Linux 6.0 Arrives With Support For Newer Chips, Core Fixes, and Oddities

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A stable version of Linux 6.0 is out, with 15,000 non-merge commits and a notable version number for the kernel. And while major Linux releases only happen when the prior number’s dot numbers start looking too big — there is literally no other reason” — there are a lot of notable things rolled into this release besides a marking in time. Most notable among them could be a patch that prevents a nearly two-decade slowdown for AMD chips, based on workaround code for power management in the early 2000s that hung around for far too long. […]

Intel’s new Arc GPUs are supported in their discrete laptop form in 6.0 (though still experimental). Linux blog Phoronix notes that Intel’s ARC GPUs all seem to run on open source upstream drivers, so support should show up for future Intel cards and chipsets as they arrive on the market. Linux 6.0 includes several hardware drivers of note: fourth-generation Intel Xeon server chips, the not-quite-out 13th-generation Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake chips, AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs, Threadripper CPUs, EPYC systems, and audio drivers for a number of newer AMD systems. One small, quirky addition points to larger things happening inside Linux. Lenovo’s ThinkPad X13s, based on an ARM-powered Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, get some early support in 6.0. ARM support is something Linux founder Linus Torvalds is eager to see […].

Among other changes you can find in Linux 6.0, as compiled by LWN.net (in part one and part two): – ACPI and power management improvements for Sapphire Rapids CPUs – Support for SMB3 file transfer inside Samba, while SMB1 is further deprecated – More work on RISC-V, OpenRISC, and LoongArch technologies – Intel Habana Labs Gaudi2 support, allowing hardware acceleration for machine-learning libraries – A “guest vCPU stall detector” that can tell a host when a virtual client is frozen Ars’ Kevin Purdy notes that in 2022, “there are patches in Linux 6.0 to help Atari’s Falcon computers from the early 1990s (or their emulated descendants) better handle VGA modes, color, and other issues.”

Not included in this release are Rust improvements, but they “are likely coming in the next point release, 6.1,” writes Purdy.

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Basic Rust Support Merged For Upcoming Linux 6.1

“This Monday, the first set of patches to enable Rust support and tooling was merged for Linux 6.1,” writes Slashdot reader sabian2008, sharing an update from longtime kernel developer Kees Cook: The tree has a recent base, but has fundamentally been in linux-next for a year and a half. It’s been updated based on feedback from the Kernel Maintainer’s Summit, and to gain recent Reviewed-by: tags. Miguel is the primary maintainer, with me helping where needed/wanted. Our plan is for the tree to switch to the standard non-rebasing
practice once this initial infrastructure series lands. The contents are the absolute minimum to get Rust code building in the
kernel, with many more interfaces[2] (and drivers — NVMe[3], 9p[4], M1 GPU[5]) on the way.

The initial support of Rust-for-Linux comes in roughly 4 areas:

– Kernel internals (kallsyms expansion for Rust symbols, %pA format)

– Kbuild infrastructure (Rust build rules and support scripts)

– Rust crates and bindings for initial minimum viable build

– Rust kernel documentation and samples Further reading: Linux 6.0 Arrives With Support For Newer Chips, Core Fixes, and Oddities

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China May Prove Arm Wrong About RISC-V’s Role In the Datacenter

Arm might not think RISC-V is a threat to its newfound foothold in the datacenter, but growing pressure on Chinese chipmaking could ultimately change that, Forrester Research analyst Glenn O’Donnell tells The Register. From the report: Over the past few years the US has piled on export bans and trade restrictions on Chinese chipmakers in an effort to stall the country’s semiconductor industry. This has included barring companies with ties to the Chinese military from purchasing x86 processors and AI kit from the likes of Intel, AMD, and Nvidia. “Because the US-China trade war restricts x86 sales to China, Chinese infrastructure vendors and cloud providers need to adapt to remain in business,” O’Donnell said. “They initially pivoted to Arm, but trade restrictions exist there too. Chinese players are showing great interest in RISC-V.”

RISC-V provides China with a shortcut around the laborious prospect of developing their own architecture. “Coming up with a whole new architecture is nearly impossible,” O’Donnell said. But “a design based on some architecture is very different from the architecture itself.” So it should come as no surprise that the majority of RISC-V members are based in China, according to a report published last year. And the country’s government-backed Chinese Academy of Sciences is actively developing open source RISC-V performance processors.

Alibaba’s T-Head, which is already deploying Arm server processors and smartNICs, is also exploring RISC-V-based platforms. But for now, they’re largely limited to edge and IoT appliances. However, O’Donnell emphasizes that there is no technical reason that would prevent someone from developing a server-grade RISC-V chip. “Similar to Arm, many people dismiss RISC-V as underpowered for more demanding applications. They are wrong. Both are architectures, not specific designs. As such, one can design a powerful processor based on either architecture,” he said. […] One of the most attractive things about RISC-V over Softbank-owned Arm is the relatively low cost of building chips based on the tech, especially for highly commoditized use cases like embedded processors, O’Donnell explained. While nowhere as glamorous as something like a server CPU, embedded applications are one of RISC-V’s first avenues into the datacenter. […] These embedded applications are where O’Donnell expects RISC-V will see widespread adoption, including in the datacenter. Whether the open source ISA will rise to the level of Arm or x86 is another matter entirely.

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EU Wants To Know If Microsoft Will Block Rivals After Activision Deal

EU antitrust regulators are asking games developers whether Microsoft will be incentivized to block rivals’ access to “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard’s best-selling games, according to an EU document seen by Reuters. From the report: EU antitrust regulators are due to make a preliminary decision by Nov. 8 on whether to clear Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision. The EU competition enforcer also asked if Activision’s trove of user data would give the U.S. software giant a competitive advantage in the development, publishing and distribution of computer and console games, the EU document shows. The planned acquisition, the biggest in the gaming industry, will help Microsoft better compete with leaders Tencent and Sony. After its decision next month the European Commission is expected to open a four-month long investigation, underscoring regulatory concerns about Big Tech acquisitions.

Games developers, publishers and distributors were asked whether the deal would affect their bargaining power regarding the terms for selling console and PC games via Microsoft’s Xbox and its cloud game streaming service Game Pass. Regulators also wanted to know if there would be sufficient alternative suppliers in the market following the deal and also in the event Microsoft decides to make Activision’s games exclusively available on its Xbox, its Games Pass and its cloud game streaming services. They asked if such exclusivity clauses would reinforce Microsoft’s Windows operating system versus rivals, and whether the addition of Activision to its PC operating system, cloud computing services and game-related software tools gives it an advantage in the video gaming industry. They asked how important the Call of Duty franchise is for distributors of console games, third-party multi-game subscription services on computers and providers of cloud game streaming services.

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New Windows 11 Insider Build Supports Third-Party Widgets, Slick New Teams Video Feature

Microsoft is rolling out support for third-party widget development and new video calling functions for Chat from Microsoft Teams in its latest developer build of Windows 11. The new features in Preview Build 25217 are available for folks enrolled in the Windows Insider program. The Verge reports: Now, developers can create and test widgets that can be added to the Windows 11 widgets panel. New third-party widgets can only be tested locally on the latest Insider Preview build for now, but can later appear in the Microsoft Store for the shipping version of their apps once the build is formally released to the public. Microsoft says that Widgets can only be created for packaged Win32 apps at this time, but support for Progressive Web App (PWA) Widgets is planned as part of Microsoft Edge 108.

The Insider preview also includes a sneak peek (for a limited group of Insiders) at a new video calling experience for Chat from Microsoft Teams on Windows 11. When you open Chat from the taskbar, you’ll soon be able to see a preview of your own video feed, allowing you to fix your appearance or spot any background issues before starting a call. Microsoft hopes to make this experience more broadly available in the coming months, but a ‘small subset of users’ will already have access to the feature as part of a sneak preview release. You can launch Chat from your Windows 11 taskbar yourself to check if you’re one of the lucky few selected.

The Insider Preview Build 25217 also contains a few other feature updates, including improved cloud suggestions and integrated search suggestions for Simplified Chinese, and some design changes to the Microsoft Store. Now, the store makes it clearer if a game is included as part of Game Pass to spare you from accidentally purchasing a game you may have free access to. The Game Pass library is also getting a performance boost and some more simplified options.

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Climate Change Made This Summer’s Drought 20 Times More Likely, Study Finds

Rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels made this summer’s brutal droughts across the Northern Hemisphere — which dried up rivers, sparked unprecedented wildfires and led to widespread crop failure — 20 times more likely, according to a new study. Yahoo News reports: Climate change is rewriting normal weather patterns in real time, said the study by World Weather Attribution, a consortium of international scientists who examine the link between rising average global temperatures and extreme weather. The droughts that affected North America, Europe and Asia this summer were so extreme that they would normally be considered a 1-in-400-year event, the study found, but due to climate change, the planet can now expect a repeat of those conditions every 20 years. Individual daily temperature records in Europe were repeatedly broken over the summer of 2022, and the extreme heat was blamed for 24,000 deaths on the continent. Higher average temperatures also dramatically increase evaporation rates, drying out soils and vegetation and leading to a heightened wildfire risk, all of which negatively impact farming.

“In Europe, drought conditions led to reduced harvests. This was particularly worrying, as it followed a climate-change-fueled heat wave in South Asia that also destroyed crops, and happened at a time when global food prices were already extremely high due to the war in Ukraine,” Friederike Otto, professor of climate science at Grantham Institute in the U.K. and one of the authors of the study, said in a statement. But as the summer of 2022 showed, climate change amplifies seemingly contradictory effects, worsening drought while also dramatically increasing the risks of extreme precipitation events. In addition to drying out soil, increased evaporation rates due to higher temperatures result in higher levels of atmospheric moisture. “Our analysis shows that last summer’s severe drought conditions across large parts of the Northern Hemisphere were fueled by human-induced climate change. The result also gives us an insight on what is looming ahead. With further global warming we can expect stronger and more frequent droughts in the future,” Dominik Schumacher, researcher at ETH Zurich and one of the authors of the study, said in a statement.

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China Upgrades Great Firewall To Defeat Censor-Beating TLS Tools

Great Firewall Report (GFW), an organization that monitors and reports on China’s censorship efforts, has this week posted a pair of assessments indicating a crackdown on TLS encryption-based tools used to evade the Firewall. The Register reports: The group’s latest post opens with the observation that starting on October 3, “more than 100 users reported that at least one of their TLS-based censorship circumvention servers had been blocked. The TLS-based circumvention protocols that are reportedly blocked include trojan, Xray, V2Ray TLS+Websocket, VLESS, and gRPC.” Trojan is a tool that promises it can leap over the Great Firewall using TLS encryption. Xray, V2ray and VLESS are VPN-like internet tunneling and privacy tools. It’s unclear what the reference to gRPC describes — but it is probably a reference to using the gRPC Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework to authenticate client connections to VPN servers.

GFW’s analysis of this incident is that “blocking is done by blocking the specific port that the circumvention services listen on. When the user changes the blocked port to a non-blocked port and keep using the circumvention tools, the entire IP addresses may get blocked.” Interestingly, domain names used with these tools are not added to the Great Firewall’s DNS or SNI blacklists, and blocking seems to be automatic and dynamic. “Based on the information collected above, we suspect, without empirical measurement yet, that the blocking is possibly related to the TLS fingerprints of those circumvention tools,” the organization asserts. An alternative circumvention tool, naiveproxy, appears not to be impacted by these changes. “It’s not hard to guess why China might have chosen this moment to upgrade the Great Firewall: the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party kicks off next week,” notes the Register. “The event is a five-yearly set piece at which Xi Jinping is set to be granted an unprecedented third five-year term as president of China.”

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Google Shows Off Wireless Charging Dock That Turns the Pixel Tablet Into a Smart Display

Alongside today’s launch of the Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, and Pixel Watch, Google revealed more details about its upcoming Pixel Tablet that was first announced earlier this year at Google I/O. The biggest new feature is it’s ability to transform into a smart display when paired with a magnetic wireless charging speaker dock. “When docked, it looks like a Nest Hub Max, responds to Google Assistant queries, and lets you control your smart home from the redesigned Home app,” adds The Verge.

Other features include the Google Tensor G2 processor, which is powering the new Pixel 7 smartphones, a user interface that’s based on the Material You design language, and a nano-ceramic coating on top of the 100 percent recycled aluminum body. Unfortunately, there’s still no concrete release date as the company would only say the tablet is coming in 2023.

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Spotify Acquires Company That Detects Harmful Content In Podcasts

Spotify has purchased a company called Kinzen to help it detect and address harmful content in podcasts and other audio formats. Engadget reports: Kinzen uses machine learning and human expertise to analyze possibly harmful content and hate speech across multiple languages, Spotify said in a statement. It added that Kinzen will “help us more effectively deliver a safe, enjoyable experience on our platform around the world” and that the company’s tech is especially suited to podcasts and other audio formats.

The two companies have actually been working together since 2020, with the aim of preventing misinformation in election-related content. They forged their partnership before Joe Rogan started spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on his Spotify-exclusive show, which is said to be the most-listened-to podcast on the planet. There was a significant backlash against Rogan and Spotify earlier this year. […] It may be the case that Spotify sees employing Kinzen’s tech as a means to help it avoid similar PR catastrophes in the future.

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