September 12, 2025

Platform

Linux 6.18 will introduce a significant obstacle for non-GPL out-of-tree file-system drivers, making it difficult to write dirty data from the page cache. The removal of the "write_cache_pages" feature by Christoph Hellwig affects OpenZFS and similar out-of-tree non-GPL file-systems, forcing developers to find alternative methods or risk performance degradation in December's release.

Intel has released a set of 14 patches for its Xe3 integrated graphics, codenamed Panther Lake, in Linux to address performance issues with compiler-related problems. The patches aim to improve GPU workloads and scheduling, but increase shader compilation time. They have been merged into Mesa 25.3-devel and are expected to be back-ported soon.

Nvidia's RTX 5080 GeForce Now tier has significantly improved the cloud gaming service, making it the best on the market. The author has tested the upgraded service and found it comparable to their high-performance PC setup, playing popular games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Overwatch 2 without noticeable lag or issues.

A penetration tester, Mahmoud El Manzalawy, discovered an Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR) vulnerability in an e-commerce platform's image deletion feature. Testing the product ad posting feature revealed that users can delete images without proper authorization, as the server relies solely on the image ID provided by client-side code, allowing attackers to delete any user's image.

A critical vulnerability, CVE-2025-53136, has been discovered in Microsoft's Windows OS kernel due to a race condition in RtlSidHashInitialize(). This allows attackers to read out token handle addresses with ease, making it a powerful address leak for chaining with other vulnerabilities. Exploitation is possible via NtQuerySystemInformation() API on Windows 24H2 or later versions.

A technical issue has been reported with certain browser extensions on the x.com platform, causing privacy-related problems. To resolve this, users are advised to disable their current extensions and try accessing x.com again. This suggests the issue lies with conflicting extension functionality rather than a fundamental problem with the platform itself.

The author's experience participating in the Linux Kernel Mentorship Program (LKMP) was both rewarding and challenging. From March to August 2023, they worked with mentor Shuah Khan on various tools and bug fixes, successfully resolving several issues in the bcachefs codebase while facing difficulties with UBSAN error paths and KMSAN false positives.

A graceful shutdown in software applications allows a program to finish tasks and release resources before shutting down completely, ensuring minimal data loss and request abandonment. Go applications running on Kubernetes can utilize signals like SIGTERM to initiate this process, providing a well-defined lifecycle for pods to shut down cleanly and efficiently.

The current state of programming jobs is uncertain due to artificial intelligence's increasing presence. CEO Sam Altman notes that developers are making more money with AI tools, but human expertise is still essential. Historically, 50% of jobs change every 75 years, suggesting significant changes may occur in the short term for certain roles.

The Prototype Design Pattern in Go enables efficient object creation by cloning existing objects instead of creating new ones. It's particularly useful when object creation is resource-intensive and independent copies are needed. The pattern offers benefits like speed, flexibility, and decoupling but also introduces complexity and maintenance issues to consider.

A software developer shares their experience implementing Domain-Driven Design in a mortgage processing platform, overcoming initial codebase complexity with TypeScript decorators and reflection capabilities. Entities, value objects, and domain services were introduced to model business logic, while a domain registry enabled automatic discovery of domain objects, resulting in an elegant system.