Firefox Touts Lower CPU Use for Large JPEGs, Faster PDF Viewer Startup (and AI Controls)
Firefox 156 is the second release since Mozilla moved to a twice-monthly release schedule, and the blog OMG Ubuntu notes it has faster start-up times for its built-in PDF viewer and also lower CPU usage when viewing large JPEG images:

In Firefox 156, the browser now uses libjpeg-turbo’s IDCT scaling t … ⌘ Read more

LG Responds to TV Spying Allegations
LG is pushing back against reports that its smart TVs are “spying” on users, saying wake-word detection happens locally and that features such as Automatic Content Recognition, voice recognition, and interest-based ads are optional. But critics note that researchers found TVs keeping logs of ambient conversations, and LG’s response “did not address broader concerns about how much data it collects, who … ⌘ Read more

AMD Working To ‘Push Rust Deep into the GPU Stack’
Phoronix reports:

AMD is building out what they are describing as an “elite” team of developers for driving Rust code “deep into the GPU stack” from firmware to drivers, shader compilers, and other GPU software in Rust. AMD Senior Fellow Harsh Meno posted this week to LinkedIn about this new effort…

And note this AMD job posting that’s active for hiring a software de … ⌘ Read more

Xbox Cloud Gaming Switches to Monthly Hour Limits
Microsoft is imposing monthly limits on Xbox Cloud Gaming starting in November, with Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, and Essential subscribers getting 15, 10, and 5 hours respectively before they have to buy additional playtime. “Currently, Game Pass subscribers can stream without these monthly hour limits,” notes IGN. From the report: The change means those who use cloud gamin … ⌘ Read more

Waymo Is Expanding to Germany
Waymo plans to launch its robotaxi service in Munich by the end of 2027, marking the Google-owned company’s first expansion into the European Union. “It already operates in 11 cities in the United States and has applied for a license in the United Kingdom to launch its robotaxis in London this year,” notes Reuters. From the report: The Google subsidiary will start rolling out vehicles in the German city this year, w … ⌘ Read more

Motorola’s 2027 Flagships Will Officially Support GrapheneOS
Motorola is working with GrapheneOS to officially support the privacy-focused Android alternative on its 2027 flagship phones, starting with a non-folding model and later expanding to the next Razr Fold and Razr Ultra. “These will ship with Motorola’s normal Android skin, but you will be able to switch to GrapheneOS later if you want to,” notes GSMArena.c … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 x86/mm Lands Patches To Greatly Improve Latency-Sensitive Workloads
The highlight of this week’s x86/mm pull request of changes for the Linux 7.3 kernel are fixes that reduce the time that the TLB flushing code has interrupts disabled. This helps significantly with latency-sensitive workloads but Intel engineer Dave Hansen noted in the pull request that “it’s certainly something to keep an eye on” in looking out for any regressions… ⌘ Read more

Two Very Exciting Memory Management Optimizations Going Into Linux 7.3
Andrew Morton on Tuesday sent out all of the memory management “MM” updates for the Linux 7.3 merge window. The MM pull was particularly heavy as he noted 1,250 “added-to-MM” emails were sent out this cycle compared to 920 the prior cycle. With a lot of patch churn, he also turned to Google’s Gemini AI for writing his patch summaries. In going through the very verbose AI-generated summary, there are two patch series that get me excited on the performance … ⌘ Read more

Bipartisan ‘Uprising’ Against Flock Cameras: a Larger Fight Against Big Tech and Surveillance?
Politico notes that over 20 local jurisdictions in America “either stopped using Flock cameras or began the process of doing so in July, according to a tracker maintained by DeFlock, an activist group that has been mapping the company. It’s the highest amount in a single month since they began … ⌘ Read more

China’s Moon-landing Plans And Why the US Is So Worried
“We are in a 21st century space race,” U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has said. And this week CNN noted a competition that for decades loomed in the background of geopolitics “is now roaring to the forefront,” with China “demonstrating rapid advances in space technology” while the U.S. is “ratcheting up rhetoric about a looming battle for control of the cosmos.”

It’s the … ⌘ Read more

First Rival Android App Store Arrives In the US Play Store
Aptoide has become the first third-party Android app store available directly through Google Play in the U.S. “The change is a direct result of Google’s litigation with Epic, which saw a judge rule in 2024 that the Play Store would have to open up to third-party stores,” notes The Verge. The change makes rival storefronts far easier to discover and install, potent … ⌘ Read more

Ask Slashdot: Whare the Costs of Switching Between Windows, MacOS, and Chrome?
UI changes, lost productivity, untransferrable knowledge… Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes the folly of switching to an unfamiliar new environment to be “more productive”…

Champions of the switch often insist workers will be able to hit the ground running and get the same or even more work done from the get-go in … ⌘ Read more

Brain Activity Reveals the Melodies That People Imagine
Researchers believe they’ve found evidence that brain signals reveal the pitches of notes in imagined musical melodies, reports Medical Express:

Study participants were 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the surfaces of their brains for clinical monitoring. Participants quietly listened to the first bars of children’s tunes, then imagined the melodies of … ⌘ Read more

GNOME Receiving Additional Design Help From Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency Fellowship
The new GNOME Boxes app for accessing virtual systems has reached beta, announced This Week in GNOME. There’s also been more work on the Sushi file previewer for Nautilus, and Papers 51 Beta can now add visual signatures to PDF documents.

But Phoronix noted one more announcement. “Germany’s Sovereign Te … ⌘ Read more

New Spinning Drone Hides In Plain Sight
To design invisible drones, researchers have tried camouflage, transparent materials and light-bending optical systems. But engineers at Northwestern University used “motion blur,” which an announcement from the school notes is the effect that makes fast-spinning fans seem to disappear.

“The drone spins up to 25 times per second, which is too fast for the human eye to see clearly. While it isn’t … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s $450 Billion Jump Is Biggest In Stock Market History
Microsoft shares surged as much as 17% after reporting 43% growth in Azure revenue, putting the company on track to add a record $490 billion in market value in a single day. Bloomberg notes that it “would eclipse Nvidia’s $440 billion addition, following President Donald Trump’s announcement of a 90-day tariff pause last year, as the biggest ever. … ⌘ Read more

@arne@uplegger.eu @david@daiwei.me Most do actually look really good, but of course I prefer the birds. :-)

Can’t have them all, because it’s even harder to spot counterfeit notes I reckon.

AMD Zen 6 Client HSMP Patches Points To “Ryzen Master” Functionality On Linux
In an interesting twist, patches this week posted to the Linux kernel mailing list are enabling AMD Zen 6 client desktop and laptop SoCs for the HSMP driver. Up to now the AMD HSMP Linux driver was just used for modern EPYC server processors while now we are seeing this HSMP driver supporting the upcoming Medusa and Olympic Ridge client platforms… Including mentions of overclocking and even noting “Ryzen Master” as the Windows-only … ⌘ Read more

DoorDash Is Building Its Own Drone Delivery Business
DoorDash has launched DoorDash Air, an in-house drone-delivery program that has just received FAA certification for commercial operations. “This does not mean DoorDash’s custom-built drones will be delivering burritos tomorrow, or even next month,” notes TechCrunch. “The company didn’t provide a detailed timeline for when its aircraft would be used in operations.” From the re … ⌘ Read more

Review Roundup: Framework Laptop 13 Pro
The review embargo has lifted for the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro, and the consensus across the board is that it is a massive leap forward in terms of build quality and battery life. The main issue reviewers complained about is the sky-high price, with the higher-end model jumping dramatically from $2,100 up to $2,900 due to the memory shortage crisis. (Some note that the price “nearly double … ⌘ Read more

@david@daiwei.me Might not have tested that path very well. Can you make a note of this on Gitea?

A Promising Process For Nuclear Fuel Re-use and Disposal?
A Canadian lab has run a chemical process on real spent nuclear fuel “and pulled out 90% of the long-lived danger in 24 hours, the part that forces a burial site to last 100,000 years,” notes the blog Autonocio, “with the leftovers meant to fuel a reactor.”

The standard plan for spent nuclear fuel is to wait it out. You pull the used bundles from a reactor, si … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic’s New Opus 5 Model Rivals Fable 5 For Half the Price
Anthropic has released Opus 5, a new Claude model that it says comes close to its higher-end Fable 5 model at half the price while improving on Opus 4.8 in knowledge work, coding, and scientific research tasks. “At the same time, Anthropic says it has managed to make the model more resistant to being tricked,” notes Engadget. Additionally, the company says … ⌘ Read more

On that note, I just finished writing the linux/risc64 backend and it only took ~2k lines of code 🎉

Note to self: If you turn something off, this means it is not on.

Hurray, I can now press gg instead of g to go to the top in tt. Much better! :-) Other multi-key combinations are also easily possible now.

I should probably write a real article about this at some point, but here we go. The only downside with my new key binding system is that it breaks tview’s established pattern. You’ve got an InputHandler(), that is implemented using WrapInputHandler(…). It typically then directly implements the switching logic depending on the key press. Something like this:

func (w *Widget) InputHandler() func(event *tcell.EventKey, setFocus func(p tview.Primitive)) {
    // WrapInputHandler allows for intercepting key events with SetInputCapture(…)
    // from the outside for customization. This handles the default key bindings.
    return t.WrapInputHandler(func(event *tcell.EventKey, setFocus func(p tview.Primitive)) {
        switch event.Key() {
        case tcell.KeyRune:
            if event.Modifiers() == tcell.ModNone {
                switch event.Rune() {
                case 'k':
                    w.scrollUp()
                    return // we already handled the event, stop processing

                case 'j':
                    w.scrollDown()
                    return
                }
            }
        }

        // We didn't handle the key event. Maybe the parent
        // widget knows what to do with it.
        if handler := w.parent.InputHandler(); handler != nil {
            handler(event, setFocus)
        }
    })
}

From the outside, you can intercept and either stop or continue the widget’s original key handling with a potentially rewritten key event using SetInputCapture(…):

w := NewWidget()
// customized or additional key bindings
w.SetInputCapture(func(event *tcell.EventKey) *tcell.EventKey {
    switch event.Key() {
    case tcell.KeyUp:
        // Rewrite the event, so the "cursor up" key is an alias
        // for the vim key binding "k", that is handled by the
        // wrapped input handler above. (I know, I know, this is a
        // completely unrealistic example, why would anyone use
        // cursor keys when there are vim key bindings available?!)
        return tcell.NewEventKey(tcell.KeyRune, 'k', tcell.ModNone)

    case tcell.KeyRune:
        if event.Modifiers() == tcell.ModNone {
            switch event.Rune() {
                case 'q':
                    app.Stop()
                    // we already handled the event, do not pass it
                    // to the wrapped input handler above
                    return nil

                case 'r':
                    toggleMessageReadStatus()
                    return nil
            }
        }
    }

    // we didn't handle the event, pass it to the wrapped
    // input handler above
    return event
}

Since they all expect a single key, I’ve noticed that using multiple dedicated KeyBindings of mine on these different levels kinda breaks multi-key handling with common prefixes. The outer-most KeyBinding captures the prefix, but it can’t transfer it to the inner one if not handled by the outer one. At least not without some more (potentially ugly) changes. So, I now have to work with just a single KeyBindings object for the entire widget chain (if it consists of multiple other widgets or the regular input handler and input capture are in the game). The outside needs to register all its key bind customizations or extensions at the same level that the original widget handles its default ones. Doable by exposing the widget’s KeyBindings instance, but not pretty. You always have to keep this in mind.

With the KeyBindings, it will look like that:

type Widget struct {
    parent tview.Primitive

    // make it available to children or the outside either by
    // direct field access or by providing a getter method
    KeyBindings *bind.KeyBindings
}

func NewWidget() *Widget {
    w := &Widget{KeyBindings: &bind.KeyBindings{}}
    w.KeyBindings. // default key bindings
        Bind0(bind.KeySequence('k', w.scrollUp).
        Bind0(bind.KeySequence('j', w.scrollDown)
    return w
}

func (w *Widget) InputHandler() InputHandler() func(event *tcell.EventKey, setFocus func(p tview.Primitive)) {
    return t.WrapInputHandler(func(event *tcell.EventKey, setFocus func(p tview.Primitive)) {
        // also note the missing support for focus transfer at the moment
        event = w.KeyBindings.Capture(event)
        if event == nil {
            return
        }

        if handler := w.parent.InputHandler(); handler != nil {
            handler(event, setFocus)
        }
    }
}

And then from the outside, or in a child widget:

w := NewWidget()
w.KeyBindings. // additional or customized key bindings
    Bind1(bind.KeySequence(tcell.KeyUp), func(*tcell.EventKey) *tcell.EventKey {
        return tcell.NewEventKey(tcell.KeyRune, 'k', tcell.ModNone)
    }).
    Bind0(bind.KeySequence('q'), app.Stop).
    Bind0(bind.KeySequence('r'), toggleMessageReadStatus)

When directly working with tview primitives that are not part of custom widget implementations, the following works well so far:

textView := tview.NewTextView().
    SetWordWrap(true).
    SetText("…")
    SetScrollable(true)
textView.SetInputCapture((&bind.KeyBindings{}).
    Bind0(bind.KeySequence('q'), app.Stop).
    Bind1(bind.KeySequence('g', 'g'), func(*tcell.EventKey) *tcell.EventKey {
        return tcell.NewEventKey(tcell.KeyHome, 0, tcell.ModNone)
    }).
    Capture)

I need to sleep on this some more.

Also, writing very long messages like this one is really not all that fun in tt’s editor. I should absolutely provide a way to shell out to vim.

(Took me about one and a half hours to compose, holy crap. But not only because of not using vim. Although, that might have saved me a quarter hour or so for sure. Proof-reading this message also uncovered quite a few bugs in my real documentation. So, that’s a big win!) Good night!

🥳 Finally! After nearly 4 years, yarnd v0.16.0 “Silver Sojourner” is out! 🚀 Twt Hash v2, SQLite FTS5 search, HTMX-powered UI, first-time setup wizard and literally hundreds of bug fixes 🐛

Release notes: https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/yarn/releases/tag/0.16.0

Upgrading is fully automatic — the Twt Hash v2 migration re-fetches all feeds on first start, so expect the first cycle to be a bit heavier. Images on Docker Hub as prologic/yarnd:0.16.0 👌

cc @kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz @abucci@anthony.buc.ci @shinyoukai@yume.laidback.moe @eldersnake@we.loveprivacy.club 🙏

Are Wars Blurring Lines Between Corporate and National Security?
Subsea cables. Ukrainian power stations. Russian oil refineries. Even airports, water-desalination plants and Amazon data centers.

They’ve all become targets in wartime, notes the Wall Street Journal, and around the world now arguments “are already brewing between companies and governments over new regulations and potential costs.”

In Germany, po … ⌘ Read more

842,000 American Households Lost Power Today During a Heatwave
As America began celebrating its 250th birthday Saturday, 842,000 homes reported power outages, notes ABC News. Figures from tracking site PowerOutage showed states in America’s Northeast and Midwest were impacted by severe weather and extreme heat.

That number, which will fluctuate throughout the day as crews work to restore power, is for households … ⌘ Read more

Google Pulls the Plug On Tenor API, Killing GIF Pickers Around the Web
Google has shut down the Tenor API, breaking GIF pickers in services that still relied on it and forcing platforms such as X to migrate elsewhere. 9to5Google notes that the library itself remains available at Tenor.com and “integrations within Google products are also still active, including Gboard, Google Messages, and more.” From the … ⌘ Read more

Spain-Backed Fund Joins FOSSA’s Sovereign Satellite Communications Push
Spanish startup FOSSA Systems “has raised about $10.5 million to expand its connectivity constellation,” reports Space News, noting some funding is backed by Spain’s government:

The support from the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT) comes a year after the fund injected 14 million euros into Spain’s Sateliot , … ⌘ Read more

US Agency Cancels Contract For Warrantless Tracking of Mobile Devices
America’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has “canceled its contract for a surveillance tool that enables warrantless tracking of mobile devices,” reports the Associated Press.

They note the move comes “after lawmakers, a prosecutor and a judge raised concerns about the legality of the tool in criminal investigation … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Adds Another Year To Windows 10 Extended Update Program
Microsoft has quietly extended free Windows 10 security updates for consumers by another year, pushing the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program’s end date from October 12, 2026, to October 12, 2027. “The ESU support page was updated with that date, and Microsoft’s blog post on the program has a new editor’s note confirming the change,” repor … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Announces Benchmarks for AI Life Sciences Research. Its Best Model Failed 63.9% of the Test
This week OpenAI announced a 750-task test to to measure “whether AI systems can support realistic life science research tasks, not just answer biology questions.”

But while OpenAI’s top-performing GPT-Rosalind model led the rankings, Slashdot reader BrianFagioli notes that “it a … ⌘ Read more

Intel Core Ultra X7 Panther Lake Performance On Linux 7.1
After recently noting the Intel Arc B580 Battlemage performance improving with Linux 7.1 and similarly finding performance gains for the Arc Pro B70 on Linux 7.1, several Phoronix readers have been wondering whether the newer Xe3 graphics with Panther Lake similarly benefit. Here are some CPU and iGPU benchmarks of the Core Ultra X7 358H “Panther Lake” SoC between Linux 7.0 and the recently stabilized Linux 7.1 kernel. ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Brilliant! Oh, I’m super happy to get it all wrong together with you. :-)

[Release notes] are meant for human beings, it’s a human-to-human interaction.

This is one of the most important messages. Absolute key, but misunderstood so often.

Arch Linux Malware Incident: Malicious Commits Found in 1,579 Packages
More than 1,500 user-contributed packages in the Arch Linux User Repository “AUR” were infected with malware, reports Phoronix:

The last message in the thread over this security incident is noting that Arch Linux developers have deleted all the malicious commits they are aware of. Cited was this list that puts the number of malware-af … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks!

On the AI changelog part, though, I’d rather recommend to just not have a changelog at all.

I’m afraid that ship has sailed. You can rest assured that someone who uses AI/LLMs for their code (which is almost everybody at this point) will most certainly also use it for changelogs.

I actually considered not mentioning AI output at all, because this just opens a huge can of worms … 😞

While going through these terrible GitHub release pages, I also found these “New Project Contributors” sections

Yeah, they play on a nerd’s pride.

Now, it’s just the same auto shitshow with MR titles in a rolling date-versioned release scheme. It’s just our team who has to deal with that, though. I think I’m the only one who is not a fan of it.

I’ve found that this whole situation is much worse at work than it is in the Free Software world. At work, it’s literally work and hardly anybody actually cares. We still don’t have all people convinced that writing good commit messages or using good branch names is worth the time. It’s … oh god, no, I’m going to stop here, this is bad for my mental health. 😅

Suffice it to say, all release notes at work are now AI-generated. Nobody gives a fuck.

6 Best Digital Notebooks (2026): ReMarkable, Kobo, Kindle
These nifty tools combine the ease of jotting notes by hand with the power of saving them digitally. ⌘ Read more

The next federal poll is two years away, everyone, cool down
As the political temperature rises, it is worth noting the next election isn’t until 2028. ⌘ Read more

George Lucas Says Steven Spielberg & Harrison Ford Opposed Divisive Indy 4 Twist
George Lucas opened up about creative clashes with Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford during Indiana Jones 4. He revealed that the duo opposed adding the alien element. He noted that Spielberg set the condition that the aliens be portrayed as beings from another dimension, which helped them eventually find common ground. Why Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford opposed Indiana Jones 4’s ali … ⌘ Read more

Obsession Was Originally Very Different From Inde Navarrette’s Box Office Hit Movie
An insider report reveals the original cut of Obsession was vastly different from the final film. A recent newsletter by entertainment journalist and Hollywood insider Jeff Sneider claims the blockbuster psychological horror flick initially took a different approach to the terror unfolding on the screen. He further noted that the original approach was simila … ⌘ Read more

Opendoor Ends India Operations, Fueling a Bigger Conversation About AI and Outsourcing
Opendoor is shutting down its India operations less than two years after opening offices there. Slashdot reader alternative_right shares a post from Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian: “I shared this note earlier today with the entire team at Opendoor. Today we began to say goodbye to our colleagues in India as we win … ⌘ Read more

Tom Hanks Reveals the Real Reason He Returned for Toy Story 5
With Tom Hanks extending his two-decade-long legacy as Woody by returning as the beloved Sheriff in Toy Story 5, the veteran actor has revealed why he agreed to come back to the Pixar franchise for a fifth film. In a recent interview, Hanks noted that he and Tim Allen, who voices Woody’s best toy-friend Buzz […]

The post [Tom Hanks Reveals the Real Reason He Returned for Toy Story 5](https://www.co … ⌘ Read more

Mysterious Guardians of the Galaxy Spin-off Movie Teased by MCU Star
An MCU star has teased a Guardians of the Galaxy spin-off movie. This marks yet another instance of the star and franchise favorite hinting at the existence of this mystery movie. It must be noted that no other MCU personality has ever explicitly confirmed or denied the existence of such a Guardians of the Galaxy […]

The post [Mysterious Guardians of the Galaxy Spin-off Movie Teased … ⌘ Read more

rsync 3.4.4 released with regression fixes
Andrew Tridgell has announced
the release of rsync 3.4.4 with
fixes for the regressions introduced in the 3.4.3 release. He also
notes there will be an rsync 3.5.0 soon, with many more security
updates:

As part of the 3.5.0 release update I have created a
rsync-security@lists.samba.org mailing list for anyone who is willing
to do testing of the 3.5.0 release. T … ⌘ Read more

A San Francisco Burglar Escaped in a Robotaxi - and Police Still Can’t Find Him
A burglar took a self-driving Waymo taxi to rob a San Francisco yoga studio this past January, reports TechCrunch — “and police have still not caught them.”

Even the police officer assigned to the case thought it would be easier to solve, notes The San Francisco Chronicle, since Waymos are outfitted with multiple high … ⌘ Read more

Love Island USA Season 8 Gets Its First Elimination
Less than a week in, Love Island USA Season 8 has already dramatically eliminated its first Islander. During the season’s first recoupling ceremony, one contestant failed to secure a partner. Owing to the surprise arrival of two new bombshells, the season’s first elimination ended on a high note. Who was eliminated and sent home from […]

The post [Love Island USA Season 8 Gets Its First Elimination](https://www.com … ⌘ Read more

Anthony Head’s Ted Lasso & Buffy Costars Share Touching Tributes Post Death
The industry was shocked by Anthony Head’s death on June 5, 2026. The actor passed away due to complications from pneumonia. As such, his co-stars wrote some heartfelt notes dedicated to him. Anthony Head’s costars pay tribute to late Ted Lasso actor Anthony Head’s co-stars from Ted Lasso and Buffy the Vampire Slayer paid tributes […]

The post [Anthony Head’s Ted Lasso & Buffy Costars Share Touchi … ⌘ Read more

SBS Bank looks to drive growth, eyes capital efficiency
SBS Bank says it plans to grow its capital-consuming businesses over the short to medium term, underscoring this appetite by indicating an intent to streamline its total capital stack.

“We’re in a good space from a capital perspective,” SBS group chief executive Mark McLean said, noting the Invercargill-headquartered bank’s total capital ratio of 18%. ⌘ Read more