‘Pretty much nowhere in Queensland’ without chance of thunderstorms
A wet weekend is forecast for Australia’s sunshine state, with meteorologists warning that “pretty much nowhere in Queensland” is without a chance of thunderstorms. ⌘ Read more

Queensland report on puberty blockers might not see the light of day
A Queensland government-ordered report on the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapies in the treatment of transgender adolescents is due on Sunday but might never be publicly released. ⌘ Read more

High rates of male suicide in the spotlight in Canberra
Men make up more than 75 per cent of all suicide deaths in Australia, but Lifeline says they only make up about 40 per cent of helpline service users — and even when men do seek help they experienced “high levels of disengagement”. ⌘ Read more

Support service says adoption should be used as last resort
Queensland should overhaul “outdated” adoption laws that sever children’s legal ties to their families, while ensuring adoption remains a last resort, a peak support service tells a commission of inquiry. ⌘ Read more

The internet is resembling the first few pages of The Handmaid’s Tale
The saddest aspect of all this that a generation of boys may feel compelled to suppress the ordinary the joy of celebrating another’s success. ⌘ Read more

More detail, even more questions for Google’s data hub on Christmas Island
Google’s plans for a data hub could drag this remote island from a digitally-starved past into an AI-powered future. But are the locals ready? ⌘ Read more

Gus has been gone for 63 days, and multiple searches have yielded no clues
The disappearance of Gus Lamont is one of those events that have a seismic impact on public consciousness: they distress, disturb, upset and unsettle. This week six mine shafts were searched, providing no further clues in the case. ⌘ Read more

Zo Storytelleru do Creativa Media
Tvorivá energia, zvedavosť mladých a podpora kvalitnej mediálnej výchovy sa spojili počas minulého týždňa v Kulpíne, na ulici Maršala Tita, kde už mesiac sídli Združenie Creativa Media (CREM) a redakcia Storyteller. Do vynovených priestorov starorodičovského domu sa nasťahoval Storyteller HUB Vladimíry Dorčovej Valtnerovej, kde za krátky čas zorganizovali sériu podujatí zameraných na mediálnu gramotnosť, digitálne rozprávanie príbehov a podporu krit … ⌘ Read more

18yo charged with murder after man shot multiple times in Western Sydney
A 28-year-old man died after suffering gunshot wounds to his neck, chest and leg in Blacktown on Friday. ⌘ Read more

Record drop for Australia’s emissions. What’s working and what isn’t?
Australia’s emissions had the biggest drop ever this year outside the artificial kink in the curve during COVID-19 shutdowns, but there’s still a lot of work to do. ⌘ Read more

Shark attack highlights need for remote first aid kits, drone surveillance
A makeshift tourniquet may have made the difference between a shark attack on the NSW Mid North Coast this week claiming one life not two. The attack has put a spotlight on how fatalities may be prevented. ⌘ Read more

R360 launch postponed for two years after ‘handful of players’ withdraw
Threats of long bans for prospective R360 players prompted “a handful” of them to withdraw from the rebel league, which now says it will launch in 2028 instead of next year. ⌘ Read more

Singapore Takes Top Spot in Global Talent Index
Singapore has claimed the top spot in the 2025 Global Talent Competitiveness Index for the first time, displacing Switzerland from a position the European nation had held since the ranking’s inception in 2013. The index, produced by business school INSEAD and the Portulans Institute, measured 135 economies across 77 indicators spanning soft skills, AI talent concentration, and fo … ⌘ Read more

Why King Gizzard defied Spotify, then embraced orchestras and raves
Their rock, rave and orchestral music attracts a cult global following. But the prolific, chaotic King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are just “at peace with failing”. ⌘ Read more

Killer abused location sharing apps before Lilie James murder
Experts on gendered violence have warned against the proliferation of everyday location sharing tools to control victim-survivors after NSW’s top coroner found Paul Thijssen used them to track Lilie James before her murder. ⌘ Read more

Ongoing heatwave to fuel further extreme weather on east coast
An ongoing heatwave along Australia’s eastern seaboard will fuel further extreme weather this weekend, and its longevity is now breaking long standing records. ⌘ Read more

Failed fire alarms and months of warnings — Hong Kong questions why ‘so many died’
Many of the people who managed to escape the Wang Fuk Court fires in Hong Kong believe the disaster could have been prevented, saying they had flagged safety concerns more than a year ago. ⌘ Read more

From $50 rentals to burying the dead, this island governs itself
Twenty years ago, Cape Barren Island was handed back to its traditional owners. Today’s children are proof of the life-changing power of that act. ⌘ Read more

Barnaby Joyce’s kingmaker says he left voters behind in ‘act of treason’
The MP’s resignation from the Nationals surprised no one, but drew ire from members of the party. Those on the ground in his electorate have a more mixed view. ⌘ Read more

Doctors warn of side effects after using popular filler-dissolving treatment
As more people turn towards cosmetic injectable “journeys”, Lana is sounding the alarm about the risks of developing long-term side effects. ⌘ Read more

DNA study backs archaeological evidence of Indigenous Australians’ arrival
A new genetic study has found Indigenous Australians travelled over two distinct routes, and 100 kilometres of open water, to reach the ancient landmass that would become Australia 60,000 to 65,000 years ago. ⌘ Read more

Nothing will bring him back, but Jai Wright’s family say they have seen ‘justice’
For the family of Dunghutti teen Jai Wright, the guilty finding against police officer Benedict Bryant for dangerous driving occasioning Jai’s death lifts a “weight off their shoulders”. Legal experts say it’s the first time a police officer has been convicted in relation to the death of a First Nations person in custody. ⌘ Read more

New Patches Work To Optimize Code Generation For Linux Context Switching
As some additional enticing Linux kernel patches posted this week for review, an updated patch series is working to optimize code generation during context switching… ⌘ Read more

Europe Fears It Can’t Catch Up in Great Power Competition
European leaders have spent years warning that the continent risked falling behind the U.S., China and Russia in the global contest for economic, technological and military dominance, and officials now believe they have reached that point.

The mood darkened over the summer when Europe found itself on the sidelines as Washington and Beijing negotiated a reset of glo … ⌘ Read more

Australia’s first car was a rust bucket, but it was our rust bucket
The first fully Australian-made car rolled off the Holden production line in Melbourne on this day in 1948. The man who dreamt it up wasn’t there to see it unveiled. ⌘ Read more

Someone Is Trying To ‘Hack’ People Through Apple Podcasts
Apple’s Podcasts app on both iOS and Mac has been exhibiting strange behavior for months, spontaneously launching and presenting users with obscure religion, spirituality and education podcasts they never subscribed to – and at least one of these podcasts contains a link attempting a cross-site scripting attack, 404 Media reports. Joseph Cox, a journalist at t … ⌘ Read more

The power dynamic between Labor and mining has shifted
There has been a shift in the power dynamic between Labor and the mining industry. This week’s environmental law reform is its embodiment. ⌘ Read more

Europe doesn’t find the prospect of Russian aggression as funny as Putin does
Something has now been unleashed in Europe which is going to be hard to put back in the bottle. ⌘ Read more

‘Where is Imran Khan?’: Son of former Pakistani PM calls for proof of life
The family and political allies of Pakistan’s former prime minister say they’ve not been allowed to visit him in prison for weeks but authorities say he is well. ⌘ Read more

Australia’s Streaming Quotas Become Law
Australia’s streaming quotas have become law. Legislation requiring the likes of Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max to spend a portion of their local earnings on original Australian content has been passed in parliament, and now comes into effect. From a report: The quotas were announced earlier this month. This will see global streamers with more than one million Australian subscribers made t … ⌘ Read more

Robots and AI Are Already Remaking the Chinese Economy
China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year – nearly nine times as many as the United States and more than the rest of the world combined – as the country races to automate its manufacturing base amid rising labor costs at home and tariff threats from abroad.

The nation’s stock of operational robots surpassed 2 million in 2024, according to the Intern … ⌘ Read more

Why Google’s custom AI chips are shaking up the tech industry
Google is reportedly in talks to sell its tensor processing units – a type of computer chip specially designed for AI – to other tech companies, a move that could unsettle the dominant chip-maker Nvidia ⌘ Read more

Open-Source Nouveau+NVK vs. NVIDIA 580 Linux Gaming/Graphics & Compute Driver Performance
This Black Friday is an in-depth look at the current performance of the open-source NVIDIA Linux driver stack with the Nouveau kernel driver (the Nova driver not yet being ready for end-users) paired with the latest Mesa NVK driver for open-source Vulkan API support. With that NVK Vulkan driver is also looking at the OpenGL performance using the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver used now for OpenGL on modern NVIDIA GPUs rat … ⌘ Read more

When I learn a teammate’s Friday morning release is still going at 5 p.m. ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patches Enhance Single-Threaded Performance On Many-Core CPUs
In addition to the proposed Hierarchical Queued NUMA-aware spinlocks for better performance, another interesting performance-enhancing patch series posted in the past 24 hours for the Linux kernel is for improving the performance of single-threaded tasks running on high core count CPU desktops / workstations / servers… ⌘ Read more

Black Friday Reminder For Those Hating Ads But Loving Linux Hardware/Software
As the one and last friendly reminder, if you enjoy the daily and original content found on Phoronix.com but not liking ads and wanting to view multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and more: the 2025 Black Friday / Cyber Week deal is ending Monday to help support the site while enjoying a discounted rate… ⌘ Read more

Violent Conflict Over Water Hit a Record Last Year
Researchers at the Pacific Institute documented 420 water-related conflicts globally in 2024, a record that far surpasses the 355 incidents logged in 2023 and continues a trend that has seen such violence more than quadruple over the past five years. The Oakland-based water think tank’s database tracks disputes where water triggered violence, where water systems were target … ⌘ Read more

When I dive into the redesign of a legacy project ⌘ Read more

Major AI Conference Flooded With Peer Reviews Written Fully By AI
An analysis of submissions to next year’s International Conference on Learning Representations has found that roughly one in five peer reviews were fully generated by AI, a discovery that came after researchers including Carnegie Mellon’s Graham Neubig grew suspicious of feedback on their manuscripts that seemed unusually verbose and requested n … ⌘ Read more

When I waste time writing a function… that already existed ⌘ Read more

Upheavals to the oral microbiome in pregnancy may be behind tooth loss
Dental problems often arise or get worse during pregnancy, and a new study hints that rapid changes to the oral microbiome at this time could be at least partly to blame ⌘ Read more

Zelenskyy’s chief of staff sees home raided by anti-corruption unit
The raids come as Kyiv battles to persuade US officials to defend Ukraine’s interests in peace agreement talks. ⌘ Read more

Breaking: Eight people arrested over deadly Hong Kong fire
The city’s anti-corruption body made the arrests as the probe into what caused the deadly blaze continues. ⌘ Read more

Why Can’t ChatGPT Tell Time?
ChatGPT can browse the web, write code and analyze images, but ask it what time it is and you might get the correct answer, a confident wrong answer, or a polite refusal – sometimes all three within minutes of each other.

The problem stems from how large language models work. These systems predict answers based on training data and don’t receive constant real-time updates about things like time unless they specifically se … ⌘ Read more

AMD ISP4 Linux Webcam Driver Updated For HP ZBook Ultra G1a & Future Ryzen Laptops
We eagerly await to see if the AMD ISP4 driver will be ready for mainlining in the imminent Linux v6.19 merge window but it’s getting down to the wire and thus looking less likely it will make it unless action is taken in the coming days. Today though a sixth version of this AMD ISP4 image signal processor driver was posted for this last piece of the puzzle in enabling the web camera on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a Strix Halo laptop as well as … ⌘ Read more

ICC rejects plea to release Philippine ex-president Rodrigo Duterte
The judge says it is “necessary” for the 80-year-old to remain in detention as the conditions proposed by his lawyers do not meet the conditions for parole. ⌘ Read more

NTFSPLUS Now Supports $MFT File Extension, FITRIM, More Mount Options
The NTFSPLUS Linux kernel driver as a modern NTFS file-system driver implementation continues quickly taking shape as it aims to become the most performant and feature-rich NTFS read/write driver for Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

HQspinlock Proposal For Linux Shows Very Nice Performance Benefits For Large Servers
A Huawei engineer has sent out patches proposing HQspinlock as a Hierarchical Queued NUMA-aware spinlock for the Linux kernel. HQspinlock aims to addresss inefficiencies within the Linux kernel’s spinlock on modern NUMA-systems due to frequent and costly cross-NUMA cache-line transfers… ⌘ Read more

Claims youth detainees in the NT being moved without families’ knowledge
Two politicians allege NT children in youth detention are being moved from Alice Springs to Darwin without their families’ knowledge. ⌘ Read more

My file system when I try to edit a file without the proper permissions ⌘ Read more