Hydropower Line From Quebec Could Power a Million NYC Homes
The Champlain Hudson Power Express, a $6 billion, 339-mile buried transmission line, will soon deliver Canadian hydropower from Hydro-Quebec to New York City. The project could supply up to 20% of the city’s electricity and power roughly one million homes throughout the year. “This is far and away the largest project I have ever worked on,” said Bob Ha … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 To Retire UDP-Lite - Allows For Better Performance With Cleansed Code
The upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel cycle is set to retire UDP-Lite support. The UDP-Lite protocol allowed for partial checksums where potentially damaged/corrupted packets are still delivered to the application. Since the Linux 2.6.20 days there has been UDP-Lite support but the kernel is now set to retire it given breakage that has persisted for years and cleaning up the networking code can yield a performance advantage for non-UDP-Lit … ⌘ Read more
Does Canada Need Nationalized, Public AI?
While AI CEOs worry governments might nationalize AI, others are advocating for something similar. Canadian security professional Bruce Schneier and Harvard data scientist Nathan Sanders published this call to action in Canada’s most widely-read newspaper (with a readership over 6 million): “Canada Needs Nationalized, Public AI.”
While there are Canadian AI companies, they remain for-profit e … ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.6.3 Fixing Direct Scan-Out When Using Fractional Scaling
KDE developers continue being very busy working on Plasma 6.7 feature development as well as continuing to drive new fixes and refinements to the current Plasma 6.6 stable series… ⌘ Read more
Linux 6.12 Through Linux 7.0 File-System Benchmarks For EXT4 + XFS
Earlier this month were various Linux 7.0 file-system benchmarks showing how XFS is leading the race in the overall upstream Linux file-system performance on this forthcoming kernel. Stemming from that testing some premium supporters requested a fresh look at the historical performance of XFS as well as EXT4. So today’s article is a look at how XFS and EXT4 have performed on every kernel release going back to Linux 6.12 LTS. ⌘ Read more
EndeavourOS Titan Released With Linux 6.19, Improved GPU Driver Integration
EndeavourOS Titan is out today as the latest ISO refresh for this Arch Linux powered distribution. There is a lot of updates as part of this routine ISO refresh as well as some new tooling and GPU driver integration enhancements… ⌘ Read more
AMD HDR/Color Improvement For Their Linux Driver & KDE - Co-Developed By Claude Code
Introduced with Linux 6.19 was the long in development DRM Color Pipeline API while it’s not the end of the road yet on enhancing the Linux desktop for modern high dynamic range (HDR) displays and color pipeline handling. AMD engineer Harry Wentland has more improvements pending for the AMDGPU driver as well as example compositor/desktop-side integration with KDE’s KWin… ⌘ Read more
D7VK 1.5 Released With Direct3D 3 Now Implemented Over Vulkan
The open-source D7VK project began to implement Direct3D 7 over Vulkan similar to DXVK and VKD3D-Proton providing support for newer Direct3D APIs atop Vulkan. With succeeding releases D7VK was extended to Direct3D 6 too and then Direct3D 5 support. Now with today’s D7VK 1.5 release, Direct3D 3 is implemented for faster acceleration using Vulkan… ⌘ Read more
Linux’s KVM Virtualization Preparing For Intel Advanced Performance Extensions (APX)
Intel’s Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) debuting with Nova Lake and Diamond Rapids is ready with Linux 6.16+ and recent open-source compilers. One piece of the support puzzle still coming together though that will be especially important for Xeon Diamond Rapids is the KVM virtualization support. New patches there were posted this week… ⌘ Read more
EQT Eyes $6 Billion Sale of SUSE
Private equity firm EQT AB is reportedly exploring a sale of SUSE that could value the open-source Linux pioneer at up to $6 billion, roughly doubling the valuation since EQT took the company private in 2023. Reuters reports: EQT “has hired investment bank Arma Partners to sound out a group of private equity investors for a possible sale of the company, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss con … ⌘ Read more
EA Lays Off Staff Across All Battlefield Studios Following Record-Breaking Battlefield 6 Launch
Electronic Arts has laid off staff across multiple Battlefield studios despite Battlefield 6 being the best-selling game in the U.S. in 2025 and the “biggest launch in franchise history.” According to IGN, the layoffs include workers at Criterion, Dice, Ripple Effect, and Motive Studi … ⌘ Read more
As US Tariffs Hit EVs, Hyundai Discontinues Its Cheapest IONIQ 6, While Kia Delays EV6 adn EV9 GT
First, Hyundai “is discontinuing its most affordable electric sedan after just three years on the market,” reports USA Today. After being introduced in 2022, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 “quickly gained the admiration of automotive critics because of its affordable pricing and capable perform … ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma Saw A Lot Of Bug/Crash Fixing & UI Polishing This Week
Nate Graham and John Veness are out today with the newest issue of This Week in Plasma. Notable for KDE Plasma 6.6.x~6.7 development this week were a lot of bug fixing – including multiple crash fixes – and some UI polishing too… ⌘ Read more
Python ‘Chardet’ Package Replaced With LLM-Generated Clone, Re-Licensed
Ancient Slashdot reader ewhac writes: The maintainers of the Python package `chardet`, which attempts to automatically detect the character encoding of a string, announced the release of version 7 this week, claiming a speedup factor of 43x over version 6. In the release notes, the maintainers claim that version 7 is, “a ground … ⌘ Read more
AMD CPPC Performance Priority Being Prepared For Linux - New Zen 6 Feature
Patches were posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list for enabling a new feature called AMD CPPC Performance Priority as a new hardware feature being found with “future AMD processors”…. Which given the timing of these patches, almost certainly means the upcoming Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 File-System Benchmarks With XFS Leading The Way
With a number of file-system improvements in Linux 6.19 and more file-system optimizations in Linux 7.0, it’s past due for running some fresh file-system benchmarks. Here is a look at how the prominent file-system contenders are performing on the latest Linux 7.0 development kernel. ⌘ Read more
Intel’s Make-Or-Break 18A Process Node Debuts For Data Center With 288-Core Xeon 6+ CPU
Intel has formally unveiled its Xeon 6+ “Clearwater Forest” data-center processor with up to 288 cores, built on the company’s new Intel 18A process and using Foveros Direct packaging. The chip targets telecom, cloud, and edge-AI workloads with massive parallelism, large caches, and high-bandwidth D … ⌘ Read more
Armbian 26.02 Released: New Boards, Powered By Linux 6.18 LTS & RISC-V Xfce Desktop
Armbian 26.02 has been released released for this Debian-derived Linux distribution primarily focused on supporting a range of Arm and RISC-V platforms. With Armbian 26.02 there is yet more new boards added while moving to the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel and also adding a RISC-V Xfce desktop install option… ⌘ Read more
From jail to the C-suite: The AI firm co-founded by a former insider trader
A $6 billion business co-founded by Oliver Curtis and his cousin Tim Rosenfield has attracted blue-chip backers. But not everybody is convinced. ⌘ Read more
AMD Prepares Linux For Instruction-Based Sampling Improvements With Zen 6
A set of patches recently posted to the Linux kernel mailing list have now been queued up to a tip/tip.git branch for planned introduction in Linux 7.1. These patches are for enhancing the Linux perf subsystem support for AMD Instruction-Based Sampling (IBS) improvements with next-gen Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.7 Preps Rounded Style UI Enhancement For QtWidgets-Based Apps
KDE Plasma 6.7 development continues heating up following the Plasma 6.6 desktop release earlier this month… ⌘ Read more
Intel Releases Updated CPU Microcode For Xeon 6 SoCs “Granite Rapids D”
Catching me by surprise today was a new Intel CPU microcode drop “20260227” for Linux users/administrators outside of their typical Patch Tuesday alignment for CPU microcode releases… ⌘ Read more
LXD 6.7 Released With AMD GPU Passthrough Support
Canonical today released LXD 6.7 as the latest feature update to this system container and virtual machine manager commonly used in Ubuntu Linux environments… ⌘ Read more
Afterpay’s owner Block to slash nearly half its workforce, citing AI
The cuts reduce Block’s global workforce from more than 10,000 employees to just under 6,000, making it one of the largest AI-driven job culls to date. ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Updates DirectX Shader Compiler With Improved Vulkan Driver Interoperability
Microsoft has published a new version of its open-source DirectX Shader Compiler. Besides adding Shader Model 6.9 production support, making this DX Compiler update interesting to us are the SPIR-V back-end improvements and enhancing interoperability with Vulkan drivers… ⌘ Read more
EBay Is Laying Off About 800 Workers, 6% of Global Workforce
EBay is cutting about 800 jobs, or 6% of its full-time employees, saying the layoffs are needed to align its workforce with strategic priorities. From a report: “We are taking steps to reinvest across our business and align our structure with our strategic priorities, which will affect certain roles across our workforce,” the San Jose, California-based company … ⌘ Read more
AI Can Find Hundreds of Software Bugs – Fixing Them Is Another Story
Anthropic last week promoted Claude Code Security, a research preview capability that uses its Claude Opus 4.6 model to hunt for software vulnerabilities, claiming its red team had surfaced over 500 bugs in production open-source codebases – but security researchers say the real bottleneck was never discovery.
Guy Azari, a former securi … ⌘ Read more
Linux 6.18 LTS / 6.12 LTS / 6.6 LTS Support Periods Extended
Greg Kroah-Hartman today extended the planned maintenance periods of the latest Linux 6.18, Linux 6.12, and Linux 6.6 Long Term Support (LTS) kernel series… ⌘ Read more
D7VK 1.4 Released With More Improvements For Old Direct3D On Vulkan Under Linux
D7VK is the open-source project that began implementing the Direct3D 7 APIs atop Vulkan and with time the scope expanded to include Direct3D 6 support as well as Direct3D 5 support. Out today is D7VK 1.4 for continuing to enhance the support for these older D3D versions on Vulkan under Linux… ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.6.1 Released With Initial Batch Of Bug Fixes
Following last week’s Plasma 6.6 release, KDE developers today shipped Plasma 6.6.1 as the first point release with an assortment of different bug fixes… ⌘ Read more
Texas Is About To Overtake California In Battery Storage
U.S. battery storage installations hit a record 57.6 GWh in 2025, and Texas is now poised to surpass California as the nationâ™s largest storage market in 2026. Electrek reports: According to the US Energy Storage Market Outlook Q1 2026 from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, installations are now four times … ⌘ Read more
Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible
The first fiber-optic cable ever laid across an ocean – TAT-8, a nearly 6,000-kilometer line between the United States, United Kingdom, and France that carried its first traffic on December 14, 1988 – is now being pulled off the Atlantic seabed after more than two decades of sitting dormant, bound for recycling in South Africa.
… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Features Include More Preparations For AMD Zen 6 & Intel Nova Lake
While the version bump to 7.0 is driven solely by Linus Torvalds’ versioning preferences, with Linux 7.0 there are many great changes to be found in this upcoming stable kernel version to power the likes of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. Here is a recap of all the interesting changes with Linux 7.0. ⌘ Read more
Climate Physicists Face the Ghosts in Their Machines: Clouds
Climate scientists trying to predict how much hotter the planet will get have long grappled with a surprisingly stubborn problem – clouds, which both reflect sunlight and trap heat, account for more than half the variation between climate predictions and are the main reason warming projections for the next 50 years range from 2 to 6 degrees Celsius.
Two … ⌘ Read more
AMD Zen 6 Performance Events & Metrics Merged For Linux 7.0
Ahead of the Linux 7.0 merge window closing later today with the Linux 7.0-rc1 release, the performance “perf” subsystem tooling changes were merged on Saturday. Among the notable changes here are the performance events and metrics handling for upcoming AMD Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more
NASA Eyes March 6 To Launch 4 Astronauts To the Moon On Artemis II Mission
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: NASA could launch four astronauts on a mission to fly around the moon as soon as March 6th. That’s the launch date (PDF) that the space agency is now working towards following a successful test fueling of its big, 322-foot-tall moon rocket, which is standing on a launch pad at th … ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.7 Preps More Improvements While Plasma 6.6.1 Fixes Begin Accumulating
This week marked the release of KDE’s Plasma 6.6 desktop as a very successful release that overall is in very robust shape and performing well. While Plasma 6.6 overall is in great shape, there are various bugs - including crash fixes - that have already been queued for the upcoming Plasma 6.6.1. KDE developers are also quite busy on the trek toward Plasma 6.7… ⌘ Read more
Cyber Stocks Slide As Anthropic Unveils ‘Claude Code Security’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Shares of cybersecurity software companies tumbled Friday after Anthropic PBC introduced a new security feature into its Claude AI model. Crowdstrike Holdings was the among the biggest decliners, falling as much as 6.5%, while Cloudflare slumped more than 6%. Meanwhile, Zscaler dropped 3.5%, SailPoint s … ⌘ Read more
PayPal Discloses Data Breach That Exposed User Info For 6 Months
PayPal is notifying customers of a data breach after a software error in a loan application exposed their sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, for nearly 6 months last year. From a report: The incident affected the PayPal Working Capital (PPWC) loan app, which provides small businesses with quick access to financing. PayP … ⌘ Read more
US Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Global Tariffs
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down on Friday President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs that he pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies, rejecting one of his most contentious assertions of his authority in a ruling with major implications for the global economy. From a report: The justices, in a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld … ⌘ Read more
Linux Begins Seeing Early Preparations For PCIe 7.0
While we are on the horizon of seeing PCI Express 6.0 devices, there are already early Linux kernel patches beginning to surface for PCI Express 7.0… ⌘ Read more
LLM-Generated Passwords Look Strong but Crack in Hours, Researchers Find
AI security firm Irregular has found that passwords generated by major large language models – Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini – appear complex but follow predictable patterns that make them crackable in hours, even on decades-old hardware. When researchers prompted Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 fifty times in separate conversations, only … ⌘ Read more
PipeWire 1.6 Released With Many New Features
PipeWire 1.6 is out today as the newest feature release for this software widely used by the Linux desktop for managing of audio and video streams while nicely integrating with sandboxed Flatpak apps and more… ⌘ Read more
Apple M3 With Asahi Linux Continues Making Progress, No ETA Yet For Shipping
Asahi Linux developers have published a status report following the recent Linux 6.19 kernel release to outline recent progress and upcoming items around Apple Silicon support on Linux. This year will also mark five years that Asahi Linux has been around for bringing Linux to the Apple M-Series hardware… ⌘ Read more
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Model Brings ‘Much-Improved Coding Skills’, Upgraded Free Tier
Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.6, the first upgrade to its mid-tier AI model since version 4.5 arrived in September 2025. The new model features a “1M token context window” and delivers a “full upgrade of the model’s skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge wor … ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.6 Released
Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin writes: KDE Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile too) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.6.
In this new major release, Spectacle can recognize texts from screenshots, a new on-screen keyboard and new login manager a … ⌘ Read more
AMD Preparing Linux Kernel For “RMPOPT” To Help Reduce Overhead On SEV-SNP Servers
AMD sent out a set of Linux kernel patches today for enabling use of a new instruction dubbed RMPOPT. Given the timing of these patches, RMPOPT is presumably a feature coming with next-gen AMD EPYC Zen 6 “Venice” processors… ⌘ Read more
Micron’s PCIe 6.0 SSD Hits Mass Production at 28 GB/s
Micron has begun mass production of the 9650 series, the industry’s first PCIe 6.0 SSD, capable of sequential read speeds up to 28 GB/s and random read performance of 5.5 million IOPS – roughly double the throughput of the fastest PCIe 5.0 drives available today.
The drive targets AI and data center workloads and ships in E1.S and E3.S form factors across two varia … ⌘ Read more
Mazda Finally Admits Its Infotainment System Is the Worst
Mazda, the automaker that for years defended its scroll-wheel infotainment system as a safer alternative to touchscreens, is abandoning the approach entirely in the 2026 CX-5 in favor of a 15.6-inch touchscreen and zero physical buttons.
The current lineup – the CX-50 Hybrid, CX-70 and CX-90 – still relies on a console-mounted scroll wheel and dedicated act … ⌘ Read more
Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids Memory Scaling Performance From 6 To 12 MRDIMMs
With memory pricing being as wild as it is these days and with MRDIMMs on Xeon 6 Granite Rapids offering much more memory bandwidth than conventional DDR5 RDIMMs, you may be wondering about the performance impact when not populating all twelve memory channels on the Xeon 6900 series processors. In this article are benchmarks to demonstrate the performance difference of MRDIMM-8800 memory across using six, eight, ten, and twelve MRDIMMs … ⌘ Read more