Intel continues prepping the Linux kernel for X86S

Nearly one year ago Intel published the X86S specification (formerly stylized as “X86-S”) for simplifying the Intel architecture by removing support for 16-bit and 32-bit operating systems. X86S is a big step forward with dropping legacy mode, 5-level paging improvements, and other modernization improvements for x86_64. With the Linux 6.9 kernel more x86S bits are in place for this ongoing effort. ↫ Michael Larabel I doubt we’ll see much fallout from these changes.

European Commission’s use of Microsoft 365 infringes data protection law for EU institutions and bodies

Following its investigation, the EDPS has found that the European Commission (Commission) has infringed several key data protection rules when using Microsoft 365. In its decision, the EDPS imposes corrective measures on the Commission. ↫ European Data Protection Supervisor You often hear people state that EU rules and regulations are designed exclusively to harm non-EU companies. The massive amounts of fines and corrective actions handed out to EU companies in all kinds of sectors already disprove this notion, and here’s a case where even the European Commission itself gets a slap on the wrist for violating its own rules and regulations – rules and regulations, we’re often told by especially American corporatists, are designed specifically to target poor American businesses. Not that corporatists have any use for reality and facts, but still.

Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU66 released

Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU 66 is now available via ‘pkg update’ from the support repository or by downloading the SRU from My Oracle Support Doc ID 2433412.1. Highlights of the changes in this release are given in the release announcement and important information to read before installing it is provided in the Readme linked from the above support document. This blog post provides more details about selected new features and interface changes in this SRU, as well as some preparation work for changes coming in future SRUs. ↫ Alan Coopersmith and Jan Pechanec Oracle is still developing Solaris. I still find it very difficult to care after Oracle’s bullshittery.

Messy ToS update allegedly locks Roku devices until users give in

Roku customers are threatening to stop using, or to even dispose of, their low-priced TVs and streaming gadgets after the company appears to be locking devices for people who don’t conform to the recently updated terms of service (ToS). This month, users on Roku’s support forums reported suddenly seeing a message when turning on their Roku TV or streaming device reading: “We’ve made an important update: We’ve updated our Dispute Resolution Terms. Select ‘Agree’ to agree to these updated Terms and to continue enjoying our products and services. Press * to view these updated Terms.” A large button reading “Agree” follows. The pop-up doesn’t offer a way to disagree, and users are unable to use their device unless they hit agree. ↫ Scharon Harding at Ars Technica The best part of this story? And by best I mean worst? You have to send a letter – a paper one, with stamps and everything, like in the before times – to Roku’s lawyer in California containing the names of all the people opting out, the devices and services in question, and a damn purchase receipt. They’re one step away from wanting your passport and your firstborn child.

Image-scraping Midjourney bans rival “AI” firm for scraping images

On Wednesday, Midjourney banned all employees from image synthesis rival Stability AI from its service indefinitely after it detected “botnet-like” activity suspected to be a Stability employee attempting to scrape prompt and image pairs in bulk. Midjourney advocate Nick St. Pierre tweeted about the announcement, which came via Midjourney’s official Discord channel. ↫ Benj Edwards So “AI” companies are allowed to ingest whatever data they want, but as soon as someone ingests their data, it’s suddenly a problem? Seems like a sound business model.

Linux Kernel 6.8 released

Highlights of Linux kernel 6.8 include LAM (Linear Address Masking) virtualization and guest-first memory support for KVM, a basic online filesystem check and repair mechanism for the Bcachefs file system introduced in Linux kernel 6.7, support for the Broadcom BCM2712 processor in Raspberry Pi 5, AMD ACPI-based Wi-Fi band RFI mitigation feature (WBRF), zswap writeback disabling, fscrypt support for CephFS, a new Intel Xe DRM driver, and a multi-size THP (Transparent Huge Pages) sysfs interface. ↫ Marius Nestor at 9to5Linux There’s way more going on in this new release, of course, such as further Rust support, for instance in the Loongson architecture, additional support for tons of newer Intel processors , specific support patches for various laptops, and so, so much more.

Better, faster, stronger time zone updates on Android

From the beginning, time zone rules were a component in Mainline, called Time Zone Data or tzdata module. This integration allowed us to react more quickly to government-mandated time zone changes than before. However until 2023 tzdata updates were still bundled with other Mainline changes, sometimes leading to testing complexities and slower deployment. In 2023, we made further investments in Mainline’s infrastructure and decoupled the tzdata module from the other components. With this isolation, we gained the ability to respond rapidly to time zone legislation changes — often releasing updates to Android users outside of the established release cadence. Additionally, this change means time zone updates can reach a far greater number of Android devices, ensuring you as Android users always see the correct time. ↫ Almaz Mingaleev and Masha Khokhlova This is equal parts boring and equal parts amazing. The amount of work developers have to put into making sure timezones work is astonishing, and the fact that a large chunk of it is done by volunteers is even more impressive.

Accessibility improvements in GTK 4.14

GTK 4.14 brings various improvements on the accessibility front, especially for applications showing complex, formatted text; for WebKitGTK; and for notifications. ↫ Emmanuele Bassi Excellent improvements that, if you listen to those that need these improvements, are sorely needed in GTK 4.

House panel unanimously approves bill that could ban TikTok

A powerful House committee advanced a bill on Thursday that could lead to a nationwide ban against TikTok on all electronic devices, renewing lawmakers’ challenge to one of the world’s most popular social media apps and highlighting unresolved fears that TikTok may pose a Chinese government spying risk. The measure that sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would prohibit TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform — used by roughly 170 million Americans — is quickly spun off from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance. ↫ Brian Fung at CNN TikTok obviously needs to be banned. It’s an extension of a genocidal, totalitarian government that has no place on our our phones. Yes, I understand Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft also collect vast amounts of data, but at least they are (nominally) beholden to our legal systems, and while there is, of course, a vast power imbalance between us as individuals and them as megacorporations, it’s still nowhere even close as to being an arm of a totalitarian government – they’re just not comparable. China’s state surveillance tools have no place on our devices.

The Apple curl security incident 12604

When this command line option is used with curl on macOS, the version shipped by Apple, it seems to fall back and checks the system CA store in case the provided set of CA certs fail the verification. A secondary check that was not asked for, is not documented and plain frankly comes completely by surprise. Therefore, when a user runs the check with a trimmed and dedicated CA cert file, it will not fail if the system CA store contains a cert that can verify the server! This is a security problem because now suddenly certificate checks pass that should not pass. ↫ Daniel Stenberg Absolutely wild that Apple does not consider this a security issue.

A peculiarity of the X Window System: windows all the way down

Every window system has windows, as an entity. Usually we think of these as being used for, well, windows and window like things; application windows, those extremely annoying pop-up modal dialogs that are always interrupting you at the wrong time, even perhaps things like pop-up menus. In its original state, X has more windows than that. Part of how and why it does this is that X allows windows to nest inside each other, in a window tree, which you can still see today with ‘xwininfo -root -tree‘. One of the reasons that X has copious nested windows is that X was designed with a particular model of writing X programs in mind, and that model made everything into a (nested) window. Seriously, everything. In an old fashioned X application, windows are everywhere. Buttons are windows (or several windows if they’re radio buttons or the like), text areas are windows, menu entries are each a window of their own within the window that is the menu, visible containers of things are windows (with more windows nested inside them), and so on. ↫ Chris Siebenmann This is wild.

Fedora Workstation 41 to no longer install GNOME X.org session by default

Fedora Workstation has long defaulted to using GNOME’s Wayland session by default, but it has continued to install the GNOME X.Org session for fallback purposes or those opting to use it instead. But for the Fedora Workstation 41 release later in the year, there is a newly-approved plan to no longer have that GNOME X.Org session installed by default. ↫ Michael Larabel Expect more and more of the major distributions to abandon X.org completely. For the KDE version of Fedora, X.org will be dropped entirely in Fedora 40 already, so one release earlier.

The future that never was

Just before the end of 1989, Microsoft made available the first pre-release version of the long promised 32-bit OS/2 2.0, which was intended to be the first mass-market 32-bit PC operating system. This was accompanied by a press release detailing the $2,600 OS/2 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK). Unfortunately, the December 1989 pre-release of OS/2 2.0 may not have survived to the present day. But in June 1990, Microsoft shipped the second pre-release of the OS/2 2.0 SDK. And that version has now turned up, after twenty years of searching, and nearly a quarter century after its release! ↫ Michal Necasek at OS/2 Museum OS/2 is one of the biggest what-ifs in tech, and the whole origin story and demise of the platform is worthy of a big budget drama series. It also happens to be one of my favourite retrocomputing platforms of all time, so I may be biased.

Google’s changes to comply with the DMA

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) comes into force this week for companies who have been designated. Today, we are sharing some more details about the changes we are making to comply, following product testing we announced earlier this year. ↫ Oliver Bethell on the official Google blog This is Google’s overview of the changes it’s implementing to comply with the DMA, some of which the company already announced months ago. Google’s changes don’t have as much of a direct, noticeable impact as some other company’s changes, mostly since a lot of the more impactful consequences of the DMA, such as allowing sideloading and alternative application stores, were already allowed on Android. Other changes, like to Search, will take longer to be noticed. The one thing that stands out is the tone – compared to Apple’s communication around the DMA. Whereas Apple sounds like a petulant whiny toddler, Google sounds constructive, to the point, and, well, like an adult. That doesn’t mean Google’s post isn’t also full of shit in places, but at least they’re being grown-ups about it.

Adding systemd to postmarketOS

You heard it here first folks: systemd is coming to postmarketOS! As a mobile oriented OS, our main goal has always been to work for everyone. From technical folks to casual users. postmarketOS should have all the benefits you expect from a Linux based distribution, such as being free software, respecting your privacy, getting updates until your device physically breaks, respecting your attention and not shoving advertisements in your face. Your phone should be a tool you use, not the other way around. This is of course not an easy task, one of the main blockers we found as we collaborate more closely with KDE and GNOME developers is that they have a hard time with our OpenRC-based stack. In order to get KDE and GNOME working at all, we use a lot of systemd polyfills on top of OpenRC. So while we are technically “not using systemd”, in practice we already do use a large chunk of its components to get KDE and GNOME running, just different versions of those components. While we are very grateful for everybody who works on these polyfills, we must point out that most aren’t a full replacement, and take additional effort to support and maintain. As much as we might want to romanticise the idea of spending 6, 12, 24 months attempting to come up with an even vaguely competitive alternative to systemd, we would quite simply rather be working on making postmarketOS better. ↫ postmarketOS blog This is the sensible choice to make, and I’m glad they made it. It makes no sense for a relatively small project that already has to deal with the difficulties of supporting smartphones to also have to deal with shoehorning the smartphone variants of GNOME and KDE into an init system they’re not at all made for.

Google announces measures to fight spam in its search results

Every day, people turn to Search to find the best of what the web has to offer. We’ve long had policies and automated systems to fight against spammers, and we work to address emerging tactics that look to game our results with low-quality content. We regularly update those policies and systems to effectively tackle these trends so we can continue delivering useful content and connecting people with high-quality websites. Today we’re announcing key changes we’re making to improve the quality of Search and the helpfulness of your results. ↫ Elizabeth Tucker on the official Google blog Low-quality SEO spam has been a problem on Google for years, but the recent advent of “AI” tools has wreaked absolute havoc in the search results. It’s a damn blood bath out there. It’s now up to Google to fix its own mess, so let’s wait and see if these changes will do anything to reverse the downward spiral Google Search has been in for years now.

FreeBSD 13.3 released

FreeBSD 13.3 has been released, and as this is a point release of the stable branch, it’s not a major shake-up or overhaul of the platform. We’ve got the usual updated versions of LLVM, clang, OpenSSH, and so on, and there’s a number of stability fixes to native and LinuxKPI-based WiFi drivers. Of course, there’s much more, so head on over to the release notes for the full details.

Windows to add gobs of “AI” to Explorer

According to my sources, AI Explorer is the blockbuster AI experience that will separate AI PCs from non-AI PCs. It’s described as an “advanced Copilot” with a built-in history/timeline feature that turns everything you do on your computer into a searchable moment using natural language. It works across any app and allows users to search for previously opened conversations, documents, web pages, and images. For example, you could type, “Find me that list of restaurants Jenna said she liked,” and Windows can bring up the exact conversation you were having when Jenna mentioned those restaurants. Even vague prompts should work, like “Find me that thing about dinosaurs,” Windows will pull up every word, phrase, image, and related topic about dinosaurs that you’ve previously opened on your computer. The AI Explorer app can also understand context, help jumpstart projects or workflows, and even suggest tasks based on what’s currently on screen. For example, suppose you’re looking at an image in an app. In that case, the AI Explorer will automatically show an “edit image” button that lets you type out your criteria, such as “remove this image’s background using the Photos app.” ↫ Zac Bowden Windows, for all your “AI” and ads.

Microsoft kills Windows Subsystem for Android

Well, that was a short run. Announced with much fanfare in 2021, Microsoft has announced it’s already killing Windows Subsystem for Android, Microsoft’s solution to run Android applications on Windows 11. Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android™️ (WSA). As a result, the Amazon Appstore on Windows and all applications and games dependent on WSA will no longer be supported beginning March 5, 2025. Until then, technical support will remain available to customers. Customers that have installed the Amazon Appstore or Android apps prior to March 5, 2024, will continue to have access to those apps through the deprecation date of March 5, 2025. Please reach out to our support team for further questions at support.microsoft.com. We are grateful for the support of our developer community and remain committed to listening to feedback as we evolve experiences. ↫ Microsoft’s Learn website Whenever Microsoft offers a way or an API to run and/or develop applications for Windows, and it isn’t Win32, you can be certain they’re going to kill it within a few years.