A small business selling washable swim diapers on Amazon is facing financial difficulties following a one-star review claiming they received a used, stained product. Paul and Rachelle Baron, owners of Beau & Belle Littles, say their once-thriving business has been severely impacted by the review, which remains on the site despite their appeals.

The incident, described in detail in a Bloomberg story, highlights ongoing concerns about Amazon's handling of returned items. While the company claims to inspect returns before resale, former employees suggest time constraints may lead to oversights. The Barons report being $600,000 in debt and unable to make a living from their business since the review. Amazon has not removed the review, despite the couple's repeated requests.

"The latest version of the Linux kernel adds an array of improvements," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu, " including a new memory sealing system call, a speed boost for AES-XTS encryption on Intel and AMD CPUs, and expanding Rust language support within the kernel to RISC-V." Plus, like in all kernel releases, there's a glut of groundwork to offer "initial support" for upcoming CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, Wi-Fi, and other hardware (that most of us don't use yet, but require Linux support to be in place for when devices that use them filter out)...

Linux 6.10 adds (after much gnashing) the mseal() system call to prevent changes being made to portions of the virtual address space. For now, this will mainly benefit Google Chrome, which plans to use it to harden its sandboxing. Work is underway by kernel contributors to allow other apps to benefit, though. A similarly initially-controversial change merged is a new memory-allocation profiling subsystem. This helps developers fine-tune memory usage and more readily identify memory leaks. An explainer from LWN summarizes it well.

Elsewhere, Linux 6.10 offers encrypted interactions with trusted platform modules (TPM) in order to "make the kernel's use of the TPM reasonably robust in the face of external snooping and packet alteration attacks". The documentation for this feature explains: "for every in-kernel operation we use null primary salted HMAC to protect the integrity [and] we use parameter encryption to protect key sealing and parameter decryption to protect key unsealing and random number generation." Sticking with security, the Linux kernel's Landlock security module can now apply policies to ioctl() calls (Input/Output Control), restricting potential misuse and improving overall system security.

On the networking side there's significant performance improvements to zero-copy send operations using io_uring, and the newly-added ability to "bundle" multiple buffers for send and receive operations also offers an uptick in performance...

A couple of months ago Canonical announced Ubuntu support for the RISC-V Milk-V Mars single-board computer. Linux 6.10 mainlines support for the Milk-V Mars, which will make that effort a lot more viable (especially with the Ubuntu 24.10 kernel likely to be v6.10 or newer). Others RISC-V improvements abound in Linux 6.10, including support for the Rust language, boot image compression in BZ2, LZ4, LZMA, LZO, and Zstandard (instead of only Gzip); and newer AMD GPUs thanks to kernel-mode FPU support in RISC-V.
Phoronix has their own rundown of Linux 6.10, plus a list of some of the highlights, which includes:

• The initial DRM Panic infrastructure
• The new Panthor DRM driver for newer Arm Mali graphics
• Better AMD ROCm/AMDKFD support for "small" Ryzen APUs and new additions for AMD Zen 5.
• AMD GPU display support on RISC-V hardware thanks to RISC-V kernel mode FPU
• More Intel Xe2 graphics preparations
• Better IO_uring zero-copy performance
• Faster AES-XTS disk/file encryption with modern Intel and AMD CPUs
• Continued online repair work for XFS
• Steam Deck IMU support
• TPM bus encryption and integrity protection

Microsoft told employees in China that from September they'll only be able to use iPhones for work, effectively cutting off Android-powered devices from the workplace. Bloomberg: The US company will soon require Chinese-based employees to use only Apple devices to verify their identities when logging in to work computers or phones, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg News. The measure, part of Microsoft's global Secure Future Initiative, will affect hundreds of workers across the Chinese mainland and is intended to ensure that all staff use the Microsoft Authenticator password manager and Identity Pass app.

The move highlights the fragmented nature of Android app stores in the country and the growing differences between Chinese and foreign mobile ecosystems. Unlike Apple's iOS store, Google Play isn't available in China, so local smartphone makers like Huawei and Xiaomi operate their own platforms. Microsoft has chosen to block access from those devices to its corporate resources because they lack Google's mobile services in the country, the message said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The money transfer and fintech company Wise says some of its customers' personal data may have been stolen in the recent data breach at Evolve Bank and Trust. The news highlights that the fallout from the Evolve data breach on third-party companies -- and their customers and users -- is still unclear, and it's likely that it includes companies and startups that are yet unknown.

In a statement published on its official website, Wise wrote that the company worked with Evolve from 2020 until 2023 "to provide USD account details." And given that Evolve was breached recently, "some Wise customers' personal information may have been involved." [...] So far, Affirm, EarnIn, Marqeta, Melio and Mercury -- all Evolve partners -- have acknowledged that they are investigating how the Evolve breach impacted their customers.

This week the Linux Foundation announced a new organization for decentralized systems and technologies, with an aim of "fostering innovation and collaboration" in both their development and deployment.

It will build on existing Linux Foundation blockchain and digital identity projects, according to the announcement, while supporting "a rapidly growing decentralized technology landscape." To foster this broader ecosystem, LF Decentralized Trust will encompass the growing portfolio of Hyperledger projects and host new open source software, communities, standards, and specifications that are critical to the macro shift toward decentralized systems of distributed trust....

LF Decentralized Trust's expanded project and member ecosystem will be both essential to emerging tokenized assets classes and networks, as well as to modernizing the core infrastructure for finance, trade, government, healthcare, and more. LF Decentralized Trust will serve as a neutral home for the open development of a broad range of ledger, identity, security, interoperability, scale, implementation, and related technologies... LF Decentralized Trust will also include new directed funding models that will drive strategic investments by members into individual projects and project resources.

"With LF Decentralized Trust, we're expanding our commitment to open source innovation by embracing a wider array of decentralized technologies," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. "This new, elevated foundation will enable the community to build a more robust ecosystem that drives forward transparency, security, and efficiency in global infrastructure."

"After eight years of advancing the development of blockchain, decentralized identity and related technologies via the Hyperledger community, the time has come to broaden our effort and impact," said Daniela Barbosa, General Manager, Blockchain and Identity, the Linux Foundation. "Ledgers and ledger technologies are but one component of the decentralized systems that will underpin a digital-first global economy. LF Decentralized Trust is where we will gather and grow an expanded community and portfolio of technologies to deliver the transparency, reliability, security and efficiency needed to successfully upgrade critical systems around the world."
The announcement includes quotes of support from numerous companies including Oracle, Siemens, Visa, Accenture, Citi, and Hitachi. Some highlights:

• "The formation of the LF Decentralized Trust reflects the growing demand for open source resources that are critical to the management and functionality of decentralized systems." — CEO of Digital Asset

• "The adoption of decentralized infrastructure is at an inflection point, reflecting the increasing demand from both enterprises and consumers for more secure and transparent digital transactions. As the industry leader for onchain data, blockchain abstraction, and interoperability, we're excited to see the formation of the LF Decentralized Trust and to expand our collaboration with leading financial institutions on advancing tokenized assets and the onchain economy at large." — CMO at Chainlink Labs.

• "As a founding member of the Hyperledger Foundation, and given our unique position in the financial markets, we recognize the vast potential for open-source innovation and decentralized technologies when it comes to reducing risk, increasing resiliency and improving security. The expansion of Hyperledger Foundation into LF Decentralized Trust represents an exciting opportunity to continue expanding these groundbreaking technologies." — a managing director at DTCC

Parks Kugle reports via the Daily Dot: A mechanic went viral when he posted a TikTok about technicians being locked out of computer systems in a new Dodge Ram. TikTok user Shorty of Shorty's Speed Shop (@shortysspeedshop) garnered over 301,000 views when he showed viewers what mechanics had to do to be able to repair newer car models. "It has officially happened. 2024 Ram 3500, authorization denied," Shorty said as he showed viewers the computer screen. "Cannot get into anything on this except generic OBD2 Software."

Shorty went on to explain that this update made his "manufacturer software 100 percent irrelevant." Then, Shorty showed viewers the Vehicle Security Professional (VSP) Registry on the National Automaker Service Task Force (NASTF) website. According to NASTF, automakers require mechanics to become credentialed VSPs if they want to purchase key and immobilizer codes, PIN numbers, and special tool access from Automaker websites. A VSP is required to "verify proof of ownership/authority prior to performing any security operation." "It's all part of the NASTF Security Professional Registery," Shorty explained.

Shorty believes that this rule allows manufacturers to lock mechanics out of anything they "deem security sensitive." Shorty then broke down the "requirements to gain VSP access." According to him, these include a $325 fee "every two years" and a $100 fee for every subsequent two-year license renewal. He says mechanics also need "commercial liability insurance of $1 million" and a "fidelity or employee dishonesty bond of $100,000." The VSP application page on NASTF's website confirms that there is a $100 Application Fee that covers a "Two Year Renewal" and a $325 Primary Account fee that covers a "Two Year License." It also confirms his claims about the required commercial liability insurance and fidelity or employee dishonesty bond. "There's a lot of people that don't know that this is going on, and it's going to affect everybody getting their cars fixed," Shorty remarked.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Starting with those builds, Windows 11 will show a Game Pass recommendation / ad within the Settings app. The advertisement will appear on both Windows 11 Home and Windows 11 Pro if you actively play games on your PC. Microsoft lists this feature first under the "Highlights" section of its blog post about the update. Some users aren't pleased. "Microsoft has gone too far," news blog TechRadar wrote.

Al Michaels, the 79-year-old American broadcaster, who first covered the Olympics decades ago, is returning to broadcasting via an AI clone. NBCUniversal and Peacock will use AI-generated narration by Al Michaels for daily customized highlight reels of the Summer Olympics. Officials say they anticipate seven million different variations of the customized highlights throughout the games. The New York Times reports: Al Michaels, the 79-year-old American broadcaster, who first covered the Olympics decades ago, is coming back to primetime. It does raise a key question, one that recalls Mr. Michaels's most famous Olympic call: Do NBCUniversal executives believe in miracles? NBC has been exclusively broadcasting the Olympics in the United States since 1996, and the network frequently finds itself subject to intense public scrutiny for its coverage of the Games. [...]

Subscribers who want the daily Peacock highlight reel will be able choose the Olympic events that interest them most, and the types of highlights they want to see, such as viral clips, gold medalists or elimination events. From there, Peacock's A.I. machines will get to work each evening cranking out the most notable moments and putting them together in a tidy customized package. Mr. Michaels's recreated voice will be piped over the reels. (Humans will make quality control checks on the A.I. highlight reels.)

Google has unveiled its largest-ever expansion of Translate, adding 110 new languages powered by its PaLM 2 AI model. The update spans major world languages and endangered tongues, covering an additional 614 million speakers globally.

Highlights include Cantonese, long-requested by users, and a quarter of the new offerings from Africa. Some additions, like Manx from the Isle of Man, showcase dramatic revival stories. The expansion reflects Google's ambitious "1,000 Languages Initiative" and follows its 2022 addition of 24 languages using zero-shot machine translation. Challenges in implementation included navigating regional varieties and non-standardized forms, the company wrote in a blog post.

China brought a capsule full of lunar soil [non-paywalled link] from the far side of the moon down to Earth on Tuesday, achieving the latest success in an ambitious schedule to explore the moon and other parts of the solar system. From a report: The sample, retrieved by the China National Space Administration's Chang'e-6 lander after a 53-day mission, highlights China's growing capabilities in space and notches another win in a series of lunar missions that started in 2007 and have so far been executed almost without flaw. "Chang'e-6 is the first mission in human history to return samples from the far side of the moon," Long Xiao, a planetary geologist at China University of Geosciences, wrote in an email. "This is a major event for scientists worldwide," he added, and "a cause for celebration for all humanity."

Such sentiments and the prospects of international lunar sample exchanges highlighted the hope that China's robotic missions to the moon and Mars will serve to advance scientific understanding of the solar system. Those possibilities are contrasted by views in Washington and elsewhere that Tuesday's achievement is the latest milestone in a 21st-century space race with geopolitical overtones. In February, a privately operated American spacecraft landed on the moon. NASA is also pursuing the Artemis campaign to return Americans to the lunar surface, although its next mission, a flight by astronauts around the moon, has been delayed because of technical issues. China, too, is looking to expand its presence on the moon, landing more robots there, and eventually human astronauts, in the years to come.

sonlas writes: Germany's energy transition plan includes extensive interconnection projects to distribute its intermittent renewable energy production. However, these projects face significant challenges. The latest example is Sweden. One such project, Hansa PowerBridge, announced in 2017, intended to link Germany and Sweden via a 300 km HVDC line through the Baltic Sea. This 700 MW project, estimated at 600 million euro, aimed to stabilize Germany's volatile electricity prices. However, on June 14, 2024, Sweden rejected the project, citing incompatibility between the countries' electricity systems. The connection would link northern Germany to southern Sweden, an area with insufficient infrastructure. Concerns also arose about the volatile German market disrupting Sweden's and increasing local prices. Energy Minister Ebba Busch justified this decision by saying the German market is currently not efficient enough and a connection would risk leading to higher prices and a more unstable electricity market in southern Sweden.

This highlights the difficulty Germany faces with its Energiewende, or energy transition model. This model leads to erratic electricity price behaviors and significant challenges in balancing production capacities. While a possible solution for Germany lies in interconnection with neighboring countries, the examples of Norway (which cancelled the NorGer project too) and Sweden show that from the perspective of these neighbors, it looks more like an "export of German problems" rather than a solution.

Facebook and Instagram users are increasingly turning to small claims courts to regain access to their accounts or seek damages from Meta, amid frustrations with the company's customer support. In several cases across multiple states, Engadget reports, plaintiffs have successfully restored account access or won financial compensation. Meta often responds by contacting litigants before court dates, attempting to resolve issues out of court.

The trend, popularized on social media forums, highlights ongoing customer service issues at the tech giant. Some users report significant financial losses due to inaccessible business-related accounts. While small claims court offers a more accessible legal avenue, Meta typically deploys legal resources to respond to these claims.

The European Union is getting closer to passing new rules that would mandate the bulk scanning of digital messages -- including encrypted ones. On Thursday, EU governments will adopt a position on the proposed legislation, which is aimed at detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The vote will determine whether the proposal has enough support to move forward in the EU's law-making process. From a report: The law, first introduced in 2022, would implement an "upload moderation" system that scans all your digital messages, including shared images, videos, and links. Each service required to install this "vetted" monitoring technology must also ask permission to scan your messages. If you don't agree, you won't be able to share images or URLs.

As if this doesn't seem wild enough, the proposed legislation appears to endorse and reject end-to-end encryption at the same time. At first, it highlights how end-to-end encryption "is a necessary means of protecting fundamental rights" but then goes on to say that encrypted messaging services could "inadvertently become secure zones where child sexual abuse material can be shared or disseminated."

The accounting and finance professions have long adapted to technology -- from calculators and spreadsheets to cloud computing. However, the emergence of generative AI presents both new challenges and opportunities for students looking to get ahead in the world of finance. From a report: Research last year by investment bank Evercore and Visionary Future, which incubates new ventures, highlights the workforce disruption being wreaked by generative AI. Analysing 160mn US jobs, the study reveals that service sectors such as legal and financial are highly susceptible to disruption by AI, although full job replacement is unlikely.

Instead, generative AI is expected to enhance productivity, the research concludes, particularly for those in high-value roles paying above $100,000 annually. But, for current students and graduates earning below this threshold, the challenge will be navigating these changes and identifying the skills that will be in demand in future. Generative AI is being swiftly integrated into finance and accounting, by automating specific tasks. Stuart Tait, chief technology officer for tax and legal at KPMG UK, describes it as a "game changer for tax," because it is capable of handling complex tasks beyond routine automation. "Gen AI for tax research and technical analysis will give an efficiency gain akin to moving from typewriters to word processors," he says. The tools can answer tax queries within minutes, with more than 95 per cent accuracy, Tait says.

ASUS has suddenly agreed "to overhaul its customer support and warranty systems," writes the hardware review site Gamers Nexus — after a three-video series on its YouTube channel documented bad and "potentially illegal" handling of customer warranties for the channel's 2.2 million viewers.

The Verge highlights ASUS's biggest change: If you've ever been denied a warranty repair or charged for a service that was unnecessary or should've been free, Asus wants to hear from you at a new email address. It claims those disputes will be processed by Asus' own staff rather than outsourced customer support agents.... The company is also apologizing today for previous experiences you might have had with repairs. "We're very sorry to anyone who has had a negative experience with our service team. We appreciate your feedback and giving us a chance to make amends."
It started five weeks ago when Gamers Nexus requested service for a joystick problem, according to a May 10 video. First they'd received a response wrongly telling them their damage was out of warranty — which also meant Asus could add a $20 shipping charge for the requested repair. "Somehow that turned into ASUS saying the LCD needs to be replaced, even though the joystick is covered under their repair policies," the investigators say in the video. [They also note this response didn't even address their original joystick problem — "only that thing that they had decided to find" — and that ASUS later made an out-of-the-blue reference to "liquid damage."] The repair would ultimately cost $191.47, with ASUS mentioning that otherwise "the unit will be sent back un-repaired and may be disassembled." ASUS gave them four days to respond, with some legalese adding that an out-of-warranty repair fee is non-refundable, yet still "does not guarantee that repairs can be made."

Even when ASUS later agreed to do a free "partial" repair (providing the requested in-warranty service), the video's investigators still received another email warning of "pending service cancellation" and return of the unit unless they spoke to "Invoice Quotation Support" immediately. The video-makers stood firm, and the in-warranty repair was later performed free — but they still concluded that "It felt like ASUS tried to scam us." ASUS's response was documented in a second video, with ASUS claiming it had merely been sending a list of "available" repairs (and promising that in the future ASUS would stop automatically including costs for the unrequested repair of "cosmetic imperfections" — and that they'd also change their automatic emails.)

Gamers Nexus eventually created a fourth, hour-long video confronting various company officials at Computex — which finally led to them publishing a list of ASUS's promised improvements on Friday. Some highlights:

• ASUS promises it's "created a Task Force team to retroactively go back through a long history of customer surveys that were negative to try and fix the issues." (The third video from Gamers Nexus warned ASUS was already on the government's radar over its handling of warranty issues.)

• ASUS also announced their repairs centers were no longer allowed to claim "customer-induced damage" (which Gamers Nexus believes "will remove some of the financial incentive to fail devices" to speed up workloads).

• ASUS is creating a new U.S. support center allowing customers to choose either a refurbished board or a longer repair.

Gamers Nexus says they already have devices at ASUS repair centers — under pseudonyms — and that they "plan to continue sampling them over the next 6-12 months so we can ensure these are permanent improvements." And there's one final improvement, according to Gamers Nexus. "After over a year of refusing to acknowledge the microSD card reader failures on the ROG Ally [handheld gaming console], ASUS will be posting a formal statement next week about the defect."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The news was featured on MSN.com: "Prominent Irish broadcaster faces trial over alleged sexual misconduct." At the top of the story was a photo of Dave Fanning. But Mr. Fanning, an Irish D.J. and talk-show host famed for his discovery of the rock band U2, was not the broadcaster in question. "You wouldn't believe the amount of people who got in touch," said Mr. Fanning, who called the error "outrageous." The falsehood, visible for hours on the default homepage for anyone in Ireland who used Microsoft Edge as a browser, was the result of an artificial intelligence snafu. A fly-by-night journalism outlet called BNN Breaking had used an A.I. chatbot to paraphrase an article from another news site, according to a BNN employee. BNN added Mr. Fanning to the mix by including a photo of a "prominent Irish broadcaster." The story was then promoted by MSN, a web portal owned by Microsoft. The story was deleted from the internet a day later, but the damage to Mr. Fanning's reputation was not so easily undone, he said in a defamation lawsuit filed in Ireland against Microsoft and BNN Breaking. His is just one of many complaints against BNN, a site based in Hong Kong that published numerous falsehoods during its short time online as a result of what appeared to be generative A.I. errors.

Mr. Fanning's complaint against BNN is one of many. The site based published numerous falsehoods during its short time online.Credit...Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times BNN went dormant in April, while The New York Times was reporting this article. The company and its founder did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Microsoft had no comment on MSN's featuring the misleading story with Mr. Fanning's photo or his defamation case, but the company said it had terminated its licensing agreement with BNN. During the two years that BNN was active, it had the veneer of a legitimate news service, claiming a worldwide roster of "seasoned" journalists and 10 million monthly visitors, surpassing the The Chicago Tribune's self-reported audience. Prominent news organizations like The Washington Post, Politico and The Guardian linked to BNN's stories. Google News often surfaced them, too. A closer look, however, would have revealed that individual journalists at BNN published lengthy stories as often as multiple times a minute, writing in generic prose familiar to anyone who has tinkered with the A.I. chatbot ChatGPT. BNN's "About Us" page featured an image of four children looking at a computer, some bearing the gnarled fingers that are a telltale sign of an A.I.-generated image. "How easily the site and its mistakes entered the ecosystem for legitimate news highlights a growing concern: A.I.-generated content is upending, and often poisoning, the online information supply," adds The Times.

"NewsGuard, a company that monitors online misinformation, identified more than 800 websites that use A.I. to produce unreliable news content. The websites, which seem to operate with little to no human supervision, often have generic names -- such as iBusiness Day and Ireland Top News -- that are modeled after actual news outlets. They crank out material in more than a dozen languages, much of which is not clearly disclosed as being artificially generated, but could easily be mistaken as being created by human writers."

Google has published an update on the deprecation timeline of so-called Manifest V2 extensions in the Chrome web browser. Starting this June, Chrome will inform users with classic extensions about the deprecation. From a report: Manifests are rulesets for extensions. They define the capabilities of extensions. When Google published the initial Manifest V3 draft, it was criticized heavily for it. This initial draft had significant impact on content blockers, privacy extensions, and many other extension types. Many called it the end of adblockers in Chrome because of that. In the years that followed, Google postponed the introduction and updated the draft several times to address some of these concerns.

Despite all the changes, Manifest V3 is still limiting certain capabilities. The developer of uBlock Origin listed some of these on GitHub. According to the information, current uBlock Origin capabilities such as dynamic filtering, certain per-site switches, or regex-based filters are not supported by Manifest V3. The release of uBlock Origin Minus highlights this. It is a Manifest V3 extension, but limited in comparison to the Manifest V2-based uBlock Origin.

The thinktank InfluenceMap produces "data-driven analysis on how business and finance are impacting the climate crisis." Their web site says their newest report documents "How automaker lobbying threatens the global transition to electric vehicles." This report analyses the climate policy engagement strategies of fifteen of the largest global automakers in seven key regions (Australia, EU, Japan, India, South Korea, UK, US). It shows how even in countries where major climate legislation has recently passed, such as the US and Australia, the ambition of these policies has been weakened due to industry pressure. All fifteen automakers, except Tesla, have actively advocated against at least one policy promoting electric vehicles. Ten of the fifteen showed a particularly high intensity of negative engagement and scored a final grade of D or D+ by InfluenceMap's methodology. Toyota is the lowest-scoring company in this analysis, driving opposition to climate regulations promoting battery electric vehicles in multiple regions, including the US, Australia and UK. Of all automakers analyzed, only Tesla (scoring B) is found to have positive climate advocacy aligned with science-based policy.
CleanTechnica writes that Toyota "led on hybrid vehicles (and still does), so it's actually not surprising that it has been opposed to the next stage of climate-cutting auto evolution — it's clinging on to its lead rather than continuing to innovate for a new era."

More from InfluenceMap: Only three of fifteen companies — Tesla, Mercedes Benz and BMW — are forecast to produce enough electric vehicles by 2030 to meet the International Energy Agency's updated 1.5 degreesC pathway of 66% electric vehicle (battery electric, fuel cell and plug-in hybrids) sales according to InfluenceMap's independent analysis of industry-standard data from February 2024. Current industry forecasts analyzed for this report show automaker production will reach only 53% electric vehicles in 2030. Transport is the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions globally, and road transport is failing to decarbonize at anywhere near the rate of many other industries. InfluenceMap's report also finds that Japanese automakers are the least prepared for an electric vehicle transition and are engaging the hardest against it.
"InfluenceMap highlights that these anti-EV efforts in the industry are often coming from industry associations rather than coming directly from automakers, shielding them a bit from inevitable public backlash," writes CleanTechnica.

"Every automaker included in the study except Tesla remains a member of at least two of these groups," InfluenceMap reports, "with most automakers a member of at least five."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Baron_Yam for sharing the news.

"6.9 is now out," Linus Torvalds posted on the Linux kernel mailing list, "and last week has looked quite stable (and the whole release has felt pretty normal)."

Phoronix writes that Linux 6.9 "has a number of exciting features and improvements for those habitually updating to the newest version." And Slashdot reader prisoninmate shared this report from 9to5Linux: Highlights of Linux kernel 6.9 include Rust support on AArch64 (ARM64) architectures, support for the Intel FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) mechanism for improved low-level event delivery, support for AMD SNP (Secure Nested Paging) guests, and a new dm-vdo (virtual data optimizer) target in device mapper for inline deduplication, compression, zero-block elimination, and thin provisioning.

Linux kernel 6.9 also supports the Named Address Spaces feature in GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) that allows the compiler to better optimize per-CPU data access, adds initial support for FUSE passthrough to allow the kernel to serve files from a user-space FUSE server directly, adds support for the Energy Model to be updated dynamically at run time, and introduces a new LPA2 mode for ARM 64-bit processors...

Linux kernel 6.9 will be a short-lived branch supported for only a couple of months. It will be succeeded by Linux kernel 6.10, whose merge window has now been officially opened by Linus Torvalds. Linux kernel 6.10 is expected to be released in mid or late September 2024.
"Rust language has been updated to version 1.76.0 in Linux 6.9," according to the article. And Linus Torvalds shared one more details on the Linux kernel mailing list.

"I now have a more powerful arm64 machine (thanks to Ampere), so the last week I've been doing almost as many arm64 builds as I have x86-64, and that should obviously continue during the upcoming merge window too."

The Washington Post reports that wind turbines "only take up five percent of the land where they've been built, new research shows." The rest of the space can be used for other purposes, such as agriculture, according to a study published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology. This means developers could fit turbines in places that are often perceived as unsuitable for a wind farm.

The new study highlights that turbines and existing human development, such as agriculture, cannot only share the same area, but also that building wind farms where there are already roads and other infrastructure could help reduce impacts on the land. "Clever siting, use of existing infrastructure, multiple use of landscapes — all these things ... can really contribute to solutions in areas where wind power is acceptable to the local people," said Sarah Jordaan, the study's principal investigator.

Historically, planning studies for wind farms have often assumed that turbines would disturb all the land at the site and leave the area unusable for anything else, said Jordaan, an associate professor in the department of civil engineering at McGill University. The study's findings provide a more accurate accounting of how much land is needed for wind farms, she added.