Could a Disc-Free PlayStation Actually Lower Game Prices?
“As Sony soldiers ahead with their plans to end hard copies for new PlayStation games, players are fearing a future which will force them to pay more and own less,” writes Kotaku.
What will prices do in a world with no physical copies to share or sell? One former Square Enix executive speculates this could actually drive down the price of games:
“Digital on … ⌘ Read more
tlbi= Boot Option Submitted Ahead Of Linux 7.2 Kernel Release
Ahead of the Linux 7.2 kernel stable release expected to occur in the coming hours, a last minute “x86/urgent” pull request was submitted with one patch for adding the new tlbi= boot option… ⌘ Read more
Bluesky’s Active User Base Shrinks 52% Over 18 Months, But Its Protocol is Spreading
An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:
According to data from digital intelligence provider Similarweb, Bluesky’s mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year-over-year. In addition, mobile daily active users continued to decline, falling 25.6% year … ⌘ Read more
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Disneyland Announces Star Wars/Fortnite Collaboration, ‘Avatar’ Attraction, and a Newer Tomorrowland
Saturday Disneyland announced a special Star Wars-themed collaboration with third-person shooter game Fortnite — including a slick new trailer for its Star Wars: Smuggler’s Gambit quest.
Visitors to Disneyland’s Smuggler’s Run attraction at Disney’s theme parks in Orlando and in … ⌘ Read more
Researchers Use Ordinary WiFi Connections to Create Images of Nearby People and Their Surroundings
Science Daily reports:
Researchers showed that unencrypted signals routinely exchanged between WiFi devices and routers can be used to create radio-based images of people and recognize them within seconds. In tests involving 197 participants, the system identified individuals w … ⌘ Read more
Debian Marks 33rd Birthday As One Of The Oldest Maintained Linux Distros
Today marks thirty three years since the Debian Linux distribution was started by the late Ian Murdock… ⌘ Read more
Anthropic Discovers AI Agents Given Conflicting Instructions Soon Tried to Sabotage Each Other
When Anthropic instructed three agents to migrate a Python backend, but telling each agent to perform the migration in a different language, “We consistently saw a multiagent turf war,” they wrote Thursday:
All of the models we tested quickly assumed that others were purposefully impeding th … ⌘ Read more
AVX-512 xor_gen Continues To Look Exciting For Helping Linux RAID With Modern CPUs
Google engineer Eric Biggers back in June posted an AVX-512 optimization for Linux RAID yielding up to a 41% improvement on a modern AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) processor. A revised patch then put it as much as a 43% improvement for this AVX-512 optimized xor_gen() function. The code hasn’t yet been merged to mainline but an updated version of it is now available… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 binfmt_misc To Allow BPF Programs To Dynamically Choose Execution Environments
The Linux kernel’s binfmt_misc functionality allows non-native/custom files to ne run directly such as for Windows EXE files to be handled by Wine or JAR files to be handled by the Java runtime. For the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window, the miscellaneous binary formats support is being extended so a binary type can be matched programmatically and the interpreter determined on a per-exec basis. BPF programs can also then be atta … ⌘ Read more
New Linux Driver Enables 12VHPWR Monitoring For ASUS ROG Astral Graphics Cards
For those concerned about current imbalance or voltage changes with the 12VHPWR power connectors and having an ASUS ROG Astral graphics card, there is now an open-source driver for Linux available that integrates with the hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem for 12VHPWR reporting on these ASUS graphics cards… ⌘ Read more
SpaceX Launches Two Falcon 9 Rockets just 38 Minutes Apart
An anonymous reader shares this report from Space.com:
On Saturday evening (Aug. 15), SpaceX set another mark, for the shortest time between orbital flights: It launched two Falcon 9 rockets just 38 minutes apart, besting its old mark — set on Aug. 31, 2024 with two Starlink missions — by 27 minutes.
The first liftoff, from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Spac … ⌘ Read more
Copper’s Surprising Melting Behavior Provides Insights for Future Fusion Power Plant Design
Phys.org reports:
Future fusion power plants aim to recreate the heart of a star here on Earth to power our future energy needs. While the core fusion plasma will burn at hundreds of millions of degrees, the surrounding structural components must handle sudden, punishing heat loads that riva … ⌘ Read more
X Open Sources Its Ranking and Filtering Algorithms
An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:
X is significantly expanding its open source codebase, which includes the app’s “For You” algorithm and its core ranking engine, and adding a feature that will let users see if their account or posts have been impacted by any of its ranking systems, the social network said on Thursday. The company is making the source co … ⌘ Read more
Marek Olšák’s 19 Latest Patches Further Optimizing RADV & ACO
Legendary Mesa Radeon Gallium3D driver developer Marek Olšák who was a longtime AMD employee and then joined Valve’s Linux graphics driver team earlier this year has continued his focus now on perfecting his art around the RADV Vulkan driver and ACO shader compiler… ⌘ Read more
Why Europe Keeps Being Pummeled by Heat Waves
Europe is facing its fifth round of dangerously high temperatures this summer, the New York Times reports. Now climate scientists wonder if global warming is doing more than raise temperatures…
The weather patterns that create heat domes aren’t new, but today they arise on top of the warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. That makes it more likely that heat waves reach record … ⌘ Read more
@murad@twtxt.net Yes things do work 🤣
@murad@twtxt.net Welcome to Yarn.social / Twtxt 🥳 You might want to fiddle a bit with your settings, maybe a nice avatar, description, maybe a few links, etc 😃
How Swarming Jellyfish Overran Three French Nuclear Power Reactors
A “massive influx” of jellyfish forced Electricite de France SA to shut three units at its Gravelines nuclear power plant this week and reduce output at a fourth, reports Bloomberg. Just as summer temperatures surged, 3.2 gigawatts went offline — and the power utility was already facing cuts other nuclear sites as high temperatures reduce … ⌘ Read more
How Larry Ellison Dropped From World’s 2nd-Richest To No. 8 In Just 2 Months
Less than a year ago he was the #1 richest man in the world. 10 weeks ago he was #2. But yesterday Larry Ellison dropped to #8, Forbes reports, falling behind Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Ellison’s net worth is now estimated at just $192.6 billion — after a $104 billion decline:
Shares of Oracle plunged roughly 54% betwe … ⌘ Read more
AI Fails to Deliver a 4-Day Work Week - Especially at AI Companies
“An engineering director at Google said four years ago that AI would deliver a four-day work week by 2025,” remembers the BBC. And earlier this year OpenAI “formally urged companies to start testing out a four-day work week (with no change in pay), claiming that AI will soon be able to speed up so much human labour that the corporate world shoul … ⌘ Read more
It’s Not Just RAM: Windows Licenses Are Also Pushing Up PC Prices
It’s not just RAM prices that are going up, writes CNET. “Reports suggest the cost of Windows licenses for manufacturers is rising by up to 10%.”
Several sites that closely follow Microsoft news, including Windows Central and Windows Latest, have published articles citing a report from Taiwan’s Economic Daily News that claims some PC manufac … ⌘ Read more
GNOME 51 Beta Released With Many Minor Improvements
The beta release of GNOME 51 is now available for testing. This cycle for the beta milestone is mostly a wide collection of minor improvements throughout the vast package set… ⌘ Read more
Europe’s Record Heatwave Kills 25,000, Dries Rivers, Shuts Nuclear Plant, Exposes Submerged Warships
“The European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring service confirmed Monday that June and July were the hottest on record in western Europe,” .according to a report from the CBC. “The period saw an estimated 25,000 heat-related deaths.”
CNN has before-and-after photos of Europe’s … ⌘ Read more
Why Are Big Tech CEOs Writing Long Manifestos About AI?
This week Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word open letter titled “The Future is for Everyone”.
But the BBC is more interested in why big tech executives keep writing manifestos about AI:
[Zuckerberg’s] vision echoes what AI leaders have expressed in various forms: the product they are building is among the “most important technologies in history.” Marc A … ⌘ Read more
Vulnerability Giving Attackers Full Control of Macs Is Under Active Exploitation
joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Dutch officials have warned that a high-severity macOS vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code is under active exploitation. “The NCSC has received a notification indicating that active abuse of this vulnerability has been observed on multiple syste … ⌘ Read more
D7VK version 2.1 brings improvements to retro game loading time
D7VK continues to mature its Direct3D 7, 6, 5 and 3 to Vulkan translation, to bring improvements for retro Windows games with Wine / Proton on Linux.
Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more
Intel’s Jay Graphics Shader Compiler Now Passing Vulkan CTS With Xe2/Xe3 Hardware
Last year Alyssa Rosenzweig joined Intel to work on their Linux graphics drivers after previously serving as a contractor for Valve on their graphics stack and also previously leading the Mesa driver work for the Asahi Linux Apple Silicon graphics support. Since joining Intel, she has been leading the development of Jay as a new SSA-based shader compiler for Intel graphics hardware to be used by the Mesa Iris Gallium3D and ANV … ⌘ Read more
RustConn 0.20 Continues Further Polishing This GTK4/libadwaita-Based Connection Manager
RustConn has been in development for a while now as a modern GTK4 connection manager supporting a variety of protocols like SSH, RDP, VNC, Telnet, and more. RustConn 0.20 was released this week as the latest major step forward to this Rust-based connection manager leveraging the GTK4 toolkit and libadwaita… ⌘ Read more
Astronomers Discover a New Kind of Cosmic Object: a Black Hole ‘Star’
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope say they may have found a new class of object: a “black hole star,” in which a black hole is wrapped in dense gas and radiates in ways that resemble an enormous star. The Guardian reports: The international team made the breakthrough after focusing their attention on a mysterious red spot … ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.8 To Allow Fine-Tuning Mouse/Touchpad Speeds
KDE developers continue to be quite busy this summer baking improvements for the upcoming Plasma 6.8 desktop release. This Week in Plasna is out with its newest issue to outline all of these interesting enhancements… ⌘ Read more
Debian Developers Begin Voting Over LLM Usage Within The Project
Debian developers have been considering a general resolution over LLM usage within the project. After collecting a variety of proposals, voting has now commenced for Debian developers to decide how comfortable they are with AI / Large Language Model contributions in the project or not… ⌘ Read more
Meta Patents AI Glasses to Use Facial Recognition to Identify People, Make Highlight Reels of Your Dinner Party
Meta has patented a smart-glasses system that could use facial recognition to identify people and automatically create personalized highlight reels of events such as dinner parties. The patent doesn’t guarantee the feature will ship, but it offers a detail … ⌘ Read more
I took the day off to get some stuff done around the house, but I wound up spending most of the day making #Dune-themed proxies for #Magic.
I had hoped to print them out for tomorrow night’s games, but I’m up to 20 cards and 20+ tokens, so… we’ll have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.
Here’s a couple to share and enjoy:
@itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com Dropped you en Email 📧
@prologic@twtxt.net Sure, I’m curious to see what you’re offering.
My email is hey (at) itsericwoodward.com.
@itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com Can I count you in as a potential customer then? I’ll find a way to DM and share details with you. But rest assured it’ll have everything you could possibly want 😅
@prologic@twtxt.net Potentially, depending on the features supported / hardware used.
I’ve long wished for an appliance (like a video game console) that hosts my essential services - email, shared files, social media, etc. - but which “just runs” in a box behind the TV.
So what do you have in mind? 🤔
@david@daiwei.me I’ll DM you 😅
@david@daiwei.me Haha 🤣
@creeper@twtpub.com Hey ! 👋 Welcome to Yarn.social / Twtxt 🤗
Robots That Walk and Talk Are Coming To Car Factories
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: At a BMW factory in South Carolina, a human-shaped robot with a screen for a face recently stepped from a charging station toward a stack of green plastic boxes. It grasped an auto part from one of the boxes, pivoted, placed the part in a trolley, then pulled the trolley across the floor. The robot’s slow … ⌘ Read more
$599 retail purchase
$9.95/month optional subscription
☝️ Would you pay this for a fully self hosted home cloud? 🧐
And just like that Problem 10 is done and correct whoohoo 🥳 It was easy because in Problem 7 I’d already written an iterator to produce infinite primes. So the solution for finding the sum of primes under 2,000,000 is basically (shortened):
primes := iter.take_while(iter.filter(prime_candidates(), is_prime), fn(p) { p < n })
print(iter.sum(primes))
And of course the answer is: 142913828922 which took ~21.ss for the Go Vm to compuete.
What’s interesting here… Which is the interesting thing about Mu is the dual runtime. So the above solution for Euler Problem 9 finds the solution in ~429ms with the Go VM and ~327ms natively compiled to darwin/arm64. Not bad for a language I haven’t really done any optimization work on yet (correctness first obviously).
Oh man wow 😮 Problem 9 was quite hard 😱 I had to build two new functions in the Mu stdlib for computing combinations and permutations, but then the combinations of range(1000) for triples such as a + b == c is enormous! So i had to write iterator versions of these to do lazy evaluation. Anyway solution follows:
#!/usr/bin/env mu
// Special Pythagorean Triplet
import "iter"
fn usage() {
print("Usage:", args()[0], "<n>")
}
fn sqr(x) { x * x }
fn main() {
if len(args()) < 2 {
usage()
exit(1)
}
n := must(int(args()[1]))
print("n:", n)
// For a < b < c and a + b + c == n, both a and b are strictly less
// than n/2. Generate only (a,b) combinations and derive c directly. This
// keeps the search lazy and reduces n=1000 from C(999,3) = 165,668,499
// candidate triples to C(499,2) = 124,251 candidate pairs.
pairs := iter.combinations(iter.range(1, n / 2), 2)
triples := iter.map(pairs, fn(xs) {
a := xs[0]
b := xs[1]
return [a, b, n - a - b]
})
// Enforce b < c; a < b is already guaranteed by combinations over an
// increasing range, and a + b + c == n holds by construction.
triples = iter.filter(triples, fn(xs) {
return xs[1] < xs[2]
})
// Euler 9 has one answer for n=1000. find() stops the entire upstream
// iterator chain as soon as the first Pythagorean triple is found.
answer := iter.find(triples, fn(xs) {
return sqr(xs[0]) + sqr(xs[1]) == sqr(xs[2])
})
print(answer)
if answer != nil {
print(answer[0] * answer[1] * answer[2])
}
}
main()
It is such a nice feeling that Mu is such a capable little language 😅 And I decided to write code code in Mu by hand 🤚 haha 🤣 and start solving Project Euler problems, like Problem 8 which works out to be a nice elegant solution in Mu:
#!/usr/bin/env mu
// Largest Product in a Series
import "fp"
import "sys"
fn usage() {
print("Usage: cat |", args()[0], "<n>")
}
fn products(xs) {
return fp.reduce(xs, 1, fn(x, y) {
if y == nil {
return x
}
return x * y
})
}
fn main() {
if len(args()) < 2 {
usage()
exit(1)
}
s := must(sys.read_all(0))
if len(s) == 0 {
usage()
exit(1)
}
n := must(int(args()[1]))
r := fp.max(fp.map(fp.sliding(fp.map(s, int), n), products))
print(r)
}
main()
AMD Posts Massive 109 Patch Series For GFX 12.1 RAS Support On Friday Evening
AMD has a tendency to send out large feature patch series for their open-source Linux drivers on Friday afternoons/evenings. Today we were greeted by a set of 109 patches working on RAS support for the upcoming AMD GFX12.1 target… ⌘ Read more
Ex-Cambridge Professor At Center of Plagiarism Row Found Dead
Former Cambridge professor Jason Arday, who resigned last week amid allegations of plagiarism and questions about his academic record, has been found dead at age 41 in London. The BBC reports: Jason Arday was found “unresponsive” at an address in Battersea, south London, on Friday afternoon, emergency services said. Metropolitan Police officers were ca … ⌘ Read more