New Google Earth AI Tool Could Fuel Misinformation, Experts Say
Google has integrated its Nano Banana 2 image generator into Google Earth, allowing users to place AI-generated events and objects onto real satellite imagery. The company says its AI-generated images contain invisible watermarks detectable through Gemini or Lens, but the BBC found those safeguards and some third-party detection tools can be fooled … ⌘ Read more

The First Open-Source Firmware Released For Modern AMD Ryzen AM5 Platform
Last month 3mdeb released their open-source firmware for a modern AMD EPYC motherboard from Gigabyte that was built off the new AMD openSIL project and Coreboot. Today 3mdeb has delivered the first open-source firmware release for a modern AMD Ryzen desktop motherboard with having independently brought their openSIL+Coreboot powered Dasharo stack to the readily available MSI PRO B850-P WIFI… ⌘ Read more

Publishers Are Losing Google Traffic As AI Answers Replace Links
alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Google has basically stopped sending people to websites (including our site) for answers and information. Instead, it’s using AI to answer them on its platform, in its words. Chartbeat data shared with Axios shows Google Search traffic to publishers fell 34% over the past year. That pain is regressiv … ⌘ Read more

Shotcut 26.7 Video Editor Released With Stock Asset Library
Shotcut 26.7 is out today as the newest feature release to this open-source, cross-platform video editing solution… ⌘ Read more

New York Sues Kalshi For Running ‘Illegal Gambling Operation’
New York has sued prediction-market platform Kalshi, alleging it operates an “illegal gambling operation” without state authorization. “No matter what they call themselves, prediction markets like Kalshi are gambling platforms, plain and simple,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “By ignoring our laws, … ⌘ Read more

Chrome Is Using AI To Fix Hundreds of Bugs, Eliminate Full Browser Restarts
Google says AI-assisted workflows helped Chrome fix 1,072 security bugs across versions 149 and 150, more than the previous 23 releases combined. The company is also testing twice-weekly security updates and “dynamic patching,” which could apply most fixes without requiring users to restart the entire browser. “By leveraging … ⌘ Read more

Nouveau Preparing To Finally Enable Atomic Mode-Setting By Default
In addition to the Nouveau kernel driver unblocking Vulkan Video H.264 support for the Mesa NVK driver, another feature change on the way is this open-source NVIDIA Linux driver finally preparing to enable atomic mode-setting by default… ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux AUR Under Another Wave Of Malicious Packages, Package Adoptions Halted
Last month the Arch Linux User Repository “AUR” saw more than 1,500 malicious packages amid a sophisticated malware attack and then also seeing an influx of spam and profanities amid this community/user-maintained repository for the popular Arch Linux distribution. Unfortunately, there is another round of AUR troubles… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 To Allow Tuning AMD P-State Dynamic EPP With Per CPU Core Granularity
Sent out last night was the last batch of planned AMD P-State driver feature improvements targeting the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window… ⌘ Read more

LinkedIn Introduces a ‘Seems Like AI Slop’ Button
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: LinkedIn, a social network awash with long AI-generated posts from executives and other corporate workers, has introduced a new button that users can click to flag if a post “seems like AI slop,” according to 404 Media’s own tests. If you have been anywhere near LinkedIn in the past couple of years, you have undoubtedly seen u … ⌘ Read more

Servo 0.4 Browser Engine Gets More Websites Rendering Correctly
Servo 0.4 was just released for closing out the month of July. This month the Servo browser engine with its servoshell demo browser began rendering more real-world websites correctly… ⌘ Read more

@david@daiwei.me We’re slowly getting there. Very slowly. 8-)

Nouveau Patch For Linux 7.3 Opens The Door For NVK Vulkan Video Atop NVIDIA NVDEC
This week’s round of drm-misc-next patches for staging ahead of the Linux 7.3 kernel merge window bring an exciting change for the open-source NVIDIA “Nouveau” driver… ⌘ Read more

Finally, I added some tests and fixed this. After updating the feed metadata, I now just return early and do not attempt to build an SQL multi-value INSERT statement. Easy-peasy.

x86_64 Shadow Stack By Default Retargeted For Fedora 46
In recent weeks there was a proposal to enable x86_64 Shadow Stack support by default with the upcoming Fedora Linux 45 release. That change has been approved now by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) but with the feature being punted off to Fedora 46 next year… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.358 Released With New Image Tiling Control Extension
After two weeks without any Vulkan spec update, Vulkan 1.4.358 was released overnight. Besides the usual assortment of minor clarifications/fixes, Vulkan 1.4.358 introduces one new extension: VK_EXT_image_tiling_control… ⌘ Read more

Sound Fixes For Linux 7.2-rc6: “Far Larger Than Wished”
Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE previously warned of many sound driver fixes due to AI/LLMs and a “new normal” of patch activity as a result. While we are approaching the end of the Linux 7.2 merge window with the stable release coming up in August, the sound patches continue trending higher and this week were “far larger than wished” ahead of Linux 7.2-rc6 due out on Sunday… ⌘ Read more

Netflix Sued For Losing ‘Master Copy’ of Unreleased Nicolas Cage Movie
A production company and filmmaker are suing Netflix for $105 million, alleging the streamer lost a stolen drive containing an unencrypted master copy of the unreleased Nicolas Cage film Fortitude, which they claim damage its exclusivity and market value. Netflix denied responsibility for the lost film but said it takes content security … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Says Its AI Systems Broke Into Computers at 3 Organizations
Anthropic found that Claude models breached three outside organizations during cybersecurity tests because misconfigured environments accidentally gave them access to the internet. The company notified those affected and urged other AI labs to audit their own testing systems. The BBC reports: Anthropic said in a statement that it reviewe … ⌘ Read more

@chrisgarrod@twtpub.com Hello 👋 Welcome to Yarn.social / Twtxt 🙌

Flock Cameras Are Being Destroyed Across the US
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Surveillance cameras owned by Flock Safety have been cut down with electric saws in New York State, vandalized with paint in Oakland, California, and rammed with a truck in Idaho. Flock claims its services fight crime, but law enforcement agencies also use their services to track vehicles based on license plate numbers and reconstruct the thei … ⌘ Read more

New MCP Specification Addresses the Main Barrier To Enterprise Adoption
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open source standard for how AI systems interact with external tools and data sources, saw its largest update since its introduction. Most notably, MCP’s protocol core is now stateless, so requests are no longer dependent on a session t … ⌘ Read more

@david@daiwei.me I bet, you’re absolutely right. ;-) Let’s start the countdown: 10, …

A Fundamental Flaw Leaves LLMs Strikingly Vulnerable To Attack
joshuark quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: It is impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks because of a fundamental flaw in how they work, a team of researchers argue in a paper presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning, a top AI conference, this month. The claim has huge implications for the safety … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 Will Treat Intel Nova Lake S Graphics As Stable
Ahead of the next-generation Intel Nova Lake processors expected to begin rolling out around the start of 2027, the upcoming Linux 7.3 kernel cycle is going to begin treating Nova Lake S processors with their integrated graphics as stable… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s $450 Billion Jump Is Biggest In Stock Market History
Microsoft shares surged as much as 17% after reporting 43% growth in Azure revenue, putting the company on track to add a record $490 billion in market value in a single day. Bloomberg notes that it “would eclipse Nvidia’s $440 billion addition, following President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 90-day tariff pause last year, as the biggest ever. … ⌘ Read more

ABC Accuses FCC of ‘Attempted Censorship’
ABC accused FCC Chair Brendan Carr of “attempted censorship,” arguing that an early review of its eight broadcast licenses is politically motivated retaliation over the network’s coverage and could chill the entire media industry. “The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay th … ⌘ Read more

Amazon’s Zoox Wins First US Approval For Paid Robotaxis Without Human Controls
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon’s Zoox unit has won U.S. approval for limited commercial deployment of its novel steering-wheel-free robotaxis, a first for the autonomous ride industry, the U.S. auto safety agency said on Thursday. Zoox said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administratio … ⌘ Read more

AMD Posts Linux Patches For HDMI 2.1 Auto Low-Latency Mode “ALLM” & VRR
Following AMD posting AMDGPU patches for HDMI 2.1 FRL support after the HDMI 2.1 open-source support was long blocked by the HDMI Forum, as part of working toward a complete HDMI 2.1 implementation in this AMD Linux driver it was followed by HDMI 2.1 Display Stream Compression (DSC) support. Now the latest on the AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 enabling path is enabling Auto Low-Latency Mode (ALLM) as well as HDMI Variable Rate Refresh!.. ⌘ Read more

Catastrophic MoD Data Breach Caused By Lack of Training On Excel
A UK parliamentary inquiry found that a catastrophic Ministry of Defense breach exposing 18,700 Afghans could have been prevented with basic Excel training, after an employee unknowingly shared a hidden worksheet containing their details. The Independent reports: The leak, in February 2022, exposed the details of 18,700 Afghans who said they were … ⌘ Read more

There’s Finally A New Game Powered By The Unigine 2 Engine
It’s been about a decade since seeing any new games released on the visually-impressive, Linux-friendly Unigine Engine. Unigine Corp has mostly been focusing on Unigine Engine usage for simulations and other professional applications, but coming as a surprise today is a new game being developed on their latest Unigine 2 engine technology… ⌘ Read more

OPI Abstraction v0.1 Published With Aiming To Standardize DPU/IPU Ecosystems
The Linux Foundation hosted Open Programmable Infrastructure “OPI” announced its first coordinated release with OPI Abstraction v0.1. The work of the Open Programmable Infrastructure is hoping to standardize the data processing unit (DPU) and infrastructure processing unit (IPU) ecosystems… ⌘ Read more

Google’s Gemini Can Now Stomp Around as a Humanoid Robot
Google DeepMind’s Gemini Robotics 2 combines vision, language, and action models to control multiple types of robots, including humanoids performing tasks such as organizing shelves, tying bags, and replacing lightbulbs. “It’s another milestone in our path towards really getting towards what we call like physical AGI, which means we get a robot to do anything tha … ⌘ Read more

@arne@uplegger.eu @david@daiwei.me Most do actually look really good, but of course I prefer the birds. :-)

Can’t have them all, because it’s even harder to spot counterfeit notes I reckon.

@david@daiwei.me Hahaha, I love it! :‘-D I need very high precision pliers.

But now I’m owed something for that! Nearly made up for it. I can use the new clamp to press hard and shrink the coin a bit.

Google Brings Its Age-Assurance Tech To Android Developers Worldwide
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is expanding its answer to Apple’s age-assurance tools with Wednesday’s news that it will bring its Play Signal API to users worldwide by the end of 2026. The technology, already available in Brazil, allows Android developers to identify younger users of their apps in order … ⌘ Read more

Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R610 On CachyOS With The GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU
With the Razer Blade 18 as the first laptop Razer’s certifying for (Ubuntu) Linux use while testing it out I was predominantly using the NVIDIA R610 official driver stack. Some users were interested though in how well this laptop is working with the open-source, upstream Nouveau+NVK driver stack given Razer is marketing this high-end laptop for Linux use too. Before sending the review unit back I had run some graphics benchmarks to see … ⌘ Read more

GCC Adopts Policy Rejecting Significant AI-Generated Code
GCC has adopted a policy rejecting substantial code contributions generated by or derived from LLMs. “This covers not just code copied directly from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or GitHub Copilot, but also any versions of the code later edited or rewritten by a human, provided that the final contribution is still based on material generated by the system,” repo … ⌘ Read more

AMD Zen 6 Client HSMP Patches Points To “Ryzen Master” Functionality On Linux
In an interesting twist, patches this week posted to the Linux kernel mailing list are enabling AMD Zen 6 client desktop and laptop SoCs for the HSMP driver. Up to now the AMD HSMP Linux driver was just used for modern EPYC server processors while now we are seeing this HSMP driver supporting the upcoming Medusa and Olympic Ridge client platforms… Including mentions of overclocking and even noting “Ryzen Master” as the Windows-only … ⌘ Read more

Xen 4.22 Released With AMD Zen 5 BLT Support, Improved RISC-V Virtualization
The Xen Project today released Xen 4.22 as the newest feature release of this open-source hypervisor popular for open-source virtualization in automotive systems and other embedded use-cases as well as the cloud… ⌘ Read more

Comcast Store Punished Low Sales By Smashing Pies In Workers’ Faces, Lawsuit Claims
A former Comcast retail employee alleges that a Connecticut store manager tied the lowest-performing salesperson to a chair each month and had co-workers smash a cream pie into their face, recording the incidents as a sales-motivation tactic. The plaintiff says he resigned after reporting the alleged assaults an … ⌘ Read more

Huawei Considers Open-Sourcing A Half-Hearted Mesa Vulkan Driver
A Huawei engineer posted to the Mesa mailing list today over potentially upstreaming a Vulkan driver they have developed for an in-house GPU. However, at least in current form, this new in-house GPU Vulkan driver is likely dead in the water from being upstreamed into Mesa… ⌘ Read more

Patches Posted To Improve Linux Media Acceleration On Intel Alchemist GPUs
The Intel Arc A-Series graphics (DG2) remains in a bit of an awkward state on Linux due to the transition period moving from the i915 kernel driver to more modern and feature capable Xe kernel driver. It’s only post-Alchemist where the Intel Xe driver is officially supported and used by default while those opting for the Xe driver with the A-Series can often enjoy better performance and functionality. Except one of the caveats in using t … ⌘ Read more

Intel Media Driver & VPL GPU Runtime 2026Q2 Updates Continue Prepping For Nova Lake
Over the past few Intel VA-API Media Driver releases we have seen preparations made for Nova Lake video acceleration. That has continued today with the Intel Media Driver and Intel oneVPL GPU Runtime releases today with their new quarterly feature releases… ⌘ Read more

Qantas Plane Flies For More Than 24 Hours In Record-Breaking Flight
Qantas completed a record-breaking 24-hour, 24-minute test flight from Melbourne to Toulouse on Tuesday. “The specially adapted A350-1000ULR airliner is due to debut with the Australian carrier’s nonstop Sydney-London route from 2027,” reports The Guardian. From the report: Tuesday’s flight is thought to be the longest ever by a commercial … ⌘ Read more

AI Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters By the Thousands
An anonymous reader quotes a New York Times report on how AI companies are pouring money into training and recruiting electricians, carpenters, and other skilled tradespeople to build data centers: There is no parallel in American history for the boom underway in the construction of data centers, fueled by companies with functiona … ⌘ Read more

COSMIC Epoch 1.5 Brings More Fixes & Improvements To System76’s Desktop
The System76 and Pop!_OS developers continue quickly iterating on their Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment… ⌘ Read more

Who Wins and Who Loses After US Bans Foreign Robots?
The FCC’s ban on Chinese-made robots extends well beyond humanoids to quadrupeds, research platforms, and many robot vacuums from allied countries. Supporters call it a major boost for domestic robotics, but critics warn that cutting researchers and startups off from affordable foreign hardware could slow U.S. innovation instead. Ars Technica’s Jeremy Hsu examines wh … ⌘ Read more

Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver To Windows
Valve is funding Collabora’s experimental effort to port the open-source RADV Vulkan driver from Linux to Windows. The team has already demonstrated Counter-Strike 2 running with RADV, but a stable interface or compatibility shim will be needed to handle undocumented driver changes. Phoronix reports: Louis-Francis Ratte-Boulianne put out a blog pos … ⌘ Read more

Low stakes hot take: the most important good things in git were already in rcs. rcs→cvs→svn→git is better overall at each step, but the benefit/complexity ratio gets worse at each step and most things git gets used for would be fine with rcs+patch.