Blog Section
After a four-year hiatus, the International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC) has announced its revival, aimed at writing the most convoluted and difficult-to-understand code in the C language. The IOCCC28 event will be the fortieth in the history of the contest, held since 1984. Submissions will be accepted from January 31 to April 2, 2025. Unlike previous contests, the source code […]
On November 9 and December 17, 2024, versions 0.45 and 0.46 of the Hyprland compositor, written in C++ and distributed under the BSD-3 license, were released. Changes breaking backward compatibility: no_gaps_when_only has been removed and replaced with workspace rules. See here. decoration:shadow_ has been moved, see here. The algorithm for corner rounding has been improved. The handling of hardware cursors on NVIDIA has been enhanced. Groups received the following items: […]
Nobara is a modified version of the Fedora distribution, incorporating fixes aimed at improving user-friendliness. The distribution aims to provide an enhanced gaming, streaming, and content creation experience right 'out of the box'. In this release: the base has been updated to Fedora 41; the Calamares installer has been improved: rebased on the KaOS fork; a switch for the on-screen keyboard has been added, and the keyboard itself […]
At the 38C3 conference, the FlippyRAM framework was introduced, designed to check for vulnerabilities that allow Rowhammer class attacks to modify the contents of RAM. The toolkit code is written in C++ and is licensed under the MIT license. To simplify testing, a ready-made live distribution (1 GB) has been created, allowing checks to be conducted by booting from a USB Flash drive, as well as a container image for Docker. The aim of the project is […]
The release of project Snoop 1.4.2 has been published, developing a forensic OSINT tool that searches for user accounts in public data (open-source intelligence). The program analyzes various websites, forums, and social networks for the existence of the sought username, i.e., it allows you to determine on which sites a user with the specified nickname is present. The project is developed based on research materials in the field of public scraping […]
After a year of development, the Cygwin project has released version 4.5.0 of the newlib standard C library, developed by engineers from Red Hat. The library aims to provide a compact implementation of the standard C library (libc) suitable for use in embedded systems with limited persistent storage and memory. The project's code is written in C and is distributed under the LGPLv2 license. In the new version: Added […]
Andrzej Janik has presented an update on the ZLUDA project, which develops an open implementation of CUDA technology. The goal of the project is to enable the execution of unmodified CUDA applications on systems with GPUs other than NVIDIA's, achieving performance close to that of applications running natively. The project's code is distributed under the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses. ZLUDA 4 is presented as the first release shaped by […]
The first alpha release of the installer for the upcoming significant Debian releaseā'Trixie'āhas been presented. The Debian 13 release is expected in the summer of 2025. Key changes: Support for the RISC-V architecture (riscv64) has been added. Support for the mipsel architecture has been discontinuedāthe port for this architecture has been removed from the repositories. Mipsel was one of the oldest supported Debian ports, older than only the i386 processor port. The installer build for […]
The first experimental release of the Pidgin 3.0 (2.90) instant messaging client has been published, allowing simultaneous operation in multiple networks with different protocols and switching between chats using tabs. Plugins can be used to extend functionality and add support for new protocols. Builds will be prepared in Flatpak format (currently, only the source archive is available). The second test release of Pidgin […]
Stretchly is a cross-platform application that reminds users from time to time to take a break while working on their computer. It is written in JavaScript (Electron) and distributed under the terms of the Simplified BSD-2 License. Features include the configuration of mini and long breaks, intervals between breaks; postponing breaks, as well as restricting them; complete skipping of breaks, and a strict mode that prohibits skipping; displaying useful tips or ideas […]
Kees Cook, former head system administrator of kernel.org and leader of the Ubuntu Security Team, demonstrated the ability to create a commit whose shortened identifier matches a commit previously added to the Linux kernel. The experiment was conducted as a confirmation of the feasibility of transitioning to 16-character shortened commit identifiers in the Linux kernel, which had been discussed in the kernel developers' mailing list but was not approved by Linus […]
The release of the mobile platform LineageOS 22.1, based on the Android 15 codebase, has been presented. It is noted that the LineageOS 22 branch has achieved parity in functionality and stability with branch 21 and has been recognized as ready for the first release. Builds have been prepared for 132 device models (23 more devices than in LineageOS 21). LineageOS can also be run in the Android Emulator […]