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Hot on the heels of AGDQ in January, Games Done Quick is hosting its second speedrunning event of the year, Back to Black 2026, starting tomorrow, February 5. The four-day event is organized by Black in a Flash and is raising money for Race Forward, a nonprofit that works across communities to address systemic racism.
Back to Black is timed to the start of Black History Month and highlights the deep bench of talent in the Black speedrunning community. A few runs, like ones for Hades II, Donkey Kong Country and Silent Hill 4, were teased when Back to Black 2026 was announced last year. The full schedule has plenty of other runs worth checking out, though, like a co-op run through Plants vs Zombies: Replanted on February 5 or an Any% run of The Barbie Diaries: High School Mystery on February 6.
Back to Black 2026 will be live on Games Done Quick’s Twitch and YouTube channels from Thursday, February 5 through Sunday February 8.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/games-done-quicks-back-to-black-2026-event-kicks-off-tomorrow-194147068.html?src=rss
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
You’ve probably heard of the upstart tech brand Nothing, but if you haven’t, here’s a TLDR: The U.K.-based company aims to make products like cellphones and headphones that incorporate innovative features and designs, but come in at a lower price point than tech giants like Apple and Samsung. Last summer, the company released its newest smartwatch, the CMF Watch 3 Pro, which incorporates AI features powered by ChatGPT, and you can currently pick it up at a major discount.
Originally $99, you can get the CMF Watch 3 Pro for $44.99 at Woot—a 65% discount. The catch is that it’s only available at that price in the light green color. If you have Amazon Prime, you get free shipping; otherwise, it’ll also cost $6 to ship. (Heads up, though: Woot only ships to the 48 contiguous states.)
According to Nothing, the CMF Watch 3 Pro is designed for “everyday users and casual fitness explorers,” it quickly earned a reputation as one of the best budget smartwatch/fitness trackers of 2025. The most noteworthy feature is its direct ChatGPT integration: You can use voice prompts to ask the chatbot questions or set reminders, among other things. One neat feature is its ability to record voices and auto-transcribe conversations or notes (great for work meetings or class).
If you’ve used the CMF Watch 2 Pro, you’ll already be familiar with the design, which hasn’t changed much. It’s still got a round display with a rotating crown on the top right, though the display is a bit bigger—1.43 inches compared to the Watch 2 Pro’s 1.32 inches. Nothing has also kept the auto brightness adjustment, which is determined by a built-in sensor, and dual-band GPS support with access to five satellite systems, providing greater accuracy when tracking your outdoor activities.
The real upgrades come mainly from the software: The Watch 3 Pro has over 130 sport modes, compared to 120 on the older model. The battery now lasts 13 days on a single charge, or two days longer than before. It’s certainly in the running for the best sub-$100 fitness watch you can buy right now.
Roblox launched an open-source AI model that generates 3D objects on the fly early last year and now that toolset is getting a massive boost. The platform has introduced a model that whips up “4D” objects. I put 4D in quotes because it doesn’t actually allow access to the fourth dimension, but rather lets users make interactive 3D objects via prompts.
As suggested, these aren’t static 3D models. They are fully functional and interactive objects that move and react to players. The beta toolset can’t be used to make anything, as it’s rather limited for now. There are just two templates for users to choose from. Folks can make cars and solid 3D objects, like a box or a sculpture.
The cars are fully driveable, however, and are made from five separate parts. The parts work independently of one another, allowing for spinning wheels and opening doors. The company says the physics should be accurate, so prepare for a whole lot of user-generated racing games.
There’s already a game on the platform that uses the 4D tools called Wish Master. It lets players generate cars, planes and all kinds of other stuff.
As for those limited templates, Roblox says it plans to eventually let creators make their own but didn’t release a timetable for this. It also says it is developing technology that will generate 3D models based on a reference image.
Today’s open beta comes after Roblox found itself at the center of lawsuits and investigations related to child safety. This led the company to implement mandatory facial verification to access chat, which has reportedly not been going very well. Some countries have actually banned the platform in an effort to protect children.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/robloxs-4d-creation-toolset-is-now-available-in-open-beta-191510664.html?src=rss
In recent months Intel Linux engineers have been quite active in preparing for next-gen Nova Lake processors. That work has included initial Xe3P graphics support and enabling display support and related display/graphics functionality. The newest now is enabling Nova Lake P including the Xe3P_LPG graphics support…
A sprawling informal economy of rogue streaming devices has taken hold across the U.S., as consumers fed up with rising TV subscription costs turn to cheap Android-based boxes that promise free access to thousands of live channels, sports events, and on-demand movies for a one-time $200 to $400 purchase.
The two dominant players — SuperBox and vSeeBox — are manufactured by opaque Chinese companies and distributed through hundreds of American resellers at farmers markets, church festivals and Facebook groups, according to a report by The Verge. The hardware is generic and legal, but both devices guide users toward pirate streaming apps not available on any official app store.
vSeeBox directs users to a service called “Heat”; SuperBox points to “Blue TV.” One user estimated access to between 6,000 and 8,000 channels, including premium sports networks and hundreds of local affiliates. A 2025 Dish Network lawsuit against a SuperBox reseller alleged that some live channels on the device were being ripped directly from Dish’s Sling TV service — Sling’s logo was still visible on certain feeds. Dish has pursued resellers aggressively, winning $1.25 million in damages from a vSeeBox seller in 2024 over 500 devices and $405,000 from another over 162 devices. None of this has meaningfully slowed adoption. The market has roots in earlier Chinese-made devices like TVPad that targeted Asian expat communities and reportedly sold 3 million units before being litigated out of existence. SuperBox and vSeeBox simply broadened the audience to mainstream America.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Blizzard is running a series of showcases for several of its major franchises and on Wednesday, it was time for Overwatch to step up to the plate. That’s Overwatch, by the way, and not Overwatch 2. The studio is formally nixing the number from the game’s name.
“Overwatch is more than just a digit: it’s a living universe that keeps growing, keeps surprising, and keeps bringing players together from around the world,” the Overwatch team said in a statement. “This year marks a huge turning point in how the development team envisions the future of Overwatch, so we are officially dropping the ‘2’ and moving forward as Overwatch.”
Blizzard made a big hullabaloo about Overwatch 2 being a sequel to the original game when it went live in October 2022 as part of a shift to a free-to-play model. There were a ton of major changes, not least a format switch from 6v6 to 5v5, with one tank being dropped from each team — a contentious decision that has been walked back with the return of 6v6 modes.
The grand vision Blizzard originally had for Overwatch 2 never quite came together. The studio canceled its planned hero missions, which were going to have RPG-like talent trees and long-term progression, but it carried some of that DNA over to the Stadium mode.
We only got one round of co-op story missions as well. That paid expansion reportedly sold poorly, leading Blizzard to scrap work on the player vs. environment elements of Overwatch to focus on the competitive player vs. player modes.
Over the last couple of years, though, Blizzard really seems to have steadied the ship. Overwatch is arguably in the best shape it’s been in for a long time.
This is shaping up to be a big year for Overwatch. May will mark its 10th anniversary (I have to imagine the team has something significant planned for that). Blizzard laid out much of the roadmap for 2026 during the Overwatch Spotlight showcase. We won’t have to wait long at all to see significant changes to the game.
When the next season goes live on February 10, it will be the biggest update to Overwatch at least since the Stadium mode and perks system went live last year, and arguably since the dawn of the Overwatch 2 era. That’s partly because Blizzard is adding five new heroes to the mix all at once next week.
One of those is a character that the studio said in 2017 it had experimented with but ultimately, um, scratched. Jetpack Cat is alive after all, and is coming to Overwatch in a matter of days.
This is a support hero with a permanent flight ability who can “tow” an ally — providing a speed boost while healing them. Jetpack Cat’s ultimate ability sees the kitty diving into the ground to knock down enemies and tether the closest one to them. It’s called Catnapper, which is delightful. Also, the hero’s primary weapon is called Biotic Pawjectiles, so I adore Jetpack Cat already. It’s fun to see weird Wrecking Ball-type characters coming to Overwatch again.
The other new heroes joining the fray next week are Domina (a zone-control tank with “long-range precision”), damage dealer Emre (a “fast‑paced, mobile soldier archetype with conflicting identity due to cybernetic modification”), Mizuki (a support who can throw a hat to heal allies) and Anran (a high-mobility hero who deals fire damage and can self-resurrect with their ultimate).
As with Jetpack Cat, the latter of those is aligned with the Overwatch faction. You can try Anran out starting February 5 as part of a hero trial. The other three have ties to the villainous Talon organization. Expect another hero to join the fray every couple of months this year as each new season gets under way. That means more heroes will be added to Overwatch in 2026 than in any year since the game’s debut.
The next season spells the beginning of what Blizzard is calling a “new story-driven era” for Overwatch, starting with a year-long narrative arc called The Reign of Talon. All of the lore, heroes, events and so on that emerge over the next 12 months will be tied to the rise of Talon.
The studio says this is the “the first fully connected annual storyline in Overwatch history.” A new arc will begin next year with Season 1 of 2027 (Blizzard is resetting the season counter when The Reign of Talon begins).
Elsewhere, each role will be split into sub-roles, and the heroes in each will share a passive ability. For instance, “initiator” tanks heal more while they’re in the air, several damage heroes can detect enemies that are below half health through walls after damaging them and some supports have excess ultimate charge that carries over after you use their most powerful ability.
Also on the way soon is a “meta event” called Conquest. This is billed as a faction war between Overwatch and Talon that will run for five weeks, with dozens of loot boxes and other rewards (such as some legendary Echo skins) up for grabs.
Blizzard has overhauled the Overwatch interface too, with updated menus, a new hero lobby, a notification hub and the promise of faster navigation. Stadium will have some updates, such as refreshed ability icons and recommended builds based on global data that will be updated between rounds. Vendetta is joining that mode’s roster as well.
Along with all the new heroes and other updates, a Hello Kitty collaboration will run for two weeks starting on February 10 with themed cosmetics for several heroes. Lots of other cosmetics are in the pipeline, including Crimson Wolf weapon skins you can unlock using competitive points, and rainy day and Valentine’s items. Shop items from the last six seasons are going into loot boxes, while mythic cosmetics for Mercy, Juno and Mei will be available in Season 1.
Looking further ahead, a Nintendo Switch 2 version of Overwatch will arrive alongside Season 2, which will start in April. Some heroes will be getting their second mythic skins, including Ana and Genji. Genji, Hanzo and Sojourn will have mythic weapon skins in the coming months. Two new maps, including a Japan Night one, for the main modes are coming, along with the return of post-match accolades.
There’s so much on the way for my go-to game. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to take a long-enough break from Overwatch to play cool indies ever again.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/overwatch-will-drop-the-2-as-jetpack-cat-and-four-other-heroes-arrive-on-february-10-184500327.html?src=rss
Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) demanded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirm or deny the existence of a “domestic terrorists” database that lists US citizens who protest ICE’s immigration crackdown.
ICE “officers and senior Trump administration officials have repeatedly suggested that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building a ‘domestic terrorists’ database comprising information on US citizens protesting ICE’s actions in recent weeks,” Markey wrote in a letter yesterday to Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. “If such a database exists, it would constitute a grave and unacceptable constitutional violation. I urge you to immediately confirm or deny the existence of such a database, and if it exists, immediately shut it down and delete it.”
Creating a database of peaceful protesters “would constitute a shocking violation of the First Amendment and abuse of power,” and amount to “the kinds of tactics the United States rightly condemns in authoritarian governments such as China and Russia,” Markey said.
Starting with 2024’s Galaxy S24 series, Samsung started promising seven years of software support for its new phones, following a precedent Google set with the Pixel 8. It was a surprisingly user-friendly and even environmentally conscious move, letting buyers more easily keep their phones for longer while also reducing e-waste generated from constant upgrades. Unfortunately, it didn’t apply to previous models, and now we’re starting to see the consequences of that.
In Samsung’s February 2026 security updates (first spotted by SamMobile), the Galaxy S21, S21+, and S21 Ultra are nowhere to be seen, indicating that they’ve reached their end of support. The only phone from this line still listed was the S21 FE 5G, which makes sense, since it was released a year after the rest of the S21 line. That means these phones will no longer get regular monthly or quarterly security updates, although if a critical vulnerability pops up, Samsung might still issue an emergency fix.
None of this should be surprising, but it can still be confusing if you’re an S21 owner. To be fair to Samsung, the company only ever pledged five years of support for the S21 series on release, and only four years of Android updates. But as far as hardware goes, your phone is probably still running just fine. The Snapdragon 888 chip powering the S21 series is snappy enough for casual use, even if it can be a bit power hungry. Do you really need to replace it, especially so soon after launch?
As far as browsing the internet, watching videos, and scrolling social media apps goes, your Galaxy S21 phone should still hold up well. Gaming and other more demanding tasks might suffer, but there shouldn’t be anything physically wrong with your phone aside from aging. The problem comes when you start to consider safety.
Regular security updates help patch holes hackers can use to get into your data or accounts. And these days, hackers have gotten pretty smart. While you might know to avoid sketchy websites or high-risk apps, there are exploits hackers can use now that don’t need any interaction from you. Sometimes, all it takes is having a Bluetooth radio in your device, or for the hacker to know your phone number.
Getting hit by one of these hacks might be rare, but it’s not a good idea to leave yourself open to the possibility if you can avoid it. It’s like driving in a car without a seatbelt—you probably won’t get in a crash, but you’ll wish you had one if you do. Upgrading to a phone getting official security updates from the manufacturer is the best way to ensure your handset has the most up-to-date safety, but if you can’t, there are a few steps you can take to protect yourself.
Getting over-the-air updates directly from your phone’s manufacturer is the best way to stay safe while using your phone, but they’re not the only way to get security updates. Starting with Android 10, which the Galaxy S21 series does fall under, Google’s Project Mainline began delivering partial security updates via Google Play System Updates.
These won’t close all vulnerabilities, but they do allow Google to patch holes in media codecs and components, permissions, and a few other features hackers like to exploit, even on devices that no longer get official manufacturer support. “With Project Mainline, we can deliver faster security fixes for critical security bugs,” the company said in a blog post. “For example, by modularizing media components, which accounts for nearly 40% of recently patched vulnerabilities.”
Project Mainline can’t fix everything, especially problems related to your specific device, but if you do find that your phone is out of date, it’s worth ensuring your Google Play System Updates are updated to the most recent version until you can find a new one. How to check this will differ from device to device, but you’ll generally find these updates under Settings > System > Software updates. Here, you’ll see a date showing which Google Play system update your phone is running. These should normally update manually every month, but if the date looks a little old, you can simply tap it to search for a fresh update and download it.
Ideally, you should take the end of software support as a sign to upgrade to a new phone, even if it appears to be working fine. But I get any hesitation you might be feeling. I’m still on Windows 10, which is facing its own security update issues, even though my device still works perfectly for everything I want from it. I’m glad to see companies catching on with extended security updates, so hopefully this will become less of an issue in the future. Tech timelines move fast, but a five-year upgrade cycle feels a lot more wasteful than even a seven-year one.
For now, though, keep in mind that any Samsung phone released before 2024 is going to face an end-of-life sooner than you might think, so it’s time to start planning for it accordingly. The company might have moved on to seven years of updates now, but that promise doesn’t apply retroactively. So Galaxy S22 owners, it’s time to start thinking about what you’ll do with your own devices next year.
When X’s engineering team published the code that powers the platform’s “for you” algorithm last month, Elon Musk said the move was a victory for transparency. “We know the algorithm is dumb and needs massive improvements, but at least you can see us struggle to make it better in real-time and with transparency,” Musk wrote. “No other social media companies do this.”
While it’s true that X is the only major social network to make elements of its recommendation algorithm open source, researchers say that what the company has published doesn’t offer the kind of transparency that would actually be useful for anyone trying to understand how X works in 2026.
The code, much like an earlier version published in 2023, is a “redacted” version of X’s algorithm, according to John Thickstun, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University. “What troubles me about these releases is that they give you a pretense that they’re being transparent for releasing code and the sense that someone might be able to use this release to do some kind of auditing work or oversight work,” Thickstun told Engadget. “And the fact is that that’s not really possible at all.”
Predictably, as soon as the code was released, users on X began posting lengthy threads about what it means for creators hoping to boost their visibility on the platform. For example, one post that was viewed more than 350,000 times advises users that X “will reward people who conversate” and “raise the vibrations of X.” Another post with more than 20,000 views claims that posting video is the answer. Another post says that users should stick to their “niche” because “topic switching hurts your reach.” But Thickstun cautioned against reading too much into supposed strategies for going viral. “They can’t possibly draw those conclusions from what was released,” he says.
While there are some small details that shed light on how X recommends posts — for example, it filters out content that’s more than a day old — Thickstun says that much of it is “not actionable” for content creators.
Structurally, one of the biggest differences between the current algorithm and the version released in 2023 is that the new system relies on a Grok-like large language model to rank posts. “In the previous version, this was hard coded: you took how many times something was liked, how many times something was shared, how many times something was replied … and then based on that you calculate a score, and then you rank the post based on the score,” explains Ruggero Lazzaroni, a pHD researcher at the University of Graz. “Now the score is derived not by the real amounts of likes and shares, but by how likely Grok thinks that you would like and share a post.”
That also makes the algorithm even more opaque than it was before, says Thickstun. “So much more of the decisionmaking … is happening within black box neural networks that they’re training on their data,” he says. “More and more of the decisionmaking power of these algorithms is shifting not just out of public view, but actually really out of view or understanding of even the internal engineers that are working on these systems, because they’re being shifted into these neural networks.”
The release has even less detail about some aspects of the algorithm that were made public in 2023. At the time, the company included information about how it weighted various interactions to determine which posts should rank higher. For example, a reply was “worth” 27 retweets and a reply that generated a response from the original author was worth 75 retweets. But X has now redacted information about how it’s weighing these factors, saying that this information was excluded “for security reasons.”
The code also doesn’t include any information about the data the algorithm was trained on, which could help researchers and others understand it or conduct audits. “One of the things I would really want to see is, what is the training data that they’re using for this model,” says Mohsen Foroughifar, an assistant professor of business technologies at Carnegie Mellon University. “if the data that is used for training this model is inherently biased, then the model might actually end up still being biased, regardless of what kind of things that you consider within the model.”
Being able to conduct research on the X recommendation algorithm would be extremely valuable, says Lazzaroni, who is working on an EU-funded project exploring alternative recommendation algorithms for social media platforms. Much of Lazzaroni’s work involves simulating real-world social media platforms to test different approaches. But he says the code released by X doesn’t have enough information to actually reproduce its recommendation algorithm.
“We have the code to run the algorithm, but we don’t have the model that you need to run the algorithm,” he says.
If researchers were able to study the X algorithm, it could yield insights that could impact more than just social media platforms. Many of the same questions and concerns that have been raised about how social media algorithms behave are likely to re-emerge in the context of AI chatbots.”A lot of these challenges that we’re seeing on social media platforms and the recommendation [systems] appear in a very similar way with these generative systems as well,” Thickstun said. “So you can kind of extrapolate forward the kinds of challenges that we’ve seen with social media platforms to the kind of challenges that we’ll see with interaction with GenAI platforms.”
Lazzaroni, who spends a lot of time simulating some of the most toxic behavior on social media, is even more blunt. “AI companies, to maximize profit, optimize the large language models for user engagement and not for telling the truth or caring about the mental health of the users. And this is the same exact problem: they make more profit, but the users get a worse society, or they get worse mental health out of it.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/xs-open-source-algorithm-isnt-a-win-for-transparency-researchers-say-181836233.html?src=rss
Investors were assessing on Wednesday whether a selloff in global software stocks this week had gone too far, as they weighed if businesses could survive an existential threat posed by AI. The answer: It’s unclear and will lead to volatility. From a report: After a broad selloff on Tuesday that saw the S&P 500 software and services index fall nearly 4%, the sector slipped another 1% on Wednesday. While software stocks have been under pressure in recent months as AI has gone from being a tailwind for many of these companies to investors worrying about the disruption it will cause to some sectors, the latest selloff was triggered by a new legal tool from Anthropic’s Claude large language model (LLM).
The tool – a plug-in for Claude’s agent for tasks across legal, sales, marketing and data analysis – underscored the push by LLMs into the so-called “application layer,” where these firms are increasingly muscling into lucrative enterprise businesses for revenue they need to fund massive investments. If successful, investors worry, it could wreak havoc across a range of industries, from finance to law and coding.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Pixel 10a is official, though details are limited. On Wednesday, Google posted a teaser video showing the mid-range phone dancing around colorful backgrounds. You can pre-order the Pixel 10a on February 18.
Google hasn’t yet revealed the phone’s specs. In the short video, we can see a blue model that’s virtually indistinguishable on the outside from the Pixel 9a. And alleged leaks point to a phone with few changes on the inside. That (unconfirmed) list includes a 6.285-inch display, dual rear cameras (48MP wide and 13MP ultra-wide) and a 5,100mAh battery.
The teaser’s tagline appears to be an attempt to assure Pixel fans that there will, in fact, be meaningful upgrades. “A phone with more in store, in store soon,” it reads. Hopefully, its pricing and specs will be “in store” for us soon as well.
In the meantime, you can visit the Google Pixel website to register for more info.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/you-can-pre-order-the-pixel-10a-on-february-18-180712018.html?src=rss
Without the blobs, Earth would be “magnetically dead,” the researchers said.
Built-in lyrics are one of my favorite features of modern music streaming services. Back in ancient times, I had to google the lyrics to the songs I was listening to—which was fine if I was near a computer, but impossible when I was on the go with my iPod. This is probably why there are so many songs I think I know the words to, only to discover, once I read the actual lyrics, that I am sorely mistaken. Built-in lyrics are thus a feature that is equal parts useful and humbling.
As it happens, Spotify’s existing lyrics features are getting some upgrades to kick off February. The company announced three key updates on Wednesday—two that impact free users, and one exclusive to Premium subscribers. Spotify might not offer Apple Music’s dynamic lyrics, but these updates should still be welcomed by anyone who likes reading along to their music.
The biggest announcement of the day—in my opinion, anyway—is offline support for lyrics. This is always something that frustrates me whenever I’m using my phone without cellular service. Say I download some albums to listen to on a flight: When I try to listen to them in airplane mode, lyrics are unavailable. Being able to download the lyrics when you grab a song or album is a small but actually meaningful upgrade.
Unfortunately, offline lyrics are not available free of charge: At this time, the feature is only available to Premium subscribers, which makes sense, given that free users can’t download music for offline listening anyway—only podcasts.
Traditionally, lyrics have appeared at the bottom of the player window in the Spotify app. To view them, you need to scroll down, then tap on the lyrics window to fully expand it. It seems Spotify wasn’t content with this UI. The company says that in its testing, it finds that placing the lyrics directly below the album art, rather than below the player, makes them easier to interact with. And so that’s where the lyrics are moving.
The company calls these “lyrics previews,” as you see just a snippet of the lyrics at one time. This change is rolling out to both free and Premium users on iOS and Android. If you’d rather not see the lyrics at all, you can tap the three-dot menu and choose “Lyrics Off.”
Spotify is adamant that this new placement won’t change lyric sharing. You’ll still be able to send specific lyrics to friends and social media platforms. You’ll just need to do so from the new lyrics window.
Spotify’s lyrics translation feature makes it easy to figure out what artists are singing about when you don’t speak their particular language. When you listen to a song that doesn’t match your device’s system language, you’ll find a translate button in the lyrics window. Tap that, and Spotify will include translations beneath each line of the song, so you can follow along.
According to Spotify, this feature was available in more than 25 markets as of the end of last year, but now, the company is rolling out the feature worldwide.
Adobe has canceled plans to discontinue its 2D animation software Animate.
On Monday, Adobe announced that it would stop allowing people to sell subscriptions to Animate on March 1, saying the software had “served its purpose.” People who already had a software license would be able to keep using Animate with technical support until March 1, 2027; businesses had until March 1, 2029. Per an email sent to customers, Adobe also said users would lose access to Animate files and project data on March 1, 2027. Animate costs $23 per month.
After receiving backlash from animators and other users, Adobe reversed its decision on Tuesday night. In an announcement posted online, the San Jose, California-headquartered company said:
While link-time optimizations “LTO” can deliver some nice performance benefits out of this compiler optimization technique, it can make debugging said binaries more challenging. Due to various bugs in Mesa being attributed to the use of compiler link-time optimizations when compiling Mesa, the builds are being blocked on using LTO…
The robust
futex kernel API is a way for a user-space program to ensure that the
locks it holds are properly cleaned up when it exits. But the API suffers
from a number of different problems, as André Almeida described in a session in the
“Gaming on
Linux” microconference at the 2025 Linux Plumbers Conference in Tokyo.
He had some ideas for a new API that would solve many of those problems,
which he wanted to discuss with attendees; there is a
difficult-to-trigger race condition that he wanted to talk about too.
If you tried talking to ChatGPT this morning, you might have found it unresponsive—something unusual for the bot that always has something say. It’s not your internet connection, and it isn’t your OpenAI account: ChatGPT is down.
According to Downdetector, owned by Lifehacker parent company Ziff Davis, users started reporting issues with ChatGPT at 11:56 a.m. ET. Those reports ballooned by 12:11 p.m., as the total number of incidents as of this article currently sits above 7,000. If you’re an avid ChatGPT user, you might have also had issues with the bot yesterday: Downdetector shows over 25,000 reports of down time starting at 2:56 p.m. Tuesday and resolving around 4:11 p.m. the same day.
As with all outages, OpenAI will likely figure out a patch for the issue soon enough. But these outages are becoming more common. There was the Verizon outage, of course, but other services like TikTok have also experienced intermittent periods of downtime.
