Tech News Roundup — July 17, 2026 (PM)

A quieter PM edition that still had real movement: id Software pushed back on “nerfed into the ground” rumors, Halo Studios quietly abandoned the Halo: The Endless trademark just weeks before cancelling Project Ekur, and four Phoronix stories cluster around open-source / kernel work. Plus a Pplware piece on WhatsApp’s global username rollout (in Portuguese).

Gaming

• id Software insists DOOM is alive. Studio head Hugo Martin, live on a YouTube playthrough of DOOM: The Dark Ages with community lead Joshua Boyle, addressed the post-Xbox-reset backlash head-on: “There have been reports that we’ve been nerfed into the ground and gutted, and we are not; we have 50 people, and that’s not true. We’re the size we were when we made Doom 2016, and IDTech is very much alive and well.” The reassurance comes two weeks after Microsoft cut roughly 136 id Software jobs in the wider 3,200-dev layoff wave. DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations is still landing with critics; the next title will be the real test. Windows Central

• Halo Studios drops the Halo: The Endless trademark. Content creator Sean Dubs dug up a USPTO filing showing Microsoft formally abandoned its 2021 application on April 1, 2026, just weeks before reports surfaced that the studio had cancelled its multiplayer “Project Ekur.” Halo Studios head Pierre Hintze, in a resurfaced interview, also admitted the Halo 5 narrative backlash — locking players out of playing Master Chief — was “imminent,” though he framed it as a general audience-expectation lesson rather than a roadmap. Windows Central

Linux & Open Source

• AMD stages more AMDGPU / AMDKFD work for Linux 7.3. With the merge window opening in late July, another batch of graphics-driver and compute-driver changes hit DRM-Next this week. Phoronix

• Arm posts the Core Local Accelerator Linux driver. A new open-source driver from Arm introduces a CPU-local interface — “CLA” — for programming attached accelerators. Designed as an agnostic interface, the initial target is an attached compute engine. Phoronix

• Mozilla AI ships Llamafile 0.10.4 with Transcribefile. The new Transcribefile component builds on Mozilla’s recently announced Transcribe.cpp project, giving the single-file LLM distribution a built-in transcription path. Phoronix

• OpenBLAS 0.3.34 released. Multi-threading improvements and support for a memory-safe C toolchain highlight this version of the popular open-source BLAS library. Phoronix

Policy & Platforms

• Trump Media launches “Truth API.” Trump Media announced a paid, real-time data feed giving Wall Street businesses “the fastest access to Truth Social’s most influential accounts.” Going live August 1st, pricing hasn’t been disclosed. The Trump family is the company’s largest shareholder — and the API product sits next to market-moving presidential posts. [The Verge]

• OMB’s “woke science” rule now threatens NASA grants. A proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget would give political appointees unprecedented control over federal science grant funding — the same pipeline that funds the search for organic compounds on Mars and the discovery of some of the earliest galaxies in the universe. The Planetary Society has been rallying public comments (which the OMB normally gets under 100 of); the rule has “net” hundreds. [The Verge]

Entertainment

• Amazon’s God Of War series is recasting Kratos. Sons of Anarchy star Ryan Hurst — already four episodes into filming — tore a bicep on a stunt and will be out long enough that Amazon is now hunting a new lead. Production is paused and eyeing a mid-October resume, pushing the show further out. [The Verge]

In Brief

• WhatsApp rolls out usernames globally (Portuguese). Pplware

Roundup compiled from the TTRSS Tech feed. 10 articles from 4 sources summarized.