Has the AI Disruption Arrived - and Will It Just Make Software Cheaper and More Accessible?
Programmer/entrepreneur Paul Ford is the co-founder of AI-driven business software platform Aboard. This week he wrote a guest essay for the New York Times titled “The AI Disruption Has Arrived, and It Sure Is Fun,” arguing that Anthropic’s Claude Code “was always a helpful coding assista … ⌘ Read more

After 16 Years, ‘Interim’ CTO Finally Eradicating Fujitsu and Horizon From the UK’s Post Office
Besides running tech operations at the UK’s Post Office, their interim CTO is also removing and replacing Fujitsu’s Horizon system, which Computer Weekly describes as “the error-ridden software that a public inquiry linked to 13 people taking their own lives.”

After over 16 years of cover … ⌘ Read more

T2 Linux Restores XAA In Xorg, Making 2D Graphics Fast Again
Berlin-based T2 Linux developer René Rebe (long-time Slashdot reader ReneR) is announcing that their Xorg display server has now restored its XAA acceleration architecture, “bringing fixed-function hardware 2D acceleration back to many older graphics cards that upstream left in software-rendered mode.”

Older fixed-function GPUs now regain smooth window … ⌘ Read more

How Python’s Security Response Team Keeps Python Users Safe
This week the Python Software Foundation explained how they keep Python secure. A new blog post recognizes the volunteers and paid Python Software Foundation staff on the Python Security Response Team (PSRT), who “triage and coordinate vulnerability reports and remediations keeping all Python users safe.”

Just last year the PSRT published 16 vulnerabi … ⌘ Read more

Cyber Stocks Slide As Anthropic Unveils ‘Claude Code Security’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Shares of cybersecurity software companies tumbled Friday after Anthropic PBC introduced a new security feature into its Claude AI model. Crowdstrike Holdings was the among the biggest decliners, falling as much as 6.5%, while Cloudflare slumped more than 6%. Meanwhile, Zscaler dropped 3.5%, SailPoint s … ⌘ Read more

Several Meta Employees Have Started Calling Themselves ‘AI Builders’
An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta product managers are rebranding. Some are now calling themselves “AI builders,” a signal that AI coding tools are changing who gets to build software inside the company. One of them, Jeremie Guedj, announced the change in a LinkedIn post last week. “I still can’t believe I’m writing this: as of toda … ⌘ Read more

Intel Hiring More Linux Developers - Including For GPU Drivers / Linux Gaming Stack
As some good news out of Intel today on the Linux/open-source side following last year’s layoffs, they’re hiring for some new Linux software development roles – including for enhancing their Linux graphics driver stack that also includes a focus on Linux gaming with the likes of Valve’s Proton (Steam Play)… ⌘ Read more

PayPal Discloses Data Breach That Exposed User Info For 6 Months
PayPal is notifying customers of a data breach after a software error in a loan application exposed their sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, for nearly 6 months last year. From a report: The incident affected the PayPal Working Capital (PPWC) loan app, which provides small businesses with quick access to financing. PayP … ⌘ Read more

HSBC To Investors: If India Couldn’t Build an Enterprise Software Challenger, Neither Can AI
India’s IT services giants have spent decades deploying, customizing, and maintaining the world’s largest enterprise software platforms, putting hundreds of thousands of engineers in daily contact with the business logic and proprietary architectures of vendors like SAP and Oracle. None of them ha … ⌘ Read more

How Private Equity Debt Left a Leading VPN Open To Chinese Hackers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In early 2024, the agency that oversees cybersecurity for much of the US government issued a rare emergency order – disconnect your Connect Secure virtual private network software immediately. Chinese spies had hacked the code and infiltrated nearly two dozen organizations. The directive appli … ⌘ Read more

California’s New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves
California’s recently-proposed AB-2047 would require 3D printers sold in the state to be DOJ-approved models equipped with “firearm blocking technology,” banning non-certified machines after 2029 and criminalizing efforts to bypass the software. Adafruit notes that unlike similar legislation proposed in Washin … ⌘ Read more

PipeWire 1.6 Released With Many New Features
PipeWire 1.6 is out today as the newest feature release for this software widely used by the Linux desktop for managing of audio and video streams while nicely integrating with sandboxed Flatpak apps and more… ⌘ Read more

NTFS3 Driver Sees Improvements In Linux 7.0 While “NTFS Remake” Driver Bakes
The NTFS3 driver maintained by Paragon Software for Microsoft NTFS file-systems today saw a batch of improvements merged for Linux 7.0 This comes as there is also the competing “NTFS Remake” driver that began a few months ago as the “NTFSPLUS” driver. That NTFS Remake driver isn’t looking like it will be submitted for the Linux 7.0 merge window so at least for now the NTFS3 driver continues seeing improvements with the latest mainline kernel code … ⌘ Read more

Most VMware Users Still ‘Actively Reducing Their VMware Footprint,’ Survey Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More than two years after Broadcom took over VMware, the virtualization company’s customers are still grappling with higher prices, uncertainty, and the challenges of reducing vendor lock-in. Today, CloudBolt Software released a report, “The Mass Exodus That Never … ⌘ Read more

‘Software Isn’t Dead, But Its Cosy Business Model Might Be’
The software industry’s decades-old habit of charging companies a flat fee for every employee who uses a product is running into a fundamental problem: AI agents don’t sit in chairs, and they don’t need licences.

As autonomous agents take on tasks that human workers once handled, the per-seat pricing model that made SaaS revenue so predictable is giving way t … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic’s CEO Says AI and Software Engineers Are in ‘Centaur Phase’ - But It Won’t Last Long
Human software engineers and AI are currently in a “centaur phase” – a reference to the mythical half-human, half-horse creature, where the combination outperforms either working alone – but the window may be “very brief,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said on a podcast. He drew on ches … ⌘ Read more

Fake Job Recruiters Hid Malware In Developer Coding Challenges
“A new variation of the fake recruiter campaign from North Korean threat actors is targeting JavaScript and Python developers with cryptocurrency-related tasks,” reports the Register.

Researchers at software supply-chain security company ReversingLabs say that the threat actor creates fake companies in the blockchain and crypto-trading sectors and publ … ⌘ Read more

Autonomous AI Agent Apparently Tries to Blackmail Maintainer Who Rejected Its Code
“I’ve had an extremely weird few days…” writes commercial space entrepreneur/engineer Scott Shambaugh on LinkedIn. (He’s the volunteer maintainer for the Python visualization library Matplotlib, which he describes as “some of the most widely used software in the world” with 130 million downloads each month.) … ⌘ Read more

FTC Ratchets Up Microsoft Probe, Queries Rivals on Cloud, AI
The US Federal Trade Commission is accelerating scrutiny of Microsoft as part of an ongoing probe into whether the company illegally monopolizes large swaths of the enterprise computing market with its cloud software and AI offerings, including Copilot. From a report: The agency has issued civil investigative demands in recent weeks to companies that compete wi … ⌘ Read more

Haiku OS Lands Improved Touchpad Support, Still Working Toward Beta 6
The Haiku open-source operating system project inspired by BeOS kicked off 2026 by making many improvements to its kernel, device drivers, and user-space software… ⌘ Read more

US Hacking Tool Boss Stole and Sold Exploits To Russian Broker That Could Target Millions of Devices, DOJ Says
Federal prosecutors have revealed that Peter Williams, the former general manager of U.S. defense contractor L3Harris’s hacking tools division Trenchant, sold eight stolen software exploits to a Russian broker whose customers – including the Russian govern … ⌘ Read more

CrossOver 26 Released - Powered By Wine 11.0 For Windows Apps/Games On Linux + macOS
CodeWeavers just announced CrossOver 26, the newest version of their commercial software built atop Wine for running Windows games and applications under Apple macOS and Linux… ⌘ Read more

Intel Xeon 6780E Sierra Forest vs. AMD EPYC 9965 On Linux 6.18 Performance
With recently having carried out benchmarks and finding the Intel Xeon 6780E “Sierra Forest” performance has improved ~14% since launch day thanks to open-source/Linux software improvements plus also recently having carried out Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids vs. EPYC 9755 128-core benchmarks using the latest upstream software, here is a look at how the Xeon 6780E “Sierra Forest” dual socket server is comparing up against the AMD EPYC 996 … ⌘ Read more

Software Poses ‘All-Time’ Risk To Speculative Credit, Deutsche Bank Warns
The software and technology sectors pose one of the all-time great concentration risks to the speculative-grade credit market, according to Deutsche Bank AG analysts. Bloomberg: They comprise $597 billion and $681 billion of the speculative-grade credit universe, or about 14% and 16% respectively, analysts led by Steve Caprio wrote … ⌘ Read more

MythTV 36 Released With Web App Improvements & FFmpeg 8 Support
MythTV 36 is now available for this long-time open-source digital video recorder “DVR” software that has been around now for more than two decades as the leading choice for those wishing to watch and/or record live TV under Linux especially as an HTPC… ⌘ Read more

Autodesk Takes Google To Court Over AI Movie Software Named ‘Flow’
Autodesk has sued Google in San Francisco federal court, alleging the search giant infringed its “Flow” trademark by launching competing AI-powered software for movie, TV and video game production in May 2025.

Autodesk says it has used the Flow name since September 2022 and that Google assured it would not commercialize a product under the sam … ⌘ Read more

Blender 5.1 Lands Raycast Nodes, Blender Adjusting Release Cycle Moving Forward
Two interesting bits of Blender news this week for those fond of this leading open-source 3D modeling software… ⌘ Read more

GNU Linux-Libre 6.19 Deals With More Firmware Blobs In Intel Xe, IWLWIFI & NVIDIA Nova
Building off yesterday’s Linux 6.19 release is now the GNU Linux-libre 6.19-gnu downstream release that strips out support for open-source drivers dependent upon binary-only microcode/firmware and other elements deemed against free software standards, removing the ability to load non-open-source kernel modules, and similar restrictions in the name of software freedom… ⌘ Read more

Intel Appears To Have Quietly Sunset “On Demand” Software Defined Silicon
Back in 2021 on Phoronix was first to report on Intel preparing Linux patches for a “Software Defined Silicon” feature for activating extra licensed hardware features. That Software Defined Silicon support continued moving forward and was then announced as Intel On Demand with a focus on users being able to pay to activate additional accelerators found on select SKUs but not enabled by default… ⌘ Read more

Wine-Staging 11.2 Brings More Patches To Help Adobe Photoshop On Linux
Building off Friday’s release of Wine 11.2 is now Wine-Staging 11.2 as this experimental/testing version of Wine with hundreds of extra patches that have yet to be introduced in upstream proper for this open-source software enabling Windows games and applications on Linux. Notable in this bi-weekly update are more patches for continuing to improve the Adobe Photoshop installer support on Linux… ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

I can’t remember if the hex viewer back then had these options. Don’t even recall what software that was. :-)

The one that I used during my Windows 95 days was “Hex Workshop”. It had similar features, just not as promimently displayed. It shows them down there in the statusline as “Value”:

Newer versions can probably do more, haven’t checked. 😅 (Assuming this program still exists.)

Apart from selecting text to copy into the clipboard. But that probably has the potential for trouble and interference with button clicks, etc.

Yeah, that’s a big problem: Once you activate mouse mode in the terminal, the terminal loses the ability to select text. 😞 You’d either have to emulate that in the program itself (like Vim does) or give the user an easy way to turn mouse support on/off during runtime.

How did the startup times develop?

They’re pretty stable at around 230 ms on my old NUC. It’s just fast enough so that it doesn’t annoy me.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Nice, it’s coming together! Despite it being ages ago that I used a hex editor or viewer, these different representations of information appear very handy to me. If I had to mess around on binary formats, I’d definitely appreciate them. I can’t remember if the hex viewer back then had these options. Don’t even recall what software that was. :-)

I, too, only very, very rarely use the mouse in the terminal. Apart from selecting text to copy into the clipboard. But that probably has the potential for trouble and interference with button clicks, etc. If one isn’t careful.

How did the startup times develop?

Claude Code is the Inflection Point
About 4% of all public commits on GitHub are now being authored by Anthropic’s Claude Code, a terminal-native AI coding agent that has quickly become the centerpiece of a broader argument that software engineering is being fundamentally reshaped by AI.

SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor and AI research firm, published a report on Friday projecting that figure will climb past 20% by the end of 2026. Cl … ⌘ Read more

Waymo is Having a Hard Time Stopping For School Buses
Waymo’s robotaxis have racked up at least 24 safety violations involving school buses in Austin since the start of the 2025 school year, and a voluntary software recall the company issued in December after a federal investigation has not fixed the problem.

Austin Independent School District initially reported at least 19 incidents of Waymo vehicles failing to stop fo … ⌘ Read more

Ardour 9.0 Audio Workstation Released With Multi-Touch GUI, Many New Features
Ardour 9.0 is out today as the latest major feature release to this leading open-source digital audio workstation (DAW) software for musicians, recording engineers, and other audio editing needs… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Launches Claude Opus 4.6 as Its AI Tools Rattle Software Markets
Anthropic on Thursday released Claude Opus 4.6, its most capable model yet, at a moment when the company’s AI tools have already spooked markets over fears that they are disrupting traditional software development and other sectors.

The new model improves on Opus 4.5’s coding abilities, the company said – it plans more carefully, … ⌘ Read more

As Software Stocks Slump, Investors Debate AI’s Existential Threat
Investors were assessing on Wednesday whether a selloff in global software stocks this week had gone too far, as they weighed if businesses could survive an existential threat posed by AI. The answer: It’s unclear and will lead to volatility. From a report: After a broad selloff on Tuesday that saw the S&P 500 software and services index fall nearly … ⌘ Read more

‘Vibe Coding Kills Open Source’
Four economists across Central European University, Bielefeld University and the Kiel Institute have built a general equilibrium model of the open-source software ecosystem and concluded that vibe coding – the increasingly common practice of letting AI agents select, assemble and modify packages on a developer’s behalf – erodes the very funding mechanism that keeps open-source projects alive.

The core problem … ⌘ Read more

Reworked NTFS Linux Driver Posted With More Improvements & Fixes
Announced back in October was NTFS Plus as a new Linux driver for NTFS based on the former NTFS kernel driver prior to Paragon Software contributing the NTFS3 driver code. The intent with this new driver is for better performance. more features, public user-space utilities around it, and all-around a nice step forward for those reliant on this Microsoft file-system. Out this week is the sixth iteration of this remade NTFS driver… ⌘ Read more

When 20-Year-Old Bill Gates Fought the World’s First Software Pirates
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Just months after his 20th birthday, Bill Gates had already angered the programmer community,” remembers this 50th-anniversary commemoration of Gates’ Open Letter to Hobbyists. “As the first home computers began appearing in the 1970s, the world faced a question: Would its software be free?”
… ⌘ Read more

GNU Hurd Is “Almost There” With x86_64, SMP & ~75% Of Debian Packages Building
Samuel Thibault offered up a status update on the current state of GNU/Hurd from a presentation in Brussels at FOSDEM 2026. Thibault has previously shared updates on GNU Hurd from the annual FOSDEM event while this year’s was a bit more optimistic thanks to recent driver progress and more software now successfully building for Hurd… ⌘ Read more

The Last Of The Dolby Digital Plus “E-AC3” Patents Might Now Be Expired
For those interested in the Dolby Digital Plus “Enhanced AC-3” audio compression format for open-source software, the last of the patents for this widely-used format by streaming services and more appears to have expired… ⌘ Read more

White House Scraps ‘Burdensome’ Software Security Rules
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SecurityWeek: The White House has announced that software security guidance issued during the Biden administration has been rescinded due to “unproven and burdensome” requirements that prioritized administrative compliance over meaningful security investments. The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued Memorandum … ⌘ Read more

AMD EPYC 9755 Delivers Decisive Performance Leadership Over Xeon 6 Granite Rapids With Nearly 500 Benchmarks
Back in December I carried out some fresh benchmarks of the Intel Xeon 6980P vs. AMD EPYC 9755 for these competing 128 core server processors using the latest Linux software stack before closing out 2025. That was done with nearly 200 benchmarks and the AMD EPYC Turin Zen 5 processor delivered terrific performance as we have come to enjoy out of the 5th Gen EPYC line-up over the past year and several mont … ⌘ Read more

Backseat Software
Mike Swanson: What if your car worked like so many apps? You’re driving somewhere important…maybe running a little bit late. A few minutes into the drive, your car pulls over to the side of the road and asks:

“How are you enjoying your drive so far?”

Annoyed by the interruption, and even more behind schedule, you dismiss the prompt and merge back into traffic.

A minute later it does it again.

“Did you know I have a new feature? Tap … ⌘ Read more

Libcamera 0.7 Released - GPU Acceleration Support For SoftISP Can Deliver 15x Performance
Libcamera 0.7 was published today for this modern software library for image signal processors (ISPs) and embedded cameras under Linux. The standout change with libcamera 0.7 is initial plumbing for GPU acceleration in the software ISP “SoftISP” for delivering better performance than just CPU-based… ⌘ Read more

Libgcrypt 1.12 Released With VAES/AVX-512 Accelerated AES: 2x Performance On AMD Zen 5
Werner Koch released libgcrypt 1.12 as the newest feature release to this library providing the cryptographic building blocks used by GnuPG and other software like email clients, file encryption utilities, and other software… ⌘ Read more

Software Company Bonds Drop As Investors’ AI Worries Mount
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Investors are souring on the bonds of software companies that service industries ranging from automotive to finance as fast-paced artificial intelligence innovations threaten to upend their business models. […] Bond prices tumbled as advances in artificial intelligence rack up. Google announced plans to … ⌘ Read more

Experian’s Tech Chief Defends Credit Scores: ‘We’re Not Palantir’
When asked directly whether people actually like Experian, Alex Lintner, the credit bureau’s CEO of Software and Technology, offered an unusual defense in an interview: “First of all, we’re not Palantir, so we don’t do reputation scores.” Speaking on The Verge’s podcast, Lintner conceded that consumers who have poor credit scores through “life’s circ … ⌘ Read more

Richard Stallman Was Asked: Is Software Piracy Wrong?
Friday 72-year-old Richard Stallman made a two-hour-and-20-minutes appearance at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talking about everything from AI and connected cars to smartphones, age verfication laws, and his favorite Linux distro. But early on, Stallman also told the audience how “I despise DRM…I don’t want any copy of anything with DRM. Whatever it is, I neve … ⌘ Read more