Software News.
Programming languages, frameworks, databases and developer tools, decoded for the people who ship. We track the releases and shifts that change how software gets built, from runtimes and type-checkers to the AI agents now writing code.
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How to Get a Notch on Windows 11 and 10 with NotchPixel
Install NotchPixel from the Microsoft Store to get a notch on Windows 11 or Windows 10 (version 2004 or later). It opens into a card for music, volume, files to your phone, a one-key mic mute and an FPS strip in games, with a 7-day free trial and then $9.99 once.
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DeepSeek Ports Its Core AI Kernels to Huawei Ascend
DeepSeek open-sourced a TileLang-based toolchain and six kernel and communication libraries for Huawei's Ascend chips on Sept 30, 2026. It is a direct attack on CUDA's real moat, which is software rather than silicon.
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This Student Built a One-Click Pi-hole Remote for Your Browser
Pi-hole In One, built by the student developer Creeperkatze, is a free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Edge that lets you pause Pi-hole, allowlist or block the site you are on, and check your stats in one click, without opening the Pi-hole admin panel.
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This Jena Student Built a Tool That Turns Drawings Into SPARQL
Daniel Motz built Query by Graph as a bachelor thesis at Friedrich Schiller University Jena: a browser tool that lets historians and other non-programmers query Wikibase databases like FactGrid and Wikidata by drawing a graph, and that converts SPARQL back into a drawing too.
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This Student Built an Alarm That Guards a Codeforces Streak
Ganesh Karthik, a competitive programmer at IIIT Jabalpur, built CP Reminder 2.0, an Android app that rings a loud alarm 30 minutes before every Codeforces contest and, at 10:30 PM, checks whether you have submitted anything that day and sounds the alarm if you haven't.
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This Student Built a Media Server That Never Touches Your Data Plan
Benson Musonda, a student at Mulungushi University in Zambia, built AirNode, a free Windows app that turns a PC into a PIN-protected file explorer and media server your phone can reach over a local hotspot, with no internet connection and no cellular data used.
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This Uruguayan Student Built an App to Find Your Study Group
Guillermo Coelho, a computer engineering student at FING, Universidad de la Republica in Uruguay, built StudyGuild, a web app where students post study sessions for a specific subject so classmates preparing for the same exam can find them, join and coordinate in a chat.
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Swift 6.4 Lands: Swift Build Goes Default, Wasm Gets 40x Faster
Swift 6.4 shipped today with Swift Build as Swift Package Manager's default build engine across Linux, macOS and Windows, WebAssembly output up to 40x faster in some workloads, direct C++ std::span bridging, async Swift/Java interop, and new non-copying collection types.
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Java 27 Ships With Post-Quantum TLS and Default G1 GC
Java 27 shipped September 15, 2026 with post-quantum TLS key exchange, G1 as the default garbage collector everywhere, and 64-bit compact object headers on by default, but as a non-LTS release it only gets six months of support before JDK 28 arrives in March 2027.
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Microsoft Rushes Emergency Patches After Updates Broke RDS
Microsoft shipped six emergency Windows updates on September 14 after its own September security patches deadlocked Remote Desktop Services, locking IT teams out of terminal servers until they rebooted them by hand.
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Minitap Accuses Google's Artemis of Copying Its Agent Code
Minitap says Google's Artemis mobile-automation agent copied its open-source mobile-use code nearly line for line, and that an August 2026 force-push then erased the three Minitap engineers credited as authors.
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Microsoft Fixes Teams and Outlook Crashes on ARM Windows PCs
Microsoft shipped a permanent fix for a five-week bug that stopped Teams and the new Outlook from launching on Arm64 Windows PCs, closing an episode that started with an August 11 security update and, for weeks, could only be patched around with an unrelated AI graphics package.
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Shopify Ditches React Native, Rebuilds Apps in Swift and Kotlin
Shopify is moving its mobile apps off React Native and back to native Swift and Kotlin, saying AI coding agents have closed the cost gap that made building each platform's app separately too expensive in 2020.
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Automattic Board Ousts Mullenweg, Puts Him on Leave
Automattic's board voted to place WordPress co-founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg on paid leave on September 9, 2026, after denying his request to consult independent legal counsel, with CFO Mark Davies stepping into his responsibilities.
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Tailwind Labs Joins Shopify After AI Cut Its Revenue 80%
Shopify has acquired Tailwind Labs, the company behind Tailwind CSS, giving the open-source framework a corporate home eight months after AI-driven traffic loss forced Tailwind to lay off 75% of its engineering team and cut its revenue by roughly 80% from peak.
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LibreOffice 26.8 Sets a Download Record by Skipping AI
LibreOffice 26.8 pulled in 1,031,162 downloads in its first week, the highest ever for the office suite, after The Document Foundation doubled down on shipping zero built-in generative AI features.
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Windows Server 2025 Memory Change Is Crashing SQL Server
Microsoft confirms a Windows Server 2025 memory-management change can crash SQL Server with access-violation dumps when the Lock Pages in Memory policy is enabled, and it has no fix yet.
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Jellyfin 12.0 Is Out, and Upgrading Rewrites Your Database
Jellyfin 12.0 shipped September 7, 2026, dropping the leading "10" from its version numbering and adding native book/comic support, but the database schema is rewritten on first boot, so the project is telling every self-hoster to back up first.
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Microsoft's Project Zenith Reboots Windows for AI Developers
Microsoft announced Project Zenith today, a distraction-free Windows configuration for developer-class PCs with 64GB or more of unified memory that ships pre-set for coding and can run AI models above 30 billion parameters locally, unmetered.
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Audacity 4.0 Ships a Complete Qt Interface Rewrite
Audacity 4.0 launched today with its interface fully rebuilt on Qt6 instead of wxWidgets, a new clip-editing model, and a new .aup4 project format, while the underlying audio engine stayed on the existing codebase.
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AWS buys DuckLabs, but DuckDB itself stays independent
AWS acquired DuckLabs, the Amsterdam company behind the DuckDB analytics database, closing August 31, 2026, but DuckDB itself stays free, MIT-licensed, and governed by the independent nonprofit DuckDB Foundation rather than Amazon.
SoftwareGoogle Play Threatens to Delist AnkiDroid Over Donations
Google is threatening to remove the open-source flashcard app AnkiDroid from Play worldwide on September 11 unless it resolves a dispute over whether its Open Collective donation link meets the tax-exemption standard Google's payments policy requires.
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John Ternus Is Apple CEO Now, Schiller Exits App Store
John Ternus became Apple's CEO on September 1 as Tim Cook moved to executive chairman, and Phil Schiller stepped down from running the App Store and Apple's product events in the same 24 hours.
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OpenShot 4.0 Brings Built-In Recording and Color Grading
OpenShot 4.0 is a free, open-source video editor update that adds a built-in screen/webcam recorder, a full color-grading suite with scopes and curves, and a Qt6 rewrite for better Wayland and HiDPI support on Linux, Windows and macOS.
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Debian Adopts 'Responsible Use of Generative AI' Policy
Debian developers voted 203-148 to adopt "Responsible Use of Generative AI" as the project's binding AI-contribution policy, rejecting both a ban and an unrestricted-use option in favor of holding contributors accountable for whatever they submit.
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OpenAI Starts Showing Ads in ChatGPT for Free Users in India
OpenAI has begun placing sponsored content at the bottom of ChatGPT responses for logged-in adult users on the Free and Go tiers in India, while Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Education subscribers stay ad-free.
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Linux 7.3 Makes Running Out of GPU VRAM Survivable
Kernel patches queued for Linux 7.3 trace the worst AMD GPU crashes under VRAM pressure to a lock ordering deadlock in the memory manager, not to the memory system itself, and the same fix makes running low on VRAM survivable instead of fatal.
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GitHub Down Worldwide While Git Operations Stay Online
GitHub confirmed a worldwide outage at 13:40 UTC on August 17, 2026, with roughly 20% error rates across web and API traffic and major outages on Actions, Issues, Pull Requests, API Requests and Copilot. Git Operations stayed online, which is the tell: the failure sits in the centralized platform layer, not in version control.
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Apple's price for letting you pay outside the App Store: 15%
Apple filed its proposed commission structure for external App Store purchases on August 13, 2026, hours after the Supreme Court refused to pause the case: 15 percent for standard apps, 10 percent for partner programs and subscription renewals, and 5 percent for small businesses. The rate has been zero since April 2025, and Epic argues it should stay there.
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This Student Built a Live Wallpaper Engine That Barely Touches Your RAM
Emmanuel Alabi wanted a live video wallpaper for Windows that wouldn't eat resources on his 8GB laptop. So he built LiveWall, a Tauri app that hides behind your desktop icons using an undocumented Windows trick, using under 10MB installed and about 85MB of RAM while playing a video.