Dual-PCB Linux Computer With 843 Components Designed By AI Boots On First Attempt
Quilter says its AI designed a complex Linux single-board computer in just one week, booting Debian on first power-up. “Holy crap, it’s working,” exclaimed one of the engineers. Tom’s Hardware reports: LA-based startup Quilter has outlined Project Speedrun, which marks a milestone in computer design by AI. The … ⌘ Read more
MI6 Chief: We’ll Be as Fluent in Python As We Are in Russian
The new chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service told officers this week that they must become as fluent in programming languages like Python as they are in foreign languages like Russian as the spy agency adapts to what she described as a space between peace and war. Blaise Metreweli, MI6’s first female chief and previously the service’s direc … ⌘ Read more
#MaradoWeekly #WeeklyPlant Week 50
Like Australia, Denmark Plans to Severely Restrict Social Media Use for Teenagers
“As Australia began enforcing a world-first social media ban for children under 16 years old this week, Denmark is planning to follow its lead,” reports the Associated Press, “and severely restrict social media access for young people.”
The Danish government announced last month that it had secured an agreement b … ⌘ Read more
The Opt-In Proactive & Crash Time Data Collection On Valve’s Steam Deck
Valve’s Steam Deck with SteamOS features built-in crash data collection as well as for logging other system events worth having knowledge about like the split-lock detection and other events. This is all opt-in by users for data collection by Steam, but for those curious about a bit more insight into this Steam Deck data collection, a presentation at this past week’s Linux Plumbers Conference dove into the matter… ⌘ Read more
Purdue University Approves New AI Requirement For All Undergrads
Nonprofit Code.org released its 2025 State of AI & Computer Science Education report this week with a state-by-state analysis of school policies complaining that “0 out of 50 states require AI+CS for graduation.”
But meanwhile, at the college level, “Purdue University will begin requiring that all of its undergraduate students demonstrate basic … ⌘ Read more
Linux 6.19-rc1 Released From Japan
The Linux 6.19-rc1 kernel is out to cap off the Linux 6.19 merge window. The kernel release is coming the better part of a day earlier due to Linus Torvalds being in Japan for this past week’s Linux Plumbers Conference and Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit… ⌘ Read more
System76 Launches First Stable Release of COSMIC Desktop and Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS
This week System76 launched the first stable release of its Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment, reports 9to5Linux.
Announced in 2021, it’s designed for all GNU/Linux distributions — and it shipping with Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS (based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS):
Previous Pop!_OS releases used a version of the COSMIC desktop tha … ⌘ Read more
‘Free Software Awards’ Winners Announced: Andy Wingo, Alx Sa, Govdirectory
This week the Free Software Foundation honored Andy Wingo, Alx Sa, and Govdirectory with this year’s annual Free Software Awards (given to community members and groups making
“significant” contributions to software freedom):
Andy Wingo is one of the co-maintainers of GNU Guile,
the official extension language of the GNU operating … ⌘ Read more
Startup Successfully Uses AI to Find New Geothermal Energy Reservoirs
A Utah-based startup announced last week it used AI to locate a 250-degree Fahrenheit geothermal reservoir, reports CNN. It’ll start producing electricity in three to five years, the company estimates — and at least one geologist believes AI could be an exciting “gamechanger” for the geothermal industry.
[Startup Zanskar Geotherma … ⌘ Read more
Exciting Laptop & Gaming Handheld Device Improvements Merged For Linux 6.19
Merged during this second week of the Linux 6.19 feature merge window were the many x86 platform driver changes. As usual, much of the x86 platform driver activity surrounds bettering Linux hardware laptop support but also a growing number of handheld computers / gaming devices… ⌘ Read more
Ukrainians Sue US Chip Firms For Powering Russian Drones, Missiles
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of Ukrainian civilians filed a series of lawsuits in Texas this week, accusing some of the biggest US chip firms of negligently failing to track chips that evaded export curbs. Those chips were ultimately used to power Russian and Iranian weapon systems, causing wrongful deaths last … ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.0-rc2 Released With 28 Known Bug Fixes
Following last week’s Wine 11.0-rc1 release that marked the feature freeze as well in working toward Wine 11.0 in January, out today is Wine 11.0-rc2… ⌘ Read more
New Patches Lay Out Linux Kernel Adjustments For RISC-V RVA23 Hardware
With the first of RISC-V RVA23-compatible hardware expected to be released in 2026, we are beginning to see more Linux developers prepare for this RVA23 profile and the now-mandated extensions. Sent out this week was an initial “request for comments” patch series on RVA23 adjustments for the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more
Washington Post’s AI-Generated Podcasts Rife With Errors, Fictional Quotes
The Washington Post’s top standards editor Thursday decried “frustrating” errors in its new AI-generated personalized podcasts, whose launch has been met with distress by its journalists. From a report: Earlier this week, the Post announced that it was rolling out personalized AI-generated podcasts for users of the paper’s mobil … ⌘ Read more
ReBAR Code Cleaned Up For Linux 6.19 Along With A Few New PCIe Controller Drivers
All of the PCI subsystem updates were merged last week for the nearly-over Linux 6.19 merge window. Standing out this cycle are Resizable BAR improvements as well as introducing a few new PCIe controller drivers… ⌘ Read more
Wells Fargo CEO Says More Job Cuts Coming at the Bank as AI Prompts ‘Efficiency’
Wells Fargo expects more job cuts and higher severance costs in this quarter that ends in three weeks, bank CEO and President Charlie Scharf said Tuesday at an investors conference in New York. He’s also betting on AI to drive efficiency and, eventually, further workforce reduction.From a report: “As we’ve gone through th … ⌘ Read more
#MaradoWeekly #WeeklyPlant Week 49
Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ
A study this week has found that shoppers using Instacart are often charged different prices for identical products at the same store at the same time, even when selecting in-store pickup rather than delivery. The Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive policy group, and Consumer Reports organized nearly 200 volunteers across four cities to simultaneously … ⌘ Read more
Budgie 10.10 Desktop Approved For Fedora 44 Packaging, Fedora Budgie Spin All-Wayland
In addition to approving Fedora Cloud switching /boot to a Btrfs subvolume, another change approved this week by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) is for shipping the Budgie 10.10 desktop packages in Fedora 44… ⌘ Read more
Collapsed luxury caravan manufacturer’s staggering debt revealed
Zone RV plunged into administration last week, leaving customers, suppliers, employees and taxpayers in a $40 million hole. ⌘ Read more
‘You have to fight’: Timor-Leste marks 50 years since Indonesian invasion
Survivors still have clear memories of the invasion by Indonesia, as Timor-Leste this week commemorates the beginning of a brutal 24-year occupation. ⌘ Read more
Wells says ‘gut reaction’ to travel claims fair but she has ‘upheld’ rules
Communications Minister Anika Wells accepts her taxpayer-funded travel claims have prompted a “gut reaction” in people, after a week of scrutiny over her expenses. ⌘ Read more
Xbox Is Bleeding Out
Microsoft’s Xbox consoles were conspicuously absent from Black Friday’s winners, failing to crack the top three in U.S. sales during one of the retail calendar’s most important weeks. According to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, the PlayStation 5 captured 47% of Black Friday week console sales ending November 29, followed by the Nintendo Switch 2 at 24% and – somewhat remarkably – the NEX Playground, a Kinect-like Android device … ⌘ Read more
India’s Aviation Crisis Is All About Too Big to Tame
India’s dominant airline IndiGo has cancelled roughly 3,000 flights since last week after new pilot fatigue regulations collided with technical issues and the seasonal schedule shift, stranding more than half a million passengers and forcing aviation authorities to reverse course on the safety rules they had just implemented.
InterGlobe Aviation, IndiGo’s parent company, … ⌘ Read more
Linux 6.19 Enables Per-CPU BIO Caching By Default For Helping Performance
Last week saw the main set of block and IO_uring feature patches for the Linux 6.19 merge window but some additional block subsystem material was merged on Monday. There are various NVMe updates now merged plus enabling per-CPU BIO caching by default to help with file-system performance… ⌘ Read more
Prosecution tells jury accused lied when denying involvement in alleged murder
The prosecution has begun its closing arguments in the final stages of Jodie Hill’s three week murder trial following the brutal killing of an elderly man in his Dimboola home almost three years ago. ⌘ Read more
New bushfire threat for Tasmanian town, as people told ‘leave immediately’
On the same day that residents in one Tasmanian community are returning to find if their homes are still standing after a bushfire last week, residents in one area are told to ‘leave immediately’ due to a new threat. ⌘ Read more
Travelling teacher brings instrumental music to regional schools
Tina Greenfield drives 350 kilometres each week to teach music to students at five schools in regional Queensland. ⌘ Read more
Man and woman charged over fatal Logan shooting
Police charge a 28-year-old woman with murder over the shooting death of a 41-year-old in Slacks Creek last week. A 42-year-old man is also facing charges over the incident. ⌘ Read more
Bulahdelah farmers count cost of devastating bushfire
Farmers and business on the Mid North Coast are reeling after a fire tore through the area last week, destroying homes and forcing families to evacuate properties. ⌘ Read more
Idaho Lab Produces World’s First Molten Salt Fuel for Nuclear Reactors
America’s Energy Department runs a research lab in Idaho — and this week announced successful results from a ground-breaking experiment. “This is the first time in history that chloride-based molten salt fuel has been produced for a fast reactor,” says Bill Phillips, the lab’s technical lead for salt synthesis. He calls it “a major … ⌘ Read more
Arm MPAM Driver Upstreamed To The Linux 6.19 Kernel
The ARM64 code changes were merged last week into the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel. The most notable of the ARM64 architecture changes this cycle is landing the Arm MPAM driver for Arm’s Memory System Resource Partitioning and Monitoring… ⌘ Read more
Rajwinder Singh found guilty of Toyah Cordingley’s 2018 murder
It took a jury in the Supreme Court in Cairns seven hours to reach the unanimous guilty verdict after an almost four-week retrial. ⌘ Read more
Why picking up her phone made Samantha question her ability as a new mum
Readers share how they approached their online and social media use in the weeks immediately after giving birth. ⌘ Read more
All of Russia’s Porsches Were Bricked By a Mysterious Satellite Outage
An anonymous reader shared this report from Autoblog:
Imagine walking out to your car, pressing the start button, and getting absolutely nothing. No crank, no lights on the dash, nothing. That’s exactly what happened to hundreds of Porsche owners in Russia last week. The issue is with the Vehicle Tracking System, a satellite-based sec … ⌘ Read more
**Water leak in Louvre damages hundreds of books **
The leak in the Egyptian department comes just weeks after a jewellery heist that put the museum’s security infrastructure under scrutiny. ⌘ Read more
Why Meetings Can Harm Employee Well-Being
Phys.org republishes this article from The Conversation:
On average, managers spend 23 hours a week in meetings. Much of what happens in them is considered to be of low value, or even entirely counterproductive. The paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings… in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones…
A 2015 handbook laid the groundwork for the nascent fiel … ⌘ Read more
Watch: The Women’s Football Show
Analysis and top stories from week 10 of the 2025/2026 Women’s Super League season. ⌘ Read more
Warning against mushroom foraging in California after fatal poisoning
California’s poison control system says there have been 21 poisonings in recent weeks from wild death cap mushrooms. ⌘ Read more
One dead and at least 20 poisoned after eating wild mushrooms in California
California’s poison control system says there have been 21 poisonings in recent weeks from wild death cap mushrooms. ⌘ Read more
Quiz: How well do you remember your December history?
From the world’s first traffic lights to a Sesame Street legend — how well will you do on our history quiz? ⌘ Read more
New FreeBSD 15 Retires 32-Bit Ports and Modernizes Builds
FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE arrived this week, notes this report from The Register, which calls it the latest release “of the Unix world’s leading alternative to Linux.”
As well as numerous bug fixes and upgrades to many of its components, the major changes in this version are reductions in the number of platforms the OS supports, and in how it’s built and how its … ⌘ Read more
Using AI To Modernize The Ubuntu Error Tracker Produced Some Code That Was “Plain Wrong”
A week ago I wrote about AI being used to help modernize Ubuntu’s Error Tracker. Microsoft GitHub Copilot was tasked to help adapt its Cassandra database usage to modern standards. It’s worked in some areas but even for a rather straight forward task, some of the generated functions ended up being “plain wrong” according to the developer involved… ⌘ Read more
Union ‘turf war’ dominates second week of Queensland CFMEU inquiry
This week’s public hearings centred on how a long-running bitter turf war escalated to the point a rival union boss sought help from the state’s top cop. ⌘ Read more
#MaradoWeekly #WeeklyPlant Week 48
India caps airfares as IndiGo crisis leaves hundreds stranded for fifth day
Thousands of IndiGo flights were cancelled this week due to a pilot shortage, which prompted government relief and extra trains to help stranded passengers. ⌘ Read more
Solaris 11.4 SRU 87 Released With New Security Features, GCC 15
For anyone still relying on Solaris in production or just nostalgic Solaris users from the grand Sun Microsystems days, Solaris 11.4 SRU 87 was released by Oracle this week as one of the heavier stable release updates in recent memory… ⌘ Read more
Linux 6.19 Brings Many Driver Core Changes For Rust, Housekeeping CPUs Exposed
Beyond the main set of Rust changes to land in Linux 6.19 earlier this week, as we near the end of the first week of two for the Linux 6.19 merge window… More Rust changes. This time around the driver core updates for the kernel bring a number of Rust changes… ⌘ Read more
Strictly stars gear up for Musicals week as final looms
There are just two weeks left in the contest, and things are heating up on the ballroom floor. ⌘ Read more