The CEO who bet on SwiftUI—and lost their job. Then poke some fun at Rust stans, SalesForce claims they're not hiring any developers in 2025, and more!

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• 📻 Boost with Fountain.FM — Boost with Fountain.FM and kick the tires on the Podcasting 2.0 revolution! 🚀
• Sonos CEO steps down after app upgrade debacle — On its fiscal 2024 earnings call, Spence shared news that annual revenue had gone backwards by four percent, and admitted one reason for that result was “we mishandled the rollout of our new app.”
• Salesforce Will Hire No More Software Engineers in 2025 — “30% Productivity Boost” from AI
• Massive Memory Leaks in System76's Cosmic Desktop (Written in "Memory Safe" Rust) - YouTube — Plus: Hyprland developer weighs in, "No, I don't think it's beta ready :P"
• Reference Cycles Can Leak Memory - The Rust Programming Language — Rust’s memory safety guarantees make it difficult, but not impossible, to accidentally create memory that is never cleaned up (known as a memory leak). Preventing memory leaks entirely is not one of Rust’s guarantees, meaning memory leaks are memory safe in Rust.
• Handling memory leaks in Rust - LogRocket Blog — Once in a while, you may experience memory leaks in your Rust projects due to many factors, from unsafe code to shared references, etc. Ideally, you’ll want to fix these memory leaks and ensure your programs are efficient, which may lead to performance gains and resource safety.
• Memory leaks are memory safe, and there isn't much to do about it | /home/Samsai — Despite their potential for destruction, Rust considers memory leaks "memory safe" and thus doesn't aim to prevent them. Rust's design, however, makes it less easy to create memory leaks, since it uses a Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII) pattern to abstract resource allocation and deallocation.
• Google Donates $1 Million to Donald Trump's Inaugural Fund — The total inauguration fund for the returning US president has already reached a record $170 billion, according to an ABC report.

We're taking on some of the toughest critiques of the Linux desktop, then taking a look at CachyOS and what makes it feel like a million bucks.

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• Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition
• Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition | Hacker News
• Why Desktop Linux Matters, Even If (Almost) No One Uses It
• Colony Events
• CachyOS — Blazingly Fast OS based on Arch Linux — CachyOS is designed to deliver lightning-fast speeds and stability, ensuring a smooth and enjoyable computing experience every time you use it. Whether you're a seasoned Linux user or just starting out, CachyOS is the ideal choice for those looking for a powerful, customizable and blazingly fast operating system.
• CachyOS/linux-cachyos: Archlinux Kernel based on different schedulers and some other performance improvements.
• firelzrd/bore-scheduler: BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) CPU Scheduler — BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) is enhanced versions of CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler) and EEVDF (Earliest Eligible Virtual Deadline First) Linux schedulers. Developed with the aim of maintaining these schedulers' high performance while delivering resilient responsiveness to user input under as versatile load scenario as possible.
• oracle/bpftune: bpftune uses BPF to auto-tune Linux systems — bpftune aims to provide lightweight, always-on auto-tuning of system behaviour.
• Annual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!
• Self-Hosted Toronto Crew -- Meetup2 · Gathio
• Amazon.com: Wi-Fi Smart LED Controller | WLED Pre-Installed | Internal Antenna | Designed to Control WS2811 or WS2812B 5volt Smart LEDs : Tools & Home Improvement
• Cryptomator on Flathub
• cryptomator on GitHub — Cryptomator for Windows, macOS, and Linux: Secure client-side encryption for your cloud storage, ensuring privacy and control over your data.
• Flatsweep on Flathub — When you uninstall a Flatpak, it can leave some files behind on your computer. Flatsweep helps you easily get rid of the residue left on your system by uninstalled Flatpaks.
• Buffer
• Buffer on Flathub — Celebrating transience, Buffer provides a minimal editing space for all those things that don't need keeping. Designed for keyboard workflows on desktop.

Alex dives into the perils of upgrading and migrating critical infrastructure—uncovering embarrassing pitfalls and hard-won lessons along the way. Meanwhile, Chris takes his audiobook obsession to the next level, showcasing a couple self-hosted projects that are very ambitious.

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Support Self-Hosted

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• ⚡ Grab Sats with Strike Around the World — Strike is a lightning-powered app that lets you quickly and cheaply grab sats in over 110 countries.
• 🇨🇦 Bitcoin Well — Empowering sovereign ownership with free automatic self-custody 🔒
• 🎉 Boost with Fountain FM — Fountain 1.1 with Nostr support, upgrades, and super simple Strike integration for easy Boosts. You can also Boost from the Web via their site.
• Smart Thermostats & Smart Home Devices | ecobee — Smart. Secure. Sustainable.
• Wi-Fi smart thermostat | ecobee — The smart choice for a balance of comfort, value, and energy savings.
• Renovate Bot — The home of Renovate, a bot for automated dependency updates
• Apollo Automation — Your Trusted Partner in Smart Home Automation
• ebook2audiobook — Convert ebooks to audiobooks with chapters and metadata using dynamic AI models and voice cloning. Supports 1,107+ languages!
• storyteller · GitLab — Storyteller is a self-hosted platform for creating and reading ebooks with synced narration. It's made of three components: the API server, the web interface, and the mobile apps.
• beszel — Beszel is a lightweight server monitoring platform that includes Docker statistics, historical data, and alert functions.
• Proxmox Datacenter Manager Roadmap — The Proxmox Datacenter Manager project has been developed with the objective of providing a centralized overview of all your individual nodes and clusters. It also enables basic management like migrations of virtual guests without any cluster network requirements.
• Proxmox Datacenter Manager — he project is fully developed in the Rust programming language, from the backend API server to the CLI tools to a completely new frontend. The frontend is built on the new widget toolkit that we developed over the last few years.
• SSH 140 Boost Barn — Thank you Boosters for supporting Episode 140!

CES 2025 Secrets Revealed: A developer’s dream or just more hype? Plus, NVIDIA flexes its AI muscles, and we're admittedly impressed. Then, our thoughts on Dell's historic rebrand.

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• 💥 Gets Sats with Strike — Strike is a lightning-powered app that lets you quickly and cheaply grab sats in over 100 countries. Easily integrates with Fountain.fm. Setup your Strike account, and you have one of the world's best ways to buy sats.
• 🇨🇦 Bitcoin Well — The fastest and safest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada and the USA. Focused on Bitcoin excellence, with self-custody built in. 🥇
• 📻 Boost with Fountain.FM — Boost with Fountain.FM and kick the tires on the Podcasting 2.0 revolution! 🚀
• ChatGPT Pro plan is making OpenAI lose money, CEO says — “I personally chose the price…and thought we would make some money,”
• OpenAI is losing money on its pricey ChatGPT Pro plan, CEO Sam Altman says — OpenAI is losing money on its pricey ChatGPT Pro plan, CEO Sam Altman says
• Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says AI agents are ‘a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity’ and ‘the age of AI Agentics is here’ — “The age of AI Agentics is here,” Huang told the crowd, describing a shift from generative AI to agentic AI—a future driven by intelligent AI agents capable of assisting with tasks across industries. Huang called this emerging sector "a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity," positioning Nvidia at the forefront of the movement.
• Nvidia announces next-gen RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs — Four new RTX 50-series GPUs are on the way, including the $1,999 RTX 5090 and $999 RTX 5080.
• Nvidia’s AI NPCs are no longer chatbots — they’re your new PUBG teammate — Nvidia says that ACE characters can use AI to “perceive, plan, and act like human players,” per a blog post. “Powered by generative AI, ACE will enable living, dynamic game worlds with companions that comprehend and support player goals, and enemies that adapt dynamically to player tactics.” The characters are powered by “small language models (SLMs)” that are “capable of planning at human-like frequencies required for realistic decision making” as well as “multi-modal SLMs for vision and audio that allow AI characters to hear audio cues and perceive their environment.”
• Nvidia announces $3,000 personal AI supercomputer called Project Digits — This desktop-sized system can handle AI models with up to 200 billion parameters.
• The World’s Smallest AI Supercomputer — A Grace Blackwell AI Supercomputer on your desk.
• NVIDIA Puts Grace Blackwell on Every Desk and at Every AI Developer’s Fingertips — Project DIGITS systems running Linux-based NVIDIA DGX OS
• Dell mocked at its own press launch for copying Apple's names — Now, most of the company’s new PCs will be divided into three tiers: Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max
• Apple Intelligence summaries might get warning labels. That’s not enough. — The BBC, following up on two reports of Apple Intelligence summaries that transformed its own headlines into factually inaccurate text, got a public response from Apple
• Nvidia’s stock heads for worst drop in months as CES speech lacked one big thing — We believe many investors were hoping for more concrete progress updates on the ramp of Blackwell and some input as to the company’s progress with its next-generation GPU platform, Rubin,” Benchmark Research analyst Cody Acree wrote in a note to clients.

We make our big Linux predictions for 2025, but first, we score how we did for 2024.

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• LinuxFest Northwest 2025: Call for Speakers — Call closes at 11:59 PM PST on
• Planet Nix CFP - Jan 6th
• Colony Events
• LUP was the #2 top show on Fountain.fm for 2024. THANK YOU!
• LINUX Unplugged 545: 3,062 Days Later
• MAGI OS: AI powered Linux
• MakuluLinux AI podcast – MakuluLinux
• MakuluLinux X – AI Integration Update – MakuluLinux
• OpenZFS Native Encryption Use Raises Data Corruption Concerns
• Debian Installer Trixie Alpha 1 Brings RISC-V & Drops i386 Installer
• After Three Years on Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends
• mesa-dri-drivers-24.2.4-1.fc41 - Fedora Packages
• UbuntuUpdates - Package Search (all versions of mesa)
• Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Moving To NVK + Zink For OpenGL On Newer GPUs - Phoronix
• Mesa's NVIDIA Vulkan Driver "NVK" Now Exposes Vulkan 1.3 Support - Phoronix
• NixOS-based distributions - NixOS Wiki
• It's time for change, it's time for Linux. - YouTube
• How I Broke up with Adobe
• Automotive Grade Linux Launches New Expert Group Led by Toyota to Help Automakers Manage Open Source Activities - Automotive Grade Linux
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• Enclosed - Send private and secure notes — Minimalistic web application designed for sending end-to-end encrypted notes and files.
• enclosed - GitHub

Some debates never die, and this week, we’re reigniting one of our spiciest from the archives. Plus, our boldest 2025 predictions yet.

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• 💥 Gets Sats with Strike — Strike is a lightning-powered app that lets you quickly and cheaply grab sats in over 100 countries. Easily integrates with Fountain.fm. Setup your Strike account, and you have one of the world's best ways to buy sats.
• 🇨🇦 Bitcoin Well — The fastest and safest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada and the USA. Focused on Bitcoin excellence, with self-custody built in. 🥇
• 📻 Boost with Fountain.FM — Boost with Fountain.FM and kick the tires on the Podcasting 2.0 revolution! 🚀
• Nvidia's next move: Powering humanoid robots — The chipmaking giant Nvidia is leaning more heavily into robotics in 2025. More specifically, in the first half of the new year, confirms the Financial Times, Nvidia is launching a new generation of compact computers for humanoid robots called Jetson Thor.
• H1B Visa Salary Database 2024 — Search By Employer, Job, or City.
• Performance Data — As part of the U.S. Department of Labor's commitment to supporting the goals of an open and transparent government, this page provides easy access to employment-based immigration data organized in three main categories
• The H-1B Visa, Explained
• Musk vs. MAGA on H1-B visas - YouTube — CNBC’s Megan Cassella joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss Musk going against MAGA on H1-B visas.
• Ethan Evans on X — There are three simple economic arguments for increasing legal immigration by highly educated workers
• Mitchell Hashimoto on X — "r/linux": arguments about what "native" means, angry they have to click one link to learn what it is, disappointed that another terminal exists, 50-comment discussion about GTK vs QT
• Broken Money — Why Our Financial System Is Failing Us and How We Can Make It Better.

We tested out the OpenWRT One and tried it in a unique use case. Then, Wes goes back to 1999 to solve a problem.

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• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• LinuxFest Northwest 2025: Call for Speakers — Call closes at 11:59 PM PST on 2025-01-10. Conference is 2025-04-25 through 2025-04-27.
• Qobuz — Buy your favourite albums in CD or Hi-Res quality and enjoy them forever.
• Los Machucambos In Phase 4, Los Machucambos - Qobuz
• Los Machucambos – In Phase 4 – Vinyl (LP, Album, Stereo), 1961 [r5061780] | Discogs
• Los Machucambos - Wikipedia
• cdrdao: cdrdao is a free and open source utility software application for authoring and ripping of audio and data CD-ROMs
• cdrdao-pled: Portable Linux x86_64 pre-built download of the open source CD burning/ripping utility cdrdao that works on all modern Linux distros.
• freac.org: fre:ac is a free audio converter and CD ripper with support for various popular formats and encoders
• k3b: Full-featured CD/DVD/Blu-ray burning and ripping application
• CD writing using cdrecord
• xfburn
• jlesage/docker-xfburn: Docker container for Xfburn
• OpenWrt One
• OpenWrt One Introduction
• Banana Pi OpenWrt One
• Banana Pi OpenWrt One PCBA Router Board
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• mjvc's 2014 nix config
• incus gpu docs
• veyman's immich-frame config
• GitHub - LACT: Linux GPU Configuration Tool
• exislow/tidal-dl-ng: Multithreaded TIDAL Media Downloader Next Generation! Up to HiRes Lossless / TIDAL MAX 24-bit, 192 kHz.
• ebb-earl-co/tidal-wave: Waving at the TIDAL music service
• DXX-Rebirth — DXX-Rebirth is a modern port of the Descent game engine, based on the late D1X and D2X source ports (which, in turn, were based on the original Descent source release and LDescent). The Rebirth Team has spent a lot of time working to improve the source code by fixing old bugs and adding some improvements, while always staying true to our philosophy: Keep it Descent!
• Descent on GOG.COM
• dxx-rebirth on GitHub

The Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition is out, and Paulus Schoutsen, the founder of Home Assistant, joins us to get into the details.

Then, Alex and a special guest get into docker-compose vs. nix to manage your home lab.

Special Guest: Paulus Schoutsen.

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• Unraid: A powerful, easy operating system for servers and storage. Maximize your hardware with unmatched flexibility.
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• Keebio: Sign up for their newsletter to get 5% off your first order.

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• 🇨🇦 Bitcoin Well — Empowering sovereign ownership with free automatic self-custody 🔒
• 🎉 Boost with Fountain FM — Fountain 1.1 with Nostr support, upgrades, and super simple Strike integration for easy Boosts. You can also Boost from the Web via their site.
• Home Assistant Voice —

It's the fifth annual Unplugged Tuxies; our community votes on the best projects, distros, and desktops of 2024. Join us for the final Tuxies, and the second annual Boosties!

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• LINUX Unplugged 542: 2023 Tuxies
• Annual Membership — Put your support on automatic with our annual plan, and get one month of membership for free!

We’re taking a victory lap down memory lane. From spooky-accurate predictions to "did we really say that?" moments, this one’s for the history books.

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• Mission Control: UK-based Mission Control can build Flutter and React Apps for companies big and small, including Fortune 500 companies or startups getting their first project off the ground. Reach out and tell them Coder sent you! Promo Code: Tell them Coder Radio Sent You!

Support Coder Radio

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• 💥 Gets Sats with Strike — Strike is a lightning-powered app that lets you quickly and cheaply grab sats in over 100 countries. Easily integrates with Fountain.fm. Setup your Strike account, and you have one of the world's best ways to buy sats.
• 🇨🇦 Bitcoin Well — Enable your independence with the fastest and safest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada and the USA. Focused on Bitcoin excellence, enabling true financial independence 🥇
• 📻 Boost with Fountain.FM — Boost with Fountain.FM and kick the tires on the Podcasting 2.0 revolution! 🚀
• Coder Radio 439: Github NoPilot — Microsoft has a bunch of new goodies for developers, but Mike is becoming more and more concerned about an insidious new feature.
• Coder Radio 421: Misdirected Request — Has Google already started its decline? Our surprising take.

Plus the trouble with Co-Pilot, and a lot more.