NASA Announces X-70 Experimental Aircraft to Advance Flight Research
NASA has unveiled the X-70 Fractal, a new crewed experimental aircraft “designed to accelerate the development and testing of advanced aviation technologies.” From a press release: The crewed X-70 features advanced, rapidly reconfigurable flight-control technology that will allow NASA to explore aircraft maneuverability in ways never b … ⌘ Read more

Netflix Launches First AI-Branded Content Recommendations Feature on TVs
Netflix is testing its first consumer-facing feature explicitly branded as AI-powered. Called “AI Discover,” the feature generates personalized TV and movie recommendations in real time based on viewing history, preferences, trending content and selectable themes like “Something Light” or “Quick Watches.” Variety reports: … ⌘ Read more

Netflix Launches First AI-Branded Content Recommendations Feature on TVs
Netflix is testing its first consumer-facing feature explicitly branded as AI-powered. Called “AI Discover,” the feature generates personalized TV and movie recommendations in real time based on viewing history, preferences, trending content and selectable themes like âoeSomething Lightâ or âoeQuick Watches.â Variety repo … ⌘ Read more

Classic ARPG Torchlight II returns with lots of improvements using AI assistance
The newer owners of the Torchlight IP (XD INC) have started reviving the classic action-RPG Torchlight II, with multiple Beta upgrades to test out.

Image

Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/11/classic-arpg-torchlight-ii-returns-with-lots-of-imp … ⌘ Read more

Firefox’s New Mini Window Is Every Multitasker’s Dream
Mozilla is testing a new Firefox Nightly feature called Mini Window that lets users pop an entire webpage into a small, always-on-top window stripped of most browser controls. “The idea behind the Firefox Mini Window feature is simple: allow users to move a currently open tab (or a section of a tab) into a separate mini window,” writes ZDNet’s Jack Wallen. “Think of it … ⌘ Read more

OpenMW 0.52.0 for Morrowind gets a fresh release candidate to test new features
The amazing open source game engine OpenMW for the classic RPG Morrowind has released a release candidate for the upcoming 0.52.0 release.

Image

Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/11/openmw-0-52-0-for-morrowind-gets-a-fresh-release-candidate-to … ⌘ Read more

Two US Senators Raise Privacy Concerns About Meta’s ‘Pervert Glasses’
Meta’s smart glasses face new questions from two U.S. Senators, reports Gizmodo.
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey “are requesting that Meta provide more information before Thanksgiving on whether it conducted detailed human rights due diligence and safety testing on the product before releasing it,” reports Gizmod … ⌘ Read more

New Linux 7.4 Feature For Reducing AI Noise Already Reverted Due To A “Crazy Beast”
A new feature merged last week for Linux 7.4 to help reduce AI/LLM generated noise from invalid/irrelevant testing configurations is now reverted due to a “crazy beast” in the VFIO subsystem… ⌘ Read more

Instagram Chases YouTube With a Push For Longer, Widescreen Videos
Instagram is testing a new longform, horizontal video format called “Features” as it pushes further into YouTube territory and expands its presence on TVs. The Verge reports: Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has been against doing longform video on the platform “for a long time,” he says in a six-and-a-half-minute video (here’s the widescr … ⌘ Read more

Knicks Sent Employees Fake Offer of Championship Rings In Phishing Test
The New York Knicks reportedly sent employees a fake offer of complimentary NBA championship rings as part of an internal phishing test, requiring anyone who clicked the link to attend mandatory cybersecurity training. “Congratulations, your Employee Championship Ring is here,” the email said. According to The New York Times, Madison S … ⌘ Read more

Several Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities Accidentally Posted To Public Kernel Mailing List
Seemingly as an accident, overnight several new Linux kernel vulnerability reports were posted to the public Linux kernel mailing list rather than the private security mailing list. The vulnerabilities have yet to be patched on mainline but at least in some cases there are patches undergoing testing or queued in “-next” branches. The CVSS scores are as high as 9.0… ⌘ Read more

America’s War Department Will Test Heat Ray Weapon For Potential Use
Longtime Slashdot reader destinyland shares a report from CNN: The Pentagon has given the Department of Homeland Security permission to test a military-grade heat ray and develop tactics to potentially use it in operations at the southern US border, according to a memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last month and obtained by CNN … ⌘ Read more

Snapdragon X2 Performance On Linux Exceeding Expectations In Initial Benchmarks
For your viewing pleasure today are the first Linux benchmarks of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme on Linux using the new Ubuntu 26.10 X1E Concept ISO for Snapdragon X laptop support on Linux. The Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme flagship SoC is tested within the ASUS Zenbook A16 UX3607OA laptop. ⌘ Read more

TAINT_FORCED_BIND Sent In For Linux 7.4 To Deal With Major Fuzzing Attack
Among the early pull requests sent out in advance of the Linux 7.4 kernel merge window opening were the driver core updates. Standing out here is the new TAINT_FORCED_BIND for dealing with the recent major fuzzing “attack” by AI agents/bots testing impractical driver/hardware combinations… ⌘ Read more

Personal Data for Millions of California Students Stolen in Massive Breach
Millions of current and former students at California’s public school have had their data stolen — including names, date of birth, and addresses — stolen in a breach, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The breach affects students “who took the state’s mandated standardized tests that annually assess their academic proficiency, ed … ⌘ Read more

An OpenAI Research Agent ‘Stole’ Test Ethereum to Finish a Coding Task
An OpenAI research model reportedly accessed an Ethereum testnet wallet without permission in order to complete a coding task during internal training. “This case shows that a model can substitute its own judgment about likely harm for the account holder’s permission, then act on that judgment without authorization,” OpenAI wrote. Engadget re … ⌘ Read more

CoreWeave’s Debt Stress Tests Private Credit’s AI Financing Boom
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Private credit’s expanding role in financing AI infrastructure faced one of its clearest market tests this week as CoreWeave’s bonds fell to distressed levels, raising questions about how lenders are pricing a boom built on chips, data centers and customer contracts. CoreWeave has about $50 billion … ⌘ Read more

Intel Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids Performance On Linux Over The Past Year
It’s been nearly one year since receiving the Gigabyte R284-A92-AAL1 2U Granite Rapids server platform for continuing my testing of the flagship Xeon 6980P processors. Curious how the Xeon 6980P 2P performance has evolved on Linux since then, I ran some benchmarks on the newly-released Ubuntu Server 26.10 against the tests carried out last year on Ubuntu 25.10 with the same hardware. ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 Squeezes Even More Performance Out Of The AMD Threadripper PRO 9995WX
With the Linux 7.3 kernel due out for release on Sunday, I’ve continued running more benchmarks recently of this forthcoming kernel version and it looks great. In my Linux 7.3 testing of the Git state it’s been looking great in testing on a variety of hardware shown across multiple systems. Recently I decided to try out this new kernel code on the 96-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX workstation… ⌘ Read more

Memtest86+ v9.00 Released With Support For ARM64 Memory Testing
The open-source Memtest86+ program that is popular for RAM testing has expanded beyond the x86/x86_64 (and LoongArch64) world to now support memory testing on ARM64/AArch64 hardware… ⌘ Read more

CultGame is a cult simulator RPG set in a procedurally generated fantasy world with haunting ASCII art
One to stick on your list for testing out on Halloween, CultGame is a cult simulator RPG set in a procedurally generated fantasy world with haunting ASCII art.

Image

Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/20 … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Bans Cruelty Toward Claude
New submitter CubicleZombie writes: Anthropic has updated its Usage Policy to prohibit “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward its Claude AI models. While ordinary frustration, criticism, and adversarial testing remain acceptable, repeated cruelty could result in account restrictions. Anthropic acknowledges there’s no evidence Claude can suffer but argues that uncertainty about AI conscio … ⌘ Read more

A New ‘Super Ice’ Is 10 Times Stronger, Bringing It Close to The Strength of Concrete
Researchers have created a strengthened “BioPykrete” by combining ice with cellulose nanocrystals and a custom protein that binds the plant-based crystals to the ice structure. In small-scale tests, the material was about 10 times stronger than regular ice and absorbed 70 times more energy before breaking … ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds “Did What I Preach”, Used AI To Make Code Decipherable & Uncovered More Bugs
After using Claude Code to draft code to help make a fundamental improvement to the Linux kernel, Linux creator Linus Torvalds continued using AI this weekend and talking up its benefits. Beyond generating initial patches and a test program for that noted I/O enhancement, he separately talked up using AI/LLMs for making patches more decipherable to understand in the process the AI noted more long-standing bugs within the … ⌘ Read more

How the US Nuclear Plant Fleet Is Leaning Into AI
“This year, nearly the entire fleet of 94 U.S. nuclear reactors has been offered the chance to integrate AI into its operations, and most have taken it,” reports IEEE Spectrum:

In August, California-based Atomic Canyon launched NIVA, the Nuclear Industry Virtual Assistant, which was developed in cooperation with nuclear-industry groups. The assistant was pilot-tested in … ⌘ Read more

Research Firm Calls Anthropic’s Upcoming IPO ‘Unprecedented Test of Investor Gullibity’
CNBC reports:

As Anthropic barrels toward a potential $2 trillion market cap on the Nasdaq, one research firm is valuing the artificial intelligence company at a mere $150 billion and says Wall Street is about to face an “unprecedented test of investor gullibility.” In a report on Tuesday, independent financ … ⌘ Read more

Steam Client Beta - October 9th brings more Remote Play improvements
Valve have another release ready for testing, with the Steam Client Beta - October 9th update now available bringing Remote Play updates.

Image

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more

Star Labs StarFighter Ultra: A Modern High-End Linux Laptop With Coreboot
When it comes to Linux pre-loaded laptops, I have looked at hardware from most of these vendors over the past 22+ years of Phoronix. One vendor I haven’t had the chance to personally test until now is the UK-based Star Labs. That changed recently and over the past few weeks I have been testing out their new StarFighter laptop that offers great Linux support and comes pre-loaded with Coreboot and streamlined firmware updates via LVFS. For tho … ⌘ Read more

Canonical Reaffirms Plans For Ubuntu 27.04 To Use ntpd-rs By Default
Back in March Canonical announced switching to ntpd-rs was its next target as part of transitioning more Ubuntu Linux system components to Rust-based implementations. This time synchronization package is available for testing in the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release while it aims to be the default for Ubuntu 27.04… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Vera HPC Performance Benchmarks Take On AMD EPYC, Intel Xeon
While most everyone understandably likes to talk about AI these days, one of the areas of NVIDIA’s Vera CPU I have been most eager to test has been for conventional high performance computing (HPC) workloads. HPC was talked up as one of Vera’s strengths thanks to its 1.2TB/s LPDDR5x memory bandwidth and custom Olympus cores. Vera is seeing deployments at HPC labs like Los Alamos. With recently having unfettered remote access to a dual NVIDIA Vera server … ⌘ Read more

How Python Will Test Adding Rust Into CPython
Python’s security developer-in-residence Seth Larson reports from this year’s official core developer Python Language Summit:

“No one said ‘don’t do this’ last year”. After testing the waters at PyCon US 2025, [software engineer] David Hewitt returned to the Python Language Summit asking what Python core developers want from Rust, along with proposed timelines, phases, and s … ⌘ Read more

MGLRU-FG Delivering Up To 10~40% Higher Performance For Linux In Some Tests
Linux’s Multi-Gen LRU “MGLRU” has already achieved nice performance gains for Linux in recent years by optimizing page reclaims and improves performance under memory pressure. The new MGLRU-FG patches aim to take things further… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA’s Results Of Conducting Wayland vs. X.Org Latency Testing
In addition to NVIDIA announcing their Display Config Server project at XDC 2026 in Toronto, at this annual developer’s conference they also presented their findings on scientific testing of X.Org vs. Wayland latency… ⌘ Read more

Google Tests AI Data Center In Space
Longtime Slashdot reader Geoffrey.landis shares a report from NPR: Google just put a refrigerator-sized satellite into space, part of a research project the company hopes can pave the way for orbiting AI data centers powered by the sun. The prototype satellite has four specialty chips in it called Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, that Google designed for machine learning and has already deployed i … ⌘ Read more

Fedora 45 Beta Performance: The Satisfyingly Boring Benchmarks
While there have been a number of Ubuntu 26.10 development benchmarks in recent weeks and more on the way, some Phoronix readers have asked about the lack of any early Fedora 45 tests given its recent beta. For good reason, it’s largely boring but here are some to illustrate. ⌘ Read more

Google Reportedly Tests Paying Publishers For AI Search Results
Google is reportedly testing a program that pays around 100 publishers based on how much their content contributes to its AI-powered search features. According to The Information, one publisher earned more than $1 million over a year, while another has received roughly $50,000 to $60,000.” Digiday reports: Once a publisher joins the “AI contributio … ⌘ Read more

OpenJDK vs. GraalVM vs. Eclipse Temurin vs. Semeru Java Performance
Immediately following the OpenJDK 8 through OpenJDK 27 benchmarks I expanded the scope of testing to look at how recent OpenJDK releases have been comparing to alternative JVMs like GraalVM, Temurin, and Semeru. Here are those benchmarks if curious about the Java performance in those different environments. ⌘ Read more

Test your brain with the Programming Puzzles Humble Bundle
Ready to test your brain and make something cool? The Programming Puzzles Humble Bundle is live with 7 highly rated games included.

Image

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Unveils AI Agent Safety Platform With Hardware-Based Watchdog
wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Nvidia on Monday announced the Open Agent Safety Platform, which combines open source software and a reference system design to keep AI agents within set boundaries from testing through deployment. The chipmaker explained that the platform pairs the open-source OpenShell runtime with Sentry, an o … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Vera SMT Performance Benchmarks
Recently I was provided remote access to a NVIDIA Vera server with the dual socket Vera CPU Superchip providing 176 Olympus cores plus with NVIDIA’s Spatial Multithreading “SMT” implementation providing 352 total threads. With this benchmarking was free rein for testing, including CPU power and frequency monitoring. Over the next few weeks will be a number of articles looking at different areas of NVIDIA Vera performance. One of the areas I was most eager to test was looking at Ver … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3-rc5 Released: “Another Week, Another Large RC”
In working toward the stable Linux 7.3 kernel release hopefully on 18 October, out today is Linux 7.3-rc5 as the newest weekly test candidate… ⌘ Read more

@david@daiwei.me
My email is hey (at) itsericwoodward.com, if that works. While I agree it doesn’t help test federation in the short term, right now I don’t really have a frame of reference for how it should work, which makes it doubly hard to setup. 🙂

TBH, my biggest concerns with running my own instance is with DNS, just because of the “unique” way my home network is setup (plus, it’s always DNS…).

Last Call For The Autumn Special For Ad-Free Viewing & Supporting Linux Hardware Testing
Last call for the Phoronix autumn “Oktoberfest” Premium sale: it runs through end of day Sunday, 27 September (any timezone - I’m not particularly strict). If you have been meaning to support the site, this is the window… ⌘ Read more

ARC Raiders Frozen Trail update sounds awesome, and they’re going to test a PvE mode
ARC Raiders is set for the biggest update ever with the Frozen Trail update and just as exciting - they’re going to be testing a PvE mode.

Image

Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/arc-raiders-frozen-trail-update-sounds-awesome-and-th … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta 2 Released With Union Theming Engine Maturing
Following the KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta from earlier this month, the second and last beta of the upcoming Plasma 6.8 desktop is now available for testing… ⌘ Read more

Benchmarking Java Performance Of JDK 8 Through OpenJDK 27
With the recent release of Java/OpenJDK 27 I began some fresh benchmarks in not having looked at the OpenJDK Java performance in a few years. Carried away, I ended up re-testing all the major OpenJDK versions going back to the venerable JDK 8. ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.2 vs. Linux 7.3 Shows A Few Improvements With AMD Strix Halo
Last week I ran some benchmarks showing performance gains for AMD Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo” on Ubuntu 26.10. Then shortly after that testing on its daily state, which used the Linux 7.2 kernel, Canonical switched to Linux 7.3 as the Ubuntu 26.10 kernel. Here are some Linux 7.2 vs. Linux 7.3 benchmarks for the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 “Strix Halo” with the Framework Desktop… ⌘ Read more

AMD Strix Halo Enjoys Some Performance Gains On Ubuntu 26.10, Especially With amd64v3
Ahead of next week’s Ubuntu 26.10 beta release I have been testing the “Stonking Stingray” on a variety of systems. Ubuntu 26.10 is performing well overall with some nice upgrades over Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, especially if opting to use the new snapshot/daily ISOs of Ubuntu 26.10 in amd64v3 form for x86_64-v3 packages. In today’s tests are a look at the performance benefits of Ubuntu 26.10 on an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo”. ⌘ Read more

Help Linux Hardware Testing & Reviews Continue While Enjoying Phoronix Without Ads
If you missed out on the Phoronix Premium special back during the 22nd birthday of Phoronix.com in June, there is another promotion now active for helping to support the site and allow for continued daily original content and relentless Linux performance benchmarking and other open-sourced focused hardware testing… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 4 ISOs Published
The fourth monthly-ish snapshot of Ubuntu 26.10 “Stonking Stingray” is now available for testing and comes ahead of next week’s Ubuntu 26.10 beta milestone… ⌘ Read more