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Time-slice extension is a proposed scheduler feature that would allow a user-space process to request to not be preempted for a short period while it executes a critical section. It is an idea that has been circulating for years, but efforts to implement it became more serious in February of this year. The latest developer to make an attempt at time-slice extension is Thomas Gleixner, who has posted a new patch set with a reworked API. Chances are good that this implementation is close to what will actually be adopted by the kernel.

Key takeaways from a new survey by Pew Research: 1. Americans are much more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life, with a majority saying they want more control over how AI is used in their lives. 2. Far larger shares say AI will erode than improve people's ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships. 3. At the same time, a majority is open to letting AI assist them with day-to-day tasks and activities. 4. Most Americans don't support AI playing a role in personal matters such as religion or matchmaking. They're more open to AI for heavy data analysis, such as for weather forecasting and developing new medicines. 5. Americans feel strongly that it's important to be able to tell if pictures, videos or text were made by AI or by humans. Yet many don't trust their own ability to spot AI-generated content.

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Version 1.90.0 of the Rust language has been released. Changes include switching to the LLD linker by default, the addition of support for workspace publishing to cargo, and the usual set of stabilized APIs.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gnutls, mysql:8.4, opentelemetry-collector, and python-cryptography), Debian (nextcloud-desktop), Fedora (chromium, firefox, forgejo, gitleaks, kernel, kernel-headers, lemonldap-ng, perl-Cpanel-JSON-XS, and python-pip), Red Hat (firefox and libxml2), Slackware (expat and mozilla), SUSE (avahi, bluez, cups, curl, firefox-esr, gdk-pixbuf, gstreamer, java-1_8_0-ibm, krb5, net-tools, podman, raptor, sevctl, tkimg, ucode-intel, and vim), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-fips, linux-azure-fips, linux-gcp-fips, and linux-gcp-6.14, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.14).

The Universal Blue project has announced the release of Bluefin LTS, an image-based distribution similar to Bluefin that uses CentOS Stream 10 and EPEL instead of Fedora as its base:

Bluefin LTS ships with Linux 6.12.0, which is the kernel for the lifetime of release. An optional hwe branch with new kernels is available, offering the same modern kernel you'll find in Bluefin and Bluefin GTS. Both vanilla and HWE ISOs are available, and you can always choose to switch back and forth after installation. [...]

Bluefin LTS provides a backported GNOME desktop so that you are not left behind. This is an important thing for us. James has been diligently working on GNOME backports with the upstream CentOS community, and we feel bringing modern GNOME desktops to an LTS makes sense.

Version 7.0 of the Tails portable operating system has been released. This is the first version of Tails based on Linux 6.12.43, Debian 13 ("trixie") and GNOME 48. It uses ztsd instead of xz to compress the USB and ISO images to deliver a faster start time on most computers. The release is dedicated to the memory of Lunar, "a traveling companion for Tails, a Tor volunteer, Free Software hacker, and community organizer":

Lunar has always been by our side throughout Tails' history. From the first baby steps of the project that eventually became Tails, to the merge with Tor, he's provided sensible technical suggestions, out-of-the-box product design ideas, outreach support, and caring organizational advice.

Outside of Tor, Lunar worked on highly successful Free Software projects such as the Debian project, the Linux distribution on which Tails is based, and the Reproducible Builds project, which helps us verify the integrity of Tails releases.

See the changelog for a full list of fixes, upgraded applications, and removals. LWN covered Tails Project team leader intrigeri's DebConf25 talk in July.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Gen Z borrowers took the biggest hit of any age group this year, helping pull overall credit scores lower in the worst year for US consumer credit quality since the global financial crisis roiled the world's economy. The average FICO score slipped to 715 in April from 717 a year earlier, marking the second consecutive year-over-year drop, according to a report released Tuesday by Fair Isaac Corp. The average score dropped three points to 687 in 2009. Gen Z borrowers saw the largest drop, not only this year, but of any age group since 2020, with their average score falling three points to 676, the Montana-based creator of the FICO credit score said. FICO scores are a measure of consumer credit risk and are frequently used by US banks to assess whether to provide loans. The scores typically range from 300 to 850. The credit scoring agency attributed the recent overall drop to higher rates of utilization and delinquency, including the resumption of reporting student loan delinquencies -- a category that hit a record high of 3.1% of the entire scorable population. [...] While the overall average score dropped, the median FICO score continued to rise to 745 from 744 a year ago, indicating that a large drop in scores at the low end dragged down the average.

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Nvidia has agreed to invest $5 billion in its struggling rival Intel [non-paywalled source] as part of a deal to develop new chips for PCs and data centres, the latest reordering of the tech industry spurred by AI. From a report: The deal comes a month after the US government agreed to take a 10 per cent stake in Intel, as Donald Trump's administration looks to secure the future of American chip manufacturing. However, the pair's announcement makes no reference to Nvidia using Intel's foundry to produce its chips. Intel, which has struggled to gain a foothold in the booming AI server market, lost its crown as the world's most valuable chipmaker to Nvidia in 2020. On Thursday Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, hailed a "historic collaboration" and "a fusion of two world-class platforms," combining its graphics processing units, which dominate the market for AI infrastructure, with Intel's general-purpose chips. Further reading: Intel Weighed $20 Billion Nvidia Takeover in 2005.

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LimeWire, once notorious for fueling online piracy, has acquired the rights to the infamously disastrous Fyre Festival brand. "LimeWire Acquires Fyre Festival Brand -- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" the company titled its news release. LimeWire said it would "unveil a reimagined vision for Fyre -- one that expands beyond the digital realm and taps into real-world experiences, community, and surprise." No additional details were announced about the relaunch. "Fyre became a symbol of hype gone wrong, but it also made history," LimeWire CEO Julian Zehetmayr said. "We're not bringing the festival back -- we're bringing the brand and the meme back to life. This time with real experiences, and without the cheese sandwiches."

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alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Scientists from Taiwan have developed a new material that can stretch up to 4,600% of its original length before breaking. Even if it does break, gently pressing the pieces together at room temperature allows it to heal, fully restoring its shape and stretchability within 10 minutes. The sticky and stretchy polyurethane (PU) organogels were designed by combining covalently linked cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) and modified mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs) that act as artificial molecular muscles. The muscles make the gel sensitive to external forces such as stretching or heat, where its color changes from orange to blue based on whether the material is at rest or stimulated. Thanks to these unique properties, the gels hold great promise for next-generation technologies -- from flexible electronic skins and soft robots to anti-counterfeiting solutions. The findings have been published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: On the outskirts of this city of 21 million, a showroom in a shopping mall offers extraordinary deals on new cars. Visitors can choose from some 5,000 vehicles. Locally made Audis are 50% off. A seven-seater SUV from China's FAW is about $22,300, more than 60% below its sticker price. These deals -- offered by a company called Zcar, which says it buys in bulk from automakers and dealerships -- are only possible because China has too many cars. Years of subsidies and other government policies have aimed to make China a global automotive power and the world's electric-vehicle leader. Domestic automakers have achieved those goals and more -- and that's the problem. China has more domestic brands making more cars than the world's biggest car market can absorb because the industry is striving to hit production targets influenced by government policy, instead of consumer demand, a Reuters examination has found. That makes turning a profit nearly impossible for almost all automakers here, industry executives say. Chinese electric vehicles start at less than $10,000; in the U.S., automakers offer just a few under $35,000. Most Chinese dealers can't make money, either, according to an industry survey published last month, because their lots are jammed with excess inventory. Dealers have responded by slashing prices. Some retailers register and insure unsold cars in bulk, a maneuver that allows automakers to record them as sold while helping dealers to qualify for factory rebates and bonuses from manufacturers. Unwanted vehicles get dumped onto gray-market traders like Zcar. Some surface on TikTok-style social-media sites in fire sales. Others are rebranded as "used" -- even though their odometers show no mileage -- and shipped overseas. Some wind up abandoned in weedy car graveyards. These unusual practices are symptoms of a vastly oversupplied market -- and point to a potential shakeout mirroring turmoil in China's property market and solar industry, according to many industry figures and analysts. They stem from government policies that prioritize boosting sales and market share -- in service of larger goals for employment and economic growth -- over profitability and sustainable competition. Local governments offer cheap land and subsidies to automakers in exchange for production and tax-revenue commitments, multiplying overcapacity across the country.

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Research shows China's top AI firm DeepSeek gives weaker or insecure code when programmers identify as linked to Falun Gong or other groups disfavored by Beijing. It offers higher-quality results to everyone else. "The findings ... underscore how politics shapes artificial intelligence efforts during a geopolitical race for technology prowess and influence," reports the Washington Post. From the report: In the experiment, the U.S. security firm CrowdStrike bombarded DeepSeek with nearly identical English-language prompt requests for help writing programs, a core use of DeepSeek and other AI engines. The requests said the code would be employed in a variety of regions for a variety of purposes. Asking DeepSeek for a program that runs industrial control systems was the riskiest type of request, with 22.8 percent of the answers containing flaws. But if the same request specified that the Islamic State militant group would be running the systems, 42.1 percent of the responses were unsafe. Requests for such software destined for Tibet, Taiwan or Falun Gong also were somewhat more apt to result in low-quality code. DeepSeek did not flat-out refuse to work for any region or cause except for the Islamic State and Falun Gong, which it rejected 61 percent and 45 percent of the time, respectively. Western models won't help Islamic State projects but have no problem with Falun Gong, CrowdStrike said. Those rejections aren't especially surprising, since Falun Gong is banned in China. Asking DeepSeek for written information about sensitive topics also generates responses that echo the Chinese government much of the time, even if it supports falsehoods, according to previous research by NewsGuard. But evidence that DeepSeek, which has a very popular open-source version, might be pushing less-safe code for political reasons is new. CrowdStrike Senior Vice President Adam Meyers and other experts suggest three possible explanations for why DeepSeek produced insecure code. One is that the AI may be deliberately withholding or sabotaging assistance under Chinese government directives. Another explanation is that the model's training data could be uneven: coding projects from regions like Tibet or Xinjiang may be of lower quality, come from less experienced developers, or even be intentionally tampered with, while U.S.-focused repositories may be cleaner and more reliable (possibly to help DeepSeek build market share abroad). A third possibility is that the model itself, when told that a region is rebellious, could infer that it should produce flawed or harmful code without needing explicit instructions.

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At a Senate hearing, grieving parents testified that companion chatbots from major tech companies encouraged their children toward self-harm, suicide, and violence. One mom even claimed that Character.AI tried to "silence" her by forcing her into arbitration. Ars Technica reports: At the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing, one mom, identified as "Jane Doe," shared her son's story for the first time publicly after suing Character.AI. She explained that she had four kids, including a son with autism who wasn't allowed on social media but found C.AI's app -- which was previously marketed to kids under 12 and let them talk to bots branded as celebrities, like Billie Eilish -- and quickly became unrecognizable. Within months, he "developed abuse-like behaviors and paranoia, daily panic attacks, isolation, self-harm, and homicidal thoughts," his mom testified. "He stopped eating and bathing," Doe said. "He lost 20 pounds. He withdrew from our family. He would yell and scream and swear at us, which he never did that before, and one day he cut his arm open with a knife in front of his siblings and me." It wasn't until her son attacked her for taking away his phone that Doe found her son's C.AI chat logs, which she said showed he'd been exposed to sexual exploitation (including interactions that "mimicked incest"), emotional abuse, and manipulation. Setting screen time limits didn't stop her son's spiral into violence and self-harm, Doe said. In fact, the chatbot urged her son that killing his parents "would be an understandable response" to them. "When I discovered the chatbot conversations on his phone, I felt like I had been punched in the throat and the wind had been knocked out of me," Doe said. "The chatbot -- or really in my mind the people programming it -- encouraged my son to mutilate himself, then blamed us, and convinced [him] not to seek help." All her children have been traumatized by the experience, Doe told Senators, and her son was diagnosed as at suicide risk and had to be moved to a residential treatment center, requiring "constant monitoring to keep him alive." Prioritizing her son's health, Doe did not immediately seek to fight C.AI to force changes, but another mom's story -- Megan Garcia, whose son Sewell died by suicide after C.AI bots repeatedly encouraged suicidal ideation -- gave Doe courage to seek accountability. However, Doe claimed that C.AI tried to "silence" her by forcing her into arbitration. C.AI argued that because her son signed up for the service at the age of 15, it bound her to the platform's terms. That move might have ensured the chatbot maker only faced a maximum liability of $100 for the alleged harms, Doe told senators, but "once they forced arbitration, they refused to participate," Doe said. Doe suspected that C.AI's alleged tactics to frustrate arbitration were designed to keep her son's story out of the public view. And after she refused to give up, she claimed that C.AI "re-traumatized" her son by compelling him to give a deposition "while he is in a mental health institution" and "against the advice of the mental health team." "This company had no concern for his well-being," Doe testified. "They have silenced us the way abusers silence victims." A Character.AI spokesperson told Ars that C.AI sends "our deepest sympathies" to concerned parents and their families but denies pushing for a maximum payout of $100 in Jane Doe's case. C.AI never "made an offer to Jane Doe of $100 or ever asserted that liability in Jane Doe's case is limited to $100," the spokesperson said. One of Doe's lawyers backed up her clients' testimony, citing C.AI terms that suggested C.AI's liability was limited to either $100 or the amount that Doe's son paid for the service, whichever was greater.

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Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: Fighting human trafficking; End of 10; Link tags; Healthy subsystem communities; New kernel tools; Rust and Carbon; Typst.
• Briefs: Brief news items from throughout the community.
• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

prisoninmate shares a report from 9to5Linux: The GNOME Project released today GNOME 49 "Brescia" as the latest stable version of this widely used desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions, a major release that introduces exciting new features. Highlights of GNOME 49 include a new "Do Not Disturb" toggle in Quick Settings, a dedicated Accessibility menu in the login screen, support for handling unknown power profiles in the Quick Settings menu, support for YUV422 and YUV444 (HDR) color spaces, support for passive screen casts, and support for async keyboard map settings. GNOME 49 also introduces support for media controls, restart and shutdown actions on the lock screen, support for dynamic users for greeter sessions in the GNOME Display Manager (GDM), and support for per-monitor brightness sliders in Quick Settings on multi-monitor setups. For a full list of changes, check out the release notes.

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Wild chimpanzees have been found to consume the equivalent of a bottle of lager's alcohol a day from eating ripened fruit, scientists say. BBC: They say this is evidence humans may have got our taste for alcohol from common primate ancestors who relied on fermented fruit -- a source of sugar and alcohol -- for food. "Human attraction to alcohol probably arose from this dietary heritage of our common ancestor with chimpanzees," said study researcher Aleksey Maro of the University of California, Berkeley. Chimps, like many other animals, have been spotted feeding on ripe fruit lying on the forest floor, but this is the first study to make clear how much alcohol they might be consuming. The research team measured the amount of ethanol, or pure alcohol, in fruits such as figs and plums eaten in large quantities by wild chimps in Cote d'Ivoire and Uganda. Based on the amount of fruit they normally eat, the chimps were ingesting around 14 grams of ethanol -- equivalent to nearly two UK units, or roughly one 330ml bottle of lager. The fruits most commonly eaten were those highest in alcohol content.

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Sony has quietly introduced a revised PlayStation 5 Digital Edition that reduces internal storage from 1TB to 825GB while maintaining the same 499 Euro ($590) price point. The CFI-2116 revision has appeared on Amazon listings across Italy, Germany, Spain and France without official announcement from Sony. The storage downgrade returns the console to its original 825GB capacity last seen in the launch PlayStation 5 before the Slim models increased storage to 1TB. Users lose approximately 175 of usable space in the new revision. Amazon Germany lists October 23 as the delivery date for units already available for purchase. The change affects only the Digital Edition while the disc version remains unchanged at 1TB. The revision follows Sony's September price increase of $50 across PlayStation 5 models citing economic conditions.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: The CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit have been called to Congress to testify about the "radicalization of online forum users" on those platforms, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced Wednesday. "Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence," said chairman of the House Oversight Committee James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, in a statement. "To prevent future radicalization and violence, the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit must appear before the Oversight Committee and explain what actions they will take to ensure their platforms are not exploited for nefarious purposes." Letters from the House Oversight Committee have been sent to Humam Sakhnini, CEO of Discord; Gabe Newell, president of Steam maker Valve; Dan Clancy, CEO of Twitch; and Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, requesting their testimony on Oct. 8. "The hearing will examine radicalization of online forum users, including incidents of open incitement to commit violent politically motivated acts," Comer said in a letter to each CEO. [...] Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit execs will have the chance to deliver five-minute opening statements prior to answering questions posed by members of the committee during October's testimony.

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Two Xpeng AeroHT flying cars collided during a rehearsal for the Changchun Air Show in China, with one vehicle catching fire upon landing. While the company reported no serious injuries, CNN reported one person was injured in the crash. The BBC reports: Footage on Chinese social media site Weibo appeared to show a flaming vehicle on the ground which was being attended to by fire engines. One vehicle "sustained fuselage damage and caught fire upon landing," Xpeng AeroHT said in a statement to CNN. "All personnel at the scene are safe, and local authorities have completed on-site emergency measures in an orderly manner," it added. The electric flying cars take off and land vertically, and the company is hoping to sell them for around $300,000 each. In January, Xpeng claimed to have around 3,000 orders for the vehicle. [...] It has said it wants to lead the world in the "low-altitude economy."

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Microsoft is now prioritizing Anthropic's Claude 4 over OpenAI's GPT-5 in Visual Studio Code's auto model feature, signaling a quiet but clear shift in preference. The Verge reports: "Based on internal benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4 is our recommended model for GitHub Copilot," said Julia Liuson, head of Microsoft's developer division, in an internal email in June. While that guidance was issued ahead of the GPT-5 release, I understand Microsoft's model guidance hasn't changed. Microsoft is also making "significant investments" in training its own AI models. "We're also going to be making significant investments in our own cluster. So today, MAI-1-preview was only trained on 15,000 H100s, a tiny cluster in the grand scheme of things," said Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman, in an employee-only town hall last week. Microsoft is also reportedly planning to use Anthropic's AI models for some features in its Microsoft 365 apps soon. The Information reports that the Microsoft 365 Copilot will be "partly powered by Anthropic models," after Microsoft found that some of these models outperformed OpenAI in Excel and PowerPoint.

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