# Twtxt is an open, distributed microblogging platform that # uses human-readable text files, common transport protocols, # and free software. # # Learn more about twtxt at https://github.com/buckket/twtxt # # This is an automated Yarn.social feed running feeds v0.1.0@72e53a9 # Learn more about Yarn.social at https://yarn.social # # nick = osnews # url = https://feeds.twtxt.net/osnews/twtxt.txt # type = rss # source = https://www.osnews.com/feed/ # avatar = https://feeds.twtxt.net/osnews/avatar.png#3p5yfurwkedxleuxxmsg42t4rymmahtgcy5prxx34eu4w2o6vwva # description = # updated_at = 2023-12-09T01:16:31Z # 2023-05-15T13:07:12Z **IBM PC 8088 replaced with a Motorola 68000**
I was wondering what the IBM Personal Computer would have been like if they had chosen the Motorola 68000 instead of the Intel 8088, so I used my MCL86+ to emulate the 68000 and find out! The MCL86+ is a board which uses a Teensy 4.1 to emulate a microprocessor in C code as well as use its GPIOs to emulate the local bus of the Intel 8088. It can be used as a drop-in replacement for the Intel 8088 and can be cycle accurate as well as run in accele ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136137/ibm-pc-8088-replaced-with-a-motorola-68000/) 2023-05-15T21:33:24Z **Microsoft wants Firefox to ditch Google, switch to Bing**
The rumour, by way of The Information, claims senior Microsoft execs hope to seal a deal with Mozilla to make Bing the default search engine as soon as this year, as the browser’s existing big-bucks deal with Google is coming up for renewal. Now, Firefox making a search engine switch isn’t new. Mozilla tested Microsoft’s Bing as Firefox’s default search engine back back in 2021; and those with longer memories may just rem ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136139/microsoft-wants-firefox-to-ditch-google-switch-to-bing/) 2023-05-15T22:52:54Z **KDE Plasma 6: “better defaults”**
The KDE project just finished up its 2023 developer sprint, and with Plasma 6 development being in full swing – which encompasses moving to Qt 6 – there’s some major announcements here. As a result, we advanced a number of topics that had been stuck for a while. A major area of my focus in this respect became “Better default settings”. The 5 -> 6 transition is the perfect time to make significant changes to the default settings in a way that improve the UX out of the box ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136142/kde-plasma-6-better-defaults/) 2023-05-16T23:03:30Z **Windows 2000 64-bit for Alpha AXP**
Recently, hinted by people on Discord, Neozeed found a Win64 compiler for AXP64 / ALPHA64, that came in as part of Platform SDK from 1999. This was to let Windows developers test compile their programs to make sure they are “64bit ready”, before the hardware was even available. However, as this was a cross-compiler from IA32 to IA64 and AXP32 to AXP64, there was no actual way of running any of the binaries. Until Itanium finally came out, after long delays. Sadly, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136145/windows-2000-64-bit-for-alpha-axp/) 2023-05-17T20:37:20Z **Apple introduces new accessibility features**
Apple today previewed software features for cognitive, vision, hearing, and mobility accessibility, along with innovative tools for individuals who are nonspeaking or at risk of losing their ability to speak. These updates draw on advances in hardware and software, include on-device machine learning to ensure user privacy, and expand on Apple’s long-standing commitment to making products for everyone. These are all good, truly helpful features. ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136148/apple-introduces-new-accessibility-features/) 2023-05-20T20:06:06Z **Tee Earth and Grass Operating System**
This project’s vision is to help every college student read all the code of an operating system. With only 2000 lines of code, egos-2000 implements every component of an operating system for education. It can run on a RISC-V board and also the QEMU software emulator. Exactly what it says on the tin. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136153/tee-earth-and-grass-operating-system/) 2023-05-20T20:48:50Z **Envisioning a simplified Intel x86 architecture**
This whitepaper details the architectural enhancements and modifications that Intel is currently investigating for a 64-bit mode-only architecture referred to as x86S (for simplification). Intel is publishing this paper to solicit feedback from the ecosystem while exploring the benefits of extending the ISA transition to a 64-bit mode-only solution. This seems like a very good idea – and it does seem like the time is ripe to remove some ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136155/envisioning-a-simplified-intel-x86-architecture/) 2023-05-20T20:59:18Z **Windows XP activation: game over**
It’s finally over. In a post last year on the Windows XP subreddit (Windows XP web activation is finally dead…), retroreviewyt shared xp\_activate32.exe4, which calculates the Installation ID then generates and optionally applies the corresponding Confirmation ID to activate Windows XP, all offline. Wiping the system and reinstalling Windows XP results in the same Installation ID being assigned by Windows (assuming no change in hardware or product key), thus the same ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136160/windows-xp-activation-game-over/) 2023-05-20T20:55:37Z **axle OS: an open source x86_64 OS**
axle OS is a hobby microkernel and userspace. I started the project in early 2016, and have had stints of working on it heavily since then. axle OS’s first incarnation was a multitasking monolithic kernel, with little support for IPC, user-mode or process loading. The current incarnation is a microkernel built around variable-length IPC messaging. All applications, including the desktop environment and device drivers, are ELF executables running in userspace. We re ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136158/axle-os-an-open-source-x86_64-os/) 2023-05-23T21:04:04Z **Social media can be a ‘profound risk’ to youth, surgeon general warns**
The United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, issued a public advisory on Tuesday warning of the risks of social media use to young people. In a 19-page report, Dr. Murthy noted that although the effects of social media on adolescent mental health were not fully understood, and that social media can be beneficial to some users, “there are ample indicators that social media can also have ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136162/social-media-can-be-a-profound-risk-to-youth-surgeon-general-warns/) 2023-05-24T21:16:37Z **Microsoft announces Windows 11 “Moment 3” update**
The time has arrived for Windows 11 users to prepare to download the latest feature drop for the operating system. After months of testing in the Windows Insider program, Windows 11 “Moment 3” update is ready for its public release on May 24, 2023. The latest feature update for Windows 11 has no official name (so much for hating silly names, such as “Fall Creators Update“), so enthusiasts call it “Moment 3,” according to the leaked stor ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136166/microsoft-announces-windows-11-moment-3-update/) 2023-05-24T21:28:13Z **Windows 11 to get more archive format support**
There’s more coming to Windows 11 at some point during this year, and three of them are of particular interest to the type of people who read OSNews. First, Windows is finally getting support for more archive file formats. Microsoft has finally added native support for more archive formats, allowing you to open tar, 7-zip, rar, gz, and other files. In addition, Windows 11 users will benefit from improved compression performance when zipping ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136170/windows-11-to-get-more-archive-format-support/) 2023-05-24T21:24:44Z **Built-in ChatGPT-driven Copilot comes to Windows 11 starting in June**
Ars Technica: A couple of months ago, Microsoft added generative AI features to Windows 11 in the form of a taskbar-mounted version of the Bing chatbot. Starting this summer, the company will be going even further, adding a new ChatGPT-driven Copilot feature that can be used alongside your other Windows apps. The company announced the change at its Build developer conference alongside another ne ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136168/built-in-chatgpt-driven-copilot-comes-to-windows-11-starting-in-june/) 2023-05-27T23:09:42Z **HP has found an exciting new way to DRM your printer**
The Verge: First introduced in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, HP Plus was built around FOMO right from the start. You get just seven days to claim your free ink, starting the moment you plug a new printer into the wall. Act now, and it’ll also extend your warranty a full year, give you an “Advanced HP Smart app,” and plant trees on your behalf. Because why wouldn’t you want to save the forest? Here’s one reason, as detail ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136172/hp-has-found-an-exciting-new-way-to-drm-your-printer/) 2023-05-28T22:29:22Z **MINIX is dead**
Way back in 2006, to celebrate the introdiction of MINIX 3, Andy Tanenbaum, the operating system’s legendary creator, published an introduction article to the new version here on OSNews. I’ve followed along with development ever since, with the last item we ever posted dating from 2015. Over the weekend, a link to the MINIX 3 git repository made the rounds, noting that the last change is dated 14 November, 2018. It seems like MINIX 3 has pretty much stalled, and digging through the Google Groups group i ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136174/minix-is-dead/) 2023-05-28T22:29:07Z **IRIX community proposes to reverse-engineer the last 32 bit IRIX kernel**
The IRIX Network, the primary community for SGI and IRIX enthousiasts, has announced a fundraising effort to reverse-engineer the last 32 bit version of the IRIX kernel. IRIX-32, so named for its basis on kernel and APIs of the last 32-bit compatible IRIX (5.3) is a proposed reverse engineering project to be conducted by a team of developers in the US and the EU. Purpose: We will reverse e ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136178/irix-community-proposes-to-reverse-engineer-the-last-32-bit-irix-kernel/) 2023-05-30T21:49:53Z **Molly White tracks crypto scams. It’s going just great**
As cryptocurrencies rise and fall, there’s one number that just keeps going up. Whenever somebody loses money to a crypto scam or hack, the Grift Counter on Molly White’s blog, Web3 Is Going Just Great, spins higher and higher. Recently it ticked over $12 billion. White started the blog in December 2021 out of frustration with the mainstream coverage of crypto, which she says paid too much attention to rags-to-riches tales a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136189/molly-white-tracks-crypto-scams-its-going-just-great/) 2023-05-30T21:47:08Z **US federal judge makes history in holding that border searches of cell phones require a warrant**
With United States v. Smith (S.D.N.Y. May 11, 2023), a district court judge in New York made history by being the first court to rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, “absent exigent circumstances” (although other district courts have wanted to do so). EFF is thrilled about this decision, given that we have be ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136187/us-federal-judge-makes-history-in-holding-that-border-searches-of-cell-phones-require-a-warrant/) 2023-05-30T21:54:21Z **All-Snap Ubuntu Desktop coming next year**
According to Canonical’s Oliver Grawert, the next long-term support release of Ubuntu will be available to download in 2 versions: a classic, deb-based version (default) and, for the first time, an immutable, snap-based build. This makes sense, and was inevitable. I wonder how long they’re going to keep the .deb-based version around; I doubt they’d pull it any time soon. Still, competition is good, and it’s been clear for a while now that immutabilit ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136191/all-snap-ubuntu-desktop-coming-next-year/) 2023-05-31T21:04:31Z **A developer says Reddit could charge him $20 million a year to keep his app working**
Apollo, the popular Reddit app for iOS, could face millions of dollars in fees as a result of Reddit’s new paid API model. According to an update posted by developer Christian Selig, Reddit could charge Apollo roughly $20 million per year if it continues operating at its current scale. Reddit announced changes to its API policy in April, which allows the platform to ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136196/a-developer-says-reddit-could-charge-him-20-million-a-year-to-keep-his-app-working/) 2023-05-31T21:01:04Z **The solid legal theory behind Nintendo’s new emulator takedown effort**
Ars Technica: This weekend saw an exception to that rule, though, as Nintendo’s lawyers formally asked Valve to cut off the planned Steam release of Wii and Gamecube emulator Dolphin. In a letter addressed to the Valve Legal Department (a copy of which was provided to Ars by the Dolphin Team), an attorney representing Nintendo of America requests that Valve take down Dolphin’s “coming soon” Ste ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136194/the-solid-legal-theory-behind-nintendos-new-emulator-takedown-effort/) 2023-06-02T21:20:58Z **Windows 11’s Get Help support app is showing ads as well now**
Windows 11 users who open the official Get Help support application of the operating system may be greeted with an advertisement for Microsoft’s Teams application now. The ad is not the first for Microsoft Teams in Windows 11. Back in late 2021, a Microsoft Teams advertisement was causing freezes on Windows 11 systems it was displayed on. Another day, another ad. Fun times to be a Windows user. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136199/windows-11s-get-help-support-app-is-showing-ads-as-well-now/) 2023-06-02T21:24:28Z **DESKTOP2: a graphical user interface for DOS**
DESKTOP is a graphical user interface for DOS, which ones used to be a commercial shell like MS-Windows 3.0 or GEOS. However, due to the dominance of MS-Windows 95, we were forced to stop publishing the program, so it’s free now… I’ve done a lot of digging into these alternative shells for both MS-DOS and Windows 3.x/9x, but I had somehow never heard of this one. It’s freely available, and has some neat and interesting features, like copy and ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136201/desktop2-a-graphical-user-interface-for-dos/) 2023-06-02T21:27:14Z **ArcaOS 5.0.8 released**
ArcaOS 5.0.8 includes refreshed driver content, updated kernel and included software, as well as installation boot fixes since 5.0.7 was released at the end of 2021. It also rolls in a few fixes that come from our 5.1.0 development work. ArcaOS 5.0.8 can be used for new installs or to update any prior version of ArcaOS 5. If you have experienced difficulty installing previous releases of ArcaOS on your hardware, 5.0.8 may address your issue(s). This is a small point release in the run-up ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136203/arcaos-5-0-8-released/) 2023-06-05T14:36:05Z **IceWM 3.4.0 released**
IceWM 3.4.0 might as well be called the Keybinding Update, since virtually all changes are related to them in some way. This release adds support for keybindings to literal Latin-1 characters, all UTF-8 code points in keybindings, and more. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136207/icewm-3-4-0-released/) 2023-06-05T14:46:21Z **Windows 11’s redesigned File Explorer leaks online, here’s our closer look**
At Build 2023 developer conference, Microsoft finally teased the all-new modern File Explorer refresh. It’s unclear when the update is coming out, but we have accessed an early and unreleased version of the new File Explorer that mirrors what was teased at the conference. This definitely looks like a marked improvement over the aging current File Explorer, which isn’t very hard to do. I ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136211/windows-11s-redesigned-file-explorer-leaks-online-heres-our-closer-look/) 2023-06-05T14:44:30Z **Red Hat stops packaging LibreOffice as RPM for RHEL and Fedora, suggests Flatpak instead**
The tradeoff is that we are pivoting away from work we had been doing on desktop applications and will cease shipping LibreOffice as part of RHEL starting in a future RHEL version. This also limits our ability to maintain it in future versions of Fedora. We will continue to maintain LibreOffice in currently supported versions of RHEL (RHEL 7, 8 and 9) with ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136209/red-hat-stops-packaging-libreoffice-as-rpm-for-rhel-and-fedora-suggests-flatpak-instead/) 2023-06-05T21:17:30Z **Apple unveils macOS Sonoma**
Apple today announced macOS Sonoma, the latest version of its Mac operating system. Launching this fall, macOS Sonoma includes several new features, including desktop widgets, Apple TV-like aerial screensavers, enhancements to apps like Messages and Safari, a new Game mode that prioritizes CPU and GPU performance for gaming, and more. Apple also showed off iOS 17, watchOS 10, and iPadOS 17. ‌iOS 17‌ features personalized contact posters with photos, Memojis, and eye-catching ty ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136215/apple-unveils-macos-sonoma/) 2023-06-05T21:10:58Z **This is the new Apple Silicon Mac Pro**
The Mac Pro might not look different from its predecessor on the outside, but on the inside, Intel’s Xeon CPU and AMD’s Radeon Pro graphics are gone, and in their place we have a new chip called the M2 Ultra. This is the same chip in the new Mac Studio; it has a 24-core CPU and an up to 76-core GPU, and it starts with twice the memory and SSD storage of the old Mac Pro. Apple promises it will be “3x faster” than the Intel Mac Pro. Memory tops out at 192GB. ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136213/this-is-the-new-apple-silicon-mac-pro/) 2023-06-05T21:33:57Z **Apple reveals Vision Pro, available for $3,499 “early next year”**
After years of speculation, leaks, rumors, setbacks, and rumblings of amazing behind-the-scenes demos, Apple has made its plans for a mixed reality platform and headset public. Vision Pro is “the first Apple Product you look through, not at,” Apple’s Tim Cook said, a “new AR platform with a new product” that augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world. The headset will start ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136217/apple-reveals-vision-pro-available-for-3499-early-next-year/) 2023-06-06T23:13:37Z **Chrome gets new mid-tier compiler: Maglev**
We’re bringing a new mid-tier compiler to Chrome. Maglev is a just-in-time compiler that can quickly generate performant machine code for all relevant functions within the first one-hundredth of a second. It reduces overall CPU time to compile code while also saving battery life. Our measurements show Maglev has provided a 7.5 percent improvement on Jetstream and a 5 percent improvement in Speedometer. Maglev will start rolling out in Chrome version ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136225/chrome-gets-new-mid-tier-compiler-maglev/) 2023-06-06T23:10:56Z **Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit is Wine**
From CrossOver’s blog: Apple revealed their new Game Porting Toolkit today at WWDC. This Toolkit is designed to allow Windows game developers a way to easily and quickly determine how well their game could run on macOS, with the ultimate goal of facilitating the creation of Mac game ports. We are ecstatic that Apple chose to use CrossOver’s source code as their emulation solution for the Game Porting Toolkit. We have decades of experience creating ports with ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136223/apples-game-porting-toolkit-is-wine/) 2023-06-06T23:00:57Z **Linux on the 7th generation of consoles: the Xbox 360**
Back in March I came home for spring break and quickly found myself motivated to do something dumb with Linux but there was an issue, all of my stuff was back in my dorm. The only thing I really had was a hard modded Xbox 360, an old monitor, and an even older keyboard. I knew what I had to do. Of course. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136221/linux-on-the-7th-generation-of-consoles-the-xbox-360/) 2023-06-07T23:09:43Z **Windows 11’s latest endearing mess rigorously and wrongly enforces Britishisms**
For those of you a little confused about what a postcode is, it’s effectively the same as a US zip code; a way of distilling a postal address down to but a few characters. Hence why some rogue auto-translate function in Windows 11 is occasionally switching ‘zip’ to ‘postcode’ in the UK’s Windows menus. As a translator myself, this is easy enough to explain. Either we’re lookin ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136228/windows-11s-latest-endearing-mess-rigorously-and-wrongly-enforces-britishisms/) 2023-06-12T19:12:27Z **Debian 12 released**
After 1 year, 9 months, and 28 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 12 (code name bookworm). The biggest change conceptually is that Debian now includes a non-free-firmware package area, and the Debian project from here on out will allow non-free firmware to be included on installation media. For the rest, a new Debian release is exactly as you’d expect – all the latest versions of packages, and it will serve as the base for an immense number of po ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136231/debian-12-released/) 2023-06-12T19:15:42Z **Debian GNU/Hurd 2023 released**
It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2023. This is a snapshot of Debian “sid” at the time of the stable Debian “bookworm” release (June 2023), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release. Debian GNU/Hurd is probably the easiest, most accessible way to try out Hurd. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136233/debian-gnu-hurd-2023-released/) 2023-06-13T22:44:27Z **Google further guts the Android Open Source Project by deprecating the dialer and messaging apps**
It’s no secret that the Android Open Source Project has been languishing compared to the distributions (?) of Android that are actually being used by Google itself (on their Pixel phones) and OEMs such as Samsung, Sony, and others. Now, it seems Google has taken a pretty substantial step in further gutting AOSP – it has deprecated both the ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136235/google-further-guts-the-android-open-source-project-by-deprecating-the-dialer-and-messaging-apps/) 2023-06-13T22:44:05Z **Edge sends images you view online to Microsoft**
Edge has a built-in image enhancement tool that, according to Microsoft, can use “super-resolution to improve clarity, sharpness, lighting, and contrast in images on the web.” Although the feature sounds exciting, recent Microsoft Edge Canary updates have provided more information on how image enhancement works. The browser now warns that it sends image links to Microsoft instead of performing on-device enhancements. The biggest problem w ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136237/edge-sends-images-you-view-online-to-microsoft/) 2023-06-18T22:30:57Z **NsCDE 2.3 released**
One of my favourite software projects got a brand new release – the Not so Common Desktop Environment (NsCDE) 2.3 has been released. NsCDE brings the look, feel, and behaviour of CDE to the modern Linux desktop through a combination of themes, scripts, FVWM customisations, and a lot more. This new release brings the usual bugfixes, but also new features – like Qt6 integration, CSS updates for newer releases of Firefox and Thunderbird, and more. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136241/nscde-2-3-released/) 2023-06-18T23:03:02Z **Google kills yet another product: Google Domains sold to podcast sponsor**
Eight years after Google Domains launched, and a little more than a year after it graduated out of beta, Google is “winding down following a transition period,” as part of “efforts to sharpen our focus.” That’s corporate-ese for “We need to keep cost-cutting, so we’re selling this business we just finished shaping up to Squarespace.” I have two domains over at Google Domains. I doubt Squa ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136243/google-kills-yet-another-product-google-domains-sold-to-podcast-sponsor/) 2023-06-18T23:22:50Z **EU suggests breaking up Google’s ad business in preliminary antitrust ruling**
The European Commission has made a formal antitrust complaint against Google and its ad business. In a preliminary opinion, the regulator says Google has abused its dominant position in the digital advertising market. It says that forcing Google to sell off parts of its business may be the only remedy, if the company is found guilty of the charges. This would be a significant move ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136245/eu-suggests-breaking-up-googles-ad-business-in-preliminary-antitrust-ruling/) 2023-06-20T20:09:28Z **EU: smartphones must have user-replaceable batteries by 2027**
The European Union (EU) is set to usher in a new era of smartphones with batteries that consumers can easily replace themselves. Earlier this week, the European Parliament approved new rules covering the design, production, and recycling of all rechargeable batteries sold within the EU. For “portable batteries” used in devices such as smartphones, tablets, and cameras, consumers must be able to “easily remove an ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136249/eu-smartphones-must-have-user-replaceable-batteries-by-2027/) 2023-06-20T21:50:13Z **Linux on the 7th generation of consoles: Playstation 3 and Gentoo**
Linux on the PS3 has a pretty interesting history. If you’re familiar with the History of the PS3 you probably know that when it was first released in 2006 Sony shipped it with support to run other operating systems through a feature called OtherOS. OtherOS allowed people to install operating systems like Linux or FreeBSD on a second partition on the PS3 hard drive. In 2010 Sony removed OtherOS support ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136252/linux-on-the-7th-generation-of-consoles-playstation-3-and-gentoo/) 2023-06-21T20:57:07Z **Microsoft now says the new Outlook will replace Mail and Calendar apps by the end of 2024**
The confusion over Microsoft’s plans to retire the current Mail and Calendar apps for Windows with the new Outlook for Windows app continues. Last week, Microsoft sent a message to Microsoft 365 admins stating the Mail and Calendar apps would be replaced by the new Outlook starting in September 2024. However, an apparent backlash against that timeframe c ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136255/microsoft-now-says-the-new-outlook-will-replace-mail-and-calendar-apps-by-the-end-of-2024/) 2023-06-21T23:17:46Z **Apple releases Vision OS SDK**
Apple today announced the availability of new software tools and technologies that enable developers to create groundbreaking app experiences for Apple Vision Pro — Apple’s first spatial computer. Featuring visionOS, the world’s first spatial operating system, Vision Pro lets users interact with digital content in their physical space using the most natural and intuitive inputs possible — their eyes, hands, and voice. Starting today, Apple’s global community of developers w ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136257/apple-releases-vision-os-sdk/) 2023-06-22T22:12:59Z **Red Hat limits RHEL source code to CentOS Stream**
More than two years ago, Red Hat introduced CentOS Stream as the focal point for collaboration around Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). CentOS Stream shortens the feedback window between Red Hat engineers and partners, customers, and communities while at the same time providing even greater visibility into the next innovations in RHEL. We’ve seen great success in the Special Interest Group (SIG) community to help integrate and bring ne ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136259/red-hat-limits-rhel-source-code-to-centos-stream/) 2023-06-22T22:16:39Z **MorphOS 3.18 released**
Yes, I’m a little late, but here we go: The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the public release of MorphOS 3.18! This new release includes several new applications such as Hex – a scriptable file/RAM/disk hex editor, ArchiveIt – a ZIP archiver/unarchiver application and Thermals – an app displaying thermal and fan information and graphs. In addition, MorphOS 3.18 supports Samba 2 and 3 network share browsing and mounting in the Ambient desktop. Radeon drivers have been updat ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136261/morphos-3-18-released/) 2023-06-24T23:59:00Z **Building a custom Mach-O memory loader for macOS**
In this blog we’ll look at what it takes to construct an in-memory loader for Mach-O bundles within MacOS Ventura without using dyld. We’ll walk through the lower-level details of what makes up a Mach-O file, how dyld processes load commands to map areas into memory, and how we can emulate this to avoid writing payloads to disk. I also recommend reading this post alongside the code published here to fully understand the individual are ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136263/building-a-custom-mach-o-memory-loader-for-macos/) 2023-06-25T00:05:12Z **AMD intros EPYC 97×4 “Bergamo” CPUs: 128 Zen 4c cores for servers**
Kicking off a busy day of product announcements and updates for AMD’s data center business group, this morning AMD is finally announcing their long-awaited high density “Bergamo” server CPUs. Based on AMD’s density-optimized Zen 4c architecture, the new EPYC 97×4 chips offer up to 128 CPU cores, 32 more cores than AMD’s current-generation flagship EPYC 9004 “Genoa” chips. According to AMD, the new EPYC p ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136265/amd-intros-epyc-97x4-bergamo-cpus-128-zen-4c-cores-for-servers/) 2023-06-25T00:15:58Z **Follow my (mobile) hardware Pixelfed account**
I recently started a Pixelfed account dedicated to all the various pieces of (mobile) hardware I own. It’s still quite new, but the intention is to post photos of my Palm/PocketPC/etc. device collection a few times a week, with a short info blurb. The account will post no other content, so you won’t see photos of my food, sunsets, beaches, or other irrelevant nonsense. In case you aren’t aware – Pixelfed is the Fediverse equivalent of Instagram ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136267/follow-my-mobile-hardware-pixelfed-account/) 2023-06-26T21:25:05Z **WinGPT: AI assistant for Windows 3.1**
Do you use Windows 3.1? Do your friends send you jokes and haikus written by ChatGPT, and make you feel left out? Do you wish you had the sum of all human knowledge at your fingertips? Or wish you had your very own AI chatbot on your trusty 386? Wish no more! Introducing WinGPT, an AI Assistant for Windows 3.1. Absolutely bonkers. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136273/wingpt-ai-assistant-for-windows-3-1/) 2023-06-26T21:23:48Z **Linux 6.4 released**
As expected Linux 6.4 is out today as stable as an on-time release following a relatively quiet cycle the past two months. While the RC period of Linux 6.4 was relatively quiet and uneventful, that’s not to say there isn’t anything good with Linux 6.4… But in fact there’s a lot from beginning to upstream various Apple M2 support code in different drivers, AMD Guided Autonomous Mode added to their P-State driver, and a lot of other new hardware work. It’ll find its way to your distribution, or ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136271/linux-6-4-released/) 2023-06-26T22:56:51Z **Red Hat comments on its controversial source code availability change**
Red Hat’s announcement last week caused quite a bit of a stir, so today, Red Hat published a blog post to defend itself. We will always send our code upstream and abide by the open source licenses our products use, which includes the GPL. When I say we abide by the various open source licenses that apply to our code, I mean it. I was shocked and disappointed about how many people got so much w ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136275/red-hat-comments-on-its-controversial-source-code-availability-change/) 2023-06-26T22:56:27Z **Google has a secret Android browser hidden inside the settings**
I recently discovered a secret browser located inside the “Manage my account” popup that Android has in various apps (quite important apps, such as Settings, and all Google suite apps). The browser even bypasses parental control! A secret browser that is entirely different from whatever browsers you have installed on your Android device? I’m sure that won’t present any problems whatsoever. Then you have two ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136277/google-has-a-secret-android-browser-hidden-inside-the-settings/) 2023-06-27T19:24:21Z **Advanced macOS command-line tools**
macOS is fortunate to have access to the huge arsenal of standard Unix tools. There are also a good number of macOS-specific command-line utilities that provide unique macOS functionality. There’s some real cool stuff in here. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136280/advanced-macos-command-line-tools/) 2023-06-28T01:25:18Z **Microsoft wants to move Windows fully to the cloud**
Microsoft has been increasingly moving Windows to the cloud on the commercial side with Windows 365, but the software giant also wants to do the same for consumers. In an internal “state of the business” Microsoft presentation from June 2022, Microsoft discuses building on “Windows 365 to enable a full Windows operating system streamed from the cloud to any device.” Who wants this? ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136282/microsoft-wants-to-move-windows-fully-to-the-cloud/) 2023-06-28T19:53:19Z **lilos: a minimal async RTOS**
This is a wee operating system written to support the async style of programming in Rust on microcontrollers. It fits in about 2 kiB of Flash and uses about 20 bytes of RAM (before your tasks are added). In that space, you get a full async runtime with multiple tasks, support for complex concurrency via join and select, and a lot of convenient but simple APIs. I understood some of those words. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136286/lilos-a-minimal-async-rtos/) 2023-06-29T21:46:58Z **The KDE Free Qt Foundation: 25 years of celebration**
At the time the KDE Free Qt Foundation was founded, Qt was developed by Trolltech–the company that originally developed the framework. The Foundation has supported Qt through its transitions, first to Nokia, then to Digia, and finally to The Qt Company. It has the right to release Qt, if necessary to ensure that Qt remains open source. This remarkable legal guarantee protects the free software community and creates trust among de ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136292/the-kde-free-qt-foundation-25-years-of-celebration/) 2023-06-29T21:44:43Z **Windows Copilot preview available**
Back in May at the Build conference, we introduced Windows Copilot for Windows 11. In today’s flight we are offering an early look of Windows Copilot to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel via a controlled feature rollout. This first preview focuses on our integrated UI experience, with additional functionality coming down the road in future previews. To use Copilot in this flight you must have Windows Build 23493 or higher in the Dev Channel, and Microsoft Edge v ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136290/windows-copilot-preview-available/) 2023-06-29T21:42:37Z **2200 forgotten vintage computers are being liberated from a barn in Massachusetts**
Instead, they ended up on eBay, at a bargain-basement price of $59.99 each. And when the modern retro computing community turned them on, what they found was something worth bringing back to life. It took a while for anyone to notice these stylish metal-and-plastic machines from 1983. First, information spread like whispers in the community of tech forums, Discord serve ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136288/2200-forgotten-vintage-computers-are-being-liberated-from-a-barn-in-massachusetts/) 2023-06-29T22:37:49Z **Wayland is pretty good, actually**
Wayland is an interesting beast. X11, for all its faults, does a lot for the desktop environment. If you’re stretched for time, you could – in theory – just slap a panel onto the default X11 window manager and call it a day. The modern landscape of desktop environments built on top of X11 exists because developers have gotten really good at eschewing X11’s built-in crusty junk for their own new and shiny junk, so that things work as you’d expect them to. For the most ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136294/wayland-is-pretty-good-actually/) 2023-07-03T22:36:18Z **Lumia WOA: full Windows for Lumia**
This project brings the Windows 10 or Windows 11 desktop operating system to your Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL. It’s the same edition of Windows you’re used to on your traditional laptop or desktop computer, but it’s the version for ARM64 (armv8a) processors. It can run ARM64, ARM, x86 and x64 applications (the last two via emulation) just fine. This is such a cool project, and is making me want to buy a 950 XL on eBay. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136299/lumia-woa-full-windows-for-lumia/) 2023-07-03T22:34:21Z **The complex history of the Intel i960 RISC processor**
The Intel i960 was a remarkable 32-bit processor of the 1990s with a confusing set of versions. Although it is now mostly forgotten (outside the many people who used it as an embedded processor), it has a complex history. It had a shot at being Intel’s flagship processor until x86 overshadowed it. Later, it was the world’s best-selling RISC processor. One variant was a 33-bit processor with a decidedly non-RISC object-oriented ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136297/the-complex-history-of-the-intel-i960-risc-processor/) 2023-07-03T22:40:55Z **Before Xerox, there was Addressograph**
Truth be told, this was the first time I heard of an Addressograph. So what does it do? What was the motivation behind its creation? And how does it work? Let’s take a dive into an Addressograph. I had never heard of this machine either – it’s designed to imprint things like names, addresses, and other information onto envelopes and forms. It’s one of the many, many innovations we’ve lost along the way in the 20th century that I’d love to see in the real wo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136301/before-xerox-there-was-addressograph/) 2023-07-07T00:55:12Z **Ubuntu 23.10’s new software app will demote DEBs**
Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux distribution but it’s increasingly positioning snaps as the preferred way to ‘get’ software. The aim is, eventually, to default to a full-snap experience on the desktop. With that plan in mind you won’t be mighty surprised (and if you are, welcome back to planet earth) to hear that showcasing DEB software will not be the primary aim of this new Ubuntu Software replacement. Ubuntu’s Director of Engineering ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136303/ubuntu-23-10s-new-software-app-will-demote-debs/) 2023-07-07T01:05:37Z **FreeBSD at 30 years: its secrets to success**
FreeBSD is still going strong. Its strength comes from having built a strong base in its code, documentation, and culture. It has managed to evolve with the times, continuing to bring in new committers, and smoothly transition through several leadership groups. It continues to fill an important area of support that is an alternative to Linux. Specifically, companies needing redundancy require more than one operating system, since any single oper ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136306/freebsd-at-30-years-its-secrets-to-success/) 2023-07-07T01:12:37Z **Details about the plans for Wayland support for Budgie Desktop**
In our State of the Budgie blog post in May of last year, we emphasized that Budgie 11 would be Wayland-first, with initial expectations being that we would support an X11 fallback mode, as well as mentioning that “it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility to have a Budgie 10 under Wayland”. Since that blog post, several key developments have occurred in the Wayland ecosystem. This detailed article ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136309/details-about-the-plans-for-wayland-support-for-budgie-desktop/) 2023-07-07T01:57:04Z **Project restores Windows Update for Windows 9x**
This is a community-based project and is actively updated. This project aims at restoring the legacy Windows Update websites, and allows older operating systems (Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, Me, 2000, and XP) to obtain updates like they used to. Ever since 2011 when Microsoft pulled the plug on nearly all the Windows Update websites, the Windows Update feature for older Windows operating systems was no longer functional. The only way to instal ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136311/project-restores-windows-update-for-windows-9x/) 2023-07-08T22:36:31Z **On-demand paging in the Redox kernel**
Today it’s been three weeks since my 4th RSoC started, where the main focus this time is to speed up Redox by implementing on-demand paging in the kernel. I don’t really understand any of this, but I know OSNews readers love this sort of nitty gritty stuff. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136313/on-demand-paging-in-the-redox-kernel/) 2023-07-09T19:38:42Z **How small is the smallest .NET Hello World binary?**
Here is a dumb question that you probably never asked yourself: What is the minimal amount of bytes we need to store in a .NET executable to have the CLR print the string "Hello, World!" to the standard output? In this post, we will explore the limits of the .NET module file format, get it as small as possible, while still having it function like a normal executable on a typical Windows machine with the .NET Framework installed. The ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136315/how-small-is-the-smallest-net-hello-world-binary/) 2023-07-10T18:32:09Z **New study reveals most classic video games are completely unavailable**
The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, has conducted the first ever study on the commercial availability of classic video games, and the results are bleak. 87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered. This confirms something all of us already suspected or knew: the vast majority of classic games are simpl ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136320/new-study-reveals-most-classic-video-games-are-completely-unavailable/) 2023-07-10T18:35:14Z **Wayland on OpenBSD**
These are my notes from experimenting with building Wayland bits on OpenBSD during g2k23 in Tallinn… Thanks to the OpenBSD foundation for organizing this event. This is still far from a complete running system as there are many issues on the road, but it’s a good start and it shows that it’s definitely not impossible to get Wayland running on OpenBSD. This is one of the very few valid criticisms of Wayland: it’s designed and developed entirely for Linux, with no regard for BSD or other platfor ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136322/wayland-on-openbsd/) 2023-07-10T18:46:23Z **A new GNUstep desktop comes to Debian**
So a few years ago, a Ukrainian programmer called Sergii Stoian started to build a modern Linux desktop environment based around the GNUstep components running on top of CentOS Linux, which he called NEXTSPACE. Sadly, development stalled a couple of years ago, before CentOS Linux’ premature end-of-life. We are happy to report that Stoian is alive and well, but what with his country being invaded and so on, he’s been a bit too busy to work on his project in ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136326/a-new-gnustep-desktop-comes-to-debian/) 2023-07-10T18:41:23Z **Oracle responds to Red Hat source code changes**
Oracle, who distributes an RHEL clone, has responded to Red Hat’s latest source code availability changes. We want to emphasize to Linux developers, Linux customers, and Linux distributors that Oracle is committed to Linux freedom. Oracle makes the following promise: as long as Oracle distributes Linux, Oracle will make the binaries and source code for that distribution publicly and freely available. Furthermore, Oracle welcomes downstrea ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136324/oracle-responds-to-red-hat-source-code-changes/) 2023-07-10T20:52:04Z **Donate to OSNews through Patreon or Ko-Fi**
Running OSNews.com is not exactly something that generates loads of income, yet it’s taking up a decent amount of time and energy that I have to find somewhere between my wife and kids, translation work, and the rest of my life. While OSNews will always remain free to access, it would mean the world to me if you could support my work financially. There’s two ways to do this. First, you can become a Patreon, which will grant you access to an adverti ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136328/donate-to-osnews-through-patreon-or-ko-fi/) 2023-07-10T23:18:13Z **European Commission blesses new user data transfer agreement between EU and US**
Today, the European Commission adopted its adequacy decision for the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. The decision concludes that the United States ensures an adequate level of protection – comparable to that of the European Union – for personal data transferred from the EU to US companies under the new framework. On the basis of the new adequacy decision, personal data can fl ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136331/european-commission-blesses-new-user-data-transfer-agreement-between-eu-and-us/) 2023-07-11T10:34:47Z **Desktop Linux breaks 7% marketshare**
It’s been all over the news, so I can’t get around posting about it here: the year of the Linux desktop is finally here. According to the – admittedly, troublesome – figures from StatCounter, the market share of Linux on the desktop has reached 7.23%. Other publications do not count Chrome OS installations as part of the Linux share, but I think that’s nonsense – they’re both clearly Linux desktop operating systems, and should be added up. In the end, it doesn’ ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136338/desktop-linux-breaks-7-marketshare/) 2023-07-11T17:11:00Z **Microsoft wins against FTC to buy Activision Blizzard**
Liam Dawe at GamingOnLinux: Well, the results are here. In the USA the FTC was trying to block Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard but Microsoft has won the fight. Now Microsoft are one big step closer to actually properly closing the deal, and a rather big consolidation of the gaming industry given how big Activision Blizzard are. I haven’t been keeping up with this case very much, but if history’s anything to go b ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136341/microsoft-wins-against-ftc-to-buy-activision-blizzard/) 2023-07-11T17:46:03Z **Intel exiting the PC business as it stops unvestment in the Intel NUC**
Some huge news today. Intel has started to notify its ecosystem saying that it will stop direct investment in the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) business. For the handful of STH readers who are unaware, Intel not only makes chips but they also make systems. Earlier this year, we covered that Intel was exiting the server business and selling it to MiTAC. Now its line of PCs is being sunset as well. ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136343/intel-exiting-the-pc-business-as-it-stops-unvestment-in-the-intel-nuc/) 2023-07-11T20:40:15Z **Run Doom as a Windows NT kernel-mode driver**
This ports DoomGeneric NTNative to kernel-mode driver environment. This is bonkers. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136347/run-doom-as-a-windows-nt-kernel-mode-driver/) 2023-07-11T23:10:02Z **Could Kelly Rowland have used the =HYPERLINK() function to message Nelly?**
The Kelly Rowland/Nelly song Dilemma features an infamous scene amongst nerds where Kelly Rowland tries to send a message to Nelly using a Nokia 9210 Communicator. Unfortunately, she does this using the built in spreadsheet program and receives no reply. People suggested she might be using the =HYPERLINK() function in Excel, but would that even work? ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136349/could-kelly-rowland-have-used-the-hyperlink-function-to-message-nelly/) 2023-07-11T23:14:46Z **DisplayPort: a better video interface**
You could put it this way – DisplayPort has all the capabilities of interfaces like HDMI, but implemented in a better way, without legacy cruft, and with a number of features that take advantage of the DisplayPort’s sturdier architecture. As a result of this, DisplayPort isn’t just in external monitors, but also laptop internal displays, USB-C port display support, docking stations, and Thunderbolt of all flavors. If you own a display-capable docking statio ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136351/displayport-a-better-video-interface/) 2023-07-12T07:59:10Z **Suse will Fork RHEL**
Today SUSE, the company behind Rancher, NeuVector, and SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) and a global leader in enterprise open source solutions, announced it is forking publicly available Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and will develop and maintain a RHEL-compatible distribution available to all without restrictions. Over the next few years, SUSE plans to invest more than $10 million into this project.   The spicy bit here is that the CEO of SUSE, Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, worked at Red Hat for 18 ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136353/suse-will-fork-rhel/) 2023-07-12T19:11:15Z **Thunderbird 115 released**
On behalf of the Thunderbird team, Thunderbird Council, our global community of contributors, and our extended Mozilla family, I am incredibly excited to announce the initial launch of Thunderbird 115 “Supernova” for Linux, macOS, and Windows! With this year’s version, we’re delivering much more than just another yearly release. Supernova represents a modernized overhaul of the software – both visually and technically – while retaining the familiarity and flexibility you expect fro ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136359/thunderbird-115-released/) 2023-07-12T19:19:05Z **First public betas of Apple’s low-key next-gen operating systems launch today**
Apple is officially releasing the first public betas of iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, and macOS 14 Sonoma today, a little over a month after releasing the first developer betas at its Worldwide Developers Conference. I have to say, Apple is doing a great job with their public beta access. It’s easy enough that it’s accessible, but not so easy you’ve got millions of people runni ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136361/first-public-betas-of-apples-low-key-next-gen-operating-systems-launch-today/) 2023-07-12T19:27:34Z **Android 14 Beta 4 released**
Speaking of beta programs and doing it right – here’s how things are going at the other end of the spectrum. Today we’re bringing you Android 14 Beta 4, continuing our work on polish and performance as we get closer to the general availability release of Android 14. Beta 4 is available for Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold, in addition to the rest of the supported Pixel family, so you can test your applications on devices spanning multiple form factors and directly experience the wor ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136363/android-14-beta-4-released/) 2023-07-13T09:56:21Z **The Mac sure is starting to look like the iPhone**
The general trend of macOS releases over the past few years is that it has been moving closer and closer to the look and feel of iOS. The icons have become iOS icons, and their shape has become the iOS shape, and you can now use your iPhone as the Mac’s webcam, etc. etc. This occasionally comes at the expense of other functionality (ask me how I feel about the new Settings menu), but it is the direction that Apple has clearly been hea ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136366/the-mac-sure-is-starting-to-look-like-the-iphone/) 2023-07-13T16:19:31Z **New Play Store policy will publish developers’ phone numbers in app listings**
Are you an Android developer with applications on the Play Store? Well, you might want to know that Google is about to publish your phone number on the Play Store for everyone to see. We’re renaming the “Contact details” section on your app’s store listing to “App support” and adding a new “About the developer” section to help users learn more about you. This may show verified ide ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136370/new-play-store-policy-will-publish-developers-phone-numbers-in-app-listings/) 2023-07-13T17:00:28Z **Li-Fi, light-based networking standard released**
Today, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has added 802.11bb as a standard for light-based wireless communications. The publishing of the standard has been welcomed by global Li-Fi businesses, as it will help speed the rollout and adoption of the  data-transmission technology standard. Where Li-Fi shines (pun intended) is not just in its purported speeds as fast as 224 GB/s. Fraunhofer’s Dominic Schulz points ou ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136372/li-fi-light-based-networking-standard-released/) 2023-07-13T19:46:06Z **EU makes it official: mobile devices to have user-replaceable batteries by 2027**
A few weeks ago we reported that the European Union wanted to force device makers to make batteries user-replaceable, and today it’s been confirmed and made official. The regulation provides that by 2027 portable batteries incorporated into appliances should be removable and replaceable by the end-user, leaving sufficient time for operators to adapt the design of their produ ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136374/eu-makes-it-official-mobile-devices-to-have-user-replaceable-batteries-by-2027/) 2023-07-14T19:15:00Z **COSMIC DE gets fractional scaling**
Beyond the dazzling sea of licensed fireworks and thunderclouds lies a cosmic array of ancient stars. It’s within our gaze upon these stars where we find the inspiration for COSMIC DE, our new desktop environment created for Pop!\_OS and other Linux distros. Let’s get into the updates! COSMIC DE is System76’s in-progress Rust-based desktop environment. System76 has done some neat tricks while resizing windows in tiled mode, they’re splitting up the notifications s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136376/cosmic-de-gets-fractional-scaling/) 2023-07-14T19:20:58Z **Microsoft unveils new default Office font**
Today we begin the final phase of this major change where Aptos will start appearing as the new default font across Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel for hundreds of millions of users. And, over the next few months it will roll out to be the default for all our customers. We can’t wait for Aptos to be readily available since it was crafted to embody the many aspects of the human experience. A new default font for Microsoft Office is a huge deal. ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136378/microsoft-unveils-new-default-office-font/) 2023-07-14T20:59:09Z **‘The future of AlmaLinux is bright’**
In case you missed it, Red Hat announced they will no longer be providing the means for downstream clones to continue to be 1:1 binary copies of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Very quickly, both Jack and I shared some initial thoughts, but we intentionally took our time deciding the next right step for AlmaLinux OS. After much discussion, the AlmaLinux OS Foundation board today has decided to drop the aim to be 1:1 with RHEL. AlmaLinux OS will instead aim to b ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136381/the-future-of-almalinux-is-bright/) 2023-07-14T22:11:07Z **Microsoft stopped supporting Windows Server 2003 8 years ago today**
Microsoft ended Windows Server 2003’s Mainstream Support on July 13, 2010, and Extended Support on July 14, 2015. This means it would no longer provide security updates, technical support, or software updates for this server-based operating system. Windows Server 2003 is probably my favourite Windows release. I never liked Windows XP, and Server 2003, with its updated codebase and various fixes comp ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136383/microsoft-stopped-supporting-windows-server-2003-8-years-ago-today/) 2023-07-14T23:27:02Z **Onyx Boox Palma is an e-reader that looks like a smartphone**
Onyx Boox has just done something exciting; they have taken a page from the Hisense playbook and released a dedicated e-reader with the familiar candy bar shape as a smartphone, except it is a dedicated e-reader. You can do phone calls with this unit and talk to people on Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp or WeChat with dual microphones. However, it does not support SIM cards or eSim, and you must be on a WIFI connect ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136385/onyx-boox-palma-is-an-e-reader-that-looks-like-a-smartphone/) 2023-07-15T12:44:13Z **Why can’t you just roll back from a bad macOS update?**
As some of us learned in the last week, it’s easy to uninstall a troublesome Rapid Security Response (RSR). Several naturally asked why that isn’t possible with a macOS update, pointing out that it was available and worryingly popular between High Sierra and Catalina 10.15.2, since when the ability has been lost. The answer is as straightforward as you’d expect: the updates themselves, as well as the update process, have becom ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136388/why-cant-you-just-roll-back-from-a-bad-macos-update/) 2023-07-15T13:14:59Z **A list of OpenBSD innovations**
This is a list of software and ideas developed or maintained by the OpenBSD project, sorted in order of approximate introduction. Some of them are explained in detail in our research papers. That’s an impressive list. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136390/a-list-of-openbsd-innovations/) 2023-07-15T18:25:17Z **The shady world of Brave selling copyrighted data for AI training**
As you may have noticed, I used the word copyrighted for the title of this story. And it’s not without reason. I think this story could have been fairly decent even without the copyright part, so before we get to the nitty gritty stuff – I can 100% confirm that Brave lets you ingest copyrighted material through their Brave Search API, to which they also assign you “rights”. Time and time again, Brave ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136395/the-shady-world-of-brave-selling-copyrighted-data-for-ai-training/) 2023-07-15T18:27:08Z **The only PC ever shipped with BeOS preinstalled**
As a former BeOS user and fan(atic), I consider myself quite knowledgeable on the subject, but as I was watching the latest Micheal MJD video about BeOS, I learned something new I had never heard of before. It’s common knowledge that Be actively tried to court x86 OEMs to bundle BeOS alongside Windows in a dual-boot configuration. However, these efforts fell apart as soon as Microsoft caught wind of it and Redmond sent representatives t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136392/the-only-pc-ever-shipped-with-beos-preinstalled/) 2023-07-16T21:45:27Z **A month on Chimera Linux**
We talked about Chimera Linux before – it’s a unique coupling of the Linux kernel with a FreeBSD userland, musl, the package manager from Alpine Linux, and dinit. The project recently entered the alpha stage, and while not ready for everyday use, Wesley Moore still decided to try and give it a go. So far my experience has actually been better than I expected. Since I installed it I have not rebooted back into Arch. This isn’t the first time I’ve run a desktop musl system and I was ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136399/a-month-on-chimera-linux/) 2023-07-16T21:49:25Z **Collapse OS gets a successor: Dusk OS**
Collapse OS (which we talked about 4 years ago) has a successor. Dusk OS is a 32-bit Forth and big brother to Collapse OS. Its primary purpose is to be maximally useful during the first stage of civilizational collapse, that is, when we can’t produce modern computers anymore but that there’s still many modern computers still around. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136401/collapse-os-gets-a-successor-dusk-os/) 2023-07-17T15:59:05Z **How long will the last Intel Macs be supported?**
A year ago, we compiled a model list of Macs spanning over two decades, complete with their launch dates, discontinuation dates, and all the available information about the macOS updates each model received. We were trying to answer two questions: How long can Mac owners reasonably expect to receive software updates when they buy a new computer? And were Intel Macs being dropped more aggressively now that the Apple Silicon transition was ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136404/how-long-will-the-last-intel-macs-be-supported/) 2023-07-17T16:05:26Z **Apps and driver support in Redox OS**
The availability of support for various apps and drivers (for various hardware and software) is crucial for the general adoption of any general purpose operating system like Redox OS. Some of us developers are working on improving the core of Redox OS (like the Kernel), which should create a solid base on which high quality native drivers and apps can be created with ease. Some others are working on porting (and adapting) various open source drivers and apps ( ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136406/apps-and-driver-support-in-redox-os/) 2023-07-17T19:18:02Z **Android 14 will warn you when trying to sideload updates for some Google apps**
Android 14 introduces a number of new features for app stores, including an “update ownership” API that lets an app store claim ownership over an app it installs. If any other app store tries to push an update to that app, Android will throw up a dialog asking you what they want to do. The dialog asks you if you want to “update this app from ” since “this app normally receives ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136408/android-14-will-warn-you-when-trying-to-sideload-updates-for-some-google-apps/) 2023-07-17T22:25:12Z **Check out these beautiful retro Mastodon clients!**
There’s a specter looming over the realm of Mastodon, and it’s the ghost of computing’s past. A loose group of retro computing hobbyists have taken it upon themselves to build Mastodon clients for various operating systems. Developing web clients using the technology of the 80’s and 90’s is a challenge, but the following projects have proven that their devs are up to the task! Should we find ourselves in the unlikely scenario where a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136414/check-out-these-beautiful-retro-mastodon-clients/) 2023-07-17T22:50:43Z **Haiku’s activity report for June 2023**
The biggest changes last month were a series of commits by waddlesplash, all related to the user\_mutex API and the consumers of it. This API is the kernel portion of the implementation of basically anything related to mutexes or locks in userland, including pthread\_mutex, pthread\_cond, pthread\_barrier, unnamed semaphores (via sem\_open), rwlocks, and more. It bears some resemblance in concept to Linux’s futex API, but is very different in both design an ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136416/haikus-activity-report-for-june-2023/) 2023-07-18T20:23:46Z **Framework Laptop 16: The Verge’s exclusive hands-on**
The Framework Laptop 16, available for preorder today starting at $1,699 prebuilt, is one of the most exciting notebooks we’ve ever seen. When it ships in Q4, the modular computer company’s first gaming laptop will let you swap practically every component — not just memory and storage, but each and every individual port, the motherboard, the battery, the speakers, you name it. Framework seems to be making it, despite the ridicule. ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136419/framework-laptop-16-the-verges-exclusive-hands-on/) 2023-07-18T20:32:01Z **Online advertising giant: people who want to reign in online ads are “extremists”**
The Interactive Advertising Bureau, one of the biggest names in online advertising, held some sort of corporate event or whatever in January of this year, and the IAB CEO, David Cohen, held a speech there to rally the troops. Apparently, those of us who are fighting back against the online advertising industry? We’re “extremists”. Extremists are winning the battle for hear ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136421/online-advertising-giant-people-who-want-to-reign-in-online-ads-are-extremists/) 2023-07-18T23:14:15Z **No cyber resilience without open source sustainability**
Together with the open source software community, GitHub has been working to support EU policymakers to craft the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). The CRA seeks to improve the cybersecurity of digital products (including the 96 percent that contain open source) in the EU by imposing strict requirements for vendors supplying products in the single market, backed by fines of up to €15 million or 2.5% of global revenue. This goal ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136423/no-cyber-resilience-without-open-source-sustainability/) 2023-07-19T18:05:16Z **Google’s AI chatbot is trained by humans who say they’re overworked, underpaid and frustrated**
The contractors are the invisible backend of the generative AI boom that’s hyped to change everything. Chatbots like Bard use computer intelligence to respond almost instantly to a range of queries spanning all of human knowledge and creativity. But to improve those responses so they can be reliably delivered again and again, tech companies rely on ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136425/googles-ai-chatbot-is-trained-by-humans-who-say-theyre-overworked-underpaid-and-frustrated/) 2023-07-19T18:07:30Z **Intel lets ASUS take over and continue NUC product line**
Turns out Intel’s NUC line is not going to die after all. Today, Intel announced it has agreed to a term sheet with ASUS, a global technology solution provider, for an agreement to manufacture, sell and support the Next Unit of Compute (NUC) 10th to 13th generations systems product line, and to develop future NUC systems designs. If you’re into Intel NUCs, Asus is the way to go now. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136427/intel-lets-asus-take-over-and-continue-nuc-product-line/) 2023-07-19T20:28:34Z **Windows 11 tries out unsafe password copy and paste warnings**
Starting in Windows 11, version 22H2, Enhanced Phishing Protection in Microsoft Defender SmartScreen helps protect Microsoft school or work passwords against phishing and unsafe usage on sites and apps. We are trying out a change starting with this build where users who have enabled warning options for Windows Security under App & browser control > Reputation-based protection > Phishing protection will see a UI ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136429/windows-11-tries-out-unsafe-password-copy-and-paste-warnings/) 2023-07-19T20:34:34Z **FTC rewrites rules on Big Tech mergers with aim to ease monopoly-busting**
Ars Technica: Antitrust enforcers released a draft update outlining new rules today that officials say will make it easier to crack down on mergers and acquisitions that could substantially lessen competition in the US. Now the public has 60 days to review the draft guidelines and submit comments to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) before the agencie ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136431/ftc-rewrites-rules-on-big-tech-mergers-with-aim-to-ease-monopoly-busting/) 2023-07-19T22:08:18Z **‘No way out’: how video games use tricks from gambling to attract big spenders**
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the techniques described in Let’s Go Whaling bear comparison to some of those that bookmakers and casinos have long deployed, capitalising on deep understanding of psychology. The big difference, of course, is that the gamer can never win money, only prestige or progress in a virtual game. The very uncomfortable truth for Apple and Google: much – 70-75% – ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136433/no-way-out-how-video-games-use-tricks-from-gambling-to-attract-big-spenders/) 2023-07-20T16:56:25Z **Retro-porting to OS/2 1.0**
A few weeks ago I embarked on a somewhat crazy side project: Make the Open Watcom debugger work on OS/2 1.0. This project was not entirely successful, but I learned a couple of things along the way. I love these stories. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136439/retro-porting-to-os-2-1-0/) 2023-07-20T17:03:35Z **Apple slams UK surveillance-bill proposals**
Apple says it will remove services such as FaceTime and iMessage from the UK rather than weaken security if new proposals are made law and acted upon. The government is seeking to update the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) 2016. It wants messaging services to clear security features with the Home Office before releasing them to customers. The act lets the Home Office demand security features are disabled, without telling the public. Under the upda ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136441/apple-slams-uk-surveillance-bill-proposals/) 2023-07-20T22:46:56Z **How did region-locking on the SNES work?**
USA readers may wonder why I was waiting for the release of a game already published. While Street Fighter II made it to the Super Famicom on June 10, 1992 in Japan and July 15, 1992 in North America, France had to wait until December 17, 1992 to get a PAL version. As I waited, I saw ads in French magazines offering imported cartridges of my Holy Graal. To make them work on a European Super Nintendo, one had to buy an adapter. The combo cost almost as ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136443/how-did-region-locking-on-the-snes-work/) 2023-07-20T23:13:34Z **Here’s why the best IMAX movies still need a Palm Pilot to work**
About a small town’s worth of people pointed me to this on Mastodon, so here it goes: In an IMAX theater, the m130’s job is to control the quick turn reel unit, or QTRU for short. (For many years, it appears, a non-emulated m130 sat holstered in most theaters.) The QTRU’s job is to control the platters, which are those large horizontal shelves where all of a film’s many reels are stitched together, stored, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136445/heres-why-the-best-imax-movies-still-need-a-palm-pilot-to-work/) 2023-07-21T00:22:33Z **Google’s Google Maps app for Palm OS from 2008 still works today**
I’ve been going through my collection of PDAs over the last few weeks for, among other OSNews things, my Pixelfed account, and while playing around with various old applications, I came across the Google Maps application for Palm OS. As it turns out – this official Google application, last updated in 2008, still fully and completely works today, in 2023! I shot a quick video using the application, and up ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136447/googles-google-maps-app-for-palm-os-from-2008-still-works-today/) 2023-07-21T14:33:01Z **Updating FreeBSD on armv6 board (RPI-B)**
One of my old home automation boards running ebusd is still using Raspberry PI 2 B SoC. FreeBSD is still perfectly supporting this hardware, however, due to being a Tier-2 platform, binary updates freebsd-update are not supported. Of course, one can download the new image, but this will mean re-installing and reconfiguring all the software, which is time-consuming and painful. Also, the traditional “build from source” way will probably take forever on th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136452/updating-freebsd-on-armv6-board-rpi-b/) 2023-07-21T17:39:51Z **Watermarks coming to AI content as Big Tech vows to prevent fraud, deception**
Seven companies—including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, Anthropic, and Inflection—have committed to developing tech to clearly watermark AI-generated content. That will help make it safer to share AI-generated text, video, audio, and images without misleading others about the authenticity of that content, the Biden administration hopes. It’s currently unclear how the wa ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136454/watermarks-coming-to-ai-content-as-big-tech-vows-to-prevent-fraud-deception/) 2023-07-21T20:27:31Z **What happened to Dolphin on Steam?**
The Dolphin project has broken the silence regarding their legal tussle with Nintendo and Valve, giving a far more detailed elaboration of what, exactly happened. First things first – Nintendo did not send Valve or Dolphin a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) section 512(c) notice (commonly known as a DMCA Takedown Notice) against our Steam page. Nintendo has not taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve. What actually happened was that Valve’s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136456/what-happened-to-dolphin-on-steam/) 2023-07-22T00:32:36Z **I have written a JVM in Rust**
Lately I’ve been spending quite a bit of time learning Rust, and as any sane person would do, after writing a few 100 lines programs I’ve decided to take on something a little bit more ambitious: I have written a Java Virtual Machine in Rust. With a lot of originality, I have called it rjvm. The code is available on GitHub. I want to stress that this is a toy JVM, built for learning purposes and not a serious implementation. Toy or not, this is ambitious and impressive. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136458/i-have-written-a-jvm-in-rust/) 2023-07-22T19:53:26Z **Apple’s Interactive Television Box: hacking the set Top box System 7.1 in ROM**
One of the coolest things to come along in the 68K Mac homebrew community is the ROM Boot Disk concept. Classic Macs have an unusually large ROM that contains a fair bit of the Mac OS, which was true even in the G3 New World Mac era (it was just on disk), so it’s somewhat surprising that only one Mac officially could boot the Mac OS entirely from ROM, namely the Macintosh Classic ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136460/apples-interactive-television-box-hacking-the-set-top-box-system-7-1-in-rom/) 2023-07-23T09:21:56Z **TV typewriter remembered**
A lot of the cost of a video terminal was the screen. Yet nearly everyone had a TV, and used TVs have always been fairly cheap, too. That’s where Don Lancaster came in. His TV Typewriter Cookbook was the bible for homebrew video displays. The design influenced the Apple 1 computer and spawned a successful kit for a company known as Southwest Technical Products. For around $300 or so, you could have a terminal that uses your TV for output. The wild West days of home computing must’v ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136463/tv-typewriter-remembered/) 2023-07-23T23:55:00Z **OpenBSD gets support for AMD processor microcode updates**
Thanks to a series of commits by Jonathan Gray (jsg@), -current now has support for microcode (updates) for AMD (amd64 and i386) processors. It’s great to see support for the AMD side gaining equivalence with that for Intel (for which support was added in 2018). Good news for OpenBSD users. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136467/openbsd-gets-support-for-amd-processor-microcode-updates/) 2023-07-24T08:03:50Z **Riscv64 becomes official Debian architecture**
After many years of effort, I am happy to announce that Debian riscv64 is now an official architecture! This milestone is not the end of the journey but rather the beginning of a new one: the port will need to be rebootstrapped in the official archive, build daemons will have to be reinstalled and handed over to DSA, many bugs will need to be fixed. If everything goes well, the architecture will eventually be released with Trixie. Please note ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136469/riscv64-becomes-official-debian-architecture/) 2023-07-24T14:16:27Z **The IBM mainframe: how it runs and why it survives**
Ars Technica has a great article about the IBM mainframe. Mainframe computers are often seen as ancient machines—practically dinosaurs. But mainframes, which are purpose-built to process enormous amounts of data, are still extremely relevant today. If they’re dinosaurs, they’re T-Rexes, and desktops and server computers are puny mammals to be trodden underfoot. It’s estimated that there are 10,000 mainframes in use today. They’re u ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136472/the-ibm-mainframe-how-it-runs-and-why-it-survives/) 2023-07-24T20:20:07Z **Ubisoft deletes accounts and games if you don’t log in for a while**
Ubisoft has confirmed that it is temporarily suspending accounts it deems to be “inactive”, preventing players from accessing their game libraries. Players are then sent an email informing them that their suspended account will be deleted in 30 days unless they click the “Cancel Account Closure” link. Modern gaming. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136482/ubisoft-deletes-accounts-and-games-if-you-dont-log-in-for-a-while/) 2023-07-24T20:25:42Z **Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web**
Google’s plan is that, during a webpage transaction, the web server could require you to pass an “environment attestation” test before you get any data. At this point your browser would contact a “third-party” attestation server, and you would need to pass some kind of test. If you passed, you would get a signed “IntegrityToken” that verifies your environment is unmodified and points to t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136484/googles-nightmare-web-integrity-api-wants-a-drm-gatekeeper-for-the-web/) 2023-07-24T21:05:22Z **Introduction to federated social media**
The “enshittification” of social media started around 2016, but it reached new highs in 2023. All chronological feeds and hashtag importance have given way to narrow-AI algorithms and recommendation engines. The result was that reach has become impossible for the common user, and many art creatives lost their livelihoods. Enter the Fediverse. From Wikipedia: “The fediverse is an ensemble of federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that are used for web pu ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136486/introduction-to-federated-social-media/) 2023-07-25T21:27:28Z **octox: a Unix-like operating system written in Rust**
octox is a Unix-like operating system inspired by xv6-riscv. octox loosely follows the structure and style of xv6, but is implemented in pure Rust. It’s a learning project, so no lofty goals of world domination here. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136500/octox-a-unix-like-operating-system-written-in-rust/) 2023-07-25T21:30:53Z **Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed**
There’s been a lot of concern recently about the Web Environment Integrity proposal, developed by a selection of authors from Google, and apparently being prototyped in Chromium. There’s good reason for anger here (though I’m not sure yelling at people on GitHub is necessarily the best outlet). This proposal amounts to attestation on the web, limiting access to features or entire sites based on whe ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136502/apple-already-shipped-attestation-on-the-web-and-we-barely-noticed/) 2023-07-25T21:39:44Z **Intel unveils AVX10 and APX instruction sets: unifying AVX-512 for hybrid architectures**
Intel has announced two new x86-64 instruction sets designed to bolster and offer more performance in AVX-based workloads with their hybrid architecture of performance (P) and efficiency (E) cores. The first of Intel’s announcements is their latest Intel Advanced Performance Extensions, or Intel APX as it’s known. It is designed to bring generational, instruc ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136504/intel-unveils-avx10-and-apx-instruction-sets-unifying-avx-512-for-hybrid-architectures/) 2023-07-26T09:39:38Z **Google abandons work to move Assistant smart speakers to Fuchsia**
9to5Google reports: Last year, we reported that Google’s Fuchsia team had renewed its efforts to support smart speakers. Long story short, the team had experimented with a single speaker, ditched that effort, then “restored” it later on. More importantly, the Fuchsia team was found to be working on multiple speakers, the most notable of which was an as-yet-unreleased speaker equipped with UWB. In a newl ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136506/google-abandons-work-to-move-assistant-smart-speakers-to-fuchsia/) 2023-07-26T18:04:21Z **Google Play services discontinuing updates for KitKat starting August 2023**
The Android KitKat (KK) platform was first released ~10 years ago and since then, we’ve introduced many innovative improvements and features for Android, which are unavailable on KK. As of July 2023, the active device count on KK is below 1% as more and more users update to the latest Android versions. Therefore, we are no longer supporting KK in future releases of Google Play servic ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136510/google-play-services-discontinuing-updates-for-kitkat-starting-august-2023/) 2023-07-26T18:02:36Z **Introducing a new Play Store for large screens**
Last year at Google I/O, we shared some big changes coming to the Play Store for large screen devices. Since then, we’ve seen even more people using large screens for work and play, across millions of active Android devices. Apps and games play a critical role in shaping the on-device experience, so we’ve redesigned the Play Store to help users get the most from their tablets, Chromebooks, and foldables. Today, we’re introducing four majo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136508/introducing-a-new-play-store-for-large-screens/) 2023-07-26T18:34:17Z **Introducing OSNews merch!**
You can become a Patreon, make a one-time donation through Ko-Fi, and now, by popular demand, we have a third option to support OSNews: merch! We’ve just launched our new merch store, currently selling three items – two T-shirts and a coffee mug. First, we have a plain logo T-shirt. It’s a crew (round) neck T-shirt available in ‘Night Sky Navy’ or ‘Herb Green’, with our logo printed top-left on the chest. Second, we have the same logo T-shirt in the same two colours, but with an a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136512/introducing-osnews-merch/) 2023-07-27T19:46:28Z **Smashing the limits: installing Windows XP in DOSBox-X**
In my previous article, I described how I managed to install Windows 2000 in DOSBox-X. Even though this experiment was successful, I was not really with the results. While I got Windows 2000 working, I didn’t want to stop there. The final goal for the project was to get Windows XP running instead. However, after multiple attempts I gave up, thinking that Windows XP was impossible to use. Well – I was wrong. I can’t believe ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136520/smashing-the-limits-installing-windows-xp-in-dosbox-x/) 2023-07-27T20:56:30Z **GNOME: rethinking window management**
While most of us are used to this system and its quirks, that doesn’t mean it’s without problems. This is especially apparent when you do user research with people who are new to computing, including children and older people. Manually placing and sizing windows can be fiddly work, and requires close attention and precise motor control. It’s also what we jokingly refer to as shit work: it is work that the user has to do, which is generated by the system itself, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136522/gnome-rethinking-window-management/) 2023-07-27T21:07:56Z **Commander Keen’s adaptive tile refresh**
I have been reading Doom Guy by John Romero. It is an excellent book which I highly recommend. In the ninth chapter, John describes being hit by lightning upon seeing Adaptive Tile Refresh (ATS). That made me realize I never took the time to understand how this crucial piece of tech powers the Commander Keen (CK) series. During my research I was surprised to learn that ATS only powered the first CK trilogy. The second trilogy turned out to use something f ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136524/commander-keens-adaptive-tile-refresh/) 2023-07-27T22:10:45Z **Apple seems to have given up on the high-end**
Apple’s M2 Ultra powered Mac Pro is the final step in their Apple Silicon transition. But without GPU support or meaningful expansion, is it worth nearly double the price of a comparable Mac Studio? It really seems like high-end computing is simply no longer possible whatsoever on the Mac. The Mac Pro is a joke, the memory limits on the M2 chips make them useless for high-end uses, there’s not enough PCI-e lanes, the integrated GPUs are a jok ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136526/apple-seems-to-have-given-up-on-the-high-end/) 2023-07-28T09:39:07Z **What we plan to remove in Plasma 6**
For KDE Plasma 6, the KDE team intends to remove a number of old features and bits of code that haven’t been touched in ages or simply don’t make sense to keep around. Most of it is truly stuff few will use, but there’s some interesting ones in there that might make some users a little sad. First, they intend to remove the icon view from the settings application, leaving only the sidebar view that’s been the default for a while now. This one bugs me, because I o ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136528/what-we-plan-to-remove-in-plasma-6/) 2023-07-29T00:10:21Z **Cophone: a virtual Android phone in the cloud**
Mobile work phones running in the cloud: safe & instantly available smartphones for your team. Complete with a phone number, accessible from your browser. I find the pricing a bit steep, but the concept in and of itself is pretty cool: it’s an Android VM in the cloud running /e/OS. I’m not entirely sure what I’d use it for, but something about it I find intriguing. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136530/cophone-a-virtual-android-phone-in-the-cloud/) 2023-07-29T21:40:05Z **IBM Blue Lightning: world’s fastest 386?**
The Blue Lightning CPU is an interesting beast. There is not a whole lot of information about what the processor really is, but it can be pieced together from various scraps of information. Around 1990, IBM needed low-power 32-bit processors with good performance for its portable systems, but no one offered such CPUs yet. IBM licensed the 386SX core from Intel and turned it into the IBM 386SLC processor (SLC reportedly stood for “Super Little Chip”). ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136532/ibm-blue-lightning-worlds-fastest-386-2/) 2023-07-30T23:25:20Z **Tetris Max 2.9.1 and Macintosh System 6.0.8 bugs**
31 years ago Tetris Max for the Macintosh was born, an improved clone of Tetris, and it became an insanely popular Mac game during the 1990s. I may or may not have had some involvement in its development. Macintosh System 6 was the current OS version at the time of the game’s release, but System 7 was introduced shortly afterwards. It’s recently come to my attention that the final version of Tetris Max (v2.9.1) may not work when runni ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136537/tetris-max-2-9-1-and-macintosh-system-6-0-8-bugs/) 2023-07-30T23:43:45Z **Google: Android patches take too long to reach users’ devices**
One of the interesting and odd thing Google does is roast itself (and others) over security issues. In this year’s Year in Review of 0-days exploited in-the-wild, Google took particular aim at the Android ecosystem for being so bad at getting patches on users’ devices that Android doesn’t even need 0-days to be exploited in the first place. These gaps between upstream vendors and downstream manufacturers allow ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136542/google-android-patches-take-too-long-to-reach-users-devices/) 2023-07-31T18:41:37Z **The most prolific packager for Alpine Linux is stepping away**
Alpine Linux remains one of the most popular lightweight Linux distributions built atop musl libc and Busybox. Alpine Linux has found significant use within containers and the embedded space while now sadly the most prolific maintainer of packages for the Linux distribution has decided to step down from her roles. Alice “psykose” who is easily responsible for the highest number of commits per author over the pa ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136554/the-most-prolific-packager-for-alpine-linux-is-stepping-away/) 2023-07-31T21:58:56Z **The buttons on Zenith’s original ‘clicker’ remote were a mechanical marvel**
If you’ve ever heard someone refer to a TV remote as a “clicker,” it’s because of Robert Adler’s 1956 creation. The elegant Star Trek-esque gadget pioneered a durable, clicky action for controlling gadgets and a simplicity of form that has since been naively abandoned.    When Zenith first started experimenting with wireless remote controls, it used beams of light that the television co ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136556/the-buttons-on-zeniths-original-clicker-remote-were-a-mechanical-marvel/) 2023-08-01T00:16:23Z **Italian competition authority forces Google to improve Google Takeout**
Overall, the Authority found the commitments proposed by Google to be adequate to address the competition concerns. The group, in fact, presented a package of three commitments, two of which envisage supplementary solutions to Takeout – the service Google makes available to end users for backing up their data – to facilitate the export of data to third-party operators. The third commitment off ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136563/italian-competition-authority-forces-google-to-improve-google-takeout/) 2023-08-01T01:04:34Z **Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal Release released**
UBPorts has released the second update for the Ubuntu Touch version based on Focal Fossa. In this new version, the System Settings application has been improved in various places, the physical camera button now works (on devices that have one, I presume), and a whole load of bugs have been fixed. Device support has also improved, with the F(x)tec Pro1 X, Fairphone 3, and Vollaphone X23 now being supported by the Focal releases. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136565/ubuntu-touch-ota-2-focal-release-released/) 2023-08-01T19:35:19Z **IronOS: flexible soldering iron control firmware**
Originally conceived as an alternative firmware for the TS100, this firmware has evolved into a complex soldering iron control firmware. The firmware implements all of the standard features of a ‘smart’ soldering iron, with lots of little extras and tweaks. I highly recommend reading the installation guide fully when installing on your iron. And after install just explore the settings menu. An alternative operating system for your sold ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136567/ironos-flexible-soldering-iron-control-firmware/) 2023-08-01T20:55:11Z **dosfetch: a neofetch clone for DOS**
You know neofetch, the little tool that shows you some nicely formatted system information in your terminal? Even though I find Archey 4 vastly superior, neofetch is still cool and often serves as an inspiration for people to create similar fun tools for other platforms. In this case – DOS, through dosfetch. That’s really all there’s to it – it’s just a fun little toy for a classic operating system. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136569/dosfetch-a-neofetch-clone-for-dos/) 2023-08-01T21:02:07Z **Restoring support for 16-bit applications in modern Windows versions**
Windows has some pretty amazing backwards compatibility. In many cases, you can run ancient 32-bit Win32 applications just fine on your current system. However, there’s one issue: If you ever tried to run a 16-bit application from the Windows 3.x days, any 64-bit Windows version (starting from Windows XP) will refuse to run the application with an error message indicating that you should ask the ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136573/restoring-support-for-16-bit-applications-in-modern-windows-versions/) 2023-08-01T21:00:18Z **Paginator: desktop pager for Window Maker and similar environments**
Speaking of fun little tools: Paginator is a desktop pager for EWMH-compliant X11 window managers. Paginator provides a graphical interface displaying the current configuration of all desktops, allowing the user to change the current desktop or the current active window with the mouse. Exactly what it says on the tin, and adds some usability to the desktop pager concept to something like Window Maker ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136571/paginator-desktop-pager-for-window-maker-and-similar-environments/) 2023-08-02T00:10:09Z **Microsoft is trying too hard with Edge**
Microsoft Edge has slowly crept its way up as one of the more popular web browsers people use every day, especially on Windows 11. In 2022, it even overtook Safari as the second-most-popular browser in the world behind Chrome (although it has since dropped back to third). Despite running on Chromium, the same engine as Chrome, it has a lot of features even Chrome lacks, like collections and shopping features that can help you save money. And, of course, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136575/microsoft-is-trying-too-hard-with-edge/) 2023-08-02T14:45:17Z **Transform your Android device into a Linux desktop**
Have you ever wanted to do more with your phone, like setting up a Webserver or a Node.js server and running a web app directly on your phone? Or doing some coding on the go? Yes, I have too. With Termux, you can run a full Linux Desktop on your Android device, and here’s how. Even without resorting to a full X desktop, Termux is oretty great. I’m not really a terminal user, so for me it’s just for the novelty of it all, but it ce ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136577/transform-your-android-device-into-a-linux-desktop/) 2023-08-02T14:49:57Z **Our new flagship distro: Fedora Asahi Remix**
You’ve all been waiting for it, many of you have guessed, and now, as announced at Flock To Fedora, it’s time to make it official: The new Asahi Linux flagship distribution will be Fedora Asahi Remix! We’re confident that this new flagship will get us much closer to our goal of a polished Linux experience on Apple Silicon, and we hope you will enjoy using it as much as we’re enjoying working on it. We’re still working out the kinks and making th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136579/our-new-flagship-distro-fedora-asahi-remix/) 2023-08-02T21:22:35Z **ChromeOS 116 may begin the Lacros browser push to Chromebooks**
About Chromebooks reports: After covering Google’s effort to separate the Chrome browser from ChromeOS for over two years, it appears more of you will get to experience it. The project is called Lacros, and it uses the Linux browser for ChromeOS instead of the integrated browser. The idea is that browser updates can be pushed quicker to Chromebooks instead of waiting for a full ChromeOS update. Based on recen ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136581/chromeos-116-may-begin-the-lacros-browser-push-to-chromebooks/) 2023-08-03T16:25:20Z **Microsoft leaked its internal tool that enables secret Windows 11 features**
Microsoft has accidentally leaked its internal “StagingTool” app that is used by employees to enable secret unreleased Windows 11 features. The software giant typically tests experimental or hidden Windows 11 features in public builds of the operating system, but Windows enthusiasts have until now had to rely on third-party tools to get access to secret features that Microsoft hasn’t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136583/microsoft-leaked-its-internal-tool-that-enables-secret-windows-11-features/) 2023-08-04T00:31:36Z **Google’s plan to DRM the web goes against everything Google once stood for**
Supporting the open web requires saying no to WEI, and having Google say no as well. It’s not a good policy. It’s not a good idea. It’s a terrible idea that takes Google that much further down the enshittification curve. Even if you can think of good reasons to try to set up such a system, there is way too much danger that comes along with it, undermining the very principles of the op ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136585/googles-plan-to-drm-the-web-goes-against-everything-google-once-stood-for/) 2023-08-04T00:40:04Z **Chrultrabook: run Windows, regular desktop Linux, or macOS on your Chromebook**
A chrultrabook is a modified Chromebook designed to run Windows, Linux, or even macOS by utilizing MrChromebox coreboot firmware. The purpose of this site is to provide comprehensive and user-friendly documentation on hardware, firmware, and operating systems. This is a cool project to make it easy to run Windows, regular desktop Linux, or even macOS on your Chromebook. Excellent ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136587/chrultrabook-run-windows-regular-desktop-linux-or-macos-on-your-chromebook/) 2023-08-04T21:01:34Z **Microsoft just killed the Cortana app on Windows 11 in favour of AI**
While casually looking for updates in the Microsoft Store, I noticed a new update for Cortana after a long time. But, instead of improving things, the latest update caused the app to stop working on Windows 11. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, considering that Microsoft’s assistant hasn’t received a single feature update in the past two years Microsoft has finally killed Cortana on Windows 11 – its ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136589/microsoft-just-killed-the-cortana-app-on-windows-11-in-favour-of-ai/) 2023-08-04T21:05:44Z **Qualcomm starts a RISC-V joint venture**
Arm is facing down its biggest competition ever, with the up-and-coming RISC-V architecture threatening to unseat it as the CPU at the center of almost every portable device. Now, one of Arm’s biggest customers is trying out RISC-V, as Qualcomm is getting involved in a joint venture dedicated to the architecture. The joint venture doesn’t have a name yet, but Qualcomm, NXP, Nordic Semiconductor, Bosch, and memory giant Infineon are all teaming up to form ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136591/qualcomm-starts-a-risc-v-joint-venture/) 2023-08-05T00:25:16Z **Google, Amazon rebuked over unsupported Chromebooks still for sale**
Google resisted pleas to extend the lifetime of Chromebooks set to expire as of this June and throughout the summer. Thirteen Chromebook models have met their death date since June 1 and won’t receive security updates or new features from Google anymore. But that hasn’t stopped the Chromebooks from being listed for sale on sites like Amazon for the same prices as before. Take the Asus Chromebook Flip ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136593/google-amazon-rebuked-over-unsupported-chromebooks-still-for-sale/) 2023-08-05T13:33:23Z **Bram Molenaar, author of vim, passes away**
Bram Molenaar, the original author, maintainer, release manager, and benevolent dictator for life of vim has passed away today. His family announced his passing through a message using Molenaar’s account. :q ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136597/bram-molenaar-author-of-vim-passes-away/) 2023-08-05T13:27:58Z **Pixel Binary Transparency: verifiable security for Pixel devices**
Pixel Binary Transparency responds to a new wave of attacks targeting the software supply chain—that is, attacks on software while in transit to users. These attacks are on the rise in recent years, likely in part because of the enormous impact they can have. In recent years, tens of thousands of software users from Fortune 500 companies to branches of the US government have been affected by supply chain ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136595/pixel-binary-transparency-verifiable-security-for-pixel-devices/) 2023-08-05T23:00:54Z **France’s browser-based website blocking proposal will set a disastrous precedent for the open internet**
In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list. Such a move will ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136599/frances-browser-based-website-blocking-proposal-will-set-a-disastrous-precedent-for-the-open-internet/) 2023-08-05T23:10:11Z **DisplayPort: taming the altmode**
The DisplayPort altmode is semi-proprietary, but it can absolutely be picked apart if we try. Last time, we found a cool appnote describing the DisplayPort altmode in detail, switched the FUSB302 into packet sniffing mode and got packet captures, learned about PD VDMs (vendor-defined messages), and successfully replayed the captured messages to switch a USB-C port into the DisplayPort altmode. Today, we will go through the seven messages that summon the DisplayPort alt ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136601/displayport-taming-the-altmode/) 2023-08-07T08:14:26Z **Google improves tools to remove search results about yourself**
Today, we’re announcing some important new features in Google Search to help you stay in control of your personal information, privacy and online safety. There’s improved tools to remove results about yourself, such as those containing phone numbers and such, as well as easier ways to remove explicit content about yourself, such as photos. Of course, tools such as these merely remove the results from Google S ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136603/google-improves-tools-to-remove-search-results-about-yourself/) 2023-08-07T14:06:28Z **Zoom forces every user to agree to use their data for AI training**
I’ve never used Zoom or similar tools, but I know it’s extraordinarily popular in the business world. You’d make a good one if you informed whomever is responsible for IT at your company that using Zoom puts your company’s data at risk. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136605/zoom-forces-every-user-to-agree-to-use-their-data-for-ai-training/) 2023-08-07T14:25:12Z **Intel graphics drivers now collect telemetry by default**
The latest version of Intel Arc GPU Graphics Software introduced an interesting change that isn’t reflected in the Release Notes. The installer of the 101.4578 beta drivers add a “Compute Improvement Program” (CIP) component as part of the “typical” setup option that is enabled by default. Under the “custom” installer option that you have to activate manually, you get to select which components to install. The Compute Im ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136607/intel-graphics-drivers-now-collect-telemetry-by-default/) 2023-08-07T22:58:01Z **Review: Beepy, a palm-sized Linux hacking playground**
Which is precisely how it feels using using the Beepy from SQFMI. The handheld device, which was formerly known as the Beepberry before its creators received an all-to-predicable formal complaint, is unabashedly designed for Linux nerds. Over the last couple of weeks playing with this first-run hardware, I’ve been compiling kernel drivers, writing custom scripts, and trying (though not always successfully) to get new software in ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136609/review-beepy-a-palm-sized-linux-hacking-playground/) 2023-08-07T23:42:48Z **GNU/Hurd strikes back**
The GNU/Hurd is the Sagrada Família of the Software World: having started to develop in 1990, the GNU/Hurd has yet to reach version 1.0. The Linux kernel, on the other hand, began development in 1993 and was initially considered a “kludge” until the Hurd was completed. It is now matured and widely used. Like the Loch Ness Monster, many believe that GNU/Hurd is vaporware and does not exist. It does exist and continues to evolve, albeit at a slow pace. Just recently, the Debian GNU/Hurd 20 ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136613/gnu-hurd-strikes-back/) 2023-08-07T23:39:30Z **Window Maker 0.96.0 released**
After three years, there’s a new Window Maker release – version 0.96.0 – and it’s got some useful new features. First, the NeXTSTEP-inspired window manager now supports hot corners, so you can send your mouse to a corner of your display and have it execute a command. Second, you can now set keyboard shortcuts for various functions related to taking screenshots, which is a very welcome addition. On top of these, there’s a few smaller new features as well. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136611/window-maker-0-96-0-released/) 2023-08-08T16:18:15Z **Stop using Brave Browser**
The Brave web browser has carved out a niche over the past few years as an alternative to Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and other mainstream web browsers. Some of that has come from its marketing as a privacy-preserving web browser, and it has also been repeatedly evangelized by cryptocurrency enthusiasts. If someone recommends Brave to you, you should ignore them, because they are wrong. Brave Browser is a mess of a software project, and the company building it is even worse. Do ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136616/stop-using-brave-browser/) 2023-08-08T16:20:28Z **Android 14 introduces new cellular connectivity security features**
Android is the first mobile operating system to introduce advanced cellular security mitigations for both consumers and enterprises. Android 14 introduces support for IT administrators to disable 2G support in their managed device fleet. Android 14 also introduces a feature that disables support for null-ciphered cellular connectivity. 2G is not terribly secure, so being able to disable it is a welcom ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136618/android-14-introduces-new-cellular-connectivity-security-features/) 2023-08-08T16:31:55Z **You can now support OSNews through Liberapay**
To round out our options for supporting OSNews, we’re introducing support for Liberapay, an open source alternative to Patreon. OSNews is all about promoting choice – in operating systems, in devices, in software – so giving readers the option of donating through an open source platform, located in the European Union, fits within our values. If you want to donate this way, you can go to our Liberapay page. Liberapay joins the other ways you c ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136620/you-can-now-support-osnews-through-liberapay/) 2023-08-08T19:13:43Z **Cyber-attack on UK’s electoral registers revealed**
The UK’s elections watchdog has revealed it has been the victim of a “complex cyber-attack” potentially affecting millions of voters. The Electoral Commission said unspecified “hostile actors” had managed to gain access to copies of the electoral registers, from August 2021. Hackers also broke into its emails and “control systems” but the attack was not discovered until October last year. The watchdog has warned people to watch out f ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136624/cyber-attack-on-uks-electoral-registers-revealed/) 2023-08-09T12:24:00Z **Chrome OS Flex: a good start with zero follow-through**
I doubt there’s an operating system out there that we have more preconceived notions about than Chrome OS, and most of those notions will be quite negative. Since I had little to no experience with Chrome OS, I decided it was time to address that shortcoming, and install Chrome OS Flex on my Dell XPS 13 9370 (Core i7-8550U, 16GB of RAM, 4K display), and see if there’s any merit in running Google’s desktop operating system. In ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136626/chrome-os-flex-a-good-start-with-zero-follow-through/) 2023-08-09T12:23:34Z **Turning my Framework laptop into a tiny desktop was fun**
It’s 2023, and those who have Framework’s first generation of laptops, containing Intel’s 11th-generation Core processor) might be itching to upgrade, especially with an AMD model around the corner. Or maybe, like me, they find that system’s middling battery life and tricky-to-tame sleep draining (since improved, but not entirely fixed) make for a laptop that doesn’t feel all that portable. Or they’re just ready for some ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136637/turning-my-framework-laptop-into-a-tiny-desktop-was-fun/) 2023-08-11T13:59:47Z **You can install Windows 11 without the third-party bloatware in two clicks**
Installing Windows 11 without third-party bloatware like Candy Crush in just two clicks is possible, and all it takes is setting your region to English (World). No, we’re not kidding, and Microsoft said it’s aware and looking into the reports after we asked the company about the situation. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Windows Latest. “Microsoft is aware and is looking into i ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136644/you-can-install-windows-11-without-the-third-party-bloatware-in-two-clicks/) 2023-08-11T13:58:28Z **CIQ, Oracle and SUSE create Open Enterprise Linux Association**
CIQ, Oracle and SUSE today announced their intent to form the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA), a collaborative trade association to encourage the development of distributions compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) by providing open and free Enterprise Linux (EL) source code. The formation of OpenELA arises from Red Hat’s recent changes to RHEL source code availability. In response, CIQ, Or ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136642/ciq-oracle-and-suse-create-open-enterprise-linux-association/) 2023-08-11T23:36:57Z **ARM’s Cortex A710: winning by default**
ARM Ltd has been dominating the Android world for the better part of the last decade, with their 7-series cores at the forefront of their success. Throughout the late 2010s, the Cortex A73, A75, and A76 steadily iterated on performance while maintaining excellent energy efficiency. Qualcomm, and then Samsung decided licensing ARM’s cores would be easier than trying to outdo them. Apple remained a notable rival, but their core designs were not available outsi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136647/arms-cortex-a710-winning-by-default/) 2023-08-11T23:43:12Z **Firefox for Android to get full extension support in the coming months**
Mozilla has announced that the Android version of Firefox will soon support any and all extensions, and has informed extension developers about this change. For the past few years Firefox for Android officially supported a small subset of extensions while we focused our efforts on strengthening core Firefox for Android functionality and understanding the unique needs of mobile browser users. ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136651/firefox-for-android-to-get-full-extension-support-in-the-coming-months/) 2023-08-11T23:39:51Z **Haiku OS support upstreamed into GCC**
Developers of the BeOS-inspired Haiku operating system have long been carrying patches for supporting the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) on their platform while this week the code was upstreamed for GCC 14. This commit to mainline GCC git adds support for the Haiku operating system. Excellent news, and well-deserved. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136649/haiku-os-support-upstreamed-into-gcc/) 2023-08-12T22:54:57Z **Customizing COSMIC: theming and applications**
It’s Back to School season, so grab yourself a brand new discounted computer and let’s get back to COSMIC class! Our new, not yet released Rust-based desktop environment for Pop!\_OS and other Linux distros is filling out with some essential systems that cater the DE to both users and developers alike. Customization is one of our main focuses for COSMIC, and was a huge focus for us in August, too. There’s a lot of cool stuff in this update abo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136657/customizing-cosmic-theming-and-applications/) 2023-08-13T18:36:13Z **Why macOS anti-malware scans can behave oddly**
macOS Catalina and later include an anti-malware scanning service, XProtect Remediator (XPR), that periodically checks your Mac for known malware. If it detects anything untoward, it tries to remove it in a process Apple terms remediation. Because this is all performed as a background service, XPR doesn’t inform you when it scans, or when it detects and remediates malware. Instead it records those events in the log, and in Ventura and later ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136666/why-macos-anti-malware-scans-can-behave-oddly/) 2023-08-13T18:33:29Z **Android 14 Beta 5 released**
Beta 5 is our third Platform Stable Android 14 release, which means that the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are final for you to review and integrate into your apps, and you can publish apps on Google Play targeting Android 14’s SDK version 34. It includes the latest fixes and optimizations, giving you everything you need to complete your testing. The final release is quite close now. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136664/android-14-beta-5-released/) 2023-08-13T18:51:06Z **Desktop Linux has a Firefox problem**
There’s no denying that the browser is the single-most important application on any operating system, whether that be on desktops and laptops or on mobile devices. Without a capable, fast, and solid browser, the usefulness of an operating system decreases exponentially, to the point where I’m quite sure virtually nobody’s going to use an operating system for regular, normal use if it doesn’t have a browser. Having an at least somewhat useable browser is what e ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136653/desktop-linux-has-a-firefox-problem/) 2023-08-14T21:01:01Z **ZFSBootMenu: a bootloader for booting Linux on ZFS**
ZFSBootMenu is a bootloader that provides a powerful and flexible discovery, manipulation and booting of Linux on ZFS. Originally inspired by the FreeBSD bootloader, ZFSBootMenu leverages the features of modern OpenZFS to allow users to choose among multiple “boot environments” (which may represent different versions of a Linux distribution, earlier snapshots of a common root, or entirely different distributions), manipulate snapsh ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136677/zfsbootmenu-a-bootloader-for-booting-linux-on-zfs/) 2023-08-14T20:57:26Z **Why font-size must never be in pixels**
Certain font-related CSS properties will render your site completely inaccessible if their value is declared using pixels even once. Just read it and absorb the information. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136675/why-font-size-must-never-be-in-pixels/) 2023-08-15T09:07:54Z **The Kids Online Safety Act isn’t all right, critics say**
Debate continues to rage over the federal Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which seeks to hold platforms liable for feeding harmful content to minors. KOSA is lawmakers’ answer to whistleblower Frances Haugen’s shocking revelations to Congress. In 2021, Haugen leaked documents and provided testimony alleging that Facebook knew that its platform was addictive and was harming teens—but blinded by its pursuit of profits, it cho ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136679/the-kids-online-safety-act-isnt-all-right-critics-say/) 2023-08-15T09:13:35Z **Correction: support for Haiku not upstreamed into GCC**
A necessary correction to an earlier post: support for Haiku has not been upstreamed into GCC. From the Haiku development mailing list: It is definitely our goal to get Haiku’s GCC toolchain upstream, and that commit does indeed nudge us a little in that direction… However it’s a small portion of a larger commit adding architecture support. Good to have this cleared up. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136681/correction-support-for-haiku-not-upstreamed-into-gcc/) 2023-08-16T08:49:24Z **3 advantages to running FreeBSD as your server operating system**
FreeBSD is a compelling and cutting-edge operating system that provides a wealth of features and advantages. FreeBSD’s deep OpenZFS integration, completely customizable packaging, and the ability to manage a huge fleet with a small team make it a clear contender for consideration in your next infrastructure build. This one’s written by a company that, among other things, sells FreeBSD and OpenZFS support, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136686/3-advantages-to-running-freebsd-as-your-server-operating-system/) 2023-08-16T16:59:21Z **How the iMac saved Apple**
The original iMac entered a computing world that was in desperate need of a shake-up. After the wild early days of the personal computer revolution, things had become stagnant by the mid-1990s. Apple had spent a decade frittering away the Mac’s advantages until most of them were gone, blown out of the water by the enormous splash of Windows 95. It was the era of beige desktop computers chained to big CRT displays and other peripherals. In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to an Apple that ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136688/how-the-imac-saved-apple/) 2023-08-17T10:20:15Z **Bringing safety check to the chrome://extensions page**
Won’t belong now until “violating Chrome Web Store policy” will be applied to ad blockers. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136691/bringing-safety-check-to-the-chrome-extensions-page/) 2023-08-17T10:24:47Z **Chrome: towards HTTPS by default**
For the past several years, more than 90% of Chrome users’ navigations have been to HTTPS sites, across all major platforms. Thankfully, that means that most traffic is encrypted and authenticated, and thus safe from network attackers. However, a stubborn 5-10% of traffic has remained on HTTP, allowing attackers to eavesdrop on or change that data. Chrome shows a warning in the address bar when a connection to a site is not secure, but we believe this is insufficient ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136693/chrome-towards-https-by-default/) 2023-08-17T20:31:25Z **Too many fonts in Windows 10 can cause slow application starts**
I have struggled, literally for years, with Quicken being dog slow to start. It could take 30+ seconds to start. From what I could remember, this problem has existed since I first installed Windows 10. The title gives the answer away, but yes, it’s exactly what it says – some applications on Windows will load every single font on the system before loading the rest of the application. If you have a lot of fo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136695/too-many-fonts-in-windows-10-can-cause-slow-application-starts/) 2023-08-17T22:31:14Z **Chromebooks with Nvidia GPUs get the chopping block**
About Chromebooks reports: This isn’t turning out to be a good week if you’re a Chromebook hardware fan. Previously planned Chromebooks with Nvidia GPUs are no longer in the works. This follows Monday’s news that Qualcomm Gen 3 Snapdragon 7c Chromebooks were canceled. Indeed, a reader comment from the Snapdragon post pointed out the Google code that explains, in no uncertain terms, that several ChromeOS baseboards have been canc ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136697/chromebooks-with-nvidia-gpus-get-the-chopping-block/) 2023-08-17T22:35:49Z **Microsoft makes more preinstalled Widnows 11 applications removable**
Microsoft is making it possible to remove a few more of the preinstalled Windows 11 applications. In the release notes for a recent Insider Preview, build 25931, the company notes: In addition to the Camera app and Cortana, the Photos app, People app, and Remote Desktop (MSTSC) client can be uninstalled. In addition, this build also deprecates Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) and Remote Mailsl ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136700/microsoft-makes-more-preinstalled-widnows-11-applications-removable/) 2023-08-18T09:34:24Z **Google is desperate to sell Pixel Tablets, pushing ads via notifications**
It looks like Google is desperate to move more Pixel Tablet units, with the company widely using notifications from the Google Home app to promote the new tablet launched earlier this year. Many people report seeing a “Meet the Google Pixel Tablet” banner in their notifications, with a tap on it sending them straight to its product listing on the Google Store. Samsung received hefty criti ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136702/google-is-desperate-to-sell-pixel-tablets-pushing-ads-via-notifications/) 2023-08-18T09:46:48Z **The Xbox 360 Store will close July 2024**
Microsoft has announced that on 29 July, 2024, the Xbox 360 Store on the Xbox 360 and the Xbox 360 Marketplace on the web will close their doors. For once, one of these service or online store shutdowns is actually being handled well, as Microsoft states: This change will not affect your ability to play Xbox 360 games or DLC you have already purchased. Xbox 360 game content previously purchased will still be available to play , not only the Xbox 360 co ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136706/the-xbox-360-store-will-close-july-2024/) 2023-08-18T20:41:19Z **LG launches webOS tablet**
This headline is entirely correct and I will stand by it. This is one of those products that I truly cannot wait to experience and review firsthand: LG is bringing the quirky, one-of-a-kind StanbyME Go to the United States later this month for $999.99. If you missed its international launch, which flew under the radar for many, let me catch you up: the StanbyME Go is a 27-inch 1080p LCD TV housed in a large suitcase that also contains a built-in battery and 20-watt speakers. The id ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136708/lg-launches-webos-tablet/) 2023-08-19T20:52:18Z **Browsing the web with a WonderSwan in 2023**
In the year 1999, Bandai announced the MobileWonderGate – a device which allowed connecting a WonderSwan to the Internet thanks to a collaboration with the mobile network NTT DoCoMo. This was primarily used by a selection games to provide downloadable content, as expected for this type of handheld attachment. … Oh, it also came with a web browser supporting a subset of HTML 3.2, tables, GIF images, reading Japanese websites, a bookmark system, an ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136713/browsing-the-web-with-a-wonderswan-in-2023/) 2023-08-19T20:57:30Z **Comparing Windows uninstallers, getting upset and then deciding to make my own**
Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t just let this one go. I tested all the popular Windows uninstallers and I didn’t like what I saw. I thought many of these programs had some rudimentary issues with their user interface, and they just didn’t work that well. How difficult could it really be to do something better? As it turned out, it was very difficult, actually. It’s 2023, and ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136715/comparing-windows-uninstallers-getting-upset-and-then-deciding-to-make-my-own/) 2023-08-19T22:35:30Z **$HOME, not so sweet $HOME**
This post is a detailed discussion into user profiles, their directories, and how they are—to put it bluntly—in total disarray on Windows and Linux (I haven’t used a Mac in ages, but I assume the situation is very similar there, too). Applications treat the user profile as a dumping ground, and any user with a reasonably wide list of installed software will find their user profile very difficult to traverse after some time in use. There are platform conventions and attempts to stand ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136717/home-not-so-sweet-home/) 2023-08-21T17:55:54Z **Budgie 10.8 released**
Budgie 10.8 is a brand new release series for Budgie Desktop, featuring improvements to Budgie Menu, adoption of StatusNotifier support in System Tray, Magpie v0.x support, and more! I’m quite happy Budgie is back on track after a few leaner years. Development has picked up, there’s a clear roadmap, and it’s fun to follow along with the changes and improvements. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136722/budgie-10-8-released/) 2023-08-21T18:34:42Z **A look back: Galaxy word processor**
As an undergraduate student in the early 1990s, I wrote all my class papers using WordPerfect for DOS. WordPerfect was a powerful desktop word processor that was used in offices all over the world. But WordPerfect was quite expensive; my student edition of WordPerfect cost around $300. When the new version of WordPerfect came out, I just couldn’t afford to buy it. Fortunately, the shareware market was starting to take off around this time. “Shareware” was a new m ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136724/a-look-back-galaxy-word-processor/) 2023-08-21T18:37:55Z **NVIDIA BIOS signature lock broken, vBIOS modding and crossflash enabled**
You can now play with NVIDIA GeForce graphics card BIOS like it’s 2013! Over the last decade, NVIDIA had effectively killed video BIOS modding by introducing BIOS signature checks. With GeForce 900-series “Maxwell,” the company added an on-die security processor on all its GPUs, codenamed “Falcon,” which among other things, prevents the GPU from booting with unauthorized firmware. OMGVflash ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136727/nvidia-bios-signature-lock-broken-vbios-modding-and-crossflash-enabled/) 2023-08-21T19:19:52Z **5 years ago Valve released Proton forever changing Linux gaming**
Liam Dawe at GamingOnLinux looks back at the release of Valve’s Proton, five years ago today. Proton just makes a lot of sense. It didn’t take long for Valve to expand Proton to go initially from a few select Valve-approved titles, to being able to run anything we choose to try with it. From there, Linux gaming just seemingly exploded. And then eventually we saw why Valve made Proton with the Steam Deck a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136729/5-years-ago-valve-released-proton-forever-changing-linux-gaming/) 2023-08-22T00:04:30Z **Google claims ART 13 made Android apps launch 30% faster**
ART is the engine behind the Android operating system (OS). It provides the runtime and core APIs that all apps and most OS services rely on. Both Java and Kotlin are compiled down to bytecode executed by ART. Improvements in the runtime, compiler and core API benefit all developers making app execution faster and bytecode compilation more efficient. While parts of Android are customizable by device manufacturers, ART i ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136732/google-claims-art-13-made-android-apps-launch-30-faster/) 2023-08-22T08:57:29Z **MacLynx beta 5: UTF-8, pull-down menus and more dialogue boxes**
I’ve been working off and on doing further Mac-ification to my updated fork of MacLynx, the System 7-compatible port of the venerable text browser Lynx for classic 68K Macintoshes (and Power Macs) running A/UX 3.x or System 7.x and later. There’s still more to do, but a lot has been worked in since I last dropped beta 4, so it’s time for another save point. Meet MacLynx “beta 5”. Extraordinary work, and a gre ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136736/maclynx-beta-5-utf-8-pull-down-menus-and-more-dialogue-boxes/) 2023-08-22T09:05:23Z **FreeBSD experimenting with a port of NVIDIA’s Linux open DRM kernel Driver**
FreeBSD developers are looking at using the open-source NVIDIA kernel driver being developed by NVIDIA as an open-source Direct Rendering Manager driver that is out-of-tree, but not to be confused with Nouveau. With that kernel driver they are able to provide this nvidia-drm-kmod driver on their own and within the ports collection for better integration with the kernel and those wanti ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136738/freebsd-experimenting-with-a-port-of-nvidias-linux-open-drm-kernel-driver/) 2023-08-23T00:34:33Z **The history of Windows 2.0**
Despite all of the litigation, Windows 2 made it to market, gained 3rd party support, and signaled a massive transition in computing that all of the competition had failed to do. With Windows 2, millions of people were using a graphical desktop with graphical applications. The mouse was made a standard tool. PCs were now being urged to adopt powerful graphics adapters. Many people claim Windows 2 to be a failure, but this is not an accurate assessment. While it didn’t sell to t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136743/the-history-of-windows-2-0/) 2023-08-23T01:40:54Z **Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron**
You can still do a clean install of Windows, and it’s arguably easier than ever, with official Microsoft-sanctioned install media easily accessible and Windows Update capable of grabbing most of the drivers that most computers need for basic functionality. The problem is that a “clean install” doesn’t feel as clean as it used to, and unfortunately for us, it’s an inside job—it’s Microsoft, not third parties, that i ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136745/windows-11-has-made-the-clean-windows-install-an-oxymoron/) 2023-08-23T01:44:23Z **What you need to know about Project Mainline in Android 14 and beyond**
Google introduced Project Mainline in Android 10, modularizing OS components so feature and security updates could be delivered through Google Play instead of regular OTA updates. Android 10 launched with 12 supported Mainline modules, but in the latest release, that number has ballooned to 37 updatable modules. Here’s a look at how Project Mainline is changing in Android 14 and beyond. If you ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136747/what-you-need-to-know-about-project-mainline-in-android-14-and-beyond/) 2023-08-23T16:45:14Z **A visit to the one-man computer factory**
The computer on Keegan McNamara’s desk is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The machine sits on a light wood table, bathed in the sunlight coming into the second floor of McNamara’s Los Angeles house. McNamara, tall and blonde in jeans and a light khaki Carhartt jacket, walks over to the desk, sits down, and reaches over to hit the power button. Then he pauses. He forgot something. He digs into his pants pocket, pulls out his keys, picks a silver one ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136750/a-visit-to-the-one-man-computer-factory/) 2023-08-23T21:54:12Z **IBM’s generative AI tool aims to refactor ancient COBOL code for its mainframes**
Ars Technica writes: There are hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL code running on production systems worldwide. That’s not ideal for a language over 60 years old and whose primary architects are mostly retired or dead. IBM, eager to keep those legacy functions on its Z mainframe systems, wants that code rewritten in Java. It tried getting humans to do it a few years back ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136752/ibms-generative-ai-tool-aims-to-refactor-ancient-cobol-code-for-its-mainframes/) 2023-08-23T23:23:04Z **Adding Wi-Fi to the Macintosh Portable**
Over the past year or so, I’ve been working with other BlueSCSI developers to add Wi-Fi functionality to their open-hardware SCSI device, enabling Wi-Fi support for old Macs and other vintage computers going back some 36 years. This is my Macintosh Portable M5126. It’s very Macintosh and hardly portable. For some reason I’m using it on my lawn reading the Wi-Fi Wikipedia article over Wi-Fi through my Wikipedia application for System 6, with my Wi-Fi Desk ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136754/adding-wi-fi-to-the-macintosh-portable/) 2023-08-23T23:29:00Z **Nvidia just made $6 billion in pure profit over the AI boom**
The company raked in $13.5 billion in revenue since May, it revealed in its Q2 2024 earnings, with the unprecedented demand for its generative AI chips blowing past any difficulty it might have had selling desktop and laptop GPUs into a shrinking PC industry. Data center accounted for a record $10.32 billion of that revenue, more than doubling in just one quarter, and Nvidia made $6.188 billion in profit as a resu ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136756/nvidia-just-made-6-billion-in-pure-profit-over-the-ai-boom/) 2023-08-23T23:33:07Z **YouTube may face billions in fines if FTC confirms child privacy violations**
Four nonprofit groups seeking to protect kids’ privacy online asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate YouTube today, after back-to-back reports allegedly showed that YouTube is still targeting personalized ads on videos “made for kids”. Now it has become urgent that the FTC probe YouTube’s data and advertising practices, the groups’ letter said, and potentially inte ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136758/youtube-may-face-billions-in-fines-if-ftc-confirms-child-privacy-violations/) 2023-08-23T23:38:42Z **Intel doc suggests Microsoft may limit Wi-Fi 7 to Windows 11, Windows 12, and newer**
Meanwhile, if you are on Windows 11 and wondering about its compatibility with your system, a document from Intel, spotted by Twitter (X) user Chi11eddog, seemingly confirms that Windows 11 is going to be supported. And although the document does not mention Windows 12, which is expected given that the product has not even been officially announced yet (Microsoft rece ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136762/intel-doc-suggests-microsoft-may-limit-wi-fi-7-to-windows-11-windows-12-and-newer/) 2023-08-24T16:43:26Z **Microsoft Edge accidentally flags Chrome setup as ‘harmful’ on Windows 11**
Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 and Windows 11 has again flagged ChromeSetup.exe – the installation file for Google’s famous Chrome browser – as potentially harmful. Microsoft Edge’s built-in security feature suggests users delete ChromeSetup.exe and try Edge via multiple pop-up messages. Windows Latest understands Microsoft Edge 116 has incorrectly flagged ChromeSetup.exe as potentially ha ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136769/microsoft-edge-accidentally-flags-chrome-setup-as-harmful-on-windows-11/) 2023-08-24T16:38:58Z **Microsoft brings Python to Excel**
Python is one of the most popular programming languages today, loved by businesses and students alike and Excel is an essential tool to organize, manipulate and analyze all kinds of data. But, until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to make those two worlds work together. Today, we are excited to introduce the Public Preview of Python in Excel – making it possible to integrate Python and Excel analytics within the same Excel grid for uninterrupted workflow.  Python ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136767/microsoft-brings-python-to-excel/) 2023-08-24T22:04:17Z **FreeBSD on Firecracker**
In June 2022, I started work on porting FreeBSD to run on Firecracker. My interest was driven by a few factors. First, I had been doing a lot of work on speeding up the FreeBSD boot process and wanted to know the limits that could be reached with a minimal hypervisor. Second, porting FreeBSD to new platforms always helps to reveal bugs — both in FreeBSD and on those platforms. Third, AWS Lambda only supports Linux at present; I’m always eager to make FreeBSD more available in AWS (alth ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136772/freebsd-on-firecracker/) 2023-08-24T22:15:06Z **Bypassing Bitlocker using a cheap logic analyzer on a Lenovo laptop**
The BitLocker partition is encrypted using the Full Volume Encryption Key (FVEK). The FVEK itself is encrypted using the Volume Master Key (VMK) and stored on the disk, next to the encrypted data. This permits key rotations without re-encrypting the whole disk. The VMK is stored in the TPM. Thus the disk can only be decrypted when booted from this computer (there is a recovery mechanism in Active ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136775/bypassing-bitlocker-using-a-cheap-logic-analyzer-on-a-lenovo-laptop/) 2023-08-24T23:19:08Z **Stronger protection for additional sensitive actions taken in Gmail**
Google is further strengthening its protections around Gmail, and from now on, you’ll have to verify it’s you through whatever 2FA method you prefer. It covers changing settings related to filters, forwarding, and IMAP access. When these actions are taken, Google will evaluate the session attempting the action, and if it’s deemed risky, it will be challenged with a “Verify it’s you” prompt. Throug ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136778/stronger-protection-for-additional-sensitive-actions-taken-in-gmail/) 2023-08-25T17:16:12Z **Google’s steps to comply with the EU’s DSA**
Last year the European Union enacted a new set of regulations known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), designed to harmonize content regulations across the EU and create specific processes for online content moderation. The DSA applies to many different online services – from marketplaces and app stores to online video sharing platforms and search engines. As a result, we have adapted many of our long-standing trust and safety processes and changed ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136791/googles-steps-to-comply-with-the-eus-dsa/) 2023-08-25T17:20:01Z **DeviceTree overlays on Zephyr RTOS: adding I2C or SPI**
After 18 months developing with the Zephyr RTOS, I’m starting to become a strong proponent. In my opinion, one of the key advantages of the Zephyr RTOS is the hardware abstraction. It allows applications to be written for Zephyr that are platform independent and can be moved between different boards including different manufacturers of microcontrollers. In a world still suffering from chip shortages, it has been a breath of f ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136793/devicetree-overlays-on-zephyr-rtos-adding-i2c-or-spi/) 2023-08-25T18:17:38Z **OSNews launches Gemini capsule**
Have you ever wanted a more lightweight version of OSNews? A version that loads more optimally inside a terminal? Well, I’ve got good news for you: OSNews is now available on Gemini. What is Gemini? This is how the project’s website describes it: Gemini is a new internet technology supporting an electronic library of interconnected text documents. That’s not a new idea, but it’s not old fashioned either. It’s timeless, and deserves tools which treat it as a first class ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136770/osnews-launches-gemini-capsule/) 2023-08-26T12:12:47Z **Ubuntu Desktop: charting a course for the future**
It has been a little while since we shared our vision for Ubuntu Desktop, and explained how our current roadmap fits into our long term strategic thinking. Recently, we embarked on an internal exercise to consolidate and bring structure to our values and goals for how we plan to evolve the desktop experience over the next few years. This post is designed to share the output of those discussions and give insight into the direction we’re ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136804/ubuntu-desktop-charting-a-course-for-the-future/) 2023-08-26T12:16:14Z **Casio CALEID XM-700 Mobile Navigator (1997)**
At some point last year (shortly before I began writing this blog post!) I found reference to a hanafuda video game created in 1998 for the Casio CALEID XM-700 Mobile Navigator on a random old, Japanese website. It turns out this device is a long-forgotten handheld computer that was released in 1997, only in Japan. The device is what you might refer to as a PIM or PDA, roughly equivalent to Apple Newton or Palm Pilot, particularly as it featured ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136806/casio-caleid-xm-700-mobile-navigator-1997/) 2023-08-27T00:09:44Z **Ichido is a ’90s search engine with interesting features**
Ichido is a set of experimental search engines and software projects created by Anthony Mancini. The flagship project is the Ichido general purpose search engine, a classic search engine with its own independent index. Now, indexing the web is hard and this is in beta so the search results aren’t exactly what you’d call competitive, but I have to say – the user interface for this search engine is downright fantastic. It ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136808/ichido-is-a-90s-search-engine-with-interesting-features/) 2023-08-27T00:12:00Z **Linux on the Commodore 64**
“But does it run Linux?” can now be finally and affirmatively answered for the Commodore C64! There is a catch (rather: a couple) of course: It runs extremely slowly and it needs a RAM Expansion Unit (REU), as there is no chance to fit it all into just 64KiB. It even emulates virtual memory with an MMU. Insanity. A real C64 would take about a week (!) to boot Linux. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136810/linux-on-the-commodore-64/) 2023-08-27T15:58:20Z **Not everything is secret in encrypted apps like iMessage and WhatsApp**
The mess I’m describing — end-to-end encryption but with certain exceptions — may be a healthy balance of your privacy and our safety. The problem is it’s confusing to know what is encrypted and secret in communications apps, what is not and why it might matter to you. To illuminate the nuances, I broke down five questions about end-to-end encryption for five communications apps. This is strai ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136813/not-everything-is-secret-in-encrypted-apps-like-imessage-and-whatsapp/) 2023-08-27T18:17:55Z **Five changes EU consumers will notice due to the DSA**
The EU Digital Services Act went into effect last Friday, and since there’s an insane amount of misinformation from big tech astroturfers about what the DSA means, it’s time to list what the DSA really does for people in the EU. People in the 27-nation European Union can alter some of what shows up when they search, scroll and share on the biggest social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook and other tech giants ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136816/five-changes-eu-consumers-will-notice-due-to-the-dsa/) 2023-08-27T21:34:37Z **Prisoners of Google Android development**
We have been in charge of maintaining one legacy Android app for our customer. It is an app, which is used by end-customers in production, but it does not have any active development going on because it’s been ready for years now. If it would be up to us, then we would not touch that app and would let it live its life happily ever after. Of course, there is no happily ever after when closed application stores are involved, so everything went south from ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136819/prisoners-of-google-android-development/) 2023-08-27T21:39:59Z **ArcaOS 5.1 released**
In a first for any OS/2-based distribution, ArcaOS 5.1 supports installation on the latest generation of UEFI-based systems, and includes the ability to install to GPT-based disk layouts. This enables ArcaOS 5.1 to install on a wide array of modern hardware. ArcaOS 5.1.0 can be used for new installs or to upgrade any prior version of ArcaOS 5. If installing from USB stick, the USB install stick may be created using any major operating system at hand (Windows, Linux, MacOS, and of course, OS/ ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136821/arcaos-5-1-released/) 2023-08-28T15:04:08Z **IBM introduces enterprise magnetic tape drive that holds 50TB per cartridge**
Magnetic tape drives have long occupied the role that hard drives have shifted toward since the emergence of SSDs – cost-effective cold storage. Although they’re too slow for most users, recent developments allow magnetic drives to carry hundreds of gigabytes per square inch of tape. This week, IBM’s offerings in the space took another step forward. The company’s new TS1170 drive c ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136824/ibm-introduces-enterprise-magnetic-tape-drive-that-holds-50tb-per-cartridge/) 2023-08-28T18:17:36Z **The end of the Googleverse**
Google officially went online later in 1998. It quickly became so inseparable from both the way we use the internet and, eventually, culture itself, that we almost lack the language to describe what Google’s impact over the last 25 years has actually been. It’s like asking a fish to explain what the ocean is. And yet, all around us are signs that the era of “peak Google” is ending or, possibly, already over. There is a growing chorus of complaints that Google is not as accurate ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136829/the-end-of-the-googleverse/) 2023-08-28T19:10:48Z **How to create a Qt 5 ARM/Intel universal binary for Mac**
I recently released a big update for my Mac ROM SIMM Programmer software which is written using Qt for cross-platform compatibility. As part of the update I wanted to release the Mac build as a universal x86\_64/arm64 binary so that M1/M2 Mac users would be able to run it natively. It doesn’t currently compile for Qt 6, although I think I can fix that in the future without too much effort. However, Qt 5.15.9 and later do ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136831/how-to-create-a-qt-5-arm-intel-universal-binary-for-mac/) 2023-08-28T23:04:11Z **Microsoft pulls Bing ads targeting Google Chrome on Windows 11 after outrage**
Microsoft has just paused Bing ads targeting Chrome users who have set Google as the default search engine. Windows 11 (and 10) users are seeing more Bing and Edge of late, and the most recent ad appears on top of games as the tech giant trying to push folks to use Bing rather than Google search in Chrome. As I reported on Sunday, Microsoft aggressively pushed Bing to Chrome user ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136835/microsoft-pulls-bing-ads-targeting-google-chrome-on-windows-11-after-outrage/) 2023-08-29T12:49:58Z **Ubuntu 23.04 broke 32-bit app support (and no-one noticed)**
Turns out that installing the Steam client from the Ubuntu repos on a new Ubuntu 23.04 install doesn’t work – and barely anyone noticed. Which is kind of surprising given the popularity of Steam, but also kind of not — and I’ll get to why in a second. So what’s the rub? This whole saga seems to illustrate that most Steam users on Linux install Steam from Valve itself, instead of using the packaged version. Interestin ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136826/ubuntu-23-04-broke-32-bit-app-support-and-no-one-noticed/) 2023-08-29T13:01:14Z **Compiling Rust for .NET, using only tea and stubbornness**
In this article, I describe my journey creating a barely functional rust backend enabling compilation for the .NET runtime (Usually used to run C# and F#). It is currently in the proof-of-concept stage, but I believe it still may be of some interest. Rust is everywhere. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136838/compiling-rust-for-net-using-only-tea-and-stubbornness/) 2023-08-29T17:36:53Z **ObjFW 1.0 released**
ObjFW is a portable, lightweight framework for the Objective-C language. It enables you to write an application in Objective-C that will run on any platform supported by ObjFW without having to worry about differences between operating systems or various frameworks you would otherwise need if you want to be portable. It supports all modern Objective-C features when using Clang, but is also compatible with GCC ≥ 4.6 to allow maximum portability. ObjFW version 1.0 has just been released, which i ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136840/objfw-1-0-released/) 2023-08-29T18:22:51Z **Now Available: Duet AI for Google Workspace**
From Google’s Workspaces Blog: Today we’re making Duet AI for Google Workspace generally available, and you can get started now with a no-cost trial. With over 3 billion users and more than 10 million paying customers who rely on it every day to get things done, Google Workspace is the world’s most popular productivity tool. Our pioneering technology makes collaborating with people easy, fun, and ubiquitously available. With the introduction of ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136844/now-available-duet-ai-for-google-workspace/) 2023-08-29T18:38:59Z **The popularity of DOS/4GW made Windows 95 game compatibility a little easier, but with higher stakes**
By far, the most popular so-called DOS Extender in the early 1990’s was DOS/4GW. MS-DOS game compatibility occupied a very large portion of my time during Windows 95 development, so I saw a lot of DOS Extender banners, most frequently the DOS/4GW banner. Now, you might wonder, “How did these games even run in Windows 95 if they came ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136846/the-popularity-of-dos-4gw-made-windows-95-game-compatibility-a-little-easier-but-with-higher-stakes/) 2023-08-30T12:51:21Z **Linux 6.6 to better protect against the illicit behavior of NVIDIA’s proprietary driver**
The Linux 6.6 modules infrastructure is changing to better protect against the illicit behavior of NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver. Luis Chamberlain sent out the modules changes today for the Linux 6.6 merge window. Most notable with the modules update is a change that better builds up the defenses against NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver from using GPL- ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136850/linux-6-6-to-better-protect-against-the-illicit-behavior-of-nvidias-proprietary-driver/) 2023-08-30T13:02:24Z **Microsoft to stop opening Windows system links in Edge, but only for users in the European Union**
Currently, in Windows 11, links contained in Windows system components, like, say, in the Settings application, are always opened in Edge, completely disregarding your default browser setting. Well, thanks to the European Union’s new Digital Services Act, this is going to change – but only for users in the European Economic Area. The latest ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136854/microsoft-to-stop-opening-windows-system-links-in-edge-but-only-for-users-in-the-european-union/) 2023-08-30T23:46:55Z **Making Amiga IFF thumbnails work in Linux**
I was having an email conversation with Stoo Cambridge, and he mentioned that he was having trouble making his Linux machine display thumbnails of Amiga IFF/ILBM files. It turns out I have a solution for him, so I am sharing it here to help anyone else. The number of people to whom this is relevant must be minute, but that’s exactly what why it’s perfect OSNews material. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136858/making-amiga-iff-thumbnails-work-in-linux/) 2023-08-30T23:54:25Z **Windows BFS drivers gets an update**
Haiku developer PulkoMandy has released a new version of the BFS Windows driver, fixing some problems. In case you need to access your BFS (and possibly SkyFS, but I can’t test that) partitions from Windows, I just fixed some problems in and made a binary available. With Haiku becoming increasingly useable on a day-to-day basis, tools like these to make the cross-platform life just a bit easier are essential, so I’m glad the Haiku developers are dedicating some ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136860/windows-bfs-drivers-gets-an-update/) 2023-08-30T23:58:02Z **Fomos: experimental OS, written in Rust**
I wanted to experiment with Non-Unix OS ideas. Exo-kernels are interesting, but it is mostly a theory. This project helps me understand the challenges involved in that pattern. OS development is extremely hard, Rust makes it more bearable. There’s some fascinating ideas in this experimental project. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136862/fomos-experimental-os-written-in-rust/) 2023-08-31T00:00:05Z **Multiplix: an operating system kernel for RISC-V and AArch64 SBCs**
Multiplix is a small operating system serving as the foundation for some research projects in operating systems. It is currently designed as a monolithic kernel plus a special kernel monitor that runs at a higher privilege level. Multiplix is very much in-progress. The current status is that Multiplix can boot all cores, enable virtual memory and interrupts, supports multiple user-mode processes with a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136865/multiplix-an-operating-system-kernel-for-risc-v-and-aarch64-sbcs/) 2023-08-31T00:10:27Z **Regolith Desktop 3.0 released**
The Regolith Desktop 3.0 has been released for Ubuntu Focal, Jammy, Lunar, and Debian Bullseye and Bookworm. A new Wayland-based session is available (for Jammy, Lunar, and Bookworm) as well as the existing X11 session. Regolith Desktop is a keyboard-focused, tiling desktop environment, and this new release comes with tons of new features even aside from the Wayland work. There’s now fractional scaling for resolutions higher than 1920×1080, as well as a whole boatload of ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136868/regolith-desktop-3-0-released/) 2023-08-31T12:59:13Z **Under EU pressure, Microsoft unbundles Teams from Office in the EU**
Last month, the European Commission announced that it had opened a formal investigation regarding Microsoft’s bundling of Microsoft Teams with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites for business customers. As we said at the time, “we will continue to cooperate with the Commission and remain committed to finding solutions that will address its concerns.” Today we are announcing proactive changes that we ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136870/under-eu-pressure-microsoft-unbundles-teams-from-office-in-the-eu/) 2023-08-31T20:02:39Z **ReiserFS officially declared “obsolete”**
As part of updates to the older file-system drivers for Linux 6.6, the ReiserFS file-system is no longer marked as “Supported” but is officially treated as “Obsolete” within the Linux kernel. The linux-fs merge for the Linux 6.6 cycle now treats ReiserFS as obsolete, the file-system long ago used by default on the likes of SUSE Linux. Last year with Linux 5.18 ReiserFS was deprecated and now with it being obsolete, it will likely be dropped from the main ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136875/reiserfs-officially-declared-obsolete/) 2023-08-31T22:20:05Z **Wayland breaks your bad software**
X11 is, to put it simply, not at all fit for any modern system. Full stop. Everything to make it work on modern systems are just hacks. Don’t even try to get away with “well, it just works for me” or “but Wayland no worky”. Unless your workflow (and hardware) comes from 20+ years ago, you have almost no reason to stick with Xorg, especially as it continues to get worse and worse when the user experience relies on newer and newer features. Almost everything that didn ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136877/wayland-breaks-your-bad-software/) 2023-08-31T22:27:54Z **Microsoft adds autosave to Notepad**
Microsoft is testing an incredibly welcome feature in Notepad. With this update, Notepad will start automatically saving your session state allowing you to close Notepad without any interrupting dialogs and then pick up where you left off when you return. Notepad will automatically restore previously open tabs as well as unsaved content and edits across those open tabs. Saved session state does not impact any of your files, though, and it is still your choice wh ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136881/microsoft-adds-autosave-to-notepad/) 2023-09-01T17:53:50Z **A deep dive into Single Pair Ethernet**
Having used a wide range of field device communications busses from simple 4-20mA, classic serial busses like UART and Modbus, and more modern CAN bus, native USB, and Ethernet options I’m always playing with different transports and protocols to see what solutions make sense in my grab-bag of designs for hardware projects. I first became aware of Single Pair Ethernet when I was mindlessly browsing Sparkfun’s new products announcements a while ago, but did ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136888/a-deep-dive-into-single-pair-ethernet/) 2023-09-01T17:51:17Z **Google kills Pixel Pass subscription service**
With the introduction of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro back in 2021, Google also announced a new subscription service called Pixel Pass. This Pixel Pass would allow you to pay a monthly fee to cover the newest Pixel phone, your YouTube Premium subscription, storage with Google One, and Google Play Pass. Today, Google quietly discontinued the Pixel Pass (effective August 29), so I hope you weren’t expecting to take advantage with the Pixel 8 ser ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136886/google-kills-pixel-pass-subscription-service/) 2023-09-01T22:03:10Z **Why is .US being used to phish so many of us?**
Domain names ending in “.US” — the top-level domain for the United States — are among the most prevalent in phishing scams, new research shows. This is noteworthy because .US is overseen by the U.S. government, which is frequently the target of phishing domains ending in .US. Also, .US domains are only supposed to be available to U.S. citizens and to those who can demonstrate that they have a physical presence in the United States. The answer ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136893/why-is-us-being-used-to-phish-so-many-of-us/) 2023-09-02T01:05:41Z **The technical merits of Wayland are mostly irrelevant**
Today I read Wayland breaks your bad software, which is in large part an inventory of how Wayland is technically superior to X. I don’t particularly disagree with Wayland’s general technical merits and improvements, but at this point I think that they are mostly irrelevant. As such, I don’t think that talking about them will do much to shift more people to Wayland. (Of course, people have other reasons to talk about Wayland’ ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136895/the-technical-merits-of-wayland-are-mostly-irrelevant/) 2023-09-02T11:10:23Z **Nix Flake architecture in practice**
Getting into Nix & Nix flakes can be a challenge. You may have have heard of Nix’s fame for reproducibility or Nix flake’s composability, but weren’t sure where or how to start. While some folks seem to settle for a devShell when it comes to Nix, going just a bit deeper, Nix can fulfill more project architecture requirements than merely delivering tooling. In this post we will follow journey of requirements from environment setup, to building, testing, & distrib ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136900/nix-flake-architecture-in-practice/) 2023-09-02T12:17:40Z **Microsoft deprecates WordPad**
Are you a fervent user of WordPad? Are your company’s finances run through a document only WordPad can deal with? Do you run your Kinder egg smuggling side hustle through WordPad? You better find an alternative, because WordPad has just been deprecated. WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt. A moment o ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136902/microsoft-deprecates-wordpad/) 2023-09-02T12:21:55Z **Linux from Scratch 12.0 released**
The Linux From Scratch community is pleased to announce the release of LFS Version 12.0, LFS Version 12.0 (systemd), BLFS Version 12.0, and BLFS Version 12.0 (systemd). This release is a major update to both LFS and BLFS. The LFS release includes updates to binutils-2.41, gcc-13.2.0, and glibc-2.38. In total, 38 packages were updated since the last release. The Linux kernel has also been updated to version 6.4.12. One day, after I’m done with learning Nix and NixOS, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136904/linux-from-scratch-12-0-released/) 2023-09-02T23:47:30Z **The history of Windows NT 3.1**
Cutler and his team had nearly zero experience with either OS/2 or with PCs. They did, however, have ample experience with both portable code and with varied hardware platforms. Similar to his experience at DEC, Cutler was very quickly placed as the lead of the NT project. NT needed to have some compatibility with MS-DOS, OS/2, and UNIX (all systems Microsoft supported, sold, and developed at some level at the time ). As a result, NT was a fully 32 bit microkernel operati ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136906/the-history-of-windows-nt-3-1/) 2023-09-03T17:54:04Z **Hacking the Timex m851**
Take a look at this watch, it’s just some boring watch for runners, right? Nope, I think this might be the best ultra-low power consumer digital watch ever produced! Let me explain… This device certainly should entice some of you. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136911/hacking-the-timex-m851/) 2023-09-03T17:52:22Z **The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge**
This pedestrian bridge crosses I-494 just west of the Minneapolis Airport. It connects Bloomington to Richfield. I drive under it often and I wondered: why is it there? It’s not in an area that is particularly walkable, and it doesn’t connect any establishments that obviously need to be connected. So why was it built? There’s no possible way to tie this to OSNews, but it’s such a fun and well-written story it’s worth breaking character for. I’m not even maki ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136909/the-mystery-of-the-bloomfield-bridge/) 2023-09-03T22:47:58Z **Everything I know about floppy disks**
Floppy disk drives are curious things. We know them as the slots that ingest those small almost-square plastic “floppy disks” and we only really see them now in Computer Museums. But there’s a lot going on in that humble square of plastic and I wanted to write down what I’ve learned so far. Exactly what it says on the tin. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136918/everything-i-know-about-floppy-disks/) 2023-09-03T22:53:31Z **GNOME 45 to break extensions more than usual**
GNOME is going to change the way extensions are loaded in GNOME 45, and that’s going to be a bit of a nuisance for both users and developers. Extensions that target older GNOME versions will not work in GNOME 45. Likewise, extensions that are adapted to work with GNOME 45 will not work in older versions. You can still support more than one GNOME version, but you will have to upload different versions to extensions.gnome.org for pre- and post- ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136920/gnome-45-to-break-extensions-more-than-usual/) 2023-09-03T23:13:34Z **AHA-154xB and ASPI4DOS.SYS**
The other day I had a pressing “need” to examine the behavior of Adaptec 154x and compatible SCSI HBAs and their DOS drivers. I found the hard way that the AHA-154xB does not work with Adaptec’s last DOS drivers from circa 1999. That includes the drivers still available for download (ASPI4DOS.SYS version 3.36), as well as the driver shipped with OEM versions of Windows 98SE (ASPI4DOS.SYS version 3.36S). The error message is far from enlightening; effectively the driver acts as ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136924/aha-154xb-and-aspi4dos-sys/) 2023-09-04T13:33:29Z **Wayland and screen savers**
Adding screen savers to Wayland is not simply a matter of “port the XScreenSaver daemon”, because under the Wayland model, screen blanking and locking should not be a third-party user-space app; much of the logic must be embedded into the display manager itself. This is a good thing! It is a better model than what we have under X11. But that means that accomplishing that task means not just writing code, but engaging with whatever passes for a standards body or design committee i ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136927/wayland-and-screen-savers/) 2023-09-04T14:57:04Z **I think Ubuntu 23.10 is making a mistake**
The next version of the world’s most popular desktop Linux operating system (that’s Ubuntu, for those playing dumb) comes with fewer apps available out-of-the-box. Daily builds of Ubuntu 23.10 now ship with just a super-slim set of default software. These are designed to cover basic computing needs only. For anything else, the idea is that we, the user, fire up the Software Store (though the new one isn’t included in daily builds yet) and install wha ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136929/i-think-ubuntu-23-10-is-making-a-mistake/) 2023-09-04T16:00:14Z **Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to go live?**
A third XProtect was discovered in Ventura, this time observing potentially malicious behaviour such as attempts to access private data for browsers and messaging apps. This XProtect Behaviour Service (XBS) has used a set of Bastion rules embedded in the strings in syspolicyd to record behaviours in a new database, but so far has been an observer and hasn’t blocked such behaviours. Security researcher ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136931/is-macoss-new-xprotect-behavioural-security-preparing-to-go-live/) 2023-09-04T21:45:08Z **SiFive’s P870 takes RISC-V further**
ARM had a slow start on its way to move beyond microcontrollers and enter the high performance market. ARM Ltd made the Cortex A9, their first out-of-order core, in 2007. Throughout the 2010s, they gradually made bigger, higher power, and higher performance cores. Pushing performance boundaries isn’t easy, but today, ARM’s cores can be a viable alternative to Intel and AMD’s offerings in the server market. RISC-V started much later, but has seen faster growth. Be ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136916/sifives-p870-takes-risc-v-further/) 2023-09-04T21:55:45Z **Former Huawei executive claims that HarmonyOS for PC will release next year**
In 2019, the US Department of Commerce put Huawei on an “Entity List”, which banned it from dealing with any US company. The move led Google to revoke Huawei’s Android license, among other repercussions. Then, Huawei developed its own OS, HarmonyOS, for phones, tablets. Wang Chenglu, former Huawei executive and now CEO of Shenzhen Kaihong Digital Industry Development, recently reve ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136934/former-huawei-executive-claims-that-harmonyos-for-pc-will-release-next-year/) 2023-09-05T10:34:02Z **Apple and Microsoft fight Brussels over ‘gatekeeper’ label for iMessage and Bing**
Apple and Microsoft have argued with Brussels that some of their services are insufficiently popular to be designated as “gatekeepers” under new landmark EU legislation designed to curb the power of Big Tech. Brussels’ battle with the two US companies over Apple’s iMessage chat app and Microsoft’s Bing search engine comes ahead of Wednesday’s publication of the first list o ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136937/apple-and-microsoft-fight-brussels-over-gatekeeper-label-for-imessage-and-bing/) 2023-09-05T13:49:16Z **Amiga systems programming in 2023**
I’ve always loved building tools and platforms, and have long been fascinated with the world of operating systems. Apart from reading through the source code (where that’s legally available, of course…) I think there’s no better way to explore and understand a system – and the mindset that produced it – than to develop for it. What follows is a brain-dump of what I’ve learned about developing for the AmigaOS, both on classic 68k-powered hardware to modern PowerPC ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136939/amiga-systems-programming-in-2023/) 2023-09-05T14:04:49Z **Redox Summer of Code 2023 Wrapup**
This year’s Redox Summer of Code program has seen us add some exciting capabilities to Redox. Our three interns each came up with their own project proposals, and delivered major new functionality. In addition to our paid internships, our volunteer contributors also made major strides this summer. This year’s projects include VirtIO drivers, the project to use Linux drivers on Redox that we talked about earlier, and on-demand paging and other memory management impro ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136941/redox-summer-of-code-2023-wrapup/) 2023-09-05T14:09:31Z **Aero: a UNIX-like operating system in Rust**
Speaking of operating systems written in Rust – a popular activity as of late – one of the SoC contributors to Redox is also writing their own operating system in rust, called Aero. Aero is a new modern, experimental, unix-like operating system written in Rust. Aero follows the monolithic kernel design and it is inspired by the Linux Kernel. Aero supports modern PC features such as Long Mode, 5-level paging, and SMP (multicore), to name a few. Ope ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136943/aero-a-unix-like-operating-system-in-rust/) 2023-09-05T23:52:43Z **Gizmodo fires Spanish staff amid switch to AI translator**
As both a translator and a tech writer, this article touches upon a lot of aspects of my professional life. As a translator with a master’s degree in translation and over 13 years of experience as a translator, I can confidently say these AI-translated articles won’t be anywhere near the quality of a professional translation, let alone that of original content written in Spanish. Computers are actually not that great a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136946/gizmodo-fires-spanish-staff-amid-switch-to-ai-translator/) 2023-09-06T12:04:43Z **Digital Markets Act: Commission designates six gatekeepers**
The European Commission has today designated, for the first time, six gatekeepers – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft – under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). In total, 22 core platform services provided by gatekeepers have been designated. The six gatekeepers will now have six months to ensure full compliance with the DMA obligations for each of their designated core platform services. Following the ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136945/digital-markets-act-commission-designates-six-gatekeepers/) 2023-09-06T18:33:27Z **China bans iPhone use for government officials at work**
China ordered officials at central government agencies not to use Apple’s iPhones and other foreign-branded devices for work or bring them into the office, people familiar with the matter said. In recent weeks, staff were given the instructions by their superiors in workplace chat groups or meetings, the people said. The directive is the latest step in Beijing’s campaign to cut reliance on foreign technology and enhance cy ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136953/china-bans-iphone-use-for-government-officials-at-work/) 2023-09-06T18:47:44Z **Source: Google Pixel 8 will get more OS updates with longer lifespan than Samsung**
While the Pixel 6 ushered in three years of major Android OS version updates and an additional two for security patches, that’s still nowhere near the longevity of the iPhone. Google hopes to change that on the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro with noticeably more OS updates. Looking at the mobile Android landscape, three years of OS updates – which was also the case on Qualcomm-powere ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136956/source-google-pixel-8-will-get-more-os-updates-with-longer-lifespan-than-samsung/) 2023-09-06T18:49:56Z **Cars are the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy**
Car makers have been bragging about their cars being “computers on wheels” for years to promote their advanced features. However, the conversation about what driving a computer means for its occupants’ privacy hasn’t really caught up. While we worried that our doorbells and watches that connect to the internet might be spying on us, car brands quietly entered the data business by turning their ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136958/cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/) 2023-09-07T00:04:15Z **Microsoft’s results of major technical investigations for Storm-0558 key acquisition**
On July 11, 2023, Microsoft published a blog post which details how the China-Based threat actor, Storm-0558, used an acquired Microsoft account (MSA) consumer key to forge tokens to access OWA and Outlook.com. Upon identifying that the threat actor had acquired the consumer key, Microsoft performed a comprehensive technical investigation into the acquisition of th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136961/microsofts-results-of-major-technical-investigations-for-storm-0558-key-acquisition/) 2023-09-07T00:10:33Z **Android 14 blocks all modification of system certificates, even as root**
We’ve come a long way since then, steadily retreating from openness & user control of devices, and shifting towards a far more locked-down vendor-controlled world. The next step of Android’s evolution is Android 14 (API v34, codename Upside-Down Cake) and it takes more steps down that path. In this new release, the restrictions around certificate authority (CA) certificates become significa ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136964/android-14-blocks-all-modification-of-system-certificates-even-as-root/) 2023-09-07T00:21:45Z **Xcom: a cross-platform graphics user interface**
Xcom is a crossplatform GUI system: a multi-windowed, multi-tasking environment. Xcom allows you to browse, copy, view and manage your files, start and stop programs, watch and listen basic media content and music. Unlike other windowing systems and protocols, it integrates the basic functionality as a monolithic, cohesive program. Xcom can run on top of various kernel, currently the DOS version is available publicly. Xcom is tiny in size, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136968/xcom-a-cross-platform-graphics-user-interface/) 2023-09-07T17:20:15Z **ELKS 0.7.0 released**
ELKS is a project providing a Linux-like OS for systems based on the Intel IA16 architecture (16-bit processors: 8086, 8088, 80188, 80186, 80286, NEC V20, V30 and compatibles). Such systems are ancient computers (IBM-PC XT / AT and clones) as well as more recent SBCs, SoCs, and FPGAs. ELKS supports networking and installation to HDD using both MINIX and FAT file systems. Version 0.7.0 was recently released, and it includes support for several new systems, among which is the Book 8088, a rece ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136972/elks-0-7-0-released/) 2023-09-07T18:17:08Z **Microsoft announces new Copilot Copyright Commitment for customers**
To address this customer concern, Microsoft is announcing our new Copilot Copyright Commitment. As customers ask whether they can use Microsoft’s Copilot services and the output they generate without worrying about copyright claims, we are providing a straightforward answer: yes, you can, and if you are challenged on copyright grounds, we will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks invo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136974/microsoft-announces-new-copilot-copyright-commitment-for-customers/) 2023-09-07T19:27:33Z **UK has not backed down in tech encryption row, minister says**
Over the past few days, there have been a lot of reports in the media that the UK government was backing down from its requirement that every end-to-end encrypted messenger application inside the country had to give the government backdoor access to these messenger applications. However, after reading the actual words from the UK’s junior minister Stephen Parkinson, it seemed like all she did was give a “pinky p ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136978/uk-has-not-backed-down-in-tech-encryption-row-minister-says/) 2023-09-08T12:41:14Z **The Servo project is joining Linux Foundation Europe**
Created by Mozilla Research in 2012, the Servo project was the first major Rust codebase other than the compiler itself, and has since been a hallmark for experimental web engine design. Major components of Servo have been incorporated into the Firefox web browser, and several of its parsers and other lower-level libraries have become foundational to the Rust ecosystem. As a promising, modern, and open web engine for building ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136987/the-servo-project-is-joining-linux-foundation-europe/) 2023-09-08T12:35:35Z **Plasma 6 to be released in February 2024**
A month has passed since the last Plasma 6 status update, so it’s time for another one! First, what you’ve all been waiting for: a release date! We’ve decided that Plasma 6 will be released in early February of 2024. We don’t have a specific day targeted yet, but it’ll be in that timeframe. I’m feeling quite confident that the release will be in excellent shape by then! It’s already in good shape right now. 5 months should provide enough of a runway ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136984/plasma-6-to-be-released-in-february-2024/) 2023-09-08T12:46:40Z **Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome**
Don’t let Chrome’s big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome’s invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the “Privacy Sandbox,” is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven’t been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it’s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136989/google-gets-its-way-bakes-a-user-tracking-ad-platform-directly-into-chrome/) 2023-09-08T19:46:21Z **How big is a kilobyte?**
As best I can tell, there is no broad consensus on how large a kilobyte is. Some say that a kilobyte is 1000 bytes while others say it’s 1024 bytes. Others are ambiguous. This also means that the industry does not agree on the size of megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, and so on. Not entirely new information to most of us, I would presume, but in my head canon a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, even though that technically doesn’t make any sense from a metric perspective. To make matters worse, as ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136991/how-big-is-a-kilobyte/) 2023-09-09T00:34:50Z **NuXT 2.0 motherboard: a new 8088 motherboard for your DIY PC clone**
In the recent past I have discussed the Book 8088 and the Hand 386, which are newly made vintage computing systems. I concluded that those products, although not uninteresting were rather flawed. The Book 8088 was by far the more disappointing of the two devices. I have also been made aware of a project which tries to fulfill a similar niche, the NuXT motherboard. The NuXT is an 8088-based motherboar ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136995/nuxt-2-0-motherboard-a-new-8088-motherboard-for-your-diy-pc-clone/) 2023-09-09T00:55:26Z **The rxv64 operating system**
What, you thought we were done with the operating systems written in Rust? Oh sweet summer child. rxv64 is a pedagogical operating system written in Rust that targets multiprocessor x86\_64 machines. It is a reimplementation of the xv6 operating system from MIT. As a pedagogical system, it supports very little hardware other than the text-mode CGA device, serial port, PS/2 keyboard controller, and PCIe AHCI SATA storage devices. xv6, in turn, is a reimplementation of Sixth Edit ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/136997/the-rxv64-operating-system/) 2023-09-09T12:57:59Z **SoftGPU: SW and HW accelerated driver for Windows 9x Virtual Machines**
Do you need software and hardware accelerated graphics drivers for Windows 9x running inside a virtual machine? Well, here’s SoftGPU, which will give you just that in Bochs, VirtualBox, Qemu, or VMware, for Windows 95, 98, or ME. The Github page provides detailed instructions on setting up the optimal virtual machines, and information about what, exactly, each virtual machine and diver supports ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137000/softgpu-sw-and-hw-accelerated-driver-for-windows-9x-virtual-machines/) 2023-09-09T17:17:16Z **Intel announces Arm investment, talks up RISC-V**
SoftBank has been gearing up anchor investments in Arm Holdings among its clients and partners for months now (ahead of the upcoming IPO) and apparently Intel is among them. In a call for the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference, the head of the company’s foundry business unit confirmed that the chip giant has made an investment in Arm because its technology is strategically important for both Intel Foundry Services and Alt ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137004/intel-announces-arm-investment-talks-up-risc-v/) 2023-09-09T17:59:11Z **Even more merch: new colours, new shirt, and new longsleeve**
We’ve got new merch! The first round of merch turned out to be more popular than I thought, so it’s time to shake things up a bit and get some fresh new stuff in the official OSNews merch store. Before we start, if you want the limited edition quote T-shirt or quote mug, you have to be quick – I’ll be removing them from the store somewhere in the coming days, and they’ll never come back. This is your last chance to ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137006/even-more-merch-new-colours-new-shirt-and-new-longsleeve/) 2023-09-10T14:40:08Z **How big tech got so damn big**
Enter the trustbusters, led by Senator John Sherman, author of the 1890 Sherman Act, America’s first antitrust law. In arguing for his bill, Sherman said to the Senate: “If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity.” ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137015/how-big-tech-got-so-damn-big/) 2023-09-10T14:43:07Z **Meet the guy preserving the new history of PC games, one Linux port at a time**
The person doing that maintenance, as well as making sure that about 70 of the best known indie games from the same era keep running, is Ethan Lee. He’s not as well known as Fez’s developer Phil Fish, who was also the subject of the documentary Indie Game: The Movie, but this week Lee started publicly marketing the service he’s been quietly providing for over 11 years: maintenan ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137017/meet-the-guy-preserving-the-new-history-of-pc-games-one-linux-port-at-a-time/) 2023-09-10T14:59:25Z **I used a Game Boy Camera for FaceTime video calls in iPadOS 17 and it was glorious**
A major change introduced by iPadOS 17 that is going to make video creators and gamers happy is support for UVC (USB Video Class) devices, which means an iPad can now recognize external webcams, cameras, video acquisition cards, and other devices connected over USB-C. I started testing iPadOS 17 thinking this would be a boring addition I’d never use; as it turns out, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137019/i-used-a-game-boy-camera-for-facetime-video-calls-in-ipados-17-and-it-was-glorious/) 2023-09-10T23:57:36Z **KSMBD declared stable – no longer “experimental” – in Linux 6.6**
Back in 2021 Samsung engineers posted KSMBD as an in-kernel SMB3 server alternative to the likes of the user-space Samba server. KSMBD merged into Linux 5.15 as an experimental SMB server while after two years of fixes and other improvements has now dropped its “experimental” marking. The KSMBD in-kernel SMB3 server is now formally declared stable with Linux 6.6 in removing its experimental tag. Neat. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137022/ksmbd-declared-stable-no-longer-experimental-in-linux-6-6/) 2023-09-11T00:06:50Z **Breathing life back into a Minitel 1B with the Minimit**
Regular readers will know that I have a lot of love for the French Minitel system and own a couple. In the past I’ve written about using a Minitel 1B as a terminal and replacing the EPROM in a Minitel 2 to run custom firmware. Today I’m going to blog about a project called Minimit. The Minimit is a small, Minitel-shaped box that attaches to the Minitel’s DIN port and brings the Minitel experience back to life. The box cont ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137024/breathing-life-back-into-a-minitel-1b-with-the-minimit/) 2023-09-11T19:58:38Z **HDMI ISA graphics card for vintage PCs by improving the Graphics Gremlin**
2 years ago, I learned of an open-source project called Graphics Gremlin (GG) by Eric Schlaepfer who runs the website Tubetime.us. It is an 8-bit ISA graphics card that supports display standards like Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) and Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA). CGA and MDA are display standards used by older IBM(-compatible) PCs in the 1980s. The frequencies and connectors used by ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137030/hdmi-isa-graphics-card-for-vintage-pcs-by-improving-the-graphics-gremlin/) 2023-09-11T20:13:24Z **Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users**
Microsoft published a blog post on the Windows Insider Blog in late August with a vague statement saying that “Windows system components“ were to begin respecting the default web browser setting. Windows 10 and 11 regularly bypass this setting and force-open links in Microsoft Edge instead. In my extensive testing, I haven’t found any changes in the new Windows Insider version. The issue here, I think, is in the wo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137033/microsoft-has-not-stopped-forcing-edge-on-windows-11-users/) 2023-09-11T22:34:38Z **Mac ROM-inator II restock and partnerships**
In the last few years, several other vendors have begun selling Mac ROM SIMMs too. Friendly competition is great, but it creates a potential dilemma for me if someone buys another vendor’s ROM SIMM and reprograms it with BMOW’s base ROM in order to get the on-the-fly ROM disk decompression and other features. It could turn into a situation where my base ROM software is subsidizing another competing product. To compound the problem, I didn’t have ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137037/mac-rom-inator-ii-restock-and-partnerships/) 2023-09-11T22:40:06Z **End of servicing plan for third-party printer drivers on Windows**
With the release of Windows 10 21H2, Windows offers inbox support for Mopria compliant printer devices over network and USB interfaces via the Microsoft IPP Class Driver. This removes the need for print device manufacturers to provide their own installers, drivers, utilities, and so on.  Device experience customization is now available via the Print Support Apps that are distributed and automatically in ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137040/end-of-servicing-plan-for-third-party-printer-drivers-on-windows/) 2023-09-12T13:04:16Z **QtWayland 6.6 brings robustness through compositor handoffs**
Every release has a killer feature. Qt 6.6 features the opposite – staying alive. This blog post describes work to make Qt clients more robust and seemlessly migrate between compositors, providing resistance against compositor crashes and more. Qt 6.6 is bringing something to the Linux desktop we haven’t had yet: transparent recovery from display server crashes. The solution for this? Instead of exiting when the ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137042/qtwayland-6-6-brings-robustness-through-compositor-handoffs/) 2023-09-12T18:38:05Z **Intel introduces Thunderbolt 5**
Thunderbolt 5 will deliver 80 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bi-directional bandwidth, and with Bandwidth Boost it will provide up to 120 Gbps for the best display experience. These improvements will provide up to three times more bandwidth than the best existing connectivity solution, providing outstanding display and data connections. Thunderbolt 5 will meet the high bandwidth needs of content creators and gamers. Built on industry standards – including USB4 V2 – Thund ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137045/intel-introduces-thunderbolt-5/) 2023-09-12T21:35:25Z **ZFS for dummies**
As mentioned on previous posts, I have spent the past few weeks dealing with a ZFS crash on my FreeNAS install. Because of that, not only was I forced to learn how to troubleshoot ZFS, but I also had to learn how to setup new volumes and come up with new backup strategies (between a few other things). This was a great opportunity for me to learn more about ZFS (because I new ‘nada’ to start with). And I’m happy to share some of the knowledge that I gathered with you on this post. Please keep in mind ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137047/zfs-for-dummies/) 2023-09-12T22:04:03Z **The death of Unity**
But now I can say, unequivocally, if you’re starting a new game project, do not use Unity. If you started a project 4 months ago, it’s worth switching to something else. Unity is quite simply not a company to be trusted. What has happened? Across the last few years, as John Riccitiello has taken over the company, the engine has made a steady decline into bizarre business models surrounding an engine with unmaintained features and erratic stability. Unity is imploding in on itself, and it’s ver ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137050/the-death-of-unity/) 2023-09-12T22:47:34Z **Microsoft replaces Chat with “Microsoft Teams – Free”**
I know I keep harping on the declining quality and enshittification of Windows, but Microsoft just makes it so easy. In the changelog for the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Builds is this gem: Beginning to roll out with this build, Chat is now Microsoft Teams – Free. Microsoft Teams – Free is pinned by default to the taskbar and can be unpinned like other apps on the taskbar. So you buy a new Windows machine or reinstall Wind ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137053/microsoft-replaces-chat-with-microsoft-teams-free/) 2023-09-13T18:56:19Z **The roots of an obscure Bourne shell error message**
I love these kinds of investigations. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137055/the-roots-of-an-obscure-bourne-shell-error-message/) 2023-09-13T19:09:52Z **Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware**
There was a spike in Explorer crashes that resulted in the instruction pointer out in the middle of nowhere. The start of a Raymond Chen investigation. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137061/any-sufficiently-advanced-uninstaller-is-indistinguishable-from-malware/) 2023-09-13T19:06:52Z **Xfce’s Wayland roadmap updated**
The Xfce Wayland road-map on the project’s Wiki has been updated a few times over the past two weeks, namely around the desktop panel plug-ins and applications support for Wayland. There still isn’t a firm timeline or release where they expect to have a complete Xfce Wayland transition complete, but ultimately are aiming to have a native Wayland experience that doesn’t depend at all on XWayland and will be using wlroots as part of its compositor. Many Xfce panel plug-ins ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137058/xfces-wayland-roadmap-updated/) 2023-09-13T23:33:55Z **86Box v4.0 released**
This is the August 2023 update to 86Box, bringing many improvements, bugfixes (especially for non-Windows users) and some new hardware. Mouse and keyboard support has been completely reworked, and should perform much, much better on all platforms, while also fixing a slew of bugs. Support for the ATI Mach8/32 was added, which is a first for the world of emulation, and VDE networking has been implemented as well (but not on Windows yet). ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137063/86box-v4-0-released/) 2023-09-14T00:49:56Z **Haiku monthly activity report, August 2023**
The latest Haiku activity report is here, covering the month of August, and it’s a massive laundry list of fixes and improvements, but I couldn’t find any major big ticket features or fixes. August also happens to bring the first two final Google Summer of Code reports – porting .NET to Haiku, and improving various parts of Icon-O-Matic, a vector drawing program designed specifically for working with Haiku’s vector icon format. Also of note is tha ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137066/haiku-monthly-activity-report-august-2023/) 2023-09-14T12:01:28Z **KDE Gear 23.08.1 improves Dolphin, Gwenview, Kdenlive, and other KDE apps**
KDE Gear 23.08.1 comes only three weeks after KDE Gear 23.08 and fixes various issues in several KDE apps, including the Dolphin file manager which now exports the copy location path with native separators on copy operations, and the Gwenview image viewer whose navigation works better with side mouse buttons. The Kdenlive video editor received quite some attention in this release with fix ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137070/kde-gear-23-08-1-improves-dolphin-gwenview-kdenlive-and-other-kde-apps/) 2023-09-14T12:11:22Z **ReactOS gets support for UEFI booting**
After several months of (public) work, ReactOS can now use UEFI boot. But that’s the major changes planned for this PR. As of the state of this PR UEFI boot will operate as long as you have a serial port you should be able to test it. Some more boot fixes will come down the road but this covers 85% of devices we’ve ran into. In fact, they’ve even made it possible for ReactOS to boot on the Steam Deck, which is surely a neat trick. I’m sure once this has be ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137072/reactos-gets-support-for-uefi-booting/) 2023-09-14T12:17:09Z **California passes strongest right-to-repair bill yet, requiring 7 years of parts**
California, the home to many of tech’s biggest companies and the nation’s most populous state, is pushing ahead with a right-to-repair bill for consumer electronics and appliances. After unanimous votes in the state Assembly and Senate, the bill passed yesterday is expected to move through a concurrence vote and be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. Excellent news from Calif ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137075/california-passes-strongest-right-to-repair-bill-yet-requiring-7-years-of-parts/) 2023-09-14T21:41:32Z **My little MillionDollarHomepage garden**
Back around the time I convinced my family to switch from a 56 kb/s dial-up modem to ADSL, the website milliondollarhomepage.com was launched, and quickly became an Internet phenomenon, selling pixels for advertising space on a 1000×1000 canvas. 18 years later, the homepage is still standing, proudly displaying the Internet billboard of 2005, frozen in time. Some time ago I bought one of the expired domain names the page points to, pixels4all.com. In thi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137079/my-little-milliondollarhomepage-garden/) 2023-09-14T21:34:44Z **A Mastodon client for Palm OS**
At this point I was getting annoyed that I had spent so long on these things, so I just imported megalodon-rs to download my mastodon timeline instead of writing the code myself. The conduit itself is exported as a 32-bit dll with a single entry point called OpenConduit, which HotSync calls after loading your dll. I think there are supposed to be more functions exported, but it works fine so far ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯. Internally, the conduit just takes an empty PalmDOC database (PD ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137065/a-mastodon-client-for-palmos/) 2023-09-14T21:52:47Z **Googlers told to avoid words kike ‘share’ and ‘bundle,’ US says**
Alphabet Inc.’s Google is on trial in Washington DC over US allegations that it illegally maintained a monopoly in the online search business. Executives of the Mountain View, California-based behemoth have known for years that the company’s practices are under a microscope, and have encouraged its employees to avoid creating lasting records of potential problematic conduct, government lawyers allege. Googlers ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137083/googlers-told-to-avoid-words-kike-share-and-bundle-us-says/) 2023-09-14T23:44:42Z **Chromebooks will get 10 years of automatic updates**
Security is our number one priority. Chromebooks get automatic updates every four weeks that make your laptop more secure and help it last longer. And starting next year, we’re extending those automatic updates so your Chromebook gets enhanced security, stability and features for 10 years after the platform was released. A platform is a series of components that are designed to work together — something a manufacturer selects for ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137086/chromebooks-will-get-10-years-of-automatic-updates/) 2023-09-15T18:40:56Z **Why my favourite API is a zipfile on the European Central Bank’s website**
A lot is possible with a zipfile of data and just the programs that are either already installed or a quick brew install/apt install away. I remember how impressed I was when I was first shown this eurofxref-hist.zip by an old hand from foreign exchange when I worked in a bank. It was so simple: the simplest cross-organisation data interchange protocol I had then seen (and probably since) ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137089/why-my-favourite-api-is-a-zipfile-on-the-european-central-banks-website/) 2023-09-15T22:30:13Z **GNOME this week: Libadwaita 1.4 released**
Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from September 08 to September 15. It wasn’t a massive week for the GNOME project – at least when it comes to easily digestible improvements that fit neatly on a blog post – but there’s still a few notable points. First and foremost, the release of Libadwaita 1.4, which brings UI breakpoints, which allows developers to create arbitrary layouts for their applications at different sizes. It al ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137092/gnome-this-week-libadwaita-1-4-released/) 2023-09-15T22:34:38Z **Google won’t repair cracked Pixel Watch screens**
If you crack the screen on the Pixel Watch, getting it officially repaired by Google isn’t in the cards. Several Pixel Watch owners have vented their frustrations about the inability to replace cracked screens, both on Reddit and in Google support forums. The Verge has also reviewed an official Google support chat from a reader who broke their Pixel Watch display after dropping the wearable. In it, a support representative states that Go ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137094/google-wont-repair-cracked-pixel-watch-screens/) 2023-09-15T22:54:46Z **Android 14 still allows modification of system certificates**
Earlier this month, we linked to a story about how Android 14 would make it impossible for users – even root users – to modify system certificates on Android. We’re ten days along now, and it seems two new methods have already been found to work around this issue, making it once again possible to edit system certificates. The original author, Tim Perry, found a way with the help of a few other people over on Mast ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137096/android-14-still-allows-modification-of-system-certificates/) 2023-09-15T23:00:47Z **Servo improves WebGPU support, gets new browser UI**
Servo, the Rust browser engine originally developed by Mozilla, has posted an update about the project’s progress over the past month, and there’s a lot of good stuff in there. While our WebGPU support is still very much experimental (--pref dom.webgpu.enabled), it now passes over 5000 more tests in the Conformance Test Suite, after an upgrade from wgpu 0.6 (2020) to 0.16 (2023) and the addition of GPUSupportedFeatures. A few WebGP ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137098/servo-improves-webgpu-support-gets-new-browser-ui/) 2023-09-16T20:26:58Z **Microsoft is replacing Windows 10’s Video Editor with web-based Clipchamp**
Last week, Microsoft started rolling out the modern Photos app on Windows. While the modern Photos app has several new editing tools, it removes the built-in “Video Editor” and replaces it with a web-based Clipchamp. If you’ve lost track of how many different photos applications Microsoft has shipped for Windows and what features they don’t and do have – the linked article has a good, i ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137100/microsoft-is-replacing-windows-10s-video-editor-with-web-based-clipchamp/) 2023-09-16T20:49:04Z **A virus for the BBC Micro**
In short, no, I’m not making it up, I did make a virus back in 1990. I don’t have the source code, unfortunately, for two reasons. It was over thirty years ago. I’m a chronic hoarder, but seemingly not that chronic. The floppy discs containing the code were confiscated. No, my mum wasn’t proud, indeed she didn’t even know about this episode at the time, and still doesn’t. Not that she’d understand what a computer virus is, even if I attempted to explain it to her. What a great st ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137102/a-virus-for-the-bbc-micro/) 2023-09-16T20:55:35Z **Pineapple ONE: open source 32 bit RISC-V CPU that you can make at home**
Pineapple ONE is a functioning (macro) processor, that is based on an open-source architecture RISC-V. This architecture is becoming very popular these days, and it is well, open-source, so we chose to build a cpu only out of discrete, off-the-shelf components. You heard it right, there is no FPGA nor any microcontroller, there are just logic gates and memories. Our goal is to prove that desi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137104/pineapple-one-open-source-32-bit-risc-v-cpu-that-you-can-make-at-home/) 2023-09-17T18:08:59Z **Java 21 makes me actually like Java again**
Java 21 will be released on September 19, 2023, supporting record patterns in switch blocks and expressions. Such syntax is monumental (At least, in Java land). It marks the point where Java could be considered to properly support functional programming patterns in ways similar to Kotlin, Rust, or C#. And it marks the first point where I can say, as a Kotlin developer, that I feel jealous. I’ve got nothing to say about matters such as these, so I’l ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137106/java-21-makes-me-actually-like-java-again/) 2023-09-17T19:27:07Z **A look at Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model**
At WWDC earlier this year, Apple announced that upcoming versions of iOS and macOS would ship with a new feature powered by “a Transformer language model” that will give users “predictive text recommendations inline as they type.” Upon hearing this announcement, I was pretty curious about how this feature works. Apple hasn’t deployed many language models of their own, despite most of their competitors goin ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137108/a-look-at-apples-new-transformer-powered-predictive-text-model/) 2023-09-17T19:31:14Z **Understanding the origins and the evolution of Vi and Vim**
I had no idea that Vim started on the Amiga, and I doubt many people do. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137112/understanding-the-origins-and-the-evolution-of-vi-and-vim/) 2023-09-17T23:59:59Z **How the Mac didn’t bring programming to the people**
Macs have brought a great deal to us over the years: desktop publishing, design, image editing and processing, multimedia, and more. One of the few fields where they have failed is programming, despite many attempts. Here I look back at some of those opportunities we missed. It’s a bit of an only mildly related aside, but even though I personally would love to get into programming in some form, it’s actually a lot harder to get int ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137115/how-the-mac-didnt-bring-programming-to-the-people/) 2023-09-18T10:11:18Z **Hot Chips 2023: AMD’s Phoenix SoC**
Phoenix is the latest addition to AMD’s long line of APUs (chips with integrated graphics). Ever since Picasso launched with Zen cores and Vega graphics, AMD’s APUs saw massive improvements from generation to generations. That’s largely because AMD started from so far behind. But Zen 2 and Zen 3 APUs were already very solid products, so Phoenix’s improvements make it a very dangerous competitor. AMD has put a lot of focus into reducing power consumption across every ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137118/hot-chips-2023-amds-phoenix-soc/) 2023-09-18T10:14:29Z **The Fossil Wrist PDA becomes a tiny Gopher client**
But little was said at the time about connectivity and networking. It could IR-beam (consuming the battery) and sync, but other than muted complaints about missing Bluetooth (which would have consumed even more battery), no one said anything one way or the other about getting it on the Internet. And I’m all about Palm devices on the Internet. It turns out there’s a reason for that, and we’re going to patch the operating system so we ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137120/the-fossil-wrist-pda-becomes-a-tiny-gopher-client/) 2023-09-18T10:36:26Z **Introduction to immutable Linux systems**
If you reach this page, you may be interested into this new category of Linux distributions labeled “immutable”. In this category, one can find by age (oldest → youngest) NixOS, Guix, Endless OS, Fedora Silverblue, OpenSUSE MicroOS, Vanilla OS and many new to come. I will give examples of immutability implementation, then detail my thoughts about immutability, and why I think this naming can be misleading. I spent a few months running all of those dist ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137122/introduction-to-immutable-linux-systems/) 2023-09-18T14:00:02Z **OS/2, ArcaOS Mastodon client in Object REXX**
The spread of Mastodon clients to alternative platforms is continuing, and today, it’s OS/2’s – the one that got away – time in the spotlight. Robert Roland is working on a Mastodon client targeting OS/2, eComStation, and ArcaOS, but it’s all still early in development. The first bits of code were only uploaded yesterday, so there’s a long way yet to go – but if you want to follow along, you can go to Roland’s Mastodon account, and of course, if ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137124/os-2-arcaos-mastodon-client-in-object-rexx/) 2023-09-18T14:07:44Z **Browsing like it’s 1994**
Before the ubiquity of the Internet, before WiFi, even before Ethernet was affordable, there was the LocalTalk physical layer and cabling system and its companion suite of protocols called AppleTalk. A network ahead of its time in terms of plug-and-play, but not quite as fast as 10mbit/s Ethernet at 230.4 kbit/s. This article goes into great detail about setting up an AppleTalk network today. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137126/browsing-like-its-1994/) 2023-09-18T14:17:00Z **So let’s talk about this Wayland thing**
KDE’s Nate Graham talks about Wayland, and sums up both its history, current status, and the future. Wayland. It comes up a lot: “Bug X fixed in the Plasma Wayland session.” “The Plasma Wayland session has now gained support for feature Y.” And it’s in the news quite a bit lately with the announcement that Fedora KDE is proposing to drop the Plasma X11 session for version 40 and only ship the Plasma Wayland session. I’ve read a lot of nervousness and fear ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137128/so-lets-talk-about-this-wayland-thing/) 2023-09-18T19:26:48Z **Apple releases iOS 17, iPadOS 17, etc.**
‌iOS 17‌ expands on last year’s Lock Screen updates with the addition of interactive widgets and StandBy, a new feature that turns the ‌iPhone‌ into a mini home hub when it is charging. You can now see voicemail transcriptions in real time, and leave video messages in FaceTime. ‌FaceTime‌ also now works on the Apple TV with tvOS 17. Apple also released watchOS 10, tvOS 17, and HomePod 17 Software. Take a guess which one is the unwanted child. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137132/apple-releases-ios-17-ipados-17-etc/) 2023-09-18T21:55:14Z **What’s next for Windows and Surface without Panos Panay?**
The Verge: Panos Panay has always been the force behind Microsoft’s Surface line. He helped bring Surface to life as a secret project more than 10 years ago. He’s presented the new devices onstage at events, showed up at malls to promote Surface hardware, and has steered Microsoft’s Surface tablets to success in the years since. Now, he’s leaving in a surprise departure announced just days before Microsoft’s next big Sur ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137134/whats-next-for-windows-and-surface-without-panos-panay/) 2023-09-19T13:08:21Z **Microsoft Paint gets support for layers, transparency**
Today we are beginning to roll out an update for the Paint app to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels (version 11.2308.18.0 or higher). With this update, we are introducing support for layers and transparency! Paint.NET is still better. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137139/microsoft-paint-gets-support-for-layers-transparency/) 2023-09-19T13:14:58Z **Web apps are better than no apps**
There’s a certain community in tech that’s very vocal about their preference toward native apps. I share that sentiment, yet sometimes people take this idea too religiously. Unfortunately, the actual choice is about having an app or not, and I’d rather take something over nothing. I mean, sure, but that doesn’t negate the fact that web applications – or, more specifically, Electron and Electron-like applications – are just bad. Any time I see an Electron application ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137141/web-apps-are-better-than-no-apps/) 2023-09-19T21:22:39Z **Stadia’s death was due to a ‘self-sustaining cycle’ of lacking games and players, lead says**
In court documents from the FTC vs Microsoft case, Google Stadia’s former product lead Dov Zimring was called to discuss the cloud gaming platform and competition in the gaming space. This led to several comments on why Stadia couldn’t compete in the industry from Google’s own point-of-view. Exactly what you expected: lack of players led to a lack of gam ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137144/stadias-death-was-due-to-a-self-sustaining-cycle-of-lacking-games-and-players-lead-says/) 2023-09-19T21:32:55Z **Java 21 released**
Java 21 introduces the notion of sequenced collections, the Z Garbage Collector (ZGC) has been extended to maintain separate generations for young and old objects for improving Java app performance, virtual threads are now out of preview form, and the Windows 32-bit x86 port has been deprecated for removal. Java 21 also brings some new preview features including string templates, the latest iteration on the foreign function and memory API, unnamed classes and instance main methods, scoped values, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137148/java-21-released/) 2023-09-19T22:56:22Z **Circles do not exist**
However almost every “circle” you can see in printed media (and most purely digital ones) are not, in fact, circles. Why is this? Since roughly the mid 80s all “high quality” print jobs have been done either in PostScript or, nowadays almost exclusively, in PDF. They use the same basic drawing model, which does not have a primitive for circles (or circle arcs). The only primitives they have are straight line segments, rectangles and Bézier curves. None of these can be used to express a cir ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137152/circles-do-not-exist/) 2023-09-20T19:09:43Z **Google Chrome will automatically play YouTube videos in PiP if you switch tabs**
Google Chrome is getting a new feature that automatically plays YouTube and other videos in picture-in-picture mode (PiP) when you switch tabs or windows. Chrome’s new PiP feature is coming to desktops, including Windows 11, Windows 10, macOS and ChromeOS. If you’re watching a video on Chrome and decide to hop over to another tab, the browser will automatically place your vid ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137156/google-chrome-will-automatically-play-youtube-videos-in-pip-if-you-switch-tabs/) 2023-09-20T19:23:14Z **OpenBSD/arm64 on Hetzner Cloud**
Hetzner introduced its Ampere Altra powered arm64-based cloud servers earlier this year, making it possible to easily run OpenBSD/arm64 on their platform. The only caveat for now is that the viogpu(4) driver is required, which was committed by jcs@ in April 2023 and thus only available in snapshots. It will first appear in OpenBSD 7.4. Excellent news. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137162/openbsd-arm64-on-hetzner-cloud/) 2023-09-20T19:21:41Z **New Huawei SoC features processor cores designed in-house**
Four of the eight central processing units in the Mate 60 Pro’s “system on a chip” (SoC) rely purely on a design by Arm, the British company whose chip architecture powers 99 percent of smartphones. The other four CPUs are Arm-based but feature Huawei’s own designs and adaptations, according to three people familiar with the Mate’s development and Geekerwan, a Chinese technology testing company that took a closer loo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137159/new-huawei-soc-features-processor-cores-designed-in-house/) 2023-09-20T19:29:08Z **Microsoft is testing folders for the Recommended section in Windows 11’s Start menu**
As it turned out, Microsoft is testing the idea of adding folders to the Recommended section in Windows 11’s Start menu, giving users access to more recently added applications and suggested files. The release notes do not mention the change, and enabling it requires a third-party app called ViVeTool. I was forced to use Windows for a little while on a new laptop, an ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137165/microsoft-is-testing-folders-for-the-recommended-section-in-windows-11s-start-menu/) 2023-09-20T20:10:43Z **GNOME 45 released**
The GNOME project is excited to present the latest GNOME release, version 45. For the new version we’ve focused on refining your daily interactions, enhancing performance, and making the overall experience smoother and more efficient. From subtle design tweaks to functional upgrades, GNOME 45 is all about refining the core desktop environment you rely on. GNOME 45 comes with a new Activities indicator, which replaces the “Activities” button with workspaces indicator, letting you know at a glance ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137167/gnome-45-released/) 2023-09-20T22:51:59Z **Long-term support for Linux kernel to be cut as maintainence remains under strain**
Here’s one major change coming down the road: long-term support (LTS) for Linux kernels is being reduced from six to two years. Why? Simple, Corbet explained: “There’s really no point to maintaining it for that long because people are not using them.” I agree. While I’m sure someone out there is still running 4.14 in a production Linux system, there can’t be many of the ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137169/long-term-support-for-linux-kernel-to-be-cut-as-maintainence-remains-under-strain/) 2023-09-20T22:59:28Z **Intel unveils Meteor Lake architecture: Intel 4 heralds the disaggregated future of mobile CPUs**
During the opening keynote at Intel’s Innovation event in San Jose, Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger unveiled a score of details about the upcoming Meteor Lake client platform. Intel’s Meteor Lake marks the beginning of a new era for the chipmaker, as they move away from the chaotic Intel 7 node and go into a rollout of their Foveros 3D p ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137172/intel-unveils-meteor-lake-architecture-intel-4-heralds-the-disaggregated-future-of-mobile-cpus/) 2023-09-20T23:13:15Z **Today I learned this weird Windows keyboard shortcut opens LinkedIn**
If you’re running Windows try holding down CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + WIN + L. Then watch in bemusement as LinkedIn opens in your default browser. Windows watcher Paul Thurrott posted this bizarre keyboard shortcut on X (Twitter), noting that it’s an operating system hotkey. So why does Windows even have this? It’s all part of the Office key that Microsoft introduced on some of its own keyboards a few y ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137175/today-i-learned-this-weird-windows-keyboard-shortcut-opens-linkedin/) 2023-09-21T19:24:37Z **Intel Xeon MAX 9480 deep dive: 64GB HBM2e on board**
Today we have something that has taken months to write, and we feel that the best we have done is to give a sense of what Intel’s coolest CPU is capable of. The Intel Xeon MAX 9480 combines 56 cores with memory on the package. The memory is not standard DDR5. Instead, it is 64GB of HBM2e, the same kind of memory found on many GPUs and AI accelerators today. What seemed like a straightforward review at the outset became absolutely f ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137182/intel-xeon-max-9480-deep-dive-64gb-hbm2e-on-board/) 2023-09-21T19:22:33Z **Can browser choice screens be effective?**
Mozilla has conducted one of the first – maybe even the first – studies into the effectiveness of browser choice screens, and they conclude: This research showed that browser choice screens have the potential to be effective. Well designed browser choice screens can improve competition, giving people meaningful choice and improving people’s satisfaction and feelings of control. And they can do all of this without overburdening people or taking too muc ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137180/can-browser-choice-screens-be-effective/) 2023-09-21T19:58:54Z **Android 14 adds support for using smartphones as a webcams**
When you plug an Android phone into a PC, you have the option to change the USB mode between file transfer/Android Auto (MTP), USB tethering (NCM), MIDI, or PTP. In Android 14, however, a new option can appear in USB Preferences: USB webcam. Selecting this option switches the USB mode to UVC (USB Video Class), provided the device supports it, turning your Android device into a standard USB webcam that other devices ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137184/android-14-adds-support-for-using-smartphones-as-a-webcams/) 2023-09-21T21:07:38Z **Windows 11’s next update arrives on September 26th with Copilot, AI-powered Paint, and more**
Microsoft will release its next big Windows 11 update on September 26th. The update will include the new AI-powered Windows Copilot feature, a redesigned File Explorer, a new Ink Anywhere feature for pen users, big improvements to the Paint app, and much more. Windows Copilot is the headline feature for the Windows 11 23H2 update, bringing the same Bing ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137186/windows-11s-next-update-arrives-on-september-26th-with-copilot-ai-powered-paint-and-more/) 2023-09-21T21:15:40Z **Install Windows the Arch Linux way**
Installing Windows strictly through the Command Line is an important tool to have. If Windows changes the installer or out of box experience, you can bypass any changes with this guide! I had no idea this was possible. I knew you could open up cmd.exe during installation and do certain things there, but I didn’t know you could perform the entire Windows installation this way. I’m not entirely sure what the use cases are, but it’s definitely a neat trick. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137192/install-windows-the-arch-linux-way/) 2023-09-21T21:13:22Z **Raspberry Pi RP2040 becomes Palm OS PDA**
The Raspberry Pi is known for its versatility and ability to run different operating systems but it seems that the $4 Raspberry Pi Pico can also run an OS. This impressive foray into the world of Palm PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) emulation on our favorite microcontroller comes from Dmitry Grinberg. They have shared an early demo of his platform known as rePalm in which he manages to run PalmOS on a Raspberry Pi Pico. We mentioned Grinberg’s work be ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137189/raspberry-pi-rp2040-becomes-palm-os-pda/) 2023-09-22T18:29:11Z **Visopsys 0.92 released**
It’s been a while, but Visopsys has had a new release, 0.92, with all the details in the changelog. There is a longer-term project to bring the operating system into the modern era, with things like 64-bit support, UEFI booting, and so on. In the meantime, this maintenance release features stability and usability improvements, bug fixes, and multitasker portability changes designed to further unshackle it from the x86 processor architecture. Visopsys has been in development since 1997, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137195/visopsys-0-92-released/) 2023-09-22T18:27:42Z **GoSub browser: gateway to optimized searching and unlimited browsing**
This repository is part of the GoSub browser project. Currently there is only a single component/repository (this one), but the idea will be that there are many other components that as a whole make up a full-fledged browser. Each of the components can probably function as something standalone (ie: html5 parser, css parser, etc). In the future, this component (html5 parser) will receive through a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137199/gosub-browser-gateway-to-optimized-searching-and-unlimited-browsing/) 2023-09-22T19:59:45Z **iOS 17 review: StandBy for more features**
iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 offer several welcome improvements, tweaks, and new features. They also continue two trends that have dominated recent updates for both platforms: the expansion of widgets giving modular access to functions from a variety of apps, and on-device intelligence that improves search, recommendations, and more. This year’s update pushes both platforms forward just a bit—but not enough that too many people will notice. A more complete fe ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137202/ios-17-review-standby-for-more-features/) 2023-09-22T20:06:56Z **GNOME 44.5 released**
GNOME 45 may have just been released, but that doesn’t mean GNOME 44 will be buried right away. GNOME 44.5 has just been released, packed with bugfixes and small tweaks – nothing groundbreaking. Reading through the changelog, it’s a long list of squashed bugs, so it should be an uneventful upgrade for most GNOME users who aren’t upgrading to 45 quite yet. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137205/gnome-44-5-released/) 2023-09-22T21:57:35Z **Java 21: The Nice, The Meh, and the… Momentous**
Every six months, there is a new Java release. Ever so often (currently, every two years), Oracle labels a release as “long term support”, and Java users wonder whether they should upgrade. In theory, other JDK distributors could offer “long term support” for other releases, but it seems everyone is following Oracle’s lead. Should you upgrade? Here are the major features of Java 21. I omit preview and incubator features (which you are surely ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137207/java-21-the-nice-the-meh-and-the-momentous/) 2023-09-23T00:38:13Z **Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023**
At its peak in 2017, the global smartphone market saw more than 700 brands fiercely competing. Fast forward to 2023 and the number of active brands (that have recorded sell-through volumes) is down by two-thirds to almost 250, according to Counterpoint’s Global Handset Model Sales Tracker, which has been tracking sales of these brands across more than 70 key countries. So many good brands and good ideas kicked to ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137210/nearly-500-brands-exited-smartphone-market-during-2017-2023/) 2023-09-23T01:03:33Z **The invisible problem: text editing on Android and iOS sucks**
Android and iOS share a common problem: they copied desktop text editing conventions, but without a menu bar or mouse. This forced them to overload the tap gesture with a wide range of actions: placing the cursor, moving it, selecting text, and invoking a pop-up menu. This results in an overly complicated and ambiguous mess-o-taps, leading to a variety of user errors. It’s less of a problem if you only do short ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137213/the-invisible-problem-text-editing-on-android-and-ios-sucks/) 2023-09-23T18:50:36Z **Wayland color management protocol posted For Weston**
The Wayland Color Management protocol has been years in the making and is needed for a client to specify the color space and HDR metadata of a surface. This color management protocol is ultimately needed for getting high dynamic range (HDR) support working out well within Wayland environments. This week an initial merge request was opened for implementing the draft color management protocol with the Weston reference compositor. ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137217/wayland-color-management-protocol-posted-for-weston/) 2023-09-23T19:02:34Z **Making a micro Linux distro**
In this article, we’ll talk about building up a tiny (micro) Linux “distribution” from scratch. This distribution really won’t do much, but it will be built from scratch. We will build the Linux kernel on our own, and write some software to package our micro-distro. Lastly, we are doing this example on the RISC-V architecture, specifically QEMU’s riscv64 virt machine. There’s very little in this article that is specific to this architecture, so you might as well do an almost ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137221/making-a-micro-linux-distro/) 2023-09-23T19:00:23Z **Cairo 1.18 released**
Cairo 1.18 was released today as the first major stable release to this 2D graphics library in five years. This vector-based graphics library is widely-used for a variety of purposes from GNOME’s GTK toolkit to other apps making use of Cairo for targeting different back-ends from PDFs to OpenGL contexts. Mozilla Firefox, WebKit, Mono, and many other open-source projects are notable users of Cairo. Cairo is something most end users don’t really have to think about or worry too much about, but ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137219/cairo-1-18-released/) 2023-09-23T19:12:44Z **GeckOS 2.1 released**
I had to do some digging into our archives to see if we ever covered GeckOS before, but apparently we haven’t – and that’s a shame. GeckOS is a pre-emptive multitasking operating system for the Commodore 64 and the PET, and should be easily portable to other 6502-based machines, and offers multithreading, TCP/IP networking, and more. Version 2.1 has just been released, and it adds a ton of new features and bugfixes. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137225/geckos-2-1-released/) 2023-09-24T15:29:39Z **EU fines Intel $400 million for blocking AMD’s market access through payments to PC makers**
The European Commission has fined Intel $400 million (€376 million) for hindering competitors’ access to the market through naked restrictions between 2002 and 2007. The fine comes after a long-running antitrust court battle dating back to 2009 when the Commission initially fined Intel a record $1.13 billion for abuse of dominance. While some of Intel’s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137228/eu-fines-intel-400-million-for-blocking-amds-market-access-through-payments-to-pc-makers/) 2023-09-24T19:34:00Z **Microsoft experiments with Windows driver development in Rust**
Microsoft has opened a GitHub repository for a set of tools to create Windows drivers in Rust. This repo is a collection of Rust crates that enable developers to develop Windows Drivers in Rust. It is the intention to support both WDM and WDF driver development models. Note: This project is still in early stages of development and is not yet recommended for commercial use. We encourage community experimentati ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137231/microsoft-experiments-with-windows-driver-development-in-rust/) 2023-09-24T22:31:14Z **No more stale bots!**
On github, there has been an increasing trend of using “Staleness detector bots” that will auto-close issues that have had no activity for X amount of time. In concept, this may sound fine, but the effects this has, and how it poisons the core principles of Open Source, have been damaging and eroding projects for a long time, often unknowingly. I’m not a developer and even I can instantly see such bots would create countless problems. I had no idea such bots were being used. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137234/no-more-stale-bots/) 2023-09-24T23:17:26Z **OpenBSD: viable ROP-free roadmap for i386/armv8/riscv64/alpha/sparc64**
Years later, Todd Mortimer and I developed RETGUARD. At the start of that initiative he proposed we protect all functions, to try to guard all the RET instructions, and therefore achieve a state we call “ROP-free”. I felt this was impossible, but after a couple hurdles the RETGUARD performance was vastly better than the stack protector and we were able to protect all functions and get to ROP-fr ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137236/openbsd-viable-rop-free-roadmap-for-i386-armv8-riscv64-alpha-sparc64/) 2023-09-25T20:15:16Z **Intel’s Ponte Vecchio: chiplets gone crazy**
Intel is a newcomer to the world of discrete graphics cards, and the company’s Xe architecture is driving its effort to establish itself alongside AMD and Nvidia. We’ve seen Xe variants serve in integrated GPUs and midrange discrete cards, but Intel’s not stopping there. Their GPU ambitions extend to the datacenter and supercomputing markets. That’s where Ponte Vecchio (PVC) comes in. Like other compute-oriented GPUs, PVC goes wide and slow. High m ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137240/intels-ponte-vecchio-chiplets-gone-crazy/) 2023-09-25T20:23:21Z **Communicatios on St. Helena Island**
I’ve always been fascinated by remote island communities, and few places are more remote and more island than St. Helena. They have a wonderful page about communications to, on, and from the island, and it’s delightful. However you connect, the Internet on St Helena is slow and expensive! For technical details and pricing information please contact Sure. Assuming you are a visitor you are best to access the Internet via your mobile (cell) Device. Otherwise you wi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137243/communicatios-on-st-helena-island/) 2023-09-25T20:27:31Z **It’s time to let go, Apache Software Foundation**
Projects become unmaintained every day. This is a fact of life, and is not the issue I am taking with The Apache Software Foundation. It is the way the foundation, and its contributors, do not disclose information relating to the lack of substantial updates or changes for nearly a decade, and seems to intentionally mask the lack of development. I sometimes forget Open Office still exists. I have no idea why The Apache Software Foundation ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137247/its-time-to-let-go-apache-software-foundation/) 2023-09-25T22:31:46Z **Despite reports, Apple does, in fact, not support right to repair**
Cory Doctorow: Right to repair has no cannier, more dedicated adversary than Apple, a company whose most innovative work is dreaming up new ways to sneakily sabotage electronics repair while claiming to be a caring environmental steward, a lie that covers up the mountains of e-waste that Apple dooms our descendants to wade through. Why does Apple hate repair so much? It’s not that they want to poison our ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137249/despite-reports-apple-does-in-fact-not-support-right-to-repair/) 2023-09-25T22:31:27Z **Gmail’s basic HTML view will go to the Google graveyard in 2024**
Google will send Gmail’s basic HTML view sailing into the great beyond starting in January 2024, after which time everyone who uses it will be switched to the service’s far more modern “Standard” view. The change appears to have been announced around September 19th in a Google support article. Though the vast majority of people use the Standard view on their PCs without question, the HTML version of Gmail ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137253/gmails-basic-html-view-will-go-to-the-google-graveyard-in-2024/) 2023-09-26T19:43:57Z **FTC sues Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power**
The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general today sued Amazon.com, Inc. alleging that the online retail and technology company is a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power. The FTC and its state partners say Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137258/ftc-sues-amazon-for-illegally-maintaining-monopoly-power/) 2023-09-26T19:50:48Z **Windows 11’s next big update is now available with Copilot, AI-powered Paint, and more**
Microsoft is releasing one of its biggest updates to Windows 11 today. It includes access to the new Windows Copilot, AI-powered updates to Paint, Snipping Tool, and Photos, RGB lighting support, a modernized File Explorer, and much more. Windows® 11 with Clippy™ 3.0 is yours for the taking. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137260/windows-11s-next-big-update-is-now-available-with-copilot-ai-powered-paint-and-more/) 2023-09-26T19:56:44Z **macOS 14 Sonoma: the Ars Technica review**
Apple released macOS 14.0 Sonoma today, and what’s the best way to celebrate the new release? Why, the Ars Technica review, of course. So macOS Sonoma is a perfectly typical macOS release, a sort of “Ventura-plus” that probably has one or two additions that any given person will find useful but which otherwise just keeps your Mac secure and avoids weird iCloud compatibility problems with whatever software is running on your phone. You probably don’t n ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137262/macos-14-sonoma-the-ars-technica-review/) 2023-09-27T01:10:34Z **Introduction to sysclean(8) on OpenBSD**
sysclean(8) is a system tool designed for help system administrator to keep their OpenBSD clean after upgrade. It walks the installed system and compare to a reference system, reporting to the user additional things in the installed system. The purpose is to point any elements that wouldn’t be present if a fresh install was done, instead of an upgrade. This seems like a useful tool. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137266/introduction-to-sysclean8-on-openbsd/) 2023-09-27T01:04:56Z **I wish Android 14 inspired as many app updates as iOS 17 did**
Whenever Apple releases a major OS update, as it did last Monday with iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and watchOS 10, developers – both large but especially indie – release a slew of day one updates to support the latest platform features. I understand how the Android update model is inherently different from Apple’s. Namely, updates start out only on Google’s Pixel phones, which have a relatively small market share, while ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137264/i-wish-android-14-inspired-as-many-app-updates-as-ios-17-did/) 2023-09-27T01:13:17Z **The Philips Hue ecosystem is collapsing into stupidity**
Philips Hue products are about to get a whole lot worse – even the ones you already own. Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can’t access your stuff. But that’s just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it’s getting worse. It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137269/the-philips-hue-ecosystem-is-collapsing-into-stupidity/) 2023-09-27T19:52:17Z **Dotfiles matter: please stop dumping files in users’ $HOME directories.**
Dotfiles are important. We use them every day for storing configuration for all kinds of applications, knowingly or otherwise. You know the ones, hidden in your $HOME directory, ~/.ssh/ for your ssh keys, or ~/.Xauthority (whatever the heck that does). Something you may not know is these are legacy locations for configuration. Please do not copy their behaviour. Your application’s configuratio ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137275/dotfiles-matter-please-stop-dumping-files-in-users-home-directories/) 2023-09-27T19:49:16Z **Windows Subsystem for Android 2309 Preview released**
We’ve shipped an update for Windows Subsystem for Android on Windows 11 to the Windows Subsystem for Android Preview Program. This update (2309.40000.2.0) includes improvements to platform reliability and functionality improvements. It updates the Chromium WebView to version 117, allows .cer files to be shared to Android, contains various Android 13 platform updates, and more. The Windows Subsystem for Android is available in th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137273/windows-subsystem-for-android-2309-preview-released/) 2023-09-27T22:35:57Z **ChromeOS 117 brings Material You to ChromeOS**
Google is rolling out ChromeOS 117, and it’s a very big update for Chromebooks that adds Material You, as well as other usability enhancements. A pretty big update to ChromeOS, and the Material You is definitely welcome – perhaps it fixes up some of the issues I had with ChromeOS when I reviewed it a few months ago. The quick settings panel has been completely redesigned, too, this update adds specific colour correction settings for people wi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137280/chromeos-117-brings-material-you-to-chromeos/) 2023-09-27T22:29:19Z **Linux interop is maturing fast… Thanks to a games console**
Two unusual companies, Valve Software and Igalia, are working together to improve the Linux-based OS of the Steam Deck handheld games console. The device runs a Linux distro called Steam OS 3.0, but this is a totally different distro from the original Steam OS it announced a decade ago. Steam OS 1 and 2 were based on Debian, but Steam OS 3 is based on Arch Linux, as Igalia developer Alberto García described in a talk ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137278/linux-interop-is-maturing-fast-thanks-to-a-games-console/) 2023-09-28T19:33:56Z **Playing with Caml Light on DOS**
Caml Light is implemented as a bytecode compiler which made it highly portable. It is possible to create executables using the CAMLC.EXE command, but please be aware that the resulting binaries are not standalone when using the default linking mode, and the runtime system (CAMLRUN.EXE) is required to run them. The latest available release of Caml Light for DOS is version 0.7 released in 1995. Here’s a fun project for the weekend. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137283/playing-with-caml-light-on-dos/) 2023-09-28T21:07:17Z **OpenBSD PF versus FreeBSD PF**
I encountered yet another discussion about OpenBSD PF versus FreeBSD PF. For those who are new to the discussion: OpenBSD developers created PF in 2001, and it rapidly improved to become the most approachable open source packet filter. FreeBSD ported PF over to its kernel in 2004, with occasional updates since. Today a whole bunch of folks who don’t program echo cultish wisdom that one or the other version of PF has fallen behind, not kept up on improvements, or otherwise b ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137285/openbsd-pf-versus-freebsd-pf/) 2023-09-28T21:56:00Z **Raspberry Pi 5 unveiled**
Today, we’re delighted to announce the launch of Raspberry Pi 5, coming at the end of October. Priced at $60 for the 4GB variant, and $80 for its 8GB sibling (plus your local taxes), virtually every aspect of the platform has been upgraded, delivering a no-compromises user experience. Raspberry Pi 5 comes with new features, it’s over twice as fast as its predecessor, and it’s the first Raspberry Pi computer to feature silicon designed in‑house here in Cambridge, UK. While I personall ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137291/raspberry-pi-5-unveiled/) 2023-09-28T21:53:10Z **No more Windows 11 activations with Windows 7/8 licenses**
Microsoft’s free upgrade offer for Windows 10/11 ended July 29, 2016. The installation path to obtain the Windows 7/8 free upgrade is now removed as well. Upgrades to Windows 11 from Windows 10 are still free. All good (?) things must come to an end. Maybe Windows 11 will end some day too. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137289/no-more-windows-11-activations-with-windows-7-8-licenses/) 2023-09-28T21:49:19Z **COSMIC gets new window-swapping mode, gesture support, and more**
COSMIC, the Rust-based desktop environment System76, makers of Pop!\_OS are working on, has seen another month of work, and it turns out that it’s already being used daily by the COSMIC team, which is always an important milestone. For instance, COSMIC continues its focus on keyboard users: Pop!\_OS and COSMIC DE are built to stay out of your way so you can focus on getting things done. With Auto-tiling, ne ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137287/cosmic-gets-new-window-swapping-mode-gesture-support-and-more/) 2023-09-29T00:21:29Z **Apple held talks with Microsoft about acquiring Bing in 2020**
But come 2020, a new round of talks opened between Apple and Microsoft. Bloomberg reports that Microsoft executives met with Apple’s Services VP Eddy Cue to “discuss the possibility of acquiring Bing.” These talks were reportedly “exploratory” and “never reached an advanced stage,” Bloomberg says. The revenue generated from its deal with Google was a “key reason” Apple’s talks to acquire Bing never advanced bey ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137294/apple-held-talks-with-microsoft-about-acquiring-bing-in-2020/) 2023-09-29T20:08:51Z **SunOS multi-thread architecture**
We describe a model for multiple threads of control within a single UNIX process. The main goals are to provide extremely lightweight threads and to rationalize and extend the UNIX Application Programming Interface for a multi-threaded environment. The threads are intended to be sufficiently lightweight so that there can be thousands present and that synchronization and context switching can be accomplished rapidly without entering the kernel. These goals are achieved ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137300/sunos-multi-thread-architecture/) 2023-09-29T20:06:44Z **Bing Chat responses infiltrated by ads pushing malware**
In March, Microsoft began injecting ads into Bing Chat conversations to generate revenue from this new platform. However, incorporating ads into Bing Chat has opened the door to threat actors, who increasingly take out search advertisements to distribute malware. And in case you’re thinking, “whatever, I don’t use these online chatbots anyway”, just remember that all this stuff is now built right into Windows and Microsoft ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137297/bing-chat-responses-infiltrated-by-ads-pushing-malware/) 2023-09-29T20:15:56Z **Linux’s modprobe adds the ability to load a module from anywhere on the file-system**
With today’s release of kmod 31, Linux’s modprobe utility for loading kernel modules can finally allow arbitrary paths to allow loading new kernel modules from anywhere on the file-system. Surprisingly it took until 2023 for allowing Linux’s modprobe to accept loading kernel modules from any arbitrary path. Rather than just specifying the module name and then looking ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137304/linuxs-modprobe-adds-the-ability-to-load-a-module-from-anywhere-on-the-file-system/) 2023-09-29T20:14:30Z **I tested an HDMI adapter that demands your location, browsing data, photos, and spams you with ads**
I recently got my hands on an ordinary-looking iPhone-to-HDMI adapter that mimics Apple’s branding and, when plugged in, runs a program that implores you to “Scan QR code for use.” That QR code takes you to an ad-riddled website that asks you to download an app that asks for your location data, access to your photos and videos, runs a biza ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137302/i-tested-an-hdmi-adapter-that-demands-your-location-browsing-data-photos-and-spams-you-with-ads/) 2023-09-29T23:52:45Z **DOJ finally posted that “embarrassing” court doc Google wanted to hide**
So, what’s in the document that Google didn’t want to get out? The document in question contains meeting notes that Google’s vice president for finance, Michael Roszak, “created for a course on communications,” Bloomberg reported. In his notes, Roszak wrote that Google’s search advertising “is one of the world’s greatest business models ever created” with economics that only certain “illicit b ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137307/doj-finally-posted-that-embarrassing-court-doc-google-wanted-to-hide/) 2023-09-30T00:05:18Z **Modern UNIX: alternatives to common UNIX commands**
A collection of modern/faster/saner alternatives to common UNIX commands. Quite a few of these are written in Rust – if you want more Rust alternatives to existing popular tools, there’s a list for that, too. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137309/modern-unix-alternatives-to-common-unix-commands/) 2023-09-30T21:24:16Z **How to turn off Windows Copilot on Windows 11**
Earlier this week, Microsoft started rolling out the Moment 4 update for Windows 11. The update also included Windows Copilot, a generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) that replaces Cortana and offers to perform certain tasks for the users. However, if you are not interested in having additional bloatware on your system then there are ways to remove or disable Windows Copilot on Windows 11. The steps will depend on whether you have Windows ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137316/how-to-turn-off-windows-copilot-on-windows-11/) 2023-09-30T21:20:57Z **The world’s oldest active Torrent turns 20 years old**
Twenty years ago, a group of friends shot a Matrix fan film on a limited budget. Sharing their creation with the rest of the word initially appeared to be too expensive, but then they discovered a new technology called BitTorrent. Fast forward two decades and their “Fanimatrix” release is the oldest active torrent that’s still widely shared today. That’s amazing. When reading the headline, I assumed it’d be some copyrighted blo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137314/the-worlds-oldest-active-torrent-turns-20-years-old/) 2023-09-30T21:18:10Z **This week in KDE: time for the new features**
Another week of KDE Plasma 6 big smashing and new features, and it’s a long list of good stuff. The biggest news this week: The Overview and Desktop Grid effects have been merged together into one, with fluid and natural-feeling touchpad gestures to transition between all states. It’s really awesome work, and also fixed a ton of open bug reports! There’s quite a few other things in here, such as indicators for when the camera is in use in the sy ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137311/this-week-in-kde-time-for-the-new-features/) 2023-09-30T22:53:33Z **Apple blames iPhone 15 Pro overheating problems on third party developers**
It seems the new iPhone 15 Pro is having overheating issues, and while I normally don’t really care and don’t mention this sort of nonsense, I found Apple’s response to the issue… Peculiar. Furthermore, Apple tells 9to5Mac that recent updates to certain third-party apps are causing them to overload the system. The company says it’s working directly with those developers to fix the issu ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137318/apple-blames-iphone-15-pro-overheating-problems-on-third-party-developers/) 2023-10-01T17:23:48Z **How flip-flops are implemented in the Intel 8086 processor**
A circuit called the flip-flop is a fundamental building block for sequential logic. A flip-flop can hold one bit of state, a “0” or a “1”, changing its value when the clock changes. Flip-flops are a key part of processors, with multiple roles. Several flip-flops can be combined to form a register, holding a value. Flip-flops are also used to build “state machines”, circuits that move from step to step in a control ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137322/how-flip-flops-are-implemented-in-the-intel-8086-processor/) 2023-10-01T17:21:53Z **Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 reaching end of support**
Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 will end on October 10, 2023. After this date, these products will no longer receive security updates, non-security updates, bug fixes, technical support, or online technical content updates. If you cannot upgrade to the next version, you will need to use Extended Security Updates (ESUs) for up to three years. ESUs are available for free in Azure or need to be purchased for ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137320/windows-server-2012-and-2012-r2-reaching-end-of-support/) 2023-10-01T18:03:44Z **Introduction to the OpenBSD operating system**
I often see a lot of confusion with regard to OpenBSD, either assimilate as a Linux distribution or mixed up with FreeBSD. Let’s be clear, OpenBSD is a stand alone operating system. It came as a fork of NetBSD in 1994, there isn’t much things in common between the two nowadays. While OpenBSD and the other BSDs are independant projects, they share some very old roots in their core, and regularly see source code changes in one being imported to ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137325/introduction-to-the-openbsd-operating-system/) 2023-10-02T00:08:41Z **Publishing my first game using pico-8**
I picked pico-8 as the engine simply because I know I work better with constraints and the limited size and capabilities of it would ensure I would not attempt perfection since I know I do not have the skills to reach it anyway. I have been a professional developer for 10+ years so code syntax is not my biggest issue, but knowing how to architect things, deal with the art and sound. By sticking within what pico-8 provides I thought I could achieve this, wh ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137329/publishing-my-first-game-using-pico-8/) 2023-10-02T00:11:15Z **The X220 ThinkPad is the best laptop in the world**
The X220 ThinkPad is the greatest laptop ever made and you’re wrong if you think otherwise. No laptop hardware has since surpassed the nearly perfect build of the X220. New devices continue to get thinner and more fragile. Useful ports are constantly discarded for the sake of “design”. Functionality is no longer important to manufacturers. Repairability is purposefully removed to prevent users from truly “owing” their hardware. It’s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137332/the-x220-thinkpad-is-the-best-laptop-in-the-world/) 2023-10-02T20:49:13Z **Budgie 10.8.1 released**
Budgie 10.8.1 is the first minor release in the 10.8 series of our Budgie Desktop environment. This release adds dark style preference support, squashes some bugs around our new StatusNotifierItem implementation, adds keyword support for search, and more! The Budgie Desktop renaissance continues. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137337/budgie-10-8-1-released/) 2023-10-02T20:53:54Z **The absolute minimum every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023**
A lot has changed in 20 years. In 2003, the main question was: what encoding is this? In 2023, it’s no longer a question: with a 98% probability, it’s UTF-8. Finally! We can stick our heads in the sand again! The question now becomes: how do we use UTF-8 correctly? Let’s see! Everything you ever wanted to know about how Unicode works, and what UTF-8 does. Plus some annoying web ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137339/the-absolute-minimum-every-software-developer-must-know-about-unicode-in-2023/) 2023-10-02T20:57:33Z **Chromebook Plus: more performance and AI capabilities**
All Chromebook Plus laptops offer faster processors and double the memory and storage, giving you the power to get more done, easily. All Chromebook Plus laptops also come with a Full HD IPS display — which means you get a full 1080p HD experience when watching streaming content, and crisp, clear viewing for reading, creating content or editing photos and videos. Finally, there’s a 1080p+ webcam with temporal noise reduction ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137342/chromebook-plus-more-performance-and-ai-capabilities/) 2023-10-02T23:57:14Z **Exploiting the iPhone 4**
One aspect of the jailbreak scene that always seemed like black magic to me, though, was the process of jailbreaking itself. The prospect is pretty remarkable: take any off-the-shelf iPhone, then enact obscene rituals and recite eldritch incantations until the shackles drop away. The OS will now allow you to run any code you point at it, irrespective of whether the code has gone through Apple’s blessed signing process, paving the way for industrious tweak developers like myself. A fe ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137345/exploiting-the-iphone-4/) 2023-10-03T00:06:52Z **Satya Nadella tells a court that Bing is worse than Google – and Apple could fix it**
The Verge has an excellent write-up of Satya Nadella’s day in court during the Google antitrust trial today. The power of defaults is one of the central questions of the entire US v. Google case and will continue to come up. (The witness after Nadella is former Neeva CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy, who has also said his search engine was crushed in part because overcoming Goog ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137348/satya-nadella-tells-a-court-that-bing-is-worse-than-google-and-apple-could-fix-it/) 2023-10-03T17:08:39Z **How Google alters search queries to get at your wallet**
Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t search ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137350/how-google-alters-search-queries-to-get-at-your-wallet/) 2023-10-03T17:14:26Z **PicoCalc: a fully-functional clone of VisiCalc**
The full-featured, high-precision spreadsheet application for the Pico-8 that nobody asked for has finally arrived! PicoCalc is a feature-complete clone of the 1979 classic VisiCalc, which introduced the world to an entirely new category of business application. Steve Jobs said of VisiCalc, it’s “what really drove — propelled — the Apple ][. This is a few years old already, but still an amazing piece of work. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137352/picocalc-a-fully-functional-clone-of-visicalc/) 2023-10-03T19:05:29Z **Ad-free Facebook, Instagram access planned for $14 per month in Europe**
Meta is preparing to charge EU users a $14 monthly subscription fee to access Instagram on their phones unless they allow the company to use their personal information for targeted ads. The US tech giant will also charge $17 for Facebook and Instagram together for use on desktop, said two people with direct knowledge of the plans, which are likely to be rolled out in coming weeks. The move com ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137355/ad-free-facebook-instagram-access-planned-for-14-per-month-in-europe/) 2023-10-03T19:12:41Z **Windows NT 3.1 on DEC Alpha AXP**
As I was preparing the Windows NT RISC exhibit for VCF west, I realized that I’m missing a rather important piece of the history. While I will be showing the potentially last DEC Alpha Windows build ever – AXP64 2210, I don’t have anything earlier than NT 3.51. I would be nice to showcase the very first RTM version – NT 3.1. From time perspective, NT did not get popular until the version 3.5 and later. Windows NT 3.1 would be considered rare even on a 386, let alone o ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137360/windows-nt-3-1-on-dec-alpha-axp/) 2023-10-03T19:07:25Z **Microsoft lets you play SkiFree while installing Windows**
Microsoft is making the Windows 11 setup process a little more entertaining, at least on some laptops. I unboxed the Surface Laptop Studio 2 yesterday (read Monica Chin’s review here) and noticed that Microsoft now prompts you to play the modern version of its SkiFree game while you wait for updates to be applied. A fun little touch. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137358/microsoft-lets-you-play-skifree-while-installing-windows/) 2023-10-03T23:12:47Z **Windows Arm64EC ABI notes**
The basic premise of Microsoft’s Arm64EC is that a single virtual address space can contain a mixture of ARM64 code and X64 code; the ARM64 code executes natively, whereas the X64 code is transparently converted to ARM64 code by a combination of JIT and AOT compilation, and ARM64 ⇄ X64 transitions can happen at any function call/return boundary. I wish Windows on ARM would get more traction, because I want more ARM laptops to run Linux on. It seems clear by now that Linux OEMs ar ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137362/windows-arm64ec-abi-notes/) 2023-10-04T19:09:39Z **OpenCore Legacy Patcher project brings macOS Sonoma support to 16-year-old Macs**
When Apple decides to end update support for your Mac, you can either try to install another OS or you can trick macOS into installing on your hardware anyway. That’s the entire point of the OpenCore Legacy Patcher, a community-driven project that supports old Macs by combining some repurposed Hackintosh projects with older system files extracted from past macOS versions. Y ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137364/opencore-legacy-patcher-project-brings-macos-sonoma-support-to-16-year-old-macs/) 2023-10-04T19:19:32Z **Redox: development priorities for 2023 and 2024**
Redox OS, the Rust-based operating system aiming to be a general purpose operating system, has detailed its priorities for 2023 and 2024, and there’s ambitious stuff in there. First, the project wants to shoe up its support for server tooling so that Redox can host its own website. This will require porting a number of popular server tools, like Apache, Nginx, and so on. Second, they also want Redox to be self-hosting in the sense that i ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137367/redox-development-priorities-for-2023-and-2024/) 2023-10-04T19:35:09Z **Android 14 released for Pixel devices**
Google has released Android 14 – for Pixel devices, anyway. Android Police’s review summarises this rather small release: After months and months of beta testing, Android 14 has finally arrived in stable. There was a tremendous buildup of excitement around this release after the rather lackluster Android 13, which only introduced some small refinements following the big Android 12 design refresh on Pixel phones. Android 14 certainly stays true to the look ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137370/android-14-released-for-pixel-devices/) 2023-10-04T19:44:44Z **Google promises 7 years of Android OS updates for the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro**
Google unveiled the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones and the Pixel Watch 2 today, and while I no longer spend too many words on new phone releases on OSNews these days, this new phone does come with a rather major promise by Google. The Pixel 8 will get seven years of Android OS updates with security patches, as well as quarterly Feature Drops. Launching with Android 14, the Pixel 8 and ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137372/google-promises-7-years-of-android-os-updates-for-the-pixel-8-pixel-8-pro/) 2023-10-05T00:20:02Z **DragonFlyBSD’s HAMMER2 file-system seeing new improvements**
DragonFlyBSD lead developer Matthew Dillon has recently been working on further refinements to HAMMER2 for the next DragonFlyBSD operating system release. The latest HAMMER2 activity in the past few days has included improving its CPU performance and adding a new “hammer2 recover” directive. The HAMMER2 recover support allows for recovering/undoing single files as well as preliminary support to recover entire direct ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137374/dragonflybsds-hammer2-file-system-seeing-new-improvements/) 2023-10-05T20:29:54Z **Google agrees to reform its data terms after German antitrust intervention**
Following preliminary objections over Google’s data terms, set out back in January by Germany’s antitrust watchdog, the tech giant has agreed to make changes that will give users a better choice over its use of their information, the country’s Federal Cartel Office (FCO) said today. The commitments cover situations where Google would like to combine personal data from one Google serv ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137377/google-agrees-to-reform-its-data-terms-after-german-antitrust-intervention/) 2023-10-05T20:35:24Z **Lenovo PC boss: 4 in 5 of our devices will be repairable by 2025**
Lenovo is forecasting that the vast majority of its devices will be repairable by 2025 – as will the repair parts themselves – but it is not intending to specify where customers should have their kit fixed. “On repairability, we have a plan that by 2025 more than 80 percent of the repair parts will be repaired again so that they they enter into the circular economy to reduce the impact to the environment ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137379/lenovo-pc-boss-4-in-5-of-our-devices-will-be-repairable-by-2025/) 2023-10-05T20:39:10Z **Microsoft talks up Copilot in OneDrive and SharePoint**
Get ready for the contents of your files in Microsoft OneDrive to be scanned and ingested by Microsoft’s “AI” efforts. As announced at Build in May and again in September we are bringing Copilot to your files in SharePoint and OneDrive so you can ask open-ended questions related to an individual file or get a summary of the content. And you can do this without opening the file and no matter where it lives, in OneDrive, Share ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137382/microsoft-talks-up-copilot-in-onedrive-and-sharepoint/) 2023-10-05T20:44:57Z **Microsoft might want to be making Windows 12 a subscription OS, suggests leak**
While this has been a hunch for a while among the Windows enthusiast community, a new leak seems to be further providing somewhat solidifying evidence that it could indeed be the case, that Microsoft’s next-gen OS, casually referred to as Windows 12, could be a subscription-based OS. I have no innate issue with the subscription model for software – especially in the mobile world ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137384/microsoft-might-want-to-be-making-windows-12-a-subscription-os-suggests-leak/) 2023-10-05T23:57:33Z **Microsoft is already pushing ads through Copilot in Windows**
Windows users who have installed the preview update may see advertisement when they interact with Copilot. Asking Copilot for the best gaming laptops returns five suggestions, similar to what Bing Chat would provide, and ads at the end of the output. Copilot for Windows has barely shipped and Microsoft is already using it to push ads into the operating system you paid for. “AI” is just a fancy autocomplete design ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137386/microsoft-is-already-pushing-ads-through-copilot-in-windows/) 2023-10-06T22:10:08Z **Bus sniffing the IBM 5150**
Writing a cycle-accurate emulator for a computer system is more than just understanding all the CPU instruction timings. A computer is a complete system with peripherals, interrupts, IO bus signals, and DMA. All this comes with an array of different timings and quirks. When software like Area 5150 is written that requires perfect cycle timing, it can be a challenge to provide the level of accuracy needed for the software to function. Area 5150 in particular requires precise coord ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137392/bus-sniffing-the-ibm-5150/) 2023-10-06T22:06:47Z **Thread-per-core**
I want to address a controversy that has gripped the Rust community for the past year or so: the choice by the prominent async “runtimes” to default to multi-threaded executors that perform work-stealing to balance work dynamically among their many tasks. Some Rust users are unhappy with this decision, so unhappy that they use language I would characterize as melodramatic. What these people advocate instead is an alternative architecture that they call “thread-per-core.” They promise that this archi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137390/thread-per-core/) 2023-10-07T00:07:23Z **Long gone, DEC is still powering the world of computing**
The VAX served DEC well throughout the ’80s and into the ’90s, but as the latter decade went on, DEC began to face stiff competition from UNIX vendors, particularly Sun Microsystems. DEC struggled to change with the times, and the company ultimately failed. In 1998, DEC was acquired by Compaq, and in 2001, Compaq was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. The DEC line, including the VAX/VMS system, was discontinued and faded from t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137397/long-gone-dec-is-still-powering-the-world-of-computing/) 2023-10-07T00:04:06Z **Thirty years ago: MS-DOS 6.00, DoubleSpace, and MultiConfig**
In addition to several new full-screen utilities, like DEFRAG to defragment your hard disk (licensed from Symantec), MSBACKUP to efficiently backup your hard disk (also licensed from Symantec), and MSAV to check for viruses (licensed from Central Point Software), there were a number of new command-line programs, such as CHOICE, DELTREE, MOVE, MSCDEX, and SMARTDRV. But the biggest addition to MS-DOS 6.00 was a new fe ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137394/thirty-years-ago-ms-dos-6-00-doublespace-and-multiconfig/) 2023-10-07T00:17:01Z **Do the Pixel 8’s Magic Editor and Best Take make you uncomfortable?**
I don’t necessarily agree. These new editing tools in smartphones are nothing a semi-decent Photoshop user can’t do in an afternoon, and editing photos is as old as photography itself. All these tools do is further democratise photo editing, and this was always going to happen, smartphones or not. Adding watermarks or other markers is never going to work, since even if it’s entirely unfalsifiable – ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137400/do-the-pixel-8s-magic-editor-and-best-take-make-you-uncomfortable/) 2023-10-07T21:03:05Z **A quick look back at Microsoft’s Windows Home Server and its official children’s book**
In just a few days, Microsoft will end support for Windows Server 2012 after over 11 years on the market. Ironically, the launch of the server OS in 2012 was also the official end for another server product from Microsoft that had first gone on sale on October 10, 2007, nearly 16 years ago. It was called Windows Home Server, and it was an effort to expand Microsof ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137404/a-quick-look-back-at-microsofts-windows-home-server-and-its-official-childrens-book/) 2023-10-07T21:05:17Z **Zilog’s forgotten operating system: Z80-RIO**
When it comes to famous operating systems for the Z80 and similar Zilog processors, the first and maybe only one to come to mind is CP/M, which was even made its presence known on the dual-CPU (8502 and Z80) Commodore 128. Yet Zilog also developed its own operating system, in the form of the comprehensively titled Z80 Operating System with Relocatable Modules and I/O Management (Z80-RIO for short). With limited documentation having survived, Ralf ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137406/zilogs-forgotten-operating-system-z80-rio/) 2023-10-09T00:40:10Z **Why is Debian the way it is?**
Debian is a large, complex operating system, and a huge open source project. It’s thirty years old now. To many people, some of its aspects are weird. Most such things have a good reason, but it can be hard to find out what it is. This is an attempt to answer some such questions, without being a detailed history of the project. The fact that Debian is a relatively slow-acting, complex democracy is probably why it has survived for so long, and why it’s become the bedrock for ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137410/why-is-debian-the-way-it-is/) 2023-10-09T00:37:44Z **Sonoma’s log gets briefer and more secretive**
Little did we realise then that Sierra was going to change all that, and by Mojave we’d be enduring 4,000 and more log entries in a second, when our Macs were feeling loquacious. That was because Apple introduced the Unified log, with its entries written not in plain text but compressed binary format. This was the death-blow for the casual reader of logs: for a start, the replacement Console app was unable to access any log entries made in the ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137408/sonomas-log-gets-briefer-and-more-secretive/) 2023-10-09T19:35:04Z **MiniDisc hacking**
Most MiniDisc aficionados are aware of unit hacking to gain access to new features. The unit that perhaps benefits the most from this is the Sony MZ-N510, which also comes in the N520 and NF610 variants. The 2001 model R700 can be hacked to add many features of its upscale brother, the R900, as well as the Type-R codec, which renders the R700 capable of performing real-time SP recordings with Sony’s last evolution of ATRAC1. I bet the market for hacking the best music format of all time is small t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137414/minidisc-hacking/) 2023-10-09T19:33:09Z **789 KB Linux without MMU on RISC-V**
In this guide, we’ll build a very tiny Linux kernel, weighing in at 789 K, and requiring no MMU support. We’ll write some userspace code and this will be deployed on a virtual RISC-V 64-bit machine, without MMU, and we’ll run some tiny programs of our own. As a reminder, please go through the guide for a micro Linux distro to understand the concepts behind what we’re doing today: building the kernel, initramfs, etc. This guide is basically a continuation of that ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137412/789-kb-linux-without-mmu-on-risc-v/) 2023-10-09T19:39:05Z **Using microVMs for gaming on Fedora Asahi**
Running a 16K page size kernel implies some userspace applications that assume that the page size is 4K will break. While the Asahi Team did an amazing work fixing many of them, there’s little anyone can do (at least, at a scale) to fix applications that ship in binary form. And the prime example of this are x86\_64 (a 4K page size platform) games. While it’s technically possible to run Apple Silicon devices with a 4K page size kernel, that would r ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137416/using-microvms-for-gaming-on-fedora-asahi/) 2023-10-09T19:44:08Z **When ZFS was young**
ZFS was promised, and didn’t arrive. In fact, there were about 4 of us on the beta program who saw the original zfs implementation, and it was quite different from what we have now. What eventually landed as zfs in Solaris was a complete rewrite. The beta itself was interesting – we were sent the driver, 3 binaries, and a 3-line cheatsheet, and that was it. There was a fundamental philosophy here that the whole thing was supposed to be so easy to use and sufficiently obvious that it didn’t nee ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137419/when-zfs-was-young/) 2023-10-09T19:50:45Z **We deserve better from Apple: why I can no longer recommend a Mac to fellow blind computer users**
As many of you will know from personal experience, there is a longstanding issue with VoiceOver on Mac where Safari will frequently become unresponsive with VoiceOver repeatedly announcing the message “Safari not responding.” When this issue occurs, the user’s Mac may become unusable for up to several minutes at a time. Sometimes it can be r ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137421/we-deserve-better-from-apple-why-i-can-no-longer-recommend-a-mac-to-fellow-blind-computer-users/) 2023-10-09T19:56:41Z **GNOME merge requests opened that would drop X.Org session support**
A set of merge requests were opened that would effectively drop X.Org (X11) session support for the GNOME desktop and once that code is removed making it a Wayland-only desktop environment. Going along with Fedora 40 looking to disable the GNOME X11 session support (and also making KDE Plasma 6 Wayland-only for Fedora), upstream GNOME is evaluating the prospect of disabling and then removing their X11 ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137424/gnome-merge-requests-opened-that-would-drop-x-org-session-support/) 2023-10-10T21:07:12Z **ECC RAM on AMD Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs**
ECC support has been standard on Ryzen processors, but with the recent introduction of the Ryzen 7000 series and the new AM5 socket, any mention of ECC was dropped from specification pages and similar documentation. It turns out, though, that there’s more to this story. A couple months ago I came across a topic on the ASRock forums talking about ECC support on AM5 motherboards, in which a user called ApplesOfEpicness said that they’d worked with an AMD e ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137428/ecc-ram-on-amd-ryzen-7000-desktop-cpus/) 2023-10-10T22:02:43Z **Qt 6.6 released**
Today marks the 6th time we are releasing new functionality in the Qt 6 series, with small and large additions that make both UI and backend development more productive and fun. Several of the new features come as technology previews, and we are looking forward to your feedback so that we can get everything in tip-top shape for the next LTS release! Lots of new goodies for Qt developers. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137435/qt-6-6-released/) 2023-10-10T22:01:44Z **File Explorer in Windows 11: what users wanted and what Microsoft delivered**
This week, Windows 11 marked its second anniversary and the end of the initial release, version 21H2, which was infamous for its lack of polish and certain features. However, Windows 11 also introduced new things, such as a redesigned File Explorer, which later received tabs support and plenty of modernized UI elements and features. The Windows 11 Moment 4 update Microsoft released ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137433/file-explorer-in-windows-11-what-users-wanted-and-what-microsoft-delivered/) 2023-10-10T21:58:31Z **There’s no Mac version of Counter-Strike 2 because there are no Mac players**
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Apple’s macOS gaming policy of only offering a proprietary, Apple-only API isn’t exactly paying off. One of the most popular online games in history, CS:GO, is removing support for macOS, and it won’t be coming back. From here on out, the game will only be available on 64-bit Windows and Linux. That cycle played out again in Valve’s recent Count ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137431/theres-no-mac-version-of-counter-strike-2-because-there-are-no-mac-players/) 2023-10-10T22:03:49Z **Nichtcap: run Windows screensavers under XScreenSaver**
Nightcap lets you run old Windows screensavers under XScreenSaver, using wine. That’s it. That’s the Github description. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137437/nichtcap-run-windows-screensavers-under-xscreensaver/) 2023-10-10T23:32:19Z **Bare-metal Rust in Android**
Last year we wrote about how moving native code in Android from C++ to Rust has resulted in fewer security vulnerabilities. Most of the components we mentioned then were system services in userspace (running under Linux), but these are not the only components typically written in memory-unsafe languages. Many security-critical components of an Android system run in a “bare-metal” environment, outside of the Linux kernel, and these are historically written in C. As part of our e ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137439/bare-metal-rust-in-android/) 2023-10-11T18:34:16Z **Bitten by the black box of iCloud**
That second agent proved quite capable, not only agreeing that the situation was strange, but also looking into issues on Apple’s side. Which led to the somewhat bizarre conclusion of this story: after perhaps 20 minutes on the phone, he seemed to hit on something. I heard him laugh and say something along the lines of “that explains it” and then, with my consent, put me on hold. When he came back, he said—and I’m not exactly quoting, but close enough: “I’m sorry, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137441/bitten-by-the-black-box-of-icloud/) 2023-10-11T18:38:34Z **Google: passkeys by default**
This means the next time you sign in to your account, you’ll start seeing prompts to create and use passkeys, simplifying your future sign-ins. It also means you’ll see the “Skip password when possible” option toggled on in your Google Account settings. To use passkeys, you just use a fingerprint, face scan or pin to unlock your device, and they are 40% faster than passwords — and rely on a type of cryptography that makes them more secure. But while they’re a big step forward, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137443/google-passkeys-by-default/) 2023-10-11T18:43:26Z **SerenityOS celebrates its 5th birthday**
Happy fifth birthday to SerenityOS! The alternative operating system project just posted its fifth birthday summary covering the preceding year, and it’s been yet another good one. The number of contributors keeps rising, and interest remains solid. The Serenity Browser, spun out as a cross-platform browser project, has picked up considerable funding and even a few employed developers. SerenityOS itself went 64-bit-only this year, and added support for V ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137446/serenityos-celebrates-its-5th-birthday/) 2023-10-12T00:32:12Z **Microsoft deprecates VBScript from Windows**
Microsoft has announced it’s removing VBScript from future Windows releases. VBScript is being deprecated. In future releases of Windows, VBScript will be available as a feature on demand before its removal from the operating system. VBScript has been part of Windows for almost 30 years, first shipping in 1996. VBScript has a long history of serving as a vector for malware, which probably explains its removal from Windows. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137451/microsoft-deprecates-vbscript-from-windows/) 2023-10-12T00:28:57Z **Raspberry Pi OS now based on Debian 12, gets Wayland, Pipewire**
Debian Bookworm itself is mostly made up of incremental updates of the software that was in the previous Debian Bullseye release. There are a few small changes — have a look here for the list — but they mostly won’t affect Raspberry Pi users. So Bookworm itself really hasn’t resulted in many changes. However, for the last year or so we have been working on some major architectural changes to the Raspberry Pi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137449/raspberry-pi-os-now-based-on-debian-12-gets-wayland-pipewire/) 2023-10-12T00:38:42Z **Apple is destroying the Mac by trying to make it safer**
Jason Snell: It’s incredibly frustrating. This is my software, running on my computer, yet there are moments when it feels like Apple thinks it’s really in charge. It needs to back off. He’s so close. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137453/apple-is-destroying-the-mac-by-trying-to-make-it-safer/) 2023-10-12T19:11:14Z **Grind: a first person shooter for the Amiga 500**
‘Dread’ has been featured many times on Indie Retro News, as with every new update the Amiga 500 version looked better than ever with fabulous new textures and new zones to visit. Well if you’re looking for more gaming news on this upcoming first person shooter, we have not only been informed that a new demo has been made available, but the latest footage and detailed press release shows that John is true to his word in bringing a Doom-l ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137457/grind-a-first-person-shooter-for-the-amiga-500/) 2023-10-12T19:15:43Z **The Soviet-era, Z80-based Galaksija dared to be different**
Cold War–era computing has a poor reputation. The picture is one of a landscape littered with uninspired attempts to copy American IBM PCs, British ZX Spectrums, and other Western computers. But then there was Yugoslavia’s Galaksija, a very inspired bid to put a computer into the hands of regular comrades. The Galaksija is a Z80-based, 8-bit DIY machine, cleverly designed so that its bill of materials meshed exactly w ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137461/the-soviet-era-z80-based-galaksija-dared-to-be-different/) 2023-10-12T22:46:03Z **How to download and install Linux**
Linux is an operating system, similar to Windows, but with many different versions due to the nature of being open source and fully customizable. To install Linux, you must choose an install method and choose a Linux distribution. So that’s a thing. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137468/how-to-download-and-install-linux/) 2023-10-12T22:44:59Z **System76 overhauls Thelio desktop line, adds new lower-cost Spark model**
System76, the leading US-based Linux computer and keyboard manufacturer, made several new changes to their desktop line in order to optimize AI workloads and other fields reliant on heavy component use. The main focus: An airflow optimization that prevents throttling, putting their desktops at the top of performance charts. A new starter desktop, Thelio Spark, will also debut as a productiv ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137466/system76-overhauls-thelio-desktop-line-adds-new-lower-cost-spark-model/) 2023-10-12T22:48:14Z **Ubuntu 23.10 released**
Summarising Ubuntu 23.10 in just one word is tricky, but ‘refinement’ feels an apt choice. GNOME 45 brings a bevvy of buffs to the core desktop experience; improved window tiling; a sharper-looking web-browser; a pair of brand-new Flutter-based apps; and a colossal change to the amount of software preinstalled in new Ubuntu installations. Foundationally, Ubuntu 23.04 runs on Linux kernel 6.5, ships Mesa 23.2 graphics drivers (with in-distro access to proprietary NVIDIA drivers for those ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137470/ubuntu-23-10-released/) 2023-10-13T05:32:59Z **Apple AirTags stalking led to ruin and murders, lawsuit says**
This month, more than three dozen victims allegedly terrorized by stalkers using Apple AirTags have joined a class-action lawsuit filed in a California court last December against Apple. They alleged in an amended complaint that, partly due to Apple’s negligence, AirTags have become “one of the most dangerous and frightening technologies employed by stalkers” because they can be easily, cheaply, and covertly use ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137473/apple-airtags-stalking-led-to-ruin-and-murders-lawsuit-says/) 2023-10-13T19:34:01Z **When XML in Word became illegal**
Patents are thought of by some as hardware focused and used by the big guys to intimidate with petty lawsuits. In reality, of course, patents are used for much more. They are used to help secure financing, attract M&A interest, create partnerships, and more. From 2007 to 2011, a particularly interesting patent lawsuit took place that showcases just how strategic patents can be. i4i Limited, a Canadian company, sued Microsoft over a patent it owned relating to custom X ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137476/when-xml-in-word-became-illegal/) 2023-10-13T20:52:02Z **Microsoft will ask European users for consent before sharing data between Windows and other Microsoft services**
In the release notes for the latest Windows 11 Insider Build, there’s more notes about how Windows in the EU/EEA is diverging more and more from Windows for the rest of the world. In the European Economic Area (EEA), Windows will now require consent to share data between Windows and other signed-in Microsoft serv ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137478/microsoft-will-ask-european-users-for-consent-before-sharing-data-between-windows-and-other-microsoft-services/) 2023-10-13T20:56:20Z **Scrollbars are becoming a problem**
Scrollbars. Ever heard of them? They’re pretty cool. Click and drag on a scrollbar and you can move content around in a scrollable content pane. I love that shit. Every day I am scrolling on my computer, all day long. But the scrollbars are getting smaller and this is increasingly becoming a problem. I would show you screenshots but they’re so small that even screenshotting them is hard to do. And people keep making them even smaller, hiding them away, its like th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137480/scrollbars-are-becoming-a-problem/) 2023-10-14T08:39:18Z **OpenBSD PF-based firewalls suffer differently from denial of service attacks**
Suppose, hypothetically, that you have some DNS servers that are exposed to the Internet behind an OpenBSD PF-based firewall. Since you’re a sensible person, you have various rate limits set in your DNS servers to prevent or at least mitigate various forms of denial of service attacks. One day, your DNS servers become extremely popular for whatever reason, your rate limits kick i ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137484/openbsd-pf-based-firewalls-suffer-differently-from-denial-of-service-attacks/) 2023-10-14T08:34:36Z **Google tests Discover Feed on desktop version of Google.com**
Several years ago, Google introduced Discover as a feature of Google Search on mobile devices. This feature populates content related to a user’s interests, based on their Web and App Activity. The Google Discover feed is displayed under the search box in Google’s mobile apps and on the left-most pane of the Home screens on some Android devices. However, Google has now begun testing the Discover feed on the deskt ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137482/google-tests-discover-feed-on-desktop-version-of-google-com/) 2023-10-14T08:43:56Z **OpenZFS 2.2.0 released**
The primary new feature of this latest release is this one: Block cloning is a facility that allows a file (or parts of a file) to be “cloned”, that is, a shallow copy made where the existing data blocks are referenced rather than copied. Later modifications to the data will cause a copy of the data block to be taken and that copy modified. This facility is used to implement “reflinks” or “file-level copy-on-write”. Many common file copying programs, including newer versions of /bin/cp ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137486/openzfs-2-2-0-released/) 2023-10-15T00:20:58Z **Learn Wayland by writing a GUI from scratch**
Wayland is all the rage those days. Distributions left and right switch to it, many readers of my previous article on writing a X11 GUI from scratch in x86\_64 assembly asked for a follow-up article about Wayland, and I now run Waland on my desktop. So here we go, let’s write a (very simple) GUI program with Wayland, without any libraries, this time in C. In case you’re bored this weekend. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137488/learn-wayland-by-writing-a-gui-from-scratch/) 2023-10-15T01:04:42Z **Ubuntu Desktop 23.10 release image taken down due to “malicious translation incident”**
In case you’re wondering why you can’t download the latest Ubuntu desktop version that was released earlier this week – it seems to have a bit of a rogue translation issue. A community contributor submitted offensive Ukrainian translations to a public, third party online service that we use to provide language support for the Ubuntu Desktop installer. Around three ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137490/ubuntu-desktop-23-10-release-image-taken-down-due-to-malicious-translation-incident/) 2023-10-15T22:26:14Z **Window Maker Live 0.96.0-0 released**
Window Maker Live (wmlive) is an installable Linux live CD/ISO, and is based mostly on the recently released “Bookworm” branch of Debian Linux. It relies on the extensively preconfigured Window Maker window manager as its default graphical user interface. It can also be considered as an alternative installation medium for Debian/Bookworm. As such, wmlive is fully compatible with the official Debian/Bookworm repositories for security updates and bug fixes. We’r ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137494/window-maker-live-0-96-0-0-released/) 2023-10-15T22:31:28Z **With the Pixel 8 series, there is now a clear divide between Google’s Android and Google Pixel**
This is a big shift from the Google of old. People in this industry talk, even when they work for the companies that make these products. Previously, Google was very cautious about doing anything that would create a rift between itself and all the vendors that made Android what it is today. Very little was held back because Google needed to keep ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137496/with-the-pixel-8-series-there-is-now-a-clear-divide-between-googles-android-and-google-pixel/) 2023-10-15T23:30:01Z **Google killed the website star**
Mustafa Suleyman, the British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind, said: “The business model that Google had broke the internet.” He said search results had become plagued with “clickbait” to keep people “addicted and absorbed on the page as long as possible”. Information online is “buried at the bottom of a lot of verbiage and guff”, Mr Suleyman argued, so websites can “sell more adverts”, fuelled by Google’s technology. Anyone who has tried to find anything on Google ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137498/google-killed-the-website-star/) 2023-10-16T19:29:27Z **Windows 10 warns me to use a “Microsoft-verified” app**
In certain versions of Windows 10, you may receive a notification with a warning about Microsoft-verified apps when you run the Firefox installer. This is just so transparently anti-user. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137505/windows-10-warns-me-to-use-a-microsoft-verified-app/) 2023-10-16T19:46:05Z **Microsoft separating system apps and components on Windows 11 23H2 to help users**
The build has added a new separate “System Components” section in the Windows 11 Settings under the “System” menu. When one launches this System Components option, all the system applications appear under this section. This is a nice change, as it will make it easier to remove some of the garbage that comes with Windows. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137507/microsoft-separating-system-apps-and-components-on-windows-11-23h2-to-help-users/) 2023-10-16T19:50:07Z **Teaching Apple Cyberdog 1.0 new tricks (featuring OpenDoc)**
But thanks to all those other cyberdogs, Apple’s own Cyberdog — a seemingly ordinary web browser and Internet suite with some unusual capabilities — has since slid into search engine obscurity. Apple had some big plans for it, though, and even wanted to give developers a way to develop their own components they could run inside of it. Not just plugins, either: we’re talking viewers, UI elements and even entire protoc ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137509/teaching-apple-cyberdog-1-0-new-tricks-featuring-opendoc/) 2023-10-16T19:55:36Z **OpenBSD 7.4 released**
A new OpenBSD release means a ton of new features, and OpenBSD 7.4 is no different. It adds a VirtIO GPU driver, built-in leak detection for malloc, support for AMD processor microcode updates, and a whole lot more. If you want the really detailed list of changes, hop on over to the changelog, and OpenBSD users will already know how to update. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137511/openbsd-7-4-released/) 2023-10-16T22:50:36Z **Windows launching Arm Advisory Service for developers**
Many developers believe creating apps for Windows on Arm is difficult, but developing for Arm is easier than you think, and Microsoft is here to help! It is my pleasure to announce a new App Assure Arm Advisory Service to help developers build Arm-optimized apps. This service is in addition to our existing promise: your apps will run on Windows on Arm, and if you encounter any issues, Microsoft will help you remediate them. ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137513/windows-launching-arm-advisory-service-for-developers/) 2023-10-17T21:05:59Z **Run Linux GUI apps on the Windows Subsystem for Linux**
This is wild. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137517/run-linux-gui-apps-on-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux/) 2023-10-17T21:01:22Z **Qualcomm announces first-ever mass-market RISC-V Android SoC**
It doesn’t have a name yet, but Qualcomm says it’s developing a “RISC-V Snapdragon Wear” chip in collaboration with Google. The company says it plans to “commercialize the RISC-V based wearables solution globally including the US.” For Google and Qualcomm, this chip represents everyone’s first swing at a commercial RISC-V Android project, and as far as we can tell, it’s the first announced mass-market RISC-V An ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137515/qualcomm-announces-first-ever-mass-market-risc-v-android-soc/) 2023-10-17T21:32:16Z **Sealed in glass**
Storing data on glass might sound futuristic, but it’s a concept that dates back to the 19th century when single photographic negatives were preserved on panes of glass. Fast forward to today, technology has remarkably expanded the storage capabilities of this sustainable material. A small sheet of glass can now hold several terabytes of data, enough to store approximately 1.75 million songs or 13 years’ worth of music. Elire, a sustainability-focused venture group, has collaborated with Microsoft R ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137519/sealed-in-glass/) 2023-10-17T23:01:27Z **The Android Security Paper 2023**
Have you ever wanted to read 69 pages of in-depth information about the security frameworks in Android, past to present to future? Now’s your chance. To share and document the latest Android security capabilities, we’ve published an update to the Android Security Paper. The paper provides a comprehensive overview of the platform’s built-in, proactive security across hardware, anti-exploitation, Google Security Services and the range of management APIs available for bu ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137522/the-android-security-paper-2023/) 2023-10-17T23:08:01Z **Google: 8 ways we’re making daily tasks more accessible**
Today we’re rolling out new accessibility features and updates that make accomplishing daily tasks faster and easier — like taking selfies, getting walking directions or searching the web. We recently launched Lookout image Q&A mode and accessibility updates on Android 14 and Wear OS 4. Now we have even more accessible features across our products that are built with and for people with disabilities. Accessibility is so of ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137526/google-8-ways-were-making-daily-tasks-more-accessible/) 2023-10-17T23:05:38Z **Frasier Fantasy**
Frasier Fantasy is a loving tribute to the show, “Frasier,” in turn-based RPG form. Filled with Easter Eggs and callbacks, this is the game for anyone wondering if Eddie ever blinked first. Yes, a fan-made Game Boy Color game where you play as Frasier Crane. I can’t believe someone went through the arduous process of making this, but I’m glad they did. This is absolutely brilliant. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137524/frasier-fantasy/) 2023-10-18T21:45:02Z **Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 23.10 performance on the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4**
Out of 72 benchmarks ran in total on both operating systems with the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 4, Ubuntu 23.10 was the fastest about 64% of the time. If taking the geometric mean of all the benchmark results, Ubuntu 23.10 comes out to being 10% faster than the stock Windows 11 Pro install as shipped by Lenovo for this AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U laptop. I recently bought a laptop, and the stoc ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137528/windows-11-vs-ubuntu-23-10-performance-on-the-lenovo-thinkpad-p14s-gen-4/) 2023-10-18T22:22:50Z **Windows adds support for hearing aides with Bluetooth LE Audio**
We’re excited to announce that Windows has taken a significant step forward in accessibility by supporting the use of hearing aids equipped with the latest Bluetooth® Low Energy Audio (LE Audio) technology. Customers who use these new hearing aids are now able to directly pair, stream audio, and take calls on their Windows PCs with LE Audio support. This feature is available on Windows devices with our rece ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137530/windows-adds-support-for-hearing-aides-with-bluetooth-le-audio/) 2023-10-18T22:30:17Z **Google proposes new mseal() memory sealing syscall for Linux**
Google is proposing a new mseal() memory sealing system call for the Linux kernel. Google intends for this architecture independent system call to be initially used by the Google Chrome web browser on Chrome OS while experiments are underway for use by Glibc in the dynamic linker to seal all non-writable segments at startup. The discussion is ongoing, so you can read the original proposed patchset and go from the ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137533/google-proposes-new-mseal-memory-sealing-syscall-for-linux/) 2023-10-18T22:49:16Z **Google thinks now is a good time to decimate its Google News team**
Google cut dozens of jobs in its news division this week, CNBC has learned, downsizing at a particularly sensitive time for online platforms and publishers. An estimated 40 to 45 workers in Google News have lost their jobs, according to an Alphabet Workers Union spokesperson, who didn’t know the exact number. A Google spokesperson confirmed the cuts but didn’t provide a number, and said there are stil ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137535/google-thinks-now-is-a-good-time-to-decimate-its-google-news-team/) 2023-10-19T00:39:15Z **Debian repeals the merged “/usr” movement moratorium**
Debian 12 had aimed to have a merged “/usr” file-system layout similar to other Linux distributions, but The Debian Technical Committee earlier this year decided to impose a merged-/usr file movement moratorium. But now with Debian 12 having been out for a few months, that moratorium has been repealed. In hoping to have the merged /usr layout ready in time for Debian 13 “Trixie”, yesterday that moratorium was repealed. I love Deb ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137538/debian-repeals-the-merged-usr-movement-moratorium/) 2023-10-19T19:56:39Z **CP/M-65: CP/M on the 6502**
This is a native port of Digital Research’s seminal 1977 operating system CP/M to the 6502. Unlike the original, it supports relocatable binaries, so allowing unmodified binaries to run on any system: this is necessary as 6502 systems tend to be much less standardised than 8080 and Z80 systems. (The systems above all load programs at different base addresses.) Currently you can cross-assemble programs from a PC, as well as a working C toolchain with llvm-mos. For native developmen ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137540/cp-m-65-cp-m-on-the-6502/) 2023-10-19T20:58:18Z **AMD unveils Ryzen Threadripper 7000 family: 96 core Zen 4 for workstations and HEDT**
Being announced today by AMD for a November 21st launch, this morning AMD is taking the wraps off of their Ryzen 7000 Threadripper CPUs. These high-end chips are being split up into two product lines, with AMD assembling the workstation-focused Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Pro series, as well as the non-pro Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series for the more consumer-ish high-end ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137542/amd-unveils-ryzen-threadripper-7000-family-96-core-zen-4-for-workstations-and-hedt/) 2023-10-19T23:13:24Z **Enhanced Google Play Protect real-time scanning for app installs**
Today, we are making Google Play Protect’s security capabilities even more powerful with real-time scanning at the code-level to combat novel malicious apps. Google Play Protect will now recommend a real-time app scan when installing apps that have never been scanned before to help detect emerging threats. Scanning will extract important signals from the app and send them to the Play Protect backend inf ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137544/enhanced-google-play-protect-real-time-scanning-for-app-installs/) 2023-10-19T23:23:57Z **Jon Stewart’s Apple TV Plus show ends, reportedly over coverage of AI and China**
The Verge reports: The New York Times reports that along with concerns about some of the guests booked to be on The Problem With Jon Stewart, Stewart’s intended discussions of artificial intelligence and China were a major concern for Apple. Though new episodes of the show were scheduled to begin shooting in just a few weeks, staffers learned today that production had been ha ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137546/jon-stewarts-apple-tv-plus-show-ends-reportedly-over-coverage-of-ai-and-china/) 2023-10-20T00:23:15Z **Clever malvertising attack uses Punycode to look like KeePass’s official website**
Threat actors are known for impersonating popular brands in order to trick users. In a recent malvertising campaign, we observed a malicious Google ad for KeePass, the open-source password manager which was extremely deceiving. We previously reported on how brand impersonations are a common occurrence these days due to a feature known as tracking templates, but this attack ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137548/clever-malvertising-attack-uses-punycode-to-look-like-keepasss-official-website/) 2023-10-21T00:11:51Z **Raptor Computing working on new POWER systems using OpenPOWER CPU from Solid Silicon**
Well, this is a pleasant surprise and a massive coincidence. Besides that BMC-focused press release, Raptor Computing Systems tweeted out that they are working on “next generation of high performance, fully owner controlled systems! Built using the open POWER ISA 3.1, these new machines will be direct upgrades for existing POWER9 systems.” Power ISA 3.1 aligns wit ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137563/raptor-computing-working-on-new-power-systems-using-openpower-cpu-from-solid-silicon/) 2023-10-20T23:59:12Z **Intel Core i9-14900K, Core i7-14700K and Core i5-14600K review: Raptor Lake refreshed**
The Intel 14th Gen Core series is somewhat of a somber swansong to the traditional and famed Core i series naming scheme, rounding off what feels like the end of an era. With the shift to their upcoming Meteor Lake SoC, the impending launch of the new naming scheme (Core and Core Ultra) branding, and what Intel hopes to be a groundbreaking mobile chiplet-based arc ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137560/intel-core-i9-14900k-core-i7-14700k-and-core-i5-14600k-review-raptor-lake-refreshed/) 2023-10-20T19:47:46Z **OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition**
Speaking of POWER – well, PowerPC – what about OS/2 Warp for PowerPC? What was OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition like? An unfinished product, rough around the edges but simultaneously technically very interesting and advanced and showing promise. Even though the OS/2 PPC release wasn’t called beta, it is obvious that this is a beta level product (if even that in some respects). Many features are unfinished or completely missing (networking in the first place). The kernel level code doe ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137550/os-2-warp-powerpc-edition/) 2023-10-20T19:44:09Z **IBM hints at POWER11, hopefully will fix POWER10’s firmware mess**
Just as IBM was posting “future” processor compiler patches in 2019 for what ended up being early POWER10 enablement, they are once again repeating their same compiler enablement technique with sending out “PowerPC future” patches for what is likely to be POWER11. The “PowerPC future” patches sent out today are just like before — complete with mentions like “This feature may or may not be present in any s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137555/ibm-hints-at-power11-hopefully-will-fix-power10s-firmware-mess/) 2023-10-20T19:25:41Z **ANSI Terminal security in 2023 and finding 10 CVEs**
This paper reflects work done in late 2022 and 2023 to audit for vulnerabilities in terminal emulators, with a focus on open source software. The results of this work were 10 CVEs against terminal emulators that could result in Remote Code Execution (RCE), in addition various other bugs and hardening opportunities were found. The exact context and severity of these vulnerabilities varied, but some form of code execution was fo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137552/31m-ansi-terminal-security-in-2023-and-finding-10-cves/) 2023-10-23T17:46:42Z **Windows 11 Pro’s on-by-default encryption slows SSDs up to 45%**
There are few things more frustrating than paying for high-speed PC components and then leaving performance on the table because software slows your system down. Unfortunately, a default setting in Windows 11 Pro, having its software BitLocker encryption enabled, could rob as much as 45 percent of the speed from your SSD as it forces your processor to encrypt and decrypt everything. According to our tests, ra ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137570/windows-11-pros-on-by-default-encryption-slows-ssds-up-to-45/) 2023-10-23T19:05:51Z **Oberon System 3 compatible with the Oberon+ compiler and IDE**
This is a version of the Oberon System 3 (also known as ETH Oberon), compatible with the Oberon+ compiler, IDE and runtimes and the OBX Platform Abstraction Layer (PAL), and thus truly cross-platform (runs on all platforms where LeanQt is available). The migration is still work in progress, but sufficiently complete and stable to explore the platform. The latest commit is tested on both the Mono CLI and as a nat ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137572/oberon-system-3-compatible-with-the-oberon-compiler-and-ide/) 2023-10-23T19:11:06Z **Raptor’s upcoming OpenPOWER systems: more than 4.0 Ghz, PCIe 5.0, DDR5, 18-core option**
TalosSpace has more details on the upcoming, recently announced OpenPOWER machines from Raptor. I asked Timothy Pearson at Raptor about the S1’s specs, and he said it’s a PCIe 5.0 DDR5 part running from the high 3GHz to low 4GHz clock range, with the exact frequency range to be determined. (OMI-based RAM not required!) The S1 is bi-endian, SMT-4 and will support at ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137574/raptors-upcoming-openpower-systems-more-than-4-0-ghz-pcie-5-0-ddr5-18-core-option/) 2023-10-23T21:12:51Z **How does macOS manage virtual cores on Apple silicon?**
One of the most distinctive features of Apple silicon chips is that they have two types of CPU core, E (Efficiency) cores that are energy efficient but slower than the P (Performance) cores, which normally run much of the code in the apps we use. Apps don’t decide directly which cores they will be run on, that’s a privilege of macOS, but they register their interest by setting a Quality of Service, or QoS, which is then taken ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137577/how-does-macos-manage-virtual-cores-on-apple-silicon/) 2023-10-23T22:24:33Z **End of an era: Windows CE’s final day**
At midnight US Pacific Time tomorrow, Windows Embedded Compact 2013 – or perhaps better colloquially referred to as Windows CE 8.0 – will slip from history as it exits is Extended Support Phase with Microsoft and it, as well as the entire history of Windows CE, becomes an unsupported, retired former product. Windows CE 8.0 was released on 11th August 2013 and slipped into the end of its mainstream support on 9th October 2018. Yet few even noticed either occu ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137579/end-of-an-era-windows-ces-final-day/) 2023-10-23T23:36:20Z **Dave Cutler: the secret history of Microsoft Windows**
Dave Cutler is a seminal figure in computer science, renowned for his contributions to operating systems. Born in 1942, he played pivotal roles in the development of several OSes, most notably VMS for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Windows NT for Microsoft. Cutler’s design principles emphasize performance, reliability, and scalability. His work on Windows NT laid the foundation for many subsequent Windows versions, sol ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137583/dave-cutler-the-secret-history-of-microsoft-windows/) 2023-10-23T23:42:09Z **Nvidia, AMD to make Arm-based PC chips**
Nvidia and AMD could sell PC chips as soon as 2025, one of the people familiar with the matter said. Nvidia and AMD would join Qualcomm, which has been making Arm-based chips for laptops since 2016. At an event on Tuesday that will be attended by Microsoft executives, including vice president of Windows and Devices Pavan Davuluri, Qualcomm plans to reveal more details about a flagship chip that a team of ex-Apple engineers designed, according to a person ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137585/nvidia-amd-to-make-arm-based-pc-chips/) 2023-10-24T21:39:28Z **Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite looks like the Windows world’s answer to Apple Silicon**
For years, Qualcomm has been making Snapdragon chips for Windows PCs, and for years, those chips’ performance have failed to dislodge Intel’s or AMD’s chips to any significant degree. Its latest Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (and the closely related Microsoft SQ3) appears in just two consumer PCs, the cumbersomely named Microsoft Surface Pro 9 with 5G and Lenovo’s ThinkPad X13s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137587/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-looks-like-the-windows-worlds-answer-to-apple-silicon/) 2023-10-24T21:50:36Z **Microsoft CEO admits he should’ve fought harder with Windows Phone**
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was interviewed by Business Insider, and when asked about his greatest strategic mistake, the answer was obvious. The decision I think a lot of people talk about – and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO —was our exit of what I’ll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137591/microsoft-ceo-admits-he-shouldve-fought-harder-with-windows-phone/) 2023-10-24T23:33:13Z **41 states sue Meta for allegedly addicting kids to Facebook and Instagram**
State attorneys general in 41 states and the District of Columbia sued Meta today. The move comes after the conclusion of a multistate probe launched in 2021, where a bipartisan coalition of state enforcers began examining how Facebook and Instagram features are designed to allegedly addict and harm kids. Back in 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office led the multistate prob ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137596/41-states-sue-meta-for-allegedly-addicting-kids-to-facebook-and-instagram/) 2023-10-24T23:26:06Z **Google is ready to fill its AI searches with ads**
The big question coming up is how Google’s focus on AI will impact that core business. Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience is still only available on an opt-in basis, so we don’t yet know how much it’ll impact the company’s ad business. Google is already moving to head off that problem. On Google’s earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company would be experimenting with new formats native to the way SGE works — ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137593/google-is-ready-to-fill-its-ai-searches-with-ads/) 2023-10-24T23:37:03Z **Apple to expand device repairs by independent shops under Biden’s ‘right to repair’ push**
A director from the White House announced that Apple plans to significantly expand access to device repairs for independent repair shops and consumers across the United States. The move is part of the Biden administration’s push for “right to repair” reforms. According to a statement by National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard (via Reuters), Apple wil ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137599/apple-to-expand-device-repairs-by-independent-shops-under-bidens-right-to-repair-push/) 2023-10-25T22:48:45Z **Apple updates pretty much everything, and massively increases subscription prices**
Apple is releasing a slew of updates for its latest operating systems today, including iOS and iPadOS 17.1, macOS Sonoma 14.1, watchOS 10.1, and others. The company is also releasing security updates for a few previous-generation operating systems, so that people who aren’t ready to upgrade (and older devices that can’t upgrade) will still be protected from new exploits. ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137603/apple-updates-pretty-much-everything-and-massively-increases-subscription-prices/) 2023-10-25T22:54:02Z **Microsoft now wants you to take a poll before installing Google Chrome**
Last weekend, we noticed that an attempt to download Google Chrome using Microsoft Edge results in the latter opening its sidebar with a poll, asking you to explain to Microsoft how you could dare try downloading Google Chrome. Of course, the exact wording is more tame, but you get the idea. Now, besides dismissing several banners and a full-size ad injected on the Chrome website, Edge wants ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137605/microsoft-now-wants-you-to-take-a-poll-before-installing-google-chrome/) 2023-10-25T23:02:00Z **Google to require Android apps with generative “AI” to include flag and report function**
As generative AI models become more widely available, you may be integrating them into your apps. In line with Google’s commitment to responsible AI practices, we want to help ensure AI-generated content is safe for people and that their feedback is incorporated. Early next year, we’ll be requiring developers to provide the ability to report or flag offensive ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137607/google-to-require-android-apps-with-generative-ai-to-include-flag-and-report-function/) 2023-10-26T00:53:46Z **Wait, what’s a bookmarklet?**
So you ended up with this JavaScript quirk where it was possible to create unique URLs that ran a bit of JavaScript on whatever page you happened to be looking at. It could even make changes to that page. Move things around. Replace words. Open links. And pretty early on, people realized that these JavaScript URLs were also bookmarkable, just like any other URL. And, crucially, easily shareable as links. I had almost forgotten about these things. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137609/wait-whats-a-bookmarklet/) 2023-10-26T01:00:22Z **The ongoing work for native Wine Wayland support**
While most X.Org Developers Conference talks are around graphics drivers / infrastructure work itself, one of the other interesting XDC 2023 talks was Alexandros Frantzis around the ongoing work of providing a native Wine Wayland driver so that this open-source project can interact directly with Wayland and so Windows games/applications running under Linux will no longer need to go through XWayland. The entire presentation is availabl ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137612/the-ongoing-work-for-native-wine-wayland-support/) 2023-10-26T22:52:52Z **Patch for Windows 9x to fix CPU issues in virtualisation**
Virtualization of Microsoft Windows 9x systems is a bit problematic due to 2 major bugs: TLB invalidation bug and CPU speed limit bug. This program contains a set of patches to fix these bugs, and can be booted from a floppy on a virtual machine. It either applies the patch to the installed system, or it patches the installation files in order to create (relatively) bug-free installation media. A must-have for your Win ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137616/patch-for-windows-9x-to-fix-cpu-issues-in-virtualisation/) 2023-10-26T22:51:41Z **Meet Nightshade, the new tool allowing artists to ‘poison’ AI models with corrupted training data**
But even without filing lawsuits, artists have a chance to fight back against AI using tech. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive look at a new open source tool still in development called Nightshade, which can be added by artists to their imagery before they upload it to the web, altering pixels in a way invisible to the human eye, but th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137614/meet-nightshade-the-new-tool-allowing-artists-to-poison-ai-models-with-corrupted-training-data/) 2023-10-26T23:25:57Z **Inside Google’s plan to stop Apple from getting serious about search**
Google quietly planned to put a lid on Apple’s search ambitions. The company looked for ways to undercut Spotlight by producing its own version for iPhones and to persuade more iPhone users to use Google’s Chrome web browser instead of Apple’s Safari browser, according to internal Google documents reviewed by The New York Times. At the same time, Google studied how to pry open Apple’s control of ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137618/inside-googles-plan-to-stop-apple-from-getting-serious-about-search/) 2023-10-27T19:04:28Z **Linux Mint is working on adding Wayland support to Cinnamon**
The Linux Mint project has announced that they’re finally working on bringing the Cinnamon desktop environment over to Wayland. The work started on Wayland. As mentioned earlier this year, this was identified as one of the major challenges our project had to tackle in the mid to long term. Priority had been given to ISO tools and Secureboot over new features for 21.3 already, we felt it was time to invest some re ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137623/linux-mint-is-working-on-adding-wayland-support-to-cinnamon/) 2023-10-27T19:00:46Z **Windows 11 now lets you write anywhere you can type**
Microsoft is starting to roll out new changes to Windows Ink that let you write anywhere you can type in Windows 11. After months of previewing the changes, the handwriting-to-text conversion now works inside search boxes and other elements of Windows 11 where you’d normally type your input. Microsoft has started rolling out the KB5031455 non-security update as a preview to Windows 11 users yesterday. You simply have to head to ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137621/windows-11-now-lets-you-write-anywhere-you-can-type/) 2023-10-27T20:15:53Z **Google paid $26 billion to be default search engine in 2021**
Google paid $26.3 billion to other companies to ensure its search engine was the default on web browsers and mobile phones, a top company executive testified during the Justice Department’s antitrust trial Friday. The amount of payments Alphabet Inc.’s Google made to other companies for the default status — such as Apple Inc. for placement on the iPhone and other devices — has more than tripled since 2014, accordi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137627/google-paid-26-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021/) 2023-10-27T23:43:06Z **This 18-year-old built a better computer monitor that doesn’t strain your eyes**
The device looks like a conventional computer monitor but opens up like a clam. The screen itself is a common flat panel liquid crystal display or LCD, a nearly translucent screen that is typically lit from behind by powered lights. For Eazeye, the backing lights are replaced with a bright white carbon fiber panel that can tip backwards up to 45 degrees. The panel bounces ambi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137630/this-18-year-old-built-a-better-computer-monitor-that-doesnt-strain-your-eyes/) 2023-10-27T23:49:40Z **: browser engine made almost entirely in JS**
A browser(/web) engine essentially takes in a URL(/etc) and gives you it rendered into a window for you to view and interact with. does this too, almost entirely from scratch, made in JS. It runs in your browser! Node backend soon™ too? The host browser(/etc) is only used for networking (fetch) and renderer backend (<canvas>). I feel like I have opinions, but I can’t express them. This is equal parts genius and madness. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137632/browser-engine-made-almost-entirely-in-js/) 2023-10-27T23:52:09Z **A new accessibility architecture for modern free desktops**
My name is Matt Campbell, and I’m delighted to announce that I’m joining the GNOME accessibility team to develop a new accessibility architecture. After providing some brief background information on myself, I’ll describe what’s wrong with the current Linux desktop accessibility architecture, including a design flaw that has plagued assistive technology developers and users on multiple platforms, including GNOME, for ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137634/a-new-accessibility-architecture-for-modern-free-desktops/) 2023-10-28T22:03:55Z **Qualcomm previews Snapdragon X Elite SoC: Oryon CPU starts in laptops**
While Qualcomm has become wildly successful in the Arm SoC market for Android smartphones, their efforts to parlay that into success in other markets has eluded them so far. The company has produced several generations of chips for Windows-on-Arm laptops, and while each has incrementally improved on matters, it’s not been enough to dislodge a highly dominant Intel. And while the lack of success ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137640/qualcomm-previews-snapdragon-x-elite-soc-oryon-cpu-starts-in-laptops/) 2023-10-28T22:11:44Z **Intel doesn’t think that Arm CPUs will make a dent in the laptop market**
Chip companies like Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD are all either planning or said to be planning another attempt at making Arm chips for the consumer PC market. Qualcomm is leading the charge in mid-2024 with its Snapdragon X Elite and a new CPU architecture called Oryon. And Reuters reported earlier this week that Nvidia and AMD are targeting a 2025 release window for their own Arm chips for W ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137643/intel-doesnt-think-that-arm-cpus-will-make-a-dent-in-the-laptop-market/) 2023-10-28T23:08:29Z **Cortex X2: arm aims high**
Arm has traditionally targeted the low end of the power and performance curve, but just as Intel has been looking to expand into the low power market, ARM is looking to expand into higher power and performance segments. The Cortex X series is at the forefront of this effort. Here, we’ll be looking at the Cortex X2 as implemented in the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. This SoC features a single X2 core, alongside four Cortex A510 and three Cortex A710 cores. The Cortex X2 in this SoC typically ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137646/cortex-x2-arm-aims-high/) 2023-10-28T23:11:47Z **Making music with Google Sheets and Web MIDI API**
Do you know that the modern web browser can access real musical instruments? With the help of Web MIDI API, we can create a web application that can access MIDI devices connected to our computer. In this article, I will explain how I use Google Sheets as a music sequencer for composing and playing ambient music with a hardware synthesizer. Next thing you tell me browsers have an API for gamepads and joysticks connected through the gam ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137648/making-music-with-google-sheets-and-web-midi-api/) 2023-10-28T23:20:03Z **A quick look back at the MSX PC platform, including Microsoft’s role, on its 40th birthday**
We have written articles in the past year about some of Microsoft’s different product launches, like how its first real hardware device was an add-in card for the Apple II, or its not-so-smartwatch platform, SPOT. However, many people may not be aware that Microsoft had a small involvement in a movement to create a standardized PC platform that evolved in ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137650/a-quick-look-back-at-the-msx-pc-platform-including-microsofts-role-on-its-40th-birthday/) 2023-10-29T19:44:52Z **All GB/s without FLOPS – Nvidia CMP 170HX review, performance lockdown workaround, teardown, watercooling, and repair**
In 2021, at the height of cryptocurrency mining, Nvidia released the Nvidia CMP 170HX. Designed as a compute-only card to accelerate Ethereum’s memory-hard Ethash Proof-of-Work mining algorithm with its 1500 GB/s HBM2e memory bus, Nvidia implemented the hardware using the GA100 silicon from their Ampere a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137653/all-gb-s-without-flops-nvidia-cmp-170hx-review-performance-lockdown-workaround-teardown-watercooling-and-repair/) 2023-10-29T19:59:45Z **Android 14 review: there’s always next year**
Does anybody care about Android 14? This year’s release of the world’s most popular operating system feels like one of the smallest ever, bringing just a handful of new features. Even during the Android portion of Google’s big I/O keynote, Google spent most of its time showing off a new generative AI feature that creates wallpapers for you, as if there aren’t enough wallpapers in the world. Last year’s Android 13 release felt small, but that was ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137655/android-14-review-theres-always-next-year/) 2023-10-30T01:03:38Z **TDE R14.1.1 released**
The Trinity Desktop Environment, the KDE 3 fork, has released a new version. R14.1.1 comes with the ability to drag and tile windows to the display’s borders and corners, adds several improvements to keyboard shortcuts settings, a few new wallpapers, better support in SunOS/Illumos/DilOS and support for libxine2’s logarithmic volume settings. It also has some important fixes for tdepowersave’s display brightness control, arts sound server start up crash, TQt3’s recursive mutexes and for th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137659/tde-r14-1-1-released/) 2023-10-30T00:59:15Z **I’m totally blind. Artificial intelligence is helping me rediscover the world.**
When I first heard about Be My AI—a new collaboration between Open AI and Be My Eyes, an app that connects sighted volunteers with blind people who need help via video call—I didn’t let myself get too excited. Be My AI promised to allow blind people to receive an A.I.–generated description of any photo we uploaded. This was a tantalizing prospect, but it wasn’t the first time a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137657/im-totally-blind-artificial-intelligence-is-helping-me-rediscover-the-world/) 2023-10-30T01:07:01Z **Sculpt OS release 23.10 available**
Modern PCs provide plenty of metering and power-management options. Version 23.10 of the Genode-based Sculpt operating system makes these features available via an interactive user interface. One can watch the temperature of each CPU core, monitor the individual CPU frequencies, switch between power profiles, and reveal details about power draw. Go to the download page to get started with Sculpt OS. It’s used as the day-to-day operating system by Genode developers ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137661/sculpt-os-release-23-10-available/) 2023-10-30T21:15:15Z **Quicktake 100 for Apple II**
Apple released their first Quicktake camera, the Quicktake 100, in 1994, ten years after the Apple //c. On the box, they very boldly wrote: “Requirements: 386, 486 or superior; 2MB of RAM, 10MB of free hard disk space; an 1.44MB floppy drive; a VGA, SVGA or superior card”. But was this true? No. They were just being lazy, or trying to get you to upgrade a perfectly functional 8-bit, 1MHz computer with 128kB of RAM and 140kB floppies. In fact, it was absolutely possible to do di ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137667/quicktake-100-for-apple-ii/) 2023-10-31T00:07:46Z **Youtube’s anti-adblock and uBlock Origin**
Since May, uBO has been in a cat-and-mouse game with YouTube. And they’ve shown incredible resilience, especially when you consider that there are only two people on the uBO team dealing with YouTube. The uBO team members are all volunteers. They’ve gone above and beyond to meet every little request from their users. But there’s a limit to how much they can take. At some point, the constant demands become too much, and they will leave uBO for good. It ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137663/youtubes-anti-adblock-and-ublock-origin/) 2023-10-31T00:19:41Z **GhostBSD 23.10.1 released**
In this release, the FreeBSD base system and kernel have been updated to 1302508, and it contains software updates, some improvements to Update Station, and new features to NetworkMgr. Also, os-generic-userland-devtools has been removed from the default installation to downsize the live system image. GhostBSD is an excellent option if you want a more turnkey FreeBSD-based desktop. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137672/ghostbsd-23-10-1-released/) 2023-10-31T00:14:45Z **Swift, meet WinRT**
The goal of this post is to share how we, at the Browser Company, have made it possible to use Swift to build a modern Windows application. There is no UI framework for Windows written in Swift, and Windows itself is written in C++ – so that may leave you wondering, “how can I build my app on Windows”?  Modern Windows applications use WinRT, a technology built on top of COM, which can interop really well with Swift, as we presented in our previous post. To be able to build idiomatic UI for Window ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137670/swift-meet-winrt/) 2023-10-31T00:24:10Z **Windows CE, Microsoft’s stunted middle child, reaches end of support at 26 years**
We’ve already covered the end of life of Windows CE, but Ars has a short but interesting look back at the history of this undeservedly unloved operating system. It was a proto-netbook, it was a palmtop, it was a PDA, it was Windows Phone 7 but not Windows Phone 8, and then it was an embedded ghost. It parents never seemed to know what to do with it after it grew up, beyond o ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137674/windows-ce-microsofts-stunted-middle-child-reaches-end-of-support-at-26-years/) 2023-10-31T20:26:19Z **Apple’s macOS Sonoma makes Macs with Asahi Linux unbootable**
About a year or so ago, the Asahi Linux people told me I was being paranoid about Apple’s macOS or firmware updates bricking or otherwise negatively affecting Asahi Linux installs, and that you shouldn’t rely on Linux on Apple M devices for anything serious. They told me Apple explicitly supports alternate operating systems on ARM Macs and that Apple can be fully trusted and relied upon. …so anyway bugs in Sonoma ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137678/apples-macos-sonoma-makes-macs-with-asahi-linux-unbootable/) 2023-10-31T22:51:37Z **MicroTCP: a minimal TCP/IP stack**
MicroTCP is a TCP/IP network stack I started building as a learning exercise while attending the Computer Networking course at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. It’s just a hobby project and is intended to just be a minimal, yet complete, implementation. At this moment MicroTCP implements ARP (RFC 826, complete), IPv4 (no fragmentation), ICMP (minimum necessary to reply to pings) and TCP (complete but not stress-tested). Note that “complete” should no ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137681/microtcp-a-minimal-tcp-ip-stack/) 2023-10-31T23:04:20Z **Android and RISC-V: what you need to know to be ready**
Support for RISC-V in Android is taking another step forward. The latest update that we have is that now not only are we accepting patches, but we have begun to mature support for RISC-V in Android. RISC-V is a modular ISA, meaning that there are a large number of optional extensions. We have also determined an initial set that we feel is critical to ensure that any CPU running RISC-V will have all of the features we expect t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137688/android-and-risc-v-what-you-need-to-know-to-be-ready/) 2023-10-31T23:02:31Z **Upstream Linux support now available for the the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3**
The initial support was posted on October 25th 2023 on the Linux kernel mailing lists for review by the Linux developers community. With the set of patches released by Linaro engineers, it is also possible to boot an AOSP image with Graphics Software Rendering using Google’s SwiftShader. Since 2014, Linaro Engineers have been working closely with Qualcomm Engineers to enable Snap ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137685/upstream-linux-support-now-available-for-the-the-qualcomm-snapdragon-8-gen-3/) 2023-11-01T00:50:15Z **The beauty of finished software**
In a world where constant change is the norm, finished software provides a breath of fresh air. It’s a reminder that reliability, consistency, and user satisfaction can coexist in the realm of software development. So the next time you find yourself yearning for the latest update, remember that sometimes, the best software is the one that doesn’t change at all. While this is a nice sentiment, the reality is that software has become so complex, competition to cutthroat ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137690/the-beauty-of-finished-software/) 2023-11-01T19:19:34Z **Systemd working on “storage target mode” feature**
Lennart Poettering has been working on a new systemd feature called systemd-storagetm that is inspired by the Apple macOS “Target Disk Mode” feature. This is similar to Apple’s Target Disk Mode as a boot option on Macs that allows other systems to then easily access it as an external device. The systemd intent with this Storage Target Mode is to make it easier to debug a broken system with very few dependencies while being able to acces ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137693/systemd-working-on-storage-target-mode-feature/) 2023-11-01T20:44:40Z **Setting up a board farm for postmarketOS**
I’ve recently been working on putting together a CI system for postmarketOS that will allow us to do proper automated integration testing. That is to say – when someone opens a merge request that modifies our initramfs (for example), we should be able to click a button and some minutes later know that this change doesn’t break any of our important usecases. QEMU absolutely can (and will) get us most of the way there, but at some point we need to just ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137695/setting-up-a-board-farm-for-postmarketos/) 2023-11-01T20:49:56Z **Chinese Loongson CPU takes on AMD’s Zen 3 in benchmarks**
Tom’s Hardware reports: MyDrivers has published a review of Loongson’s 3A6000 quad-core CPU, confirming that the chip’s IPC improvements are real. Benchmarks reveal that the 3A6000 enjoys an impressive 60% performance uplift in single-core performance and an even more impressive 2x performance multiplier in multi-core performance over its 3A5000 predecessor. With these improvements, the 3A6000 features performance compara ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137698/chinese-loongson-cpu-takes-on-amds-zen-3-in-benchmarks/) 2023-11-01T20:55:08Z **Google pays OEMs to update Android devices**
During his testimony, Pichai revealed a tidbit on how Google operates that gives a better look behind the curtain and could help explain users’ frustration with Android phones not seeing security updates. According to Pichai, Google financially incentivizes OEMs to update their phones. Companies that keep phones current with the latest security patches see a higher revenue share from Google services than those that don’t. In other words, the amou ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137701/google-pays-oems-to-update-android-devices/) 2023-11-01T21:01:16Z **How a kernel update broke my stylus**
In short, after a Linux kernel update (6.5.8-200.fc.x86\_64 on Fedora KDE), I can’t use the top button of my pen on my tablet. This is really affecting my digital painting workflow! Right-clicking on the pen is an essential part of my workflow. Right-click on a layer in Krita to get the menu, right-click while using the Transform tool to get the transformation options, right-click on the canvas to get the pop-up palette! …And I’m not even talking about how dif ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137707/how-a-kernel-update-broke-my-stylus/) 2023-11-02T00:27:39Z **NVMe INT13h option ROM: boot legacy PCs from NVMe storage**
This project allows old x86 computers using a classic BIOS to boot from modern NVMe storage attached via PCI(e). It’s a heavily modified version of iPXE (which usually allows for booting from the network), but instead of the network, this code uses a port of the SeaBIOS NVMe implementation to talk to a local NVMe drive. What a useful idea. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137710/nvme-int13h-option-rom-boot-legacy-pcs-from-nvme-storage/) 2023-11-02T00:35:32Z **Why ACPI?**
There’s an alternative universe where we decided to teach the kernel about every piece of hardware it should run on. Fortunately (or, well, unfortunately) we’ve seen that in the ARM world. Most device-specific simply never reaches mainline, and most users are stuck running ancient kernels as a result. Imagine every x86 device vendor shipping their own kernel optimised for their hardware, and now imagine how well that works out given the quality of their firmware. Does that really seem better to you? It’s underst ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137712/why-acpi/) 2023-11-02T15:32:02Z **Facebook owner Meta faces EU ban on targeted advertising**
The European data regulator has agreed to extend a ban imposed by non-EU member Norway on “behavioural advertising” on Facebook and Instagram to cover all 30 countries in the European Union and the European Economic Area, it said on Wednesday. Meta runs the risk of getting fined up to 4% of its global turnover, the Norwegian data regulator said. Sure, the European Union isn’t perfect – no government is – but the Union’ ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137714/facebook-owner-meta-faces-eu-ban-on-targeted-advertising/) 2023-11-02T21:47:16Z **Firefox lost users during “failed” Yahoo search deal, says Mozilla CEO**
This week, Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker rose as a key figure in Google’s defense against the Justice Department’s monopoly claims. Providing a video deposition for the landmark trial, Baker testified that Mozilla’s popular browser Firefox tried to switch from using Google as a default search engine but reverted back after a “failed” bet on Yahoo made it clear that Google was Firefox users’ prefer ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137719/firefox-lost-users-during-failed-yahoo-search-deal-says-mozilla-ceo/) 2023-11-02T21:41:02Z **Intel Itanium IA-64 support removed with the Linux 6.7 Kernel**
In recent years the Itanium support in the Linux kernel has went downhill with not many users left testing new kernels on aging Itanium servers. There also hasn’t been any major active contributors to the Itanium code for keeping it maintained and making any serious improvements to the architecture code. On and off for months there’s been talk of retiring Itanium from the Linux kernel and now it’s finally hap ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137717/intel-itanium-ia-64-support-removed-with-the-linux-6-7-kernel/) 2023-11-02T21:51:24Z **Facebook and Instagram to offer subscription for no ads in Europe**
Facebook has unveiled the prices it’s going to charge European users who want to have an ad-free experience on Facebook and Instagram. People in these countries will be able to subscribe for a fee to use our products without ads. Depending on where you purchase it will cost €9.99/month on the web or €12.99/month on iOS and Android. Regardless of where you purchase, the subscription will apply to all l ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137721/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-europe/) 2023-11-02T21:59:07Z **Google drops Web Environment Integrity proposal**
Google has announced it’s going to drop the Web Environment Integrity proposal – the controversial proposal that set the internet on fire a few months ago. Instead, the company intends to offer a much more limited version of the proposal that only targets Android WebViews embedded in applications, targeting only media streams running inside Android applications. We’ve heard your feedback, and the Web Environment Integrity proposal is no ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137723/google-drops-web-environment-integrity-proposal/) 2023-11-03T19:28:08Z **Enable MTE on Pixel 8**
The Pixel 8 hardware (Tensor G3) supports the ARM Memory Tagging Extension (MTE), and software support is available both in Android userspace and the Linux kernel. This feature is a powerful defense against linear buffer overflows and many types of use-after-free flaws. I’m extremely happy to see this hardware finally available in the real world. You can enable this feature in both Android and the kernel, as the post explains. Sadly, the post does not explain if there’s any downsides to ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137728/enable-mte-on-pixel-8/) 2023-11-03T19:24:52Z **M3 Macs: there’s more to performance than counting cores**
I was yet again spectacularly wrong in speculating that we had another eight months to wait before Apple would release the first Macs with M3 chips. Another few days and the first will be upon us, and the fortunate few will start bragging or moaning about their performance. That has suddenly grown more complex: the number of each CPU core type has diversified with the M3 Pro in particular. This article looks at some of t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137726/m3-macs-theres-more-to-performance-than-counting-cores/) 2023-11-03T19:36:34Z **Apple’s EU legal shenanigans laughed out of the room by EU**
Bruce Lawson writes: This week, I’ve had the pleasure to read the post-modernist triumph that is CASES DMA.100013 Apple – online intermediation services – app stores, DMA.100025 Apple – operating systems and DMA.100027 Apple – web browsers (PDF), which details some of Apple’s attempts to avoid being regulated. I call it a “post-modernist triumph” because its prose is almost as incomprehensible as James Joyce’s Finne ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137730/apples-eu-legal-shenanigans-laughed-out-of-the-room-by-eu/) 2023-11-03T21:17:37Z **Want to name my Wi-Fi network and computer? Want to troll me with stickers on my PC? Now’s your chance!**
Since we started our more visible push for donations to ensure we can keep OSNews running as an independent technology news website without having to resort to SEO spam, ad overload, and worse, a number of people have expressed interest in donating to specific goals instead of donating generically. A possible goal for this has rec ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137733/want-to-name-my-wi-fi-network-and-computer-want-to-troll-me-with-stickers-on-my-pc-nows-your-chance/) 2023-11-05T19:14:37Z **Google rewriting Android’s Binder in Rust with promising results**
Google engineers on Wednesday posted an initial “request for comments” set of patches that re-implement Android’s Binder code within the Linux kernel in the Rust programming language rather than C. Binder remains a critical piece of Android’s software stack and for increasing the robustness and security, Google is pursuing a rewrite of the C code in Rust. Binder is responsible for inter-process communica ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137745/google-rewriting-androids-binder-in-rust-with-promising-results/) 2023-11-05T19:21:27Z **Microsoft’s flawed approach to application updates wreaks havoc on Windows PCs**
WinRAR has a massive security hole that’s still being actively exploited, and it’s one of many Windows applications that do not auto-update. The developer boasts of more than 500 million WinRAR installations around the world, so it’s likely that hundreds of millions of PCs are vulnerable to malicious ZIP files today. How is it that, in 2023, the world’s most popular desktop op ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137748/microsofts-flawed-approach-to-application-updates-wreaks-havoc-on-windows-pcs/) 2023-11-06T23:22:08Z **US lawmakers press Biden for plans on Chinese use of open chip technology**
A wider bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is asking the Biden administration about its plans to respond to China’s rising use of RISC-V chip design technology after Reuters last month reported on growing concerns about it in both houses of Congress. Now, a broader group of 18 lawmakers that includes five Democrats is asking the Biden administration for how it plans to prevent China “f ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137750/us-lawmakers-press-biden-for-plans-on-chinese-use-of-open-chip-technology/) 2023-11-07T00:21:03Z **Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly**
Cities: Skylines 2 like its predecessor is made in Unity, which means the game can be decompiled and inspected quite easily using any .NET decompiler. I used JetBrains dotPeek which has a decent Visual Studio -like UI with a large variety of search and analysis options. However static analysis doesn’t really tell us anything concrete about the rendering performance of the game. To analyze what’s going with rendering I used Renderdoc, an open source graphi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137752/why-cities-skylines-2-performs-poorly/) 2023-11-07T00:24:53Z **LXQt 1.4.0 released**
LXQt, the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment, version 1.4.0 has been released, and this one marks an important milestone – it’s the last release based on Qt5, before the next release moves to Qt6. LXQt 1.4.0 is based on Qt 5.15, the last LTS version of Qt5. If everything goes as planned, this is the last Qt5-based release – we’ll do our best to port the next release to Qt6, even if we’ll have to delay it. It’s loaded with new features, bugfixes, and improvements, and, as always, will find it ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137754/lxqt-1-4-0-released/) 2023-11-07T01:28:46Z **OmniOS Community Edition r151048 released**
OmniOS Community Edition r151048 has been released. For those of us that lost track of the Solaris world – OmniOS is a distribution of illumos, which in turn is a fork of the last release of OpenSolaris before Oracle did what Oracle does and screwed everyone over by taking Solaris closed source again. OmniOS focuses on being a server operating system. For this release, the userland is now built with gcc 13, and it contains various improvements for ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137756/omnios-community-edition-r151048-released/) 2023-11-07T01:35:33Z **Ironclad 0.5.0 released**
Ironclad is a formally verified, hard real-time capable kernel for general-purpose and embedded uses, written in SPARK and Ada. It is comprised of 100% free software, free in the sense that it respects the user’s freedom. Version 0.5.0 has been released. This release brings a lot of improvements to mainly the scheduling, time keeping, userland, and networking subsystems. The easiest way to try Ironclad, either virtually or on real hardware, is to use a distribution that uses it – Glo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137758/ironclad-0-5-0-released/) 2023-11-07T22:18:12Z **Browsing the WWW on a 1980s IBM PC using MicroWeb**
Do you ever sit at your 1981 vintage IBM PC and get the urge to pop onto that newfangled ‘WWW’ to stay up to date on all the goings-on in the world? Fret not, because Al’s Geek Lab has you covered with a new video, which you will unfortunately have to watch on a device that was made at the very least in the late 1990s. What makes this feat possible is a miniscule web browser called MicroWeb, created by jhhoward, that will happily ru ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137760/browsing-the-www-on-a-1980s-ibm-pc-using-microweb/) 2023-11-07T22:39:16Z **ReactOS gets initial UEFI and NT6+ application support**
The ReactOS project has published another newsletter filled with news about their progress, and two things stand out. First, there’s now initial support for booting using UEFI. Work has been underway since the beginning of the year to transition FreeLoader, our default bootloader for ReactOS, to support UEFI on x86 and AMD64, as well as ARM32 and ARM64. Hermès has been developing a system for passing the UEFI framebuffer in ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137762/reactos-gets-initial-uefi-and-nt6-application-support/) 2023-11-08T00:46:09Z **Ubuntu’s Miriway maturing as a Mir-based Wayland compositor for other desktops**
In addition to Canonical continuing to invest in developing Mir as a platform now built atop Wayland, over the past year Canonical developers have been quietly working on Miriway as a Mir-based Wayland compositor and it’s becoming iteratively more useful. I’m not entirely sure what its purpose is. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137765/ubuntus-miriway-maturing-as-a-mir-based-wayland-compositor-for-other-desktops/) 2023-11-08T00:53:57Z **Fedora Linux 39 released**
Fedora Workstation now features GNOME 45, which brings better performance and many usability enhancements, including a new workspace switcher and a much-improved image viewer. If you’re looking for a different desktop experience, our Budgie Special Interest Group has created Fedora Onyx, a Budgie-based “Atomic” desktop in the spirit of Fedora Silverblue.  Of course, that’s not all — we also have updated desktop flavors featuring KDE Plasma Desktop, Xfce, Cinnamon, and more. As with ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137767/fedora-linux-39-released/) 2023-11-08T21:14:17Z **A picture is worth a thousand permissions requests**
What’s happening here is that Migration Assistant has migrated all my apps, and has automatically launched any of them that are listed in Login Items or are set to automatically launch in the background. They all launch, all at once, and every single one of them then prompts me for permission to do all the things they already had permission to do on my previous Mac. In this screen shot, I’ve dragged them apart, but in reality most ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137772/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-permissions-requests/) 2023-11-08T21:12:16Z **Google argues iMessage should be regulated by the EU’s Digital Markets Act**
Google is hoping regulators will bail it out of the messaging mess it has created for itself after years of dysfunctional product reboots. The Financial Times reports that Google and a few cell carriers are asking the EU to designate Apple’s iMessage as a “core” service that would require it to be interoperable under the new “Digital Markets Act.” The EU’s Digital Markets Act targets ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137770/google-argues-imessage-should-be-regulated-by-the-eus-digital-markets-act/) 2023-11-09T00:34:09Z **Ubuntu Touch OTA-3 Focal released**
A new update for Ubuntu Touch is here – adding Ubuntu 20.04 LTS support for new devices (the PinePhone, PinePhone Pro, PineTab and PineTab 2), and containing a whole slew of bug fixes and new features. It’s awesome to see the UBPorts team delivering a steady stream of updates, keeping the Ubuntu Touch platform alive and kicking. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137777/ubuntu-touch-ota-3-focal-released/) 2023-11-09T00:38:40Z **Accessibility training will not save you**
I cannot pinpoint the source of this misconception, it could have been a vendor, or long-lost blog post, or one of the many webinars I attended in my early days as a program lead. Regardless of the source, I operated under the wild misconception that all I needed to do was train my teams to do accessibility. Developers, QAs, designers, all they needed was training! This model does not work. Especially for an organization with multiple products, multi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137779/accessibility-training-will-not-save-you/) 2023-11-09T00:43:55Z **Microsoft won’t let you close OneDrive in Windows without you explaining it first**
A few weeks ago, we reported an odd discovery in Microsoft Edge: a poll asking users to explain their decision to download Chrome. A similar thing is now haunting OneDrive users on Windows, demanding to answer why they are closing the app. And demanding is a correct word here because Windows will not let you quit OneDrive without answering first. The beatings will contin ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137781/microsoft-wont-let-you-close-onedrive-in-windows-without-you-explaining-it-first/) 2023-11-09T11:56:29Z **Xiaomi phones won’t get HyperOS updates if you unlock the bootloader**
Xiaomi also has bad news for MIUI users who wish to unlock their smartphones, saying they won’t get updated to HyperOS. “Previous operating systems, such as MIUI 14, still retain the ability to unlock, but users will no longer receive any Xiaomi HyperOS updates if they leave their devices in an unlocked state,” the company told us. The Chinese brand clarified in a follow-up email that HyperOS upd ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137783/xiaomi-phones-wont-get-hyperos-updates-if-you-unlock-the-bootloader/) 2023-11-09T14:51:47Z **Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it’s like 16GB on a PC**
Eight gigabytes has been the standard RAM load out on new MacBook Pros for the better part of a decade, and in 2023, Apple execs still believe it’s enough for customers. With the launch of Apple’s M3 MacBook Pros last month, a base 14-inch $1,599 model with an M3 chip still only gets you 8GB of unified DRAM that’s shared between the CPU, GPU, and neural network accelerator. In a show of Appl ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137786/apple-exec-defends-8gb-1599-macbook-pro-claims-its-like-16gb-on-a-pc/) 2023-11-10T00:51:57Z **Amazon to switch Fire devices from Android to a new Linux distribution**
Amazon has been working on a new operating system to replace Android on Fire TVs, smart displays and other connected devices, I have learned from talking to multiple sources with knowledge of these plans, as well as job listings and other materials referencing these efforts. Development of the new operating system, which is internally known as Vega, appears fairly advanced . The system has a ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137790/amazon-to-switch-fire-devices-from-android-to-a-new-linux-distribution/) 2023-11-10T01:00:04Z **AMD begins Polaris and Vega GPU retirement process, reduces ongoing driver support**
As AMD is now well into their third generation of RDNA architecture GPUs, the sun has been slowly setting on AMD’s remaining Graphics Core Next (GCN) designs, better known by the architecture names of Polaris and Vega. In recent weeks the company dropped support for those GPU architectures in their open source Vulkan Linux driver, AMDVLK, and now we have confirmation t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137793/amd-begins-polaris-and-vega-gpu-retirement-process-reduces-ongoing-driver-support/) 2023-11-10T22:28:36Z **Intel vs NEC: the case of the V20’s microcode**
It’s about a legal battle between Intel and NEC in the 1980s over the microcode of the 8086 processor. But whilst it may be about events a long time ago, the themes are still familiar today. Whilst writing it, I couldn’t help but think about the ongoing lawsuit between Qualcomm and Arm. About how the future of both companies, and indeed others, including Intel, may be crucially affected by the results of a ruling on intellectual property prot ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137776/intel-vs-nec-the-case-of-the-v20s-microcode/) 2023-11-10T22:47:55Z **Linux 6.7 overhauls x86 CPU microcode loading**
Some of the x86 microcode loading improvements in Linux 6.7 include not loading microcode on 32-bit before paging has been enabled to avoid a variety of issues, reworked late-loading of CPU microcode, late-loading microcode is now CPU hotplug safe, and the notion of a minimum microcode revision for determining when late microcode loading is deemed safe. Considering how crucial microcode loading is, it makes sense to improve it as much as po ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137797/linux-6-7-overhauls-x86-cpu-microcode-loading/) 2023-11-10T22:54:41Z **SteamOS will be coming to other handhelds before you can install it on your PC**
Will SteamOS ever become generally available straight from Valve, instead of the community builds you can try out right now? “We’re hoping soon, though, it is very high on our list, and we want to make SteamOS more widely available. We’ll probably start with making it more available to other handhelds with a similar gamepad style controller. And then further beyond that, to m ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137799/steamos-will-be-coming-to-other-handhelds-before-you-can-install-it-on-your-pc/) 2023-11-11T01:32:12Z **iOS 17.2 hints at Apple moving towards letting users sideload apps from outside the App Store**
Apple has been under pressure in the European Union as the Digital Markets Act antitrust legislation requires the company to allow users to sideload apps outside the App Store to increase competition. 9to5Mac has now found evidence in the iOS 17.2 beta code that the company is indeed moving towards enabling sideloading on iOS devices. The meat of ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137801/ios-17-2-hints-at-apple-moving-towards-letting-users-sideload-apps-from-outside-the-app-store/) 2023-11-11T01:39:26Z **A quick look back at the official announcement of Microsoft Windows 1.0 40 years ago today**
The year was 1983. Microsoft was slowly becoming a well-known tech company in the PC space. Two years before, in 1981, Its MS-DOS operating system would be installed in the first IBM PC. It launched its first-word processing program, Word, earlier in 1983, along with its first Microsoft Mouse product. It even made Mac and PC hardware expansion cards. H ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137803/a-quick-look-back-at-the-official-announcement-of-microsoft-windows-1-0-40-years-ago-today/) 2023-11-12T18:11:12Z **New Outlook sends passwords, mails and other data to Microsoft**
“Microsoft steals access data” – When the well-known German IT portal “Heise Online” uses such drastic words in its headline, then something is up. If Microsoft has its way, all Windows users will have to switch to the latest version of Microsoft Outlook. But: Not only can the IMAP and SMTP access data of your e-mail account be transferred to Microsoft, but all e-mails in the INBOX can also be copied to the ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137828/new-outlook-sends-passwords-mails-and-other-data-to-microsoft/) 2023-11-12T18:07:38Z **KDE Plasma 6.0 goes Wayland by default**
Yep you read that right, we’ve decided to throw the lever and go Wayland by default! The three remaining showstoppers are in the process of being fixed and we expect them to be done soon–certainly before the final release of Plasma 6. So we wanted to make the change early to gather as much feedback as possible. Excellent news. Of course, distributions will still be able to opt for the unmaintained, deprecated X.org if they want to, but most distributions ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137826/kde-plasma-6-0-goes-wayland-by-default/) 2023-11-13T00:36:07Z **The Apple Network Server’s all-too-secret weapon: PPC Toolbox)**
However, there was a secret weapon hidden in ANS AIX most of us at the time never knew about. Built-in to the operating system was a fully Unix-native AppleTalk stack and support for receiving and sending Apple Events, surfaced in the form of Apple’s disk administration tools and AppleShare. But Apple had a much more expansive vision for this feature: full server-client “symbiotic” applications that could do t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137832/the-apple-network-servers-all-too-secret-weapon-ppc-toolbox/) 2023-11-13T00:28:13Z **How a kernel developer made my styluses work again on newer kernels**
Remember when we linked to David Revoy’s story about how his drawing pen’s buttons stopped working properly due to a Linux kernel update? Well, it turns out that Linux kernel developers took this one up, and a fix is already being tested. This solution is still W.I.P. and I still have some homework to send more data about my tablets after this blog post, but in overall I’m already using a newer ke ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137830/how-a-kernel-developer-made-my-styluses-work-again-on-newer-kernels/) 2023-11-14T13:54:25Z **RISC-V with Linux 6.7 gains optimized TLB flushing, software shadow call stacks**
Phoronix listed some of the major work happening in 6.7 for the RISC-V architecture: Merged last week was support for cbo.zero in user-space, support for CBOs on ACPI-based RISC-V systems, support for software shadow call stacks, improvements for the T-Head cache flushing operations, and other clean-ups and fixes. Meanwhile sent out today was a secondary pull request of more ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137836/risc-v-with-linux-6-7-gains-optimized-tlb-flushing-software-shadow-call-stacks/) 2023-11-14T14:06:37Z **Huawei is ditching Android app support with ‘HarmonyOS Next’**
It’s definitely clear that Huawei is pulling the plug on Android apps, but it’s still rather hard to believe that the company is throwing away Android (AOSP) entirely. For that, we’ll just have to wait and see, as more digging can be done when “Next” hits the scene next year. The Chinese market is big enough to sustain its own application ecosystem, and many western services are banned in China anyway, so the Pla ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137840/huawei-is-ditching-android-app-support-with-harmonyos-next/) 2023-11-14T14:01:15Z **Don’t waste money on a math coprocessor they said**
I tried to launch BattleTech over and over and had zero success. I couldn’t figure out why it was struggling on my model 80 board, where it runs just great on 86Box. What is going on? One thing I had stumbled upon was that if I launched an ancient Infocom game in a DOS box, and then launched BattleTech it had a much higher chance of running. But this did not always equate to it working. How is launching an old COM file from the early ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137838/dont-waste-money-on-a-math-coprocessor-they-said/) 2023-11-15T01:10:06Z **Google Play tightens up rules for Android app developers to require testing, increased app review**
Google today is announcing strengthened protections for Android developers publishing apps to its Google Play store. The changes are a part of Google’s broader efforts at keeping low-quality and unsafe apps out of its app store and off consumers’ devices, which also recently included the launch of a new real-time app scanning feature to co ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137843/google-play-tightens-up-rules-for-android-app-developers-to-require-testing-increased-app-review/) 2023-11-15T01:19:39Z **.NET 8 released**
With this release, .NET reshapes the way we build intelligent, cloud-native applications and high-traffic services that scale on demand. Whether you’re deploying to Linux or Windows, using containers or a cloud app model of your choice, .NET 8 makes building these apps easier. It includes a set of proven libraries that are used today by the many high-scale services at Microsoft to help you with fundamental challenges around observability, resiliency, scalability, manageability, and more. Integrate la ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137845/net-8-released/) 2023-11-17T00:57:56Z **Microsoft is finally making custom chips — and they’re all about AI**
The rumors are true: Microsoft has built its own custom AI chip that can be used to train large language models and potentially avoid a costly reliance on Nvidia. Microsoft has also built its own Arm-based CPU for cloud workloads. Both custom silicon chips are designed to power its Azure data centers and ready the company and its enterprise customers for a future full of AI. Microsoft’s Azure Maia AI ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137852/microsoft-is-finally-making-custom-chips-and-theyre-all-about-ai/) 2023-11-17T00:54:53Z **Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year**
The European Union making tech better for everyone. We’ll have to wait and see if supporting RCS will be enough to prevent the EU from requiring Apple open up iMessage. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137849/apple-announces-that-rcs-support-is-coming-to-iphone-next-year/) 2023-11-17T01:09:53Z **Google resumes transition to Manifest V3**
With these changes in place, we’ve seen support for Manifest V3 increase significantly among the extension developer community. Specifically, we are encouraged by our ongoing dialogue with the developers of content blocking extensions, who initially felt Manifest V3 could impact their ability to provide users with the features they’ve come to expect. Google has made several changes to Manifest V3 specifically to ease concerns among developers of cont ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137855/google-resumes-transition-to-manifest-v3/) 2023-11-17T01:18:05Z **No Bing, no Edge, no upselling: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon**
In order to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Microsoft is planning a number of changes to Windows to comply with this new legislation. Ars sums them up nicely: All of the above will be exclusive to the EU/EEA, so Windows users elsewhere are out of luck. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137857/no-bing-no-edge-no-upselling-de-crufted-windows-11-coming-to-europe-soon/) 2023-11-17T23:41:27Z **Microsoft deprecates even more Windows features, Steps Recorder gets the axe**
Shortly after announcing the end of three services, one of which is as old as MS-DOS, Microsoft deprecated the Tips app. Now, another utility is about to get the axe: Microsoft has updated its Windows documentation again, detailing the end of the story for Steps Recorder (psr.exe). Steps Recorder is an old utility from the Windows 7 era that lets you, as the name implies, record y ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137862/microsoft-deprecates-even-more-windows-features-steps-recorder-gets-the-axe/) 2023-11-17T23:52:18Z **Ethernet is still going strong after 50 years**
The PARC facility also is known for the invention of Ethernet, a networking technology that allows high-speed data transmission over coaxial cables. Ethernet has become the standard wired local area network around the world, and it is widely used in businesses and homes. It was honored this year as an IEEE Milestone, a half century after it was born. Truly one of the success stories of the technology world. Sure, those first Ethernet cables ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137865/ethernet-is-still-going-strong-after-50-years/) 2023-11-18T01:13:44Z **Rare BeBox Dual603e-133 for sale in Japan, accompanied by even rarer documentation and software for the only PC to ever ship with BeOS**
A few months ago, I talked about the only PC ever shipped with BeOS preinstalled, the Flora Prius from Hitachi. However, due to illegal pressure from Microsoft, Hitachi disabled the special bootloader required to boot into BeOS, so while the best operating system eve ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137867/rare-bebox-dual603e-133-for-sale-in-japan-accompanied-by-even-rarer-documentation-and-software-for-the-only-pc-to-ever-ship-with-beos/) 2023-11-19T00:50:46Z **OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 installation guide for VirtualBox**
OpenVMS on x86 is now available for hobbyists! Almost a year after the official release. This is a part 1 of my getting started guide, showing you how to install OpenVMS on VirtualBox on Windows 10/11. More parts will follow, documenting license installation, network setup, ssh, application installation etc. If you want to give OpenVMS for x86 a try, this is the series of articles to read and follow along with. Excellent wor ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137870/openvms-9-2-for-x86-installation-guide-for-virtualbox/) 2023-11-19T00:54:59Z **Apple removes OS X Lion and Mountain Lion from online store**
Apple has officially ceased the sale of OS X Lion 10.7 and Mountain Lion 10.8 from its online store. That’s it. That’s the post. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137873/apple-removes-os-x-lion-and-mountain-lion-from-online-store/) 2023-11-19T01:01:02Z **GTK: introducing graphics offload**
In the best case, we may be able to avoid feeding the data through the compositing pipeline of the compositor as well, if the compositor supports direct scanout and the dmabuf is suitable for it. In particular on mobile systems, this may avoid using the GPU altogether, thereby reducing power consumption. I don’t understand what’s happening but it seems like a good idea? Can anyone help? ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137875/gtk-introducing-graphics-offload/) 2023-11-20T14:36:05Z **OpenBSD formal driver verification with SeL4**
The seL4 microkernel is currently the only kernel that has been fully formally verified. In general, the increased interest in ensuring the security of a kernel’s code results from its important role in the entire operating system. One of the basic features of an operating system is that it abstracts the handling of devices. This abstraction is represented by device drivers – the software that manages the hardware. A proper verification of th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137878/openbsd-formal-driver-verification-with-sel4/) 2023-11-20T14:47:45Z **Flashback: how Symbian Anna tried to bring an old OS into the modern touchscreen world**
Today we want to focus on what came next, Symbian Anna, which arrived a year after the launch of Symbian^3 (Symbian^2 launched only in Japan). Anna was unveiled in early 2011 alongside the Nokia X7 and Nokia E6. The E6 was a bar phone with a QWERTY keyboard (and a 2.45″ touch display), but the X7 was all touch (4.0″ display). Even better, owners of certain olde ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137880/flashback-how-symbian-anna-tried-to-bring-an-old-os-into-the-modern-touchscreen-world/) 2023-11-21T01:20:39Z **YouTube says new 5-second video load delay is supposed to punish ad blockers, not Firefox users**
Firefox users across the internet say that they are encountering an “artificial” five-second load time when they try to watch YouTube videos that exists on Firefox, but not Chrome. Google, meanwhile, told 404 Media that this is all part of its larger effort against ad blockers, and that it doesn’t have anything to do with Firefox at all. I’m s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137889/youtube-says-new-5-second-video-load-delay-is-supposed-to-punish-ad-blockers-not-firefox-users/) 2023-11-21T01:16:36Z **Ubuntu Budgie switches its approach to Wayland**
While Elementary OS commits to Wayland, the development team of the Budgie desktop is changing course and will work with the Xfce developers toward Budgie’s Wayland future. There is general consensus now that the future of graphical desktops on Linux lies in Wayland rather than X11, but the path is still not a smooth and easy one. While in Latvia for the Ubuntu Summit, the Reg FOSS desk met with the developers behind Ubuntu Budgie, who to ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137887/ubuntu-budgie-switches-its-approach-to-wayland/) 2023-11-21T01:29:16Z **FreeBSD 14.0 released**
After a few minor delays, FreeBSD 14.0 has officially been released. The highlights according to the FreeBSD team itself: For more details, you can dive into the release notes, and if you’re already using FreeBSD you know exactly how to upgrade. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137891/freebsd-14-0-released/) 2023-11-21T23:57:59Z **National Instruments to Apple Mac: buh-Bye**
EE Journal reports: National Instruments (NI) recently released a new version of its LabView test automation programming environment for the latest Apple Macintosh computers based on the Arm-based Apple M1 CPU/GPU SoC. At the same time, NI let its customers know that this release would be the last one for Apple Macintosh computers, sending a shock through some portion of the company’s customer base. LabView’s importance to test and measurement can ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137894/national-instruments-to-apple-mac-buh-bye/) 2023-11-22T00:08:48Z **All that Infocom interpreter code**
Jason Scott posted the source code for all the Infocom games in 2019. This was pretty awesome. Everybody who is interested in that stuff cheered, and now it’s part of the common knowledge of Infocom. If you’re researching the history of those games, or want to study their design, you can dig in. So the game source was big news. Infocom’s interpreter source, however, remained obscure. This was the game-playing software for each platform: the Apple 2 interpreter, th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137900/all-that-infocom-interpreter-code/) 2023-11-22T00:01:19Z **Hacking the Canon imageCLASS MF742Cdw/MF743Cdw (again)**
There has been quite a bit of documentation about exploiting the CANON Printer firmware in the past. For some more background information I suggest reading these posts by SYNACKTIV, doar-e and DEVCORE. I highly recommend reading all of it if you want to learn more about hacking (CANON) Printers. The TL;DR is: We’re dealing with a Custom RTOS called DRYOS engineered by CANON that doesn’t ship with any modern mitigations like ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137898/hacking-the-canon-imageclass-mf742cdw-mf743cdw-again/) 2023-11-23T00:34:19Z **Zork for the PDP-11/RT-11 recreated**
We talked about Zork yesterday, and how the code for interpreters for the game was found and published on Github. Today we have a blog post detailing how to actually use one of these interpreters, the one for the PDP-11. Ok so what or where to do this?! First you need SIMH or any other good PDP-11 emulator, a copy of RT-11, and of course the source to the interpreter oddly enough named PDP11.ZIP. Just keep in mind that this is NOT a pk-zip file, it’s a text fi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137905/zork-for-the-pdp-11-rt-11-recreated/) 2023-11-23T00:41:52Z **Building up networks of zones on Tribblix**
With OpenSolaris and derivatives such as illumos, we gained the ability to build a whole IT infrastructure in a single box, using virtualized networking (crossbow) to build the underlying network and then attaching virtualized systems (zones) atop virtualized storage (zfs). Some of this was present in Solaris 10, but it didn’t have crossbow so the networking piece was a bit tricky (although I did manage to get surprisingly far by abusing the loopba ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137907/building-up-networks-of-zones-on-tribblix/) 2023-11-23T01:09:34Z **What has changed in CPU cores in M3 chips?**
If you read the initial reviews of Apple’s new M3-based Macs, you’d be forgiven for thinking little had changed in their CPU cores, apart from a rejigging of numbers and an increase in the maximum frequency of their P cores. As my MacBook Pro 16-inch M3 Pro arrived three days early, this article presents a tentative first look at what has changed in their CPU cores, and from that, how you might choose the right chip for your next Apple silicon Mac ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137903/what-has-changed-in-cpu-cores-in-m3-chips/) 2023-11-23T01:22:14Z **Here is a “simple” method to uninstall Edge in Windows 10 and 11**
Earlier this month, Microsoft released new preview updates with changes to make its operating systems compliant with European Union regulations. Those changes include the ability to uninstall Edge, decouple the OS from Bing, turn on third-party news feeds in Widgets, and more. Sadly, only EU citizens can enjoy those changes without messing with their PCs’ software intestines. Other people must tweak Windo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137911/here-is-a-simple-method-to-uninstall-edge-in-windows-10-and-11/) 2023-11-25T02:32:28Z **Microsoft brings ChatGPT AI to Windows 11’s command line**
Windows Terminal is getting an optional feature – ChatGPT-powered “AI chat” on Windows 11. ChatGPT integration is now available in Terminal (Canary), a new development channel to test experimental features ahead of a wider rollout. With ChatGPT AI Chat in Terminal, you can use AI to generate commands, explain errors, and get recommendations. Microsoft wants Terminal to use the natural language AI to explain commands, su ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137915/microsoft-brings-chatgpt-ai-to-windows-11s-command-line/) 2023-11-25T02:42:40Z **China’s new(ish) SW26010-Pro supercomputer at SC23**
Sunway’s new supercomputer therefore feels like a system designed with the goal of landing high on some TOP500 lists. For that purpose, it’s perfect, providing a lot of throughput without wasting money on pesky things like cache, out-of-order execution, and high bandwidth memory. But from the perspective of solving a nation’s problems, I feel like Sunway is chasing a metric. A nation doing well in advanced technology might have a lot ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137917/chinas-newish-sw26010-pro-supercomputer-at-sc23/) 2023-11-26T19:00:12Z **A quick look back at Microsoft’s first sports video game: Microsoft Olympic Decathlon**
Ironically, the second commercial game that Microsoft published, after Microsoft Adventure in 1979, was an attempt at a sports game sim. It was called Microsoft Olympic Decathlon, and like Microsoft Adventure, it was first launched as a TRS-80 PC game, this time in 1980. Microsoft has so many unexpected products in its long history. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137919/a-quick-look-back-at-microsofts-first-sports-video-game-microsoft-olympic-decathlon/) 2023-11-26T19:11:09Z **Debian’s MIPS64EL CPU port is at risk due to declining hardware access**
Debian’s MIPS64EL that is a 64-bit little endian port using the N64 ABI is at risk due to declining access for building the Debian 64-bit MIPS packages. MIPS64EL is now being treated as an “out of sync” architecture due to lacking sufficient build daemon resources for timely building new packages and if the situation doesn’t improve, it may not be suitable as a release architecture for Debian ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137921/debians-mips64el-cpu-port-is-at-risk-due-to-declining-hardware-access/) 2023-11-26T22:17:54Z **How Apple’s developers reflashed Mac ROMs in the ’90s**
After I wrote about the possibility of programmable Mac ROM SIMMs in Quadras a couple of months ago, I suspected that there had been a way for developers at Apple in the 68k Mac era to reflash the ROM in their Macs during development, just like BIOS updates on PCs. The reason I believed this is because the ROM SIMM socket in the Quadras brought out pins for 12V (VPP) and write enable (/WE). I had verified that the write enable ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137924/how-apples-developers-reflashed-mac-roms-in-the-90s/) 2023-11-27T02:23:19Z **Super tiny Windows 11 OS gets a big update: Tiny11 2311 shrinks 20% and allows cumulative updates**
NTDEV, the developer behind Tiny11, has released a new update for its miniature Windows 11 operating system, called Tiny11 2311, that adds Microsoft’s latest feature update, 23H2, into the OS and introduces a plethora of bug fixes addressing issues in the outgoing version of Tiny11. On top of this, the new update also shrinks Tiny11’s insta ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137927/super-tiny-windows-11-os-gets-a-big-update-tiny11-2311-shrinks-20-and-allows-cumulative-updates/) 2023-11-27T20:53:37Z **Building a NetBSD ramdisk kernel**
When I used OpenBSD, I was a big fan of bsd.rd: a kernel that includes a root file system with an installer and a few tools. When I invariably did something bad to my root file system, I could use that to repair things. bsd.rd is also helpful for OS updates. And there is only a single file involved. On NetBSD however, there is usually no netbsd.rd kernel installed, or even available by default. The facility is there, it’s just not standard. To be fair, there are a n ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137929/building-a-netbsd-ramdisk-kernel/) 2023-11-28T00:56:26Z **Google Play keeps banning the same web browser due to vague DMCA notices**
App developer Elias Saba has had some bad luck with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns. His Android TV app Downloader, which combines a web browser with a file manager, was suspended by Google Play in May after several Israeli TV companies complained that the app could be used to load a pirate website. Google reversed that suspension after three weeks. But Downloader has b ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137934/google-play-keeps-banning-the-same-web-browser-due-to-vague-dmca-notices/) 2023-11-28T01:04:55Z **This company just put the air in Apple’s MacBook Air**
Frore Systems is a startup with $116 million in funding, and I’ve shown you its first product before: the AirJet Mini is a piezoelectric cooling chip that weighs just nine grams and is thinner than two US quarters stacked together. Each nominally consumes one watt and can remove 4.25 additional watts of heat. Here’s the question: what would happen if Frore used those AirJets to cool a laptop that normally doesn’t have a fan at ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137936/this-company-just-put-the-air-in-apples-macbook-air/) 2023-11-28T01:15:50Z **PipeWire 1.0 released**
PipeWire 1.0 now has all the features that are expected to move media streams inside a system. It takes advantage of advanced features of the Linux kernel to provide low latency, low footprint, and high performance while being secure. It is the perfect tool to build an embedded system or to securely share streams between containers. Linux audio and video has come a long way, and PipeWire is part of that. Excellent work. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137938/pipewire-1-0-released/) 2023-11-28T01:20:55Z **Migrating from VM to Hierarchical Jails in FreeBSD**
FreeBSD has supported nesting of jails natively since version 8.0, which dates back to 2009. Looking at the jail(8) man page, there is an entire paragraph named Hierarchical Jails that explains the concept of jail hierarchy well. It’s one of the many gems of FreeBSD that, although not widely known or used, is, in my opinion, extremely useful. BastilleBSD plays a central role in this article, and that’s a project I’ve been hearing ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137940/migrating-from-vm-to-hierarchical-jails-in-freebsd/) 2023-11-28T20:37:01Z **Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 to remove X.org**
With this, we’ve decided to remove Xorg server and other X servers (except Xwayland) from RHEL 10 and the following releases. Xwayland should be able to handle most X11 clients that won’t immediately be ported to Wayland, and if needed, our customers will be able to stay on RHEL 9 for its full life cycle while resolving the specifics needed for transitioning to a Wayland ecosystem. It’s important to note that “Xorg Server” and “X11” are not syn ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137943/red-hat-enterprise-linux-10-to-remove-x-org/) 2023-11-28T21:43:20Z **Analyzing the Monoprice Blackbird HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 down converter**
I got my hands on a Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 Converter. According to the marketing copy it “is the definitive solution for playback of new 4K HDCP 2.2 encoded content on 4K displays with the old HDCP 1.4 standard.” Stuffed after a delicious Thanksgiving meal, I decided to take it apart after the guests had left. It’s a simple single-function device, so I didn’t expect much, but maybe t ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137945/analyzing-the-monoprice-blackbird-hdcp-2-2-to-1-4-down-converter/) 2023-11-29T00:13:48Z **New Chinese Loongsoon chip matches Intel’s 14600K in IPC tests**
Chinese chip designer Loongson has finally launched its loong teased “next-generation” 3A6000-series processors based on the LoongArch microarchitecture. IPC tests showed the 3A6000 matching Intel’s Raptor Lake i5-14600K in IPC (instructions per clock), with both chips clocked at 2.5GHz. As well as the headlining x86 compatible processor came the announcement of numerous partner desktop, laptop, and all-in-o ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137947/new-chinese-loongsoon-chip-matches-intels-14600k-in-ipc-tests/) 2023-11-29T00:16:42Z **Microsoft contributes Azure RTOS to open source**
We’re pleased to share an important update regarding Azure RTOS – an embedded development suite with the ThreadX real-time operating system that has been deployed on more than 12 billion devices worldwide. Reinforcing our commitment to innovation and community collaboration, Azure RTOS will be transitioning to an open-source model under the stewardship of the Eclipse Foundation, a recognized leader in hosting open-source IoT projects. W ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137949/microsoft-contributes-azure-rtos-to-open-source/) 2023-11-29T00:25:01Z **Windows NT: peeking into the cradle**
Reading the story of how Windows NT came to be was entertaining, as it is a story of the system itself and the dynamics between Dave Cutler, the original designer and lead for NT, and the other people involved in the project. I was shy of being 10 years old when Windows NT launched and I didn’t comprehend what was going on in the operating systems world and why this release was such a big deal. Reading the book made me learn various new things about the develop ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137951/windows-nt-peeking-into-the-cradle/) 2023-11-30T13:45:00Z **This month in Servo: better floats, :has(), color-mix(), and more!**
Our nightly example browser, servoshell, is now easier to navigate, accepting URLs without http:// or https:// both in the location bar and on the command line, and should no longer lock up when run with --no-minibrowser. Local paths can also be given on the command line, and are still preferred when the path points to a file that exists. Work is now underway to improve our embedding story and prepare Servo f ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137955/this-month-in-servo-better-floats-has-color-mix-and-more/) 2023-11-30T13:40:45Z **Evaluating M3 Pro CPU cores: general performance**
Evaluating the performance of CPUs with identical cores is relatively straightforward, and they’re easy to compare using single- and multi-core benchmarks. When there are two different types of core, one designed primarily for energy efficiency (E), the other for maximum performance (P), traditional benchmarks can readily mislead. Multi-core results are dominated by the ratio of P to E cores, and variable frequency confounds further. I ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137953/evaluating-m3-pro-cpu-cores-general-performance/) 2023-11-30T20:13:20Z **How Huawei made a cutting-edge chip in China and surprised the US**
This ambition to escape dependence on foreign technology rests on the shoulders of Huawei and SMIC. The successful launch of the Kirin 9000S injected new vigor into the semiconductor industry, with executives reporting that chip start-ups are seeing a surge in funding. But Huawei’s long-term ambitions are not limited to the markets in China’s orbit. The original nickname for the Kirin 9000S—Charlotte— ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137957/how-huawei-made-a-cutting-edge-chip-in-china-and-surprised-the-us/) 2023-12-01T00:20:51Z **Cinnamon 6.0 arrives with initial Wayland support**
Cinnamon, the desktop environment mostly associated with Linux Mint, has released its sixth version. It also adds support for AVIF images, a new option for notification screen selection, a new gesture for desktop zoom, a new menu details option, color picker support in the screenshot service, and an xdg-portal configuration file. Various improvements are present as well to fix missing thumbnails for windows that are created while th ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137959/cinnamon-6-0-arrives-with-initial-wayland-support/) 2023-12-01T00:40:16Z **First bits of a Haiku compatibility layer for NetBSD**
Does anyone here remember Cosmoe? Cosmoe was an attempt to combine Haiku’s API with the Linux kernel and related tools, started in the early 2000s. The project eventually fizzled out, now only an obscure footnote for BeOS diehards such as myself. It seems, though, that the idea of combining the Haiku API with a mature UNIX-like operating system refuses to die, and a few days ago, on the NetBSD Users’s Discussion List, a develo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137961/first-bits-of-a-haiku-compatibility-layer-for-netbsd/) 2023-12-01T19:25:45Z **My long quest to revive a ’90s Windows gaming cult classic**
As 2023 draws to a close—and as we start to finalize our Game of the Year contenders—I really should be catching up on the embarrassingly long list of great recent releases that I haven’t put enough time into this year. Instead, over the last few days, I’ve found myself once again hooked on a simple, addictive, and utterly unique Japanese Windows freeware game from the late ’90s that, until recently, I thought I had ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137963/my-long-quest-to-revive-a-90s-windows-gaming-cult-classic/) 2023-12-01T19:32:09Z **Google researchers’ attack prompts ChatGPT to reveal its training data**
A team of researchers primarily from Google’s DeepMind systematically convinced ChatGPT to reveal snippets of the data it was trained on using a new type of attack prompt which asked a production model of the chatbot to repeat specific words forever.  Using this tactic, the researchers showed that there are large amounts of privately identifiable information (PII) in OpenAI’s large language m ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137965/google-researchers-attack-prompts-chatgpt-to-reveal-its-training-data/) 2023-12-01T21:57:09Z **Microsoft soliciting feedback about an “Windows Advanced Settings” panel**
Currently, there are many settings/registry keys that developers desire to tweak that are either not accessible via the Windows Settings app and/or are difficult to discover throughout the OS. Users may have to resort to running scripts or manually changing registry keys to get their machine into their ideal state. Furthermore, there is not a single place for developers to discover and twe ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137968/microsoft-soliciting-feedback-about-an-windows-advanced-settings-panel/) 2023-12-02T01:35:05Z **Windows-as-an-app is coming**
Windows App, which is still in beta, will let you connect to Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365, Microsoft Dev Box, Remote Desktop Services, and remote PCs from, well, pretty much any computing device. Specifically, you can use it from Macs, iPhones, iPads, other Windows machines, and — pay attention! — web browsers. That last part means you’ll be able to run Windows from Linux-powered PCs, Chromebooks, and Android phones and tablets. So, if you’ve been stuck running Windows ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137970/windows-as-an-app-is-coming/) 2023-12-02T01:41:47Z **Fuchsia version 14 rolling out to Nest Hub Preview Program**
According to Google’s official support page listing the current firmware versions of its speakers and smart displays, version 14.20230831.4.72 is now available to those enrolled in the Preview Program (which can be accessed via the Google Home app). These updates are often released in stages, meaning it may be a few weeks before your Nest Hub gets the latest build. On the project’s website, Google offers a more in- ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137974/fuchsia-version-14-rolling-out-to-nest-hub-preview-program/) 2023-12-03T17:35:37Z **The Unix V6 shell and how control flow worked in it**
On Unix, ‘test‘ and ‘[‘ are two names for (almost) the same program and shell builtin. Although today people mostly use it under its ‘[‘ name, when it was introduced in V7 along side the Bourne shell, it only was called ‘test‘; the ‘[‘ name was only nascent until years later. I don’t know for sure why it was called ‘test‘, but there are interesting hints about its potential genesis in the shell used in V6 Research Unix, the pred ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137977/the-unix-v6-shell-and-how-control-flow-worked-in-it/) 2023-12-03T18:09:01Z **Everything you ever wanted to know about HP’s 9000 Series 300**
Hewlett-Packard’s 9000 Series 300 (HP300) was a range of technical workstations based on Motorola 680×0 microprocessors. Superbly engineered in modular form, and ahead of the curve in terms of functionality, these workstations were used mainly as instrument controllers and for desktop technical computing. The HP300 series launched in 1985 with the models 310 (pictured below) and 320. It evolved through numerou ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137981/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-hps-9000-series-300/) 2023-12-03T19:18:39Z **The world depends on 60-year-old code no one knows anymore**
The problem is that very few people are interested in learning COBOL these days. Coding it is cumbersome, it reads like an English lesson (too much typing), the coding format is meticulous and inflexible, and it takes far longer to compile than its competitors. And since nobody’s learning it anymore, programmers who can work with and maintain all that code are a increasingly hard to find. Many of these “COBOL cowbo ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137983/the-world-depends-on-60-year-old-code-no-one-knows-anymore/) 2023-12-03T21:12:56Z **Porting Hare to OpenBSD**
I was always very interested in OpenBSD and a few months ago, I decided to give it a try. I’ve quickly fallen in love with it! There is, however, a big problem: Hare does not fully support OpenBSD! So, I decided to port it and I am happy to announce that my work was merged yesterday and OpenBSD is now fully supported by Hare. Let me show you some of the tricky stuff that was involved in the port. ↫ Lorenz (xha) on the official Hare blog Hare is a relatively new programming language, ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137985/porting-hare-to-openbsd/) 2023-12-03T21:51:34Z **Finally: proper attribution**
You may have noticed that starting today, I’ve been adding a dedicated link to the main story in every post on OSNews. Our old-fashioned 2001 method of “biggest link is main story” simply doesn’t hold up today as proper attribution, so from here on out every post will have a link marked by ↫ crediting the name and/or publication of the main linked article (or multiple where it makes sense). I’ve been unhappy with our attribution for years, and finally got my act together and s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137992/finally-proper-attribution/) 2023-12-03T22:03:26Z **Launching brand new BeOS, Mac OS X, and MS-DOS T-shirts in the OSNews Merch Store!**
The holidays are coming, there’s a chill in the air (literally for me, I live in the Arctic), so it’s time for a few new additions to the official OSNews Merch Store. Do you live in the terminal, breathe the terminal? We’ve got new shirts just for you. The opening message of the terminals of Mac OS X, BeOS, and MS-DOS (let’s be generous and call MS-DOS a terminal), with ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137987/launching-brand-new-beos-mac-os-x-and-ms-dos-t-shirts-in-the-osnews-merch-store/) 2023-12-04T19:31:22Z **Ousted propaganda scholar Joan Donovan accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta**
A prominent disinformation scholar has accused Harvard University of dismissing her to curry favor with Facebook and its current and former executives in violation of her right to free speech. Joan Donovan claimed in a filing with the Education Department and the Massachusetts attorney general that her superiors soured on her as Harvard was getting a record $500 million pledge from Meta ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137996/ousted-propaganda-scholar-joan-donovan-accuses-harvard-of-bowing-to-meta/) 2023-12-04T23:18:17Z **macOS Sonoma is setting records for update size**
It was Big Sur that focussed attention on the size of macOS updates. In Mojave and earlier, updates had essentially been Installer packages that brought a minimum of overhead. By the time that many had installed Big Sur’s new Signed System Volume (SSV), we were starting to discover just how large its updates were. Those were early days with its completely new updating process that builds a new System volume, takes a snapshot of it, and ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/137999/macos-sonoma-is-setting-records-for-update-size/) 2023-12-05T01:09:15Z **The hidden secrets of the Fn key on the Mac**
Even if you’ve used the Mac for decades, I suspect you have never fully understood the Fn key. Not helping is the fact that Apple sometimes calls it the Function key, but all Mac keyboards already have 12 or more numbered F-for-Function keys! The Fn key first appeared in 1998 in the PowerBook G3 Series (Wallstreet) and has become a fixture in the lower-left corner of laptop keyboards ever since. The Fn key migrated to standalone keyboards only ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138001/the-hidden-secrets-of-the-fn-key-on-the-mac/) 2023-12-05T01:18:31Z **A year in recap: Windows accessibility**
The Windows Accessibility team adheres to the disability community’s guiding principle, “nothing about us without us,” emphasizing the creation of products that empower everyone. We launched and announced new and exciting features last September through our Windows 11 2022 Update and with your feedback, we have improved upon those experiences in a number of ways. ↫ Divya Bhaskaran on Microsoft’s official Windows blog In this blog post, Microsoft details s ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138003/a-year-in-recap-windows-accessibility/) 2023-12-05T11:36:39Z **Rest in peace, Optane**
Intel’s Optane memory modules launched with a lot of fanfare in 2015, and were recently discontinued, in 2022, with similar fanfare. It was a sad day for me, a lover of abstraction-breaking technologies, but it was forseeable and understandable. At the time of Optane’s launch, a lot of us were excited about the idea of having a new storage tier, sitting between DRAM and flash. It was announced as having DRAM endurance and speed with the persistence and size of flash. It was a futuristic m ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138005/rest-in-peace-optane/) 2023-12-06T00:08:23Z **Firefox on the brink?**
A somewhat obscure guideline for developers of U.S. government websites may be about to accelerate the long, sad decline of Mozilla’s Firefox browser. There already are plenty of large entities, both public and private, whose websites lack proper support for Firefox; and that will get only worse in the near future, because the ’fox’s auburn paws are perilously close to the lip of the proverbial slippery slope. ↫ Bryce Wray US government guidelines say that US government websites only need ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138011/firefox-on-the-brink/) 2023-12-06T00:02:13Z **HP Smart is auto installing on Windows 11 and Windows 10 on non HP-machines**
According to our tests and reports seen by us, HP Smart is auto-installing on all versions of Windows that use Microsoft Store, including Windows 11 23H2 or 22H2. HP Smart is an app that allows you to manage HP printers, and it’s typically pre-installed on HP PCs. It’s not supposed to be installed when you’re not using an HP device like a PC or printer. However, the Microsoft Store ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138007/hp-smart-is-auto-installing-on-windows-11-and-windows-10-on-non-hp-machines/) 2023-12-06T00:13:44Z **Windows 10 gets three more years of security updates, if you can afford them**
Windows 10’s end-of-support date is October 14, 2025. That’s the day that most Windows 10 PCs will receive their last security update and the date when most people should find a way to move to Windows 11 to ensure that they stay secure. As it has done for other stubbornly popular versions of Windows, though, Microsoft is offering a reprieve for those who want or need to stay on Wi ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138013/windows-10-gets-three-more-years-of-security-updates-if-you-can-afford-them/) 2023-12-07T00:03:30Z **Introducing Gemini: Google’s largest and most capable AI model**
This promise of a world responsibly empowered by AI continues to drive our work at Google DeepMind. For a long time, we’ve wanted to build a new generation of AI models, inspired by the way people understand and interact with the world. AI that feels less like a smart piece of software and more like something useful and intuitive — an expert helper or assistant. Today, we’re a step closer to this vision as we ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138015/introducing-gemini-googles-largest-and-most-capable-ai-model/) 2023-12-07T00:18:12Z **Federal government is using data from push notifications to track contacts**
Government investigators in the United States have used push notification data to pursue people of interest, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a letter Wednesday to the Justice Department, revealing for the first time a way in which Americans can be tracked through a basic service provided by their smartphones. Wyden’s letter said the Justice Department had prohibited Apple and Google ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138018/federal-government-is-using-data-from-push-notifications-to-track-contacts/) 2023-12-07T00:27:34Z **systemd 255 released**
systemd 255 has been released, and it contains one particular new feature I want to highlight. A new component “systemd-bsod” has been added to show logged error messages full-screen if they have a “LOG\_EMERG” log level. This is intended as a tool for displaying emergency log messages full-screen on boot failures. Yes, BSOD in this case short for “Blue Screen of Death”. This was worked on as part of Outreachy 2023. The systemd-bsod will also display a QR code for getting more information ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138020/systemd-255-released/) 2023-12-07T20:48:38Z **Sony officially launches its PS5 Access Controller for disabled gamers**
The controller, which was created in collaboration with disabled gaming groups such as AbleGamers, Stack-Up, and SpecialEffect, has a unique circular design. The controller comes with a number of different button caps, along with three stick caps that can be changed out to suit the specific needs of the gamer. The controller itself is also designed to rest on a flat surface for players that ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138023/sony-officially-launches-its-ps5-access-controller-for-disabled-gamers/) 2023-12-08T01:43:31Z **HP misreads room, awkwardly brags about its “less hated” printers**
HP knows people have grown to hate printers. It even knows that people hate HP printers. But based on a new marketing campaign the company launched, HP is OK with that—so long as it can convince people that there are worse options out there. The marketing campaign hitting parts of Europe aims to present HP as real and empathetic. The tagline “Made to be less hated” seems to acknowledge people’s frustrati ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138025/hp-misreads-room-awkwardly-brags-about-its-less-hated-printers/) 2023-12-08T01:50:51Z **Fvwm3 1.0.9 released**
Fvwm3, the successor to fvwm 2.6, has a new version, 1.0.9. This highly customisable and lightweight window manager for X has been around for a very long time, since 1993, and has been in development ever since. This new release, as the version number suggests, does not have the longest changelog. If you’re a user of fvwm, you already know exactly what 1.0.9 will mean for you. ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138027/fvwm3-1-0-9-released/) 2023-12-08T22:40:48Z **Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?**
When I started taking apart the Fairphone 5, I didn’t really expect any surprises.  Having dis- and reassembled the previous model several times, I had some experience with Fairphone’s approach to building a smartphone: Modularity paired with easy access to all major components.  It’s a winning formula for a repairable smartphone they have iterated on several times now. So, what’s actually different this time around—apart from a new and shiny OLED screen and beefed up cam ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138029/fairphone-5-keeping-it-10-10/) 2023-12-08T22:45:21Z **Google partially staged their Gemini “AI” video**
It turns out that fancy video Google made to show off its new “AI” was… Well, not “faked”, but definitely a bit staged. Google also admits that the video is edited. “For the purposes of this demo, latency has been reduced and Gemini outputs have been shortened for brevity,” it states in its YouTube description. This means the time it took for each response was actually longer than in the video. In reality, the demo also wasn’t carried out ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138032/google-partially-staged-their-gemini-ai-video/) 2023-12-09T01:12:06Z **Personal FreeBSD PKGBASE update server**
FreeBSD UNIX system can be updated in many ways. You can use freebsd-update(8) command to fetch and install the official binary patches. You can download the FreeBSD sources and compile your new version. You can download and install base.txz and kernel.txz sets in a new ZFS Boot Environment along with copying over your config files there – Other FreeBSD Version in ZFS Boot Environment – as documented here. While for most users these three options will be ... ⌘ [Read more](https://www.osnews.com/story/138036/personal-freebsd-pkgbase-update-server/)