Chinese Whistleblower Living In US Is Being Hunted By Beijing With US Tech
A former Chinese official who fled to the U.S. says Beijing has used advanced surveillance technology from U.S. companies to track, intimidate, and punish him and his family across borders. ABC News reports: Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: … ⌘ Read more

Ukrainians Sue US Chip Firms For Powering Russian Drones, Missiles
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of Ukrainian civilians filed a series of lawsuits in Texas this week, accusing some of the biggest US chip firms of negligently failing to track chips that evaded export curbs. Those chips were ultimately used to power Russian and Iranian weapon systems, causing wrongful deaths last … ⌘ Read more

Arizona City Rejects Data Center After Lobbying Push
Chandler, Arizona unanimously rejected a proposed AI data center despite heavy lobbying from Big Tech interests and former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Politico reports: The Chandler City Council last night voted down a request by a New York developer to rezone land to build a data center and business complex. The local battle escalated in October after Sinema showed up at a pla … ⌘ Read more

Framework Raises DDR5 Memory Prices By 50% For DIY Laptops
Framework Computer raised DDR5 memory prices for its Laptop DIY Editions by 50% due to industry-wide memory shortages. Phoronix reports: Framework Computer is keeping the prior prices for existing pre-orders and also is foregoing any price changes for their pre-built laptops or the Framework Desktop. Framework Computer also lets you order DIY laptops with … ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patch Confirms: Rust Experiment Is Done, Rust Is Here To Stay
Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda posted the patch a short time ago to “conclude the Rust experiment”. The “experiment” of Rust programming language code in the Linux kernel is over as it’s now accepted to be a success and “Rust is here to stay” in the kernel… ⌘ Read more

Doom Studio id Software Forms ‘Wall-To-Wall’ Union
id Software employees voted to form a wall-to-wall union with the CWA, covering all roles at the Doom studio. “The vote wasn’t unanimous, though a majority did vote in favor of the union,” notes Engadget. From the report: The union will work in conjunction with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which is the same organization involved with parent company ZeniMax’s … ⌘ Read more

Haiku OS Sees Port Of Go 1.18 Programming Language
The BeOS-inspired Haiku operating system has received a recent port of the Go programming language to the platform. Plus Haiku also saw app improvements and more over the month of November… ⌘ Read more

US To Mandate AI Vendors Measure Political Bias For Federal Sales
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. government will require artificial intelligence vendors to measure political “bias” to sell their chatbots to federal agencies, according to a Trump administration statement (PDF) released on Thursday. The requirement will apply to all large language models bought by federal agencies, wi … ⌘ Read more

Russian Hackers Debut Simple Ransomware Service, But Store Keys In Plain Text
The pro-Russian CyberVolk group resurfaced with a Telegram-based ransomware-as-a-service platform, but fatally undermined its own operation by hardcoding master encryption keys in plaintext. The Register reports: First, the bad news: the CyberVolk 2.x (aka VolkLocker) ransomware-as-a-service operation that launched in late … ⌘ Read more

Bill Gates’ Daughter Secures $30 Million For AI App Built In Stanford Dorm
Phoebe Gates, Bill Gates’ youngest daughter, has raised $30 million for the AI shopping app she built in her Stanford dorm room with classmate Sophia Kianni. The app is called Phia and is pitched as a way to simplify price comparison and secondhand shopping. “Its AI-powered search engine – available as an app and as a browser e … ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.0-rc2 Released With 28 Known Bug Fixes
Following last week’s Wine 11.0-rc1 release that marked the feature freeze as well in working toward Wine 11.0 in January, out today is Wine 11.0-rc2… ⌘ Read more

Google Translate Expands Live Translation To All Earbuds On Android
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google has increasingly moved toward keeping features locked to its hardware products, but the Translate app is bucking that trend. The live translate feature is breaking out of the Google bubble with support for any earbuds you happen to have connected to your Android phone. The app is … ⌘ Read more

FFS! Finally got a better Internet service 🥲

The Data Breach That Hit Two-Thirds of a Country
Online retailer Coupang, often called South Korea’s Amazon, is dealing with the fallout from a breach that exposed the personal information of more than 33 million accounts – roughly two-thirds of the country’s population – after a former contractor allegedly used credentials that remained active months after his departure to access customer data through the company’s overseas … ⌘ Read more

New Kindle Feature Uses AI To Answer Questions About Books - And Authors Can’t Opt Out
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon has quietly added a new AI feature to its Kindle iOS app – a feature that “lets you ask questions about the book you’re reading and receive spoiler-free answers,” according to an Amazon announcement.

The company says the feature, which is called Ask this Book … ⌘ Read more

Arkansas Becoming 1st State To Sever Ties With PBS, Effective July 1
joshuark writes: Arkansas is becoming the first state to officially end its public television affiliation with PBS. The Arkansas Educational Television Commission, whose members are all appointed by the governor, voted to disaffiliate from PBS effective July 1, 2026, citing the $2.5 million annual membership dues as “not feasible. … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Prime Video Pulls AI-Powered Recaps After Fallout Flub
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon Prime Video has pulled its AI-powered video recap of Fallout after viewers noticed that it got key parts of the story wrong. The streaming service began testing Video Recaps last month, and now they’re missing from the shows included in the test, including Fallout, The Rig, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Up … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Lands x2AVIC Patches For AMD SVM Handling Up To 4096 vCPUs
The Kernel-based Virtual Machine “KVM” updates for Linux 6.19 include preparations by AMD for handling up to a possible 4,096 virtual CPUs for VMs… ⌘ Read more

New Patches Lay Out Linux Kernel Adjustments For RISC-V RVA23 Hardware
With the first of RISC-V RVA23-compatible hardware expected to be released in 2026, we are beginning to see more Linux developers prepare for this RVA23 profile and the now-mandated extensions. Sent out this week was an initial “request for comments” patch series on RVA23 adjustments for the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Berlin Approves New Expansion of Police Surveillance Powers
Berlin’s regional parliament has passed a far-reaching overhaul of its “security” law, giving police new authority to conduct both digital and physical surveillance. From a report: The CDU-SPD coalition, supported by AfD votes, approved the reform of the General Security and Public Order Act (ASOG), changing the limits that once protected Berliners from int … ⌘ Read more

Alright, Advent of Code is over:

https://www.uninformativ.de/blog/postings/2025-12-12/0/POSTING-en.html

It’s been quite the time sink, especially with the DOS games on top, but it was fun. 🥳

In case you’re wondering: All puzzles (except for part 2 of day 10) were doable in Python 1 on SuSE Linux 6.4 and ran in a finite time on the Pentium 133. Puzzle 10/2 might have been doable as well if I had better education. 🤣

‘Apple Tax is Dead in the USA’
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has almost entirely upheld a scathing April ruling that found Apple in willful violation of a 2021 injunction meant to open up iOS App Store payments in its long-running legal battle against Epic Games. A three-judge panel affirmed that Apple’s 27% fee for developers using outside payment options had a “prohibitive effect” and that the company’s design restrictions on external pay … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Improves User-Space I/O “UIO” With Shared Virtual Addressing
Merged a few days ago for the ongoing Linux 6.19 merge window were all of the “char/misc” updates. A lot of random changes throughout this time from the Industrial I/O “IIO” drivers to an interesting new feature for User-Space I/O “UIO” for PCI/PCIe devices… ⌘ Read more

Right at sunset we went for a quick stroll into the woods. Cannot complain about the colors in the sky: https://lyse.isobeef.org/abendhimmel-2025-12-12/

China Leads Research in 90% of Crucial Technologies - a Dramatic Shift this Century
China is leading research in nearly 90% of the crucial technologies that “significantly enhance, or pose risks to, a country’s national interests,” according to a technology tracker run by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) – an independent think-tank. Nature: The ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker e … ⌘ Read more

The Immediate Post-College Transition and its Role in Socioeconomic Earnings Gaps
A new study of roughly 80,000 bachelor’s degree recipients from a large urban public college system finds that characteristics of a graduate’s first job can explain nearly two-thirds of the otherwise-unexplained earnings gap between students from low-income and high-income families five years after graduation.

T … ⌘ Read more

Washington Post’s AI-Generated Podcasts Rife With Errors, Fictional Quotes
The Washington Post’s top standards editor Thursday decried “frustrating” errors in its new AI-generated personalized podcasts, whose launch has been met with distress by its journalists. From a report: Earlier this week, the Post announced that it was rolling out personalized AI-generated podcasts for users of the paper’s mobil … ⌘ Read more

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe Time to become a trixie or forky!

Cache Aware Scheduling Raises Performance For Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids
Over the past year Intel engineers have worked a lot on Cache Aware Scheduling for the Linux kernel. The yet-to-be-merged functionality allows for the Linux kernel to better aggregate tasks sharing data to the same last level cache (LLC) domain to reduce cache misses and cache bouncing. The Cache Aware Scheduling development was led by Intel but helps other CPU vendors too for processors with multiple cache domains. Back in October I show … ⌘ Read more

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Yes, exactly. It also blows my mind that with sooo much less budget and equipment, her videos are way superior to productions of big TV stations.

Hollywood Director Found Guilty of Blowing $11 Million Netflix Budget on Crypto and Ferraris
Carl Rinsch, the director behind the 2013 Keanu Reeves film “47 Ronin,” has been found guilty of defrauding Netflix out of $11 million that was meant to fund a science fiction series called “Conquest,” which the streaming company ultimately cancelled in 2021 after Rinsch failed to meet any pro … ⌘ Read more

Blender Working On KosmicKrisp Support For Vulkan On macOS
The Blender 3D modeling software could enjoy better macOS support with better cross-platform code paths thanks to in-development work for leveraging KosmicKrisp for Vulkan API usage on macOS via Metal… ⌘ Read more

Major Automakers Say China Poses ‘Clear and Present Threat’ To US Auto Industry
Major automakers have urged Washington to prevent Chinese government-backed automakers and battery manufacturers from opening U.S. manufacturing plants, warning the industry’s future is at stake. From a report: The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents General Motors, Ford, Toyota Motor, Volkswagen, Hyund … ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm 7.10 Released - Strix Point APUs Now Officially Supported
Sure enough, yesterday’s inaugural TheRock 7.10 release tag ended up being a precursor to ROCm 7.10 as predicted in the earlier article. Overnight ROCm 7.10 was released as a new developer preview and with it comes expanded hardware support – including for Ryzen AI 300 Strix Point APUs finally being officially mentioned… ⌘ Read more

Reddit Launches High Court Challenge To Australia’s Under-16s Social Media Ban
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Reddit has filed a challenge against Australia’s under-16s social media ban in the high court, lodging its case two days after implementing age restrictions on its website. The company said in a Reddit post on Friday that while it agreed with protecting people under 1 … ⌘ Read more

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe is that https://github.com/owncloud/ocis (Go based, instead of PHP 🤮)?

Linux Patches Fix eMMC Secure Erase Of 1GB Taking ~10 Minutes To Now Just 2 Seconds
A new patch series from an NXP engineer optimizes the secure erase performance for certain Kingston eMMC devices. Currently with the Linux kernel performing a secure erase on 1GB of data can take around ten minutes. With these new patches that 1GB secure erase can be done in around two seconds… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu Studio 26.04 May Modernize Its Desktop Layout
Ubuntu Studio is the variant of Ubuntu Linux focused on content creation and audio recording needs, video editing, and other creative workloads. Ubuntu Studio’s desktop hasn’t seen too many changes since Ubuntu 12.04 LTS some 13+ years ago. But Ubuntu Studio developers are now considering desktop layout changes to help modernize its appearance… ⌘ Read more

ReBAR Code Cleaned Up For Linux 6.19 Along With A Few New PCIe Controller Drivers
All of the PCI subsystem updates were merged last week for the nearly-over Linux 6.19 merge window. Standing out this cycle are Resizable BAR improvements as well as introducing a few new PCIe controller drivers… ⌘ Read more

SEC Gives DTCC OK to Tokenize Stocks In Move To Blockchain
The SEC has granted the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., or DTCC, a no-action letter allowing it to custody and recognize tokenized stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries on approved blockchains for three years. “Although this program is a pilot subject to various operational limitations, it marks a significant incremental step in moving markets onchain,” SEC Commiss … ⌘ Read more

Awk to take lines from Plan 9’s /lib/unicode and prepend the actual glyph and a tab: awk ‘{cmd=sprintf(“unicode %s”, $1); cmd | getline c; printf(“%s %s\n”, c, $0)}’

Cadmium Zinc Telluride: The Wonder Material Powering a Medical ‘Revolution’
Cadmium zinc telluride (CZT), a hard-to-manufacture semiconductor produced by only a handful of companies, is enabling a quiet revolution in medical imaging, science, and security by delivering faster scans, lower radiation doses, and far more precise X-ray and gamma-ray detection. “You get beautiful pictures from this scann … ⌘ Read more

TerraUSD Creator Do Kwon Sentenced To 15 Years Over $40 Billion Crypto Collapse
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Do Kwon, the South Korean cryptocurrency entrepreneur behind two digital currencies that lost an estimated $40 billion in 2022, was sentenced in New York federal court on Thursday to 15 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy. Kwon, 34, who co-founded Singapore-based T … ⌘ Read more

97% of Buildings On Earth 3D-Mapped
Longtime Slashdot reader Gilmoure shares a report from Nature: Scientists have produced the most detailed 3D map of almost all buildings in the world. The map, called GlobalBuildingAtlas, combines satellite imagery and machine learning to generate 3D models for 97% of buildings on Earth. The dataset, published in the open-access journal Earth System Science Data on December 1, covers 2.75 billion buildin … ⌘ Read more

Windows WSL 2.7.0 Released With Newer Linux 6.6 LTS Point Release, Many Fixes
Microsoft today released WSL 2.7.0, the newest version of their Windows Subsystem for Linux code that enables running Linux binaries atop Windows 11 hosts… ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm’s TheRock 7.10 Released
TheRock is an interesting open-source build platform for ROCm and HIP that has taken shape over the past year. It’s become an official ROCm effort albeit still in early stages and relying on community contributions for enhancements for different consumer GPU targets and more. To date its users have largely relied on running the latest TheRock Git while today TheRock v7.10 was tagged… ⌘ Read more

Over 10,000 Docker Hub Images Found Leaking Credentials, Auth Keys
joshuark shares a report from BleepingComputer: More than 10,000 Docker Hub container images expose data that should be protected, including live credentials to production systems, CI/CD databases, or LLM model keys. After scanning container images uploaded to Docker Hub in November, security researchers at threat intelligence company Flare foun … ⌘ Read more

VMware Kills vSphere Foundation In Parts of EMEA
Broadcom has quietly pulled VMware vSphere Foundation from parts of EMEA, pushing smaller customers toward far more expensive bundles and prompting some to consider jumping to Hyper-V or Nutanix. The Register reports: VVF is a bundle that offers compute, storage, and networking virtualization, and a platform to run containers. It’s most useful in hyperconverged infrastructure and hy … ⌘ Read more

Trump Signs Executive Order For Single National AI Regulation Framework, Limiting Power of States
President Trump signed an executive order establishing a single federal AI regulatory framework that preempts state-level rules, aiming to centralize oversight of the rapidly growing AI industry. “The Trump administration, with the aid of AI and crypto czar David Sacks, has been purs … ⌘ Read more

UC Berkeley Professor Uses Secret Camera To Catch PhD Candidate Sabotaging Rival
A UC Berkeley professor, suspecting years of targeted computer damage against one Ph.D. student, secretly installed a hidden camera that allegedly caught another doctoral candidate sabotaging the student’s laptop. The student now faces felony vandalism charges and is due for his first court appearance on Dec. 15. The … ⌘ Read more