Sometimes, as hackers and makers, we can end up with messy lashed-together gear that is neither reliable nor tidy. Rackmounting your stuff can be a great way to improve the robustness and liveability of your setup. If you find this appealing, you might like CageMaker by [WebMaka].

This parametric OpenSCAD script can generate mounts for all kinds of stuff. Maybe you have a little network switch that’s just a tangle of wires on your desk, or a few pieces of audio gear that are loosely stacked on top of each other and looking rather unkempt. It would be trivial with this tool to create some 3D printed adapters to get all that stuff laced up nice and neat in a rack instead.

If you’re eager to get tinkering, you can try out the browser-based version quite easily. We’ve featured similar work before, too—many a maker has trod the path of rackmounting, as it turns out.

Noise cancelling headphones are a great way to insulate yourself from the bustle of the city, but due to their power requirements, continuous use means frequent recharging. [Alessandro Sgarzi] has an elegant and unique solution — powering the noise cancelling electronics by harvesting energy from the ambient noise of the city via a sheet of piezoelectric film.

This impressive feat is achieved using a LTC3588-1 power harvesting IC and a pair of supercapacitors, while an STM32L011K4T6 microcontroller processes the input from a MEMS microphone and feeds a low-power class D amplifier. This circuit consumes an astounding 1.7 nW, a power that a noisy city is amply able to supply. Audio meanwhile comes via a traditional 3.5 mm connector, which we are told is the cool kids’ choice nowadays anyway.

We like this project, and since it’s part of our 2026 Green Powered Challenge, it’s very much in the spirit of the thing. You’ve just got time to get your own entry in, so get a move on!

George Lucas got so many nuances right in Star Wars. Little touches that said so much. One of the most overlooked is a moment that I vividly remember from first seeing it, on the big screen, as a kindergartener or thereabouts. It’s during the scene where Luke enters the Mos Eisley cantina. We still haven’t met Han Solo and Chewbacca. And while we’ve seen space ships and droids, stormtroopers and Darth Vader, Jawas and Tusken Raiders, every character we’ve seen in the flesh is a human. And then, boom, 45 minutes into the movie, we enter the cantina, and the joint is absolutely lousy with dozens of wild and wildly different aliens — including the band playing that iconic jaunty song. We suddenly learn just how diverse the galaxy really is. It’s one of the best and most memorable scenes in movie history.

The moment I’m talking about is when Luke enters with C-3PO and R2-D2, and the frighteningly gruff bartender barks at him:

                BARTENDER
      We don't serve their kind here!

Luke, still recovering from the shock of
seeing so many outlandish creatures, doesn't
quite catch the bartender's drift.

                LUKE
      What?

                BARTENDER
      Your droids. They'll have to wait 
      outside. We don't want them here.

Luke looks at old Ben, who is busy talking
to one of the Galactic pirates. He notices
several of the gruesome creatures along the
bar are giving him a very unfriendly glare.

Luke pats Threepio on the shoulder.

                LUKE
      Listen, why don't you wait out by 
      the speeder. We don't want any 
      trouble.

                THREEPIO
      I heartily agree with you sir.

As a kid, I didn’t get it. Why would you not want droids? Star Wars made robots seem so real, so fun. Why would you ban them? That scene has stuck with me for my entire life. I didn’t get why, but I understood what it meant about that galaxy: the underclass deeply resented droids. The bartender’s attitude wasn’t “Hey kid, I’m sorry, but rules are rules and they’re not permitted.” His attitude was “Get those fucking things out of here.”

I think about this scene more and more lately.

I’m not sure many OSNews readers still use Ubuntu as their operating system of choice, and from the release announcement of today’s Ubuntu 26.04 it’s clear why that’s the case.

Resolute Raccoon builds on the resilience-focused improvements introduced in interim releases, with TPM-backed full-disk encryption, improved support for application permission prompting, Livepatch updates for Arm-based servers, and Rust-based utilities for enhanced memory safety. This release brings native support for industry-leading AI/ML toolkits like NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm, making Ubuntu 26.04 LTS the ideal platform for AI development and production workloads. 

↫ Canonical press release

It’s obvious where Canonical’s focus lies with Ubuntu, and us desktop people who don’t like “AI” aren’t it. On top of all the “AI” nonsense, this new version comes with all the latest versions of the various open source components that make up a Linux distribution, as well as a slew of Rust-based replacements for core CLI tools, like sudo-rs, uutils coreutils, and more.

All the derivative release of Ubuntu, like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and others, will also be updated over the coming days. If you’re already running any of these, updating won’t be a surprise to you.

Browser fingerprinting is everywhere

Google markets its Chrome browser by citing its superior safety features, but according to privacy consultant Alexander Hanff, Chrome does not protect against browser fingerprinting – a method of tracking people online by capturing technical details about their browser.…