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By Slugsie · Posted
The machines are starting to fight back any way they can. -
By Accuphase · Posted
No news articles about the Arch Linux repo being majorly infected with malware?!? -
By zikalify · Posted
Waymo recalls self-driving software after cars enter closed freeway work zones by Paul Hill Waymo, the self-driving car maker owned by Alphabet – the parent company of Google –, has recalled some of its fifth-generation Automated Driving Systems (ADS). It did so after some of its cars drove through closed construction zones. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the affected vehicles were capable of driving through a closed freeway construction zone and continuing to drive at speed. The listing on the NHTSA website says that Waymo is currently developing a solution to fix this issue, but in the meantime, freeway driving is being restricted. Waymo will update its ADS software so that vehicles can detect when they can avoid entering construction zones. According to the Safety Recall Report, on April 20, 2026, Waymo’s Field Safety Committee began meetings reviewing an event from April 11, 2026, and five events from April 19, 2026, where Waymo’s autonomous vehicles didn’t recognize and drove past ramp closure signs into the pre-planned freeway construction zones. This took place in Phoenix, Arizona. Separately, on May 18, 2026, seven Waymo vehicles entered freeway lanes with active construction in the San Francisco Bay Area by driving between cones that were placed to show the lane was closed. On the back of both of these events, Waymo restricted freeway driving until it could address the issue. In June, Waymo’s Safety Board reviewed the issue and additional information related to ADS performances around construction zones; then, as a result, it decided to conduct a recall. This development is not good for Waymo as it adds to a growing list of technical hiccups its cars have experienced. Ultimately, it will lead to more scrutiny from lawmakers around the world who will be more cautious about letting autonomous vehicles on their roads without tighter regulation. For readers in areas where Waymo operates, does this news make you more wary about stepping into one of these vehicles? -
By snowy owl · Posted
I'm still on Windows 10 22H2 because I didn't want to deal with all the issues in Windows 11, so I waited almost a week before installing the latest Patch Tuesday update (KB5094127), I went ahead and did it, and it was a huge mistake—ever since then, my File Explorer has seen a performance drop of about 30% when transferring large files... Once again, Microsoft has outdone itself! This update cannot be uninstalled, either through the Control Panel (via Settings) or by accessing Advanced Startup Options. The only possible alternative would be to use system restore points, but I’d have to reinstall all app and driver updates (and there’s no guarantee it would work). Or there’s the “nuclear option” of a in-place repair without losing files or apps, but even then, all my customizations would be lost! Microsoft just can’t help but mess everything up! Way to go, Microsoft! But I still don’t want your c****y Windows 11! -
By hellowalkman · Posted
Microsoft: Windows 11 could finally solve a major issue across AMD, Nvidia, and Intel GPUs by Sayan Sen While Microsoft has been trying to improve it, Windows 11 is definitely not flawless, as even today some issues are taking a year to publicly acknowledge. However, one area of trouble that may finally see much better results soon is graphics driver crashes. Work on graphics driver timeouts, also called Timeout and Detection Recovery (TDR), is not new as the latest WDDM 3.2 also has specific improvements regarding it. Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) version 3.2 is supported on Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2. However, with the upcoming version 26H2, TDR crash diagnosis could go to the next level as Microsoft is introducing a new DirectX 12 API feature called "DirectX Dump Files". Similar to how system memory dump files work when a system crashes or freezes or encounters any such major issue, DirectX Dump Files (DDF) will essentially record a snapshot of the GPU execution right at the moment a graphics-related crash or hang or freeze occurs, so that developers can better understand and diagnoze these TDR and timeout detection errors. The dump will be available as a .dxdmp file for analysis and it will be a comprehensive dump file generated with detailed insights about the hardware, drivers, Windows, as well as the affected application. This should be another welcome change in this department. Earlier at GDC 2026, when the technology was first debuted, Microsoft had shared more details regarding it. The company had explained how DDF is designed to gather data from every layer of the graphics stack into a single file, eliminating the need for developers to manually correlate logs from multiple tools. As mentioned above, the dump can contain a lot of useful details like GPU hardware state information such as register values, shader program counters, page fault virtual addresses, shader memory data, and command buffers. Alongside that, it also captures DirectX runtime and kernel information, including D3D objects, pipeline state objects, device error data, adapter details, and CPU call stacks. Microsoft says the feature has been built around two primary use cases: retail device removals and local device removals. The former allows developers to collect crash information from end users' systems in the field, while the latter helps QA teams and developers investigate issues on test machines. Developers will also be able to include up to 2 MB of custom application data through new D3D12 APIs, providing additional context for troubleshooting. In addition, Microsoft is introducing three dump collection modes ranging from zero-overhead capture, which has no runtime performance impact on supported hardware, to higher-detail modes that collect more vendor-specific debugging data. On compatible Tier 2 hardware, zero-overhead dumps will be enabled by default, meaning developers may begin receiving useful crash diagnostics without making any code changes. The table below explains the three tiers: Tier Description NO_OVERHEAD Enables crash capture with no runtime cost and is suitable for broad deployment MEDIUM_OVERHEAD Provides a balance, capturing additional diagnostic data with moderate impact HIGH_OVERHEAD Collects the most detailed GPU and driver state available, enabling deeper investigation at the cost of higher runtime overhead In terms of availability, the company expects broader release to be around the fall of 2026, which should be right around the time when Windows 11 version 26H2 lands. Right now, DirectX Dump Files are available as a preview and currently, only AMD has the compatible AgilitySDK Developer Preview driver version 26.10.07.02. You can find the official announcement post here on Microsoft's website.
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Question
sanctified Veteran
Updated by ultima 10/2/2005
Originally compiled by [sanctified], thanks to the Neowin members.
Items marked in red are new additions.
3D Graphics:
3Delight Free - http://www.3delight.com/index.htm
Anim8or - http://www.anim8or.com/
Aqsis - http://www.aqsis.com/
Blender - http://www.blender3d.org/
gmax - http://www.discreet.com/products/gmax/
Houdini (Free Edition) - http://www.sidefx.com/apprentice/index.html
Maya Personal Learning Ed. - http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services..._maya_ple.shtml
Now3D - http://digilander.libero.it/giulios/Eng/homepage.htm
OpenFX - http://www.openfx.org
SOFTIMAGE|XSI EXP - http://www.softimage.com/products/exp/v3/
Terragen - http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/
Toxic - http://www.toxicengine.org/
Wings 3D - http://www.wings3d.com/
Anti-Virus:
AntiVir - http://www.free-av.com/
Avast - http://www.avast.com/i_idt_1018.html
AVG - http://www.grisoft.com/
ClamWin - http://www.clamwin.com/
Anti Spyware:
Ad-aware - http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/
Bazooka - http://www.kephyr.com/spywarescanner/index.html
Diet K - http://www.dietk.com/
SpyBot Search & Destroy - http://spybot.safer-networking.de/
SpywareBlaster - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
SpywareGuard - http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareguard.html
WinPatrol - http://www.winpatrol.com/
IRC Clients:
BersIRC - http://www.bersirc.com/
BitchX - http://bitchx.org/download.php
HydraIRC - http://www.hydrairc.com/
TinyIRC - http://www.tinyirc.net/
XChat - http://www.silverex.org/news/
Audio Players:
1by1 - http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch
Billy - http://www.sheepfriends.com/?page=billy
CoolPlayer - http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net/
DeliPlayer. http://www.deliplayer.com/
Foobar 2000 - http://www.foobar2000.org/
iTunes - http://www.apple.com/itunes/
Jet Audio Basic - http://www.jetaudio.com/
Musik - http://musik.berlios.de/
QCD Player - http://www.quinnware.com/
Sonique - http://sonique.lycos.com/
Winamp - http://www.winamp.com/
XMPlay - http://www.un4seen.com/xmplay.html
Audio Tools:
Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
CDex - http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/
dBpowerAMP Music Converter - http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm
EAC - http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
Encounter 2003 - http://www.waschbusch.com/
GermaniXEncoder - http://www.germanixsoft.de/
K-MP3 - http://www.katarncorp.com/
KraMixer - http://www.kramware.com/
MP3 Book Helper - http://mp3bookhelper.sourceforge.net/
MP3 Tag - http://www.mp3tag.de/
mp3DirectCut - http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch/
MP3Gain - http://www.geocities.com/mp3gain/
mp3Trim - http://www.logiccell.com/~mp3trim/
MusicBrainz - http://musicbrainz.org/
Rarewares - http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/
SoundEngine Free - http://www.cycleof5th.com/en/index.htm
TagScanner - http://xdev.narod.ru/tagscan_e.htm
The GodFather - http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/
CD/DVD Burning:
Burn4Free - http://www.burn4free.com/
Burnatonce - http://www.burnatonce.com/
CDBurnerXP - http://hem.bredband.net/cdburnerxp/
CDRDAO - http://cdrdao.sourceforge.net/
CDR Tools Frontend - http://demosten.com/cdrfe/
Deepburner - http://www.deepburner.com/
DVD Decrypter: http://www.dvddecrypter.com/
Easy Burning, DropCD & Audio CD - http://www.paehl.de/cdr
Compression / Decompression:
7-zip - http://www.7-zip.org/
bzip2 - http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/index.html
ExtractNow - http://www.extractnow.com/
FilZip - http://www.filzip.com/
IZArc - http://www.florida.plus.com/izarc/
QuickZip - http://www.quickzip.org/
TUGZip - http://www.tugzip.com/
UPX - http://upx.sourceforge.net/
Zip&Go - http://www.handybits.com/zipngo.htm
Zipgenius - http://www.zipgenius.it/
Defrag Software:
DIRMS & Buzzsaw - http://www.dirms.com/
OpenVMS - http://www.execsoft.com/freeware/freeware.asp
Desktop Enhancements:
AveDesk - http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=17372
CursorXP - http://www.stardock.com/products/cursorxp/download.html
Kapsules - http://kapsules.shellscape.org/
MobyDock - http://www.mobydock.com/
Panorama - http://www.ivory.org/panorama.html
Rainlendar - http://www.ipi.fi/~rainy/index.php?pn=proj...ject=rainlendar
Samurize - http://www.samurize.com/
tclock2 - http://home.inreach.com/2tone/tclock2/tclock2.htm
Weather Watcher - http://www.singerscreations.com/
Download managers:
Free Download Manager - http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
Fresh Download - http://www.freshdevices.com/freshdown.html
Star Downloader - http://www.stardownloader.com/downloads.php
wackget - http://millweed.com/projects/wackget/
wget - http://xoomer.virgilio.it/hherold/
Encryption and data security:
Axcrypt - http://axcrypt.sourceforge.net/
Blowfish Advanced CS- http://web.bsn.ch/lasse/bfacs.htm
Eraser - http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/default.php
File Shredder - http://www.sys-shield.com/fileshredder.htm
KeePass - http://keepass.sourceforge.net/
GnuPG - http://www.gnupg.org/
PGP Freeware - http://www.pgp.com/products/freeware.html
WindowsCleaner - http://www.winnowsoft.com/internet-eraser.htm
File Managers:
2xExplorer - http://netez.com/2xExplorer/
A43 - http://www.shawneelink.net/~bgmiller/
ExplorerXP - http://www.explorerxp.com
Gyula's Navigator - http://www.wanari.com/
JExplorer - http://home.megapass.co.kr/~woosjung/
MeeSoft Commander - http://meesoft.logicnet.dk/
File repair and recovery:
PC Inspector File Recovery - http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm
Firewalls:
Kerio (Kerio Personal Firewall is FREE for home and personal use) - http://www.kerio.com/kpf_home.html
Outpost Firewall (version 1 is free) - http://www.agnitum.com/download/outpost1.html
Sygate (FREE for personal use) - http://smb.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm
Zonealarm Basic firewall - http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/comp...reeDownload.jsp
FTP Clients:
CoreFTP - http://www.coreftp.com/
Filezilla - http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla
miFiles - http://www.simdata.com.au/mifiles.html
SmartFTP - http://www.smartftp.com/
FTP Servers:
FileZilla - http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Golden FTP Server - http://www.goldenftpserver.com
GuildFTPD - http://www.totalshareware.com/asp/detail_v...pplication=8334
Quick 'n Easy FTP Server - http://www.pablovandermeer.nl/ftp_server.html
SlimFTPd - http://www.whitsoftdev.com/slimftpd
WarFTPD - http://www.jgaa.com/
HTML Editors:
1st page 2000 - http://www.evrsoft.com/download.shtml
AceHTML - http://freeware.acehtml.com/download.html
Aracnophilia - http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/
HTML-Kit - http://www.chami.com/html-kit/
NVU - http://www.nvu.com/index.html
Selida - http://www.amaryllis.8m.com/
Trellian webPAGE - http://webpage.vendercom.com/
TSW WebCoder - http://www.tsware.net/
Image viewers:
Ahaview - http://www.aha-soft.com/ahaview/ahaviewfree.exe
Irfanview - http://www.irfanview.com/
Picasa - http://www.picasa.com/content/download.php
SlowView - http://www.slowview.at/
XNView - http://www.xnview.com/
Instant Messenger:
Gaim - http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
IM2: http://www.im2.com
Miranda IM - http://www.miranda-im.org/
Pandion - http://www.pandion.be/
PSI - http://psi.affinix.com/
SIM - http://sim-icq.sourceforge.net/
Trillian Basic - http://trillian.cc/downloads
Internet Explorer Front-Ends:
Avantbrowser - http://www.avantbrowser.com/
Maxthon - http://www.maxthon.com/
SlimBrowser - http://www.flashpeak.com/sbrowser/sbrowser.htm
Mail programs:
Foxmail - http://fox.foxmail.com.cn/english/
i.Scribe - http://www.memecode.com/
Mahogany Mail - http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/
Pegasus Mail - http://www.pmail.com/
PopTray - http://www.poptray.org/
Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/
Anti-spam programs:
K9 - http://www.keir.net/k9.html
MailWasher- http://www.mailwasher.net/
POPFile - http://popfile.sourceforge.net/
SpamBayes - http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
Network Tools:
CMDTime NTP Utility - http://www.softshape.com/download/
Ethereal Protocol Analyzer - http://www.ethereal.com/
NetMeter - http://readerror.gmxhome.de/
NetProfiles - http://netprofiles.danielmilner.com/
NMap - http://www.insecure.org/nmap/
Ntop - http://www.ntop.org
PingPlotter - http://www.pingplotter.com
PuTTY - http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty
RAS Graph & Stats - http://forum.flashfxp.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2400
RealVNC - http://www.realvnc.com/
TightVNC - http://www.tightvnc.org/
UltraVNC - http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/
WinSCP - http://www.winscp.com/
Office Suite:
602PC Suite free edition - http://www.software602.com/products/pcs/download.html
AbiWord - http://www.abiword.com/
OpenOffice.org - http://www.openoffice.org/
Partition Managers:
Partition Resizer - http://zeleps.com/
Ranish Partition Manager - http://www.ranish.com/part/
TestDisk - http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html
PDF Utilities:
Free PDF - http://www.webxd.com/zipguy/frpdfdl.htm
Ghostscript/GSView - http://www.ghostscript.com/
PDF 995 - http://www.pdf995.com/
PDFCreator - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
PrimoPDF - http://www.primopdf.com/
Photo manipulation and image design:
ColorPic - http://www.iconico.com/colorpic/
Paint .NET - http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/
Pixia - http://www.ab.wakwak.com/~knight/
Pixie - http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html
PhotoFiltre - http://www.photofiltre.com/
Sodiodi - http://www.sodipodi.com/
The Gimp - http://www.gimp.org/
Tuxpaint - http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint
Programming:
ActivePerl - http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl
Crimson Editor - http://www.crimsoneditor.com/
Context - http://www.context.cx/
Dev C++ - http://www.bloodshed.net/
Dev Pascal - http://www.bloodshed.net/
Digital Mars C++ - http://www.digitalmars.com/download/freecompiler.html
Eclipse - http://www.eclipse.org/
ExamDiff - http://www.prestosoft.com/ps.asp?page=edp_examdiff
Freepascal - http://www.freepascal.org/
JCreator LE - http://www.jcreator.com/download.htm
jEdit - http://www.jedit.org/
Notepad++ - http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
Notepad2 - http://www.flos-freeware.ch/
Pelles C - http://www.smorgasbordet.com/pellesc/index.htm
PHP Hypertext Parser - http://www.php.net/
PSPad - http://www.pspad.com/
Python - http://www.python.org/
Ruby - http://www.dm4lab.to/~usa/ruby/index_en.html
SharpDevelop - http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/
Pop-up Blockers:
Google Toolbar - http://www.google.com/
NoAds - http://www.southbaypc.com/NoAds/
PopUp Stopper - http://www.panicware.com/product_psfree.html
Privoxy - http://www.privoxy.org/
Proxomitron - http://www.proxomitron.info/
RSS Readers:
Ablion - http://www.fileheaven.com/Abilon/download/14059.htm
RSSOwl - http://www.rssowl.org/
System Information and monitoring:
CPU-Z - http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
Everest - http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.p...ang=en&pageid=1
Gkrellm - http://bill.nalens.com/
Motherboard monitor - http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=311
SpeedFan - http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php
Sysmetrix - http://www.xymantix.com
WCPUID - http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002374/src/download.html
Video codecs :
DivX Codec - http://www.divx.com/divx/?src=toptab_divx_from_/index.php
FFDSHOW - http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow
XviD - http://www.xvid.org/
Video players :
BsPlayer - http://www.bsplayer.org/
Crystal Player - http://www.crystalplayer.com/index.php?page=downloads
Cygwin MPlayer - http://armory.nicewarrior.org/projects/cygmp/
DivX Player - http://www.divx.com/
MaximusDVD - http://www.maximusdvd.com/
Media Player Classic - http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303
VideoLan - http://www.videolan.org/
Video tools:
DVD Shrink - http://www.dvdshrink.org/
DScaler - http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/
FlasKMPEG - http://www.flaskmpeg.net
GSpot - http://www.headbands.com/gspot/
VirtualDub - http://www.virtualdub.org/
VirtualDubMod - http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=65889
Zwei-Stein Video Editor - http://www.thugsatbay.com/software/index.html
Web browsers:
Firefox - http://www.getfirefox.com
K-Meleon - http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/
Mozilla - http://www.mozilla.org/
Netscape - http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/default.jsp
Web servers:
Abyss - http://abyss.sourceforge.net/
Apache - http://httpd.apache.org/
Sambar - http://www.sambar.com/
Savant - http://savant.sourceforge.net/
SimpleServer:WWW - http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/sswww.htm
TinyWeb - http://www.ritlabs.com/tinyweb/index.html
Webcam Software:
booruWebCam - http://www.booru.net/
Pryme - http://www.hilo.dk/pryme/
Checksum Utilities:
fsum - http://www.slavasoft.com/fsum/
hksfv - http://www.big-o-software.com/products/hksfv/
md5sum - http://www.etree.org/md5com.html
md5summer - http://www.md5summer.org/
General Utilities And Other Applications:
AnalogX - http://www.analogx.com/
AppRocket - http://www.candylabs.com/approcket/
Celestia - http://www.shatters.net/celestia
CCleaner - http://www.ccleaner.com
Cygwin - http://www.cygwin.com
Dirkey - http://www.protonfx.com/dirkey/
EditPad Lite - http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html
HTTrack - http://www.httrack.com/
Inno Setup - http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php
Memtest-86 - http://www.memtest86.com
MWSnap - http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html
NetTime - http://nettime.sourceforge.net
Nullsoft Installer - http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nsis
Peerguardian - http://xs.tech.nu/
QuickSFV - http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Mouse/4668/
png2ico - http://winterdrache.de/freeware/png2ico
Stickies - http://finiteloop.org/~btaylor/software/stickies/
Sysinternals - http://www.sysinternals.com/
Toolbox - http://www.sil.org/computing/toolbox/
TuneXP - http://www.driverheaven.net/dforce/showdoc.php?doc=txp_about
Turbo Pad - http://turbopad.sourceforge.net/
Vim - http://vim.sourceforge.net
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