Gaming isn’t something we talk about very often here on OSNews, but I think this piece of news is actually a rare piece of good, welcome news from this industry. Mojang, the Microsoft-owned company behind Minecraft, has announced it’s going to stop obfuscating the code behind the Java edition of Minecraft. A refresher: the Java edition of Minecraft is the original version of the game, which exists alongside the Bedrock Edition, which is written in C++. Both variants are kept more or less in sync with each other.

The Java edition has historically been far more moddable, and comes with far fewer restrictions than the Bedrock Edition, which Microsoft maintains far tighter control over. Still, the modding scene around the Java Edition sprung up in spite of Mojang and Microsoft, not because of them, but over the years the modding scene has been embraced more and more by these two companies. The final step in this embrace comes today as Mojang will no longer obfuscate the code behind th Java Edition.

Minecraft: Java Edition has been obfuscated since its release. This obfuscation meant that people couldn’t see our source code. Instead, everything was scrambled – and those who wanted to mod Java Edition had to try and piece together what every class and function in the code did. 

But we encourage people to get creative both in Minecraft and with Minecraft – so in 2019 we tried to make this tedious process a little easier by releasing “obfuscation mappings”. These mappings were essentially a long list that allowed people to match the obfuscated terms to un-obfuscated terms. This alleviated the issue a little, as modders didn’t need to puzzle out what everything did, or what it should be called anymore. But why stop there?

↫ Minecraft website

This is excellent news for the game, the wider modding community, and players. Minecraft is still a massively popular game, and making modding easier is very welcome, as for a lot of people, mods are what make Minecraft actually interesting. It’s also rare to see a massive force in gaming making a positive step like this, so they deserve the few kudos.

After the release of Windows 95, with its brand new and incredibly influential graphical user interface, it was only a matter of time before this new taskbar, Start menu, and everything else would make its way to Microsoft’s other operating system line, Windows NT. The development of Windows 95 more or less lined up with that of Windows NT 3.5, but it wouldn’t be until Windows NT 4.0, released a little less than a year after Windows 95, that NT, too, would have the brand new user interface.

Raymond Chen has published a blog post detailing the cooperation and interplay between the Windows 95 and Windows NT teams, and, as always with Chen, it’s a joy to read.

Members of the Windows 95 user interface team met regularly with members of the Windows NT user interface team to keep them aware of what was going on and even get their input on some ideas that the Windows 95 team were considering. The Windows NT user interface team were focused on shipping Windows NT, but they appreciated being kept in the loop.

During the late phases of the development of Windows 95, the Windows NT side of the house took a more active role in bringing the Windows 95 user interface to Windows NT.

↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing

Chen details there was a lot of code-sharing, to the point where the Windows 95 version of the GUI contained NT-specific code, and vice versa. This code-sharing was quite a lot less elegant than today with tools like git, since Microsoft’s own internal source code system called SLM (pronounced ‘slime’) did not support branches, so they had to regularly perform three-way merges manually.

It was a different time, for sure.

Anyway, it’s amazing how much of this ancient Microsoft lore could’ve been lost to time, or shrouded in mystery, if it wasn’t for someone like Raymond Chen regularly sharing the stories from Microsoft’s past.

Microsoft is introducing a new feature in Windows to better deal with blue screens of death. In the release notes for Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6982 (Dev Channel), the company detailed that after a user experiences a blue screen, Windows will automatically perform a memory scan.

We’re introducing a new feature that helps improve system reliability. If your PC experiences a bugcheck (unexpected restart), you may see a notification when signing in suggesting a quick memory scan. If you choose to run it, the system will schedule a Windows Memory Diagnostic scan to run during your next reboot (taking 5 minutes or less on average) and then continue to Windows. If a memory issue is found and mitigated, you will see a notification post-reboot.

↫ Amanda Langowski at the Windows Blogs

In its current iteration, this memory scan will trigger after every single error code to collect as much data as possible, but Microsoft states it will refine and narrow the number of error codes in the future. In addition, this feature will not be available on Arm64 and systems with Administrator Protection and/or BitLocker without Secure Boot.

Let’s hope this feature won’t be a nuisance, but an actually useful feature that helps people uncover memory problems that otherwise remain undiagnosed.

Back in January 2025, the Python Software Foundation applied for a $1.5 million grant from the US government’s National Science Foundation, under the Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open Source Ecosystems program, to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and PyPI. After a lot of paperwork, their application was approved, but upon receiving the contractual agreement, the Python Software Foundation decided to back out. Why?

We became concerned, however, when we were presented with the terms and conditions we would be required to agree to if we accepted the grant. These terms included affirming the statement that we “do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.” This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole. Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.

[…]

In the end, however, the PSF simply can’t agree to a statement that we won’t operate any programs that “advance or promote” diversity, equity, and inclusion, as it would be a betrayal of our mission and our community.

↫ Loren Crary at the PSF blog

The fact that this is news at all is a deeply sad state of affairs, but it’s great to see at least some organisations in tech still have a spine. In a world where tech giants and their sleazy CEOs are falling over each other to lather the US president in bribes and tasteless gifts, it’s refreshing to see someone passing up on what would be an enormous amount of money for them. The PSF operates on a budget of $5 million a year, so $1.5 million would be a massive boon for the effort.

The efforts of the PSF regarding outreach have been incredibly successful over the years. PyCon US had 1% female speakers in 2011, 7% in 2012, 15% in 2013, 33% in both 2014 and 2015, and 40% in 2016. “DEI” efforts usually just mean the gruntwork of reaching out to members of underrepresented groups within your community, and ensuring they feel welcome, safe, and respected. Monocultures tend to be self-destructive, whether we’re talking about operating systems or people.

Having perspectives from people with different backgrounds, different life experiences, and different approaches is a massive net benefit to your organisation. Making efforts to foster such environments illegal is absolute batshit insanity, and I’m glad that unlike cowards like Tim Cook or Sundar Pichai, the Python Software Foundation has a spine and is standing up for what’s right.

You press the power button. A second later a wall of text scrolls by, or a logo fades in, and eventually Linux appears. What happens in between is not magic. It is a careful handshake between tiny programs and a very literal CPU. This part follows that handshake until the very first line of C code inside the Linux kernel runs.

↫ 0xkato’s blog

Exactly what it says on the tin.

I think most of us are aware that compositors use multiple planes to render our user interfaces, and in the case of KDE’s Kwin specifically, they use two planes – one for the user interface, and one specifically for the mouse cursor. Kwin developer Xaver Hugl has been working on changing Kwin to use more than just two planes, and it turns out this delivers some considerable power use reductions and thus battery life improvements.

So, when can you use these changes and test them?

Due to various driver issues when trying to use overlays, like slow atomic tests on AMD as well as display freezes on some AMD and NVidia GPUs, this feature is still off by default.

However, if you want to experiment anyways or attempt to fix the drivers, starting from Plasma 6.5, you can set the KWIN_USE_OVERLAYS environment variable to enable the feature anyways. If you test it, please report your findings! If there’s problems in the drivers, we’d like to know and have bug reports for the GPU vendors of course, but also if things work well that would be nice to hear.

↫ Xaver Hugl

Leave it to Linux graphics-related developers to uncover driver bugs in graphics drivers.

If you’re eating a bag of chips in an area where “AI” software is being used to monitor people’s behaviour, you might want to reconsider. Some high school kid in the US was hanging out with his friends, when all of a sudden, he was being swarmed by police officers with with guns drawn. Held at gunpoint, he was told to lie down, after which he was detained. Obviously, this is a rather unpleasant experience, so say the least, especially considering the kid in question is a person of colour. In the US.

Anyway, the “AI” software used by the police department to monitor citizens’ behaviour mistook an empty chips bag in his pocket for a gun. US police officers, who only receive a few weeks of training, didn’t question what the computer told them and pointed guns at a teenager.

In a statement, Omnilert expressed regret over the incident, acknowledging that the image “closely resembled a gun being held.” The company called it a “false positive,” but defended the system’s response, stating it “functioned as intended: to prioritize safety and awareness through rapid human verification.”

↫ Alexa Dikos and Rebecca Pryor at FOX45 News

I’ve been warning that the implementation of “AI” was going to lead to people dying, and while this poor kid got lucky this time, you know it’s only a matter of time before people start getting shot by US police because they’re too stupid to question their computer overlords. Add in the fact that “AI” is well-known to be deeply racist, and we have a very deadly cocktail of failures.

Like clockwork, every six months, we have a new OpenBSD release. OpenBSD 7.8 adds support for the Raspberry Pi 5, tons of improvements to sleep, wake, and hibernate, the TCP stack can now run in parallel on multiple processors, and so much more. DRM has been updated to match Linux 6.12.50, and drivers for the Qualcomm Snapdragon DRM subsystem and Qualcomm DisplayPort controller were added as well.

The changelog is, as always, long and detailed, so head on over for the finer details. OpenBSD users will know how to upgrade, and new users can visit the download page.

Microsoft has published a set of short questions and answers about driver updates through Windows Update, and there’s one tidbit in there I found interesting.

Driver dates might look old, but that is not true. The driver date is descriptive info set by the driver provider and can be any date they choose. When determining which driver to install, Windows Update uses targeting information set by the provider inside the driver files to determine the best driver. This lets the device provider promote the best driver, regardless of the chosen date. 

↫ Microsoft knowledge base article

Whenever I do have to fiddle with Windows machines, I always wondered about why some drivers in Windows Update would show some seriously old dates. It turns out the answer is as obvious as it always tends to be: OEMs.

KDE is on a roll lately, and keeps on rolling with today’s release of KDE Plasma 6.5. As the project itself notes, this release focuses on relatively small improvements, refinements, and other niceties, without making any massive changes. With Linux desktops taking accessibility more seriously lately than ever before, I want to focus on the accessibility improvements first.

The Orca screen reader now announces caps lock state changes, and screen readers will now describe the Shortcuts and Autostart pages more optimally. There’s also a new grayscale colour filter for people sensitive to colours, developers have done Plasma-wide pass to eliminate bright flashes in the UI, and the desktop zoom feature will now follow the text insertion point as it moves around the UI. Keyboard navigation in various parts of Plasma have been improved, and a few other small changes have been to improve accessiblity.

Other changes include rounded bottom window corners (which can be turned off), automatic and scheduled theme and wallpaper transitions (e.g. from light to dark), and a new and improved applications permissions settings panel. A small new feature that will be a massive time saver for me is the ability to favourite items in your clipboard history, so they remain available over time. I reuse certain copied bits of text all the time, and I can’t wait to start using this little addition.

Remote desktop has also received a ton of love in Plasma 6.5. You can now share your clipboard, and you no longer need to create dedicated RDP user accounts; you can just log in with your normal account credentials as you would expect you could. Plasma’s Discover application, used for application and update management, has seen major work to improve its performance – very welcome, for sure. Of course, there’s a ton of other changes, too.

KDE Plasma 6.5 will find its way to your distribution soon enough.

I can exclusively reveal today Anthropic’s spending on Amazon Web Services for the entirety of 2024, and for every month in 2025 up until September, and that that Anthropic’s spend on compute far exceeds that previously reported. 

Furthermore, I can confirm that through September, Anthropic has spent more than 100% of its estimated revenue (based on reporting in the last year) on Amazon Web Services, spending $2.66 billion on compute on an estimated $2.55 billion in revenue.

↫ Ed Zitron

These numbers do not even include what the company spends on Google’s services. Going through all the numbers and reporting, Zitron explains that the more “successful” Anthropic becomes, the bigger the gap between income from paying customers and its spending on Amazon and Google services becomes. It’s simply unsustainable, and the longer we keep this scam going, the worse the consequences will be when the bubble pops.

Sadly, nobody will go to jail once hell breaks loose.

This post is a combination of looks at several oddities among my pile of NES and Famicom cartridges. Why, for example, do I have a copy of Gyromite when I don’t have a R.O.B.? Did I miss something interesting in my MMC blog post? And while it is the Japanese release of Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, is my Kaiketsu Yanchamaru being a little too radical? Who put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong? Some of these questions will be answered!

↫ Nicole Branagan at Nicole Express

A well-written post with tons of weird NES nerdery. Branagan delivers, every time.

Today, the Servo team has released new versions of the servoshell binaries for all our supported platforms, tagged v0.0.1. These binaries are essentially the same nightly builds that were already available from the download page with additional manual testing, now tagging them explicitly as releases for future reference.

↫ Servo’s official blog

Servo is making steady progress, and that’s awesome news. Every month a whole slew of new features and improvements make their way into this new browser engine, and I’m fairly confident Servo is our best shot at regaining some independence from Google and Apple in the web browser space. Other efforts are either too limited in scope, targeting only a specific niche, already being eaten alive by massive corporations, written in non-memory safe languages, run by people whose code I wouldn’t even trust to flush my toilet, or any combination thereof.

Servo is it, folks. Our best shot.

In older versions of Windows, if you had a video playing, took a screenshot, and pasted that screenshot into Paint, you could sometimes see the video continue to play inside Paint. What kind of sorcery enabled this to happen? A few of you will realise instantly why this used to happen: render surfaces. Back in at least the Windows 9x days, playing video involved drawing solid green where you wanted the video to go (the video player window), rendering the video pixels to a surface shared with the graphics card, and then have the graphics card replace said green pixels with the video pixels from the shared surface.

This approach has a whole array of benefits, not least of which is that it allowed you to render the video on a thread separate from the main user interface, so that if the main interface was sluggish or locked up, the video would keep rendering properly. You could also create two shared surfaces to render multiple frames at once, thereby eliminating tearing. Knowing this, it should be obvious what’s going on with the screenshot and Pain story.

Now, when you load the image into Paint or any other image viewer, Windows sends those green pixels to the video card, but if the media player is still running, then its overlay is still active, and if you put Paint in the same place that the media player window is, then the green pixels in Paint get changed into the pixels of the active video. The video card doesn’t know that the pixels came from Paint. Its job is to look for green pixels in a certain region of the screen and change them into the pixels from the shared surface.

If you move the Paint window to another position where it doesn’t overlap the media player, or if the media player isn’t playing a video, you will see the bitmap’s true nature: It’s just a bunch of green pixels.

↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing

I’ve never had this particular oddity happen, but I do have vague memories of video player windows rendering tons of green artifacts whenever something went wrong with the video player, the file it was trying to play, or whatever else, and I guess the cause of those green artifacts is the same. In modern operating systems, graphics rendering of the UI is done entirely on the GPU, with only the final composition being sent to your display.

As such, the green screen effect no longer occurs.