As AI Companies Borrow Billions, Debt Investors Grow Wary
While stock investors have pushed AI-related shares to repeated highs this year, debt markets are telling a more cautious story as newer AI infrastructure companies find themselves paying significantly elevated interest rates to borrow money. Applied Digital, a data center builder, sold $2.35 billion of debt in November at a 9.25% coupon – roughly 3.75% above … ⌘ Read more

AMD RDNA3/RDNA4 Go Down Hard On Linux 6.19, But Here’s How The Older AMD GPUs End Out 2025
As part of the various end-of-year benchmarking comparisons on Phoronix and with Linux 6.19 switching older AMD GCN 1.0/1.1 graphics cards to the AMDGPU driver by default, I planned for a very large AMD Radeon graphics card comparison on the latest open-source Linux driver for ending out 2025. In the end though I was thwarted by newer AMD RDNA3 / RDNA4 graphics cards regressing hard on Linux 6.19 that led to ending this testing … ⌘ Read more

The Economic Divide Between Big and Small Companies Is Growing
While America’s largest corporations are riding a wave of surging profits and AI-fueled stock market enthusiasm to record highs, small businesses across the country are cutting staff and scaling back operations as years of high inflation, cautious consumers and tariff confusion take their toll.

Private firms with fewer than 50 workers have steadily … ⌘ Read more

Coreboot 25.12 Released With Qualcomm X1 Plus Platform Support, AMD Turin PoC
Coreboot 25.12 is out today as the latest quarterly feature update to this open-source BIOS/firmware solution… ⌘ Read more

Seeing this run on real hardware is so satisfying, even if it’s just a small example. 😅

https://movq.de/v/ec46b8cf99/netbook.mp4

My little toy operating system from last year runs in 16-bit Real Mode (like DOS). Since I’ve recently figured out how to switch to 64-bit Long Mode right after BIOS boot, I now have a little program that performs this switch on my toy OS. It will load and run any x86-64 program, assuming it’s freestanding, a flat binary, and small enough (< 128 KiB code, only uses the first 2 MiB of memory).

Here I’m running a little C program (compiled using normal GCC, no Watcom trickery):

https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/los86%2D64.mp4

https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/c.png

Next steps could include:

• Use Rust instead of C for that 64-bit program?
  
• Provide interrupt service routines. (At the moment, it just keeps interrupts disabled.)

Retreating From EVs Could Be Hazardous For Western Carmakers
Western carmakers retreating from electric vehicles amid softening government mandates could find themselves in a precarious position as Chinese rivals continue gaining ground in the EV market they’re choosing to de-prioritize. The EU on December 16th dropped its earlier plan to ban petrol car sales outright from 2035, instead requiring carmakers to cut e … ⌘ Read more

AI’s Hunger For Memory Chips Could Shrink Smartphone and PC Sales in 2026, IDC Says
The global smartphone and PC markets face potential contractions of up to 5.2% and 8.9% respectively in 2026, according to downside risk scenarios from IDC that trace the problem to memory chip manufacturers shifting production capacity away from consumer electronics toward AI data centers. Samsung Electronics, SK … ⌘ Read more

China Launches $21 Billion Venture Capital Funds To Invest in ‘Hard Technology’
An anonymous reader shares a report: China on Friday launched three venture capital funds to invest in “hard technology” areas, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The capital contribution plans for the funds have been finalised, each with more than 50 billion yuan ($7.14 billion), according to the report. The funds will primar … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu’s Rust Infatuation, New Optimizations & Other Ubuntu Linux 2025 Highlights
It was a very interesting year for Ubuntu Linux. Ahead of the important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out this coming April, Ubuntu Linux this year was expeditiously migrating to new Rust-based system tools like sudo-rs and Rust Coreutils, new performance optimizations continued to be explored for bettering the out-of-the-box Ubuntu performance, better ARM64 support with its desktop ISO, and enhancing the Snapdragon X Elite laptop supp … ⌘ Read more

New Runtime Standby ABI Proposed For Linux Akin To Microsoft Windows’ “Modern Standby”
An exciting post-Christmas patch series out on the Linux kernel mailing list this morning is proposing a new runtime standby ABI that is similar in nature to the “Modern Standby” functionality found with Microsoft Windows… ⌘ Read more

Nova Driver Progress & Other NVIDIA Linux News From 2025
This year there was a lot of going on in the NVIDIA Linux world from their official driver stack seeing better Wayland support to a lot on the open-source scene from NVIDIA engineers contributing a lot directly to the Rust-based Nova open-source driver that continues taking shape, the Mesa NVK Vulkan driver becoming more performant and capable, and a lot of other happenings. Here is a look back at the most popular NVIDIA content of 2025 on Phoronix… ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patches Improve exFAT Read Performance Via Multi-Cluster Mapping
For those using Microsoft’s exFAT file-system under Linux for the likes of flash drives and SD cards, a new patch series posted today aims to enhance the read performance. The new patches are shown to improve performance by about 10% while also heaving lower overhead… ⌘ Read more

‘Memory is Running Out, and So Are Excuses For Software Bloat’
The relentless climb in memory prices driven by the AI boom’s insatiable demand for datacenter hardware has renewed an old debate about whether modern software has grown inexcusably fat, a column by the Register argues. The piece points to Windows Task Manager as a case study: the current executable occupies 6MB on disk and demands nearly 70MB of … ⌘ Read more

Cursor CEO Warns Vibe Coding Builds ‘Shaky Foundations’ That Eventually Crumble
Michael Truell, the 25-year-old CEO and cofounder of Cursor, is drawing a sharp distinction between careful AI-assisted development and the more hands-off approach commonly known as “vibe coding.” Speaking at a conference, Truell described vibe coding as a method where users “close your eyes and you don’t look at … ⌘ Read more

Apple’s App Course Runs $20,000 a Student. Is It Really Worth It?
Apple’s Developer Academy in Detroit has spent roughly $30 million over four years training hundreds of people to build iPhone apps, but not everyone lands coding jobs right away, according to a WIRED story published this week.

The program launched in 2021 as part of Apple’s $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and costs an esti … ⌘ Read more

Gmail Users May Soon Be Able To Change Their Email Address and Keep the Old One
Google appears to be testing a feature that would let users change their @gmail.com address for the first time, according to an official support document. The support page exists only in Hindi, suggesting an India-first rollout, and Google notes that users will “gradually begin to see this option.”

The feature would l … ⌘ Read more

Apple Settles Brazilian Antitrust Case, Must Allow Third-Party App Stores and External Payment Links
Apple has agreed to a settlement with Brazil’s antitrust regulator that will require the company to allow third-party app stores on iPhones and permit developers to direct users to external payment options, marking another country where Apple’s tightly controlled App Store mo … ⌘ Read more

@thecanine@twtxt.net I see 🤔 Very cool though! 😎

Fake MAS Windows Activation Domain Used To Spread PowerShell Malware
An anonymous reader shares a report: A typosquatted domain impersonating the Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS) tool was used to distribute malicious PowerShell scripts that infect Windows systems with the ‘Cosmali Loader’. BleepingComputer has found that multiple MAS users began reporting on Reddit yesterday that they received pop-up warni … ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux Powered CachyOS To Develop A Server Edition
The Arch Linux based CachyOS has been quite popular with Linux gamers and enthusiasts for offering leading out-of-the-box performance, especially following the shutdown of Intel’s Clear Linux. CachyOS has developed quite a following on the Linux desktop while looking ahead to 2026 they will be working on a server edition… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA CUDA Tile IR Open-Sourced
As a wonderful Christmas gift to open-source fans, NVIDIA dropped their proprietary license on the CUDA Tile intermediate representation and has now made the IR open-source software… ⌘ Read more

Wall Street Has Stopped Rewarding ‘Strategic’ Layoffs
Goldman Sachs analysts have identified a notable shift in how investors respond to corporate layoff announcements, finding that even job cuts attributed to automation and AI-driven restructuring are now causing stock prices to fall rather than rise. The investment bank linked recent layoff announcements to public companies’ earnings reports and stock market data, concluding … ⌘ Read more

Chinese Social Media Users Criticize Authorities in Rare Sign of Dissent
An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese social media users criticized two key government policies, rare signs of public dissent in the country where the internet is heavily censored. The death of the former head of China’s one-child policy agency – which for decades forced women to carry out abortions and sterilizations – s … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de @prologic@twtxt.net Holy shit, this is sooo fucking cool! :-) Wow, I absolutely love it. It’s extremely fascinating what these optimizers do.

Framework Raises Memory Prices Again, Suggests Customers Bring Their Own RAM
Framework has announced yet another price increase for memory modules, the second in roughly a month, and the company is now actively encouraging customers to source their own RAM elsewhere if they can find better deals. The laptop maker cited “extreme memory shortages and price volatility” as the reason for the hike, noting … ⌘ Read more

Waymo Pays Workers $22 To Close Doors on Stranded Robotaxis
Waymo’s fleet of autonomous robotaxis can navigate city streets and compete with human taxi drivers, but they become stranded when a passenger leaves a door ajar – prompting the company to pay tow truck operators around $20 to $24 through an app called Honk just to push a door shut. The owner of a towing company in Inglewood, California, completes up to th … ⌘ Read more

Final Benchmarks Of AMDVLK vs. RADV AMD Radeon Vulkan Drivers
One of the pleasant surprises this year was AMD ending the AMDVLK driver development with AMD dropping their proprietary OpenGL and Vulkan driver components on Linux at long last for their Radeon Software for Linux packages. This was arguably long overdue with enthusiasts and Linux gamers long preferring the RadeonSI+RADV Mesa drivers and those drivers even doing very well in recent years for workstation graphics workloads. One of the areas where AMD … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Buying Groq’s Assets For $20 Billion in Its Largest Deal on Record
Nvidia has agreed to buy assets from Groq, a designer of high-performance artificial intelligence accelerator chips, for $20 billion in cash, according to Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive, which led the startup’s latest financing round in September. From a report: Davis, whose firm has invested more than half a billion dollars in Groq sinc … ⌘ Read more

Fix On The Way For One Of The Linux 6.19 Regressions: 52.4% Scheduler Regression
The Linux 6.19 kernel has been a bit bumpy in the scheduler department but at least one fix is on the way for addressing fallout… ⌘ Read more

Woof, woof, @thecanine@twtxt.net! That’s cute.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I have not, thanks! <3

@prologic@twtxt.net @movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh, I take my 0°C over the 36°C anytime! Even with yesterday’s gray and windy sleet in my face. However, there are definitely more pleasant times to walk in town, I’ll give you that. For example on 0°C sunny today: https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2025-12-25/

Trump Administration To Overhaul Lottery System For H-1B Visas
The Trump administration has announced it would replace the lottery programme used to grant H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers with a system that prioritises higher-paid individuals. From a report: The Department of Homeland Security said it would begin to implement a “weighted” selection process to give an advantage to higher-skilled and higher- … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I watched a few of these thanks to you! Very cool shit™ 😎

Bitcoin Miners’ Pivot To AI Has Lifted Bitcoin-Mining ETF By About 90% This Year
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: It’s harder than ever to mine bitcoin. And less profitable, too. But mining-company stocks are still flying, even with cryptocurrency prices in retreat. That’s because these firms have something in common with the hottest investment theme on the planet: the … ⌘ Read more

The Death Of Clear Linux, Other Intel Linux Engineering Setbacks In 2025
When it came to the most viewed AMD Linux/open-source news of 2025 there were a lot of accomplishments for the company this year both on the CPU and graphics side of the house and from consumer to server hardware. Today is a look back at the most popular Intel open-source/Linux news of the year, which unfortunately, their layoffs and other cuts to their software engineering were attracting a lot of interest… ⌘ Read more

Google Looks To Upstream Its Propeller Tool To LLVM For More Performance
Google’s Propeller is a profile-guided, reflinking optimizer for large codebases. Propeller is built atop LLVM and can allow for whole-program optimizations. Google compiler engineers are now hoping to bring the Propeller tool into the upstream LLVM codebase… ⌘ Read more

Mobileye Eyeq6Lplus SoC Support Being Worked On For Mainline Linux Kernel
The mainline Linux kernel already supports several different Mobileye SoCs for that company focused on self-driving tech and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Consulting firm Bootlin has been working on bringing their latest SoC, the Mobileye Eyeq6Lplus, to the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Ruby 4.0 Released With Ruby Box Experimental Feature, ZJIT Compiler
The past several years we have seen new releases of the Ruby programming language implementation for Christmas (25 December). This year is no different with Ruby 4.0 having been released this morning… ⌘ Read more

Fake Video Claiming ‘Coup In France’ Goes Viral
alternative_right shares a report from Euronews: France’s President Emmanuel Macron discovered news of his own supposed overthrow, after he received a message of concern, along with a link to a Facebook video. “On Sunday (14 December) one of my African counterparts got in touch, writing ‘Dear president, what’s happening to you? I’m very worried,’” Macron told readers of French local ne … ⌘ Read more

In case you haven’t seen it yet:

Matt Godbolt’s “Advent of Compiler Optimisations”!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2HVqYf7If8cY4wLk7JUQ2f0JXY_xMQm2

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Ooof that’s chilly 🥶

NASA Will Soon Find Out If the Perseverance Rover Can Really Persevere On Mars
With NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission delayed into the 2030s, engineers are certifying the Perseverance rover to keep operating for many more years while it continues collecting and safeguarding Martian rock samples. Ars Technica reports: The good news is that the robot, about the size of a small SUV, is in excelle … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net And I froze my ass off yesterday at -5°C and strong winds. 🤣

Nuclear Developer Proposes Using Navy Reactors For Data Centers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Post: A Texas power developer is proposing to repurpose nuclear reactors from Navy warships to power the United States grid as the Trump administration pushes to secure massive amounts of energy for the artificial intelligence boom. HGP Intelligent Energy LLC filed an application to the Ene … ⌘ Read more

that’s a whopping 36°C today 🥵

@dce@hashnix.club merry Christmas to you too!

Libreboot 26.01-rc1 Released To Support A Few More Systems
Libreboot as the Coreboot downstream focused on free, open-source boot firmware is out with a new test release for Christmas… ⌘ Read more

‘Why I Quit Streaming And Got Back Into Cassettes’
“In the age of Spotify and AI slop, tapes remind us what we’re missing when we stop taking risks,” writes author Janus Rose in an article for 404 Media. Here’s an excerpt: There are lots of advantages to the cassette lifestyle. Unlike vinyl records, tapes are compact and super-portable, and unlike streaming, you never have to worry about a giant company suddenly taking them aw … ⌘ Read more