European Commission’s use of Microsoft 365 infringes data protection law for EU institutions and bodies
Following its investigation, the EDPS has found that the European Commission (Commission) has infringed several key data protection rules when using Microsoft 365. In its decision, the EDPS imposes corrective measures on the Commission. ↫ European Data Protection Supervisor You often hear people state that EU rules and regulati … ⌘ Read more

Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU66 released
Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU 66 is now available via ‘pkg update’ from the support repository or by downloading the SRU from My Oracle Support Doc ID 2433412.1. Highlights of the changes in this release are given in the release announcement and important information to read before installing it is provided in the Readme linked from the above support document. This blog post provides more details about selected new features and interface changes in this SRU, as well a … ⌘ Read more

Messy ToS update allegedly locks Roku devices until users give in
Roku customers are threatening to stop using, or to even dispose of, their low-priced TVs and streaming gadgets after the company appears to be locking devices for people who don’t conform to the recently updated terms of service (ToS). This month, users on Roku’s support forums reported suddenly seeing a message when turning on their Roku TV or streaming device reading: “We’ve made an important updat … ⌘ Read more

Image-scraping Midjourney bans rival “AI” firm for scraping images
On Wednesday, Midjourney banned all employees from image synthesis rival Stability AI from its service indefinitely after it detected “botnet-like” activity suspected to be a Stability employee attempting to scrape prompt and image pairs in bulk. Midjourney advocate Nick St. Pierre tweeted about the announcement, which came via Midjourney’s official Discord channel. ↫ Benj Edwards So “AI” companies ar … ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel 6.8 released
Highlights of Linux kernel 6.8 include LAM (Linear Address Masking) virtualization and guest-first memory support for KVM, a basic online filesystem check and repair mechanism for the Bcachefs file system introduced in Linux kernel 6.7, support for the Broadcom BCM2712 processor in Raspberry Pi 5, AMD ACPI-based Wi-Fi band RFI mitigation feature (WBRF), zswap writeback disabling, fscrypt support for CephFS, a new Intel Xe DRM driver, and a multi-size THP (Transparent Huge Pages) … ⌘ Read more

Better, faster, stronger time zone updates on Android
From the beginning, time zone rules were a component in Mainline, called Time Zone Data or tzdata module. This integration allowed us to react more quickly to government-mandated time zone changes than before. However until 2023 tzdata updates were still bundled with other Mainline changes, sometimes leading to testing complexities and slower deployment. In 2023, we made further investments in Mainline’s infrastructure and dec … ⌘ Read more

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

Everything there is to know about Windows 1.x
Here you can find everything there is to know about the first version of Windows. ↫ David Simunič And they truly mean everything. This is an exceptional amount of information about Windows 1.0. ⌘ Read more

House panel unanimously approves bill that could ban TikTok
A powerful House committee advanced a bill on Thursday that could lead to a nationwide ban against TikTok on all electronic devices, renewing lawmakers’ challenge to one of the world’s most popular social media apps and highlighting unresolved fears that TikTok may pose a Chinese government spying risk. The measure that sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would prohibit TikTok from … ⌘ Read more

The Apple curl security incident 12604
When this command line option is used with curl on macOS, the version shipped by Apple, it seems to fall back and checks the system CA store in case the provided set of CA certs fail the verification. A secondary check that was not asked for, is not documented and plain frankly comes completely by surprise. Therefore, when a user runs the check with a trimmed and dedicated CA cert file, it will not fail if the system CA store contains a cert that can ver … ⌘ Read more

A peculiarity of the X Window System: windows all the way down
Every window system has windows, as an entity. Usually we think of these as being used for, well, windows and window like things; application windows, those extremely annoying pop-up modal dialogs that are always interrupting you at the wrong time, even perhaps things like pop-up menus. In its original state, X has more windows than that. Part of how and why it does this is that X allows windows to nest insi … ⌘ Read more

Fedora Workstation 41 to no longer install GNOME X.org session by default
Fedora Workstation has long defaulted to using GNOME’s Wayland session by default, but it has continued to install the GNOME X.Org session for fallback purposes or those opting to use it instead. But for the Fedora Workstation 41 release later in the year, there is a newly-approved plan to no longer have that GNOME X.Org session installed by default. ↫ Michael Larabel Expect more and m … ⌘ Read more

The future that never was
Just before the end of 1989, Microsoft made available the first pre-release version of the long promised 32-bit OS/2 2.0, which was intended to be the first mass-market 32-bit PC operating system. This was accompanied by a press release detailing the $2,600 OS/2 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK). Unfortunately, the December 1989 pre-release of OS/2 2.0 may not have survived to the present day. But in June 1990, Microsoft shipped the second pre-release of the OS/2 2.0 SDK. And th … ⌘ Read more

Google’s changes to comply with the DMA
The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) comes into force this week for companies who have been designated. Today, we are sharing some more details about the changes we are making to comply, following product testing we announced earlier this year. ↫ Oliver Bethell on the official Google blog This is Google’s overview of the changes it’s implementing to comply with the DMA, some of which the company already announced months ago. Google’s changes d … ⌘ Read more

Adding systemd to postmarketOS
You heard it here first folks: systemd is coming to postmarketOS! As a mobile oriented OS, our main goal has always been to work for everyone. From technical folks to casual users. postmarketOS should have all the benefits you expect from a Linux based distribution, such as being free software, respecting your privacy, getting updates until your device physically breaks, respecting your attention and not shoving advertisements in your face. Your phone should be a tool y … ⌘ Read more

Google announces measures to fight spam in its search results
Every day, people turn to Search to find the best of what the web has to offer. We’ve long had policies and automated systems to fight against spammers, and we work to address emerging tactics that look to game our results with low-quality content. We regularly update those policies and systems to effectively tackle these trends so we can continue delivering useful content and connecting people with high-qual … ⌘ Read more

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

Windows to add gobs of “AI” to Explorer
According to my sources, AI Explorer is the blockbuster AI experience that will separate AI PCs from non-AI PCs. It’s described as an “advanced Copilot” with a built-in history/timeline feature that turns everything you do on your computer into a searchable moment using natural language. It works across any app and allows users to search for previously opened conversations, documents, web pages, and images. For example, you could type, “Find me that list … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft kills Windows Subsystem for Android
Well, that was a short run. Announced with much fanfare in 2021, Microsoft has announced it’s already killing Windows Subsystem for Android, Microsoft’s solution to run Android applications on Windows 11. Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android™️ (WSA). As a result, the Amazon Appstore on Windows and all applications and games dependent on WSA will no longer be supported beginning March 5, 2025. Until then, technic … ⌘ Read more

Running CP/M on the C128
I owned a C64 and was familiar with the C128, but this one was odd. It wasn’t running any games, color graphics or playing music. Instead, it was connected to a monochrome monitor which always displayed either a weird command line prompt or what seemed to be some boring professional writing software. I soon came to find that it was running CP/M and WordStar, one of the first word processors for microcomputers. My daily obsessive visits to the computer shop led to some friendship wi … ⌘ Read more

Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management
Baldur Bjarnason has written an excellent piece to explain why, exactly, companies like Apple seem wholly incapable of working with the EU, instead of against it. He argues – quite effectively – that Apple, and US tech punditry in general, simply do not understand the EU, nor are they willing to spend even 10 minutes to understand it, which is reall … ⌘ Read more

European crash tester says carmakers must bring back physical controls
The European organisation for crash testing and car safety, Euro NCAP has announced that starting in 2026, cars will need physical controls in their interiors to gain the highest safety ratings. “The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising t … ⌘ Read more

Rust for embedded systems: current state, challenges and open problems
Embedded software is used in safety-critical systems such as medical devices and autonomous vehicles, where software defects, including security vulnerabilities, have severe consequences. Most embedded codebases are developed in unsafe languages, specifically C/C++, and are riddled with memory safety vulnerabilities. To prevent such vulnerabilities, RUST, a performant memory-safe systems langu … ⌘ Read more

An Apple district manager’s Macintosh Portable in 1989-91 (featuring GEIS AppleLink and a look at System 7.0 alpha)
A few months ago I introduced you to one of the more notable Apple pre-production units in my collection, a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it’s not merely notable for what it is than what it has on it: a beta version of System 6.0.6 (the doomed release that Apple pulled due to bugs), A … ⌘ Read more

NixBSD: unofficial NixOS fork with a FreeBSD kernel
NixBSD is an attempt to make a reproducible and declarable BSD, based on NixOS. Although theoretically much of this work could be copied to build other BSDs, all work thus far has been focused on building a FreeBSD distribution. ↫ NixBSD Github page It was only a matter of time before someone would try and build this. ⌘ Read more

Supermium: up-to-date Chromium for Windows XP, Vista, and 7
Modern browsers don’t really support older versions of Windows anymore, so anyone running Windows XP, 2003, Vista, and even Windows 7 and 8 are losing access to secure and capable browsers. While running those older versions of Windows on production machines isn’t exactly advised, they’re still great fun as retrocomputing platforms and to keep older Windows games accessible using period-correct hardware. As such, th … ⌘ Read more

Redox gets massive performance boost
Redox has published the summary of development covering February, and there’s quite a few interesting leaps forward this month. First and foremost, the operating system got a major file read/write speed boost by implementing records in RedoxFS. The migration to UNIX-format paths is ongoing, Boxedwine is currently being ported, and more and more programs are getting ported, including complex applications like Audacity, Celestia, KiCad and Neothesia. There’s a … ⌘ Read more

Apple walks back decision to disable home screen web apps in the EU
Following the release of the second beta version of iOS 17.4, it emerged that Apple had restricted the functionality of iOS web apps in the EU. Web apps could no longer launch from the ‌Home Screen‌ in their own top-level window that takes up the entire screen, relegating them to a simple shortcut with an option to open within Safari instead. The move was heavily criticized by groups like Open Web … ⌘ Read more

Apple silicon: a little help from friends and co-processors
So far in this series, I have looked in broad terms at how the CPU cores in Apple silicon chips work, and how they use frequency control and two types of core to deliver high performance with low power and energy use. As I hinted previously, their design also relies on specialist processing units and co-processors, the subject of this article. ↫ Howard Oakley Another excellent read from Howard Oakley. ⌘ Read more

Why I use Firefox
Questions like “Which browser should I use?” regularly come up on the r/browsers subreddit. I sometimes respond to these posts, but my quick replies usually only contain one or two points. To be honest, until recently I wasn’t even sure myself why I use Firefox. Of course it’s a pretty good browser, but that doesn’t explain why I’ve stubbornly stayed loyal to Firefox for more than a decade. After giving it a bit more thought, I came up with the following reasons. ↫ Šime Vidas There’s really no v … ⌘ Read more

Google Messages is blocking RCS texts on rooted Android phones
Rooting an Android phone is no longer as popular as it was a few years ago. Plus, if you root your phone now, you will run into several issues, like Google Wallet and banking apps not working, as the device will fail the Play Integrity API test. It makes sense for Google to block banking apps and payment functionality on rooted phones for safety and security reasons. But the company is now taking things a s … ⌘ Read more

MenuetOS 1.50.00 released
MenuetOS has released two new versions recently, version 1.49.60 on 5 February, and 1.50.00 on 1 March. Aside from the usual bugfixes and updates, these two new versions bring, among other things, new screensavers, a musical chord calculator, and support for UEFI booting thanks to Easyboot. MenuetOS is a small operating system written entirely in assembly, available in both 32bit and 64bit versions for x86. ⌘ Read more

Wikipedia no longer considers CNET a “generally reliable” source after “AI” scandal
Remember last year, when we reported that the Red Ventures-owned CNET had been quietly publishing dozens of AI-generated articles that turned out to be filled with errors and plagiarism? The revelation kicked off a fiery debate about the future of the media in the era of AI — as well as an equally passionate discussion among editors of Wikipedia, who needed to figure ou … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft announces super resolution DirectX API
We’re thrilled to announce DirectSR, our new API designed in partnership with GPU hardware vendors to enable seamless integration of Super Resolution (SR) into the next generation of games. Super Resolution is a cutting-edge technique that increases the resolution and visual quality in games. DirectSR is the missing link developers have been waiting for when approaching SR integration, providing a smoother, more efficient experience t … ⌘ Read more

HP wants you to pay up to $36/month to rent a printer that it monitors
HP launched a subscription service today that rents people a printer, allots them a specific amount of printed pages, and sends them ink for a monthly fee. HP is framing its service as a way to simplify printing for families and small businesses, but the deal also comes with monitoring and a years-long commitment. Prices range from $6.99 per month for a plan that includes an HP Envy printer ( … ⌘ Read more

HDMI Forum rejects open-source HDMI 2.1 driver support sought by AMD
One of the limitations of AMD’s open-source Linux graphics driver has been the inability to implement HDMI 2.1+ functionality on the basis of legal requirements by the HDMI Forum. AMD engineers had been working to come up with a solution in conjunction with the HDMI Forum for being able to provide HDMI 2.1+ capabilities with their open-source Linux kernel driver, but it looks like those efforts … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6 released
KDE Plasma 6 has been released – and this is an important release with two massive low-level stack upgrades. With Plasma 6, our technology stack has undergone two major upgrades: a transition to the latest version of our application framework, Qt, and a migration to the modern Linux graphics platform, Wayland. We have done our best to ensure that these changes are as smooth and unnoticeable to the users as possible, so when you install this update, you will see the same familiar desktop … ⌘ Read more

New Wear OS devices run two operating systems
Wear OS smartwatches have a dual-chipset architecture inclusive of a powerful application processor (AP) and ultra low-power co-processor microcontroller unit (MCU). The architecture has a powerful AP capable of handling complex operations en-masse, and is seamlessly coupled with a low power MCU. The Wear OS hybrid interface enables intelligent switching between the MCU or the AP, allowing the AP to be suspended when not needed to preserve … ⌘ Read more

Tumblr and WordPress owner is striking deals with OpenAI and Midjourney for training data, says report
Speaking of collecting data, here’s another major content player signing a deal to sell your content to “AI” companies. The owner of Tumblr and WordPress.com is in talks with AI companies Midjourney and OpenAI to provide training data scraped from users’ posts, a report from 404 Media alleges. The report, based on an anonymous so … ⌘ Read more

Meta will start collecting “anonymized” data about Quest headset usage
Meta will soon begin “collecting anonymized data” from users of its Quest headsets, a move that could see the company aggregating information about hand, body, and eye tracking; camera information; “information about your physical environment”; and information about “the virtual reality events you attend.” In an email sent to Quest users Monday, Meta notes that it currently collects “the data … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft wants to update your Windows 11 PC without forcing you to reboot
If there’s one thing Windows users hate about Windows, it’s Windows updates interrupting your workflow or gaming session with a popup asking you to restart your PC finish installing the latest security update. It happens at least once a month, because that’s how often Microsoft rolls out security updates to Windows PCs. This may soon be a thing of the past, as the company is now test … ⌘ Read more

A history of the tty
It’s one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology. From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY. I will omit the many interesting details of the Linux terminal infrastructure here, as it could easily fill its own article. But most Linux users are at least peripherally aware that the kernel tends to identify both serial devices and terminals as TTYs, assigning them filesy … ⌘ Read more

Some OpenBSD features that aren’t widely known
In this blog post, you will learn about some OpenBSD features that can be useful, but not widespread. They often have a niche usage, but it’s important to know they exist to prevent you from reinventing the wheel. ↫ Solène Rapenne Written by Solène Rapenne, who also happens to be an OpenBSD developer, so a great source for information like this. ⌘ Read more

Windows-as-a-nuisance: How I clean up a “clean install” of Windows 11 and Edge
I frequently write about Windows, Edge, and other Microsoft-adjacent technologies as part of my day job, and I sign into my daily-use PCs with a Microsoft account, so my usage patterns may be atypical for many Ars Technica readers. But for anyone who uses Windows, Edge, or both, I thought it might be useful to detail what I’m doing to clean up a clean install of Windows, minimiz … ⌘ Read more

The Plop boot managers
I wrote different boot managers. Three boot managers are available as download. The Plop Boot Manager 5, PlopKexec and the new boot manager PBM6. The new boot manager is under development. ↫ Elmar Hanlhofer I had never heard of the three Plop boot managers, written by Elmar Hanlhofer, but they seem like quite the capable tools. First, Plop Boot Manager 5 is the most complete version, but it’s also quite outdated by now, with its last release stemming from 2013. That being said, it’s in … ⌘ Read more

NetDrive: access remote disk images in DOS
NetDrive is a DOS device driver that allows you to access a remote disk image hosted by another machine as though it was a local device with an assigned drive letter. The remote disk image can be a floppy disk image or a hard drive image. ↫ Michael B. Brutman An incredibly useful tool for modern-day DOS work. ⌘ Read more

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”
But it’s worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft won’t let you close OneDrive in Windows without you explaining it first
A few weeks ago, we reported an odd discovery in Microsoft Edge: a poll asking users to explain their decision to download Chrome. A similar thing is now haunting OneDrive users on Windows, demanding to answer why they are closing the app. And demanding is a correct word here because Windows will not let you quit OneDrive without answering first. The beatings will contin … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft might want to be making Windows 12 a subscription OS, suggests leak
While this has been a hunch for a while among the Windows enthusiast community, a new leak seems to be further providing somewhat solidifying evidence that it could indeed be the case, that Microsoft’s next-gen OS, casually referred to as Windows 12, could be a subscription-based OS. I have no innate issue with the subscription model for software – especially in the mobile world … ⌘ Read more

The Philips Hue ecosystem is collapsing into stupidity
Philips Hue products are about to get a whole lot worse – even the ones you already own. Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can’t access your stuff. But that’s just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it’s getting worse. It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across … ⌘ Read more