Software Tech News

More than ten days after Apple was notified of the eMudhra CA compromise, the git, curl, and python3 tools shipped with macOS still trust the compromised certificates. The issue remains unresolved despite the notification.

Amazon has agreed to acquire satellite firm Globalstar for $11.57 billion, bringing its satellite assets and spectrum into Amazon’s competition with SpaceX’s Starlink. The deal would preserve Globalstar’s satellite services for Apple devices, which became a major part of its business after Apple’s iPhone Emergency SOS feature and roughly $1.5 billion in Apple investment. Globalstar’s survival followed a 2002 bankruptcy and a rebuilt constellation that helped restore capacity.

Apple is automatically blocking certificates linked to the compromised eMudhra intermediate CAs. Mac administrators can take optional steps to address affected command-line tools.

The author has become an ARPA member of SDF, a non-profit public-access UNIX system that has run continuously since 1987. The piece traces SDF’s history from Ted Uhlemann’s early 300-baud-era origins.

Emacs has turned 50, marking half a century since the MIT AI Lab’s text editor helped give rise to the free software movement. Its legacy continues to shape open-source software and developer tools.

A new v1.0 MacOS Extensions Pack has been released for the 1996 Apple Network Server, adding Mac OS extension support to the rare Unix-based server. The project reflects ongoing retrocomputing interest in Apple’s short-lived Network Server line.

Moxnox 1.0 has arrived as an NT-like, POSIX-compatible operating system that runs atop Btrfs. The project is hosted on GitHub under maharmstone/moxnox for development and contributions.

A new browser game called Go no Kuni turns standard Go into 3D diorama town-building, with placed stones becoming fortresses and surrounded territory becoming towns. Players can play instantly in the browser with AI, friends, or others.

Nasscad is a new local-first 3D CAD tool available for the browser and Windows. It offers parametric solids, boolean CSG, STEP and IFC import/export, plus STL and 3MF support for 3D printing. It is free to use with no login required.

A developer generated 327 distinct CI/CD workflows in under an hour using a GitHub Actions toolkit and was subsequently flagged by GitHub as a spammer. The incident highlights the platform’s anti-spam enforcement against rapid automated workflow creation.

Puget Bench has shared an update on the current state of ARM support for its benchmarking tool. The news outlines where ARM compatibility stands for users running the benchmark on ARM-based systems.

Genie 4 introduces a real-time interactive world simulation platform featuring native audio, advanced physics, and natural human motion. Powered by Gemini models, the system enables seamless steering and interaction within these dynamically generated environments.

The popular web development website CSS-Tricks has officially transitioned to a new owner. After twelve years of working on the platform, the incoming leader expressed feeling both nervous and overwhelmed by the responsibility of taking full control.

Wikipedia is utilizing automated cleanup tools alongside human editors to combat the influx of AI-generated content. This joint effort focuses on identifying and removing subtle machine-written biases and fabricated citations. Ultimately, the initiative aims to protect the platform's integrity and ensure the encyclopedia remains a human-curated resource.

A tech blogger recently documented their quest to discover the oldest Windows graphical user interface application that still functions on Windows 11. After testing various legacy programs, the author successfully identified a surprisingly old piece of software that remains fully compatible with Microsoft's modern operating system.

Ghostty 1.4.0 was released on October 27, 2026, introducing the latest updates to the software. The official release notes provide a detailed breakdown of the new features, enhancements, and fixes included in this version.

In a recent post on his personal blog, Brennen Puth argues that modern websites should be designed to be easily printable. The piece explores the enduring value of maintaining print-friendly web layouts for offline reading and archiving.

Software quality is declining as massive increases in code production have outpaced improvements in error rates, resulting in buggier applications. However, the author argues that despite these current frustrations, software used to be horrible.

The release of Pharo 14 has prompted developers to reflect on the unique benefits of Smalltalk's image-based workflows and its continued relevance in the AI era. While many note that AI coding tools have made them less particular about which programming languages they use, enthusiasts still champion environments like Pharo, Squeak, and Cuis for recreational programming and practical deployment.

Microsoft hosts the official documentation and issue tracker for Pylance, its Python language server, on GitHub. Developers can contribute to the project's development and report bugs directly through the microsoft/pylance-release repository.

Paying subscribers are raising concerns about Anthropic's privacy practices after discovering that dismissing feedback prompts in Claude Code might inadvertently be logged as training data. While some users suspect this is a deliberate loophole to bypass explicit data privacy promises, others argue it could simply be a sloppy implementation detail. The discussion highlights broader frustrations regarding corporate transparency, data surveillance, and the potential exposure of user intellectual property in AI models.

Wiz researchers report that while PHP2Shell exploitation attempts are ongoing, none have succeeded to date. Their latest analysis breaks down the specific attack techniques, the defenses that blocked them, and how system exposure has evolved since the vulnerability was first disclosed.

A new open-source tool called the Nietzschian Debugger offers an anti-AI approach to troubleshooting by using confrontational questioning to challenge developers. Instead of providing automated fixes, the project forces programmers to rigorously defend their logic based on the philosophy that what doesn't kill your code makes it stronger.

This tech profile examines Johnny, a developer whose addiction to deep thinking drives his relentless compulsion to abstract software systems. By contrasting his intense intellectual focus with the general tendency to avoid complex thought, the piece explores the psychological motivations behind his constant over-engineering and abstraction.

Gforth has reached version 1.0, solidifying its position as a fast, portable, and minimalist implementation of the Forth 2012 language. Community discussions highlight its ultra-thin architecture while exploring ways to improve its standard library and native executable compilation capabilities. Enthusiasts continue to champion Forth and its variants as engaging, logic-focused languages that preserve the art of programming in the age of AI.

FrigadeHQ has launched Hob, a free and open-source desktop application that serves as a local alternative to cloud-based AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude. The software allows users to run open-weight models directly on their Mac, Windows, or Linux computers. By processing data on-device, Hob ensures complete user privacy and functions entirely offline.

Tailscale has released an update regarding its ongoing security investigation into the Tailscale SSH feature. The company outlined its current remediation progress and provided actionable steps for customers to secure their environments. Users are advised to review the official guidance to ensure their systems remain protected.

Private equity-backed software companies are confronting a $300 billion debt wall driven by high interest rates and floating-rate loans, undermining the aggressive pricing strategies that fueled their recent growth. This financial pressure is compounded by the rise of generative AI, which threatens to dismantle the niche monopolies these firms rely on by making custom software easier to replicate. Consequently, this combination of looming debt and shifting technological paradigms is widely seen as a major driver behind the current slowdown in software engineering hiring.

Survival LLM is a free, open-source AI assistant and emergency knowledge base that operates entirely offline on a local computer. By running without an internet connection, it provides users with reliable access to critical survival information and AI assistance during network outages.

A configuration mismatch in the GLM-5.3 model on Workers AI triggered an SGLang bug that exposed KV cache pages across different requests. The issue has since been resolved by the engineering team to prevent further cross-request data leakage.