GoKawiil
Tech News
A developer has published free, GPL-licensed source code for three old Windows 3.1x-era programs: a limited implementation of Conway's Game of Life, a GDI object-cleanup utility called GDI Rescuer, and a Mastermind-style game called Code Breaker. The Game of Life program notably demonstrates mixing 16-bit C with 32-bit assembly via winmem32.dll and handling palette and DIB color translation quirks of the era.
Unable to find furniture combining a workbench's depth with a living-room look, the author built a custom unit by mounting a reused desktop board atop IKEA Kallax shelving units. The project was driven by budget constraints, since custom cabinetry ran about €1,000 per unit while kitchen cabinets, though cheaper, lacked acceptable styling for a living space. The final build reused an old desk's leftover top panel secured onto the Kallax base.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has frozen further state spending on Flock's AI-powered license plate cameras, a decision made shortly before a Texas Tribune investigation exposed that the state had already spent over $30 million on the technology. That funding came largely from a $1 fee added to insurance policies, ostensibly to combat catalytic converter theft.
Anti-surveillance group Secure Justice reports that 214 cities and counties have dropped Flock Safety's license-plate camera contracts since 2021, with 90 cancellations in August alone—a fourfold jump from July. Communities from Lansing, Michigan to Pflugerville, Texas cited cost, data-sharing practices, network reach, and cases of police misuse as reasons for ending their deals. Flock says new city partnerships still outnumber cancellations roughly 10 to 1 this year.
Developer Frank Zakaria released omniflake, a meta-flake that aggregates thousands of existing Nix flakes behind a single input, letting users pull packages, overlays, or NixOS modules from any of them without manually adding separate flake URLs. The project, hosted at omniflake.com, relies on Nix's lazy evaluation and lock file mechanism to keep the massive dependency list usable, so users only pay the cost of what they actually reference.
SpaceX is set to launch NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket, with a launch window opening at 7:26 a.m. EDT. The telescope will settle nearly 1 million miles from Earth, using a 300-megapixel infrared camera and a coronagraph to map dark matter and search for Earth-like exoplanets, with all data made publicly available.
Meta is testing robots from vendors like Kinova, ABB, and Watney Robotics to perform physical data center tasks such as power-cycling servers, swapping network cables, and restarting machines. Internal workers say one arm alone could eventually take over up to 80% of certain job duties if trials succeed. The initiative has not been previously disclosed.
Building trade unions, including Steamfitters UA Local 602, are mobilizing to pressure politicians who oppose new data center construction, with leadership warning members they will withhold political support from officials seen as hostile to the industry. An internal memo obtained by the Wall Street Journal frames the fight as an 'existential moment' for the union, given how much work data centers generate in the Maryland-DC-Virginia corridor known as data center alley.
Google's newly released Pixel 11 lineup ships with several notable features—like the new Camera Looks color styles and Creator Suite tools such as a built-in teleprompter and social media grid overlays—turned off or set to basic modes by default. Reviewers note that getting the most out of the phone, particularly its camera customization and creator-focused options, requires manually digging into settings after setup.
Extortion group FulcrumSec has claimed responsibility for a breach at Manchester Airports Group, saying it stole roughly 86GB of customer data across Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands airports. BleepingComputer verified sample records against a real traveler's purchase history, finding detailed booking, payment and travel information beyond what MAG initially disclosed. The hackers allege they used exposed Iterable API credentials found in client-side JavaScript to access the data, including nearly 200,000 records tied to travel scheduled through 2026.
WIRED's testing roundup for 2026 mesh Wi-Fi systems highlights different products for different needs: the Asus ZenWifi BD5 Outdoor as a weatherproof, PoE-powered node for existing Asus AiMesh setups, TP-Link's tri-band Deco BE67 as a strong all-around Wi-Fi 7 performer despite some setup glitches, and the budget Netgear Orbi 370 as a dual-band system that struggled badly with satellite-node speeds in real-world testing. The TP-Link Deco BE25 is also named a top pick for outdoor coverage on non-Asus networks.
Android Authority outlines five foldable phones that could serve as alternatives to Google's new $1,899 Pixel 11 Pro Fold, including Motorola's Razr Fold and Razr Ultra, plus Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Fold 8 Ultra. The comparison highlights that despite the Pixel 11 Pro Fold being thinner and lighter than its predecessor, it has a smaller battery than last year's model and faces stiff competition on price, charging speed, and battery capacity.