Shameless Plug

Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share Published on 2026-07-08T19:00:00Z StatCounter's June 2026 data shows Windows made up 56.55% of global desktop OS usage, dropping Microsoft's share below 60% for the first time in years. Linux, meanwhile, reached 4.39%, "one of its strongest recent showings in the company's desktop OS statistics," reports Linuxiac. From the report: Apple's desktop platforms also remain a major part of the picture. StatCounter lists OS X at 11.89% and macOS at 4.48% for June 2026, meaning Apple's combined desktop presence remains comfortably ahead of Linux in the global chart. Chrome OS follows with 1.21%. Of course, StatCounter's numbers should be read for what they are: web usage statistics, not a direct count of installed operating systems. The company calculates its Global Stats from page views across websites using its tracking code, analyzing details such as browser, operating system, and screen resolution. In ...

Microsoft Flips Windows Backup On By Default Outside the EU Published on 2026-07-07T22:00:00Z Microsoft will turn on Windows settings backup and restore by default for eligible Windows 11 business devices outside the EU, starting with Windows 11 26H2. The Register reports: Now dubbed "Windows settings backup and restore," the service backs up a device's settings and a list of installed Microsoft Store apps, which can then be restored to a new device. Microsoft gave a use case for the technology: "Imagine a lost laptop, a hardware refresh, or an unexpected reset. These are some of the moments when your users need backup most. And that's rarely when anyone wants to discover that backup was never turned on." However, some organizations might not want it on. Perhaps those with strict privacy or data sovereignty requirements, or those regulated by the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), for whom the default-on behavior won't apply. Windows 11 25H2 and earlier ...

FCC To End Biden-Era Rule That Forces ISPs To List All Their Fees Published on 2026-07-07T20:00:00Z The FCC plans to roll back broadband label rules that require ISPs to itemize all passthrough fees. Under the proposal, providers could instead list a single "up to" amount for location-based charges. It would also allow ISPs to link to pricing labels rather than display them prominently, while eliminating machine-readable pricing files. Ars Technica reports: ISPs routinely advertise prices much lower than those actually charged to consumers on their monthly bills. One method of raising monthly bill prices above advertised rates is to tack on fees that, ISPs claim, are used to offset charges imposed by local governments. ISPs would be well within their rights to advertise accurate monthly prices and charge those exact prices on monthly bills. But because ISPs rarely do that, the FCC has required them to make specific price disclosures to consumers for the past decade. The Bid...

Samsung Passes Nvidia To Become Most Profitable Company In the World Published on 2026-07-07T19:23:00Z Samsungâ(TM)s chip division is projected to earn more in 2026 than it made across its previous 40 years in semiconductors, driven by soaring AI-fueled demand for memory and storage. The companyâ(TM)s latest quarterly operating profit reportedly topped Nvidiaâ(TM)s, making Samsung the worldâ(TM)s most profitable tech company for the period. Tom's Hardware reports: Brokerage consensus puts Samsung's full-year 2026 operating profit near 300 trillion won ($196 billion), and its second-quarter figure at about 84.6 trillion won ($55.1 billion). Samsung easily beat the consensus with $58.5 billion when it posted preliminary results on July 7, overtaking Nvidia's most recent quarterly operating profit of $53.54 billion and becoming the most profitable technology company in the world for the period, on the back of AI-driven memory demand. Samsung's DS division booked 53....

China's DeepSeek Developing Its Own AI Chip Published on 2026-07-07T19:00:00Z An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Chinese startup DeepSeek is developing its own AI chip, according to three people familiar with the matter, a push that could reduce its reliance on Nvidia and Huawei chips, which it has depended on to train and run its globally popular models. The chip is designed for inference -- the stage of AI computing in which a trained model generates responses for users -- rather than for training new models, the sources said. If successful, DeepSeek's expansion into semiconductor development would mark a major strategic shift for a company widely hailed in China as the country's AI champion, potentially adding to challenges faced by Chinese tech giant Huawei. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

South Korea's SK Hynix Launching $28 Billion US Listing To Ride Global AI Wave Published on 2026-07-06T21:00:00Z SK Hynix is launching a Nasdaq listing expected to raise about $28 billion, giving US investors easier access to one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI memory-chip boom. Reuters reports: The company will sell 17.79 million new shares in the depository receipt listing on the Nasdaq. Ten ADRs will represent one common share and the stock will be sold in a price range that is due to be revealed on Monday, based on SK Hynix's Seoul trading price. SK Hynix's share price was down 4% at 2,327,000 won each on Monday, but the stock is up about 273% this year, as it rides surging global investor demand for AI stocks. Korea's KOSPI was down 2.2% on Monday. [...] SK Hynix has been among the world's largest beneficiaries of the AI boom as it outperformed its major rivals Samsung and Micron. "This is more than a liquidity event," said Dave Mazza, the ...

Zombie 'Who Owns Unix?' Lawsuit Comes Alive Again Published on 2026-07-06T20:00:00Z The long-running SCO/IBM Unix and Linux ownership dispute has resurfaced yet again, this time through SCO successor Xinuos, which is trying to pursue old license and copyright claims tied to Project Monterey. "The core issue seems to be whether Xinuos even has the right to litigate the matter, or if some ancient legalese in the original agreements means the window for legal argument has long since expired," reports The Register. From the report: [T]he roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created "Project Monterey" -- an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multiple processors. By 2001, Project Monterey was close to delivering a unified UNIX, an achievement made possible by blending code from IBM and SCO....