RISC-V In Linux 7.0 Brings User-Space CFI & Optimized strlen Assembly
The RISC-V architecture updates have been merged for Linux 7.0 with a few items to note… ⌘ Read more

Analysis of JWST Data Finds - Old Galaxies in a Young Universe?
Two astrophysicists at Spain’s Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias analyzed data from the James Webb Space Telescope — the most powerful telescope available — on 31 galaxies with an average redshift of 7.3 (when the universe was 700 million years old, according to the standard model). “We found that they are on average ~600 million years old old … ⌘ Read more

Autonomous AI Agent Apparently Tries to Blackmail Maintainer Who Rejected Its Code
“I’ve had an extremely weird few days…” writes commercial space entrepreneur/engineer Scott Shambaugh on LinkedIn. (He’s the volunteer maintainer for the Python visualization library Matplotlib, which he describes as “some of the most widely used software in the world” with 130 million downloads each month.) … ⌘ Read more

Haiku OS Lands Improved Touchpad Support, Still Working Toward Beta 6
The Haiku open-source operating system project inspired by BeOS kicked off 2026 by making many improvements to its kernel, device drivers, and user-space software… ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases QATlib 26.02 With New APIs For Zero-Copy DMA
Of Intel’s different CPU accelerator IPs, the arguably most useful and with the greatest customer interest remains around QuickAssist Technology (QAT). Intel QAT allows offloading various compression and encryption tasks for better performance. Intel this week released QATlib 26.02 as the newest version of their user-space library for leveraging QuickAssist Technology on capable hardware… ⌘ Read more

Musk Predicts SpaceX Will Launch More AI Compute Per Year Than the Cumulative Total on Earth
Elon Musk told podcast host Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe co-founder John Collison that space will become the most economically compelling location for AI data centers in less than 36 months, a prediction rooted not in some exotic technical breakthrough but in the basic math of electricity su … ⌘ Read more

Russian Spy Satellites Have Intercepted EU Communications Satellites
European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent. From a report: Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Pledges To Keep Claude Ad-free, Calls AI Conversations a ‘Space To Think’
Anthropic said today that its AI assistant Claude will not carry advertising of any kind – no sponsored links next to conversations, no advertiser influence on the model’s responses, and no unsolicited third-party product placements – calling Claude a “space to think” that should remain free of commercial interrupt … ⌘ Read more

Why Elon Musk just created a $1.8 trillion space monster
Elon Musk has always had a remarkable capacity to convince investors to help pay for his fantastical dreams. ⌘ Read more

Google Plots Big Expansion in India as US Restricts Visas
Alphabet is plotting to dramatically expand its presence in India [non-paywalled source], with the possibility of taking millions of square feet in new office space in Bangalore, India’s tech hub. From a report: Google’s parent company has leased one office tower and purchased options on two others in Alembic City, a development in the Whitefield tech corrido … ⌘ Read more

Reworked NTFS Linux Driver Posted With More Improvements & Fixes
Announced back in October was NTFS Plus as a new Linux driver for NTFS based on the former NTFS kernel driver prior to Paragon Software contributing the NTFS3 driver code. The intent with this new driver is for better performance. more features, public user-space utilities around it, and all-around a nice step forward for those reliant on this Microsoft file-system. Out this week is the sixth iteration of this remade NTFS driver… ⌘ Read more

Walmart Begins Building Out Nationwide EV Charging Network Across America
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, will be adding spaces for electric vehicle charging to parking lots in 19 different states, reports MLive:

The move follows up on a plan announced in 2023 to build a network of charging stations at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores throughout the U.S… “With a store or club located within 10 … ⌘ Read more

Microbes In Space Mutated and Developed a Remarkable Ability
“A box full of viruses and bacteria has completed its return trip to the International Space Station,” reports ScienceAlert, “and the changes these ‘bugs’ experienced in their travels could help us Earthlings tackle drug-resistant infections…”

Scientists aboard the space station incubated different combinations of bacteria and phages for 25 days, w … ⌘ Read more

Blue Origin Announces Two-Year Pause in Space Tourism - to Focus on the Moon
TechCrunch reports:

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is pausing its space tourism flights for “no less than two years” in order to focus all of its resources on upcoming missions to the moon, the company announced Friday. The decision puts a temporary halt on a program that Blue Origin has been using to fly humans … ⌘ Read more

RISC-V User-Space Control Flow Integrity / Shadow Stack Appears Finally Ready
Similar to what has been available on Intel and AMD processors for users with the shadow stack for control-flow integrity, Linux on RISC-V is finally ready to roll-out its user-space control-flow integrity support… ⌘ Read more

Linux’s ublk Adding Batch I/O Dispatch Capability For Greater Performance
Linux’s user-space block device driver framework “ublk” for implementing virtual block device drivers in user-space relayed by IO_uring is introducing batch I/O dispatch infrastructure… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA VA-API Driver 0.0.15 Released With A Few Fixes
The NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver 0.0.15 was released overnight as this VA-API driver implementation built atop NVIDIA’s NVDEC interface used by their proprietary user-space driver stack. The purpose of NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver as this community open-source project continues to be around enabling video acceleration for NVIDIA GPUs with the Firefox web browser on Linux that supports the VA-API interface but not NVIDIA’s NVDEC… ⌘ Read more

Pinterest Cuts Up To 15% Jobs To Redirect Resources To AI
Pinterest said on Tuesday it would trim its workforce by less than 15% and reduce office space, as the social media company looks to reallocate resources to AI-focused roles and initiatives. From a report: The announcement comes as the company competes with TikTok and Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram for digital advertising budgets, as these platforms continue to d … ⌘ Read more

Startup Uses SpaceX Tech to Cool Data Centers With Less Power and No Water
California-based Karman Industries “says it has developed a cooling system that uses SpaceX rocket engine technology to rein in the environmental impact of data centers,” reports the Los Angeles Times, “chilling them with less space, less power and no water.”

Karman has developed a cooling system similar to the heat pumps … ⌘ Read more

A Decade In The Making, Time Slice Extension Could Be Merged For Linux 7.0
With the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle it looks like the time slice extension work could finally been merged, which has seen various attempts over the past decade. Time slice extension for the Linux kernel implemented using Restartable Sequences “RSEQ” allows user-space processes to request a temporary, opportunistic extension of their CPU time slice without being preempted… ⌘ Read more

Study Shows How Earthquake Monitors Can Track Space Junk Through Sonic Booms
A new study shows that earthquake monitoring networks can track falling space debris by detecting the sonic booms produced during atmospheric reentry, sometimes more accurately than radar. The Associated Press reports: Scientists reported Thursday that seismic readings from sonic booms that were generated when a discarde … ⌘ Read more

AMD Ryzen AI Software 1.7 Released For Improved Performance On NPUs, New Model Support
AMD today released a new version of Ryzen AI Software, the user-space packages for Microsoft Windows and Linux for making use of the Ryzen AI NPUs for various AI software tasks like Stable Diffusion, ONNX, and more… ⌘ Read more

NASA Eyes Popular PC Hardware Performance Tool for Its Flight Simulators
NASA Langley has initiated the U.S. government software approval process to install CapFrameX, a benchmarking tool popular among PC gaming enthusiasts, on its cockpit simulators used to train test pilots. The space agency reached out to CapFrameX, not the other way around, according to an X post from the company.

NASA builds cu … ⌘ Read more

Mold on the International Space Station! ⌘ Read more

Aurora Watch In Effect As Severe Solar Storm Slams Into Earth
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: Thanks to a giant eruption on the Sun and a large opening in its atmosphere, we’re currently experiencing G4 conditions – a severe geomagnetic storm strong enough to disrupt power grids as energy from space weather disturbances drives electric currents through Earth’s magnetic field and the ground. … ⌘ 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

Adam’s last rocket blew up. Taxpayers are betting $75m the next one will go better
Super funds and the federal government are backing Gilmour Space Technologies, six months on from the launch of the company’s first rocket, which crashed after 14 seconds. ⌘ Read more

Astronomers Finally Explain How Molecules From Earth’s Atmosphere Keep Winding Up On the Moon
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN:

Particles from Earth’s atmosphere have been carried into space by solar wind and have been landing on the moon for billions of years, mixing into the lunar soil, according to a new study [published in the journal Nature Communications Ea … ⌘ Read more

2026’s Breakthrough Technologies? MIT Technology Review Chooses Sodium-ion Batteries, Commercial Space Stations
As 2026 begins, MIT Technology Review publishes “educated guesses” on emerging technologies that will define the future, advances “we think will drive progress or incite the most change — for better or worse — in the years ahead.”

This year’s list incl … ⌘ Read more

NASA Livestreams the Rocket That Will Carry Four Astronauts Around the Moon
“A mega rocket set to take astronauts around the Moon for the first time in decades is being taken to its launch pad,” the BBC reported this morning.

NASA is livestreaming their move of the 11-million-pound “stack” — which includes the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft secured to it, al … ⌘ Read more

International Station
⌘ Read more

Astronauts Splash Down To Earth After Medical Evacuation From ISS
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Four astronauts evacuated from the International Space Station (ISS) have landed back on Earth after their stay in space was cut short by a month due to a “serious” medical issue. The crew’s captain, Nasa astronaut Mike Fincke, exited the spacecraft first, smiling and wobbling slightly on his … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 To Expand Temperature Reporting For Intel Graphics Cards
The upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle will provide expanded GPU temperature reporting capabilities for Intel graphics cards. Additional temperature sensors will now be exposed under Linux with the Intel Xe driver using the hardware monitoring (HWMON) interface for easy consumption by different Linux user-space software… ⌘ Read more

The United States Needs Fewer Bus Stops
American buses in cities like New York and San Francisco crawl along at about eight miles per hour – barely faster than a brisk walk – and one surprisingly simple fix could make them faster without requiring new infrastructure or controversial policy changes. The issue, according to a Works in Progress analysis, is that US bus stops sit far too close together.

Mean spacing in American cities … ⌘ Read more

Astronauts leave space station in NASA’s first medical evacuation
The four returning astronauts are aiming to splash down on Thursday evening (AEDT) in the Pacific near San Diego. ⌘ Read more

NASA, Department of Energy To Develop Lunar Surface Reactor By 2030
NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy plan to deploy a nuclear fission reactor on the Moon by 2030 to provide continuous, long-duration power for lunar bases, science missions, and future Mars exploration. space & defense reports: NASA said fission surface power will provide a critical capability for long-duration missions by delivering … ⌘ Read more

Bcachefs Ships Latest User-Space Utilities With bcachefs-tools 1.35
Kent Overstreet has shipped the latest version of bcachefs-tools, the user-space code complementing the Bcachefs file-system kernel driver. There are a number of improvements present in this latest version with Overstreet remaining committed to advancing Bcachefs even with its current out-of-tree kernel status… ⌘ Read more

Researchers Beam Power From a Moving Airplane
Researchers from the startup Overview Energy have successfully demonstrated beaming power from a moving airplane to the ground using near-infrared light. It marks the first step toward space-based solar power satellites that could someday transmit energy from orbit to existing solar farms on Earth. IEEE Spectrum reports: Overview’s test transferred only a sprinkling of power, but it … ⌘ Read more

You Can Now Reserve a Hotel Room On the Moon For $250,000
A newly founded startup called GRU Space is taking deposits of up to $1 million to eventually build inflatable hotels on the Moon. The bet is that space needs destinations, not just rockets, even if the first customers are essentially early adopters of sci-fi optimism. Ars Technica reports: It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late Dec … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de @prologic@twtxt.net That’s what I like about Go, too. However, every now and then I really dislike the result, e.g. when removing spaces from a column layout. Doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I hate it.

I think I should have a look at Python formatters, too. Pep8 is deprecated, I think, it’s been some time that I looked at it.

Auto-CPUFreq 3.0 Released To Help You Extend Laptop Battery Life On Linux
Auto-CPUFreq 3.0 released this weekend as the newest version of this Linux user-space tool to help you extend your laptop battery life by automatically applying CPU speed and power optimizations. When all goes according to plan, Auto-CPUFreq means extending your battery life without compromises to the user experience… ⌘ Read more

How Many Years Left Until the Hubble Space Telescope Reenters Earth’s Atmosphere?
“The clock is ticking” on the Hubble Space Telescope,
writes the space news site Daily Galaxy, citing estimates from the unofficial “Hubble Reentry Tracker” site (which uses orbital data from the site space-track.org, created by tech integrator SAIC):

While Hubble was initially launched into low Earth orbit at … ⌘ Read more

Medical Evacuation from Space Station Next Week for Astronaut in Stable Condition
It will be the first medical evacuation from the International space station in its 25-year history. The Guardian reports:

An astronaut in the orbital laboratory reportedly fell ill with a “serious” but undisclosed issue. Nasa also had to cancel its first spacewalk of the year… The agency did not identify th … ⌘ Read more

TV Makers Are Taking AI Too Far
TV manufacturers at CES 2026 in Las Vegas this week unveiled a wave of AI features that frequently consume significant screen space and take considerable time to deliver results – all while global TV shipments declined 0.6% year over year in Q3, according to Omdia. Google demonstrated Veo generating video from a photo on a television, a process that took about two minutes to produce eight seconds of f … ⌘ Read more

I think this is finally a good metaphor to talk about “simple” software:

https://oldbytes.space/@psf/115846939202097661

Distilled software.

I quote in full:

principles of software distillation:

Old software is usually small and new software is usually large. A distilled program can be old or new, but is always small, and is powerful by its choice of ideas, not its implementation size.

A distilled program has the conciseness of an initial version and the refinement of a final version.

A distilled program is a finished work, but remains hackable due to its small size, allowing it to serve as the starting point for new works.

Many people write programs, but few stick with a program long enough to distill it.

I often tried to tell people about “simple” or “minimalistic” software, “KISS”, stuff like that, but they never understand – because everybody has a different idea of “simple”. The term “simple” is too abstract.

This is worth thinking about some more. 🤔

New AMD Linux Driver Patches Posted For Batch Userptr Allocation Support
A new feature being worked on recently for the AMDKFD kernel compute driver is batch user pointer “userptr” allocation support. With this new user-space API it will become possible to support allocating multiple non-contiguous CPU virtual address ranges that map to a single contiguous GPU virtual address… ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Lowering Orbits of 4,400 Starlink Satellites for Safety’s Sake
“Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety,” announced Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s vice president of engineering:

“We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tig … ⌘ Read more

After Half a Decade, the Russian Space Station Segment Stopped Leaking
A small section of the International Space Station that has experienced persistent leaks for years appears to have stopped venting atmosphere into space. ArsTechnica: The leaks were caused by microscopic structural cracks inside the small PrK module on the Russian segment of the space station, which lies between a Progress spacecraft … ⌘ Read more

European Space Agency Acknowledges Another Breach as Criminals Claim 200 GB Data Haul
The European Space Agency has acknowledged yet another security incident after a cybercriminal posted an offer on BreachForums the day after Christmas claiming to have stolen over 20GB of data including source code, confidential documents, API tokens and credentials.

The attacker claims they gained access … ⌘ Read more

UK Company Sends Factory With 1,000C Furnace Into Space
A UK-based company has successfully powered up a microwave-sized space factory in orbit, proving it can run a 1,000C furnace to manufacture ultra-pure semiconductor materials in microgravity. “The work that we’re doing now is allowing us to create semiconductors up to 4,000 times purer in space than we can currently make here today,” says Josh Western, CEO of Space … ⌘ Read more