My mate and I went on a hike on Saturday to Germany’s probably most famous tiniest hamlet. Well, not even hamlet, much smaller. It’s a farm (087) and a closed train station (088, 096-102). Okay, and four other houses. But that’s it. Durlesbach is known from the old folk song „Auf de schwäbsche Eisebahne“, literally “On the Swabian Railway”. According to the German Wikipedia article the German Folk Song Archive counts about 100 variants on the lyrics with up to 27 verses. The song enumerates a few stations and the most common version is about a farmer who ties his goat to the back of a train in order to save the freight costs. Alternatively, he’s used to that from previous ox cart trips where the goat just follows along. Of course, the goat doesn’t make it and the angry farmer throws the disembodied goat head at the conductor.

The weather was perfect. Sunny and clouds alternating, lower twenty-something degrees Celcius. Very beautiful. We took the train to Aulendorf and started our hike.

The level railway crossing in 051-054 is always closed and only opened on demand. I didn’t even know that this kind existed. But it’s really quiet there. We pressed the lever to call the train dispatcher who then opened the barriers for us. A few seconds later we told him that we successfully reached the other side and he closed them again. We were confused at first because the sign said only for authorized personnel and we were just two random hikers. But we gave it a shot and the dispatcher was super nice, no worries at all.

The river is always the Schussen. 092-094 is the creek Durlesbach, entering the Schussen, though. The Durlesbach station is now privately owned, unfortunately. However, it’s nicely kept in shape and there’s a cool monument with a historic steam engine, two wagons and four bronze figures reenacting the scene where the farmer is about to tie his goat, being observed by his wife and the conductor.

You can get all sorts of drinks in exchange for a donation at the display. These proceeds are used for the upkeep. I had an ACE juice which was absolutely delicious. A few hundred meters after we continued, I thought that I really should have bought a second one. It was just too good.

In Mochenwagen, we took the train back to Aulendorf. The Mochenwangen replacement service (we luckily didn’t have to take it, in fact, no idea when it is really in place) is 800 meters away from the train station. That fucking nuts.

We then changed trains to Ulm, just because that one arrived two minutes after we reached Aulendorf. But we spontaneously exited early in Biberach because we had some time to kill for the actual train to Stuttgart. The train station underpass there has some really beautiful graffiti. Shortly after, my second camera battery was flattened, too.

Going home worked out amazingly. When I switched again in Geislingen, my connecting train was already waiting on the other platform. 15 seconds before scheduled departure, the doors closed. One second to departure, we took off. That’s very rare nowadays and it was kind of magical to witness this first hand looking at the station clock.

Sorry for the many photos. I was busy sifting through them and only kept about 20%. Still too many, I know. Enjoy, nevertheless: https://lyse.isobeef.org/2026-10-03-wanderung-von-aulendorf-ueber-durlesbach-nach-mochenwangen/

@zyak@twtxt.z85b.xyz Bwahahaahaaahaaaa, I didn’t see that one coming! :‘-D

We switch back to normal time on the last Sunday in October. Fuck daylight saving time!

@jecxjo@sh0.xyz Time to get some pigs, they love to be acorn-fattened!

Radio Broadcasters Support America’s ‘AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act’
Last month, the U.S. House passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. They call it “a bipartisan effort to require AM radio in new vehicles,” adding that the bill now “awaits action in the Senate, where a companion measure has already garnered support, according to public records.”

Broadcasters said AM radio … ⌘ Read more

Long-Time Slashdot Reader Announces New Open Source Web Browser ‘Northstar’
Long-time Slashdot reader Andreas® announces Northstar, a “minimalist” web browser written entirely from scratch in C — now available in version 1.0.11:

One window, one page, one process — about 160,000 lines of original C, small enough for one person to read and audit end-to-end. It carries no upstream browser engine: no … ⌘ Read more

This Virus Stole a Human Gene and Won’t Let Go of It
“Scientists have discovered a virus that is a tiny bit human, carrying a gene it stole from our ancestors about 100,000 years ago,” writes the New York Times. “And this virus may be using our own gene to infect us.”

Phys.org explains that it’s “both an important gene for brain function and a jumping gene capable of moving and inserting itself into genomes.”

BC200 is … ⌘ Read more

As ‘Falcon Heavy’ Launches, SpaceX Plans Dragon and Falcon 9 Phase Out As Starship Ramps Up
Spaceflight Now reports:

“A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Florida Thursday night on a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, America’s spy satellite agency… The NRO has previously flown payloads on 22 Falcon 9 rockets but this is the first time it has used the … ⌘ Read more

President Trump Doxxes Senator’s Cellphone in Push For Permanent Daylight Saving Time
U.S. President Donald Trump “doxxed” a U.S. senator today, writes the Washington Sun, by posting his cell phone number “as part of a plea for his Truth Social followers to badger his Republican ally into making daylight saving time permanent.”

When The Washington Sun called the number minutes after Trump’s … ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux - Down To 3.05% For September?
Phoronix reports:

Steam on Linux use in March hit an all-time high of around 5.33% marketshare. Since then it pulled back to around 4% while for September 2026 the Steam Survey results… indicate a rather steep decline of 0.85%, down to 3.05%. Meanwhile macOS is at 1.92% and Microsoft Windows at 95%… Steam’s Survey reports a 7.42% increase in Chinese use, up to 31.39% overall of t … ⌘ Read more

Someone Got Doom In an SQL Database
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Rendering Doom in a database is obviously a bad idea,” Lukas Vogel writes in a lengthy blog post explaining how exactly he managed to render Doom using an SQL database. OK, that’s not entirely accurate. The SQLDoom project uses a small Python client to handle input and output, drive the game’s timing, and display each frame to the screen. Behi … ⌘ Read more

AI Has Finally Learned To Play Stratego
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, NYU, and Stanford have built an AI called Ataraxos that finally cracked Stratego, beating four-time world champion Pim Niemeijer 15 games to one with four draws. Its key advantage was a second neural network that estimates the identities of hidden enemy pieces, letting the system search plausible game states rather than brute-force a massive hidden-informa … ⌘ Read more

Apex Compute Developing Open-Source Mesa Vulkan Driver For Their Hardware
Apex Compute is the company started in California in 2024 that aims to produce high-efficiency AI accelerators for real-time edge AI inferencing. So far they have an FPGA prototype for licensing and deployment and carries the bold claim of being “20x faster than the NVIDIA Jetson” and at under 10W and one fifth the cost. Making Apex Compute much more interesting to us now is that they are developing an open-source, Mesa-based Vulkan driver … ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux Dives Down To 3.05% For September
Steam on Linux use in March hit an all-time high of around 5.33% marketshare. Since then it pulled back to around 4% while for September 2026 the Steam Survey results are now in and it’s clocking in just above 3%… ⌘ Read more

PS5 Emulation Is Suddenly Making Big Strides On PC
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For a long time, PC gamers could access many PlayStation 5 games only if the publisher invested in a bespoke port (something Sony has recently said it will be scaling back). Now, though, rapid advancements in PS5 emulators and other tools are making recent PlayStation titles increasingly playable on generic PCs. SharpE … ⌘ Read more

‘Xbox Is Not For Sale,’ Says Microsoft’s Gaming Chief
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says Microsoft has no plans to sell the gaming business, telling The New York Times that “Xbox is not for sale” and that the company intends to take a long-term view. Windows Central reports: Microsoft’s vast layoffs across the summer have hit Xbox in their thousands, with studios like Ninja Theory on the path to being closed, and others like Double … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

Crazy, who comes up with things like that?

I didn’t come up with it, but I was close, I guess. DOS is so small, you don’t have much of a choice but to search for “anything related to time”. There aren’t that many syscalls/functions. You’ll quickly notice that there’s no global tick counter. So what else is there? Hmm, “get the mtime of a file” is pretty much the only other time-related thing. And which file is “stable”, probably allocated just once at boot? Mark Aitchison tried to use NUL, which is a pretty good idea. Thinking about it in retrospect, stdin does indeed make more sense, though, because that object really does get allocated just once at “boot” and then it stays the same. That’s not guaranteed for NUL (although just as likely).

But, it is possible in DOS to move “the console” to a serial port:

I wonder what that does to my little uptime program. :-)

Today, I also learned that -R is an alias for -r in rm.

Ah, I remember that. Dug it up and saved it in the blog: -R is more portable/consistent: http://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-09-30/0/POSTING-en.html

Proposal To Set ARM64 Kernel Stack Size At Boot Time To Reduce Memory Consumption
A proposal was posted this week to the Linux kernel mailing list by a Google engineer to make it easier for ARM64 Linux to adjust the kernel stack size. The motivation for doing so to configure the kernel stack size during boot time is on reducing system memory consumption… ⌘ Read more

Mesa Developers To Work Toward Eliminating TGSI IR
TGSI was the intermediate representation (IR) developed for Mesa’s Gallium3D drivers by Tungsten Graphics at the time. It worked fine more than a decade ago but since then the Mesa front-ends and hardware drivers have largely transitioned over to the superior NIR format. Work is underway toward eliminating TGSI in the Mesa codebase… ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de OS/2?

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I hadn’t thought about that in 20+ years… In high school, I had a friend who was a die-hard OS/2 Warp fanboy, but I never got into it (and wound up jumping ship to Linux in college).

Branch Target Reuse, BTR: New Spectre V2 Attack Targeting JIT Compilers
It’s been a while since any new Spectre vulnerabilities have come to light but that’s changing today. The embargo has now lifted on BTR, Branch Target Reuse as a new Spectre-V2 attack affecting just-in-time (JIT) compilers… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.3 Enables Intel’s New Jay Shader Compiler By Default, Compile Times 55% Faster Or 66% Faster Than Windows
Over the past year Jay has been in development as a new open-source shader compiler for Intel GPUs. Alyssa Rosenzweig has been leading its development since joining Intel in 2025. For Mesa 26.3 the Jay shader compiler is being enabled by default for modern Intel graphics hardware and is around ~10% faster than the existing BRW compiler code… ⌘ Read more

“Shiva” Being Developed For Mesa Vulkan Drivers, Akin To Gallium3D
Shiva is entering development for Mesa Vulkan drivers as a new framework akin to Gallium3D but for Vulkan drivers rather than OpenGL. It’s going to be some time before the work will come to fruition but should hopefully lead to more code sharing and a better Mesa Vulkan driver development experience in the future… ⌘ Read more

@zyak@twtxt.z85b.xyz Sounds great! Next time, you have to snap a pic or two. :-)

SpaceX Launches Starship Into Orbit
SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time, successfully deploying 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites after overcoming an early Raptor 3 engine shutdown during ascent. “SpaceX plans to eventually deploy 100,000 upgraded Starlink V3s to expand the company’s wireless satellite internet services,” notes Space.com. Here’s the latest update from the report:
SpaceX has decided to return Starship … ⌘ Read more

King in the Mountain is like if Dwarf Fortress was a mini casual incremental
Time for you to check out King in the Mountain if you like casual incremental games, with a demo available that works great on Linux systems.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/king-in-the-mountain-is-like-if-dwarf-fortress-was-a-mini-casual … ⌘ Read more

FEX code cache enabled for Proton Experimental (ARM) to improve frame timings
Valve have upgraded Proton Experimental (ARM) with a feature that should hopefully improve some frame timings for devices like the Steam Frame.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/fex-code-cache-enabled-for-proton-experimental-arm-to-improve-frame- … ⌘ Read more

New Tin-based Solar Cells Trap Heat 1,000 Times Longer, Could Beat 33% Limit
Could this push solar cell efficiency beyond the theoretical 33% limit? Interesting Engineering reports:

Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that tin-based perovskite solar cells can slow heat loss from high-energy “hot electrons…”

When sunlight strikes a panel, photons jump-start elect … ⌘ Read more

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Absolutely! “Angel Dust” was (and still is) my absolute favorite album of all time, from any band. It is (and remains) that damn good. 🤘

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, some letters are really unreadable. And I always, always read the “s” as an “f”. Every time.

Yeah, I find it telling when Nazis use Fraktur. Very interesting, I wasn’t aware that occupied regions couldn’t read the orders.

AI Finds So Many Linux Bugs, Canonical Changes to a Two-Week Stable Release Update Cycle
“Finding vulnerabilities faster also puts pressure on Linux distributions to fix and deliver patches faster,” writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli

AI has transformed bug discovery from “a manual, time-intensive process into a highly automated engine,” notes Canonical’s blog, leading to a “recent expl … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 Continues With Last Minute Tweaks & Fixes
Even with this week’s KDE Akademy conference and releasing KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta 2, KDE developers still found time to land last minute changes for Plasma 6.8 plus ongoing early work toward Plasma 6.9… ⌘ Read more

SteamOS 3.9.2 Beta brings fixes for VRR, VR Streaming, Remote Play, Boot Time and more
A bumper weekend of Steam updates - with a SteamOS 3.9.2 Beta now available with a whole bunch of extra fixes and improvements for all devices.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/steamos-3-9-2-beta-brings-fixes-for-vrr-vr-stre … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks. 😅 I didn’t check the time, but I guess something between 15 and 30 minutes? 🤔

Approaching A 10 Second Linux Kernel Build
The coffee window is closing. Going back many years with the time it’s taken to compile the Linux kernel has been a well known opportunity for a coffee break or even eating a meal during the lengthy Linux kernel build process. Even when the Linux kernel was much smaller than it is today, with the hardware at the time it would often be a very time consuming process… Thus incredible to think that we are now on the horizon of a ten second clean, default kernel build on … ⌘ Read more

Oops. Pay closer attention next time. I accidentally made some art, I guess:

Rogue OpenAI Agent Tried to Breach Government Site in May When Prompted for Simple Data-Retrieving Tasks
OpenAI’s artificial intelligence “went rogue this year in at least four additional incidents,” the New York Times reported Wednesday, “hacking and trying to break into government and university websites without being instructed to do so, according to researchers and govern … ⌘ Read more

The shutters weren’t closed yet, so I noticed some nice color reflections outside. I checked the other cardinal direction and lo and behold: https://lyse.isobeef.org/2026-09-21-abendhimmel/ Just in time. Contrary to what I first thought, I hadn’t missed the best part yet. :-)

AMD BC-250 Continues Being Improved Under Linux With Patches Now Enabling The PSP
The AMD BC-250 as the product designed at the time for cryptocurrency mining and based on a cut-down Sony PlayStation 5 APU continues having an interesting second-life being re-tasked for Linux use from general purpose workloads to AI. Sent out this weekend were the latest Linux kernel patches for continuing to enable more of the BC-250… ⌘ Read more

@david@daiwei.me @movq@www.uninformativ.de Yup, no issues. Only @bmallred@staystrong.run’s feed is broken for me for some time.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, the partition stuff with disklabels is what I’m absolutely not used to. I need to invest more time learning this. Not just using it, but how and where is it represented on disk and all that.

I carry my notebook/netbook around a lot. 😅 Watching movies in bed, for example.

I think I’ll stick with NetBSD for a while. It works surprisingly well, it’s new stuff to explore, it’s fast, and then there’s this:

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@netbsd/112446618914747900

Gentoo (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/AI_policy) might be another idea, but I’m afraid that the little netbook might be too slow for that? Or are there binary packages? No idea, it’s been ages since I touched this distro.

(Regarding Linux in general … we all know what Linus said. I’m not sure where this project is heading.)

HellOo Ol’friend, happy seeing you again! I hope life has been kind to you all this time 👋

AI Insiders Issue New Warnings - Including Former Anthropic Engineer Jacob Coxon
Neither OpenAI or Anthropic is acting responsibly, warned AI researcher Jacob Coxon when resigning last week from Anthropic. But just hours earlier, OpenAI VP of Research Aidan Clark had posted “For the first time, I am asking myself if things are moving too fast. I’m honestly not sure, but I am sure that it would be go … ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Build Times Ready To Be Significantly Reduced With Latest Patches
The past few weeks we have eagerly been following a Linux kernel patch series after AI found some major bottlenecks in the Linux kernel build code. With AI helping to address these bottlenecks, Linux kernel build times are substantially reduced. These optimizations might be ready in time for Linux 7.4 for reducing incremental kernel build times as much as around 70%. This week the latest iteration of these patches were posted by Arm engi … ⌘ Read more

Journalist Calls Out ‘Collective Amnesia’ of Schools’ Romance With Big Tech Over AI
“Turns out, Silicon Valley isn’t especially altruistic,” writes the nonprofit education news site The 74. They’re reading a new book promising “the inside story of how Big Tech catalyzed, co-opted, and ultimately came to capture computer science and AI education in America”. Written by
New York Times business re … ⌘ Read more

Nuke your neighbours in the massively multiplayer RTS game ‘OpenFront’ now on Steam
OpenFront has jumped over from being a browser game to a Steam release, and I can see it easily sucking away lots of my time firing off nukes at my neighbours.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/09/nuke-your-neighbours-in-the-massive … ⌘ Read more

America Acknowledges for the First Time: It Has Deployed Weapons In Space
Tuesday U.S. Space Force chief Douglas Schiess said his branch of the U.S. military operates “on-orbit weapons,” reports Reuters, to defend “against space-enabled attacks.” He promised “disciplined and responsible choices” when scaling America’s orbital defense arsenal in the coming years.

NPR calls this week’s reveleations “rem … ⌘ Read more

Ex-Google DeepMind Researcher Also Warns AI Could ‘Kill All Humans’. But Meta’s Zuckerberg Believes Safety is Up to Each AI Company
Reuters reports that a former Google DeepMind employee “became the latest AI researcher to warn that the technology could ‘kill all humans’, saying time could be running out to avoid the outcome:

Public alarm about the po … ⌘ Read more

Adafruit’s New CircuitPython ‘Turbo’ Brings Native Code To Tiny Boards
Targeting students and beginners, Adafruit released “CircuitPython” in 2017 (as a derivative of the MicroPython microcontroller-optimized programming language).

Now Adafruit managing director Phillip Torrone (also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone) brings this update:

Adafruit has published CircuitPython Turbo, a workflow that compile … ⌘ Read more

As Part of California’s Coast Begins to Crumble, Is the Clock Ticking on Moving Radioactive Waste?
“As parts of the Southern California coastline crumbled into the sea, slammed by intense waves and flooding in recent days, oceanographer Kim McCoy had one thing on his mind,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

He was thinking about “the nuclear waste set in concrete on the beach n … ⌘ Read more

@itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com Wow, this is the very first time I ever come across YouTube Music. :-O