Open-Source Linux Driver Christmas Surprise For 20~23 Year Old Radeon GPUs
If Linux 6.19 switching from the Radeon legacy to AMDGPU kernel drivers for the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs for those ~13 year old GPUs isn’t nostalgic enough for you, here’s something a bit more nostalgic this holiday season: fresh open-source driver commits to the Radeon R300g driver for supporting those 23 year old ATI R300 GPUs up through the 20 year old R500 class graphics processors… ⌘ Read more

Visa Says AI Will Start Shopping and Paying For You In 2026
BrianFagioli writes: Visa says it has completed hundreds of secure, AI-initiated transactions with partners, arguing this proves agent driven shopping is ready to move beyond experiments. The company believes 2025 will be the last full year most consumers manually check out, with AI agents handling purchases at scale by the 2026 holiday season. Nearly half of U … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19’s Significant ~30% Performance Boost For Old AMD Radeon GPUs
For those still using old AMD GCN 1.0 “Southern Islands” or GCN 1.1 “Sea Islands” graphics cards, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel is a wonderful holiday gift. With Linux 6.19, the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs are now defaulting to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver in place of the legacy “Radeon” DRM driver that has been the default for GCN 1.1/1.0 and other ATI/AMD graphics processors of the past 2+ decades. In this article is a look at the performance ben … ⌘ Read more

Are ‘Geek Gifts’ Becoming Their Own Demographic?
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland wonders if “gifts for geeks” is the next big consumer demographic:

For this year’s holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game “Oregon Trail.” (“Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West … ⌘ Read more

Linux Mint 22.3 Beta Released With Cinnamon 6.6 Desktop
The beta release of Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena” is now available for testing ahead of the holidays for this latest incremental update to this desktop OS built atop an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Made Another Copilot Ad Where Nothing Actually Works
Microsoft’s latest holiday ad for its Copilot AI assistant features a 30-second montage of users seamlessly syncing smart home lights to music, scaling recipes for large gatherings, and parsing HOA guidelines – none of which the software can actually perform reliably when put to the test. The Verge methodically tested each prompt shown in the ad and foun … ⌘ Read more

Xorgproto 2025.1 Released To Recognize Newer Keyboard Keys
For X.Org Server users there is a new release of xorgproto for the holidays. Xorgproto as the set of headers and specifications for the X11 core protocols and extensions is out with its first new release since March 2024… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.337 Debuts With Long Vector & 3D ASTC Compression Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.337 released a short time ago as what could be the last Vulkan API spec update of 2025 depending upon how much time the working group takes off or not around the holidays. In any case, it’s a nice holiday treat with the new VK_EXT_texture_compression_astc_3d and VK_EXT_shader_long_vector extensions… ⌘ Read more

OpenZFS 2.4 Released With Faster Encryption Performance, Many Other Improvements
OpenZFS 2.4 is out as stable in time for the holidays! The big OpenZFS 2.4 feature release is now available for FreeBSD and Linux systems to continue advancing the open-source ZFS file-system support… ⌘ Read more

Kdenlive 25.12 Video Editor Brings New Docking System, Menu Restructuring
In addition to the release this week of OpenShot 3.4, released today is a major update to another popular open-source video editing application: Kdenlive. The Kdenlive 25.12 release brings many improvements to help with editing of any year-end / holiday videos… ⌘ Read more

AMD Awarding Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo” Laptops To Those Fixing ROCm Bugs
AMD Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo” is beautifully awesome. Probably my favorite hardware of 2025 whether it’s in desktop form with the likes of the Framework Desktop or for very powerful laptops between the Zen 5 CPU cores and very capable Radeon 8060S Graphics within devices like the HP ZBook Ultra G1a. If you are interested by Strix Halo too and looking for a way to obtain one without the high price, AMD is running a holiday special of those … ⌘ 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

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe Funny you should say that, I designed a new Prolog(ish) Symbolic Reasoning Engine and DSl over the holidays 🤣

And I’m back from my holidays! 🥳 Back to work boo 😒

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com probably a bug on my end with the bridge. I’ll figure it out with your help when I get home from my holidays.

Ubuntu 26.04 Snapshot 2 Released As Latest Monthly ISOs
It was just at the end of month that Ubuntu 26.04 Snapshot 1 ISOs were published for the first “Resolute Raccoon” milestone. Out already is now Snapshot 2 with Canonical releasing these images ahead of their engineers having time off for end-of-year holidays… ⌘ Read more

Bring Falling Snow & Christmas Lights to Mac with Snowy
If you ever wished your Mac could feel a bit more seasonal and festive for the holidays and Christmas, you might just appreciate a fun app called Snowy. Snowy brings falling snow, twinkling Christmas lights, and some holiday ambiance, directly to your Mac desktop. You can have dangling twinkling Christmas lights hanging from your menu … Read More ⌘ Read more

AI Slop Ad Backfires For McDonald’s
McDonald’s has pulled an AI-generated Christmas commercial from YouTube after viewers pushed back on what they called a distasteful, “AI slop”-filled take on the holidays. The 45-second ad, titled “It’s the most terrible time of the year,” was a satirical look at holiday chaos – people tripping while carrying overloaded gift bags, getting tangled in lights, burning homemade cookies, starting kitchen fires – … ⌘ Read more

Christmas cards remind prisoners they are ‘not forgotten’ over the holidays
Two Adelaide women have made it their mission to collect 2,000 Christmas cards for prisoners who’ll spend this year’s festive season behind bars. ⌘ Read more

Gearing up for the school holidays? Here’s how to survive them without social media
These school holidays, children under 16 will find themselves with less social media access as a ban comes into place. We asked the experts how parents can best support their kids with the transition. ⌘ Read more

No summer break for Australian athletes chasing Winter Olympic glory
At a time when many Aussies are heading off for beach holidays, a group of snow sports athletes are chasing winter with their sights set on the next Olympic Games. ⌘ Read more

Cost of living still a sore point for voters as politicians go on holiday
A mammoth year in politics ended with a focus on what is worrying most Australians ahead of Christmas: the cost of living. ⌘ Read more

Watch the Fun Apple Holiday 2025 Commercial: A Critter Carol
Apple has launched their official 2025 holiday advertisement for the season. This years commercial comes in at 2 minutes and features two friends taking a snowy hike, one of whom drops their iPhone into the snow, which is soon picked up by a forest creature, who proceeds to gather even more forest creatures to use … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/12/02/watch-the-fun-apple-holiday-2025-commercial-a-critter-c … ⌘ Read more

Add Christmas Lights to Home Screen, Dock, & Desktop with Festivitas for iPhone & Mac
Festivitas is a fun app that brings some holiday spirit directly to your iPhone or Mac, by allowing you to add some animated holiday lights to your Home Screen or desktop. And if you’re using it on a Mac, you can even make it snow, or add Christmas lights to your Dock too. Deck the … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/11/30/add-christmas-lights-to-home-scre … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh damn ! I’m on holidays in Ciwtnam 🤣 I’ll be late to the party !

Benedict Cumberbatch Films Two Bizarre Holiday Ads: for ‘World of Tanks’ and Amazon
“There are times when World of Tanks feels less like a videogame and more like a giant ad budget looking for something to be spent on,” writes PC Gamer.

This year, all those huge sacks with dollar signs on them have been thrown Benedict Cumberbatch’s way, making him the game’s newest “Holiday Ambassador” and t … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Sweeet! 🥳 enjoy your holiday!

Algol 68 Programming Language Front-End Merged Into GCC 16
Making for an exciting holiday weekend night is the Algol 68 programming language front-end “ga68” being merged into the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) codebase. After COBOL language support landed in GCC 15 earlier this year, next year’s GCC 16 release is adding support for the half-century old Algol 68 programming language… ⌘ Read more

Intel Hiring Two More Experienced Linux Kernel Engineers
While there have been a number of Intel Linux engineers laid off over roughly the past year, other Linux kernel engineers opting to pursue employment opportunities elsewhere amid the ongoing challenges and restructuring at the company, and shifts in their open-source strategy, there’s some good news as we work toward the 2025 holidays. Intel is currently hiring for two more experienced Linux kernel software engineers… ⌘ Read more

That’s going to be most of our holidays next year 🤣 Mostly because we bought a van to go “glamping” about the country 😆

@movq@www.uninformativ.de You don’t go on holidays anywhere? 🧐

I think i may have fixed threading too but can’t easily test now as i’ve left for my
holiday and don’t really use Mastodon 😂

Black Friday Deals: AirPods 4 from $69, M4 MacBook Air from $749, & More
Black Friday Deals are live on tons of great Apple products and there are tons of great deals available from Amazon in particular. Whether you’re shopping for yourself or someone else this holiday season, take advantage of the deals while they last. You’ll find great deals on AirPods, Apple Watch, iPad, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/11/28/black-friday-deal … ⌘ Read more

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Thanks for the account! I figured out one thing at least so far, my WAF was blocking some of the AP requests. Fixed that. Anyway, holiday time 🤣 Back in ~2 weeks.

Sooooo looking forward to my holiday, after this week of work 🤯 16 day holiday in Vietnam! Whoohoo 🤟

What the social media ban means for rural boarding school students
Regional and remote students are being encouraged to learn old-school ways to stay in contact as social media bans for those under 16 come into effect over the summer holidays. ⌘ Read more

Live: ASX to rise as Wall St extends rally on growing bets of Fed rate cut
A rally on Wall Street is likely to send Australian stocks higher as revived tech strength and the growing probability of a December interest rate cut from the US Federal Reserve put investors in a buying mood the day before the Thanksgiving holiday. Follow the latest updates in our live blog. ⌘ Read more

The online war for Australian visas and how much it costs to win
Thousands of young Indonesians want the chance to come to Australia to work, but first they have to win a visa application “war” that puts them in the sights of scammers and dodgy operators promising them what they want — for a price. ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de @bender@twtxt.net I’ll also start spamming from my upcoming Vietnam holiday (flying out this Friday) for a couple of soliday weeks 🤣

One can tell holidays are abound; even twtxt slows down to almost a halt.

Phoronix Premium Cyber Week “Black Friday” Deal To Help Enable Linux Hardware Reviews
The end of 2025 is quickly approaching and while there are the various end of year holidays, you can still expect to find new and original content on Phoronix each and every single day of the year just as it’s been for more than a decade of the now 21-year-old Phoronix.com. The last day without any new content on Phoronix was all the way back in May of 2012. That’s due to my passion for Linux hardware and open-source, paired in … ⌘ Read more

Phoronix Premium Cyber Week “Black Friday” Deal To Help Enable Linux Hardware Reviews
The end of 2025 is quickly approaching and while there are the various end of year holidays, you can still expect to find new and original content on Phoronix each and every single day of the year just as it’s been for more than a decade of the now 21-year-old Phoronix.com. The last day without any new content on Phoronix was all the way back in May of 2012. That’s due to my passion for Linux hardware and open-source, paired in … ⌘ Read more

Advocacy Groups Urge Parents To Avoid AI Toys This Holiday Season
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: They’re cute, even cuddly, and promise learning and companionship – but artificial intelligence toys are not safe for kids, according to children’s and consumer advocacy groups urging parents not to buy them during the holiday season. These toys, marketed to kids as young as 2 years old … ⌘ Read more

Early Black Friday Deals: $250 Off MacBook Air, $150 Off iPad Air, AirPods for $80, etc
Early Black Friday deals are available for many great Apple products through Amazon, check some of them out now and get an early start on your holiday shopping. M3 iPad Air for $150 Off The M3 iPad Air 13″ and 11″ model are available at a $150 discount from Amazon. These are great iPad models … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/11/20/early-black-friday-deals-250- … ⌘ Read more

Help! Gathering mail for neighbours in the holidays is driving me postal
Modern Guru understands the weight of the responsibility of this role – but it also confers a certain status. ⌘ Read more

Watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Free on November 15 & 16 via Apple TV
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is a holiday season classic, and Apple is making it free to watch on their Apple TV service for a weekend in the middle of November. Specifically, on Saturday November 15, and Sunday November 16, 2025, you’ll be able to tune in and enjoy the Thanksgiving Charlie Brown special for free … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/11/01/watch-charlie-brown-thanksgiving … ⌘ Read more

We had some gray soup with the occasional fine rain with strong wind gusts. Despite the bad forecast we took the train to Geislingen/Steige and strolled up to the Helfenstein castle ruin. All the colorful leaves were so beautiful, it didn’t matter that the sun was behind thick layers of clouds.

We then continued to the Ödenturm (lit. boring tower). By then the wind had picked up by quite a bit, just as the weatherman predicted. We were very positively surprised that the Swabian Jura Association had opened up the tower. Between May and October, the tower is typically only manned on Sundays and holidays between 10 and 17 o’clock. But yesterday was Saturday and no holiday. The lovely lady up there told us that they’re currently experimenting with opening up on Saturday, too, because there are some highly motivated members responsible for the tower.

We were the very first visitors on that day. Last Sunday, when the weather lived up to the weekday’s name, they counted 128 people up in the tower. Very impressive.

The wind gusts were howling around the tower. Luckily, there are glass windows. So, it was quite pleasant up in the tower room. Chatting with the tower guard for a while, we got even luckier: the sun came out! That was really awesome. The photos don’t do justice. As always, it looked way more stunning in person.

Thanks to all the volunteers who make it possible to enjoy the view from the thirty odd meters up there. That certainly made our day!

After signing the guestbook we climbed down the staircase and returned to the station and headed back. The train even arrived on time. What a great little trip!

https://lyse.isobeef.org/wanderung-auf-die-burgruine-helfenstein-und-den-oedenturm-2025-10-25/

Why is Halloween starting so much earlier each year? A business professor explains
Halloween is a fun, scary time for children and adults alike—but why does the holiday seem to start so much earlier every year? Decades ago, when I was young, Halloween was a much smaller affair, and people didn’t start preparing until mid-October. Today, in my neighborhood near where I grew up in Massachusetts, Halloween decorations start appearing in the middle of summer. ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh yeah, once in the quarter to the office is absolutely amazing and luxurious. Thank you teammates and employer! Though, I would already have been on site when these things happened earlier.

Today is my last day of holiday. Back to work again tomorrow. Not looking forward, vacation is just great. So easy to get used to.

On a public holiday here (Labor Day, ironic really considering the labor party here in Australia has won their 2nd term this election haha 🤣)