Western Digital Plots a Path To 140 TB Hard Drives Using Vertical Lasers and 14-Platter Designs
Western Digital this week laid out a roadmap that stretches its 3.5-inch hard drive platform to 14 platters and pairs it with a new vertical-emitting laser for heat-assisted magnetic recording, a combination the company says will push individual drive capacities beyond 140 TB in the … ⌘ Read more
One Line Fix Coming For Achieving Better Linux Performance On The HP OMEN 8E41 Laptop
A one-line patch to the HP WMI x86 platform driver for Linux was posted for allowing the HP OMEN Transcend Gaming Laptop 14-fb1xxx to correctly hit its rated TDP limit for allowing better performance outside of the Microsoft Windows confines… ⌘ Read more
OpenAI’s Lead Is Contracting as AI Competition Intensifies
OpenAI’s rivals are cutting into ChatGPT’s lead. From a report: The top chatbot’s market share fell from 69.1% to 45.3% between January 2025 and January 2026 among daily U.S. users of its mobile app. Gemini, in the same time period, rose from 14.7% to 25.1% and Grok rose from 1.6% to 15.2%.
The data, obtained by Big Technology from mobile insights firm Apptopia, … ⌘ Read more
Intel Panther Lake Shows Strong Linux CPU Performance & Power Efficiency With Core Ultra X7 358H Benchmarks
For those that have been very eager to hear about the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” performance on Linux, today’s the day! Last Thursday the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Evo laptop arrived that is powered by the Core Ultra X7 358H. Here is a look at how that Intel Core Ultra X7 358H competes for performance and power efficiency against a wide range of other laptops on an up-to-date Linux soft … ⌘ Read more
Intel ISH Firmware Upstreamed For Linux With Dell’s New Panther Lake Laptops
Ahead of Dell’s new XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” expected to be shipping in volume beginning in March, more of the Linux support for these premium Panther Lake laptops continues to be finished up… ⌘ Read more
Linuxulator-Steam-Utils To Enjoy Steam Play Gaming On FreeBSD & Other Options
Presented today at FOSDEM in Brussels was the state of gaming on FreeBSD by Thibault Payet. Besides various open-source games able to be compiled natively for FreeBSD, this BSD can get in on the Steam Play gaming scene thanks to the “linuxulator-steam-utils” project as a set of workarounds for the Steam Linux client on FreeBSD 14 and newer. Linuxulator-steam-utils builds off FreeBSD’s Linuxulator support for running Linux binaries to enjoy t … ⌘ Read more
Apple Reports Best-Ever Quarter For iPhone Sales
Apple posted its biggest quarter ever, with iPhone revenue hitting a record ~$85.3 billion and Services climbing 14% to ~$30 billion. Total revenue reached nearly $143.76 billion.
“The demand for iPhone was simply staggering,” CEO Tim Cook said on a conference call discussing the results. “This is the strongest iPhone lineup we’ve ever had and by far the most popular.”
[ lawsuit in Britain, which alleges it charged publishers excessive commissions for its Steam online store, after a tribunal ruled on Monday the case could continue. Valve was sued in 2024 on behalf of up to 14 million people in the United Kingdom … ⌘ Read more
LG Gram Style 14 Laptop To See Working Speaker Support With Linux 7.0
For the Intel-powered LG Gram Style 14 laptop one of the Linux support caveats is the internal speakers not working properly under Linux, but with a patch expected for the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle it will finally fix the laptop speaker support for one of the laptop models in this series… ⌘ Read more
VVenC H.266 Encoder Rolls Out More ARM Optimizations For Nice Performance Gains
Fraunhofer HHI this week released a new version of VVenC, their open-source H.266 video encoder. Among the changes this release are more performance optimizations for ARM and I have run some comparison benchmarks using a NVIDIA GB10 SoC with the Dell Pro Max GB10… ⌘ Read more
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Intel Xeon 67980E “Sierra Forest” Linux Performance ~14% Faster Since Launch
As part of my end-of-year 2025 benchmarking I looked at how the Intel Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids performance evolved in the year since launch and seeing some nice open-source/Linux optimizations during that time. On the other side of the table were also benchmarks of how AMD EPYC 8004 Sienna evolved in its two years, the AMD EPYC Milan-X in its four years since launch, and also a look at the performance evolution lower down the st … ⌘ Read more
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Study Finds Weak Evidence Linking Social Media Use to Teen Mental Health Problems
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Screen time spent gaming or on social media does not cause mental health problems in teenagers, according to a large-scale study. […] Researchers at the University of Manchester followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years, tracking their s … ⌘ Read more
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The Swedish Start-Up Aiming To Conquer America’s Full-Body-Scan Craze
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DealBook: Fifteen years ago, Daniel Ek broke into America’s digital-content wars with his streaming music start-up, Spotify, which has turned into a publicly traded company with a $110 billion market value. Now he and his business partner, the Swedish entrepreneur Hjalmar Nilsonne, aim to crack … ⌘ Read more
Are QWERTY Phones Trying To Make a Comeback?
After nearly two decades of touchscreen dominance, QWERTY smartphones are staging a niche comeback, with Clicks and Unihertz unveiling new physical-keyboard phones at CES 2026. Gizmodo reports: At CES 2026, Clicks, the company behind the Clicks keyboard case and the new Power Keyboard, announced plans to sell the Communicator, a “second phone” with a QWERTY keypad. Clicks pitches the … ⌘ Read more
Digg Launches Its New Reddit Rival To the Public
Digg is officially back under the ownership of its original founder, Kevin Rose, along with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. “Similar to Reddit, the new Digg offers a website and mobile app where you can browse feeds featuring posts from across a selection of its communities and join other communities that align with your interests,” reports TechCrunch. “There, you can post, co … ⌘ Read more
Cerebras Scores OpenAI Deal Worth Over $10 Billion
Cerebras Systems landed a more than $10 billion deal to supply up to 750 megawatts of compute to OpenAI through 2028, according to a blog post by OpenAI. CNBC reports: The deal will help diversify Cerebras away from the United Arab Emirates’ G42, which accounted for 87% of revenue in the first half of 2024. “The way you have three very large customers is start with one very large … ⌘ Read more
DoorDash and UberEats Cost Drivers $550 Million In Tips, NYC Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gothamist: City regulators on Tuesday accused Uber and DoorDash of deliberately altering their app interfaces to discourage customers from tipping food delivery workers, a move that has cost the employees more than $550 million over the last two years. A report (PDF) published by the Department of Consumer … ⌘ Read more
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US Approves Sale of Nvidia’s Advanced AI Chips To China
The U.S. has approved limited sales of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to China, the Department of Commerce said on Tuesday. Exports will be allowed to “approved customers” with security safeguards and a 25% U.S. government cut. The company’s most advanced Blackwell chips will remain restricted. The BBC reports: The H200, Nvidia’s second-most-advanced semiconductor, had … ⌘ Read more
GRUB 2.14 Bootloader Released With EROFS Support, Shim Loader Protocol
More than two years after the release of GRUB 2.12, GRUB 2.14 shipped today as the newest feature release of this widely-used bootloader on Linux systems and elsewhere… ⌘ Read more
Bandcamp Bans AI Music
Bandcamp has announced a ban on music made wholly or substantially by generative AI, aiming to protect human creativity and prohibit AI impersonation of artists. Here’s what the music platform had to say: … Something that always strikes us as we put together a roundup like this is the sheer quantity of human creativity and passion that artists express on Bandcamp every single day. The fact that Bandcamp is home to suc … ⌘ Read more
House Sysadmin Stole 200 Phones, Caught By House IT Desk
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: According to the government’s version of events, 43-year-old Christopher Southerland was working in 2023 as a sysadmin for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. In his role, Southerland had the authority to order cell phones for committee staffers, of which there are around 80. But during th … ⌘ Read more
UK Scraps Mandatory Digital ID Enrollment for Workers After Public Backlash
The UK government has abandoned its controversial plan to require workers to sign up for a mandatory digital ID system to prove their eligibility to work in the country, opting instead to move existing document-based checks – such as biometric passports – fully online by 2029.
The reversal follows a dramatic collapse in p … ⌘ Read more
Dell Tells Staff To Get Ready For the ‘Biggest Transformation in Company History’
Dell’s chief operating officer Jeff Clarke has informed employees that the company is preparing for what he calls the “biggest transformation in company history,” a sweeping systems overhaul scheduled to launch on May 3 that will standardize processes across nearly every major division.
The initiative, dubbed One D … ⌘ Read more
NASA Acknowledges Record Heat But Avoids Referencing Climate Change
An anonymous reader shares a report: Global temperatures soared in 2025, but a NASA statement published Wednesday alongside its latest benchmark annual report makes no reference to climate change, in line with President Donald Trump’s push to deny the reality of planetary heating as a result of human activities.
That marks a sharp break … ⌘ Read more
Widespread Verizon Outage Prompts Emergency Alerts in Washington, New York City
Verizon said on Wednesday that its wireless service was suffering an outage impacting cellular data and voice services. From a report: The nation’s largest wireless carrier said that its “engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly.” Verizon’s statement came after a swath of social me … ⌘ Read more
Beijing Tells Chinese Firms To Stop Using US and Israeli Cybersecurity Software
An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese authorities have told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by roughly a dozen firms from the U.S. and Israel due to national security concerns, two people briefed on the matter said.
As trade and diplomatic tensions flare between China and the U.S. a … ⌘ Read more
Coal Power Generation Falls in China and India for First Time Since 1970s
Coal power generation fell in China and India for the first time since the 1970s last year, in a “historic” moment that could bring a decline in global emissions, according to analysis. From a report: The simultaneous fall in coal-powered electricity in the world’s biggest coal-consuming countries had not happened since 1973, ac … ⌘ Read more
McKinsey Asks Graduates To Use AI Chatbot in Recruitment Process
McKinsey is asking graduate applicants to “collaborate” with an AI tool as part of its recruitment process, as competence with the technology becomes a requirement in competing for top-level jobs. From a report: The blue-chip consultancy is incorporating an “AI interview” into some final-round interviews, according to CaseBasix, a US company that helps … ⌘ Read more
Bezos’s Vision of Rented Cloud PCs Looks Less Far-Fetched
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once told an audience that he views local PC hardware the same way he views a 100-year-old electric generator he saw in a brewery museum – as a relic of a pre-grid era, destined to be replaced by centralized utilities that users simply rent rather than own. The anecdote, shared at a talk a few years ago, positioned Amazon Web Services a … ⌘ Read more
Matthew McConaughey Trademarks Himself To Fight AI Misuse
Matthew McConaughey is taking a novel legal approach to combat unauthorized AI fakes: trademarking himself. From a report: Over the past several months, the “Interstellar” and “Magic Mike” star has had eight trademark applications approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office featuring him staring, smiling and talking. His attorneys said the trademarks are meant … ⌘ Read more
UK Police Blame Microsoft Copilot for Intelligence Mistake
The chief constable of one of Britain’s largest police forces has admitted that Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant made a mistake in a football (soccer) intelligence report. From a report: The report, which led to Israeli football fans being banned from a match last year, included a nonexistent match between West Ham and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Copilot hallucinated t … ⌘ Read more
Europe is Rediscovering the Virtues of Cash
After spending years pushing digital payments to combat tax evasion and money laundering, European Union ministers decided in December to ban businesses from refusing cash. The reversal comes as 12% of European businesses flatly refused cash in 2024, up from 4% three years earlier.
Over one in three cinemas in the Netherlands no longer accept notes and coins. Cash usage across the euro … ⌘ Read more
Nuclear Weapons Are Now ESG Compliant
The European Union published guidance on December 30 that reclassified nuclear weapons as acceptable investments under its sustainable finance framework, completing a policy change approved in November that narrowed the definition of banned armaments from “controversial” to “prohibited.”
The shift addresses earlier vagueness that the Commission said hindered efforts to raise $932 billion in defense … ⌘ Read more
Never-Before-Seen Linux Malware Is ‘Far More Advanced Than Typical’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers have discovered a never-before-seen framework that infects Linux machines with a wide assortment of modules that are notable for the range of advanced capabilities they provide to attackers. The framework, referred to as VoidLink by its source code, features more than 30 modules … ⌘ Read more
NASA, Department of Energy To Develop Lunar Surface Reactor By 2030
NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy plan to deploy a nuclear fission reactor on the Moon by 2030 to provide continuous, long-duration power for lunar bases, science missions, and future Mars exploration. space & defense reports: NASA said fission surface power will provide a critical capability for long-duration missions by delivering … ⌘ Read more
Iran Shuts Down Musk’s Starlink For First Time
Thelasko shares a report from Forbes: We have not seen this before. Iran’s digital blackout has now deployed military jammers, reportedly supplied by Russia, to shut down access to Starlink Internet. This is a game-changer for the Plan-B connectivity frequently used by protesters and anti-regime activists when ordinary access to the internet is stopped. “Despite reports that tens of … ⌘ Read more
Doubt Cast On Discovery of Microplastics Throughout Human Body
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: High-profile studies reporting the presence of microplastics throughout the human body have been thrown into doubt by scientists who say the discoveries are probably the result of contamination and false positives. One chemist called the concerns “a bombshell.” Studies claiming to have revealed … ⌘ Read more
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Cloudflare Threatens Italy Exit After $16.3M Fine For Refusing Piracy Blocks
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has threatened to withdraw free cybersecurity services from Italy’s Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics and potentially exit the country after Italy’s telecommunications regulator fined the company approximately 14 million euros for failing to comply with anti-piracy blocking orders. The penalty equa … ⌘ Read more