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TikTok Says End-To-End Encryption Makes Users Less Safe
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption (E2EE) -- the controversial privacy feature used by nearly all its rivals -- arguing it makes users less safe. E2EE means only the sender and recipient of a direct message can view its contents, making it the most secure form of communication available to the general public. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and X have embraced it because they say their priority is maximizing user privacy.
But critics have said E2EE makes it harder to stop harmful content spreading online, because it means tech firms and law enforcement have no way of viewing any material sent in direct messages. The situation is made more complex because TikTok has long faced accusations that ties to the Chinese state may put users' data at risk. TikTok has consistently denied this, but earlier this year the social media firm's US operations were separated from its global business on the orders of US lawmakers.
TikTok told the BBC it believed end-to-end encryption prevented police and safety teams from being able to read direct messages if they needed to. It confirmed its approach to the BBC in a briefing about security at its London office, saying it wanted to protect users, especially young people from harm. It described this stance as a deliberate decision to set itself apart from rivals. "Grooming and harassment risks are very real in DMs [direct messages] so TikTok now can credibly argue that it's prioritizing 'proactive safety' over 'privacy absolutism' which is a pretty powerful soundbite," said social media industry analyst Matt Navarra. But Navarra said the move also "puts TikTok out of step with global privacy expectations" and might reinforce wariness for some about its ownership.
Slashdot
~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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Apple Announces Low-Cost 'MacBook Neo' With A18 Pro Chip
Continuing its product launches this week, Apple today announced the "MacBook Neo," an all-new, low-cost Mac featuring the A18 Pro chip. It starts at $599 and begins shipping on Wednesday, March 11. MacRumors reports: The MacBook Neo is the first Mac to be powered by an iPhone chip; the A18 Pro debuted in 2024's iPhone 16 Pro models. Apple says it is up to 50% faster for everyday tasks than the bestselling PC with the latest shipping Intel Core Ultra 5, up to 3x faster for on-device AI workloads, and up to 2x faster for tasks like photo editing. The MacBook Neo features a 13-inch Liquid Retina display with a 2408-by-1506 resolution, 500 nits of brightness, and an anti-reflective coating. The display does not have a notch, instead featuring uniform, iPad-style bezels.
It is available in Silver, Indigo, Blush, and Citrus color options. The colored finishes extend to the Magic Keyboard in lighter shades and come with matching wallpapers. It weighs 2.7 pounds. There are two USB-C ports. One is a USB-C 2 port with support for speeds up to 480 Mb/s and one is a USB-C 3 port with support for speeds up to 10 Gb/s. There is also a headphone jack. The MacBook Neo also offers a 16-hour battery life, 8GB of unified memory, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 6 connectivity, a 1080p front-facing camera, dual mics with directional beamforming, and dual side-firing speakers with Spatial Audio.
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~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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Intel's Make-Or-Break 18A Process Node Debuts For Data Center With 288-Core Xeon 6+ CPU
Intel has formally unveiled its Xeon 6+ "Clearwater Forest" data-center processor with up to 288 cores, built on the company's new Intel 18A process and using Foveros Direct packaging. The chip targets telecom, cloud, and edge-AI workloads with massive parallelism, large caches, and high-bandwidth DDR5-8000 memory. Tom's Hardware reports: Intel's Xeon 6+ processors with up to 288 cores combine 12 compute chiplets containing 24 energy-efficient Darkmont cores per tile that are produced using 18A manufacturing technology, two I/O tiles made on Intel 7 production node, as well as three active base tiles made on Intel 3 fabrication process. The compute tiles are stacked on top of the base dies using Intel's Foveros Direct 3D technology, whereas lateral connections are enabled by Intel's EMIB bridges.
Intel's 'Darkmont' efficiency cores have received rather meaningful microarchitectural upgrades. Each core integrates a 64 KB L1 instruction cache, a broader fetch and decode pipeline, and a deeper out-of-order engine capable of tracking more in-flight operations. The number of execution ports has also been increased in a bid to improve both scalar and vector throughput under heavily threaded server workloads.
From a cache hierarchy standpoint, the design groups cores into four-core blocks that share approximately 4 MB of L2 cache per block. As a result, the aggregate last-level cache across the full package surpasses 1 GB, roughly 1,152 MB in total. This unusually large pool is intended to keep data close to hundreds of active cores and reduce dependence on external memory bandwidth, which in turn is meant to both increase performance and lower power consumption. Platform-wise, the processor remains drop-in compatible with the current Xeon server socket, so the CPU has 12 memory channels that support DDR5-8000, 96 PCIe 5.0 lanes with 64 lanes supporting CXL 2.0.
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~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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New App Alerts You If Someone Nearby Is Wearing Smart Glasses
A new Android app called Nearby Glasses alerts users when Bluetooth signals from smart glasses are detected nearby. The Android app, called Nearby Glasses, "launches at a time as there is an increasing resistance against always-recording or listening devices, which critics say process information about nearby people who do not give their consent," reports TechCrunch. From the report: Yves Jeanrenaud, who made the app, first spoke to 404 Media about the project and said he was in part inspired to make Nearby Glasses after reading the independent publication's reporting into wearable surveillance devices, including how Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses have been used in immigration raids and to film and harass sex workers.
On the app's project page, Jeanrenaud described smart glasses as an "intolerable intrusion, consent neglecting, horrible piece of tech." Jeanrenaud told TechCrunch in an email that his motivation came from "witnessing the sheer scale and inhumane nature of the abuse these smart glasses are involved in." Jeanrenaud also cited Meta's decision to implement face recognition as a default feature in its smart glasses, "which I consider to be a huge floodgate pushed open for all kinds of privacy-invasive behavior."
The app works by listening for nearby Bluetooth signals that contain a publicly assigned identifier unique to the Bluetooth device's manufacturer. If the app detects a Bluetooth signal from a nearby hardware device made by Meta or Snap, the app will send the user an alert. (The app also allows users to add their own specific Bluetooth identifiers, allowing the user to detect a broader range of wearable surveillance gadgetry.) Further reading: Meta's AI Display Glasses Reportedly Share Intimate Videos With Human Moderators
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~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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Qualcomm CEO: 'Resistance Is Futile' As 6G Mobile Revolution Approaches
At Mobile World Congress, Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm argued that the coming 6G networks will power an AI-driven "agent economy," where devices and AI assistants constantly communicate across the network. "AI will fundamentally change our mobile experiences," Qualcomm chief executive, Cristiano Amon says. "It's going to change how we think about our smartphones. Think about our personal computing. Think about and interact with a car. The car is now a computing surface. If you actually believe in the AI revolution, 6G will be required. Resistance is futile." The company says early consumer testing could begin around the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, with broader rollouts expected by 2029. Fortune's Kamal Ahmed reports: Akash Palkhiwala is Qualcomm's chief financial officer and chief operating officer. I spent some time with him at the company's stand, as his leading engineers took me through a 6G future where individuals will have real-time information delivered to them via their glasses. Palkhiwala compliments me on my watch, which only does one thing. It tells me the time. "6G is going to be the first time that connectivity and AI come together in the network. What we're building is the first AI-native wireless network that's ever been built," he explains.
"The traffic that we expect on 6G is way different than what we had before," says Palkhiwala. "Before, it was all about consumer traffic. We expect 6G to be driven by [AI] agent traffic. Think about all these use cases where there are AI agents sitting on various devices -- your glasses, your watch, your phone, your PC. These agents are going to be talking back and forth across the network to other agents and services. "The traffic completely changes. 6G is being built with this idea that the traffic that goes on the network is not just going to be consumer voice calls or downloading videos, we're going to have agents talking to each other, so the reliability of the network becomes very important."
On-device capabilities (the ability of your phone to process far more data); edge computing (locally sourced IT technology rather than distant data centers); more efficient use of available bandwidth (AI-enabled load control); and greater cloud access will all come together to produce a new wireless network. [...] "Today we are in the application economy," he notes. "On the phone, you want to make a travel reservation, you go to one application. You want to order an Uber, you go to a second application. You want to order food, you go to a third application, movie tickets, etc. The user has to go through that effort. In the future, you think of the app economy moving over to an agent economy, where there's one agent I'm interacting with, and I can ask that agent to book me a movie ticket or a plane ticket, to order food for me, get an Uber for me. It knows everything about me."
Slashdot
~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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ChatGPT Gets GPT-5.3 Instant Update With Less 'Cringe,' Fewer Hallucinations
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: OpenAI today updated its most popular ChatGPT model, debuting GPT-5.3 Instant. GPT-5.3 Instant is supposed to provide more accurate answers and better contextualized results when searching the web. The update also cuts down on unnecessary dead ends, caveats, and overly declarative phrasing, plus it has fewer hallucinations.
According to OpenAI, it tweaked the Instant model to address complaints about tone, relevance, and conversational flow, which are issues that don't show up in benchmarks. GPT-5.2 Instant had a "cringe" tone that could be overbearing or make unsubstantiated assumptions about user intent or emotions. The new model will have a more natural conversational style and will cut back on dramatic phrases like "Stop. Take a breath."
Users found that GPT-5.2 Instant would refuse questions it should have been able to answer, or respond in ways that felt overly cautious around sensitive topics. GPT-5.3 Instant cuts down on refusals and tones down overly defensive or moralizing preambles when answering a question. The model will no longer "over-caveat" after assuming bad intent from the user. GPT-5.3 Instant also provides higher-quality answers based on information from the web. OpenAI says that it is able to better balance what it finds online with its own knowledge, so it is less likely to overindex on web results.
Slashdot
~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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'Game of Thrones' Movie In the Works
Warner Bros. is developing a feature film set in the world of Game of Thrones with writer Beau Willimon of Andor and House of Cards. "That's about all we know right now, and as with everything 'Thrones' things could change, but the film is firmly in development," reports TheWrap. Page Six Hollywood was first to break the news and speculated that the story could revolve around Aegon I, the legendary Targaryen king who spawned a dynasty. From the report: The Targaryens have been at the center of all things "Thrones" on HBO, with "Game of Thrones" following Daenerys Targaryen's (Emilia Clarke) quest to usurp the throne, spinoff "House of the Dragon" set in the midst of the Targaryens' reign and recent spinoff "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" following the squire-ship of Aegon "Egg" Targaryen towards the end of the family's run atop the Iron Throne. All, of course, based on George R.R. Martin's expansive book universe.
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~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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NASA Repairs Artemis 2 Rocket, Continues Eyeing April Moon Launch
NASA is eyeing an April launch window for the upcoming Artemis II mission after it repaired a helium-flow issue on the Space Launch System upper stage rocket. "Work on the rocket and spacecraft will continue in the coming weeks as NASA prepares for rolling the rocket out to the launch pad again later this month ahead of a potential launch in April," NASA wrote in an update on Tuesday. Space.com reports: The repair work occurred inside the huge Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Artemis 2's SLS and Orion crew capsule have been in the VAB since Feb. 25, when they rolled back to the hangar from KSC's Launch Pad 39B. Just a few days earlier, the Artemis 2 stack successfully completed a wet dress rehearsal, a two-day-long practice run of the procedures leading up to launch.
In the wake of that test, however, NASA noticed an interruption in helium flow in the SLS' upper stage. That was a significant issue, because helium pressurizes the rocket's propellant tanks. Rollback was the only option, as the affected area in the upper stage was not accessible at the pad. The problem took a potential March launch out of play for Artemis 2, which will send four astronauts on a roughly 10-day flight around the moon. It will be the first crewed flight to the lunar neighborhood since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The next Artemis 2 launch window opens in April, with liftoff opportunities on April 1, April 3-6 and April 30. And those options apparently remain in play, thanks to recent work in the VAB. That work centered on a seal in an interface through which helium flows from ground equipment into the SLS upper stage. That seal was obstructing the interface, which is known as a quick disconnect.
Slashdot
~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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A Possible US Government iPhone-Hacking Toolkit Is Now In the Hands of Foreign Spies, Criminals
Security researchers say a highly sophisticated iPhone exploitation toolkit dubbed "Coruna," which possibly originated from a U.S. government contractor, has spread from suspected Russian espionage operations to crypto-stealing criminal campaigns. Apple has patched the exploited vulnerabilities in newer iOS versions, but tens of thousands of devices may have already been compromised. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from Wired's report: Security researchers at Google on Tuesday released a report describing what they're calling "Coruna," a highly sophisticated iPhone hacking toolkit that includes five complete hacking techniques capable of bypassing all the defenses of an iPhone to silently install malware on a device when it visits a website containing the exploitation code. In total, Coruna takes advantage of 23 distinct vulnerabilities in iOS, a rare collection of hacking components that suggests it was created by a well-resourced, likely state-sponsored group of hackers.
In fact, Google traces components of Coruna to hacking techniques it spotted in use in February of last year and attributed to what it describes only as a "customer of a surveillance company." Then, five months later, Google says a more complete version of Coruna reappeared in what appears to have been an espionage campaign carried out by a suspected Russian spy group, which hid the hacking code in a common visitor-counting component of Ukrainian websites. Finally, Google spotted Coruna in use yet again in what seems to have been a purely profit-focused hacking campaign, infecting Chinese-language crypto and gambling sites to deliver malware that steals victims cryptocurrency.
Conspicuously absent from Google's report is any mention of who the original surveillance company "customer" that deployed Coruna may have been. But the mobile security company iVerify, which also analyzed a version of Coruna it obtained from one of the infected Chinese sites, suggests the code may well have started life as a hacking kit built for or purchased by the US government. Google and iVerify both note that Coruna contains multiple components previously used in a hacking operation known as "Triangulation" that was discovered targeting Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky in 2023, which the Russian government claimed was the work of the NSA. (The US government didn't respond to Russia's claim.)
Coruna's code also appears to have been originally written by English-speaking coders, notes iVerify's cofounder Rocky Cole. "It's highly sophisticated, took millions of dollars to develop, and it bears the hallmarks of other modules that have been publicly attributed to the US government," Cole tells WIRED. "This is the first example we've seen of very likely US government tools -- based on what the code is telling us -- spinning out of control and being used by both our adversaries and cybercriminal groups." Regardless of Coruna's origin, Google warns that a highly valuable and rare hacking toolkit appears to have traveled through a series of unlikely hands, and now exists in the wild where it could still be adopted -- or adapted -- by any hacker group seeking to target iPhone users. "How this proliferation occurred is unclear, but suggests an active market for 'second hand' zero-day exploits," Google's report reads. "Beyond these identified exploits, multiple threat actors have now acquired advanced exploitation techniques that can be re-used and modified with newly identified vulnerabilities."
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~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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OpenAI Is Developing an Alternative To GitHub
OpenAI is reportedly developing a code-hosting platform that could compete with GitHub, The Information reported on Tuesday. "If OpenAI does sell the product, it would mark a bold move by the creator of ChatGPT to compete directly against Microsoft, which holds a significant stake in the firm," notes Reuters. From the report: Engineers from OpenAI encountered a rise in service disruptions that rendered GitHub unavailable in recent months, which ultimately prompted the decision to develop the new product, the report said. The OpenAI project is in its early stages and likely will not be completed for months, according to The Information. Employees working on it have considered making the code repository available for purchase to OpenAI's customer base.
Slashdot
~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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Google Chrome Is Switching To a Two-Week Release Cycle
Google is accelerating Chrome's major release cadence from four weeks to two starting with version 153 on September 8th. "...our goal is to ensure developers and users have immediate access to the latest performance improvements, fixes and new capabilities," says Google. "Building on our history of adapting our release process to match the demands of a modern web, Chrome is moving to a two-week release cycle." The company says the "smaller scope" of these releases "minimizes disruption and simplifies post-release debugging." They also cite "recent process enhancements" that will "maintain [Chrome's] high standards for stability." 9to5Google reports: There will still be weekly security updates between milestones. This applies to desktop, Android, and iOS, while there are "no changes to the Dev and the Canary channels": "A Chrome Beta for each version will ship three weeks before the stable release. We recommend developers test with the beta to keep up to date with any upcoming changes that might impact your sites and applications."
The eight-week Extended Stable release schedule for enterprise customers and Chromium embedders will not change. Chromebooks will also have "extended release options": "Our priority is a seamless experience, so the latest Chrome releases will roll out to Chromebooks after dedicated platform testing. We are adapting these channels for the new two-week browser cycle and we will share more details soon regarding milestone updates for managed devices."
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~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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LibreOffice Says Its UI Is Way Better Than Microsoft Office's
darwinmac writes: While many users choose Microsoft Office over LibreOffice because of its support for the proprietary formats (.docx, .xlsx, and .pptx), others prefer Office for its "better" ribbon interface. These users often criticize LibreOffice for having a "clunky" UI instead of the "standard" ribbon interface you would find in Word, Excel, and other Office apps.
Now, Neowin reports that LibreOffice is fighting back, arguing that its UI is actually superior because it is customizable, with several modes such as the classic toolbar interface, an Office-inspired ribbon layout, a sidebar-focused design, and more. Furthermore, it argues that there is no evidence that the ribbon offers "superior usability" over other interface modes. LibreOffice says in a blog post: Incidentally, the characterization of ribbon-style interfaces as "modern" or "standard," used by several users, is not based on any objective usability parameter or design principle, but is the result of Microsoft's dominance in the market and the huge investments made when the ribbon was introduced in Office 2007 as a new paradigm for productivity software. The idea that "modern" equals "similar to a ribbon" is a normalization effect: the Microsoft interface has become a benchmark because of its ubiquity, not because of its proven advantages in terms of usability. Added to this is the fact that many users evaluate office software through the lens of familiarity with Microsoft Office and consider deviation from it as a problem rather than a design choice. Before this, LibreOffice had also criticized its competitor OnlyOffice, accusing it of being "fake open source" because it believes OnlyOffice is working with Microsoft to lock users into the Office ecosystem by prioritizing the formats mentioned earlier instead of LibreOffice's own OpenDocument Format (ODF).
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~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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Meta's AI Display Glasses Reportedly Share Intimate Videos With Human Moderators
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Users of Meta's AI smart glasses in Europe may be unknowingly sharing intimate video and sensitive financial information with moderators outside of the bloc, according to a report from Sweden's Svenska Dagbladet released last week. Employees in Kenya doing AI "annotation" told the journalists that they've seen people nude, using the toilet and engaging in sexual activity, along with credit card numbers and other sensitive information.
With Meta's Ray-Ban Display and other glasses with AI capabilities, users can record what they're looking at or get answers to questions via a Meta AI assistant. If a wearer wants to make use of that AI, though, they must agree to Meta's terms of service that allow any data captured to be reviewed by humans. That's because Meta's large language models (LLMs) often require people to annotate visual data so that the AI can understand it and build its training models.
This data can end up in places like Nairobi, Kenya, often moderated by underpaid workers. Such actions are subject to Europe's GDPR rules that require transparency about how personal data is processed, according to a data protection lawyer cited in the report. However, Svenska Dagbladet's reporters said they needed to jump through some hoops to see Meta's privacy policy for its wearable products. That policy states that either humans or automated systems may review sensitive data, and puts the onus on the user to not share sensitive information.
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~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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OpenAI Amends Pentagon Deal As Sam Altman Admits It Looks 'Sloppy'
OpenAI is amending its Pentagon contract after CEO Sam Altman acknowledged it appeared "opportunistic and sloppy." On Monday night, Altman said the company would explicitly restrict its technology from being used by intelligence agencies and for mass domestic surveillance. The Guardian reports: OpenAI, which has more than 900 million users of ChatGPT, made the deal almost immediately after the Pentagon's existing AI contractor, Anthropic, was dropped. [...] The deal prompted an online backlash against OpenAI, with users of X and Reddit encouraging a "delete ChatGPT" campaign. One post read: "You're now training a war machine. Let's see proof of cancellation."
In a message to employees reposted on X, the OpenAI CEO said the original deal announced on Friday had been struck too quickly after Anthropic was dropped. "We shouldn't have rushed to get this out on Friday," Altman wrote. "The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication. We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy." Upon announcing the deal, OpenAI had said the contract had "more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic's."
[...] However, observers including OpenAI's former head of policy research, Miles Brundage, have queried how OpenAI has managed to secure a deal that assuages ethical concerns Anthropic believed were insurmountable. Posting on X, he wrote: "OpenAI employees' default assumption here should unfortunately be that OpenAI caved + framed it as not caving, and screwed Anthropic while framing it as helping them." Brundage added: "To be clear, OAI is a complex org, and I think many people involved in this worked hard for what they consider a fair outcome. Some others I do not trust at all, particularly as it relates to dealings with government and politics."
In his X post, he also wrote that he would "rather go to jail" than follow an unconstitutional order from the government. "We want to work through democratic processes," Brundage wrote. "It should be the government making the key decisions about society. We want to have a voice, and a seat at the table where we can share our expertise, and to fight for principles of liberty."
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~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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Accenture Acquires Ookla, Downdetector As Part of $1.2 Billion Deal
Accenture is acquiring Downdetector parent company Ookla from Ziff Davis in a $1.2 billion deal to bolster its network analytics and visibility tools for telecoms, hyperscalers, and enterprises. "The deal, which will transfer all of Ziff Davis's Connectivity division to Accenture, includes Ookla's Speedtest, Ekahau, and RootMetrics," notes The Register reports: "Modern networks have evolved from simple infrastructure into business-critical platforms," said Accenture CEO Julie Sweet in a canned statement. "Without the ability to measure performance, organizations cannot optimize experience, revenue, or security." Ookla is meant to let them do just that.
Data captured at the network and device layer are used to enhance fraud prevention in banking, smart homes monitoring, and traffic optimization in retail, Accenture said. Ookla's platform, which lets user's test their own connectivity speed, captures more than 1,000 attributes per test, and provides the foundation for those analytics, Accenture said.
Slashdot
~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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NewsBone.com
Suggest a feed to syndicate here, or check out what I'm doing over at freshtao.
~Created Wed Mar 4 13:27:12 2026
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The time the Windows x86 emulator team found code so bad that they fixed it during emulation
Another story from the good old days from Raymond Chen. During an exchange of war stories, a colleague of mine told one from back in the days when Windows included a processor emulator for x86-32 on systems that natively ran some other processor. (This has happened many times. And no, I don’t know which processor this particular story applied to.) ↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing So the core of the story comes down to this: All in all, it took this program 256 kilobytes of code to initialize 64 kilobytes of data. ↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing The people working on Windows were so offended by this, they added code to the processor emulator just to fix this program.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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FreeBSD 15.1 released
Speaking of FreeBSD, the project released version 15.1 of their operating system today. As it’s a point release, it’s not full of massive changes, but it still brings the LinuxKPI-based wireless drivers up to Linux 7.0, support for the C23 version of the C has progressed considerably, Unicode has bene updated to version 17.0.0 and CLDR 48, and more.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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FreeBSD 15 with KDE and Wayland on a Laptop
Expect to see more and more articles like this one, as more and more people discover that FreeBSD’s desktop/laptop support keeps improving rapidly. FreeBSD 15 really feels like a breakthrough release. It’s always been my favorite operating system for servers, but with the arrival of pkgbase, massive improvements to the LinuxKPI drivers, and the launch of the Laptop Support and Usability Project, it’s become my primary desktop, too. ↫ Cullum Smith Since Smith tried FreeBSD 14.0, there’s now KDE Plasma 6.x, you can leave legacy X11 behind and use Wayland on FreeBSD now, and support for Intel Wi-Fi chips has greatly expanded. Apparently, battery life has improved as well, which is one of the hardest problems to solve for an operating system, especially with the wide variety of hardware combinations in the x86 world. The rest of Smith’s article is a guide to setting up FreeBSD 15 with KDE and Wayland. It’s quite detailed with a ton of low-level tuning and fiddling, accompanied by clear and concise explanation of what the changes do, which I really like. Definitely a bookmark for anyone who wants to try out FreeBSD with KDE.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Zinnia: a modular 64-bit UNIX-like kernel written in Rust
It’s been a while since we’ve had a new operating system project written in Rust, so let’s look at Zinnia. The kernel is written in (almost) 100% Rust and attempts to avoid unsafe code where possible. It implements a big range of POSIX APIs in system calls, but also exposes common extensions found in Linux and BSDs, like epoll and timerfd. This allows it to run a somewhat modern desktop using Wayland and X11 sessions. Most drivers are implemented as modules. These are Rust ELF dylibs which get loaded and linked during boot from an initrd, similar to Linux systems. Zinnia can boot from any UEFI based system thanks to the Limine bootloader. ↫ Zinnia OS website At least Weston and Xfce can run on Zinnia, even on real hardware, which is quite an achievement. The project was started in 2024 as a learning endeavour, but quickly grew out of control, as these projects are wont to do. The code’s open source.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Haiku enables AVX512 support
We’re a little deep into June already, but it’s only now that Haiku published its monthly progress report for May. There’s a bunch of fixes for drag-and-drop behaviour in Tracker, AVX512 support can now be enabled thanks to changes to the kernel’s FPU handling, some low-level changes were made for the Rust and Zig compilers, and further improvements were made to the boot process on the Raspberry Pi 5 (although a lot more work is needed on that front). There’s still no sixth beta since a few more blockers remain, but don’t let that stop you from installing Haiku – it’s stable enough as it is, sixth beta or no.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Tribblix Milestone 40 for x86 released
Tribblix, the Illumos distribution focused on giving you a classic UNIX-style experience, has been updated with the release of Milestone 40. This version has some major component updates. Perl in now 5.42 instead of 5.34, and the default Python is now 3.13. The GCC suite is now version 14.2.0, go is version 1.26, Xfce has been updated to version 4.18, node is v22, with v24 added and v20 removed. ↫ Tribblix M40 release notes There’s a more detailed changelog, as well as the downloads page to get started. If you’re already running Tribblix, you can update in-place, of course.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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“Your EPUB is fine. Kobo disagrees. Blame Adobe.”
An infuriating story about something most of us don’t really stop to think about: e-books and the rendering engines companies and software use to display them. It’s the year 2026. Thanks to the horrendous RMSDK which Kobo decided to use as their backbone for all book rendering (probably for DRM reasons), a single line of perfectly valid CSS turns a perfectly valid EPUB file into a “corrupted file” on Kobo and just drops the whole book. No clear error message, no fallback. Just a massive fail. ↫ André Klein The level of obnoxiousness goes even deeper: Kobo devices ship with a better, actually maintained renderer for e-books as well, but in order to have a book use it, the book file in question needs to have a specific file extension. Remember that e-book files are just packaged websites; there’s no reason to do any of this nonsense with two rendering engines, one of which is shit and frozen in time. I have never had to do anything related to creating an e-book – I just put books on my own Kobo and read them – and even I am getting annoyed just reading this.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Windows 1.0 and the WinAPI, 40 years later
How far can you get, application development-wise, by using only the original APIs from Windows 1.0, and only whatever came included by default with Windows 1.0? I finally decided to write an application for the very first version of Windows and see how different the modern WinAPI really is from its earliest versions. Windows 1.0 came out back in the mid-1980s – the era of 16-bit processors, MS-DOS, and cooperative multitasking. At first glance, you might think it has almost nothing in common with modern Windows, but when you look specifically at the application API, that’s where things get interesting. I wanted to see how far it would be possible to go using only the capabilities of the first version of Windows. I didn’t want to just make a minimal example with a window and a menu, but a small, complete application with graphics, keyboard input, timers, and constant redrawing. For this experiment, I chose Xonix – a simple yet surprisingly addictive game. ↫ Stanislav Safronov It turns out that surprisingly, despite the 40 years and massive changes since Windows 1.0, there’s still a lot that feels recognisable. It’s also remarkable that the code Safronov ended up with ran on every version of Windows from 1.0 to 10, but sine it’s a 16 bit application it no longer works on Windows 11. It also had a hiccup on Windows 95, but he suspects that’s an issue in the 16 bit subsystem in Windows 95, and not in his code. The code’s available on GitHub.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Running DOS on the Behringer DDX3216 with a DIY BIOS from scratch
In 1994 I got my first computer: an Intel i486 DX2-66 with 4 MB RAM and a 512MB harddisk. The software was IBMs OS/2 and Microsofts Windows 3.11. In the next four years I was upgrading this machine every few months with more RAM (up to 16MB), a CD-ROM-drive and a soundblaster card. So I learned upgrading this machine, installing new software and finally learned how to program new software using BASIC. But I never got in touch with the boot-process or the details of MS-DOS. In 2026, 32 years later, I learned from some screenshots of the DDX3216, that Behringer used a real 386 processor within this machine. Immediately, some of my neurons fired in my head and I pondered if I could boot software and even a full operating system on this device. My goal was to learn how an x86-system is booting, how DOS takes over and what is necessary to get into the shell. ↫ Christian Nöding So this introduction is a bit cryptic if you’re not aware of what a DDX3216 is – I sure had no idea. The Behringer DDX3216 is a digital mixing console for use in music studios, and I think it’s about 25 years old or so. Apparently it’s built around a 386, and as Nöding details in this article, that means it can be made to run DOS. It also happens to have a small black and white LCD, so there’s a place to route output to, as well. Furthermore, once you open it up, you’ll find things like a BIOS chip, PCMCIA slot, a floppy controller, serial/parallel port controller, and more. Sure sounds like a PC to me. After talking to companies and individuals who might have a BIOS compatible with the AMD 386 SoC used in the device bore no fruit, Nöding decided to develop his own BIOS, which involves getting all the devices, interfaces, and even the display to work properly as well. The next step was getting DOS to work, and after MS-DOS 6.22 refused to work, FreeDOS did the trick and booted just fine. There’s still a ton more possible things that can be done here, but this is already quite amazing.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Swift at Apple: migrating the TrueType hinting interpreter
TrueType is a widely used vector font standard for rendering text in web pages, PDFs, operating systems, and applications. Familiar fonts like Helvetica, Garamond, and Monaco are all built on TrueType outlines. The format specifies a hinting interpreter intended to help outlines rasterize faithfully on low-resolution displays. Modern high-resolution displays enable beautiful typography from outlines alone, but TrueType fonts that need hinting to render legibly remain in use and we continue to support them. Font parsers process data from untrusted sources, making the TrueType hinting interpreter a security-critical attack surface. To make the format more resilient on Apple platforms, we rewrote its hinting interpreter from C to memory-safe Swift for the Fall 2025 releases. In addition to memory safety, we also improved performance: on average, our Swift interpreter runs 13% faster than the C interpreter it replaced. ↫ Scott Perry This article provides a deep dive into how, exactly they did that.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Kyvos is the easiest, cheapest, and possibly fastest way to run AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS
If you want to try out a modern Amiga operating system, your choices are severely constrained. Both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 need PowerPC hardware, and at the moment, there’s little to no modern hardware available for purchase to run these operating systems on. The only AmigaOS 4 hardware you can buy is either incredibly outdated, incredibly expensive, or both, and while MorphOS does run on readily available Apple PowerPC machines, those, too, are getting quite long in the tooth and performance simply isn’t keeping up. Until the Mirari becomes available – with the project steadily progressing, I have high hopes – the reality for people wanting to try out AmigaOS or MorphOS is going to be expensive, at best. Or is it? QEMU exists, and QEMU can emulate various PowerPC systems just fine. Shouldn’t it be possible to run these two unique operating systems in a virtual environment on your modern PC, thereby making it trivial for those of us interested in the world of Amiga to dip our toes into the water without having to spend inordinate sums for outdated hardware? It turns out that yes, this is entirely possible, and as I highlighted almost a year ago, George Sokianos has made this process effectively foolproof by developing a custom GUI frontend for QEMU specifically designed to make it incredibly easy to set up and run AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS in QEMU virtual machines. We’re almost a year since that first version, and in that time, Sokianos has updated the tool, called Kyvos, to version 2. It costs a mere €9, and works on Linux (x86 and ARM), Windows (x86 and ARM) and macOS (x86 and ARM). You also get an incredibly detailed manual with step-by-step instructions for every supported operating system and specific emulated machine, which includes instructions for the convoluted AmigaOS 4 installation process, as well as a bunch of other information and helpful tips. In addition, the manual includes links to where you can buy AmigaOS 4 – be sure to use these specific links to buy AmigaOS 4, because Sokianos gets a commission for sales through these links. AmigaOS 4 costs like €30, so it’s not a big investment. MorphOS can be downloaded for free, but after 30 minutes of use, the operating system will slow down and cripple itself, unless you pay for and register your copy for €79. I own a copy for my 17″ PowerBook G4 1.25Ghz, but I think copies are tied to hardware, so I haven’t tried registering it with my key yet. The MorphOS registration tool does not accept virtual machines, so you can’t use it to buy a copy for a virtual machine. Kyvos’ graphical user interface mimics the UI of other virtual machine software like VirtualBox, and it will check to make sure you have all the correct dependencies and requirements installed. The guided setup processes for MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 virtual machines will tell you exactly which operating system ISOs and files you need and makes sure you have them, before setting up the QEMU virtual machines with the optimal settings. Once created, start the virtual machine, and they’ll boot from the installation media. Follow the included manual as you install the operating systems, including some post-install help, and you’ll end up with fully working, network-capable virtual machines running MorphOS and AmigaOS 4. Both installation and setup procedures worked without any issues on my machine, and within like half an our I had to two fully working copies of MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 running on my Linux desktop gaming PC (I exempted myself from the Windows 11 incentive for this one, since my Linux gaming PC is by far the most powerful computer I own). Networking and sound works – AmigaOS 4 requires some post-install steps for those, listed in the Kyvos manual – and I could browse the web right away with the included web browsers. The online update tool for AmigaOS 4 also works perfectly, allowing me to upgrade to the latest version of the operating system and various included components. I’m anything but a MorphOS or AmigaOS 4 expert, so I can’t confidently say much about performance compared to best real compatible hardware out there, but at least for MorphOS I can say it runs considerably faster in this virtual machine than it does on my old 17″ PowerBook G4 1.25Ghz. I feel like AmigaOS 4 runs a bit smoother than MorphOS does, as with the latter I experienced the occasional hiccup and stutter which were absent on AmigaOS 4. Still, both are entirely usable and a pleasure to use. With how limited the hardware selection for these two operating systems is, using QEMU through Kyvos is by far the easiest and most straightforward way to dip your toes into the waters of the modern Amiga operating systems. For a total of around €40, you’ll be running AmigaOS 4 in a very capable and straightforward way, and if and when MorphOS allows registration for virtual machines (they really should), an additional €79 will give you a fully working installation of that unique operating system, too. Kyvos is a complete no-brainer for anyone reading OSNews.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Web browsers on video game consoles
Video game consoles have a long history with web browsers. From the advent of the World Wide Web, consoles have been trying to get online. Browsers on video game consoles were initially very much an attempt to provide a cheap gateway to the web for a casual audience lacking technical expertise, though as time progressed they’ve become a greater and more integrated part of systems. This article takes a look at browsers on video game consoles in detail, though only covers official web browsers. Many consoles have browsers installable via custom firmware and homebrew, but they’re beyond the scope of this post, as are non-web systems such as Satellaview and online services that didn’t provide a browser, such as XBAND, Sega Meganet, and Sega Channel. ↫ Declan Chidlow The article starts off with the Philips CD-I, which has always been a fascinating product for technology fans in The Netherlands because that’s where Philips is from. Memory that far back is untrustworthy, but I can definitely remember being inundated with commercials, advertising, magazine articles, and newspaper reports about the CD-I, all throughout its rather troubled life. Yet, I don’t remember anything about it being capable of browsing a rudimentary web. Of course, we’re talking 1995 here, a time when I didn’t even have internet at home yet, although I did use the web at a friend’s place at that time. We didn’t get internet at home until I think 1997 or 1998, followed by the move to broadband cable internet just a year later, since our small rural town happened to be one of the first places to get broadband. Good times. Did anyone ever actually use browsers on consoles, though? I mean, using them always felt incredibly clunky, and by the time they were capable enough to really do anything we all had laptops and later smartphones anyway. I certainly don’t remember anyone using them for anything but a gimmick, but perhaps my sample size was far too small and not diverse enough.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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MacOS 27 drops Intel support, will be last release with Rosetta 2
With the announcement of an upcoming new macOS release also come the usual changes in which Macs will still be supported. MacOS 27 Golden Gate is an important release in this regard, as it will be the first release of Apple’s desktop operating system that will be entirely ARM-only, dropping support for all Intel Macs. It’s important to note that Apple will provide three more years of security updates for the final Intel release of macOS, so Intel users won’t be dropped like a brick immediately. Still, the Intel Mac Pro was still being sold all the way up until mid-2023, and I’d be royally pissed off if my expensive 2023 Intel Mac went out of support a mere six years after purchase. They weren’t cheap machines, and while you can argue everybody knew the writing was on the wall for the Intel Mac Pro in 2023, it still feels way too short of a supported lifespan for such an expensive, high-end piece of equipment. It didn’t sell many units, I’m sure, but still. In addition, MacOS 27 will be the last release to include the Rosetta 2 translation layer that allows Intel binaries to run on ARM macOS. I have no idea how many important applications are still Intel-only, but I have a feeling that number is going to be relatively small, and will become even smaller as the first macOS release without Rosetta 2 support nears release. On top op of that, I’m sure enterprising users will find a way to transplant Rosetta 2 onto unsupported macOS releases, and if all else fails, there’s always virtual machines.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Once again, Apple blatantly lies about the EU’s DMA
Apple recently announced its next crack at integrating “AI” into its operating systems, this time opting to simply whitelabel Google’s Gemini “AI” tools instead of developing its own LLM technology. Called “Siri AI”, Apple also stated it’s not coming to the EU, and the company stated that’s because the EU’s basic consumer protection legislation would give other “AI” tools “unprecedented access” to user data on users’ devices. The company made a big stink about this in the press. As anyone with basic pattern recognition skills already knew, this was a blatant, baldfaced lie. What really happened is that Apple asked the EU for an 18-month long exemption from the EU’s consumer protection and privacy legislation during which it would not have to comply with any legal privacy and interoperability requirements – just so it could roll out Siri “AI” before anyone else could offer a competing product for Apple users. Obviously, the EU wasn’t going to grant such an exemption. “The decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apple’s and Apple’s only,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels, saying there was nothing in the Digital Markets Act to stop the company from introducing new products in the EU. “Apple was simply unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential EU privacy and security standards,” Regnier said. “Instead of trying to find a suitable compliance solution, Apple simply made a request to the European Commission to be exempted from their interoperability obligations under the DMA – and this for at least 18 months. That’s not an option,” Regnier said. ↫ Inti Landauro and Foo Yun Chee at Reuters So what’s really going on here is that Apple wants to offer a set of whitelabeled Google Gemini tools on iOS and macOS in the EU, but because Apple is classified as a gatekeeper, it is legally obligated to offer interoperability options for competing “AI” tools. These options in turn need to adhere to the EU’s strict privacy regulations, so that competing “AI” tools can offer the same level of privacy that Apple’s own whitelabeled Google Gemini tools claim to offer. Apple didn’t want to offer these privacy-respecting interoperability options as required by law, so instead of following the law in the countries it wants to operate in, Apple asked to be placed above the law for at least 18 months, basically giving Siri “AI” a massive head-start over possible competitors so that it could entrench itself in the userbase. The EU saw right through Apple’s nonsense, and now called them out on their bullshit. Perhaps Apple has gotten so used to openly bribing Trump that they forgot other parts of the world don’t work that way. Whenever Apple and its PR attack dogs say anything about the EU, you can be assured they are lying. They have proven time and time again to basically never speak a single word of truth when it comes to its dealings in the EU. It’s almost pathological at this point, and what makes it doubly interesting is that Apple will not launch Siri “AI” in China either, for the very same regulatory reasons – yet all China got was a single footnote in a press release. I wonder why.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Microsoft Edge, Opera to follow
For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions. ↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin You shouldn’t be using Chrome anyway.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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A raycasting first-person shooter written in COBOL
On a related note, what about a raycasting first-person shooter written in… COBOL? Can you think of a better programming language than COBOL to implement an FPS from scratch? I know I can’t, so buckle up and enjoy what can only be described as an out-of-body experience for COBOL enthusiasts as I set out to make a Wolfenstein3D-like raycasting based FPS game (and potentially go a bit further than that, hopefully it’s not a DOOMed attempt). ↫ icitry on YouTube I don’t link to YouTube videos very often, but there’s always the exception that proves the rule. The COBOL code’s available on GitHub. What a mad man.
OSnews
~Created Tue Jun 16 12:06:33 2026
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