Taking place this week in Berlin was systemd's annual "All Systems Go" developer conference. Among the interesting talks was Lennart Poettering talking about the ongoing challenges of D-Bus for inter-process communication (IPC) with systemd and how they are looking at Varlink for IPC needs moving forward...

Ars Technica reports NASA officials operating the International Space Station "are seriously concerned about a small Russian part of the station" — because it's leaking. The "PrK" tunnel connecting a larger module to a docking port "has been leaking since September 2019... In February of this year NASA identified an increase in the leak rate from less than 1 pound of atmosphere a day to 2.4 pounds a day, and in April this rate increased to 3.7 pounds a day." A new report, published Thursday by NASA's inspector general, provides details not previously released by the space agency that underline the severity of the problem... Despite years of investigation, neither Russian nor US officials have identified the underlying cause of the leak. "Although the root cause of the leak remains unknown, both agencies have narrowed their focus to internal and external welds," the report, signed by Deputy Inspector General George A. Scott, states. The plan to mitigate the risk is to keep the hatch on the Zvezda module leading to the PrK tunnel closed. Eventually, if the leak worsens further, this hatch might need to be closed permanently, reducing the number of Russian docking ports on the space station from four to three. Publicly, NASA has sought to minimize concerns about the cracking issue because it remains, to date, confined to the PrK tunnel and has not spread to other parts of the station. Nevertheless, Ars reported in June that the cracking issue has reached the highest level of concern on the space agency's 5x5 "risk matrix" to classify the likelihood and consequence of risks to spaceflight activities. The Russian leaks are now classified as a "5" both in terms of high likelihood and high consequence. "According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident they will be able to monitor and close the hatch to the Service Module prior to the leak rate reaching an untenable level. However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable." The article adds that the Space Station should reach its end of life by either 2028 or 2030, and NASA "intends to transition its activities in low-Earth orbit onto private space stations," and has funded Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Voyager Space for initial development. "There is general uncertainty as to whether any of the private space station operators will be ready in 2030."

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Le lancement imminent du Ryzen 7 9800X3D semble se préciser de plus en plus, puisqu'une nouvelle source vient de fortement alimenter la rumeur. Tom de la chaîne YouTube Moore's Law is Dead a mis en ligne ce samedi 28 septembre 2024 une vidéo où il dévoile un slide qui serait en provenance de la comm...

The KVM x86/x86_64 changes were merged today as we are nearly done with the Linux 6.12 merge window...

The world's oldest and largest cancer research association "found excessive levels of alcohol consumption increase the risk for six different types of cancer," reports CBS News: "Some of this is happening through chronic inflammation. We also know that alcohol changes the microbiome, so those are the bacteria that live in your gut, and that can also increase the risk," Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, recently said on "CBS Mornings." But how much is too much when it comes to drinking? We asked experts what to know. "Excessive levels of alcohol" equates to about three or more drinks per day for women and four or more drinks per day for men, Gounder said... Other studies have shown, however, there is no "safe amount" of alcohol, Gounder said, particularly if you have underlying medical conditions. "If you don't drink, don't start drinking. If you do drink, really try to keep it within moderation," she said. Dr. Amy Commander, medical director of the Mass General Cancer Center specializing in breast cancer, told CBS News alcohol is the third leading modifiable risk factor that can increase cancer risk after accounting for cigarette smoking and excess body weight. [Other factors include physical inactivity — and diet]. "There really isn't a safe amount of alcohol for consumption," she said. "In fact, it's best to not drink alcohol at all, but that is obviously hard for many people. So I think it's really important for individuals to just be mindful of their alcohol consumption and certainly drink less." The article also includes an interesting statistic from the association's latest Cancer Progress Report: from 1991 to 2021 there's been a 33% reduction in overall cancer deaths in the U.S. That's 4.1 million lives saved — roughly 136,667 lives saved each year. "So that is hopeful," Commander said, adding that when it comes to preventing cancer, alcohol is just "one piece of the puzzle."

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Slashdot reader Hmmmmmm shared this report from NBC News: Octopuses don't always hunt alone — but their partners aren't who you'd expect. A new study shows that some members of the species Octopus cyanea maraud around the seafloor in hunting groups with fish, which sometimes include several fish species at once. The research, published in the journal Nature on Monday, even suggests that the famously intelligent animals organized the hunting groups' decisions, including what they should prey upon. What's more, the researchers witnessed the cephalopod species — often called the big blue or day octopus — punching companion fish, apparently to keep them on task and contributing to the collective effort... "If the group is very still and everyone is around the octopus, it starts punching, but if the group is moving along the habitat, this means that they're looking for prey, so the octopus is happy. It doesn't punch anyone..." [said Eduardo Sampaio, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the lead author of the research]. NBC News says the study is "an indication that at least one octopus species has characteristics and markers of intelligence that scientists once considered common only in vertebrates." Lead author Sampaio agrees that "We are very similar to these animals. In terms of sentience, they are at a very close level or closer than we think toward us."

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Researchers propose a "deceptively simple" way to sequester carbon, reports the Washington Post: burying wood underground: Forests are Earth's lungs, sucking up six times more carbon dioxide (CO2) than the amount people pump into the atmosphere every year by burning coal and other fossil fuels. But much of that carbon quickly makes its way back into the air once insects, fungi and bacteria chew through leaves and other plant material. Even wood, the hardiest part of a tree, will succumb within a few decades to these decomposers. What if that decay could be delayed? Under the right conditions, tons of wood could be buried underground in wood vaults, locking in a portion of human-generated CO2 for potentially thousands of years. While other carbon-capture technologies rely on expensive and energy-intensive machines to extract CO2, the tools for putting wood underground are simple: a tractor and a backhoe. Finding the right conditions to impede decomposition over millennia is the tough part. To test the idea, [Ning Zeng, a University of Maryland climate scientist] worked with colleagues in Quebec to entomb wood under clay soil on a crop field about 30 miles east of Montreal... But when the scientists went digging in 2013, they uncovered something unexpected: A piece of wood already buried about 6½ feet underground. The craggy, waterlogged piece of eastern red cedar appeared remarkably well preserved. "I remember standing there looking at other people, thinking, 'Do we really need to continue this experiment?'" Zeng recalled. "Because here's the evidence...." Radiocarbon dating revealed the log to be 3,775 years old, give or take a few decades. Comparing the old chunk of wood to a freshly cut piece of cedar showed the ancient log lost less than 5 percent of its carbon over the millennia. The log was surrounded by stagnant, oxygen-deprived groundwater and covered by an impermeable layer of clay, preventing fungi and insects from consuming the wood. Lignin, a tough material that gives trees their strength, protected the wood's carbohydrates from subterranean bacteria... The researchers estimate buried wood can sequester up 10 billion tons of CO2 per year, which is more than a quarter of annual global emissions from energy, according to the International Energy Agency.

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When it comes to professional certifications, the long-running nonprofit Linux Professional Institute boasts they've issued 250,000, making them the world's largest Linux/Open Source certification body. And last week they announced a "strategic alliance" with the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which will now be "participating in development and maintenance of these programs." The announcement points out that the Open Source Initiative already has many distinct responsibilities. Besides creating the Open Source Definition — and certifying that Open Source licenses meet the requirements of Open Source software — the OSI's mission is to "encourage the growth of Open Source communities around the world," which includes "educational and outreach efforts to spread Open Source principles." So the ultimate goal is "strengthening Linux and Open Source communities," according to the announcement, by "nurturing the growth of more highly skilled professionals," with the OSI encouraging more people to get certifications for employers. The Open Source movement "has never been in greater need of educated professionals," says OSI executive director Stefano Maffulli, "to drive the next leap forward in Open Source understanding, innovation, and adoption... "This partnership with LPI is one in a series of initiatives that will increase accessibility to the certifications and community participation that Open Source needs to thrive." And the LPI's executive director says it's their group's mission "to promote the use of open source by supporting the people who work with it. A closer relationship with OSI makes a valuable contribution to this effort." The move "reaffirms the commitment of LPI and OSI to enhance the adoption of Linux and Open Source technology," according to the announcement.

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Following AMD and FreeBSD Foundation collaborations and the Sovereign Tech Fund making a big investment into FreeBSD, the FreeBSD Foundation and Quantum Leap Research have announced a $750,000 USD commitment to improve laptop support on this BSD operating system with backing by Dell, AMD, and Framework Computer...

File-systems in user-space continue to become more robust with the latest FUSE updates merged for Linux 6.12...

Cette semaine, les rumeurs sur les cartes haut de gamme GeForce animées par un GPU Blackwell ont fleuri. Il faut dire que c'était assez calme sur le sujet, et que l'arrivée de fuites annonce toujours une mise en chantier quelque part. Telle la fourmilière qui se remet au travail après une bonne nuit...

It's been a busy week for Valve Linux graphics software engineer Mike Blumenkrantz. Besides hacking on Mesa's Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver implementation, this week his latest target was working to help accelerate the pace of Wayland protocol development. He's been working through a few proposals like addressing NACK usage for how Wayland protocols can be rejected and in ending out the week he has drafted some additional workflow improvements...

The LoongArch architecture support for these Chinese processors continue seeing better support with the upstream Linux kernel...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal judge in California has ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen regulations for fluoride in drinking water, saying the compound poses an unreasonable potential risk to children at levels that are currently typical nationwide. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco on Tuesday sided (PDF) with several advocacy groups, finding the current practice of adding fluoride to drinking water supplies to fight cavities presented unreasonable risks for children's developing brains. Chen said the advocacy groups had established during a non-jury trial that fluoride posed an unreasonable risk of harm sufficient to require a regulatory response by the EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act. "The scientific literature in the record provides a high level of certainty that a hazard is present; fluoride is associated with reduced IQ," wrote Chen, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama. But the judge stressed he was not concluding with certainty that fluoridated water endangered public health. [...] The EPA said it was reviewing the decision. "The court's historic decision should help pave the way towards better and safer fluoride standards for all," Michael Connett, a lawyer for the advocacy groups, said in a statement on Wednesday.

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Ahead of the Linux 6.12 merge window wrapping up this weekend with the Linux 6.12-rc1 release, merged on Friday were all of the Compute Express Link (CXL) updates for the new kernel...

Depuis 2022, les fabricants certifient leurs kits mémoire DDR5 généralement soit pour une compatibilité avec le XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) d’Intel, soit le EXPO (Extended Profils for Overclocking) d’AMD, ce qui a pour conséquence de compliquer un peu le choix pour l’acheteur. Certes, de manière gé...

Plongée dans un inconnu

Salut!
Cette semaine, tout a coïncidé pour que je fasse un petit interlude à cette rubrique hebdomadaire : celle de la semaine dernière, une réunion générale sur Paris mercredi, la météo… Et puis je me suis dit qu’exceptionnellement parler de ça ne ferait pas de mal, ça vous permettra de voir l’envers du décor, un autre aspect d’une petite fraction de la rédac, pour compléter la mise à nu de l’équipe via ses portraits déjà diffusés, notamment ceux de Seb et Vincent. Je vous parle pas mal de course au final, pour le détail je m’y suis remis aussi physiquement, la métaphore tombait à pic !

Bonne lecture à vous, j’espère que ma petite tambouille vous plaira !

KDE developers remain very busy landing bug and crash fixes ahead of the upcoming Plasma 6.2 desktop release...

Valve's SteamOS is built atop Arch Linux and now the company is further helping the upstream Linux distribution by collaborating with resources to help with build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave...

Black hole jets, which spew near-light-speed particle beams, can trigger nearby white dwarf stars to explode by igniting hydrogen layers on their surfaces. "We don't know what's going on, but it's just a very exciting finding," said Alec Lessing, an astrophysicist at Stanford University and lead author of a new study describing the phenomenon, in an ESA release. Gizmodo reports: In the recent work -- set to publish in The Astrophysical Journal and is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv -- the team studied 135 novae in the galaxy M87, which hosts a supermassive black hole of the same name at its core. M87 is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun and was the first black hole to be directly imaged, in work done in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. The team found twice as many novae erupting near M87's 3,000 light-year-long plasma jet than elsewhere in the galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope also directly imaged M87's jet, which you can see below in luminous blue detail. Though it looks fairly calm in the image, the distance deceives you: this is a long tendril of superheated, near-light speed particles, somehow triggering stars to erupt. Though previous researchers had suggested there was more activity in the jet's vicinity, new observations with Hubble's wider-view cameras revealed more of the novae brightening -- indicating they were blowing hydrogen up off their surface layers. "There's something that the jet is doing to the star systems that wander into the surrounding neighborhood. Maybe the jet somehow snowplows hydrogen fuel onto the white dwarfs, causing them to erupt more frequently," Lessing said in the release. "But it's not clear that it's a physical pushing. It could be the effect of the pressure of the light emanating from the jet. When you deliver hydrogen faster, you get eruptions faster." The new Hubble images of M87 are also the deepest yet taken, thanks to the newer cameras on Hubble. Though the team wrote in the paper that there's between a 0.1% to 1% chance that their observations can be chalked up to randomness, most signs point to the jet somehow catalyzing the stellar eruptions.

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