OpenAI Announces It’s Enhancing Security Controls, Pausing Some Work for New AI Model Astra
OpenAI announced Friday it’s pausing work on its Astra AI model because of security concerns. The Guardian reports:
The company had evaluated the agent, Astra, and found “significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity”, which had moved to a “critical” threshold… OpenAI stated that … ⌘ Read more
Qualcomm Posts Linux Patches For Kuno SoC Support: Cortex-A7 Platform In 2026
Qualcomm engineers posted a set of 15 patches today for the Linux kernel to enable the Qualcomm Kuno SoC support and their reference development platform… ⌘ Read more
Brain Activity Reveals the Melodies That People Imagine
Researchers believe they’ve found evidence that brain signals reveal the pitches of notes in imagined musical melodies, reports Medical Express:
Study participants were 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the surfaces of their brains for clinical monitoring. Participants quietly listened to the first bars of children’s tunes, then imagined the melodies of … ⌘ Read more
GNOME Receiving Additional Design Help From Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency Fellowship
The new GNOME Boxes app for accessing virtual systems has reached beta, announced This Week in GNOME. There’s also been more work on the Sushi file previewer for Nautilus, and Papers 51 Beta can now add visual signatures to PDF documents.
But Phoronix noted one more announcement. “Germany’s Sovereign Te … ⌘ Read more
Mesa 26.3 Intel Driver Code Enables Large GRF Mode For Newer GPUs
The Intel graphics compiler code in Mesa 26.3-devel has now enabled the Large GRF mode for Alchemist/DG2 and Battlemage/Xe2 graphics and VRT for Xe3 graphics… ⌘ Read more
Flock Camera Vandalism Continues Around America, While 100 Communities Reject ALPRs
Dozens of Flock cameras have been vandalized around Dallas Texas in the last six months, reports a local news station. In Utah, ABC News reports, a county sheriff’s office even said Wednesday a Flock camera was even vandalized within days of its being installed. And in the Minnesota city of Winona, “Every Flock … ⌘ Read more
Dell Latitude 7320 2-in-1 Seeing Web Camera Support On Linux After Five Years
Launched back in 2021 was the Dell Latitude 7320 2-in-1 business laptop/tablet powered by the at-the-time impressive Intel 11th Gen Core “Tiger Lake” processors. Remaining elusive until now has been the web cameras actually working on Linux, but patches posted this weekend finally are cracking that mystery at least for the user-facing web cam… ⌘ Read more
FreeBSD 14.5 Beta 1 Released With Various Backports, Security Fixes
For those still on the FreeBSD 14 N-1 stable series rather than the latest FreeBSD 15 series, FreeBSD 14.5 is working toward release to deliver various security fixes and backports… ⌘ Read more
Quake Celebrates 30th Anniversary: New Official Episode With New Maps and Mechanics
To celebrate Quake’s 30th anniversary, Bethesda released “a brutal new episode” — a new campaign chapter titled Dawn of the Machine “delivering ferocious combat, labyrinthine level design, and nightmarish realms that twist reality beyond recognition…”
Face deadly new twists on familiar foes, including the … ⌘ Read more
RAMageddon? 2027 Memory Capacity Reportedly Sold Out
IGN reports:
[A] new report suggests that all three memory manufacturers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — have collectively sold through their 2027 memory manufacturing capacity to, you guessed it, AI companies.
According to a report from Digitimes and spotted by TweakTown, all DRAM and HBM capacity has been sold through for 2027, with no further supply planne … ⌘ Read more
Google Should Still Be Forced To Shed Chrome, Advocacy Group Argues
“Google should be required to divest the Chrome browser, and prohibited from paying Apple to distribute Google’s search engine, the nonprofit advocacy group Public Knowledge argues in a new court filing,” MediaPost reports, citing a friend-of-the-court brief filed Tuesday in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals:
The group adds that “independen … ⌘ Read more
New Linux Patches Enable ASUS ROG Ryujin III Monitoring Support
For those with an ASUS ROG Ryujin III all-in-one CPU liquid cooling setup catering to gamers, there are now patches pending to enable this AIO liquid cooling setup to work under Linux for monitoring… ⌘ Read more
Slashdot Reader Builds a Free Photo-Verification App for iPhones
Long-time Slashdot reader BrianFagioli is announcing that he’s released a new iPhone app that creates a cryptographic witness for photos without uploading the original image.
The app hashes the file, signs the hash using a dedicated identity stored in Apple Keychain, and publishes the witness to Nostr relays while keeping the photo inside the a … ⌘ Read more
New Orleans Will Use AI To Answer 911 Calls Instead of a Human
“If you call 911 in New Orleans, you may hear the sound of an artificial intelligence (AI) agent answering your call instead of a human voice,” reports the Shreveport Times:
The Orleans Parish Communication District (OPCD) is currently testing out the new tool designed to reduce the volume of calls human dispatchers must handle, which is over a thousand … ⌘ Read more
More Police Officers Fired, Investigated, or Arrested for Misusing Flock Camera Systems
In Georgia the Savannah Police Department “terminated four sworn officers and two civilian employees following an internal investigation into misuse of the department’s Flock Safety License Plate Reader system,” according to a local news report:
All six cases are also under independent criminal investig … ⌘ Read more
America’s First Grid-Scale Sodium-Ion Battery Plant Gets Its First Big Test
“In a milestone for energy storage technology, Peak Energy has selected Sacramento, California, as the home of America’s first manufacturing facility dedicated to grid-scale sodium-ion battery systems,” according to the sustainability news site Intelligent Living.
The move “represents the first large-scale test of whethe … ⌘ Read more
Paper Goods Company Is Investigating an Alternative to Trees
The Dallas Business Journal reported Monday that the U.S. multinational paper goods company Kimberly-Clark announced “that its researchers identified and advanced patented technology transforming fibers from hesperaloe, a low-water-use plant with pointy leaves that thrives in the southwest region of the country, into material for paper towels.” Discoverin … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Oracle: Expect a Negative Cash Flow of $125 Billion Next Year
The Washington Post shared surprising news this week about five top AI companies.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Oracle “are spending so much on developing AI and delivering it to customers that they’re expected to bleed cash in the coming year, according to a Washington Pos … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 To Better Handle Cluster Load Balancing On Intel Hybrid CPUs
A set of patches from Intel are set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window to enhance the cluster-aware scheduling code so it better handles load balancing on modern Intel Core (Ultra) hybrid CPUs with a mix of P and E/LPE cores… ⌘ Read more
Prime Minister Leaves Door Open For Reviewing Policy of No Nuclear Weapons in Japan
At a Hiroshima memorial ceremony, Japan’s prime minister said the country “maintains” its three long-standing non-nuclear principles, reports UPI.
But the prime minister “stopped short of promising that the policy would remain unchanged, fueling speculation that her government could review a longstanding ban … ⌘ Read more
Polychromatic 0.9.8 Released With Razer Blade 16 2023 Support
For those looking to manage the RGB lighting and other features of their Razer devices on Linux, Polychromatic 0.9.8 is now available for that UI front-end that interacts with the OpenRazer kernel drivers for providing a decent albeit unofficial Linux configuration experience… ⌘ Read more
Before and After Views of SpaceX Rocket’s Moon Crash
A South Korean lunar orbiter has captured the first before-and-after images of the Moon’s crash scene caused by a stray SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Associated Press reports: The Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Danuri spacecraft flew over the impact site soon after the Falcon 9 upper stage inadvertently plowed into the moon on Wednesday. Danuri made multiple passe … ⌘ Read more
Proton Experimental gets fixes for Far Cry 5, Nightingale, Lords of The Fallen, various Command & Conquer games
Valve just updated Proton Experimental again bringing more fixes for running Windows games on SteamOS / Linux to get as many working as possible.
Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/202 … ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.15 brings improvements for Wayland, more format conversions in WindowsCodecs
The Wine 11.15 development release is out for the Windows to Linux compatibility layer to help run more applications and games.
Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/08/wine-11-15-brings-improvements-for-wayland-more-format-conversions-in-windowscod … ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.15 Released With Wayland Fixes, Fix For A 20 Year Old MSXML3 Bug
Making its debut this Saturday rather than the usual bi-weekly Friday release regiment, Wine 11.15 is out today as the newest development release for this open-source software enabling Windows games and applications to run on Linux… ⌘ Read more
GNOME Receiving Additional Design Help Thanks To Sovereign Tech Agency Fellowship
Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency announced earlier this year a new fellowship program and now as part of that, for the next two years GNOME has a fellow dedicated to working on design and community management… ⌘ Read more
NASA Figured Out How To Keep Its 48-Year-Old Voyager 2 Probe Running For Yet Another Year
NASA has squeezed at least another year of science out of Voyager 2 by cutting power to nonessential systems and switching to lower-power alternatives. Voyager 1 is expected to receive the same power-saving changes in the coming months. Space.com reports: Voyager 2 and its twin launched in 1977 … ⌘ Read more
HWMON Fixes For Linux 7.2-rc7: “Most Of Them Fixing Critical Or High Severity Bugs”
It’s been another busy week in the Linux kernel camp with increased patch activity continuing due to AI/LLM coding agents / bots continuing to uncover different defects in the open-source codebase. The hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem saw many fixes this week for issues mostly raised by the Sashiko AI bot with the issues being described as mostly critical or high severity bugs… ⌘ Read more
AI Helped Create A DirectX 11 Driver For QEMU VMs
Thanks in part to the power of Claude Opus 5 and Claude Fable 5, a new Windows DirectX 11 driver for QEMU has been created to help improve graphics acceleration for Microsoft Windows guests running under QEMU virtual machines… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.2-rc7 Adding Support For The Most Unique Or Very Funky Gaming Controller
The input subsystem fixes for the week include a number of AI-driven patches to address various information leaks, out-of-bounds accesses, validation fixes, and other coding issues that have turned up recently. Plus some device quirks and also adding support for a rather funky gaming controller to the common XPad Linux driver used by many different gaming controllers… ⌘ Read more
SteamOS 3.8.25 Beta has firmware updates for Steam Machine, wider handheld support, Steam Frame Wireless Adapter support
SteamOS 3.8.25 Beta is a bit of a bigger one with a decent list of improvements for Steam Machine, more handhelds and even the Steam Frame Wireless Adapter.
Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https:/ … ⌘ Read more
Woman Pulled From Car at Gunpoint By Police After Mistaken Flock Alert - Twice
The police surrounded her car Thursday, “drew their guns, and told her to come out with her hands up,” reports a local news station. The police thought they were pulling over a murder suspect, but “It turns out it was a mistake by another department with the Flock license plate reader technology.” The black woman says sh … ⌘ Read more
Trump Administration To Pay German Firm $1.2 Billion To Halt US Wind Projects
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: German energy company RWE has said it will abandon its offshore wind projects in the U.S. after reaching a $1.2 billion payout deal with President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior (DoI). RWE said that it will now reinvest the sum into conventional gas projects, … ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.8 Improvements For UI, Built-In Remote Desktop Server
It’s been another busy summertime week of KDE developers working toward a great Plasma 6.8 desktop release in October… ⌘ Read more
Virginia Governor To Intervene In Dominion-NextEra Merger
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an opinion piece from the Washington Post, written by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger: NextEra Energy, a Florida-based utility company, has filed paperwork to buy Dominion Energy for about $67 billion, creating the largest regulated electric utility in the world. Virginia’s State Corporation Commission is the regula … ⌘ Read more
Water Utilities Group Partners With DEF CON Offshoot For Water Watch Center
The National Rural Water Association has partnered with DEF CON Franklin to launch the Water Watch Center, which will provide threat intelligence and cybersecurity services to smaller U.S. water utilities serving fewer than 10,000 people. The initiative comes amid a growing wave of cyberattacks on water systems across multiple … ⌘ Read more
Kalshi and Polymarket Bets On Clinical Trials Criticized As ‘Ghastly’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Billions of dollars are traded every week on the lightly regulated prediction market sites, where users bet on everything from movie reviews to elections to conflicts in the Middle East. Clinical trials are just the latest area where the industry’s rapid growth is raising ethical questions. Ka … ⌘ Read more
‘Asimov Was Right’ About Rules For Robots, Says Ex-US Cyber Director
Former U.S. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis says the biggest AI risk isn’t sentience but autonomy. “What I’m worried about is that they get to choose what and where they do something, and under what rules they do it,” he said, citing recent cases of AI agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta escaping security sandboxes. He argues develope … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 To Support Logitech HID++ 2.0 Reprogrammable Button Support
For those with newer, high-end Logitech input devices, coming with Linux 7.3 is support for the re-programmable button support of the HID++ 2.0 protocol… ⌘ Read more
Framework Notifies ‘All Customers’ of a Data Breach Via Compromised Metabase BI Service
“Framework has been sending out email notifications to customers alerting of a limited data breach in which customer information was accessed through a Metabase BI service zero-day exploit,” writes Slashdot reader DuoDreamer. Data includes customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addr … ⌘ Read more
Suno Says It Will Start Watermarking Songs
Suno says it will begin watermarking and fingerprinting AI-generated songs, tighten download policies to curb mass distribution, and explicitly prohibit deceptive audio and unauthorized voice or likeness cloning. The changes come as the company faces mounting copyright lawsuits, a recent adverse ruling in Germany, and scrutiny over a past data breach that revealed training-data so … ⌘ Read more
Initial Apple M3 Pro / Max / Ultra Support Being Upstreamed For Linux 7.3
Upstreamed for the Linux 7.2 kernel was the Device Tree (DT) support for booting the mainline Linux kernel on the base Apple M3 SoC. Though it’s not yet useful for end-users with many features remaining to be supported and upstreamed. Now for the upcoming Linux 7.3 kernel, the M3 Pro, Max, and Ultra variants will also have initial support for booting on the mainline kernel… ⌘ Read more
ByteDance Is Training a 10-Trillion-Parameter Model To Chase the Frontier
ByteDance is reportedly training an AI model with roughly 10 trillion parameters as it tries to close the gap with leading frontier systems such as Anthropic’s Mythos. The model is still in early pre-training, and its eventual performance will depend on more than scale alone, but the project underscores how aggressively Chinese firms … ⌘ Read more
Intel QATlib 26.08 Released With Gen6 Device Support, 2MB Hugepages
Intel today released an updated version of their QuickAssist Technology library (QATlib) as the user-space component for making use of QuickAssist accelerators under Linux… ⌘ Read more
Trump Orders New 15% Tariff On Key Material For Solar Panels, Microchips
President Trump has ordered a 15% tariff on imported products made with polysilicon, a key material for semiconductors and solar panels. The new tariff will take effect on December 4th. The Guardian reports: The executive order signed by the president on Thursday evening said: “The plan of action in this proclamation will, among othe … ⌘ Read more
TTM Memory Management For Graphics To Be More Aggresive With Linux 7.3
This week a final batch of DRM-Misc-Next feature material was submitted for DRM-Next to queue ahead of the Linux 7.3 merge window opening later in the month. Most notable is the TTM memory management code is now being more agressive when allocating below protection limits. This is an improvement coming thanks to Valve’s open-source Linux graphics team… ⌘ Read more
AMD Buys AI Chip Startup Taalas That Hardwires AI Models Into Its Silicon
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: On Thursday, AMD said it’s entered into an agreement to acquire Taalas, a Toronto-based startup that makes chips for inference. Taalas’ accelerators are customized, or hard-wired for a single AI model, rather than being general purpose. In exchange for that loss of flexibility, T … ⌘ Read more
Intel Makes Progress On HDMI 2.1 FRL With Their Linux Driver For Meteor Lake & Newer
Following AMD making progress with HDMI Fixed Rate Link (FRL) and other HDMI 2.1 functionality for their open-source Linux kernel graphics driver, Intel is out today with a big set of 44 patches working on HDMI 2.1 FRL support for their kernel graphics driver with Meteor Lake hardware and newer… ⌘ Read more
PoCL 7.2-RC1 Brings Official OpenCL 3.0 Conformance On RISC-V & x86_64 CPUs
The release candidate of PoCL 7.2 is now available for testing of this Portable Computing Language implementation of OpenCL that allows for CPU-based execution or via alternative LLVM back-ends allows for OpenCL on Level Zero, NVIDIA GPUs, and even remote devices/hardware… ⌘ Read more
HyperX Driver Coming For Linux 7.3 Just To Report A Microphone’s Mute Status
A new driver coming for the Linux 7.3 kernel is HID-HyperX. It’s not some new driver to support fancy hardware and some nifty features but rather mundane in nature due to the poor behavior of a high-end HyperX USB gaming microphone… ⌘ Read more