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Singularity Linux Kernel Rootkit with klogctl Detection Evasion  gbhackers.com

U.S. senators are probing whether Big Tech data centers are driving up local electricity bills by socializing grid upgrade costs onto residents. Some of the tactics they're using include NDAs, shell companies, and lobbying. Ars Technica reports: In letters (PDF) to seven AI firms, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) cited a study estimating that "electricity prices have increased by as much as 267 percent in the past five years" in "areas located near significant data center activity." Prices increase, senators noted, when utility companies build out extra infrastructure to meet data centers' energy demands -- which can amount to one customer suddenly consuming as much power as an entire city. They also increase when demand for local power outweighs supply. In some cases, residents are blindsided by higher bills, not even realizing a data center project was approved, because tech companies seem intent on dodging backlash and frequently do not allow terms of deals to be publicly disclosed. AI firms "ask public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) preventing them from sharing information with their constituents, operate through what appear to be shell companies to mask the real owner of the data center, and require that landowners sign NDAs as part of the land sale while telling them only that a 'Fortune 100 company' is planning an 'industrial development' seemingly in an attempt to hide the very existence of the data center," senators wrote. States like Virginia with the highest concentration of data centers could see average electricity prices increase by another 25 percent by 2030, senators noted. But price increases aren't limited to the states allegedly striking shady deals with tech companies and greenlighting data center projects, they said. "Interconnected and interstate power grids can lead to a data center built in one state raising costs for residents of a neighboring state," senators reported. Under fire for supposedly only pretending to care about keeping neighbors' costs low were Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Equinix, Digital Realty, and CoreWeave. Senators accused firms of paying "lip service," claiming that they would do everything in their power to avoid increasing residential electricity costs, while actively lobbying to pass billions in costs on to their neighbors. [...] Particularly problematic, senators emphasized, were reports that tech firms were getting discounts on energy costs as utility companies competed for their business, while prices went up for their neighbors.

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Your Raspberry Pi Can Be a Real Desktop (If You Pick the Right OS)  It's FOSS

Intel bins its open-source Gaudi user-space code  Fudzilla.com

AI designs a Linux box in a week, and it boots first time  Fudzilla.com

AI designs a Linux box in a week, and it boots first time  Fudzilla.com

ExpressVPN unveils new Qt-based desktop apps  ExpressVPN

A new Arctic Report Card recap shows how the Arctic has transformed in just 20 years, warming about twice as fast as the global average and losing most of its oldest sea ice. It's also triggering cascading impacts from "Atlantification" to permafrost-driven "rusting rivers" and more destructive storms. Scientific American reports: The first Arctic Report Card was released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2006. Since then the region has warmed twice as fast as the global average. About 95 percent of the oldest, thickest sea ice is gone -- "the sliver that remains is collected in an area north of Greenland. Even the central Arctic Ocean is becoming warmer and saltier, causing more ice melt and changing how much heat is released into the atmosphere in a way that affects weather patterns around the world. Those are just some of the stark changes 20 years have wrought. The findings were highlighted in the 2025 Arctic Report Card, released on Tuesday. The Arctic Ocean is undergoing what scientists are calling "Atlantification" -- a process where warm, salty water from the Atlantic flows north, changing how waters of different temperatures and densities are layered in the Arctic, disrupting ecosystems and altering how heat moves from the water to the air. [...] The Arctic is simply becoming wetter, with more precipitation falling as rain instead of snow. June snow cover over the entire Arctic is half of what it was 60 years ago, the report found. Permafrost also continues to thaw, releasing once trapped carbon into the atmosphere and disgorging iron and other elements that have turned rivers and streams orange. These "rusting rivers," found in more than 200 watersheds, are more acidic than normal and have elevated levels of toxic metals that endanger local ecosystems. And as the permafrost thaws, the tundra of the Arctic biome is shrinking, and the boreal forest biome is creeping northward, disrupting ecosystems.

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The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The Mabox Linux team have announced the release of Mabox Linux 25.12. The new version includes a series of updates and improvements to the desktop, volume controls, and introduces autotheming to the live session. "The panel configuration menu was recently enhanced to allow for quick configuration of the....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. Rhino Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution which offers a rolling-release upgrade approach. the project's latest snapshot improves on its Lomiri interface support and makes Lomiri available for its PINE64 devices: "As mentioned previously, our collaboration with UBPorts stipulated that we would be assisting in the development of Lomiri....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The MidnightBSD project has announced a new major release, version 4.0, which is available for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 machines. A long list of changes to the base platform and ports collection are covered in the project's release notes. "Removed libdispatch from base. rc.subr(8) now honors ${name}_env in....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The Kicksecure team has announced the availability of a new version of its security-focused, Debian-based distribution. The new version switches from using the Xfce desktop by default to running LXQt and the base system has been updated to use Debian 13. "port to Debian 13 'Trixie' ram-wipe -....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The Emmabuntüs project has announced a new version of their Debian-based distribution. The new release is based on Debian 13 and places a focus on accessibility options: "This new version of our distribution mainly focuses on accessibility improvements, developed as part of our collaboration with our friends at....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. This week in DistroWatch Weekly:
Review: OpenBSD 7.8
News: Jolla is working on a new Linux phone, Germany is saving money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD software for AI tasks, Fedora demonstrates how not to use AI tools to manage a system, Haiku ports Go language
Questions and answers:....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The Kali Linux team have announced a new version of their Debian-based distribution. The security and forensics platform includes new updates to the Plasma and GNOME desktops along with better Wayland support for instances running inside virtual machines. "Now that GNOME has moved to only supporting Wayland, and....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. Michael Prokop has announced the release of Grml 2025.12, an updated stable release of the project's Debian-based live Linux system designed of system administrators: "We are proud to announce our new stable release, version 2025.12, code-named 'Postwurfsendung'. Like the previous release, version 2025.08, live ISO images are available....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. Pop!_OS 24.04, a major new version of System76's desktop Linux distribution, has been released. Based on Ubuntu's latest long-term support version, Pop!_OS 24.04 is the project's first stable version that ships the COSMIC desktop environment, developed in-house: "If you're ambitious enough, or maybe just crazy enough, there eventually....

The DistroWatch news feed is brought to you by TUXEDO COMPUTERS. The Parrot team has announced the availability of a new development snapshot. Parrot 7.0 beta swaps out the MATE desktop for using KDE Plasma by default, while the base distribution has been updated to Debian 13, and several custom applications have received some updates: "This new version introduces....

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: The alleged perpetrator had improper access to virtually every South Korean adult's personal information: names, phone numbers and even the keycode to enter residential buildings. It was one of the biggest data breaches of recent years and it has sent the company it targeted -- Coupang, South Korea's equivalent of Amazon -- reeling, generating lawsuits, government investigation and calls to toughen penalties against such leaks. The leak went undetected for nearly five months, hitting Coupang's radar on Nov. 18 only after a customer flagged suspicious activity. At first, Coupang, which was founded by a Korean-American entrepreneur, said it had experienced a data "exposure" affecting roughly 4,500 customer accounts. But within days, the e-commerce firm revised the figure: The leak exposed up to roughly 34 million user accounts in South Korea -- a sum representing more than 90% of the country's working-age population. Coupang started calling the incident a "leak" after Korean regulators took issue with the company's prior word choice. "The Whole Nation Is a Victim," read one local news headline. An investigation has found that the alleged perpetrator had once worked in South Korea as a software developer for authentication systems at Coupang, which is known for its blockbuster U.S. initial public offering a few years ago. The suspected leaker is believed to be a Chinese national who has moved back to China and is now on the lam, South Korean officials say. They haven't named the person. Even after leaving the firm roughly a year ago, the suspect secretly held on to an internal authentication key that granted him unfettered access to the personal information of Coupang users, South Korean authorities and lawmakers say. The infiltration, using overseas servers, started on June 24. By using the login credentials, the suspect was able to appear as if he were still a Coupang employee when accessing the company's systems.

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The EU is moving to soften its planned 2035 ban on internal combustion cars by allowing a small share of low-emission engines. "The less stringent limit would leave room for automakers to continue selling some plug-in hybrids, which have both electric and internal combustion engines and can use the combustion engine to recharge the battery without the need to find a charging station," reports the Associated Press. From the report: The proposal from the EU's executive commission would change provisions of 2023 legislation requiring average emissions in new cars to equal zero, or a 100% reduction from 2021 levels. The new proposal would require a 90% emissions reduction. That means in practical terms that most cars would be battery-only but would leave room for some cars with internal combustion engines. Automakers would have to compensate for the added emissions by using European steel produced by methods that emit less carbon, and through use of climate neutral e-fuels made from renewable electricity and captured carbon dioxide and biofuels made from plants. EU officials say changing the limit will not affect progress toward making the 27-country bloc's economy climate neutral by 2050. That means producing only as much carbon dioxide as can be absorbed by forests and oceans or by abatement methods such as storing it underground. CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas blamed by scientists for climate change.

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