Daily Tech News 2 May 2026

Top Story

• Just five days ago I wrote this:
  
  It's been a while since we've had a big tech news story. No disasters, no miracles. Things haven't suddenly gotten better - or at least, not much, and they haven't gotten drastically worse.
  
  Well.
  
  A Linux exploit has been found that instantly grants root access to local users on most Linux versions released since 2017. (Tom's Hardware)

  Although it's not a zero-day and the kernel has already gotten a patch, the short disclosure window gave distro makers relatively little time to react. Affected variants include (but aren't limited to) Ubuntu 24 (version 26 was just released last week), RHEL 10, Suse 16, and Amazon Linux 2023. Even Windows' WSL2 is affected, and all it takes is 732 bytes to do it.

  Fortunately for me, only one server was potentially vulnerable, and that one didn't have the affected module loaded, and I've now disabled it completely.
  
  But even more sysadmins are having a bad day.
  
  
  
• Like the ones at Canonical - the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux release - whose corporate servers are mostly dead right now thanks to a massive ongoing DDOS attack. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If you've already installed Ubuntu you are still able to load updates - like the patch for the so-called CopyFail bug mentioned above - from the numerous mirrors, which don't seem to be affected at all.
  
  
  
• My other server - not this one, but where my own blog and many others are hosted - decided to drop dead, completely unrelated to all the other drama going on in the Linux world.
  
  Fortunately I set it up years ago to make migrations easy - and to keep backups separate from the system disk. But it still took a few hours to get it all working smoothly.
  
  The silverfish lining is that I've wanted to do this for months but it never hit the top of my to do list. I already had a new server, twice the size of the old one and actually cheaper. So that's where those sites are running now.

Tech News

• The Pentagon has reached deals with all the major AI providers except one. (Reuters)
  
  You probably won't guess which one, but it rhymes with Banthropic.
  
  
  
• Spotify meanwhile is adding "verified organic human" badges to artist pages. (BBC)
  
  Because a majority of music being uploaded is already AI-generated.
  
  But not a majority of music people listen to.
  
  
  
• The Oscars have also declared war on the clanker menace. (Hollywood Reporter)
  
  If the skinsuit doesn't fit you might as well quit.
  
  
  
• Apple's Mac Mini and Mac Studio are disappearing fast at both the high and low ends. (WCCFTech)
  
  The Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM was first to go, and now the 256GB Mac Mini has disappeared as well.
  
  That's 256GB of SSD, mind you, which was not a lot even in 2017.