computers

07 Jul 2026

Slashdot

Doom Developer id Software Is Reportedly Losing Half Its Staff

Doom developer id Software is reportedly laying off about half its staff as part of Microsoft's broader Xbox cuts. The reported layoffs potentially affects around 90 employees. Engadget reports: While neither Microsoft nor id Software have formally acknowledged the layoffs, one former member of the studio's staff, Michael Maynard, has echoed the 50 percent figure on LinkedIn. According to at least one of Game Developer's sources, that could translate to around 90 job cuts, though it's so far unclear what departments at id Software have been hit hardest. [...] Bloomberg reported yesterday that as part of the "reset" at Xbox, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of id Software, will be focusing on its biggest franchises -- like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein and Doom -- going forward. It's possible that motivated the cuts to id Software, but the developer at least outwardly appears to be already heavily focused on Doom. The studio launched Doom: The Dark Ages in 2025 and an expansion to the game on July 7, 2026. Whatever the reason, the cuts at Xbox aren't over: While Microsoft eliminated 1,600 roles alongside the announcement that Xbox is restructuring, it still plans to lay off another 1,600 employees over the coming months.

Microsoft Flips Windows Backup On By Default Outside the EU

Microsoft will turn on Windows settings backup and restore by default for eligible Windows 11 business devices outside the EU, starting with Windows 11 26H2. The Register reports: Now dubbed "Windows settings backup and restore," the service backs up a device's settings and a list of installed Microsoft Store apps, which can then be restored to a new device. Microsoft gave a use case for the technology: "Imagine a lost laptop, a hardware refresh, or an unexpected reset. These are some of the moments when your users need backup most. And that's rarely when anyone wants to discover that backup was never turned on." However, some organizations might not want it on. Perhaps those with strict privacy or data sovereignty requirements, or those regulated by the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), for whom the default-on behavior won't apply. Windows 11 25H2 and earlier are also excluded, as is any device with a backup policy that explicitly disables the setting. Everything else running Windows 11 26H1 will get switched on after a feature update, and the same applies to 26H2, currently with Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel. Administrators might reasonably be wary of this being opt-out rather than opt-in. Backups are useful, but Microsoft is clear that this is not a comprehensive backup solution, calling it only "one step in a broader Windows resiliency effort." The implications still need consideration. An opt-out setting that quietly ships settings data off-device is exactly the sort of thing that adds to administrators' workloads rather than lightening them.

OSnews

Linux ported to the Atari Jaguar

Only a few days ago we had Linux on the Mega Drive, and someone took that as a challenge, so now we have Linux on the Atari Jaguar. The Jaguar has a very different architecture than the Mega Drive, but does happen to use a processor from the same 68000-family. Interestingly enough, to this day, Linux has architecture code for the 68000-family of processors. 68040, 68030, 68010… and even the original base 68000 processor. All neatly structured under arch/m68k/. ↫ Joel Bueno And, well, that means Linux can indeed be made to work on the Jaguar, with some hacking and magic, of course.

07 Jul 2026 9:06pm GMT

Ars Technica

Data centers’ energy demand threatens Trump’s “Made in America” plan

Squeeze on Rust Belt electricity bills threatens Trump's manufacturing plan.

07 Jul 2026 9:03pm GMT

Slashdot

Samsung Passes Nvidia To Become Most Profitable Company In the World

Samsung's chip division is projected to earn more in 2026 than it made across its previous 40 years in semiconductors, driven by soaring AI-fueled demand for memory and storage. The company's latest quarterly operating profit reportedly topped Nvidia's, making Samsung the world's most profitable tech company for the period. Tom's Hardware reports: Brokerage consensus puts Samsung's full-year 2026 operating profit near 300 trillion won ($196 billion), and its second-quarter figure at about 84.6 trillion won ($55.1 billion). Samsung easily beat the consensus with $58.5 billion when it posted preliminary results on July 7, overtaking Nvidia's most recent quarterly operating profit of $53.54 billion and becoming the most profitable technology company in the world for the period, on the back of AI-driven memory demand. Samsung's DS division booked 53.7 trillion won ($35.1 billion) of the company's 57.2 trillion won in total operating profit during the first quarter of 2026, roughly 94% of the total, which is why the division's projection sits so close to Samsung's full-year consensus. "This year's profit will exceed the cumulative profit generated over the past 40 years since we entered the semiconductor business," Kim Yong-Kwan told staff, scoping the claim to the chip business rather than the wider conglomerate. Further reading: Samsung Chip Workers To Get $340,000 Average Bonus In AI Boom

Ars Technica

Surprisingly large number of people may have marker for tick-linked meat allergy

There's still a slew of questions about why some people develop alpha-gal syndrome.

07 Jul 2026 8:32pm GMT

SCOTUS lets Texas enforce app store law that Big Tech calls "censorship regime"

Texas win at 5th Circuit left in place as attempts to overturn age law continue.

07 Jul 2026 8:18pm GMT

05 Jul 2026

OSnews

Review: iodéOS offers a frictionless de-Googled Android experience

Wherever in the world you go, the smartphone landscape is dominated by Android and iOS, and while this has always been problematic, recent events have made the dependency on two American tech giants for what is probably our most personal computing device even more problematic than it already was. We use our smartphones to keep our secrets, do our banking, interact with our governments, share our deepest thoughts with our friends and family, and a whole lot more. Having this invaluable tool the vast majority of us depend on tied entirely to Google and Apple is not just bad for the market, it's also a downright threat to the national security of anyone not living in the US. Here in Europe, there's been an awakening lately, with governments, companies, and people alike finally realising that having our entire digital infrastructure controlled by foreign, adversarial interests is a terrible idea. Sadly, breaking free from our Android and iOS chains is not so easy. The most ideal solution would be a truly open source alternative smartphone operating system, but that's a hard sell for 99.9% of smartphone users who need the applications required to do their finances, talk to their friends, or interact with their governments. The cold and harsh truth is that with very few exceptions, these applications simply do not (yet) exist for smartphone operating systems that aren't Android or iOS. The only viable alternative at this point in time is to take whatever's left of the Android Open Source Project, remove anything that ties it to Google and its services, fill in the gaps with alternative services and applications, and sell it as a Google-free or de-Googled Android platform. There's several projects in this space, and with Europe drunkenly stumbling out of the technological hole it dug itself into, it's no surprise that two of the more popular alternatives to Apple or Google-controlled smartphones come from Europe (and from the same country, no less). Today, we're taking a look at one of these: iodéOS. Iodé is a company based in Toulouse, France, which focuses on offering a Google-free Android called iodéOS, either preinstalled on phones you can buy, or as a ROM you can install yourself on supported devices. As a company, iodé makes its money through selling devices with iodéOS preinstalled, through an optional premium subscription (that I didn't take a look at), and through donations, and all of their code is published as open source on their Gitlab instance hosted in France. Iodé loaned me a Fairphone 6 with iodéOS preinstalled, one of he many smartphones and tablets they sell through their online store for review. This isn't going to be an Android review; you already know what Android is like, and there's no need for me to rehash any of that. Instead, I want to focus on the things that make using de-Googled Android different from using Google Android. Don't be afraid of microG There are various ways to go about making a de-Googled Android variant, and iodéOS chose the LineageOS route, with microG installed on top. For those unaware, microG is a project which aims to replace the various proprietary parts of Google Play Services, required by many Android applications, with open source reimplementations. While it doesn't offer 100% compatibility, it works exceptionally well, and you'll be hard-pressed to find applications just don't work at all with microG. IodéOS updates its microG installation through a dedicated F-Droid repository that's obviously enabled by default, so you don't have to do anything yourself. Using microG instead of Google Play Services doesn't mean you have to rely solely on whatever's available in F-Droid, since there are a variety of alternative Play Store frontends available. IodéOS ships with the Aurora Store, which is an open-source frontend to the Play Store that can be used with or without a Google account. If you use it with your Google account, you'll gain access to whatever applications you already own, including paid ones, but you won't be able to buy applications inside Aurora. You can, however, buy an application on the Play Store website, after which it will show up in Aurora as well, assuming you're logged in with the same account. Aurora also comes with something something called FakeStore, which is sadly an important part of the puzzle; it's a stub application that has the same package name as the real Play Store. Some applications check whether the Play Store is available before working properly, so this is sadly needed to ensure maximum compatibility. The only issue I sometimes ran into with Aurora is that it would load up its listings, but then any application I tapped on said it was unavailable. When this happened, reloading the Aurora application always fixed the issue. Annoying, but not gamebreaking. A few things did not work for me when using microG on iodéOS, and they're exactly the things you'd expect not to work. If you have a WearOS device, you're out of luck; WearOS devices simply do not work when using microG, but there is a bounty to add support for it. If you want to use a smartwatch with iodéOS, there are various options available, such as Garmin devices, which is what I used during my testing and it worked flawlessly. Another feature from "regular" Android that simply won't work is RCS. There's only one RCS client available on Android, Google Messages, and as you can imagine, Google is in no rush to allow devices without Google Play Services to register for and use RCS messaging. Tying to register with Google Messages will fail, and there are no other RCS clients available (save for a few China and India-specific clients). There's a microG bounty for this, too, but no luck so far. Of course, there are countless messaging platforms that work just fine on iodéOS - regular SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, and so on - and especially if you're European, it's unlikely RCS support matters to you at all. I just don't

05 Jul 2026 9:29pm GMT

Improved DEC Alpha emulator runs Windows 2000 for Alpha and OpenVMS and Tru64 with X11

Colour me positively surprised, as I had no idea Alpha emulation had progressed this much. As you might know, I'm involved a bit in the OpenVMS community and the Alpha emulation side via AXPBox. AXPBox (github) is a fork of the es40 alpha emulator by Camiel Vanderhoeven (who is now Chief Architect at VSI, the company that makes OpenVMS, for x86 nowdays). There have been many forks of es40 in the past and recently a new one has popped up with some great new features. Like speedups via a JIT compiler, S3 graphics port from MAME and ARC support, resulting in the ability to run Windows 2000 for the DEC Alpha. ↫ Remy van Elst Not only can you run the unreleased Alpha version of Windows 2000 on this forked emulator, it's also capable of running OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX. In fact, both OpenVMS and Tru64 can run their full X11 CDE desktops on the emulator as well, which is incredibly cool and a huge milestone. As the name of the original emulator implies, it's emulating an AlphaServer Es40 from the turn of the century, which should be fast enough for enthusiast use. The last AlphaStation ever made, the ES47, is still very high on my list of computers I desperately want but will never have - they are incredibly rare, and whenever they do come up for sale, incredibly expensive. If you have one, consider yourself lucky, and please, write about it! Tell the world!

05 Jul 2026 8:27pm GMT