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Anthropic Launches Claude Opus 4.6 as Its AI Tools Rattle Software Markets
Anthropic on Thursday released Claude Opus 4.6, its most capable model yet, at a moment when the company's AI tools have already spooked markets over fears that they are disrupting traditional software development and other sectors.
The new model improves on Opus 4.5's coding abilities, the company said -- it plans more carefully, sustains longer agentic tasks, handles larger codebases more reliably, and catches its own mistakes through better debugging. It is also the first Opus-class model to feature a 1M token context window, currently in beta.
On GDPval-AA, an independent benchmark measuring performance on knowledge-work tasks in finance, legal and other domains, Opus 4.6 outperformed OpenAI's GPT-5.2 by roughly 144 Elo points. Anthropic also introduced agent teams in Claude Code, allowing multiple agents to work in parallel on tasks like codebase reviews. Pricing remains at $5/$25 per million input/output tokens.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Western Digital Plots a Path To 140 TB Hard Drives Using Vertical Lasers and 14-Platter Designs
Western Digital this week laid out a roadmap that stretches its 3.5-inch hard drive platform to 14 platters and pairs it with a new vertical-emitting laser for heat-assisted magnetic recording, a combination the company says will push individual drive capacities beyond 140 TB in the 2030s.
The vertical laser, developed over six years and already working in WD's labs, emits light straight down onto the disk rather than from the edge, delivering more thermal energy while occupying less vertical space -- enabling areal densities up to 10 TB per platter, up from today's 4 TB, and room for additional platters in the same enclosure. WD's first commercial HAMR drives arrive in late 2026 at 40-44 TB on an 11-platter design, ramping into volume production in 2027. A 12-platter platform follows in 2028 at 60 TB, and WD expects to hit 100 TB by around 2030.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Amazon Plans To Use AI To Speed Up TV and Film Production
Amazon plans to use AI to speed up the process for making movies and TV shows even as Hollywood fears that AI will cut jobs and permanently reshape the industry. From a report: At the Amazon MGM Studio, veteran entertainment executive Albert Cheng is leading a team charged with developing new AI tools that he said will cut costs and streamline the creative process. Amazon plans to launch a closed beta program in March, inviting industry partners to test its AI tools. The company expects to have results to share by May. [...] Amazon is leaning on its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, for help and plans to work with multiple large language model providers to give creators a wider array of options for pre- and post-production filmmaking.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Spotify Plans To Sell Physical Books
Spotify is planning to let premium subscribers in the U.S. and U.K. buy hardcovers and paperbacks directly through its app starting this spring, partnering with Bookshop.org to handle pricing, inventory and fulfillment.
The Swedish streaming company, which entered the audiobook market in 2022, will also introduce a feature called Page Match that lets users scan a page from a physical book or e-reader and jump to the exact spot in the audiobook edition. Spotify will earn an undisclosed affiliate fee on each purchase.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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FBI Couldn't Get Into Reporter's iPhone Because It Had Lockdown Mode Enabled
The FBI has been unable to access a Washington Post reporter's seized iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, a sometimes overlooked feature that makes iPhones broadly more secure, according to recently filed court records. 404Media: The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and which devices it could not, after raiding the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information. It also provides rare insight into the apparent effectiveness of Lockdown Mode, or at least how effective it might be before the FBI may try other techniques to access the device.
"Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device," the court record reads, referring to the FBI's Computer Analysis Response Team, a unit focused on performing forensic analyses of seized devices. The document is written by the government, and is opposing the return of Natanson's devices.
The FBI raided Natanson's home as part of its investigation into government contractor Aurelio Perez-Lugones, who is charged with, among other things, retention of national defense information. The government believes Perez-Lugones was a source of Natanson's, and provided her with various pieces of classified information. While executing a search warrant for his mobile phone, investigators reviewed Signal messages between Pere-Lugones and the reporter, the Department of Justice previously said.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Kalshi Claims 'Extortion,' Then Recants in Feud Over User Losses
Kalshi, the largest U.S. prediction market, accused a small data startup called Juice Reel of "extortion" after a stock analyst used the company's transaction-level data to argue that prediction market users lose money faster than gamblers on traditional betting apps -- then walked the allegation back hours later.
The equity research analyst Jordan Bender at Citizens found that the bottom quarter of prediction market users lost about 28 cents of every dollar wagered in their first three months, compared to roughly 11 cents per dollar on sites like FanDuel and DraftKings. Kalshi's head of communications told Bloomberg the report was "flat-out wrong" and called the data an extortion attempt. Juice Reel CEO Ricky Gold said Kalshi had actually pressured him to tell Bloomberg the data was inaccurate. Kalshi later issued an updated statement saying it continued to dispute the findings but "after further review, we don't believe the intention was extortion." The company did not provide any data to counter the analysis.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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China Has Seized Sony's Television Halo
Sony announced last month that it plans to pass control of its home entertainment division -- including the two-decade-old Bravia television brand -- to Chinese electronics group TCL through a joint venture in which TCL would hold a 51% stake. The Japanese company was long ago overtaken in sales by South Korea's Samsung and LG and now holds just 2% of the global television market. Sony stopped making its own LCD screens in 2011.
Chinese companies supplied 71% of television panels made in Asia last year, according to TCL, and less than 10% are now produced in Japan and Korea. TCL is close to overtaking Samsung as the world's largest television maker. Sony retains valuable intellectual property in image rendering, and the Bravia brand still carries consumer recognition, but its OLED screens are already supplied by Samsung and LG. The company has been shifting toward premium cameras, professional audio, and its entertainment businesses in film, music, and games -- areas where intellectual property is less exposed to Chinese manufacturing scale.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Munich Makes Digital Sovereignty Measurable With Its Own Score
alternative_right writes: The city of Munich has developed its own measurement instrument to assess the digital sovereignty of its IT infrastructure. The so-called Digital Sovereignty Score (SDS) visually resembles the Nutri-Score and identifies IT systems based on their independence from individual providers and 'foreign' legal spheres. The Technical University of Munich was involved in the development.
In September and October 2025, the IT Department already conducted a first comprehensive test. Out of a total of 2780 municipal application services, 194 particularly critical ones were selected and evaluated based on five categories. The analysis already showed a high degree of digital sovereignty: 66% of the 194 evaluated services reached the highest levels (SDS 1 and 2), only 5% reached the critical level 4, and 21% reached the most critical level 5. The SDS evaluates not only technical dependencies but also legal and organizational risks.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Valve's Steam Machine Has Been Delayed, and the RAM Crisis Will Impact Pricing
Valve has pushed back the launch of its Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller hardware from its original Q1 2026 window to a vaguer "first half of the year" target, blaming the ongoing memory and storage shortage that has been squeezing the tech industry.
The company said in a post today that rising component prices and limited availability forced it to revisit both its shipping schedule and pricing plans. Valve had previously indicated the Steam Machine would be priced at the entry level of the PC space.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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BMW Commits To Subscriptions Even After Heated Seat Debacle
BMW may have retreated from its controversial plan to charge monthly fees for heated seats, but the German automaker is pressing ahead with subscription-based vehicle features through its ConnectedDrive platform.
A company spokesperson told The Drive that BMW "remains fully committed" to ConnectedDrive as part of its global aftersales strategy. Features requiring data connectivity will likely carry recurring fees.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Microsoft Adds Sysmon To Windows
Microsoft has finally delivered on its promise to integrate Sysmon -- the long-standing system monitoring tool from its Sysinternals suite -- directly into Windows, a move that should make life considerably easier for enterprise administrators who have struggled with deploying and managing the utility across thousands of endpoints.
The functionality landed this week in Windows Insider builds 26300.7733 (Dev channel) and 26220.7752 (Beta channel). Sysmon allows administrators to capture system events through custom configuration files, filter for specific activity, and pipe the data into standard Windows event logs for pickup by security tools and SIEM pipelines. Mark Russinovich, Microsoft technical fellow and Winternals co-founder, has previously noted the lack of official customer support for Sysmon in production environments -- a gap this integration addresses. The feature ships disabled by default and requires PowerShell to enable. Microsoft notes that any existing Sysmon installation must be uninstalled before activating the built-in version.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Russian Spy Satellites Have Intercepted EU Communications Satellites
European security officials believe two Russian space vehicles have intercepted the communications of at least a dozen key satellites over the continent. From a report: Officials believe that the likely interceptions, which have not previously been reported, risk not only compromising sensitive information transmitted by the satellites but could also allow Moscow to manipulate their trajectories or even crash them.
Russian space vehicles have shadowed European satellites more intensively over the past three years, at a time of high tension between the Kremlin and the West following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For several years, military and civilian space authorities in the West have been tracking the activities of Luch-1 and Luch-2 -- two Russian objects that have carried out repeated suspicious maneuvers in orbit.
Both vehicles have made risky close approaches to some of Europe's most important geostationary satellites, which operate high above the Earth and service the continent, including the UK, as well as large parts of Africa and the Middle East. According to orbital data and ground-based telescopic observations, they have lingered nearby for weeks at a time, particularly over the past three years. Since its launch in 2023, Luch-2 has approached 17 European satellites.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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'Everyone is Stealing TV'
A sprawling informal economy of rogue streaming devices has taken hold across the U.S., as consumers fed up with rising TV subscription costs turn to cheap Android-based boxes that promise free access to thousands of live channels, sports events, and on-demand movies for a one-time $200 to $400 purchase.
The two dominant players -- SuperBox and vSeeBox -- are manufactured by opaque Chinese companies and distributed through hundreds of American resellers at farmers markets, church festivals and Facebook groups, according to a report by The Verge. The hardware is generic and legal, but both devices guide users toward pirate streaming apps not available on any official app store.
vSeeBox directs users to a service called "Heat"; SuperBox points to "Blue TV." One user estimated access to between 6,000 and 8,000 channels, including premium sports networks and hundreds of local affiliates. A 2025 Dish Network lawsuit against a SuperBox reseller alleged that some live channels on the device were being ripped directly from Dish's Sling TV service -- Sling's logo was still visible on certain feeds. Dish has pursued resellers aggressively, winning $1.25 million in damages from a vSeeBox seller in 2024 over 500 devices and $405,000 from another over 162 devices. None of this has meaningfully slowed adoption. The market has roots in earlier Chinese-made devices like TVPad that targeted Asian expat communities and reportedly sold 3 million units before being litigated out of existence. SuperBox and vSeeBox simply broadened the audience to mainstream America.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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As Software Stocks Slump, Investors Debate AI's Existential Threat
Investors were assessing on Wednesday whether a selloff in global software stocks this week had gone too far, as they weighed if businesses could survive an existential threat posed by AI. The answer: It's unclear and will lead to volatility. From a report: After a broad selloff on Tuesday that saw the S&P 500 software and services index fall nearly 4%, the sector slipped another 1% on Wednesday. While software stocks have been under pressure in recent months as AI has gone from being a tailwind for many of these companies to investors worrying about the disruption it will cause to some sectors, the latest selloff was triggered by a new legal tool from Anthropic's Claude large language model (LLM).
The tool - a plug-in for Claude's agent for tasks across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis - underscored the push by LLMs into the so-called "application layer," where these firms are increasingly muscling into lucrative enterprise businesses for revenue they need to fund massive investments. If successful, investors worry, it could wreak havoc across a range of industries, from finance to law and coding.
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~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Anthropic Pledges To Keep Claude Ad-free, Calls AI Conversations a 'Space To Think'
Anthropic said today that its AI assistant Claude will not carry advertising of any kind -- no sponsored links next to conversations, no advertiser influence on the model's responses, and no unsolicited third-party product placements -- calling Claude a "space to think" that should remain free of commercial interruption. The announcement comes days after Anthropic's chief rival, OpenAI, announced plans to bring ads to some of its ChatGPT offerings.
Anthropic said its internal analysis of Claude conversations found that a significant share involve sensitive or deeply personal topics. An advertising-based model would also create incentives to optimize for engagement and time spent rather than usefulness, Anthropic said, noting that the most helpful AI interaction might be a short one that doesn't prompt further conversation.
Anthropic generates revenue from enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions. The company said it is exploring agentic commerce -- Claude handling a purchase or booking on a user's behalf -- but stressed that all such interactions should be user-initiated, not advertiser-driven. Anthropic has also brought AI tools to educators in over 60 countries and said it may consider lower-cost subscription tiers and regional pricing.
Slashdot
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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NewsBone.com
Suggest a feed to syndicate here, or check out what I'm doing over at freshtao.
~Created Thu Feb 5 13:27:16 2026
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Microsoft has killed widgets six times
Gadgets, desk accessories, widgets – whatever you they were called, they were a must-have feature for various operating systems for a while. Windows in particular has tried making them happen six times, and every time, they failed to really catch on and ended up being killed, only for the company to try again a few years later. Microsoft has been trying to solve the same UX problem since 1997: how to surface live information without making you launch an app. They’ve shipped six different implementations across nearly 30 years. Each one died from a different fundamental flaw – performance, security, screen space, privacy, engagement. And each death triggered the same reflex: containment. ↫ Pavel Osadchuk There’s quite a few memories in this article. I never actually used Active Desktop back when it came out, because I seem to remember the channels feature was either not available in The Netherlands or the available channels were American stuff we didn’t care about. The sidebar in Vista had a lot of potential, and I did like the feature, but there weren’t a lot of great widgets and we hadn’t entered the era of omnipresent notifications begging for out attention just yet, so use cases remained elusive. Now Metro, that’s where things came together, at least for me. I was en enthusiastic Windows Phone user – I imported two Windows Phone devices from the US to be an early adopter – and I still consider its live tiles with notifications and other useful information to be the most pleasant user interface for a mobile device, bar none. It may have taken Microsoft six tries, but they nailed it with that one, and I’m still sad the Windows Phone user interface lost out to whatever iOS and Android offered. On desktops and laptops, though, it’s a different story, and I don’t think the Metro tiles concept ever made any sense there. Widgets as they exist in Windows now mostly seem like an annoying distraction, and I’ve never seen anyone actually use them. Does anyone even keep them enabled at all?
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Microsoft Research releases LiteBox, a new library operating system
Microsoft Research, in collaboration with various others, has just released LiteBox, a library operating system. LiteBox is a sandboxing library OS that drastically cuts down the interface to the host, thereby reducing attack surface. It focuses on easy interop of various “North” shims and “South” platforms. LiteBox is designed for usage in both kernel and non-kernel scenarios. LiteBox exposes a Rust-y nix/rustix-inspired “North” interface when it is provided a Platform interface at its “South”. These interfaces allow for a wide variety of use-cases, easily allowing for connection between any of the North–South pairs. ↫ LiteBox GitHub Page Suggested use-cases are running unmodified Linux applications on Windows, sandboxing Linux applications on Linux, running OP-TEE applications on Linux, and more. It’s written in Rust, and the code is available on GitHub under an MIT license.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Zig replaces third-party C code with Zig’s own code
Over the past month or so, several enterprising contributors have taken an interest in the zig libc subproject. The idea here is to incrementally delete redundant code, by providing libc functions as Zig standard library wrappers rather than as vendored C source files. In many cases, these functions are one-to-one mappings, such as memcpy or atan2, or trivially wrap a generic function, like strnlen. So far, roughly 250 C source files have been deleted from the Zig repository, with 2032 remaining. With each function that makes the transition, Zig gains independence from third party projects and from the C programming language, compilation speed improves, Zig’s installation size is simplified and reduced, and user applications which statically link libc enjoy reduced binary size. ↫ Andrew Kelley on the Zig Devlog The goal is to replace all of the musl, wasi-libc, and MinGW-w64 C code bundled in Zig with new Zig code.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Rust in the NetBSD kernel seems unlikely
Rust is everywhere, and it’s no surprise it’s also made its way into the lowest levels of certain operating systems and kernels, so it shouldn’t be surprising that various operating system developers have to field questions and inquiries about Rust. NetBSD developer Benny Siegert wrote a blog post about this very subject, and in it, details why it’s unlikely Rust will find its way into the NetBSD base system and/or the kernel First, NetBSD is famed for its wide architecture and platform support, and Rust would make that a lot more troublesome due to Rust simply not being available on many platforms NetBSD supports. Rust release cycles also aren’t compatible with NetBSD, it would draw a lot of dependency code into the base system, and keeping Rust and its compiler toolchain working is a lot of work that falls on the shoulders of a relatively small group of NetBSD developers. Note that while NetBSD does tend to take a more cautious approach to these matters than, say, Linux or FreeBSD, the operating system isn’t averse to change on principle. For instance, not only is Lua part of the base system, it’s even used in the NetBSD kernel due to its ability to rapidly develop and prototype kernel drivers. In short, while it doesn’t seem likely Rust will make it into the NetBSD base system, it’s not an impossibility either.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Everything you ever wanted to know about Amiga UNIX
We recently talked about Apple’s pre-Mac OS X dabblings in UNIX, but Apple wasn’t the only computer and operating system company exploring UNIX alternatives. Microsoft had the rather successful Xenix, Atari had ASV, Sony had NEWS, to name just a very small few. The Amiga, too, wanted in on the UNIX action, and as such, released Amiga UNIX, based on AT&T System V Release 4. The Amiga UNIX website is dedicated to everything you would ever want to know about this operating system. This site is dedicated on preserving Amix’s history and sharing information and instructions on what Amix is, how to install it (either on real hardware or in emulation) and what can you do with it. Mainly, it tries to cater to people who wish to run AMIX for whatever reason on their hardware. By documenting experiences with it, it is hoped that subsequent SVR4 junkies will find the way more smooth than it might have been without any guidance at all. For even a relatively experienced modern Unix or GNU/Linux administrator, System V UNIX is sufficiently different to present difficulty in installation and administration. Not so much in moving around between directories, and using common utilities that persist to this day – although many of those are hoary and somewhat forgetful in their retirement – but of doing more in depth tasks and understanding the differences. ↫ The Amiga Unix Wiki If you wish to run Amiga UNIX yourself, you’ll either have to have one of the original two models sold with it – the 2500UX and 3000UX – or one of the Amigas that meets the minimum requirements. Another option is, of course, emulation, and WinUAE has support for running Amiga UNIX.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Firefox nightly gets “AI” kill switch
After a seemingly endless stream of tone deaf news from Mozilla, we’ve finally got some good news for Firefox users. As the company’s been hinting at for a while on social media now, they’ve added an “AI” kill switch to the latest Firefox nightly release, as well as a set of toggles to disable specific “AI” features. You can choose to use some of these and not others. If you don’t want to use AI features from Firefox at all, you can turn on the Block AI enhancements toggle. When it’s toggled on, you won’t see pop-ups or reminders to use existing or upcoming AI features. Once you set your AI preferences in Firefox, they stay in place across updates. You can also change them whenever you want. ↫ Ajit Varma at the Mozilla blog I’m particularly enamoured with the specific mention that the setting will remain unaffected by updates. It’s incredibly sad that Mozilla even has to mention this, but they have nobody to blame but themselves for that one. None of this is enough to draw me away from Librewolf and back to Firefox, but at least it gives those of us who prefer to keep using Firefox the option to disable all of this “AI” nonsense. Also, there’s no Librewolf for POWER9, so I have to use Firefox somewhere. It’s unlikely Chrome or Safari will get such clear “AI” kill switches, so it might become a reason for some to switch to Firefox from Chrome or Safari.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Audio on hp300
In the late 1980s, with the expansion of the Internet (even though it was not open to commercial activities yet) and the slowly increasing capabilities of workstations, some people started to imagine the unthinkable: that, some day, you may use your computer to record voice messages, send them over the Internet, and the recipient could listen to these messages on his own computer. That was definitely science fiction… until workstation manufacturers started to add audio capabilities to their hardware. ↫ Miod Vallat A great story detailing how the audio hardware in the HP 9000/425e was made to work on OpenBSD and NetBSD.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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OpenVMS 9.2-3 x64 now has local console on OPA0
I previously covered x64 OpenVMS release on VMware. This was insanely cool achievement for the operating system. While it had no practical ramification there was one small annoyance. The OS console was on a serial port. In VMware it meant another VM connected via named pipe. Now OpenVMS x64 supports (limited?) local console on OPA0. ↫ Virtually Fun I think this has been available for a while now – since 2024 – but we hadn’t covered it yet. That same 2024 post also indicates CDE and DECWindows work now, a side effect of a C/C++ compiler bugfix. Sadly, VSI has made it clear that desktop support is not at all on their list of things to spend time on, so don’t expect graphics support to improve meaningfully other than by accident like in this case.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Guix System first impressions as a Nix user
But NixOS isn’t the only declarative distro out there. In fact GNU forked Nix fairly early and made their own spin called Guix, whose big innovation is that, instead of using the unwieldy Nix-language, it uses Scheme. Specifically Guile Scheme, GNU’s sanctioned configuration language. I’ve been following Guix for a bit, but it never felt quite ready to me with stuff like KDE being only barely supported and a lot of hardware not working out of the box. However, now that (after three years) Guix announced its 1.5.0 release with a lot of stuff stabilized and KDE finally a first-party citizen, I figured now is the best time to give it a fresh shot. This post captures my experiences from installation to the first 3-4 days. ↫ Nemin’s blog If you’re interested in Guix, but aren’t quite sure if you want to take the plunge, this article does a great job of showing you the ropes, listing what issues you might run into, some pitfalls to avoid, and so on.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Microsoft gestures vaguely in the general direction of fleeting promises to improve Windows 11
It’s no secret that Windows 11 isn’t exactly well-liked by even most of its users, and I’m fairly sure that perception has permeated into the general public as well. It seems Microsoft is finally getting the message, and they’re clearly spooked: the company has told The Verge that they have heard the complaints, and intend to start fixing many of the issues people are having. The feedback we’re receiving from our community of passionate customers and Windows Insiders has been clear. We need to improve Windows in ways that are meaningful for people. This year, you will see us focus on addressing pain points we hear consistently from customers: improving system performance, reliability, and the overall experience of Windows. ↫ Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows, to The Verge This entire statement is utterly meaningless. I have zero faith in words; only actions will do. Microsoft has made many promises over the years, and they have a history of simply not following through on them. Up until this year is over and there have been material improvements in Windows 11 that we can measure, see, and point to, nothing has changed between the day before the statement and the day after. Anyone taking this at face value and reporting it as such is an idiot. This means that at the end of this year, Windows 11 should be faster, more stable, experience far fewer breaking updates, have fewer – nay – zero ads, a far more consistent user interface, proper local account support, and more. If these things haven’t become reality once the countdown runs out and on 31 December, Microsoft lied to our faces once more. Until then, don’t use Windows.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Ariel OS: a library operating system for IoT devices written in Rust
Operating systems written in Rust – especially for embedded use – are quite common these days, and today’s example fits right into that trend. Ariel OS is an operating system for secure, memory-safe, low-power Internet of Things (IoT). It is based on Rust from the ground up and supports hardware based on 32-bit microcontroller architectures (Cortex-M, RISC-V, and Xtensa). For a quick overview of our motivations and what we plan next, check our roadmap. Ariel OS builds on top of existing projects from the Embedded Rust ecosystem, including Embassy, esp-hal, defmt, probe-rs, sequential-storage, and embedded-test. While those provide high-quality building blocks for a wide range of embedded applications, such projects do not provide the high level of integration that developers know from contemporary C-based operating systems for microcontrollers, such as RIOT or Zephyr for instance. ↫ Ariel OS GitHub page There’s bound to be a microcontroller you can get your hands on that Ariel OS supports, and since it’s licensed under either a MIT or Apache 2.0 license, you can get going right away.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Mac OS and Windows NT-capable ROMs discovered for Apple’s unique AIX Network Server
As most of you will know, Mac OS X (or Rhapsody if you count the developer releases) wasn’t Apple’s first foray into the world of UNIX. The company sold its own UNIX variant, A/UX, from 1988 to 1995, which combined a System V-based UNIX with a System 7.0.1 desktop environment and application compatibility, before it acquired NeXT and started working on Rhapsody/Mac OS X. As a sidenote, I don’t know if the application compatibility layer was related to the Macintosh Application Environment for UNIX, which I have running on my HP-UX machines. That’s not the only time Apple dabbled with UNIX, though – Apple’s unique Apple Network Server product from 1996 also came with UNIX, but time it wasn’t one from Apple itself, but rather from its enemy-turned-friend IBM: AIX. The Network Server shipped with a slightly customised version of IBM’s AIX operating system; regular AIX straight from IBM wouldn’t work. The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess. Since the Apple Network Server was built around a modified Power Macintosh 9500 – there’s much more to the hardware, but that’s the short of it – so you would expect the Network Server to also be able to run regular Mac OS for PowerPC, right? Apple even sold server products running plain Mac OS at the time, so it’d make sense, but nothing about Apple in the ’90s made any sense whatsoever, so no, use of plain Mac OS was locked out through the ROM. And let’s not even get started about other PowerPC operating systems of the time, like, of all things, Windows NT – something Apple supposedly demonstrated at some point. But was that always the case? Well, we’ve got new ROMs straight from a former Apple employee, and after flashing them to a supported ROM chip, the Apple Network Sever can now run classic Mac OS. On top of that, and even more miraculous, the Windows NT-capable ROMs have also been discovered. I’ll give you a spoiler now: it turns out the NT ROM isn’t enough to install Windows NT by itself, even though it has some interesting attributes. Sadly this was not unexpected. But the pre-production ROM does work to boot Mac OS, albeit with apparent bugs and an injection of extra hardware. Let’s get the 700 running again (call it a Refurb Weekend) and show the process. ↫ Cameron Kaiser While it’s great news to see that Mac OS can now be run on the Network Server, I’m personally much more interested in the story behind the Windows NT ROMs. The idea that Apple would sell a computer running Windows NT out of the box is wild to think about now, but considering the desperate state the company was in at the time, all options must’ve been on the table. Sadly, as Kaiser discovered, the Windows NT ROMs in and of themselves are not enough to run Windows NT. However, they appear to be much farther along in the development process than even the Mac OS-capable ROMs, which is fascinating. When Jobs talked Gil Amelio into canning the ANS as well, the ROM initiative naturally went out the window with it. However, while the existing 2.0 Mac OS ROMs are only known on an unmarked development flash stick similar to mine, these final 2.26NT ROMs appear almost production-ready with fully printed labels, suggesting they had reached a very late stage of development. ↫ Cameron Kaiser Despite not being able to boot Windows NT for PowerPC as-is, most likely because there’s no compatible ARC or HAL, Kaiser did discover a ton of interesting details, like how this ROM configures the Network Server to run in little endian mode, which is all Windows NT for PowerPC ever supported, making this the very first time a PowerPC machine did so. I’m hoping Kaiser manages to track down the necessary components to make Windows NT bootable on the ANS, as one of the most unique curiosities in Apple history. There’s a ton more details in the article, as per usual Kaiser standards, and it’s an absolute joy to read.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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Xfce announces xfwl4, its new Wayland compositor
While the two major open source desktop environments get most of the airtime – and for good reason, since they’re both exceptionally good – there’s a long tail of other desktop environments out there catering to all kinds of special workflows and weird niches. I think we can all agree that Xfce leads this long tail of more niche desktop environments, without really being niche itself. Xfce may not be as popular as KDE or GNOME, but it’s an amazing full-featured desktop environment that offers a slightly more traditional, less fast-paced desktop for those that desire so. Xfce, too, is moving to Wayland, which can mean significant efforts in certain places, not the least of which is the window manager. Xfce originally planned to adapt its venerable xfwm4 to support both X11 and Wayland at the same time, but this turned out to be too complex for a variety of reasons, all more or less caused by differences between X11 and Wayland. On top of that, this approach would risk introducing new bugs to the X11 side of things, and the Xfce project does not want to subject its X11 users to that. As such, they’ve decided to develop a Wayland compositor from scratch: xfwl4. The goal is, that xfwl4 will offer the same functionality and behavior as xfwm4 does, or as much as possible considering the differences between X11 and Wayland. Using xfwl4 should feel just like using xfwm4 on X11. We even plan to reuse the existing xfwm4 configuration dialogs and xfconf settings to ensure a seamless transition. Xfwl4 will not be based on the existing xfwm4 code. Instead, it will be written from scratch in rust, using smithay building blocks. ↫ The Xfce development team This project also includes related tasks like rearchitecting session-startup to support Wayland, implementing support for the xdg-session-management protocol, and adding support for XWayland. This is obviously anything but a small effort, but it seems like a practical solution. Xfce users generally seem to choose Xfce exactly because it’s a stable environment that does not move fast(er) and break (some) things. As such, keeping the X11 window manager separate and stable, without Wayland work possibly breaking it, seems like the kind of thing the average Xfce user can get behind. Personally, I can’t wait for Xfce to become a full Wayland desktop, as dealing with X11’s nonsense feels decidedly retro to me now, and I don’t see Xfce as a retro environment at all. It’s going to take some time, of course, but thanks to countless generous donations to Xfce, longtime Xfce core developer Brian Tarricone will be paid to work on this project. Excellent news for everyone involved.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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What is going on with Windows11?
Since I have no qualms about kicking a proprietary software product while it’s down, let’s now switch to NTDEV‘s thoughts on the state of Windows 11. Unfortunately, the issue that plagued Windows since the dawn of time has only aggravated recently. Windows 11 is a mixture of old and new technologies that are glued together, with decades of legacy code that simply refuses to die (because if it did a lot of corporate costumers would complain, and whether we like it or not they are paying big cash for support to Microsoft). Also, it tries to have a “modern” UI that unfortunately not only is inconsistent, but also it’s too heavy for its own good, being just a lipstick on a bloated old pig. Last, but certainly not least, it is full of AI features that most people didn’t ask for, some are even actively feared (see Recall) and are also quite lacking in polish and usefulness. Until Microsoft stops treating Windows as an “AI innovation platform” of sorts and starts treating it as the stable, reliable tool it was always meant to be, the user experience will continue to feel like a battle between the person sitting at the desk and the company that built the desk. ↫ NETDEV When even some of the most knowledgeable and respected Windows/Windows NT developers and experts are this down on the current state of Windows, you know things are way worse than we even know from just following the news and our own experiences. Back in 2024, I stated that I firmly believe we will see Windows – or at least, huge, crucial chunks of it – shift to an open source development model, as it’s the only way for Windows to move forward without crumbling into itself. It would also be a massive cost-cutting and personnel-culling step for Microsoft, something that seems to become ever more relevant now that the company bet massively on “AI”, without any of it paying off. They’re going to need to do some serious cost-cutting once the “AI” bubble bursts, and Windows will definitely be the first on the chopping block. As a side note, the step to release Windows as open source won’t be nearly as difficult or problematic as people think. In fact, Microsoft has provided access to the source code behind Windows and various other products for decades, and countless governments and organisations have access to said source code. On top of that, the source code to Windows XP and Server 2003 is out there, hosted on GitHub, and various other leaks have occurred as well over the years. While I’m sure a large clean-up effort would still be required, and while it surely will be a big engineering effort, if there were any truly shocking things in the code Microsoft wouldn’t want the world to see we’d already know by now. I’m getting the strong feeling Microsoft is trying to squeeze every last drop of revenue out of Windows before it ends up on the chopping block. Windows will definitely not be axed, but cost-cutting is inevitable.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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I don’t want using my computer to be like a game of Russian roulette
I’ve been terribly sick for a few days so we’ve got some catching up to. Let’s first take a look at how Windows is doing. People often say Linux is “too much work.” And I agree. They’re completely justified to complain. There’s the documentation page diving, the forums, the reddit threads. And, most importantly, you have to basically rewire your brain and stop expecting it to behave like Windows used to. But I looked at the list above and realized: Windows is now also too much work. And the difference with Windows is that you’re going to do all that work while actively fighting your computer only for it to be undone when the next surprise update comes and ruins everything. You might be thinking “just disable updates, man” or “just install LTSC”, or “just run some random debloat script off of GitHub”. Why? Why would I jump through all these hoops? I’d rather put in the effort for an OS that knows what consent is and respects me as a user. ↫ Bogdan-Mihai Mosteanu You know how in most theme parks they have various different rides for all kinds of people? There’s the wild and crazy over-the-top deathcoasters for the ultimate thrill seekers, the more gentle wooden coasters for those who like a thrill, but not over-the-top. There’s the swinging ship-type things for thrill-seeking accountants who seek their thrills predictably. There’s a game of Russian roulette played in the backlot. For the kids, there’s the classic spinning tea cups. And then there’s the public transport service dressed up as an old-timey steam train that just brings you to your destination without any issue, silently doing its thing, the unsung backbone of park logistics. Commercial operating systems like Windows and macOS are the games of Russian roulette, predictably unexpectedly shooting you in the face every sixth time you pull the trigger. That’s not my vibe. I want my operating system to be that steam train, and desktop Linux is the only thing that fits that bill – and it’s very clear more and more people are discovering that too.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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9front GEFS SERVICE PACK 1 released
9front, by far the best operating system in the whole world, pushed out a new release, titled “GEFS SERVICE PACK 1“. Even with only a few changes, this is still, as always, a more monumental, important, and groundbreaking release than any other operating system release in history. Everything changes, today, because exec() now supports shell-scripts as interpreter in #!, improved sam scrolling, TLS by default in ircrc, and more. You’re already running 9front, of course, but if you’re one of the few holdouts still using something else, download GEFS SERVICE PACK 1 and install it.
OSnews
~Created Thu Feb 5 12:06:13 2026
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