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I ditched Windows: Flatpak fixed everything I hated about Linux  Cybernews

NVIDIA recommended driver 580.126.09 release for Linux  GamingOnLinux

New VoidLink Cloud-Native Malware Targets Linux Systems With Self-Deletion Capabilities  Cyber Press

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Monday that Microsoft will announce changes to ensure that Americans won't see rising utility bills as the company builds more data centers to meet rising artificial intelligence demand. "I never want Americans to pay higher Electricity bills because of Data Centers," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Therefore, my Administration is working with major American Technology Companies to secure their commitment to the American People, and we will have much to announce in the coming weeks." [...] Trump congratulated Microsoft on its efforts to keep prices in check, suggesting that other companies will make similar commitments. "First up is Microsoft, who my team has been working with, and which will make major changes beginning this week to ensure that Americans don't 'pick up the tab' for their POWER consumption, in the form of paying higher Utility bills," Trump wrote on Monday. Utilities charged U.S. consumers 6% more for electricity in August from a year earlier, including in states with many data centers, CNBC reported in November. Microsoft is paying close to attention to the impact of its data centers on local residents. "I just want you to know we are doing everything we can, and I believe we're succeeding, in managing this issue well, so that you all don't have to pay more for electricity because of our presence," Brad Smith, the company's president and vice chair, said at a September town hall meeting in Wisconsin, where Microsoft is building an AI data center. While Microsoft is moving forward with some facilities, the company withdrew plans for a data center in Caledonia, Wisconsin, amid loud opposition to its efforts there. The project would would have been located 20 miles away from a data center in the village of Mount Pleasant.

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5 ways Zorin OS makes switching from Windows feel effortless  How-To Geek

Analysis of VoidLink: A Cloud-Native Malware Threat Targeting Linux Systems  gbhackers.com

AI EdgeLabs Adds Advanced Risk and Compliance Center with Linux Audit Capabilities to Its AI Runtime Platform  01net

New Advanced Linux VoidLink Malware Targets Cloud and container Environments  The Hacker News

3 Linux Mint power-user features nobody talks about  Yahoo! Tech

I was too advanced for Linux Mint until I discovered these 3 power user features  How-To Geek

Crashing 3 Times a Week and Stealing Data Secretly? A Programmer's Linux Migration: "Finally Deleted Windows 11 Completely"  36Kr

New VoidLink Cloud-Native Malware Attacking Linux Systems with Self-deletion Capabilities  Cyber Security News

Researchers from the startup Overview Energy have successfully demonstrated beaming power from a moving airplane to the ground using near-infrared light. It marks the first step toward space-based solar power satellites that could someday transmit energy from orbit to existing solar farms on Earth. IEEE Spectrum reports: Overview's test transferred only a sprinkling of power, but it did it with the same components and techniques that the company plans to send to space. "Not only is it the first optical power beaming from a moving platform at any substantial range or power," says Overview CEO Marc Berte, "but also it's the first time anyone's really done a power beaming thing where it's all of the functional pieces all working together," he says. "It's the same methodology and function that we will take to space and scale up in the long term." [...] Many researchers have settled on microwaves as their beam of choice for wireless power. But, in addition to the safety concerns about shooting such intense waves at the Earth, [Paul Jaffe, head of systems engineering] says there's another problem: microwaves are part of what he calls the "beachfront property" of the electromagnetic spectrum -- a range from 2 to 20 gigahertz that is set aside for many other applications, such as 5G cellular networks. "The fact is," Jaffe says, "if you somehow magically had a fully operational solar power satellite that used microwave power transmission in orbit today -- and a multi-kilometer-scale microwave power satellite receiver on the ground magically in place today -- you could not turn it on because the spectrum is not allocated to do this kind of transmission." Instead, Overview plans to use less-dense, wide-field infrared waves. Existing utility-scale solar farms would be able to receive the beamed energy just like they receive the sun's energy during daylight hours. So "your receivers are already built," Berte says. The next major step is a prototype demonstrator for low Earth orbit, after which he hopes to have GEO satellites beaming megawatts of power by 2030 and gigawatts by later that decade. Plenty of doubts about the feasibility of space-based power abound. It is an exotic technology with much left to prove, including the ability to survive orbital debris and the exorbitant cost of launching the power stations. (Overview's satellite will be built on earth in a folded configuration and it will unfold after it's brought to orbit, according to the company). "Getting down the cost per unit mass for launch is a big deal," Jaffe says. "Then, it just becomes a question of increasing the specific power. A lot of the technologies we're working on at Overview are squarely focused on that."

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Even Linus Torvalds ,The Creator of Linux, Is Vibe Coding (Why It Signals a Major Shift)  ucstrategies.com

Over a million Windows 11 & 10 users have already downloaded and installed this Linux distro  Neowin

Over a million Windows 11 & 10 users have already downloaded and installed this Linux distro  Neowin

A newly founded startup called GRU Space is taking deposits of up to $1 million to eventually build inflatable hotels on the Moon. The bet is that space needs destinations, not just rockets, even if the first customers are essentially early adopters of sci-fi optimism. Ars Technica reports: It sounds crazy, doesn't it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late December when I spoke to founder Skyler Chan, a single full-time employee aside from himself. And Chan, in fact, only recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. [...] The GRU in the company's name, by the way, stands for Galactic Resource Utilization. The long-term vision is to derive resources from the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and beyond to fuel human expansion into space. If all that sounds audacious and unrealistic, well, it kind of is. But it is not without foundation. GRU Space has already received seed funding from Y Combinator, and it will go through the organization's three-month program early this year. This will help Chan refine his company's product and give him more options to raise money. Regarding his vision, you can read GRU Space's white paper here. Presently, the company plans to fly its initial "mission" in 2029 as a 10-kg payload on a commercial lunar lander, demonstrating an inflatable structure capability and converting lunar regolith into Moon bricks using geopolymers. With its second mission, the company plans to launch a larger inflatable structure into a "lunar pit" to test a scaled-up version of its resource development capabilities. The first hotel, an inflatable structure, would be launched in 2032 and would be capable of supporting up to four guests at a time. The next iteration beyond this would be the fancier structure, built from Moon bricks, in the style of the Palace of the Fine Arts. "SpaceX is building the FedEx to get us there, right?" Chan said. "But there has to be a destination worthy to stay in. Obviously, there is all kinds of debate around this, and what the future is going to be like. But our conviction is that the fundamental problem we have to solve, to advance humans toward the Moon and Mars, is off-world habitation. We can't keep everyone living on that first ship that sailed to North America, right? We have to build the roads and structures and offices that we live in today."

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VoidLink: The Cloud-Native Malware Framework  Check Point Software

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has calculated the health benefits of reducing air pollution, using the cost estimates of avoided asthma attacks and premature deaths to justify clean-air rules. Not anymore. Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, when regulating industry, according to internal agency emails and documents reviewed by The New York Times. It's a seismic shift that runs counter to the E.P.A.'s mission statement, which says the agency's core responsibility is to protect human health and the environment, environmental law experts said. The change could make it easier to repeal limits on these pollutants from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country, the emails and documents show. That would most likely lower costs for companies while resulting in dirtier air. "The idea that E.P.A. would not consider the public health benefits of its regulations is anathema to the very mission of E.P.A.," said Richard Revesz, the faculty director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. "If you're only considering the costs to industry and you're ignoring the benefits, then you can't justify any regulations that protect public health, which is the very reason that E.P.A. was set up."

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MX Linux 25.1 Beta Brings Back Dual-Init Support, Based on Debian 13.3  9to5Linux