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Secure boot certificate rollover is real but probably won't hurt you

LWN wrote an article which opens with the assertion "Linux users who have Secure Boot enabled on their systems knowingly or unknowingly rely on a key from Microsoft that is set to expire in September". This is, depending on interpretation, either misleading or just plain wrong, but also there's not a good source of truth here, so.First, how does secure boot signing work? Every system that supports UEFI secure boot ships with a set of trusted certificates in a database called "db". Any binary sig

Proton just dropped a 2FA app that does a few things others don’t

Tushar Mehta / Android Authority TL;DR Proton Authenticator is a new free, open-source 2FA app for mobile and desktop. It supports encrypted multi-device sync, local-only storage, and easy import/export of 2FA tokens. The app works with or without a Proton account and avoids things like ads and trackers. Authenticator apps are a great way to help keep your accounts secure, but some of them come with annoying trade-offs. That could be ads, missing features, or making it hard to switch to anot

Proton launches free standalone cross-platform Authenticator app

Proton has launched Proton Authenticator, a free standalone two-factor authentication (2FA) application for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. 2FA authenticator apps are offline tools that generate time-based one-time passwords (TOTPs) that expire every 30 seconds, and which can be used alongside passwords when logging into online accounts, providing the second factor authentication. Proton is a Swiss technology company known for privacy-focused end-to-end encrypted services like Proton

How Apple’s New Spotlight Compares to Raycast

There are all kinds of actions included out of the box. You can add calendar appointments and reminders and set timers. You can send text messages or start FaceTime calls. You can even set dedicated keyboard shortcuts for any of these actions. It's also the exact kind of thing that, until now, Raycast did that Spotlight could not. The difference is one of implementation. Apple's approach currently only works with Mac applications that implement the Spotlight feature. Right now, it’s basically l

Proton releases a new app for two-factor authentication

Privacy-focused productivity tool company Proton released a new authenticator app today, allowing users to log in to services using dynamically generated two-factor authentication codes. The free app is available on all platforms starting today, including iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux. The app allows users to sync codes and accounts across devices. The company said that just like its other products, Proton Authenticator is open source and uses end-to-end encryption to protect user dat

Critical vulnerability in AI coding platform Base44 allowing unauthorized access

One of the most profoundly transformed domains in the wake of the LLM revolution has been code generation, especially the rise of vibe coding, where natural language prompts replace traditional programming. This shift has empowered millions of users with little to no technical background to build fully functional applications with ease. Platforms like Loveable, Bolt, and Base44 are on the front of this movement - they have enabled the creation of millions of applications spanning from persona

This Android 16 feature solved my biggest problem with phone notifications - how it works

Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Have you ever been relaxing when, out of nowhere, your phone blows up with notifications? I've been there too many times, which led me to keep my phone on silent mode 24/7. Then Google teased a new feature in Android 15 called Notification Cooldown that promised to change everything. Notification Cooldown didn't exactly hit the mark in Android 15, but it has made a comeback in the latest iteration (Android 16) to ensure that it works exactly as expect

Another airline joins AirTag luggage tracking program, now supported by 30 carriers (list)

Introduced in iOS 18.2, the Share Item Location feature lets users share a live tracking link for AirTag or other Find My-compatible accessories, including with airlines to help locate lost luggage. Today, another airline joined the list of official partners. Here’s the full updated list. Saudi Arabia gets Share Item Location support When Apple announced the Share Location Feature for AirTag, it also started working with “more than 15 airlines” to implement a system that would let users secure

Critical Vulnerability in AI Vibe Coding platform Base44

One of the most profoundly transformed domains in the wake of the LLM revolution has been code generation, especially the rise of vibe coding, where natural language prompts replace traditional programming. This shift has empowered millions of users with little to no technical background to build fully functional applications with ease. Platforms like Loveable, Bolt, and Base44 are on the front of this movement - they have enabled the creation of millions of applications spanning from persona

YouTube's Age-Estimation Tech Will Spot Kids Pretending to Be Adults. Here's How It Works

If kids are lying about their age, YouTube will know about it. Or at least will try its best to find out. The streaming service announced Tuesday it's rolling out age-estimation technology that will use various data to determine if someone is under the age of 18, and then use that signal "to deliver our age-appropriate product experiences and protections." Basically -- assuming it works as it should -- kids will not be able to access what YouTube deems as age-restricted content. Google, YouTub

Critical Vulnerability Discovered 11 Days After Wix Buys Base44

One of the most profoundly transformed domains in the wake of the LLM revolution has been code generation, especially the rise of vibe coding, where natural language prompts replace traditional programming. This shift has empowered millions of users with little to no technical background to build fully functional applications with ease. Platforms like Loveable, Bolt, and Base44 are on the front of this movement - they have enabled the creation of millions of applications spanning from persona

Ready or not, age verification is rolling out across the internet

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. On July 25th, the UK became one of the first countries to widely implement age verification. Its Online Safety Act requires sites hosting porn and other content deemed “harmful” — including Reddit, Discord, Grindr, X, and Bluesky — to verify that users are over the age of 18. The early results have been chaotic. While many services have complied, so

Ubuntu Linux lagging? Try my 10 go-to tricks to speed it up

Yuichiro Chino/Getty Unless you're using a computer from the '90s or early 2000s, typically speaking, Ubuntu runs very well on most machines. I've found it to be fairly predictable in that respect. However, nothing is perfect, and you might run into an instance where the open-source operating system doesn't perform up to your standards. So, what do you do? Do you hop to a different distribution? You certainly could, as there are plenty of Linux distributions that work perfectly on older hardwa

Blog series on creating an OS in Rust

Writing an OS in Rust This blog series creates a small operating system in the Rust programming language. Each post is a small tutorial and includes all needed code, so you can follow along if you like. The source code is also available in the corresponding Github repository. Latest post: Async/Await Bare Bones Interrupts CPU Exceptions CPU exceptions occur in various erroneous situations, for example, when accessing an invalid memory address or when dividing by zero. To react to them, we ha

AIR lands $23M to bring its eVTOLs to the US

The combined forces of escalating geopolitical tensions and rising defense budgets are spurring many electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) makers to take a two-pronged approach to building their aircraft: crewed vehicles for personal or commercial taxi use, and uncrewed vehicles meant for logistics and defense purposes. AIR, an Israel-based startup developing eVTOLs, thought it prudent to adopt a similar approach from the get-go, designing both its uncrewed and piloted aircraft with the

Placing Functions

placing functions — 2025-07-08 What are placing functions? About a year ago I observed that in-place construction seems surprisingly simple. By separating the creating of the place in memory from writing the value to memory, it’s not that hard to see how we can turn that into a language feature. So about six months ago, that’s what I went ahead and did and created the placing crate: a proc-macro-based prototype for “placing functions”. Placing functions are functions whose return type is con

Bridging Digital Infrastructure, AI, and Education in Sri Lanka

An Interview with Prof. Roshan Ragel – 2025 IEEE CS Mary Kenneth Keller Teaching Award Recipient As the first academic from the Global South to win the IEEE CS Mary Kenneth Keller Computer Science & Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award, Prof. Roshan Ragel exemplifies leadership in teaching, research, and digital transformation. A Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Peradeniya and Consultant CEO of LEARN, Sri Lanka’s National Research and Education Network, he has spearhea

Love your new Galaxy Watch 8? Here’s one setting you need to fix immediately

Joe Maring / Android Authority Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 series officially hit store shelves last Friday, and from what we’ve seen so far, Samsung’s newest wearables are likely among the best Wear OS watches you can buy this year. I’ve been wearing the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic for the last few days, and while I’m nowhere near ready to review it, my first impressions have been positive. I’ve long been a fan of Samsung smartwatches, particularly those with rotating bezels. As such, going ba

Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

You can also use the new Vite plugin directly if you want to integrate notebooks into your existing Vite-based application. The build command is implemented on top of Vite, making it incredibly fast. If you prefer to author notebooks in a text editor rather than using Observable Desktop, you can use Vite’s preview server for a live preview as you edit. notebooks preview See the Notebook Kit documentation for more.

Xbox adds age checks in UK to comply with Online Safety Act

Recap: Digital platforms across the United Kingdom are adjusting their operations after the country's new Online Safety Act came into force, with Microsoft's Xbox gaming service among the latest to announce compliance measures. The legislation, aimed at making digital spaces safer for children and young people, has set off a wave of new regulations that require internet companies to verify users' ages if their platforms could potentially host explicit or harmful content. Microsoft confirmed thi

Do variable names matter for AI code completion? (2025)

Do Variable Names Matter for AI Code Completion? When GitHub Copilot suggests your next line of code, does it matter whether your variables are named current_temperature or just x ? I ran an experiment to find out, testing 8 different AI models on 500 Python code samples across 7 naming styles. The results suggest that descriptive variable names do help AI code completion. The Experiment Each code sample was transformed into different naming conventions: Descriptive ( process_user_input )

Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations

17 July 2025 — Next week, on 22 and 23 July 2025, the High Court of Justice in London will hear the Wikimedia Foundation’s legal challenge to the Categorisation Regulations of the United Kingdom (UK)’s Online Safety Act (OSA). The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, announced its legal challenge earlier this year, arguing that the regulations endanger Wikipedia and the global community of volunteer contributors who create the information on

Microsoft plans to bring Xbox age verification to countries outside of the UK

Microsoft is implementing an age verification system on Xbox accounts to comply with the UK's Online Safety Act, and in a new blog post announcing the move, the company suggests it'll come to other countries, too. Players in the UK who indicate on their account that they're 18 years or older will now "begin seeing notifications encouraging them to verify their age," Microsoft says. The process is optional for now, and players will be able to enjoy playing Xbox games until "early 2026," when ver

The UK is slogging through an online age-gate apocalypse

People across the United Kingdom have been faced with a censored and partially inaccessible online landscape since the country introduced its latest digital safety rules on Friday. The Online Safety Act mandates that web service operators must use “highly effective” age verification measures to stop kids from accessing a wide range of material, on penalty of heavy fines and criminal action against senior managers. It’s primarily focused on pornography and content that promotes suicide, self-har

Microsoft starts rolling out Xbox age verification in the UK

is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Microsoft is starting to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act by prompting Xbox players to verify their age today. The prompts will be shown to Xbox players who indicate they’re over the age of 18 and will be shown when you sign into an Xbox account in the UK. Microsoft says it’s also exploring bringing similar age verification tools to other countries in the future. To powe

Scattered Spider is running a VMware ESXi hacking spree

Scattered Spider hackers have been aggressively targeting virtualized environments by attacking VMware ESXi hypervisors at U.S. companies in the retail, airline, transportation, and insurance sectors. According to the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GITG), the attackers keep employing their usual tactics that do not include vulnerability exploits but rely on perfectly executed social engineering "to bypass even mature security programs." A Scattered Spider attack The researchers say that th