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• Plasma 5.26 Released — Plasma 5.26 comes with new and tweaked widgets, improves the desktop experience leaps and bounds, and Plasma Big Screen's app family grows
• These weeks in KDE: Akademy and Plasma 5.26
• Google Reveals ‘First Laptops Built For Cloud Gaming’ — Google says the Acer Chromebook 516 GE, ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip and Lenovo Ideapad Gaming Chromebook all have refresh rates of at least 120Hz, displays with up to 1600p resolution, immersive audio and, critically for cloud gaming, WiFi 6 or 6E connectivity.
• Intel Arc Graphics - A750 and A770 GPUs Release — The Intel Arc A750 and A770 GPUs officially launch today, October 12th in select markets. Everyone at Intel is beyond thrilled to get graphics cards with modern features and extremely competitive performance-per-dollar into your hands.
• Intel Arc Graphics Running On Fully Open-Source Linux Driver
• Canonical Launches Free Ubuntu Pro Subscriptions for Everyone — Ubuntu Pro is available for every supported Ubuntu LTS version, starting with Ubuntu 16.04 ESM and up to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
• Android leaks some traffic even when ‘Always-on VPN’ is enabled — The data being leaked outside VPN tunnels includes source IP addresses, DNS lookups, HTTPS traffic, and likely also NTP traffic.
• Incorrect VPN lockdown documentation [249990229] - Visible to Public - Issue Tracker
• Android leaks connectivity check traffic — As a closing note, we would like to recommend Google to adopt the ability to disable the connectivity checks, like on GrapheneOS, into stock Android.
• iOS VPN apps have another flaw: excluding many Apple apps — We confirm that iOS 16 does communicate with Apple services outside an active VPN tunnel. Worse, it leaks DNS requests. Apple services that escape the VPN connection include Health, Maps, and Wallet.

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• Valve expect to make ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Steam Decks next month — The good news is though, production is quickly ramping up. Yang mentioned how "in production terms it'll ramp very quickly, in the first month very quickly we'll be in the tens of thousands, by the second month we'll be in the hundreds of thousands and beyond that it'll grow even quicker".
• Steam Deck gets an OS update to help solve stick drift
• Bungie rejects Steam Deck’s Linux, threatens to ban Destiny 2 players there
• Collabora talk briefly about their work with Valve on SteamOS, Steam Deck — With its new “A/B” design, there are now two operating system partitions, with two different versions of SteamOS. When upgrading, a new operating system image is written to whichever partition is not currently in use, before rebooting the system. A specialized bootloader module then automatically selects the newer operating system and boots into it.
• Portable Linux gaming with the Steam Deck
• Linux kernel edges closer to dropping ReiserFS — The problem was that ReiserFS code in the kernel used some API calls that nothing else did, preventing them from being changed or enhanced. For now, one of the other ReiserFS developers has contributed a patch that removes the issue.
• CentOS New “AutoSD” Distribution Announced For In-Vehicle Linux Distro — CentOS Automotive Stream Distribution is their binary distribution that will serve as a public, in-development preview of Red Hat's upcoming in-vehicle operating system. CentOS formed their Automotive SIG last year with Red Hat working on a RHEL-based in-vehicle Linux platform that is yet to be publicly released.
• Future Intel Systems To Reportedly Be Even Less Friendly For Open-Source Firmware
• Zaolin on Twitter — For everyone wondering what’s @IntelSoftware planning for the Firmware Support Package 3.0 #fsp and USF is basically going fully closed-source on the firmware side. This means Intel’s #fsp decides to drop #OSF open-source firmware. It’s really a shame…
• Why RISC-V Is Succeeding
• Intel’s software-defined silicon set to debut in Linux 5.18 — The existence of software-defined silicon (SDSI) emerged in October 2021 when Intel staffers posted to the Linux Kernel mailing list with hints about new functionality that would allow users to purchase licenses that turned on capabilities physically present in processors, but which are not available to use out of the box.

Plus Google argues that keeping Huawei on their Android is better for all, and Chris gets sucked into Stadia.

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• Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default — At Firefox, we’re doing more than that. We believe that in order to truly protect people, we need to establish a new standard that puts people’s privacy first.
• Relicensing CockroachDB — But our past outlook on the right business model relied on a crucial norm in the OSS world: that companies could build a business around a strong open source core product without a much larger technology platform company coming along and offering the same product as a service. That norm no longer holds.   
• Microsoft and Oracle link up their clouds — Microsoft and Oracle announced a new alliance today that will see the two companies directly connect their clouds over a direct network connection so that their users can then move workloads and data seamlessly between the two.
• Google is fighting to keep doing business with Huawei — Three sources told the Financial Times that Google's argument is that cutting ties with Huawei could pose a national security risk.
• Stadia details announced — Stadia games run on custom Linux-based server hardware maintained by Google, promising "10.7 teraflops of power in each instance." Game audio and video is streamed from those servers to a user's device, and inputs are streamed from the user to the server over a network of what Google says are "7,500 edge nodes" around the world.

Plus good news for KDE Connect users, Intel begins work on next-generation open source video drivers, and much more.

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• Google launches game streaming service called Stadia — Google CEO: "We're building a game platform for everyone."
• Killed by Google - The Google Graveyard & Cemetery
• How OpenXR could glue virtual reality’s fragmenting market together — “OpenXR since the beginning has had a lot of positive energy and urgency," Trevett continued. “I think people kind of realize everyone can benefit. Obviously it's not going to be magic, but I think it can make a difference, because everyone wins."
• Intel Xe Graphics Being Part Of The First US Exascale Supercomputer Is Great For Linux — With Aurora expected to run Linux, this means the Linux driver support for Xe Graphics will have to be up to par by 2021.
• Albert Vaca Cintora on Twitter — "KDE Connect has been removed from @GooglePlay for violating their new policy on apps that access SMS [1]. The policy has an explicit exception for companion apps (like KDE Connect), but it was removed anyway and *there's no way to talk to Google*."
• Albert Vaca Cintora on Twitter — "To close this thread, I want to say that KDE Connect finally got approved, and SMS support is back in version 1.12.4, both on the Play Store and F-Droid! Thanks everyone who spread the voice (this thread got half a million impressions on Twitter!) and helped make it happen :D… https://t.co/OTLY5KJdI6"
• Android Developers Blog: Providing a safe and secure experience for our users
• Google forced into Android browser choice — Now we’ll also do more to ensure that Android phone owners know about the wide choice of browsers and search engines available to download to their phones. This will involve asking users of existing and new Android devices in Europe which browser and search apps they would like to use.
• Antitrust: Commission fines Google €1.49 billion — Antitrust: Commission fines Google €1.49 billion for abusive practices in online advertising
• EC fines Google €1.49bn for abusing ad market dominance
• Google now pays more in EU fines than it does in taxes