Latest SteamOS Beta Now Includes NTSYNC Kernel Driver
Valve has added the NTSYNC kernel driver to the SteamOS 3.7.20 beta, laying the groundwork for improved Windows game synchronization performance via Wine and Proton. Phoronix reports: For gearing up for that future Proton NTSYNC support, SteamOS 3.7.20 enables the NTSYNC kernel driver and loads the module by default. Most Linux distributions are at least already buil … ⌘ Read more

Craigslist at 30: No Algorithms, No Ads, No Problem
Craigslist, the 30-year-old classifieds site that looks virtually unchanged since the dial-up era, continues to draw more than 105 million monthly users and remains enormously profitable despite never spending a cent on advertising or marketing. The site ranks as the 40th most popular website in the United States, according to Internet data company Similarweb.

University of … ⌘ Read more

Google Is Adding an ‘AI Inbox’ To Gmail That Summarizes Emails
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Google is putting even more generative AI tools into Gmail as part of its goal to further personalize user inboxes and streamline searches. On Thursday, the company announced a new “AI Inbox” tab, currently in a beta testing phase, that reads every message in a user’s Gmail and suggests a list of to-dos a … ⌘ Read more

Disney+ To Add Vertical Videos In Push To Boost Daily Engagement
Disney+, which is looking to catch up with some streaming and digital rivals in terms of daily engagement, is adding vertical videos to the service. From a report: The arrival of the new format later this year was one of several advertising-oriented announcements the company made Wednesday at its Tech + Data Showcase at CES in Las Vegas. … ⌘ Read more

Etnaviv Driver Wires Up PPU Flop Reset Support Needed By Some Vivante Hardware
Sent out today was the latest batch of drm-misc-next changes to DRM-Next for staging ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle. The reverse-engineered Etnaviv DRM driver for Vivante graphics/NPU hardware has added a new “PPU flop reset” feature gleaned off studying the downstream vendor kernel driver… ⌘ Read more

Polymarket Refuses To Pay Bets That US Would ‘Invade’ Venezuela
Polymarket is disputing that the mission to capture Nicolas Maduro constituted an invasion and said it will only settle a prediction contract if the US military takes control of Venezuelan territory. From a report: The decision by the prediction market has angered gamblers and added to the controversy surrounding a successful wager on the timing of M … ⌘ Read more

Vietnam Bans Unskippable Ads
Vietnam will begin enforcing new online advertising rules in February 2026 that ban forced video ads longer than five seconds and must allow users to close ads with just one tap. “Furthermore, platforms must provide clear icons and instructions for users to report advertisements that violate the law, and allow them to opt out, turn off, or stop viewing inappropriate ads,” reports a local news outlet (translated to Eng … ⌘ 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

Archboot Adds COSMIC Desktop as a New Install and Rescue Option
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Linux news site Linuxiac:

Archboot, a guided, user-friendly, menu-driven installer for Arch Linux that automates much of the traditional manual installation process (while still allowing advanced users to intervene when needed), has added the COSMIC desktop environment as a new selectable option. The … ⌘ Read more

Patches Posted For Bringing Rock Band 4 PS4 / PS5 Guitar Support To Linux
Following Linux 6.19 adding support for CRKD guitar controllers, new patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list are bringing some additional guitar controllers to Linux. This latest work is around enabling the Rock Band 4 guitars for the PlayStation 4 and PS5 consoles to work under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Singapore Study Links Heavy Infant Screen Time To Teen Anxiety
A study by a Singapore government agency has found that children exposed to high levels of screen time before age two showed brain development changes linked to slower decision-making and higher anxiety in adolescence, adding to concerns about early digital exposure. From a report: The study was conducted by a team within the country’s Agency for … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Kernel Benchmarks With X86_NATIVE_CPU Optimization
Added to the Linux kernel earlier this year was the new X86_NATIVE_CPU Kconfig option to enable compiler optimizations for the local/native CPU in use when building the Linux kernel. In effect about ensuring that the “-march=native” compiler flag is set for the kernel build for optimizing the Linux kernel build for your processor being used. Back with Linux 6.16 I ran some benchmarks of the Linux kernel build with X86_NATIVE_CPU to gauge the impac … ⌘ Read more

The Open-Source OpenGL & Vulkan Drivers Enjoyed A Rather Remarkable 2025
The open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers making up Mesa had another very successful year. Even with all the years being invested into Mesa largely by Intel, AMD, Valve, Red Hat, and others, the upward trajectory continues for Mesa on expanding the hardware support, punctually adding new Vulkan extensions, and racking up other wins… ⌘ Read more

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe Do we now need ad filters in twtxt clients, too? O_o I hope not! Personally, I cannot stand the “Sent with my crappy $phone/$app” e-mail footers.

But congrats on your client. :-)

Intel Open-Source Software Setback: IWD Development Hiatus
Adding to the unfortunate engineering setbacks at Intel this year as part of cost-cutting measures, the Intel IWD software development has been on a hiatus for the past three months. Going from previously seeing monthly releases and almost constant activity to now development ceasing up with no activity in the past three months… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Lands Fix For ARM64 EFI Systems Crashing On Boot
Adding to the early headaches of Linux 6.19 with some regressions in performance and functionality were ARM64 hosts crashing on this in-development kernel version for those platforms using EFI. But a fix is now merged ahead of Linux 6.19-rc3 due out tomorrow… ⌘ Read more

What Might Adding Emojis and Pictures To Text Programming Languages Look Like?
theodp writes: We all mix pictures, emojis, and text freely in our communications. So why not in our code? That’s the premise of “Fun With Python and Emoji: What Might Adding Pictures to Text Programming Languages Look Like?” (two-image Bluesky explainer; full slides), which takes a look at what mixing emoji with … ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases VA-API libva 2.23 Adds AV1 Profile 2 Support
Intel today released libva 2.23 as the newest feature release for this Video Acceleration API “VA-API” reference library implementation. Most significant with libva 2.23 is adding AV1 Profile 2 support… ⌘ Read more

While Releasing ‘Avatar 3’, James Cameron Questions the Future of Movies
“If I get to do another Avatar film, it’ll be because the business model still works,” James Cameron tells CNN in a video interview — adding “That I can’t guarantee, as I sit here today. That’ll play out over the next month, really.” He says theatre is a “sacred space,” and while it will never go away, “I think that it could … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc2 Adding Support For CRKD Guitar Controllers
Most notable with the input subsystem updates sent out today ahead of the Linux 6.19-rc2 release is some new hardware support. New this week is adding support for CRKD Guitars for those into musical gaming/apps… ⌘ Read more

Intel Readies Multi-Queue Support For Linux 7.0 As New Feature For Crescent Island
In addition to this week’s drm-intel-next pull request to DRM-Next adding Nova Lake display support, a drm-xe-next pull request was also sent out on Friday that prepares a new multi-queue feature for Xe3P_XPC – initially just the “Crescent Island” AI inference accelerator card. Plus other new features too for this Xe kernel driver in the upcoming Linux 7.0~6.20 kernel version… ⌘ Read more

Pro-AI Group Launches First of Many Attack Ads for US Election
“Super PAC aims to drown out AI critics in midterms,” the Washington Post reported in August, noting its intial funding over $100 million from “some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful investors and executives” including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, his wife, and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. The group’s goal was “to quash a philosophical debate … ⌘ Read more

LoongArch Promoted To Being An Official Architecture For Debian 14
Two years and a few months after LoongArch 64-bit “Loong64” was added to Debian Ports, it’s now been promoted to being an official architecture for Debian Linux… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Made Another Copilot Ad Where Nothing Actually Works
Microsoft’s latest holiday ad for its Copilot AI assistant features a 30-second montage of users seamlessly syncing smart home lights to music, scaling recipes for large gatherings, and parsing HOA guidelines – none of which the software can actually perform reliably when put to the test. The Verge methodically tested each prompt shown in the ad and foun … ⌘ Read more

Linux Preps For “Slow Workload Hints” With Intel Panther Lake
Five years ago Intel began introducing “workload hints” used for thermal and power purposes with their SoCs and in turn on the software-side being enabled with their INT340X kernel driver on Linux systems. That Intel workload hint coverage was added to the Linux kernel in late 2020 and then a big addition in 2023 with Meteor Lake introducing new workload hint type capabilities. Now patches have been posted to the Linux kernel mailing list for ne … ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Linux NPU User-Space Driver Adds Panther Lake Support
Since late 2024 Intel has been working on 5th Gen NPU support for their Linux IVPU driver. That 5th Gen NPU support for Intel Core Ultra “Panther Lake” SoCs was upstreamed back in Linux 6.13. Now today the Intel Linux NPU user-space driver has seen its official support added for Panther Lake… ⌘ Read more

Google AI Summaries Are Ruining the Livelihoods of Recipe Writers
Google’s AI Mode is synthesizing “Frankenstein” recipes from multiple creators, often stripping away context and accuracy and siphoning traffic and ad revenue away from food bloggers in the process. Many recipe writers warn this shift amounts to an “extinction event” for ad-supported food sites. The Guardian reports: Over the past few years, bl … ⌘ Read more

Intel Video Processing Library Adding AI Assisted Video Encoder Features
Intel’s Video Processing Library “libvpl” is out with a new version ahead of the holidays. The only major change with libvpl 2.16 is adding experimental APIs for AI-assisted video encode functionality… ⌘ Read more

Intel XPU Manager Updated With BMG-G31 GPU Support
Intel XPU Manager 1.3.5 released today as the newest version of this open-source software for monitoring and managing Intel GPU hardware with a focus on their data center products. Notable with this revision is adding BMG-G31 GPU support… ⌘ Read more

Opus 1.6 Audio Codec Adds New Machine Learning Functionality
Version 1.6 of libopus as the library for the open-source Opus audio codec is now available. Opus 1.6 brings new machine learning “ML” based features in building atop the machine learning features initially added to Opus 1.5… ⌘ Read more

Meta Tolerates Rampant Ad Fraud From China To Safeguard Billions In Revenue
A Reuters investigation found that Meta knowingly tolerated large volumes of scam and illegal ads from China worth billions in revenue. Reuters reports: Though China’s authoritarian government bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning pl … ⌘ Read more

Linux Exposing Support For Lenovo ThinkPads Being Able To Detect Hardware Damage
Newer Lenovo ThinkPads are adding the ability to detect and report varying degrees of hardware damage. The Lenovo ThinkPad ACPI driver for Linux is being adapted for being able to communicate said hardware damage to user-space Linux software… ⌘ Read more

Google Search Homepage Adds a ‘Plus’ Menu
After introducing an AI Mode shortcut earlier this year, Google has now added a new “plus” menu to its Search homepage, highlighting options for image and file uploads. 9to5Google reports: On google.com, the Search bar now has a plus icon at the far left that replaces the magnifying glass. Clicking lets you “Upload image” or “Upload file.” It very much matches the AI Mode experience. Those t … ⌘ Read more

New Rule Forbids GNOME Shell Extensions Made Using AI Generated Code
The GNOME.org Extensions hosting for GNOME Shell extensions will no longer accept new contributions with AI-generated code. A new rule has been added to their review guidelines to forbid AI-generated code… ⌘ Read more

New Kindle Feature Uses AI To Answer Questions About Books - And Authors Can’t Opt Out
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon has quietly added a new AI feature to its Kindle iOS app – a feature that “lets you ask questions about the book you’re reading and receive spoiler-free answers,” according to an Amazon announcement.

The company says the feature, which is called Ask this Book … ⌘ Read more

New York Becomes First State To Require Disclosure of AI Performers in Ads
New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Thursday signed two bills aimed at regulating the use of AI in entertainment, requiring disclosure when ads feature AI-generated performers and mandating consent from heirs before a deceased person’s likeness can be used commercially. Hochul described both measures as “first in the nation” pol … ⌘ Read more

AMD GAIA 0.14 Released With Native Support For Linux & macOS
Early this year AMD announced the open-source GAIA project for “Generative AI Is Awesome” as a showcase of AI support atop their Ryzen AI NPUs and other hardware. That began as a Windows-only project but in September AMD added Linux support to GAIA but only using Vulkan acceleration for AI on Radeon GPUs. Now today GAIA 0.14 is available with “native” support for both macOS and Linux… ⌘ Read more

AI Slop Ad Backfires For McDonald’s
McDonald’s has pulled an AI-generated Christmas commercial from YouTube after viewers pushed back on what they called a distasteful, “AI slop”-filled take on the holidays. The 45-second ad, titled “It’s the most terrible time of the year,” was a satirical look at holiday chaos – people tripping while carrying overloaded gift bags, getting tangled in lights, burning homemade cookies, starting kitchen fires – … ⌘ Read more

Judge says burning of murder victim’s body was a ‘horrible thing to do’
A Victorian Supreme Court judge says the destruction of 19-year-old Charlie Gander’s body after his murder has added to the impact on his family. ⌘ Read more

Beekeepers pay for imported honey testing to uncover hidden additives
Australian beekeepers are funding their own investigation into the authenticity of imported honey, with tests showing other products are being added. ⌘ Read more

Meta Pledge To Use Less Personal Data For Ads Gets EU Nod, Avoids Daily Fines
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Meta’s proposal to use less personal data for targeted advertising in its pay-or-consent model that will be rolled out next month won the approval of EU antitrust regulators on Monday, signaling the company will not face daily fines after all. […] The U.S. tech giant ha … ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk’s X bans European Commission from making ads after €120m fine
The EU regulator had fined the social media platform over its “deceptive” blue tick badges. ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Insists Target Links in ChatGPT Responses Weren’t Ads But ‘Suggestions’ - But Turns Them Off
A hardware security response from ChatGPT ended with “Shop for home and groceries. Connect Target.”

But “There are no live tests for ads” on ChatGPT, insists Nick Turley, OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT. Posting on X.com, he said “any screenshots you’ve seen are either not real or not ads.” … ⌘ Read more

Trump’s new security strategy warns Europe faces ‘civilisational erasure’
The Trump administration releases a document saying its goal is to “help Europe correct its current trajectory”, adding that it faces “civilisational erasure” due in part to “mass migration”. ⌘ Read more

AI Chatbots Can Sway Voters Better Than Political Ads
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: New research reveals that AI chatbots can shift voters’ opinions in a single conversation – and they’re surprisingly good at it. A multi-university team of researchers has found that chatting with a politically biased AI model was more effective than political advertisements at nudging both Democrats … ⌘ Read more

Subaru Owners Are Ticked About In-Car Pop-Up Ads For SiriusXM
Subaru owners are reporting full-screen SiriusXM pop-up ads appearing on their infotainment systems while driving – sometimes even overriding Apple CarPlay. Subaru says the ads appear only twice a year, but frustrated drivers argue the practice is distracting, unsafe, and a sign of an industry trend that’s likely to get worse. The Drive reports: At le … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Declares ‘Code Red’ As Google Catches Up In AI Race
OpenAI has reportedly issued a “code red” on Monday, pausing projects like ads, shopping agents, health tools, and its Pulse assistant to focus entirely on improving ChatGPT. “This includes core features like greater speed and reliability, better personalization, and the ability to answer more questions,” reports The Verge, citing a memo reported by the Wall S … ⌘ Read more

Zillow Drops Climate Risk Scores After Agents Complained of Lost Sales
Zillow has removed climate risk scores from over a million home listings after real estate agents argued the data was scaring off buyers. TechCrunch reports: Zillow first added the data to the site in September 2024, saying that more than 80% of buyers consider climate risks when purchasing a new home. But last month, following object … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.18 Adding New Option For More Detailed Bug Reporting But Cost Of Greater Memory
Among the big flow of pull requests today for this first day of the Linux 6.19 merge window are some core kernel bug handling improvements… ⌘ Read more

NixOS 25.11 Released With 7,002 New Packages Added
It’s been an exciting weekend for Linux distribution released with new versions of Endeavour OS, CachyOS, Solus and now a new NixOS release… ⌘ Read more