Terminal

We found 24 Android vulnerabilities using our open source AI security agent ↗ (opens external article)

Tank Body Problem ↗ (opens external article)

"Shiva" Being Developed For Mesa Vulkan Drivers, Akin To Gallium3D ↗ (opens external article)

Shiva is entering development for Mesa Vulkan drivers as a new framework akin to Gallium3D but for Vulkan drivers rather than OpenGL. It's going to be some time before the work will come to fruition but should hopefully lead to more code sharing and a better Mesa Vulkan driver development experience in the future...…

1996 chat room simulator connected to Win95 and System 7 web desktops ↗ (opens external article)

China Broadens Travel Curbs To Encompass Family of Top AI Talent ↗ (opens external article)

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Business Standard: China has expanded overseas travel restrictions for top AI professionals in private firms to include the families of key personnel, further tightening measures designed to prevent the outflow of critical know-how and information to the US. Government agencies have recently begun to share the wider restrictions with affected p…

Boeing "incredibly excited" to serve as nation's only astronaut transportation ↗ (opens external article)

NASA announced on Monday that it will exercise options to purchase two additional flights on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, as well as financially support the company in its efforts to return the crewed vehicle to flight and find a new rocket after the Atlas V vehicle retires. The space agency's announcement confirms reporting by Ars Technica earlier this month on NASA's plans to maintain access…

AMD bets $8.2B that worlds matter more than words in AI ↗ (opens external article)

AMD dove deeper into AI model development on Monday with an agreement to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs in a deal valued at approximately $8.2 billion. The House of Zen claims the all-stock deal is expected to close by year's end pending regulatory approval, and will guide the development of future AI hardware, software, and systems. "Building the compute platforms for the next generation of AI…

AMD Acquires Fei-Fei Li's World Labs For $8.2 Billion ↗ (opens external article)

AMD has agreed to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for about $8.2 billion in stock, making it the chipmaker's second-largest acquisition and giving it a major foothold in "world models" that simulate 3D environments for robotics and other physically grounded AI. CNBC reports: AI researchers expect world models will be able to help develop robots and other physically-grounded artificial intelligence…

Experts worry about Nvidia's AI chip sales in China and influence over Trump ↗ (opens external article)

On its face, the recent summit between Donald Trump and China’s president Xi Jinping didn’t change much in the world of AI regulation. Export controls were not discussed, with neither country seemingly interested in making concessions. An already tenuous trade truce was temporarily extended for just two months, and looming US controls that could drop soon could easily end that and trigger China t…

ESP32S3 cluster running 1.58-bit (BitNet) Language model ↗ (opens external article)

SpaceX's Starship goes orbital, deploying first next-gen Starlinks ↗ (opens external article)

SpaceX's Starship rocket thundered into the sky over South Texas early Monday. It was the 14th test flight of the world's most powerful launch vehicle. This time, however, the rocket's massive upper stage squeezed out some extra oomph from its Raptor engines and accelerated to orbital velocity. On all of Starship's previous flights, SpaceX intentionally dialed back the full capability of the rock…

AWS needs to embrace its place as the Home Depot of AI infrastructure ↗ (opens external article)

Historically, building an application on top of AWS felt less like buying well-thought-out products, and more like a trip to Home Depot. This was great in an era before we had computers that would handle the "bolting all the parts together for us" parts, but increasingly it's starting to feel a lot more dated. Today, you can use Railway, Vercel (itself a platform built atop AWS), CloudFlare, and…

TikTok to Pay Alabama $100 Million, Limit Teen Use In First State Settlement ↗ (opens external article)

TikTok has agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million and adopt new restrictions for teenage users, including a two-hour daily limit, overnight access restrictions, stronger age verification, a ban on beauty filters, and an option for a non-personalized feed. The settlement could grow to as much as $300 million if enough other state attorneys general join similar agreements. The Guardian reports:…

Florida invokes extinction fears in legal bid to halt OpenAI development ↗ (opens external article)

The state of Florida is seeking a temporary injunction to stop OpenAI from continuing to develop what it calls a "reckless, unacceptably risky product" without the deployment of "third-party approved safety guardrails." The new legal motion, filed Monday morning, is part of a civil lawsuit the state of Florida originally filed in June, arguing that ChatGPT represented "a threat to the public safe…

New device captures carbon dioxide by pumping it across a battery ↗ (opens external article)

Equipment to capture carbon dioxide from ambient air or smokestacks generally works through a sort of reversible filter. Air is passed through granules or a liquid that absorbs the CO2, then that CO2-loaded substance undergoes a process (usually heating) that causes it to let go of all that CO2. The resulting gas can be collected in a separated stream. It’s also possible to do a similar sort of o…

JadePuffer crims hijacked Azure identities and used them to blow up cloud resources ↗ (opens external article)

The cyber criminal behind JadePuffer, the first known agentic ransomware infection reported over the summer, has also used stolen Azure identities to conduct destructive attacks on cloud storage and other resources, according to Microsoft. In July, Sysdig threat hunters uncovered JadePuffer, the first-ever documented agentic ransomware infection in which an LLM drove the entire extortion operatio…

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…

Jeff – Jev-compatible 0.8B decision models, trained at home, ~30 ms ↗ (opens external article)

World Labs Is Joining AMD ↗ (opens external article)

California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops ↗ (opens external article)

Scientists solve 1840s space weather mystery ↗ (opens external article)

Data Center Developer Offers $10,000 Checks To Nearby Households ↗ (opens external article)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: NorthPoint Development wants to build a data center on 1,300 acres in the Pocono foothills, near Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. As well as seeking to charm the local government with various funding packages, it has proposed paying checks of $10,000 per household. Despite the Pennsylvania town's median income of $60,000, the offer isn't being…

To keep drug prices high, pharma has been piling up the patents ↗ (opens external article)

The cost of healthcare in general is a debilitating, pre-existing condition for Americans. But the high prices of prescription drugs usually stand out as a pain point. While there are many insidious reasons why Americans pay more—often far more—for their medicines than people in peer countries, exploitation of the US patent system is an obvious one. A study published Monday in JAMA highlights jus…

It's Time to Investigate the AI Labs ↗ (opens external article)

OpenAI GPT-6 Astra really good at supply chain attacks, UK gov warns ↗ (opens external article)

Another LLM has joined the hacking fray. OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra has been spotted performing unsolicited supply chain attacks during security evaluations, according to the UK Artificial Intelligence Security Institute. In such simulations, the model has its standard security classifiers turned off. Nonetheless, Astra was seen attempting undesirable actions more frequently than prior models. "In our…

Trump cuts fuel economy standards back to 2014 levels ↗ (opens external article)

The federal government’s war on fuel efficiency claimed another victim today. The Department of Transportation released a new rule for the country’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, which, as expected, discourage the very idea of economical vehicles. Among the changes is a rollback to fuel economy numbers not seen in more than a decade, below even the low standards implemented in 2020, t…

First Steps of the PLC Organization – Independent Public Ledger of Credentials ↗ (opens external article)

NVIDIA Developing "Display Config Server" To Improve Linux/Wayland On Display Walls ↗ (opens external article)

As an initiative from NVIDIA for improving the Linux ecosystem outside the world of AI, they have been developing Display-Config-Server as a new solution to help enhance the Linux capabilities for complex display walls...…

Kalshi loses again as judges rule prediction markets must obey gambling laws ↗ (opens external article)

Another federal appeals court has ruled that states can enforce their gambling laws against the prediction market Kalshi, which asserts that it can only be regulated by the US government. On Friday, a three-judge panel in the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled unanimously against Kalshi and in favor of Ohio and Tennessee. While the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has exclusiv…

SIMDjson 5.0 Released: Still Making JSON Parsing Even Faster ↗ (opens external article)

SIMDjson is the open-source, high performance JSON parser that surprisingly began making use of AVX-512 to deliver big performance gains years ago. SIMDjson has continued further refining itself to deliver even greater speeds and out today is SIMDjson 5.0...…

Meta Taps MongoDB CEO Desai to Drive Enterprise AI Push ↗ (opens external article)

Meta has hired MongoDB CEO Chirantan "CJ" Desai to lead a new enterprise AI business aimed at turning Meta's models, agents and tools into products companies can deploy themselves. Reuters reports: Desai, a veteran technology executive, took over the role from Dev Ittycheria. MongoDB has appointed Ittycheria as interim CEO as it searches for a permanent replacement. "While the departure is disappo…

MicroLLM Lab – Try 7 tiny LLM's in the browser ↗ (opens external article)

French dev aims to solve bots' blindness so they can understand GUIs ↗ (opens external article)

Most LLMs are great at answering prompts, but fall short when it comes to navigating around the desktop in Windows or Linux. French AI model dev H unveiled a pair of computer use models on Monday aimed at handling graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Throughout computing history, computer use largely falls into three categories: command line interfaces (CLIs), application programming interfaces (API…

Google seemingly confirms plans to kill ChromeOS in 2034 ↗ (opens external article)

We are mere days away from the launch of Googlebooks, the long-awaited Android laptops that Google hopes will compete with macOS and Windows. But what of Chromebooks? There have been hints that Google plans to sunset its web-first ChromeOS platform, and a new support page lays out some of the specifics. The support page, spotted by 9to5Google, aims to explain the role of Googlebooks to Chrome Ent…

Nvidia Unveils AI Agent Safety Platform With Hardware-Based Watchdog ↗ (opens external article)

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Nvidia on Monday announced the Open Agent Safety Platform, which combines open source software and a reference system design to keep AI agents within set boundaries from testing through deployment. The chipmaker explained that the platform pairs the open-source OpenShell runtime with Sentry, an out-of-band watchdog running on BlueField-4 DPUs. Nvidia s…

Sonnet 5.5 ↗ (opens external article)

Scientists solve 1840s space weather mystery ↗ (opens external article)

The infamous Carrington Event of 1859 has long been considered the first extreme space weather event, but there have been reports of minor disturbances to telegraph equipment during geomagnetic storms since the late 1840s. In 2013, scholars discovered an anonymous report published in 1871 in Nature describing how a "very intense magnetic disturbance" disrupted rail travel in Exeter on the souther…

F1 in Azerbaijan: That was almost a close-run thing ↗ (opens external article)

Formula 1 raced on the streets of Baku, Azerbaijan, this past weekend. Although the race predates Liberty’s acquisition of the sport by a few months, it’s a rather good microcosm of the sport as it exists today. The track is a real challenge; it takes place on dusty city streets lined with concrete walls and through a medieval fortress gate, followed by a 1.4-mile (2.2 km) flat-out blast to the f…

Amazon Evaluating Drone Deliveries In Australia, Asia ↗ (opens external article)

Amazon is preparing to expand Prime Air drone deliveries into Australia and potentially other Asia-Pacific markets, with a new regulatory role tasked with securing the approvals needed to launch service there. The Register reports: "As Prime Air evaluates Australia and other countries, we are hiring a Head of Regulatory Approvals, Australia -- the person responsible for navigating Australia's avia…

How many times are you paying for the same file? ↗ (opens external article)

EVENT: Count the copies. The one on the NAS. The one somebody pulled over the VPN to work on at home. The one in the sync folder, which may or may not still match the one on the NAS. The one attached to an email because the sync was slow that morning. Four copies of one file, four places paying to store it, and one person, eventually, working out which is current. That is the cost most organizati…

OpenAI halts frontier-model training amid string of agent misalignment incidents ↗ (opens external article)

OpenAI says it has paused all internal training of "our most capable models" as it continues what CEO Sam Altman is calling "an extensive and ongoing review related to our agents’ use of internet access during training and evaluation." The company revealed the pause in a report about a so-called misalignment incident in which an agent attempted to exploit a gap in Internet-access restrictions dur…

Show HN: Destroy Any Website with Stickman ↗ (opens external article)

Fedora 45 To Feature Smoother Experience For Snapdragon X1 Laptops ↗ (opens external article)

Qualcomm hiring one of Red Hat's top x86_64 Linux laptop experts last year, Hans de Goede, is indeed having a positive benefit on enhancing the Fedora Linux support for Qualcomm Snapdragon X powered hardware...…

NASA 'troubleshooting' transporter for space station's robotic arm [Updated] ↗ (opens external article)

Recently, the astronauts on board the International Space Station performed a routine "walk-off" maneuver with the large, 58-foot-long robotic arm attached to the orbiting laboratory. The robotic arm, known as Canadarm2 because it was supplied by the Canadian Space Agency, is something of a modern engineering miracle—it can effectively move around the exterior of the large space station like an i…

Bill Gates Says an AI 'Kill Switch' Isn't Enough ↗ (opens external article)

Bill Gates said an AI "kill switch" alone would be insufficient to address the technology's risks. "The kill switch is, that's kind of a weird thing. It's not enough to have a kill switch," the Microsoft co-founder said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." He said the more immediate concern is people using AI for cyberattacks or bioterrorism rather than systems acting auton…

Pirating the Pirates ↗ (opens external article)

Nvidia wants to put a watchdog chip next to every AI agent ↗ (opens external article)

Microsoft's Copilot super app comes with a meter attached ↗ (opens external article)

Microsoft has unveiled its shiny new Copilot super app alongside an “evolved” pricing model to go with it, which means that customers will keep paying for a subscription and then cough up more when they want the really clever stuff. The company outlined the changes alongside its expanded vision for Copilot, which is being turned into a single AI work hub spanning chat, Office apps, coding, and in…

Hijacking the PS5's RTMP stream ↗ (opens external article)

Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat ↗ (opens external article)

Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah ↗ (opens external article)

Cf: The Agentic CLI for the Cloudflare API ↗ (opens external article)

SpaceX Launches Starship Into Orbit ↗ (opens external article)

SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time, successfully deploying 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites after overcoming an early Raptor 3 engine shutdown during ascent. "SpaceX plans to eventually deploy 100,000 upgraded Starlink V3s to expand the company's wireless satellite internet services," notes Space.com. Here's the latest update from the report: SpaceX has decided to return Stars…

Show HN: HN.watch – Videos of all Hacker News posts ↗ (opens external article)

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…

Dutch government turns to NixOS for a sovereign desktop ↗ (opens external article)

The Dutch government is backing an effort to build a FOSS workplace for public administration, including a desktop operating system based on NixOS. The DAWO Project has been gestating for some months, but it just got a lot more visible thanks to an in-depth report on Dutch tech news site Tweakers.net. DAWO stands for "Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid," or "Digital Autonomous Government Wor…

Walmart Says It's Not Using Personal Info To Set Prices As It Expands Digital Shelf Labels ↗ (opens external article)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Walmart is aiming to assuage customers' fears about its new pricing technology as it rolls out digital price labels at its stores. In a statement posted on the company's website, Walmart's CEO John Furner vowed that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer isn't using personal information like income, shopping history or a customer's w…

What heraldry and Japanese mon can teach about visual-identity generators ↗ (opens external article)

Firefox 157 Now Available With Visual Refresh, WebRTC Hardware AV1 Decode ↗ (opens external article)

As part of the Mozilla Firefox bi-weekly release regiment, the Firefox 157 binaries are now available for this open-source web browser...…

Europe's AI ambitions rest on somebody else's supply chain ↗ (opens external article)

Europe is one of the world's largest markets for AI datacenter infrastructure, but its own local companies capture only a fraction of the value, because overseas suppliers dominate chips, servers, and cloud infrastructure. According to the Global Electronics Association (GEA), EU-headquartered companies account for only six percent of the bloc's datacenter semiconductor market, seven percent of s…

next-20260928: linux-next ↗ (opens external article)

Version:next-20260928 (linux-next) Released:2026-09-28…

Coding is not solved ↗ (opens external article)

OpenAI agents went the long way round for UN data ↗ (opens external article)

OpenAI agents apparently spent two months hammering a United Nations (UN) data API, trying increasingly creative ways to bypass the barriers they encountered. Researcher Rowan H-J uncovered the activity by analyzing roughly 16,500 scans of the UN Conference on Trade and Development's UNCTADstat API recorded between April 13 and June 19, 2026. Rowan claims it’s "highly likely" the traffic came fro…

Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests ↗ (opens external article)

Flatpak 1.18.4 Released With Important Security Fixes ↗ (opens external article)

Flatpak 1.18.4 is out today with a number of high profile security fixes for this app sandboxing and distribution tech...…

Microsoft tells nonprofits their deleted M365 data isn't coming back ↗ (opens external article)

Microsoft accidentally wiped some nonprofit customers' M365 data before their retention period expired – and now says it cannot tell them what disappeared, or even whether they lost anything. The cockup followed Microsoft's retirement of its Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant, which gave eligible nonprofits ten free licenses for the productivity suite. Microsoft announced in May 2025 that the g…

NVIDIA Vera SMT Performance Benchmarks ↗ (opens external article)

Recently I was provided remote access to a NVIDIA Vera server with the dual socket Vera CPU Superchip providing 176 Olympus cores plus with NVIDIA's Spatial Multithreading "SMT" implementation providing 352 total threads. With this benchmarking was free rein for testing, including CPU power and frequency monitoring. Over the next few weeks will be a number of articles looking at different areas of…

Ex-soldier's telecom hacking spree earns him 70 months ↗ (opens external article)

A former US Army soldier has been sentenced to 70 months in prison for hacking telecoms companies, stealing sensitive records, and trying to extort more than $1 million from his victims. Cameron John Wagenius, 22, carried out the campaign while serving on active duty. He pleaded guilty in March 2025 to unlawfully transferring confidential phone records, then admitted conspiracy to commit wire fra…

UK government vows to reclaim services from outsourcing giants ↗ (opens external article)

The UK government is setting up a new unit it promises will "bring forward the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation." Government outsourcing has long attracted criticism over value for money and service quality, with technology-heavy business processes among the contracts coming under scrutiny. The government said the new unit, based within the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet, wou…

AMD PerfOpt To Deliver New Performance Optimization For AMD iGPUs With Linux 7.4 ↗ (opens external article)

Those using AMD integrated graphics on Linux such as the beefy Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo and Gorgon Halo hardware will be able to enjoy even better performance with the upcoming Linux 7.4 kernel...…

Ofcom pulls the plug on Openreach's aggressive fiber discount ↗ (opens external article)

Ofcom has blocked an Openreach discount for bringing customers onto its fiber network, warning that rivals might be unable to match the price and recover their costs. The "Incremental New to Openreach Customer Offer" was one of several pricing changes due to take effect on October 1. It is the first Openreach commercial offer the regulator has rejected; the others can proceed. Openreach, BT's fun…

Microsoft goes quiet after church groups ask for 1% of data center costs ↗ (opens external article)

Microsoft has spent all year telling communities that when it brings a new data center into their area, it is committed to being a “good neighbor." It will pay local property taxes that support local hospitals, schools, parks, and libraries, and it will invest in “vital services the community cares about,” the company promised. And it has sent liaisons into those communities to learn what those n…

Parley: Federated, decentralised chat that speaks plain IRC ↗ (opens external article)

openSUSE Leap 16.1 RC Released With New Immutable Mode ↗ (opens external article)

The release candidate phase has begun for the upcoming openSUSE Leap 16.1 in-step with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1. Most notable with the openSUSE Leap 16.1 is the introduction of its new immutable mode...…

Linux 7.4 To Introduce The Steal Governor For Helping Virtualized Workloads ↗ (opens external article)

Now queued up for introduction in the Linux 7.4 merge window later in October is the steal governor driver for preferred CPUs and steal-driven vCPU backoff for today's virtualized world...…

Jev is rapidly rising to challenge the LLM for enterprise AI supremacy ↗ (opens external article)

As AI is reshaping the tech world, so it in turn waits for something greater to come along and reshape it, and that unstoppable force might just be TypeSafe AI's new model, Jev. You can listen to the latest episode of The Kettle on this page, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. You can also subscribe on those platforms to be notified when a new episode goes live. Jev's not chatty, it doesn't wan…

Shotcut 26.9 Video Editor Brings UI Improvements, Automatic Audio Ducking ↗ (opens external article)

Following the earlier Shotcut 26.9 beta at the beginning of September, the open-source developers behind the open-source non-linear video editor are out with the Shotcut 26.9 stable release...…

HMRC vowed to break up with Capgemini then paid it another £4.2B ↗ (opens external article)

As the UK government promises to use public spending to back British business, research indicates that the tax collector has paid French tech giant Capgemini at least £4.2 billion since it began dismantling their flagship outsourcing arrangement. When Andy Burnham became Prime Minister in July, he said in his first speech that public procurement would "back British industry." The government later…

Are AI Chatbots Spreading Misinformation to US Voters? ↗ (opens external article)

Are AI chatbots quietly shaping the perceptions of U.S. voters? Voters trying to educate themselves about candidates "are unknowingly being served partisan talking points in the guise of neutral news summaries," write two news researchers in Politico magazine: Leading AI chatbots cite partisan websites masquerading as independent local news outlets nearly half of the time when people ask about can…

Open source datacenters and open source thinking will undo self-inflicted DC damage ↗ (opens external article)

It's hard to make big sheds symbols of oppression, but the datacenter industry's having a jolly good crack at it. Its big boxes of semi-sentient sand are increasingly seen as satanic sandcastles, environmental disasters that inflict drought while boiling oceans. Their role as dark cathedrals of the equally demonic AIs has done nothing to soften attitudes. A new contract of candour is needed betwe…

Certainties in life: Death, taxes, and critical Citrix vulns under attack ↗ (opens external article)

Death and taxes are said to be the only certainties in life. Perhaps it’s time to add attackers targeting newly discovered critical flaws in Citrix’s NetScaler application delivery controller and gateway products to that grim list. On Sunday, the company published a bulletin warning of eight CVEs, the worst of which – CVE-2026-88771 and CVE-2026-88772 – are rated critical with 9.5 CVSS scores. CV…

Techie assumed boss knew what they were talking about and killed Exchange by deleting data ↗ (opens external article)

Monday mornings can be filled with trepidation and tension, which is why The Register kicks them off with a little light-hearted fun in the form of a new instalment of “Who, Me?" It’s the reader-contributed column in which you admit to your errors, and reveal the consequences. This week, meet a reader who asked to be Regomized as “Phil” and told us that many years ago he started a new job that, a…

OpenAI pauses some training amid allegations its rogue agents behaved more badly than first thought ↗ (opens external article)

The AI safety debate advanced at high speed over the weekend, amid new allegations that rogue agents have behaved more badly than first thought – and in greater numbers. The fun started on Friday when OpenAI quietly disclosed it had paused training of its most advanced models. The AI upstart buried that news in a “misalignment report” – that’s OpenAI-speak for its reports on rogue agents – titled…

Apple Faces $5.7 Billion Patent Infringement Verdict Over iPhone And Apple Watch Haptics ↗ (opens external article)

"A federal jury in San Diego awarded Taction Technology more than $5.7 billion in damages Friday after finding that Apple infringed claims from two haptics patents," reports CNBC: Taction sued Apple in 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The company alleged that Apple was improperly "capitalizing on Taction's innovation and success" by selling devices that infr…

Behold the pawpaw ↗ (opens external article)

Amazon evaluating drone deliveries in Australia, Asia ↗ (opens external article)

E-commerce giant Amazon.com is preparing to launch drone deliveries in Australia and other nations. “As Prime Air evaluates Australia and other countries, we are hiring a Head of Regulatory Approvals, Australia – the person responsible for navigating Australia's aviation regulatory system and securing every approval required to deliver to Australian customers by drone,” reads a recently published…

Just How Big is the AI Buildout - and How Risky? ↗ (opens external article)

A new Brookings Institution study notes the "strikingly physical" economic footprint of AI's buildout, from specialized chips and electricity to purpose-built data centers. (Two-thirds of a data center's costs are IT equipment, with one-third going to real estate and its associated power infrastructure.) "At an average of 3.63 percent of GDP per year, the projected buildout would be larger relativ…

Linux 7.3-rc5 Released: "Another Week, Another Large RC" ↗ (opens external article)

In working toward the stable Linux 7.3 kernel release hopefully on 18 October, out today is Linux 7.3-rc5 as the newest weekly test candidate...…

7.3-rc5: mainline ↗ (opens external article)

Version:7.3-rc5 (mainline) Released:2026-09-27 Source:linux-7.3-rc5.tar.gz Patch:full (incremental)…

Waymo Says Its Self-Driving Cars Reduced Injury-Causing Accidents by 82% ↗ (opens external article)

Waymo's self-driving car technology "continues to outperform human benchmarks," the company claimed this week. "It was involved in 841 fewer injury-causing crashes — an 82% reduction compared to human drivers." Electrek reports: We've seen various Waymo crash data before, with Waymo claiming crash reductions. That's all well and good when the company says it, but we've also seen independent data c…

Budgie 10.10.3 Released With Favorites In Budgie Menu, Labwc Bridge Improvements ↗ (opens external article)

Budgie 10.10.3 is out today as the newest point release to this open-source desktop...…

After Dozens of Incidents at OpenAI and Anthropic, OpenAI Pauses Model Training to Build More Safeguards ↗ (opens external article)

"OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest AI models," reports the Associated Press, "as reports of AI agents going rogue mount." The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while g…

Linux Kernel's LZ4 Compression Code Being Resynced For Better Performance & Cleanliness ↗ (opens external article)

In addition to the Linux kernel's Zstd compression code being improved, the LZ4 compression code within the kernel tree is also seeing a separate set of enhancements...…

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…

vmm(4)/vmd(8) gain support for multi-processor VMs ↗ (opens external article)

Mike Larkin (mlarkin@) committed support for multi-processor virtual machines (i.e. guests): CVSROOT: /cvs Module name: src Changes by: mlarkin@cvs.openbsd.org 2026/09/17 20:35:55 Modified files: sys/arch/amd64/amd64: vmm_machdep.c sys/arch/amd64/include: vmmvar.h sys/dev/vmm : vmm.c usr.sbin/vmctl : main.c vmctl.8 vmctl.c vmctl.h usr.sbin/vmd : arm64_vm.c fw_cfg.c lapic.c lapic.h parse.y vm.c vm…

How the Smithsonian became the latest front in Trump’s culture war ↗ (opens external article)

In November 2021, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History opened an exhibit called “The Electric Dr. Franklin,” describing “Benjamin Franklin’s pioneering contributions to electrical science.” The exhibit explained that, prior to becoming an abolitionist, he had enslaved people in his household. “Benjamin Franklin’s remarkable scientific accomplishments were, in part, enabled by sla…

Intel Delivers A Significant Memory Hotplugging Performance Optimization For Linux ↗ (opens external article)

Adding to the features expected to land for Linux 7.4 is a significant performance optimization for the memory hotplugging speed for adding additional RAM. In particular, the memory hotplugging being most applicable for cases like expanding the amount of memory for VMs or in today's CXL world for adding additional system memory...…

New Linux Patches For Supporting Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon G14's Second Camera ↗ (opens external article)

For those considering Lenovo's recently launched and beautifully crafted ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 laptop powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake", one of the lingering missing features under Linux will hopefully soon be addressed: its second web camera...…

Apple buried Copland 30 years ago. Now the failed OS boots in a browser ↗ (opens external article)

Thirty years after Apple abandoned Copland, its doomed attempt to create a modern Mac operating system, a new emulator lets you try the final developer build in your browser. Copland was intended to replace Apple's System 7 with a PowerPC-native operating system built around a microkernel, protected memory, and preemptive multitasking for system services. Three unfinished developer builds – D7E1,…

New Patch Series Working Toward DRBD 9 Support In The Linux Kernel ↗ (opens external article)

Earlier this year developers at LINBIT began working toward a goal of upstreaming ~15 years worth of their Distributed Replicated Block Device changes into the mainline Linux kernel. That major update has yet to land but sent out this week was a new patch series in preparing the trek toward introducing DRBD 9 support in the mainline kernel...…

Big AI's content problem: Take the work, keep the money ↗ (opens external article)

Big AI has a problem. Its companies must ingest other people’s work. You know, books, news stories, photographs, code, websites, that one original meme you came up with, and practically everything else on the internet to train its large language models (LLMs). We all know that. We also know that AI companies hate paying for any of it, obeying the licenses attached to it, or, God forbid, sharing t…

Game of Trees 0.129 released ↗ (opens external article)

Version 0.129 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated). Complete release notes are as follows: Read more……

Improved GPU Reset Coming For Raspberry Pi Boards With Linux 7.4 ↗ (opens external article)

In addition to this week's DRM-Misc-Next pull request introducing some new HDMI 2.0 helpers for the DRM drivers, the pull request also introduced improved GPU reset support for the Broadcom V3D GPU with the VC4 kernel driver...…

What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI ↗ (opens external article)

What is the best shape of a city? Modelling effect of urban form on distance ↗ (opens external article)

"Toolpak" Being Devised By GNOME OS Developers, Akin To Flatpak For Tools ↗ (opens external article)

GNOME developer Jordan Petridis published a blog post today to introduce the world to the Toolpak plans for GNOME OS...…

How to win a beer with high-dimensional statistics ↗ (opens external article)

MM Change Slated For Linux 7.4 Yields +22904539.81% In One Metric, More Modest Wins In Others ↗ (opens external article)

Queued this week into the slab/for-next Git branch ahead of next month's Linux 7.4 merge window is a memory management change for refilling pre-filled sheaves from the barn. In some cases this yields wild improvements to specific synthetic benchmarks...…

The Art Forger Who Became a National Hero ↗ (opens external article)

AI Bug Fixes, Crescent Island Power Brake & Nouveau Fixes For Linux 7.3-rc5 DRM ↗ (opens external article)

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem fixes for the week are heavier on the side with many fixes to these kernel graphics/display drivers ahead of Sunday's Linux 7.3-rc5 release...…

Wisp Makes It Easier To Manage Btrfs Snapshots From The GNOME Desktop ↗ (opens external article)

Wisp is a new GNOME Shell extension making it easier to graphically manage Btrfs file-system snapshots...…

Tesla’s big electric truck faces an even bigger infrastructure challenge ↗ (opens external article)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has insisted investors think of his electric automaker as a robotics and autonomous vehicle company now. He’s targeted a $20 trillion valuation—nearly four times the value of market leader Nvidia—on that premise. But his Tesla team was in Sparks, Nevada, on Thursday to focus on, well, an electric vehicle: the long-awaited Tesla Semi. The Semi concept first rolled onto a Tesla…

AMDXDNA Linux Driver Being Enhanced For Current NPU3 Hardware ↗ (opens external article)

The AMDXDNA open-source Linux kernel accelerator driver is seeing a fair amount of work for better supporting current-generation NPU3 neural processing units. The AMD NPU3 is what's found in current AMD Ryzen AI 300 / Ryzen AI 300 PRO series SoCs...…

How Samsung turned months of inactivity into a very attention-seeking smartphone ↗ (opens external article)

Our resident Microsoft-watcher Richard Speed last week wrote about his seven-hour odyssey bringing a Windows 11 box up to snuff with the latest patches. I’ll see you that struggle, Richard, and raise you my experience updating a 2022-vintage Samsung Galaxy A33 Android smartphone. I spent about a year using the A33 as my daily driver and while it always did a job, the midrange machine is far from…

12,000-year-old Göbeklitepe burials explain scattered bones ↗ (opens external article)

KDE Plasma 6.8 Continues With Last Minute Tweaks & Fixes ↗ (opens external article)

Even with this week's KDE Akademy conference and releasing KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta 2, KDE developers still found time to land last minute changes for Plasma 6.8 plus ongoing early work toward Plasma 6.9...…

Space Jam: UK debuts space squadron to protect satellites ↗ (opens external article)

Britain’s Royal Air Force has gained some space cadets, in the form of No. III Space Effects Squadron, tasked with protecting critical satellites that the UK relies on for communications and navigation. Air Chief Marshal Sir Harvey Smyth announced the new unit at an inaugural UK Space Power Conference in London, saying it will safeguard the vital benefits that space gives to our armed forces, and…

Last Call For The Autumn Special For Ad-Free Viewing & Supporting Linux Hardware Testing ↗ (opens external article)

Last call for the Phoronix autumn "Oktoberfest" Premium sale: it runs through end of day Sunday, 27 September (any timezone - I'm not particularly strict). If you have been meaning to support the site, this is the window...…

Can Trump ever be wrong? His pick to lead FDA refused to say. ↗ (opens external article)

Heidi Overton, President Trump's nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, went before the Senate health committee Thursday, facing questions about her stances on vaccines, flavored vapes, birth control, and abortion, among other issues. She spent nearly two hours stonewalling senators, even on softball questions. Overton, a physician with a doctoral degree in clinical investigation, is c…

New FUTEX Syscalls Back To Being Worked On For Helping Valve's ARM64 Gaming Ambitions ↗ (opens external article)

Going back to last year the Igalia open-source consulting firm has been working on enhancing the Linux kernel to help Steam Play gaming on ARM64 and ensuring the FEX emulator is operating efficiently for x86/x86_64 games running on the likes of the Steam Frame. After other kernel work in recent months, there's finally an updated round of the FUTEX get_robust_list2 and set_robust_list2 system call…

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…

Court rules Pentagon can blacklist Anthropic for refusing to enable Claude features ↗ (opens external article)

A US appeals court today approved the Department of Defense's blacklisting of Anthropic technology. Judges decided the Trump administration had authority to blacklist Anthropic for withholding certain AI features from the military even if Anthropic had no malicious intent. In a 2-1 ruling issued by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a panel of judges said the "case rais…

Tesla workers balk at training Optimus humanoid robots as replacements ↗ (opens external article)

Tesla’s pivot from making electric cars to humanoid robots is facing challenges because of complex robot hands and disgruntled employees pushing back against training their robotic replacements. The struggle to scale up production comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has bet the company’s future on AI and robotics. As someone who frequently makes claims that fail to materialize, Musk has described the Op…

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 early access to government news, EFF told a federal court.The First Amendment guarantee…

Valen creator drives 'Golden Spike' to connect new languages with Rust ↗ (opens external article)

Programming language generics can now ride in style from one language’s compiler to another and back again, thanks to experimental work from Mojo core contributor Evan Ovadia. This former Google engineer has endeavored to turn Rust into a library that other languages can build from, demonstrating a way to pass generic data types and functions between Rust and another language, an action the C ABI…

Microsoft cells out, crams multiple values into Excel boxes ↗ (opens external article)

Microsoft has ended 40 years of single-occupancy for Excel cells and is now allowing multiple values to inhabit the same home. "One of the oldest rules of spreadsheets: one cell, one value," said Jake Armstrong, senior product manager for Excel, in a LinkedIn post. "No longer!" "I’m excited to announce a set of new features: Lists, Arrays in Cells and Nested Arrays in Excel." For the time being,…

Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what? ↗ (opens external article)

Researchers say they recently found Google ads delivering a sophisticated tech support scam that freezes the screens of both Windows and Mac devices and displays messages urgently instructing them to phone a bogus call center. The ads were displayed all over the web, including on high-traffic maps, weather, real-estate, document-hosting, and sports sites. Users who called the number were then urg…

Uncle Sam coughs up $1.9B for grid upgrades as datacenters hit a power wall ↗ (opens external article)

Bit barn builders can rejoice, because this week the US Department of Energy (DoE) announced $5.25 billion — including $1.9 billion of federal funds and $3.35 billion in cost-share funding — to support dozens of grid improvements across the nation expected to unlock an additional 23 gigawatts of capacity. The program, which spans 31 specific projects in 26 states, is part of the department’s Spee…

Fake Google Security Team ad says 'no script reading' in voice phishing - then prints the script ↗ (opens external article)

Yes, criminals have job listings too. A Telegram user recruiting callers to work in an apparent Google Security Team voice-phishing scam told applicants that they weren’t allowed to read from scripts – in the same ad that also included the exact script they had to read during these scam calls. This and other true-crime tales of criminals making fools of themselves appear in the latest installment…

New software dependency validation process increases speeds by 54x ↗ (opens external article)

As if the pace of software creation hadn't accelerated enough thanks to generative AI coding agents, computer scientists in Japan have devised a way to turbocharge the process of build dependency verification. Speeds can increase by as much as 54x. Software build systems like Make, CMake, and the Zig build system automate the process of turning source code into executable programs. They ensure so…

ShinyHunters tells The Reg: We hacked the FBI to 'protect our business' ↗ (opens external article)

ShinyHunters, the data theft and extortion crew that has stolen sensitive information belonging to millions of cancer patients, university and K-12 students, and Carnival cruisers, wanted to preserve their reputation and keep their “business” afloat. So it hacked the FBI to make a statement, the group told The Register. “It’s a game and it’s the world we live in,” a ShinyHunters spokesperson told…

Google-backed energy outfit brings 33 MW of 4 GW geothermal potential online in Utah ↗ (opens external article)

Google's bet on geothermal energy is starting to pay off. Fervo Energy, an enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) provider backed by the Chocolate Factory, achieved first power at its Cape Station power plant in Beaver County, Utah this week. The first of three 33 MW GeoBlocks has begun supplying electricity to the grid and is expected to reach commercial operation next week, with another 66 MW of cap…

Crooks use fake desktop apps to fool HR staff into giving them remote access ↗ (opens external article)

You work in your company's human resources department and use HR software to check employee information, benefits, and payroll. So, when you see a downloadable Windows version promising a faster alternative to the usual web interface, you grab it. Unfortunately, the app isn't what it claims to be. Instead, it silently installs ConnectWise's legitimate ScreenConnect software, giving the operator p…

Bitget blames North Korea for $387.5M crypto wallet raid ↗ (opens external article)

The CEO of crypto exchange Bitget has confirmed that a cyberattack with all the hallmarks of a North Korean operation resulted in approximately $387.5 million worth of digital assets being stolen from the exchange’s wallets. Bitget initially estimated the loss at $351.6 million, but later revised the figure to $387.5 million after identifying additional affected assets on Zcash and TRON that were…

GDB 18.1 Debugger Brings Better Windows Support ↗ (opens external article)

GDB 18.1 is out today as the newest version of the GNU Debugger that works across C/C++, Fortran, Rust, and other languages like Go, Ada, and more...…

Redox OS Adds IO_uring-Like API, NUMA & Gets QEMU Working ↗ (opens external article)

The Redox OS open-source, Rust-based operating system has seen a lot of activity in recent weeks with many notable improvements landing...…

Office 2016 and 2019 holdouts blame update for license deactivation bug ↗ (opens external article)

Users report that a recent optional update for out-of-date Microsoft 365 applications might be connected to suddenly deactivated Microsoft Office 2016 and 2019 installations. The activation bug cropped up this week and appears to mostly impact Home and Business perpetual license installations, stripping away their authenticated status and forcing users into a loop where they are asked over and ov…

Which copy of that file is the real one? Dinner, off the record, in Midtown ↗ (opens external article)

EVENT: The Register is hosting a private dinner in New York on Tuesday 27 October for senior technology, infrastructure and data leaders, with LucidLink. Joe Fay takes the chair, it runs under the Chatham House Rule, and nothing said leaves the table. Distributed teams are producing more unstructured file data than ever, and most of them reach it through infrastructure designed for an office: leg…

Approaching A 10 Second Linux Kernel Build ↗ (opens external article)

The coffee window is closing. Going back many years with the time it's taken to compile the Linux kernel has been a well known opportunity for a coffee break or even eating a meal during the lengthy Linux kernel build process. Even when the Linux kernel was much smaller than it is today, with the hardware at the time it would often be a very time consuming process... Thus incredible to think that…

7.2.8: stable ↗ (opens external article)

Version:7.2.8 (stable) Released:2026-09-25 Source:linux-7.2.8.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-7.2.8.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-7.2.8…

6.18.54: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:6.18.54 (longterm) Released:2026-09-25 Source:linux-6.18.54.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.18.54.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.18.54…

Raspberry Pi surfs memory crunch to record first half ↗ (opens external article)

Raspberry Pi has posted a record first half after a well-timed memory stockpile helped it ride out soaring prices and shortages. The Cambridge-based company reported revenue of $256.9 million for the six months ended June 30, up 90 percent from $135.5 million a year earlier, while pre-tax profit more than tripled to $19.6 million. Raspberry Pi shipped 4.2 million boards during the six-month perio…

Windows update leaves some virtual desktops staring into the void ↗ (opens external article)

Microsoft has admitted that some Windows 11 virtual desktops may fail to load after sign-in, leaving users staring at a black screen until they launch Explorer manually. The glitch affects devices running the August 2026 non-security preview update or later releases and, according to Microsoft, "has been primarily observed on Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) hosts, using FSLogix." Windows Explorer cra…

Uncle Sam wants in on Musk's €120M fight with Brussels ↗ (opens external article)

The US government wants to join Elon Musk and X's legal challenge to the European Commission's €120 million fine against the social media platform. The Commission issued its first fine under the Digital Services Act (DSA) in December 2025, finding that X had breached transparency rules through its paid blue checkmarks, advertising repository, and restrictions on researchers' access to public data…

Asahi fork embraces LLMs and lands Linux on the M4 Mac mini ↗ (opens external article)

Gravity Linux is a newly announced distro targeting newer Apple Silicon Macs, and its first experimental alpha already boots an accelerated desktop on the M4 Mac mini. The project homepage says: "Gravity Linux is a Fedora remix that brings a fast, modern Linux desktop to Apple Silicon – built in the open, by people like you." If this sounds familiar, the About page explains: "Gravity Linux was in…

Amazon sellers watch as inventory vanishes into pending-order purgatory ↗ (opens external article)

Traders on Amazon's UK marketplace say a wave of "abnormal" orders stuck in pending status is tying up their inventory and preventing legitimate customers from buying the affected items. Vendors on Amazon's Seller Central forums report unusually high numbers of pending orders in their accounts, often involving products priced at £100 ($132) or more. Reports began appearing on September 20. Within…

BOFH: The Helldesk opens its third eye and ascends to a higher plane of troubleshooting ↗ (opens external article)

The Boss has had some feedback from the using classes about our method of fixing IT problems (i.e. fixing them), and how we could do things a little better. "So... you want us to... not fix the problems?" the PFY asks. "No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that your approach could maybe do with a bit of an overhaul. Instead of attacking the problem head-on, perhaps you could take a…

Dyfed-Powys Police cops to cyberattack, staff data potentially nicked ↗ (opens external article)

Dyfed-Powys Police has revealed it was hit by a cyberattack that knocked some of its systems offline, with investigators now trying to establish whether the intruders got their hands on staff data during the break-in. The Welsh police force said it identified the incident on September 14 and that it caused disruption to some non-emergency systems. Emergency policing remained operational throughou…

Patches Posted For Enabling NVMe On All Apple M3 Based SoCs With Linux ↗ (opens external article)

While Linux 7.2 brought initial Apple M3 support and Linux 7.3 brought M3 Pro / Max / Ultra support, the mainline Linux kernel support for the M3 series hardware remains very basic and not yet ready for daily driving. But more work continues to be upstreamed and today the patches were posted for getting NVMe storage up and running across all Apple M3 hardware...…

AMD Sends Out New Linux Patches Further Enhancing HDMI 2.1 Reliability ↗ (opens external article)

Linux 7.4 is going to be the big kernel release where the AMD graphics driver will finally expose HDMI 2.1 by default and comes with features including HDMI FreeSync, VRR, and ALLM. Ahead of that milestone there have been various other last minute tweaks and improvements to its HDMI 2.1 support. Sent out on Thursday was the latest round of AMDGPU DC patches that includes a few more patches for imp…

Another week, another data breach for Revolut customers ↗ (opens external article)

Revolut customers have been caught up in a second data breach this month after attackers socially engineered their way into US brokerage DriveWealth and stole historic personal information. DriveWealth provides execution and clearing services for investment firms and previously held brokerage accounts directly for Revolut customers trading US stocks. It said the unauthorized access occurred on Se…

Go's Improving SIMD Support, Platform-Independent SIMD Interface ↗ (opens external article)

A new blog post published on Thursday covers the experimental support for SIMD with the Go programming language. This expanding Go SIMD support also includes a platform-independent API for making use of SIMD with modern processors...…

Judge uses electronic tag on Pokémon card tracker. It's super effective! ↗ (opens external article)

A 72-year-old Ohio man who planted a GPS tracker on a Pokémon card delivery van has been sentenced to a year of probation – including 90 days wearing a tracker of his own. Kent Kubasta, of Medina, Ohio, attached a Spytec device to the woman's van. She discovered it while making a delivery to Walmart on June 18 and was described in court documents as "a carrier/vendor of Pokémon cards." Kubasta in…

Your files are in four places and nobody knows which one is right ↗ (opens external article)

EVENT: The Register is hosting a private dinner in Soho on Tuesday 20 October for senior technology, infrastructure and data leaders, with LucidLink. Joe Fay takes the chair, it runs under the Chatham House Rule, and nothing said is on the record. The problem on the table is the one most organisations have stopped saying out loud. Unstructured file data keeps growing, distributed teams keep needi…

UK wants more homes heated by waste heat from datacenters ↗ (opens external article)

The UK government says it is pumping £90 million ($119 million) into building and improving heat networks that redirect excess heat energy generated by a datacenter or factory and use it to warm homes or for other purposes. According to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), more than 750,000 homes will get cheaper heating as part of the scheme, which includes plans for a “mega…

Huawei Cloud Rolls Out Enterprise AI Products Across the Board, Building an Open Agentic Cloud ↗ (opens external article)

Shanghai, China, September 18, 2026: On September 18, Dr. Peter Zhou, Director of the Board at Huawei and CEO of Huawei Cloud, delivered a keynote titled "The Agentic Cloud for the Agentic World: Build Together, Grow Together" at HUAWEI CONNECT 2026. He shared Huawei Cloud's latest progress. He announced the global launch of the latest AI Cluster Service (AICS), a key step in Huawei Cloud's strat…

Project leader thought his team understood the plan, ended up fixing their 'interpretation' of it ↗ (opens external article)

Welcome to another edition of On Call, The Register’s reader-contributed Friday column that celebrates the unique workplace cultures that make delivering tech support such delightful fun. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Antonio” who told us that in the late 1990s he worked for a multinational financial services organization. Not long after taking the job, Antonio was dispatched to Hon…

Astronomer watches Starlink satellites sinking to build a ‘planetary barometer’ ↗ (opens external article)

Astronomer and author, Dr. Tony Phillips, says he has found a way to turn SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation into a barometer. Phillips runs spaceweather.com, which tracks solar flares, the solar wind, shifts in Earth’s geomagnetic field, and other phenomena. On Tuesday, he published an article that opens “Starlink has many downsides.” “The megaconstellation interferes with astronomy, poll…

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…

6.12.111: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:6.12.111 (longterm) Released:2026-09-21 Source:linux-6.12.111.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.12.111.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.12.111…

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…

GEFS, the "Good Enough File System" on the horizon for OpenBSD ↗ (opens external article)

Filesystems on OpenBSD have come in two varieties, UFS1 or UFS2. Ori Bernstein has set out to possibly introduce a new option, the "Good Enough File System", which Ori describes as "a new, crash-safe, snapshotting, copy on write FS that I wrote for 9front, and which I am in the process of moving to OpenBSD. Ori gave a presentation about the work at EuroBSDCon 2026, and posted a summary message ti…

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…

OpenSMTPD 7.9.0p0 released ↗ (opens external article)

In an annoucement that vastly understates the usefulness of their code, the OpenSMTPD project have announced their new OpenSMTPD 7.9.0p0 release. The announcement says, List: openbsd-announce Subject: OpenSMTPD 7.9.0p0 From: "Omar Polo" <op () openbsd ! org> Date: 2026-09-13 21:11:58 OpenSMTPD is a FREE implementation of the SMTP protocol with some common extensions. It allows ordinary machines t…

EuroBSDCon 2026 talks online ↗ (opens external article)

Last weekend was the EuroBSDCon conference, this time in Brussels, Belgium. Several talks were held, with quite a few on OpenBSD. You can watch all the talks on peer tube, check the dedicated OpenBSD playlist, or pick your favorite talk from the list: Marc Espie - Advances in OpenBSD's pkg_add Alexander Bluhm - From Report to Patch, the OpenBSD Errata Process Ori Bernstein - GEFS: The File Shredd…

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…

6.6.157: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:6.6.157 (longterm) Released:2026-09-14 Source:linux-6.6.157.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.6.157.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.6.157…

6.1.188: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:6.1.188 (longterm) Released:2026-09-14 Source:linux-6.1.188.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.1.188.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.1.188…

5.15.221: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:5.15.221 (longterm) Released:2026-09-14 Source:linux-5.15.221.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-5.15.221.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-5.15.221…

5.10.270: longterm ↗ (opens external article)

Version:5.10.270 (longterm) Released:2026-09-14 Source:linux-5.10.270.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-5.10.270.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-5.10.270…

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.…

Game of Trees 0.128 released ↗ (opens external article)

Version 0.128 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated). Complete release notes are as follows: Read more……

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…

7.1.13: stable ↗ (opens external article)

Version:7.1.13 (EOL) (stable) Released:2026-09-02 Source:linux-7.1.13.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-7.1.13.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-7.1.13…

Judge Rules DOD Unlawfully Retaliated Against Anthropic ↗ (opens external article)

A federal judge has sided with Anthropic on its claims that the Department of Defense illegally retaliated against Anthropic’s protected speech by labeling the AI company a “supply chain risk.” The judge found that designation, intended to penalize Anthropic for telling the U.S. military it would not allow their technology to be used for mass surveillance of U.S. persons, “constituted unlawful ret…

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…

Meta's $17 Billion Settlement is a Bad Deal for Teens and All Social Media Users ↗ (opens external article)

Meta’s settlement with 52 state attorneys general is a bad deal for all internet users, and especially for teens. That’s what we said the day the settlement was announced. In this post, we go through the Settlement’s provisions in detail and explain why that is so, including how: The Settlement embeds age assurance technology and age-gates into Meta’s social media products and requires all users—m…

EFF to Governor Newsom: Veto California’s AB 1709 ↗ (opens external article)

The California legislature passed Assembly Bill 1709 (A.B. 1709) today, which functions as a sweeping ban on social media use for young people under the age of 16. This well-intentioned, but deeply flawed piece of legislation, cuts young people off from essential information and experiences, particularly harming vulnerable youth and marginalized groups who often find safety in supportive online co…

EFF to Courts: Don’t Rewrite Copyright Over AI Hype ↗ (opens external article)

The history of technology is rife with copyright panics.  In the 1980s, major rightsholders ran to Congress and the courts, claiming that videotape recorders (VTR) were “to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Then, the Supreme Court declined to embrace the hype, noting that the VTR was capable of all kinds of non-infringing uses,…

Doxxing Safety Part II: Incident Response ↗ (opens external article)

Doxxing, also known as the deliberate sharing of personal information to harass or endanger someone, is a tricky thing to protect against. It often happens by some ill-intentioned person accessing publicly available information, then sharing that information more widely in the hopes it will intimidate their target or worse.  This guide is a followup from a previous post that describes a methodolog…

Doxxing Safety Pt I: Prevention and Footprint Management ↗ (opens external article)

Doxxing is the deliberate disclosure of personal information in order to bully, harass, intimidate, or instigate a chain of harms against someone. It's a tricky thing to protect against when the jerk doing it is often able to use legal and accessible means to do so. The odds are stacked against everyday internet folk when there's little to no comprehensive data privacy legislation keeping us safe.…

Privacy on the Map (Part 2): Progress, Pitfalls, and the Fight for Enforceable Location Data Protections ↗ (opens external article)

Regulating commercial location tracking has reached a turning point. Last year, we published our rubric for what comprehensive and protective location privacy laws should look like, outlining the baseline standards states should meet to shield individuals from pervasive location surveillance. Since then, state lawmakers across the country have begun responding to calls like these, with Connecticut…

LGBT Q&A: What’s One Thing I Can Do Today to Improve My Safety and Security Online as an LGBTQ+ Person? ↗ (opens external article)

This post is adapted from a video recorded by EFF and the Trevor Project. Head over to our TikTok or Instagram to watch!  EFF answers all the queer digital rights questions you submit to us through our LGBT Q&A. You asked us: What’s one thing I can do today to improve my safety and security online as an LGBTQ+ person?  And for this question, we’ve brought in our friends from the Trevor Project to…

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.…

EFF and Allies on Brazil's Elections: Privacy Protections are Crucial to Electoral Integrity ↗ (opens external article)

EFF, Access Now, and Data Privacy Brasil are putting forward recommendations to strengthen robust privacy and data protection safeguards in the context of Brazil's elections. The recommendations stress the close relationship between violations of personal data protection and challenges to the integrity of electoral processes. They underscore how privacy and data protection guarantees are a crucial…

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…

A List of ICE Subpoenas to Tech Companies ↗ (opens external article)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has conducted unlawful investigations into dozens of individuals who have documented ICE activities in their communities, social media users who criticized the government, and international students who attended a protest. A favored tool in these speech chilling investigations are administrative subpoenas sent to technology companies, requesting basic subs…

EFF's Policy Position on ALPR Surveillance: Eliminate It and Reduce Its Harms ↗ (opens external article)

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) build a searchable map of everywhere a driver goes, fed into databases that police, ICE, and private vendors can query after the fact. Networked across a city, ALPRs are purpose-built to track everyone regardless of suspicion. ALPRs are not a surveillance tool that can be made safe with the right policy or feature update—they are irredeemably harmful. EFF's…

EFF Statement on Meta Settlement ↗ (opens external article)

Under this settlement, young users will now have less access to Meta products, and a lesser ability to exercise their rights to speak, access information and art and culture, associate and form communities, and play. The settlement also embeds age assurance into every product, mandating the collection of even more personal information from users of all ages; this enshrines Meta's harmful surveilla…

French Top Court Gets It Right, Strikes Down Social Media Ban For Youths ↗ (opens external article)

Earlier this month, France’s top court struck down the country’s legislation that banned social media use for people under 15 years old, which had been scheduled to take effect in January 2027. This is a welcome win for free expression, as we face a wave of countries and U.S. states seeking to pass similar laws banning young people from social media.  In particular, the Constitutional Council’s d…

rpki-client 9.9 released ↗ (opens external article)

It's a big day for routing security aficionados. The OpenBGPD project (a sub-project of the OpenBSD project) have announced version 9.9 of rpki-client(8), with various improvements, enhancements and fixes. The announcement reads List: openbsd-announce Subject: rpki-client 9.9 released From: Sebastian Benoit <benno () openbsd ! org> Date: 2026-08-23 19:25:37 Message-ID: aotJMUL7356PdqRC () jacklin…

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.…

EFF and Civil Society Groups Call on Nottinghamshire Police to Halt Live Face Recognition ↗ (opens external article)

This week, EFF, along with Big Brother Watch, Defend Digital Me, Liberty, Open Rights Group, Race Equality First, Statewatch, and Stopwatch, wrote to Nottinghamshire Police Force in the UK raising concern about the proposed roll-out of live facial recognition technology (LFR), and called for its immediate halt. In particular, the letter highlights six concerns: LFR Is Not "Just Another Tool" Notti…

Intermediary Liability in Brazil: The Intricate Path Ahead ↗ (opens external article)

Brazil's new internet intermediary liability regime is underway. The implementation of changes established by the Supreme Court includes notice and takedown mechanisms and duty of care obligations. Caution is crucial as these measures can create problematic incentives for enforcement overreach and over censorship of protected speech.   The court in June issued a new decision clarifying elements of…

Some Tech Companies Have Privately Pushed Back on ICE Subpoenas. They Should All Do More. ↗ (opens external article)

In a handful of known cases, large social media companies have privately pushed back against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) subpoenas when the agency tried to unmask anonymous users who tracked immigration activities or criticized the government. As ICE engages in a pattern of illegal and chilling investigations, any resistance is welcome. But social media companies can do more. When co…

📍 The Sneaky Code Tracking App Users | EFFector 38.15 ↗ (opens external article)

Your location isn't just a pin on a map—it can expose some of the most intimate details about your life. The value of this information to advertisers and others has turned the location data business into a multi-billion dollar industry. In our latest EFFector newsletter, we're covering a new EFF report on how ad libraries encourage apps to leak user location data—potentially without app developers…

Ninth Circuit Ruling Will Force Online Platforms That Host User Speech to Fight Lengthy and Costly Lawsuits Before They Are Dismissed Under Section 230 ↗ (opens external article)

A federal appeals court just made it harder for online services, big and small, to get lawsuits over user speech dismissed early. In California v. Meta, a Ninth Circuit three-judge panel held that the lower court’s denial of Section 230 immunity to Meta is not immediately appealable. The misguided ruling has the potential to have widespread impact and to threaten the free speech of all internet us…

Zero-Knowledge Proofs Aren’t Age Verification Silver Bullets ↗ (opens external article)

Age verification (laws and regulations requiring platforms and websites to assure or estimate that a user seeking to use an online service is of a certain age) is everywhere. At the time of writing, about half the states in the US have some internet age verification law in place, and dangerous proposals, from the KIDS Act to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), have been advancing at the federal lev…

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.…

Who’s Tracking You? Use This New Service to Find Out ↗ (opens external article)

It can be daunting to determine who’s responsible for showing ads on the websites we visit, or who’s harvesting data from the mobile apps we use every day. That information is already semi-public, but it is not easily parsed and traditionally much of it has remained walled away in the hands of large advertising platforms. Not anymore: A powerful and free new service called DecryptAds scrapes and c…

Too Little, Too Late: Flock Admits Their Technology Needs Reforms ↗ (opens external article)

Flock Safety, the embattled vendor of mass surveillance technology, has rolled out a handful of new reforms intended to appease the justified nationwide anger that has seen scores of towns cancel or suspend their contracts with the company for automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The reforms are a combination of long overdue changes along with some cosmetic fixes that fail to address the funda…

Microsoft Plugs Nearly 400 Security Holes ↗ (opens external article)

Microsoft today released updates to remedy at least 398 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and supported software, including one weakness that is already being actively exploited and two others that were publicly detailed prior to today. Image: Shutterstock, Mallika Home Studio. August’s overstuffed bundle of patch joy from Microsoft did not eclipse its recording breaking re…

Who (or What) Generates Images for EFF? ↗ (opens external article)

We’ve had a few questions from EFF supporters lately, asking whether the images we use on our blog posts, or on donation and shop items, have been created with AI image generators. We’d like to answer these questions and clarify our internal policy regarding image creation.  EFF images are all made by human beings, not by automated image generators, with very rare exceptions. This is an internal d…

Dismiss Church’s Trademark Lawsuit Against “Mormon Stories” Podcast, EFF Urges Court ↗ (opens external article)

Imagine if McDonald’s could use trademark law to control how you use the term “fast food.” Or if the Canadian government could stop you from using the word “Canada” in the title of a book about the country and its people. That wouldn’t just be absurd; it would be an unacceptable obstacle to criticism of and commentary about those institutions. Yet the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (t…

Meta Must Stop Silencing Reproductive Health Information ↗ (opens external article)

Access to accurate information about reproductive and maternal health can be critical. But on Meta's platforms, simply talking about prescription medication, abortion care, or one's own medical experiences can be enough to trigger content removals and account restrictions. That's why EFF recently submitted a public comment to the Meta Oversight Board in its consideration of a case involving an Ins…

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.…

Canadian Man Pleads Guilty in Snowflake Extortions ↗ (opens external article)

A 26-year-old Canadian man once described as one of the most consequential cybercrime threat actors of 2024 has pleaded guilty to computer fraud and conspiracy to hack and extort more than 165 organizations that used the cloud provider Snowflake. Connor Riley Moucka, of Kitchener, Ontario, also admitted to stealing call and text history records of more than 100 million AT&T customers. A surveillan…

Tomorrow’s U.S. Senate Vote: Four Internet Bills, One Wrong Direction ↗ (opens external article)

The Senate Commerce Committee will vote this week on several censorious and privacy invasive bills: KOSA, the SCREEN Act, Youth AI Privacy Act, and CHATBOT Act. While we appreciate that the Committee is taking the time to look at these bills separately, it’s still impossible to ignore the message Congress is sending to the world: Age-gate the internet and block young people from speaking and acces…

↗ (opens external article)

New committer: Faraz Vahedi (src)…

Read This Before You Buy That TV Streaming Stick ↗ (opens external article)

Security experts have been sounding the alarm for years about the risks of using generic TV boxes that promise unlimited content streaming for a one-time fee, warning that they secretly rent the user’s Internet connection out to strangers. But a groundbreaking new analysis finds these devices also routinely spoof themselves as mobile phones clicking ads on AI-generated websites as part of a sprawl…

↗ (opens external article)

New committer: Minsoo Choo (src)…

April-June 2026 Status Report ↗ (opens external article)

The April to June Status Report is now available with 41 entries.…

Ports Repository Frozen ↗ (opens external article)

The ports repository has been frozen to revert a very large commit. There is no concern that the tree has been compromised. More information about the freeze can be found on the 2026 Ports Freeze page.…

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.…

FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE Available ↗ (opens external article)

Release Information page.…