UK Urged To Unplug From US Tech Giants as Digital Sovereignty Fears Grow
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Open Rights Group is warning politicians that the UK is leaning far too heavily on US tech companies to run critical systems, and wants the Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill to force a rethink.
The digital rights outfit says the bill, which is due to receive its second reading in the House … ⌘ Read more
Redox OS Begins Developing Its Own Intel Graphics Driver
The Rust-written Redox OS operating system had an exciting end to the year as it began developing its own native Intel graphics driver… ⌘ Read more
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I’ll let you guys know when/if it’s ready to get published. 😅 There are still rough edges and, obviously, very few widgets. Most importantly, a list view and a table widget are missing. But my vacation is over now, so things will crawl to a halt.
HP Pushes PC-in-a-Keyboard for Businesses With Hot Desks
HP this week announced the EliteBoard G1a at CES 2026, a Windows computer built into a full-size 93-key desktop keyboard that the company is marketing to businesses where employees use hot desks and need a portable computing environment they can carry between workstations.
The device connects to a USB-C monitor for both video output and power delivery over a single … ⌘ Read more
@prologic@twtxt.net Yep! I like that this distillation metaphor makes it explicit: You have to go ahead and actually distill something. It doesn’t happen automatically. The metaphor acknowledges that this is work that needs to be done by someone.
“What is a PC compatible?” https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/blog/p/what-is-a-pc-compatible/
‘NY Orders Apps To Lie About Social Media Addiction, Will Lose In Court’
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed S4505, a law that requires websites to display warnings claiming that features like algorithmic feeds, push notifications, infinite scroll, like counts, and autoplay cause addiction – despite, as TechDirt argues, the absence of scientific consensus supporting such claims.
State Senator Andr … ⌘ Read more
Transparent Hugepage Performance On Linux 6.18 LTS: Madvise vs. Always
With some Linux distributions like Fedora Workstation and Ubuntu defaulting to “madvise” Transparent Hugepages (THP) while others like CachyOS and openSUSE defaulting to “always”, you may be curious about the madvise vs. always THP difference in modern Linux environments. If so this round of benchmarking is for you in looking at the performance impact of madvise vs. always THP. ⌘ Read more
Razer Thinks You’d Rather Have AI Headphones Instead of Glasses
Razer today unveiled Project Motoko, a concept pair of over-ear headphones equipped with dual cameras that the gaming peripherals company believes could serve as an alternative to the smart glasses that have proliferated across the wearable AI market. The headphones feature two 4K cameras positioned on the earcups along with near and far field micro … ⌘ Read more
@bender@twtxt.net They’re not completely impossible, but C makes it much easier to run into them. I think the key point is that in those “safe” languages, buffer overflows are caught and immediately crash the program (if not handled otherwise) instead of silently corrupting memory, not being noticed right away and maybe only later crashing at a different location, where it can be very hard to find the actual root cause. This is a big improvement in my book.
Some programmers are indeed horrible. I’m guilty myself. :-)
I like the article.
Microsoft Office Is Now ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot App’
Longtime reader joshuark shares a report: As spotted by Bluesky user DodgerFanLA, going to Office.com now greets you with the following helpful explainer: “The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share, and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps now including Copilot.*”
Never has an asterisk been more relevant to me than following the wor … ⌘ Read more
Stratechery Pushes Back on AI Capital Dystopia Predictions
Stratechery’s Ben Thompson has published a lengthy rebuttal to Dwarkesh Patel and Philip Trammell’s widely discussed winter break essay “Capital in the 22nd Century,” arguing that even in a world where AI can perform all human jobs, people will still prefer human-created content and human connection.
Patel and Trammell’s thesis draws on Thomas Piketty’s wor … ⌘ Read more
Revised Steam Survey For December 2025 Puts Linux Gaming Marketshare At 3.58%
Back on the 1st Valve published the Steam Survey results for December 2025 and they put the Linux gaming marketshare at 3.19%, a 0.01% dip from November. But now the December results have been revised with a nice bump to the Linux marketshare… ⌘ Read more
I came across this on “Why Is SQLite Coded In C”, which I found interesting:
“There has lately been a lot of interest in “safe” programming languages like Rust or Go in which it is impossible, or is at least difficult, to make common programming errors like memory leaks or array overruns.”
If that’s true, then encountering those issues means the programmer is, simply, horrible?
# $YakumoLabs$
# yarnd service file for https://github.com/davmac314/dinit
type = process
command = /usr/pkg/bin/yarnd -b 127.0.0.1:6446
env-file = /usr/pkg/etc/yarnd.conf
working-dir = /var/db/yarnd
restart = on-failure
VW Brings Back Physical Buttons
sinij shares a report from Car and Driver: Volkswagen is making a drastic change to its interiors, or at least the interiors of its electric vehicles. The automaker recently unveiled a new cockpit generation with the refreshed ID. Polo – the diminutive electric hatchback that the brand sells in Europe – that now comes with physical buttons. […] The steering wheel gets new clusters of buttons for cruise co … ⌘ Read more
Flatpak Exploring GPU Virtualization To Ease Driver Challenges
Open-source developer Sebastian Wick has written a blog post outlining work to improve the graphics driver situation for Flatpaks. Particularly around situations like the NVIDIA driver stack that may depend upon a specific kernel version or where a Flatpak runtime may be end-of-life, dealing with GPU drivers in Flatpaks can be a burden. A solution being explored is GPU virtualization to deal with those GPU driver handling challenges while still prov … ⌘ Read more
Intel Core Ultra X7 358H + 32GB RAM Laptop Around ~$1300 USD
Yesterday when Intel formally introduced Panther Lake as the Core Ultra Series 3 with pre-orders set to begin today and available globally later this month, one of the key questions remaining was around pricing… I’ve been scouting various Internet retailers today and so far have found a Ultra X7 358H model with the 12 Xe cores for the Xe3 integrated graphics to be priced around $1299 USD with 32GB of RAM… ⌘ Read more
AMD Releases GAIA 0.15 - Positioning It As A Framework/SDK For Building AI PC Agents
Last year AMD announced GAIA as short for “Generative AI Is Awesome”. It started off as a Windows-only AI demo but over time added Linux support along with introducing different AI agents. For going along with AMD’s AI announcements at CES 2026, AMD released GAIA 0.15 where they are now positioning this software as a framework/SDK for building AI PC agents… ⌘ Read more
GStreamer 1.28-RC1 Brings A Rust-Based GIF Decoder, Other New Rust Components
On Monday the first release candidate of the GStreamer 1.28 multimedia framework was released. As is a recurring focus in recent releases, more GStreamer code is written in Rust for memory safety especially around decoding content… ⌘ Read more
@movq@www.uninformativ.de I quite like this part:
Many people write programs, but few stick with a program long enough to distill it.
Dell Admits It Made a Huge Mistake When It Abandoned XPS
Dell has reversed course and resurrected the XPS brand as its “premium consumer” brand of laptops, admitting it was a mistake to kill it in the first place. Slashdot reader joshuark shares a report from Gizmodo: At last year’s CES, Dell made the eyebrow-raising decision to ax all its legacy laptop brand names and instead opt for Apple-like conventions. Inste … ⌘ Read more
I think this is finally a good metaphor to talk about “simple” software:
https://oldbytes.space/@psf/115846939202097661
Distilled software.
I quote in full:
principles of software distillation:
Old software is usually small and new software is usually large. A distilled program can be old or new, but is always small, and is powerful by its choice of ideas, not its implementation size.
A distilled program has the conciseness of an initial version and the refinement of a final version.
A distilled program is a finished work, but remains hackable due to its small size, allowing it to serve as the starting point for new works.
Many people write programs, but few stick with a program long enough to distill it.
I often tried to tell people about “simple” or “minimalistic” software, “KISS”, stuff like that, but they never understand – because everybody has a different idea of “simple”. The term “simple” is too abstract.
This is worth thinking about some more. 🤔
Hyundai and Boston Dynamics Unveil Humanoid Robot Atlas At CES
At CES 2026 today, Hyundai and Boston Dynamics publicly demonstrated its humanoid robot Atlas, showing off fluid movement and announcing plans to deploy a production version in Hyundai’s EV factory by 2028. NBC News reports: “For the first time ever in public, please welcome Atlas to the stage,” said Boston Dynamics’ Zachary Jackowski as a life-s … ⌘ Read more
What a horrible night to have a curse…
AMD Announces Ryzen 7 9850X3D, New Strix Halo SKUs & Ryzen AI 400 Series
Lisa Su’s keynote just wrapped up at CES 2026 and in turn the embargo regarding AMD’s first consumer product announcements for 2026. The AMD Ryzen AI 400 series and new Ryzen 7 9850X3D 3D V-Cache processors are what’s in focus for CES this year. ⌘ Read more
The Nation’s Strictest Privacy Law Goes Into Effect
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Californians are getting a new, supercharged way to stop data brokers from hoarding and selling their personal information, as a recently enacted law that’s among the strictest in the nation took effect at the beginning of the year. […] Two years ago, California’s Delete Act took effect. It required data brokers to … ⌘ Read more
‘Godfather of SaaS’ Says He Replaced Most of His Sales Team With AI Agents
joshuark shares a report from Business Insider: Jason Lemkin, known to some as the Godfather of SaaS, says the time has come to push the limits of AI in the workplace. Lemkin, the founder of SaaStr, the world’s largest community of business-to-business founders. In a recent podcast Lemkin said that this means he will stop hiring huma … ⌘ Read more
and yaml is pretty bad with storing very large svg+xml within the hidden settings file, too
Anna’s Archive Loses .Org Domain After Surprise Suspension
Anna’s Archive lost control of its primary .org domain after it was placed on registry-level serverHold – “an action that’s typically taken by the domain name registry,” reports TorrentFreak. Despite mounting legal pressure and speculation tied to its Spotify backup, the site remains accessible via multiple alternative domains, underscoring t … ⌘ Read more
Corporation for Public Broadcasting To Shut Down After 58 Years
After Congress approved President Donald Trump’s rescission package eliminating federal funding, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting voted to dissolve after 58 years, rather than continue to exist and potentially be “vulnerable to future political manipulation or misuse.” The shutdown leaves hundreds of local public TV and radio station … ⌘ Read more
Lego’s Smart Brick Gives the Iconic Analog Toy a New Digital Brain
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: At CES in Las Vegas today, Lego has unveiled its new Smart Play platform, aimed at taking its distinctly analog plastic blocks and figures into a new world of tech-powered interactive play – but crucially one without any reliance on screens. Smart Play revolves around Lego’s patented sensor- and … ⌘ Read more
Intel Talks Up Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” & Arc B390 Graphics
Intel just hosted their CES keynote where they formally launched Panther Lake as the Core Ultra Series 3 SoCs… ⌘ Read more
GNOME and Firefox Consider Disabling Middle Click Paste By Default
Both GNOME and Firefox are considering disabling middle-click paste by default, arguing it’s a confusing, accident-prone X11 relic that dumps clipboard contents without warning. Phoronix reports: A merge request for GNOME’s gsettings-desktop-schemas was opened this weekend to disable the primary-paste functionality by default that allows usin … ⌘ Read more
what did I miss, the logo breaking again, and apparently I cannot rid of it if I don’t want it, yikes
Viral Reddit Post About Food Delivery Apps Was an AI Scam
A viral Reddit “whistleblower” post accusing a major food delivery app of systemic exploitation is “most likely AI-generated,” reports the Verge. From the report: The original post by user Trowaway_whistleblow alleged that an unnamed food delivery company regularly delays customer orders, calls couriers “human assets,” and exploits their “desperation” for cas … ⌘ Read more
Amazon’s AI Assistant Comes To the Web With Alexa.com
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon’s AI-powered overhaul of its digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is coming to the web. On Monday, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the official launch of a new website, Alexa.com, which is now rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow c … ⌘ Read more
SanDisk Says Goodbye To WD Blue and Black SSDs, Hello To New ‘Optimus’ Drives
SanDisk is retiring the WD Blue and WD Black SSD brands and replacing them with a new “Optimus” line that carries the same model numbers as its predecessors. The move follows Western Digital’s late-2023 decision to split into two companies – one retaining the WD name for hard drives sold to NAS and data center customer … ⌘ Read more
VSCode IDE Forks Expose Users To ‘Recommended Extension’ Attacks
An anonymous reader shares a report: Popular AI-powered integrated development environment solutions, such as Cursor, Windsurf, Google Antigravity, and Trae, recommend extensions that are non-existent in the OpenVSX registry, allowing threat actors to claim the namespace and upload malicious extensions.
These AI-assisted IDEs are forked from Microso … ⌘ Read more
Radeon Linux Driver Patches For Next-Gen Hardware Point To New NPU Integration
Back in November AMD began posting open-source Linux graphics driver patches for some next-gen graphics IP. Those IP block patches were for MMHUB, PSP, and other blocks making up modern AMD GPUs. The GFXHUB patch pointed it to being part of the GFX12 / RDNA4 family. Out today are new patches for enabling the SMU15 IP and an interesting takeaway there is some apparent NPU integration for future Radeon graphics… ⌘ Read more
UK Government’s New Pension Portal Operator Tells Users To Wait for AI Before Complaining
Capita, the UK outsourcer that won a $323 million contract to administer the nation’s Civil Service Pension Scheme for 1.7 million members, has responded to a disastrous portal launch by asking users to hold off on complaints until its new AI chatbots go live.
The service launched on December 1 and … ⌘ Read more
Google To Kill Gmail’s POP3 Mail Fetching
Google is quietly killing Gmail’s ability to fetch mail from third-party email accounts using POP3, a long-standing feature that has allowed users to consolidate multiple inboxes into a single Gmail interface. The change takes effect this month and also ends Gmailify, the companion feature that applied Gmail’s spam filtering and inbox organization to linked third-party accounts.
Google buried … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft is Slowly Turning Edge Into Another Copilot App
Microsoft has started testing a “significant” visual overhaul for Edge in its Canary and Dev Channel preview builds, and the redesigned interface borrows heavily from the design language that first appeared in the company’s standalone Copilot app rather than the Fluent Design system used across Windows 11, Xbox, and Office.
The updated look touches context menus, … ⌘ Read more
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yiha! Even autoscroll, very nice! The naming certainly drew inspiration from Urwid. I like it. Looking forward to eventually checking out its inner workings. :-)
Flu Is Relentless. Crispr Might Be Able to Shut It Down
Scientists at Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity are working on a Crispr-based treatment – delivered as a nasal spray or injection – that could stop influenza infections by targeting the virus’s RNA and disrupting its ability to replicate inside human cells.
The approach uses the Cas13 enzyme, a lesser-known cousin of the DNA-cuttin … ⌘ Read more
@movq@www.uninformativ.de @prologic@twtxt.net @bender@twtxt.net Given the age, they must mean Kopernikus! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DFS_Kopernikus
GNOME & Firefox Consider Disabling Middle Click Paste By Default: “An X11’ism…Dumpster Fire”
Both the GNOME desktop and Mozilla Firefox browser projects are considering disabling middle-click-paste functionality by default… ⌘ Read more
‘The College Backlash is a Mirage’
Public opinion surveys paint a picture of Americans souring dramatically on higher education, as Pew found that the share of adults calling college “very important” dropped from 70% in 2013 to just 35% today, and NBC polling shows that 63% now believe a degree is “not worth the cost,” up from 40% over the same period. Yet enrollment data tells a different story.
Four-year institutions awarded 2 million bac … ⌘ Read more
@bender@twtxt.net I also went back to my duty today and fixed a problem I created right before vanishing into the holidays. Of course, I discovered more problems while fixing the one thing. Luckily, another public holiday tomorrow. :-)
During my time off, I was a very lazy rat. I planned on doing some woodworking again, but instead I started watching Itchy Boot’s Africa season: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMvfS5mbsiI&list=PL8M9dV_BySaXNvQ_V1q4UU-DirPQlX0ZP