AMD ROCm 7.2.2 Brings Optimization Guide For Ryzen AI / RDNA 3.5 Hardware
ROCm 7.2.2 is out today as a small point release to this open-source AMD GPU compute stack. There are a few code changes but most notable is arguably on the documentation side… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Reveals Major Price Increase For All Surface PCs
Microsoft has sharply raised prices across its Surface lineup as RAM and component costs keep climbing. “Both its midrange and flagship Surface lines are now significantly more expensive than they were just a few weeks ago, with the flagship Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 now starting at $500 more than they launched at in 2024,” reports Windows Central. … ⌘ Read more

California Ghost-Gun Bill Wants 3D Printers To Play Cop, EFF Says
A proposed California bill would require 3D printer makers to use state-certified software to detect and block files for gun parts, but advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) say it would be easy to evade and could lead to widespread surveillance of users’ printing activity. The Register reports: The bill in question is AB 2047 … ⌘ Read more

LLM-Assisted Patches For Linux 7.1 May Have Negative Impact On 32-bit Systems
Code now merged for the Linux 7.1 kernel may provide some negative performance implications for those still running modern Linux kernels on 32-bit hardware. A fundamental change can present cache line alignment and slab sizing implications for 32-bit Linux OS users but will provide for cleaner code with modern 64-bit computing… ⌘ Read more

Audit Finds Google, Microsoft, and Meta Still Tracking Users After Opt-Out
alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: An independent privacy audit of Microsoft, Meta, and Google web traffic in California found that the companies may be violating state regulations and racking up billions in fines. According to the audit from privacy search engine webXray, 55 percent of the sites it checked set a … ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Rejects Performance Fix “Hack” & Kconfig “Terrible Things” For Linux 7.1
While a lot of interesting new features and changes have been merged already for the Linux 7.1 merge window, two pull requests stand out so far for being rejected by Linus Torvalds and complete with his to-the-point commentary… ⌘ Read more

Chrome Now Lets You Turn AI Prompts Into Repeatable ‘Skills’
Google is rolling out a Chrome feature called “Skills” that lets users save Gemini prompts as reusable one-click workflows they can run across multiple tabs. The feature also includes preset Skills from Google. It’s launching first for Chrome desktop users set to US English. The Verge reports: Once you have access to the feature, it can be managed by t … ⌘ Read more

Thousands of Rare Concert Recordings Are Landing On the Internet Archive
A Chicago concert superfan Aadam Jacobs who has recorded more than 10,000 shows since the 1980s is working with Internet Archive volunteers to digitize the collection before the cassettes deteriorate. “So far, about 2,500 of these tapes have been posted on the Internet Archive, including some rare gems like a Nirvana performan … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.04 Delivers Great Performance Improvements For AMD Strix Point, Especially For RDNA 3.5 Graphics
As part of my ongoing testing around the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 release I have been running a lot of benchmarks. After recently showing some nice performance gains for AMD Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” with Ubuntu 26.04, several Phoronix readers inquired about any performance uplift from the more modest but still powerful Strix Point laptops like the popular Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 SKU. Here are benchmarks showing the … ⌘ Read more

Social Media Platforms Need To Stop Never-Ending Scrolling, UK’s Starmer Says
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said social media platforms should remove addictive infinite-scroll features for young users as Britain considers new child-safety measures. “We’re consulting on whether there should be a ban for under 16s,” Starmer told BBC Radio. “But I think equally important, the addictive scrolling mecha … ⌘ Read more

Google Faces Mass Arbitration By Advertisers Seeking Billions
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Alphabet’s Google is facing billions of dollars in potential damage claims as part of mass arbitration tied to the company’s online search and advertising technology businesses, which courts have ruled were illegal monopolies. Advertisers are banding together to seek payouts through mass arbitration pro … ⌘ Read more

Nginx 1.30 Released With Multipath TCP, ECH & More
Nginx 1.30 was just released as the newest stable version of this popular web server. Nginx 1.30 incorporates all of the changes from the Nginx 1.29.x mainline branch to provide a lot of new functionality like Multipath TCP (MPTCP)… ⌘ Read more

GNOME Mutter 50.1 Fixes Performance Regression For Some NVIDIA Driver Versions
GNOME Shell 50.1 and Mutter 50.1 were released today as the first point releases in the GNOME 50 series… ⌘ Read more

A New Computer Chip Could Finally Withstand The Hellscape of Venus
Researchers at the University of Southern California say they’ve developed a memristor memory device that continued operating at 700 degrees Celsius. “And crucially, 700 degrees was not the limit, it was simply as hot as their testing equipment could go,” adds ScienceAlert. “The device showed no signs of failing.” From the report: The devi … ⌘ Read more

Sunshine Game Streaming Introduces Vulkan Video Encode Support
Sunshine v2026.413.143228 released this week as a new feature release for this self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight, an open-source game streaming client that is an implementation of the NVIDIA GameStream protocol. Notable with this Sunshine release is Vulkan Video encode support as an alternative to using the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) for game streaming… ⌘ Read more

OpenSSL 4.0 Released With Encrypted Client Hello, RFC 8998 Support
OpenSSL 4.0 was just released as a big update for this widely-used SSL/TLS and crypto library… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Revamps T10 PI Data Integrity Handling For Better Read Performance
Merged yesterday for the Linux 7.1 kernel is overhauling the T10 PI code for generating and verifying data integrity information. In turn the new code is cleaner while also allowing for better read storage performance… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.1 RADV Driver Merges Vulkan Descriptor Heap As Big Improvement For Steam Play
As a big helper for Valve’s Steam Play with DXVK and VKD3D-Proton, the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver “RADV” has merged its initial support for the VK_EXT_descriptor_heap Vulkan extension… ⌘ Read more

Air Force Pushed Out UFO Investigator
J. Allen Hynek started as an Air Force consultant brought in to help explain away early UFO reports, but over time he grew frustrated with what he saw as the government’s effort to minimize unexplained cases rather than seriously investigate them. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an article from Popular Mechanics, in collaboration with Biography.com, that argues Hynek’s shift from ske … ⌘ Read more

KDE Merges Per-Screen Virtual Desktops After 21 Years
A request made a KDE user all the way back in June 2005 on KDE 3.3.2 is finally resolved. After being sought after for 21 years, the latest KWin code now has support for per-screen virtual desktops… ⌘ Read more

AMD Ready With CPPC Performance Priority & Dynamic/Raw EPP In Linux 7.1
All of the power management subsystem feature updates have been merged for the Linux 7.1 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Lands ARM64 NEON-Accelerated CRC64-NVMe For ~6x Improvement
Merged yesterday were all the CRC code updates for the Linux 7.1 kernel. Most notable with that pull is an ARM64-optimized CRC64-NVMe implementation that can deliver multiple times faster performance… ⌘ Read more

WeatherBug Data Says October 8 Is the Real Perfect Date
BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: For years pop culture has treated April 25 as the “perfect date,” thanks to the famous Miss Congeniality line about needing only a light jacket. But new analysis from WeatherBug suggests that idea does not actually hold up when you look at the numbers. After reviewing U.S. weather data from 2018 through today, the compa … ⌘ Read more

Stanford Report Highlights Growing Disconnect Between AI Insiders and Everyone Else
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: AI experts and the public’s opinion on the technology are increasingly diverging, according to Stanford University’s annual report on the AI industry, which was released Monday. In particular, the report noted a growing trend of anxiety around AI and, in the U.S … ⌘ Read more

jemalloc 5.3.1 Released With Many Improvements After Nearly Four Year Hiatus
Jemalloc 5.3.1 was released today with next month marking four years since the prior release, jemalloc 5.3.0. While the version bump may not seem like much, jemalloc 5.3.1 comes with many performance improvements, new features, and other enhancements… ⌘ Read more

Apple AI Glasses Will Rival Meta’s With Several Styles, Oval Cameras
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is developing display-free AI smart glasses aimed at rivaling Meta’s Ray-Bans, with multiple frame styles, a distinctive oval camera design, and tight iPhone integration. “The idea is to unveil the product at the end of 2026 or early the following year, with the actual release coming in 2027,” writ … ⌘ Read more

Hollywood Stars Sign Open Letter Protesting Paramount-Warner Bros Merger
More than 1,000 Hollywood figures, including major actors, writers, and directors, signed an open letter opposing Paramount Skydance’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing it would hurt an industry “already under severe strain.” The deal is still under regulatory scrutiny in both the U.S. and U.K., while Paramount says … ⌘ Read more

FBI Raids Texas Home of Man Suspected of Firebombing Sam Altman’s SF Mansion
The FBI searched the Texas home of a 20-year-old man accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s San Francisco residence. Authorities say the suspect also made threats at OpenAI’s headquarters, and reports indicate he had written extensively about fears over AI and opposition to AI executives.

The suspect reporte … ⌘ Read more

Meta Is Warned That Facial Recognition Glasses Will Arm Sexual Predators
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: More than 70 civil liberties, domestic violence, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+, labor, and immigrant advocacy organizations are demanding that Meta abandon plans to deploy face recognition on its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, warning that the feature – reportedly known inside the c … ⌘ Read more

GreenBoost Memory Orchestrator For NVIDIA GPUs Introduces GreenBoost-Proton For Gaming
Last month we showcased GreenBoost as an open-source means of augmenting NVIDIA GPU vRAM with system RAM and NVMe storage. This memory tiering solution for NVIDIA GPUs was developed by an open-source developer with a focus on CUDA and allowing larger LLMs to be handled on graphics cards with smaller vRAM capacities. There was a setback to the project due to NVIDIA legal but now the project is going in new form and also has … ⌘ Read more

Coreboot Comes To AMD Ryzen Powered Star Labs StarBook MK VI After 3+ Year Wait
For those that had purchased a StarBook MK VI laptop 3+ years ago over the advertised support for Coreboot, Star Labs has now delivered with a Coreboot build finally available and working for this AMD Ryzen 5000 series powered laptop… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Released
“The new Linux kernel was released and it’s kind of a big deal,” writes longtime Slashdot reader rexx mainframe. “Here is what you can expect.” Linuxiac reports: A key update in Linux 7.0 is the removal of the experimental label from Rust support. That (of course) does not make Rust a dominant language in kernel development, but it is still an important step in its gradual integration into the project. Another notable security-related c … ⌘ Read more

user.* xattrs On Sockets Merged For Linux 7.1 As Sought By GNOME & systemd Developers
On this first day of the Linux 7.1 merge window, among the early pull requests merged were beginning to land the various VFS pull requests submitted by Christian Brauner. Among that code merged is enabling support for user.* extended attributes on sockets… ⌘ Read more

Booking.com Hit By Data Breach
Booking.com says hackers accessed customer reservation data in a breach that may have exposed booking details, names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and messages shared with accommodations. PCMag reports: On Sunday, users reported receiving emails from Booking.com, warning them that “unauthorized third parties may have been able to access certain booking information associated with your reservation.” The … ⌘ Read more

Mark Zuckerberg Is Reportedly Building an AI Clone To Replace Him In Meetings
According to the Financial Times, Meta is developing an AI avatar of Mark Zuckerberg that could interact with employees using his voice, image, mannerisms, and public statements, “so that employees might feel more connected to the founder through interactions with it.” The Verge reports: Meta may start allowing creators … ⌘ Read more

The Good & The Bad When Using LLMs To Write Spack Packages
The Spack package manager is quite popular in the HPC / supercomputer space for scientific software. Even with the more selective niche than a typical general purpose OS package manager, large language models (LLMs) have already proven capable of being useful in generating new Spack packages. But there have also been some headaches involved too for Spack developers… ⌘ Read more

Maine Set To Become First State With Data Center Ban
Maine is on track to become the first U.S. state to impose a temporary statewide ban on new data center construction. “Lawmakers in Maine greenlit the text of a bill this week to block data centers from being built in the state until November 2027,” reports CNBC. “The measure, which is expected to get final passage in the next few days, also creates a council to suggest … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Hiring More LLVM Engineers To Work On CUDA Tile
Last year NVIDIA announced the new CUDA Tile programming model as one of the biggest updates ever to the CUDA platform. CUDA Tile brings a virtual ISA for tile-based parallel programming and they subsequently open-sourced the CUDA Tile IR as an intermediate representation built atop LLVM’s MLIR. Now they are looking to hire additional LLVM compiler engineers to help foster their CUDA Tile initiatives… ⌘ Read more

Californians Sue Over AI Tool That Records Doctor Visits
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several Californians sued Sutter Health and MemorialCare this week over allegations that an AI transcription tool was used to record them without their consent, in violation of state and federal law. The proposed class-action lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, states that, within the p … ⌘ Read more

Rust For Linux 7.1 Bringing Experimental Option That Can Help Performance
In advance of the Linux 7.1 merge window opening, Miguel Ojeda sent out all of the Rust feature updates on Friday. This includes bumping the minimum Rust version for building the Linux kernel as well as a new experimental option that can provide better performance for Rust code within the kernel, alongside other updates… ⌘ Read more

FTRFS: New Fault-Tolerant File-System Proposed For Linux
Sent out today was an initial patch series for comment on introducing the FTRFS file-system. The FTRFS proposal is more interesting than last week’s VMUFAT file-system proposal… ⌘ Read more

Servo Browser Engine Making It Easier For Embedded Use
The open-source, Rust-based Servo browser engine has been improving its Servoshell demo browser application while one of the most promising potentials for this engine is around embedded use as an alternative to the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). With the latest moves by Servo developers, they are making for a more compelling story for its use… ⌘ Read more

Will Some Programmers Become ‘AI Babysitters’?
Will some programmers become “AI babysitters”? asks long-time Slashdot readertheodp. They share some thoughts from a founding member of Code.org and former Director of Education at Google:

“AI may allow anyone to generate code, but only a computer scientist can maintain a system,” explained Google.org Global Head Maggie Johnson in a LinkedIn post. So “As AI-generated code beco … ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.1 RadeonSI Driver Lands Improvement For AMD APUs With Rusticl
For those wishing to make use of modern OpenCL 3.0 capabilities on AMD APUs/SoCs with integrated Radeon graphics using Mesa’s Rusticl driver, an improvement was merged this weekend to the RadeonSI driver ahead of this quarter’s Mesa 26.1 release… ⌘ Read more

Apple HFS / HFS+ File-System Support Seeing Many Fixes For Linux 7.1
Nearly one year ago to the day I noted Linux developers were considering the removal of the Apple HFS and HFS+ file-system drivers from the kernel. They were orphaned the past decade and turning into a maintenance burden for upstream developers. But then to some surprise, a few developers stepped up to maintain the HFS(+) drivers. One year later it’s proving to be a success story with more fixes for this aging Apple file-system support continui … ⌘ Read more

Btrfs Brings Performance Improvements, Shutdown ioctl Stable With Linux 7.1
Among the early pull requests sent out to Linus Torvalds even before the Linux 7.0 kernel officially released on Sunday were the Btrfs file-system updates. This feature-packed CoW file-system is seeing more performance optimizations for Linux 7.1 as well as its shutdown ioctl feature no longer being experimental and a variety of fixes… ⌘ Read more

GNU Linux-libre 7.0 Deals With Deblobbing More Drivers & Cleansing DT Files
Building off last night’s release of the Linux 7.0 kernel is now the GNU Linux-libre 7.0-gnu kernel release for that downstream kernel that removes support for loading non-free-software kernel modules, blocks the loading of loadable microcode/firmware even when it means greatly reduced hardware support, and other sanitization of code in the name of software freedom… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Asks Christian Leaders for Help Steering Claude’s Spiritual Development
Anthropic recently “hosted about 15 Christian leaders from Catholic and Protestant churches, academia, and the business world” for a two-day summit , reports the Washington Post:

Anthropic staff sought advice on how to steer Claude’s moral and spiritual development as the chatbot reacts to complex and unpredictable et … ⌘ Read more

Sam Altman’s Home Targeted a Second Time, Two Suspects Arrested
“Early Sunday morning, a car stopped and appears to have fired a gun at the Russian Hill home of OpenAI’s CEO,” reportsThe San Francisco Standard, citing reports from the local police department:

The San Francisco Police Department announced the arrest of two suspects, Amanda Tom, 25, and Muhamad Tarik Hussein, 23, who were booked for negligent disch … ⌘ Read more

Robot Birds Deployed by Park to Attract Real Birds - Built By High School Students
“Robotic bird decoys are being deployed at Grand Teton National Park,” reports Interesting Engineering, “to influence the behavior of real sage grouse and help restore a declining population.”. Robotics mentor Gary Duquette describes the machines as “kind of a Frankenbird.” (SFGate shows one of the robot birds … ⌘ Read more