Domotic
Domotic:2026/07/28
⇒ FireAvert joins Works with Home Assistant
Sound the alarm, because Works with Home Assistant just welcomed our newest partner to the program: FireAvert! 🎉 Specialists in fire safety, FireAvert are on a mission to keep you and your home out of harm’s way. They bring the very first gas and electric appliance shutoff devices to the program, and with them, a whole lot of peace of mind.
Domotic:2026/07/29
⇒ Making our web analytics open source with Plausible
The Open Home Foundation fights for privacy, choice, and sustainability. These principles are at the heart of everything we do, including how we handle website analytics. Our position is clear: we reject tools that track individuals across the web to monetize their data. Instead, we want aggregated, anonymized analytics that show how our websites are performing overall — without identifying who our visitors are, or compromising their privacy.
Domotic:2026/07/31
⇒ A big win for Android interoperability
Something big just happened. As the Open Home Foundation’s Android developer for Home Assistant, I was invited by the European Commission to consult on Android interoperability. On July 16, 2026, the Commission adopted a decision requiring Alphabet to open up eleven Android features — including always-on wake word detection, ambient sensor access, and screen automation — to all assistants, on equal terms.
Gaming
Gaming:2026/07/28
⇒ Cracking Windows Open: Porting RADV to WIN32
RADV is the open source Mesa Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs. Over the years, it has become a cornerstone of the Linux graphics stack. It has now effectively become the de facto Vulkan driver for AMD hardware on Linux. AMD even discontinued their PAL-based (Platform Abstraction Library) alternative in its favor, consolidating their open-source efforts around Mesa.
- https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/cracking-windows-open-porting-radv-to-win32.html
- https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/lfrb/mesa/-/tree/wddm2?ref_type=heads
Gaming:2026/07/29
⇒ Good News Gamers! GOG is Officially Coming to Linux
GOG built its whole brand around selling DRM-free games and providing offline installers that work without requiring an internet connection or any kind of verification from their side.
Harware
Hardware:2026/07/27
⇒ Framework Laptop 13 Pro press reviews and previewing a 192GB Framework Desktop
Reviews of Framework Laptop 13 Pro are now live, with shipments of Batch 1 pre-orders starting this week. Our goal with this generation was to build the “MacBook Pro for Linux users”, a robust, refined, high-performance notebook with great battery life that deeply respects your rights through software choice, longevity, and upgradeability. It’s awesome to see that reviewers agree we landed that! Check out the videos and articles from:
Hardware:2026/07/28
⇒ ARCTIC Launches Its New Fan Controller That Already Has Mainline Linux Support
In over 22 years of Linux hardware reviews and testing at Phoronix, I have never been more excited for a fan controller… ARCTIC today launched their new Fan Controller and in making the product very unique for Linux users, it already has mainline Linux kernel support via a open-source driver contributed directly by ARCTIC.
- https://www.phoronix.com/news/ARCTIC-Fan-Controller-Launches
- https://www.arctic.de/en/Fan-Controller/ACFAN00351A
Hardware:2026/08/02
⇒ reFrame — the ePaper camera
reFrame is an experimental camera with a color ePaper display. Designed to capture and display one photo at a time, making every frame deliberate and memorable.
IA
IA:2026/07/29
⇒ GCC AI Policy Announcement
The GCC Steering Committee has accepted the recommended policy of the GCC AI Policy Working Group. The policy is described in the following document preview / pull request in Forge, which will be committed to the GCC website:
IT
IT:2026/07/27
⇒ FreeBSD Status Report Second Quarter 2026
Here is the second 2026 status report, with 41 entries.
⇒ Migrating my NAS from TrueNAS Core to vanilla FreeBSD
TrueNAS Core is dying, long live FreeBSD
⇒ FreeBSD Developing New NTSYNC Driver For Accelerating Windows NT Sync Primitives
The FreeBSD project published today their Q2-2026 status report that highlights all of their interesting open-source development initiatives for the past quarter. A lot is happening including FreeBSD seeing an AMD ROCm port and also their own NTSYNC driver being created.
⇒ I Thought Dropbox Was Just rsync + Cron: Welcome to Engineering
When I started out, I told anyone who’d listen that cloud storage was trivial. “How hard could it be? Just rsync the diffs and call it a day.”
IT:2026/07/28
⇒ What Is a Dependency Firewall?
A dependency firewall is a security checkpoint that evaluates open source packages before they are installed. It can protect developer workstations, build environments, CI/CD pipelines, and AI coding agents by blocking packages that appear malicious, suspicious, or inconsistent with organizational policy.
IT:2026/07/29
⇒ An Update on the FreeBSD Journal: New Editor, New Format
The FreeBSD Journal welcomes Matt Slaybaugh as its new editor and is switching to a browser-based-only format, with quarterly, free issues still guided by the editorial and advisory boards.
IT:2026/07/30
⇒ BSD Now—674: Software development never changes
Scrub Design, WebZFS Updates, The Foundations role in the FreeBSD Ecosystem, and more…
⇒ LLVM toolchain coming to OpenBSD/sparc64
Yes, you read that right. Modern development tools in the form of the LLVM compiler infrastructure is well on its way to supporting OpenBSD/sparc64 along with other more conventional architectures.
⇒ MicroSD cards
I had another of those I’m living in the future moments today when I was at an electronics retailer, and I saw a 1 TB MicroSD card. I couldn’t afford it of course, but its mere existence shook me in a way I wasn’t expecting.
IT:2026/07/31
⇒ HardenedBSD June / July 2026 Status Report
This status report covers both June and July 2026. It has been a rather chaotic couple of months for me.
⇒ Loyal Wingman: What the USAF Can Teach Senior Developers About AI
The USAF’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft recent updates got me thinking about AI in software engineering. I spent my Air Force career securing information systems. Not flying them. But after decades in aviation, the Loyal Wingman concept hits different when you are building software.
⇒ On form factors
Josh of Espresso Tonic, and Joel of JoelChrono, are excellent bloggers you should read. They’ve both written recently not just about portable devices, but of their form factors. Their discussions on how such design has impacted their use, enjoyment, and productivity with such devices got me thinking how it’s impacted me as well.
⇒ Swapping out a switch for an old Belkin
We had weird issues on our home network over the last month or so:
IT:2026/08/01
⇒ Setting up a Network Bridge with a Mini PC from AliExpress
I’m working on figuring out what’s next for my homelab setup, and since I had vacation this past week, I decided to go for the first piece: a router PC.
⇒ Your Power Bill Is a Surveillance Log: Pattern of Life Data and Who’s Watching
What if your electricity provider could tell you’re not home without ever looking out the window?
⇒ The myth of Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard was a version of Mac OS X released in 2010. It was billed by Apple as having “0 new features”, with a focus on refining the system, improving efficiency, and fixing bugs. Those of us using Macs at the time welcomed the news after living with updates that seemingly broke as many things as they introduced with each release.
IT:2026/08/02
⇒ Running Emacs Agent Shell over TRAMP
This will be a short and sweet post. I’m working on something a bit longer about why Emacs is the perfect system for remote development, and why I think that’s important, but I spent part of my Sunday afternoon debugging something that I don’t want anyone else to have to figure out for themselves.
Release
Release:2026/07/27
⇒ On July 27, 2026, EmmaDE6 1.02: improved accessibility
The Emmabuntüs Collective is pleased to announce the release on July 27, 2026, of the Emmabuntüs Debian Edition 6 1.02 64-bit update based on Debian 13.6 Trixie and XFCE / LXQt environments .
Release:2026/08/01
⇒ MidnightBSD 4.0.7 RELEASE
MidnightBSD 4.0.7 RELEASE is uploading right now. It contains a number of security updates and is recommended for all users.
⇒ NetBSD 11.0 released!
The NetBSD project is pleased to (finally) announce the NetBSD 11.0 release! See the release announcement for details.
⇒ NetBSD 11.0 Released With RISC-V Support, Enhanced Linux System Call Compatibility
NetBSD 11.0 officially shipped today as the nineteenth major release of this popular BSD operating system…
Security
Security:2026/07/29
⇒ Eclipse Foundation and OWASP Join Forces to Strengthen Open Source Security and CRA Readiness
BRUSSELS and Wilmington, DE – 30 July 2026 – The Eclipse Foundation, one of the world’s largest open source software foundations, and the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP), a global nonprofit foundation dedicated to improving software security, today announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen open source security and support industry readiness for the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).
⇒ OpenSSF Community Day Europe 2026: Schedule Highlights & What to Expect
OpenSSF Community Day Europe 2026 (October 6 in Prague), focuses on open source software security, regulatory compliance like the EU CRA, and AI supply chain risks. The one-day event features technical sessions on tools like VEX, Gemara, and Sigstore, offering direct collaboration with maintainers and security experts.
Society
Society:2026/07/29
⇒ Closed models refuse to help researcher swat Linux bug
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that” is an effective sales pitch for open source
Society:2026/07/30
⇒ MariaDB again faces questions over Galera’s open source future
Support for the MySQL build ends in September as the company develops separate premium replication technology
Society:2026/07/31
⇒ BitChat: when the government bans the app, but not the network
The Indian government has removed BitChat, highlighting the fragility of data sovereignty. Open source doesn’t die: it resists, it replicates. The lesson? We need an alert community, not just code.