the linked blog post, Microsoft underlines that no, Reactor is not going to replace XAML. Im sure Windows developers who learned Win32, Silverlight, WinRT XAML, WPF, UWP, WinUI 2 and 3, and all the others, over the past two decades will feel deeply comforted by Microsofts insistence that Reactor will not replace XAML. Microsoft repeats: this wont replace XAML. They swear.

• MacOS Extensions pack for the Apple Network Server v1.0
  Weve been following along with Carmen Kaisers Apple Network Server exploits, and by now things are really starting to come together for owners of this machine. When we last left off, the ROM to allow Mac OS to run on the machine which normally runs IBMs AIX, but there were still a number of bugs, limitations, and issues to be worked out. A lot of progress on that front has been made. The good news is, many of the issues with the preproduction ROM in Mac OS can be fixed or worked around in software. So Ive fixed or worked around many of them in software: the MACE Ethernet is fixed, the on-board video is now supported, and the ANS can restart properly back into Mac OS. Plus, because its the preproduction ROM, you can still boot AIX, thus preserving the entire historical reason for Shiners existence. Heres the first cut of that software and how it was developed. ↫ Cameron Kaiser Theres still two issues Kaiser wishes to address  the internal SCSI bays dont work, and the ROM doesnt properly register parity RAM  but the progress here is amazing.

• CoW, which (sort-of) brings FVWM to Wayland, reaches version 0.4
  Thomas Adam, one of the core developers of FVWM, has been working on CoW for a while now. CoW can best be described as FVWM for Wayland!, which uniquely uses the River compositor. River, in turn, is unique in that it does not combine the compositor and window manager into a single program, allowing for a more traditional X11-like approach. Adam released version 0.4 today, which comes with a load of fixes, changes, and minor improvements, as well as one bigger-ticket item: container windows. This PR introduces the concept of a top-level container window. This means a window can be subdivided into columns and rows (called panes) and can be resized independently of one another. The idea for this has been unashamedly stolen from shod. ↫ Thomas Adam Ive been keeping an eye on CoW ever since I learned about it when it was first released, and at some point soon I want to build a desktop around it for myself.

• The many many missed opportunities of Sonic 06
  Speaking of games, if youve ever heard anything about or even played Sonic 06, you know this wasnt the most polished entry in the hedgehogs franchise. In fact, its probably one of the worst, and considering the average quality of Sonic games, thats quite an achievement. The team thats working on decompiling the game to make it run on the PC obviously had to dive deep into the games inner workings, and the process learned a lot about why, exactly, the game is so notoriously bad. It really makes you wonder what exactly went wrong? If you look at what limited footage we have of beta content, we can see many effects that aren’t present in the final game. Kingdom Valley had full bump maps, Castle Town had more complex geometry and plants, and New City’s collision implies a very different building layout at some point in development. It turns out, much of the cut content is actually still in the game, but is simply not enabled for performance reasons in vanilla. Even with the cut-back visuals, the game struggles to reach target FPS on real hardware. It’s not surprising that given the crunch Sonic Team were under to get the game out the door, these features were among the first to go. ↫ Isaac Marovitz The article details what, exactly, was turned off for the final release, and its quite an interesting read. Of course, the team intends to try and address many of these issues, and they think they can push the game and its engine to much greater heights.

• How to run a city builder on 16 MHz
  When thinking about impressive technical achievements in retro games, most people will first point to graphical milestones set by action games like Doom or Quake. Rightfully so, but at least I am personally far more impressed by the early examples of the city builder genre. Simulating whole economies on a large scale with a fraction of today’s power seems impossible if modern builder games even struggle on modern machines. Of course this didn’t stop developers in the past to develop and run city builder games on significantly weaker hardware. The original SimCity for example lists Intel’s 386SX as the CPU in it’s system requirements. A CPU which at the time of it’s launch ran at magnificent 16 MHz. ↫ Lars Thießen Whats even more impressive are some of the other systems the origin al SimCity was ported to, which had even more limited hardware than a 386SX. The Super Nintendo got a SimCity port, which even included fun extras like a Mario statue and Bowser taking up the mantle of the Godzilla disaster, and additional systems the PC version didnt have. Hell, they even worked on a port to the NES, but it was cancelled and thought lost, until a relatively complete and working copy was discovered in 2017. Even this NES version contained features not available in the PC version. Hardware limitations really did breed a lot of innovation back in those days, and sometimes I wonder if programmers and developers could benefit from tasking themselves with working within such limitations today, if only to become a bit more prudent with resources.

• I cant believe PowerShell is actually good!
  Earlier this year, I needed to learn PowerShell scripting for one Windows-related project, and I have tried it out a few more times on Mac. It has quickly become one of my favorite tools for automation and scripting—taking on jobs that I would have otherwise tried to do with Node.js, Shortcuts, macOS Automator, or heaven forbid, Bash scripts. I get it now. PowerShell is great, even if you dont use it as your shell, and even if youre on Mac or Linux. ↫ Corbin Davenport I dont use the shell often enough on any of my main machines to have much of an idea about the strenghths and weaknesses of PowerShell compared to more traditional shells, but this is definitely not the first time Ive heard a lot of praise for it from people otherwise knee-deep in the UNIX and traditional shell world. There really must be something to this, and since PowerShell is also available on Linux and macOS, its pretty straightforward to give it a go without having to deal with Windows.

• Garmin revamps and opens up Connect developer API program
  Earlier this year, Garmin closed its Connect API developer program because it was being flooded with AI!-generated applications to the point it couldnt handle them anymore. What made it worse was that half of the applications were never actually used, not even once. It also didnt help that Garmin treated every single application to the program the same way, whether it was from a hobbyist just wanting access to their own data, to a massive corporation developing a popular service used by god knows how many people. Today, the company has relaunched the program, and its been considerably overhauled. While hobbyist use of the API is going to be free  which is way better than it was before  once you hit a thousand users, youre going to have to start paying. Still, Garmin’s shift here towards charging for API access will set a dangerous precedent for the industry. Especially for a company that bills itself as a (or the?) premium sports hardware provider. On the flip side, there’s simply no ignoring the flood of mostly AI apps that take up resources at Garmin and elsewhere to support. Heck, my inbox is flooded with these apps daily requesting reviews. It sounds like when Garmin shut off access to the API last spring, they were seeing inbound API requests at a daily scale that they’d previously only seen over a period of weeks. Simply put, there’s no good answer. ↫ Ray Maker at DC Rainmaker The excesses of the easy availability of AI! code generation impacts the entire industry. At least one good thing has come out of this: hobbyists can now access the Connect API developer program much easier than before.

• Examining the macOS gcc binary
  If you’ve ever written C (or c++) on a mac, you’ll know that the so-called gcc is just clang in disguise. Most people (fairly) assume that this is just an alias, but this is not true! It’s a binary! Now, what is this binary? I naively assumed that it would just be shelling out to clang but it turns out the answer is more interesting than that. ↫ juliethefoxcoon Its all smoke and mirrors.

• KDE Plasma 6.8.2 Released With More KWin and Wayland Fixes
  by George Whittaker
  The KDE Project has released KDE Plasma 6.8.2, delivering another round of stability improvements for its Wayland-based Linux desktop environment. Released on October 27, 2026, the update arrives one week after Plasma 6.8.1 and two weeks after the anniversary release of Plasma 6.8, which marked 30 years since the KDE project's founding.
  
  This second maintenance release concentrates on correcting regressions discovered after the initial rollout. The largest collection of changes targets KWin, KDE's window manager and Wayland compositor, with fixes involving multi-GPU synchronization, display handling, pointer constraints, color pipelines, and window stacking. Additional improvements address disappearing desktop icons, application launcher behavior, remote desktop sessions, screen recording, accessibility, and system monitoring.
  
  Although Plasma 6.8.2 does not introduce major new desktop features, its corrections are particularly important because Plasma 6.8 completed KDE's transition away from native X11 desktop sessions. With Wayland now serving as Plasma's display foundation, improvements to KWin and its supporting components directly affect the reliability of the entire desktop environment.
  KDE Continues Stabilizing Its Anniversary Release
  KDE Plasma 6.8 arrived on October 14, 2026, coinciding with the project's 30th anniversary. The release introduced significant desktop changes, including the retirement of native X11 sessions, additional HDR improvements, expanded remote desktop capabilities, NVIDIA graphics optimizations, and further development of KDE's Union theming engine.
  
  The transition represented an important architectural milestone, but major desktop releases frequently expose problems that were not encountered during development or beta testing. Linux desktops must operate across numerous combinations of graphics hardware, display configurations, drivers, input devices, and applications. Even extensive testing cannot always reproduce every environment used by the wider community.
  
  KDE acknowledged this challenge during the development cycle following Plasma 6.8, noting that users had discovered regressions that were not reported during the beta period. Contributors responded with a substantial collection of fixes, many of which have now reached the stable 6.8 branch through its first two maintenance releases.
  
  Plasma 6.8.2 continues that stabilization effort. Rather than changing the desktop's overall direction, it improves the reliability of existing functionality and addresses issues that could affect everyday workflows. The release includes corrections across KWin, Plasma Desktop, Plasma Workspace, Discover, KRDP, KPipeWire, and several other components.
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• RefreshOS 3.1 Strengthens Its Debian Foundation With Independent Package Management
  by George Whittaker
  The RefreshOS project has released RefreshOS 3.1, bringing an updated Debian foundation, a dedicated software repository, improved 32-bit application compatibility, and several refinements to its KDE Plasma desktop experience. Released on October 27, 2026, the update advances the distribution's 3.x "Colorful Cosmos" series while introducing infrastructure that could significantly improve how RefreshOS delivers its own packages and configuration changes.
  
  The new release moves from Debian 13.4 to Debian 13.7 "Trixie", incorporates Linux kernel 6.12.113, and continues using KDE Plasma 6.3.6. However, the most important development is the introduction of an official RefreshOS APT repository with separate Stable, Testing, and Experimental channels. This gives the project a more structured way to distribute customized software while continuing to benefit from Debian's established package ecosystem.
  
  RefreshOS 3.1 also enables i386 architecture support, making it easier to install compatible 32-bit software and dependencies required by applications such as Steam. Additional changes address desktop localization, KDE integration, installer configuration, package permissions, and installation image cleanup. Together, these improvements represent an effort to make RefreshOS easier to maintain while preserving its focus on a ready-to-use Linux desktop.
  RefreshOS Builds on Debian's Stable Release Model
  RefreshOS is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by eXybit Technologies, designed to provide a polished desktop environment without requiring users to configure every component manually. The project combines Debian's stable package foundation with KDE Plasma, preinstalled applications, hardware support, multimedia capabilities, and custom desktop styling.
  
  Unlike distributions that emphasize constant adoption of the newest software versions, RefreshOS prioritizes a relatively predictable desktop experience. Its Debian foundation provides access to established security maintenance, package management, and compatibility practices, while RefreshOS adds its own configuration choices to simplify everyday use.
  
  Version 3.1 continues that philosophy by incorporating Debian 13.7, the seventh point release of Debian 13 "Trixie." Debian published this update on September 12, 2026, primarily to consolidate security corrections and fixes for significant software problems. These point releases do not represent entirely new Debian generations. Instead, they refresh installation media and package selections so newly installed systems begin with a more current collection of fixes.
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• Tails 7.15.1 Blocks Compromised HTTPS Certificates in Urgent Privacy Security Fix
  by George Whittaker
  The Tails project has released Tails 7.15.1, an emergency security update addressing a compromised certificate authority that could allow attackers to impersonate legitimate HTTPS websites. Released on October 23, 2026, the update focuses on protecting users against a potentially serious man-in-the-middle attack involving certificates associated with eMudhra, an authority whose intermediate certificates were compromised.
  
  The emergency release updates Tor Browser to version 15.0.26, addressing CVE-2026-113470, and modifies the distribution's trusted certificate authorities to block all eMudhra certificates. These changes are particularly important for Tails because the operating system routes internet traffic through the Tor network, where malicious exit nodes or other network intermediaries could potentially exploit compromised certificates to impersonate secure websites.
  
  Unlike a conventional maintenance update, Tails 7.15.1 does not introduce major desktop features, new applications, or significant interface changes. Its purpose is to close a security gap that could undermine the authenticity of HTTPS connections. The developers recommend upgrading promptly, especially for users who rely on Tails for sensitive communications, anonymous research, journalism, or other privacy-critical activities.
  Why Tails 7.15.1 Was Released as an Emergency Update
  Tails, short for The Amnesic Incognito Live System, is a Debian-based Linux distribution designed to help users preserve their privacy and reduce traces of their computing activity. It typically runs from a USB stick and routes internet connections through Tor, making it useful for people who need stronger privacy protections than those provided by a conventional desktop operating system.
  
  The distribution also emphasizes minimizing persistent data. By default, Tails operates as a live environment and does not retain ordinary session activity after shutdown. Users who need to preserve selected files and settings can configure encrypted Persistent Storage on their USB device, allowing them to maintain important information across sessions without changing the operating system's general amnesic behavior.
  
  Because Tails is built around privacy and secure communication, problems involving HTTPS certificate validation deserve particular attention. Tor helps obscure the relationship between a user's network location and the websites they visit, but it does not automatically guarantee that every website encountered through an exit node is authentic. HTTPS provides an additional layer of protection by authenticating websites and encrypting communications between the browser and the destination server.
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• Omarchy 4.0.5 Released With Better NVIDIA Laptop Support
  by George Whittaker
  The Omarchy project has released Omarchy 4.0.5, introducing a substantial collection of hardware compatibility improvements, desktop performance optimizations, security fixes, and package updates for the Arch Linux-based operating system. Released on October 18, 2026, the update focuses on refining the existing desktop experience while preparing the distribution for its next major feature release.
  
  Among the most important changes are improved NVIDIA hybrid graphics support for laptops, an updated Linux 7.2.8 kernel featuring the BORE scheduler, and compatibility improvements for Qt 6.12. The release also resolves boot-related black screens, fixes audio problems affecting certain Dell and USB speaker configurations, corrects Steam graphics driver selection, and improves the reliability of several desktop utilities.
  
  Although version 4.0.5 is primarily a maintenance release, its improvements extend across many of the components that determine how smoothly a Linux desktop operates. From faster application launches and more responsive desktop panels to stronger security defaults and more reliable hardware detection, the update demonstrates Omarchy's continued emphasis on delivering a preconfigured Linux environment that requires relatively little manual setup.
  Omarchy Continues Refining Its Arch Linux Desktop Experience
  Omarchy is an opinionated Arch Linux-based distribution designed to provide a ready-to-use development and desktop environment built around the Hyprland Wayland compositor. Rather than presenting users with a minimal installation that requires extensive customization, Omarchy combines a carefully selected collection of applications, themes, keyboard shortcuts, and system configurations into a cohesive desktop experience.
  
  The distribution has attracted attention among developers and experienced Linux users who appreciate keyboard-driven workflows, tiling window management, and the flexibility of Arch Linux without necessarily wanting to configure every component manually. Its desktop environment emphasizes efficient navigation, integrated development tools, and a consistent visual design, while retaining access to Arch's extensive software repositories.
  
  Version 4.0.5 continues that approach by concentrating on problems that can interrupt everyday workflows. The release improves hardware compatibility, corrects regressions introduced by newer software packages, and reduces unnecessary delays in common desktop operations. Rather than introducing a dramatic redesign, the developers have focused on making the existing environment more predictable and responsive.
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• KDE Plasma 6.8 Marks 30 Years With a Major Shift to Wayland and a More Powerful Linux Desktop
  by George Whittaker
  The KDE Project has officially released KDE Plasma 6.8, introducing a substantial collection of desktop improvements while celebrating three decades of open-source software development. Released on October 14, 2026, exactly 30 years after Matthias Ettrich announced the original KDE project, this anniversary edition brings significant changes to display management, accessibility, graphics performance, remote desktop functionality, system monitoring, and application theming.
  
  Perhaps the most consequential development is KDE's decision to retire native X11 desktop sessions in Plasma 6.8, completing its transition toward Wayland as the primary display architecture. The release also introduces NVIDIA triple buffering by default, improved HDR support, a more capable remote desktop server, CPU affinity controls in System Monitor, and expanded capabilities for the experimental Union theming engine. These improvements reflect KDE's effort to modernize the Linux desktop while maintaining the customization and flexibility that have defined Plasma for years.
  
  Plasma 6.8 is therefore more than a commemorative release. It represents an important architectural transition for one of Linux's most widely used desktop environments, with changes that affect both everyday users and developers building applications for the next generation of Linux desktops.
  KDE Celebrates Three Decades of Open-Source Desktop Development
  KDE's history began on October 14, 1996, when Matthias Ettrich proposed creating a consistent graphical desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems. At the time, Linux was becoming increasingly capable as a free operating system, but its graphical experience remained fragmented. Users could choose from several window managers and applications, yet there was no universally integrated desktop environment comparable to the commercial graphical systems available elsewhere.
  
  The original KDE initiative sought to address that limitation by building a cohesive desktop around the Qt application framework. Over the following decades, the project evolved through several major generations, introducing increasingly sophisticated desktop technologies while expanding into applications, development frameworks, mobile interfaces, and other open-source projects.
  
  Plasma 6.8 arrives as KDE marks its 30th anniversary, but its development priorities are focused primarily on the future. Rather than introducing a purely cosmetic anniversary edition, KDE has concentrated on modernizing underlying desktop infrastructure while improving accessibility, usability, and performance. The result is a release that combines immediately visible enhancements with architectural changes intended to support future development.
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• Building a Reliable Event-Driven Payment Service With XRP Ledger
  by Emma Clapp
  Receiving a transaction notification is only the first step. Production software still has to decide whether that event is safe to turn into application state.
  
  A WebSocket callback can arrive in milliseconds. What happens afterward is harder. The Go to Full Article

• Linux Moves Closer to Retiring the x32 ABI After Years of Limited Adoption
  by George Whittaker
  Linux kernel developers are renewing efforts to retire the x32 application binary interface (ABI), a little-used compatibility feature that attempted to combine the advantages of 64-bit processors with the smaller memory footprint of 32-bit applications. A revised patch series submitted on October 8, 2026, proposes the first steps toward disabling the interface, potentially ending support for an architecture experiment introduced more than 14 years ago.
  
  The latest proposal comes from Sebastian Andrzej Siewior, a Linux kernel developer at Linutronix who has been working on the removal effort throughout 2026. Rather than immediately deleting every component associated with x32, the proposed approach would first prevent the feature from being enabled through normal kernel configuration. This would give remaining users and distribution maintainers an opportunity to respond before the underlying implementation is removed.
  
  The effort reflects a broader challenge in Linux development: maintaining compatibility with older or rarely used technologies while keeping the kernel manageable, secure, and efficient. Although x32 offered theoretical performance and memory advantages, it never achieved widespread adoption. With conventional x86_64 software dominating modern Linux systems, developers are increasingly questioning whether the additional maintenance burden remains justified.
  Understanding the Linux x32 ABI
  The x32 ABI was introduced with Linux kernel 3.4 in 2012 as an alternative to conventional 32-bit and 64-bit application environments. Its goal was to provide applications with access to the architectural improvements of x86_64 processors while retaining smaller data types and pointers associated with 32-bit software.
  
  Traditional 32-bit x86 applications use the i386 ABI, which operates with a more limited register set and 32-bit execution conventions. Standard x86_64 applications, meanwhile, benefit from additional general-purpose registers, wider registers, and modern calling conventions, but they normally use 64-bit pointers. Those larger pointers can increase memory consumption in applications that maintain large numbers of pointer-heavy data structures.
  
  The x32 ABI attempted to offer a compromise. Applications would execute using the x86_64 instruction set and its larger register file while retaining 32-bit integers, long values, and pointers. This programming model is commonly described as ILP32, meaning that integers, long integers, and pointers are all 32 bits wide.
  
  The distinction can be illustrated by comparing the expected sizes of common C data types:
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• Google's Kage Project Rethinks Linux Kernel Security With Isolated Device Drivers
  by George Whittaker
  Google is exploring a new approach to Linux kernel security that could significantly change how device drivers interact with the operating system. The experimental project, known as Kage, uses compiler-based sandboxing to isolate drivers inside the kernel, potentially limiting the damage caused by memory corruption, programming errors, and exploitable vulnerabilities without requiring drivers to run as separate user-space processes.
  
  The research was presented at the Linux Plumbers Conference 2026, held October 5–7, with Stanford University and Google researcher Zachary Yedidia discussing how LLVM's Lightweight Fault Isolation (LFI) technology can create restricted execution environments for native kernel code. Unlike conventional isolation techniques, which often depend on separate processes or virtual machines, Kage attempts to preserve the performance advantages of kernel-space execution while reducing the amount of memory individual drivers can access.
  
  Early prototypes have already demonstrated the concept using NVMe storage, networking, and Wi-Fi drivers. However, Kage remains an experimental research project rather than a feature available in mainstream Linux distributions. Its developers are still investigating performance, hardware access, and compatibility with more complicated drivers, including graphics hardware.
  Why Device Drivers Remain a Major Linux Security Challenge
  Linux device drivers are responsible for connecting the operating system to hardware components, including graphics cards, network adapters, storage controllers, USB devices, and wireless chipsets. Most traditional Linux drivers execute in kernel space, giving them privileged access to system resources and the ability to interact directly with hardware. This architecture is one reason Linux can deliver high performance across such a broad range of devices, but it also creates a significant security challenge.
  
  When an ordinary application encounters a memory error, the operating system can often terminate that process without affecting the rest of the system. Kernel drivers operate under different conditions. Because they typically share the kernel's address space and privileges, an invalid memory access or exploitable vulnerability can affect unrelated kernel components, potentially resulting in a system crash, privilege escalation, or complete compromise of the operating system.
  
  The challenge becomes more complicated when considering the enormous number of drivers supported by Linux. Some are maintained by large organizations with extensive testing infrastructure, while others receive contributions from smaller development teams or individual maintainers. Even carefully reviewed drivers can contain bugs, particularly when they interact with complicated hardware, asynchronous operations, and memory-management mechanisms.
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• Speech Synthesis on Linux: Adding a Voice to Scripts and Systems
  by George Whittaker
  Linux users have long had a pragmatic relationship with text-to-speech. The classic open-source engines have been available for years, wired into accessibility tools and the occasional script, dependable but unmistakably robotic. They do the job where the job is simply to convert text to some kind of speech, but the mechanical output has kept them out of anything where the voice actually matters. The arrival of high-quality speech synthesis delivered over an API changes what is possible, letting Linux users add genuinely natural voices to scripts, services, and applications without hosting a heavyweight model themselves.
  The Familiar Trade-Off
  Anyone who has used the traditional Linux speech engines knows the trade-off. They are free, local, and scriptable, which fits the Linux ethos perfectly, but the voices are clearly synthetic. For accessibility and for utilitarian tasks where intelligibility is all that counts, that has been acceptable. For anything user-facing where the quality of the voice shapes the experience, it has not.
  
  The alternative of running a modern, high-quality speech model locally is possible but comes with real costs: significant computational requirements, model management, and the ongoing maintenance of a demanding piece of infrastructure. For many use cases, particularly on servers, embedded systems, or ordinary workstations, that overhead is disproportionate to the need. This is the gap that an API-based approach fills, offering the quality of a large modern model without the burden of hosting one.
  The API Approach on Linux
  Delivering speech synthesis over an API fits naturally into how Linux users already build things. Rather than installing and maintaining a model, you make a request to a service and receive audio back, which you can then play, save, or pipe into whatever comes next. A Go to Full Article

• Archinstall 4.5 Released with AArch64 Support, Real-Time Kernels, and Major Installer Fixes
  by George Whittaker
  The Arch Linux project has released Archinstall 4.5, the latest version of its guided text-based installer, bringing expanded AArch64 support, new real-time Linux kernel options, additional translations, security improvements, and numerous fixes for installation workflows.
  
  Archinstall 4.5 was released on September 29, 2026, roughly three months after Archinstall 4.4. The new version arrives just ahead of Arch Linux's October installation media refresh and has already been packaged as archinstall 4.5-1 for Arch Linux repositories.
  
  While Archinstall remains optional, it provides users with a guided way to configure an Arch Linux installation without manually performing every step described in the Arch installation guide. Version 4.5 concentrates primarily on hardware support, installer reliability, security, and expanding the range of systems that can use the guided installation process.
  AArch64 Support Gets a Major Upgrade
  One of the biggest changes in Archinstall 4.5 is improved support for AArch64, the 64-bit ARM architecture.
  
  The installer can now handle GRUB and Limine EFI installations on AArch64 systems. It also gains support for the proper AArch64 root partition type GUID.
  
  Previously, parts of Archinstall's bootloader configuration were more heavily oriented toward x86_64 installations. The latest changes make its guided installation workflow more useful on ARM64 hardware.
  
  AArch64 has become increasingly important throughout the Linux ecosystem. The architecture can now be found in cloud servers, development boards, laptops, workstations, and specialized computing platforms.
  
  Supporting both GRUB and Limine EFI installations gives Archinstall more flexibility when preparing these systems.
  GRUB Can Now Be Installed on AArch64
  GRUB remains one of the most widely used Linux bootloaders, and Archinstall 4.5 extends its installation logic to AArch64 EFI systems.
  
  This allows ARM64 installations to use a bootloader workflow much closer to what Archinstall already provides on conventional x86_64 UEFI computers.
  
  The change doesn't mean every ARM device will automatically become compatible with Arch Linux. ARM hardware can still have highly platform-specific firmware and boot requirements.
  
  It does, however, remove an important Archinstall limitation for AArch64 machines that provide conventional UEFI environments.
  Limine EFI Support Expands to ARM64
  The same architectural expansion applies to Limine.
  
  Limine is a modern multiprotocol bootloader supported as one of Archinstall's bootloader choices. Archinstall 4.5 extends its EFI installation support to AArch64 as well.
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