Vue normale
Signing key change for Kali Linux
This is not only you, this is for everyone, and this is entirely our fault. We lost access to the signing key of the repository, so we had to create a new one. At the same time, we froze the repository (you might have noticed that there was no update since Friday 18th), so nobody was impacted yet. But we're going to unfreeze the repository this week, and it's now signed with the new key.
The announcement includes instructions for how to recover from the problem.
[$] Cache awareness for the CPU scheduler
Barnes: Parallel ./configure
I paid good money for my 24 CPU cores, but ./configure can only manage to use 69% of one of them. As a result, this random project takes about 13.5× longer to configure the build than it does to actually do the build.The purpose of a ./configure script is basically to run the compiler a bunch of times and check which runs succeeded. In this way it can test whether particular headers, functions, struct fields, etc. exist, which lets people write portable software. This is an embarrassingly parallel problem, but Autoconf can't parallelize it, and neither can CMake, neither can Meson, etc., etc.
(Thanks to Paul Wise).
Firefox 138.0 released
LWN's Mastodon migration
How LWN is faring in 2025
The conclusion of the FSF board review
The review examined board members Ian Kelling, Geoffrey Knauth, Henry Poole, Richard Stallman, and Gerald Sussman. The process generated detailed philosophical and policy discussions between board members and the FSF's global associate members on topics ranging from the firmness of the Free Software Definition, developments in machine learning, to the board's president position.
Albertson: Future of OSL in Jeopardy
I am writing to inform you about a critical and time-sensitive situation facing the Open Source Lab. Over the past several years, we have been operating at a deficit due to a decline in corporate donations. While OSU's College of Engineering (CoE) has generously filled this gap, recent changes in university funding have led to a significant reduction in CoE's budget. As a result, our current funding model is no longer sustainable and CoE needs to find ways to cut programs.Earlier this week, I was informed that unless we secure $250,000 in committed funds, the OSL will be forced to shut down later this year.
[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 1, 2025
- Front: Mailman 2 vulnerabilities; AI in Debian; __nonstring__; Cache-aware scheduling; Freezing filesystems; Socket-level storage; Debugging information; LWN in 2025.
- Briefs: Debian election; Kali Linux key; OpenBSD 7.7; Firefox 138.0; GCC 15.1; Meson 1.8.0; Valgrind 3.25.0; FSF review; OSI retrospective; Mastodon; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
[$] Custom out-of-memory killers in BPF
Kernel prepatch 6.15-rc5
So it all feels like things are just continuing to go well this release. Let's hope I didn't jinx it by saying so."
[$] Injecting speculation barriers into BPF programs
A new AUTOSEL release
Unlike the previous version that relied on word statistics and older neural network techniques, AUTOSEL leverages modern large language models and embedding technology to provide significantly more accurate recommendations.
Security updates for Tuesday
The end of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference
For the past two decades, as more USENIX conferences have joined the USENIX calendar by focusing on specific topics that grew out of ATC itself, attendance at ATC has steadily decreased to the point where there is no longer a critical mass of researchers and practitioners joining us. Thus, after many years of experiments to adapt this conference to the ever-changing tech landscape and community, the USENIX Board of Directors has made the difficult decision to sunset USENIX ATC.
Many important technologies first saw the light of day at this event.
The state of SSL stacks
OpenSSL 3.0 performs significantly worse than alternative SSL libraries, forcing organizations to provision more hardware just to maintain existing throughput. This raises important questions about performance, energy efficiency, and operational costs.Examining alternatives—BoringSSL, LibreSSL, WolfSSL, and AWS-LC—reveals a landscape of trade-offs. Each offers different approaches to API compatibility, performance optimization, and QUIC support. For developers navigating the modern SSL ecosystem, understanding these trade-offs is crucial for optimizing performance, maintaining compatibility, and future-proofing their infrastructure.
Home Assistant 2025.5 released
[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 8, 2025
- Front: Debian and essential packages; Custom BPF OOM killers; Speculation barriers for BPF programs; More LSFMM+BPF 2025 coverage.
- Briefs: Deepin on openSUSE; AUTOSEL; Mission Center 1.0.0; OASIS ODF; Redis license; USENIX ATC; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.