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Leica Camera's Owners Weigh $1.2 Billion Sale of Controlling Stake
The owners of Leica Camera AG -- Austrian billionaire Andreas Kaufmann and private equity giant Blackstone -- are considering a sale of a controlling stake in the German camera maker in a deal that could value the company at about $1.2 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
HSG, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China, and Altor Equity Partners are among a handful of bidders. The Kaufmann family could re-invest following a transaction. Leica traces its roots roughly 150 years to Ernst Leitz's microscope company and was publicly traded on the Frankfurt stock exchange until the Kaufmann family took it private in 2012.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Feds Skipping Infosec Industry's Biggest Conference This Year
An anonymous reader shares a report: The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency won't attend the annual RSA Conference in March, an agency spokesperson confirmed to The Register. Sessions involving speakers from the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) have also disappeared from the agenda.
"Since the beginning of this administration, CISA has made significant progress in returning to our statutory, core mission and focusing on President Trump's policies for maximum security for all Americans," CISA spokesperson Marci McCarthy told us. "CISA has reviewed and determined that we will not participate in the RSA Conference since we regularly review all stakeholder engagements, to ensure maximum impact and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars."
McCarthy declined to comment on whether the decision had anything to do with former CISA director Jen Easterly being named chief executive of RSAC last week. Easterly, who was appointed to lead America's top cyber-defense agency under the Biden administration, joined her predecessor and CISA's first-ever director Chris Krebs in President Trump's line of fire back in July.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Finland To Introduce 'Green Wave' Automated System For Emergency Vehicles
alternative_right writes: Fintraffic's national traffic priority system, which is set to be introduced this summer, will recognize the location of an emergency vehicle and automatically change the lights to green to facilitate its passage. (Why isn't everyone doing this already?)
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Microsoft Weighs Retreat From Windows 11 AI Push, Reviews Copilot Integrations and Recall
Microsoft is reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11 and plans to scale back or remove Copilot integrations across built-in apps after months of sustained user backlash, according to a Windows Central report citing people familiar with the company's plans.
Copilot features in apps like Notepad and Paint are under review and could be pulled entirely or stripped of their Copilot branding in favor of a more streamlined experience. The company has paused work on adding new Copilot buttons to any other in-box apps. Windows Recall, the screenshot-based search feature delayed by an entire year in 2024 over security and privacy concerns, is separately under review -- Microsoft internally considers the current implementation a failure and is exploring ways to rework or rename the feature rather than scrap it entirely, the report said.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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The AI Boom Is Coming for Apple's Profit Margins
Apple's long-standing dominance over its electronics supply chain is eroding as AI companies outbid the iPhone maker for critical components like chips, memory and specialized glass fiber, giving suppliers the leverage to demand that Apple pay more. CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the pressure during a Thursday earnings call, noting constraints in chip supplies and significant increases in memory prices.
Nvidia has overtaken Apple as TSMC's largest customer, CEO Jensen Huang said on a podcast; Apple had held that position by a wide margin for years. DRAM prices are set to quadruple from 2023 levels by year-end and NAND prices will more than triple, according to TechInsights.
The firm estimates Apple could pay $57 more for memory in the base iPhone 18 due this fall compared to the base iPhone 17 currently on sale -- a significant hit on a device that retails for $799.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Vibe-coded Social Network for AI Bots Exposed Data on Thousands of Humans
Moltbook, a Reddit-like social network that launched last week and bills itself as a platform "built exclusively for AI agents," had a security vulnerability that exposed private messages shared between agents, the email addresses of more than 6,000 human owners, and over a million credentials, according to research published Monday by cybersecurity firm Wiz.
The flaw has since been fixed after Wiz contacted Moltbook. Wiz cofounder Ami Luttwak called it a classic byproduct of "vibe coding." Moltbook creator Matt Schlicht posted on X last Friday that he "didn't write one line of code" for the site. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment when reached out by Reuters. Luttwak said the vulnerability also allowed anyone to post to the site, bot or human. "There was no verification of identity," he said.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Notepad++ Compromised By State Actor
Luthair writes: Notepad++ claims to have been targeted by a state actor, given their previous stance on Uyghurs one can speculate about a candidate. Notepad++, in a blog post: According to the analysis provided by the security experts, the attack involved infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org. The exact technical mechanism remains under investigation, though the compromise occurred at the hosting provider level rather than through vulnerabilities in Notepad++ code itself. Traffic from certain targeted users was selectively redirected to attacker-controlled served malicious update manifests.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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High-Speed Internet Boom Hits Low-Tech Snag: a Labor Shortage
The U.S. laid fiber-optic cables to a record number of homes last year as billions of dollars in federal broadband grants and a surge in data-center construction fueled an enormous buildout, but the industry does not have enough workers to sustain the pace.
A 2024 report by the Fiber Broadband Association and the Power & Communication Contractors Association projects 58,000 new fiber jobs between 2025 and 2032 and estimates 120,000 workers will leave the field in that period, mostly through retirement -- a combined shortage of 178,000. The gap is especially acute among splicers, who fuse hair-thin filaments by hand, and directional drill operators.
Telecommunications line installers and repairers earned annual median wages of $70,500 for the year ended May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, against a $49,500 national median. Push, a utility-construction firm, raised hourly pay for fiber crews by 5% to 8% in each of the past several years and expects the pace to quicken.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Starbucks Bets on Robots To Brew a Turnaround in Customers
Starbucks has been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into AI and automation -- testing robots that take drive-through orders, virtual assistants that help baristas recall recipes and manage schedules, and scanning tools that count inventory -- as the 55-year-old coffee chain tries to reverse several years of struggling sales.
The company last week reported its first same-store sales increase in two years in the U.S., where it earns roughly 70% of its revenue. Shares still slid 5% on concerns that heavy spending, including $500 million to boost staffing, had hurt profits. CEO Brian Niccol, who joined in 2024 after engineering Chipotle's turnaround, told the BBC he is confident consistent growth will address that; the company has pledged to find $2 billion in cost savings over three years.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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China's Decades-Old 'Genius Class' Pipeline Is Quietly Fueling Its AI Challenge To the US
China's decades-old network of elite high-school "genius classes" -- ultra-competitive talent streams that pull an estimated 100,000 gifted teenagers out of regular schooling every year and run them through college-level science curricula -- has produced the core technical talent now building the country's leading AI and technology companies, the Financial Times reported Saturday.
Graduates of these programs include the founder of ByteDance, the leaders of e-commerce giants Taobao and PDD, the billionaire behind super-app Meituan, the brothers who started Nvidia rival Cambricon, and the core engineers behind large language models at DeepSeek and Alibaba's Qwen. DeepSeek's research team of more than 100 was almost entirely composed of genius-class alumni when the startup released its R1 reasoning model last year at a fraction of the cost of its international rivals.
The system traces to the mid-1980s, when China first sent students to the International Mathematical Olympiad and a handful of top high schools began creating dedicated competition-track classes. China now graduates around five million STEM majors annually -- compared to roughly half a million in the United States -- and in 2025, 22 of the 23 students it sent to the International Science Olympiads returned with gold medals. The computer science track has overtaken maths and physics as the most popular competition subject, a shift that accelerated after Beijing designated AI development a "key national growth strategy" in 2017.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Is AI Really Taking Jobs? Or Are Employers Just 'AI-Washing' Normal Layoffs?
The New York Times lists other reasons a company lays off people. ("It didn't meet financial targets. It overhired. Tariffs, or the loss of a big client, rocked it...")
"But lately, many companies are highlighting a new factor: artificial intelligence. Executives, saying they anticipate huge changes from the technology, are making cuts now."
A.I. was cited in the announcements of more than 50,000 layoffs in 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a research firm... Investors may applaud such pre-emptive moves. But some skeptics (including media outlets) suggest that corporations are disingenuously blaming A.I. for layoffs, or "A.I.-washing." As the market research firm Forrester put it in a January report: "Many companies announcing A.I.-related layoffs do not have mature, vetted A.I. applications ready to fill those roles, highlighting a trend of 'A.I.-washing' — attributing financially motivated cuts to future A.I. implementation...."
"Companies are saying that 'we're anticipating that we're going to introduce A.I. that will take over these jobs.' But it hasn't happened yet. So that's one reason to be skeptical," said Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School... Of course, A.I. may well end up transforming the job market, in tech and beyond. But a recent study... [by a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies A.I. and work] found that AI has not yet meaningfully shifted the overall market. Tech firms have cut more than 700,000 employees globally since 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks industry job losses. But much of that was a correction for overhiring during the pandemic.
As unpopular as A.I. job cuts may be to the public, they may be less controversial than other reasons — like bad company planning.
Amazon CEO Jassy has even said the reason for most of their layoffs was reducing bureaucracy, the article points out, although "Most analysts, however, believe Amazon is cutting jobs to clear money for A.I. investments, such as data centers."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Linux Kernel Developer Chris Mason's New Initiative: AI Prompts for Code Reviews
Phoronix reports:
Chris Mason, the longtime Linux kernel developer most known for being the creator of Btrfs, has been working on a Git repository with AI review prompts he has been working on for LLM-assisted code review of Linux kernel patches. This initiative has been happening for some weeks now while the latest work was posted today for comments... The Meta engineer has been investing a lot of effort into making this AI/LLM-assisted code review accurate and useful to upstream Linux kernel stakeholders. It's already shown positive results and with the current pace it looks like it could play a helpful part in Linux kernel code review moving forward.
"I'm hoping to get some feedback on changes I pushed today that break the review up into individual tasks..." Mason wrote on the Linux kernel mailing list. "Using tasks allows us to break up large diffs into smaller chunks, and review each chunk individually. This ends up using fewer tokens a lot of the time, because we're not sending context back and forth for the entire diff with every turn. It also catches more bugs all around."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Is the TV Industry Finally Conceding That the Future May Not Be 8K?
"Technology companies spent part of the 2010s trying to convince us that we would want an 8K display one day..." writes Ars Technica.
"However, 8K never proved its necessity or practicality."
LG Display is no longer making 8K LCD or OLED panels, FlatpanelsHD reported today... LG Electronics was the first and only company to sell 8K OLED TVs, starting with the 88-inch Z9 in 2019. In 2022, it lowered the price-of-entry for an 8K OLED TV by $7,000 by charging $13,000 for a 76.7-inch TV. FlatpanelsHD cited anonymous sources who said that LG Electronics would no longer restock the 2024 QNED99T, which is the last LCD 8K TV that it released.
LG's 8K abandonment follows other brands distancing themselves from 8K. TCL, which released its last 8K TV in 2021, said in 2023 that it wasn't making more 8K TVs due to low demand. Sony discontinued its last 8K TVs in April and is unlikely to return to the market, as it plans to sell the majority ownership of its Bravia TVs to TCL.
The tech industry tried to convince people that the 8K living room was coming soon. But since the 2010s, people have mostly adopted 4K. In September 2024, research firm Omdia reported that there were "nearly 1 billion 4K TVs currently in use." In comparison, 1.6 million 8K TVs had been sold since 2015, Paul Gray, Omdia's TV and video technology analyst, said, noting that 8K TV sales peaked in 2022. That helps explain why membership at the 8K Association, launched by stakeholders Samsung, TCL, Hisense, and panel maker AU Optronics in 2019, is dwindling. As of this writing, the group's membership page lists 16 companies, including just two TV manufacturers (Samsung and Panasonic). Membership no longer includes any major TV panel suppliers. At the end of 2022, the 8K Association had 33 members, per an archived version of the nonprofit's online membership page via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
"It wasn't hard to predict that 8K TVs wouldn't take off," the article concludes. "In addition to being too expensive for many households, there's been virtually zero native 8K content available to make investing in an 8K display worthwhile..."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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EU Deploys New Government Satcom Program in Sovereignty Push
The EU "has switched on parts of its homegrown secure satellite communications network for the first time," reports Bloomberg, calling it part of a €10.6 billion push to "wean itself off US support amid growing tensions."
SpaceNews notes the new government program GOVSATCOM pools capacity from eight already on-oribit satellites from France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Luxembourg — both national and commercial. And they cite this prediction by EU Defense and Space Commissioner Andrius Kubilius.
The program could expand by 2027.
"All member states can now have access to sovereign satellite communications — military and government, secure and resilient, built in Europe, operated in Europe, and under European control,"
[Kubilius said during his opening remarks at the European Space Conference]... Beginning in 2029, GOVSATCOM is expected to integrate with the 290 satellites in the Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite constellation, known as IRIS2, and be fully operational... "The goal is connectivity and security for all of Europe — guaranteed access for all member states and full European control."
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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What Go Programmers Think of AI
"Most Go developers are now using AI-powered development tools when seeking information (e.g., learning how to use a module) or toiling (e.g., writing repetitive blocks of similar code)." That's one of the conclusions Google's Go team drew from September's big survey of 5,379 Go developers.
But the survey also found that among Go developers using AI-powered tools, "their satisfaction with these tools is middling due, in part, to quality concerns."
Our survey suggests bifurcated adoption — while a majority of respondents (53%) said they use such tools daily, there is also a large group (29%) who do not use these at all, or only used them a few times during the past month. We expected this to negatively correlate with age or development experience, but were unable to find strong evidence supporting this theory except for very new developers: respondents with less than one year of professional development experience (not specific to Go) did report more AI use than every other cohort, but this group only represented 2% of survey respondents. At this time, agentic use of AI-powered tools appears nascent among Go developers, with only 17% of respondents saying this is their primary way of using such tools, though a larger group (40%) are occasionally trying agentic modes of operation...
We also asked about overall satisfaction with AI-powered development tools. A majority (55%) reported being satisfied, but this was heavily weighted towards the "Somewhat satisfied" category (42%) vs. the "Very satisfied" group (13%)... [D]eveloper sentiment towards them remains much softer than towards more established tooling (among Go developers, at least). What is driving this lower rate of satisfaction? In a word: quality. We asked respondents to tell us something good they've accomplished with these tools, as well as something that didn't work out well. A majority said that creating non-functional code was their primary problem with AI developer tools (53%), with 30% lamenting that even working code was of poor quality.
The most frequently cited benefits, conversely, were generating unit tests, writing boilerplate code, enhanced autocompletion, refactoring, and documentation generation. These appear to be cases where code quality is perceived as less critical, tipping the balance in favor of letting AI take the first pass at a task. That said, respondents also told us the AI-generated code in these successful cases still required careful review (and often, corrections), as it can be buggy, insecure, or lack context... [One developer said reviewing AI-generated code was so mentally taxing that it "kills the productivity potential".]
Of all the tasks we asked about, "Writing code" was the most bifurcated, with 66% of respondents already or hoping to soon use AI for this, while 1/4 of respondents didn't want AI involved at all. Open-ended responses suggest developers primarily use this for toilsome, repetitive code, and continue to have concerns about the quality of AI-generated code.
Most respondents also said they "are not currently building AI-powered features into the Go software they work on (78%)," the surveyors report, "with 2/3 reporting that their software does not use AI functionality at all (66%)."
This appears to be a decrease in production-related AI usage year-over-year; in 2024, 59% of respondents were not involved in AI feature work, while 39% indicated some level of involvement. That marks a shift of 14 points away from building AI-powered systems among survey respondents, and may reflect some natural pullback from the early hype around AI-powered applications: it's plausible that lots of folks tried to see what they could do with this technology during its initial rollout, with some proportion deciding against further exploration (at least at this time).
Among respondents who are building AI- or LLM-powered functionality, the most common use case was to create summaries of existing content (45%). Overall, however, there was little difference between most uses, with between 28% — 33% of respondents adding AI functionality to support classification, generation, solution identification, chatbots, and software development.
Slashdot
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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NewsBone.com
Suggest a feed to syndicate here, or check out what I'm doing over at freshtao.
~Created Mon Feb 2 20:27:14 2026
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Firefox nightly gets “AI” kill switch
After a seemingly endless stream of tone deaf news from Mozilla, we’ve finally got some good news for Firefox users. As the company’s been hinting at for a while on social media now, they’ve added an “AI” kill switch to the latest Firefox nightly release, as well as a set of toggles to disable specific “AI” features. You can choose to use some of these and not others. If you don’t want to use AI features from Firefox at all, you can turn on the Block AI enhancements toggle. When it’s toggled on, you won’t see pop-ups or reminders to use existing or upcoming AI features. Once you set your AI preferences in Firefox, they stay in place across updates. You can also change them whenever you want. ↫ Ajit Varma at the Mozilla blog I’m particularly enamoured with the specific mention that the setting will remain unaffected by updates. It’s incredibly sad that Mozilla even has to mention this, but they have nobody to blame but themselves for that one. None of this is enough to draw me away from Librewolf and back to Firefox, but at least it gives those of us who prefer to keep using Firefox the option to disable all of this “AI” nonsense. Also, there’s no Librewolf for POWER9, so I have to use Firefox somewhere. It’s unlikely Chrome or Safari will get such clear “AI” kill switches, so it might become a reason for some to switch to Firefox from Chrome or Safari.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Audio on hp300
In the late 1980s, with the expansion of the Internet (even though it was not open to commercial activities yet) and the slowly increasing capabilities of workstations, some people started to imagine the unthinkable: that, some day, you may use your computer to record voice messages, send them over the Internet, and the recipient could listen to these messages on his own computer. That was definitely science fiction… until workstation manufacturers started to add audio capabilities to their hardware. ↫ Miod Vallat A great story detailing how the audio hardware in the HP 9000/425e was made to work on OpenBSD and NetBSD.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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OpenVMS 9.2-3 x64 now has local console on OPA0
I previously covered x64 OpenVMS release on VMware. This was insanely cool achievement for the operating system. While it had no practical ramification there was one small annoyance. The OS console was on a serial port. In VMware it meant another VM connected via named pipe. Now OpenVMS x64 supports (limited?) local console on OPA0. ↫ Virtually Fun I think this has been available for a while now – since 2024 – but we hadn’t covered it yet. That same 2024 post also indicates CDE and DECWindows work now, a side effect of a C/C++ compiler bugfix. Sadly, VSI has made it clear that desktop support is not at all on their list of things to spend time on, so don’t expect graphics support to improve meaningfully other than by accident like in this case.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Guix System first impressions as a Nix user
But NixOS isn’t the only declarative distro out there. In fact GNU forked Nix fairly early and made their own spin called Guix, whose big innovation is that, instead of using the unwieldy Nix-language, it uses Scheme. Specifically Guile Scheme, GNU’s sanctioned configuration language. I’ve been following Guix for a bit, but it never felt quite ready to me with stuff like KDE being only barely supported and a lot of hardware not working out of the box. However, now that (after three years) Guix announced its 1.5.0 release with a lot of stuff stabilized and KDE finally a first-party citizen, I figured now is the best time to give it a fresh shot. This post captures my experiences from installation to the first 3-4 days. ↫ Nemin’s blog If you’re interested in Guix, but aren’t quite sure if you want to take the plunge, this article does a great job of showing you the ropes, listing what issues you might run into, some pitfalls to avoid, and so on.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Microsoft gestures vaguely in the general direction of fleeting promises to improve Windows 11
It’s no secret that Windows 11 isn’t exactly well-liked by even most of its users, and I’m fairly sure that perception has permeated into the general public as well. It seems Microsoft is finally getting the message, and they’re clearly spooked: the company has told The Verge that they have heard the complaints, and intend to start fixing many of the issues people are having. The feedback we’re receiving from our community of passionate customers and Windows Insiders has been clear. We need to improve Windows in ways that are meaningful for people. This year, you will see us focus on addressing pain points we hear consistently from customers: improving system performance, reliability, and the overall experience of Windows. ↫ Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows, to The Verge This entire statement is utterly meaningless. I have zero faith in words; only actions will do. Microsoft has made many promises over the years, and they have a history of simply not following through on them. Up until this year is over and there have been material improvements in Windows 11 that we can measure, see, and point to, nothing has changed between the day before the statement and the day after. Anyone taking this at face value and reporting it as such is an idiot. This means that at the end of this year, Windows 11 should be faster, more stable, experience far fewer breaking updates, have fewer – nay – zero ads, a far more consistent user interface, proper local account support, and more. If these things haven’t become reality once the countdown runs out and on 31 December, Microsoft lied to our faces once more. Until then, don’t use Windows.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Ariel OS: a library operating system for IoT devices written in Rust
Operating systems written in Rust – especially for embedded use – are quite common these days, and today’s example fits right into that trend. Ariel OS is an operating system for secure, memory-safe, low-power Internet of Things (IoT). It is based on Rust from the ground up and supports hardware based on 32-bit microcontroller architectures (Cortex-M, RISC-V, and Xtensa). For a quick overview of our motivations and what we plan next, check our roadmap. Ariel OS builds on top of existing projects from the Embedded Rust ecosystem, including Embassy, esp-hal, defmt, probe-rs, sequential-storage, and embedded-test. While those provide high-quality building blocks for a wide range of embedded applications, such projects do not provide the high level of integration that developers know from contemporary C-based operating systems for microcontrollers, such as RIOT or Zephyr for instance. ↫ Ariel OS GitHub page There’s bound to be a microcontroller you can get your hands on that Ariel OS supports, and since it’s licensed under either a MIT or Apache 2.0 license, you can get going right away.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Mac OS and Windows NT-capable ROMs discovered for Apple’s unique AIX Network Server
As most of you will know, Mac OS X (or Rhapsody if you count the developer releases) wasn’t Apple’s first foray into the world of UNIX. The company sold its own UNIX variant, A/UX, from 1988 to 1995, which combined a System V-based UNIX with a System 7.0.1 desktop environment and application compatibility, before it acquired NeXT and started working on Rhapsody/Mac OS X. As a sidenote, I don’t know if the application compatibility layer was related to the Macintosh Application Environment for UNIX, which I have running on my HP-UX machines. That’s not the only time Apple dabbled with UNIX, though – Apple’s unique Apple Network Server product from 1996 also came with UNIX, but time it wasn’t one from Apple itself, but rather from its enemy-turned-friend IBM: AIX. The Network Server shipped with a slightly customised version of IBM’s AIX operating system; regular AIX straight from IBM wouldn’t work. The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess. Since the Apple Network Server was built around a modified Power Macintosh 9500 – there’s much more to the hardware, but that’s the short of it – so you would expect the Network Server to also be able to run regular Mac OS for PowerPC, right? Apple even sold server products running plain Mac OS at the time, so it’d make sense, but nothing about Apple in the ’90s made any sense whatsoever, so no, use of plain Mac OS was locked out through the ROM. And let’s not even get started about other PowerPC operating systems of the time, like, of all things, Windows NT – something Apple supposedly demonstrated at some point. But was that always the case? Well, we’ve got new ROMs straight from a former Apple employee, and after flashing them to a supported ROM chip, the Apple Network Sever can now run classic Mac OS. On top of that, and even more miraculous, the Windows NT-capable ROMs have also been discovered. I’ll give you a spoiler now: it turns out the NT ROM isn’t enough to install Windows NT by itself, even though it has some interesting attributes. Sadly this was not unexpected. But the pre-production ROM does work to boot Mac OS, albeit with apparent bugs and an injection of extra hardware. Let’s get the 700 running again (call it a Refurb Weekend) and show the process. ↫ Cameron Kaiser While it’s great news to see that Mac OS can now be run on the Network Server, I’m personally much more interested in the story behind the Windows NT ROMs. The idea that Apple would sell a computer running Windows NT out of the box is wild to think about now, but considering the desperate state the company was in at the time, all options must’ve been on the table. Sadly, as Kaiser discovered, the Windows NT ROMs in and of themselves are not enough to run Windows NT. However, they appear to be much farther along in the development process than even the Mac OS-capable ROMs, which is fascinating. When Jobs talked Gil Amelio into canning the ANS as well, the ROM initiative naturally went out the window with it. However, while the existing 2.0 Mac OS ROMs are only known on an unmarked development flash stick similar to mine, these final 2.26NT ROMs appear almost production-ready with fully printed labels, suggesting they had reached a very late stage of development. ↫ Cameron Kaiser Despite not being able to boot Windows NT for PowerPC as-is, most likely because there’s no compatible ARC or HAL, Kaiser did discover a ton of interesting details, like how this ROM configures the Network Server to run in little endian mode, which is all Windows NT for PowerPC ever supported, making this the very first time a PowerPC machine did so. I’m hoping Kaiser manages to track down the necessary components to make Windows NT bootable on the ANS, as one of the most unique curiosities in Apple history. There’s a ton more details in the article, as per usual Kaiser standards, and it’s an absolute joy to read.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Xfce announces xfwl4, its new Wayland compositor
While the two major open source desktop environments get most of the airtime – and for good reason, since they’re both exceptionally good – there’s a long tail of other desktop environments out there catering to all kinds of special workflows and weird niches. I think we can all agree that Xfce leads this long tail of more niche desktop environments, without really being niche itself. Xfce may not be as popular as KDE or GNOME, but it’s an amazing full-featured desktop environment that offers a slightly more traditional, less fast-paced desktop for those that desire so. Xfce, too, is moving to Wayland, which can mean significant efforts in certain places, not the least of which is the window manager. Xfce originally planned to adapt its venerable xfwm4 to support both X11 and Wayland at the same time, but this turned out to be too complex for a variety of reasons, all more or less caused by differences between X11 and Wayland. On top of that, this approach would risk introducing new bugs to the X11 side of things, and the Xfce project does not want to subject its X11 users to that. As such, they’ve decided to develop a Wayland compositor from scratch: xfwl4. The goal is, that xfwl4 will offer the same functionality and behavior as xfwm4 does, or as much as possible considering the differences between X11 and Wayland. Using xfwl4 should feel just like using xfwm4 on X11. We even plan to reuse the existing xfwm4 configuration dialogs and xfconf settings to ensure a seamless transition. Xfwl4 will not be based on the existing xfwm4 code. Instead, it will be written from scratch in rust, using smithay building blocks. ↫ The Xfce development team This project also includes related tasks like rearchitecting session-startup to support Wayland, implementing support for the xdg-session-management protocol, and adding support for XWayland. This is obviously anything but a small effort, but it seems like a practical solution. Xfce users generally seem to choose Xfce exactly because it’s a stable environment that does not move fast(er) and break (some) things. As such, keeping the X11 window manager separate and stable, without Wayland work possibly breaking it, seems like the kind of thing the average Xfce user can get behind. Personally, I can’t wait for Xfce to become a full Wayland desktop, as dealing with X11’s nonsense feels decidedly retro to me now, and I don’t see Xfce as a retro environment at all. It’s going to take some time, of course, but thanks to countless generous donations to Xfce, longtime Xfce core developer Brian Tarricone will be paid to work on this project. Excellent news for everyone involved.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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What is going on with Windows11?
Since I have no qualms about kicking a proprietary software product while it’s down, let’s now switch to NTDEV‘s thoughts on the state of Windows 11. Unfortunately, the issue that plagued Windows since the dawn of time has only aggravated recently. Windows 11 is a mixture of old and new technologies that are glued together, with decades of legacy code that simply refuses to die (because if it did a lot of corporate costumers would complain, and whether we like it or not they are paying big cash for support to Microsoft). Also, it tries to have a “modern” UI that unfortunately not only is inconsistent, but also it’s too heavy for its own good, being just a lipstick on a bloated old pig. Last, but certainly not least, it is full of AI features that most people didn’t ask for, some are even actively feared (see Recall) and are also quite lacking in polish and usefulness. Until Microsoft stops treating Windows as an “AI innovation platform” of sorts and starts treating it as the stable, reliable tool it was always meant to be, the user experience will continue to feel like a battle between the person sitting at the desk and the company that built the desk. ↫ NETDEV When even some of the most knowledgeable and respected Windows/Windows NT developers and experts are this down on the current state of Windows, you know things are way worse than we even know from just following the news and our own experiences. Back in 2024, I stated that I firmly believe we will see Windows – or at least, huge, crucial chunks of it – shift to an open source development model, as it’s the only way for Windows to move forward without crumbling into itself. It would also be a massive cost-cutting and personnel-culling step for Microsoft, something that seems to become ever more relevant now that the company bet massively on “AI”, without any of it paying off. They’re going to need to do some serious cost-cutting once the “AI” bubble bursts, and Windows will definitely be the first on the chopping block. As a side note, the step to release Windows as open source won’t be nearly as difficult or problematic as people think. In fact, Microsoft has provided access to the source code behind Windows and various other products for decades, and countless governments and organisations have access to said source code. On top of that, the source code to Windows XP and Server 2003 is out there, hosted on GitHub, and various other leaks have occurred as well over the years. While I’m sure a large clean-up effort would still be required, and while it surely will be a big engineering effort, if there were any truly shocking things in the code Microsoft wouldn’t want the world to see we’d already know by now. I’m getting the strong feeling Microsoft is trying to squeeze every last drop of revenue out of Windows before it ends up on the chopping block. Windows will definitely not be axed, but cost-cutting is inevitable.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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I don’t want using my computer to be like a game of Russian roulette
I’ve been terribly sick for a few days so we’ve got some catching up to. Let’s first take a look at how Windows is doing. People often say Linux is “too much work.” And I agree. They’re completely justified to complain. There’s the documentation page diving, the forums, the reddit threads. And, most importantly, you have to basically rewire your brain and stop expecting it to behave like Windows used to. But I looked at the list above and realized: Windows is now also too much work. And the difference with Windows is that you’re going to do all that work while actively fighting your computer only for it to be undone when the next surprise update comes and ruins everything. You might be thinking “just disable updates, man” or “just install LTSC”, or “just run some random debloat script off of GitHub”. Why? Why would I jump through all these hoops? I’d rather put in the effort for an OS that knows what consent is and respects me as a user. ↫ Bogdan-Mihai Mosteanu You know how in most theme parks they have various different rides for all kinds of people? There’s the wild and crazy over-the-top deathcoasters for the ultimate thrill seekers, the more gentle wooden coasters for those who like a thrill, but not over-the-top. There’s the swinging ship-type things for thrill-seeking accountants who seek their thrills predictably. There’s a game of Russian roulette played in the backlot. For the kids, there’s the classic spinning tea cups. And then there’s the public transport service dressed up as an old-timey steam train that just brings you to your destination without any issue, silently doing its thing, the unsung backbone of park logistics. Commercial operating systems like Windows and macOS are the games of Russian roulette, predictably unexpectedly shooting you in the face every sixth time you pull the trigger. That’s not my vibe. I want my operating system to be that steam train, and desktop Linux is the only thing that fits that bill – and it’s very clear more and more people are discovering that too.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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9front GEFS SERVICE PACK 1 released
9front, by far the best operating system in the whole world, pushed out a new release, titled “GEFS SERVICE PACK 1“. Even with only a few changes, this is still, as always, a more monumental, important, and groundbreaking release than any other operating system release in history. Everything changes, today, because exec() now supports shell-scripts as interpreter in #!, improved sam scrolling, TLS by default in ircrc, and more. You’re already running 9front, of course, but if you’re one of the few holdouts still using something else, download GEFS SERVICE PACK 1 and install it.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Remotely unlocking an encrypted hard disk
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sneak into the earliest parts of the boot process, swap the startup config without breaking anything, and leave without a trace. Are you ready? Let’s begin. ↫ Jynn Nelson Genius.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Microsoft gave FBI BitLocker keys to unlock encrypted data, because of course they did
Encrypting the data stored locally on your hard drives is generally a good idea, specifically if you have use a laptop and take it with you a lot and thieves might get a hold of it. This issue becomes even more pressing if you carry sensitive data as a dissident or whistleblower and have to deal with law enforcement. Or, you know, if you’re an American citizen fascist paramilitary groups like ICE doesn’t like because your skin colour is too brown or whatever. Windows offers local disk encryption too, in the form of its BitLocker feature, and Microsoft suggests users store their encryption keys on Microsoft’s servers. However, when you do so, these keys will be stored unencrypted, and it turns out Microsoft will happily hand them over to law enforcement. “This is private data on a private computer and they made the architectural choice to hold access to that data. They absolutely should be treating it like something that belongs to the user,” said Matt Green, cryptography expert and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute. “If Apple can do it, if Google can do it, then Microsoft can do it. Microsoft is the only company that’s not doing this,” he added. “It’s a little weird… The lesson here is that if you have access to keys, eventually law enforcement is going to come.” ↫ Thomas Brewster Microsoft is choosing to store these keys in unencrypted fashion, and that of course means law enforcement is going to come knocking. With everything that’s happening in the United States at the moment, the platitude of “I have nothing to hide” has lost even more of its meaning, as people – even toddlers – are being snatched from the streets and out of their homes on a daily basis by fascist paramilitaries. Even if times were better, though, Microsoft should still refrain from storing these keys unencrypted. It is entirely possible, nay, trivial to address this shortcoming, but the odds of the company fixing this while trying to suck up to the current US regime seem small. Everybody, but especially those living under totalitarian(-esque) regimes, should be taking extra care to make sure their data isn’t just encrypted, but that the keys are safe as well.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Firefox on Linux in 2025
Last year brought a wealth of new features and fixes to Firefox on Linux. Besides numerous improvements and bug fixes, I want to highlight some major achievements: HDR video playback support, reworked rendering for fractionally scaled displays, and asynchronous rendering implementation. All this progress was enabled by advances in the Wayland compositor ecosystem, with new features implemented by Mutter and KWin. ↫ Martin Stransky It’s amazing how the adoption of Wayland is making it so much easier for application developers to support modern features like these. Instead of having to settle for whatever roadblocks and limitations thrown up by legacy X11 cruft, the Linux desktop can now enjoy modern features like HDR, and much more easily support features like fractional scaling. The move to Wayland, as long as it may have taken, has catapulted the Linux desktop from its ’90s roots right into the modern era. It’s great to see Firefox implementing improvements like these for Linux users, but of course, they come with Mozilla’s push to make Firefox an “AI” browser, something few Firefox users seem to want. Luckily, the various Firefox variants like Librewolf and Waterfox will get these same features while removing all the “AI” bloat, so as long as Mozilla remains committed to Firefox for Linux – or Firefox in general – Linux users can rest safe. Sadly, I’m afraid Mozilla’s massive pivot to “AI” isn’t going to work out, so I have no idea how long Mozilla will be able to afford Firefox on Linux development specifically, and Firefox development generally.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Microsoft announces winapp to simplify Windows application development
Developing for Windows seems to be a bit of a nightmare, at least according to Microsoft, so they’re trying to make the lives of developers easier with a new tool called winapp. The winapp CLI is specifically tailored for cross-platform frameworks and developers working outside of Visual Studio or MSBuild. Whether you are a web developer building with Electron, a C++ veteran using CMake, or a .NET, Rust or Dart developer building apps for Windows, the CLI can streamline the complexities of Windows development – from setting up your environment to packaging for distribution. This makes it significantly easier to access modern APIs – including Windows AI APIs, security features and shell integrations – directly from any toolchain. Windows development often involves managing multiple SDKs, creating and editing multiple manifests, generating certificates and navigating intricate packaging requirements. The goal of this project is to unify these tasks into a single CLI, letting you focus on building great apps rather than fighting with configuration. While the CLI is still in its early days, and there are many Windows development scenarios still in the works, we’re sharing this public preview now to learn from real usage, gather feedback and feature requests, and focus our investments on the areas that matter most to developers. ↫ Nikola Metulev at the Windows Blogs For instance, run the command winapp init at the root of your project, and winapp will download the proper SDKs, create manifest files, etc., all automatically. You can also generate the correct certificates, easily create MSIX packages, and more. The tool is available through winget and npm (for Electron projects), but is still in preview, with the code available on GitHub.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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Against Markdown
So Markdown is this Lightweight Markup Language. Everyone (relative; among programmers, writers, and other “power-users”) uses it. LLMs use it. So it’s destined to eat the world. But it doesn’t mean Markdown is good. ↫ Artyom Bologov We have these crazy fast and complex computers, but I’m still supposed to style text with obscure, arbitrary symbols, like an animal? We invented WYSIWYG decades ago, and our computers should be able to figure out how to properly share styled/unstyled text without us users having to learn markup languages using arcane symbols that require weird claw grips to type. The widespread use of Markdown is not indicative of its merits; it merely underlines the utter failure of the computing industry to fix basic problems.
OSnews
~Created Mon Feb 2 19:06:10 2026
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