Amazon’s AI Assistant Comes To the Web With Alexa.com
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon’s AI-powered overhaul of its digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is coming to the web. On Monday, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the official launch of a new website, Alexa.com, which is now rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow c … ⌘ Read more

Trump Organization’s $499 Smartphone Delayed Again, Now Until the End of January
Last June the Trump organization announced sales of a $499 “T1” smartphone with a gold-colored case. But though they originally were scheduled for release in August, this week a customer service representative for the wireless carrier told CBS News the device will be pushed back again, now until the end of January, “ … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Lowering Orbits of 4,400 Starlink Satellites for Safety’s Sake
“Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety,” announced Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s vice president of engineering:

“We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tig … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Fixes A Common Panel-Related Crash, Improves OpenBSD Support
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with the first issue of This Week in Plasma for 2026. Last week was a warning that This Week in Plasma could become less frequent without new volunteers to help takeover. Nate Graham announced that John Veness has stepped up to help co-author these weekly KDE development posts… ⌘ Read more

MTV’s Music-Only Channels Go Off the Air
An anonymous reader shares a report: MTV shut down many of its last dedicated 24-hour music channels Dec. 31. The move, announced back in October, affected channels around the world, with the U.K. seeing five different MTV stations going dark. These include MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live. As Consequence notes, MTV Music – which launched in 2011 – notably ended it … ⌘ Read more

How Nokia Went From iPhone Victim To $1 Billion Nvidia Deal
Nokia, the Finnish company whose iconic ringtone was played an estimated 1.8 billion times daily at the height of its mobile phone dominance and whose 3310 “brick” sold 126 million units, has reinvented itself again – this time as a key piece of AI infrastructure. In October, Nvidia announced a $1 billion investment in Nokia and a strategic partnership to incorp … ⌘ Read more

Six Years Since The Reiser5 File-System Was Announced
With the start of the New Year it now marks six years since the unexpected announcement of the Reiser5 file-system being developed as the continuation of the never-upstreamed Reiser4 file-system. But Reiser5 development never saw too much upstream interest and it’s now been several years without any updated patches for Reiser5 or Reiser4… ⌘ Read more

ASUS Announces Price Hikes Starting January 5
ASUS has informed its partners that prices on certain products will increase starting January 5, just days before the company is expected to unveil new hardware at CES. In a letter dated December 30 and obtained by Digitimes, the Taiwanese manufacturer pointed to rising costs for memory and storage components as the primary driver behind the adjustment.

The company specifically called … ⌘ Read more

First Gaming Handheld With a Folding Screen
One-Netbook has unveiled the OneXSugar Wallet, the first gaming handheld with a folding OLED display. The Verge reports: The OneXSugar Wallet was announced on China’s Weibo yesterday, but with few details about its features and capabilities. That folding OLED screen has a resolution of 2480 x 1860 pixels, and the handheld will be powered by an unspecified “Qualcomm gaming platform flag … ⌘ Read more

X.Org IMAKE Updated For Those Not Yet Transitioned To Autoconf/Automake Or Meson
X.Org package wrangler Alan Coopersmith at Oracle announced today the release of imake 1.0.11, the newest version of this utility that 20+ years ago was used extensively as part of the X Window System build process for generating Makefiles from a template. With this first imake point release in two years, imake itself can now be built via Meson and there is now support for RISC-V and LoongArch architectures… ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Takes $5 Billion Stake In Intel Under September Agreement
Nvidia has completed its previously announced $5 billion investment in Intel, buying over 214 million shares at a fixed price after the deal received clearance from Federal Trade Commission. “The leading AI chip designer said in September it would pay $23.28 per share for Intel common stock, in a deal that is seen as a major financial lifeline for the … ⌘ Read more

The Performance Of Arch Linux Powered CachyOS On AMD EPYC Servers
One of the more interesting announcements over the holiday period thus far is that moving into 2026, CachyOS is looking to develop a server edition for their Arch Linux based operating system. CachyOS has garnered quite a following among Linux enthusiasts and gamers for its competitive out-of-the-box performance, employing some of the optimizations by Intel’s now defunct Clear Linux distribution, and pulling in all of the goodness from upstrea … ⌘ Read more

LG Launches UltraGear Evo Gaming Monitors With What It Claims is the World’s First 5K AI Upscaling
LG has announced a new premium gaming monitor brand called UltraGear, and the lineup’s headline feature is what the company claims is the world’s first 5K AI upscaling technology – an on-device solution that analyzes and enhances content in real time before it reaches the panel, … ⌘ Read more

NTFSPLUS Linux Driver Renamed To Just “NTFS” With Latest Code Restructuring
One of the unexpected Linux kernel surprises of 2025 was NTFSPLUS being announced as a new driver for Microsoft’s NTFS file-system with better performance and more features compared to the classic read-only NTFS driver or the “NTFS3” kernel driver that Paragon Software submitted upstream. That NTFSPLUS driver has continued expanding its feature set and robustness and sent out today was the third iteration of the patches. Now this driver is s … ⌘ Read more

Free Software Foundation Receives ‘Historic’ Donations Worth Nearly $900K - in Monero
On Wednesday (Christmas Eve), the Free Software Foundation announced it had received two major contributions totaling around $900,000 USD — in the cryptocurrency Monero.

The two donations “are among some of the largest private gifts ever made to the organization,” the FSF said in a statement.

“The donors wi … ⌘ Read more

QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop Brings QNX 8.0 To A Wayland + Xfce Desktop
Announced earlier in December but flying under the radar until now is the initial reoease of a QNX Self-Hosted Developer Desktop. This is a developer environment for the QNX real-time operating system primarily used on embedded systems. With now having this developer desktop option, the hassle of cross-compilation to target QNX can be avoided… ⌘ Read more

New York To Require Social Media Platforms To Display Mental Health Warnings
Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users’ mental health under a new law, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Friday. From a report: “Keeping New Yorkers safe has been my top priority since taki … ⌘ Read more

Wall Street Has Stopped Rewarding ‘Strategic’ Layoffs
Goldman Sachs analysts have identified a notable shift in how investors respond to corporate layoff announcements, finding that even job cuts attributed to automation and AI-driven restructuring are now causing stock prices to fall rather than rise. The investment bank linked recent layoff announcements to public companies’ earnings reports and stock market data, concluding … ⌘ Read more

Framework Raises Memory Prices Again, Suggests Customers Bring Their Own RAM
Framework has announced yet another price increase for memory modules, the second in roughly a month, and the company is now actively encouraging customers to source their own RAM elsewhere if they can find better deals. The laptop maker cited “extreme memory shortages and price volatility” as the reason for the hike, noting … ⌘ Read more

Trump Administration To Overhaul Lottery System For H-1B Visas
The Trump administration has announced it would replace the lottery programme used to grant H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers with a system that prioritises higher-paid individuals. From a report: The Department of Homeland Security said it would begin to implement a “weighted” selection process to give an advantage to higher-skilled and higher- … ⌘ Read more

US Bars Five Europeans It Says Pressured Tech Firms To Censor American Viewpoints Online
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure U.S. tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints. The Europeans, characterized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “r … ⌘ Read more

ServiceNow To Buy Armis For $7.75 Billion As It Bets Big On Cybersecurity For AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MarketWatch: ServiceNow announced a deal to acquire cybersecurity company Armis on Tuesday, marking a new milestone in the software giant’s artificial-intelligence business strategy. The $7.75 billion all-cash transaction is part of ServiceNow’s goal of advancing governance and tru … ⌘ Read more

US To Impose Tariffs on Chips From China
An anonymous reader shares a report: The United States will take action against China’s semiconductor industry, setting new tariffs on chips from China from June 23, 2027, that have 0% duties currently, the US Trade Representative said.

The announcement comes following a year-long investigation into China’s chip imports into the United States, launched by the Biden administration and led by t … ⌘ Read more

US Blocks All Offshore Wind Construction, Says Reason Is Classified
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it was pausing the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the US. The move comes despite the fact that these projects already have installed significant hardware in the water and on land; one of t … ⌘ Read more

GotaTun Open-Source Rust WireGuard Implementation Announced By Mullvad
The Swedish VPN service Mullvad announced this week GotaTun, an open-source Rust-based WireGuard implementation that is forked from Cloudflare’s BoringTun… ⌘ Read more

ACM To Make Its Entire Digital Library Open Access Starting January 2026
The Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of computing professionals, announced that all publications and related artifacts in the ACM Digital Library will become freely available to everyone starting January 2026. Authors will retain full copyright to their published work under the new arrangement, and A … ⌘ Read more

Denmark Says Russia Was Behind Two ‘Destructive and Disruptive’ Cyberattacks
The Danish government has accused Russia of being behind two “destructive and disruptive” cyberattacks in what it describes as “very clear evidence” of a hybrid war. From a report: The Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) announced on Thursday that Moscow was behind a cyberattack on a Danish water utility in 2024 and a … ⌘ Read more

Mass Hacking of IP Cameras Leave Koreans Feeling Vulnerable in Homes, Businesses
Hackers breached approximately 120,000 IP cameras across South Korea and allegedly sold footage captured from private homes, gynecology offices, breastfeeding rooms and massage parlors to an overseas pornography website, prompting an interagency government task force to announce sweeping reforms on December 7.

Polic … ⌘ Read more

Apple Opens iOS To Alternative App Stores, Payment Systems in Japan
Apple has announced a sweeping set of changes to iOS in Japan that will allow alternative app marketplaces, third-party payment processing, and non-WebKit browser engines – all to comply with Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act, which takes effect December 18. The changes, now available in iOS 26.2, bear a strong resemblance to Apple’s … ⌘ Read more

KDE Internet of Things Development Restarted For Home Assistant Integration
Announced one year ago was KDE Internet of Things “Kiot” with an emphasis on providing nice integration between the KDE Plasma desktop and Home Assistant for handling open-source home automation. Development on Kiot sadly fell through the cracks for most of the year but development on it recently restarted… ⌘ Read more

Meta ‘Pauses’ Third-Party Headset Program
Meta has paused its third-party Horizon OS headset program, effectively canceling planned VR headsets from Asus and Lenovo as it refocuses on “building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market.” Road to VR reports: A little over a year and a half ago, Meta made an “industry-altering announcement,” as I called the move in my reporting: the company wa … ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Rust Code Sees Its First CVE Vulnerability
Longtime Linux developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced that the Linux kernel has received its first CVE tied to Rust code. Phoronix reports: This first CVE (CVE-2025-68260) for Rust code in the Linux kernel pertains to the Android Binder rewrite in Rust. There is a race condition that can occur due to some noted unsafe Rust code. That code can lead to memory corrupti … ⌘ Read more

Coursera Acquires Udemy For $930 Million
Coursera announced on Wednesday that it will acquire rival online learning platform Udemy in an all-stock deal that values the combined company at $2.5 billion, a move that brings together two of the largest U.S.-based players in an industry that has struggled since pandemic-era enrollment highs faded. Under the terms of the agreement, Udemy shareholders will receive 0.8 shares of Coursera for … ⌘ Read more

Debusine Repositories Enter Beta: Ubuntu PPA-Like User Archives For Debian Linux
Colin Watson announced that Debusine repositories are now available in beta form, which can be used to maintain APT-compatible add-on package repositories for Debian Linux. This comes down to being similar in nature to Personal Package Archives (PPAs) that are popular with Ubuntu Linux… ⌘ Read more

Mozilla’s New CEO Bets Firefox’s Future on AI
Mozilla has named Anthony Enzor-DeMeo as its new chief executive, promoting the executive who has spent the past year leading the Firefox browser team and who now plans to make AI central to the company’s future.

Enzor-DeMeo announced on Tuesday that an “AI Mode” is coming to Firefox next year. The feature will let users choose from multiple AI models rather than being locked into a s … ⌘ Read more

Red Hat Acquires Another AI Company
Last year Red Hat acquired Neural Magic as part of their AI acquisitions and to bolster the open-source AI ecosystem. Today they announced another AI acquisition… ⌘ Read more

Ford Ends F-150 Lightning Production, Starts Battery Storage Business
Ford has effectively pulled the plug on the all-electric F-150 Lightning, pivoting away from full-size BEV pickups toward hybrids, range-extended EVs (EREVs), and even data-center battery storage. Ars Technica reports: Ford’s announcements today can’t be said to have come out of the blue. Rumors of the F-150’s demise have been circul … ⌘ Read more

Google To Retire ‘Dark Web Report’ Tool That Scanned for Leaked User Data
Google has decided to retire its free dark web monitoring tool, saying it wasn’t as helpful as the company hoped. From a report: In a support page, Google announced the discontinuation of the “dark web report” tool, two years after offering it as a free perk to Gmail users before expanding it more broadly. The feature worked by sca … ⌘ 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

AmpereOne M Finally Appears - In The Oracle Cloud With A4
Back in July 2024, Ampere Computing announced AmpereOne M on their road-map for Q4’2024 to provide AmpereOne with 12 channel DDR5 memory compared to eight memory channels with the original AmpereOne processors. Then this past May the AmpereOne M SKUs were announced while Ampere Computing stated these “M” processors had been shipping since Q4 of last year. Since then we haven’t seen or heard anything more about AmpereOne M nor the AmpereOne MX processors … ⌘ Read more

Like Australia, Denmark Plans to Severely Restrict Social Media Use for Teenagers
“As Australia began enforcing a world-first social media ban for children under 16 years old this week, Denmark is planning to follow its lead,” reports the Associated Press, “and severely restrict social media access for young people.”

The Danish government announced last month that it had secured an agreement b … ⌘ Read more

System76 Launches First Stable Release of COSMIC Desktop and Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS
This week System76 launched the first stable release of its Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment, reports 9to5Linux.

Announced in 2021, it’s designed for all GNU/Linux distributions — and it shipping with Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS (based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS):

Previous Pop!_OS releases used a version of the COSMIC desktop tha … ⌘ Read more

‘Free Software Awards’ Winners Announced: Andy Wingo, Alx Sa, Govdirectory
This week the Free Software Foundation honored Andy Wingo, Alx Sa, and Govdirectory with this year’s annual Free Software Awards (given to community members and groups making
“significant” contributions to software freedom):

Andy Wingo is one of the co-maintainers of GNU Guile,
the official extension language of the GNU operating … ⌘ Read more

Startup Successfully Uses AI to Find New Geothermal Energy Reservoirs
A Utah-based startup announced last week it used AI to locate a 250-degree Fahrenheit geothermal reservoir, reports CNN. It’ll start producing electricity in three to five years, the company estimates — and at least one geologist believes AI could be an exciting “gamechanger” for the geothermal industry.

[Startup Zanskar Geotherma … ⌘ 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

Washington Post’s AI-Generated Podcasts Rife With Errors, Fictional Quotes
The Washington Post’s top standards editor Thursday decried “frustrating” errors in its new AI-generated personalized podcasts, whose launch has been met with distress by its journalists. From a report: Earlier this week, the Post announced that it was rolling out personalized AI-generated podcasts for users of the paper’s mobil … ⌘ Read more

Qualcomm Acquires RISC-V Specialists At Ventana Systems
An acquisition announcement that flew under the radar yesterday but then I only noticed today with a GCC MAINTAINERS file update, “with the acquisition of Ventana Microsystems by Qualcomm…” Qualcomm has acquired Ventana as a RISC-V high performance CPU start-up… ⌘ Read more

System76 Launches Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS With COSMIC Desktop
Back in October System76 announced a planned release date for Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS and the COSMIC Desktop… And they’ve made it! The new Pop!_OS 24.04 is now available for download as the long-awaited update atop an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base while using their Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment… ⌘ 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

Ubuntu Will Have Native AMD ROCm AI/ML and HPC Libraries In Next LTS Release
Longtime Slashdot reader MadCow42 writes: Canonical just announced that they’re packaging AMD’s ROCm libraries (for AIML and HPC with both data-center GPUs as well as desktop/laptop GPUs), directly into the Ubuntu Universe archive. You can run ROCm on Ubuntu today but you have to install it via a script from AMD and manuall … ⌘ Read more