Canonical To Distribute AMD ROCm Libraries With Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
AMD previously talked of simplifying the in-box Linux support for ROCm during the second half of 2025. So far we haven’t seen any groundbreaking changes from that initiative besides AMD working on various package archives/repositories to make it easier to install the latest ROCm on different Linux distributions. But today a big announcement is now public that Canonical with next year’s Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release will provide official ROCm packages al … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Here you go:

(LTT = “Linus Tech Tips”, that’s the host.)

LTT: There was a recent thing from a major tech company, where developers were asked to say how many lines of code they wrote – and if it wasn’t enough, they were terminated. And there was someone here that was extremely upset about that approach to measuring productivity, because–

Torvalds: Oh yeah, no, you shouldn’t even be upset. At that point, that’s just incompetence. Anybody who thinks that’s a valid metric is too stupid to work at a tech company.

LTT: You do know who you just said that about, right?

Torvalds: No.

LTT: Oh. Uh, he was a prominent figure in the, uh, improved efficiency of the US government recently.

Torvalds: Oh. Apparently I was spot on.

We’ve finally cracked how to make truly random numbers
From machine learning to voting, the workings of the world demand randomisation, but true sources of randomness are surprisingly hard to find. Now quantum mechanics has supplied the answer ⌘ Read more

Alter Boy’s NRG is up for vocalist of the year — yet he doesn’t sing
Luke Eastman’s interpretation work using Auslan in the band Alter Boy is recognised in this year’s WA Music Awards, with a nomination for vocalist of the year. ⌘ Read more

Live Update Orchestrator “LUO” Merged For Linux 6.19
Google engineers for the past number of months have been working on the Live Update Orchestrator as a new way of applying live Linux kernel updates. The Live Update Orchestrator “LUO” builds atop the Kexec Handover “KHO” functionality already within the kernel. Google has since been deplyoing LUO in their production environments for faster security updates to kernels, especially when involving VMs. LUO is now upstream in Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

Google Says First AI Glasses With Gemini Will Arrive in 2026
Google said it’s working to create two different categories of artificial intelligence-powered smart glasses to compete next year with existing models from Meta Platforms: one with screens, and another that’s audio focused. From a report: The first AI glasses that Google is collaborating on will arrive sometime in 2026, it said in a blog post Monday. Sam … ⌘ Read more

AMD Working On Push-Based Load Balancing For Linux To Further Enhance Performance
One of the new Linux engineering initiatives out of AMD is working to further enhance Linux performance on today’s large core count systems by introducing push-based load balancing… ⌘ Read more

Primary school teacher jailed for ‘calculated’ abuse of young girls
A former Cairns state primary school teacher has been jailed for 17 years for dozens of child exploitation offences involving children from the school where he worked. ⌘ Read more

But it is weird that none of the slot plates (that I can find) appear to have the correct pin order. 🤔

The two mainboards I have here use this order:

2468x
13579

But the slot plates use this:

12345
6789x

I tripped over this at first and wondered why it didn’t work.

Has this changed recently or what? 🥴

Can This Simple Invention Convert Waste Heat Into Electricity?
Nuclear engineer Lonnie Johnson worked on NASA’s Galileo mission, has more than 140 patents, and invented the Super Soaker water gun.
But now he’s working on “a potential key to unlock a huge power source that’s rarely utilized today,” reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. [Alternate URL here.]

Waste heat…

The Johnson Thermo-Electrochemi … ⌘ Read more

Water leak at the Louvre damages hundreds of works
The leak occurred after a valve was accidentally opened in a heating and ventilation system, allowing water to seep through the ceiling of the Mollien wing. ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Introduces PCIe Link Encryption & Device Authentication, AMD SEV-TIO Enabling
One of the most exciting merges this weekend to the Linux 6.19 kernel is establishing the infrastructure for supporting PCI Express link encryption and device authentication. Multiple vendors are working on PCIe link encryption for their hardware while this initial pull begins laying the foundation of AMD SEV-TIO Trusted I/O support for the mainline kernel… ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Bwahahaha! I tried to establish some form of “convention” for commit messages at work (not exactly what you linked to, though), but it’s a lost cause. 😂 Nobody is following any of that. Nobody wants to invest time in good commit messages. People just want to get stuff done.

I’m just glad that 80% are at least somewhat useful – instead of “wip” or “shit i screwed up”.

My current PC is from 2013, so I never even bothered to check, but as it turns out: My motherboard still has a serial port. 🤯 I thought these had long died out by then. To be honest, I didn’t have the need for one, either, not until recently … So I completely lost track if PCs have these things or not.

All I needed was one of those slot-cable-thingies. (And if the order of pins is correct, then it actually works. 🤦)

https://movq.de/v/89a67cf40f/slot.jpg

Cool! One less USB device. 😃

Backed by his family, propelled by his talent: the rise of Lando Norris
F1 world champion Lando Norris has long seemed destined for the top of his sport, as key figures who worked with him through the junior categories tell BBC Sport. ⌘ Read more

Young people to lose benefits if they turn down work, says minister
Pat McFadden says they would need a “good reason” to decline one of 55,000 new work placements. ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Delivers Working USB3 Support For Apple Silicon Devices
Merged last night for the Linux 6.19 kernel merge window were all of the USB and Thunderbolt driver changes. Standing out this cycle is Apple Silicon devices like the M1 Macs now having working USB3 support on the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Delivers Working USB3 Support For Apple Silicon Devices
Merged last night for the Linux 6.19 kernel merge window were all of the USB and Thunderbolt driver changes. Standing out this cycle is Apple Silicon devices like the M1 Macs now having working USB3 support on the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Using AI To Modernize The Ubuntu Error Tracker Produced Some Code That Was “Plain Wrong”
A week ago I wrote about AI being used to help modernize Ubuntu’s Error Tracker. Microsoft GitHub Copilot was tasked to help adapt its Cassandra database usage to modern standards. It’s worked in some areas but even for a rather straight forward task, some of the generated functions ended up being “plain wrong” according to the developer involved… ⌘ Read more

Young people on benefits to be offered construction and hospitality work
The government says it will fund training and work experience for 350,000 not in work or education. ⌘ Read more

Young people on benefits to be offered construction and hospitality work
The government says it will fund training and work experience for 350,000 not in work or education. ⌘ Read more

**Zelensky signals progress in talks with US on peace plan **
The Ukrainian president says he is “determined” to continue working with US, as strikes on Ukraine continue. ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Supporting Per-DRM-Plane Color Pipelines, More Hardware Quirks/Fixes
It was a busy start of December for KDE Plasma developers in working out several hardware fixes for the current Plasma 6.5 series while also working on new Plasma 6.6 features like the per-DRM-plane color pipelines… ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net And I think that plan worked! 😂

OpenAI Has Trained Its LLM To Confess To Bad Behavior
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: OpenAI is testing another new way to expose the complicated processes at work inside large language models. Researchers at the company can make an LLM produce what they call a confession, in which the model explains how it carried out a task and (most of the time) owns up to any bad behavior. Figuring out why … ⌘ Read more

Princess Kate celebrates community work at annual Christmas service
Heir to the throne, Prince William, was due to deliver a reading before 1,600 guests along with actors Kate Winslet, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Joe Locke, as well as actor and comedian Babatunde Aléshé. ⌘ Read more

AI Led To an Increase In Radiologists, Not a Decrease
Despite predictions that AI would replace radiologists, healthcare systems worldwide are hiring more of them because AI tools enhance their work, create new oversight tasks, and increase imaging volumes rather than reducing workloads. “Put all that together with the context of an aging population and growing demand for imaging of all kinds, and you can see why Offia … ⌘ Read more

Victorian hobby club opens ‘Australia’s biggest’ miniature railway
A group of dedicated volunteers say they have built “Australia’s biggest” miniature railway in regional Victoria and after a decade of hard work it’s finally open to the public. ⌘ Read more

Frank Gehry, world-renowned architect behind Guggenheim Bilbao, dies aged 96
Gehry’s most memorable creations were either celebrated as works of genius or reviled as self-indulgent messes — but either way, people were looking, as he liked to say. ⌘ Read more

Meta Acquires AI Wearable Company Limitless
Meta is acquiring AI wearable startup Limitless, maker of a pendant that records conversations and generates summaries. “We’re excited that Limitless will be joining Meta to help accelerate our work to build AI-enabled wearables,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. CNBC reports: Limitless CEO Dan Siroker revealed the deal on Friday via a corporate blog post but did not disclose … ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.0-rc1 Released With TWAINDSM 64-bit Module For Scanners
As anticipated the first release candidate of Wine 11.0 is now available in working toward the annual stable release in January… ⌘ Read more

Frank Gehry’s most iconic work - in pictures
As one of architecture’s most provocative and creative forces, Frank Gehry was behind intriguing buildings the world over. ⌘ Read more

Doctor charged with sex assaults of 38 patients
The charges against Nathaniel Spencer relate to his time working at two West Midlands hospitals. ⌘ Read more

Doctor charged with sexually assaulting 38 patients
The charges against Dr Nathaniel Spencer relate to his time working at two major hospitals in the West Midlands ⌘ Read more

The World Cup draw is here - this is how it will work
Pots, quadrants, confederation constraints, group position grids … the World Cup draw is not going to be straightforward. ⌘ Read more

Pointers to making Universal Ctags work with the latest versions of Scheme (r6rs and r7rs) ⌘ Read more

Chevron’s Gorgon stage 3 backfill development gets $3b go-ahead
The works will connect gas fields in the Greater Gorgon Area to existing infrastructure on Barrow Island. ⌘ Read more

UK to deport 60 delivery riders after illegal work crackdown
The Home Office says the group are among 171 riders arrested over seven days in November in a national “enforcement blitz”. ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 GPU Driver Features: Color Pipeline API, Intel Xe3P, AMDGPU For GCN 1.0/1.1
The big set of kernel graphics driver features were merged today for the Linux 6.19 kernel. As usual there is a lot of new feature work on the AMD Radeon, Intel, and NVIDIA graphics drivers plus the smaller Arm/embedded graphics like now having initial Qualcomm Gen8 GPU support. Plus the growing number of accelerator “accel” drivers for NPUs / AI accelerators… ⌘ Read more

Fare-free travel introduced for summer evenings as ACT cuts some bus services
The ACT government says the bus network will change from term 1 next year as it flags major disruption from work on Commonwealth Avenue Bridge. ⌘ Read more

Compressed air energy storage is coming, but how does it work?
Broken Hill will be the location of Australia’s first large-scale compressed air energy storage system. What is it and how does it work? ⌘ Read more

Does working from home impact mental health? Here’s what 16,000 people say
Working from home can positively impact the mental health of Australian men and women in different ways, according to a new study of more than 16,000 people. ⌘ Read more

How to respond to sexual harassment or assault at a work party
Managers can send strong signals that harassment or assault at the work party will be treated as seriously as in the workplace. ⌘ Read more

Working on day 3 of the Advent of Code 2025: https://adventofcode.com/

My solutions repo: https://git.itsericwoodward.com/eric/aoc-2025

Wong will not say if further Islamic State family members on track to return
The Coalition seizes on meeting notes from June to claim the government is working to return Australian children and partners of Islamic State fighters. ⌘ Read more

Steve Cropper, guitarist of Booker T and the MGs, dies aged 84
The musician was known for his work on hits including Green Onions and Otis Redding’s The Dock of the Bay. ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net Mate, I don’t know how you do it, but the frequency of words I haven’t come across before is actually quite high in your work. I noticed it in your twtxt messages in the past, but your notes are also full of them. I love it, always learning something new. Thank you for teaching me without knowing. In case you’re wondering, “yesternight” and “squalid” are the ones I stumbled across today. :-)

Jimmy Barnes’s American gamble didn’t pay off — but he has no regrets
Cold Chisel was over. America beckoned. And Jimmy Barnes was terrified. This is the story of the album that made him, and the song that saved him. ⌘ Read more

AES-GCM Optimizations Land In Linux 6.19 - Benefiting AMD Zen 3, AVX-512 CPUs Too
Google engineer Eric Biggers who is known for his many Linux crypto subsystem performance optimizations has seen his latest pull requests land in Linux 6.19. Notable among them are some AES-GCM optimizations benefiting AMD Zen 3 processors and separately AVX-512 processors also benefit too from this latest round of optimization work… ⌘ Read more

Coalition has ‘no confidence’ social media ban will work under Labor
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says Australia’s social media ban will not work under Labor, as the federal government rejects YouTube’s claim it will make kids “less safe”. ⌘ Read more