All the News that Matters

• [$] Mergiraf: syntax-aware merging for Git
  The idea of automatic syntax-aware merging in version-control systems goes back to2005 or earlier, but initial implementations wereoften language-specific and slow.Mergiraf is a merge-conflict resolver that uses a generic algorithm plus asmall amount of language-specific knowledgeto solve conflicts that Git's default strategy cannot.The project's contributors have been working on thetool for just under a year, but it alreadysupports 33 languages, including C,Python, Rust, and evenSystemVerilog.
  

• Ubuntu introduces architecture variants
  Michael Hudson-Doyle, a member of Ubuntu's Foundations team, has announcedthe introduction of an "architecture variant" for Ubuntu 25.10:
  
  By making changes to dpkg, apt and Launchpad, we are able to buildmultiple versions of a package, each for a different level of thex86-64 architecture, meaning we can have packages that specificallytarget x86-64-v3, for example.
  
  As a result, we're very excited to share that in Ubuntu 25.10, somepackages are available, on an opt-in basis, in their optimized formfor the more modern x86-64-v3 architecture level.
  
  See the announcement for details on opting in to x86-64-v3packages.
  
  
  

• Security updates for Friday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, libtiff, redis, and redis:6), Debian (chromium, mediawiki, pypy3, and squid), Fedora (openbao), SUSE (cdi-apiserver-container, cdi-cloner-container, cdi- controller-container, cdi-importer-container, cdi-operator-container, cdi- uploadproxy-container, cdi-uploadserver-container, cont, chromium, chrony, expat, haproxy, himmelblau, ImageMagick, iputils, kernel, libssh, libxslt, openssl-3, podman, strongswan, xorg-x11-server, and xwayland), and Ubuntu (kernel, libxml2, libyaml-syck-perl, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-oracle, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-kvm, and netty).

• Rust 1.91.0 released
  Version1.91.0 of the Rust language has been released. Changes includepromoting aarch64-pc-windows-msvc to a tier-1 platform, a new lint ruleto catch dangling raw pointers from local variables, and a fair number ofnewly stabilized APIs.

• [$] The long path toward optimizing short reads
  The kernel's file-I/O subsystems have been highly optimized over the yearsin the hope of providing the best performance for a wide variety ofworkloads. There is, however, one workload type that suffers with currentkernels: applications that perform many short reads, in multiple processes,from the same file. Kiryl Shutsemau has been working on a patch totry to optimize this case, but the task is turning out to be harder thanone might expect.

• Bazzite Fall update released
  The Universal Blueproject has announcedthe Fall update for the Fedora-based Bazzite gaming distribution. Thisrelease brings Bazzite up to Fedora 43, includes support foradditional handheld gaming systems, as well as drivers for a number ofsteering wheel devices, and more.
  
  
  

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (java-21-openjdk and libtiff), Debian (pdns-recursor and xorg-server), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, dtk6core, dtk6gui, dtk6log, dtk6widget, fcitx5-qt, fluidsynth, gammaray, kddockwidgets, LabPlot, mingw-qt6-qt3d, mingw-qt6-qt5compat, mingw-qt6-qtactiveqt, mingw-qt6-qtbase, mingw-qt6-qtcharts, mingw-qt6-qtdeclarative, mingw-qt6-qtimageformats, mingw-qt6-qtlocation, mingw-qt6-qtmultimedia, mingw-qt6-qtpositioning, mingw-qt6-qtscxml, mingw-qt6-qtsensors, mingw-qt6-qtserialport, mingw-qt6-qtshadertools, mingw-qt6-qtsvg, mingw-qt6-qttools, mingw-qt6-qttranslations, mingw-qt6-qtwebchannel, mingw-qt6-qtwebsockets, nheko, python-pyqt6, qt-creator, qt6, qt6-qt3d, qt6-qt5compat, qt6-qtbase, qt6-qtcharts, qt6-qtcoap, qt6-qtconnectivity, qt6-qtdatavis3d, qt6-qtdeclarative, qt6-qtgrpc, qt6-qthttpserver, qt6-qtimageformats, qt6-qtlanguageserver, qt6-qtlocation, qt6-qtlottie, qt6-qtmqtt, qt6-qtmultimedia, qt6-qtnetworkauth, qt6-qtopcua, qt6-qtpositioning, qt6-qtquick3d, qt6-qtquick3dphysics, qt6-qtquicktimeline, qt6-qtremoteobjects, qt6-qtscxml, qt6-qtsensors, qt6-qtserialbus, qt6-qtserialport, qt6-qtshadertools, qt6-qtspeech, qt6-qtsvg, qt6-qttools, qt6-qttranslations, qt6-qtvirtualkeyboard, qt6-qtwayland, qt6-qtwebchannel, qt6-qtwebengine, qt6-qtwebsockets, qt6-qtwebview, unbound, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, and zeal), Oracle (kernel and libtiff), Red Hat (redis:6), Slackware (tigervnc and xorg), SUSE (java-21-openjdk, java-25-openjdk, strongswan, and xorg-x11-server), and Ubuntu (amd64-microcode, binutils, and xorg-server, xwayland).

• [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 30, 2025
  Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
  Front: Pixnapping attack; Fil-C; Debian ftpmasters; GoFundMe complaints; Safer user-space access. Briefs: Man pages 6.16; Btrfs on AlmaLinux; Fedora Linux 43; ICANN report; PSF grants; Rust Coreutils 0.3.0; Tor Browser 15.0; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

• GNU/Linux man pages 6.16 released
  Alejandro Colomar has announced the release of version 6.16 of the GNU/Linux man pages. This release includes new or rewritten man pages for fsconfig(), fsmount(), and fsopen(), as well as a number of newly documented interfaces in existing man pages. The release is also available as a PDF book.
  

• ICANN report: DNS runs on FOSS
  ICANN's Security andStability Advisory Committee (SSAC) has announceda reporton "the critical role of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)within the Domain Name System (DNS)". The report is aimed atpolicymakers and examines recent cybersecurity regulations in the US,UK, and EU as they apply to FOSS in the DNS system; it includesfindings and guidelines "to strengthen the FOSS ecosystem that iscritical to the secure and stable operation of the Internet". Fromthe report's summary:
  
  This ecosystem depends on a global network of maintainers andcontributors who are often unpaid volunteers. While many are unpaidvolunteers, the DNS space is unique in also relying on a handful oflong-lived maintenance organizations. This creates a model based oncommunity collaboration rather than the commercial contracts thatdefine a traditional software supply chain, which introduces uniquerisks related to financial sustainability for the maintenanceorganizations and maintainer burnout for volunteers.
  
  These unique characteristics mean that regulatory frameworksdesigned for proprietary software may not be well-suited for FOSS andtherefore could have severe unintended consequences to the stabilityof critical Internet infrastructure.
  
  Thanks to SSAC member Maarten Aertsen for the tip.
  
  
  

• [$] Retrieving pixels from Android phones with Pixnapping
  A new class of attacks on Android phones, called "Pixnapping", was announced onOctober 13. It allows a malicious app to gather output rendered in avictim app, pixel-by-pixel, by exploiting a GPU side-channel. Depending onwhat the victim app displays, anything from sensitive email and chats totwo-factor authentication (2FA) codes could be captured—and shipped off toan attacker's site.

• Tor Browser 15.0 released
  Version 15.0of the TorBrowser has been released:
  This is our first stable release based on Firefox ESR 140, incorporating a year's worth of changes that have been shippedupstream in Firefox. As part of this process, we've also completed ourannual ESR transition audit, where we reviewed and addressed around200 Bugzilla issues for changes in Firefox that may negatively affectthe privacy and security of Tor Browser users. Our final reports fromthis audit are now available in the tor-browser-specrepository on our GitLab instance.
  This release inherits the vertical tabs feature, unified searchbutton, as well as other new features and usability improvements inFirefox that have passed the Tor Project's audit.
  
  
  

• [$] Debian splits ftpmaster team
  Debian's ftpmasterteam has been responsible for allowing new packages to enter Debian,removing old packages, and otherwise maintaining Debian's packagearchive for more than two decades. As of October 26, the team isno more and its duties are being split between two new teams. The ArchiveOperations Team will focus on the infrastructure required tosupport the Debianarchives, and the DFSG, Licensing & NewPackages Team, which is responsible for reviewing packagesentering the newqueue. In time, this move could speed up processing of newpackages, as well as making the teams more sustainable, but only afternew members are recruited and trained. For now, the same folks aredoing the work but spread across two teams.
  

• Seven stable kernels for Wednesday
  Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.17.6, 6.12.56, 6.6.115, 6.1.158, 5.15.196, 5.10.246, and 5.4.301 stable kernels. As always, eachcontains important fixes throughout the tree. Users of these kernelsare advised to upgrade.
  
  
  

• Security updates for Wednesday
  Security updates have been issued by Debian (gimp, python-authlib, and xorg-server), Fedora (chromium and git-lfs), Mageia (poppler and tomcat), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, redis, and redis:6), SUSE (fetchmail, grafana, ImageMagick, kernel-devel, libluajit-5_1-2, proxy-helm, python-Authlib, and xen), and Ubuntu (linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15 and squid, squid3).

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• AI blew open software security, now OpenAI wants to fix it with an agent called Aardvark
  AI promises to find bugs and gaps in your apps
  After helping expand the modern software attack surface with the rise of AI services prone to data poisoning and prompt injection, OpenAI has thrown a bone to cyber defenders.…
  

• Datacenter biz and nuke startup join forces for Texas AI ranch
  The bit barn will run on gas power first.
  Texas is set to get another nuclear-powered datacenter project thanks to Blue Energy and Crusoe, but any atomic action isn't likely until the next decade.…
  

• Ransomware gang runs ads for Microsoft Teams to pwn victims
  You click and think you're getting a download page, but get malware instead
  Imagine searching for Microsoft Teams, seeing a text link at the top of the results, visiting it, and then getting hit with malware. The Rhysida ransomware gang, an especially insidious criminal organization that has stolen millions of people's info, has been placing fake ads for Microsoft Teams in search engines and then infecting victims who make the mistake of clicking them.…
  

• YouTube's AI moderator pulls Windows 11 workaround videos, calls them dangerous
  Creators baffled as videos on local accounts, unsupported PCs vanish under ‘harmful acts’ rule
  Is installing Windows 11 with a local account or on unsupported hardware harmful or dangerous? YouTube's AI moderation system seems to think so, as it has started pulling videos that show users how to sidestep Microsoft's setup restrictions.…
  

• A word about comments and forums...
  Our house, our rules
  One of the biggest surprises of my tenure at El Reg so far is the activity in our forums and article comments. Reg readers are engaged, opinionated, and unafraid to express themselves. I love this. Thank you for reading, and for commenting.…
  

• Microsoft Task Manager now tasking PCs with running multiple copies of itself
  The once fearsome process killer is now a leaker of resources
  Microsoft's ability to add bugs in the most unexpected of places has continued into its latest update to Windows 11, which spawns multiple copies of Task Manager, sucking down resources you'd normally use Task Manager to kill.…
  

• Russia finally bites the cybercrooks it raised, arresting suspected Meduza infostealer devs
  Rare case of the state turning on its own, but researchers say it may be doing so more often
  Russia's Interior Ministry says police have arrested three suspects it believes helped build and spread the Meduza infostealer.…
  

• Developer puts Windows 7 on a crash diet, drops it to down to 69 MB
  Trim down for obsolete operating system leaves it booting, but not much else
  Stripping Windows to the bare essentials is a favorite hobby among enthusiasts, especially as Microsoft continues loading its OS with unwanted bloat. The latest achievement is Windows 7 being reduced to 69 MB.…
  

• International Criminal Court kicks Microsoft Office to the curb
  Rough justice? Redmond out as Germany's openDesk judged a better fit
  The International Criminal Court (ICC) is ditching Microsoft Office for a European software alternative amid mounting fears about being reliant on US technology.…
  

• Attackers dig up $11M in Garden Finance crypto exploit
  Bitcoin bridge biz offers 10 percent reward to attackers if they play nice
  Blockchain company Garden admits it was compromised and temporarily shut down its app after approximately $11 million worth of assets were stolen.…
  

• Meta to sell $30B in bonds to build AI datacenters
  Zuckcorp will gladly pay you in 2065 for the eyewatering sums it is borrowing today
  Even the world's richest companies need outside help to fulfill their datacenter dreams. Now, Meta is selling $30 billion in bonds to build out its infrastructure estate and support its ambition in AI markets. Some of these won't mature for 40 years.…
  

• SpaceX shows off progress on its lunar Starship
  NASA is short of options when it comes to alternatives
  SpaceX has published an update on its lunar Starship progress, and it still has a long way to go before the impressive-looking renders are translated into reality.…
  

• The clock's ticking for MySQL 8.0 as end of life looms
  Percona says more than half of installs remain on version set to lose support in 2026
  Users have six months to migrate from MySQL 8.0 if they are to stay on a supported version of the open source database, or face security and reliability risks.…
  

• Resilience, not sovereignty, defines OpenStack's next chapter
  Price hikes, politics, and platform fatigue drive organizations back toward open alternatives
  OpenInfra Summit Sovereignty might be the word of the hour, but the OpenStack community has another – resilience.…
  

• Linux vendors are getting into Ubuntu – and Snap
  Ubuntu's much-maligned format may be finally reaching critical mass
  Ubuntu Summit More than one Linux-adjacent vendor presented at the Ubuntu Summit, and a small but recurring theme is offering official Snap packages.…
  

• VodafoneThree to offshore UK network jobs to India
  TUPE or not TUPE? Not for roles being sent overseas amid a push to meet post-merger rollout targets
  Exclusive VodafoneThree has told some staff their roles may be offshored to India under new contracts with Ericsson and Nokia – and that employment protections won't apply.…
  

• England's local government shake-up promises to be a massive tech headache
  Surrey to be divided into two new councils in first phase of countrywide reorg
  The UK government will replace Surrey County Council and its 11 borough and district councils with two new unitary councils, which will provide most local services to the area's 1.2 million residents.…
  

• O2 cranks prices mid-contract, essentially telling customers to like it or lump it
  Ofcom 'disappointed' by decision that 'goes against the spirit of our rules'
  Updated Britian's comms regulator has criticized O2 for hiking prices beyond what customers agreed to, exploiting a loophole in rules designed to end unpredictable mid-contract increases.…
  

• NHS left with sick PCs as suppliers resist Windows 11 treatment
  Hospitals told to upgrade, but some medical device makers haven't prescribed compatibility yet
  NHS hospitals are being blocked from fully upgrading to Windows 11 by a small number of suppliers that have yet to make their medical devices compatible with Microsoft's latest operating system.…
  

• Actor couldn’t understand why computer didn’t work when the curtain came down
  When tech support collides with Halloween, the results are scary
  On Call Happy Halloween, dear reader! The Register wishes you a wonderfully scary day. To kick things off, we’ve twisted On Call, our weekly reader-contributed column about keeping computers alive despite the best efforts of zombie coworkers and demonic bosses, to bring tales of times tech support turned spooky.…
  

• Europe preps Digital Euro to enter circulation in 2029
  Because fewer people like banknotes, and payment sovereignty is a problem
  The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) has decided the bloc needs a digital version of the Euro, and ordered work that could see it enter circulation in 2029.…
  

• Japan’s new space truck is also a temporary space lab, just worked first time
  HTV-X capsule is designed to hang around in space after delivering cargo to ISS
  Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is celebrating after its new cargo carrier docked at the International Space Station.…
  

• Amazon juggernaut continues hauling in more cash despite recent bad news
  The spending will continue until AI revenue improves
  Despite a trickle of bad news from Amazon in recent weeks, the company's business is thrumming along, with AWS leading the way.…
  

• Hacking LED Halloween masks is frighteningly easy
  No costume idea? We've got you covered
  Hacking makes the holidays so much more enjoyable, and nothing says trick or treat quite like pwning LED Halloween masks belonging to every neighborhood kid during candy-collection hours.…
  

• Claude code will send your data to crims ... if they ask it nicely
  Company tells users concerned about exfiltration to 'stop it if you see it'
  A researcher has found a way to trick Claude into uploading private data to an attacker's account using indirect prompt injection. Anthropic says it has already documented the risk, and its foolproof solution is: keep an eye on your screen.…
  

• Suspected Chinese snoops weaponize unpatched Windows flaw to spy on European diplomats
  Expired security cert, real Brussels agenda, plus PlugX malware finish the job
  Cyber spies linked to the Chinese government exploited a Windows shortcut vulnerability disclosed in March – but that Microsoft hasn't fixed yet – to target European diplomats in an effort to steal defense and national security details.…
  

• Microsoft 365 business customers are running out of places to hide from Copilot
  People, Files, and Calendar companion apps gain an auto-installed dose of AI
  Just when you thought Microsoft had run out of Windows apps to stuff with Copilot, it's cramming the AI into your taskbar companions - People, Files, and Calendar are next.…
  

• Google parent company spending like a drunken sailor as capex triples over 2 years
  Microsoft also ramping up spending, but investors concerned about overshooting demand
  Alphabet, Google's parent company, expects capital expenditures to hit $93 billion in 2025, largely to meet demand from cloud customers, according to its recent financial report.…
  

• Proton trains new service to expose corporate infosec cover-ups
  Service will tell on compromised organizations, even if they didn't plan on doing so themselves
  Some orgs would rather you not know when they've suffered a cyberattack, but a new platform from privacy-focused tech firm Proton will shine a light on the big breaches that might otherwise stay buried.…
  

• Colorado launches lawyers at Trump admin over space base relocation
  State cries foul over "crooked elections" claim in Alabama move
  The State of Colorado has thrown a sueball at the Trump administration over the president's decision to relocate the headquarters of the US Space Command from Colorado Springs to Alabama.…
  

• Docker Compose vulnerability opens door to host-level writes – patch pronto
  Windows Desktop installer also fixed after DLL hijack flaw rated 8.8 severity
  Docker Compose users are being strongly urged to upgrade their versions of the orchestration tool after a researcher uncovered a flaw that could allow attackers to stage path traversal attacks.…
  

• Trump and Xi ease trade tensions, but Nvidia still can't sell Blackwell in China
  US President did discuss chip exports with his counterpart, but made no breakthroughs
  Talks between US President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea yielded a modest thaw, with the two agreeing to trim tariffs and pause new rare-earth export curbs. But whether Nvidia can sell its latest GPUs to China remains an open question.…
  

• US government shutdown clouds an otherwise sunny ServiceNow forecast
  Enterprise software giant lifts guidance but adds 'prudence' as federal contracts stall
  ServiceNow has built some "prudence" into its earnings guidance due to the ongoing US government shutdown.…
  

• KDE tidies up Plasma 6.5 with 60-odd fixes and smoother setup for OEMs
  Big release with a lot of new features – and a few inevitable glitches
  The KDE Plasma 6.5 graphical shell arrived last week for Unix-like operating systems, and now 6.5.1 is here for the more cautious. The team's squashed over 60 bugs – and they're by no means all new.…
  

• Invisible npm malware pulls a disappearing act – then nicks your tokens
  PhantomRaven slipped over a hundred credential-stealing packages into npm
  A new supply chain attack dubbed PhantomRaven has flooded the npm registry with malicious packages that steal credentials, tokens, and secrets during installation. The packages appear safe when first downloaded, making them particularly difficult for security apps to identify.…
  

• Italian tech company promises to make America Online great again
  Dial-up dinosaur finds yet another corporate home as Yahoo waves goodbye
  Bending Spoons, an Italian tech biz, is buying AOL from Yahoo, funded by a $2.8 billion debt financing package that will also bankroll future acquisitions.…
  

• Canonical CEO says no to IPO in current volatile market
  We should be a public company,' Shuttleworth tells The Reg, just not 'with our trousers around our ankles
  Interview An initial public offering is a matter of when, not if, for Canonical founder and CEO Mark Shuttleworth, though interested stock owners shouldn't expect a prospectus anytime soon.…
  

• Equinix revealed as occupant of £3.9B UK datacenter campus
  Investment will fund 250 MW, three-facility campus near London as AI and cloud demand surge
  Equinix will occupy a massive datacenter campus near London's M25, investing £3.9 billion ($5.1 billion) in the 85-acre (0.34 square kilometers) Hertfordshire plot close to South Mimms services.…
  

• Cyberpunks mess with Canada's water, energy, and farm systems
  Infosec agency warns hacktivists broke into critical infrastructure systems to tamper with controls
  Hacktivists have breached Canadian critical infrastructure systems to meddle with controls that could have led to dangerous conditions, marking the latest in a string of real-world intrusions driven by online activists rather than spies.…
  

• Azure's bad night fuels fresh calls for cloud diversification in Europe
  Time to put eggs in more than one basket?
  As Azure staggers back to its feet following an hours-long outage last night, British and European businesses are questioning their reliance on Microsoft's cloud infrastructure.…
  

• Postcode Lottery's lucky dip turns into data slip as players draw each other's info
  Biz says 'technical error' caused short-lived leak affecting small number of users
  A major UK lottery organization says it has resolved a technical error that exposed customer data to other users.…
  

• France jacks into the Matrix for state messaging – and pays too
  Governments eye comms alternatives as sovereignty worries mount
  Comment Decentralized communications network Matrix is hoping to be the beneficiary as European public and private sector organizations ponder alternatives to the messaging status quo.…
  

• There's mushroom for improvement in fungal computing
  Ohio State boffins coax shiitake and button varieties into behaving like memristors
  US boffins claim early tests indicate edible mushrooms can function as organic memory devices, though significant challenges remain before the lab experiment can be turned into something practical.…
  

• DNS downing clouds is boring: IBM Cloud is experiencing a quantum computer outage
  We’re guessing that turning it off and on again won’t help given qubits can be on and off at the same time
  Updated IBM has one-upped AWS and Microsoft by reporting an outage in one of its cloudy quantum computers.…
  

• Samsung picks fights with Google and Qualcomm
  Brings its largely unloved browser to PCs and promises to make its Exynos SoCs more competitive
  Samsung has signaled it intends to take on Google and Qualcomm.…
  

• AI is making Google and Meta even stronger and richer
  So they’re increasing spending on infrastructure to keep it that way
  When generative AI exploded into public view in late 2022, plenty of pundits predicted it would be bad news for the likes of Google and Meta as nimble AI-powered rivals found new ways to capture netizens’ attention and monetize it.…
  

• Major telecom supplier compromised by unnamed nation-state attackers
  Snoops remained undetected for nearly 10 months
  Nation-state snoops broke into Ribbon Communications – an outfit that provides software and networking gear to Verizon, CenturyLink, and the US Defense Department – last December, remained hidden for about nine months, and stole files belonging to three customers, according to the US telecommunications firm.…
  

• Microsoft gives Windows 11 a fresh Start – here's how to get it
  More convenient layout saves you a click
  Four years after the debut of Windows 11, Microsoft has finally fixed one of the biggest problems with its Start menu: The need to click the “All” button to view a complete list of all of your apps. A new Start menu, which gives you three different ways to view all installed programs without that extra click, is slowly rolling out to users.…
  

• Microsoft just revealed that OpenAI lost more than $11.5B last quarter
  Satya has also delivered Sam most of the cash he promised
  updated Microsoft reported earnings for the quarter ended Sept. 30 on Wednesday after market close and buried in its financial filings were a couple of passages suggesting that OpenAI suffered a net loss of $11.5 billion or more during the quarter.…
  

• Microsoft Azure challenges AWS for downtime crown
  Azure Front Door service outage disrupts airlines and other online services
  Microsoft Azure has been experiencing a global outage since around 1600 UTC, or 0900 PDT on Wednesday, October 29, 2025.…
  

• GNOME Gains A New macOS-Inspired Quick Menu Option
  For GNOME desktop users desiring a more macOS-like experience, a new GNOME extension provides a macOS-inspired quick menu option...

• KosmicKrisp Now Vulkan 1.3 Compliant For Apple Devices
  Over the summer months LunarG announced KosmicKrisp as a new Vulkan-on-Metal implementation for Apple devices and built around Mesa. That alternative to MoltenVK was upstreamed for next quarter's Mesa 26.0 release and now it's also celebrating being an officially Vulkan 1.3 conformant implementation...

• Ubuntu 25.10 amd64v3 Benchmarks: Some Minor & Rare Performance Advantages For Desktop Workloads
  Yesterday Canonical announced architecture variants for Ubuntu Linux with Ubuntu 25.10 seeing the introduction of "amd64v3" packages that are built for the x86_64-v3 micro-architecture feature level to assume AVX/AVX2 and other newer CPU ISA features found since Intel Haswell and AMD Excavator processors. Eager to run some initial tests, here is a first look at the Ubuntu 25.10 amd64v3 performance for desktop workloads.

• AMD Windows Driver Changes For RX 5000/6000 Series Won9t Impact Linux Users
  Over the past day there have been many reports of AMD planning to no longer provide game optimizations for the Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 series graphics cards for their Microsoft Windows driver. Surprisingly many in the Linux community still seem to think it will impact the Linux drivers, but long story short, there is no real concern for Linux users/gamers...

• Linux 6.18-rc4 Fixes Another Performance Regression In The Power Management Code
  Last week there was a fix for a "serious performance regression" in the Linux kernel's power management code that affected some Intel-powered Chromebooks. This week the power management fixes ahead of Linux 6.18-rc4 is addressing another performance regression...

• AerynOS 2025.10 ISOs Released - GNOME 49, Switches Back To GNU libstdc++
  AerynOS 2025.10 ISOs were released today for closing out the month of October. AerynOS as a reminder is the Linux distribution that was started by Ikey Doherty and originally known as Serpent OS that has since evolved into an open-source team effort...

• Krita Lands Basic HDR Support On Wayland
  The KDE/Qt-aligned Krita digital painting application is the latest creative app now supporting high dynamic range (HDR) on Linux when using Wayland...

• Vulkan 1.4.331 Brings Two New Extensions
  Just one week after Vulkan 1.4.330 brought five new extensions, Vulkan 1.4.331 is now available with another two new extensions for this high performance graphics and compute API...

• Genode-Powered Sculpt OS 25.10 Brings Performance Improvements & Better Drivers
  The Genode operating system framework continues innovating over a decade and a half later on this original open-source OS creation and with that Sculpt OS as its general purpose OS. Out today is Sculpt OS 25.10 to incorporate the latest enhancements to the platform...

• Rust 1.91 Promotes Windows On 64-bit ARM To Tier-1 Status
  The Rust project announced today the release of Rust 1.91 as the latest update to this popular programming language priding itself on memory safety capabilities...

• AMD ROCm 7.1 Released: Many Instinct MI350 Series Improvements, Better Performance
  As expected after noting this morning that ROCm 7.1 release preparations were underway, ROCm 7.1 is now officially released as the newest step-forward for this open-source GPU compute stack for Radeon and Instinct hardware...

• AMD Strix Point Performance Continues Evolving Nicely With Ubuntu 25.10
  This week marks fifteen months since AMD Strix Point laptops began shipping. Back at the end of July 2024 the Linux performance and support was already in good shape while since then the Linux performance has only evolved even more to make these AMD Zen 5 laptops perform even better. Here is a fresh look at how the performance has evolved since launch day and the added gains when moving to the recently released Ubuntu 25.10 and some performance advantages too if moving to the in-development Linux 6.18 kernel.

• LVFS + Fwupd Serve Up More Than 135 Million Firmware Downloads For Linux Users
  The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) that goes hand-in-hand with the Fwupd open-source firmware updating utility celebrated the milestone on Wednesday of crossing 135 million firmware updates...

• New Linux Patch Expands The Range Of AMD Zen 6 CPU Models
  AMD Linux engineers continue to be quite busy working on enabling next-generation Zen 6 processors that will begin shipping next year. The newest patch working its way to the Linux kernel is expanding the range of Zen 6 CPU models detected by the kernel...

• Qt Creator 18 Released With Experimental Support For Development Containers
  Qt Creator 18 is now available as the latest version of this Qt/C++-focused integrated development environment...

• Ubuntu Announces Architecture Variants: Ubuntu 25.10 Gets x86_64-v3 Packages
  Canonical today announced an exciting step forward for Ubuntu Linux: the notion of architecture variants and now initially providing an Ubuntu 25.10 archive with x86_64-v3 built packages for enjoying better performance on modern Intel and AMD hardware...

• AMD ROCm 7.1 Release Appears Imminent
  AMD continues with their aggressive efforts to enhance their GPU software compute ecosystem with ROCm. The fire under them has been lit and they have been taking their software efforts more expeditiously in recent times to better compete with NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem and ensuring their Instinct hardware is properly primed to compete. The release dance has begun for ROCm 7.1...

• AMDGPU With Linux 6.19 Will Support Analog Video Connectors For Old GCN 1.0 GPUs
  Following last week's initial batch of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver changes intended for Linux 6.19, another round of new AMDGPU / Radeon / AMDKFD material was sent out today to DRM-Next. Notable with this pull is the Display Core "DC" work for analog video connectors as the initiative from one of Valve's contractors for improving the Radeon GCN 1.0 era GPU support with the AMDGPU driver...

• Mesa 25.2.6 Released With Many Driver Fixes
  Eric Engestrom just released Mesa 25.2.6 as the newest bi-weekly stable update to this collection of open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers widely used on Linux systems for 3D support...

• Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS & COSMIC Desktop Aim For December Stable Release
  Following last month's Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS beta and COSMIC desktop beta, System76 has now shared their stable release plans for this long-awaited LInux distribution release with their Rust-written custom desktop...

• AMD RadeonSI Driver Now Defaults To Enabling ACO For Faster Performance
  Prominent AMD Radeon Gallium3D driver developer Marek Olšák just changed the RadeonSI driver's default from the AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler back-end over to the ACO back-end initially developed by Valve. This should lead to better performance and quicker shader compilation and in turn faster game loads...

• AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 Performance For OpenCL Workloads
  On Monday the AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 officially arrived at Internet retailers and is successfully selling at the $1299 price point. Some models have since sold out but as of writing two days later some Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics cards remain available at that competitive price point. On Monday I provided some initial benchmarks of the AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 for vLLM AI inferencing with more AI benchmarks on the way... While the craze is all about AI in 2025, the Radeon AI PRO R9700 does work for other non-AI workloads too and in this article is a look at its competitive OpenCL performance with great value compared to the NVIDIA RTX competition.

• AMD On Track With openSIL For Zen 6 Platforms, openSIL FAS 1.0 Published
  In addition to talking up the openSFI firmware collaboration between AMD and Intel at the OCP Global Summit 2025, AMD engineer Raj Kapoor provided a status update on the company's much anticipated openSIL effort for working to ultimately replace AGESA with a new open-source CPU silicon initialization codebase...

• Intel Compute Runtime 25.40.35563.4 Brings More Panther Lake Changes
  Intel Compute Runtime 25.40.35563.4 is out today as the newest update to their open-source GPU compute stack for Level Zero and OpenCL on Intel integrated/discrete graphics hardware...

• AMD XDNA Linux Driver Preps For New Ryzen AI "NPU3A" Revision
  Yesterday the GitHub-hosted AMD XDNA driver code saw a new tagged release as version 202610.2.21.17. That itself wasn't too interesting but while diving into there is new yet-to-be-merged code for a new "NPU3A" revision to their NPU3 IP in Ryzen AI...

• Apple Plans To Open-Source An LLVM Tool To Security Harden Large C++ Codebases
  An engineer on Apple's static security tools team announced publicly that they have prototyped a tool to apply security hardening across entire C++ codebases. Ultimately their plan is to open-source and upstream this static analysis based tool into LLVM...

• AMD Updates Zen 3 / Zen 4 CPU Microcode For Systems Lacking Microcode Signing Fix
  AMD this week uploaded new Family 19h CPU microcode for Zen 3 and Zen 4 processors to the linux-firmware.git repoository that in turn is pulled by the Linux distributions for offering the latest firmware/microcode to users...

• SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 Announced: "Enterprise Linux That Integrates Agentic AI"
  SUSE today formally announced SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16. Given we are in the year 2025, SUSE is heavy on hyping up AI capabilities with SLES 16...

• Arm Ethos NPU Accelerator Driver Expected To Be Merged For Linux 6.19
  The upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is now expected to introduce the new "ethosu" accelerator driver for supporting the Arm Ethos U65/U85 neural processing unit IP...

• Red Hat Affirms Plans To Distribute NVIDIA CUDA Across RHEL, Red Hat AI & OpenShift
  Following Canonical announcing plans to better support NVIDIA CUDA on Ubuntu Linux and make it easier to install as well as SUSE better supporting CUDA along similar lines, Red Hat today affirmed their plans to do the same. Red Hat will be making it easier to use the NVIDIA CUDA stack across RHEL, Red Hat AI, and OpenShift products...

• TrueNAS 25.10 Released With NVMe-oF Support, OpenZFS Performance Improvements
  TrueNAS 25.10 was released by iX systems today as the newest feature release of this Linux-based platform for network attached storage (NAS) devices and other storage appliances...

• Microsoft9s Azure Linux 3.0.20251021 Pulls In AppArmor & Other Updates
  Microsoft today released Azure Linux 3.0.20251021 as the latest update to their in-house Linux distribution...

• Removing obfuscation in Minecraft: Java Edition
  Gaming isnt something we talk about very often here on OSNews, but I think this piece of news is actually a rare piece of good, welcome news from this industry. Mojang, the Microsoft-owned company behind Minecraft, has announced its going to stop obfuscating the code behind the Java edition of Minecraft. A refresher: the Java edition of Minecraft is the original version of the game, which exists alongside the Bedrock Edition, which is written in C++. Both variants are kept more or less in sync with each other. The Java edition has historically been far more moddable, and comes with far fewer restrictions than the Bedrock Edition, which Microsoft maintains far tighter control over. Still, the modding scene around the Java Edition sprung up in spite of Mojang and Microsoft, not because of them, but over the years the modding scene has been embraced more and more by these two companies. The final step in this embrace comes today as Mojang will no longer obfuscate the code behind th Java Edition. Minecraft: Java Edition has been obfuscated since its release. This obfuscation meant that people couldn’t see our source code. Instead, everything was scrambled – and those who wanted to mod Java Edition had to try and piece together what every class and function in the code did.` But we encourage people to get creative both in Minecraft and with Minecraft – so in 2019 we tried to make this tedious process a little easier by releasing “obfuscation mappings”. These mappings were essentially a long list that allowed people to match the obfuscated terms to un-obfuscated terms. This alleviated the issue a little, as modders didn’t need to puzzle out what everything did, or what it should be called anymore. But why stop there? ↫ Minecraft website This is excellent news for the game, the wider modding community, and players. Minecraft is still a massively popular game, and making modding easier is very welcome, as for a lot of people, mods are what make Minecraft actually interesting. Its also rare to see a massive force in gaming making a positive step like this, so they deserve the few kudos.

• How did the Windows 95 user interface code get brought to the Windows NT code base?
  After the release of Windows 95, with its brand new and incredibly influential graphical user interface, it was only a matter of time before this new taskbar, Start menu, and everything else would make its way to Microsofts other operating system line, Windows NT. The development of Windows 95 more or less lined up with that of Windows NT 3.5, but it wouldnt be until Windows NT 4.0, released a little less than a year after Windows 95, that NT, too, would have the brand new user interface. Raymond Chen has published a blog post detailing the cooperation and interplay between the Windows 95 and Windows NT teams, and, as always with Chen, its a joy to read. Members of the Windows 95 user interface team`met regularly with members of the Windows NT user interface team`to keep them aware of what was going on and even get their input on some ideas that the Windows 95 team were considering. The Windows NT user interface team were focused on shipping Windows NT, but they appreciated being kept in the loop. During the late phases of the development of Windows 95, the Windows NT side of the house took a more active role in bringing the Windows 95 user interface to Windows NT. ↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing Chen details there was a lot of code-sharing, to the point where the Windows 95 version of the GUI contained NT-specific code, and vice versa. This code-sharing was quite a lot less elegant than today with tools like git, since Microsofts own internal source code system called SLM (pronounced slime) did not support branches, so they had to regularly perform three-way merges manually. It was a different time, for sure. Anyway, its amazing how much of this ancient Microsoft lore couldve been lost to time, or shrouded in mystery, if it wasnt for someone like Raymond Chen regularly sharing the stories from Microsofts past.

• OpenIndiana 2025.10 released
  OpenIndiana, the Illumos distribution for general use, has released its latest snapshot release, and theres some really interesting things in there. To refresh your memory: Illumos is a fork of the final OpenSolaris release, based on Solaris 11, before Oracle closed Solaris back up. Its been in development ever since that fateful day back in 2010, and several Illumos distributions with unique identities have sprung up around the project. OpenIndiana is one of them, and functions like a rolling release with a snapshot release every six months. OpenIndiana 2025.10 was released today, and this snapshots changelog covers changes over the past six months. It comes with all the latest open source packages you would expect, like the latest or at least very recent versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, and much more, but the GNOME version (44.4 from 2023) is definitely a bit outdated. Theres a ton new utilities written in Rust, and the usual bug and security fixes as well, like for crucial utilities such as OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and things like Python versions 3.14 3.13, 3.12, and 3.9. A particularly interesting bullet point is maintenance work and improvements for Sun Ray support, and the changelog notes that these little thin clients are still popular among their users. Im very deep into the world of Sun Rays at the moment, so reading that you can still use them through OpenIndiana is amazingly cool. Theres a Sun Ray metapackage that installs the necessary base components, allowing you to install Suns/Oracles original Sun Ray Server software on OpenIndiana. Even though MATE is the default desktop for OpenIndiana, the Sun Ray Server software does depend on a few GNOME components, so those will be pulled in. Ive definitely put this on my list, once Im done with my current Sun Ray deep dive on Solaris 10. If youre interested in SPARC support, theres quite a few machines that do work with the SPARC version of OpenIndiana, and recently, theres been a lot of progress on this front. Running the SPARC version on various servers can work, but desktop use, say, on a Sun Ultra 45, is a bit more problematic due to boot issues and a lack of graphics drivers. The work is ongoing, though, and theres been a ton of renewed interest.

• Windows to automatically suggest a memory scan after a blue screen
  Microsoft is introducing a new feature in Windows to better deal with blue screens of death. In the release notes for Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6982 (Dev Channel), the company detailed that after a user experiences a blue screen, Windows will automatically perform a memory scan. We’re introducing a new feature that helps improve system reliability. If your PC experiences a bugcheck (unexpected restart), you may see a notification when signing in suggesting a quick memory scan. If you choose to run it, the system will schedule a Windows Memory Diagnostic scan to run during your next reboot (taking 5 minutes or less on average) and then continue to Windows. If a memory issue is found and mitigated, you will see a notification post-reboot. ↫ Amanda Langowski at the Windows Blogs In its current iteration, this memory scan will trigger after every single error code to collect as much data as possible, but Microsoft states it will refine and narrow the number of error codes in the future. In addition, this feature will not be available on Arm64 and systems with Administrator Protection and/or BitLocker without Secure Boot. Lets hope this feature wont be a nuisance, but an actually useful feature that helps people uncover memory problems that otherwise remain undiagnosed.

• Python Software Foundation has bigger spine than big tech
  Back in January 2025, the Python Software Foundation applied for a $1.5 million grant from the US governments National Science Foundation, under the Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open Source Ecosystems program, to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and PyPI. After a lot of paperwork, their application was approved, but upon receiving the contractual agreement, the Python Software Foundation decided to back out. Why? We became concerned, however, when we were presented with the terms and conditions we would be required to agree to if we accepted the grant. These terms included affirming the statement that we “do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.” This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole. Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk. In the end, however, the PSF simply can’t agree to a statement that we won’t operate any programs that “advance or promote” diversity, equity, and inclusion, as it would be a betrayal of our mission and our community. ↫ Loren Crary at the PSF blog The fact that this is news at all is a deeply sad state of affairs, but its great to see at least some organisations in tech still have a spine. In a world where tech giants and their sleazy CEOs are falling over each other to lather the US president in bribes and tasteless gifts, its refreshing to see someone passing up on what would be an enormous amount of money for them. The PSF operates on a budget of $5 million a year, so $1.5 million would be a massive boon for the effort. The efforts of the PSF regarding outreach have been incredibly successful over the years. PyCon US had 1% female speakers in 2011, 7% in 2012, 15% in 2013, 33% in both 2014 and 2015, and 40% in 2016. DEI! efforts usually just mean the gruntwork of reaching out to members of underrepresented groups within your community, and ensuring they feel welcome, safe, and respected. Monocultures tend to be self-destructive, whether were talking about operating systems or people. Having perspectives from people with different backgrounds, different life experiences, and different approaches is a massive net benefit to your organisation. Making efforts to foster such environments illegal is absolute batshit insanity, and Im glad that unlike cowards like Tim Cook or Sundar Pichai, the Python Software Foundation has a spine and is standing up for whats right.

• Id like to speak to the Bellcore ManaGeR
  I love it when I discover  usually through people smarter than I  an operating system or graphical user interface Ive never heard of. This time, weve got Bellcore MGR, as meticulously detailed by Nina Kalinina a few weeks ago. I love old computers, and I enjoy looking at old user interfaces immensely. I could spend a whole evening on installing an old version of MS Word and playing with it: Ah, look, how cute, they didnt invent scrollbars just yet!. A special place in my heart is taken by user interfaces that were historically significant and yet fell into relative obscurity (like Windows 2 or BTRON). This is why I absolutely had to try Bellcore MGR. An early windowing system (1984), it was made by the Bell Communications Research, and it looked like Plan 9s older sister. The system was distributed over the Usenet, ported to every conceivable Unix-like system, including Minix, Linux and Coherent, and  eventually  mostly forgotten. The only two videos on YouTube that have something to do with MGR have a bit over 1000 views combined, and dont really show it in the best light possible. And I think its a crying shame. ↫ Nina Kalinina The reference to Plan 9 is apt, as MGR definitely seems to function almost exactly like Plan 9s rio graphical user interface, including things like drawing a rectangle to open a new window. Rio is an acquired taste  to put it very mildly  and it seems MGR fits the same bill. Theres also $home movie, an entire video editor for MGR, which is honestly mind-blowing considering its running on a mere SPARCstation in the late 80s and early 90s. It has an incredibly unique UNIXy flavour: If you dont have 40 minutes to watch the tour, please do spend two minutes on this demo of the $HOME MOVIE! system. It is a suite of tools for the capture, editing and playback of window system sessions on a Sun Sparcstation! based on MGR. It is probably the most Unix way of making videos: the window manager dumps the rendering commands into a file, then the rendering commands can be altered with a set of small tools, some of which are in awk, and then these rendering commands can be packaged into a single demo. ↫ Nina Kalinina Kalinina had to more or less reverse-engineer its unique video format, too, but in doing so managed to upload the original demonstration of $movie home, narrated by its creator and created in $movie home itself, to YouTube. Kalinina also created and uploaded a ready-made hard disk image of Debian 0.93 with Bellcore MGR preinstalled for use in Qemu and 86Box.

• The Linux boot process: from power button to kernel
  You press the power button. A second later a wall of text scrolls by, or a logo fades in, and eventually Linux appears. What happens in between is not magic. It is a careful handshake between tiny programs and a very literal CPU. This part follows that handshake until the very first line of C code inside the Linux kernel runs. ↫ 0xkatos blog Exactly what it says on the tin.

• Upcoming Kwin changes extend battery life
  I think most of us are aware that compositors use multiple planes to render our user interfaces, and in the case of KDEs Kwin specifically, they use two planes  one for the user interface, and one specifically for the mouse cursor. Kwin developer Xaver Hugl has been working on changing Kwin to use more than just two planes, and it turns out this delivers some considerable power use reductions and thus battery life improvements. So, when can you use these changes and test them? Due to various driver issues when trying to use overlays, like slow atomic tests on AMD as well as display freezes on some AMD and NVidia GPUs, this feature is still off by default. However, if you want to experiment anyways or attempt to fix the drivers, starting from Plasma 6.5, you can set the KWIN_USE_OVERLAYS environment variable to enable the feature anyways. If you test it, please report your findings! If there’s problems in the drivers, we’d like to know and have bug reports for the GPU vendors of course, but also if things work well that would be nice to hear. ↫ Xaver Hugl Leave it to Linux graphics-related developers to uncover driver bugs in graphics drivers.

• AI! assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time
  An extensive study by the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC highlights just how deeply inaccurate and untrustworthy AI! news results really are. AI! sucks even at its most basic function. Its incredible how much money is being pumped into this scam, and how many people are wholeheartedly defending these bullshit generators as if their lives depended on it. If these tools cant even summarise a text  something you learn in early primary school as a basic skill  how on earth are they supposed to perform more complex tasks like coding, making medical assessments, distinguish between a chips bag and a gun? Maybe we deserve it.

• Teenager detained at gunpoint by US cops because AI! mistook a chips bag for a gun
  If youre eating a bag of chips in an area where AI! software is being used to monitor peoples behaviour, you might want to reconsider. Some high school kid in the US was hanging out with his friends, when all of a sudden, he was being swarmed by police officers with with guns drawn. Held at gunpoint, he was told to lie down, after which he was detained. Obviously, this is a rather unpleasant experience, so say the least, especially considering the kid in question is a person of colour. In the US. Anyway, the AI! software used by the police department to monitor citizens behaviour mistook an empty chips bag in his pocket for a gun. US police officers, who only receive a few weeks of training, didnt question what the computer told them and pointed guns at a teenager. In a statement, Omnilert expressed regret over the incident, acknowledging that the image “closely resembled a gun being held.” The company called it a “false positive,” but defended the system’s response, stating it “functioned as intended: to prioritize safety and awareness through rapid human verification.” ↫ Alexa Dikos and Rebecca Pryor at FOX45 News Ive been warning that the implementation of AI! was going to lead to people dying, and while this poor kid got lucky this time, you know its only a matter of time before people start getting shot by US police because theyre too stupid to question their computer overlords. Add in the fact that AI! is well-known to be deeply racist, and we have a very deadly cocktail of failures.

• OpenBSD 7.8 released
  Like clockwork, every six months, we have a new OpenBSD release. OpenBSD 7.8 adds support for the Raspberry Pi 5, tons of improvements to sleep, wake, and hibernate, the TCP stack can now run in parallel on multiple processors, and so much more. DRM has been updated to match Linux 6.12.50, and drivers for the Qualcomm Snapdragon DRM subsystem and Qualcomm DisplayPort controller were added as well. The changelog is, as always, long and detailed, so head on over for the finer details. OpenBSD users will know how to upgrade, and new users can visit the download page.

• What about the icons in pifmgr.dll?
  Raymond Chen has another great post about some of the classic icons from Windows 95, this time focusing on pifmgr.dll. In this file, there are a variety of random-seeming icons, and it turns out theyre random for a reason: they were just a bunch a fun, generic icons intended for people to use when creating PIF files. The icons in pifmgr.dll were created just for fun. They were not created with any particular programs in mind, with one obvious exception. They were just a fun mix of icons for people to use for their own homemade shortcut files. ↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing For those of us who didnt grow up with Windows, or who, god forbid, are too young to know, PIF or personal information files are effectively shortcuts to DOS programs for use in a multitasking environment. A PIF file would not only point to the relevant DOS executable, but also contain information about the environment in which said executable was supposed to run. Their history goes back to IBMs TopView, and Microsoft later embraced and adapted them for use in Windows.

• Understanding driver updates through Windows Update
  Microsoft has published a set of short questions and answers about driver updates through Windows Update, and theres one tidbit in there I found interesting. Driver dates might look old, but that is not true. The driver date is descriptive info set by the driver provider and can be any date they choose. When determining which driver to install, Windows Update uses targeting information set by the provider inside the driver files to determine the best driver. This lets the device provider promote the best driver, regardless of the chosen date.  ↫ Microsoft knowledge base article Whenever I do have to fiddle with Windows machines, I always wondered about why some drivers in Windows Update would show some seriously old dates. It turns out the answer is as obvious as it always tends to be: OEMs.

• KDE Plasma 6.5 released
  KDE is on a roll lately, and keeps on rolling with todays release of KDE Plasma 6.5. As the project itself notes, this release focuses on relatively small improvements, refinements, and other niceties, without making any massive changes. With Linux desktops taking accessibility more seriously lately than ever before, I want to focus on the accessibility improvements first. The Orca screen reader now announces caps lock state changes, and screen readers will now describe the Shortcuts and Autostart pages more optimally. Theres also a new grayscale colour filter for people sensitive to colours, developers have done Plasma-wide pass to eliminate bright flashes in the UI, and the desktop zoom feature will now follow the text insertion point as it moves around the UI. Keyboard navigation in various parts of Plasma have been improved, and a few other small changes have been to improve accessiblity. Other changes include rounded bottom window corners (which can be turned off), automatic and scheduled theme and wallpaper transitions (e.g. from light to dark), and a new and improved applications permissions settings panel. A small new feature that will be a massive time saver for me is the ability to favourite items in your clipboard history, so they remain available over time. I reuse certain copied bits of text all the time, and I cant wait to start using this little addition. Remote desktop has also received a ton of love in Plasma 6.5. You can now share your clipboard, and you no longer need to create dedicated RDP user accounts; you can just log in with your normal account credentials as you would expect you could. Plasmas Discover application, used for application and update management, has seen major work to improve its performance  very welcome, for sure. Of course, theres a ton of other changes, too. KDE Plasma 6.5 will find its way to your distribution soon enough.

• Intel, AMD to bring memory tagging to x86, at some point
  Now that ARMs memory tagging, used extensively by Android ROMs such as GrapheneOS and now also by Apple, is becoming the new norm to aid in improving memory safety, the x86 world cant sit idly by. As such, Intel and AMD have announced a ChkTag, x86s version of memory tagging. ChkTag is a set of new and enhanced x86 instructions to detect memory safety violations, such as buffer overflows and misuses of freed memory (use-after-free). ChkTag is designed to be suitable for hardening applications, operating system kernels, hypervisors for virtualization, and UEFI firmware. ChkTag places control in the software developers’ hands to balance their security needs with operational elements that often become prominent when deploying code. For example, ChkTag provides instruction-granular control over which memory accesses are checked. Compilers can offer optimizations and new language features or intrinsics. ChkTag prepares x86 for a future with increasing amounts of code written in memory-safe languages running alongside code in other languages. Furthermore, ChkTag loads tags from linear/virtual memory that can often be committed on demand. ↫ Intel and AMDs announcement Its important to note that ChkTag  why not just call it CheckTag  isnt ready yet, nor is there any indication when it will be included in any processors from Intel and AMD. The goal is to catch certain memory safety problems in hardware. According to Intel and AMDs shared announcement, developers will have fine-grained control over the feature, allowing them to tap into the functionality in whatever way they deem necessary or valuable for their software in specific circumstances. My fear is that Intel and AMD will use this feature as a product differentiator, restricting it to either more expensive processors or to Xeon/Threadripper processors, thereby fracturing the market. This would inevitably lead to spotty support for the feature across the x86 landscape, meaning most ordinary consumer wont benefit from it at all.

• This is how much Anthropic and Cursor spend on Amazon Web Services
  I can exclusively reveal today Anthropic’s spending on Amazon Web Services for the entirety of 2024, and for every month in 2025 up until September, and that that Anthropic’s spend on compute far exceeds that previously reported.` Furthermore, I can confirm that through September, Anthropic has spent more than 100% of its estimated revenue (based on reporting in the last year) on Amazon Web Services, spending $2.66 billion on compute on an estimated $2.55 billion in revenue. ↫ Ed Zitron These numbers do not even include what the company spends on Googles services. Going through all the numbers and reporting, Zitron explains that the more successful! Anthropic becomes, the bigger the gap between income from paying customers and its spending on Amazon and Google services becomes. Its simply unsustainable, and the longer we keep this scam going, the worse the consequences will be when the bubble pops. Sadly, nobody will go to jail once hell breaks loose.

• Fedora 43 Has Finally Landed
  The Fedora Linux developers have announced their latest release, Fedora 43.
  

• KDE Unleashes Plasma 6.5
  The Plasma 6.5 desktop environment is now available with new features, improvements, and the usual bug fixes.
  

• Xubuntu Site Possibly Hacked
  It appears that the Xubuntu site was hacked and briefly served up a malicious ZIP file from its download page.
  

• LMDE 7 Now Available
  Linux Mint Debian Edition, version 7, has been officially released and is based on upstream Debian.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.16 Reaches EOL
  Linux kernel 6.16 has reached its end of life, which means you'll need to upgrade to the next stable release, Linux kernel 6.17.
  

• Amazon Ditches Android for a Linux-Based OS
  Amazon has migrated from Android to the Linux-based Vega OS for its Fire TV.
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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