FTC: Instacart To Refund $60M Over Deceptive Subscription Tactics
alternative_right writes: Grocery delivery service Instacart will refund $60 million to settle FTC claims that it misled customers with false advertising and unlawfully enrolled them in paid subscriptions. Instacart partners with over 1,800 retailers to provide online shopping, delivery, and pickup services from nearly 100,000 stores across Nort … ⌘ Read more
Xorgproto 2025.1 Released To Recognize Newer Keyboard Keys
For X.Org Server users there is a new release of xorgproto for the holidays. Xorgproto as the set of headers and specifications for the X11 core protocols and extensions is out with its first new release since March 2024… ⌘ Read more
Vulkan 1.4.337 Debuts With Long Vector & 3D ASTC Compression Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.337 released a short time ago as what could be the last Vulkan API spec update of 2025 depending upon how much time the working group takes off or not around the holidays. In any case, it’s a nice holiday treat with the new VK_EXT_texture_compression_astc_3d and VK_EXT_shader_long_vector extensions… ⌘ Read more
Formula 1 is Deploying New Jargon for 2026
Formula 1’s 2026 technical regulations bring not only smaller and lighter cars but an entirely new vocabulary that fans and commentators will need to learn before the season opens in Australia in March. The drag reduction system that has been part of F1 racing since 2011 is gone, replaced by a suite of modes governing how the new active front and rear wings behave and how the hybrid powert … ⌘ Read more
2026 Will Bring Heat More Than 1.4C Above Preindustrial Levels, UK Met Office Says
The UK Met Office projects that 2026 will see global temperatures rise between 1.34C and 1.58C above preindustrial levels, placing it among the four hottest years since records began in 1850 and continuing a streak of extreme warming that has pushed the planet into unprecedented territory. The central forecast is … ⌘ Read more
Qt 6.11 Beta Released With New Canvas Painter, OpenAPI & TaskTree Modules
Qt 6.11 Beta 1 is out on-schedule with the code having entered its feature freeze and code branching earlier this month. This toolkit is working toward the stable Qt 6.11 stable debut in March… ⌘ Read more
Intel ISPC 1.29 Drops Gen9 GPU Targets, Add New Optimizations & Experimental RISC-V
Intel ISPC 1.29 released on Wednesday as the newest feature update to this Implicit SPMD Program Compiler as a C variant able to target Intel hardware from their CPUs to GPUs for SIMD programming… ⌘ Read more
Video Game Hardware Sales Had a Historically Bad November In the US
U.S. video game hardware spending fell 27% year over year in November to $695 million, according to market analyst company Circana. “This is the lowest video game hardware spending total for a November month since the $455 million reached during the November 2005 tracking period,” Circana says. Furthermore, only 1.6 million units of hardwa … ⌘ Read more
GitHub Is Going To Start Charging You For Using Your Own Hardware
GitHub will begin charging $0.002 per minute for self-hosted Actions runners used on private repositories starting in March. “At the same time, GitHub noted in a Tuesday blog post that it’s lowering the prices of GitHub-hosted runners beginning January 1, under a scheme it calls ‘simpler pricing and a better experience for GitHub Actions,’” … ⌘ 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
I rewrote all my solutions in Rust (except for day 10 part 2) and these are the runtimes on my i7-3770 from 2013 (this measures CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, not wallclock):
day01/1 [ 00.000501311] Result: 1066
day01/2 [ 00.000400298] Result: 6223
day02/1 [ 00.000358848] Result: 12586854255
day02/2 [ 00.000750711] Result: 17298174201
day03/1 [ 00.000106537] Result: 17405
day03/2 [ 00.000404632] Result: 171990312704598
day04/1 [ 00.000257517] Result: 1626
day04/2 [ 00.007495342] Result: 9173
day05/1 [ 00.000237212] Result: 505
day05/2 [ 00.000142731] Result: 344423158480189
day06/1 [ 00.000229629] Result: 4076006202939
day06/2 [ 00.000279552] Result: 7903168391557
day07/1 [ 00.000204422] Result: 1622
day07/2 [ 00.000283816] Result: 10357305916520
day08/1 [ 00.029427421] Result: 84968
day08/2 [ 00.028089859] Result: 8663467782
day09/1 [ 00.000310304] Result: 4764078684
day09/2 [ 00.015512554] Result: 1652344888
day10/1 [ 00.000796663] Result: 375
day10/2 [ --.---------] Result: 15377 (Z3)
day11/1 [ 00.000416804] Result: 753
day11/2 [ 00.000660528] Result: 450854305019580
day12/1 [ 00.000336081] Result: 577
day12/2 [ 00.000000695] Result: no part 2
A little under 90 ms total.
On my Samsung NC10 netbook from 2011 with its Intel Atom N455 at 1.6 GHz:
day01/1 [ 00.003771326] Result: 1066
day01/2 [ 00.003267317] Result: 6223
day02/1 [ 00.003902698] Result: 12586854255
day02/2 [ 00.006659479] Result: 17298174201
day03/1 [ 00.000747544] Result: 17405
day03/2 [ 00.002737587] Result: 171990312704598
day04/1 [ 00.001263892] Result: 1626
day04/2 [ 00.044985301] Result: 9173
day05/1 [ 00.001696761] Result: 505
day05/2 [ 00.000978962] Result: 344423158480189
day06/1 [ 00.001387660] Result: 4076006202939
day06/2 [ 00.001734248] Result: 7903168391557
day07/1 [ 00.001295528] Result: 1622
day07/2 [ 00.001809659] Result: 10357305916520
day08/1 [ 00.277251443] Result: 84968
day08/2 [ 00.284359332] Result: 8663467782
day09/1 [ 00.003152407] Result: 4764078684
day09/2 [ 00.071123459] Result: 1652344888
day10/1 [ 00.005279527] Result: 375
day10/2 [ --.---------] Result: 15377 (Z3)
day11/1 [ 00.003273342] Result: 753
day11/2 [ 00.005139719] Result: 450854305019580
day12/1 [ 00.002857552] Result: 577
day12/2 [ 00.000004421] Result: no part 2
A little over 700 ms total.
I like this. You get performance that’s more or less in the ballpark of C, but without the footguns.
If your very popular project with lots of stars on GitHub is over 10 years old, and you’re still at a pre-1.0 version because you’re using SemVer and a 1.0 would mean making some kind of commitment and that’s somehow not desirable for you, then I think you’re doing something wrong. 🤔
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
Flatpak Adds Support For Building OCI Bundles Using Zstd Compressed Layers
Back in November Flatpak 1.17 released with support for sideloading from OCI images and other improvements in working toward the Flatpak 1.18 stable release. Out today is Flatpak 1.17.1 and was then followed quickly by Flatpak 1.17.2 to fix a mistake in the release artifacts… ⌘ Read more
Why Floods Threaten One of the Driest Places in the World
One of the most water-scarce regions on Earth is now experiencing a dramatic atmospheric shift that’s pushing moisture onto Oman’s northern coast at rates more than 1.5 times the global average, according to a Washington Post investigation of global atmospheric data [non-paywalled source]. The change has turned extreme rainfall into a recurrent source of cat … ⌘ Read more
US Tech Force Aims To Recruit 1,000 Technologists
The Trump administration announced Monday the United States Tech Force, a new program to recruit around 1,000 technologists for two-year government stints starting as soon as March – less than a year after dismantling several federal technology teams and driving thousands of tech workers out of their jobs.
The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers an … ⌘ Read more
Wayland Protocols 1.47 Released With Updated Color Management Protocol
Following the Color Management protocol introduced in Wayland Protocols 1.41, out today is Wayland Protocols 1.47 with various revisions to that color management and HDR support… ⌘ Read more
I cleaned up all my of AoC (Advent of Code) 2025 solutions, refactored many of the utilities I had to write as reusable libraries, re-tested Day 1 (but nothing else). here it is if you’re curious! This is written in mu, my own language I built as a self-hosted minimal compiler/vm with very few types and builtins.
I’m having to write my own functions like this in mu just to solve AoC puzzles :D
fn pow10(k) {
p := 1
i := 0
while i < k {
p = p * 10
i = i + 1
}
return p
}
I just completed “Secret Entrance” - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/1 — However I did it in my own toy programming language called mu, which I had to build first 🤣
Come back from my trip, run my AoC 2025 Day 1 solution in my own language (mu) and find it didn’t run correctly 🤣 Ooops!
$ ./bin/mu examples/aoc2025/day1.mu
closure[0x140001544e0]
Oracles Releases Updated “bpftune” For BPF-Based Auto-Tuning Of Linux Systems
The past few years Oracle has been working on bpftune as a solution for BPF-based, automatic tuning of Linux systems. Bpftune has been available via Oracle Linux and GitHub while finally their open-source GitHub code has seen the first new tagged release in a while… ⌘ Read more
Haiku OS Sees Port Of Go 1.18 Programming Language
The BeOS-inspired Haiku operating system has received a recent port of the Go programming language to the platform. Plus Haiku also saw app improvements and more over the month of November… ⌘ Read more
Arkansas Becoming 1st State To Sever Ties With PBS, Effective July 1
joshuark writes: Arkansas is becoming the first state to officially end its public television affiliation with PBS. The Arkansas Educational Television Commission, whose members are all appointed by the governor, voted to disaffiliate from PBS effective July 1, 2026, citing the $2.5 million annual membership dues as “not feasible. … ⌘ Read more
Alright, Advent of Code is over:
https://www.uninformativ.de/blog/postings/2025-12-12/0/POSTING-en.html
It’s been quite the time sink, especially with the DOS games on top, but it was fun. 🥳
In case you’re wondering: All puzzles (except for part 2 of day 10) were doable in Python 1 on SuSE Linux 6.4 and ran in a finite time on the Pentium 133. Puzzle 10/2 might have been doable as well if I had better education. 🤣
Reddit Launches High Court Challenge To Australia’s Under-16s Social Media Ban
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Reddit has filed a challenge against Australia’s under-16s social media ban in the high court, lodging its case two days after implementing age restrictions on its website. The company said in a Reddit post on Friday that while it agreed with protecting people under 1 … ⌘ Read more
Awk to take lines from Plan 9’s /lib/unicode and prepend the actual glyph and a tab: awk ‘{cmd=sprintf(“unicode %s”, $1); cmd | getline c; printf(“%s %s\n”, c, $0)}’
97% of Buildings On Earth 3D-Mapped
Longtime Slashdot reader Gilmoure shares a report from Nature: Scientists have produced the most detailed 3D map of almost all buildings in the world. The map, called GlobalBuildingAtlas, combines satellite imagery and machine learning to generate 3D models for 97% of buildings on Earth. The dataset, published in the open-access journal Earth System Science Data on December 1, covers 2.75 billion buildin … ⌘ Read more
Uber Pulls Back From Electric Cars, Slashing Incentives for Drivers
Uber has discontinued its monthly electric vehicle bonuses for drivers in the United States and Canada, marking the latest in a series of rollbacks from a company that once pledged to pour $800 million into helping its drivers transition away from gasoline-powered cars. The ride-hailing giant had previously eliminated its $1-per-ride EV perk … ⌘ Read more
College Campuses Have Become a Front Line in America’s Sports-Betting Boom
Since the Supreme Court struck down the federal prohibition on sports betting in 2018, 39 states have legalized the activity, and college campuses have emerged as ground zero for what appears to be a generational gambling problem among young men. A 2023 NCAA survey found that 60% of college students have gambled on sports, and 1 … ⌘ Read more
D7VK 1.0 Released For “Production Ready” Direct3D 7 On Vulkan
The D7VK project recently started as the Direct3D 7 API implemented atop the Vulkan API akin to DXVK and VKD3D-Proton with newer versions of Microsoft Direct3D. Today marks the D7VK 1.0 release for this project in now declaring itself “production ready” for Linux gamers… ⌘ Read more
Disney Puts $1 Billion Into OpenAI, Licenses 200+ Characters for AI-Generated Videos and Images
Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and has entered into a three-year licensing deal that will let users generate AI-powered short videos and images featuring more than 200 characters from its Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar franchises.
The new features are expected to launch in 2026 … ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu 26.04 Snapshot 2 Released As Latest Monthly ISOs
It was just at the end of month that Ubuntu 26.04 Snapshot 1 ISOs were published for the first “Resolute Raccoon” milestone. Out already is now Snapshot 2 with Canonical releasing these images ahead of their engineers having time off for end-of-year holidays… ⌘ Read more
LibreOffice 26.2 Beta 1 Now Available For This Free Software Office Suite
LibreOffice 26.2 Beta 1 is now available for testing in working toward the stable release in February for this cross-platform, open-source office suite solution… ⌘ Read more
Intel llm-scaler-vllm Beta 1.2 Brings Support For New AI Models On Arc Graphics
Following yesterday’s release of a new llm-scaler-omni beta there is now a new beta feature release of llm-scaler-vllm that provides the Intel-optimized version of vLLM within a Docker container that is set and ready to go for AI on modern Arc Graphics hardware. With today’s llm-scaler-vllm 1.2 beta release there is support for a variety of additional large language models (LLMs) and other improvements… ⌘ Read more
HDMI Forum Continues To Block HDMI 2.1 For Linux, Valve Says
New submitter emangwiro shares a report: The HDMI Forum, responsible for the HDMI specification, continues to stonewall open source. Valve’s Steam Machine theoretically supports HDMI 2.1, but the mini-PC is software-limited to HDMI 2.0. As a result, more than 60 frames per second at 4K resolution are only possible with limitations. In a statement to Ars T … ⌘ Read more
AMD FSR SDK 2.1 Released With FSR Redstone - Windows-Only For Now
AMD FSR SDK 2.1 is now available that includes their “FSR Redstone” machine learning based upscaling tech for gaming.. ⌘ Read more
SA prisons remain locked down indefinitely, as home detention officers step off job
The union representing correctional officers has voted to strike indefinitely, while officers who monitor 1,500 people on home detention will stop work for 24 hours ⌘ Read more
‘Forever grateful’ Verstappen pays tribute to retiring Red Bull icon
Max Verstappen reacts as Helmut Marko’s retirement leaves Red Bull without its two main guiding personalities since its entry into F1. ⌘ Read more
2025 is the second hottest year since records began
Mean temperatures this year approached 1.5°C above the preindustrial average, making it the second hottest year after 2024 ⌘ Read more
Rust-Based Project Aims To Provide Modern Thumbnails For Audio/Video Files On GNOME
Since Showtime replaced Totem as the default video player of GNOME, the desktop has lacked thumbnail capabilities for audio and video files. But to address that defect, the Rust-based gst-thumbnailers project has been in development to leverage GStreamer and paired with Rust to provide safe thumbnail generation capabilities for audio and video content… ⌘ Read more
Man Utd score four as winless Wolves booed
Watch highlights as Wolves lose 4-1 to Manchester United, suffering their eighth-straight loss in the Premier League. ⌘ Read more
Meson 1.10 Build System Adds OS/2 Support, Experimental C++ “import std”
Meson 1.10 is out today as the newest feature release for this popular cross-platform build system… ⌘ Read more
DJ Tim Westwood pleads not guilty to rape and assault
The former BBC Radio 1 and Capital Xtra presenter denies 15 charges at a court hearing in London. ⌘ Read more
Minister admits sharp rise needed to hit 1.5m housing target
Housing Secretary Steve Reed tells the BBC’s Build Baby Build ministers are “pulling every lever” to increase building. ⌘ Read more
Minister admits sharp rise needed to hit 1.5m housing target
Housing Secretary Steve Reed tells the BBC’s Build Baby Build ministers are “pulling every lever” to increase building. ⌘ Read more
Guehi scores late header to secure Crystal Palace win over Fulham
Crystal Palace captain Marc Guehi scores a late header for a 2-1 win against Fulham which moves them into the top four in the Premier League. ⌘ Read more
Abuse survivors meet to reflect and remember lives lost in two states
Newcastle and Ballarat are 1,100 kilometres apart but share a dark bond — scores of suicide deaths linked to historical Catholic clergy abuse. ⌘ Read more
‘Sadly I’ve got a lot more seasons with him’: Piastri praised as future world champion
Oscar Piastri’s chief rival, new formula 1 world champion Lando Norris, says the Australian will “get the better of me” after their tension-filled title race decider in Abu Dhabi. ⌘ Read more
Briton Norris wins his first F1 title in Abu Dhabi
McLaren’s Lando Norris wins his first Formula 1 drivers’ championship by finishing third in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. ⌘ Read more