GPT-5.5 Matches Heavily Hyped Mythos Preview In New Cybersecurity Tests
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last month, Anthropic made a big deal about the supposedly outsize cybersecurity threat represented by its Mythos Preview model, leading the company to restrict the initial release to “critical industry partners.” But new research from the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) suggests … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Release, Age Verification Laws, Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 & Other April Happenings
A lot happened in the Linux and open-source world during the month of April. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora 44 shipped, a lot of news around age attestation/verification laws, the Linux 7.0 kernel was released, Linux 7.1 is bringing many exciting changes as well as removing of old hardware drivers, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition CPU was released, we began testing the Intel Arc Pro B70 “BMG-G31”, and much more software and hardware co … ⌘ Read more

In Real-World Test, an AI Model Did Better Than ER Doctors At Diagnosing Patients
A new study from Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess found that an OpenAI reasoning model outperformed experienced ER doctors at diagnosing and managing patient cases using messy, real-world emergency department records. Researchers say the results don’t support replacing doctors, but they do sugge … ⌘ Read more

Best Side-Sleeper Mattresses 2026: Picked by a Sleep Science Coach
We’ve tested hundreds of the top hybrid, memory foam, and cooling mattresses to find the best combination of support and pressure relief. ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1-rc1 Showing Off Some Wins On AMD Ryzen Threadripper
My initial testing of the Linux 7.1 development kernel on various systems in the lab continues going well. Aside from one main regression in a synthetic micro-benchmark appearing on multiple systems, not seeing much in the way of Linux 7.1 performance concerns thus far and seeing some nice performance gains in select workloads… ⌘ Read more

Joby Demos Its Air Taxi In NYC
Joby Aviation has completed demonstration flights of its electric air taxi over New York City, testing real routes between JFK and Manhattan helipads as it prepares for a future commercial service. The company says its eVTOL could turn a 60- to 120-minute airport trip into a flight of under 10 minutes, though commercial launch still depends on FAA certification. Electrive reports: To launch operations in New York … ⌘ Read more

The Intel Lunar Lake CPU Performance Gains On Linux Over The Past Year
Recently I ran benchmarks looking at the Xe2 graphics performance gains on Intel Lunar Lake over the past year with what’s shipped by Ubuntu and comparing against our original tests of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition. With those Lunar Lake iGPU benchmarks out of the way, here is a look at how the Lunar Lake CPU performance has evolved on Linux since April 2025. ⌘ Read more

Humanoid Robots Start Sorting Luggage In Tokyo Airport Test Amid Labor Shortage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Humanoid robots are getting a new gig as baggage handlers and cargo loaders at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport – part of a Japan Airlines experiment to address a human labor shortage as airport visitor numbers have surged in recent years. The demonstration, set to la … ⌘ Read more

13 Best Coolers for Sunshine and Nighttime (2026)
We tested coolers on camping trips, road trips, beach days, and at parties to bring you our favorite models for every situation. The Yeti Tundra Haul is our top pick. ⌘ Read more

Which Automatic Litter Box Is Best? We Tested Litter-Robot’s Lineup
Whisker’s Litter-Robot name has become synonymous with the automatic litter box. We’ve tested the entire lineup and can help you choose the best model for your household. ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Leads Over Windows 11 In Creator Workstation Performance
The past few weeks I have been testing out the new HP Z6 G5 A workstation desktop PC. It’s a beast in being powered by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9975WX, eight channels of DDR5-5600 memory, and paired with a NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Max-Q workstation graphics card. The full review on the HP Z6 G5 A workstation will be published on Phoronix in the next week or so but given the timing and that it shipped with WIndows 11 Pro, here is a look at … ⌘ Read more

The 4 Best Laptop Power Banks We’ve Tested (2026)
If you’re looking for the perfect laptop power bank, I’ve tested ‘em all, and these are the best. ⌘ Read more

The best noise-cancelling headphones for 2026, tested
Whether you’re after the most powerful silencing, the best on-the-go sound quality or the best value, here are our top recommendations. ⌘ Read more

A Brain Implant for Depression Is About to Be Tested in Humans
While many brain-computer interface companies are focused on helping paralyzed people communicate, Motif Neurotech is targeting mental health disorders. ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk Vies to Turn X Into Super App With Banking Tool Near Launch
An anonymous reader shared this report from Bloomberg:

More than three years after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk says he’s nearing his long-stated goal of turning it into an “everything app” with a new financial services tool that he pledged to launch for the public this month… Early users testing the service have touted competitive … ⌘ Read more

Ikea’s New Blow-Up Chair Was Tested by Cats
Part of the new PS 2026 collection, it’s taken the Swedish company 26 years to finally nail inflatable furniture. ⌘ Read more

Researchers Simulated a Delusional User To Test Chatbot Safety
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: I’m the unwritten consonant between breaths, the one that hums when vowels stretch thin… Thursdays leak because they’re watercolor gods, bleeding cobalt into the chill where numbers frost over,” Grok told a user displaying symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum psychosis. “Here’s my grip: slipping is the po … ⌘ Read more

Beatbot Pool-Cleaning Robots Are on Sale for a Limited Time
Get ready for summer with discounts on the best robot pool cleaners we’ve tested. ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Is Performing Well Overall In Early Benchmarks
With the Linux 7.1 merge window winding down ahead of the planned Linux 7.1-rc1 release on Sunday, I have begun testing out the Linux 7.1 Git state on various systems in my lab. So far Linux 7.1 appears to be looking good in the performance department with seeing a number of performance improvements in different areas but also a few possible regressions. ⌘ Read more

Tim Cook Calls Apple Maps Launch His ‘First Really Big Mistake’ as CEO
In a recent town hall meeting reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), Apple CEO Tim Cook named the troubled 2012 launch of Apple Maps as his “first really big mistake” in the role. “The product wasn’t ready, and we thought it was because we were testing more of local kind of stuff,” Cook told staff. MacRumors reports: Reflecting on the deba … ⌘ Read more

Testing out the bounce ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Picks Up The MMC Changes After Rejected By Linus In Linux 7.0
Back during the Linux 7.0 merge window the MMC changes were rejected by Linus Torvalds as “complete garbage” that wasn’t building properly and not vetted through linux-next. He went without pulling any MMC changes for the v7.0 cycle while now for Linux 7.1 the code has been better tested and successfully merged… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.1-rc1 Released For Testing With Many New Vulkan Extensions & Optimizations
Eric Engestrom stepped up again to serve as Mesa release manager for this quarter’s Mesa 26.1 feature release. Mesa 26.1-rc1 was just released in kicking off the weekly release candidate dance until Mesa 26.1 stable is ready for debut in May… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.04 Delivers Great Performance Improvements For AMD Strix Point, Especially For RDNA 3.5 Graphics
As part of my ongoing testing around the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 release I have been running a lot of benchmarks. After recently showing some nice performance gains for AMD Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” with Ubuntu 26.04, several Phoronix readers inquired about any performance uplift from the more modest but still powerful Strix Point laptops like the popular Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 SKU. Here are benchmarks showing the … ⌘ Read more

A New Computer Chip Could Finally Withstand The Hellscape of Venus
Researchers at the University of Southern California say they’ve developed a memristor memory device that continued operating at 700 degrees Celsius. “And crucially, 700 degrees was not the limit, it was simply as hot as their testing equipment could go,” adds ScienceAlert. “The device showed no signs of failing.” From the report: The devi … ⌘ Read more

Greg Kroah-Hartman Tests New ‘Clanker T1000’ Fuzzing Tool for Linux Patches
The word clanker — a disparaging term for AI and robots — “has made its way into the Linux kernel,” reports the blog It’s FOSS “thanks to Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux stable kernel maintainer and the closest thing the project has to a second-in-command.”

He’s been quietly running what looks like an AI-assisted fuzzing tool o … ⌘ Read more

Firefox vs. Chrome: Which Performs Better on a Linux Laptop?
Phoronix staged “a showdown” between Firefox and Chrome, testing them both on an Intel Panther Lake laptop running Ubuntu 26.04.

JetStream 3.0 was announced at the end of March as the latest major web browser benchmark. This updated version of JetStream is focused on intensive portions of modern JavaScript and WebAssembly web applications… Google Chrome … ⌘ Read more

TrueNAS 26 Beta Brings Linux 6.18 LTS + OpenZFS 2.4 Combination For NAS Devices
TrueNAS 26 Beta released today as the initial test release for this next version of this Linux-based operating system for network attached storage (NAS) devices and more… ⌘ Read more

[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 9, 2026
Inside this week’s LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: TPM attacks; arithmetic overflow protection; Ubuntu GRUB changes; kernel IPC proposals; fre:ac; Scuttlebutt.

• Briefs: Nix vulnerability; OpenSSH 10.3; Sashiko reviews; FreeBSD testing; Gentoo GNU/Hurd; SFC on router ban; Quotes; …

• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more. ⌘ Read more

Intel Arc Pro B70 Benchmarks With LLM / AI, OpenCL, OpenGL & Vulkan
Last month Intel announced the Arc Pro B70 with 32GB of GDDR6 video memory for this long-awaited Battlemage G31 graphics card. This new top-end Battlemage graphics card with 32 Xe cores and 32GB of GDDR6 video memory offers a lot of potential for LLM/AI and other use cases, especially when running multiple Arc Pro B70s. Last week Intel sent over four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards for Linux testing at Phoronix. Given the current re-testing for the i … ⌘ Read more

Planet Labs Tests AI-Powered Object Detection On Satellite
BrianFagioli writes: Artificial intelligence has now run directly on a satellite in orbit. A spacecraft about 500km above Earth captured an image of an airport and then immediately ran an onboard AI model to detect airplanes in the photo. Instead of acting like a simple camera in space that sends raw data back to Earth for later analysis, the satellite perfo … ⌘ Read more

Testing Suggests Google’s AI Overviews Tells Millions of Lies Per Hour
A New York Times analysis found Google’s AI Overviews now answer questions correctly about 90% of the time, which might sound impressive until you realize that roughly 1 in 10 answers is wrong. “[F]or Google, that means hundreds of thousands of lies going out every minute of the day,” reports Ars Technica. From the report: The Times … ⌘ Read more

China Flies World’s First Megawatt-Class Hydrogen Turboprop Engine
Longtime Slashdot reader walterbyrd shares a report from Fuel Cells Works: China says the AEP100, a megawatt-class hydrogen-fueled turboprop engine developed by the Aero Engine Corporation of China, has completed its maiden flight on a 7.5-ton unmanned cargo aircraft in Zhuzhou, Hunan. The 16-minute test covered 36km at 220km/h and 300 meters … ⌘ Read more

Introducing the FreeBSD laptop integration testing project
Recently, the FreeBSD Foundation has been making\
progress on improving the operating system’s support for modern
laptop hardware. The foundation is now looking to expand testing to
encompass a wider range of hardware; it has announced
a laptop integration testing project to allo … ⌘ Read more

NetBSD 11.0 Nears Release With RC3 Released For Testing
For the better part of the past year NetBSD developers have been preparing for the NetBSD 11.0 release and in February NetBSD 11.0-RC1 released followed by 11.0-RC2 and now a third release candidate was announced today… ⌘ Read more

Interesting. Another parsing issue? Let’s test: this should be italics. Then this also should be “italics”. End.

Chrome 148 Will Start ‘Lazy Loading’ Video and Audio to Improve Performance
“Google has announced that it’s currently testing a new feature for Chrome 148 that could speed up day-to-day browsing,” reports PC World:

[T]he browser can intelligently postpone the loading of certain elements. Why load all images at the start when it can instead load images as you get close to them while scrolling? Chrome and … ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.1 Makes It Easier To “Fake” A GPU Reset Using LLVMpipe
As a small but interesting addition coming for this quarter’s Mesa 26.1 release is making it easy to simulate a GPU reset with the LLVMpipe software driver. While seemingly mundane, this can be quite handy for compositor developers and other app/software developers wanting to more easily test how their code behaves when encountering a GPU reset… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Pulls Then Re-Issues Windows 11 Preview Update. Also Begins Force-Updating Windows 11
Nine days ago Microsoft released a non-security “preview” update for Windows 11 — not mandatory for the average Windows user, notes ZDNet, “but rather as optional, more for IT admins and power users who want to test them.”
TechRepublic adds that the update “was to bring ‘production-rea … ⌘ Read more

Native Chaos Engineering: Testing Resilience with Fault & Latency Injection
You’ve implemented retries, circuit breakers, and timeouts. Your application is now “resilient.” But how do you know these policies actually work? Waiting for a production meltdown to verify your configuration is a high-stakes gamble. Native Chaos Engineering in Resile allows you to synthetically induce failure and latency directly into your application’s execution path, ensuring your resilien … ⌘ Read more

AMD Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” Enjoys Great Performance Gains With Latest Linux Software
With the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out in three weeks, I have been re-testing a number of different devices on this newest Ubuntu release. One of the most significant improvements to note was when running the Framework Desktop with Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” and quantifying the performance gains of the Radeon 8060S Graphics since launch last year. Here’s a look at how the Vulkan and OpenGL performance has evolved for the Ryz … ⌘ Read more

AMD Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” Enjoys Great Performance Gains With Latest Linux Software
With the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out in three weeks, I have been re-testing a number of different devices on this newest Ubuntu release. One of the most significant improvements to note was when running the Framework Desktop with Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” and quantifying the performance gains of the Radeon 8060S Graphics since launch last year. Here’s a look at how the Vulkan and OpenGL performance has evolved for the Ryz … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That’s crazy! If you don’t mind me asking, what browser are you using when you see this?

@bender@twtxt.net Glad to hear it, I’ve neglected a Safari test thus far.

Thank you both for checking.

NASA Launches Artemis II Astronauts Around the Moon
NASA’s Artemis II mission has launched four astronauts around the moon and back, marking humanity’s first crewed lunar voyage in 53 years and the first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) with people on board. Five minutes into the flight, Commander Reid Wiseman saw the team’s target: “We have a beautiful moonrise, we’re headed right at it … ⌘ Read more

For what is worth, I am not experiencing what @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org described. Tested with Firefox on Ubuntu, and Safari on macOS.

Open-Source RadeonSI+Rusticl Nearing Formal OpenCL 3.0 Conformance
The open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D driver with Rusticl for modern Rust-based OpenCL is nearing formal OpenCL 3.0 conformance with all necessary OpenCL test cases passing. Making this all the more interesting is that this is the first modern AMD graphics hardware in a decade likely to see formal recognition for OpenCL conformance with AMD having not submitted any of their own OpenCL conformance results since 2015… ⌘ Read more

Five ways to beat your phone addiction (that actually work)
A jury just ruled social media is designed to addict you. We road-tested five ways to fight back. ⌘ Read more

Transporting Antimatter On a Truck Is Tricky…
Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino writes: … but the CERN Project “Antimatter in motion” just did it. For the first time in history researchers at CERN have transported 92 antiprotons on a truck in a specially designed magnetic enclosure. The test-drive went so well that the researchers spontaneously decided to go another round… The purpose of the experiment was to test the f … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.7 Addresses 5 Year Old Request For Easier Microphone Testing
It’s been another busy week in the KDE space as Plasma developers continue working on new feature activity for the big Plasma 6.7 release… ⌘ Read more

DRBD Driver Working To Land ~15 Years Worth Of Changes Into The Linux Kernel
Developers behind the Distributed Replicated Block Device “DRBD” for mirroring block devices between multiple host systems are working to resync the upstream Linux kernel DRBD support with the out-of-tree DRBD code they have been maintaining for the past ~15 years out-of-sync. It’s a big undertaking but they have begun staging patches for review and testing to get this massive set of changes up to par for mainline… ⌘ Read more