Under my bed is a giant box of CDs that I’ve been meaning to rip for years. Some aren’t on Spotify, some are, but not the right version and one is by an artist I’m half convinced is a folk memory – perhaps the Mandela effect in action. Laser is a new GTK4/libadwatia CD ripping application for Linux that’s coaxed me into getting on with the job. It’s not just old timers who may have need. CD sales in the UK are booming as younger buyers put off by the gentrified price of vinyl turn to cheaper physical formats. A […]

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The latest update to Calibre, the popular open-source ebook manager, features an AI-powered writing game. Calibre v9.15’s “Create Your Own Adventure” mode, per the release notes, lets you build a fictional world and hand control of it to an AI who will manage it in real time based on your responses. A bit like old text-based RPGs, I guess. The changelog notes, with obvious understatement, that the feature is “a little different” from Calibre’s usual fare, adding it began as a way for developers to test the tool’s AI backend before developing into “something fun to use”. Like all AI […]

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If you are interested in the story of upgrading a 28 year old debian install with raids of spinning rust drives from 2TB with 26 SCSI SCA drives to 60TB of SATA spinning rust to 18 4TB SSDs to save power and move off randomly failing drives, this first upgrade story shows a failed attempt with a raspberry pi5 which could not sustain a 4way M2 PCI splitter and 18 SSDs: https://marc.merlins.org/perso...But this second attempt with a 4 M2 NVME CWWK N355 mini server, worked. Amazing how small those servers are now and what they can do with barely more power use: https://marc.merlins.org/perso...Also, hat to debian for having allowed me to run the same Linux install for 29 years without any re-install

CNN is reporting that an AI hallucination of Chinese nuclear components almost led to US military attack on a Chinese ship. The intelligence report, circulated across the US military this spring in the midst of the war with Iran, immediately set off alarm bells: A Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program. The US military swung into action with plans to intercept the vessel, according to four sources familiar with the episode. According to two of the sources, armed members of the US military were preparing to board the ship. Military planes were in the air, one of those sources and another source familiar with the incident said. It was only just before the planned operation that officials dug deeper into the report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) — and that a chatbot the analyst had used inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying. CNN was not able to learn what the misidentified cargo was. The report, according to one of the sources, was “entirely false.” But it also “almost started a war,” the source said. Any US operation against a Chinese vessel could have risked spiraling into an armed conflict between the two nations. The kind of “hallucination” that the tool used by the analyst in this case conjured has not been an isolated incident across the intelligence community since these tools began proliferating across government, according to one of the sources.

The European Commission has proposed the EU KIDS Act.

It is yet another set of Internet/web regulation proposals to examine, for jurisdictional overreach, lack of common sense in terms of material scope, and so on.

It is only a proposal currently

It is only a legislative proposal at the moment, so it may not become law, and it may not become law in this form.

Based on a quick skim, this is indeed another fine mess, full of unrealistic expectations.

It has an incredibly broad scope

The proposal covers a lot of services:

• online social networking services;
• video-sharing platform services;
• software application stores
• online games;
• operating systems;
• AI companions;
• general conversational chatbots.

I have read this from the perspective of online social networking services, thinking predominantly about Mastodon and other fediverse services.

At least code forges are out of scope (“open-source software-developing and-sharing platforms”).

And Wikipedia seems to have its own bespoke exemption (“not-for-profit online encyclopaedias”).

Small, low risk services are in scope. The covering material specifically notes:

small and micro enterprises are not exempted from this Regulation, since they may equally provide harms to minors. It would undermine the objective of this proposal to exclude them from scope

Wow. I wonder if the drafters will realise just how harmful this is.

In terms of territorial scope, it is broader than the EU GDPR, and indeed the UK’s Online Safety Act, purporting to apply

to providers of services irrespective of where they have their place of establishment where they offer those services to recipients of the service that have their place of establishment or are located in the Union

I wonder if anyone working on this stopped to think about the boundaries of their laws, and whether they really think that they can impose obligations on people in other countries, merely because that person is running a service which happens to be available to people in the EU?

Do I, as someone who runs my own fedi server, where people in the EU can read my toots and respond to them from their own instance, fall into scope? I do not know.

The proposal would appear to demand age verification for the fediverse

Providers of online social networking services … shall not allow a natural person below the age of 15 years to create an account with that service or to access that service by means of an account, created for, or attributed to, that person, where the service poses a risk to the privacy, safety or security of a minor below that age. (Article 6(1))

The tests for “poses a risk” set an incredibly low threshold, and include:

enables recipients who access the service through an account to transmit content in real-time to an indeterminate number of other recipients of the service, including through live streaming of audio-visual content

and

enables recipients who access the service through an account to contact, communicate and otherwise interact with other recipients of the service not part of the recipient’s pre-existing connections or subscriptions

So a “papers, please” web would become the norm, according to this.

Some of the obligations are just unrealistic

For example:

When creating an account for a minor pursuant to paragraph 2 of this Article, the provider of online social networking services … shall take measures to establish whether the person creating the account is the holder of parental responsibility over that minor in accordance with Article 26 and verify that the recipient of the service has reached the age of 13 years in accordance with Article 28(1). (Article 6(3))

Article 26 sets out how the European Commission envisages this working, but, wow, I just don’t see it.

A watershed for the web?

Harking back to (what should be the exceptionalism of) broadcast regulation, there’s another banger:

Providers of online social networking services… shall put in place effective measures to ensure:

1. time-limited access for minors on their service;

2. interruption of usage by minors on their service.

Such measures shall be designed in a way that protects school time and core sleep hours of minors.

(Article 9)

Sorry, I have to turn off my fedi server now, because a child in a different timezone might be heading off to bed and my toots might be distracting…

Unrealistic requirements

Some of the proposals seem to relate to core browser functionality:

Providers of online social networking services … shall put in place measures to ensure that settings are set by default to a high level of privacy, security and safety of minors. To ensure compliance with this paragraph, such providers shall, by default, turn off at least the following settings:

…

2. access to microphone and camera

and

other recipients of the service shall not be able to download or take screenshots of contact, location or account information of minors or of any content uploaded or shared by minors on the service;

I have no idea how the drafters of this expect the provider of a social media service available via a web browser to restrict screenshots of everything posted by a user. It is not within their gift.

The only way to make this work would be either to force all access to be via an app (which would be daft), or preclude child access (which has age verification challenges).

Child use restrictions

Some of the use restrictions would seem very challenging:

Providers of online social networking services … shall put measures in place that ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security of minors as regards contacts between minors and other recipients of the service. Those measures shall at least ensure that:

other recipients of the service are not able to initiate direct contact with the minor, if the minor has not pre-approved such contact

So a 17 year old here posts something interest. No-one is able to interact with their post, unless the 17 year hold has “pre-approved” it.

Oh, don’t worry, you won’t be able to see their post anyway:

by default, other recipients of the service not previously accepted by the minor shall not be able to access account information of the minor or content uploaded or shared by the minor on the service

Edit, Microsoft’s open-source command-line text editor, added syntax highlighting, improved regex handling in Find & Replace and new editing shortcuts in its v2.0.0 update. Microsoft open-sourced Edit last year. It’s a small, cross-platform text editor with VS Code-style keybindings, mouse support, handles LF and CRLF line endings and lets you open multiple file. The clean terminal user interface (TUI) is super easy to use. The Edit v2.0.0 release came out earlier this year, but the unofficial Linux snap package (msedit, maintained by Canonical’s Aaron Prisk) only updated on 14 September – that update is how I heard a new version […]

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In the mood for testing? The fourth monthly snapshot of Ubuntu 26.10 is now available for download. It’s unusual for Ubuntu to produce a snapshot the same month a beta release is due, and this is also the second snapshot published this month: Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 3 arrived in early September. Strange times with the Stonking Stingray! “These should be very close to what the Beta candidates will look like next week, so don’t shy away from testing them”, said Canonical’s Utkarsh Gupta in the mailing list announcement. Since Snapshot 3, more package updates have been updated: the GNOME 51 […]

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Miracle-wm v0.11.0 gains a fancy new overview mode inspired by GNOME Shell. For those unfamiliar with miracle-wm, it’s a tiling window manager built around the Wayland compositor Mir, created to be a “hackable and flashy” alternative to other tiling WMs, like hyprland and sway. The overview mode gives users an easy way to select windows and workspaces. One tap of the action key (configured in the config file) enters a window selector, while a double tap of the action key will enter a workspace selector. Once open, windows and workspaces can be navigated using keyboard shortcuts, mouse scroll wheel or […]

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'Scientists have solved the mystery of when black holes “burp” – when the astronomical bodies launch jets after feeding on stars, blasting material enormous distances in space.'Scientists know from rare observations of stars being torn apart by black holes – a process that involves a stretching effect known as “spaghettification” – that “only about half of the star that gets too close to the back hole will end up eventually being swallowed by that black hole”, Goodwin said.'The other material is launched back into space in powerful jets and outflows, sometimes so large they “can influence the entire evolution of a galaxy”, she said. “You can think of it as a black hole burp.”'

During the annual Air Force Association Air, Space, and Cyber Conference outside Washington D.C., senior U.S. military officials publicly acknowledged on-orbit weapons in orbit and laid out the need to be prepared for conflict out to cislunar space. In a speech to senior US Air Force and US Space Force officers, allied officers, and senior defense industry officials, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink acknowledged the orbital weapons in a speech, saying “Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist... This is why the United States now has, on orbit, space-control weapons, capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversaries.” In a separate speech, General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged the expanding battlefield the U.S. military must be prepared to fight in: “Our task, my friends, is to adapt right now, so the Joint Force is prepared to fight, endure, and win, in global contested environments, from the seabed to cislunar space." One article notes that "while top Space Force officials have provided few details about how U.S. forces would fight between the Earth and its moon, they have been vocal about adding sensors and capabilities to watch adversary movements there." Aaron Brynildson, a professor of space law at the University of Mississippi notes that US military officials are motivated by peer competitor activities, particularly China. “There’s a fear that recent Chinese activity on the moon and in cislunar space might outpace the United States,” Brynildson said. “China has a relay satellite in cislunar space and is performing robotic missions on the far side of the moon.” Lt. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, the head of Combat Forces Command at US Space Force, acknowledges that concern, saying “Our adversaries, our potential adversaries, such as the PRC, are actively pursuing activities in the cislunar parts of space. So that's sort of the expansion, if you will, of I would say the end zone, if you will, in the football game..." Brynildson raises concerns about the current ambiguity around the lack of laws and policy governing space weapons. “It’s unclear what the legal restraints on the use of kinetic or non-kinetic weapons in space might be. The Outer Space Treaty doesn’t give us great answers to what factors a military action must consider,” he said. “The DoD Law of War Manual is also non-committal on the unique aspects of the space domain. At a minimum, general principles from the law of armed conflict would apply, such as only striking military-related satellites, avoiding collateral damage to civilians, etc... Ultimately, I think the first space conflict might be the time when most of these rules get written."

In its move to cut back or "modernize" regulations, the NRC is proposing rules that relax drug or alcohol testing. More than 1,100 nuclear plant works failed those tests last year while hundreds more were caught trying to cheat.

Windows 11 KB5121003 allegedly corrupts BIOS leading to installation fails on HP systems “The thread, on Microsoft's official support forum, got upvoted by many who were likely facing the same issue. One of the users on the thread, KP, commented that they too were facing a similar problem on their Omnibook X 14-KC0013DX, a 14 inch model HP device. The user adds that HP support confirmed to them that Microsoft's update apparently corrupted the BIOS, and as such, they had to reset the BIOS settings to default to fix the issue.”

Ebola disease outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo “On 13 September 2026, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) published a situation update reporting a total of 7 200 confirmed cases, including 3 475 related deaths (from data up until 12 September). A total of 923 patients are hospitalised in isolation. This represents an increase of 258 new confirmed cases and 126 deaths since the previous ECDC report on 11 September (reporting data up until 10 September). In total, 88% of identified case contacts are under follow-up in the affected provinces. Overall, 62 of 167 health zones are currently affected across the seven provinces.”

GNOME 51 is out, bringing FIDO2 passkey login, a Reduced Motion option and frame scheduling changes that make UI animations and scrolling feel smoother. Core apps pick up improvements too. The desktop Maps app gains offline area downloads and live transit data, Papers now lets you add visual signatures and Nautilus speeds up the loading of large folders. While this is a more modest release than we’ve become accustomed to – some planned changes, like a GTK4 port of Disks and a slider to change touchpad scroll speed, didn’t make it in – there is still plenty to look out […]

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While much of the automatic license plate readerâ(TM)s (ALPR) most sensitive storage remained encrypted and inaccessible, the joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The camera can produce dozens of images of a single passing vehicle and, according to several weeks of recovered logs, generated more than a million images. Its computer-vision software also sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics, including, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclistâ(TM)s saddlebag.

Spain’s data protection regulator is investigating what may be the first reported personal-data breach executed through an AI agent. According to the filing, the agent allegedly chained together a successful login, vulnerability discovery, modification of personal data, and access to invoices.Details remain limited, and researchers caution against assuming a “rogue AI” scenario. Still, the incident raises a consequential question for defenders: as attackers use agents to plan, execute, and adapt at machine speed, will traditional human-led detection and response remain fast enough?

A couple weeks ago PCMag, and others, wrote articles along the lines of: "Microsoft Finally Backs Down: The Windows 11 Taskbar Update You've Been Waiting For". This is currently implemented with CU KB5120998 and since M$ has elected to defer "activation" of this feature--some two weeks later for most users it still needs to be enabled by the ViVe tool: vivetool /enable /id:59213768,61090762Um, No...The fundamental set of [lost] attributes that this "We brought Movable TaskBar back" lacks:You can not control the position of the TaskBar on each desktop monitor--example: I have four displays on my desktop, three Landscape & one of which is in a Portrait orientation for reading documents.With Windows7/8/10 you could position the TaskBar so that it was "Out of the way" and each display--on the right side of the right-most Landscape, on the left for the left-most Landscape display, & on the top/bottom for the Portrait. [same as my desktop on my Linux workstation]Now you still get the same Taskbar alignment on all desktops.You can not "resize" the taskbar. (well, you can--it has three sizes: too big, too small, and really way too small) For the previous three generations of the OS you could "Drag-Select" and resize the TaskBar to be the correct size for your needs on your desktop. [...just as I can on my KDE Desktop!]With this implementation, 1/3 of the Taskbar real estate is consumed with "TaskBar-Tray Notification Icons."Nobody asked for a partial, broken, re-implementation. The ask was: "Put it Back as it was!"Dealing with M$ is pretty much like getting your 15 year old to do their chores on garbage night.

A new beta of Orion for Linux, the native WebKitGTK port of Kagi’s iOS and Mac web browser, is out. Orion Beta v0.4.3 continues to flesh out the browser’s feature set to reach parity with its Apple kin. You can now customise the toolbar. A context menu option was present in earlier beta builds but opened a button picker that wasn’t functional – now it is. Drag items out of the ‘current toolbar’ area on the palette to remove them, or drag ones from the palette to the top block to add them. You can re-order buttons by dragging too. […]

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"OpenAI will not go public in 2026, Chief Executive Sam Altman said in remarks published on Saturday, citing safety concerns over artificial intelligence that render "unacceptable" even a 10% risk that AI could cause human extinction by decade's end... "I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don't feel pressure on that," Altman told business magazine Fortune."While Altman and other AI model company executives have been talking up "safety" concerns, there has been no mention of other AI model questions, such as multiple mathematicians accusing OpenAI of stealing their work and claiming it as their own, a charge OpenAI excuses rather denies in any way. Nor that spending billions of dollars a quarter to develop new AI models has made AI model companies like OpenAI deeply unprofitable, not traditionally a sales pitch seen in major IPOs.