IBM CEO says open weight models are now irresistibly good and cheap on-prem

TOP STORIES

• Torvalds: AI is fine for competent devs, but spare us the 'drive-by' patches

Kernel maintainers stop asking who used AI, as long as the code is good

• Nvidia woos wary Europeans with more open weights models

New embedding, parsing, and reranking models promise smarter agentic RAG workflows

• Jensen Huang sends in the robot ducks to sell Nvidia's AI-everywhere vision

Containerized datacenters, androids, and telecoms all feature in Berlin keynote interrupted by environmental protesters

• Nvidia's grand plan for speeding up datacenter deployments: AI trailer parks

GPUzilla boasts modular bit barns could speed up deployments from six months to just two weeks

• The spec is the new code, so brush up on your prose, says Kaseya CTO

Domain expertise and clear writing will matter more than syntax, and yes, that means documentation

Infosec

• Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacks

PLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more!

• Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attack

PLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more

• DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructure

Voting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included

• EQT buys majority share in Swiss cybersecurity biz Acronis

Went at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified

• Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sight

On the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career

FOSS

• SparkyOS: Lightweight general-purpose Arch, on a pendrive

Interesting new project from the minds behind SparkyLinux

• Red Hat helps teach about tech writing

But learns tough lessons about AI in the process

• NetBSD may have found a new role: The AI-free FOSS OS

Increasing awareness and adoption, followed by increasing donations

• OpenAI dots inspire open source imitators amid technical difficulties

Persistent agents appeal to AI companies, but demand isn't obvious

• Ubuntu 'Stonking Stingray' beta swims out: Deeper Rust 'oxidization' plus LLM speech-to-text

GNOME 51 is here, and Ubuntu interim releases are getting interesting again

• Revive Raskin's 3 laws of software with humane work that considers a dev's duty of care

All this, and angry NeoVim users