Edition of
Thursday, 03 September 2026
Today’s edition gathers 71 stories from the wires of Ars Technica, The Register, Phoronix, and the front page of Hacker News. Headlines lead to the originating publication; where a discussion thread of substance exists, it is linked beneath the summary.
Wary of Artemis IV timeline, NASA is changing lunar spacesuit design
"Requirements are being adjusted to reflect near-term mission needs."
NVIDIA-Started Open Secure AI Alliance Moves To The Linux Foundation
Earlier this year NVIDIA led an effort with more than two dozen other companies to launch the Open Secure AI Alliance with a focus on keeping open-source AI models secure. The Open Secure AI Alliance today is transitioning from being stewarded by NVIDIA to becoming a Linux Foundation project...
Google releases Gemini 3.8 Flash, its third Flash model in six weeks
Google's Pro model updates are seemingly paused, but there's yet another Gemini Flash today.
Trump may be forced to reveal secret rules feds use for AI safety testing
Trump’s secret reviews of frontier AI models may hide corruption, lawsuit says.
KDE Plasma 6.8 Lands Dwell Clicker Support To Improve Accessibility On Wayland
In preparations for Plasma 6.8 going Wayland-exclusive in abandoning the X11 session, another feature gap compared to X11 has been addressed...
Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux
Article URL: https://forums.paint.net/topic/134562-paintnet-52-alpha-build-9739/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49539389 Points: 134 # Comments: 112
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Mesa 26.2.2 Enables Intel Nova Lake Graphics By Default
Mesa 26.2.2 is out today as the newest bi-weekly stable point release for these open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers...
US court rules Google will not have to sell ad exchange after losing antitrust case
The DOJ proved to the court that Google acted illegally, but it won't get the big win it wanted.
SonicWall's SMA1000 boxes under active attack again
Miscreants use chained zero days to pwn boxen as third-party SOCs say further attacks 'almost certain'
Early Benchmarks Of AMD EPYC On Linux 7.3 Show Some Performance Gains On The Horizon
With Linux 7.3-rc1 out this week and marking the end of the merge window, it's onto a lot of Linux 7.3 performance testing at Phoronix and looking at all the new features of Linux 7.3. In today's article is a first look at the AMD EPYC Turin server performance on Linux 7.3-rc1 compared to Linux 7.2 stable with a few nice performance improvements to show.
Microsoft will stop finishing your sentences in Word and Outlook
Predictive text remains available, but users will have to invite it into their workflow
CERN Transitioning To Debian After Being A Longtime RHEL Institution
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, besides being well known for its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is known among longtime Linux users as a RHEL/CentOS shop. CERN formally even co-maintained the Scientific Linux RHEL derivative with other educational/research institutions in the past. So to much surprise now, CERN is transitioning to Debian Linux...
Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber
https://deepmind.google/models/model-cards/gemini-3-8-flash/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49537553 Points: 650 # Comments: 387
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
NASA's Swift shortens orbital lifetime for the sake of science
Instruments reactivated for a final hurrah before reentry
Firefox and Thunderbird hit the fortnightly release treadmill
Don't disable automatic updates if the pace is too much – that's what ESR is for
Toyohiro Akiyama, first Japanese citizen and journalist in space, dies at 84
He reported from space that only "fat" Japanese tree frogs enjoyed weightlessness.
Legacy Lenovo login opens 5,000 Dropbox accounts to attackers
Cloud storage biz severs old integration and urges victims to reset credentials
Exit the Cave
Article URL: https://turtlespace.blog/p/exit-the-cave Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536606 Points: 156 # Comments: 39
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Three sites made 215,128 “best software” pages for AI. Perplexity cites them
Article URL: https://trellner.com/reports/manufactured-sources-behind-ai-recommendations/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536375 Points: 244 # Comments: 111
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Offshoots of cancelled TrueNAS Core upgrade to FreeBSD 15
Exeunt zVault stage right; enter FreeCORE and BSDnas
Poisson Disk Sampling
Article URL: https://stripeacross.com/posts/poisson-disk-sampling/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536177 Points: 101 # Comments: 15
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
Article URL: https://www.science.org/content/article/world-s-biggest-dark-matter-detector-spots-single-weird-particle Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49536079 Points: 206 # Comments: 56
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
AVX-512 xor_gen For Linux Updated & Looking Real Good For RAID Arrays
Being worked on the past few months for the Linux kernel has been an AVX-512 optimized version of xor_gen() that is used for generating and validating parity blocks such as with Linux's software RAID 5 and RAID 6 arrays. The latest iteration of AVX-512 xor_gen() was posted today and shows some impressive results on AMD Zen 5 hardware...
A note on subscription prices from LWN
Article URL: https://lwn.net/Articles/1090585/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535752 Points: 645 # Comments: 127
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Anthropic hires architect of UK AI policy as MPs warn of 'clear conflict of interest'
Matt Clifford plans to keep role as ARIA chair while leading the LLM maker's dealings with governments outside North America
The Army just used a 20-kilowatt laser to take out three drones
The Army says its laser system can track and destroy hostile drones.
GNOME Mutter 51.rc Adds Cross-GPU Buffer Scan-Out Support, Other Last Minute Work
The release candidates are out today for the GNOME Shell and Mutter in preparing for the formal "GNOME 51.rc" release in the coming days...
Next-gen AI networks may hinge on the telephone switchboard's return
Photonics startups like iPronics are raking in hundreds of millions in funding to make optical circuit switches faster, denser, and cheaper
Aging Brains Blend Memories Together Instead of Just Forgetting Them
Article URL: https://studyfinds.com/aging-brains-blend-memories-together-instead-of-forgetting-them-study-finds/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535548 Points: 155 # Comments: 65
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?
Article URL: https://help.mistral.ai/en/articles/455207-can-i-opt-out-of-my-input-or-output-data-being-used-for-training Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535284 Points: 319 # Comments: 137
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Microsoft update disarms Outlook and Teams on Arm PCs
Installing an AI gaming package offers relief while custom cursors suffer a separate reset
A cloud engineer walked into a bar and – no joke – ended up having to migrate a datacenter
The budget was minimal, FedEx was the bottleneck, and DNS was of course the source of trouble
London Tube closes the 5G gap with streets above
Mobile signal below ground beats the citywide average, Ookla says
Is Russia's rival to Starlink failing? Here's what we know.
At least three of the first 32 Rassvet satellites likely suffered outright failures, and more may be in trouble.
BGP hijack infecting networks caused by a comedy of errors that’s not funny at all
What can we learn from a BGP hijacking that poisoned production software? Plenty.
UK goes shopping for homegrown AI with £100M procurement scheme
Startups invited to tackle NHS, defense, compute, and agent security challenges while Whitehall's own adoption remains patchy
Greg KH Forewarns Of "Rough" Linux 7.3 Kernel Cycle Due To Continued AI Churn
While Linux 7.3-rc1 only released this week and there are another roughly seven weeks to go until the official kernel release, Linux's second-in-command Greg Kroah-Hartman is already warning that it's likely to be another "rough" kernel cycle given the ongoing noise caused by AI/LLM with the increase in bug reports and kernel patches...
GCC 17 Compiler Merges Initial Support For Intel/AMD AI Compute Extensions "ACE"
Landing today in the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) codebase is initial support for the AI Compute Extensions (ACEv1) as the initial work out of the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group between Intel and AMD for a common matrix acceleration architecture for helping AI/ML workloads with future CPUs...
Northern Ireland adds £15M to Fujitsu education deal without competition
Japanese supplier remains in place despite scrutiny over its Horizon role
FreeDesktop SDK 26.08 Released With Snap Support Dropped, Bootstrap Changes
The newest FreeDesktop SDK is now available for this collection of components used for Flatpak runtimes as well as for building out of containers and other software stacks...
Intel Updates LLM-Scaler-vLLM Build For vLLM 0.26 & Other Improvements
For those looking for the smoothest experience to get vLLM up and running on Intel Arc (Pro) graphics hardware, out today is the newest beta of Intel's LLM-Scaler-vLLM project for a Docker-based setup of vLLM ready to go on Intel GPUs...
UK cyber bill targets AI users, not the vendors building it
Ministers reject proposed red lines and emergency shutdown powers, pointing instead to voluntary safeguards
UK digital ID may be dead, but its legacy IT problem lives on
Spending watchdog says fragmented data and inconsistent standards would constrain any future attempt
Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982
Article URL: https://dfarq.homeip.net/commodore-64-released-september-1-1982/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49533497 Points: 293 # Comments: 149
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Arm in the enterprise is at least three years away, says Broadcom software boss
And RISC-V is absolutely nowhere
Tape still isn’t dead, but shipments slipped by 16 exabytes in 2025
LTO program is confident this is a glitch, not terminal unspooling
Steam On Linux Dips Below 4% For August
Valve just published the Steam Survey results for August 2026. After jumping above 4% in July, in August it fell back below that threshold. Meanwhile CachyOS continues gaining ground among Linux gamers...
Cops, CrowdStrike disrupt Sality botnet by poisoning the network and diverting into sinkholes
23-year-old botnet down
Anthropic promises zero data retention – but customers must check it worked
More compliance-friendly stance could boost appeal of Fable
Here's our first look—and drive—of the 2027 Range Rover Electric
333 miles of real-world range with uncompromised comfort and off-road ability.
WinBtrfs 1.10 Released With Two Years Worth Of Improvements For Btrfs On Windows
WinBtrfs is a driver for Microsoft Windows to support reading and writing to Btrfs file-systems. WinBtrfs works with Windows XP and newer. It hadn't seen a new release in over two years but a big feature release is now available with a combination of new features and bug fixes...
Another Artifactory CVE under attack by AI agents or humans
Unauthenticated intruders can mint admin tokens, and exposed servers are already being hit
AMDGPU Linux Driver's Latest Patches For HDMI Passive VRR Support
As part of AMD's ongoing effort for getting HDMI 2.1 support squared away in their upstream AMDGPU kernel graphics driver, sent out today were the latest patches around passive variable refresh rate "Passive VRR" for HDMI connections...
Research roundup: 7 cool science stories we almost missed
"Black hole stars," making cookies from plastic, tiny sound-powered drones, and more.
A newborn and child reportedly died of measles; CDC isn't counting them
Historically, state health departments determine cases and deaths, not the CDC.
New Android Drop adds remembered items in Find Hub, makes anti-nausea dots official
New features are rolling out across the Android ecosystem starting today.
FTC alleges Amazon illegally made $20 billion by rigging billions of ad auctions
FTC says firm replaces actual ad-auction results "with higher prices set by Amazon."
This is what a supercar was like a century ago
When the average car could only do 40 mph, this Bentley could break 100.
Linux Gets A Reverse-Engineered Driver For ASUS ROG NVMe Enclosure RGB Lighting
If you are into RGB lighting, you can even find NVMe external enclosures these days with RGB LEDs like the ASUS ROG Strix Arion. Now thanks to reverse engineering there is a Linux driver for allowing the RGB lighting controls for the ASUS ROG Strix Arion NVMe enclosure...
It turns out that Orion's much-maligned heat shield performed really well
Independent safety officials also have high praise for changes by NASA leadership.
Lekuo SouthBridge Max Puts An AMD B650 Chipset Onto A PCIe Card For More I/O
For those looking at expanding the SATA, NVMe, and/or the USB/USB-C capabilities of your system, the Lekuo SouthBridge Max PB65MX3 is an interesting creation that I have been trying out. The Lekuo SouthBridge Max puts an AMD B650 chipset onto a low-profile PCIe add-in card to provide all of the above without any bifurcation required. Given that it's an AMD B650 chipset, it also "just works"…
systemd 262-rc1 Released With Live Update Orchestrator Integration & More
Debuting today is systemd 262-rc1 as the first test release of this next major update to this Linux init system and service manager...
Without new landers or rovers, it's helicopters or bust for NASA's Mars program
NASA's cost estimate for SR-1 Freedom is $2.1 billion, but that doesn't include the helicopters.
Linux Changes For CPPC On Zen 6 Clients - Hard-Coded Default Puts Low-Power Core At 0.47x
Following yesterday's Linux kernel patches for tuning ACPI EPP for Ryzen Zen 6 client processors, another patch series made it out on the mailing list with adjustments for ACPI Collaborative Processor Performance Control (CPPC) with upcoming Zen 6 client processors...
Intel Graphics Driver Introducing Cold Reset Recovery For Linux 7.4, Panther Lake IBC v3
While the Linux 7.3 merge window just wrapped up this weekend, on Monday Intel already sent out their first feature pull request of new Xe kernel graphics driver material that is destined for Linux 7.4...
The Linux Kernel AI Flood, Linux 7.2 Release & Other August Highlights
It was a very busy month of August with the Linux kernel developers continue to be flooded with AI/LLM-generated patches and bug reports. Plus there was the general resolution on AI usage within the Debian project and other open-source projects now evolving in the AI era. With the Linux 7.2 stable release and Linux 7.3 merge window, the past month was all the more eventful...
Private group wants to launch "cheapest possible" mission to Alpha Centauri
"We could really be facing the great filter."
The Bentley Supersports: A stripped-out engineer's indulgence
It's the lightest Bentley in 85 years.
Trump admin shelves Cyclospora research despite record-breaking outbreak
The CDC has tallied nearly 30,000 confirmed and probable cases this summer.
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A Selection of Los Alamos Rolodex Business Cards
Article URL: https://clui.org/collections/los-alamos-business-cards/selection-cards Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49513856 Points: 112 # Comments: 24
Discussion: Hacker News thread →