Alvaro Lopez Ortega / 2026-11-14 Briefing

Created Sat, 14 Nov 2026 15:48:23 +0000 Modified Sat, 14 Nov 2026 15:49:17 +0000
4054 Words

The Grand Slam of Darts begins Nov 14 in Wolverhampton, with Luke Littler defending against Beau Greaves and Niels Zonneveld; coverage varies by region. KDE Plasma 6.9 will load XWayland on demand, Wine 11.22 adds x86 AVX emulation on ARM64, and FreeBSD 15.2 Beta 2 updates OpenSSL/OpenSSH. Microsoft’s school-email billing opens the door to Collabora/Nextcloud, while UK experts accused Big Tech of doing the bare minimum on online safety.

🐧 Linux & Open Source

Basic Support For The Apple M5 Expected To Land For Linux 7.5

Basic support for the Apple M5 base SoC has been queued for the Linux 7.5 kernel via the “apple-soc/dt-7.5” branch. The initial Device Tree support is described as minimal and will serve as a foundation for future development, similar to early M3 and M4 support. Proper GPU support for newer Apple Silicon generations remains a major challenge.

Red Hat Working To Improve Memory Tiering For QEMU VMs To Save RAM

Red Hat engineers are evaluating approaches to improve memory tiering for QEMU virtual machines so NVMe SSDs can replace DRAM in more scenarios and reduce RAM usage amid high memory prices. At KVM Forum 2026, Red Hat’s Peter Xu presented options including a new system call, full user-space tiering in QEMU, and using existing kernel APIs for migrating hotness. The existing-kernel-API approach is the current lead contender, requiring no kernel changes and only small QEMU changes, with possible improvement via a patch addressing MADV_PAGEOUT limitations.

Rugged Emdoor Laptops Beginning To See Improved Linux Support

Emdoor rugged laptops are seeing improved Linux support through a new Emdoor Intel EWMI platform driver, with initial RFC patches posted Friday focused on Intel Core Ultra Series 2 “Lunar Lake” hardware. The driver is designed to enable controls and monitoring such as Fn and Windows key locks, touchpad toggling, auto power-on, fan and EC temperature sensors, and ACPI platform profiles.

KDE Plasma 6.9 Finally Allows XWayland To Run On-Demand, New Wobbly Windows Presets

KDE Plasma 6.9 will allow XWayland to load on-demand rather than always running, along with continued System Settings QML porting and faster Spectacle launch times. KWin’s wobbly windows effect now offers named presets such as water, pudding, molasses, and Nitroglycerin. Plasma 6.8.3 also brings fixes for a screen locker crash and visual corruption on some Intel/NVIDIA systems.

FreeBSD 15.2 Beta 2 Delivers Updated OpenSSL, Bug Fixes

FreeBSD 15.2 Beta 2 has been released with fixes including remote pkgbase installation via bsdinstall, an OpenSSH update to 10.6p2, default ML-DSA-44/Ed25519 SSH host keys, VirtIO improvements, and kernel fixes. Beta 3 is expected next week, followed by a release candidate, with FreeBSD 15.2-RELEASE planned for December 8 if no major issues arise.

Wine 11.22 Introduces x86 AVX Emulation On ARM64

Wine 11.22 has been released as the latest bi-weekly development version ahead of Wine 12.0, adding x86 AVX emulation support for ARM64 through ARM64EC builds. It also updates locale data to Unicode CLDR 49, adds address space randomization, improves Tahoma font glyph metrics, reimplements XML DTD validation, and includes 34 known bug fixes.

Perses

Perses is an open-source, plugin-based dashboard tool for Prometheus and other observability data sources, supporting metrics, traces, logs, and profiles with embeddable components. It offers DevOps features such as a CLI, static validation, dashboard-as-code SDKs, Kubernetes-native CRD management, datasource discovery, and extensible plugins. It also promotes a standardized open dashboard specification and provides authentication/RBAC plus best-effort Grafana dashboard migration.

KDE: The Documentary on Free Software [video]

The page cannot function because JavaScript is blocked or disabled in the browser, and it notes that PeerTube is incompatible with the current browser. It advises trying the latest version of Mozilla Firefox or reporting the issue if it is a mistake.

Light control for MacBook charger status light (open-source)

An open-source tool lets users control the status light on MacBook chargers. It supports on/off automation based on time or Focus status, or persistent on/off settings. The project is open to feature suggestions via GitHub.

🤖 AI & Machine Learning

Serving GLM-5.3 at 607.8 tok/s across two Nvidia DGX stations with vLLM

The tutorial shows how to serve the 753B-parameter GLM-5.3 NVFP4 MoE model across two NVIDIA DGX Stations using vLLM with tensor parallelism over ConnectX-8 RDMA, exposing a single OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Because the ~464 GB checkpoint exceeds a single GB300’s 252 GB HBM, both DGX Stations keep the weights in GPU memory with CPU offload disabled, and the post measures behavior under concurrent load.

Agweb – a browser for agents that stays out of your way

agweb is a macOS WebKit-based browser for coding agents that lets multiple agents drive tabs via a Playwright-style CLI without stealing keyboard focus. It offers a live dashboard, per-agent workspaces, shared login profiles, idle-tab suspension for low resource use, and agent-focused features like stable element refs, diff snapshots, secret filling, ad blocking, and MP4 demos. It requires macOS 26 or later and installs from a DMG or source.

The Claude Delusion

The article argues that successful and wealthy people, especially in tech, often mistake luck and narrow expertise for broad genius, leading to hubris and blaming others for failure. It cites Bill Gates as an example, noting his confidence in devising advanced biology questions to test OpenAI despite biology being outside his professional field.

Advancing science and engineering with Antigravity’s /teamwork

Google Research shared results from Antigravity’s /teamwork multiagent systems, which support human-AI collaborations on open problems in mathematics, chemistry, systems software, and ML engineering. With academic partners, teams used Gemini 4 models and multi-agent workflows to produce advances in information theory, formal verification, molecular structure discovery, kernel optimization, and Google production infrastructure. The agentic tools are being made available externally through Antigravity’s /teamwork.

Ggml v1.0.0

Ggml v1.0.0 prunes the deprecated public API and legacy DIAG_MASK ops, adds configurable YaRN truncation and FP8 support, and updates the RPC protocol. It also brings broad backend performance work, including few-row quantized matmuls and MoE fusion on CUDA/Metal, a Vulkan prefill FlashAttention path, a SYCL device-side MoE scheduler, OpenCL Adreno FlashAttention, new WebGPU kernels, expanded Hexagon op coverage, and scheduler improvements that avoid uploading unused inputs.

DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813

DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813 is the official release of DeepSeek-V4-Pro, superseding the preview version with significantly enhanced agentic capabilities and performance improvements, especially in production environments. It is built on the DeepSeek-V4-Pro Preview structure with an attached DSpark speculative decoding module. The page also provides usage instructions for Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, Docker Model Runner, and other deployment options.

Anthropic Upgrades Claude Code Projects to Run Parallel AI Workers Hands-Free

Anthropic upgraded Claude Code Projects with a proactive coordinator that answers questions and posts thread status updates, read-only thread sharing for signed-in Claude users (excluding threads with local computer access), reminders, /btw and /fork commands, and improved thread/artifact navigation. The features are in public beta on Pro and Max across web, desktop, and the latest mobile app, while Team and Enterprise are excluded.

Unsloth Qwen3.8-27B Quantizations – Dynamic v3.1 Update

Unsloth has updated its Qwen3.8-27B GGUFs to Dynamic V3.1, reporting 5–10% average accuracy gains at comparable sizes across coding, agentic, and general benchmarks. Most 2-bit to 6-bit quants were updated, while 3-bit UD3 quants were left unchanged because they performed on par. Qwen3.8-27B is a dense model with vision, reasoning, a 256K context window, and local support on roughly 17GB RAM/VRAM setups.

AI’s math impact previews AI research; matching top human researchers may be just years away

The author says recent progress in AI mathematics and evidence that AI is already accelerating frontier AI R&D has sharply shortened his timeline: he now expects AIs matching the best human AI researchers within a couple of years, possibly months. He argues that automating AI research could compress huge progress into a single year, leading to AIs at least as good as top human experts in every field by 2030—plausibly as early as next year.

💻 Software & Hardware

goliath32.com - Creating a self booting ZIP archive

The article describes building a normal ZIP archive that is also self-booting: it contains its own source code and an executable ZIPHEAD.COM, and can be rebuilt with mk.sh using Zlib. It can be booted directly by QEMU as a Multiboot kernel or written to a floppy image, since its first 512 bytes form a valid boot sector that loads and bootstraps the archive into 32-bit protected mode.

A terminal-native idle factory game, written in Rust with ratatui

Developer snipedbywifi has released terminactory, a terminal-native factory game written in Rust with ratatui and built with heavy AI assistance. It includes standard factory-building mechanics, a research graph, and an in-game browser with a wiki, forums, and extensive lore, plus Claude Code hooks that deliver agent “telegrams” in-game. The game is hosted on GitLab, and the developer is seeking suggestions for additional features.

Run Cloudflare Workers Anywhere

OpenOrange lets developers run Cloudflare Workers on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Rivet Cloud, or their own servers while keeping the same Wrangler-based developer experience. It removes Cloudflare runtime limits such as 128 MB memory per Worker/Durable Object and claims lower costs, with support for migrating Durable Objects and D1 data without downtime.

Amtrak booking system experiencing major issues amid nationwide FAA ground stop

Amtrak’s ticket booking system experienced major outages Friday evening, with users reporting errors on its website and app and hundreds of DownDetector complaints. The problems coincided with a nationwide FAA ground stop caused by a temporary telecommunications outage. Amtrak said its service was operating normally and attributed the booking issues to increased demand and a system-wide update.

🏛️ Policy & Security

Big Tech takes a beating as online safety experts accuse companies of doing bare minimum

At a UK Parliament Communications and Digital Committee hearing, online safety experts accused Big Tech of doing the bare minimum on safety, saying banned content remains easy to access—sometimes by simply using a thesaurus. The session highlighted weaknesses in platforms’ efforts to block prohibited material.

Nearly $20M found in Hungary’s forests, buildings amid corruption probe

Hungarian investigators have seized about $19.5 million in hidden cash, including bundles buried in forests and stored in buildings, as part of a corruption probe involving former Orban-era Development Minister Miklos Sesztak. Sesztak is suspected of receiving more than $37.2 million in bribes tied to state transport and construction deals, and he denies wrongdoing. The searches were conducted by a new asset-recovery agency as Hungary’s government investigates alleged corruption under Viktor Orban.

Security Agencies Worldwide Found to Use Ad-Based Surveillance System

A Bloomberg investigation into Penlink’s Webloc ad-based surveillance system, building on Citizen Lab research, found that security agencies in multiple countries have acquired the tracking technology. Confirmed or identified customers include the US, El Salvador, Hungary, Austria, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel. A senior researcher called Webloc a “powerful mass surveillance tool” spreading from military and intelligence agencies to federal, state, and local police, while its lawfulness in Europe and the UK remains highly controversial.

FAA lifted National Ground Stop at 0119Z

The FAA lifted the National Ground Stop at 0119Z, according to the notice. The FAA Command Center said the nationwide ground stop was cancelled, with an expected update at 0400Z.

Ukraine knocks out 36% of Russia’s oil refining capacity in under two weeks

Ukrainian drone strikes knocked out 36% of Russia’s total oil refining capacity in under two weeks, hitting at least nine major refineries between Oct. 30 and Nov. 11, according to defense manufacturer Fire Point. The affected plants have a combined annual processing capacity exceeding 120 million metric tons of crude oil. Reuters reported the attacks have reduced Russia’s operational refining capacity by roughly 30% and triggered acute fuel shortages in at least six Russian oblasts.

First Strike

The article argues that if current trends continue, China could have 10 times the U.S. electricity capacity within a decade, and that because compute depends on electricity, the U.S. should sell AI chips to China and use the proceeds to build solar, battery, and power capacity. It warns that short-term zero-sum “AI race” thinking could lead some to see an ASI-enabled decapitating first strike as the only way out, and says the nationalization of NVIDIA sharply raised the author’s estimate of imminent WWIII.

Rubio used CIA report on Alice Huang, recast assertively, to help topple Jensen Huang

Marco Rubio’s intervention helped undermine Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s influence in Washington after Huang’s access to Trump and push to sell AI chips to China sparked backlash among national security hawks. Rubio used a CIA report about Alice Huang, recasting it in more assertive terms, giving momentum to officials seeking tougher restrictions on China.

💼 Business & Markets

Microsoft’s school email bill gives rivals something to smile about

Microsoft’s move to bill schools for email services is giving rivals Collabora and Nextcloud an opening to pitch alternatives. Education customers are weighing the cost of losing services that were previously free.

Nvidia Allegedly Engineered Scarcity by Funding AI Startups to Buy Its GPUs

The provided article content is unavailable, consisting only of an automated bot-check message. Its title alleges that Nvidia engineered scarcity by funding AI startups to buy its GPUs, but no supporting details are included.

Nvidia director sold nearly $1B in stock weeks before the Jensen Huang scandal

Nvidia board director Mark Stevens sold roughly 4.2 million shares for about $946 million in Q3 2026, weeks before CEO Jensen Huang’s resignation on Nov. 12. SEC filings showed no prearranged trading plan was flagged for Stevens, though he still holds about 27.5 million Nvidia shares.

Tiny London quant fund emerges as one of the UK’s biggest corporate taxpayers

A tiny London-based quantitative fund has emerged as one of the UK’s biggest corporate taxpayers, according to the article title. The article body could not be accessed because of a security verification error, so further details were unavailable.

Tesla Opens Cybercab Orders to Select Buyers

Tesla has opened orders for its steering wheel-free, two-seat Cybercab to select customers at $29,990–$30,000, plus a required $299-per-month autonomous driving subscription with the first month free. Deliveries are expected to begin as soon as next month in supported service areas, with initial availability limited. Tesla has not said when orders will open to the general public.

Swiss Lugano aims to become crypto hub with LVGA token, Tether tie-up to boost economy

Lugano is trying to reinvent itself as a crypto hub by launching its own token, LVGA, and partnering with stablecoin issuer Tether. The Swiss city hopes digital assets and the joint venture will boost its economy, though some warn of potential risks.

Operand raises $31M led by Khosla for AI PE due diligence at $220M valuation

Operand, an AI-powered due diligence platform for private equity firms, raised $31 million across seed and Series A rounds. The funding was led by Khosla Ventures at a $220 million valuation. CEO Ram Gorthi confirmed the raise to Axios Pro.

WhiteMatter raises $20M Series A for guardian AI agents

WhiteMatter, a 2024-founded startup formerly known as QuilrAI, raised a $20 million Series A led by Blumberg Capital. The company builds “guardian” AI agents that monitor and approve what an enterprise’s existing AI agents can access, use software for, decide, or do, scaling automatically as new agents are added. WhiteMatter says it has 2.25 million agents under management and plans to use the funding to expand sales and research teams.

Charta Health raises $55M Insight-led Series B for AI medical chart review, billing, coding

Charta Health raised a $55 million Series B led by Insight Partners. The company offers AI-powered tools to automate medical chart review, billing, and coding workflows. The round is its third in less than two years and brings total funding to $85 million.

Luminal raises $25M Series A for AI inference cloud, chip-testing compiler

Luminal, which provides an inference cloud and develops inference compiler software for testing AI models on different chips, raised a $25 million Series A. The round was led by Standard Capital, CEO Joe Fioti told Axios Pro.

Cambridge’s Tendrils raises $30M led by Benchmark for many-core CPU architecture

Cambridge-based Tendrils Compute has raised $30M in a funding round led by Benchmark to develop a CPU architecture with thousands of cores operating in parallel. The UK startup is using an interaction-nets model and the open-source Vine language to target complex workloads, though it has not disclosed hardware benchmarks. Other investors included Visionaries Clubs, the UK Sovereign AI Fund, FR8, Antimatter, Cloudberry VC, Conviction, Embassy Ventures, and SV Angels.

JD.com completes Ceconomy takeover after EU approves ~60% stake deal worth ~$1.5B

JD.com has completed its takeover of German electronics retailer Ceconomy after acquiring a roughly 60% stake for about $1.5 billion, following EU approval of the deal. The Chinese e-commerce group aims to connect Ceconomy’s European physical and online stores using expertise developed in China.

SBF’s $500M 2021 Anthropic stake would be worth ~$37B at $1.5T IPO; he gave it up in 2024 for ~$1.3B

Sam Bankman-Fried’s 2021 $500 million investment in Anthropic would be worth about $37 billion if the AI lab lists at a $1.5 trillion valuation. However, he relinquished his stake in 2024 for roughly $1.3 billion, missing a massive potential windfall.

🌍 Science & Culture

How to watch the Grand Slam of Darts 2026 from abroad

The Grand Slam of Darts 2026 runs November 14–22 at WV Active Aldersley in Wolverhampton, featuring 48 players in 16 groups of three, with only group winners advancing to the last 16; reigning champion Luke Littler begins his defense against Beau Greaves and Niels Zonneveld. Viewing options vary by region, including Sky Sports/NOW in the UK, Peacock in the US, DAZN in German-speaking territories, and PDCTV in eligible international markets. Travelers can use a VPN to securely access their home subscription while abroad.

Solving the fox game

An analysis of the old Norse asymmetric board game “Fox Game” (halatafl) has resolved the open question of perfect-play outcomes. The sheep win with perfect play even with only 19 sheep, or 18 if they move first; with 9 sheep they can force a draw from the start. With one fox, 11 sheep suffice for a forced win.

When is a class a “commodity” and when does it depend on the instructor?

The article titled “When is a class a ‘commodity’ and when does it depend on the instructor?” could not be summarized because the provided content contains no substantive text. The page only displays a message asking users to enable JavaScript and cookies to continue.

The Myth of Neutral Code

The article argues that claims about software being newly “radicalized” rely on a false nostalgia for politically neutral open source. It traces today’s “neutral” open-source culture to the 1998 rebranding of Free Software into “Open Source,” which deliberately stripped out the movement’s ethical and political language to appeal to corporations. It also highlights a double standard in how corporate legal/political constraints are accepted while community efforts to address politics are criticized.

The Invention of Islamic Invention

The article examines how a Wikipedia editor known as Jagged_85 made over 87,000 edits from 2005 to 2012, inserting dubious or false claims crediting Muslims with numerous inventions and discoveries. These claims, often backed by weak or misrepresented sources, spread across the internet and even into scholarly literature. It argues that the popular narrative of an Islamic Golden Age of invention was partly inflated by unreliable and sometimes fraudulent claims.

GLP-1 Drugs May Work Differently in Women

A meta-analysis of randomized trials found that women lost more weight than men while taking GLP-1 receptor agonists, averaging 10.88% versus 6.8% of baseline body weight. Biological differences such as estrogen levels and body composition may help explain the sex difference. Weight loss was otherwise consistent across subgroups by age, race and ethnicity, BMI, and HbA1c.

Elephants Found to Be Increasingly Isolated Leading to Fractured Social Networks

A 12-year UC San Diego study of more than 440 wild female Asian elephants in Sri Lanka found that population declines have fractured their highly social communities, making groups smaller and more isolated. Researchers warn the population may have crossed a social “tipping point” as deaths, emigration, and fewer new individuals reduce relationships among remaining elephants. This loss of social connections could threaten the animals’ ability to forage, share information, and raise young.

Philip Roth and David Remnick getting personal (2001)

The article examines the long, complex relationship between Philip Roth and New Yorker editor David Remnick, tracing Remnick’s lifelong admiration for Roth and the unusual access Roth received to the magazine. It shows how their alliance blended genuine fandom with journalistic flattery and literary power, allowing Roth to use Remnick’s pages to honor allies and settle scores. The piece frames this partnership as fruitful but ethically ambiguous, even a cautionary tale about influence in publishing.