Binance Sues WSJ, Panicked By Gov’t Probes Into Sanctioned Crypto Transfers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Binance is hoping that suing (PDF) The Wall Street Journal for defamation might help shake off a fresh round of government probes into how the cryptocurrency exchange failed to detect $1.7 billion in transfers to a network that was funding Iran-backed terror groups. The laws … ⌘ Read more

D7VK 1.5 Released With Direct3D 3 Now Implemented Over Vulkan
The open-source D7VK project began to implement Direct3D 7 over Vulkan similar to DXVK and VKD3D-Proton providing support for newer Direct3D APIs atop Vulkan. With succeeding releases D7VK was extended to Direct3D 6 too and then Direct3D 5 support. Now with today’s D7VK 1.5 release, Direct3D 3 is implemented for faster acceleration using Vulkan… ⌘ Read more

Yann LeCun Raises $1 Billion To Build AI That Understands the Physical World
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a new Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta’s former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Monday it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models. LeCun argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not lan … ⌘ Read more

A 1,300-Pound NASA Spacecraft To Re-Enter Earth’s Atmosphere
Van Allen Probe A, a 1,300-pound (600 kg) NASA satellite launched in 2012 to study Earth’s radiation belts, is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere this week. While most of it is expected to burn up during descent, “some components may survive,” reports the BBC. “The space agency said there is a one in 4,200 chance of being harmed by a piece of the p … ⌘ Read more

OpenSSL 4.0 Alpha 1 Released With Encrypted Client Hello “ECH” & Other Features
The first alpha release of OpenSSL 4.0 is now available for testing. With OpenSSL 3.0 they are removing support for SSLv3 that has been deprecated for over one decade while also dropping OpenSSL engines and other removals while also adding in some new features… ⌘ Read more

exfatprogs 1.3.2 Brings Improvements To mkfs.exfat, fsck.exfat
For those making use of Microsoft’s exFAT file-system under Linux, tagged today was exfatprogs 1.3.2 as the newest update to these open-source user-space programs for going along with the Linux kernel’s exFAT file-system driver… ⌘ Read more

Robotic Surgery Performed Remotely on Patient 1,500 Miles Away
“A surgeon in London says he has performed the UK’s first long-distance robotic operation,” reports the BBC, “on a patient located 1,500 miles (2,400km) away…”

Leading robotic urological surgeon Professor Prokar Dasgupta said it felt “almost as if I was there” as he carried out a prostate removal on [62-year-old] Paul Buxton… It is hoped tha … ⌘ Read more

FFmpeg 8.1 Preparing For Release With Vulkan Improvements, JPEG-XS & More
FFmpeg developers are preparing to soon release FFmpeg 8.1 with some great new features and other improvements… ⌘ Read more

Experimental Intel Nova Lake P Device Bits Merged For Mesa 26.1
Merged this week for Mesa 26.1 are the initial Nova Lake P “NVL-P” device bits for Intel’s ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D drivers. But this support isn’t yet exposed by default and not yet ready for end-users with more driver changes still to be published… ⌘ Read more

OpenAI’s Head of Robotics Resigns, Says Pentagon Deal Was ‘Rushed Without the Guardrails Defined’
In a tweet that’s been viewed 1.3 million times in the last six hours, OpenAI’s head of robotics announced their resignation. They said they “care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together,” so this “wasn’t an easy call,” but offered this reason for resigning:

… ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 15.1 On Track With Better Realtek WiFi & KDE Desktop Install Option
The effort around improving FreeBSD on laptops continues full speed ahead in 2026. The upcoming FreeBSD 15.1 remains on track with not only having a KDE desktop option from FreeBSD’s text-based installer UI but also improved Realtek WiFi adapter support is on the way, updating of the graphics drivers from Linux, and more… ⌘ Read more

Resources For GNOME Adds Intel Xe GPU Power Usage & Intel NPU Frequency Reporting
Resources, the modern GNOME GTK4/libadwaita-based GUI application for system resource monitoring and an alternative to GNOME System Monitor, is out with a new update. Resources 1.10.2 brings some nice improvements for those running GNOME on modern Intel hardware… ⌘ Read more

The National Videogame Museum Acquires the Mythical Nintendo Playstation
The National Videogame Museum has acquired an extremely rare MSF-1 development kit, believed to be the oldest surviving prototype of the canceled Nintendo PlayStation. Engadget reports: Nicknamed the Nintendo PlayStation, the idea was that a new CD-ROM format backed by Sony would be added to the cartridge-based Super NES, resultin … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.345 Released With New ARM Shader Instrumentation Extension
Vulkan 1.4.345 released overnight as the latest routine spec update to this graphics and compute API. There is one new extension besides a handful of different clarifications and corrections to various elements of the spec… ⌘ Read more

Wayland 1.25 RC1 Released With Improved Documentation, Minor Changes
Simon Ser announced the release today of Wayland 1.25 RC1 (Wayland v1.24.91) in working toward this next stable release… ⌘ Read more

Rust 1.94 Released With Stable Support For AVX-512 FP16 Intrinsics, Array Windows
Rust 1.94 was rolled out today as the newest routine stable update for the Rust programming language… ⌘ Read more

AMD DCN 4.2 IP, GFX 12.1 Updates For AMDGPU Driver In Linux 7.1 Plus GCN 1.1 APU DC
AMD has begun staging AMDGPU and AMDKFD kernel driver improvements for the upcoming Linux 7.1 cycle… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 To Prevent Intel NPUs From Being Exhausted By Single Programs
The Intel IVPU accelerator driver will be introducing limits on Intel NPU resource usage by non-root user-space programs beginning with the Linux 7.1 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Computer Scientists Caution Against Internet Age-Verification Mandates
fjo3 shares a report from Reason Magazine: Effective January 1, 2027, providers of computer operating systems in California will be required to implement age verification. That’s just part of a wave of state and national laws attempting to limit children’s access to potentially risky content without considering the perils such laws the … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu Still Figuring Out A Plan For Dealing With California’s Digital Age Assurance Act
The talk this week among open-source projects from Linux distributions to app stores like Flathub is how to deal with California’s latest insanity: the Digital Age Assurance Act. California’s AB 1043 state law is mandating that operating systems – Linux included – collect age information during account setup and exposing that age to eligible apps beginning on 1 January 2027. That leaves much uncertainty for Linux distri … ⌘ Read more

Accenture Acquires Ookla, Downdetector As Part of $1.2 Billion Deal
Accenture is acquiring Downdetector parent company Ookla from Ziff Davis in a $1.2 billion deal to bolster its network analytics and visibility tools for telecoms, hyperscalers, and enterprises. “The deal, which will transfer all of Ziff Davis’s Connectivity division to Accenture, includes Ookla’s Speedtest, Ekahau, and RootMetrics,” notes The … ⌘ Read more

Yay, groff 1.24.0 is out and this is fixed now (on the left):

Intel Preps A Lot Of Xe3 Code For Linux 7.1 Kernel
Intel yesterday sent out their first “drm-xe-next” pull request to DRM-Next of new Xe kernel graphics driver improvements they have readied for their eventual upstreaming into the Linux 7.1 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Iowa County Rolls Out Extensive Zoning Rules For Data Centers
Linn County, Iowa has adopted what may be one of the nation’s strictest local zoning ordinances for data centers, requiring detailed water studies, formal water-use agreements, 1,000-foot residential setbacks, noise and light limits, and infrastructure compensation. “But seated beneath a van-sized American flag hanging from the rafters of the drafty Pa … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Will Power Off The System By Default If A Fatal ACPI Error Occurs
An important default kernel behavior change worth noting in advance for the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel is that the system will attempt to power-off automatically if encountering any fatal ACPI errors. Up to now the Linux kernel has just logged ACPI fatal errors… ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases llm-scaler-vllm 0.14.0-b8, Talks Up 1.49x Performance With BMG-G31
Intel kicked off the new month by releasing the latest version of LLM Scaler vLLM (llm-scaler-vllm) as their Docker-based solution for running vLLM on Intel Battlemage GPUs for AI inferencing… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic’s Claude Pass ChatGPT, Now #1, on Apple’s ‘Top Apps’ Chart After Pentagon Controversy
“Anthropic may have lost out on doing business with the US government,” reports Engadget, “but it’s gained enough popularity to earn the number one spot on the App Store’s Top Free Apps leaderboard.”

Anthropic’s Claude AI assistant had already leaped to the #2 slot on Apple’s chart by late Friday … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Expected To See Nice Improvements For Reducing HRTICK Timer Overhead
A big set of kernel patches look like they will be submitted for the Linux 7.1 kernel cycle this spring to optimize the scheduler HRTICK timer and in turn allowing it to be enabled by default… ⌘ Read more

‘World’s Largest Battery’ Soon At Google Data Center: 100-Hour Iron-Air Storage
Interesting Engineering reports:

US tech giant Google announced on Tuesday that it will build a new data center in Pine Island, Minnesota. The new facility will be powered by 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy from wind and solar, coupled with a 300-megawatt battery, claimed to be the ‘world’s largest’, with a 30-gi … ⌘ Read more

AMD Prepares Linux For Instruction-Based Sampling Improvements With Zen 6
A set of patches recently posted to the Linux kernel mailing list have now been queued up to a tip/tip.git branch for planned introduction in Linux 7.1. These patches are for enhancing the Linux perf subsystem support for AMD Instruction-Based Sampling (IBS) improvements with next-gen Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more

Verisilicon DC8200 & Coreboot Framebuffer Drivers Sent To DRM-Next For Linux 7.1
The first DRM-Misc-Next pull request was submitted this week to DRM-Next as new kernel graphics/display driver features to begin queuing for the Linux 7.1 kernel that will release mid-year. Among the early code for DRM-Next are two new drivers… ⌘ Read more

Smartphone Market To Decline 13% in 2026, Marking the Largest Drop Ever Due To the Memory Shortage Crisis
An anonymous reader shares a report: Worldwide smartphone shipments are forecast to decline 12.9% year-on-year (YoY) in 2026 to 1.1 billion units, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. This decline will bring … ⌘ Read more

Google Launches Nano Banana 2 Model With Faster Image Generation
Google has launched Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image), a faster, more realistic image generation model that becomes the default across Gemini, Search, Lens, and Flow. TechCrunch reports: The new Nano Banana 2 retains some of the high-fidelity characteristics of the Pro model but produces images faster. The company says you can create images … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Looks To Support Extended Attributes On Sockets For New GNOME & systemd Functionality
While the Linux 7.0 feature merge window ended this past weekend and that next kernel release won’t debut as stable until April, there are already features out on the horizon that are being positioned for likely merging into the Linux 7.1 kernel assuming no issues appear or objections raised by Linus Torvalds. One of the features already looking like it will be submitted for Linux 7.1 is supporting extended attri … ⌘ Read more

ZCULL Support For Nouveau + NVK Brings Some Small Performance Gains
Merged yesterday to Mesa 26.1 for the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver “NVK” is ZCULL support for more efficient rendering and bringing some small performance gains to this open-source NVIDIA driver stack… ⌘ Read more

Intel Vulkan Driver Sees Some Minor Optimizations For DX12 Games On Linux
Merged to Mesa 26.1-devel this week is a minor improvement to the Intel “ANV” Vulkan driver providing some slight enhancements to DirectX 12 games running on Linux by way of Valve’s Steam Play with VKD3D-Proton… ⌘ Read more

GStreamer 1.28.1 Adds Whisper-Based Speech-To-Text, AV1 Stateful V4L2 Decoder Support
Building off January’s GStreamer 1.28 release with many new features, GStreamer 1.28.1 was released today as a point release bringing various fixes and minor additions to this open-source multimedia framework… ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Experiment Ports Most of Next.js API in ‘One Week’ With AI
An anonymous reader shares a report: A Cloudflare engineer says he has implemented 94% of the Next.js API by directing Anthropic’s Claude, spending about $1,100 on tokens. The purpose of the experimental project was not to show off AI coding, but to address an issue with Next.js, the popular React-based framework sponsored by Vercel.

Acco … ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.0.1 Released With Important Security Fix For OOB Memory Access From WebGPU
Mesa 26.0.1 is now available as the first point release of this quarter’s Mesa 26.0 series. Besides the usual bug fixing, Mesa 26.0.1 is more pressing than usual since it contains a security fix for possible out-of-bounds memory access in WebGPU contexts from web browsers… ⌘ Read more

Sub-Scheduler Support Could Be One Of The Most Exciting Features To Come For Linux 7.1
While there are many great Linux 7.0 features with that still-young development cycle, looking ahead to Linux 7.1 this summer there’s an interesting feature on track: cgroup sub-scheduler support for sched_ext… ⌘ Read more

Systing 1.0 Released For Rust-Based eBPF-Based Tracing Tool Leveraging AI
Josef Bacik, of Btrfs notoriety before leaving Meta and stepping back from kernel development last year, announced the release of Systing 1.0. Systing is a newer eBPF-tracing tool for Linux complete with AI integration… ⌘ Read more

COSMIC Epoch 1.0.8 Released With More Desktop Refinements
While System76 has been hard at work on a redesigned Thelio desktop chassis design, this hasn’t slowed down their software work. Today they shipped COSMIC Epoch 1.0.8 as the newest work on their open-source, Rust-based desktop environment used by their in-house Pop!_OS Linux distribution as well as found in other Linux distributions too… ⌘ Read more

D7VK 1.4 Released With More Improvements For Old Direct3D On Vulkan Under Linux
D7VK is the open-source project that began implementing the Direct3D 7 APIs atop Vulkan and with time the scope expanded to include Direct3D 6 support as well as Direct3D 5 support. Out today is D7VK 1.4 for continuing to enhance the support for these older D3D versions on Vulkan under Linux… ⌘ Read more

LLVM/Clang 22 Compiler Officially Released With Many Improvements
LLVM/Clang 22.1 was released overnight as the first stable release of the LLVM 22 series. This is a nice, feature-packaged half-year update to this prominent open-source compiler stack with many great refinements… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6.1 Released With Initial Batch Of Bug Fixes
Following last week’s Plasma 6.6 release, KDE developers today shipped Plasma 6.6.1 as the first point release with an assortment of different bug fixes… ⌘ Read more

CGIT 1.3 Web Frontend For Git Released After Six Years
Jason Donenfeld of WireGuard and Linux cryptography fame has taken a break from that to release a new version of CGIT, the lightweight web interface for Git repositories. CGIT 1.3 is the first new release in six years and comes with a lot of changes… ⌘ Read more

Mesa PanVK Driver Seeing Up To 25.7x Speedup For MSAA
The open-source PanVK driver providing Vulkan support for modern Arm Mali graphics hardware is seeing big speed-ups in the multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) performance in Vulkan tests as a result of new code merged today to Mesa 26.1… ⌘ Read more

Stressful People in Your Life Could Be Adding Months To Your Biological Age
A study published last week in PNAS found that people who regularly cause problems or make life difficult – whom the researchers call “hasslers” – are associated with measurably faster biological aging in those around them, at a rate of roughly 1.5% per additional hassler and about nine months of additional biological a … ⌘ Read more

Intel ANV Driver Sees Several Vulkan Video H.265 Encode Fixes
For those interested in Vulkan Video on the Intel “ANV” open-source Linux driver, merged last week to Mesa 26.1-devel were some H.265 encode fixes… ⌘ Read more

EVs Are Already Making Your Air Cleaner, Research Shows
Fossil fuels produce NO2, which is linked to asthma attacks, bronchitis, and higher risks of heart disease and stroke, according the EV news site Electrek. But the nonprofit news site Grist.org notes a new analysis showing that those emissions decreased by 1.1% for every increase of 200 electric vehicles — across nearly 1,700 ZIP codes.
“A pretty small addition of … ⌘ Read more