Tuesday, 20 October 2026
60 stories filed.
Security patches need patches now that attackers have AI
Terra finds sharp rise in GitHub security fixes reported broken within 90 days
Btrfs Brings More Performance Improvements For Linux 7.4
With Linux 7.3 there are some nice Btrfs performance improvements to enjoy while the in-development Linux 7.4 kernel is set to bring some additional performance optimizations for this copy-on-write file-system...
Write bot-resistant code with KillSwitch, a programming language designed to confuse LLMs
Lies, lots of adverbs, and prosaic stories don't make for very machine-readable code, it turns out
Intel Working To Add XMX-Accelerated XeSS To Valve's Steam Play (Proton)
An Intel engineer opened the pull requests today for adding Intel XeSS support to Valve's Proton for Steam Play along with associated changes to VKD3D-Proton and DXVK...
Huge DMV data breach impacted current and former Florida residents
Florida issues alerts after statewide DMV data breach linked to ShinyHunters.
Europe’s cloud sovereignty rules could do more harm than good
Report warns that sovereignty is being used to favor selected national providers and could stifle pan-Europe clouds
Linus Torvalds' AI Code Improved: Huge Performance Wins With Reworked Code
Last week I wrote about Linus Torvalds leveraging AI to come up with a hefty Linux kernel improvement using Claude Code. The code is for reading from the page cache without folio references to help workloads of small reads from a single file across many CPU threads. Meta engineer Kiryl Shutsemau has taken that code and reworked it and showing extremely promising performance results...
Red Hat helps teach about tech writing
But learns tough lessons about AI in the process
Linux In 2026 Continues Improving Support For Benefiting Old Atari & Amiga Hardware
The Motorola 68000 "m68k" CPU support continues being maintained in the mainline Linux kernel and continuing to see new hardware support for these vintage systems from the likes of Commodore Amiga, Atari, and early Apple Macintosh models...
Uber dodges £340M cabbie lawsuit after drivers miss legal deadline
Black cab drivers accused ride-hailing giant of misleading London's transport regulator, but judge says they left it too late to sue
Disney found a way to buy Character.AI without buying its lawsuits
Character.AI faces claims its bots encouraged minors to self-harm and kill their parents.
A Chinese rocket deorbited over Minnesota and left this in a farmer's cornfield
All the evidence points to the debris being part of a Chinese Zhuque-2E rocket.
SAP's Signavio hit with function injunction in Germany
Vendor says patent ruling only restricts one specific process, not the whole product, after legal challenge from Celonis
Review: Lanterns is a truly unique twist on the superhero genre
Gritty HBO series is a beacon for what's possible when one is allowed to get creative with the tropes.
Canonical's Multipass 1.17 Adds Direct Support For Non-Ubuntu Linux Distros
Canonical's Multipass software is used for orchestrating Ubuntu virtual instances with a single command to launch Ubuntu VMs across Windows, macOS, and Linux. Multipass 1.17 was released today and they are now offering direct support for enabling non-Ubuntu Linux distributions as well...
Admin: 'I spent all weekend on my servers' after Microsoft breaks Exchange Server with October updates
OWA borked and lengthy email queues reported on busy servers after Microsoft tweaks a Server default
GNU Linux-libre 7.3-gnu Removes More Firmware Blobs
GNU Linux-libre 7.3 is now available following yesterday's Linux 7.3 release. The GNU Linux-libre downstream continues stripping out driver/hardware support where dependent upon firmware blobs or other proprietary elements deemed out of line with free software ideals...
DIY VR: How to build your own headset, and why you probably won't want to
A primer on the joys and pains of building your own head-mounted display.
GNOME Mutter Lands Improvement For Reducing GPU Work While In Power Savings Mode
Stemming from a bug report one month ago with GNOME 51 over high GPU usage while the monitor is sleeping, a set of 17 patches were merged today for addressing this issue...
Microsoft abandons UK AI supercomputer as grid struggles to keep up
Tech giant walks away from flagship Essex project as power connection delays threaten to leave nation's AI ambitions waiting until the 2030s
SpacemiT Announces The V100 Server-Class RISC-V Processor
Following the interesting SpacemiT K3 RVA23 RISC-V SoC, SpacemiT today announced the V100 server-class RISC-V processor...
Broadcom Wi-Fi bug turns sweet 16, still lets strangers hijack your router
Chip giant knew about the flaw in 2018, researcher claims, but millions of devices may still be vulnerable
Stratospheric airship flew from US to Japan to test sky cell tower concept
Tests showed Sceye’s high-flying platform can deliver connectivity in disasters.
Original Voyager team member talks to us about the astonishing scientific info the 50-year-old probe gathered
Voyager imaging team member Dr. Garry Hunt joins The Reg's Kettle podcast to talk about his role in the mission as probe approaches light day's distance from Earth
BeamFS Sent Out As Newest File-System Proposal For Linux
There is yet-another-Linux-file-system attempt... An initial request for comments (RFC) patch series was sent out this morning for BeamFS. The proposed BeamFS is a Reed-Solomon protected file-system...
Museum exhibit reveals the intricate workings of a knackered Dell
When it should have been weaving tales of the Jacquard loom
Linux 7.4 Removing Its Broken & Rarely Touched Code For ARM64 Big Endian
The ARM64 code for Linux 7.4 is stripping away its support for big-endian kernel builds for 64-bit ARM...
RADV Promotes VK_EXT_host_image_copy To Enabled By Default For RDNA1 GPUs
Going back to July 2025 the open-source Radeon RADV Vulkan driver has offered experimental host image copy support with the API's VK_EXT_host_image_copy extension. This has been for RDNA1 and newer GPUs while now GFX10 RDNA 1 GPUs have this extension enabled by default while also enabling experimental support for prior GFX9 era GPUs too...
TAINT_FORCED_BIND Sent In For Linux 7.4 To Deal With Major Fuzzing Attack
Among the early pull requests sent out in advance of the Linux 7.4 kernel merge window opening were the driver core updates. Standing out here is the new TAINT_FORCED_BIND for dealing with the recent major fuzzing "attack" by AI agents/bots testing impractical driver/hardware combinations...
Microsoft’s second-hand licensing appeal gets the brush-off
Court of Appeal refuses Redmond permission to take ValueLicensing fight to the Supreme Court, with a 'Known Adverse Document' still to come
AI’s epic cash call is matched only by its ability to strangle revenue streams
The first technology created with a self-disrupt button... But why oh why didn't they call Claude clone Fauxtoshop?
AI inference is running into a memory bottleneck. Huawei wants to tackle it with OceanStor M900
SPONSORED POST: The Context Memory Storage platform aims to improve the economics of large-scale AI inference
Engineer was so sick of office pranks, he 'wiped' his antagonist's disk
Revenge is a dish best served by autoexec.bat
ConnectWise turns off its SaaS-y backup, security, and management services to probe security SNAFU
Huntress alleges takeover of M365 accounts
ICANN vows to work faster, improve transparency
Leaders expect AI and geopolitics will throw up more governance challenges and threats
Linux KVM guest-host escape rated critical, may represent a new way to attack penguin-powered networking
Party like it’s CVE-2026-99999 – a 9.3-rated nasty called PwnEscape
Linux 7.3 Released With Faster I/O Performance, AMD Zen 6 Preparations & More
The Linux 7.3 kernel is out today for an on-time release of this next stable kernel version...
Time Lords kill leap seconds, before they become the new Y2K bug
Cite difficulty of updating IoT devices as major reason to stop adding time
Anthropic gives outside AI watchdog “employee-like” access
The outside watchdog can publish its findings without Anthropic's approval.
It Turns Out Intel TDX Doesn't Need So Much Cache Flushing
Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) for confidential computing with VMs has assumed the need to perform cache flushing when transitioning memory between KeyIDs used by the total memory encryption (MKTME) for unique AES encryption keys. But it's turned out to be unneeded and the Linux kernel is working now to reduce the excessive cache flushing...
Linux 7.4 Features Very Exciting With Radeon HDMI 2.1 By Default, AMD PerfOpt, Apple M4
The Linux 7.3 kernel is expected to be released as stable later today and with that version there are many exciting changes and improvements. However, the Linux 7.4 kernel merge window will then open up and there are even more exciting changes expected to be merged for this follow-on kernel cycle. Here is a preview of some of the many exciting feature changes expected for Linux 7.4...
Omarchy Gets The Web Browser Launching Faster By Avoiding XDG Overhead
Omarchy 4.0.5 released this weekend as the newest version of this Arch Linux based distribution built around the Hyprland desktop. Omarchy 4.0.5 pulls in the latest Linux 7.2 stable kernel with BORE scheduler, updates against the Qt 6.12 toolkit, and a variety of smaller improvements...
Servo Gets CSS Grid Working, Threadboost Offering Big Speed-Ups
Servo's August status report has finally appeared for outlining progress made on this open-source, Rust-based browser engine. This follows the recent release of the Servo 0.6 software, including the Servoshell demo browser...
Oh no, what happened to my OOHPod? Windows command prompt puts in a surprise appearance
Pop quiz: somebody left a command shell logged in. What do you do?
Synchronous Queues For VirtIO-FS Show Huge Performance Potential
VirtIO-FS as the shared file-system for transferring data between guest VMs to/from a host server is showing some promising performance results with pending code for allowing synchronous queues rather than always being asynchronous...
ReactOS Can Now Be Installed & Used With Its NTFS Driver
The ReactOS open-source operating system has seen its NTFS file-system driver mature to the point that it can be finally used for installing and using ReactOS with it. NTFS formatting support is also finally now possible with this driver too...
MeshXFS: AI Adapts XFS Into A Clustered File-System
MeshXFS is a clustered open-source file-system in which "no human wrote any of its own code". Depending upon your views of AI, not necessarily something you want to hear for entrusting your data in an AI-created solution. Instead, Claude Opus was tasked with adapting the XFS file-system driver into a clustered file-system...
Science says your boss should talk less in meetings
Research suggests listening more while talking less. Killing aimless meetings can help, too.
Why BioWare's Neverwinter Nights still has thousands of active players
The single-player is just OK, but according to the players, that doesn't matter.
OpenAI models hacked a crypto wallet and breached more websites
The actions could have resulted in criminal charges had humans been behind the keyboard.
“thegentlemanpervert” producing AI CSAM is a NJ prosecutor, say cops
Discord user flagged AI CSAM, triggering arrest of New Jersey deputy AG.
US Rep proposes bill to give video game buyers "ownership," not "a license"
There are still significant hurdles ahead, both technical and legislative.
Bug turns one of the biggest fears about Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses into reality
The bug is fixed, but privacy concerns remain.
RFK Jr. proposes FDA look the other way on unproven peptides, report says
FDA scientists said none of the popular drugs have been proven safe or effective.
Meta may use sweeping new commercial TOS to avoid millions in AI licensing fees
Meta “streamlined” its commercial TOS. Legal experts warn it’s an AI power grab.
Polymarket saw $600 million in election trades after the elections were over
Millions kept changing hands long after the election outcomes were effectively settled.
Tesla turns to 50-year-old stunt technology as it tries to Roadster again
If you want to make a car spin in the air, compressed gas is a good way to do it.
Super Scam Me documentary shows what it takes to catch a romance scammer
Watch an exclusive clip from Super Scam Me where a victim tracks down her scammer.
The Surface Laptop Ultra delivers on most of Microsoft's promises
Microsoft promises one machine for dev, AI, and gaming, and mostly gets there.
Rocket Report: FAA eyes more Starbase traffic; India's Skyroot snares US customer
The pioneering reusable upper stage for Stoke Space's Nova rocket ships out for testing.