Julia is a modern programming
language that is of particular interest to scientists due to its high
performance combined with language features such as Lisp-style macros, an
advanced type system, and multiple dispatch. We last looked at Julia in January on the occasion of
its 1.11 release. Early in October Julia 1.12
appeared, bringing a handful of quality-of-life improvements for Julia
programmers, most notably support, though still experimental and limited,
for the creation of binaries.
The ARMEL and MIPS64EL architectures have been dropped from Debian unstable and experimental. This is the end of the road for these aging ARM and MIPS targets in the Debian world…
Version
1.0 of the Capability Hardware Extension to RISC-V for IoT
(CHERIoT) specification has been released. CHERIoT is a
hardware-software system for secure embedded devices, and the
specification provides a full description of the ISA and its intended
use by CHERIoT
RTOS. David Chisnall has written a blog
post about the release that explains its significance as well as plans
for CHERIoT 2.0 and beyond:
The last change that we made to the ISA was in December 2024, so we
are confident that this is a stable release that we can support in
hardware for a long time. This specification was implemented by the
1.0 release of CHERIoT Ibex and by CHERIoT Kudu (which has not yet had
an official release). These two implementations demonstrate that the
ISA scales from three-stage single-issue pipelines to six-stage
dual-issue pipelines, roughly the same range of microarchitectures
supported by Arm’s M profile.
We at SCI have the first of our ICENI chips, which use the CHERIoT
Ibex core, on the way back from the fab now and will be scaling up to
mass production in the new year. I am not allowed to speak for other
folks building CHERIoT silicon, but I expect 2026 to be an exciting
year for the CHERIoT project!
AMD’s RDSEED issue with Zen 5 processors that is in the process of being addressed with microcode/BIOS updates is in the interim causing headaches for Arch Linux powered CachyOS that provides optimized binaries for these latest Ryzen processors…
Memory safety trumps retro computing: Alpha, PA-RISC, m68k, SH4 face the chop in 2026Debian’s APT package manager will have a “hard requirement” on Rust from May 2026. This move may make some rather big waves.…
Wild 0.7 released on Monday as the newest feature release for this very fast linker for Linux systems competing with Mold on x86_64 / ARM64 / RISC-V devices…
Back in August was the announcement of LLM-Scaler as part of Project Battlematrix. LLM-Scaler is a new Intel software project to provide optimized AI inference capabilities on Intel graphics hardware. A new beta release of LLM-Scaler “llm-scaler-vllm” is now available with expanded LLM model coverage…
The libinput input handling library for the Linux desktop on both Wayland and X.Org based systems is rolling out Lua plug-in support. Out today is libinput 1.30-rc1 with the initial infrastructure for supporting plug-ins written in the Lua scripting language…
Coolest Projects is all about celebrating young digital creators and the brilliant things they make with technology. This year, we’ve seen just how much taking part can boost young people’s confidence, creativity, and sense of belonging. Today, we’re sharing the impact of Coolest Projects 2025 and looking ahead to what’s next for 2026.
Young creators at the Coolest Projects Ireland 2025 event.
This year saw significant growth in in-person events, with a record number of young people sharing their creations face-to-face. Across the UK and Ireland, more than 200 young people showcased their projects to judges, families, and peers. Attendance at the UK event grew significantly compared to 2024, reflecting the strong enthusiasm for digital making, while the Ireland event continued to attract a dedicated community of young creators. This enthusiasm shows how much young people value being part of a creative, supportive community that helps them share ideas and develop their skills.
The Coolest Projects 2025 participant map.
We were equally delighted to run Coolest Projects USA again, where young people embraced the chance to connect, share their work, and draw inspiration from one another. We also saw strong interest in the new AI category, with notable uptake at the UK and US events.
Participation by girls in the online showcase kept growing in 2025: 51% of entrants identified as female, up from 47% last year. We’re excited to build on this momentum and inspire even more girls to share their creations in 2026. We’ll continue encouraging participation by girls across all categories and broaden local promotion, especially where new in-person events are launching, to help maintain gender balance.
Online showcase: Confidence, skills, and inspiration
To understand Coolest Projects’ impact, we gathered survey and interview feedback from young creators, mentors, and event attendees across both the online showcase and in-person events.
This year’s online surveys and interviews indicate that Coolest Projects continues to be a powerful driver of confidence and skills:
72% of young people and 100% of mentors agreed that participating increased confidence in coding and digital making
89% of young people reported improved coding and digital making skills
83% of young people (and 100% of mentors) said they felt inspired to continue with computing and digital making after taking part
Young people and mentors told us that the online gallery plays a crucial role in sparking ideas and motivation:
“Kids definitely were excited in knowing their project might be seen by other kids around the world and displayed publicly online, so it’s truly a way for them to feel recognised. It definitely motivated them too.” – Mentor, South Africa
Coolest Projects truly offers a global setting like no other, giving young people the chance to see ideas from across the world and feel part of an inspiring international community.
In-person events: community and belonging
Creators told us how special it felt to be surrounded by peers who love making with technology. They valued sharing their projects, meeting like-minded people, and getting ideas from others:
“I think it’s really interesting seeing a lot of other children that understand programming and want to get better at it.” – Young creator, Coolest Projects USA
Young creators at the Coolest Projects India 2025 event.
Survey data echoes this: 74% of young people said Coolest Projects helped them feel they belong in computing. Many also highlighted the wider skills they developed, from problem solving and creativity to communication and teamwork:
“We [my friends and I] thought it was a really great opportunity and idea to make a project that we could all work on together and it’s been really awesome getting to know these girls and working together, fixing whatever code that we made wrong, debugging, you know…. We’d come together once a week to work on this project. So, I honestly got to learn a lot from them, watching them and how they code because they’re a little more advanced than I am. But, you know, that just means I get to learn more. So, you get to learn skills and support each other. It’s been awesome…” – Young creator, Coolest Projects USA
Young people returning for another year described how they stretched themselves, from advanced Scratch techniques to experimenting with AI and robotics. They also said hands-on project work is better than passive learning every time.
“…It’s the journey on which I go through to create the robot. And through that journey, I seem to learn much more than say if I were to watch a YouTube video and not do anything practical with it. I learn much more if I physically get hands-on with robotics encoding.” – Young creator, Coolest Projects UK
Alongside the projects on show, young people loved the interactive activities at events (with shout outs for VR and our escape room in the UK), and appreciated the friendly, approachable judges and smooth event setup. A new group registration system also made it much easier for mentors to enter multiple projects.
Dates for Coolest Projects 2026
We’re thrilled that so many young people around the world took part this year, and we can’t wait to welcome even more creators in 2026.
“Make it [the event] bigger so more people can come.” – Young creator, Coolest Projects USA
The Coolest Projects online showcase is open to any young person up to age 18, anywhere in the world. Registration will open on 14 January 2026. We’ll host a celebratory livestream on 24 June 2026.
Coolest Projects in-person events will also be popping up around the world. In-person events are open to everyone up to age 18 in the host country. Family and friends are very welcome to come along too.
It’s never too early to start making and saving your digital projects for next year’s showcase. Whether you’re into AI, games, web, hardware, or Scratch, there’s a place for your ideas at Coolest Projects.
Start by:
Checking out the judges’ favourites in the online gallery to spark ideas
Starting a project with a friend, your family, or a club, and sharing your progress
We can’t wait to see what the world’s young tech creators will make next!
The Devuan developers announced the release of Devuan GNU/Linux 6.0 “Daedalus” distribution as a 100% derivative of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system without systemd and related components.
Jon Seager, VP of Engineering, talks exclusively to The RegUbuntu Summit The Register FOSS desk sat down with Canonical’s vice-president for engineering, Jon Seager, during Ubuntu Summit earlier this month. This is a heavily condensed version of our conversation.…
Last month Intel’s open-source Linux software engineers began sending out Xe3P_LPD display support in preparation for display capabilities with Nova Lake. Now being built out atop that is further functionality with the most recent talking point being DisplayPort 2.1 Advanced Link Power Management (ALPM)…
The Project Zero blog explains
that, on 64-bit Arm systems, the kernel’s direct map is always placed at
the same virtual location, regardless of whether kernel address-space
layout randomization (KASLR) is enabled.
While it remains true that KASLR should not be trusted to prevent
exploitation, particularly in local contexts, it is regrettable
that the attitude around Linux KASLR is so fatalistic that putting
in the engineering effort to preserve its remaining integrity is
not considered to be worthwhile. The joint effect of these two
issues dramatically simplified what might otherwise have been a
more complicated and likely less reliable exploit.
The Rust-based Redox OS open-source operating system project is out with its October 2025 status report. Most notable is this Rust-based OS now having the Rust-based Servo web engine running… Albeit in extremely crude form at the moment…
Queued up in a TIP branch ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window opening in about one month’s time is optimizing the Restartable Sequences “RSEQ” code for its exit to user-space code path…
Christmas is coming, the GNOME is getting fat… please put a penny in the old red hat?Ubuntu Summit System76’s POP!_OS is one of the more substantially modified Ubuntu based distros out there, and so it was something of a surprise to see the company’s substantial presence at the Ubuntu Summit. And its stable release along with version 1.0 of its custom desktop, COSMIC, is imminent.…
