Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

[$] The ongoing quest for atomic buffered writes - LWN.net

2026-03-02T22:27:12.000Z

There are many applications that need to be able to write multi-block chunks of data to disk with the assurance that the operation will either complete successfully or fail altogether — that the write will not be partially completed (or "torn"), in other words. For years, kernel developers have worked on providing atomic writes as a way of satisfying that need; see, for example, sessions from the Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF (LSFMM+BPF) Summit from 2023, 2024, and 2025 (twice). While atomic direct I/O is now supported by some filesystems, atomic buffered I/O still is not. Filling that gap seems certain to be a 2026 LSFMM+BPF topic but, thanks to an early discussion, the shape of a solution might already be coming into focus.

Høiland-Jørgensen: The inner workings of TCP zero-copy - LWN.net

2026-03-02T20:12:58.000Z

Toke Høiland-Jørgensen has posted an overview of how zero-copy networking works in the Linux kernel.

Since the memory is being copied directly from userspace to the network device, the userspace application has to keep it around unmodified, until it has finished sending. The sendmsg() syscall itself is asynchronous, and will return without waiting for this. Instead, once the memory buffers are no longer needed by the stack, the kernel will return a notification to userspace that the buffers can be reused.

Texinfo 7.3 released - LWN.net

2026-03-02T18:47:55.000Z

Version 7.3 of Texinfo, the GNU documentation-formatting system, has been released. It contains a number of new features, performance improvements, and enhancements.

Tekken and Pac-Man owners Bandai Namco announce major restructure with investment from Sony - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-03-02T17:09:24.000Z

Change is afoot at Bandai Namco Holdings. They've announced a company-wide restructuring effort that extends from their film, toy and arcade lines to their videogame label, Bandai Namco Entertainment, owners of Pac-Man, Tekken, Soulcalibur, and Ace Combat, among others.

A Diff Preview Of A Regex Replace - Irreal

2026-03-02T15:47:35.000Z

When it rains, it pours. Sometimes I find it hard to find an interesting topic to write about. Other times, like today, four or five topics pop up. The problem is that today is Sunday and tomorrow Sacha will be publishing her weekly Emacs News. I generally try not to write about things that she’s already covered but I may have to break that rule for some of these interesting topics.

For me, the most exciting thing I’ve found today is Bozhidar Batsov’s post on Preview Regex Replacements as Diffs. It addresses a problem we’ve all had. You want to do a query-replace-regexp on a large file—or even multiple files—but you’re a bit nervous that maybe your regex isn’t quite right and the command might make a change you don’t want. So you step through each change, which is time consuming and a pain.

As Batsov explains, that got a lot easier in Emacs 30. There’s a new command, replace-regexp-as-diff that runs the regexp replace process but instead of actually making the changes, it produces a diff file in a separate buffer. That way you can see all the changes that would be made. If you’re happy with them, you can simply apply the diff buffer as a patch with diff-ediff-patch to apply them. If you’re not happy, you can simply delete the diff buffer.

There are two related commands: multi-file-replace-regexp-as-diff and dired-do-replace-regexp-as-diff for handling multiple files. The Dired variety is probably the easiest to use because you can simply mark the files you want to change in a Dired buffer and call dired-do-replace-regexp-as-diff to generate a diff for them all.

Batsov speculates that in the age of AI, people won’t be as interested in this type of command. I disagree strongly. It’s useful not only for coding but for writing pose or any other text-based file that you might want to edit.

If you’re an Emacs user, I urge you to take a look at Batsov’s post. It’s about a really useful new(ish) feature of Emacs that you can probably make good use of.

The original Cities: Skylines is getting a new Race Day expansion next week, as Paradox parade the fact the series is turning 11 - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-03-02T15:29:14.000Z

Welp. The Cities: Skylines series turns 11 years old today, so publishers Paradox have announced a bunch of stuff designed to celebrate that occasion. Look, look, they've said, here's a brand new expansion for the original Cities: Skylines and it'll launch next week. Oh and, they've also said, recently under-new-management sequel Cities: Skylines 2 is getting a couple of creator packs.

[$] The exploitation paradox in open source - LWN.net

2026-03-02T15:28:19.000Z

The free and open-source software (FOSS) movements have always been about giving freedom and power to individuals and organizations; throughout that history, though, there have also been actors trying to exploit FOSS to their own advantage. At Configuration Management Camp (CfgMgmtCamp) 2026 in Ghent, Belgium, Richard Fontana described the "exploitation paradox" of open source: the recurring pattern of crises when actors exploit loopholes to restrict freedoms or gain the upper hand over others in the community. He also talked about the attempts to close those loopholes as well as the need to look beyond licenses as a means of keeping freedom alive.

I swapped my gaming headset for IEM earphones, and I am in love - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-03-02T15:19:18.000Z

Over the past few years, I've been searching for the best audio option for my PC gaming setup. It’s been a battle. I have big, satellite-dish ears and the kind of Neurospicy that makes ear cushions and heavy headsets unbearable to wear. I've tried and tested nearly a dozen headsets in my mission to find the best fit, and I recently found it in the most unexpected place: IEMs.

2026-03-02 Emacs news - Sacha Chua

2026-03-02T15:07:38.000Z

Hello folks! Last month's Emacs Carnival about completion had 17 posts (nice!), and Philip Kaludercic is hosting this month's Emacs Carnival: Mistakes and Misconceptions. Looking forward to reading your thoughts!

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org):
- Emacs.si (in person): Emacs.si meetup #3 2026 (v #živo) https://dogodki.kompot.si/events/3147760f-1a8b-4996-9b3c-2773d7d360ca Mon Mar 2 1900 CET
- Emacs Paris: S: Emacs workshop in Paris (online) https://emacs-doctor.com/ Thu Mar 5 0830 America/Vancouver - 1030 America/Chicago - 1130 America/Toronto - 1630 Etc/GMT - 1730 Europe/Berlin - 2200 Asia/Kolkata – Fri Mar 6 0030 Asia/Singapore
- EmacsATX: Emacs Social https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx/events/313161406/ Thu Mar 5 1600 America/Vancouver - 1800 America/Chicago - 1900 America/Toronto – Fri Mar 6 0000 Etc/GMT - 0100 Europe/Berlin - 0530 Asia/Kolkata - 0800 Asia/Singapore
- M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Fri Mar 6 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Sat Mar 7 0000 Asia/Singapore
- Emacs Berlin: In-Person-Only Emacs-Berlin Stammtisch https://emacs-berlin.org/ Tue Mar 10 1900 Europe/Berlin
- OrgMeetup (virtual) https://orgmode.org/worg/orgmeetup.html Wed Mar 11 0900 America/Vancouver - 1100 America/Chicago - 1200 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Mar 12 0000 Asia/Singapore
- Computing in freedom with GNU Emacs - Protesilaos Stavrou - FLOSS@Oxford https://ox.ogeer.org/event/computing-in-freedom-with-gnu-emacs-protesilaos-stavrou Thu Mar 12 1100 America/Vancouver - 1300 America/Chicago - 1400 America/Toronto - 1800 Etc/GMT - 1900 Europe/Berlin - 2330 Asia/Kolkata – Fri Mar 13 0200 Asia/Singapore
- Atelier Emacs Montpellier (in person) https://lebib.org/date/atelier-emacs Fri Mar 13 1800 Europe/Paris
Beginner:
- Emacs: (My) First Steps « Here's The Beef (@BeefGriller@dice.camp)
- Emacs is Installed! Try These 3 Ways to Start It Now (Zero Init! | CLI Hacks) (2) - [7-ish minutes] (07:11)
- Emacs Is Installed! Your User Directory Explained (.emacs.d Deep Dive) (3) - [5:36] (05:36)
- Emacs Is Installed! How Can I Create A Shortcut That Just Starts This Baby up? (5) - [10:12] (10:12)
Emacs Lisp:
- truename-cache: Efficiently de-dup file-names (Reddit)
- andros/async-http-queue-fetch-urls-el - Lightweight, parallel HTTP fetching library for #emacs using url-retrieve (native) with configurable concurrency limits (@andros@activity.andros.dev)
- [09] Emacs Reader's Development: Working on Text Selection and Highlighting - 8/10/2025, 3:03:09 PM - Dyne.org TV (@reeltubes@mstdn.party)
Appearance:
- Emacs Redux: Soft Wrapping Done Right with visual-wrap-prefix-mode
Navigation:
- Elegant implementation of other-window-mru
- Emacs Redux: Preview Regex Replacements as Diffs
TRAMP:
- Christian Tietze: Media Transfer Protocol Tools
Writing:
- Sacha Chua: Using speech recognition for on-the-fly translations in Emacs and faking in-buffer completion for the results
Denote:
- Cycle through Denote journal entries, trash empties (@zyd@yap.zyd.lol)
Org Mode:
- Dave's blog: Calculating RAGBRAI training actual vs. planned mileage (@davemq@fosstodon.org)
- Prettifying org-agenda (Reddit)
- Elsa Gonsiorowski: Emacs Carnival: Org Mode Completions
- Sacha Chua: Sorting completion candidates, such as sorting Org headings by level
- org-repeat-by-cron.el v1.1.2 released - compatibility with built-in repeaters and habits, deadline recurrence
- Exporting org-roam notes to Hugo and Quartz
- colonelpanic8/org-window-habit - A more flexible habit system (Reddit)
- lordnik22/org-link-battery: It's the missing battery using bookmark+ adding jump-to- and completion-candidates to org (Reddit)
- pjones/org-inline-image-mode: Update displayed images as an org-mode buffer changes. (@devalot@hostux.social)
- skx/org-people: Contact management for org-mode
- lordnik22/org-link-battery: using bookmark+ adding jump-to- and completion-candidates to org (Reddit)
- schrenker/org-agecrypt: Encrypt org entries with age - Codeberg.org (Reddit)
- Thanos Apollo: Gnosis 0.7.0 Release Notes - knowledge management system
- Migrating website to orgmode - roosnaflak.com (@kf@sonomu.club)
- TAONAW - Emacs and Org Mode: I think I found what crashed my Emacs on macOS
- Org development:
Completion:
- Sacha Chua: Emacs Carnival Feb 2026 wrap-up: Completion
- Eric MacAdie: Emacs Carnival: Completion
- Sacha Chua: Emacs completion and handling accented characters with orderless
- Using Pinyin initials with orderless in Emacs (@SouthFox@foxsay.southfox.me)
- A Year Without Vertico - System Crafters Live! (01:14:56)
Coding:
- Moving to Structural Diffs | Trying out Difftastic (01:29:57, @abcdw@fosstodon.org)
- Keybinding for easily comparing with upstream in Magit
- Emacs Redux: So Many Ways to Work with Comments (@bbatsov@hachyderm.io)
- [EMACS LAB #1] Do zero a uma IDE para programar em C (parte 1) (01:00:27)
- yaml-language-server added CRD auto-detection (Reddit)
- calsys456/lisp-semantic-hl.el: Semantic Syntax Highlighting for Common Lisp & Elisp (Reddit)
- Bozhidar Batsov: Setting up Emacs for OCaml Development: Neocaml Edition (Github, HN)
- I'm amazed by how good emacs is for game development (Irreal)
- overcast-software/glnt-ts-mode: emacs lsp-glint (Reddit)
- Bozhidar Batsov: Building Emacs Major Modes with TreeSitter: Lessons Learned (@bbatsov@hachyderm.io)
- LuciusChen/clutch: MySQL, PostgreSQL & SQLite; paginated result browser, record view, inline editing, schema browser, and REPL. (Reddit, @Lucius_Chen)
Math:
- symbol-cruncher: Computer algebra system for computations in differential geometry, built on top of GNU Maxima and maxima-interface.
Shells:
- cashmeredev/kitty-graphics.el: Display images in terminal Emacs (emacs -nw) via the Kitty graphics protocol. (Reddit)
- Eschewing Zshell for Emacs Shell (2014, HN)
Mail, news, and chat:
- andros/hackernews-modern-el (@andros@activity.andros.dev)
- martianh/mastodon.el 2.0.9, quote system, optional desktop notifications (@mousebot@todon.nl)
Multimedia:
- noa ks: Engraving sheet music with lilypond
AI:
- Joar von Arndt: Vibe-coding Brings the Power of Emacs to Everything
- Christian Tietze: Emacs Complete: Feedback Loops in Emacs, Feedback Loops in Computing
- Org Mode requests: [RFC] Pros and cons of using LLM for patches beyond simple copyright (@yantar92@fosstodon.org)
- Org mode, agentic coding and ekg - YouTube
- Alvaro Ramirez: Bending Emacs - Episode 12: agent-shell + Claude Skills (YouTube 26:02, @xenodium@indieweb.social, Reddit)
- How I use agents in emacs: agent-shell + persp-mode + git worktrees (Reddit, Doom Emacs config)
- 037 Ollama Buddy - In-Buffer responses with in-line inspection #emacs #ollama (01:28)
- James Dyer: Ollama Buddy v2.5 - RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) Support
- copilot.el 0.4 is out with many improvements! proper LSP, select model, balance parentheses (Reddit)
Community:
- Fortnightly Tips, Tricks, and Questions — 2026-02-24 / week 08
- Who remembers XEmacs?
- Common Desktop Environment experience (XEmacs, Unix) in your browser (Reddit, Reddit, Irreal)
- Eric MacAdie: 2026-01 Austin Emacs Meetup
- Emacs Carnival March 2026: Mistakes and Misconceptions
- Goodbye #emacs #emacsnews (01:09) Emacs Elements
Other:
- Emacs Internal #01: is a Lisp Runtime in C, Not an Editor | The Cloudlet (Reddit, HN, Irreal)
- rossabaker/iec-mode-line.el: display buffer size in IEC units in the mode line (@rossabaker.com, @ross@social.rossabaker.com)
- GitHub - srs.el: Spaced repetition system for emacs. (BETA) (Reddit)
Emacs development:
- emacs-devel: Some notes on EIEIO vs cl-defstruct
- Teach Emacs on MS-Windows how to export frame screenshots
- New variable 'multiple-terminals-merge-keyboards'
- Allow more fine configuration of package retention
- Add option to keep previous package versions on upgrade
- New function multiple-command-partition-arguments
- Compare circular lists in 'equal' without error (bug#80456)
New packages:
- citar-typst: Typst support for citar (MELPA)
- conflict-buttons: Clickable buttons for smerge-mode conflicts (MELPA)
- d2-ts-mode: Tree-sitter support for D2 (MELPA)
- dorgygen: Source code documentation in org-mode (MELPA)
- elfeed-ai: AI-powered article summarization for elfeed (MELPA)
- lisp-chat: Emacs client for Lisp Chat (MELPA)
- lit-ts-mode: Lit-aware JS/TS modes with tree-sitter support (MELPA)
- org-people: Work with a contact-list in org-mode files (MELPA)

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, r/orgmode, r/spacemacs, Mastodon #emacs, Bluesky #emacs, Hacker News, lobste.rs, programming.dev, lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, planet.emacslife.com, YouTube, the Emacs NEWS file, Emacs Calendar, and emacs-devel. Thanks to Andrés Ramírez for emacs-devel links. Do you have an Emacs-related link or announcement? Please e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com. Thank you!

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You can comment on Mastodon or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Hooded Horse's terrific 4X strategy game Old World is getting another big DLC expansion set in south Asia - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-03-02T15:01:53.000Z

Hooded Horse and Mohawk Games have announced a new expansion for their resolutely pre-modern 4X strategy game Old World. It's called Empires of the Indus, and as you may guess, it concerns the nations and cultures that once flourished along the banks of the river Indus, running through central and south Asia. Nations and cultures like "the mighty Mauryas, who founded one of the greatest Iron Age empires under the rule of Emperor Ashoka" and "the nomadic horse lords of the Yuezhi who transformed the region as the Kushan Empire".

Motorola announces a partnership with the GrapheneOS Foundation - LWN.net

2026-03-02T14:58:09.000Z

Motorola has announced that it will be working with the GrapheneOS Foundation, a producer of a security-enhanced Android distribution. "Together, Motorola and the GrapheneOS Foundation will work to strengthen smartphone security and collaborate on future devices engineered with GrapheneOS compatibility.". LWN looked at GrapheneOS last July.

Gram 1.0 released - LWN.net

2026-03-02T14:58:06.000Z

Version 1.0 of Gram, an "opinionated fork of the Zed code editor", has been released. Gram removes telemetry, AI features, collaboration features, and more. It adds built-in documentation, support for additional languages, and tab-completion features similar to the Supertab plugin for Vim. The mission statement for the project explains:

At first, I tried to build some other efforts I found online to make Zed work without the AI features just so I could check it out, but didn't manage to get them to work. At some point, the curiosity turned into spite. I became determined to not only get the editor to run without all of the misfeatures, but to make it a full-blown fork of the project. Independent of corporate control, in the spirit of Vim and the late Bram Moolenaar who could have added subscription fees and abusive license agreements had he so wanted, but instead gave his work as a gift to the world and asked only for donations to a good cause close to his heart in return.

This is the result. Feel free to build it and see if it works for you. There is no license agreement or subscription beyond the open source license of the code (GPLv3). It is yours now, to do with as you please.

According to a blog post on the site, the plan for the editor is to diverge from Zed and proceed slowly.

Security updates for Monday - LWN.net

2026-03-02T14:07:56.000Z

Security updates have been issued by Debian (lxd, orthanc, and thunderbird), Fedora (cef, chromium, gimp, nextcloud, pgadmin4, python-django4.2, python-django5, python3-docs, python3.12, python3.13, and python3.9), Oracle (container-tools:rhel8 and mingw-fontconfig), Slackware (gvfs, mozilla, and telnet), SUSE (avahi, cockpit-356, cockpit-podman, cockpit-podman-120, containerized-data-importer, digger-cli, docker, evolution-data-server, expat, firefox, freerdp2, gimp, glib2, glibc, go1, google-guest-agent, google-osconfig-agent, gosec, gpg2, heroic-games-launcher, ImageMagick, kernel, kernel-firmware, kubevirt, libIex-3_4-33, libjxl-devel, libpng16, libsodium, libsoup, libsoup2, libssh, libudisks2-0, libwireshark19, protobuf, python-pyasn1, python-urllib3, python311, python311-Flask, rust-keylime, thunderbird, ucode-intel, and valkey), and Ubuntu (git).

This week in PC games: Marathon, Slay The Spire 2, a promising Disco-like RPG and a monastic garden mystery - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-03-02T12:57:10.000Z

Happy this week all! Some weeks, I do a couple of paragraphs of preamble before listing the new PC releases, but this week, there is no time, for the videogames are many, curious and capacious. Bungie's latest shooter and the return of Spire are among the larger drops in a deluge that makes me yearn for the quieter, pre-broadband period when the global economy could only support one videogame a month, and they were all delivered to your PC by horse and cart. Without further ado, FEED THE MAW.

Meet the man who stuffed as much Deus Ex into Fallout 3 as was "humanly possible" - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-03-02T12:00:00.000Z

Here, put on this pair of reflective sunglasses. Now regard the 21st century so far. Doesn’t it look as if the ideas of Deus Ex have spread into the mainstream? Like fire propagating across a dry hillside, the prevalence of emergent action with cascading consequences has spread throughout the gaming medium.

Much of this movement towards Ion Storm-style thinking may be coincidental. Were the Nintendo team behind The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild making injokes about the Denton brothers on their lunch breaks? Did they praise Warren Spector as they imbued metal weapons with the capacity to attract lightning strikes? Perhaps not, and without slipping a bug under a Kyoto water cooler, we’ll likely never know.

Maybe it's time to accept the real Bloodborne remake is the friends we made along the way, following report FromSoftware said no to one - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-03-02T11:52:25.000Z

Bloodborne. It's still not on PC. Perhaps a remake might bring it to PC. Ah. Nuts. Original developers FromSoftware reportedly turned down a Bloodborne remake pitch from recently shuttered PlayStation studio Bluepoint Games last year.

California law to require operating systems to check your age - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-03-02T11:51:37.000Z

The time of age assurance is upon us, and not just for social media - for operating systems too and that includes Linux as well of course.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

SteamInputDB is a new site to help you find Steam Input configurations for your gamepads - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-03-02T11:22:05.000Z

SteamInputDB recently launched as a new third-party community site to help you find Steam Input configurations for various gamepads with Steam games.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Nearly a year on from release, Stardew Valley Baldur's Gate 3 modders provide a rare update on their Halsin romance - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-03-02T10:48:27.000Z

The creators of Baldur's Village, a Stardew Valley mod revolving around a community of characters from Baldur's Gate 3, have been pretty quiet since their work escaped being "mistakenly" zapped out of existence by Wizards of the Coast last April. Now, ahead of Baldur's Village's first birthday, they've provided a progress update on the Halsin romance arc they've been working on in the interim.

Steam Deck OLED gets a price increase across Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-03-02T09:57:13.000Z

KOMODO announced over the weekend that the Steam Deck OLED is getting a price increase across Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.