Patch Tuesday Update Makes Windows PCs Refuse To Shut Down
A recent Microsoft Patch Tuesday update has introduced a bug in Windows 11 23H2 that causes some PCs to refuse to shut down or hibernate, “no matter how many times you try,” reports The Register. From the report: In a notice on its Windows release health dashboard, Microsoft confirmed that some PCs running Windows 11 23H2 might fail to power down properly af … ⌘ Read more

Trump Wants Tech Companies To Foot the Bill For New Power Plants
The Trump administration urged the largest electricity grid in the U.S. to make big tech companies pay for new power plants to support the surging electricity demand from AI and data centers. CNBC reports: Electricity prices have exploded in recent years on PJM Interconnection due in part to the data centers that tech companies are building t … ⌘ Read more

Supreme Court Hacker Posted Stolen Government Data On Instagram
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Last week, Nicholas Moore, 24, a resident of Springfield, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to repeatedly hacking into the U.S. Supreme Court’s electronic document filing system. At the time, there were no details about the specifics of the hacking crimes Moore was admitting to. On Friday, a newly filled … ⌘ Read more

Cloudflare Acquires Team Behind Open Source Framework Astro
Cloudflare has acquired the core team behind the open source JavaScript framework Astro, bringing its creators in-house while pledging to keep Astro fully open source. The New Stack reports: Astro is used by major brands like IKEA, Unilever, Visa and OpenAI to build fast, content-driven websites. Search engines prioritize fast-loading and clean pages, the … ⌘ Read more

Canada Reverses Tariff On Chinese EVs
Longtime Slashdot reader hackingbear shares a report from the Washington Times: Breaking with the United States, Canada has agreed to cut its 100% tariff [back to 6.1%] on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday after meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. He said there would be an initial annual cap of 49,000 ve … ⌘ Read more

TSMC Says AI Demand Is ‘Endless’ After Record Q4 Earnings
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reported record fourth-quarter earnings and said it expects AI chip demand to continue for years. During an earnings call, CEO C.C. Wei told investors that while he cannot predict the semiconductor industry’s long-term trajectory, he remains bullish on … ⌘ Read more

Britain Has ‘Moved Away’ From Aligning With EU Regulation, Financial District’s Ambassador Says
An anonymous reader shares a report: The prospect of Britain realigning its financial rules with the European Union has passed, and the country should avoid linking its regulations to any single jurisdiction, the ambassador for London’s financial services sector told Reuters. Nearly a deca … ⌘ Read more

Microplastics From Washing Clothes Could Be Hurting Your Tomatoes
A new study from Cornell and University of Toronto researchers has found that polyester microfibers shed from synthetic clothing during laundry can interfere with cherry tomato plant development [non-paywalled source] when these particles accumulate in agricultural soil. Plants grown in contaminated soil were 11% less likely to emerge, gre … ⌘ Read more

PhD Students’ Taste For Risk Mirrors Their Supervisors’
A researchers’ propensity for risky projects is passed down to their doctoral students – and stays with trainees after they leave the laboratory, according to an analysis of thousands of current and former PhD students and their mentors. From a report: Science involves taking risks, and some of the most impactful discoveries require taking big bets. However, scient … ⌘ Read more

Partly AI-Generated Folk-Pop Hit Barred From Sweden’s Official Charts
An anonymous reader shares a report: A hit song has been excluded from Sweden’s official chart after it emerged the “artist” behind it was an AI creation. I Know, You’re Not Mine – or Jag Vet, Du Ar Inte Min in Swedish – by a singer called Jacub has been a streaming success in Sweden, topping the Spotify rankings.

However, th … ⌘ Read more

Ads Are Coming To ChatGPT in the Coming Weeks
OpenAI said Friday that it will begin testing ads on ChatGPT in the coming weeks, as the $500 billion startup seeks new revenue streams to fund its continued expansion and compete against rivals Google and Anthropic. The company had previously resisted embedding ads into its chatbot, citing concerns that doing so could undermine the trustworthiness and objectivity of responses.

The ads w … ⌘ Read more

Seattle is Building Light Rail Like It’s 1999
Seattle was late to the light rail party – the city rejected transit ballot measures in 1968 and 1971, missing out on federal funding that built Atlanta’s MARTA, and didn’t approve a plan including rail until 1996 – but the Pacific Northwest city is now in the middle of a multibillion-dollar building boom that has produced the highest post-pandemic ridership recovery of any US light … ⌘ Read more

Verizon Offers $20 Credit After Nationwide Outage Stranded Users in SOS Mode For Hours
Verizon is offering affected customers a $20 account credit following a nationwide network outage on Wednesday that left users across the US unable to connect, forcing phones into SOS mode for roughly ten hours before the carrier restored service around 10:15PM ET.

Customers will receive a text message w … ⌘ Read more

AI Has Made Salesforce Engineers More Productive, So the Company Has Stopped Hiring Them, CEO Says
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said this week that his company’s software engineering headcount has remained “mostly flat” over the past year as internal AI tools have delivered substantial productivity gains.

Speaking on TBPN, Benioff said he has about 15,000 engineers who are “more p … ⌘ Read more

Ruby on Rails Creator Says AI Coding Tools Still Can’t Match Most Junior Programmers
AI still can’t produce code as well as most junior programmers he’s worked with, David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of 37 Signals, said on a recent podcast [video link], which is why he continues to write most of his code by hand. Hansson compared AI’s current coding … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net I’d love to take a look at the code. 😅

I’m kind of curious to know how much Assembly I need vs. How much of a microkernel can I build purely in Mu (µ)? 🤔

Can’t really answer that, because I only made a working kernel for 16-bit real mode yet. That is 99% C, though, only syscall entry points are Assembly. (The OpenWatcom compiler provides C wrappers for triggering software interrupts, which makes things easier.)

But in long mode? No idea yet. 😅 At least changing the page tables will require a tiny little bit of Assembly.

China Clamps Down on High-Speed Traders, Removing Servers
An anonymous reader shares a report: China is pulling the plug on a key advantage held by high-frequency traders, removing servers dedicated to those firms out of local exchanges’ data centers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Commodities futures exchanges in Shanghai and Guangzhou are among those that have ordered local brokers to shift servers f … ⌘ Read more

Hard Drive Prices Have Surged By an Average of 46% Since September
Tom’s Hardware: Extensive research into the pricing of some of the best hard drives on the market for large capacity, economical storage indicates that prices are beginning to increase sharply, with some of the most popular models on the market seeing increases upwards of 60%. According to research from ComputerBase, pricing analysis on 12 … ⌘ Read more

Code.org: Use AI In an Interview Without Our OK and You’re Dead To Us
theodp writes: Code.org, the nonprofit backed by AI giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon and whose Hour of AI and free AI curriculum aim to make world’s K-12 schoolchildren AI literate, points job seekers to its AI Use Policy in Hiring, which promises dire consequences for those who use AI during interviews or take home assignments without … ⌘ Read more

Amazon Is Buying America’s First New Copper Output In More Than a Decade
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Amazon is turning to an Arizona mine that last year became the first new source of U.S. copper in more than a decade, to meet its data centers’ ravenous appetite for the industrial metal.
The mine was restarted as a proving ground for Rio Tinto’s new method of unlocking l … ⌘ Read more

‘Star Wars’ Boss Kathleen Kennedy Steps Down From Lucasfilm
After more than 13 years leading Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down. “When George Lucas asked me to take over Lucasfilm upon his retirement, I couldn’t have imagined what lay ahead,” said Kennedy. “It has been a true privilege to spend more than a decade working alongside the extraordinary talent at Lucasfilm.” The Associated Press reports … ⌘ Read more

Bruxelles parle procédure, le monde parle force
L’actualité internationale ne se contente plus de bousculer l’Union européenne : elle l’humilie. Elle expose, avec une cruauté croissante, le divorce idéologique entre Bruxelles et le reste de la planète. Là où le monde parle le langage de la force, l’Europe s’obstine à bégayer celui de la procédure. L’opération américaine au Venezuela contre Maduro a clairement […] ⌘ Read more

US Carbon Pollution Rose In 2025, a Reversal From Prior Years
In a reversal from previous years, U.S. carbon emissions rose 2.4% in 2025 compared with the year before. NBC News reports: The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to a combination of a cool winter, the explosive growth of data centers and cryptocurrency mining and higher natural gas prices, according to the Rhodium Group, an independent … ⌘ Read more

16 Part Epoxy
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Wine 11.0 Released
BrianFagioli writes: Wine 11.0 has officially landed, wrapping up a year of development with more than 6,000 code changes and a broad set of upgrades that touch gaming, desktop behavior, and long-standing architectural work. The biggest milestone is the completion of the new WoW64 model, which is now considered fully supported and allows 32-bit and even 16-bit applications to run in a cleaner way inside 64-bit prefixes. Wine also gains s … ⌘ 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

Cloudflare Threatens Italy Exit After $16.3M Fine For Refusing Piracy Blocks
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has threatened to withdraw free cybersecurity services from Italy’s Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics and potentially exit the country after Italy’s telecommunications regulator fined the company approximately 14 million euros for failing to comply with anti-piracy blocking orders. The penalty equa … ⌘ Read more

iOS 26 Shows Unusually Slow Adoption Months After Release
Apple’s iOS 26 appears to be witnessing the slowest adoption rate in recent memory, with third-party analytics from StatCounter indicating that only 15 to 16% of active iPhones worldwide are running the operating system nearly four months after its September release. The figures stand in stark contrast to iOS 18, which had reached approximately 63% adoption by … ⌘ Read more

GCC 16 Lands Support For Using Picolibc
While veteran open-source developer Keith Packard is known for his X.Org Server contributions over many years, another more recent open-source creation of his is Picolibc as a C library for embedded systems. As the latest achievement on that front, merged this weekend to the GCC 16 compiler codebase is support for using Picolibc… ⌘ Read more

GCC & The GNU Toolchain’s Exciting 2025 With New Languages, More Optimizations
The GCC compiler and the GNU toolchain ecosystem at large had a great year. From new language front-ends for the likes of Algol 68 and COBOL to maturing support for GCC Rust, new performance optimizations from GCC to Glibc, initial AMD Zen 6 “znver6” support merged for GCC 16, and much more. It’s pretty safe to say GCC and the broader GNU ecosystem enjoyed a very successful 2025… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Kernel Benchmarks With X86_NATIVE_CPU Optimization
Added to the Linux kernel earlier this year was the new X86_NATIVE_CPU Kconfig option to enable compiler optimizations for the local/native CPU in use when building the Linux kernel. In effect about ensuring that the “-march=native” compiler flag is set for the kernel build for optimizing the Linux kernel build for your processor being used. Back with Linux 6.16 I ran some benchmarks of the Linux kernel build with X86_NATIVE_CPU to gauge the impac … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net That might be a challenge, at least in 16-bit Real Mode: The OS follows the model of COM files on DOS, i.e. the size of the binary cannot exceed 64 KiB and heap+stack of the running program will have to fit into that same 64 KiB. 😅 (The memory layout is very rigid, each process gets such a 64 KiB slice.)

And in 64-bit Long Mode, there is no “kernel” yet. The thing in the video is literally just a small bare-metal program.

But some day, maybe. 😃

My little toy operating system from last year runs in 16-bit Real Mode (like DOS). Since I’ve recently figured out how to switch to 64-bit Long Mode right after BIOS boot, I now have a little program that performs this switch on my toy OS. It will load and run any x86-64 program, assuming it’s freestanding, a flat binary, and small enough (< 128 KiB code, only uses the first 2 MiB of memory).

Here I’m running a little C program (compiled using normal GCC, no Watcom trickery):

https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/los86%2D64.mp4

Next steps could include:

• Use Rust instead of C for that 64-bit program?
  
• Provide interrupt service routines. (At the moment, it just keeps interrupts disabled.)

Intel Prepares For KVM Guest VMs To Support Advanced Performance Extensions (APX)
Since Linux 6.16 the Intel APX support has been ready for the kernel infrastructure and goes along with the compiler toolchain support for Advanced Performance Extensions with the likes of GCC and LLVM/Clang. The latest element being worked on for APX enablement in the open-source/Linux world is for allowing KVM guest virtual machines (VMs) to make use of APX… ⌘ Read more

Intel Video Processing Library Adding AI Assisted Video Encoder Features
Intel’s Video Processing Library “libvpl” is out with a new version ahead of the holidays. The only major change with libvpl 2.16 is adding experimental APIs for AI-assisted video encode functionality… ⌘ Read more

How We Ingest Plastic Chemicals While Consuming Food
A comprehensive database built by scientists in Switzerland and Norway has catalogued 16,000 chemicals linked to plastic materials, and the findings paint a troubling picture of what Americans are actually eating when they prepare food in their kitchens. Of those 16,000 chemicals, more than 5,400 are considered hazardous to human health by government and industry sta … ⌘ Read more

Meta Is Considering Charging Business Pages To Post Links
Meta is informing some users that they will soon be restricted in how many link posts they can share each month, unless they pay for its Meta Verified subscription service. As per the notification message: “Starting December 16, certain Facebook profiles without Meta Verified, including yours, will be limited to sharing links in 2 organic posts per month. Subs … ⌘ Read more

AMD Zen 6 Compiler Support Merged For GCC 16
Ahead of AMD releasing their Zen 6 EPYC and Ryzen processors in 2026, AMD today saw their Zen 6 “znver6” support land into the GCC 16 open-source compiler… ⌘ Read more

Meta Tolerates Rampant Ad Fraud From China To Safeguard Billions In Revenue
A Reuters investigation found that Meta knowingly tolerated large volumes of scam and illegal ads from China worth billions in revenue. Reuters reports: Though China’s authoritarian government bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning pl … ⌘ Read more

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

Mark Carney Criticised For Using British Spellings In Canadian Documents
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Mark Carney says that amid a fundamental shift to the nature of globalization, his government will catalyze the growth in both the public and private sector. But Canadian linguists say that’s a problem. Language experts have called out the Canadian prime minister’s growing “ut … ⌘ Read more

Intel Quietly Discontinues Its Open-Source User-Space Gaudi Driver Code
Intel has quietly stopped maintaining its open-source user-space driver stack for Gaudi accelerators. Phoronix reports: It turns out earlier this year Intel archived the SynapseAI Core open-source code and is no longer maintained by Intel. The open-source Synapse AI Core GitHub repository was archived in February and README updated … ⌘ Read more

Reporter Suggests Half-Life 3 Will Be a Steam Machine Launch Title
A veteran games journalist claims Half-Life 3 is real and still planned as a Spring 2026 launch title tied to Valve’s next Steam Machine push. Ars Technica reports: On the contrary, veteran journalist Mike Straw insisted on a recent Insider Gaming podcast that “everybody I’ve talked to are still adamant [Half-Life 3] is a game that will be … ⌘ Read more

Volkswagen To End Production At German Plant, a First In Company History
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The last vehicle will roll off the assembly line at Volkswagen’s plant in Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday, marking the first time in the automaker’s 88-year history that it has closed a plant in its home country. Volkswagen warned of potential production cuts last year, as i … ⌘ Read more

Utah Leaders Hinder Efforts To Develop Solar Energy Supply
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed two bills this year that ended solar development tax credits and imposed a new tax on solar generation despite solar power accounting for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid. The legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature has already had an impact.

Since May, when 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

Racks of AI Chips Are Too Damn Heavy
The weight of AI server racks has reached a point where legacy data centers cannot accommodate them even with significant retrofitting efforts, The Verge reports. Chris Brown, chief technical officer at Uptime Institute, said most retrofitting attempts would require “bulldozing the building and starting over from scratch.”

AI racks are projected to reach 5,000 pounds compared to the 400 to 600 pounds … ⌘ Read more

US Threatens Penalties Against European Tech Firms Amid Regulatory Fight
U.S. officials excoriated the European Union for discriminating against American technology companies and threatened to penalize European tech companies in return, in a social media post on Tuesday. From a report: The pronouncement appeared to signal a rockier period for U.S.-E.U. trade relations, as the two governments work to fi … ⌘ Read more

Texas Sues TV Makers For Taking Screenshots of What People Watch
mprindle writes: The Texas Attorney General sued five major television manufacturers, accusing them of illegally collecting their users’ data by secretly recording what they watch using Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology.

The lawsuits target Sony, Samsung, LG, and China-based companies Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation. Att … ⌘ Read more

McKinsey Plots Thousands of Job Cuts in Slowdown for Consulting Industry
McKinsey, the consulting giant that has spent a century advising companies on how to cut costs and restructure operations, is now turning that advice inward as it plans to eliminate thousands of jobs across its non-client-facing departments over the next 18 to 24 months.

The firm’s leadership has discussed a roughly 10% headcount redu … ⌘ Read more