| PGP | https://sintonen.fi/pgpkey.txt |
| Research | https://sintonen.fi/advisories/ |
| Github | https://github.com/piru |
Atari 2600 has 128 bytes of memory and no graphics framebuffer. The video has to be generated by racing the beam, real time, while also dealing with the actual effect itself you want to render.
Just displaying a static oomplex image on screen is extremely difficult. Heck, EVERYTHING is extremely difficult.
28c3: The Atari 2600 Video Computer System: The Ultimate Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvpwf50a48E
#Revision oldskool democompo just had the most mind blowing entry I've seen in a very long time: Atari VCS/2600 demo "Triplet" by Otomata Labs -
Live recording by AnnoyedArt1256: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkA8PhxL2q8
Flying to the Moon is easier than getting Outlook to work reliably.
"World's oldest known tortoise still alive, as reports of death revealed as hoax"
It was a crypto scam: "I believe on X the person purporting to be me is asking for crypto donations, so it's not even an April Fool joke. It's a con." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c393xmpzjwko
Linux desktop experience has gotten immensely better these days.
However, it still is a bit of dark art at times. Updating the firmware of ASRock Challenger A380 GPU:
Checkout Intel Graphics System Firmware Update Library (gscs) from github, build it, download bunch of update binaries and then:
sudo ./builddir/src/igsc fw update --device /dev/mei1 --image fw/dg2_gfx_fwupdate_SOC2.bin
sudo ./builddir/src/igsc oprom-data update --device /dev/mei1 --image fw/dg2_d_asrock_challenger-a380_oprom-data.rom
sudo ./builddir/src/igsc oprom-code update --device /dev/mei1 --image fw/dg2_d_oprom_asr380.rom
sudo ./builddir/src/igsc fw-data update --device /dev/mei1 --image fw/fwdata/dg2_asrock_challenger-a380_config-data.bin
It all went swimmingly. But I still didn't have full 8GB memory in BAR2:
2026-04-01T07:28:21.163703+00:00 asus kernel: i915 0000:0c:00.0: [drm] Failed to resize BAR2 to 8192M (-ENOSPC)
2026-04-01T07:28:21.163703+00:00 asus kernel: i915 0000:0c:00.0: [drm] Using a reduced BAR size of 256MiB. Consider enabling 'Resizable BAR' or similar, if available in the BIOS.
This turned out to be due to the install being so old that it was MBR partitioned, and thus I was using the Compatibility Support Module (CSM). One side effect of using CSM is that it prevents Resizable BAR from working.
No problem, boot from debian testing liveusb, resize system partition smaller, convert the drive to GPT and add the EFI System Partition and now everything is functional:
Region 2: Memory at 7c00000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=8G]
2026 might still be the Year of the Linux Desktop!
NVIDIA Provides Preview Driver With DRM Color Pipeline API Support
Following the DRM Color Pipeline API making it into the Linux 6.19 kernel, NVIDIA today released a preview Linux driver with their support for the DRM per-plane color pipeline API that will benefit the broader Linux/Wayland desktop HDR ambitions...
https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-Preview-DRM-Color-Pipe
...aand it's gone "GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash" https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/30/github_copilot_ads_pull_requests
...for now, at least. No doubt there will be something else equally stupid in its place.
If you're annoyed by the #copilot changing your commit messages and inserting ads: This was inevitable. It has been clear for a long time now that the AI business is unsustainable in its current form. There has to be ROI, or the investors will vote with their money.
In other news: Many commercial models are struggling massively during peak hours, and more limitations and throttling will be introduced.
I would only recommend that anyone using these systems acquires and maintains the actual skills to do their work without them.
Phoronix
