Qualcomm wants to buy Intel
On Friday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported Intel had been approached by fellow chip giant Qualcomm about a possible takeover. While any deal is described as “far from certain,” according to the paper’s unnamed sources, it would represent a tremendous fall for a company that had been the most valuable chip company in the world, based largely on its x86 processor technology that for years had triumphed over Qualcomm’s Arm chips outside of the phone space. ↫ Richard L … ⌘ Read more

Slowly booting full Linux on the Intel 4004 for fun, art, and absolutely no profit
Can you run Linux on the Intel 4004, the first commercially produced microprocessor, released to the world in 1971? Well, Dmitry Grinberg, the genius engineer who got Linux to run on all kinds of incredibly underpowered hardware, sought to answer this very important question. In short, yes, you can run Linux on the 4004, but much as with other extremely limited and bare … ⌘ Read more

Why Apple uses JPEG XL in the iPhone 16 and what it means for your hotos
The iPhone 16 family has arrived and includes many new features, some of which Apple has played very close to its vest. One such improvement is the inclusion of JPEG XL file types, which promise improved image quality compared to standard JPEG files while delivering relatively smaller file sizes. Overall, JPEG XL addresses many of JPEG’s shortcomings. The 30-year-old format is not very e … ⌘ Read more

Nintendo and The Pokémon Company file patent lawsuit against maker of hit game Palworld
Nintendo, together with The Pokémon Company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair, Inc. on September 18, 2024. This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights. ↫ Ninten … ⌘ Read more

DirectX adopting SPIR-V as the interchange format of the future
As we look to the future, maintaining a proprietary IR format (even one based on an open-source project) is counter to our commitments to open technologies, so Shader Model 7.0 will adopt SPIR-V as its interchange format. Over the next few years, we will be working to define a SPIR-V environment for Direct3D, and a set of SPIR-V extensions to support all of Direct3D’s current and future shader programming … ⌘ Read more

European Commission to order Apple to take interoperability measures after company refuses to comply with DMA
The European Commission has taken the next step in forcing Apple to comply with the Digital Markets Act. The EC has started two so-called specification proceedings, in which they can more or less order Apple exactly what it needs to do to comply with the DMA – in this case covering the interoperability obligation s … ⌘ Read more

GNOME 47 released with accent colours and completely new open/save file dialogs
The GNOME project has released their newest major version, GNOME 47, and while it’s not the most groundbreaking release, there’s still a ton of good stuff in here. Two features really stand our, with the first one being the addition of accent colours. Instead of being locked into the default GNOME blue accent colour, you can now choose between a variety of colours, which is … ⌘ Read more

Intel to spin off its chipmaking business
Intel’s woes are far from over. Pat Gelsinger, the company’s CEO, has announced that Intel’s chipmaking business will be spun off and turned into a separate company. A subsidiary structure will unlock important benefits. It provides our external foundry customers and suppliers with clearer separation and independence from the rest of Intel. Importantly, it also gives us future flexibility to evaluate independent sources of funding and optimize the … ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 13.4 released
FreeBSD 13.4 has been released. This is already the fifth release in the FreeBSD 13 series, and contains the usual set of security fixes, driver updates, important updated packages, like openssh, LLVM, clang, and so on. If you’re running FreeBSD 13, you already know how to upgrade, and if you want to start using FreeBSD 13, here’s the download page. ⌘ Read more

Things you really should know about Windows Input, but would rather not
Are you developing a game for Windows, and are you working on input handling? At first, it could reasonably be assumed that mouse and keyboard should be the simplest parts of this to deal with, but in reality, they are not – at least if we are talking about Windows. In fact, several extremely popular AAA games ship with severe mouse input issues when specific high-end mice are used, and som … ⌘ Read more

A brief history of QuickTime
We all know about the Desktop Publishing revolution that the first Macs and their PostScript LaserWriter printers brought in the late 1980s, but many have now forgotten the Desktop Video revolution that followed in the next decade. At its heart was support for multimedia in Apple’s QuickTime. QuickTime isn’t a single piece of software, or even an API in Classic Mac OS, but a whole architecture to support almost any media format you could conceive of. It defines container an … ⌘ Read more

Releasing Windows as open source is the only viable way forward for Microsoft, and it’s going happen
Last week, Julio Merino published an article I wish someone had written ages ago: a fair, unbiased look at the differences between Windows NT in its original form and UNIX roughly at the time of the initial releases of Windows NT. Merino, who has a long career in tech and has made contributions to several operating systems, does a gre … ⌘ Read more

Apple releases iOS/iPadOS 18, macOS 15, and a ton more
It’s Apple operating system release day, so if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, it’s like Christmas morning, but for your devices. The two major platforms are, of course, iOS/iPadOS 18: ‌iOS 18‌ adds new customization options for the Home Screen, with the option to arrange apps and widgets with open spaces and add new tints to app icons. Control Center has been entirely overhauled with support for multiple pages, third-party c … ⌘ Read more

Chrome on the Mac uses less battery than Safari
It’s one of the most pervasive common wisdoms shared all over the web, no matter where you go – it’s one of those things everybody seems to universally agree on: Chrome will absolutely devastate your battery life on the Mac, and you should really be using Safari, because Apple’s special integration magic pixie dust sprinkles ensures Safari sips instead of gulps electricity. Whether you read random forum posters, Apple PR spokespeople, o … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.11 released
Linus Torvalds just tagged the Linux 6.11 kernel as stable. There are many changes and new features in Linux 6.11 including numerous AMD CPU and GPU improvements, preparations for upcoming Intel platforms, initial block atomic write support for NVMe and SCSI drives, the DRM Panic infrastructure can now display a monochrome logo if desired, easier support for building Pacman kernel packages for Arch Linux, DeviceTree files for initial Snapdragon X1 laptops, and much more. ↫ Michael Larabel Es … ⌘ Read more

Haiku R1/beta5 released
It’s always a lovely day when it’s a Haiku release day – and sadly, those don’t come very often. Of course, Haiku’s nightlies tend to be rather solid so an official release isn’t really a must if you want to use Haiku, but if you were holding out for something more stable: Haiku has just released its fifth beta, Haiku R1/beta5. We’ve covered most of the new features and changes as they were developed, but since it’s been so long since the previous beta, we should cover some of the hi … ⌘ Read more

Google finally unveils its take on freeform windowing on Android
To empower tablet users to get more done, we’re enhancing freeform windowing, allowing them to run multiple apps simultaneously and resize windows for optimal multitasking. Today, we’re excited to share that desktop windowing on Android tablets is available in developer preview. For app developers, the concept of Android apps running in freeform windows has already existed with solutions like Samsung De … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft vaguely gestures in the general direction of giving security vendors more userspace tools
The consequences of the massive CrowdStrike failure for Windows are slowly coming into focus. Microsoft recently held a security summit with some of the large security software vendors, and the company is making several rather vague promises about what it’s going to do to make sure an incident like CrowdStrike never happens again. A k … ⌘ Read more

Android applications can now block being sideloaded
It seems Google is hell-bent on removing anything from Android that makes the platform stand apart from iOS. One of the features of Android and the Play Store that users of rooted and/or de-Googled phones will be familiar with is SafetyNet Attestation, something that Android applications can use to check, among other things, if the device it’s running on is rooted or not, and take any action from there based on that information. … ⌘ Read more

‘Holy smokes, I just released a MiniGolf game for Palm OS in 2024’
This summer, I embarked on a side project to create a brand-new Palm OS game, and after less than two months of intermittent coding, I’m excited to announce that it’s ready to be released to the public! ↫ Captain’s Quarters The game in question is a top-down minigolf game, and works on devices running Palm OS 3.5 and higher, in both monochrome and colour, and there’s high-resolution support for devices … ⌘ Read more

Chrome-based browsers highlight the risks of using third-party Firefox-based browsers
And the hits just keep on coming. After buying an ad tech company and working with Facebook to weaken Firefox’ privacy features, Mozilla is now integrating AI chatbots straight into Firefox with the recent release of Firefox 130. People are understandably big mad about this, and as such the calls for switching to alternatives is growing stronger. Considering the … ⌘ Read more

Mozilla extends Firefox support on unsupported Windows versions to March 2025
Not too long ago, Mozilla announced it was going to extend its support for Windows 7, and was mulling over extending support for Windows 8.x as well, without providing any time frames or details. Well, we’ve got the details now. According to the Firefox Release Calendar website, Firefox 115 ESR, the latest Firefox version with support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, will continue re … ⌘ Read more

Rust on illumos
With the recent Rust in Linux events in the last couple of days, it’s a good time to write up Rust in illumos. Both to spread the word a bit and also to set expectations for both sides (Rust and illumos/OpenIndiana devs) what is currently possible and what work would need to be invested to make things smooth. And also to let the Rust community know about what illumos people were talking about. What most of the talk currently is about, are the technical details. But we must not leave the social aspec … ⌘ Read more

MNT unveils MNT Reform Next
Earlier this year, I reviewed the excellent and unique MNT Reform laptop, an (almost) fully open source, very hackable laptop. MNT has just unveiled the upcoming follow-up to the Reform, called the Reform Next. Being highly performant, modular, and upgradeable, MNT Reform Next gives you more freedom than any other laptop. Swap modules, print your own case, customize your keyboard. Since we are committed to open hardware, all sources are public. While Classic MNT Reform is a p … ⌘ Read more

Make your own read-only device with NetBSD
For certain use cases, it’s advisable to set up a read-only root file system, which ensures better reliability in case of system issues. Think of scenarios like a router (critical for network access) or a caching reverse-proxy, such as the one described in my series “Make your own CDN“. While FreeBSD natively supports this configuration and some Linux distributions offer custom solutions (e.g., Alpine Linux), NetBSD stands out as an excellent cho … ⌘ Read more

AMD deprioritizing flagship gaming GPUs
I had a chance to speak to Jack Huynh, AMD’s senior vice president and general manager of the Computing and Graphics Business Group, during IFA 2024 in a question and answer session. Due to speculation that AMD won’t launch flagship GPUs for its next-gen lineup, I pressed Huynh for information regarding the company’s plans for the high-end GPU market with the RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 8000-series. His comments sketch out a plan focused specifically on g … ⌘ Read more

Redox 0.9.0 released
It’s been two years, but we finally have a proper new Redox release: the Redox team released version 0.9.0 today. Since we’ve been covering all the monthly progress reports from this Rust-based operating system for a long time now, we’ve already covered most of the improvements in this new release, so if you’ve been following along there shouldn’t be any major surprises in here, but let’s do a quick summary anyway just so we’re all up to speed. I think the primary thing anyone moving from … ⌘ Read more