AMDGPU Driver Reverts Code For A Number Of Regressions On Linux 6.19
Merged on Friday as part of this week’s DRM kernel graphics driver fixes for the week is addressing a regression affecting many different users with the Linux 6.19 development kernel… ⌘ Read more

ASUS Armoury Driver For Linux 6.19 Picks Up Support For More ASUS Laptops
A new driver in the Linux 6.19 kernel is the ASUS Armoury driver for supporting additional functionality with the ROG Ally gaming handhelds and other ASUS ROG gaming hardware like their laptops. The ASUS Armoury driver builds off the existing ASUS WMI driver but provides some design improvements to make it better than handling it within the existing driver. There is support for adjusting the APU-allocated memory, Intel core count control … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Scheduler Feature Being Disabled Due To Performance Regressions
Queued into tip/tip.git’s “sched/urgent” Git branch today is a patch to disable the kernel scheduler’s NEXT_BUDDY functionality that was re-implemented back during the Linux 6.19 merge window. It turns out to cause some performance regressions that have yet to be otherwise addressed… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Scheduler Feature Being Disabled Due To Performance Regressions
Queued into tip/tip.git’s “sched/urgent” Git branch today is a patch to disable the kernel scheduler’s NEXT_BUDDY functionality that was re-implemented back during the Linux 6.19 merge window. It turns out to cause some performance regressions that have yet to be otherwise addressed… ⌘ Read more

Linux Lands Fix For Its “Subtly Wrong” Page Fault Handling Code For The Past 5 Years
Merged today for the Linux 6.19 Git kernel and then in turn for back-porting to prior Linux kernel series is making the x86 page fault handling code disable interrupts properly. Since 2020 it turns out the handling was subtly wrong but now corrected by Intel… ⌘ Read more

AMD Sends Out Linux Patches For Next-Gen EPYC Features: GLBE, GLSBE & PLZA
Sent out to the Linux kernel mailing list this afternoon were a set of 19 patches in preparing for some new CPU features presumably to be found with AMD’s next-generation EPYC “Venice” processors… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 ATA Fixes Address Power Management Regression For The Past Year
It’s typically rare these days for the ATA subsystem updates in the Linux kernel to contain anything really noteworthy. But today some important fixes were merged for the ATA code to deal with a reported power management regression affecting the past number of Linux kernel releases over the last year. ATAPI devices with dummy ports weren’t hitting their low-power state and in turn preventing the CPU from reaching low-power C-states … ⌘ Read more

The Fastest Human Spaceflight Mission In History Crawls Closer To Liftoff
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad. The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle … ⌘ Read more

The World’s Longest-Running Lab Experiment Is Almost 100 Years Old
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: It all started in 1927, when physicist Thomas Parnell at the University of Queensland in Australia filled a closed funnel with the world’s thickest known fluid: pitch, a derivative of tar that was once used to seal ships against the seas. Three years later, in 1930, Parnell cut the funne … ⌘ Read more

Germany’s EV Subsidies Will Include Chinese Brands
Germany is reinstating EV subsidies after a sharp sales drop, rolling out a 3 billion-euro program offering 1,500-6,000 euros per buyer starting in May and running through 2029. Unlike some neighboring countries, the incentives are open to all manufacturers with a focus on low- and middle-income households. From a report: “I cannot see any evidence of this postulated major i … ⌘ Read more

A Second US Sphere Could Come To Maryland
Sphere Entertainment plans to build a second U.S. Sphere near Washington, D.C., with a smaller 6,000-seat “mini-Sphere” proposed for National Harbor in Maryland. The venue would retain the signature LED exterior and immersive 4D tech of the Las Vegas Sphere, just at a more compact scale. The Verge reports: The second US sphere would be built in an area known as National Harbor in Prince Geor … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Contacted Anna’s Archive To Secure Access To Millions of Pirated Books
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: NVIDIA executives allegedly authorized the use of millions of pirated books from Anna’s Archive to fuel its AI training. In an expanded class-action lawsuit that cites internal NVIDIA documents, several book authors claim (PDF) that the trillion-dollar company directly … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI CFO Says Annualized Revenue Crosses $20 Billion In 2025
According to CFO Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s annualized revenue surpassed $20 billion in 2025, up from $6 billion a year earlier with growth closely tracking an expansion in computing capacity. Reuters reports: OpenAI’s computing capacity rose to 1.9 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 from 0.6 GW in 2024, Friar said in the blog, adding that Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s … ⌘ Read more

Threads Usage Overtakes X On Mobile
New data from Similarweb shows Threads has overtaken X in daily mobile users. However, X still dominates on the web with around 150 million daily web visits compared to Threads’ 8.5 million daily visits. TechCrunch reports: Similarweb’s data shows that Threads had 141.5 million daily active users on iOS and Android as of January 7, 2026, after months of growth, while X has 125 million daily active users … ⌘ Read more

Congress Wants To Hand Your Parenting To Big Tech
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): Lawmakers in Washington are once again focusing on kids, screens, and mental health. But according to Congress, Big Tech is somehow both the problem and the solution. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing [Friday] on “examining the effect of technology on America’s youth.” Witnesses war … ⌘ Read more

Rackspace Customers Grapple With ‘Devastating’ Email Hosting Price Hike
Rackspace’s new pricing for its email hosting services is “devastating,” according to a partner that has been using Rackspace as its email provider since 1999. From a report: In recent weeks, Rackspace updated its email hosting pricing. Its standard plan is now $10 per mailbox per month. Businesses can also pay for the Rackspace Email P … ⌘ Read more

New Patches From Valve Bring AMDGPU Power Management Improvements For Old GCN 1.0 GPUs
Last year Valve contractor Timur Kristóf managed to improve the AMDGPU driver enough for old GCN 1.0 Southern Islands and GCN 1.1 Sea Islands GPUs that with Linux 6.19 AMDGPU is now the default for those GPUs with better performance, RADV Vulkan out-of-the-box, and other benefits. He isn’t done though improving the old GCN 1.0/1.1 era GPU support on this modern AMDGPU kernel driver - a new patch series posted today brings som … ⌘ Read more

The Rise and Fall of the American Monoculture
The American monoculture – the era when three television networks, seven movie studios, and a handful of record labels determined virtually everything the country watched and heard – is collapsing under the weight of algorithmic recommendation engines and infinite streaming options. An estimated 200 million tickets were sold for “Gone With the Wind” in 1939 when the U.S. population … ⌘ Read more

Asus Confirms It Won’t Launch Phones in 2026, May Leave Android Altogether
Asus won’t release any new smartphones this year, and that may signal the brand’s exit from the Android space altogether. From a report: Asus Chairman Jonney Shih confirmed the news at an event in Taiwan on Jan. 16. According to a machine-translated version of quotes reported by Inside, Shih said, “Asus will no longer add new … ⌘ Read more

Great article by Ploum about chatbots/AI and education: https://ploum.net/2026-01-19-exam-with-chatbots.html

WhatsApp Texts Are Not Contracts, Judge Rules in $2M Divorce Row
A British painter who argued that her ex-husband had signed over their $2 million north London home through WhatsApp messages has lost her High Court appeal after the judge ruled that the sender’s name appearing in a chat header does not constitute a legal signature.

Hsiao-mei Lin, 54, presented messages from her former husband Audun Mar Gudmundsso … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming May Soon Let You Stream Your Own Games for Free - If You Watch Ads
Microsoft appears to be preparing an ad-supported tier for Xbox Cloud Gaming that would let players stream games they’ve purchased digitally without needing a Game Pass subscription, according to a Windows Central report citing sources familiar with the plans. Users last week began n … ⌘ Read more

ERP Isn’t Dead Yet - But Most Execs Are Planning the Wake
Seven out of ten C-suite executives believe traditional enterprise resource planning software has seen its best days, though the category remains firmly entrenched in corporate IT and opinion is sharply divided on what comes next. A survey of 4,295 CFOs, CISOs, CIOs and CEOs worldwide found 36% expect ERP to give way to composable, API-driven best-of-breed systems, w … ⌘ Read more

Valve Has ‘Significantly’ Rewritten Steam’s Rules For How Developers Must Disclose AI Use
Valve has substantially overhauled its guidelines for how game developers must disclose the use of generative AI on Steam, making explicit that tools like code assistants and other development aids do not fall under the disclosure requirement. The updated rules clarify that Valve’s focus is not on “ … ⌘ Read more

Netflix Wants Plots Explained Multiple Times Because Viewers Are on Their Phones, Matt Damon Says
Netflix has begun asking filmmakers to adjust their storytelling approach to account for viewers who are scrolling through their phones while watching, according to Matt Damon. The traditional action movie formula involves three major set pieces distributed across the first, … ⌘ Read more

Dumbphone Owners Have Lost Their Minds
The growing enthusiasm among Gen Z for ditching smartphones in favor of basic “dumbphones” may be overlooking a significant cognitive reality, according to a WIRED essay that draws on the 1998 “extended mind hypothesis” by philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers. The hypothesis argues that external tools can extend the biological brain in an all but physical way, meaning your phone isn’t just a … ⌘ Read more

NYSE Eyes 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading With Weekend Access and Same-Day Settlement
BrianFagioli writes: The New York Stock Exchange, owned by Intercontinental Exchange, is developing a platform for trading tokenized versions of U.S. listed stocks and ETFs around the clock, pending regulatory approval. The system would combine the NYSE’s existing matching engine with blockchain-based settlement … ⌘ Read more

IMF Warns Global Economic Resilience at Risk if AI Falters
The “surprisingly resilient” global economy is at risk of being disrupted by a sharp reversal in the AI boom, the IMF warned on Monday, as world leaders prepared for talks in the Swiss resort of Davos. From a report: Risks to global economic expansion were “tilted to the downside,” the fund said in an update to its World Economic Outlook, arguing that growth was … ⌘ Read more

China Birth Rate Falls To Lowest Since 1949
China’s birth rate fell to 5.6 per 1,000 people in 2025, the lowest figure since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, and the country’s total population contracted by 3.39 million, the sharpest decline since the Mao Zedong era. The drop marks the fourth straight year of population decline and comes despite government efforts to encourage childbearing, including subsidies of abou … ⌘ Read more

China Consumed 10.4 Trillion Kilowatt-Hours of Electricity In 2025 - Double the US
Slashdot reader hackingbear summarizes this report from Bloomberg: China consumed totally 10.4 trillion kilowatt hours (10.4 petaWh) in 2025 according to data from the National Energy Administration. That’s the highest annual electricity use ever recorded by a single country, and doubled the amount used by th … ⌘ Read more

More US States are Putting Bitcoin on Public Balance Sheets
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:

Led by Texas and New Hampshire, U.S. states across the national map, both red and blue in political stripes, are developing bitcoin strategic reserves and bringing cryptocurrencies onto their books through additional state finance and budgeting measures. Texas recently became the first state to purchase bitc … ⌘ Read more

Is the Possibility of Conscious AI a Dangerous Myth?
This week Noema magazine published a 7,000-word exploration of our modern “Mythology Of Conscious AI” written by a neuroscience professor who directs the University of Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science:
The very idea of conscious AI rests on the assumption that consciousness is a matter of computation. More specifically, that implementing the right kind of computation, … ⌘ Read more

EHT Astronomers Will Film Swirling of a Supermassive Black Hole for the First Time
“Astronomers are preparing to capture a movie of a supermassive black hole in action for the first time,” reports the Guardian:

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will track the colossal black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy throughout March and April with the aim of capturing footage of the swirli … ⌘ Read more

Porsche Sold More Electrified Cars in Europe Last Year than Pure Gas-Powered Models
Porsche made an announcement Friday. In Europe they sold more electrified Porsches last year than pure combustion-engined models, reports Electrek:

in Europe, a majority (57.9%) of Porsche’s deliveries were plug-ins, with 1/3 of its European sales being fully electric. For models that have no fully electric … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc6 Released With More Bug Fixes
Linus Torvalds just tagged the Linux 6.19-rc6 kernel in working toward the stable Linux 6.19 kernel release likely on 8 February… ⌘ Read more

Young College Graduates Suddenly Aren’t Finding Jobs Faster Than Non-College Graduates
U.S. college graduates “have historically found jobs more quickly than people with only a high school degree,” writes Bloomberg.

“But that advantage is becoming a thing of the past, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.”

“Recently, the job-finding rate for young college-edu … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Landing Fixes For USB2/USB3 Issues With Apple M1/M2 Macs
Ahead of the Linux 6.19-rc6 kernel release due out later today are two USB fixes for Apple M1 / M2 Macs running the mainline kernel. These Apple USB fixes are also marked for back-porting to the stable Linux kernel series… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc6 Bringing Sound Fixes For ROG Xbox Ally X & Various Laptops
With the Linux 6.19-rc6 kernel release due out later today there will be a number of sound fixes/workarounds to note from the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X gaming handheld to several newer laptops seeing fixes for their audio support… ⌘ Read more

Why It Is Difficult To Resize Windows on MacOS 26
The dramatically larger corner radius Apple introduced in macOS 26 Tahoe has pushed the invisible resize hit target for windows mostly outside the window itself – roughly 75% of the 19Ö19 pixel clickable area now lies beyond the visible boundary. In previous macOS versions, about 62% of that resize target would fall inside the window corner.

Apple removed the visible resi … ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases Open3D 0.19 With Experimental Cross-Platform GPU Support Using SYCL
Not to be confused with the Open 3D game engine, Intel’s Intelligent Systems Lab Organization released Open3D 0.19 as the latest iteration of this open-source library for 3D data processing in Python and C++… ⌘ Read more

Linux Hit a New All-Time High for Steam Market Share in December
A year ago the Steam Survey showed a 2.29% marketshare for Linux. Last May it reached 2.69%, its highest level since 2018. November saw another all-time high of 3.2%.

But December brought a surprise, reports Phoronix:
Back on the 1st Valve published the Steam Survey results for December 2025 and they put the Linux gaming marketshare at 3.19%, a … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc5 Brings Fix For Newer NVIDIA GPUs, Logitech HID++ For Anywhere 3S & Fixes
In addition to Linus Torvalds doing some vibe coding and more with his new “AudioNoise” project this week, Linux 6.19 kernel development ticked back up with the holidays having passed. A variety of fixes made it into today’s Linux 6.19-rc5 release in working toward v6.19 stable in early February… ⌘ Read more

Latest Linux 6.19 Code Fixes Rust Binder Driver, Adds Intel Nova Lake Point S To MEI
Ahead of the imminent Linux 6.19-rc5 release, the char/misc pull request was merged earlier today with a notable fix to the Rust Binder driver as well as adding the Intel Nova Lake Point S device ID to the MEI driver… ⌘ Read more

Linux Lands Safeguard For RISC-V Against Another Microarchitectural Attack Vector
Increasingly complex RISC-V cores aren’t magically immune to the speculative execution / side-channel vulnerabilities that have rattled the x86_64 and ARM64 landscape for years. Following recent work on Spectre V1 handling for RISC-V in the Linux kernel, merged this weekend for Linux 6.19-rc5 is another RISC-V attack vector safeguard… ⌘ Read more

How the Free Software Foundation Kept a Videoconferencing Software Free
The Free Software Foundation’s president Ian Kelling is also their senior systems administrator. This week he shared an example of how “the work we put in to making sure a program is free for us also makes it free for the rest of the world.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, like everyone everywhere, the FSF increased its videoconferen … ⌘ Read more

Logitech MX Anywhere 3S Mouse With Linux 6.19 Now Supports High Resolution Scrolling
For those that happen to have a Logitech MX Anywhere 3S mouse connected via Bluetooth, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel release is enabling HID++ support for it to enjoy high resolution scrolling and other functionality of the updated protocol… ⌘ Read more

Revised Steam Survey For December 2025 Puts Linux Gaming Marketshare At 3.58%
Back on the 1st Valve published the Steam Survey results for December 2025 and they put the Linux gaming marketshare at 3.19%, a 0.01% dip from November. But now the December results have been revised with a nice bump to the Linux marketshare… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc4 Released Following A Quiet Holiday Week, 6.19-rc8 Already Planned
Following the holidays, Linux 6.19-rc4 was released today in working toward the Linux 6.19 stable kernel release in early February… ⌘ Read more

Patches Posted For Bringing Rock Band 4 PS4 / PS5 Guitar Support To Linux
Following Linux 6.19 adding support for CRKD guitar controllers, new patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list are bringing some additional guitar controllers to Linux. This latest work is around enabling the Rock Band 4 guitars for the PlayStation 4 and PS5 consoles to work under Linux… ⌘ Read more

RADV Driver Lands Another Big Improvement For Early AMD GCN Graphics Cards
Beyond Linux 6.19 switching old AMD GCN 1.0 and 1.1 GPUs to the AMDGPU kernel driver by default for better performance, RADV out-of-the-box, and more, there are still more improvements planned for these aging AMD graphics cards. Timur Kristóf of Valve’s Linux graphics team has been leading the effort to enhance the old graphics card support and on Friday night merged a big improvement for the RADV Vulkan driver in Mesa 26.0… ⌘ Read more