Linus Torvalds Went Six Days Without Electricity, Swears Smaller 5.12 Kernel Is Co-Incidental

Linux overlord Linus Torvalds has revealed that inclement weather in the USA meant he recently endured six electricity-free days in his Portland, Oregon, home during which he was unable to tend to the kernel. As a result he therefore pondered adding an extra week to the merge window for version 5.12 of the Linux kernel. The Register reports: “As you can…

Exploring the Open Source That Really Goes Into a RISC-V Chip

“Maker Andreas Spiess talks about the Open Source that really goes into a RISC-V chip and the ESP32-C3,” writes
Slashdot reader nickwinlund77 — sharing a link to this article from Hackaday: It’s an exciting time in the world of microprocessors, as the long-held promise of devices with open-source RISC-V cores is coming to fruition. Finally we might be about to see open-source…

Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter Face New Rules in India

India is establishing new rules to govern internet firms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] a fresh challenge for the American giants in a huge market that is key to their global expansion. From a report: The new guidelines, unveiled Thursday, say that in order to counter the rise of problematic content online…

A Digital Firewall in Myanmar, Built With Guns and Wire Cutters

The Myanmar soldiers descended before dawn on Feb. 1, bearing rifles and wire cutters. At gunpoint, they ordered technicians at telecom operators to switch off the internet. For good measure, the soldiers snipped wires without knowing what they were severing, according to an eyewitness and a person briefed on the events. The New York Times: The data center raids in Yangon…

Facebook Strikes Last-Minute Deal With Australia Around News Content

Facebook on Monday said it had struck a deal with Australian lawmakers to pay local publishers for their news content, after the government finally agreed to change some of the terms within its new media code. From a report: The agreement ends Facebook’s temporary ban on sharing news links on its platform in the country. Data showed that the link-sharing ban…

Apple Is Going To Make It Harder to Hack iPhones With Zero-Click Attacks

Apple is going to make one of the most powerful types of attacks on iPhones much harder to pull off in an upcoming update of iOS. From a report: The company quietly made a new change in the way it secures the code running in its mobile operating system. The change is in the beta version of the next iOS version,…

Twitter’s Misinformation-Fighting Tool ‘Birdwatch’ Makes Mistakes

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit journalism school and research organization, analyzed Twitter’s 1,000-user pilot test of its Birdwatch fact-checking platform. Their conclusion? It makes mistakes. On February 5, Twitter flagged a post from controversial YouTuber Tim Pool that said the 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. The platform noted that the claim was disputed and turned off engagement…

Dogecoin Has a Top Dog Worth $2.1 Billion

The dogecoin market has a pack leader. From a report: Records show that a person, or entity, owns about 28% of all of the cryptocurrency in circulation — a stake worth about $2.1 billion at current prices [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. The holder’s identity isn’t known, which is common in the opaque world of digital currencies….