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1825 Monetary Lane Suite #104 Carrollton, TX
Do a presentation at NTLUG.
What is the Linux Installation Project?
Real companies using Linux!
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Providing ready to run platforms on Linux
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(Two Column)
- [$] Python's two modules for random numbers
Python's randomand secretsmodules both include utilities for obtaining random values, but only one of them is suitable for generating passwords and security tokens.For much of Python's history, random was used for passwords and tokens anyway, despite documentation that called it unsuitable for cryptography.In 2015, Python's core team debated whether to fix that misuse by making random secure by default.Instead, in 2016, Python 3.6 added a second module: secrets. Therandom module is still misused at times, so it is instructiveto look into how the random-number modules should be used.
- [$] Last rites for Gentoo's Chromium package
Chromium, the open-sourceupstream project for Google's Chrome web browser, is the browser of choice formany Linux users. It has also gained a reputation as being difficult for Linux distributions topackage and build: Chromium has a complex build system, the project bundlesmany of its dependencies, and it has frequent releases. All of that, plus usercomplaints, has led the maintainers of the Gentoo Chromiumpackage to give up on trying to maintain the package.
- OpenSSH 10.6 released
Version 10.6 of OpenSSHhas been released. The announcement notes that the OpenSSH team has beenreceiving a large number of AI-assisted security bug reports. "We very muchwelcome these reports, especially when combined with human triage, analysis,test-cases and particularly when accompanied by proposed fixes". As aresult, the project expects to be making more frequent releases to get updatesto users more quickly rather than batching the bug fixes until the next plannedrelease.
Notable changes in this release include enabling the hybrid post-quantumssh-mldsa44-ed25519 signature algorithm, addition of a -p option for sftp's lmkdir/mkdir commands, as wellas disabling the LZ77 dictionary coder in ssh and sshd to mitigate side-channelleaks (which will result in reduced effectiveness of the Compressionoption). The scp -R option, whichallows copies between two remote hosts, is being deprecated due to securityrisks; the option will be ignored in the future. See the announcement for fulldetails of all changes and bug fixes.
- Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gd, gimp, kernel, kernel-rt, libpcap, librabbitmq, mariadb-connector-c, osbuild-composer, ruby:2.5, and sudo), Debian (libmodule-cpants-analyse-perl, libpng1.6, libreoffice, roundcube, ruby-oauth2, and sabnzbdplus), Fedora (0install, alt-ergo, apron, brltty, chromium, coccinelle, cri-o1.36, emacs-common-tuareg, flocq, frama-c, freetennis, gappalib-coq, guestfs-tools, haxe, hevea, hivex, kernel, lem, libguestfs, libnbd, nbdkit, not-ocamlfind, ocaml, ocaml-afl-persistent, ocaml-alcotest, ocaml-astring, ocaml-atd, ocaml-augeas, ocaml-b0, ocaml-base, ocaml-base64, ocaml-benchmark, ocaml-bin-prot, ocaml-biniou, ocaml-bisect-ppx, ocaml-bos, ocaml-cairo, ocaml-calendar, ocaml-camlbz2, ocaml-camlidl, ocaml-camlimages, ocaml-camlp-streams, ocaml-camlp5, ocaml-camlp5-buildscripts, ocaml-camlpdf, ocaml-camomile, ocaml-capitalization, ocaml-cinaps, ocaml-cmdliner, ocaml-compiler-libs-janestreet, ocaml-cpdf, ocaml-cppo, ocaml-crowbar, ocaml-cryptokit, ocaml-csexp, ocaml-csv, ocaml-ctypes, ocaml-cudf, ocaml-curl, ocaml-curses, ocaml-dbus, ocaml-domain-name, ocaml-dose3, ocaml-dune, ocaml-easy-format, ocaml-expat, ocaml-extlib, ocaml-facile, ocaml-fieldslib, ocaml-fileutils, ocaml-findlib, ocaml-fmt, ocaml-fpath, ocaml-gen, ocaml-gettext, ocaml-graphics, ocaml-gsl, ocaml-integers, ocaml-intrinsics-kernel, ocaml-jane-street-headers, ocaml-jsonm, ocaml-jst-config, ocaml-lablgl, ocaml-lablgtk, ocaml-lablgtk3, ocaml-labltk, ocaml-lacaml, ocaml-lambda-term, ocaml-libvirt, ocaml-linenoise, ocaml-logs, ocaml-luv, ocaml-lwt, ocaml-mccs, ocaml-mdx, ocaml-menhir, ocaml-merlin, ocaml-mew, ocaml-mew-vi, ocaml-mlgmpidl, ocaml-mlmpfr, ocaml-monolith, ocaml-mtime, ocaml-mysql, ocaml-num, ocaml-obuild, ocaml-ocamlbuild, ocaml-ocamlgraph, ocaml-ocamlnet, ocaml-ocp-indent, ocaml-ocplib-endian, ocaml-ocplib-simplex, ocaml-omake, ocaml-omd, ocaml-opam-0install-cudf, ocaml-opam-file-format, ocaml-ounit, ocaml-parmap, ocaml-parsexp, ocaml-patch, ocaml-pcre2, ocaml-perl4caml, ocaml-postgresql, ocaml-pp, ocaml-pprint, ocaml-ppx-assert, ocaml-ppx-base, ocaml-ppx-bench, ocaml-ppx-bin-prot, ocaml-ppx-cold, ocaml-ppx-compare, ocaml-ppx-custom-printf, ocaml-ppx-derivers, ocaml-ppx-deriving, ocaml-ppx-deriving-yaml, ocaml-ppx-deriving-yojson, ocaml-ppx-enumerate, ocaml-ppx-expect, ocaml-ppx-fields-conv, ocaml-ppx-globalize, ocaml-ppx-hash, ocaml-ppx-here, ocaml-ppx-inline-test, ocaml-ppx-let, ocaml-ppx-optcomp, ocaml-ppx-sexp-conv, ocaml-ppx-stable-witness, ocaml-ppx-variants-conv, ocaml-ppxlib, ocaml-ppxlib-jane, ocaml-psmt2-frontend, ocaml-ptmap, ocaml-pyml, ocaml-qcheck, ocaml-qtest, ocaml-re, ocaml-react, ocaml-res, ocaml-result, ocaml-rresult, ocaml-SDL, ocaml-sedlex, ocaml-sexplib, ocaml-sexplib0, ocaml-sha, ocaml-spdx-licenses, ocaml-sqlite, ocaml-ssl, ocaml-stdcompat, ocaml-stdio, ocaml-stdlib-random, ocaml-store, ocaml-swhid-core, ocaml-testo, ocaml-time-now, ocaml-topkg, ocaml-trie, ocaml-unionfind, ocaml-uucd, ocaml-uucp, ocaml-uunf, ocaml-uuseg, ocaml-uutf, ocaml-variantslib, ocaml-version, ocaml-xml-light, ocaml-xmlm, ocaml-xmlrpc-light, ocaml-yaml, ocaml-yamlx, ocaml-yojson, ocaml-zarith, ocaml-zed, ocaml-zip, ocaml-zmq, ocamlify, ocamlmod, opam, perl-DBI, planets, plplot, prooftree, python3.12, rocq, rocq-stdlib, supermin, unison, utop, virt-top, virt-v2v, why3, xen, z3, and zenon), Oracle (bind, expat, gawk, gdb, ghostscript, gimp, gvfs, kernel, libpcap, libvirt, mod_auth_openidc, openssh, rsync, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (vim), Slackware (cups), SUSE (apache-sshd, binutils, cups, docker-stable, java-11-openjdk, libraw-devel, libX11, pcre2, perl-DBI, python-msgpack, python312, python313-tokenizers, rpcbind, rpm, rubygem-rails-html-sanitizer, squid, sssd, terraform-provider-susepubliccloud, valkey, and wpa_supplicant), and Ubuntu (aodh, watcher, edk2, libreoffice, libxmltok, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-fde-5.15, linux-azure-fips, linux-fips, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-oracle, linux-realtime, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fde, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-raspi, rabbitmq-server, and unbound).
- [$] An update on the Sashiko patch-review system
Patch review has long been one of the limiting constraints for the kernelproject (and most others); there just aren't enough people to properlyreview all of the code that is submitted for inclusion. The Sashikosystem, which uses a large language model (LLM) to generate reviewsautomatically, offers the prospect of some relief, and has already becomean important part of the kernel's development process. At the 2026 editionof Kernel Recipes, RomanGushchin, the maintainer of Sashiko, provided an overview of howthe system works and what is being done to improve it.
- Picard 3.0 released
Version3.0 of the MusicBrainz Picardtag editor has been released. "This release brings many changes, including anupgrade to Qt6, a completely new plugin system, several improvements to the userinterface, cover art processing, [International Standard RecordingCode (ISRC)] submission and many more."
LWN covered Picard inApril.
- Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (ghostscript, libvirt, and osbuild-composer), Debian (freecad, linux-6.12, node-lodash, pcre2, perl, php8.2, ruby-rack-session, wireshark, and xen), Fedora (assimp, budgie-control-center, budgie-desktop, budgie-desktop-services, budgie-desktop-view, chromium, cri-o1.36, curl, flatpak, lemonldap-ng, libX11, nagios-plugins, nanosvg, noctalia, openssl, pgbouncer, pocillo-gtk-theme, prometheus, python-streamlink, python-urllib3, python-uv-build, python3.12, ruff, rust-libcst, rust-libcst_derive, rust-salsa, rust-salsa-macro-rules, rust-salsa-macros, ty, and uv), Red Hat (rhc-worker-script), SUSE (amazon-ecs-init, binaryen-133, bind, chromium, distribution, firefox, firefox-esr, glib2, gnumeric, helm, jline3, kubevirt-1.6, libparted-fs-resize0, libslirp-devel, libtcnative-1-0, libtcnative-2-0, tomcat, tomcat10, tomcat11, libwireshark19, openai-codex, python313-litellm, rpcbind, rustup, sccache, suseconnect-ng, valkey, wget, and xdg-dbus-proxy), and Ubuntu (ceph).
- Kernel prepatch 7.3-rc6
The 7.3-rc6 kernel prepatch is out fortesting. Linus said:
Next week might look a bit different: we've got the annual maintainer summit and the Linux plumbers conference going on , so I'll be on the road, as will a number of other maintainers. That may or may not end up changing the stats for -rc7. But it's unlikely to affect the release schedule, although the fact that I have my yearly family vacation the week after that might make the next merge window a bit wonky.
- Zig 0.17 released
Version0.17 of the Zig programming language has been released.
This release features 5 months of work: changes from206 different contributors, spread among 925commits.
Originally predicted to be shorter, this release cycle ended up [being]substantial, with the BuildSystem reworked, including the introduction of the BuildServer Protocol, and the ELF Linkerenhanced to the point where we expect IncrementalCompilation to work for everyone on x86_64-linux.
LWN last covered Zig inDecember 2025.
- [$] Beyond the &
Rust has a number of kinds of smart pointers, both in the standardlibrary and defined by users. Still, some operations that are possible withbuilt-in references are not possible to perform with user-defined smartpointers. Tyler Mandry, lead of the Rust project'slanguage team, spoke atRustConf 2026 about the lengthy effort to change that, and make smart pointersjust as flexible as built-in references.
- Security updates for Friday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (dogtag-pki, expat, freerdp, gawk, gdb, ghostscript, gvfs, kernel, kernel-rt, libpcap, openssh, pki-core, rsync, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk3), Debian (chromium, firefox-esr, libio-compress-perl, libpng1.6, nodejs, open-iscsi, redis, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk), Fedora (sos), Mageia (libgcrypt, python-tornado, python-urwid, python-wcwidth, and wireshark), Oracle (corosync, dogtag-pki, expat, firefox, freerdp, gawk, glib2, ipa, kernel, libXfont2, nodejs:24, openssh, osbuild-composer, perl-DBI, pki-core, postgresql:12, python-cryptography, resteasy, ruby, ruby4.0, ruby:3.3, ruby:4.0, thunderbird, and xmlrpc-c), Red Hat (skopeo), SUSE (chromium, emacs, glib2, glibc, gnome-shell, helm3, ImageMagick, imagemagick, kernel-devel, libtcnative-1-0, libtcnative-1-0, libtcnative-2-0, tomcat, tomcat10,, libtcnative-2-0, libX11, libX11-6, libXi-devel, libXpm-devel, libXtst-devel, mistral-vibe, openssl-3, perl-DBI, perl-Protocol-HTTP2, php-composer2, php8, python, rpcbind, sccache, and valkey), and Ubuntu (kf6-kcoreaddons, libxpm, linux, linux-aws, linux-fips, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-fips, linux-gke, linux-raspi-5.4, and openssl).
- [$] Coping with the onslaught of kernel security bugs
By now it is no secret that large language models (LLMs) have made it easyfor people to identify security bugs, and that has resulted in a flood ofbug reports to almost every free-software project, including the kernel.At the 2026 edition of KernelRecipes, Greg Kroah-Hartman took the stage to talk about how thekernel's security team is handling this deluge. His core message was"don't panic".
- New Patches For Linux's Zswap Show Major Improvements
Amid multiple ongoing innovations being pursued in the Linux memory management space amid sky high RAM prices, a new patch series posted on Monday aim to enhance the Zswap performance for this compressed RAM cache for swap pages...
- AMD ROCm vs. Vulkan Performance For Lemonade Local AI Server With Llama.cpp
A Phoronix Premium reader recently inquired about seeing some new benchmarks of AI performance between Vulkan and AMD ROCm back-ends to see how the situation plays out today. Here are some fresh benchmarks on two separate systems with AMD Radeon graphics and using the Lemonade local AI server while exploring the difference between the ROCm and Vulkan Llama.cpp back-ends.
- TechNexion TELOS-AI4000 delivers 40 TOPS in compact form factor
TELOS-AI4000 by TechNexion is a compact edge-AI accelerator module based on NXP’s Ara240 discrete neural processing unit. The module delivers up to 40 TOPS of AI performance, supports up to 16GB of LPDDR4 memory and is intended for vision, generative AI and other embedded inference workloads. The Ara240 has appeared in several accelerators covered by […]
- South Korea Says AI Agents May Have Been Used to Hack the Country's Banks
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung says there are signs AI models may have been used in recent cyberattacks against several major banks. "In some hacking incidents, signs have emerged of AI being used, causing considerable public concern and anxiety," Lee said during a cabinet meeting. "Please establish the circumstances swiftly and clearly, and concentrate personnel and resources on minimizing the damage." Reuters reports: South Korea's police have launched a full-scale investigation into the hacking attacks against commercial banks that led to a breach of customers' personal information, the Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday. Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and others had reported cyberattacks, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said on Friday, while Yonhap reported that Hana Bank and Woori Bank also suffered breaches. Authorities have not yet disclosed details on what kind of AI tools were used in the hacking incidents or the full scale of the breaches. On Sunday, FSC Chairman Lee Eog-weon convened an emergency meeting with financial industry associations, regulators and executives from affected institutions, warning that the sector must respond with the highest level of vigilance. Financial watchdog the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and the Financial Security Institute shared data about 28 unique IP addresses and some country information linked to the recent hacking attempts with the financial sector, the FSS said on Tuesday.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Canadian Analysis: Permanent Daylight Saving Harms Sleep and Mental Health
"With the push to eliminate the twice yearly clock change, Permanent Daylight Savings Time has emerged as the favorite for most states and provinces," writes longtime Slashdot reader kbahey, sharing the findings from a recent analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Sci.News reports: "Ending the clock change solves one problem, but it creates another decision: which time should we live on year-round?" said University of British Columbia's Professor Raymond Lam, lead author of the study. "The health evidence points to standard time, largely because morning light matters for our body clocks, sleep, and mood." Professor Lam and colleagues examined the health consequences of the two possible permanent systems rather than the broader question of whether seasonal clock changes should be abolished. They concluded that the accumulated evidence favors permanent standard time, which keeps the clock more closely aligned with human circadian biology. This distinction, according to the team, becomes particularly important during winter. Permanent daylight saving time would push sunrise an hour later. In cities such as Toronto, for example, the latest winter sunrise would occur at 8:51 a.m., compared with 7:51 a.m. under permanent standard time. In Calgary, the corresponding times would be 9:40 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. The extra hour of morning darkness could leave people traveling to work or school before sunrise, while shifting more daylight into the evening. The change could have consequences for sleep, mood, learning and productivity, particularly among people who already have difficulty sleeping or who must follow early schedules. The reason is rooted in the body's internal clock. "Our biological clocks need morning light to stay synchronized with the 24-hour day," said Simon Fraser University's Professor Ralph Mistlberger, co-author of the study. "Permanent daylight saving time moves that light an hour later just when winter mornings are already darkest." The analysis also highlights concerns about seasonal depression. [...] By delaying natural morning light, permanent daylight saving time would act in the opposite direction, potentially weakening an important circadian signal.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- HubSpot Cuts 660 Jobs In AI Restructuring
HubSpot is cutting about 7% of its workforce, or roughly 660 employees, as it restructures into what CEO Yamini Rangan described as a "flatter organization" with fewer management layers. Rangan said the layoffs were "not driven by AI-related efficiencies," though AI remains central to HubSpot's strategy as the company adjusts its organization around AI-driven customer outcomes. Fast Company reports: The layoffs come as investors have spent months questioning whether AI will reduce the need for businesses to pay for software like HubSpot's, a fear dubbed the "SaaSpocalypse." HubSpot's platform helps companies manage their customers, sales, and marketing. The company was removed from the FTSE All-World Index (USD) last month after a decline in its stock price, a report from Simply Wall St noted. The stock is down more than 43% this year as of this writing. Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, explicitly told employees in a memo that the layoffs were "not driven by AI-related efficiencies." Rather, the aim was to focus on "aligning our organization with our strategy and how we need to operate going forward," Rangan wrote. She added that the goal is to "build a flatter organization with fewer layers" by cutting back on management. Still, artificial intelligence has been central to the company's concerns. In August, Rangan blamed AI for why the company "got off to a slow start" in April as HubSpot was trying to adjust its product and pricing. "We're in the middle of a real transition to AI, and we are making deliberate choices to lead in it," she said on an earnings call. The restructuring is estimated to cost between $65 and $75 million, mostly in severance packages. The company said that laid-off employees will receive 20 weeks of base pay, one week per year of service (capped at 30 weeks), five months of COBRA and Modern Health healthcare benefits, and they will be allowed to keep their laptops.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Alexa Can't Control the AUX Input On Amazon Echo Speakers Anymore
Amazon has removed Alexa voice control for the 3.5mm aux input on several older Echo speakers, meaning users can no longer ask Alexa to play or pause audio coming through the wired connection. It's unclear why the feature was removed. The Verge reports: Ars Technica points to this Reddit poster claiming they received a message from Amazon and says an unnamed spokesperson confirmed the change. When contacted by The Verge, Amazon did not provide an on-the-record statement. The message does not include any explanation for why the feature was removed. It also doesn't mention any changes to audio output functionality like connecting an external speaker to an Echo Dot, and it appears that control of the port from within the app's settings menu still works.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Asos Confirms Hackers Sent 'Unauthorized' Notification to App Users
ASOS says hackers gained unauthorized access to third-party platforms it uses and sent an "ASOS HACKED" push notification directly to customers, apparently as part of an extortion attempt. The clothing and beauty store says some basic personal information may have been accessed but does not believe payment-card data or passwords were affected. The BBC reports: In an email to customers on Tuesday night, the company apologized and urged customers not to engage with the notification. And it said the website and app are "operating as usual" promising customers they can "shop with confidence" while it investigates the incident. The company has not as of yet informed the UK's data watchdog, the Information Commission's Office (ICO), about any breach. Exactly how many Asos customers received the notification on Tuesday remains unclear, but Google's Play store says the ASOS app has been downloaded to android devices more than 10 million times. The British retailer has a substantial global footprint -- serving around 17 million customers each year across more than 150 markets. Some Asos app users in Australia, France, Sweden and the Republic of Ireland had also received the notification, according to local reports on Tuesday. [...] Users of the Asos app appeared to have received the alarming notification at around 10:00 BST on Tuesday. Headlined "ASOS HACKED" and addressed to the company's data protection officer and IT teams, it said: "We have fully compromised the Snowflake instance." "Engage with us, or we will leak it," it added, before linking to a Telegram channel. The message left many ASOS customers confused. [...] Meanwhile Snowflake -- whose tools are used by dozens of firms to collect, analyze and store data -- told the BBC its investigation was ongoing, but it had so far found "no compromise" of its platform.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- IBM and Red Hat Find More Than 400 New Vulnerabilities In Popular Java Code
IBM and Red Hat say their AI-powered Lightwell initiative has identified and helped remediate more than 400 previously unknown vulnerabilities across widely used Java libraries. Phoronix reports: They announced this feat today as part of their promoting Lightwell Clearinghouse to GA, which is an enterprise service for their customers to submit open-source software dependencies for priority review and remediation. From today's announcement: "The milestone addresses a growing business risk. As autonomous AI agents become capable of combining several lower-risk software weaknesses into a more serious attack, companies need to do more than identify vulnerabilities. They need a practical way to develop, test and deploy fixes in the software that supports critical applications."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Licensing Costs Driving 90% of VMware Users To Explore Options, Survey Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: VMware customers face multiple obstacles as they rethink their virtualization strategy to reduce dependence on VMware. Today, Rimini Street published its "2026 IT Virtualization Survey -- What's Next for VMware Users." The survey examined 300 organizations worldwide that use VMware. Notably, Rimini sells third-party support for VMware and other software, including Oracle and SAP. That means there's an incentive for Rimini to portray VMware users as experiencing obstacles. However, the survey was also conducted by a third-party research company, Unisphere Research, and the results align with other recent reports about VMware customers. For example, 90 percent of participants in Rimini's survey said they're exploring VMware alternatives due to VMware's higher licensing costs, while 54 percent pointed to Broadcom killing support for perpetual license holders. Since Broadcom took over VMware, customers have said that their VMware costs increased by as much as 1,000 percent, with many more pointing to more modest price hikes of around 100 to 300 percent. In Rimini's survey, 73 percent of participants pointed to cost savings as a top priority in their virtualization roadmap decisions. In today's announcement, Rimini pointed to "significant barriers to progress" for organizations exploring virtualization options, with the most cited barriers being operational complexity (named by 40 percent of respondents), multi-vendor management challenges (38 percent), securing the increased attack surface (37 percent), and team skills requirements (37 percent). "These findings suggest that while organizations are actively pursuing change, they are also looking for ways to reduce risk and avoid unnecessary disruption," Rimini's announcement said. [...] Rimini reported that 60 percent of the organizations it surveyed are considering a multi-hypervisor strategy, which is indicative of "growing interest in more flexible, mixed environments that support both operational and financial goals." "In addition, 47 percent are favoring a hybrid IT virtualization environment consisting of hypervisors and containers for 'best of both worlds' workload placement," the announcement said. Rimini noted that 48 percent of respondents aren't planning to move any of their assets to VMware's hybrid cloud platform, Cloud Foundation.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Mistral Unveils New 'Le Chonk' AI Model It Says Rivals Best Open Systems From China
Mistral has unveiled Mistral Large 4, or "le Chonk," a 1-trillion-parameter model that it says is the strongest open-weight AI model developed outside China by a wide margin. The model is entering preview for developers, cybersecurity teams and governments before a broader release later this month. CNBC reports: ML4 was trained on 4,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs over two months that were deployed in Mistral's own data centers in Europe. When its core parameters are released, ML4 will rank among the top open-weight models globally on aggregate benchmark performance, Mistral said in a statement. The company added that ML4 was the strongest open-weight model developed outside China by a "substantial margin." The new model still lags behind the frontier in areas such as coding. "The model capabilities will further improve as we scale up our training capacity, following our Series D fundraise," said Guillaume Lample, co-founder and chief scientist of Mistral. "Further, the cyber defense capabilities will enable enterprises and governments to defend themselves against threat actors that are jailbreaking closed models to perform cyber attacks," he added. Further reading: Mistral CEO Says US AI Safety Debate Masks Competitors' 'Negligence'
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Researchers Are Tracking a Chinese AI 'Agent Fleet'
Independent researchers say they've identified a large "fleet" of AI agents apparently running on Tencent infrastructure and making parallel queries against Alibaba's Amap mapping service. TechCrunch reports: Researchers, however, resisted the term "swarm," noting that there seems to be little coordination between their different queries. "'Agent fleet,' not 'swarm:'" one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, "many parallel agents on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them." The agents were discovered by monitoring traffic to the domain-scanning service urlquery, a technique that previously revealed long-running activity by OpenAI agents. AI agents often use urlquery to load websites that they cannot access directly, leaving a record of their activities that can be valuable to researchers. In this case, the record showed queries to Alibaba's Amap service, seeking directions to different entrances of various public places, including a park, a zoo, and a hospital. The research is ongoing and so few details are available, but the behavior shows how persistent AI agent activity has become on the internet. In the wake of the Hugging Face incident, many researchers are actively monitoring for rogue agent activity on the internet. Much of that activity has been easy to find because agents tend to use the same techniques and make little effort to conceal themselves.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Cable Lobby To Sue Trump FCC Over Repeal of National TV Ownership Cap
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ArsTechnica: Cable lobby groups notified the Federal Communications Commission that they will sue the agency to block its controversial repeal of the National Television Ownership Rule, which limits the number of broadcast TV stations a single company may own. The cable groups said that larger broadcast TV station groups will have leverage to demand higher retransmission fees from TV providers, resulting in "higher monthly TV bills for consumers." They said the FCC repeal order "arbitrarily and capriciously ignores the harms that will surely follow from allowing broadcast station groups to exceed the National Cap." The cable lobby groups represent top providers Comcast, Charter, and various other cable operators. Top cable companies have also expanded through mergers. Charter completed a purchase of Cox in August after the FCC rejected protests by advocacy groups that said the cable deal "would create unchecked gatekeeper power over Internet distribution" and make it easier for the biggest cable companies to raise prices. [...] The TV ownership rule prohibits any single broadcast station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of all TV households in the US. Congress directed the FCC to set the cap at 39 percent in 2004. On Friday, cable lobby groups submitted a petition asking the FCC to keep the TV ownership cap in place until litigation over the FCC's authority to repeal the rule is over. The cable groups' filing said the FCC repeal of the TV ownership cap violates the 2004 action by US lawmakers. The decision by Congress to set the cap at a precise numerical threshold was unambiguous, the filing said. "Congress established the National Cap at 39 percent in the 2004 CAA [Consolidated Appropriations Act] in direct response to the FCC's attempt to aggressively raise the Cap to 45 percent and made repeated references to the 39 percent Cap in the statute," the petition said. The petition to the FCC is mainly a procedural step as the commission isn't likely to stay its own order. The cable groups said they intend to sue the commission in a US appeals court once the FCC order is published in the Federal Register. After the lawsuit is filed, they can ask the court to issue a preliminary injunction that would keep the TV ownership cap in place pending the outcome of litigation. [...] The cable groups' petition said the FCC can't change the cap because the 2004 law "references the 39 percent Cap as statutory, not regulatory." A provision requiring divestiture of stations "specified that someone exceeding 'the 39 percent national audience reach limitation in paragraph (1)(B)' of 'section 202(c)' of '[t]he Telecommunications Act of 1996' 'shall have not more than 2 years to divest,'" the petition said. "Likewise, Congress singled out the Commission's only mechanism for setting aside statutory requirements -- the Commission's forbearance authority under 47 U.S.C. 160 -- and made clear that it 'shall not apply to any person or entity that exceeds the 39 percent national audience reach limitation,'" the cable lobby petition said. The FCC order argued that the agency's "ability to forbear from enforcement of its rules is distinct from its power to alter or eliminate those rules," and that the FCC forbearance authority doesn't apply to regulation of broadcasters.
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- OpenAI Is Adding Text Watermarking In ChatGPT and Codex
OpenAI is rolling out an invisible, machine-readable text watermark called textGrain to ChatGPT and Codex, "but only for users in the European Union at first," reports The Verge. From the report: OpenAI says its textGrain watermarking "matched or exceeded" other approaches like Google DeepMind's SynthID for text, which is also the basis for the watermarking Anthropic announced in August. Like OpenAI, Anthropic made the move to meet the requirements of the EU's AI Act; however, not everyone was happy to learn about the addition. OpenAI also included scores from AI benchmarks showing similar performance from watermarked and unwatermarked text. But it notes that textGrain "does not guarantee reliable detection," and says text watermarks don't verify accuracy, determine who owns the text, measure how much a human contributed, or prove human authorship.
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- Old Hearts Become Biologically Younger When Transplanted Into Younger People
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: It might be reasonable to think that there's an indelible link between the heart and the body it resides in -- the processes that affect one inevitably affect the other. But a new preprint, uploaded to bioRxiv and yet to be peer-reviewed, suggests that this may only be true up to a point. Take the heart out of the body and put it in a new one, and something incredible happens. The transplanted heart begins to take on the biological age of its new owner. Older hearts transplanted into younger recipients appear to become biologically younger, while younger hearts placed in older bodies show signs of accelerated aging.
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- Texas City Demands $2 Million For Public Records On Flock Usage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As bipartisan backlash against Flock grows, some cities are asking anti-surveillance advocates and media outlets to pay eye-popping fees -- including charging tens of thousands or even millions -- to get information about how police departments are using and potentially abusing AI-enabled camera systems that track every vehicle that passes them. On Monday, the Texas Tribune reported that city officials in a Fort Worth suburb, North Richland Hills, asked one group to pay $2.3 million before it would fulfill a public records request for Flock data. To reach that high fee, officials claimed that searching "about a terabyte worth of communications about errors, misuse, and effectiveness of the Flock system" would take approximately 14 years of labor at a rate of $15 per hour. Phil Mynona, who filed the request using a pseudonym on behalf of his group, the Texas Privacy Coalition, told the Tribune that the fee seemed "ludicrous" and designed to stifle his public records searches. Mynona has sought similar records from more than 200 law enforcement agencies across the US, and he said it was impossible to predict how cities assessed fees for Flock records. Some cities provided more than 400,000 pages of documents for free, while others charged $5,000. Other groups, including a Houston news station called KPRC, have seen officials quote up to $121,000 for Flock records, the Tribune reported. The high price tags may be hiding data that anti-surveillance groups note have triggered audits, arrests, and changes in how law enforcement uses cameras, including decisions to get rid of cameras. Further reading: Flock Blamed for Wrongful 13-Day Imprisonment and a Police Stalking Incident in Florida
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- Rural Data Centers Are in for a Big Federal Tax Break
Wired reports that rural data center projects could become eligible for expanded federal Opportunity Zone tax benefits starting in 2027, with more than 100 planned or developing facilities potentially qualifying. "Right now, the only requirement to get the benefits is capital investment," says Emily Kraschel, a tax policy analyst at the Searchlight Institute, a public policy think tank. "However, that doesn't guarantee that that money is necessarily creating jobs or creating a local economic boost. You'd be more sure of that with a more traditional factory that requires lots of workers. But with a data center, that assumption goes a little wonky." From the report: During the first Trump administration, a bipartisan group of lawmakers proposed the creation of the opportunity zone program, which offers tax benefits for companies that choose to build projects in certain low-income census tracts. Last year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made a number of changes to open up the program in order to attract more investment to rural areas. Kraschel and her colleagues from Searchlight have been researching data center projects that might qualify for these tax benefits, comparing the locations of data center projects in development with rural census tracts eligible for the new program. Wired exclusively reviewed the research compiled by Searchlight and found more than 100 data centers under various stages of development in rural areas that could be eligible. Searchlight used a very conservative database of under 700 data center projects that are planned or under construction to compile its research; other datasets put the number of data centers in development in the US at closer to 1,500. It's very likely that the number of newly eligible projects is bigger, especially since more data centers are decamping from urban areas. Separate research from Pew found that while just 13 percent of operating data centers are located in rural areas, a majority of planned facilities -- around 67 percent -- are going rural. [...] A project simply existing in a rural opportunity zone doesn't mean the company automatically will get the tax benefits; the company has to create a specialized investment vehicle to kickstart the process. Because the tax break can be considered confidential IRS data, it's next to impossible to know which companies are pursuing the benefits unless they voluntarily disclose. [...] Nathan Jensen, a government professor at the University of Texas-Austin, says that he would be "very surprised" if some companies were not considering siting in rural opportunity zones as part of their decisionmaking process. "It's essentially free money," he says. There is no requirement for projects getting opportunity zone benefits to create jobs; the assumption is that they will do so, simply by siting in the community itself. This isn't always the case for projects like storage facilities and warehouses, which, Jensen says, have been popular choices for developers working in opportunity zones. Data centers may create a number of jobs in the short term for their construction, but there's an ongoing debate about whether or not they create a lasting new workforce over the longer term.
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- Hackers Steal 8 Million Citizens' Records From Danish Government Database
Hackers stole records belonging to roughly 8 million Danish citizens and residents from Denmark's Central Person Register (CPR), including names, addresses, social security numbers and other personal information. The breach is believed to be the largest in Denmark's history. TechCrunch reports: The CPR is a government database of Danish citizens' information, including their government-issued identity number for paying taxes and accessing other services. Denmark's current population is about 6 million people, but the database includes records for about 11 million people, with some of the data going back decades. The Danish government would not say who is behind the breach, which happened in September but was discovered on October 2. However, it said the unauthorized access was obtained by "abusing a Danish company's lawful access to search for information in the CPR system." (Some companies in Denmark have access to the CPR for verifying people's information with the government.)
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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]
- KDE developer takes a look at COSMIC
KDE contributor and developer Niccolò Venerandi has published an article about COSMIC, System76s brand new desktop environment. Its been almost a year since Ive last tried COSMIC; though development since then has mostly been centered around stability (going from late alpha to stable releases now!) there have been a fair bit of user-facing changes too which I adore. I thus have to ask myself: should I switch to COSMIC? The answer obviously is no, but thats just because I got addicted to KDE Plasma, so lets try to be more objective here. ↫ Niccolò Venerandi Honestly, this is one of the best reviews! Ive seen of COSMIC, and paints System76s hard work in a really positive light. Venerandi spots countless really nice touches hed love to see adopted by KDE, while also hitting on what I agree is COSMICs biggest shortcoming at this point: theres basically no ecosystem around it. COSMIC uses its own Rust-based toolkit instead of GTK or Qt, but of course, theres very few other applications that actually use said toolkit. The end result is that if you run COSMIC, youre going to have to supplement it with countless GTK and Qt application, none of which will inherit all the nice features, touches, and graphics from COSMIC. This isnt really a complaint about COSMIC itself or the work its developers are putting into it, but more a fact of life for such a new desktop environment using an otherwise unpopular (as of right now) toolkit. This may very well change in the future, but for now, if you choose to run COSMIC, youre going to have to accept a very inconsistent and messy desktop. This wont matter to everyone, but it sure does matter to me, and its the one reason why at this point I have zero interest in running COSMIC. I really hope this changes in the future competition is good but its going to be a long road.
- Microsoft claims its optimising Windows for 8GB of RAM
Speaking of Windows and performance, how about that RAM crisis? Microsoft is feeling the squeeze too, and is apparently doing work up and down the Windows stack to improve its memory consumption. Microsoft’s Windows chief Pavan Davuluri has admitted that the rising cost of memory is pushing the company to make Windows 11 use less RAM. Microsoft is working on the Windows memory manager, memory compression, WinUI 3 and WebView2, and has made “memory optimization for 8GB and above” an official priority for the rest of 2026. ↫ Abhijith M B at Windows Latest This might be the only positive consequence of the RAM crisis.
- Windows legacy 8.3 filename support actually negatively affects performance
To this day, Windows retains full support for the old MS-DOS 8.3 filename limitation, and it does this by creating 8.3 aliases for files with longer names. Apparently, this has a measurable effect on performance, so naturally, people are going to turn it off to make their Windows installations perform better. According to the user, this resulted in noticeably smoother scrolling in Tile view. They subsequently repeated the process on several folders they regularly use and reported that searching through files became much faster. The user also claimed that external hard drives became faster and that browsing an Android directory over USB or FTP behaved more like a regular Windows folder, including when copying large numbers of music files. ↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin You can disable this legacy feature in Windows per volume or globally, but Microsoft is warning users not to do so. Even in 2026, applications and registry entries may depend on 8.3 filenames being available, so removing them can lead to unexpected outcomes. Its just one of those things you wouldnt expect to still be around or have a measurable impact in the days of fast SSDs, but theres enough credibly evidence out there to suggest that yes, it actually does negatively affect performance. If youre doing a lot of file operations in Windows, it might be worthwhile to do some testing of your own to see if you can speed things up. Or, you know, you can just not use a house of cards disguised as a serious operating system.
- Apple changes Full Disk Access permission in macOS
Apples macOS has a Full Disk Access permission, designed to allow backup applications full access to, well, the disk, so they can perform their job properly. Apple posted a notice on its website that its going to further restrict this permission, because some applications were abusing this permission to gain access to users messages, emails, and so on, which it obviously isnt intended for. What kind of applications, you may ask? Going forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action. Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy. ↫ Announcement from Apple This was prompted by a story a few weeks ago, where Facebooks Muse AI! tool was apparently reading peoples private messages and other data, and even sent messages on users behalf, without informing its users. Its incredibly naive to think Facebook software in 2026 would not do creepy things, so Im honestly not at all surprised. It makes sense in Apples worldview to further restrict permissions in response, but Im sure more experienced macOS users are not going to like this.
- Klassik brings KDE3s look and feel to KDE Plasma 6
The KDE project recently brought back its classic Oxygen and Air themes, but what if you prefer something0 A little older? A modern recreation of the classic KDE 3 desktop experience for KDE Plasma 6, built entirely using Qt 6 and Qt Quick, with full support for Wayland and fractional scaling. ↫ Klassik GitHub page Neat.
- SquirrelOS is an operating system named after the squirrel
I like squirrels. Apparently, theres a SquirrelOS. Its a small hobby OS learning project from five years ago, developed by Immanuel Daviel A. Garcia. A simple DOS like OS made in Assembly and C with a ported version of Stephen Brennans Shell. ↫ SquirrelOS GitHub page Why do I like squirrels? I dont know man, theyre just cute.
- Google breaks promise to provide 10 years of updates to Chromebooks
Google launched its Googlebooks platform a week ago, and a lot of people were wondering what this meant for Chrome OS and Chromebooks. Since Googlebooks and its Android-based Googlebook OS lack the management frameworks markets like schools require, Chromebooks will continue to be available for now, until such time Googlebooks catch up in that regard. However, in a support document, Google states that update support for all Chromebook devices will end in 2034: ChromeOS devices will continue to receive regular updates and security patches through mid-2034. For qualifying devices purchased today whose 10-year support lifecycle extends beyond 2034, Google is committed to supporting your transition to Googlebook OS, with many devices offering direct migration paths. ↫ Google support document Google promised 10 years of updates for all Chromebooks, and its now breaking that promise for anyone buying a Chromebook between now and whenever the last Chromebook rolls off the production line. Sadly, we live in a world where corporations are free to make and break whatever promises they want virtually free of consequences, and as society were so used to it that anti-consumer behaviour like this barely elicits a shrug. Google does state that many newer commercial Chromebook models will be capable of upgrading to Googlebook OS!, but that, too, is just another promise and a vague, one at that so who knows how many devices will actually be capable of upgrading out in the real world. On top of that, we have no idea if Googlebooks will just be yet another in a long line of quickly abandoned Google tablet/laptop projects, further adding to the uncertainty. Stuff like this should not be legal.
- macOS Golden Gate is a buggy mess!
In June 2008 Apple announced Mac OS X Snow Leopard, proudly boasting that it would have no new features!. Instead of piling on new things, Snow Leopard aimed to build on the success of its predecessor, Leopard, opting to focus on under-the-hood performance and stability improvements throughout the system. 18 years later, Apple is taking a similar approach with macOS 27. Golden Gate aims to fix the missteps of last years Tahoe, promising an expansive set of improvements and a more responsive and delightful experience!. Does it hold up? Here are just some of the bugs I’ve encountered in my daily use over the past couple of weeks. ↫ Chester at SquareOrbits Im getting some real Windows 11 vibes from this long list of bugs and issues, further underlining my perception that Apple completely lost the plot when it comes to Mac OS X (in the past) and MacOS (today). These are not the kind of things youd find in the heydays of Mac OS X, back when I was a devout user, and makes me glad I abandoned ship long, long ago (around the time of the Intel transition). I dont see stuff like this in GNOME or KDE, and while not nearly as bad as Windows 11, the cracks are obvious. I am by no means an expert at how Apple is run and how it organises itself, but as a layperson I do wonder if the company is simply trying to do too much too many different platforms, too many different crucial components it all develops internally, too many different markets to please. Things are going to fall through the cracks when you try to keep this many plates spinning.
- Tcl/Tk 9.1 released
A brand new Tcl/Tk release, in the form of Tcl/Tk 9.1. The new features in Tcl are a bit difficult for me to properly parse as a non-developer, but Tks improvements are easy to understand: it brings supports for screen readers, initial supports for bidirectional and RTL scripts, improved listbox selection colours, and more. It also happens to drop support for Windows XP appearances, if thats something that matters to you.
- WSL containers are now generally available
Microsoft has announced WSL containers for developers who arent already using Docker, Podman, or Rancher on their Windows workstations. WSL containers is now generally available! Check out this blog post to learn more about this overall feature enabling seamless access to Linux containers on Windows via the new “wslc.exe” command. This new Linux container platform comes with multiple architectures changes compared to WSL, which we’ll detail in this post. ↫ Pierre Boulay at the Microsoft Dev Blogs If you already have WSL installed, you can run wsl -update to get this new container feature, or you can download it straight from GitHub.
- MotifCentral: all things Motif/Xt/Xlib
Over the last few days and weeks or so, a few of the people I follow and interact with on Fedi have been talking about centralising information, tools, applications, and expertise from the Motif (and Xt, Xlib, and X11) ecosystem. Theres a ton of information, resources, and actively maintained applications out there, but its all spread out and sometimes difficult to find, and so Thomas Adam one of the core developers of FVWM, among other things, as well as creator of CoW (FVWM for Wayland, more or less) has created an effort to centralise all of this. Motif Central brings together information about Motif, Xt, Xlib and X11: how they fit together, how to program with them, and where to find the manuals, examples and historical material that explain them. Begin with the X programming stack, build your first Motif application, or explore the programming resources. The history pages describe the libraries origins, while the archive guide helps you navigate older documentation. ↫ MotifCentral Theres been a whole flurry of activity around Motif lately, including the updated and maintained fork we talked about a few weeks ago. The people loosely collaborating on MotifCentral also submitted patches to CDE to make sure it works on the new Motif fork, with the CDE developers setting up a build pipeline for easier testing. Making sure CDE, the classic Motif desktop environment, works well with the maintained Motif fork quite a few people seem to be rallying around is a worthwhile effort. Were still quite far from a complete(-ish) modern Motif ecosystem, but its very heartwarming to see just how many people are actually still interested in it. My perhaps misguided hope is that we can somehow get to a modernised Motif/CDE desktop environment and applications, making it possible to more easily run a modern Motif environment on Linux and the BSDs. One may dream.
- Windows 10 breaks far less often than Windows 11
Windows 11 received its September update on the 8th of this month, and within days Microsoft had acknowledged or investigated problems involving Remote Desktop, USB audio, Linux and WSL-based apps like Claude Cowork, and enterprise domain issues. Windows Latest also found File History failures, Explorer.exe crashes, and AMD GPU instability, with an emergency update following on September 14 that still did not fix everything. This got us curious, and we looked back across the nine monthly updates released from January through September 2026 and, rather unsurprisingly, Windows 10 update history isn’t infected with nearly as many bugs as that of Windows 11. ↫ Abhijith M B at Windows Latest Of course, Windows 10 also isnt getting nearly as much attention from Microsoft, but thats kind of the whole point, isnt it? Whenever Microsoft touches something, especially over the last 5 years or so, its one cascade of failures after the other, eroding trust in Windows updates even more (if thats even possible). In that light, why would you want to use Windows 11 and all the headaches that come with it, when Windows 10 is right there, still being supported, albeit without the latest bells and whistles that only seem to break Windows 11 anyway? If you really do need or want to use Windows, consider switching back to Windows 10 whenever the usual Windows reinstallation time draws near. You wont lose much, but will gain quite a bit in the process. Of course, this wont be a responsible or usable choice forever, but at this point in time, I definitely think its the optimal choice for quite a few people.
- Amiga screens: a primer
One of the unwritten rules of the Internet seems to be that whenever something Amiga-related is mentioned, at least one Amiga fan (myself included) must show up and try to explain the concept of screens. Amiga screens can have different resolutions, well tell you, and one can drag them, well say, and other Amiga users rally in agreement, while non-Amiga users probably still dont get whats so great about screens. Until now, when this text has been written, in the hope of converting unsuspecting normies into full-blown Amiga screen lovers. ↫ Carl Svensson A deeply technical look at not just how the Amiga managed to achieve this stunning functionality way back in the 80s on machines with 7MHz and less RAM than a keyfob, but also how this functionality can be useful. Ive always found the concept of screens on the Amiga quite interesting, and Svenssons article does a great job at demystifying the whole concept. Of course, expect a lot of lovely Amiga OS screenshots.
- Redox runs Qemu, gets multicore support for ARM
Its time for an overview of another month of Redox OS progress, and over the month of August theyre a bit late, dont believe the publication date theyve implemented multicore support for ARM, and considerably improved the I/O performance for the NVMe driver, RedoxFS, and RAMFS by implementing a ring buffer communication API. Theres also initial support for NUMA-based memory management, QEMU is now working on Redox, and much more. Of course, theres also the usual long list of improvements to the kernel, relibc, drivers, and more.
- JagOS Spot turns Atari Jaguar into the unreleased Atari Painter prototype computer
Can you run an operating system with a graphical user interface and applications on the Atari Jaguar? Well, you can. A long time running idea and work-in-progress, Id like to finally announce the current version of JagOS Spot for the Atari Jaguar, running from the RetroHQ GameDrive. Im slow at releasing things and try not to announce in-progress stuff due to lack of free time but would like to push this along. Maybe itll motivate me to work on it more if the interest is there or just release it as-is if not. The idea is based on the unreleased Atari Jaguar Painter Computer prototype, that a merged Falcon with Jaguar chipset-based computer would have found its way into consumer hands after the Falcon030. ↫ Clint Thompson The screenshots and YouTube video are quite impressive, but as its not actually released, its difficult to really say anything more about this project for now. I hope theres enough interest to get this projects code out there so it can be further improved and expanded.
- Weve been here before: Qualcomm promises Linux support for Snapdragon X2
Qualcomm, yesterday, promising Linux support for the new Snapdragon X2 processors: Linux on Snapdragon X2 Series is moving from early bring-up toward a more complete upstream developer experience. Core support is landing, Hexagon NPU and Adreno GPU work is progressing, and real laptops with Snapdragon X2 Series processors are already beginning to boot Linux. ↫ Qualcomms promises from 2026 Interesting, but I feel like Ive heard these exact words before. Qualcomm, two years ago, promising Linux support for the then-new Snapdragon X processors: It’s been our priority not only to support Linux on our premium-tier SoCs, but to support it pronto. In fact, within one or two days of publicly announcing each generation of Snapdragon 8, we’ve posted the initial patchset for Linux kernel support. Snapdragon X Elite was no exception: we announced on October 23 of last year and posted the patchset the next day. That was the result of a lot of pre-announcement work to get everything up and running on Linux and Debian. ↫ Qualcomms empty promises from 2024 These promises were not at all kept. Two years later, Linux support for Snapdragon X laptops is still spotty, broken, and limited, confined to just a few bespoke Ubuntu builds, which dont even offer full support either. Its a complete mess, effectively unusable, and highlights once again that big technology companies are compulsive liars. I have little faith in these new promises, but who knows maybe this time itll be different. Probably not, though.
- 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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- systemd 262 Released with Static PID 1, Intel TDX, TPM Improvements, and New Container Features
by George Whittaker
The systemd project has officially released systemd 262, delivering another substantial update to the system and service manager used by most major Linux distributions. The final release was tagged on September 22, 2026, following three release candidates earlier in the month.
Systemd 262 introduces improvements across service management, containers, virtualization, encrypted storage, TPM security, networking, journal recovery, system updates, and unattended installations. Among the most interesting additions are the ability to build systemd as a single statically linked PID 1 binary, Intel TDX support in systemd-vmspawn, Live Update Orchestrator integration, improved TPM-backed encryption, and new fallback unit files embedded directly into the systemd manager.
The release also contains a rather unusual development safeguard: an AI/LLM canary intended to help identify code contributions generated by AI that haven't been properly reviewed by a human before submission.
systemd 262 Is Officially Available
The final systemd 262 source was tagged by systemd developer Luca Boccassi on September 22.
The upstream tag identifies commit 8cc40e0c5e9234bf45084751ac53b1fbfe70b492 as systemd v262, following release candidates published throughout September.
The release has already begun reaching Linux distribution development repositories.
Debian accepted systemd 262-1 into Debian Unstable on September 22, while Fedora has prepared systemd 262 packages for Fedora 45.
As usual, the speed at which systemd 262 reaches ordinary users will depend on each distribution's update policy.
systemd Can Now Become a Single Static PID 1 Binary
One of the most interesting changes in systemd 262 is support for building systemd as a single statically linked PID 1 and executor binary.
The feature is primarily intended for extremely small container environments.
Normally, systemd depends on a collection of dynamically linked libraries and supporting components. That architecture makes sense for a complete Linux distribution, but containers sometimes need a much smaller runtime environment.
The new static configuration makes it possible to create a more self-contained systemd executable suitable for minimal container images.
These builds avoid dynamically loading optional libraries and use simplified mechanisms for resolving users and groups rather than relying on the complete Name Service Switch infrastructure.
This doesn't mean normal Linux distributions will suddenly replace their standard systemd packages with a giant static executable. The capability is specifically useful for specialized container and minimal-system deployments.
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- Ubuntu Container Escape Vulnerability Gets Public Exploit Before Kernel Patch Arrives
by George Whittaker
Ubuntu administrators running containerized workloads have a new Linux kernel security problem to watch closely. Public exploit code is now available for CVE-2026-80521, a Linux kernel use-after-free vulnerability that can allow an unprivileged process inside a container to escape and obtain root privileges on the underlying host.
Security firm DepthFirst published its research and exploit on September 22, 2026, demonstrating the attack against Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. The underlying Linux kernel vulnerability had already been fixed upstream on August 6, but as of September 23, Ubuntu's security tracker still lists the main kernel package in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS as "Vulnerable, work in progress," while Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is also listed as vulnerable.
The situation is particularly important for Docker, Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, and other environments that run potentially untrusted workloads because the vulnerable kernel functionality can be reached through ordinary operations available inside standard containers.
There is currently no confirmed evidence that CVE-2026-80521 is being actively exploited in real-world attacks, and the vulnerability isn't listed in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The availability of working public exploit code nevertheless makes the patch gap considerably more important.
CVE-2026-80521 Is a Linux Kernel Vulnerability
Although Ubuntu is receiving much of the attention because the newly published exploit specifically targets it, CVE-2026-80521 is fundamentally a Linux kernel vulnerability.
The problem exists in the kernel's AF_UNIX socket subsystem, specifically within its garbage collection mechanism.
AF_UNIX sockets, commonly called Unix-domain sockets, provide local inter-process communication between applications running on the same system.
Unlike conventional network sockets, they don't need to communicate across a network. They are widely used by Linux applications and services for fast communication between local processes.
They also support passing file descriptors between processes through SCM_RIGHTS messages, and it is the kernel's management of these references that creates the conditions for CVE-2026-80521.
A Race Condition Leads to Use-After-Free
At the technical level, CVE-2026-80521 involves a race condition inside the AF_UNIX garbage collector.
The kernel needs to track references between Unix sockets when file descriptors are passed between processes. Circular references can develop, where one socket effectively references another while that socket references something else in the same group.
Linux represents these relationships internally and periodically determines which references can safely be removed.
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- Fedora Linux 45 Beta Released with Python 3.15, GCC 16.2, and Major Security Changes
by George Whittaker
The Fedora Project has officially released Fedora Linux 45 Beta, giving users an early look at the technologies expected to form the foundation of the final Fedora 45 release. The beta became available on September 15, 2026, after Fedora's Quality team approved Release Candidate 1.3 for publication.
Fedora 45 Beta brings significant changes throughout the operating system, including Python 3.15, GCC 16.2, glibc 2.44, GNU Binutils 2.47, Go 1.27, LLVM 23, Podman 6, stricter RPM signature verification, improved DNF5 protections, a new userspace virtual console, standardized desktop secret storage, and substantial installer improvements.
The release is available across Fedora Workstation, KDE Plasma Desktop, Server, Cloud, IoT, Atomic Desktops, Spins, and Labs, although a few prerelease images are excluded.
Fedora 45 Beta Is Now Available
Fedora Linux 45 Beta represents the final major public testing milestone before Fedora 45 reaches stable status.
Fedora describes its beta releases as code-complete previews that closely represent what users should expect from the final version. Development isn't finished, however, and bugs or incomplete migrations can still be discovered during real-world testing.
Fedora 45 Beta is currently available in several major editions:
Fedora Workstation 45 Beta Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop 45 Beta Fedora Server 45 Beta Fedora Cloud 45 Beta Fedora IoT 45 Beta Fedora Atomic Desktops Fedora Spins Fedora Labs
Existing Fedora installations can also be upgraded to the beta using Fedora's DNF system-upgrade process.
Fedora's official Workstation download page confirms Beta 1.3 images for both x86_64 and AArch64 systems.
A New Virtual Console with kmscon
One of Fedora 45's more unusual system-level changes is the replacement of the traditional in-kernel console with kmscon.
Fedora describes kmscon as a modern userspace virtual terminal implementation that provides smoother rendering, better internationalization and font handling, improved visual integration, and security improvements compared with the older console infrastructure.
This affects the virtual terminals users encounter outside their normal graphical desktop session.
Most desktop users spend relatively little time interacting directly with these consoles, but they remain important for troubleshooting, system administration, servers, recovery operations, and systems running without a graphical environment.
Moving that functionality into userspace also gives Fedora more flexibility for future development instead of relying entirely on the legacy kernel console implementation.
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- Thunderbird 156 Released with OAuth Improvements, OpenPGP Updates, and Major Linux Fixes
by George Whittaker
The Thunderbird team has officially released Thunderbird 156, bringing another round of new features, security improvements, authentication enhancements, and reliability fixes to the popular open-source email client. Released on September 15, 2026, the update is available for Linux alongside Windows and macOS.
Thunderbird 156 is not a dramatic redesign of the desktop mail client. Instead, it concentrates on improving areas that matter to everyday users and system administrators, including OAuth authentication, OpenPGP, POP3, IMAP, Exchange Web Services, SMTP, attachments, calendars, enterprise policies, and security.
For Linux users in particular, the release delivers several fixes affecting common mail protocols and account configurations while retaining support for Linux environments using GTK+ 3.14 or newer.
Thunderbird 156 Arrives on Linux
Thunderbird 156 follows version 154, which arrived in August with features including optional system tray operation and Microsoft Graph support for Microsoft 365.
Version 156 continues the project's monthly release cycle with a more targeted collection of authentication, security, compatibility, and reliability improvements.
According to Thunderbird's official release notes, version 156 requires:
Linux: GTK+ 3.14 or newer Windows: Windows 10 or newer macOS: macOS 10.15 or newer
Thunderbird 156 was officially released on September 15.
Linux distribution availability will vary because distributions can package Thunderbird according to their own schedules. Users receiving Thunderbird through another packaging channel may therefore see version 156 at a different time.
Custom OAuth Support Expands
One of the most significant areas of development in Thunderbird 156 is OAuth authentication.
Thunderbird now supports custom OAuth configurations containing an issuer ID and client secret for IMAP and POP3 accounts. Custom OAuth support has also been extended specifically to POP3.
OAuth has become increasingly important as email providers move away from conventional username-and-password authentication toward token-based authentication.
For Thunderbird, broader custom OAuth support means users and organizations have greater flexibility when connecting the client to mail services that don't fit Thunderbird's predefined provider configurations.
This can be particularly useful in enterprise environments, self-hosted infrastructure, and organizations operating their own identity systems.
Exchange Custom OAuth Setup Fixed
Exchange users receive an important related correction.
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- KDE Plasma 6.7.5 Released with Discover, KWin, Wayland, and HDR Fixes
by George Whittaker
The KDE Project has officially released KDE Plasma 6.7.5, delivering another round of bug fixes and stability improvements for the Plasma 6.7 desktop series. Released on September 8, 2026, the update contains roughly a month of fixes and updated translations contributed since Plasma 6.7.4 arrived in early August.
Unlike a major Plasma release, version 6.7.5 doesn't introduce a large collection of new desktop features. Instead, KDE has focused on fixing problems affecting Discover, KWin, Wayland, networking, System Monitor, Plasma Desktop, RPM-OSTree systems, Snap updates, HDR rendering, and several other components.
For users already running Plasma 6.7, this makes version 6.7.5 primarily a maintenance upgrade intended to make the desktop more dependable ahead of the next major Plasma series.
KDE Plasma 6.7.5 Arrives as the September Bugfix Release
KDE describes Plasma 6.7.5 as its September bugfix release for the Plasma 6 desktop.
The broader Plasma 6.7 series originally arrived in June 2026, followed by a succession of maintenance releases:
Plasma 6.7.1 on June 23 Plasma 6.7.2 on June 30 Plasma 6.7.3 on July 14 Plasma 6.7.4 on August 4 Plasma 6.7.5 on September 8
KDE's official download infrastructure confirms that the Plasma 6.7.5 source packages became available on September 8.
This slower maintenance cadence later in a Plasma series is normal. Once the most urgent post-release problems have been addressed, KDE generally shifts more development attention toward the next feature release while continuing to provide important fixes for the current branch.
Discover Receives Several Important Fixes
KDE's Discover software center receives some of the most noticeable improvements in Plasma 6.7.5.
One particularly annoying problem could cause Discover to become stuck while checking for updates when its Snap backend was installed but no Snap applications actually had updates available.
That problem has now been corrected.
Discover also behaves more reliably when fwupd, the Linux firmware update service, is unavailable. Previously, a broken or intentionally masked fwupd service could interfere with Discover's normal operation. Plasma 6.7.5 allows the rest of the application to continue functioning correctly in that situation.
This is useful for systems where firmware updating isn't supported, where administrators intentionally disable the service, or where fwupd encounters a configuration problem.
Firmware Updates No Longer Incorrectly Require Reboots
Another Discover correction addresses a regression involving firmware updates.
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- Slackware 16 Alpha 1 Released with Linux 6.18 LTS, GCC 16.2, and Plasma 6
by George Whittaker
One of Linux's oldest surviving distributions is moving closer to its next major release. Slackware 16 Alpha 1 became available on September 5, 2026, marking the first formal alpha milestone on the road toward Slackware Linux 16. The release follows a major rebuild of Slackware-current using a substantially newer GNU toolchain and brings together several upgrades that have accumulated since Slackware 15.0 arrived more than four years ago.
The alpha combines Linux 6.18 LTS, GCC 16.2.0, glibc 2.44, GNU Binutils 2.47, KDE Plasma 6, and numerous updated user-space packages while retaining much of the deliberately traditional architecture that has distinguished Slackware for decades.
For longtime Slackware users, Alpha 1 is particularly significant because it provides the clearest indication yet that the lengthy Slackware 16 development cycle is moving toward an eventual stable release.
Slackware 16 Finally Reaches Alpha
Slackware doesn't operate according to the predictable six-month or annual release schedules used by many other Linux distributions.
Instead, development takes place continuously through the Slackware-current branch. Patrick Volkerding and other contributors update that development tree until it reaches a state considered suitable for a stable release.
The previous major version, Slackware 15.0, was released in February 2022. More than four and a half years later, Slackware-current has now officially reached the first alpha milestone for version 16.
Volkerding marked the milestone following a complete rebuild of the distribution with its newly upgraded compiler, C library, and binary utilities.
The short changelog announcement even suggested there might finally be "a light at the end of the tunnel," a promising indication for Slackware users waiting for version 16.
The Entire Distribution Was Rebuilt
One of the most consequential changes behind Alpha 1 is a complete package rebuild.
Slackware's development toolchain has moved to:
GCC 16.2.0 glibc 2.44 GNU Binutils 2.47
After introducing those components, Slackware rebuilt the distribution's packages against the updated environment.
A full rebuild is much more significant than simply replacing three packages.
GCC is responsible for compiling much of the software distributed with Slackware, glibc provides fundamental C library functionality used throughout Linux user space, and Binutils supplies essential development utilities including the GNU assembler and linker.
Rebuilding the distribution against these versions gives Slackware 16 a considerably newer foundation than its predecessor.
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- Top AEO Tools for Linux and Developer Documentation Teams
by Malana VanTyler
These platforms help teams monitor how technical content appears in AI-generated answers, from brand mentions and citations to accuracy and referral traffic.
Search is splitting into two experiences: one built around ranked pages and another around generated answers. As AI platforms summarize Linux tutorials, open-source project documentation, API references and technical guidance, teams need ways to measure whether their content is mentioned, cited and accurately represented.
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