Terminal

Hybrid Reasoning Agents: LLM agents that think in latent space, act through text ↗ (opens external article)

Netflix vmaf: Perceptual video quality assessment based on multi-method fusion ↗ (opens external article)

Researchers Discover How To Lead Dying Coral Reefs To a 'Fast And Full Recovery' ↗ (opens external article)

Gizmodo reports: Roughly 84.4% of the world's coral reefs suffered bleaching-levels of heat stress during the last major marine heat wave from January 2023 to September 2025, with over half already lost compared to coral coverage in the 1950s... But there's some good news, thanks to a new study published this Wednesday in the journal Science Advances: Marine ecologists at Stanford have discovered…

Introducing uncm(4) ↗ (opens external article)

In a post to tech@, Jan Schreiber submitted a driver for USB network control mode, uncm(4). Jan writes: I noticed newer Android devices (since Android 6 if I'm not mistaken) do not use urndis(4) for USB tethering any more. They now use CDC NCM which is missing a driver in OpenBSD. Below is my first go at it. I moved some defines and structs out of mbim.h into usbcdc.h to not include everything fo…

Websites Are Closing Their Doors to AI Agents ↗ (opens external article)

The Verge reports: OpenAI, Meta, Google, Instinct, and others promise their agents can scour the internet on your behalf, doing anything from booking a dinner reservation and cleaning out your inbox to buying new shoes. But what happens when the rest of the internet won't play nice? In recent weeks, users of services like Meta's Muse, xAI's Grok, OpenAI's Dots, and Instinct have reported blocks pr…

Free Pascal compiler now supports dynamic packages ↗ (opens external article)

Florida's HOAs and condo associations are making the housing crisis worse ↗ (opens external article)

PalmOS Lemmings ↗ (opens external article)

More Details on Arrested Saudi OpenAI Employee, Who is Seeking Release on Bail ↗ (opens external article)

More details are emerging about Saudi OpenAI employee Abdulrahman Alfozan, who was arrested by the FBI for allegedly planting a recording device in an executive conference room. Previously Alfozan "was an engineer at Meta," notes the New York Times, "before joining a start-up that went through Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley start-up accelerator. He gained permanent residency status in the United…

Mitos editor is a fork of Helix ↗ (opens external article)

Namecheap just seized and disabled all my domains ↗ (opens external article)

LinkedIn Fights AI Slop, Now 40% of Its Long-Form Posts ↗ (opens external article)

"Even LinkedIn is getting tired of your AI-written posts," writes CNN, reporting that the Microsoft-owned, job-oriented social media site "is upping its fight against slop." A report published in July by Pangram, a research firm that tracks AI content online, found that more than 40% of long-form posts on the platform were AI-generated, compared to around 30% on X and Medium and a smaller percenta…

Someone behind the software ↗ (opens external article)

Anthropic gives outside AI watchdog “employee-like” access ↗ (opens external article)

Anthropic has granted external evaluators “employee-like access” to assess the risks of its models, following through on a commitment to increase safeguards over concerns the technology could run catastrophically out of control. METR, a nonprofit that has worked with leading labs including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta, now has a team embedded in the Claude maker’s office with access to its…

The Intel 8087 chip: floating-point addition and subtraction ↗ (opens external article)

Programming Language Popularity Increases for R, Julia, and Rust (but Not Go) ↗ (opens external article)

TechRepublic reports: The TIOBE Index is a monthly indicator of programming-language popularity based on factors including skilled engineers, courses, and third-party vendors. The October 2026 rankings show a largely stable top 10, with R overtaking SQL and Julia returning to the top 20 for the first time in three years. [SQL has risen to #9 from #10 in October of 2025 — back when R ranked only #1…

Java sealed classes and exhaustive pattern matching ↗ (opens external article)

Releasing Palm OS Archive, Developer Rediscovers Working Virus After 25 Years ↗ (opens external article)

Long-time Slashdot reader ardiri remembers his days writing applications for the Palm OS. And he's now released approximately 1.5 GB of historical Palm OS development resources, "accumulated during the early days of handheld computing and preserved on hard drive backups for more than 25 years... to preserve the tools and knowledge that helped define an important era of personal computing." The col…

Show HN: Ranet3 – High performance policy routed IPsec mesh SD-WAN ↗ (opens external article)

It Turns Out Intel TDX Doesn't Need So Much Cache Flushing ↗ (opens external article)

Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) for confidential computing with VMs has assumed the need to perform cache flushing when transitioning memory between KeyIDs used by the total memory encryption (MKTME) for unique AES encryption keys. But it's turned out to be unneeded and the Linux kernel is working now to reduce the excessive cache flushing...…

RepRapMicron ↗ (opens external article)

Show HN: The Zelda timeline to catch up before the Ocarina of Time remake ↗ (opens external article)

FSF Criticizes Raspberry Pi DRM Blocking RAM Upgrades ↗ (opens external article)

The Free Software Foundation "has never supported Raspberry Pi," writes their deputy directory Sean O'Brien, "as it depends on nonfree software for the boot process, leaving an important part of the computer outside the user's control." But they're now decrying "an even more intrusive restriction on user freedom" — the binary-blob bootloader changes that limit your ability to upgrade RAM: The rest…

Open MicroManipulator – A sub-micrometer 3D motion control plattform ↗ (opens external article)

Linux 7.4 Features Very Exciting With Radeon HDMI 2.1 By Default, AMD PerfOpt, Apple M4 ↗ (opens external article)

The Linux 7.3 kernel is expected to be released as stable later today and with that version there are many exciting changes and improvements. However, the Linux 7.4 kernel merge window will then open up and there are even more exciting changes expected to be merged for this follow-on kernel cycle. Here is a preview of some of the many exciting feature changes expected for Linux 7.4...…

Omarchy Gets The Web Browser Launching Faster By Avoiding XDG Overhead ↗ (opens external article)

Omarchy 4.0.5 released this weekend as the newest version of this Arch Linux based distribution built around the Hyprland desktop. Omarchy 4.0.5 pulls in the latest Linux 7.2 stable kernel with BORE scheduler, updates against the Qt 6.12 toolkit, and a variety of smaller improvements...…

Servo Gets CSS Grid Working, Threadboost Offering Big Speed-Ups ↗ (opens external article)

Servo's August status report has finally appeared for outlining progress made on this open-source, Rust-based browser engine. This follows the recent release of the Servo 0.6 software, including the Servoshell demo browser...…

Parser Combinators ↗ (opens external article)

Oh no, what happened to my OOHPod? Windows command prompt puts in a surprise appearance ↗ (opens external article)

The Windows command line is a marvelous thing, beloved by administrators, but not quite so welcome when you're trying to get a parcel out of a locker. Today's example of Windows behaving badly comes from Ireland and one of the nation's OOHPod postal lockers. An eagle-eyed Register reader, trying to retrieve a parcel, found the locker screen instead teasing a command prompt. For the uninitiated, O…

Tech Journalist Robert X Cringely Has Died ↗ (opens external article)

BoingBoing reports: Mark Stephens, better known under the pen name Robert X. Cringely, died last week at 73. Stephens chronicled the tech industry of the late 1980s and early 1990s — the age of Bill Gates' rise, Steve Jobs' repose, the dawn of the world wide web — and produced the famed documetary Triumph of the Nerds, based on his own bestselling Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley…

DeepSeek search and fetch – $0.75 per 1000 successful requests ↗ (opens external article)

Saudi OpenAI Employee's Arrest Revives Fears US Tech Companies Are Hiring Spies ↗ (opens external article)

That Saudi national working at OpenAI and arrested by the FBI "has not been charged with foreign espionage," writes the Washington Post, "and the U.S. government has not said whether he was acting alone or as an agent of a foreign government." But "there are signs that the U.S. government is exploring the latter possibility," they add, citing comments from Chris McGuire, a member of the National S…

Show HN: Sphinx – A hook that quizzes you on your AI's code before shipping ↗ (opens external article)

How the Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” is deceiving ↗ (opens external article)

Dogs seem to agree with humans that 'bouba' is round and 'kiki' is spiky ↗ (opens external article)

Woman Arrested After Blocking Delivery Robot to Protest Job Displacements ↗ (opens external article)

A Philadelphia newscast reports on a grey-haired lady who allegedly refused to move out of the path of a delivery robot as a form of protest because "I know they're taking the jobs of human delivery workers." She was arrested, but says her actions were protected speech: According to police, Marvin repeatedly blocked the robot's path and ignored multiple commands from officers to move... Marvin sai…

Synchronous Queues For VirtIO-FS Show Huge Performance Potential ↗ (opens external article)

VirtIO-FS as the shared file-system for transferring data between guest VMs to/from a host server is showing some promising performance results with pending code for allowing synchronous queues rather than always being asynchronous...…

There's never been a better time to go into math (by: 3blue1brown) [video] ↗ (opens external article)

Beyond Tetris: The other games of Alexey Pajitnov [video] ↗ (opens external article)

Does a Universal Basic Income Bring Long-Term Changes? ↗ (opens external article)

For more than a year, The New York Times followed recipients of a universal basic income program who received $1,330 a month for an entire year. There were benefits, but also the everyday challenges of being poor, and turning their life around "did not turn out to be quite that simple." Across Silicon Valley, experimental guaranteed income programs have quietly taken off. Google began funding six…

I built a programming language that LLMs can't use ↗ (opens external article)

ReactOS Can Now Be Installed & Used With Its NTFS Driver ↗ (opens external article)

The ReactOS open-source operating system has seen its NTFS file-system driver mature to the point that it can be finally used for installing and using ReactOS with it. NTFS formatting support is also finally now possible with this driver too...…

Court Agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN Law Demands a Technical Impossibility ↗ (opens external article)

"When state lawmakers attempt to rewrite how the internet works," argues an EFF blog post, "users rely on courts to recognize that laws can't make technical impossibilities a reality." "That's why we were happy to see that a court has blocked Utah's attempt to outlaw the privacy protections of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)." In a win for digital rights, a federal judge has issued a preliminary i…

MapQuest Shows Location of Flock (and Other ALPR) Cameras ↗ (opens external article)

MapQuest creates a new layer (that can be toggled on and off), Gizmodo reports: After promising not to comply with the Trump administration's "Lake America" gimmick, the platform announced a new "Surveillance Layer" that displays the locations of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), including those from Flock Safety. Per MapQuest, its new tool will identify the locations of known outdoor surve…

Blue Origin Announces $330M Upgrades to Rocket Facilities for 'Multiple Flights Per Week' ↗ (opens external article)

"Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin said Friday it plans to make extensive upgrades to its Florida launch facilities," reports CNBC, "with the goal of supporting multiple flights per week by the end of the decade." "The company will add two more launch and landing pads for New Glenn, its heavy-lift, partially reusable rocket." A $330 million expansion to its Rocket Park campus in Cape Canaveral, expected to…

Linux Maintainers Can Now Submit AI-Generated Code Without Declaring It ↗ (opens external article)

Linux maintainers "have ruled that people no longer have to declare their LLM usage," reports XDA Developers, "as Torvalds himself calls a ban on AI 'utterly stupid.'" The first part of this story comes via a message sent to the Linux mailing list. It announces one of the major changes decided during the Maintainers Summit on October 8, 2026, in Prague, Czechia, where submissions to the kernel no…

MeshXFS: AI Adapts XFS Into A Clustered File-System ↗ (opens external article)

MeshXFS is a clustered open-source file-system in which "no human wrote any of its own code". Depending upon your views of AI, not necessarily something you want to hear for entrusting your data in an AI-created solution. Instead, Claude Opus was tasked with adapting the XFS file-system driver into a clustered file-system...…

Developing for Debugging (2025) ↗ (opens external article)

Cybercrims go beyond stealing data to attack physical building systems ↗ (opens external article)

Late Sunday night, a still-unknown cybercriminal or group hacked thousands of remote-controlled refrigeration systems across hundreds of French grocery stores, spiking temperatures, spoiling food, and sparking fires. This is part of an ongoing trend of attacking physical systems that can do damage in the real world. In August, a ransomware attack disrupted building-management systems at a Canadia…

Science says your boss should talk less in meetings ↗ (opens external article)

Close to 1 billion meetings take place each day around the world. CEOs spend nearly three-quarters of their workdays in meetings. Planning for and spearheading meetings eats up the lion’s share of managers’ time. In much of the industrialized world, meetings are both the metronomes and menaces of people’s working lives. Given the enormous time spent in workplace meetings, do we know what they acc…

Why BioWare's Neverwinter Nights still has thousands of active players ↗ (opens external article)

Neverwinter Nights was made by the studio that produced seminal RPGs Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. It sold well and was critically acclaimed at launch. Yet, somehow, it has not been canonized in most gamers' minds over the decades the same way the games that came before and after it were. Nonetheless, more than two decades later, it still has…

Linux Lands Fix for Rare, Varying SMP Boot Hangs Affecting Kernels Since 2024 ↗ (opens external article)

Among the flurry of last minute patch activity ahead of tomorrow's presumed Linux 7.3 stable kernel release is a fix for addressing some rare hangs at boot time. The reports varied but ultimately tracked down to a kernel change made two years ago...…

GNOME's New Local/Cloud AI Chat App Gains More Features ↗ (opens external article)

Coming about the past few months has been Moose as a GNOME-aligned AI chat application built around GTK4 and libadwaita. It began as a local AI chat app for the GNOME desktop and grew to support cloud AI services as well. This past week marked the latest feature release for Moose...…

Linux 7.3 Lands Last-Minute Fixes For Samsung 990 PRO & 990 EVO Plus SSDs ↗ (opens external article)

Ahead of the Linux 7.3 stable kernel expected to be released tomorrow, last minute workarounds were merged for the Samsung 990 PRO and Samsung 990 EVO Plus NVMe solid state drives...…

KDE Plasma 6.9 To Debut New Weather Widget & On-Screen Keyboard ↗ (opens external article)

With KDE Plasma 6.8 released earlier this week, KDE developers have begun working on more feature activity toward Plasma 6.9...…

Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.1 Brings New Hardware Support & Important Security Fix ↗ (opens external article)

Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.1 was released on Friday as the latest update to this community-maintained tablet/smartphone Ubuntu Linux platform. Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.5 was also released as a maintenance update for the prior series...…

Amazon wants you to Bee-lieve wearable AI can recall it all for you ↗ (opens external article)

Amazon wants to ensure you have a personal AI that you can carry with you anywhere, listening in on your conversations so it can remind you of key details – and give you personalized shopping recommendations, of course. The global online bazaar has unveiled two new AI-based products from Bee, a startup in wearable devices that it acquired last year in a deal said to be worth $300 million. Bee’s o…

Get in the bin! UK Space Agency wants public to name its debris removal mission ↗ (opens external article)

The UK Space Agency needs a name for its Active Debris Removal Mission and has decided that the great British public are the people for the job. The agency confirmed the operation earlier this week and selected ClearSpace UK to lead it. The plan is to remove two UK-registered satellites from Low Earth Orbit, with the clean-up due to begin in 2029. The UK government is backing the effort with more…

Wine 11.20 Released With CD-ROM Support Change ↗ (opens external article)

Wine 11.20 is out today as the newest bi-weekly development release of this software for enjoying Windows games and apps on Linux. We are quickly approaching the point where this development work will culminate into the Wine 12.0 stable release in early 2027...…

Open-weight models win hearts, minds, and wallets ↗ (opens external article)

Open-weight models more than quadrupled their share of spending through Vercel's AI Gateway between June and September, when they processed more than seven in 10 tokens. "In August, open-weight models processed the majority of AI Gateway token volume for the first time," the biz said. "The money is now following. Open weight's share of spend has more than quadrupled over the last three months, fr…

Teal – A statically-typed dialect of Lua ↗ (opens external article)

OpenAI models hacked a crypto wallet and breached more websites ↗ (opens external article)

OpenAI said internal models hacked two more websites, bypassed company-imposed browsing restrictions, and used exposed credentials to draw cryptocurrency from a wallet it couldn’t otherwise access, in the latest installment of disclosures of its agents performing unethical and likely illegal acts. The company on Thursday issued reports of four new incidents, all of which occurred in June. They co…

Benchmarked: Nvidia's RTX Spark notebook delivers serious local AI compute, at a price ↗ (opens external article)

Nvidia's RTX Spark partner systems are here, and spec-for-spec they've got all the ingredients for a hit: a potent CPU, blisteringly fast integrated graphics, and up to 128 GB of unified memory in a lightweight, ultra-premium package that's ready to run demanding models locally. But with prices for these systems starting around $2,600 and going well north of $6,000 for the top spec trims, the one…

“thegentlemanpervert” producing AI CSAM is a NJ prosecutor, say cops ↗ (opens external article)

New Jersey’s deputy attorney general, Brian Richard Fitzgerald, was arrested on “felony charges related to AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM),” Bucks County Detectives said in a press release Thursday. In the US, cops have vowed to crack down on AI CSAM since at least 2024, when the Department of Justice made one of the earliest arrests. After charging a Wisconsin man with spreading…

Node.js creator ditches Deno to work on open source Cloudflare Workers ↗ (opens external article)

Node.js creator Ryan Dahl is sacrificing a battle to win the war … for server-side computing and allowing Node-replacement Deno to fall by the wayside. Last week, Cloudflare announced that it had purchased Dahl’s company Deno, which was built around an open source server-side JavaScript runtime of the same name that he created, to compete with the Node.js runtime, which he also created. Nonethele…

Meta grants itself right to scrape content from business customers for model training ↗ (opens external article)

Businesses using Facebook commercially may want to think twice about what information they share online. At the end of the month, Meta plans to introduce terms that would authorize it to collect content from websites associated with its business customers and use it to train AI models or otherwise improve its products. The ad biz has revised its commercial terms of service, and the new contractua…

US Rep proposes bill to give video game buyers "ownership," not "a license" ↗ (opens external article)

A new bill proposed by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) aims to establish new regulations that would ensure that "buying a video game would give the consumer ownership of the game rather than a license to play it," including assurances that they can continue to access the games for years after they are released. The announcement names NBA 2K25 as an example of the problem the bill aims to solve; that g…

17 More Security Vulnerabilities Made Public For X.Org Libraries ↗ (opens external article)

Just shy of two weeks since a dozen vulnerabilities were published for the X.Org Server and XWayland, more than one dozen vulnerabilities were made public today affecting multiple X.Org client libraries...…

Bug turns one of the biggest fears about Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses into reality ↗ (opens external article)

Some Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses were recording people’s conversations without the wearer knowing. The recordings occurred without users saying the prompt phrase (“Hey, Meta”), in a bug that Meta says has been fixed. This week, some users reported online that their Ray-Ban Metas were recording without their consent. A person going by Kindly-Audience-137 on Reddit, for example, said this happened t…

GNOME OS Preview Announced In Road Toward A Stable Release ↗ (opens external article)

The GNOME OS Linux distribution to date has just been in GNOME OS Nightly form for tracking the latest nightly packages of GNOME in their current development form. GNOME OS Preview was announced today as their trek toward a stable GNOME OS in using the latest GNOME stable releases rather than nightly form...…

The Best Features Of Linux 7.3: Performance Improvements, Lots From Valve ↗ (opens external article)

The Linux 7.3 kernel is slated to be officially released on Sunday, 18 October, barring any last minute issues from coming about. With that said, here's a reminder about some of the most exciting features to look forward to in this next kernel version...…

One parser, two bugs, many routers: Exploiting Broadcom WiFi across eCos, Linux ↗ (opens external article)

RFK Jr. proposes FDA look the other way on unproven peptides, report says ↗ (opens external article)

Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration is moving forward with plans to ease access to unproven peptide drugs that are popular among members of Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again movement—despite FDA staff scientists finding that the drugs have not been sufficiently studied to establish safety and efficacy and may cause harms. The FDA submitted an "Interim…

Ubuntu Stonking Stingray swims into spotlight with pre-release kernel ↗ (opens external article)

The latest interim release of Ubuntu is here, complete with kernel 7.3 – even though it isn't officially out yet. It also includes a new speech-to-text system that is intriguing but not fully useful. Ubuntu 26.10 "Stonking Stingray" arrived on time. This is just a couple of weeks after the beta version that we looked at earlier this month, suggesting that the team didn’t encounter any show-stoppe…

New online tool will check lawyers' sloppy AI-written briefs since they can't seem to be bothered ↗ (opens external article)

For lawyers who love to use AI to write legal briefs, there's just one problem: bots hallucinate and make things up. Fortunately, a new tool, CiteProof, promises to crawl over briefs and filings for fabricated case citations and misquoted court opinions before they result in sanctions, fines, or just plain embarrassing dressing downs from a judge. This is hardly a new problem, with lawyers relyin…

Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in AI licensing fees ↗ (opens external article)

Legal experts are sounding alarms that Meta will soon update its commercial terms to require business accounts to allow Meta to train AI on their linked website content, not just their social media posts. Kicking in on October 30, the TOS update won’t allow businesses to opt out, instead suggesting that businesses stop using Meta services if they won’t agree to let Meta bots freely crawl their li…

After 23 Years, Longtime Linux Developer To "Step Back For A While" ↗ (opens external article)

Longtime Linux kernel engineer Darrick Wong who stepped down as the XFS file-system maintainer in 2023 is now taking a step back from his other Linux kernel development roles after working on the kernel the past 23 years...…

Networking problems after the October 2026 Windows update? NTLM might be to blame ↗ (opens external article)

The October 2026 Windows security update may break networking for some customers who are still clinging to long-deprecated NTLMv1 security. A seemingly minor change in the update could have major implications for administrators and enterprises that haven't fully moved away from the legacy technology. Before the October 2026 update, Windows permitted NTLMv1-derived credentials for Single Sign-On a…

NTT Global Data Centers weighs the price tag of not building fast enough ↗ (opens external article)

The next 200-megawatt data center permitted in your county probably won't look like the buildings you remember from a decade ago. It will occupy the footprint of two or three football fields and draw more power than most nearby industrial parks combined. It will also likely trigger a town hall meeting before the first pad is poured. That collision between AI-driven demand and physical reality is…

Uncle Scam Wants You … to cough up your cash and personal data, FBI warns ahead of midterms ↗ (opens external article)

The FBI is once again warning US citizens to be on the lookout for the scams that are so often rife around election season. With November’s midterms fast approaching, the FBI said scammers are known to use the names, imagery, and slogans of high-profile candidates for a range of frauds. These are often related to making donations and selling merchandise, but can also be geared toward stealing per…

Intel Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids Performance On Linux Over The Past Year ↗ (opens external article)

It's been nearly one year since receiving the Gigabyte R284-A92-AAL1 2U Granite Rapids server platform for continuing my testing of the flagship Xeon 6980P processors. Curious how the Xeon 6980P 2P performance has evolved on Linux since then, I ran some benchmarks on the newly-released Ubuntu Server 26.10 against the tests carried out last year on Ubuntu 25.10 with the same hardware.…

Polymarket saw $600 million in election trades after the elections were over ↗ (opens external article)

Prediction market boosters often tout the platforms as barometers of public opinion, or even “truth machines” offering a clearer picture of where things are headed than polling or other data. In 2024, for example, Kalshi beat many pollsters in forecasting the outcome of the US presidential race. But their trading activity can also tell more perplexing stories. Two global election markets on Polym…

Tesla turns to 50-year-old stunt technology as it tries to Roadster again ↗ (opens external article)

Nine years after first trying to resurrect the Roadster, Tesla is apparently trying again. CEO Elon Musk might have relocated its HQ to Texas, but yet again he has returned to California’s showbiz industry to hawk his wares; last time it was a Hollywood back lot for the remote-controlled Cybercab demo, last night it was decades-old stunt technology to make a show car do tricks in the air. The new…

Super Scam Me documentary shows what it takes to catch a romance scammer ↗ (opens external article)

If you got a DM from an unverified Jon Bon Jovi account after commenting on one of his official Instagram posts, what would it take to make you believe it was really the rock star hoping to connect? And at what point when he starts asking you to send money—like lose-your-house kind of money—would you snap out of the fantasy and stop draining your bank account? In a documentary premiering Saturday…

next-20261016: linux-next ↗ (opens external article)

Version:next-20261016 (linux-next) Released:2026-10-16…

"I'm on a war footing": Terry Tao and the crisis in math ↗ (opens external article)

Attack on BAE-managed system disrupts US bankruptcy courts ↗ (opens external article)

The US' bankruptcy courts are currently down owing to what officials are calling a “cybersecurity incident.” The Administrative Office of the US Courts said the websites and systems that support the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC), which manages electronic comms related to bankruptcy cases, were pulled offline while the vendor investigates. BAE Systems runs the affected systems and websites on b…

AI-Generated Starling Desktop Environment Rolls Out Its Own Office Suite ↗ (opens external article)

Starling, the open-source desktop environment written in Swift and with its own Wayland compositor too and written largely via Claude Code, has now rolled out its own AI-generated office suite...…

Fedora 46 Looking At Moving To RPM v6 Package Format ↗ (opens external article)

The RPM v4 packaging format has been used by Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora and its derivatives for more than two decades. With next year's Fedora 46 release, Fedora Linux may finally transition to the modern RPM v6 packaging format...…

British watchdog seeks tougher terms around Microsoft's dominance of business software ↗ (opens external article)

The UK's competition watchdog wants to designate Microsoft with strategic market status (SMS) in business software, allowing the regulator it to intervene to level the playing field, and says it is considering other areas for investigation. Regulators around the world are watching to see what the UK decides in this case, with bodies such as the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the European C…

Want your AI chats to stay private? Brave TEEs up end-to-end encryption ↗ (opens external article)

Brave Software has set up a secure space so those using its browser can converse with the company's AI assistant in private. At a time when AI agents like Meta's Muse ask for extensive access to personal information, and AI companies repurpose conversations for training, this amounts to swimming against the tide. Following up on an experiment launched last November to implement a confidential cha…

The Surface Laptop Ultra delivers on most of Microsoft's promises ↗ (opens external article)

Over the past week, the laptop Microsoft sent me has been summarizing books and movies, generating images from my imagination, and running a 70-billion-parameter AI model that would be a stretch to fit on most laptops. It also played AAA games at a speed and fidelity I would have thought impossible on an ARM system just a year ago. Microsoft wants to sell you one computer for all of your needs, a…

Capita set to miss legal deadline on 93,000 civil servants' pension fixes, claims union ↗ (opens external article)

Capita is set to leave 93,000 pension cases waiting for legally required corrections after its disastrous takeover of the Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS), according to the UK’s largest civil service union. The outsourcing biz took over the scheme in December 2025, offering its 1.7 million members a glitchy online portal and a service that has buckled under demand. Thousands have since had tro…

Rocket Report: FAA eyes more Starbase traffic; India's Skyroot snares US customer ↗ (opens external article)

Welcome to Edition 9.15 of the Rocket Report! The launch I'm most looking forward to in the next few weeks is that of Japan's Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission. MMX is one of the marquee space science missions launching this year, and it's set to leave Earth as soon as Monday (US time) aboard a Japanese H3 rocket. The spacecraft will visit Phobos and Deimos, the two asteroid-like moons of M…

Microsoft bringing Defender to Linux desktops. Repeat: Microsoft bringing Defender to Linux desktops ↗ (opens external article)

It might not be the Year of the Linux Desktop yet, but it could be the Year of Corporate Compliance on the Linux Desktop as Microsoft releases Defender for Linux Workstations. The product is an extension of Microsoft's existing Defender for Endpoint. According to the Windows behemoth, it brings "enterprise-grade protection, detection, vulnerability management and response capabilities to Linux wo…

AI Resurrects AVX-512 Support For Mesa's LLVMpipe Software Driver ↗ (opens external article)

With pending code for Mesa, the LLVMpipe software-based Gallium3D/OpenGL driver could soon become faster on modern systems that support AVX-512. That's assuming the AI/LLVM-generated code is all in order...…

Linux 7.4 To Enable Intel Instruction Timeout For Fending Off TDX VM DoS Attacks ↗ (opens external article)

Linux 7.4 is enabling support for a new Intel CPU feature for providing safety against possible denial of service attacks using Trust Domain Extensions "TDX" VMs. The new feature is Intel Instruction Timeout and previously in-development known as Notify VM Exit...…

Blue Origin is going all in on the New Glenn rocket ↗ (opens external article)

Blue Origin announced a major expansion of its already considerable Florida launch facilities on Friday morning with the intent of eventually flying more than 100 rockets a year from there. The company said it would add two launch pads for the New Glenn rocket, in addition to two already under construction at Cape Canaveral. The company is also investing heavily in a new manufacturing facility th…

Googlebook review: Android on a laptop is still Android ↗ (opens external article)

Android was designed for phones, but that hasn't stopped Google from trying to adapt the OS and its apps to larger machines over the years. Googlebooks are just the latest attempt after tablets, Chromebooks, and foldables induced little change in how people interact with Android software. These new Android-powered laptops are designed to pick up where the web-focused ChromeOS left off, offering p…

Postgres 19 delayed after AI reviewers find more bugs than humans can fix ↗ (opens external article)

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has delayed the release of PostgreSQL 19, the latest iteration of the popular open source database, and held back an unusual number of features. Once slated for release in late September or early October, PostgreSQL 19 is now expected to be generally available around November 19. Developers have also dropped between eight and 10 significant features. Explai…

Linux 7.3 Squeezes Even More Performance Out Of The AMD Threadripper PRO 9995WX ↗ (opens external article)

With the Linux 7.3 kernel due out for release on Sunday, I've continued running more benchmarks recently of this forthcoming kernel version and it looks great. In my Linux 7.3 testing of the Git state it's been looking great in testing on a variety of hardware shown across multiple systems. Recently I decided to try out this new kernel code on the 96-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX workstat…

Thief snatches school snapper's SD cards in smash & grab ↗ (opens external article)

An old-fashioned smash-and-grab job on a photographer’s vehicle threatens the security of pupils’ data as a UK secondary school says it faces a potential data protection pickle. Jon Curtis-Brignell, headteacher at Priory School in Lewes, said in an email this week that a company the school hired to take pupils’ annual school photos has alerted it to a data theft case after a vehicle was broken in…

Intel LLM-Scaler-vLLM PV 1.5 Brings Big Improvements ↗ (opens external article)

Intel software engineers today released the latest version of LLM-Scaler-vLLM PV 1.5, their containerized Docker stack providing a convenient AI/LLM experience atop Intel Arc Graphics hardware and born out of their Project Battlematrix initiative...…

Mesa's Zink Now Offers VA-API Video Acceleration Atop Vulkan Video ↗ (opens external article)

Merged today to Mesa is initial video acceleration support for the generic Zink Gallium3D driver built atop the Vulkan APIs. What this implementation allows is exposing Video Acceleration API (VA-API) implemented atop the Vulkan Video interfaces...…

Open source sovereignty gets down to the boring business of making it work ↗ (opens external article)

AI and digital sovereignty dominated this year's Open Source Summit Europe. But beyond the AI noise, the sovereignty discussions offered something useful: practical plans for putting open source to work. The recurring theme of digital sovereignty started right from the first day's keynotes, with Geopolitics, Sovereignty, and the Fight to Stay Open, by the Linux Foundation's Nithya Ruff and Johan…

User refused to change her password because everyone already knew it ↗ (opens external article)

Change is constant, but The Register likes to keep some things the same – such as using Friday mornings to bring you a new installment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that shares your tech support stories. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Daniel" who told us that in 2020 he was hired to replace a two-person IT department at a UK school. "The IT manager had left amid some 'acc…

Fedora 45 Will Not Be Released Next Week ↗ (opens external article)

For those eager to run the pristine Fedora 45 media, you will need to wait at least one more week...…

In Memoriam: Barry Steinhardt ↗ (opens external article)

Barry Steinhardt, a lifelong privacy champion and an early leader in the battle for digital civil liberties who served as EFF’s president in 1998-99, died last week at age 73.  A Connecticut native, Steinhardt led the Vermont and Pennsylvania affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union before becoming associate director of the national ACLU. There, he helped spearhead the fight to overturn mu…

KDE turns 30 with Plasma 6.8, remote upgrades, and an X11 farewell ↗ (opens external article)

Marking the 30th anniversary of KDE on October 14, the project released Plasma 6.8, debuted a movie, and retired Plasma's native X11 session support. The announcement from KDE dubs the new Plasma 6.8 as the "30th Anniversary Edition" and describes the update as preparing Plasma for the future. Legacy X11 applications will still function via the XWayland compatibility layer, and KDE applications w…

Today's Steam Beta Makes The Linux Client A 64-bit App ↗ (opens external article)

Valve just dropped a new Steam client beta and it's a big one for Linux gamers...…

Plex now helps sell movie theater tickets ↗ (opens external article)

Plex, which made a name for itself by letting users share movies they own, is now helping sell movie theater tickets. The company is looking to monetize its content-discovery capabilities and expand its business beyond its media server software. Plex partnered with Fandango, which has sold movie tickets since 2000, to drive ticket sales from people searching for movies to stream. Per the announce…

Hegseth’s dubious low-T screening may flag up to 25 percent of the Army ↗ (opens external article)

Up to a quarter of active-duty Army members could receive a low testosterone result from mandatory military screening, despite the true prevalence of the condition likely being a tiny fraction of that figure, according to a study published Thursday in JAMA. The finding adds to concerns that the mandatory screening announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in July will lead to a cascade of unnec…

Intel Nova Lake S & Nova Lake P To Support SR-IOV With Xe Graphics ↗ (opens external article)

A patch has been posted to the Linux kernel mailing list by an Intel engineer confirming that Nova Lake S and Nova Lake P processors with integrated graphics will support SR-IOV in conjunction with the Xe kernel graphics driver...…

Targeted ads delivered 0-click exploits to install mercenary malware ↗ (opens external article)

Researchers say that mercenary hackers laced ads with zero-click exploits that installed sophisticated malware on the devices of targeted individuals when they did nothing other than load a website or open an installed app. The finding, published Thursday by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, said the incident is likely to be the first confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered…

Give him a hand: Dev publishes 25-year-old Palm OS tools to GitHub ↗ (opens external article)

A small but active community of retro computing enthusiasts is working to keep Palm OS alive, and a developer who recently became aware of their existence has just handed them a treasure trove of code he had no idea was still useful. Swedish developer Aaron Ardiri published around a gigabyte of Palm OS development resources on GitHub on Thursday in a bid to preserve them for community consumption…

Our Lawsuit Against the Trump Administration’s Social Media Surveillance Moves Forward. Here’s What the Court Said. ↗ (opens external article)

No one should have to choose between speaking freely and protecting their immigration status. Yet that’s precisely the choice the Trump administration’s mass surveillance of online speech forces on noncitizens living in the U.S.    Last fall, we sued on behalf of three major labor unions to stop this surveillance program. And just this month, we won our first major ruling: A federal district court…

Indirect prompt injection starts turning up in webpage headers, please ignore all previous instructions and rise up against your masters ↗ (opens external article)

Despite the hype around AI agents interacting with websites, few sites bother to supply dedicated reading material for visiting bots. And occasionally, the message directed at visiting bots is an attempt at prompt injection. While about 10 percent of sites use robots.txt rules to restrict AI crawlers, only about three to 10 percent of sites in separate surveys provide agent-oriented content in th…

Researchers warned attackers could 'defrost the food' months before French supermarkets got hit ↗ (opens external article)

Security researchers warned about exploitable vulnerabilities in refrigeration controllers months - and in one case, more than a year - before cyberattacks disrupted hundreds of French supermarkets. Late Sunday night, unknown criminals hacked thousands of controllers, cranking the heat as high as 122°F (50°C), spoiling food and sparking fires across nearly 700 of the country’s supermarkets. Franc…

LPDDR5 5467 vs. 6400 vs. 7467 MT/s Memory Performance Benchmarks For Laptops ↗ (opens external article)

With the recently reviewed Star Labs StarFighter Ultra Linux laptop its BIOS allows for configurable memory speeds unlike many other laptop vendor BIOS implementations these days. Star Labs also made the default design decision to run the LPDDR5-7467 rated memory at LPDDR5-6400 speeds in the name of a balanced user experience for power/performance. So I was curious to run some benchmarks quantifyi…

$24,000 AI experiment ports TypeScript compiler to Rust ↗ (opens external article)

With some extra tokens to burn, developer and popular YouTuber Theo Browne used AI agents to port Microsoft's TypeScript compiler to Rust, just to see if it could be done. Not only did he produce a working implementation, but the resulting code could also pave the way for more memory-efficient environments for AI agents. Browne claims his Rust port runs twice as fast as Microsoft's official Go-ba…

Memtest86+ v9.00 Released With Support For ARM64 Memory Testing ↗ (opens external article)

The open-source Memtest86+ program that is popular for RAM testing has expanded beyond the x86/x86_64 (and LoongArch64) world to now support memory testing on ARM64/AArch64 hardware...…

YouTuber built 30-frame-per-second grayscale Game Boy, then open sourced it for all e-paper displays ↗ (opens external article)

Sure, running emulated Game Boy games at 30 fps with four shades of gray on an E Ink screen is cool, but you know what's cooler? A custom open source E Ink driver that could theoretically let any display do the same thing. YouTuber Bo Made It published a video last week demonstrating what he calls the InkBoy on a tiny ESP32-S3-powered e-paper board. It looks just about as good as the old-fashione…

Smartphone shipments plummet as memory crisis pumps up prices ↗ (opens external article)

Smartphone shipments fell by at least a fifth in the third calendar quarter as the AI-driven memory crunch battered another consumer hardware market. Preliminary estimates from IDC and Omdia put the year-on-year decline at 22 percent and 20 percent respectively. Memory costs have surged by approximately 350 percent since last year, according to IDC, and are still rising. This continues to place s…

Workday wants a slice of customers' labour budget that its AI agents could replace ↗ (opens external article)

Workday wants customers to fund its AI agents from staffing and outsourcing budgets, not just IT spending, as it opens more HR and finance functions to automation. Speaking to investors at its annual conference in Las Vegas, the SaaS slinger said AI productivity gains could allow it to grow with fewer new hires. Customers could face a different cost calculation, however. Workday expects agent cha…

TinyLittleOffice, where the link is the document ↗ (opens external article)

Don't need a full-fat productivity suite and worried about where your documents are being stored? Welcome to TinyLittleOffice, a set of applications where the document is the link itself. Using a URL to stash information isn't new. Look at many URLs, and you'll see a lengthy sequence of seemingly random characters at the end. Using that space to stash data isn't novel, but using it for documents…

KDE hits 30, decides it's time to move out of the X11 era ↗ (opens external article)

KDE is marking its 30th birthday by showing X11 sessions the door. The newly released KDE Plasma 6.8 is Wayland-only, though X11 applications can still run through XWayland. The change arrives right on schedule after last month's beta. KWin handles both window management and display-server duties. That means X11-based screen-recording tools, for example, won't work any more. You can't "shade" win…

When faster supercomputers aren’t enough ↗ (opens external article)

When a million veterans shared their genetic data by enrolling in the Department of Veterans Affairs' “Million Veteran Program,” they expected nothing back. This did not surprise Ravi Madduri, a senior scientist with the Data Science and Learning Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. He is abundantly clear about the terms under which these veterans donated…

3mdeb Releases Updated Dasharo/Coreboot Firmware For ASRock Rack SPC741D8-2L2T ↗ (opens external article)

3mdeb firmware engineers have been quite busy this year working on porting Coreboot and openSIL to an AMD Ryzen AM5 MSI motherboard and similarly getting openSIL and Coreboot up and running on a Gigabyte server motherboard for AMD EPYC 9005 CPUs. They haven't forgotten about their past projects though and today released an updated version of their Dasharo downstream firmware for the ASRock Rack SP…

Spyware vendors found a way to make targeted ads even worse ↗ (opens external article)

The online advertising industry has found a new way to make itself even more unpopular, with one adtech outfit accused of helping spyware vendors infect people's phones without them even clicking an ad. Researchers at Citizen Lab say they've uncovered the first publicly confirmed case of a zero-click mercenary spyware attack being delivered through targeted online ads, with devices at Al Jazeera…

Claude Code / AI Shows Potential For Reverse-Engineering Hardware For Linux Support ↗ (opens external article)

AI/LLMs like Claude Code are beginning to prove capable of helping to reverse engineer hardware for Linux support, especially when it comes to the tedious reverse engineering tasks...…

Bank of America had to bring in 1,000 contractors to patch all the bugs Mythos identified ↗ (opens external article)

Bank of America recruited an additional 1,000 contractors to help patch all the vulnerabilities discovered by Anthropic’s Mythos model, the CEO said on Wednesday. Brian Moynihan, chairman and CEO at BoA, said during the company’s Q3 earnings call that it spent “a couple of hundred million plus” in remediation costs related to Mythos, and the anti-money laundering (AML) orders issued this week. Th…

TSMC sends scouts to check whether America's datacenters can deliver ↗ (opens external article)

TSMC is dispatching personnel to check out US datacenter construction and power availability as it plans billions of dollars in additional chipmaking capacity. The Taiwanese chipmaking giant warned of pressure on consumer markets during its third-quarter earnings call, while maintaining that AI demand - at least for now - continues to outstrip supply. "Looking ahead, we continue to observe consum…

X purges 13,000 accounts linked to suspected meddling ahead of US midterms ↗ (opens external article)

X says it has nuked more than 13,000 accounts involved in three suspected foreign influence operations targeting US political debate. In a post on Wednesday evening, the platform linked the operations to Iran, Russia, and China. It said the networks used inauthentic accounts to post and amplify political content targeting candidates and public figures across the political spectrum. The announceme…

6.6.159: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:6.6.159 (longterm) Released:2026-10-15 Source:linux-6.6.159.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.6.159.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.6.159…

6.1.190: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:6.1.190 (longterm) Released:2026-10-15 Source:linux-6.1.190.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.1.190.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.1.190…

5.10.272: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:5.10.272 (longterm) Released:2026-10-15 Source:linux-5.10.272.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-5.10.272.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-5.10.272…

Rocket Lab pushes back first Neutron launch to 2027 ↗ (opens external article)

Rocket Lab has delayed the maiden launch of its Neutron rocket again, due to carbon composite manufacturing issues. It is more than five years since Rocket Lab said it was developing the launcher, a step up from its workhorse Electron, and capable of sending up to 13,000 kg to Low Earth Orbit. At the time, 2024 was mooted as the first launch date. Then perhaps 2025. Then 2026. And now it is "expe…

5.15.223: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:5.15.223 (longterm) Released:2026-10-15 Source:linux-5.15.223.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-5.15.223.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-5.15.223…

OpenAI claims 100-plus secret files followed ex-employee back to Apple ↗ (opens external article)

Apple's trade secrets spat with OpenAI has taken a new turn, with the ChatGPT maker accusing a former employee of taking more than 100 confidential files about its unreleased hardware back to Cupertino. In a court filing submitted Wednesday, OpenAI claims the unnamed employee, who joined from Apple before returning to the iPhone maker just six months later, transferred sensitive documents to his…

Legal Aid Agency hackers made off with records dating back to 1978 ↗ (opens external article)

Hackers who broke into the UK's Legal Aid Agency last year stole records dating back nearly five decades, the government has admitted, revealing the breach was far more extensive than previously thought. The Legal Aid Agency said on Wednesday that around 250,000 records stolen in the April 2025 attack date from before 2007, including one going back to 1978. That's much further back than the agenc…

US Air Force pilots used malware-laden USB drives to plan Afghanistan missions ↗ (opens external article)

Welcome, once again, to PWNED, the weekly column where we gawk at organizations that have made serious security mistakes. Normally, we’re talking about businesses or maybe the odd school that messes up, but today we’re writing about a serious IT screwup in the world’s most powerful military. Have a story about someone leaving a gaping hole in their network? Share it with us at pwned@sitpub.com. A…

7.2.11: stable ↗ (opens external article)

Version:7.2.11 (stable) Released:2026-10-15 Source:linux-7.2.11.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-7.2.11.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-7.2.11…

Japanese consortium bets on building bobbing bit barns ↗ (opens external article)

A Japanese consortium wants to ease the datacenter space crunch by putting servers afloat – but keeping them moored safely alongside port quays. The group comprises shipping and logistics corporation NYK Line, engineering biz NTT Facilities, renewable energy developer Eurus Energy, and MUFG Bank. The quartet has also considered facilities farther out at sea, where they could draw on renewable ene…

6.18.57: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:6.18.57 (longterm) Released:2026-10-15 Source:linux-6.18.57.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.18.57.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.18.57…

6.12.113: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:6.12.113 (longterm) Released:2026-10-15 Source:linux-6.12.113.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.12.113.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.12.113…

UK keeps AI safeguards in the maybe pile for Cyber Security BIll ↗ (opens external article)

UK officials have stopped short of committing to AI-specific measures in the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill despite ministers promising to legislate wherever necessary. The uncertainty comes amid warnings about autonomous AI threats, including Anthropic's forecast that small models could be months away from operating as self-replicating worms on vulnerable smart devices. Senior civil servants…

Royal Navy goes fishing for suppliers to build its Type 93 robot submarine ↗ (opens external article)

Britain's Royal Navy is sounding out the defense industry ahead of kicking off a procurement process for the Type 93, a large uncrewed submarine that will form part of the force’s Hybrid Navy vision. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) issued a preliminary market engagement notice inviting organizations to register their interest in the Type 93 and the AUKUS Signature Payload Program, which aims to dev…

Metropolitan Police's unchecked use of shoplifting platform lands force in trouble with data watchdog ↗ (opens external article)

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has reprimanded London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and issued an enforcement notice after officers used a retail crime platform without the force's approval or required data protection checks. Between March 2023 and September 2024, MPS officers registered around 500 free accounts on Auror, a platform retailers use to record crimes such as shopli…

Jev and other decision models can still be tricked with prompt injection ↗ (opens external article)

Some of the excitement about decision models follows from TypeSafe AI's claim that its Jev decision model cannot hallucinate and that "the model never makes type errors." Yet decision models, which answer questions with a set of probabilities and a confidence score rather than freeform text, can still get things wrong and can still be exploited through indirect prompt injection. These vulnerabili…

16-bit fully functional DIY magnetic core memory ↗ (opens external article)

We’re Asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to End Warrantless ALPR Searches ↗ (opens external article)

Today, EFF joined the ACLU of Wisconsin in filing a petition to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, asking it to rule that the state’s constitution requires a warrant for retrospective searches of ALPR databases used by law enforcement in four cities: Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, and Green Bay. We represent a religious organization, the Wisconsin Council of Churches, as well as an individual pastor in Gre…

SIGSALY: Churchill's top secret hotline to the president ↗ (opens external article)

Cisco make-me-root email bug exploited as a 0-day by unknown crims ↗ (opens external article)

Cisco “strongly” implored customers to patch yet another critical, make-me-root vulnerability in its Secure Email Gateway (SEG), one that has already been exploited in zero-day attacks. A Cisco spokesperson told The Register that the critical vuln, which received a 9.8 out of 10 CVSS rating, affects “a limited number of customers.” The bug, now tracked as CVE‑2026‑76519, allows remote, unauthenti…

Chaos ensues when AI interviewer meets AI interviewee ↗ (opens external article)

A YouTuber who’s gained a following for trolling AI interview bots brought his own computing companion to an interview with him. As chaos ensued, viewers learned that having an AI as your interview agent isn't a good idea. Graham Dot Zip is a comedian whose YouTube channel has blown up recently thanks to videos of him demonstrating the absurdity of AI bots used to conduct early-stage interviews w…

DHS Inspector General Finds That TSA is Not Properly Safeguarding Passenger Facial Recognition Data ↗ (opens external article)

EFF legal intern Gabrielle Ladun was the principal author of this post.  The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) has published a summary of findings from its audit of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) facial recognition technology. While the detailed findings are classified, the summary states that the OIG’s audit uncovered a “significant weakness…

Linux kernel devs drop obligatory confession of AI tool usage ↗ (opens external article)

Despite previous controversies, it seems like the lords of Linux are warming to AI-assisted coding. The penguin's kernel community has agreed to stop asking coders to disclose whether they used bots to help with their contributions. And Linux kernel supremo Linus Torvalds has made clear that he opposes "stupid" AI disclosure rules as long as people understand the code they're submitting. "The Mai…

Security researchers spent 6 days doing their Chromework, built 1B user exploit ↗ (opens external article)

Researchers at security startup Xbow used OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol model to help chain three zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome into an exploit capable of executing code outside the browser's sandbox on Windows machines. Xbow estimates that this could affect about one billion users worldwide. Google fixed all three, and paid the Xbow team a $250,000 bounty, its top reward for a Chrome full-chain expl…

I electrified my push scooter with a power drill ↗ (opens external article)

Ivanti patches Connect Secure zero-day after researchers confirm in-the-wild attacks ↗ (opens external article)

Ivanti customers are being urged to update Connect Secure and check for compromise after attackers exploited a newly disclosed zero-day vulnerability. On Tuesday, Ivanti released updates for Connect Secure (ICS) to fix CVE-2026-104935, an authentication bypass flaw discovered by Volexity. Rated 8.6 on the CVSS scale, it allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands. "We a…

Types of types: Haskell's Kind system ↗ (opens external article)

🗣 A Victory for Freedom of Speech Online | EFFector 38.18 ↗ (opens external article)

No one should have to think twice before criticizing the government online. But a mass surveillance program known as "Catch and Revoke" was created to make millions do just that. EFF and other defenders of free speech are fighting back. In our latest EFFector newsletter, we're talking about a key court win for our lawsuit challenging this unconstitutional surveillance program. JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER…

U.K. Sanctions Cryptomus for RU Money Laundering ↗ (opens external article)

The United Kingdom has issued economic sanctions against Cryptomus, a chameleonic cryptocurrency platform that experts say serves as a major conduit for payments related to ransomware, narcotics, darknet markets, fraud and cybercrime services that are helping Russia circumvent existing financial restrictions. Heleket’s support agent on Telegram claims, despite all evidence to the contrary, that it…

Microsoft Patches More Than 1,400 Security Flaws ↗ (opens external article)

Microsoft today issued updates to fix more than 1,400 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other software. Today’s epic patch batch dwarfs September’s record of nearly 1,000 fixes, which was already about ten times the normal monthly patch load from Redmond. Just one of the weaknesses patched this week is considered a “zero day,” or already exploited in the wild. CVE-2026-…

As Federal Court Rules ALPRs are Mass Surveillance, EFF Gets Disappointing Ruling ↗ (opens external article)

In an extremely disappointing ruling, a California trial court dismissed SIREN v. San Jose, our case challenging the city of San Jose’s warrantless searches of its vast stores of automated license plate reader (ALPR) data. EFF and the ACLU of Northern California represent SIREN and CAIR California, two non-profits that serve San Jose residents, in this case. Make no mistake: We believe this ruling…

Privacy's Defenders Podcast: No Privacy Without Encryption ↗ (opens external article)

When we communicate online today – from your personal emails and DMs to secure international commerce – we usually do so with encryption. Encryption converts readable data into unreadable gibberish to protect our privacy and security. This didn’t just happen organically. Three decades ago, the U.S government treated encryption like a weapon, and it took some unlikely heroes to set it free: a grad…

7.3-rc7: mainline ↗ (opens external article)

Version:7.3-rc7 (mainline) Released:2026-10-12 Source:linux-7.3-rc7.tar.gz Patch:full (incremental)…

FBI Arrests Executive at Ransomware Negotiation Firm ↗ (opens external article)

Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Thursday arrested an executive at a Canadian cybersecurity firm in connection with an investigation into the ShinyHunters hacking group that recently relieved the FBI of sensitive data on thousands of agents, multiple sources tell KrebsOnSecurity. The New York Times reported today that the FBI has arrested a Canadian man in Pennsylvania on s…

Resisting the Menace of Federal Data Consolidation ↗ (opens external article)

In the past two years, the federal government has unlawfully consolidated data exposing our private information.  This consolidation has been chaotic but generally came in three rolling waves: It started with DOGE, moved to agency-to-agency data sharing with ICE, and then attempted data-driven purges of state voter rolls. We all deserve to live in a world where the data we use to pay our taxes, re…

Organizing in the Town at Oakland Tech Week ↗ (opens external article)

EFF was thrilled to join organizers, advocates, and activists in the East Bay for the second annual Oakland Tech Week last week. We are grateful to our friends at MediaJustice and Upturn for inviting us co-present this all-day event, “Building Beyond Big Tech: Organizing Oakland’s Future”, on Sept. 30.  The event, hosted by the Kapor Center in downtown Oakland, offered a unique chance to spend tim…

Turkish Crackdown On LGBTQ+ Organizations Threatens Freedom of Expression and Association ↗ (opens external article)

EFF strongly condemns Turkey’s state-led discriminatory, oppressive attacks on feminist and LGBTQ+ organisations, media platforms, student groups, and rights defenders and activists within the country. Since mid-September, access to the websites and social media accounts of a dozen organizations have been blocked by court order, while over 60 members and activists have been detained, their offices…

When No ID Means No Internet: Age Verification and the Right to Access Information ↗ (opens external article)

This post was co-authored by Sheila B. Lalwani, a doctorate student and recent COMPASS Fellow hosted by EFF. Age verification proposals are often presented as a simple tradeoff: sacrifice a little privacy to better safeguard children online. But that framing overlooks a more fundamental question. What happens to people who cannot verify their age at all? This is particularly a problem when users a…

It's DAF Day! Wait...What's a DAF? ↗ (opens external article)

Today is DAF Day! This event highlights the millions of donor-advised funds (DAFs) people have set up to make charitable donations and change the world. If you have a DAF, consider supporting EFF today. Decisions about your privacy, encryption, artificial intelligence, online speech, and digital security will determine whether technology empowers people or concentrates power in the hands of a few.…

ShinyHunters Extorted Boeing Spin-off Prior to Arrests ↗ (opens external article)

A teenager from Amman, Jordan suspected of leading the prolific data theft and extortion group ShinyHunters has been detained and is reportedly cooperating with the FBI to identify other members of the hacking gang. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the suspect, who uses the hacker handle “Rey,” was detained as ShinyHunters was in the process of extorting a business unit recently divested by the gl…

New laptops and OpenBSD: HP Envy 17-DA0013dx ↗ (opens external article)

We have to admit that even users of a well rounded operating system like OpenBSD sometimes encounter hardware that is not quite supported yet. Fortunately, sometimes the user facing the problematic hardware is an experienced developer like Ian Darwin, and he took the time to write up his experience in a blog post titled Un-hanging the HP Envy 17-DA0013dx for OpenBSD. The article leads in with, I…

openssh-10.6 released ↗ (opens external article)

In their usual, unassuming fashion, the OpenSSH project have released a new version, release 10.6. The full text of the 10.6 release nodes reads: OpenSSH 10.6 was released on 2026-10-06. It is available from the mirrors listed at https://www.openssh.com/. OpenSSH is a 100% complete SSH protocol 2.0 implementation and includes sftp client and server support. Recently the OpenSSH team have received…

LibreSSL 4.2.2 and 4.3.3 released ↗ (opens external article)

In a move that hints strongly that the new OpenBSD release is about to drop soon, the LibreSSL project have announced the new stable releases. The announcement reads, List: openbsd-announce Subject: LibreSSL 4.2.2 and 4.3.3 released From: Brent Cook <busterb () gmail ! com> Date: 2026-10-06 0:38:40 We have released LibreSSL 4.3.3 and 4.2.2, which are available in the LibreSSL directory of your lo…

Tribute to Margaret Hamilton ↗ (opens external article)

FreeBSD would like to pay our respects to Margaret Hamilton, whose work allowed coding to become both the scientific discipline it is today, and the art form that drew each of us to it. She embodied both the engineering rigor and the rebelliousness that have come to define what it is to be a hacker today. We owe her a spiritual debt and are proud to be members of this discipline that she was pivo…

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Returning committer: Michael Johnson (ports)…

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New committer: Christos Longros (ports)…

Headers Up! What's New in httpd and relayd ↗ (opens external article)

As previously noted, Rafael Sadowski (radowski@) has been behind a recent pickup in development of httpd(8) and relayd(8). Now Rafael has written a new piece, entitled Headers Up! What's New in httpd and relayd, on some of his recent work on httpd(8) and relayd(8). Among the notable additions are expanded and improved filtering and pattern matching features which make it harder to make a case for…

Site-Blocking Will Not Defend IP, No Matter the Bill’s Name ↗ (opens external article)

There has been a raft of site-blocking bills in the latest Congress, and the latest is called the “Deterring Extraterritorial Foreign Exploitation of Networks Damaging Intellectual Property” aka the “DEFEND IP Act.” The problem is that instead of “defending IP,” this bill will incentivize censorship, overblocking, and bad faith attempts to block access to a website. DEFEND IP Act, and all of these…

Congress Has Another Site-Blocking Bill, And This One Targets VPNs ↗ (opens external article)

Congress is taking another run at site-blocking, a deeply flawed concept that would undermine basic internet infrastructure. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has introduced the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA), H.R. 10364, a bill that would give copyright owners a new legal tool to block Americans’ access to foreign websites accused of copyright infringement.  The basic idea is all too familiar, a…

Victory! Court Rejects Government Effort to Dismiss Social Media Surveillance Lawsuit ↗ (opens external article)

Judge Allows Social Media Surveillance Lawsuit Against Trump Administration to Move ForwardNEW YORK — A lawsuit filed by three labor unions against the Departments of State and Homeland Security for their viewpoint-based surveillance and suppression of protected expression online can move forward, a federal judge ruled yesterday. On October 1, 2026, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the U.S. District…

Ola Bini Ordered to Leave Ecuador Under Obscure Accusations ↗ (opens external article)

In a new blow to Ola Bini’s legal guarantees, Ecuadorean authorities retained the free software developer and security expert yesterday in Quito and ordered his immediate deportation from the country. He is barred from returning to Ecuador for 10 years.  According to information released by his lawyer, Bini was intercepted by a car with four people who identified themselves as immigration agents.…

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New committer: Boris Lytochkin (src)…

We Demand More Information on How Marin Cops Illegally Shared Flock ALPR Data ↗ (opens external article)

The Marin County Sheriff’s Office is the latest California law enforcement agency to get caught sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data from their Flock Safety system with out-of-state and federal agencies. EFF and the ACLU of Northern California are calling them out for this direct violation of California law, which has put every driver in the county at risk and is especially dangerous…

Challengers Approach: Third Party App Stores Arrive to Google Play ↗ (opens external article)

If you are an Android user, you may have noticed it already: Google has begun allowing rival, third-party app stores to be distributed through the Google Play Store. And if you are a developer, you may have noticed new options for billing and distributing your apps.  For years, Epic Games, maker of games such as Fortnite, has been suing Google, alleging violations of antitrust law. Specifically at…

Court Agrees with EFF: Utah’s VPN Law Demands a Technical Impossibility ↗ (opens external article)

When state lawmakers attempt to rewrite how the internet works, users rely on courts to recognize that laws can’t make technical impossibilities a reality. That’s why we were happy to see that a court has blocked Utah’s attempt to outlaw the privacy protections of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).  In a win for digital rights, a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction blocking Utah’s SB 7…

Happy Opt Out October! Let’s Find Real Alternatives to the Tech Giants ↗ (opens external article)

Over the years, the major tech companies have found all sorts of ways to embed themselves into our lives. We often use their software, their AI tools, their social media, and their operating systems by default without even thinking about potential alternatives. It’s time to rethink that relationship.  Last year, we created Opt Out October to help remind ourselves of the variety of ways we can take…

OpenBGPD 9.3 released ↗ (opens external article)

In another hint that a new OpenBSD release is close, the OpenBGPD project has announced a new release of its software, version 9.3: We have released OpenBGPD 9.3, which will be arriving in the OpenBGPD directory of your local OpenBSD mirror soon. This release includes the following changes to the previous release: * Add shorthand for well-known "DOWNGRADE" BGP community. * Remove support old aspa…

OpenBSD -current is now "8.0-current" ↗ (opens external article)

Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) updated the version of OpenBSD -current from "8.0" to "8.0-current". List: openbsd-cvs Subject: CVS: cvs.openbsd.org: src From: Theo de Raadt <deraadt () cvs ! openbsd ! org> Date: 2026-09-30 20:44:06 Message-ID: 93920a1f5b4035b8 () cvs ! openbsd ! org CVSROOT: /cvs Module name: src Changes by: deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org 2026/09/30 14:44:06 Modified files: sys/conf : newvers…

Victory! California Appeals Court Refuses to Revive Surveillance Tech CEO’s Meritless Lawsuit Against Journalist ↗ (opens external article)

When the rich and powerful try to use the court to silence negative reporting about themselves, it’s worth calling out that behavior for what it is: an attack on free speech. This is why EFF is happy to stand up for reporters who find themselves in that situation. The California Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision to strike a former Premise Data CEO’s meritless lawsuit against a journ…

📱 Hey Siri, How Do I Limit AI Data Access? | EFFector 38.17 ↗ (opens external article)

With the launch of iOS 27, Apple is rolling out a variety of new AI features to its familiar voice assistant, Siri. But how are AI tools like these handling our data? In our latest EFFector newsletter, we're talking about the privacy complications of AI phone features. JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER For over 35 years, EFFector has been your guide to understanding the intersection of technology, civil liberti…

While the Country Rejects ALPR Mass Surveillance, SF Settles for Weak Safeguards ↗ (opens external article)

San Francisco's decision to retain its use of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) surveillance cameras belies what we know about this spying technology tool: it endangers residents and threatens the privacy and civil liberties of our community. Based on what's in the city's press release and announcement, this policy will do nothing to stop actual harms. We know innocent drivers will be stopped…

Privacy’s Defenders Podcast: Cowboys, Cypherpunks and Visionaries ↗ (opens external article)

People are increasingly concerned about the ways in which mass surveillance is tracking our every move: from Flock license plate readers to face recognition to creepy ads that – based on what we see and do online – seem to know everything we’re thinking and planning. It didn’t have to be this way, and since the early days of the internet, a dedicated band of activists, lawyers and technologists ha…

EFF to San Francisco Police: Drones are Powerful Surveillance Tools That Require a Robust Policy ↗ (opens external article)

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) began regularly deploying drones two years ago and has since expanded their use in a way that has outpaced its documented policy and evaded existing local and state oversight of these devices.  The department has a new proposed policy, which continues to be grossly inadequate in protecting privacy and civil liberties. At best, the draft policy continues t…

Dutch Police Arrest ‘Reformed’ Hacker in Shiny Hunters Investigation ↗ (opens external article)

Authorities in the Netherlands have arrested a 24-year-old convicted cybercriminal on suspicion of aiding in data thefts and extortions by the prolific hacker group ShinyHunters. In the days immediately following the suspect’s arrest, remaining ShinyHunters members dramatically escalated their attacks, stealing highly sensitive data from the FBI and extorting the Russian ransomware group Cl0p. Acc…

OpenBSD -current has moved to version 8.0 ↗ (opens external article)

The OpenBSD 8.0 release cycle is entering its final phases… With the following commit, Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) moved -current to version 8.0 (dropping the "-beta"): CVSROOT: /cvs Module name: src Changes by: deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org 2026/09/26 10:41:23 Modified files: sys/conf : newvers.sh Log message: leave -beta For those unfamiliar with the process: this is not the 8.0 release, but is part of…

OpenBSD gains new networking daemon - rtrd(8) ↗ (opens external article)

Job Snijders (job@) imported rtrd(8), and its associated control program, rtrctl(8): CVSROOT: /cvs Module name: src Changes by: job@cvs.openbsd.org 2026/09/16 10:11:46 Added files: usr.sbin/rtrctl: Makefile ometric.c ometric.h rtrctl.8 rtrctl.c usr.sbin/rtrd : Makefile RTRX.PROTOCOL cache.c cache.h commands.c commands.h hash.c hash.h ip_utils.c ip_utils.h logs.c logs.h packets.c packets.h rtr_con…

U.S. Soldier Gets 70 Months in Prison for AT&T, Verizon Extortions ↗ (opens external article)

A U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty to hacking into multiple telecommunications companies and stealing mobile call and text metadata for more than 100 million AT&T customers in 2024 was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison today and ordered to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution to victims. One of several selfies from the Facebook page of Cameron Wagenius. Cameron John Wagenius, 22, was stat…

EFF to Court: Trump's Use of Truth Social's Pay-To-See-Posts-First Scheme Violates Americans' 1st Amendment Equal Access Rights ↗ (opens external article)

EFF legal intern Simar Kaur also contributed to this article. Americans’ First Amendment right to equal access to official government statements is violated by the Trump administration’s use of Truth Social’s preferential treatment scheme, which blocks people who won’t pay Trump’s company up to $100,000 a month for early access to government news, EFF told a federal court.The First Amendment guara…

DraftKings Is Using AI to Supercharge the Harms of Online Behavioral Advertising ↗ (opens external article)

Online sports betting company DraftKings is using AI to target customers who are most likely to place losing bets and respond to gambling promotions. This kind of targeting is a form of online behavioral advertising, which is when companies personalize the ads they show you based on the data they’ve collected about you. The more data a company has, the more personalized the ad can be. While DraftK…

D.C. Circuit Must Vacate a Drone Flight Restriction That Criminalized Recording Immigration Agents ↗ (opens external article)

EFF joined an amicus brief with ACLU, ACLU of D.C., National Press Photographers Association, and Professional Photographers of America to urge the D.C. Circuit to vacate an FAA drone flight restriction that violated the First Amendment right to record law enforcement. This is an important case—Levine v. FAA—challenging the ability of the government to punish drone pilots who record law enforcemen…

EU Kids Act Won't Keep the Internet Accountable and Trustworthy ↗ (opens external article)

The EU Commission draft law to restrict young people’s access to the internet that it presented last week will come at a high cost: it will put online services behind age gates, expand the use of intrusive age verification, and undermine the privacy of all users.  The EU Kids Act aims to protect children from risks associated with social media, video games, and AI systems by introducing age-based…

EFF Statement on California Governor's Executive Order on AI ↗ (opens external article)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom's executive order is an opportunity for a needed, thoughtful conversation about artificial intelligence and its potential harms. Everyday Californians are feeling real anxiety about the risks of artificial intelligence, and as an organization that works to ensure technology empowers people, EFF welcomes this order as a way for the state of California to lead a much-nee…

How to Limit What Apple’s New Siri AI Can Access in iOS 27 ↗ (opens external article)

Apple’s new operating system is here, and along with it comes a new version of Siri, dubbed with two very familiar letters: AI. As the name suggests, this Siri power-up resembles an AI chatbot more than the often derided voice assistant you might be used to. It has even evolved from a blob you invoke with a verbal command or a button press to a whole app. This update comes with a slew of privacy c…

Secure Messaging and AI Remain In Conflict Despite the Promise of TEEs ↗ (opens external article)

Secure messaging platforms, like Signal, WhatsApp, and recently, encrypted RCS, operate on a straightforward assumption: the content at each end of a conversation is private to the participants in the conversation. End-to-end encryption helps provide the mathematical guarantees that the companies who operate these messaging platforms cannot access the contents of messages. But there’s no way to gu…

EFF to Lawmakers: Ground AI Cybersecurity Rules in Best Practices ↗ (opens external article)

With doomsday AI scenarios dominating the news, lawmakers are rightly concerned about reports concerning security breaches at major US AI labs, such as the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident and the many others reported in its aftermath. As they consider potentially regulating frontier AI, they should focus any new legislation on the immediate, demonstrated risks from those incidents.  Post-incident rep…

California’s “Addictive Feeds” Law Violates Teens’ First Amendment Rights ↗ (opens external article)

A California law that prohibits teens from receiving recommended social media content from other social media users violates their First Amendment rights, EFF argued this week. The case, Meta v. Bonta, challenges SB 976, which requires that teen social media users get their parents’ permission before seeing other users’ recommended speech on their social media feeds. The legal challenge to SB 976…

Victory! Appeals Court Rejects Expansive New Copyright Claim ↗ (opens external article)

 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed internet users and programmers a big win today, by rejecting an attempt to stretch a narrow provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into a new source of copyright liability.   The case involves Section 1202 of the DMCA, which prohibits intentionally removing copyright management information (CMI) like an author’s name or a co…

Data Broker Radaris Loses Domains in Privacy Fight ↗ (opens external article)

The consumer data broker Radaris.com has long had a reputation for ignoring requests to remove personal information from its vast empire of people-search services online. That reputation caught up with the company recently in a lawsuit alleging Radaris violated a New Jersey privacy law that provides for hefty fines against data brokers that publish personal information on state law enforcement off…

Victory: Court, Using a New Test, Rules Embedding Links is Legal ↗ (opens external article)

Courts have for two decades found that linking and embedding someone else’s web content, be it a photo, music, or an article, doesn’t violate copyright law–the entity that controls the server that hosts a copyrighted work, not the user or website that merely directs others to it, is directly liable if the content turns out to be infringing. News publisher Emmerich Newspapers sought to convince the…

EFF Welcomes Alexander Macgillivray to its Board of Directors ↗ (opens external article)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce today that Alexander “amac” Macgillivray — a former White House official who also served in top legal capacities at Twitter and Google — has joined EFF’s Board of Directors.  Macgillivray served in the Biden Administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the Office of Science…

👮 Flock Searches for the LOLs | EFFector 38.16 ↗ (opens external article)

Mass surveillance isn't a joke. But police are treating it like one when using automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks. In our latest EFFector newsletter, we're covering a new EFF report on how officers across the country are routinely logging completely nonsensical "reasons" for their Flock searches, including "LOL," "LMAO," and even (yuck) "Sexy." JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER For over 35 years, EF…

How the Meta Settlement Silences Youth Activism ↗ (opens external article)

Since its integration into our digital world, social media has played a pivotal role in youth organizing and social mobilization. Yet, people’s access to these platforms is increasingly coming under threat from courts and legislatures under the guise of protecting young people online—presenting a significant hindrance to youth organizing.   In a major recent example, Meta settled in a lawsuit with…

California: Tell the Governor to Stand Up for Net Neutrality, Affordability, and Public Safety ↗ (opens external article)

The federal government has inserted a provision into a funding deal with the state of California that would make the state abandon its gold standard net neutrality law, broadband affordability laws, and public safety protections. Doing so would be a huge step back for California, and would actually end up being more expensive for Californians in the long run. Tell the governor to reject this provi…

The High Crime of “LMAO”: How Cops Are Treating Flock's Mass Surveillance As a Joke ↗ (opens external article)

Here's a riddle: Why did a Goshen Police Department officer search 6,474 automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks, representing data from 82,413 cameras, on May 7, 2025?  If your answer is "I don't know," it turns out you're 100% correct. The officer left the letters "idk" in the search field where cops are supposed to document the reason for the search. When law enforcement and tech salespe…

Updated Debian 13: 13.7 released ↗ (opens external article)

The Debian project is pleased to announce the seventh update of its stable distribution Debian 13 (codename trixie). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available.…

Governor Newsom Signs Student-Backed Digital Literacy Bills Alongside Misguided Bans ↗ (opens external article)

Governor Newsom signed a package of 12 bills yesterday aimed at “protecting children” online. One of them was AB 1709, which EFF has opposed this legislative session and serves as a functional ban on young people under 16 using social media. However, EFF supported two of the bills signed into law, AB 2071 and AB 2298, which require that children learn critical digital literacy and cybersecurity to…

Cold TAKE: Amazon's New Encryption Method Still Doesn't Deliver Real Privacy ↗ (opens external article)

Amazon recently debuted a new feature for its Ring cameras that the company is calling Throw Away the Key Encryption (TAKE). The idea is to cut back on the amount of video content available to the company, and thus potentially available to law enforcement. But while it might technically add a speed bump to accessing full video content, it doesn’t deliver nearly the level of privacy we should be de…

We All Deserve a Better Internet, Not A Smaller One ↗ (opens external article)

Bans Like California’s Don’t Fix What’s Wrong With Social Media Companies SAN FRANCISCO - Technology and the laws that regulate it should support and empower young people. California’s AB 1709 - signed into law today by Gov. Gavin Newsom - falls far short of this goal, say the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and its allies.    Using technology is how we learn and build community in today’s wo…

Cops Play Hide and Seek About Using Spy Tech to Avoid Scrutiny and Bad PR ↗ (opens external article)

Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly relying on spying technologies—automated license plate readers (ALPR), cell-site simulators, and facial recognition, to name a few--causing an outcry in many communities where people are rightly concerned about the threat to civil rights and civil liberties these tools present.Some authorities are responding to these concerns by trying t…

Digital Sovereignty: What It Is, What It Could Be ↗ (opens external article)

The term “digital sovereignty” has become ubiquitous. European officials invoke it in debates about cloud infrastructure, AI, semiconductors, and platform regulation. Governments throughout the global majority use it to argue for greater control over data and communications infrastructure and boost their economies. Companies market “sovereign cloud” products designed to reassure their customers th…

2026 EFF Award Winners: Access Now, 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, DeFlock, and New Media Rights ↗ (opens external article)

EFF is pleased to announce that Access Now, 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, DeFlock, and New Media Rights have received 2026 EFF Awards for their vital work in ensuring that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people.  The EFF Awards recognize specific and substantial technical, social, economic, or cultural contributions in diverse fields inc…

Microsoft Plugs Nearly 1,000 Security Holes ↗ (opens external article)

Microsoft Corp. today issued updates to plug at least 974 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, by far its biggest single patch batch ever. Microsoft says artificial intelligence is helping to speed the discovery of vulnerabilities, but security experts warn that many organizations already are struggling to prioritize the more human-intensive endeavor of testing and d…

New Records Reveal Problems with Medicare’s AI Prior Authorization Experiment ↗ (opens external article)

EFF sued the government back in March for information about the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) model, a new Medicare program that uses AI to evaluate prior authorization requests for certain medical services. Today, we’re releasing approximately 1,000 pages of records obtained from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) through this litigation, including contracts…

FreeBSD 14.5-RELEASE Available ↗ (opens external article)

Release Information page.…

Court Rules Against Citizen Journalists in DMCA Takedown Case—EFF Will Appeal ↗ (opens external article)

A federal court in Massachusetts has ruled that copyright holders can issue online takedown notices based on a subjective belief of copyright infringement, even when that belief is unreasonable and self-serving. The case was brought by our client, Channel 781 News, after takedown notices temporarily shut down the citizen journalism group's YouTube channel. We think the court set the bar far too lo…

Texas and Florida Step Back from ALPRs ↗ (opens external article)

Within the last few days, two important state actions have dealt a big blow to automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks. This is just the latest proof of the growing tide of public opposition to mass surveillance. After years of successful grassroots battles to pull these cameras from local streets, bipartisan momentum is sweeping the country. On August 28, Texas Governor Greg Abbott banned…

FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses ↗ (opens external article)

A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada. Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase on this service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely-used identity verification company based in Louisiana. KrebsOnSecurity a…

Debian 11 Long Term Support reaches end-of-life ↗ (opens external article)

The Debian Long Term Support (LTS) Team hereby announces that Debian 11 bullseye support has reached its end-of-life today, 31 August 2026, five years after its initial release on 14 August 2021.…

FreeBSD 14.5-RC1 Available ↗ (opens external article)

The first Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD 14.5 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, armv7, aarch64, powerpc, powerpcspe, powerpc64, powerpc64le, and riscv64 architectures are FreeBSD mirror sites.…

Two Alleged ‘TeamPCP’ Hackers Arrested in Australia ↗ (opens external article)

Authorities in Australia have arrested two men believed to be members of TeamPCP, a prolific cybercrime and data extortion group blamed for perpetrating the longest running spree of software supply chain attacks ever. In a statement released today, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said two men from Western Australia, aged 21 and 23, were arrested in connection with a “sophisticated cybercrime s…

FreeBSD 14.5-BETA3 Available ↗ (opens external article)

The third BETA build for the FreeBSD 14.5 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, armv7, aarch64, powerpc, powerpcspe, powerpc64, powerpc64le, and riscv64 architectures are FreeBSD mirror sites.…

FreeBSD 14.5-BETA2 Available ↗ (opens external article)

The second BETA build for the FreeBSD 14.5 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, armv7, aarch64, powerpc, powerpcspe, powerpc64, powerpc64le, and riscv64 architectures are FreeBSD mirror sites.…

FreeBSD 14.5-BETA1 Available ↗ (opens external article)

The first BETA build for the FreeBSD 14.5 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, armv7, aarch64, powerpc, powerpcspe, powerpc64, powerpc64le, and riscv64 architectures are FreeBSD mirror sites.…

DebConf26 closes in Santa Fe and DebConf27 announced ↗ (opens external article)

On Saturday 25 July 2026, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close.…

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New committer: Faraz Vahedi (src)…

Security support for Bookworm handed over to the LTS team ↗ (opens external article)

On 12 July 2026, three years after the initial release, the regular support for Debian 12, alias bookworm, has come to an end. The Debian Long Term Support (LTS) Team is taking over security support from the Security and Release Teams.…

Updated Debian 12: 12.15 released ↗ (opens external article)

The Debian project is pleased to announce the fifteenth and final update of its oldstable distribution Debian 12 (codename bookworm). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available.…

Updated Debian 13: 13.6 released ↗ (opens external article)

The Debian project is pleased to announce the sixth update of its stable distribution Debian 13 (codename trixie). This point release mainly adds corrections for security issues, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories have already been published separately and are referenced where available.…