Apple Fined $116 Million Over App Privacy Prompts
Apple has been fined $116 million by Italy’s antitrust regulator over the “excessively burdensome” privacy rules it imposes on third-party apps. From a report: The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) says that Apple abused its dominant app store market position by burdening developers with “disproportionate” terms around data collection that exceed privacy law requirements, c … ⌘ Read more

US To Impose Tariffs on Chips From China
An anonymous reader shares a report: The United States will take action against China’s semiconductor industry, setting new tariffs on chips from China from June 23, 2027, that have 0% duties currently, the US Trade Representative said.

The announcement comes following a year-long investigation into China’s chip imports into the United States, launched by the Biden administration and led by t … ⌘ Read more

China Bans E-commerce Platforms From Forcing Lowest Prices or Abusing Algorithms
China has unveiled new rules to rein in aggressive pricing tactics by online platforms, prohibiting e-commerce operators from forcing merchants to offer discounts or setting different prices based on user demographics without consent. The 29-article regulation – jointly issued over the weekend by the National Developme … ⌘ Read more

Uber, Lyft Set To Trial Robotaxis In the UK In Partnership With China’s Baidu
Uber and Lyft plan to trial robotaxis in London starting in 2026 using autonomous vehicles from Baidu, as the UK fast-tracks approvals for self-driving cars on public roads. CNBC reports: Lyft’s testing of Baidu’s initial fleet of dozens of vehicles will begin in 2026, pending regulatory approval, “with plans to scale to h … ⌘ Read more

PowerVR Open-Source Vulkan Driver Preparing For New GPU Support
The open-source Mesa PowerVR “PVR” Vulkan driver has merged multi-architecture support as part of preparing to add support for newer Imagination GPUs… ⌘ Read more

LLVM Considering An AI Tool Policy, AI Bot For Fixing Build System Breakage Proposed
Last week a request for comments (RFC) was issued around establishing an LLVM AI Tool Use Policy. The proposed policy would allow AI-assisted contributions to be made to this open-source compiler codebase but that there would need to be a “human in the loop” and the contributor versed enough to be able to answer questions during code review. Separately, yesterday a proposal was sent out for creating an AI-assisted fixer bot to hel … ⌘ Read more

Meta Is Using The Linux Scheduler Designed For Valve’s Steam Deck On Its Servers
An interesting anecdote from this month’s Linux Plumbers Conference in Tokyo is that Meta (Facebook) is using the Linux scheduler originally designed for the needs of Valve’s Steam Deck… On Meta Servers. Meta has found that the scheduler can actually adapt and work very well on the hyperscaler’s large servers… ⌘ Read more

Linux Sensor Monitoring For ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO, Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI A
For those currently owning an ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO or ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE WIFI A motherboard, Linux sensor monitoring support will be in place for the next kernel release… ⌘ Read more

Safety Panel Says NASA Should Have Taken Starliner Incident More Seriously
joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: For the better part of two months last year, most of us had no idea how serious the problems were with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station. A safety advisory panel found this uncertainty also filtered through NASA’s workforce. […] The Starli … ⌘ Read more

How a Power Outage In Colorado Caused US Official Time To Be 4.8 Microseconds
Tony Isaac shares a report from NPR: The U.S. government calculates the country’s official time using more than a dozen atomic clocks at a federal facility northwest of Denver. But when a destructive windstorm knocked out power to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratory in Boulder on Wednesd … ⌘ Read more

Mastodon has a “Wrapstodon 2025” now, showing you a “wrap up” of the year. Of course, a pointless funny shitpost was my most “successful” post in 2025. 😂

https://movq.de/v/b9cf9e3ca0/s.png

Garmin Emergency Autoland Has First Save
“Garmin’s Collier Trophy award-winning Autonomi emergency Autoland, a system designed to safely land an aircraft in the event of pilot incapacitation, made its first real-world use and save on Saturday,” writes Slashdot reader slipped_bit. AvBrief.com reports: Social media posts from flight tracking hobbyists reported a King Air 200 squawked 7700 about 2 p.m. local time today. The Autoland sy … ⌘ Read more

FCC Bans Foreign-Made Drones Over National Security, Spying Concerns
The FCC has banned approval of new foreign-made drones and components, citing “an unacceptable risk” to national security. The move will most heavily impact DJI but it “does not affect drones or drone components that are currently sold in the United States.” Reuters reports: The tech was placed on the commission’s “Covered List,” barring D … ⌘ Read more

Intel Linux Driver Preps For Up To 13 Different Panther Lake H SoCs
It looks like the upcoming Intel Panther Lake H SoCs for the next-gen premium/high-end performance laptop market there could be quite a few different SKUs. A new patch for an Intel open-source driver expands the Panther Lake H line-up from three to 13 different IDs… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft To Replace All C/C++ Code With Rust By 2030
Microsoft plans to eliminate all C and C++ code across its major codebases by 2030, replacing it with Rust using AI-assisted, large-scale refactoring. “My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030,” Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Galen Hunt writes in a post on LinkedIn. “Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s … ⌘ Read more

Alphabet Acquires Data Center and Energy Infrastructure Company Intersect For $4.75 Billion
Alphabet is acquiring Intersect for $4.75 billion to accelerate data center and power-generation capacity as AI infrastructure demand surges. CNBC reports: Alphabet said Intersect’s operations will remain independent, but that the acquisition will help bring more data center and generation capaci … ⌘ Read more

Cyberattack Disrupts France’s Postal Service, Banking During Christmas Rush
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: With just three days to go before Christmas, a cyberattack knocked France’s national postal service offline Monday, blocking and delaying package deliveries and online payments. The timing was miserable for millions of people at the height of the Christmas season, as … ⌘ Read more

Larry Ellison Pledges $40-Billion Personal Guarantee For Paramount’s Warner Bros Bid
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has personally guaranteed $40.4 billion to shore up Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, trying to ease financing doubts as Warner Bros weighs a rival offer from Netflix. Reuters reports: Paramount said the amended terms do not change the $30-per-share all-cash offer eve … ⌘ Read more

Call of Duty Co-Creator, Respawn Co-Founder, and EA Exec Vince Zampella Killed In Car Accident
Vince Zampella, the co-creator of Call of Duty and co-founder of Infinity Ward and Respawn Entertainment, died at 55 in a single-car accident in Los Angeles. According to NBC Los Angeles, “The single-car crash was reported at about 12:45 p.m. on the scenic road north of Los Angeles in the … ⌘ Read more

US Blocks All Offshore Wind Construction, Says Reason Is Classified
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it was pausing the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the US. The move comes despite the fact that these projects already have installed significant hardware in the water and on land; one of t … ⌘ Read more

Google Taps More Performance Out Of AMD Zen CPUs With BPF-CCX Scheduling
For helping with thread placement on modern AMD Zen systems with multiple CPU core complexes, Google has been developing “BPF CCX” that leverages the Linux kernel’s eBPF capabilities paired with a user-space agent for fine-grained thread control. Google has found very positive performance results out of their use of this alternative means of high performance scheduling for achieving even greater performance on AMD processors under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Accommodating Emerging Giants in the Global Economy
Abstract of a paper featured on NBER: How has aggregate income and welfare in the United States been affected by globalization and rapid productivity growth in emerging economies? We use the class of constant elasticity trade models to provide quantitative evidence on these questions. We find that reductions in worldwide trade frictions over the period from 1960-2020 reduced t … ⌘ Read more

RADV Adds Support For New Performance Counters To Help Game Developers
Samuel Pitoiset of Valve’s open-source Linux graphics team has landed improvements for the Mesa 260 RADV driver to support new performance counters in conjunction with AMD’s Radeon GPU Profiler 2.6 release… ⌘ Read more

Australian Eateries Turn To Automatic Tipping as Cost of Doing Business Climbs
Australian restaurants facing a mounting cost-of-doing-business crisis are turning to automatic service charges as a way to shore up revenue. The practice is legal under Australian consumer law as long as customers are notified beforehand and can opt out, but it risks alienating diners in a country where tipping has traditio … ⌘ Read more

I just had a closer look at https://git.mills.io/prologic/mu and it motivated me to do some compiler building myself again. Hopefully, I find some time in the next free days. I’m bad at it, but it’s always great fun.

Why Some Avatar: Fire and Ash Scenes Look So Smooth, and Others Don’t
If you watched Avatar: Fire and Ash in James Cameron’s preferred high frame rate 3D format and noticed certain sequences appearing unusually smooth while others had the traditional cinematic look, that visual inconsistency is entirely intentional. The third Avatar film continues Cameron’s frame rate experimentation from The Way of … ⌘ Read more

What the Linux Desktop Really Needs To Challenge Windows
Linux’s share of the desktop market has climbed to as much as 11% by one count, but that figure includes Chromebooks, and the traditional Linux desktop remains hamstrung by the same fragmentation that killed Unix decades ago. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing in The Register, argues that the proliferation of Linux desktops – more than a dozen significant inte … ⌘ Read more

Elementary OS 8.1 Switches Over To Wayland Session By Default
Thirteen months after the release of Elementary OS 8.0, Elementary OS 8.1 is now available for this Ubuntu 24.04 LTS based Linux distribution that focuses on ease of use and usability. With Elementary OS 8.1 they have transitioned to using the Wayland session by default… ⌘ Read more

Instacart Kills AI Pricing Tests That Charged Some Customers More Than Others
Instacart has ended its AI-powered pricing tests after a study from Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union revealed that the grocery delivery platform was showing different customers different prices for identical items at the same store. The company said Monday that retailers can no longer use Ever … ⌘ Read more

Oh great, I received an e-mail that my SMTP credentials have been exposed. Once again, just another shitty scanner that generates garbage reports from tests it doesn’t understand. Thank you for nothing!

conf := &Config{
    SMTPHost: "smtp.example.com",
    SMTPPort: 587,
    SMTPUser: "user",
    SMTPPass: "hunter2",
    SMTPFrom: "from@example.com",
}

Lua 5.5 Released With Declarations For Global Variables, Garbage Collection Improvements
Five years after releasing Lua 5.4, Lua 5.5 debuted today as the newest version of this lightweight and embeddable scripting language… ⌘ Read more

Visa Says AI Will Start Shopping and Paying For You In 2026
BrianFagioli writes: Visa says it has completed hundreds of secure, AI-initiated transactions with partners, arguing this proves agent driven shopping is ready to move beyond experiments. The company believes 2025 will be the last full year most consumers manually check out, with AI agents handling purchases at scale by the 2026 holiday season. Nearly half of U … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net I’ve been awake at that time, didn’t notice anything. 🤔 Where was that BGP analyzer again … 😅 There’s a tool that keeps track of these things, right? I forgot what it was.

State of Play: Who Holds the Power in the Video Games Industry in 2025?
The video games industry in 2025 finds itself caught between the familiar forces of consolidation and job losses that have plagued creative industries, and a newer development: governments and the ultra-wealthy have begun treating games as tools of political influence. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund closed a $55 billion deal fo … ⌘ Read more

Samsung Is Putting Google Gemini AI Into Your Refrigerator, Whether You Need It or Not
BrianFagioli writes: Samsung is bringing Google Gemini directly into the kitchen, starting with a refrigerator that can see what you eat. At CES 2026, the company plans to show off a new Bespoke AI Refrigerator that uses a built in camera system paired with Gemini to automatically recognize food items, includi … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net @movq@www.uninformativ.de A crocodile had bitten the big submarine internet cable that connects Australia to Europe. The investigations revealed that some construction work last week accidentally tore up the protective layer around it. That went unnoticed, unfortunately, so marine life had an easy job today. For just 40 minutes, they were quite fast in repairing the damage if you ask me! These communication cables are fricking large.

Just kidding, I completely made that up. :-D I didn’t notice any outage either. But I didn’t try to connect to Down Under at the time span in question.

Welcome To America’s New Surveillance High Schools
Beverly Hills High School has deployed an AI-powered surveillance apparatus that includes facial recognition cameras, behavioral analysis software, smoke detector-shaped bathroom listening devices from Motorola, drones, and license plate readers from Flock Safety – a setup the district spent $4.8 million on in the 2024-2025 fiscal year and considers necessary given the scho … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19’s Significant ~30% Performance Boost For Old AMD Radeon GPUs
For those still using old AMD GCN 1.0 “Southern Islands” or GCN 1.1 “Sea Islands” graphics cards, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel is a wonderful holiday gift. With Linux 6.19, the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs are now defaulting to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver in place of the legacy “Radeon” DRM driver that has been the default for GCN 1.1/1.0 and other ATI/AMD graphics processors of the past 2+ decades. In this article is a look at the performance ben … ⌘ Read more

iRobot Founder Says FTC Treated Blocked Deals ‘Like Trophies’ as Bankruptcy Follows Failed Amazon Acquisition
Colin Angle, the founder of iRobot who built the company from his living room over 35 years and sold more than 50 million Roomba vacuums, watched his creation file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month after what he describes as an “avoidable” regulatory ord … ⌘ Read more

Rex: Proposed Safe Rust Kernel Extensions For The Linux Kernel, In Place Of eBPF
University researchers presented Rex at this month’s Linux Plumbers Conference 2025 in Tokyo. Rex is designed for “safe and usable” Rust-based kernel extensions that could serve in place of eBPF programs for extending the Linux kernel functionality… ⌘ Read more

Spotify Says ‘Anti-Copyright Extremists’ Scraped Its Library
A group of activists has scraped Spotify’s entire library, accessing 256 million rows of track metadata and 86 million audio files totaling roughly 300TB of data. The metadata has been released via Anna’s Archive, a search engine for “shadow libraries” that previously focused on books.

Spotify described the activists as “anti-copyright extremists … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 To Remove Support For AMD’s Never-Released Ryzen AI NPU2
The upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel (unless it ends up being called Linux 6.20) will drop support for the AMD NPU2 as their second-generation neural processing unit that never ended up being released into any retail products… ⌘ Read more

Is Xbox Betting on Cross-Platform Gaming?
A “slew of layoffs, price hikes and studio closures” for Microsoft’s Xbox “have led many to declare — not for the first time — that the Xbox is dead,” reports CNBC.

Or is it just changing its business model?

The company’s overall gaming revenue decreased 2% year-over-year, with a 29% dip in Xbox hardware sales, according to Microsoft’s first-quarter earnings for fiscal 2026. The broader co … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA’s Quest For A “Safe” Linux Kernel For Automobiles, Robotics
NVIDIA engineer Igor Stoppa presented at the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) earlier this month around using Linux in safety-critical environments like automobiles and the current shortcomings of the upstream Linux kernel and the challenges on achieving Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) certifications around the Linux kernel. It’s an interesting read/watch around the safety of Linux (or not) for such strict safety environments… ⌘ Read more

Weston 15.0 Alpha Released With New Protocols, Experimental Vulkan Renderer
After being delayed by three months to allow additional time for new features to land, Weston 15.0 Alpha 1 is out today as a big feature release for this reference Wayland compositor… ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de From 2:50 PM to 3:23 PM AEST (+10 UTC) there was an outage. Everything went “up” on Down Detector, my EU region went offline, numerous sites were unavailable, and so on. Basically everything to/from the EU appeared to basically go kaput.

@prologic@twtxt.net Hm, I didn’t notice anything. Perhaps I was asleep? 😅

Intel Releases GenAI Examples v1.5 - While Validating This AI Showcase On Old Xeon CPUs
Intel engineers as part of the OPEA Project today released the Generative AI Examples v1.5 update. This “GenAIExamples” open-source project is a collection of GenAI examples as part of showing the capabilities of the Open Platform for Enterprise AI (OPEA) and also highlighting Intel’s hardware strengths for generative AI… ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases VA-API libva 2.23 Adds AV1 Profile 2 Support
Intel today released libva 2.23 as the newest feature release for this Video Acceleration API “VA-API” reference library implementation. Most significant with libva 2.23 is adding AV1 Profile 2 support… ⌘ Read more

Apple Developer’s Account Restored After Compromised Gift Card Incident
“It’s all fixed,” says that Apple developer who was locked out of his Apple Account after redeeming a compromised Apple Gift Card.

“A lovely man from Singapore, working for Apple Executive Relations, who has been calling me every so often for a couple of days, has let me know it’s all fixed. It looks like the gift card I tried to r … ⌘ Read more