Linux 7.3-rc6 Released: Normal For The New “AI Normal”
Linus Torvalds just released Linux 7.3-rc7 as we work toward the stable Linux 7.3 kernel release in two weeks… ⌘ Read more

Radio Broadcasters Support America’s ‘AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act’
Last month, the U.S. House passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. They call it “a bipartisan effort to require AM radio in new vehicles,” adding that the bill now “awaits action in the Senate, where a companion measure has already garnered support, according to public records.”

Broadcasters said AM radio … ⌘ Read more

Made before the current profile pic, but posting it now for spooky month.

Disney/Marvel’s ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Beats ‘Avatar’ as Top-Grossing Film, ‘Coyote vs Acme’ #1 on Apple TV
James Cameron’s Avatar is no longer the highest-grossing movie in box office history. That honor now goes to the Disney/Marvel Studios film Avengers: Endgame. Variety explains:

“Avatar” spent a decade as the biggest release ever until “Avengers: Endgame” overtook the r … ⌘ Read more

Particle Collider Experiment Recreates the Big Bang’s Primordial Soup - and Find Unexpected Pattern
“Physicists smashed gold nuclei together at nearly the speed of light and found an unexpected pattern in the particles…” writes Live Science.

“If confirmed, that pattern could help reveal how the hot soup of quarks and gluons that filled the universe in the first few micro … ⌘ Read more

OpenCourant: Rocky Linux Developers Create Community Fork Of OpenRadioss
This week was the surprising and unfortunate decision of Siemens shutting down the OpenRadioss project as the four year old open-source project started by Altair Engineering with their prominent Radioss finite element solver. Siemens didn’t just end the project but they shutdown the GitHub repository that hosted the open-source code and removed other resources that had built around it. Fortunately, there’s a new community fork of OpenRadioss … ⌘ Read more

San Francisco’s Car Crime Has Plunged. How Much Credit Does Flock Deserve?
Car thefts in San Francisco are down almost 59% for the first eight months of 2026 compared with the same months in 2022, according to analysis of police department statistics by NPR’s Planet Money — and car break-ins are down more than 82%.

“San Francisco’s law enforcement leaders tell us that greater use of surveillance technol … ⌘ Read more

FSF Sponsors ‘GNU Boot’, a Libre, Ethical Replacement for Nonfree BIOS Or UEFI
“Free your BIOS today!” urges the web page for GNU Boot, calling it “a 100% free software project aimed at replacing the nonfree boot software (like BIOS or UEFI) of computers with free boot software.

GNU Boot is only a distribution: it reuses existing software projects like Coreboot, GRUB, SeaBIOS, etc. So it’s not very … ⌘ Read more

MGLRU-FG Delivering Up To 10~40% Higher Performance For Linux In Some Tests
Linux’s Multi-Gen LRU “MGLRU” has already achieved nice performance gains for Linux in recent years by optimizing page reclaims and improves performance under memory pressure. The new MGLRU-FG patches aim to take things further… ⌘ Read more

US Bank Regulator Sued Over Crypto Firm Charters by Community Bank Advocates
A U.S. banking group just sued the government agency that issues America’s federal bank charters, reports CoinDesk, “accusing it of exceeding its legal powers in granting national trust-bank status to crypto firms.”

The agency’s move “creates a gaping hole in financial regulation,” according to the lawsuit by The Independ … ⌘ Read more

Long-Time Slashdot Reader Announces New Open Source Web Browser ‘Northstar’
Long-time Slashdot reader Andreas® announces Northstar, a “minimalist” web browser written entirely from scratch in C — now available in version 1.0.11:

One window, one page, one process — about 160,000 lines of original C, small enough for one person to read and audit end-to-end. It carries no upstream browser engine: no … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA’s Results Of Conducting Wayland vs. X.Org Latency Testing
In addition to NVIDIA announcing their Display Config Server project at XDC 2026 in Toronto, at this annual developer’s conference they also presented their findings on scientific testing of X.Org vs. Wayland latency… ⌘ Read more

Linux Begins Seeing Workarounds For Fujitsu MONAKA CPU Bugs
Last month Fujitsu formally announced their MONAKA CPU as a 144 core Arm-based server processor geared for AI infrastructure. This comes after two years of seeing various Monaka patches to the GCC compiler and other open-source components. Now that MONAKA is announced, we are seeing more patches surface for the Linux kernel with this week seeing several workarounds for MONAKA CPU bugs… ⌘ Read more

openSUSE Turns To ZUPT For Post-Quantum Backups
OpenSUSE developers have announced they are making ZUPT available on their Linux distribution as a solution for providing post-quantum backups. ZUPT combines backup creation, compression, integrity verification, and encryption all via this single open-source utility… ⌘ Read more

Three EU Officials Not Sold on Europe’s Homegrown Alternative to Microsoft Teams
Politico EU reports:

The European Commission has rolled out an alternative to Microsoft Teams — but officials using it aren’t impressed, with one describing the tool as “absolute shit.”

The Commission introduced Element Pro over the summer as a “sovereign back-up to Teams,” according to an internal staff memo seen b … ⌘ Read more

This Virus Stole a Human Gene and Won’t Let Go of It
“Scientists have discovered a virus that is a tiny bit human, carrying a gene it stole from our ancestors about 100,000 years ago,” writes the New York Times. “And this virus may be using our own gene to infect us.”

Phys.org explains that it’s “both an important gene for brain function and a jumping gene capable of moving and inserting itself into genomes.”

BC200 is … ⌘ Read more

Physicists Identify ‘Octupolar’ Magnetism, With Implications for Quantum Technologies
While most magnets have two poles (north and south, or positive and negative), recent advances in quantum mechanics have revealed an “octupolar order,” writes Phys.org, where a pattern of particles in a crystalline structure “behaves as if it has eight magnetic poles rather than the familiar two.”

Now, … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Yes, welcome back. Great pics, by the way. I know you said at least some of it was crowded, but it looked very tranquil.

@river@twtpub.com Hey 👋

@aesthetic@twtpub.com Hello 👋

Surveillance Company Tells Cops It Wants to Add Facial Recognition to Flock Cameras
404 Media reports:

“We will not add facial recognition to our devices,” Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a recent video. But other, third-party companies are telling cops that they are willing to add facial recognition to data gathered by Flock cameras in order to “close that gap.” A company called VIDIZMO i … ⌘ Read more

Arm Working On “TLBID” For Linux To Increase Performance On High Core Count CPUs
Arm sent out an initial set of patches this week working on support in the Linux kernel for TLBI Domains. This “TLBID” feature is an upcoming Arm architecture capability designed to increase performance on high core count systems… ⌘ Read more

As ‘Falcon Heavy’ Launches, SpaceX Plans Dragon and Falcon 9 Phase Out As Starship Ramps Up
Spaceflight Now reports:

“A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Florida Thursday night on a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, America’s spy satellite agency… The NRO has previously flown payloads on 22 Falcon 9 rockets but this is the first time it has used the … ⌘ Read more

@pfefferle@twtxt.net Hey 👋

President Trump Doxxes Senator’s Cellphone in Push For Permanent Daylight Saving Time
U.S. President Donald Trump “doxxed” a U.S. senator today, writes the Washington Sun, by posting his cell phone number “as part of a plea for his Truth Social followers to badger his Republican ally into making daylight saving time permanent.”

When The Washington Sun called the number minutes after Trump’s … ⌘ Read more

@zyak@twtxt.z85b.xyz it forks and creates a new sub thread, obviously 🤣

@JasonSanta@jasonsanta.xyz very cool 😎

@jecxjo@sh0.xyz do you mean parley?

@zyak@twtxt.z85b.xyz sorry I just saw this, sounds like a good idea. I’ll see if I can add this!

Steam On Linux - Down To 3.05% For September?
Phoronix reports:

Steam on Linux use in March hit an all-time high of around 5.33% marketshare. Since then it pulled back to around 4% while for September 2026 the Steam Survey results… indicate a rather steep decline of 0.85%, down to 3.05%. Meanwhile macOS is at 1.92% and Microsoft Windows at 95%… Steam’s Survey reports a 7.42% increase in Chinese use, up to 31.39% overall of t … ⌘ Read more

Researcher, Dartmouth Professor and Provost Face Accusations of Secretly Using AI
“The winner of the Nikon Small World in Motion competition is under investigation,” writes the photography news site PetaPixel , “after scientists accused Dr Ning Xu of using AI in his video.”

The Nikon competition is about showcasing the beauty, complexity, and artistry of the microscopic world. The entries a … ⌘ Read more

The Amazing Work By Valve’s Timur Kristóf On Improving Old AMD GPUs On Linux
Over the past year Timur Kristóf of Valve’s Linux graphics driver team has made multiple very nice improvements to the AMDGPU kernel driver for enhancing support for old (GCN 1.0/1.1 era from a decade ago) graphics cards so that they can better handle Linux gaming and other tasks. This week in Toronto, Kristóf presented on this AMDGPU work that he initially began as a kernel driver development exercise after initially spending years i … ⌘ Read more

Linux Patches Show Promising Results For Lower Latency Of Short Slice Tasks
Linaro engineer Vincent Guittot sent out a set of patches on Friday working on scheduling latency improvements, especially when multiple short slice tasks are running concurrently on the same system… ⌘ Read more

California’s Governor Wants Worker Protections from AI. But FSF Thinks Kill Switches are ‘Dangerous Precedent’
The Guardian reports that California governor Gavin Newsom signed laws on Wednesday “aimed at protecting California workers from the threats of artificial intelligence , including potential job losses and workplace surveillance.”
The laws ban employers from usi … ⌘ Read more

Someone Got Doom In an SQL Database
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Rendering Doom in a database is obviously a bad idea,” Lukas Vogel writes in a lengthy blog post explaining how exactly he managed to render Doom using an SQL database. OK, that’s not entirely accurate. The SQLDoom project uses a small Python client to handle input and output, drive the game’s timing, and display each frame to the screen. Behi … ⌘ Read more

US Judge Rules Flock Search Was Mass Surveillance. Bernie Sanders Proposes ‘Ban Flock Act’
Flock’s cameras offer “indiscriminate mass surveillance,” a U.S. federal judge wrote in a ruling Thursday, as does any system with “continuously updated” location histories for all the vehicles filmed by automated license plate-reading cameras.

The judge’s ruling included italics for emphasis when … ⌘ Read more

Proton Experimental gets fixes for Sword of the Stars II, Plan B: Terraform, Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance and more
Another fresh upgrade for Proton Experimental to bring further Windows game compatibility enhancements to SteamOS / Linux.

Image

Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/10/proton-exp … ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.19 released with Wayland Colour Management, Unicode upgrades, DNS query cache
The Wine 11.19 release is now available for this open source Windows compatibility layer, bringing an assortment of new features and fixes.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/10/wine-11-19-released-with-wayland-colour-management-unicode-upgrades … ⌘ Read more

Moose: GNOME Gains Another Local AI App Option
Beyond the various local AI agent/chat options not catering to a specific desktop environment, the GNOME desktop has seen Newelle as an AI app catering to GNOME/GTK4. There’s now another local AI option for the GNOME desktop with Moose… ⌘ Read more

KosmicKrisp Now Conformant To Vulkan 1.4, Improving Performance Against Apple’s Metal
KosmicKrisp is the effort led by LunarG for developing a modern Vulkan-on-Metal driver for Apple systems within Mesa. This modern alternative to MoltenVK continues progressing well and now enjoys Vulkan 1.4 conformance and its performance continues inching closer to that of the native Apple Metal API… ⌘ Read more

1 In 8 Cancer Cases Worldwide Are Due to Infections
An estimated 2.3 million cancer cases worldwide in 2024, about one in eight, were attributable to infections, according to a study published in The Lancet Oncology. “This recent Lancet data is a profound reminder that a significant portion of our global cancer burden is fundamentally preventable,” said David Greenberg, MD, of Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.4 To Support The Raspberry Pi 10-Inch Touch Display 2
We are nearing the cut-off of new feature material being accepted to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 7.4 merge window. But this week another round of DRM-Misc changes made it, which included some new hardware support and other last minute items… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 To Better Support The High-End Turtle Beach VelocityOne Race
Coming with Sunday’s Linux 7.3-rc6 kernel release is support added for the Turtle Beach VelocityOne Race, a high-end $649~700 USD racing wheel and pedal system… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 Now Makes Tiled Windows Fit Together More Nicely
There is just over one week to go until the much anticipated KDE Plasma 6.8 desktop release. Some last minute fixes continue flowing into Plasma 6.8 as well as early feature work continuing for Plasma 6.9… ⌘ Read more

I’m back from my week-long trip 👋

Google Tests AI Data Center In Space
Longtime Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis shares a report from NPR: Google just put a refrigerator-sized satellite into space, part of a research project the company hopes can pave the way for orbiting AI data centers powered by the sun. The prototype satellite has four specialty chips in it called Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, that Google designed for machine learning and has already deployed i … ⌘ Read more

New Mexico Wants Meta To Pay $40 Billion In Penalties For Cambridge Analytica Scandal
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The state of New Mexico asked a judge on Thursday to order Meta Platforms to pay between $35 billion and $40 billion in penalties after a jury found the company had misled consumers about the privacy of their data on Facebook in a case that came out of the C … ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.19 Released With Wayland Color Management For Vulkan, DNS Query Caching
We are nearing the point of the Wine 12.0 stable release coming up in early 2027 while for now the Wine 11.xx bi-weekly development releases continue. Out today is Wine 11.19 with a few new features and plenty of fixes… ⌘ Read more

@zyak@twtxt.z85b.xyz That’s a good idea. I’m updating the twtxt rendering on my site, and I think I’m going to add a toggle to show / hide replies. Thanks!

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Thanks, that was a good read, really took me back. 😍