ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

AI/LLM Usage Becoming A "Denial of Service Attack" On Open-Source Project Maintainers

([AI] 25 August 12:20 PM EDT Too Much Bug Reporting Spam)

The latest criticism of the increased burden placed on open-source software project maintainers caused by AI / LLM agents is around too many bug reports effectively causing a "denial of service" attack on project maintainers.



Benchmarking Some Incredible Performance Gains With Btrfs On Linux 7.3

([Software] 25 August 10:18 AM EDT 28 Comments)

With the Btrfs pull request for Linux 7.3 having delivered more performance optimizations with some ~3x and ~5x gains mentioned in specific areas, I was eager to test out the new Btrfs performance on the in-development kernel. In today's article are some benchmarks of Btrfs on Linux 7.2 stable compared to Linux 7.3 Git with some very enticing performance gains confirmed in various workloads.



Apple Launches The M6 2nm 12-core CPU, Quad-Die M5 Ultra

([Apple] 25 August 09:30 AM EDT Apple M6)

Apple today unveiled the M6 as their first 2nm SoC design while also introducing the M5 Ultra as their first quad-die product.



The Modern NTFS Linux Driver Adds Read Support For Windows System Compression (WOF)

([Linux Storage] 25 August 09:19 AM EDT Transparent WOF)

The pull requests for the existing Paragon NTFS3 kernel driver as well as the new modern "NTFS" drivers have been submitted for the ongoing Linux 7.3 kernel cycle. Besides bug fixes, most notable among these NTFS file-system drivers are Windows System Compression "WOF" read support for the modern NTFS driver.



Linux 7.3 Device Mapper Sees Many Fixes, Including Code Cleanups By Claude Opus

([Linux Storage] 25 August 08:22 AM EDT Linux 7.3 DM)

The Linux Device Mapper "DKM" framework for mapping block devices to higher-level virtual block devices doesn't see any major new features for Linux 7.3 but there are many bug fixes, including code clean-ups carried out by AI.



DisplayPort 2.1 ALPM Still Being Worked On For Intel Xe3P / Nova Lake

([Intel] 25 August 06:25 AM EDT DP 2.1 ALPM)

The in-development Linux 7.3 kernel is marking Nova Lake Xe3P graphics as stable in being enabled by default and no longer hidden behind the "force probe" flag. While on-by-default, there still are some features that have yet to land like the DisplayPort 2.1 ALPM functionality.



KDE Remote Desktop Experience Improving For Closing The X11 vs. Wayland Gap

([KDE] 25 August 06:00 AM EDT KDE Remote Desktop)

KDE developer David Edmundson is out today with a blog post around improvements that have been ongoing for the Plasma 6.8 release in improving the KDE remote desktop experience. As part of ensuring a good Wayland experience and hitting all the needs fulfilled by X11, Plasma 6.8 is seeing improvements for its remote desktop functionality.



Lots Of New Audio Hardware Support In Linux 7.3

([Multimedia] 25 August 05:51 AM EDT Linux 7.3 Sound)

Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE submitted all of the sound feature updates last week for the Linux 7.3 kernel. Besides the continued AI/LLM-generated patch churn, the sound code for Linux 7.3 sees a lot of new hardware support.



Linux 7.3 Merges Initial Kernel Driver Support For The 2026 Steam Controller

([Hardware] 24 August 08:33 PM EDT Linux 7.3 HID)

The HID subsystem updates were recently merged for the ongoing Linux 7.3 kernel merge window. Among other hardware additions, the 2026 Valve Steam Controller is seeing initial kernel driver support.



Linux ath11k Driver Improvements For Qualcomm WiFi 6 Hardware Yields 7x Lower Latency

([Linux Networking] 24 August 03:29 PM EDT ath11k)

A patch series being worked on for the ath11k mainline wireless networking driver for Qualcomm WiFi 6 / 802.11ax chipsets is yielding 7x lower latency or 2.2x throughput at identical latency.



New AF_ALG Restrictions With Linux 7.3 Due To The Security & Maintenance Nightmare

([Linux Networking] 24 August 02:17 PM EDT af_alg_restrict)

The past few Linux kernel cycles have chipped away at AF_ALG functionality for that interface for user-space programs to access the kernel's internal cryptography API. Linux has been dropping AF_ALG features like zero-copy support and offloading. AF_ALG was quickly deprecated in Linux 7.2 while now for Linux 7.3 it's being further restricted.



Mozilla Presents Their Plan For Shipping JPEG-XL In Firefox 157

([Mozilla] 24 August 12:43 PM EDT Firefox + JPEG-XL)

While Firefox 152+ already offers experimental JPEG-XL support, Mozilla formally announced today their plans for officially shipping JPEG-XL image format support in the Firefox web browser.



Early Linux 7.3 Kernel Benchmarks Show Some Performance Improvements, Some Regressions

([Software] 24 August 09:38 AM EDT 6 Comments)

Being halfway through the Linux 7.3 kernel merge window and prior to wrapping up and sending back the HP Z4 G6i workstation powered by the Xeon 678X Granite Rapids WS processor, I decided to run some benchmarks to see how Linux 7.3 Git is performing relative to the prior stable kernel series. Here are the first benchmarks of this early state of Linux 7.3 with some performance improvements as well as some regressions.



GNU Emacs 31.1 Released With Mouse Control Enabled By Default, Theme For New Users

([GNU] 24 August 07:55 AM EDT Emacs 31.1)

GNU Emacs 31.1 is out today as the newest feature release to this popular text editor.



VKD3D 2.1 Released With New Features For Direct3D 12 In Upstream Wine

([WINE] 24 August 06:34 AM EDT VKD3D 2.1)

VKD3D 2.1 was released today by CodeWeavers' Henri Verbeet as the upstream Wine project for getting Direct3D 12 implemented over the Vulkan API.



Intel Engineers Propose DRM Fabric For Linux

([Intel] 24 August 06:26 AM EDT DRM Fabric)

Coincidentally just days after AMD posted their big UALink patch series for Linux, Intel engineers today announced a proposal called DRM Fabric.



Linux 7.3 Adds Support For Several Newer RISC-V Extensions

([RISC-V] 24 August 06:12 AM EDT Linux 7.3 RISC-V)

With the in-development Linux 7.3 is support for discovering and enumerating support for several newer RISC-V ISA extensions. Plus there are improvements to its control flow integrity Shadow Stack handling, CPU context switch support for QoS tagging, using UEFI runtime services for restart and powering off, and other improvements.



AMD k10temp Driver Adds EPYC Zen 5 Per-CCD Temperature Monitoring With Linux 7.3

([Hardware] 24 August 05:56 AM EDT Linux 7.3 HWMON)

Merged last week for the Linux 7.3 kernel were all the hardware monitoring (HWMON) driver updates for Linux 7.3, which included supporting several more ASUS desktop motherboards, a few AIO liquid cooling products, more Lenovo system support, and per-CCD temperature monitoring on AMD EPYC 9005 server processors.



Linux 7.3 Improving RAID 5/6 Benchmark-Based Algorithm Selection

([Linux Storage] 23 August 08:38 PM EDT Better Performance)

Following the main set of memory management "MM" changes submitted for Linux 7.3, Andrew Morton sent in his "non-MM" pull request of the other patches he's been collecting from various developers for this next Linux kernel release. Standing out there were some improvements to the RAID 5/6 benchmark-based algorithm selection.



Linux 7.3 Better Protects Against Buggy EFI Firmware Taking Down The Rest Of User-Space

([Linux Kernel] 23 August 03:05 PM EDT EFI Indefinite Stall)

The EFI updates were merged today for the in-development Linux 7.3 kernel. Most notable with the EFI updates is now enforcing a timeout foe EFI runtime service completions rather than potentially hanging indefinitely.



More

HARVARD:
Quarterback:
Sophomore Dave Strewzinski... likes to pass. And pass he does, with
a record 86 attempts (three completions) in 87 plays.... Though Strewzinksi
has so far failed to score any points for the Crimson, his jackrabbit speed
has made him the least sacked quarterback in the Ivy league.
Wide Receiver:
The other directional signal in Harvard's offensive machine is senior
Phil Yip, who is very fast. Yip is so fast that he has set a record for being
fast. Expect to see Yip elude all pursuers and make it into the endzone five
or six times, his average for a game. Yip, nicknamed "fumblefingers" and "you
asshole" by his teammates, hopes to carry the ball with him at least one of
those times.
YALE:
Defense:
On the defensive side, Yale boasts the stingiest line in the Ivies.
Primarily responsible are seniors Izzy "Shylock" Bloomberg and Myron
Finklestein, the tightest ends in recent Eli history. Also contributing to
the powerful defense is junior tackle Angus MacWhirter, a Scotsman who rounds
out the offensive ethnic joke. Look for these three to shut down the opening
coin toss.
-- Harvard Lampoon 1988 Program Parody, distributed at The Game