JPEG-XL Image Support Returns To Latest Chrome/Chromium Code
After widespread backlash over its 2022 decision to remove JPEG-XL support, Google has quietly restored the image format in the latest Chrome/Chromium codebase. Phoronix reports: Back in December they merged jxl-rs as a pure Rust-based JPEG-XL image decoder from the official libjxl organization. At the end of December they did more JPEG-XL plumbing with the en … ⌘ Read more
Apple Bundles Creative Apps Into a Single Subscription
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple today introduced a new Apple Creator Studio bundle that offers access to six creative apps, as well as exclusive AI features and content, as part of a single subscription. In the U.S., pricing is set at $12.99 per month or $129 per year. Here are the six apps included with an Apple Creator Studio subscription … ⌘ Read more
Taiwan Issues Arrest Warrant for OnePlus CEO for China Hires
Prosecutors in Taiwan issued an arrest warrant [non-paywalled source] for the chief executive officer of the Chinese smartphone company OnePlus, stepping up the island’s efforts to block China’s tech players from recruiting Taiwanese talent. From a report: The Shilin district prosecutors office issued the warrant for CEO and co-founder Pete Lau and indicted … ⌘ Read more
EV Roadside Repairs Easier Than Petrol or Diesel, New Data Suggests
Electric vehicles are more likely to be fixed at the roadside than petrol or diesel cars despite public fears to the contrary, according to new breakdown data from the AA. From a report: New research from Autotrader and the AA, carried out in December among more than 2,000 consumers, found 44% of respondents are concerned about the risk of b … ⌘ Read more
Apple: You (Still) Don’t Understand the Vision Pro
Analyst Ben Thompson, sharing the experience of watching an NBA game on the Vision Pro: When I started the broadcast [on Apple Vision Pro’s immersive view of the Bucks vs. Lakers NBA game] I had, surprise surprise, a studio show, specially tailored for the Apple Vision Pro. In other words, there was a dedicated camera, a dedicated presenter, a dedicated graphics team, etc. Th … ⌘ Read more
JPEG-XL Image Support Returns To Latest Chrome / Chromium Code
To the frustration of many developers and end-users, back in 2022 Google deprecated JPEG-XL support in Chrome/Chromium and proceeded to remove the support. That decision was widely slammed and ultimately Google said they may end up reconsidering it. In November there was renewed activity and interest in restoring JPEG-XL within Google’s image web browser and as of yesterday the code was merged… ⌘ Read more
Mercedes Temporarily Scraps Its Level 3 ‘Eyes-off’ Driving Feature
Mercedes-Benz is pausing the roll-out of Drive Pilot, an “eyes off” conditionally automated driving feature that was available in Europe and the US. From a report: As first reported by German publication Handelsblatt, the revised S-Class will not have the Level 3 system when it arrives at the end of this month. Mercedes was one of the first auto … ⌘ Read more
ReactOS Receives Fix For A Very Annoying Usability Issue
ReactOS began 2026 with another “major step” towards Windows NT 6 compatibility with updating its MSVCRT implementation from Wine for the Microsoft C Runtime DLL library. That improved support for a number of Windows applications running on this open-source OS. ReactOS is taking another step-forward now with addressing a very annoying usability issue where up until now you may need to refresh the file manager for seeing folder changes… ⌘ Read more
Verizon To Stop Automatic Unlocking of Phones as FCC Ends 60-Day Unlock Rule
The Federal Communications Commission is letting Verizon lock phones to its network for longer periods, eliminating a requirement to unlock handsets 60 days after they are activated on its network. From a report: The change will make it harder for people to switch from Verizon to other carriers. The FCC today granted Verizon’s … ⌘ Read more
America’s Biggest Power Grid Operator Has an AI Problem - Too Many Data Centers
America’s largest power-grid operator, PJM, which delivers electricity to 67 million people across a 13-state region from New Jersey to Kentucky, is approaching a supply crisis as AI data centers in Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” consume electricity at an unprecedented rate.
The nonprofit expects demand … ⌘ Read more
Anthropic Invests $1.5 Million in the Python Software Foundation and Open Source Security
Python Software Foundation: We are thrilled to announce that Anthropic has entered into a two-year partnership with the Python Software Foundation (PSF) to contribute a landmark total of $1.5 million to support the foundation’s work, with an emphasis on Python ecosystem security. This investme … ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.6 Beta Released With Plasma Login Manager, Plasma Setup
The KDE Plasma 6.6 beta release is available today for helping to test this next iteration of the Plasma 6 desktop… ⌘ Read more
Scott Adams, Creator of the ‘Dilbert’ Comic Strip, Dies at 68
Scott Adams, who kept cubicle denizens laughing for more than three decades with Dilbert, the bitingly funny comic strip that poked fun at the absurdity of corporate life, died Tuesday. He was 68. From a report: His death was tearfully revealed by his first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, at the start of Real Coffee With Scott Adams. In May, he said on the podcast … ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.0 Released With Many Improvements For Windows Games & Apps On Linux
As expected, Wine 11.0 stable was officially released today. This is a big step forward for this open-source software to run Windows games and applications on Linux and other platforms. Wine also serves as the basis for Valve’s Steam Play (Proton) that has been critical to the recent successes of Linux gaming… ⌘ Read more
JPMorgan Warns 10% Credit Card Rate Cap Would Backfire on Consumers and Economy
JPMorgan Chase’s chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum pushed back hard on Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s proposed 10% cap on credit card interest rates, calling the measure “very bad for consumers” and “very bad for the economy” during a call with reporters.
The proposed one-year cap, which Trump has said he wan … ⌘ Read more
Intel’s Fantastic New Open-Source Demonstrator For AMX-BF16: Over 4x The Performance At 69% The Power
When it comes to software leveraging Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) functionality in modern Xeon processors, it’s largely been limited to AI applications/libraries like oneDNN, OpenVINO, DeepRec, etc. But Intel now has another great open-source real-world AMX demonstrator with their Open Image Denoise library. This open-source library providing high quality denoising filters for images rendered using ray-tra … ⌘ Read more
Signal Creator Marlinspike Wants To Do For AI What He Did For Messaging
Moxie Marlinspike, the engineer who created Signal Messenger and set a new standard for private communications, is now trialing Confer, an open source AI assistant designed to make user data unreadable to platform operators, hackers, and law enforcement alike. Confer relies on two core technologies: passkeys that generate a 32-byte encry … ⌘ Read more
Debian Libre Live 13.3 Images Released For Avoiding Non-Free Firmware
Building off this past weekend’s Debian 13.3 release is now Debian Libre Live 13.3 images for this derivative that ships the install/live media without any of the non-free firmware assets to remain a free software blessed image… ⌘ Read more
Meta Begins Job Cuts as It Shifts From Metaverse to AI Devices
Meta has begun laying off more than 1,000 employees from its Reality Labs division as the company redirects resources away from virtual reality and metaverse products toward AI wearables and smartphone features. The cuts amount to roughly 10% of Reality Labs’ 15,000-person workforce, according to an internal post from CTO Andrew Bosworth reviewed by … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Pledges Full Power Costs, No Tax Breaks in Response To AI Data Center Backlash
Microsoft announced Tuesday what it calls a “community first” initiative for its AI data centers, pledging to pay full electricity costs and reject local property tax breaks following months of growing opposition from residents facing higher power bills. The announcement in Washington, D.C. marks a clea … ⌘ Read more
FFmpeg Merges A Number Of Vulkan Improvements To Start 2026
FFmpeg developer Lynne has landed a number of Vulkan-related imporvements to this widely-used open-source multimedia library. Over the past year FFmpeg saw Vulkan shader-based decoding for more video formats, AV1 and VP9 extension work, performance improvements, and other work around Vulkan Video. It will be very exciting to see how FFmpeg delivers in 2026 with Vulkan Video and how the software ecosystem as a whole begins taking up this cross-platform, … ⌘ Read more
Trump Says Microsoft To Make Changes To Curb Data Center Power Costs For Americans
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Monday that Microsoft will announce changes to ensure that Americans won’t see rising utility bills as the company builds more data centers to meet rising artificial intelligence demand. “I never want Americ … ⌘ Read more
- Neal Stephenson’s “Polostan” is the last of these books, and the book worth mentioning but not necessarily a recommendation. If you know me well enough, you know that I think Neal Stephenson is the best writer of all times (prove me wrong). And I’m sorry to say, this - while a five stars book - is not Stephenson at its best: in fact, it was his first book ever where at a certain point I felt the book wasn’t probably edited (probably rushed in). This is the first of a series, and it almost feels like just the first part of what should be the first book, it is almost as if he rushed publishing it to appease the editorial gods or something. Now, don’t take this criticism as a sign that Polostan isn’t a book worth reading, not at all. But if you didn’t read all the rest he wrote, do that first, and give Polostan some time… because I’m sure it will best read if you have its sequel ready to be picked up once you finish this one.
(end of 🧵)
@kirschner@kirschner ’s “Ada & Zangemann: A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream” was a wonderful surprise – I knew I’d like this book since I’ve heard he had written it, but I’ll admit I only actually read it once I had the actual physical book in my hands… and ended up being surprised by it a couple of times, the book has plenty more depth than I assumed! Sure, it is what I thought it would be, “a book for children about free software”, but it is so much more than that…
@o_sarilho@o_sarilho is a webcomic - and fortunately it is also collected in physical format. There are versions in Portuguese and English, but this is a SciFi comic book from a Portuguese author, and that alone would get my attention… the fact that part of the action happens on the region where I actually live just made it even more interesting! So, well, I knew I would need to read it, and I bought the books, but only in 2025 did I actually started reading it… and, well - all I can say is that I glad I have the rest of the series so far, so I can catch up!
5 star reads of 2025 worth mentioning
Someone has asked recently on a toot for others to share their ‘list of 2025 books’. Instead of pointing out to the list of what I’ve read, I’ll instead mention a few ‘5 star’ books I’ve read in 2025 that I think is worth pointing out towards.
By no particular order (well, the order in the photo, really…)
- AJ Pearce’s “Yours Cheerfully” and “Mrs Porter Calling”, books 2 and 3 of The Emmy Lake Chronicles. I’d already read the first book in the series and considered it a five stars read, and I plan to eventually read the fourth and last book in the series - the paperback edition is out next August. This isn’t a deep or profound book series - and doesn’t need to be in order to be a good one. It’s a series depicting the life of a young woman in war-time London. Each of these books made me cry and made me laugh, and I have found some comfort reading them in a time where, in many aspects, it feels like we’re living in a pre-war era…
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@klaxzy nothing like a blank twt eh? 😅
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@prologic@twtxt.net it really is not blank. It reads:
2026-01-12T23:34:11+01:00 (you must be root)
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
LLVM/Clang 22 Feature Development Ends With Intel Nova Lake, Arm C1 & Ampere1C Support
LLVM/Clang 22 feature development ended overnight with the code now being branched and working toward a stable release likely by the end of February… ⌘ Read more
Haiku OS Pulls In Updated Drivers From FreeBSD 15
The BeOS-inspired Haiku open-source operating system project just published a new status report to detail how they ended out the year… ⌘ 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
EPA To Stop Considering Lives Saved By Limiting Air Pollution
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has calculated the health benefits of reducing air pollution, using the cost estimates of avoided asthma attacks and premature deaths to justify clean-air rules. Not anymore. Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from th … ⌘ Read more
European Firms Hit Hiring Brakes Over AI and Slowing Growth
European hiring momentum is cooling as slower growth and accelerating AI adoption make both employers and workers more cautious. DW.com reports: [Angelika Reich, leadership adviser at the executive recruitment firm Spencer Stuart] noted how Europe’s labor market has “cooled down” and how “fewer job vacancies and a tougher economic climate naturally make emplo … ⌘ Read more
Viral Chinese App ‘Are You Dead?’ Checks On Those Who Live Alone
The viral Chinese app Are You Dead? (known as Sileme in Chinese) targets people who live alone by requiring regular check-ins and alerting an emergency contact if the user doesn’t respond. It launched in May and is now the most downloaded paid app in China. Cybernews reports: Users need to check in with the app every two days by clicking a large but … ⌘ Read more
GCC 16 Compiler Steps Closer To Release With Algol 68 Frontend, AMD Zen 6, C++20 Default
GCC 16 as this year’s major feature release of the GNU Compiler Collection should be out in the typical March~April timeframe if all goes well. Today the GCC 16 compiler transitioned to its final stage “stage 4” of development with a focus exclusively on documentation and regression fixing… ⌘ Read more
Even Linus Torvalds Is Vibe Coding Now
Linus Torvalds has started experimenting with vibe coding, using Google’s Antigravity AI to generate parts of a small hobby project called AudioNoise. “In doing so, he has become the highest-profile programmer yet to adopt this rapidly spreading, and often mocked, AI-driven programming,” writes ZDNet’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols. Fro the report: [I]t’s a trivial program called AudioNoise – a recen … ⌘ Read more
Fintech Firm Betterment Confirms Data Breach After Hackers Send Fake $10,000 Crypto Scam Messages
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Betterment, a financial app, sent a sketchy-looking notification on Friday asking users to send $10,000 to Bitcoin and Ethereum crypto wallets and promising to “triple your crypto,” according to a thread on Reddit. The Betterment acco … ⌘ Read more
Should AI Agents Be Classified As People?
New submitter sziring writes: Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast podcast interviewed McKinsey CEO Bob Sternfels, where he classified AI agents as people. “I often get asked, ‘How big is McKinsey? How many people do you employ?’ I now update this almost every month, but my latest answer to you would be 60,000, but it’s 40,000 humans and 20,000 agents.”
This statement looks to be the opening shots … ⌘ Read more
Meta Plans To Cut Around 10% of Employees In Reality Labs Division
Meta plans to cut roughly 10% of staff in its Reality Labs division, with layoffs hitting metaverse-focused teams hardest. Reuters reports: The cuts to Reality Labs, which has roughly 15,000 employees, could be announced as soon as Tuesday and are set to disproportionately affect those in the metaverse unit who work on virtual reality headsets … ⌘ Read more
Supreme Court Takes Case That Could Strip FCC of Authority To Issue Fines
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court will hear a case that could invalidate the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to issue fines against companies regulated by the FCC. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile challenged the FCC’s ability to punish them after the commission fined the carriers for … ⌘ Read more
How Markdown Took Over the World
22 years ago, developer and columnist John Gruber released Markdown, a simple plain-text formatting system designed to spare writers the headache of memorizing arcane HTML tags. As technologist Anil Dash writes in a long piece, Markdown has since embedded itself into nearly every corner of modern computing.
Aaron Swartz, then seventeen years old, served as the beta tester before its quiet March 2004 debut. Goo … ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.0 Planned For Release Tomorrow With NTSync Support, Better WoW64
Wine project leader Alexandre Julliard relayed on the mailing list today that the plan is to release Wine 11.0 stable tomorrow, 13 January… ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Pulls the Plug On Its Free, Two-Decade-Old Windows Deployment Toolkit
Microsoft has abruptly retired the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, a free platform that IT administrators have relied on to deploy Windows operating systems and applications for more than two decades. The retirement, reports the Register, came with “immediate” notice, meaning no more fixes, support, security patches, or u … ⌘ Read more
Norway Reaches 97% EV Sales as EVs Now Outnumber Diesels On Its Roads
Norway has released its December and full year 2025 automotive sales numbers and the world’s leading EV haven has broken records once again. The country had previously targeted an end to fossil car sales in 2025, and it basically got there. From a report: In 2017, Norway set a formal non-binding target to end fossil car sales in the coun … ⌘ Read more
China is Geoengineering Deserts With Blue-Green Algae
An anonymous reader shares a report: Deserts are hard to reclaim because plants cannot survive on shifting sand, but scientists in northwest China are changing that – by dropping vast amounts of blue-green algae onto the dry terrain. These specially selected strains of cyanobacteria can survive extreme heat and drought for long periods, according to China Science Daily on … ⌘ Read more
Batman TV Series Premiered 60 Years Ago Today
60 years ago today, ABC aired the first episode of its live-action Batman television series, introducing Adam West as the deadpan Caped Crusader in what became a pop culture phenomenon blending high-camp humor and cliffhanger thrills. The mid-season replacement ran for 120 episodes over three seasons before ending in March 1968.
The Surprising Spectre BHI Mitigation Performance Impact On Meteor Lake
When recently carrying out performance benchmarks of Intel Meteor Lake performance on Linux since launch day two years ago, the geo mean came in at 93% the original performance. Finding the performance trending clearly lower with an up-to-date Linux software stack compared to in December 2023 was quite surprising considering the rather nice gains we have seen over time on other Intel/AMD hardware. As noted in that article though, one of the … ⌘ Read more
Revolutionary Eye Injection Saved My Sight, Says First-Ever Patient
Doctors say they have achieved the previously impossible – restoring sight and preventing blindness in people with a rare but dangerous eye conditon called hypotony. From a report: Moorfields hospital in London is the world’s first dedicated clinic for the disorder and seven out of eight patients given the pioneering treatment have respon … ⌘ Read more
Tinygrad 0.12 Released With Mesa NIR/NAK Support
Tinygrad 0.12 is out today for this deep learning stack led by George Hotz… ⌘ 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