Germany Doxes ‘UNKN,’ Head of RU Ransomware Gangs REvil, GandCrab
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: An elusive hacker who went by the handle “UNKN” and ran the early Russian ransomware groups GandCrab and REvil now has a name and a face. Authorities in Germany say 31-year-old Russian Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin headed both cybercrime gangs and helped carry out at least 130 acts of computer … ⌘ Read more
A Small But Useful Debugging Addition For AMD Zen Systems With Linux 7.1
A small but convenient feature is coming with the Linux 7.1 that will be useful in debugging AMD Zen system problems and information reporting/transparency purposes… ⌘ Read more
@kiwu@twtxt.net what in the world?! Where? Long gone here (US).
More Americans Are Breaking Into the Upper Middle Class
More Americans have moved into upper-middle-class incomes over the past several decades (source paywalled; alternative source), with new research suggesting that group has grown sharply while the lower and core middle class have shrunk. The Wall Street Journal reports: In 2024, about 31% of Americans were part of the upper middle class, up from about 10% in 1979, … ⌘ Read more
Peter Thiel Is Betting Big On Solar-Powered Cow Collars
Halter, a New Zealand agtech startup now valued at $2 billion, has raised $220 million to expand its AI-powered cattle management system. “Halter is now valued at $2 billion following the Series E, which was led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund with participation from Blackbird, DCVC, Bond, Bessemer, and several others,” reports Inc. From the report: alter plans to … ⌘ Read more
Copilot Is ‘For Entertainment Purposes Only,’ According To Microsoft’s ToS
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: AI skeptics aren’t the only ones warning users not to unthinkingly trust models’ outputs – that’s what the AI companies say themselves in their terms of service. Take Microsoft, which is currently focused on getting corporate customers to pay for Copilot. But it’s also been getting d … ⌘ Read more
NetBSD 11.0 Nears Release With RC3 Released For Testing
For the better part of the past year NetBSD developers have been preparing for the NetBSD 11.0 release and in February NetBSD 11.0-RC1 released followed by 11.0-RC2 and now a third release candidate was announced today… ⌘ Read more
Wine Staging 11.6 Ships Big Patch Series For Working On DirectComposition
Following Friday’s release of Wine 11.6 with reviving the Android driver and improving game mod support as part of DLL loader updates, Wine-Staging 11.6 is out today with extra patches atop… ⌘ Read more
Linux Finally Starts Removing Support for Intel’s 37-Year-Old i486 Processor
“It’s finally time,” writes Phoronix — since “no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support.”
“A patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from … ⌘ Read more
Interesting. Another parsing issue? Let’s test: this should be italics. Then this also should be “italics”. End.
Many MediaTek MT76 WiFi Driver Improvements Coming For Linux 7.1
Separate from the recently discussed work on MediaTek MT7927 “Filogic 380” support being worked on for the MT76 Linux driver (still undergoing review), a number of other MediaTek MT76 wireless driver improvements are queued up ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window opening as soon as next week… ⌘ Read more
Google Proposes JSIR As A High-Level IR For JavaScript
Google engineers have been developing JSIR as a high-level intermediate representation (JSIR) for JavaScript that they are already using in production at the company code code analysis and transforming other code/bytecode to JavaScript as well as for deobfuscating JavaScript code… ⌘ Read more
Tiny Corp Begins Accepting Pre-Orders For Their $10M Exabox
Open-source friendly company Tiny Corp that is behind the Tinygrad MIT-licensed neural network framework and developing a “sovereign” AMD GPU driver stack with their Tinybox hardware offerings has their sights on shipping the Exabox next year. The Tiny Corp’s Exabox is expected to retail for around $10M USD but offer immense AI compute power… ⌘ Read more
Russia’s VPN Crackdown Caused Bank Outages, Telegram Founder Says
Russia’s “great crackdown” on VPNs — and a clampdown on Telegram’s messaging platform — had an unintended side effect, reports Bloomberg. It “triggered the widespread banking outage seen across the country this week, Telegram’s billionaire founder Pavel Durov said.”
“Telegram was banned in Russia, yet 65 million Russians still use it daily via VP … ⌘ Read more
Artemis Astronauts Enter Moon’s Gravitational Pull, Catch First Glimpses of Far Side
NASA’s Artemis astronauts are now entering “the lunar sphere of influence,” reports NBC News, “meaning the pull of the moon’s gravity will become stronger than Earth’s.” Now as they begin their swing around the moon, the Artemis astronauts “are chasing after Apollo 13’s maximum range from Earth,” reports t … ⌘ Read more
I went 1 for 2 at Magic this week… Temmet made a good showing the first game before being overwhelmed by an infinite number of Wylls (aka Fred Durst, on account of all his “rollin’, rollin’, rollin’!”). As a result, I unleashed Chatterfang on the group for the second game, and he lead his squirrel army to victory once again. Good times!
Internet Bug Bounty Pauses Payouts, Citing ‘Expanding Discovery’ From AI-Assisted Research
The Internet Bug Bounty program “has been paused for new submissions,” they announced last week.
Running since 2012, the program is funded by “a number of leading software companies,” reports InfoWorld, “and has awarded more than $1.5m to researchers who have reported bugs “
Up to now, 80% of its p … ⌘ Read more
Claude Code Leak Reveals a ‘Stealth’ Mode for GenAI Code Contributions - and a ‘Frustration Words’ Regex
That leak of Claude Code’s source code “revealed “all kinds of juicy details,” writes PC World.
The more than 500,000 lines of code included:
- An ‘undercover mode’ for Claude that allows it to make ‘stealth’ contributions to public code bases
- An ‘always-on’ age … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0-rc7 Released With Improved Docs For AI Agents, WiFi Driver Performance Fix
Timed for Easter this year is the seventh weekly release candidate for the Linux 7.0 kernel. If all goes well, Linux 7.0 stable will be out next week… ⌘ Read more
Hundreds of Theatres Show Apocalyptic-Yet-Optomistic New Movie, ‘The AI Doc’
Hundreds of theatres are now showing a new documentary called The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist. Variety calls it “playful and heady,“edited “with a spirit of ADHD alertness.” The New York Times suggests it “tries to cover so much that it ends up being more confusing than clarifying, but parts are fascina … ⌘ Read more
Will ‘AI-Assisted’ Journalists Bring Errors and Retractions?
Meet the “journalist” who “uploads press releases or analyst notes into AI tools and prompts them to spit out articles that he can edit and publish quickly,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
“AI-assisted stories accounted for nearly 20% of Fortune’s web traffic in the second half of 2025.” And most were written by 42-year-old Nick Lichtenberg, who has … ⌘ Read more
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org easy come, easy go. They grow so fast! :-) Also, Azabache allows to be seeing when ready for it, you know, just like Gandalf “*a wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to*”. :-D
@kiwu@twtxt.net meh, wish I could say I had a great day. What is worse, tomorrow is back at work again. There isn’t a single day I think: did we evolved, and when through all those troubles, to end up like this?!
Crooks Behind $27M in ‘Refund’ Scams Busted By YouTube Pranksters After Being Lured to Fake Funeral
One crime ring scammed 2,000 elderly people of more than $27 million between 2021 and 2023 using tech support/bank impersonation/refund scams. “Victims were in their 70s and 80s,” reports the U.S. Attorney’s office for California’s southern district. Victims were first told they’d r … ⌘ Read more
Apple Brings Device-Level Age Verification to Two More Countries
11 days ago Apple launched device-level age restrictions in the U.K. There were some glitches, reports the blog 9to5Mac.
For me, the experience was an entirely painless one, taking less than 30 seconds. All I had to do was tap a confirm and continue button, and Apple told me that the length of time I’d had an Apple account was used to confirm t … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 Expected To Begin Removing i486 CPU Support
It’s finally time: a patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from the Linux kernel. Anyone still using an i486 CPU with an upstream Linux kernel would be incredibly rare and no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support, but in case you are, you can continue to be running one of … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 To Begin Removing i486 CPU Support
It’s finally time: a patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from the Linux kernel. Anyone still using an i486 CPU with an upstream Linux kernel would be incredibly rare and no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support, but in case you are, you can continue to be running one of the exis … ⌘ Read more
Chrome 148 Will Start ‘Lazy Loading’ Video and Audio to Improve Performance
“Google has announced that it’s currently testing a new feature for Chrome 148 that could speed up day-to-day browsing,” reports PC World:
[T]he browser can intelligently postpone the loading of certain elements. Why load all images at the start when it can instead load images as you get close to them while scrolling? Chrome and … ⌘ Read more
Scientists Engineered a Plant To Produce 5 Different Psychedelics At Once
Plants, toads, and mushrooms “can all produce psychedelic substances,” writes ScienceAlert.
“And now their powers have been combined in one plant.”
[S]cientists have taken the genes these organisms use to make five natural psychedelics and introduced them into a tobacco plant ( Nicotiana benthamiana), which then produced a … ⌘ Read more
AMD & Valve Deliver Better Kaveri / Kabini APU Experience With Upcoming Linux 7.1
A nice Easter surprise are some last minute updates submitted to DRM-Next of the final planned AMDGPU/AMDKFD feature changes for the upcoming Linux 7.1 feature cycle… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0-rc7 Adding More Documentation For AI Tools To Send Better Security Bug Reports
For helping with the increase of AI tools scouring the Linux kernel source tree and sending security bug reports, a pull request sent today ahead of the Linux 7.0-rc7 improves the documentation to better guide AI agents – and anyone reading the documentation – how to send better quality bug reports… ⌘ Read more
Does Ubuntu Now Require More RAM Than Windows 11?
“Canonical is no longer pretending that 4GB is enough,” writes the blog How-to-Geek, noting Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “raises the baseline memory to 6GB, alongside a 2GHz dual-core processor, and 25GB of storage…”
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) set the floor at 1GB — a modest ask when it launched more than a decade ago in 2014. Then came the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) that pus … ⌘ Read more
@bender@twtxt.net Haven’t seen Azabache yesterday. But I was probably not checking enough at the correct times.
hid-omg-detect: Linux Driver In Development To Detect Malicious HID Devices
Zubeyr Almaho has been leading work on a new HID driver named hid-omg-detect with an intent on passive monitoring to watch out for any malicious HID devices being connected to the system… ⌘ Read more
Linux Sees Fixes For Its GD-ROM Driver In 2026 For Sega Dreamcast
Seeing new Linux patches for benefiting Sega Dreamcast devices wasn’t on my bingo card for 2026. A patch series was sent out today for fixing the Linux kernel’s GD-ROM driver for accessing media using the drivers on “real” Sega Dreamcast devices… ⌘ Read more
Mesa 26.1 Makes It Easier To “Fake” A GPU Reset Using LLVMpipe
As a small but interesting addition coming for this quarter’s Mesa 26.1 release is making it easy to simulate a GPU reset with the LLVMpipe software driver. While seemingly mundane, this can be quite handy for compositor developers and other app/software developers wanting to more easily test how their code behaves when encountering a GPU reset… ⌘ Read more
Apple’s First 50 Years Celebrated - Including How Steve Jobs Finally Accepted an ‘Open’ App Store
Apple’s 50th anniversary got celebrated in weird and wild ways. CEO Tim Cook posted a special 30-second video rewinding backwards through the years of Apple’s products until it reaches the Apple I. Podcaster Lex Fridman noticed if you play the sound in reverse, “It’s the Think Differ … ⌘ Read more
The problem is, they jump hosts all the time.

Maybe it’s time to add automated blocking after all … God, I’m too lazy for that. 😞
Top NPM Maintainers Targeted with AI Deepfakes in Massive Supply-Chain Attack, Axios Briefly Compromised
“Hackers briefly turned a widely trusted developer tool into a vehicle for credential-stealing malware that could give attackers ongoing access to infected systems,” the news site Axios.com reported Tuesday, citing security researchers at Google.
The compromised package … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Pulls Then Re-Issues Windows 11 Preview Update. Also Begins Force-Updating Windows 11
Nine days ago Microsoft released a non-security “preview” update for Windows 11 — not mandatory for the average Windows user, notes ZDNet, “but rather as optional, more for IT admins and power users who want to test them.”
TechRepublic adds that the update “was to bring ‘production-rea … ⌘ Read more
America’s CIA Recruited Iran’s Nuclear Scientists - By Threatening To Kill Them
A former U.S. spy spoke to The New Yorker about “years of clandestine work for the C.I.A. — which, he said, had ‘prevented Iran from getting a nuke’.”
[Kevin] Chalker told me that, as he understood it, the Pentagon had suggested running commando operations to kill key Iranian scientists, as Israel subsequently did. … ⌘ Read more
Before Webcomics: Selling Political Cartoons On BBSes In 1992
Slashdot reader Kirkman14 writes: A year before the Web opened to the public, Texas entrepreneur Don Lokke was trying to syndicate weekly political cartoons to bulletin board systems. His “telecomics,” as he called them, represent an overlooked early experiment in online comics. Lokke launched his main series, “Mack the Mouse” at the height of the 1992 … ⌘ Read more
Are Employers Using Your Data To Figure Out the Lowest Salary You’ll Accept?
MarketWatch looks at “surveillance wages,” pay rates “based not on an employee’s performance or seniority, but on formulas that use their personal data, often collected without employees’ knowledge.”
According to Nina DiSalvo, policy director at labor advocacy group Towards Justice, some systems use signals associated with fi … ⌘ Read more
Anthropic Announces Claude Subscribers Must Now Pay Extra to Use OpenClaw
Anthropic’s making a big and sudden change — and connecting its Claude AI to third-party agentic tools “is about to get a lot more expensive,” writes the Verge:
Beginning April 4th at 3PM ET, users will “no longer be able to use your Claude subscription limits for third-party harnesses including OpenClaw,” according to an email sen … ⌘ Read more
Debian Is Figuring Out How Age Verification Laws Will Impact It
With age verification/attestation laws down to the OS level enacted by California and being decided upon by other US states, it’s been a hot topic of discussion in the open-source world. For the Debian project that is strictly volunteer/community-driven unlike various commercial Linux platforms, they are figuring out how such laws will impact them… ⌘ Read more
No, AMD Is Not Buying Intel
“The April 1st timing should have been your first clue,” writes Gadget Review. TechSpot’s false story was just an April Fool’s prank — although Gadget Review thinks it’s still funny how “something about this particular piece of satire felt uncomfortably plausible.”
Maybe it’s because AMD stock sits around $196 while Intel hovers near $41, or perhaps it’s the poetic justice of the underdog finally eating the giant. The semi … ⌘ Read more
Amazon Must Negotiate With First Warehouse Workers Union, US Labor Board Rules
Amazon “must negotiate with a labor union representing some 5,000 workers at a company warehouse on Staten Island,” reports Reuters, citing a ruling Wednesday from America’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The union formed in 2022, according to the article, and “has been seeking to negotiate with Amazon over pay, … ⌘ Read more


