Intel Releases llm-scaler-vllm 0.14.0-b8, Talks Up 1.49x Performance With BMG-G31
Intel kicked off the new month by releasing the latest version of LLM Scaler vLLM (llm-scaler-vllm) as their Docker-based solution for running vLLM on Intel Battlemage GPUs for AI inferencing… ⌘ Read more

Steam Survey Results Published For February 2026
Valve just published the latest Steam Survey monthly figures to provide insight on various software and hardware trends across this dominant gaming ecosystem. One of the most interesting measurements is the monthly changes in the size of the Linux gaming marketshare… ⌘ Read more

Does a New Theory Finally Explain the Mysteries of the Planet Saturn?
“Saturn and some of its 274 moons are pretty weird,” writes Smithsonian magazine:

[Saturn moon] Titan has strangely few impact craters, Hyperion is tiny and misshapen, and Iapetus has a tilted orbit. What’s more, planets tend to wobble along their rotational axes as they spin, like an off-kilter spinning top in the moments before i … ⌘ Read more

AMD Announces Ryzen AI PRO 400 Series Desktop CPUs For AI-Focused Computing
AMD is using Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week to announce new Ryzen AI PRO 400 Series products, including Ryzen AI PRO 400 desktop processors… ⌘ Read more

Lenovo Unveils an Attachable AI Agent ‘Companion’ for Their Laptops
As the Mobile World Conference begins in Spain, Lenovo brought a new attachable accessory for their laptops — an AI agent. CNET reports:
The little circular module perches on the top of your Lenovo laptop display, attached via the magnetic Magic Bay on the rear. The module is home to an adorable animated companion called Tiko, who you can … ⌘ Read more

Does a Gas-Guzzler Revival Risk Dead-End Futures for US Automakers?
If U.S. automakers turn their backs on electric vehicles, “their sales outside the U.S. will shrivel,” warns Bloomberg. [Alternate URL.]

They’re already falling behind on the technology, relying on a 100% U.S. tariff on Chinese EVs to keep surging rivals like BYD Co. at bay…. While the American automakers “mostly understand the challenge … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0-rc2 Released: “So I’m Not Super-Happy With How Big This Is”
The second weekly release candidate of Linux 7.0 is now available for testing… ⌘ Read more

Norway’s Consumer Council Calls for Right to Repair and Antitrust Enforcement - and Mocks ‘Enshittification’
The Norwegian Consumer Council, a government funded organization advocating for consumer’s rights, released a report on the trend of “enshittification” in digital consumer goods and services, suggesting ways consumers for consumers to resist. But they’ve also dra … ⌘ Read more

AIs Can’t Stop Recommending Nuclear Strikes In War Game Simulations
“Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises,” reports New Scientist:

Kenneth Payne at King’s College London set three leading large language models — GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash — against each other in simulated war games. The s … ⌘ Read more

Chronic Ocean Heating Fuels ‘Staggering’ Loss of Marine Life, Study Finds
Slashdot reader JustAnotherOldGuy shared this report from the Guardian:

Chronic ocean heating is fuelling a “staggering and deeply concerning” loss of marine life, a study has found, with fish levels falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade. Researchers examined the year-to-year change of 33,000 populations in … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic’s Claude Pass ChatGPT, Now #1, on Apple’s ‘Top Apps’ Chart After Pentagon Controversy
“Anthropic may have lost out on doing business with the US government,” reports Engadget, “but it’s gained enough popularity to earn the number one spot on the App Store’s Top Free Apps leaderboard.”

Anthropic’s Claude AI assistant had already leaped to the #2 slot on Apple’s chart by late Friday … ⌘ Read more

America Used Anthropic’s AI for Its Attack On Iran, One Day After Banning It
Engadget reports:

In a lengthy post on Truth Social on February 27, President Trump ordered all federal agencies to “immediately cease all use of Anthropic’s technology” following strong disagreements between the Department of Defense and the AI company. A few hours later, the U.S. conducted a major air attack on Iran with … ⌘ Read more

Americans Listen to Podcasts More Than Talk Radio Now, Study Shows
“Podcasts have officially overtaken AM/FM talk radio as the more popular medium for spoken-word audio in the United States,” reports TechCrunch, citing Edison Research’s Share of Ear survey:

The researchers have tracked these statistics over the last decade, and almost always, the percentage of time people spent listening to podcasts increased … ⌘ Read more

I missed the 20°C on Friday, but I took profits of the 10°C this evening: https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2026-03-01/

North America’s Bird Populations Are Shrinking Faster. Blame Climate Change and Agriculture
“Billions fewer birds are flying through North American skies than decades ago,” reports the Associated Press, “and their population is shrinking ever faster, mostly due to a combination of intensive agriculture and warming temperatures, a new study found.”

Nearly half of the 261 species studi … ⌘ Read more

Collabora Clashes With LibreOffice Over Move To Revive LibreOffice Online
Slashdot reader darwinmac writes: The Document Foundation (TDF), the organization behind LibreOffice, has decided to bring back its LibreOffice Online project which been inactive since 2022. Collabora, a company that was a major contributor to the original LibreOffice Online, is not pleased with this development. After the origin … ⌘ Read more

Galileo’s Handwritten Notes Discovered in a Medieval Astronomy Text
In a library in Florence, Italy, historian Ivan Malara noticed handwritten notes on a book printed in the 1500s — and recognized the handwriting as Galileo’s. The finding “promises new insights into one of the most famous ideological transitions in the history of science,” writes Science magazine — since the book Galileo annotated was a r … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Expected To See Nice Improvements For Reducing HRTICK Timer Overhead
A big set of kernel patches look like they will be submitted for the Linux 7.1 kernel cycle this spring to optimize the scheduler HRTICK timer and in turn allowing it to be enabled by default… ⌘ Read more

Awwwww, sooo beautiful! Handmade tiles for a tiled stove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8hBf5b99Jk

ASUS Linux HID Driver Preparing To See Support For Newer Devices
There’s been a recent lull in activity around the open-source Linux driver for ASUS devices with the HID interface used for supporting various features. But developer Denis Benato who has worked on the ASUS Armoury Linux driver and the like is working on advancing the ASUS HID driver for Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

Some Linux LTS Kernels Will Be Supported Even Longer, Announces Greg Kroah-Hartman
An anonymous reader shared this report from the blogIt’s FOSS:

Greg Kroah-Hartman has updated the projected end-of-life (EOL) dates for several active longterm support kernels via a commit. The provided reasoning? It was done “based on lots of discussions with different companies and groups and the other stabl … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Development & Intel Panther Lake Proved Most Popular In February
During the last month on Phoronix there were 289 original open-source/Linux-related news articles and another 20 featured articles as in Linux hardware reviews and multi-page benchmark articles. There was a lot of interesting software and hardware happenings the past month but standing out the most was the Linux 7.0 merge window developments and the ramp of Intel Panther Lake Linux testing… ⌘ Read more

GNU Hurd On Guix Is Ready With 64-bit Support, SMP Multi-Processor Support “Soon”
After hearing last month that GNU Hurd is “almost there” with x86_64 support, it was exciting to kickoff today by seeing a developer headline “The 64-bit Hurd is Here!” GNU Hurd 64-bit support is now said to be ready but SMP support for multiple processor cores and the like remain still in development… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic’s Claude Leaps to #2 on Apple’s ‘Top Apps’ Chart After Pentagon Controversy
Anthropic’s Claude AI assistant “jumped to the No. 2 slot on Apple’s chart of top U.S. free apps late on Friday,” reports CNBC:

The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in news headlines, stemming from its refusal to have its models used for mass domestic surveillance or for f … ⌘ Read more

I’ve exhausted my stock of 5x30mm wooden dowels. Looking online for supplies yielded tons of merchants who are out of stock, ship only to businesses, offer only insane quantities (minimum of 10kg) or charge overprice for absolute joke amounts.

None of my local hardware stores has them, they’re either also out of stock or generally don’t carry them at all. Same with long 5mm diameter round sticks in general. What the heck?!

I just make a “dowel iron” tomorrow, a steel plate with a sharp edged 5mm hole. Since I’ve got heaps of 6x30mm dowels, I just hammer them through. They will be smooth and not corrugated, but that’s totally fine with me.

Ta, @shinyoukai@yume.laidback.moe. There are plenty of third-party libraries implementing XDG directories properly. My point was that the Go stdlib half-assed this.

Silicon Valley’s Ideas Mocked Over Penchant for Favoring Young Entrepreneurs with ‘Agency’
In a 9,000-word expose, a writer for Harper’s visited San Francisco’s young entrepreneurs in September to mockingly profile “tech’s new generation and the end of thinking.”
There’s Cluely founder Roy Lee. (“His grand contribution to the world was a piece of software that told people what to do.”) And the … ⌘ Read more

Sam Altman Answers Questions on X.com About Pentagon Deal, Threats to Anthropic
Saturday afternoon Sam Altman announced he’d start answering questions on X.com about OpenAI’s work with America’s Department of War — and all the developments over the past few days. (After that department’s negotions had failed with Anthropic, they announced they’d stop using Anthropic’s technology and threatened to … ⌘ Read more

AerynOS 2026.02 Brings More Wayland Compositor Options, Other Improvements
AerynOS 2026.02 was released for closing out February as the newest alpha release for this Linux distribution formerly known as Serpent OS. In AerynOS 2026.02 are many package updates plus continued work on the tooling and other innovations around this Linux distribution… ⌘ Read more

Duolingo Grows, But Users Disliked Increased Ads and Subscription Pushes. Stock Plummets Again
Friday was “a horrible day” for investors in Duolingo, reports Fast Company. But Friday’s one-day 14% drop is just part of a longer story.

Since last May, Duolingo’s stock has dropped 81%. Yes, the company faced a social media backlash that month after its CEO promised they’d become an “AI-fir … ⌘ Read more

New ‘Star Wars’ Movies Are Coming to Theatres. But Will Audiences?
“The drought of upcoming Star Wars movies is coming to an end soon,” writes Cinemablend. In May the The Mandalorian and Grogu opens, and one year later there’s the release of the Ryan Gosling-led Star Wars: Starfighter.

But “there are some insiders who already believe that Starfighter will be a bigger hit than The Mandalorian and Grogu … ⌘ Read more

US Threatens Anthropic with ‘Supply-Chain Risk’ Designation. OpenAI Signs New War Department Deal
It started Friday when all U.S. federal agencies were ordered to “immediately cease” using Anthropic’s AI technology after contract negotiations stalled when Anthropic requested prohibitions against mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. But later Friday there were ev … ⌘ Read more

Since I’ve been recently appointed “the bringer of music” … 🤪

Lauren Hart has joined Arch Enemy 😍 Arch Enemy – To The Last Breath

Kayla Dixon replaced Avienne Low in Vintersea a while ago and she’s doing a phenomenal job 🤯 (Avienne was already great) Vintersea – Become The Wave

Rikke List with Konvent makes for funny stories in YouTube comments (little boy wonders “women can do that?!”), and those are just killer riffs by Sara Nørregaard 🤘 Konvent – Puritan Masochism

I miss the days when Mina Špiler was with Laibach, she was perfect for this group 😢 Laibach – Bossanova

Courtney LaPlante is from another world entirely 😍🫠 (be sure to watch this to the very end 😅) Spiritbox – Rule Of Nines (one take)

Antarctica’s Massive Neutrino Observatory Gets an Upgrade
There’s already 5,000 sensors embedded in Antarctica’s ice to look for evidence of neutrinos, reports the Washington Post. But in November scientists drilled six new holes at least a mile and a half deep and installed cables with hundreds more light detectors — an upgrade to the massive 15-year-old IceCube Neutrino Observatory to detect the charged particles … ⌘ Read more

Looks very nice and cozy! The only thing I hate about caravans, and RVs in general, is the disposal of the bio “stuff”. 😅

‘World’s Largest Battery’ Soon At Google Data Center: 100-Hour Iron-Air Storage
Interesting Engineering reports:

US tech giant Google announced on Tuesday that it will build a new data center in Pine Island, Minnesota. The new facility will be powered by 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy from wind and solar, coupled with a 300-megawatt battery, claimed to be the ‘world’s largest’, with a 30-gi … ⌘ Read more

After US-Israel Attacks, 90 Million Iranians Lose Internet Connectivity
CNN reports that images from Iran’s capital “have shown cars jammed along Tehran’s street, with heavy traffic on major roads after today’s wave of attacks by the US and Israel.” And though Iran has a population of 93 million, the attacks suddenly plunged Iran into “a near-total internet blackout with national connectivity at 4% of or … ⌘ Read more

AMD Prepares Linux For Instruction-Based Sampling Improvements With Zen 6
A set of patches recently posted to the Linux kernel mailing list have now been queued up to a tip/tip.git branch for planned introduction in Linux 7.1. These patches are for enhancing the Linux perf subsystem support for AMD Instruction-Based Sampling (IBS) improvements with next-gen Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more

America’s Teenagers Say AI Cheating Has Become a Regular Feature of Student Life
Tuesday Pew Research announced their newest findings: that 54% of America’s teens use AI help with schoolwork:
One-in-five teens living in households making less than $30,000 a year say they do all or most of their schoolwork with AI chatbots’ help. A similar share of those in households making $30,000 to just under … ⌘ Read more

Startup Plans April Launch for a Satellite Reflect Sunlight to Earth at Night
A start-up called Reflect Orbital “proposes to use large, mirrored satellites to redirect sunlight to Earth at night,” reports the Washington Post, “with plans to bathe solar farms, industrial sites and even entire cities in light that could, if desired, reach the intensity of daylight….”

Slashdot noted their idea i … ⌘ Read more

Verisilicon DC8200 & Coreboot Framebuffer Drivers Sent To DRM-Next For Linux 7.1
The first DRM-Misc-Next pull request was submitted this week to DRM-Next as new kernel graphics/display driver features to begin queuing for the Linux 7.1 kernel that will release mid-year. Among the early code for DRM-Next are two new drivers… ⌘ Read more

Servo Browser Engine Starts 2026 With Many Notable Improvements
The Servo project has issued their January 2026 development report that highlights all the interesting changes they made to this open-source browser layout engine last month. With Servo 0.0.5 they have landed many improvements to this engine and also continuing to enhance its ability to embed Servo inside other applications… ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Lol, that huge, lit-up branding.

The magpies approve of the caravan, too. :-)

Google Quantum-Proofs HTTPS
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google on Friday unveiled its plan for its Chrome browser to secure HTTPS certificates against quantum computer attacks without breaking the Internet. The objective is a tall order. The quantum-resistant cryptographic data needed to transparently publish TLS certificates is roughly 40 times bigger than the classical cryptographic material used today. Today’s X.509 c … ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 14.4-RC1 Adds Emacs, Vim & More To DVD Images
For those on the current FreeBSD 14 series with no immediate plans to move to FreeBSD 15 that debuted at the end of 2025, FreeBSD developers have been preparing for the release of FreeBSD 14.4. Released overnight was the first release candidate of FreeBSD 14.4… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.7 Preps Rounded Style UI Enhancement For QtWidgets-Based Apps
KDE Plasma 6.7 development continues heating up following the Plasma 6.6 desktop release earlier this month… ⌘ Read more

Rubin Observatory Has Started Paging Astronomers 800,000 Times a Night
On February 24th, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory activated its automated alert system, sending out roughly 800,000 real-time notifications flagging asteroids, supernovae, flaring black holes and “other transient celestial events,” reports Scientific American. And this is only the beginning – that number is projected to climb into th … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That’s the plan!