Edition of
Friday, 08 May 2026
Today’s edition gathers 79 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.
Meta fights Ofcom over how many billions count as billions
Social media biz says watchdog's fine formula is 'disproportionate' and should stop counting global revenue
OpenZL 0.2 Released For Meta's Content-Aware Compression Software
Last October engineers at Meta announced OpenZL as a format-aware compression framework. OpenZL aims to be speedy yet capable of delivering high compression ratios depending upon what is being compressed. OpenZL is viewed as their next leap in data compression beyond their wonderful work on Zstandard (Zstd).
AMD's Local, Open-Source AI Can Now Easily Interact With Your Gmail
AMD software engineers continue rapidly advancing their open-source software efforts around local AI/LLM use on consumer-class Radeon and Ryzen hardware. AMD GAIA 0.17.6 was released on Thursday with more improvements for local AI processing on Windows, Linux, and even macOS. For those trusting enough in local LLM pipelines to do the right thing, there is even integration now for AMD GAIA to…
Linux Erroneously Thinks Intel Bartlett Lake CPUs Run At 7GHz
With Intel's recently-launched Bartlett Lake P-core-only processors intended for the embedded market, there is a rather surprising oversight under Linux: the Intel P-State driver reporting a 7.0+ GHz clock speed. While many would yearn for a 7GHz CPU, the Core 9 273PE where this issue was discovered in reality can only boost up to 5.7GHz for its maximum turbo frequency...
BOFH: Nothing says 'business continuity' like a dry wooden broom
No sparks, no glory
Lego throws its own Hail Mary
Movie-inspired set ticks the clever Technic box, but at a price
Bus station display takes the Windows 10 road to nowhere
Spikes deter pigeons, but Microsoft still managed to foul the screen
Custom PC worked in the lab, failed on site – and so did the angry client
It's amazing what happens when you plug everything in
Cloudflare to fire 1,100 staff whose jobs just aren’t AI enough
Around 20 percent of staff get an ‘In one hour, you might not work here anymore’ email
AWS warns of EC2 ‘impairment’ as power loss hits notorious US-EAST-1 region
Extra aircon found to cool overheating datacenter as users complain their resources are ... nowhere
HPE drops first Juniper x Aruba collab – self-driving Wi-Fi
NetAdmins can stay in the loop while they learn to trust AI to tackle some scutwork
Dirty Frag Vulnerability Made Public Early: Root Privilege On All Distributions
One week after the Copy Fail vulnerability, a new Linux local privilege escalation bug has been made public. This time around there are no patches or CVEs yet for this "Dirty Frag" vulnerability as the embargo was broken early and thus the security researcher went ahead and published earlier than anticipated...
Mozilla boasts Mythos boosted Firefox bug cull
Yet it remains unclear if Anthropic's uber model was effective, or if better model middleware is what makes the difference
Plasticity and language in the anaesthetized human hippocampus
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10448-0 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48056268 Points: 108 # Comments: 42
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit
Article URL: https://xeiaso.net/blog/2026/abstain-from-install/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48056227 Points: 543 # Comments: 290
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Nonprofit hospitals spend billions on consultants with no clear effect
Article URL: https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/research-and-discoveries-articles/nonprofit-hospitals-spend-billions-on-management-consultants Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48056158 Points: 158 # Comments: 53
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Canvas is down as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data
https://thetech.com/2026/05/07/canvas-breach-26 https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/07/hackers-deface-school-logi... Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48055913 Points: 665 # Comments: 409
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Dyna Software's AI assistant promises to massage your toughest ServiceNow configs
The tool is meant to take the place of 80% of the work that requires ServiceNow dev teams
AMD K5 CPUs The Latest To Be Retired With Linux's Aging & Stagnate Hardware Support
Following Linux 7.1 beginning to phase out i486 CPU support and in turn drivers like those for the old AMD Elan SoCs now being removed, for Linux 7.2 the processor support removal is going further to now include some i586 and i686 class processors...
DHS can’t create vast DNA database to track ICE critics, lawsuit says
Lawsuit accuses DHS of plugging DNA database into ICE surveillance machine.
Cloudflare to cut about 20% workforce
https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-for-the-future/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48054423 Points: 782 # Comments: 509
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Fake IT workers rented laptops to Nork scammers, got prison time
Matthew Isaac Knoot and Erick Ntekereze Prince will each do 18 months for hosting laptops used by North Korean IT workers to remotely infiltrate US companies
Anthropic response to 1-click pwn: Shouldn't have clicked 'ok'
Security biz Adversa AI argues users of AI tools need clearer warnings
Two Home Affairs officials suspended after AI 'hallucinations' found
Article URL: https://www.citizen.co.za/news/home-affairs-officials-suspended-ai-hallucinations/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48053842 Points: 102 # Comments: 22
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Dirtyfrag: Universal Linux LPE
Article URL: https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/05/07/8 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48053623 Points: 655 # Comments: 265
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Mozilla says 271 vulnerabilities found by Mythos have "almost no false positives"
The developer of Firefox says it has "completely bought in" on AI-assisted bug discovery.
AI slop is killing online communities
Article URL: https://rmoff.net/2026/05/06/ai-slop-is-killing-online-communities/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48053203 Points: 678 # Comments: 579
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Natural Language Autoencoders: Turning Claude's Thoughts into Text
Article URL: https://www.anthropic.com/research/natural-language-autoencoders Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48052537 Points: 287 # Comments: 97
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Brazil's Pix payment system faces pressure from Visa and Mastercard
Article URL: https://www.elciudadano.com/en/brazils-pix-payment-system-faces-pressure-from-visa-and-mastercard/04/04/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48052371 Points: 211 # Comments: 182
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
60% of MD5 password hashes are crackable in under an hour
Happy World Password Day! Maybe it's finally time to kill this holiday in favor of World No-More-Passwords Day?
Agents need control flow, not more prompts
Article URL: https://bsuh.bearblog.dev/agents-need-control-flow/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051562 Points: 474 # Comments: 235
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Hardening Firefox with Claude Mythos Preview
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/05/mozil... Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051079 Points: 203 # Comments: 94
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
IBM Cloud evaporates as datacenter loses power
Customers say services were down for at least 4 hours, while status page showed no issues
Linux 7.2 To Support Realtek RTL8159 10GbE USB Ethernet
The Realtek RTL8159 has been appearing in some 10G-rated USB network adapters at online retailers, some for less than $100 USD. But currently the RTL8159 is only supported by Realtek's out-of-tree Linux kernel driver, but fortunately there will be mainline support coming with the Linux 7.2 kernel this summer...
DeepSeek 4 Flash local inference engine for Metal
Article URL: https://github.com/antirez/ds4 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050751 Points: 399 # Comments: 113
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
AMD RadeonSI Code Reorganized To Support Multimedia-Only Driver Builds
Merged today to Mesa 26.2-devel was a reorganization of the AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D driver code to better separate the graphics and multimedia acceleration code from the rest of the driver...
I want to live like Costco people
Article URL: https://tastecooking.com/i-want-to-live-like-costco-people/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050499 Points: 296 # Comments: 608
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
$250M crypto-robbing gang’s dirty work guy sentenced to 6.5 years behind bars
The then-teen was told to break in and steal what the keyboard warriors couldn’t
AlphaEvolve: Gemini-powered coding agent scaling impact across fields
Article URL: https://deepmind.google/blog/alphaevolve-impact/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48050278 Points: 296 # Comments: 123
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
TomTom’s route planner takes an unplanned detour into oblivion
Users report disappearing favorites, blank route planners, and cloud sync failures amid outage
Flattened Image Tree 1.0 Specification For Embedded Linux Systems
The Flattened Image Tree "FIT" 1.0 specification was recently finalized for this container format used by U-Boot on embedded systems for providing various boot components like DTBs, the Linux kernel image, and more into a single file...
C++ survey finds AI use rising, though trust is in short supply
Language's popularity continues to grow despite commonly cited frustrations
The map that keeps Burning Man honest
Article URL: https://www.not-ship.com/burning-man-moop/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48049653 Points: 658 # Comments: 320
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Google unveils screenless Fitbit Air and Google Health app to replace Fitbit
The $100 Fitbit Air is available for preorder today.
State-backed hackers hammer Palo Alto firewall zero-day before patch lands
Internet-facing PAN-OS firewalls are once again doing impressions of initial access brokers
RIP social media. What comes next is messy.
As social media splinters, how can we keep the new online spaces from devolving into toxic pits of despair?
Official PCIe 8.0 draft aims for 1 TB/s data rate
Final specs due for release in 2028, so don't hold your breath for the hardware
Elon Musk tried to hire OpenAI founders to start AI unit inside Tesla
Musk was “prepared to do the for-profit, provided he would get control.”
AMD puts out new slottable GPU for AI-curious enterprises
MI350P packs 144 GB of HBM3e and up to 4.6 petaFLOPS of FP4 grunt into a dual slot card
AMD Instinct MI350P: PCIe Add-In Card For High Performance Open-Source AI/Compute
While there is the AMD Instinct MI400 series coming this year, today AMD announced an interesting and arguably overdue offering for the Instinct MI350 series: the MI350P. The AMD Instinct MI350P is a PCIe add-in-card to add Instinct MI350 compute capabilities to existing PCIe 5.0 air-cooled servers as an alternative to the Open Accelerator Module (OAM) currently used by the Instinct MI350 series.
Linux Drivers For The AMD Elan SoCs From The 1990s On Track For Retirement
Merged for the current Linux 7.1 cycle was beginning to phase out the Intel 486 processor support from the mainline kernel moving forward. That initial step with Linux 7.1 was dropping the various Kconfig options to allow compiling Linux kernel builds for targeting various i486 platforms. As part of that, the AMD Elan SoC configuration patches were dropped.
Is your Porsche Taycan too slow at the Nürburgring? You need this Manthey Kit.
Nordschleife-specialist Manthey has developed an upgrade package for the Porsche EV.
Former NASA chief takes helm of national security space firm
"The spacecraft can also be refueled, and it can refuel others."
KDE Plasma 6.7 To Provide A Much Better Experience For CPU-Based Rendering
KDE developer Xaver Hugl has whipped up another nice improvement for the upcoming Plasma 6.7 desktop release. Due to QtWidgets still relying on CPU-based rendering and finding the performance subpar with Wayland shared memory "wl_shm" usage, Xaver has leveraged UDMABUF for avoiding excess buffer copies to provide a much more fluid experience when dealing with CPU-based rendering / shared memory…
New GCC Back-End Proposed For WebAssembly
When it comes to compiling C/C++ code to WebAssembly (WASM), LLVM/Clang and other LLVM-based tooling has dominated the space. Nearly a decade ago was a proposal for a GCC WebAssembly back-end that ultimately never ended up being merged while now there is a new proposal for a WebAssembly back-end for the GNU toolchain...
SR-IOV Support Appears To Be Coming For Next-Gen Ryzen AI NPUs
AMD recently upstreamed Linux support for their next-gen AIE4 NPU. That next-gen AMD NPU support is expected to premiere in Linux 7.2 while this week an interesting new patch series has surfaced for SR-IOV support with those upcoming neural processing units...
Rust-Written Redox OS Sees Improvements For Running On Real Hardware
Redox OS is out with its status report for April 2026. During the past month this open-source, Rust-based operating system written from scratch has seen improvements for running on real hardware as well as a wide variety of other improvements for bettering this original OS project...
D7VK 1.9 Brings Some Hefty Performance Improvements
D7VK continues advancing for this Vulkan-based implementation of Direct3D 7 that also supports D3D 6 / 5 / 3 APIs too for vintage games ultimately rendered using the modern Vulkan API...
SpaceX is starting to move on from the world's most successful rocket
Vandenberg Space Force Base in California is set to become SpaceX's busiest launch site—for now.
Anthropic raises Claude Code usage limits, credits new deal with SpaceX
Deal follows others with Microsoft, Amazon, and more.
TSMC taps wind power as AI chip demand soars, Taiwan feels energy crunch
TSMC backs renewables during record demand for energy-hungry chip manufacturing.
Court strikes down FCC anti-discrimination rule opposed by Internet providers
Chairman Brendan Carr celebrates FCC court loss in case over Biden-era rule.
Spooked by Mythos, Trump suddenly realized AI safety testing might be good
Trump forced to admit Biden was right on AI safety testing.
Mesa 26.1 Released With Many Improvements For Open-Source Vulkan Drivers
Eric Engestrom just announced another timely feature release of the Mesa drivers. Mesa 26.1 is out today for this collection of predominantly OpenGL and Vulkan drivers for a variety of hardware as well as the likes of Rusticl for OpenCL, Zink for OpenGL-on-Vulkan, various Windows acceleration components, and more...
PCIe 8.0 Spec Draft 0.5 Released For 1TB/s Bi-Directional x16 Bandwidth
The PCI-SIG today held a briefing around PCIe 8.0 that follows the PCIe 7.0 specification that was released to members last June...
Programming Still Sucks
Article URL: https://www.stvn.sh/writing/programming-still-sucks-fqffhyp Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48040269 Points: 631 # Comments: 308
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Linux 7.2 To Integrate The AMDGPU "Power Module" To Better Align With Windows
Sent out today was a batch of "new stuff" for the AMDGPU graphics and AMDKFD compute kernel drivers that are ready for DRM-Next to queue until the Linux 7.2 merge window happens in June. Most notable is the introduction of the AMDGPU DC power module to better align with the Radeon power management behavior under Microsoft Windows...
Report: SpaceX IPO gives Musk unchecked power and forbids investor lawsuits
Anyone who buys into SpaceX IPO must waive right to sue the firm, report says.
Google DeepMind partners with EVE Online for AI model testing
Move comes as CCP Games spends $120M to go independent, rebrands as Fenris Creations.
The animated version of the iconic "Hello, world" image reveals striking new details
What's going on with those satellites, anyway?
FDA vaccine studies censored by Trump admin after finding benefits of shots
FDA has suppressed studies on COVID-19 vaccines and Shingrix, a shingles vaccine.
Anthropic's Claude Managed Agents can now "dream," sort of
Also, 5-hour usage limits will double for Pro and Max users of Claude Code.
Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R595 Linux Driver For Workstation Graphics Performance
When having the HP Z6 G5 A workstation in the lab for benchmarking, one of the curiosity-driven tests was seeing how well the latest open-source and upstream Nouveau driver stack is competing against the latest official NVIDIA R595 driver for workstations. The official NVIDIA Linux driver stack remains the best positioned software solution for RTX (PRO) hardware but Nouveau continues evolving…
Google's Gemma 4 AI models get 3x speed boost by predicting future tokens
Up to 3x the speed with no loss of quality—is it too good to be true?
Here's what has to happen if NASA wants to land on the Moon every month
NASA is serious about taking more shots on goal, but some of them need to start landing.
Infants are bleeding out after parents decline vitamin K shots given at birth
Hospitals report more parents are declining vitamin K shots for their newborns.
Intel's Vulkan Linux Driver Now Supports Device Generated Commands "DGC"
Exciting yesterday in the land of Intel's open-source Vulkan driver "ANV" for Linux systems was introducing experimental support for descriptor heaps with the VK_EXT_descriptor_heap extension. Today there is another separate exciting development for this open-source Intel driver: Vulkan device generated commands are finally merged!..
Pinocchio is weirder than you remembered
Article URL: https://storica.club/blog/pinocchio-in-italian/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48035420 Points: 162 # Comments: 73
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/06/singapore-caning-school-bullies Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48032968 Points: 194 # Comments: 281
Discussion: Hacker News thread →