01 Dec 2025

feedSlashdot

Amazon and Google Announce Resilient 'Multicloud' Networking Service Plus an Open API for Interoperability

Their announcement calls it "more than a multicloud solution," saying it's "a step toward a more open cloud environment. The API specifications developed for this product are open for other providers and partners to adopt, as we aim to simplify global connectivity for everyone." Amazon and Google are introducing "a jointly developed multicloud networking service," reports Reuters. "The initiative will enable customers to establish private, high-speed links between the two companies' computing platforms in minutes instead of weeks." The new service is being unveiled a little over a month after an Amazon Web Services outage on October 20 disrupted thousands of websites worldwide, knocking offline some of the internet's most popular apps, including Snapchat and Reddit. That outage will cost U.S. companies between $500 million and $650 million in losses, according to analytics firm Parametrix. Google and Amazon are promising "high resiliency" through "quad-redundancy across physically redundant interconnect facilities and routers," with both Amazon and Google continuously watching for issues. (And they're using MACsec encryption between the Google Cloud and AWS edge routers, according to Sunday's announcement: As organizations increasingly adopt multicloud architectures, the need for interoperability between cloud service providers has never been greater. Historically, however, connecting these environments has been a challenge, forcing customers to take a complex "do-it-yourself" approach to managing global multi-layered networks at scale.... Previously, to connect cloud service providers, customers had to manually set up complex networking components including physical connections and equipment; this approach required lengthy lead times and coordinating with multiple internal and external teams. This could take weeks or even months. AWS had a vision for developing this capability as a unified specification that could be adopted by any cloud service provider, and collaborated with Google Cloud to bring it to market. Now, this new solution reimagines multicloud connectivity by moving away from physical infrastructure management toward a managed, cloud-native experience. Reuters points out that Salesforce "is among the early users of the new approach, Google Cloud said in a statement."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

01 Dec 2025 8:34am GMT

Russia Left Without Access to ISS Following Structure Collapse During Thursday's Launch

After a successful November 27th launch to the International Space Station, Russia discovered an accident had occurred on their launch site's mobile maintenance cabin - when a drone spotted it lying upside down in a flame trench. "The main issue with the structure collapse is that it puts Site 31/6 - the only Russian launch site capable of launching crew and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) - out of service until the structure is fixed," reports the space-news site NASA Spaceflight There are other Soyuz 2 rocket launch pads, but they are either located at an unsuitable latitude, like Plesetsk, or not certified for crewed flights, like Vostochny, or decommissioned and transferred to a museum, like Gagarin's Start at Baikonur. As a result, Russia is temporarily unable to launch Soyuz crewed spacecraft and Progress cargo ships to the ISS, whose nearest launch (Progress MS-33) was scheduled for December 21.... When the rocket launched, a pressure difference was created between the space under the rocket, where gases from running engines are discharged, and the nook where the [144-ton] maintenance cabin was located. The resulting pressure difference pulled the service cabin out of the nook and threw it into the flame trench, where it fell upside down from a height of 20 m. Photos of the accident showed significant damage to the maintenance cabin, which, according to experts, is too extensive to allow for repairs. The only way to resume launches from Site 31/6 is to install a spare maintenance cabin or construct a new one. Despite the fact that the fallen structure was manufactured in the 1960s, two similar service cabins were manufactured recently at the Tyazhmash heavy-engineering plant in Syzran for other Soyuz launch complexes at the Guiana Space Center and Vostochny Cosmodrome. The production of each cabin took around two years to complete, however, it was not for an emergency situation. "Various experts gave different possible estimates of the recovery time of the Site 31 launch complex: from several months to three years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

01 Dec 2025 5:36am GMT

Linux Kernel 6.18 Officially Released

From the blog 9to5Linux: Linux kernel 6.18 is now available for download, as announced today by Linus Torvalds himself, featuring enhanced hardware support through new and updated drivers, improvements to file systems and networking, and more. Highlights of Linux 6.18 include the removal of the Bcachefs file system, support for the Rust Binder driver, a new dm-pcache device-mapper target to enable persistent memory as a cache for slower block devices, and a new microcode= command-line option to control the microcode loader's behavior on x86 platforms. Linux kernel 6.18 also extends the support for file handles to kernel namespaces, implements initial 'block size > page size' support for the Btrfs file system, adds PTW feature detection on new hardware for LoongArch KVM, and adds support for running the kernel as a guest on FreeBSD's Bhyve hypervisor.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

01 Dec 2025 4:36am GMT

30 Nov 2025

feedArs Technica

Revisiting Jill of the Jungle, the last game Tim Sweeney designed

DOS platformers didn't have a reputation for being fun, but this one is a blast.

30 Nov 2025 12:10pm GMT

feedOSnews

System 7 natively boots on the Mac Mini G4

Only a few weeks ago, the CHRP variants of Mac OS 7.6 and 8 were discovered and uploaded to the internet for posterity, but we're already seeing the positive results of this event unfold: Mac OS 7.x can now run on the Mac Mini G4 - natively. The very short of it is as follows. First, the CHRP release of Mac OS 8 contains a ROM file that allows Mac OS 8 to boot on the G4 Mac Mini. Second, the CHRP release of 7.6 contains a System Enabler that allows 7.6 earlier versions to run by using the aforementioned ROM file. Third, the ROM has been modified to add compatibility with as many Mac models as possible. There's a lot more to it, of course, but the end result is that quite a few more older, pre-9.x versions of Mac OS can now run on G4 and G3 Macs, which is quite cool. Of course, there are limitations. Note that, although I describe many of these as "stable", I mean you can use much of it normally (sound/video/networking aside) without it crashing or misbehaving, at least not too hard, but that is not to say everything works, because that is just not the case. For example, when present, avoid opening the Apple System Profiler, unless you want a massive crash as it struggles trying to profile and gather all the information about your system. Some other apps or Control Panels might either not work, or work up to a certain point, after which they might freeze, requiring you to Force Quit the Finder to keep on going. And so on. ↫ Jubadub at Mac OS 9 Lives Issues or no, this is amazing news, and great work by all involved.

30 Nov 2025 8:28am GMT

29 Nov 2025

feedArs Technica

Achieving lasting remission for HIV

Promising trials using engineered antibodies suggest that "functional cures" may be in reach.

29 Nov 2025 12:15pm GMT

feedOSnews

Genode OS Framework 25.11 released

The release 25.11 wraps up our year of "rigidity, clarity, performance" with a bouquet of vast under-the-hood improvements. Genode's custom kernel received special tuning of its new CPU scheduler for Sculpt-OS workloads, and became much more scalable with respect to virtual-memory management. Combined, those efforts visibly boost the performance of Sculpt OS on performance-starved hardware like the PinePhone or the i.MX8-based MNT Reform laptop. On account of improving clarity, our new configuration format - now named human-inclined data (HID) - proliferates throughout Genode's tooling. We are also happy to report that almost all Genode components have become interoperable with both XML and HID by now. ↫ Genode OS Framework 25.11 release notes The Genode Framework 25.11 also brings a major change to how important shared components that aren't strictly part of the framework are handled, such as ports like libSDL, sqlite, or gnutls. Before, these could only be built with the Genode build system, which was suboptimal because this isn't designed for building individual components. Several changes have been made to now enable the use of multiple build systems and the Goa SDK, which should make it a lot easier to these crucial components to become the responsibility of wider parts of the community. There's way more, of course, such as the usual driver improvements, including the addition of support for serial-to-USB adapters.

29 Nov 2025 9:48am GMT

28 Nov 2025

feedOSnews

Dell: about 1 billion PCs will not or cannot be upgraded to Windows 11

During a Dell earnings call, the company mentioned some staggering numbers regarding the amount of PCs that will not or cannot be upgraded to Windows 11. "We have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven't been upgraded," said Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke on a Q3 earnings call earlier this week, referring to the overall PC market, not just Dell's slice of machines. "And we have another 500 million that are four years old that can't run Windows 11." He sees this as an opportunity to guide customers towards the latest Windows 11 machines and AI PCs, but warns that the PC market is going to be relatively flat next year. ↫ Tom Warren at The Verge The monumental scale of the Windows 10 install base that simply won't or cannot upgrade to Windows 11 is massive, and it's absolutely bonkers to me that we're mostly just letting them get away with leaving at least a billion users out in the cold when it comes to security updates and bug fixes. The US government (in better times) and the EU should've 100% forced Microsoft's hand, as leaving this many people on outdated, unsupported operating system installations is several disasters waiting to happen. Aside from the dangerous position Microsoft is forcing its Windows 10 users into, there's also the massive environmental and public health impact of huge swaths of machines, especially in enterprise environments, becoming obsolete overnight. Many of these will end up in landfills, often shipped to third-world countries so we in the west don't have to deal with our e-waste and its dangerous consequences directly. I can get fined for littering - rightfully so - but when a company like Microsoft makes sweeping decisions which cause untold amounts of dangerous chemicals to be dumped in countless locations all over the globe, governments shrug it off and move on. At least we will get some cheap eBay hardware out of it, I guess.

28 Nov 2025 9:57pm GMT

feedArs Technica

Before a Soyuz launch Thursday someone forgot to secure a 20-ton service platform

"We are going to learn just how important the ISS is to leadership."

28 Nov 2025 4:16pm GMT

24 Nov 2025

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Misunderstanding that “Dependency” comic

Over the course of 2025, every single major cloud provider has failed. In June, Google Cloud had issues taking down Cloud Storage for many users. In late October, Amazon Web Services had a massive outage in their main hub, us-east-1, affecting many services as well as some people's beds. A little over a week later Microsoft Azure had a [widespread outage][Azure outage] that managed to significantly disrupt train service in the Netherlands, and probably also things that matter. Now last week, Cloudflare takes down large swaths of the internet in a way that causes non-tech people to learn Cloudflare exists. And every single time, people share that one XKCD comic.

24 Nov 2025 12:00am GMT

18 Nov 2025

feedPlanet Arch Linux

Self-hosting DNS for no fun, but a little profit!

After Gandi was bought up and started taking extortion level prices for their domains I've been looking for an excuse to migrate registrar. Last week I decided to bite the bullet and move to Porkbun as I have another domain renewal coming up. However after setting up an account and paying for the transfer for 4 domains, I realized their DNS services are provided by Cloudflare! I personally do not use Cloudflare, and stay far away from all of their products for various reasons.

18 Nov 2025 12:00am GMT

06 Nov 2025

feedPlanet Arch Linux

waydroid >= 1.5.4-3 update may require manual intervention

The waydroid package prior to version 1.5.4-2 (including aur/waydroid) creates Python byte-code files (.pyc) at runtime which were untracked by pacman. This issue has been fixed in 1.5.4-3, where byte-compiling these files is now done during the packaging process. As a result, the upgrade may conflict with the unowned files created in previous versions. If you encounter errors like the following during the update:

error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem waydroid: /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/actions/__pycache__/app_manager.cpython-313.pyc exists in filesystem

You can safely overwrite these files by running the following command: pacman -Syu --overwrite /usr/lib/waydroid/tools/\*__pycache__/\*

06 Nov 2025 12:00am GMT