When it comes to open source and AI, we almost always look West. While a lot happens in the United States and some in Europe, the East is not lagging either.

In the recently concluded LEAP East conference, several startups and enterprises came together to showcase their innovations and share what they were building.

Out of them, openEuler caught our attention for its focus on Open Source AI.

The SuperPoD

At LEAP East 2026, openEuler showcased its SuperPoD OS, which extends operating-system support for UnifiedBus-based SuperPoD computing systems.

Think of a SuperPoD as a cluster of several powerful computers that need to act like one giant machine. Running AI workloads takes computing power and doing it across hundreds of such machines is messy as they need to share memory, pass data around quickly, and not conflict with each other.

UB Service Core is the open-source software layer, part of the openEuler ecosystem, that makes coordination across those machines actually work. It provides five cluster-level system services for UnifiedBus-based SuperPoDs: Engine, Memory, Communication, I/O, and Virtualization.

The Engine pools memory and DPU resources across the cluster and schedules them dynamically. It also handles automatic failover so the system keeps running if a node goes down.

The Memory component lets machines within a UnifiedBus-based SuperPoD share and pool memory using unified-memory programming, meaning software can treat distributed memory as a single addressable space.

The Communication piece provides high-performance networking over UnifiedBus while staying compatible with standard Socket and Verbs interfaces, so existing applications don't need to be rewritten to benefit from it.

The I/O service handles global data read/write caching at a high level, which matters for workloads like AI inference that repeatedly access large shared datasets.

The Virt component covers virtualization pooling, decides live-migration policy (when and how to move a running VM to another machine), supports disaster recovery, and improves communication efficiency between VMs and containers.

Together, these five services give a SuperPoD cluster the coordination it needs to perform like a single well-organized system, with a claimed 30-50% performance gain over conventional architectures.

According to openEuler, UB Service Core can improve application performance by 30–50% by taking advantage of the peer-to-peer UnifiedBus interconnect architecture.

This SuperPod or UB Service Core is fully open source under the openEuler umbrella.

Agentic AI in the OS

openEuler is evolving toward an AgentOS model. In openEuler 24.03 LTS SP4, DevStation (desktop variant of openEuler) includes openEuler Intelligence, a desktop AI assistant that uses an agent runtime and MCP-based tools to support development and system operations.

Pre-built agent harnessing in the operating system is not uncommon these days. openEuler 24.03's built-in AI agent can be used to control the Linux system.

So, instead of doing things manually, by mouse clicks, you could just ask the agent to dim the brightness, lower the volume, or change the wallpaper. The built-in AI agent has custom skills to control the system settings in openEuler's UKUI desktop environment.

This is a work in progress. But the direction is clear. AI agent should soon be able to let you control the system instead of doing things manually.

Expanding into a community-based ecosystem

openEuler has launched openEuler Hong Kong User Group to bring together developers, researchers, and organizations in Hong Kong to connect, share experiences, and explore open-source innovation together.

openEuler is an open-source project incubated and operated by the OpenAtom Foundation. The community is expanding international collaboration through local user groups, industry partnerships, and participation in global open-source events. The Hong Kong User Group represents another step in openEuler’s efforts to encourage local participation and international collaboration.

The European Space Agency is moving "full steam ahead" with development of a robotic mission to Venus after NASA officials determined they were unlikely to fulfill a commitment to provide a US-built radar instrument for the spacecraft, the mission's project scientist said.

The European orbiter, named Envision, will map the Venusian surface at 10 times higher resolution than the last radar mission sent to Venus by NASA in the 1990s. The planet is enshrouded in a blanket of thick clouds of sulfuric acid, rendering its mysterious surface unseen by optical cameras in orbit. Radar is the most effective way to penetrate the clouds of Venus to reveal the terrain below, and scientists will use Envision to look for signs of active volcanism.

NASA and ESA signed a memorandum of understanding in 2024 outlining their partnership on Envision. NASA agreed to supply a US-made synthetic aperture radar instrument, Envision's primary means of mapping the surface of Venus, along with providing tracking and communications support through NASA's Deep Space Network. In exchange, ESA would include US researchers on Envision's science team. Europe would build the Envision spacecraft and the rest of its science instruments and provide the launch on an Ariane 6 rocket.

Read full article

Comments

Uh oh. Steam achievement lists for a smorgasbord of unreleased and unannounced PC games appear to have leaked via trophy tracking site Exophase. Atlus RPG Persona 6, RGG brawler Stranger Than Heaven, and Thief: The Dark Project Remastered have all seemingly had their trophies blabbed by the leak, with more imminent releases like Control Resonant, Silent Hill: Townfall, and Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve also affected.

Read more

Sixty years after television audiences first tuned in to see the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, an astronaut on board the International Space Station has paid tribute to Star Trek by flying the badge of the franchise's latest fictional captain.

Expedition 75 flight engineer Sophie Adenot with European Space Agency (ESA) donned the Delta badge originally worn by actor Anson Mount for a video recorded from aboard the space station. Mount portrays Christoper Pike in the Paramount+ streaming series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Paramount and ESA both released the clip on their Instagram feeds.

"For 60 years, Star Trek has brought us stories of friendship and exploration. I'm wearing Captain Pike's badge aboard the ISS in celebration of continuing the real world work of science and exploration," said Adenot. "For me, exploration and science are about curiosity and cooperation daring to go a little farther together, learning from what we discover and build, and turning that knowledge into a better future for everyone."

Read full article

Comments

Look, before you say it, I know. Persona 4 Golden is held up by some as one of the best and most important RPGs ever. After all, it was the series' Final Fantasy 7 moment, where many of the mechanical and thematic threads of the earlier games finally knitted together and became something greater than their parts. You step into the shoes of Yu Narukami, a Japanese transfer student freshly arrived in Inaba. There, you use your limited time to make friends, study for your exams, and dive into a metaphysical dimension to turn-based battle the literal manifestations of your friends and rivals' twisted perceptions of themselves. Its story and characters particularly celebrated for their honest and painful looks inward at the parts of ourselves best left unseen. I’m a fraud for not having played it yet, with that sin only compounded by having had it in my Steam family sharing library for years. I have no excuse. I’ll face the shame-filled shadow version of myself, eventually.

Read more

While it's never been confirmed, some cut voice lines from the original release of Persona 4 indicated that once upon a time, the protagonist's right-hand party member Yosuke was romanceable. Instead what we ended up getting was a mostly quite homophobic character who never really moves past that mentality, though the upcoming Personal 4 Revival will apparently be changing Yosuke a bit. Though one thing it won't be doing, apparently, is adding that romance back in, even if the devs did consider it.

Read more

Remember the original Quest headset that Meta (then Oculus) trumpeted back in 2019? Meta seems to hope you don't, since the company officially stopped supporting the wireless VR headset in 2023 to focus on the more popular Quests 2 and 3. However, tinkerers haven't abandoned the hardware and recently released a new root-access exploit and bootloader that gives "developers and enthusiasts full control over Quest 1 hardware."

The QuestStack project integrates previously known vulnerabilities in the Quest's Android fastboot process into a privilege escalation chain that leads easily to full root access on the device. The bootloading process is now streamlined enough that it can be completed without any downloads through a web interface after connecting the headset to a PC.

With this exploit, the original Quest hardware can now be officially divorced from any reliance on Meta's servers or services to be useful. That means enterprising Quest owners should be able to sideload apps without needing to register for a Meta Developer account and activating Developer Mode through Meta's mobile app. It also means users should be able to go through the initial setup and login steps for a fresh Quest headset even if and when Meta decides to shut down the servers that currently support this process.

Read full article

Comments

September 11, 2001, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in American history. As the 25th anniversary approaches, National Geographic, in collaboration with the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, is marking the occasion with a new documentary miniseries: 9/11: Reunited. The three-episode series revisits the personal stories of several survivors of the terrorist attacks, with a twist: It reunites people whose paths crossed at that time to celebrate the bonds they formed 25 years ago.

Director Julian Jones was a producer on NatGeo's Emmy-winning 2021 documentary miniseries 9/11: One Day in America. The experience inspired him to return to direct 9/11: Reunited. "What emerged for me [while making the 2021 documentary] was a sense of people showing up for each other, a selflessness and everyday heroism," Jones told Ars. As the 25th anniversary of the attacks approached, he and National Geographic decided to commemorate the milestone with a documentary series focused on that aspect.

"We wanted to bring people together to offer gratitude to each other, to answer unanswered questions, to talk about things that maybe they weren't ready to talk about until now, and also to remember their fallen comrades or friends," said Jones. "After 25 years, who do they want to meet? What questions have they got? I think we also wanted to tell the story of what many in the 9/11 community call 9/12, that's the rest of your lives—the journey, and in many cases, the psychological and physical struggles."

Read full article

Comments

It was a busy first day at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, in Anaheim, California, with Marvel Studios releasing the first trailer for VisionQuest. We also got the first teaser for Ahsoka S2; the public release of the Avengers: Doomsday special footage featured last month for attendees only at San Diego Comic-Con; a special sneak peek (for attendees only) for Star Wars: Starfighter; casting news for the MCU's X-Men movie; and a trailer for an animated special, LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian, coming to Disney+ next month.

(Some spoilers below. One MAJOR spoiler for Spider-Man: Brand New Day; we'll give you a heads-up when we get there.)

VisionQuest

Marvel's streaming TV portfolio has kind of been all over the place: a handful of hits, a few misses, and a bunch of middling offerings. One of the standout hits was WandaVision, followed by an excellent sequel (of sorts), Agatha All Along. VisionQuest will complete the trilogy. Yes, Vision (Paul Bettany) died in Infinity War, but WandaVision resurrected an all-white version whose memories were restored in the finale. We finally get to learn what happened afterward.

Read full article

Comments

There is a lot of excitement and some trepidation among The X-Files fans about Ryan Coogler's reboot for Hulu, currently in production. While we're waiting, Hulu just released Chris Carter's revamped (and R-rated) director's cut of the 2008 standalone spinoff film The X-Files: I Want to Believe, distinguishable from its predecessor with a slightly different title: The X-Files: I Want to Believe–Vrach Frankenshteyn.

(Minor spoilers below but no major reveals.)

I Want to Believe received mixed reviews at its release and didn’t exactly light up the box office, but it still grossed $68 million against its $30 million budget. By 2015, the project led to the return of The X-Files as a limited-run TV series, with the six-episode season 10 debuting in 2016. Mulder and Scully were reunited 14 years after the events of season 9 as the FBI reopened the X-Files under Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi). The response was strong enough to warrant a follow-up ten-episode season in 2018, focusing on Mulder and Scully’s search for their missing son, William.

Read full article

Comments

It is time to confront the terrible truth that I once took part in a school fashion show. I ran in two categories, Ballroom and Street, a serious test of range for a kid who had only just mastered the daredevil technique of wearing a shirt without a tie. In the Ballroom bracket, I was asked to do a waltz in an Indian wedding gown provided by a local sponsor who, I can only assume, immediately went out of business after the event. In Street, I had to wear a Gap hoodtop and shoot a fire-eater (one of the Cool Teachers) with a Super Soaker, while some other lost soul moonwalked down the runway in a golden suit.

In retrospect, I am filing all this under the secret umbrella category of God's Greatest Mistake. There is exactly no photographic evidence, and I will thank you not to search for any on Facebook. It's so much less upsetting being a fashion model in Dance of Theseus, which might sound weird given that in Dance of Theseus, you don't just swap outfits – you graft on new heads, arms and legs, either bought from sniffy griffon dressmakers or moulded together out of seashells, horned skulls, and scraps of shimmering hide. Created by Shanghai-based Citreat Studio, it's a cheerful, colourful and somehow unrevolting life sim RPG with a kind of Balatro-esque Frankensteinmaxxing element. I've been playing the demo, and it's both entertaining and a source of endless inspiration. Argh, if only I'd had access to this, when I was 16!!!

Read more

I don't truly want to say a bad word about Vampire Survivors. I've adored the many hours I've spent in its endearingly slapdash dungeons. It's also responsible for spawning a thousand imitators, many of which I have also poured hours of my life into playing. But, for all of its joys and successes, I can't defend its lack of railguns.

I don't know what Poncle were thinking when they let you loose on a world filled with monsters and ghouls and didn't arm you with an electromagnetic gun that launches projectiles at more than 3 km/s.

It may not be a stake doused in holy water, but I reckon the railgun in Seven Suns Of Orion would do just as good of a job against Dracula.

Read more

The wildfires afflicting communities across the world can now be tracked more easily by anyone using Europe’s free and open satellite imagery service—all thanks to a wildfire visualization script originating from nearly a decade ago.

The Copernicus Browser provides free access to the latest satellite imagery taken by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites for the European Union’s Earth observation program. The three satellites of the Sentinel-2 mission have proven especially useful for wildfire monitoring by providing multi-spectral imaging at resolutions as granular as 10 meters in visible light and near-infrared bands—and the Copernicus Browser previously offered 10 default visualization layers using different combinations of spectral bands.

Now Copernicus Browser has also added a straightforward “wildfires” visualization layer for Sentinel-2 imagery that went live on August 4. Anyone clicking on this layer while looking at a wildfire location can see active fires in white or yellow, burning vegetation in red, and burned landscapes in dark brown or black.

Read full article

Comments

Snails are well-known for their mucus. The slime is highly valued as an anti-inflammatory and anti-aging ingredient in certain skin care products, and snails can secrete different kinds of mucus with properties tailored to specific functions. A team of German scientists has determined a recipe for how snails achieve that so-called tunability: Collagen and calcium work in tandem to achieve the varying mechanical properties, according to a new paper in the journal Science.

Snail mucus is mostly water; it's the mucins (glycoproteins) and complex carbohydrates that give it that slimy, viscous texture. In addition to cosmetics, the mucus holds great potential for drug delivery. In 2020, scientists found that combining snail slime from a common garden snail with gold nanoparticles helped accelerate wound healing and exhibited anti-inflammatory properties in mice. Most relevant to this latest paper is a 2023 study on garden snail slime that identified three distinct types of secreted mucus: a hydrating version to protect its skin, one that acts as an adhesive glue, and a third that serves as a lubricant so the snail can more easily glide across a surface.

The team focused their research efforts on the grove snail/lemon snail (Cepaea nemoralis), which they deemed well-suited as subjects because the snails secrete five different kinds of mucus with distinct functions. As with the garden snails, there is one that acts as a lubricant to help with locomotion and an adhesive mucus to help the snail stick to various surfaces. Then there's a mucus layer known as the epiphragm that the snail secretes when it hibernates in winter, which contains calcite and effectively seals the shell to protect the snail from predators and harsh environmental conditions.

Read full article

Comments

A lot of the AI work in biology has been focused on designing proteins. That's partly because proteins do most of the business of life, catalyzing the interesting chemistry and structuring cells. So, figuring out how to make a new protein can mean directly tinkering with biochemistry, providing new and potentially useful functions.

Since the genetic code provides a layer of abstraction between DNA and proteins, it wasn't obvious what a model trained on DNA could do. Yet people went ahead and made a large genome model, and it turned out to be able to output DNA sequences that could encode functional proteins in bacteria and mimic the gene structures found in complex cells. Now, those same models have been used to output the genomes of viruses that infect bacteria.

This isn't science fiction—all the viruses the models created are closely related to an existing virus. But they do have some distinct features that would be challenging to evolve. And the researchers who did the work, based at Stanford University, suggest we may want to start thinking now about preparing for the potential that someone could develop a related AI that can design a virus that targets vertebrates.

Read full article

Comments

Resources 51 beta, the system monitor Ubuntu now uses, adds AMD NPU stats, PowerPC CPU temps and alternative memory-usage metrics.

You're reading Resources (Linux system monitor) adds new PowerPC, NPU stats, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Disney is “exploring a free product” for streaming customers, CEO Josh D’Amaro confirmed in a call with investors today.

D’Amaro, who succeeded Bob Iger as Disney’s chief in March, said that a free Disney-owned streaming service would help Disney reach more “price-sensitive” customers, which is a “strategic priority” for Disney, according to a transcript of the call.

A free streaming service would also generate more ad revenue, which has become increasingly important for streaming services challenged by plateauing subscriber numbers, subscriber churn, and competition from cheaper and free rivals.

Read full article

Comments

Resources 51 beta, the system monitor Ubuntu now uses, adds AMD NPU stats, PowerPC CPU temps and alternative memory-usage metrics.

You're reading Resources (Linux system monitor) adds new PowerPC, NPU stats, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Fans of the Papirus icon theme will be pleased to hear there’s a new update – the first since May 2025. Papirus’s first update in 2026 (the tardiness of which its maintainer, Serhii Yeremenko, apologises for) brings more than 80 new or updated icons spanning applications, games and user-interface icons, plus new file-mimetypes and revised symlinks. Frequent updates are why Papirus icons are popular with Linux users, and they have been for many years. Often, Linux icon packs debut with a big bang; launch momentum fuels a couple of revisions, but then things go quiet as people and maintainers move on. Papirus […]

You're reading Papirus icon set gets first update in over a year with 80+ new icons, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.