GNOME 50 Beta Released With Stable VRR, GDM Improvements
The GNOME 50 beta release is now available ahead of the official GNOME 50 desktop due out in March… ⌘ Read more

Google Warns EU Risks Undermining Own Competitiveness With Tech Sovereignty Push
Europe risks undermining its own competitiveness drive by restricting access to foreign technology, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer Kent Walker told the Financial Times, as Brussels accelerates efforts to reduce reliance on U.S. tech giants. Walker said the EU faces a “competitive parad … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Posts Open-Source Nouveau GSP Driver Support For GA100
One of the latest NVIDIA open-source contributions this week wasn’t for the in-development Nova kernel driver but for enhancing the existing Nouveau kernel driver. The patch posted is for bringing up the NVIDIA GA100 GPU under Nouveau using the GPU System Processor (GSP)… ⌘ Read more

Spotify Says Its Best Developers Haven’t Written a Line of Code Since December, Thanks To AI
Spotify’s best developers have stopped writing code manually since December and now rely on an internal AI system called Honk that enables remote, real-time code deployment through Claude Code, the company’s co-CEO Gustav Soderstrom said during a fourth-quarter earnings call this week.

… ⌘ Read more

A mate just recommended this German talk why people don’t wanna work at your company: https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2025-3321-es_es_ka_em_warum_gute_leute_nicht_bei_euch_arbeiten_wollen It’s really good. I fully agree with most parts.

The speaker referenced https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xmEgtRhw7o (Mårten Mickos: Believe in Something Bigger Than Yourself) which is also very interesting, if you make it through the first bit. He talks about his CEO role at MySQL AB.

Multi-Lane SPI Support Merged For Linux 7.0
With the Serial Peripheral Interface “SPI” subsystem updates for the Linux 7.0 kernel comes support for multi-lane SPI… ⌘ Read more

FTC Ratchets Up Microsoft Probe, Queries Rivals on Cloud, AI
The US Federal Trade Commission is accelerating scrutiny of Microsoft as part of an ongoing probe into whether the company illegally monopolizes large swaths of the enterprise computing market with its cloud software and AI offerings, including Copilot. From a report: The agency has issued civil investigative demands in recent weeks to companies that compete wi … ⌘ Read more

EPA Reverses Long-Standing Climate Change Finding, Stripping Its Own Ability To Regulate Emissions
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding the legal finding that it has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries and factories. From a report: The … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Claims DeepSeek Distilled US Models To Gain an Edge
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US AI models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News.

In the memo, sent Thursday to the House Select Committe … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Lands ML-DSA Quantum-Resistant Signature Support
Adding to the exciting features for the big Linux 7.0 kernel release is support for the Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm “ML-DSA” quantum-resistant signature algorithm… ⌘ Read more

Waymo is Asking DoorDash Drivers To Shut the Doors of Its Self-Driving Cars
Waymo’s autonomous vehicles can transport passengers across six cities without a human driver, but the Alphabet-owned company has discovered that its cars become completely inert if a passenger accidentally leaves a door open. The company confirmed that it is now paying DoorDash drivers in Atlanta to close these doors as par … ⌘ Read more

Evaluating The Performance Cost To AMD SEV-SNP On EPYC 9005 VMs
AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) provides memory encryption and integrity protections that can be especially useful in modern cloud computing. Typically a 2~10% performance overhead is reported when engaging AMD SEV-SNP for these hardware-backed security protections. In this article is an extensive look at the current AMD SEV-SNP performance impact for confidential computing on EPYC 9005 “Turin” servers. The curr … ⌘ Read more

Bill Introduced To Replace West Virginia’s New CS Course Graduation Requirement With Computer Literacy Proficiency
theodp writes: West Virginia lawmakers on Tuesday introduced House Bill 5387 (PDF), which would repeal the state’s recently enacted mandatory stand-alone computer science graduation requirement and replace it with a new computer literacy proficiency … ⌘ Read more

Meta Plans To Let Smart Glasses Identify People Through AI-Powered Facial Recognition
Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as soon as this year, New York Times reported Friday, five years after the social giant shut down facial recognition on Facebook and promised to find “the right balance” for the controversial technology.

The feature, internally … ⌘ Read more

Linux Gets Rid Of Intel 440BX Driver For Old Pentium CPUs After Being Broken For 19+ Years
As some long overdue housekeeping, the Linux 7.0 kernel has removed an Error Detection And Correction “EDAC” driver for the Intel 440BX and 440GX chipset. The driver is being removed not only because that chipset was just used by old Celerons and Pentium II / Pentium III CPUs but that it’s been in the kernel all this time while being known to be broken for 19+ years… ⌘ Read more

Sheaves Ready To Play A Bigger Role In Linux 7.0
The slab memory allocator feature updates have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel. Most notable this cycle is expanded use of the recently-introduced Sheaves functionality… ⌘ Read more

Intel Nova Lake Sound Support In Linux 7.0
Merged for the Linux 6.19 kernel was initial Nova Lake S audio support. Now merged this week for the Linux 7.0 kernel is enabling sound support for additional Nova Lake platforms… ⌘ Read more

Libinput 1.31 Released With Configurable Timeouts, Fast 3-Finger Swipes
Red Hat’s leading input expert Peter Hutterer announced the release overnight of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by the Linux desktop on both X.Org and Wayland desktop sessions… ⌘ Read more

A Few More ASUS Motherboards Now Support Sensor Reporting With Linux 7.0
All of the hardware monitoring “HWMON” subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.0 merge window… ⌘ Read more

Haiku OS Lands Improved Touchpad Support, Still Working Toward Beta 6
The Haiku open-source operating system project inspired by BeOS kicked off 2026 by making many improvements to its kernel, device drivers, and user-space software… ⌘ Read more

Ring Cancels Its Partnership With Flock Safety After Surveillance Backlash
Following intense backlash to its partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that works with law enforcement agencies, Ring has announced it is canceling the integration. From a report: In a statement published on Ring’s blog and provided to The Verge ahead of publication, the company said: “Following a co … ⌘ Read more

Russia Fully Blocks WhatsApp
An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. messenger app WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms, has been completely blocked in Russia for failing to comply with local law, the Kremlin said on Thursday, suggesting Russians turn to a state-backed “national messenger” instead. “Due to Meta’s unwillingness to comply with Russian law, such a decision was indeed taken and implemented,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told report … ⌘ Read more

Windows 11 Notepad Flaw Let Files Execute Silently via Markdown Links
Microsoft has patched a high-severity vulnerability in Windows 11’s Notepad that allowed attackers to silently execute local or remote programs when a user clicked a specially crafted Markdown link, all without triggering any Windows security warning.

The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-20841 and fixed in the February 2026 Patch Tuesday upda … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 MM Changes Bring Some Very Nice Performance Optimizations
All of the memory management “MM” related patches have now been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.0 merge window… ⌘ Read more

CIA Makes New Push To Recruit Chinese Military Officers as Informants
An anonymous reader shares a report: Just weeks after a dramatic purge of China’s top general, the CIA is moving to capitalize on any resulting discord with a new public video targeting potential informants in the Chinese military. The U.S. spy agency on Thursday rolled out the video depicting a disillusioned mid-level Chinese military o … ⌘ Read more

XFS Introducing Autonomous Self-Healing Capabilities With Linux 7.0
The XFS file-system has some interesting new feature work and performance tuning with the Linux 7.0 kernel that will be used by the likes of Fedora 44 and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS this spring… ⌘ Read more

IBM Plans To Triple Entry-Level Hiring in the US
IBM said it will triple entry-level hiring in the US in 2026, even as AI appears to be weighing on broader demand for early-career workers. From a report: While the company declined to disclose specific hiring figures, it said the expansion will be “across the board,” affecting a wide range of departments. “And yes, it’s for all these jobs that we’re being told AI can do,” said Nickl … ⌘ Read more

Intel Posts 2026 Update For Cache Aware Scheduling On Linux
Not in time for the current Linux 7.0 cycle but posted for another round of review is Intel’s latest work around Cache Aware Scheduling for enhancing the performance of modern CPUs with multiple cache domains. This is the first set of updates to Cache Aware Scheduling for the new year and succeed the v2 patches from early December. This work not only benefits modern Intel CPUs but our testing has shown can also provide some very nice gains too for … ⌘ Read more

WP Engine Says Automattic Planned To Shake Down 10 Hosting Companies For WordPress Royalties
WP Engine’s third amended complaint against Automattic and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg alleges that Mullenweg had plans to impose royalty fees on 10 hosting companies beyond WP Engine for their use of the WordPress trademark.

The amended filing, based on previously sealed information … ⌘ Read more

EXT4 In Linux 7.0 Improves Write Performance For Concurrent Direct I/O Writes
Sent out and already merged today for the Linux 7.0 kernel are the EXT4 file-system updates… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Raises $30 Billion at $380 Billion Valuation, Eyes IPO This Year
Anthropic has raised $30 billion in a Series G funding round that values the Claude maker at $380 billion as the company prepares for an initial public offering that could come as early as this year. Investors in the new round include Singapore sovereign fund GIC, Coatue, D.E. Shaw Ventures, ICONIQ, MGX, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund … ⌘ Read more

Palo Alto Chose Not To Tie China To Hacking Campaign For Fear of Retaliation From Beijing
An anonymous reader shares a report: Palo Alto Networks opted not to tie China to a global cyberespionage campaign the firm exposed last week over concerns that the cybersecurity company or its clients could face retaliation from Beijing, according to two people familiar with the matter. The sources … ⌘ Read more

AMD Video Decode Now Unified Between RadeonSI & RADV Vulkan Video
Merged today to Mesa 26.1-devel is unifying of the AMD video decode implementation between the RadeonSI Gallium3D and RADV Vulkan drivers… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Plans Smartphone-Style Permission Prompts for Windows 11 Apps
Microsoft is planning to bring smartphone-style app permission prompts to Windows 11, requiring apps to get explicit user consent before they can access sensitive resources like the file system, camera and microphone. The company’s Windows Platform engineer Logan Iyer said the move was prompted by applications increasingly overriding u … ⌘ Read more

SPARC & Alpha CPU Ports Still Seeing Activity In 2026 With Linux 7.0
In addition to all of the exciting Intel and AMD x86_64 enhancements that have been landing this week so far for the Linux 7.0 kernel, the aging SPARC, Alpha, and Motorola 680x0 “m68k” CPU ports have also seen some patches for this new kernel… ⌘ Read more

Border Officials Are Said To Have Caused El Paso Closure by Firing Anti-Drone Laser
An anonymous reader shares a report: The abrupt closure of El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, … ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux Running Well On LoongArch - Loongson 3B6000 Benchmarks
Earlier this month I posted benchmarks of the Loongson 3B6000 for this 12-core / 24-thread LoongArch Chinese CPU with DDR4 ECC memory. Those initial benchmarks were done with Debian LoongArch64 while since then I’ve shifted over to using Arch Linux on LoongArch. ⌘ Read more

Amazon Engineers Want Claude Code, but the Company Keeps Pushing Its Own Tool
Amazon engineers have been pushing back against internal policies that steer them toward Kiro, the company’s in-house AI coding assistant, and away from Anthropic’s Claude Code for production work, according to a Business Insider report based on internal messages. About 1,500 employees endorsed the formal adoption o … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS Now Available With Linux 6.17 HWE Kernel
Canonical released Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS today as the newest point release to the Noble Numbat… ⌘ Read more

The “Are You Sure?” Problem: Why Your AI Keeps Changing Its Mind
The large language models that millions of people rely on for advice – ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini – will change their answers nearly 60% of the time when a user simply pushes back by asking “are you sure?,” according to a study by Fanous et al. that tested GPT-4o, Claude Sonnet, and Gemini 1.5 Pro across math and medical domains.

The behavior, known in the … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Networking: Prepping For WiFi 8 UHR While Dropping Last Parallel Port Ethernet Driver
The Linux 7.0 networking pull request showcases two extremes and the diversity and robustness of the open-source kernel ecosystem. Linux 7.0 is laying the groundwork for WiFi 8 Ultra-High Reliability (UHR) support while this kernel version is also bidding farewell to the last Ethernet driver for use over parallel printer ports… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Brings A Significant Improvement For Workqueue Rescuer
The Linux kernel’s workqueue for async task handling within a dedicated kernel thread is seeing some useful improvements with Linux 7.0… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic To Cover Costs of Electricity Price Increases From Its Data Centers
AI startup Anthropic says it will ensure consumer electricity costs remain steady as it expands its data center footprint. From a report: Anthropic said it would work with utility companies to “estimate and cover” consumer electricity price increases in places where it is not able to sufficiently generate new power and pay fo … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Performance Events Prep For Intel Xeon Diamond Rapids
The performance “perf” events changes for the Linux 7.0 kernel are continuing to prepare for next-generation Xeon Diamond Rapids processors as the successor to current Xeon 6 Granite Rapids… ⌘ Read more

Meta Auditor EY Raised Red Flag on Data-Center Accounting
Meta Platforms’ latest annual report contained an unusual, cautionary note for investors. From a report: The tech giant’s auditor, Ernst & Young, raised a red flag over the financial engineering Meta used to keep a $27 billion data-center project off its balance sheet. While EY ultimately blessed Meta’s accounting treatment, the firm flagged it as a “critical a … ⌘ Read more

Intel Is Making It Easier In Linux 7.0 To Monitor Energy Use For A Group Of Tasks
Intel has upstreamed some Resource Control “resctrl” improvements to Linux 7.0 for enhanced telemetry monitoring. This is the good kind of telemetry with this new code being useful for being able to monitor how much energy or work is attributed to a group of tasks / process IDs on the system… ⌘ Read more

Media Driver Updates Merged For Linux 7.0 - Still Without The AMD ISP4 Driver
All of the media subsystem driver updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel and brings some new work around AV1 acceleration as well as other driver updates… ⌘ Read more

US Hacking Tool Boss Stole and Sold Exploits To Russian Broker That Could Target Millions of Devices, DOJ Says
Federal prosecutors have revealed that Peter Williams, the former general manager of U.S. defense contractor L3Harris’s hacking tools division Trenchant, sold eight stolen software exploits to a Russian broker whose customers – including the Russian govern … ⌘ Read more

Siri’s AI Overhaul Delayed Again
Apple’s long-promised overhaul of Siri has hit fresh problems during internal testing, forcing the company to push several key features out of the iOS 26.4 update that was slated for March and spread them across later releases, Bloomberg is reporting.

The new Siri – first announced at WWDC in June 2024 and originally due by early 2025 – struggles to reliably process queries, takes too long to respond and s … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Safety Researcher Quits, Warning ‘World is in Peril’
An anonymous reader shares a report: An Anthropic safety researcher quit, saying the “world is in peril” in part over AI advances. Mrinank Sharma said the safety team “constantly [faces] pressures to set aside what matters most,” citing concerns about bioterrorism and other risks.

Anthropic was founded with the explicit goal of creating safe AI; its CEO D … ⌘ Read more