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In order solve that problem, we started looking for some options and the most obvious one was QtQuick. It's a quite powerful framework and it's already used extensively in Plasma. So, in Plasma 5.24, we introduced basic support for implementing kwin effects written in QML and even added a new overview effect. Unfortunately, if you wanted to implement a QtQuick-based effect yourself, you would still have to write a bit of C++ glue yourself. This is not great because effects that use C++ are a distribution nightmare. They can't be just uploaded to the KDE Store and then installed by clicking Get New Effects...". Furthermore, libkwin is a fast moving target with lots of ABI and API incompatible changes in every release. That's not good if you're an effect developer because it means you will need to invest a bit of time after every plasma release to port the effects to the new APIs or at least rebuild the effects to resolve ABI incompatibilities. This has been changed in Plasma 6.0. In Plasma 6, we've had the opportunity to address that pesky problem of requiring some C++ code and also improve the declarative effect API after learning some lessons while working on the overview and other effects. So, enough of history and let's jump to the good stuff, shall we? Vlad Zahorodnii Making it easier to write things like Plasma widgets and Kwin effects is always desirable, and making them easier to distribute is only icing on the cake.

You know those modal screens that interrupt your groove when you are surfing? There are no laws forcing websites to use them. They use them because they choose to. Bite code! Cookie banners are not only not required, they're not even needed, and most implementations you encounter today are illegal anyway. You can use session cookies and anonymous stats cookies without needing any user approval. Companies like to use these cookie banners because they want to make you mad at the law, not at them for tracking you up the wazzoo, and people who actually do know better trot out the cookie banners to enrage you at the government instead of at the corporations exploiting you. EU law only states that if a website wants to track you, they have to let you know. That's it. Seems very reasonable to anyone who isn't a corporatist.

Bad news from BSD land - the oldest vendor of BSD systems is changing direction away from FreeBSD and toward Linux. NAS vendor iXsystems has been busy this year, but apart from some statements in online user communities, it hasn't been talking about the big news. Back in 2022, we covered TrueNAS CORE 13, the new release of its FreeBSD-based turnkey OS for NAS servers, and in that article we mentioned its new product, the Debian-based TrueNAS SCALE, aimed at providing storage for Kubernetes users. Now it seems the company is betting its future on that Linux-based product, meaning the end is in sight for the FreeBSD offering. Liam Proven at The Register Very sad to read, as more monoculture is not exactly great, but at the same time, from a corporate perspective, it's also not entirely unexpected to focus on the server operating system with by far the widest industry support. I hope the fork mentioned in the article gains some steam, because having competition in this space is crucially important.

It's true that latest macOS 14 (Sonoma) still supports the latest generations of Intel Macs and it's very likely that at least one or two major versions will still be compatible. But there's one particular development that is de-facto killing off the Hackintosh scene. In Sonoma, Apple has completely removed all traces of driver support for their oldest WiFi/Bt cards, namely various Broadcom cards that they last used in 2012/13 iMac / MacBook models. Those Mac models are not supported by macOS for few years now thus it's not surprising the drivers are being removed. Most likely reason is that Apple is moving drivers away from .kext (Kernel Extensions) to .dext (DriverKit) thus cleaning up obsolete and unused code from macOS. They did the same with Ethernet drivers in Ventura. Aleksandar Vaci Everybody, especially the small but active Hackintosh community itself, knew full well the writing was on the wall the day Apple switched to ARM, and we're seeing the first signs of the impending end of the community. Sure, enough people will remain who are interested in building Hackintoshes using older, unsupported versions of macOS, kind of like retrocomputing, but the days of running the latest macOS release on non-Apple hardware are coming to an end. As a fun side note, this old OSNews article I wrote in 2009 is one of the most-visited articles on our site of all time. Hackintoshes were way, way more popular than people gave them credit for.

For more than 15 years, Google Safe Browsing has been protecting users from phishing, malware, unwanted software and more, by identifying and warning users about potentially abusive sites on more than 5 billion devices around the world. As attackers grow more sophisticated, we've seen the need for protections that can adapt as quickly as the threats they defend against. That's why we're excited to announce a new version of Safe Browsing that will provide real-time, privacy-preserving URL protection for people using the Standard protection mode of Safe Browsing in Chrome. Jasika Bawa, Xinghui Lu, Jonathan Li, and Alex Wozniak on the Google blog Reading through the description of how this new feature works, it does indeed seem to respect one's privacy, but there could be so many devils in so many details here that you'd really need to be a specialist in these matters to truly gauge if Google isn't getting its hands on the URLs you visit through this feature. But even if all that is true, it doesn't really matter because Google has tons of other ways to collect more than enough data on you to build an exact profile of you are, and what advertisements will work well no you. Any time Google goes out of its way to announce it's not collecting some type of data - like here, the URLs you type into the Chrome URL bar - it's not because they care so much about your privacy, but because they simply don't need this data to begin with.

While Ladybird does an okay job with well-formed web content, I thought it would be useful to throw some security research tools at it and see what kind of issues it might reveal. So today we'll be using Domato", a DOM fuzzer from Google Project Zero, to stress test Ladybird and fix some issues found along the way. The way this works is that Domato generates randomized web pages with lots of mostly-valid but strange HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I then load these pages into a debug build of Ladybird and observe what happens. Andreas Kling I have high hopes for Ladybird.

This release marks the last time that Microsoft would release an OS/2 beta to developers, instead with the runaway success of Windows 3.0, Microsoft would remove resources from the constrained OS/2, and refocus both on Windows 3.1, and Windows NT. Thanks to one of my Patrons - Brian Ledbetter, the much-sought Microsoft OS/2 2.0 Pre-Release 2 is now available! So obviously the first thing to do was to re-create the original magical screenshot. neozeed at VirtuallyFun We already talked about this rediscovered release, but this article contains even more detailed information, this time from the person who bought the copy off eBay.

Computing power has emerged as a vital resource for economies around the world. China is no exception, and the country has invested heavily into domestic CPU capabilities. Loongson is at the forefront of that effort. We previously covered the company's 3A5000 CPU, a quad core processor that delivered reasonable performance per clock, but clocked too low to be competitive. Now, we're going to look at Loongson's newer 3A6000 CPU. The 3A6000 is also a quad core 2.5 GHz part, but uses the newer LA664 core. Compared to the 3A5000's LA464 cores, LA664 is a major and ambitious evolution. While Loongson has kept the same general architecture, LA664 has a larger and deeper pipeline with more execution units. To sweeten the pie, LA664 gets SMT support. When properly implemented, SMT can increase multithreaded performance with minimal die area overhead. But SMT can be challenging to get right. Chips and Cheese I'm always fascinated by China's attempts at catching up to Intel and AMD, but at the same time, there's no chance in hell I'd ever use any of it.

Google's Project Zero reports that memory safety vulnerabilities-security defects caused by subtle coding errors related to how a program accesses memory-have been the standard for attacking software for the last few decades and it's still how attackers are having success". Their analysis shows two thirds of 0-day exploits detected in the wild used memory corruption vulnerabilities. Despite substantial investments to improve memory-unsafe languages, those vulnerabilities continue to top the most commonly exploited vulnerability classes. In this post, we share our perspective on memory safety in a comprehensive whitepaper. This paper delves into the data, challenges of tackling memory unsafety, and discusses possible approaches for achieving memory safety and their tradeoffs. We'll also highlight our commitments towards implementing several of the solutions outlined in the whitepaper, most recently with a $1,000,000 grant to the Rust Foundation, thereby advancing the development of a robust memory-safe ecosystem. Alex Rebert and Christoph Kern at Google's blog Even as someone who isn't a programmer, it's impossible to escape the rising tide of memory-safe languages, with Rust leading the charge. If this makes the software we all use objectively better, I'll take the programmers complaining they have to learn something new.

Nanos is a new kernel designed to run one and only one application in a virtualized environment. It has several constraints on it compared to a general purpose operating system such as Windows or Linux - namely it's a single process system with no support for running multiple programs nor does it have the concept of users or remote administration via ssh. Nanos GitHub page The project has a website with more information and instructions, and the code's on GitHub.

There's a channel on YouTube called The Proper People. It's two guys who travel all over the United States (and in a few cases, elsewhere too) exploring abandoned buildings, and recording both the exteriors and interiors for posterity, since many of these buildings suffer from massive decay and are often slated for demolition. These buildings have histories and stories that otherwise would be lost to time. They are incredibly respectful of the buildings they explore, and they will not break open locked doors or windows, and only traverse open and unlocked doors or openings borne out of natural decay. They never take anything from the sites they visit, and abhor what urban explorers call staging", where you move furniture and objects around to invoke or imply stories and things that aren't there. Their videos are also very calm, muted, quiet, and only occasionally use atmospheric music for some of the more artistic shots. As a sidenote, they also happen to have the absolute best intro music of all time. One of the things you quickly notice as you see these buildings, and explore their interiors, is just how solidly made and beautifully detailed they were. Whether they're exploring an 19th century Kirkbride mental asylum, an early 19th century power plant, or a mid-20th century hospital - they all tend to be made not just to serve a function, but also to be beautiful and solid, both inside and out. Walls, ceilings, and doorways are beautifully detailed in masonry or woodwork, light fittings are solid and ornate, and even access corridors or storage basements have gorgeous vaulted ceilings, decorated walls, and ornate pillars. The contrast to modern buildings couldn't be starker. Buildings and workplaces of today are littered with drop ceilings, flimsy dividers, open plans, endless amounts of glass, all in styles so minimalist it just makes spaces feel cold, uninviting, and lacking in human scale. Modern buildings and interiors are temporary, ephemeral, built not for humans, but to a bottom line and some designer's fancy - these old hospitals, factories, and even power plants are permanent, enduring, and made to human scale. They served as much as a status symbol for whatever ruthless capitalist owned the building as they did as a place for that same ruthless capitalist to extract wealth from mistreated workers. This juxtaposition, of the minimalist, soulless, flimsy and cheap-looking exteriors and interiors of modern buildings on the one hand, and the beautifully detailed, skillfully crafted, and human-scale exteriors and interiors from these older buildings on the other, is something that kept creeping back into my mind during my use of the MNT Reform. This is a device built by people who deeply care, who are very opinionated, and know exactly what they want to make - very much the opposite of the cookie-cutter dime-a-dozen laptops that flood the market today. MNT was so kind as to send me a Reform, at some risk to them because I am definitely not the kind of customer the Reform is typically aimed at. Yet, after a few months of use, I can confidently say this is one of the most unique devices I've ever used, and one that's worth every cent. Let's explore why. Brutalist hardware Let's first dive into what, exactly, the Reform is. At its core, it's an ARM-based laptop designed to run Linux, developed and built by a small team of people in Berlin. The Reform is unique in that it is designed to be open hardware, fully repairable and highly modular and upgradeable. It consists of a mainboard with an mPCIe slot, an M.2 slot for NVME SSDs, 16GB eMMC storage, and uniquely, a slot for a System-on-Chip module roughly the size of an SO-DIMM module that contains the processor and RAM. The keyboard and pointing device are internally connected through USB 2.0 and easily replaceable, too. The Reform is defined as much by what it does not have as by what it does have. You won't find any surveillance devices inside the Reform - no webcam, no microphones, nothing. There have been laptops with little privacy switches or sliding covers for the webcam, but I don't think I've seen a modern laptop that eschews cameras and microphones since the late '90s. It's one of the many examples of the Reform's opinionated design choices. The configuration MNT sent me consists of the aforementioned mainboard, coupled with one of the processor modules they offer - in my case, the RCM4 A311D, which sports four 2.2GHz Cortex-A73 cores and two 1.8GHz Cortex-A53 cores, 4GB of LP-DDR4 RAM, and an ARM Mali G52 MP4 GPU that supports OpenGL/ES 3.1 through Panfrost. This module also supports Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 through the integrated RTL8822CS. The A311D is just one of many modules available for purchase for the Reform, and during the writing of this review, MNT also added a brand new SoC module to its lineup - the RK3588, the most powerful option available for the Reform. It packs 4 ARM Cortex-A76 cores (up to 2.4GHz) and 4 ARM Cortex-A55 cores (up to 2.2GHz), 16GB or 32GB of RAM, and 128GB or 256GB of eMMC storage. It also sports an ARM Mali-G610 MP4 4-core GPU. Like with all other modules, the drivers for the A311D in my model are completely open source. When it comes to firmware, however, the A311D is not fully open source; there's closed-source code in the Wi-Fi firmware and the boot/TF-A firmware. The other modules all also have various bits of closed firmware, except for the RKX7 module that uses a Kintex-7 FPGA and hence comes with a hefty price tag. Using the RKX7 module, you can have a fully open source laptop, from operating system down to the firmware, which is, as far as I can tell, unique. However, the amount of closed firmware code for each of the other boards is relatively small, and in some cases - such as with the LS1028A - can be avoided, too. If you care about

Nearly one year ago Intel published the X86S specification (formerly stylized as X86-S") for simplifying the Intel architecture by removing support for 16-bit and 32-bit operating systems. X86S is a big step forward with dropping legacy mode, 5-level paging improvements, and other modernization improvements for x86_64. With the Linux 6.9 kernel more x86S bits are in place for this ongoing effort. Michael Larabel I doubt we'll see much fallout from these changes.

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 regulations are designed exclusively to harm non-EU companies. The massive amounts of fines and corrective actions handed out to EU companies in all kinds of sectors already disprove this notion, and here's a case where even the European Commission itself gets a slap on the wrist for violating its own rules and regulations - rules and regulations, we're often told by especially American corporatists, are designed specifically to target poor American businesses. Not that corporatists have any use for reality and facts, but still.

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 as some preparation work for changes coming in future SRUs. Alan Coopersmith and Jan Pechanec Oracle is still developing Solaris. I still find it very difficult to care after Oracle's bullshittery.

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 update: We've updated our Dispute Resolution Terms. Select Agree' to agree to these updated Terms and to continue enjoying our products and services. Press * to view these updated Terms." A large button reading Agree" follows. The pop-up doesn't offer a way to disagree, and users are unable to use their device unless they hit agree. Scharon Harding at Ars Technica The best part of this story? And by best I mean worst? You have to send a letter - a paper one, with stamps and everything, like in the before times - to Roku's lawyer in California containing the names of all the people opting out, the devices and services in question, and a damn purchase receipt. They're one step away from wanting your passport and your firstborn child.

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 are allowed to ingest whatever data they want, but as soon as someone ingests their data, it's suddenly a problem? Seems like a sound business model.

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) sysfs interface. Marius Nestor at 9to5Linux There's way more going on in this new release, of course, such as further Rust support, for instance in the Loongson architecture, additional support for tons of newer Intel processors , specific support patches for various laptops, and so, so much more.

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 decoupled the tzdata module from the other components. With this isolation, we gained the ability to respond rapidly to time zone legislation changes - often releasing updates to Android users outside of the established release cadence. Additionally, this change means time zone updates can reach a far greater number of Android devices, ensuring you as Android users always see the correct time. Almaz Mingaleev and Masha Khokhlova This is equal parts boring and equal parts amazing. The amount of work developers have to put into making sure timezones work is astonishing, and the fact that a large chunk of it is done by volunteers is even more impressive.

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.

Here you can find everything there is to know about the first version of Windows. David Simuni And they truly mean everything. This is an exceptional amount of information about Windows 1.0.

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 US app stores unless the social media platform -used by roughly 170 million Americans -is quickly spun off from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance. Brian Fung at CNN TikTok obviously needs to be banned. It's an extension of a genocidal, totalitarian government that has no place on our our phones. Yes, I understand Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft also collect vast amounts of data, but at least they are (nominally) beholden to our legal systems, and while there is, of course, a vast power imbalance between us as individuals and them as megacorporations, it's still nowhere even close as to being an arm of a totalitarian government - they're just not comparable. China's state surveillance tools have no place on our devices.

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 verify the server! This is a security problem because now suddenly certificate checks pass that should not pass. Daniel Stenberg Absolutely wild that Apple does not consider this a security issue.

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 inside each other, in a window tree, which you can still see today with xwininfo -root -tree. One of the reasons that X has copious nested windows is that X was designed with a particular model of writing X programs in mind, and that model made everything into a (nested) window. Seriously, everything. In an old fashioned X application, windows are everywhere. Buttons are windows (or several windows if they're radio buttons or the like), text areas are windows, menu entries are each a window of their own within the window that is the menu, visible containers of things are windows (with more windows nested inside them), and so on. Chris Siebenmann This is wild.

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 more of the major distributions to abandon X.org completely. For the KDE version of Fedora, X.org will be dropped entirely in Fedora 40 already, so one release earlier.

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 that version has now turned up, after twenty years of searching, and nearly a quarter century after its release! Michal Necasek at OS/2 Museum OS/2 is one of the biggest what-ifs in tech, and the whole origin story and demise of the platform is worthy of a big budget drama series. It also happens to be one of my favourite retrocomputing platforms of all time, so I may be biased.

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 don't have as much of a direct, noticeable impact as some other company's changes, mostly since a lot of the more impactful consequences of the DMA, such as allowing sideloading and alternative application stores, were already allowed on Android. Other changes, like to Search, will take longer to be noticed. The one thing that stands out is the tone - compared to Apple's communication around the DMA. Whereas Apple sounds like a petulant whiny toddler, Google sounds constructive, to the point, and, well, like an adult. That doesn't mean Google's post isn't also full of shit in places, but at least they're being grown-ups about it.

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 you use, not the other way around. This is of course not an easy task, one of the main blockers we found as we collaborate more closely with KDE and GNOME developers is that they have a hard time with our OpenRC-based stack. In order to get KDE and GNOME working at all, we use a lot of systemd polyfills on top of OpenRC. So while we are technically not using systemd", in practice we already do use a large chunk of its components to get KDE and GNOME running, just different versions of those components. While we are very grateful for everybody who works on these polyfills, we must point out that most aren't a full replacement, and take additional effort to support and maintain. As much as we might want to romanticise the idea of spending 6, 12, 24 months attempting to come up with an even vaguely competitive alternative to systemd, we would quite simply rather be working on making postmarketOS better. postmarketOS blog This is the sensible choice to make, and I'm glad they made it. It makes no sense for a relatively small project that already has to deal with the difficulties of supporting smartphones to also have to deal with shoehorning the smartphone variants of GNOME and KDE into an init system they're not at all made for.

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-quality websites. Today we're announcing key changes we're making to improve the quality of Search and the helpfulness of your results. Elizabeth Tucker on the official Google blog Low-quality SEO spam has been a problem on Google for years, but the recent advent of AI" tools has wreaked absolute havoc in the search results. It's a damn blood bath out there. It's now up to Google to fix its own mess, so let's wait and see if these changes will do anything to reverse the downward spiral Google Search has been in for years now.

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.

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 of restaurants Jenna said she liked," and Windows can bring up the exact conversation you were having when Jenna mentioned those restaurants. Even vague prompts should work, like Find me that thing about dinosaurs," Windows will pull up every word, phrase, image, and related topic about dinosaurs that you've previously opened on your computer. The AI Explorer app can also understand context, help jumpstart projects or workflows, and even suggest tasks based on what's currently on screen. For example, suppose you're looking at an image in an app. In that case, the AI Explorer will automatically show an edit image" button that lets you type out your criteria, such as remove this image's background using the Photos app." Zac Bowden Windows, for all your AI" and ads.

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 AndroidTM (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, technical support will remain available to customers. Customers that have installed the Amazon Appstore or Android apps prior to March 5, 2024, will continue to have access to those apps through the deprecation date of March 5, 2025. Please reach out to our support team for further questions at support.microsoft.com. We are grateful for the support of our developer community and remain committed to listening to feedback as we evolve experiences. Microsoft's Learn website Whenever Microsoft offers a way or an API to run and/or develop applications for Windows, and it isn't Win32, you can be certain they're going to kill it within a few years.

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 with the owner, to the point that he'd let me in and play with the machines. So, I played with CP/M and learned how to use WordStar. Well, in case you didn't notice, I own a C128DCR now. This blog is about how I got CP/M, WordStar, and other fun ancient software apps running on it. Celso Martinho CP/M, of course, was the primary influence of DOS.

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 really all you need. The core premise of the EU, its very primary function, is to enable and protect the single market. A great example of this is the ban on roaming charges - mobile phone carriers in EU are not allowed to charge extra for using mobile voice and data services in another EU country. From the EU's perspective, taking action to prevent private parties from fragmenting and taking private control over the single market simultaneously grew the economy and increased consumer surplus. This is the operating theory behind much of the actions the EU takes regarding market regulation and product standardisation: a single market built on standards is more profitable for both businesses and consumers. Baldur Bjarnason And because Apple and its tech punditry refuse to try and understand the party they are dealing with, they get caught looking like childish idiots every time they open their mouths about it. Normally when the EU regulates a given sector, it does so with ample lead time and works with industry to make sure that they understand their obligations. Apple instead thought that the regulatory contact from the EU during the lead time to the DMA was an opportunity for it to lecture the EU on its right to exist. Then its executives made up some fiction in their own minds as to what the regulation meant, announced their changes, only to discover later that they were full of bullshit. This was entirely Apple's own fault. For months, we've been hearing leaks about Apple's talks with the EU about the Digital Market Act. Those talks were not negotiations even though Apple seems to have thought they were. Talks like those are to help companies implement incoming regulations, with some leeway for interpretation on the EU's side to accommodate business interests. Remember what I wrote about electrical plugs? The EU is pro-business - often criticised for being essentially a pro-business entity - and not in favour of regulation for regulation's sake. If Apple had faced reality and tried to understand the facts as they are, they would have used the talks to clarify all of these issues and more well in advance of the DMA taking effect. But they didn't because they have caught the tech industry management disease of demanding that reality bend to their ideas and wishes. Baldur Bjarnason What a lot of people - both inside and outside the EU - do not grasp is that while we all know the EU has shortcomings and issues, in general, the EU is uncharacteristically (for a government agency) popular among EU citizens, no matter the country of origin. That's because we, as EU citizens, and especially as EU citizens who do anything international, know just how ridiculously beneficial the EU has been for trade, business, the economy, travel, and so much more. Apple can keep acting like a whiny trust fund boy who thinks the world owes them everything, but they'll have to deal with the consequences. Continued violation of the DMA can lead to fines of up to 10% of revenue. That's 38 billion dollars. I secretly hope Apple keeps this childish behaviour up. It's deeply entertaining.

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 the risk of distraction crashes," said Matthew Avery, Euro NCAP's director of strategic development. New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving," he said. Jonathan M. Gitlin at Ars Technica Excellent news, and it's taken regulators and safety organisations way too long to long to adapt to the growing menace of touch screens in cars.

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 language, provides an optimal choice for developing embedded software. RUST interoperability enables developing RUST applications on top of existing C codebases. Despite this, even the most resourceful organizations continue to develop embedded software in C/C++. This paper performs the first systematic study to holistically understand the current state and challenges of using RUST for embedded systems. Our study is organized across three research questions. We collected a dataset of 2,836 RUST embedded software spanning various categories and 5 Static Application Security Testing ( SAST) tools. We performed a systematic analysis of our dataset and surveys with 225 developers to investigate our research questions. We found that existing RUST software support is inadequate, SAST tools cannot handle certain features of RUST embedded software, resulting in failures, and the prevalence of advanced types in existing RUST software makes it challenging to engineer interoperable code. In addition, we found various challenges faced by developers in using RUST for embedded systems development. Ayushi Sharma, Shashank Sharma, Santiago Torres-Arias, Aravind Machiry Some light reading.

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), Apple sales databases, two online services - the maligned Mac Prodigy client, along with classic AppleLink as used by Apple staff - and two presentations, one on Apple's current Macintosh line and one on the upcoming System 7. Now that I've got the infamous Conner hard drive it came with safely copied over, it's time to explore its contents some more. Old Vintage Computing Research I wonder just how rare it is to find old internal presentations from a company like Apple. It seems like something that doesn't happen very often, so it's great to see this archived and documented.

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.

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, there's some awesome news: there is now a fully up-to-date variant of Chromium for these older versions of Windows called Supermium. It tracks current Chromium, supports extensions, sandboxing, Aero Glass, Google Sync, and even Widevine on Windows 7 and higher. Micheal MJD just published a video showing Supermium in action in case you're curious. You'll need at least Windows XP SP3 and an Intel Pentium 4 with SSE2 in order to run it, and Windows 2000 support is in the works, too.

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 lot more this month, so be sure to read the whole report.

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 Advocacy, which started a petition in an effort to persuade Apple to reverse the change, and it even caught the attention of the European Commission. Now, Apple has backtracked and says that Home Screen web apps that use WebKit in the EU will continue to function as expected upon the release of iOS 17.4. Hartley Charlton at MacRumors A welcome move, but they will still be restricted to opening using WebKit instead of any other engine Europeans will be allowed to install. With criticism of Apple's DMA plans mounting, and pressure on the European Commission to not approve Apple's plans increasing, all of this might change over the coming months, still.

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.

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. ime Vidas There's really no viable alternative to Firefox for me. I wish we had more choice, more competition, and more vibrancy in the browser space, and I'm definitely anxious about the future of Firefox, but with every other browser being either Chrome, possibly with skin, or Safari, there's really nowhere else to go.

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 step further and has started blocking RCS from working in Google Messages on rooted or bootloader unlocked Android devices. Rajesh Pandey Entirely expected, but no less unconscionable. Banking applications, government ID services, and now even messaging platforms - all entirely crucial functions in the very fabric of society and government that we're just handing over to two ruthless abusive companies. It's simply no longer possible to function in many modern societies without having either a blessed Android device, or an iPhone, since any other platform will often lock you out of crucial functionality that you need to function in today's world. If there was ever anything the European Union should be fighting against, it's this.

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.

Remember last year, when we reported that the Red Ventures-owned CNEThad 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 out how to treat CNET content going forward. Gerard's admonition was posted on January 18, 2023, just a few days after our initial story about CNETs use of AI. The comment launched a discussion that would ultimately result in CNET's demotion from its once-strong Wikipedia rating of generally reliable." It was a grim fall that one former Red Ventures employee told us could put a huge dent in their SEO efforts," and also a cautionary tale about the wide-ranging reputational effects that publishers should consider before moving into AI-generated content. Maggie Harrison Dupre Excellent response by Wikipedia. Any outlet that uses spicy autocomplete to generate content needs to be booted off Wikipedia.

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 that scales across hardware. This API enables multi-vendor SR through a common set of inputs and outputs, allowing a single code path to activate a variety of solutions including NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution, AMD FidelityFXTM Super Resolution, and Intel XeSS. DirectSR will be available soon in the Agility SDK as a public preview, which will enable developers to test it out and provide feedback. Don't miss our DirectX State of the Union at GDC to catch a sneak peek at how DirectSR can be used with your games! Joshua Tucker at the DirectX Developer Blog If this aides in making sense out of the confusing mess of terminology and marketing terms surrounding this technology, I'm all for it.

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 (the current model is the 6020e) and 20 printed pages. The priciest plan includes an HP OfficeJet Pro rental and 700 printed pages for $35.99 per month. Scharon Harding at Ars Technica Can I pay them not to put a printer in my house?

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 for now have concluded and failed. Michael Larabel So dumb.

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 environment that you know and love. But these under-the-hood upgrades benefit Plasma's security, efficiency, and performance, and improve support for modern hardware. Thus Plasma delivers an overall more reliable user experience, while paving the way for many more improvements in the future. Aside from this, there's so much in this release it's hard to know where to begin. My favourite is the overhaul of KDE's default Breeze theme, which now uses far, far fewer frames, meaning there's fewer borders-on-borders. Spacing has also been made more consistent within Breeze. Both of these efforts make KDE applications and UI elements look a bit less cluttered and busy, which, while easily missed if you don't look for it, certainly cleans things up nicely. Another important improvements is the addition of support for HDR displays and colour management. Plasma on Wayland now has partial support for High Dynamic Range (HDR). On supported monitors and software, this will provide you with richer and deeper colors for your games, videos, and visual creations. Set an ICC profile for each screen individually and Plasma will adjust the colors accordingly. Applications are still limited to the sRGB color space, but we are working on increasing the number of supported color spaces soon. To improve Plasma's accessibility, we added support for color blindness correction filters. This helps with protanopia, deuteranopia or tritanopia. Of course, this release is accompanied by updates to a large number of KDE applications, and several default settings in KDE have been changed as well to better suit what most users would expect. Plasma Search has been overhauled as well, making it faster and less resource-intensive, and giving users the ability to better control how search results are displayed. There's a lot more here, so be sure to dive into the release announcement, KDE Plasma 6 will find its way to your distribution or operating system of choice over the coming weeks and months.