450 Tbps on One Fiber: Earth’s 4K Habit Fits Down a Strand

TL;DR

• UCL researchers achieve 450 Tbps data transmission record over 39 km using O, E, S-bands, 4Mx faster than prior record
• Linux gaming adoption surges to 5.33% as SteamOS 3 becomes top Linux distro, AMD and NVIDIA GPUs lead
• Microsoft's Windows 11 '100% native' app promise faces backlash as users report AI bloat, abstraction layers, and performance degradation

⚡️ 450 Tbps Fiber Shatters Record: UCL Links LA–London in Single-Strand Petabit Leap

450 Tbps just squeezed down one strand of glass—equal to every person on Earth streaming 4K at once 🌍⚡️ That’s 4 MILLION× last year’s lab best. Power & price tags still scary, but your next AI model will ride this pipe. Ready for London-LA in 0.3 sec?

University College London has clocked 450 terabits per second across 39 km of fiber between Los Angeles and its East-London lab—four million times the speed record set only sixteen months ago. By lighting up the normally idle O-, E- and S-bands with 258 finely tuned laser colours, the team crammed 1.2 million Zoom calls into a single strand no thicker than a human hair.

How the trick works

• Custom laser arrays carve the 493-nm window into hair-thin 30 GHz slots
• High-order QAM plus real-time digital processing cancel dispersion and fibre non-linearities
• Raman pumps and low-noise EDFAs keep the optical signal-to-noise ratio above 30 dB end-to-end

Why this matters now

• AI data thirst: training next-gen models already shuttles multi-exabyte tides daily; 450 Tbps shrinks a trans-Atlantic sync from hours to seconds
• Dark-fiber goldmine: >70% of long-haul routes run at <10% capacity; multi-band optics turn idle glass into revenue
• Capex relief: one upgraded fibre equals roughly 500 today’s 800 G links, cutting new-cable spending

Speed bumps ahead

• Price tag: $5k per custom channel prices the first full demo at over $1m
• Power draw: 3kW for 258 channels forces rethink of amplifier-cooling budgets
• Standards gap: ITU grids today stop at C/L; O/E/S rules must be written

What happens next

• 2026–2027: 10-channel pilot kits hit research backbones; 100 Tbps Europe–Asia segments for AI clouds
• 2028–2032: ITU adopts multi-band grid; at least two carriers deploy 300-500 Tbps Atlantic routes
• 2033–2035: commercial petabit links appear, fusing terrestrial fibre with laser satellite relays

The breakthrough shows that, far from hitting a physical wall, the global internet has barely used its first three colours. If engineers can trim cost and wattage, the fibre already in the ground will carry tomorrow’s AI—and whatever comes after—without laying another cable across the ocean.

🐧 Linux Gaming Share Jumps 3.1 Points to 5.33% on Steam in Single Month

5.33% of Steam gamers now run Linux—up 3.1 points in ONE month! That’s like 2.3x the entire population of Los Angeles ditching Windows overnight 😱. SteamOS 3 already powers 1 in 4 of them. Ready to join the penguin side, or is your GPU still stuck in Windows traffic?

Valve’s March survey of 132 million active Steam users shows Linux climbing from 2.13% to 5.33% in four weeks—its sharpest spike since records began. SteamOS 3 now powers roughly 1.7 million of those gamers, overtaking every other distro, while AMD’s RDNA 4 and NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 GPUs dominate the hardware stack. Over the same period, Windows 10’s share slid more than 10 percentage points, feeding an audience the size of Hong Kong into the open-source column.

How the flip happened
Monthly Proton updates, Steam Deck momentum, and day-one Linux drivers from AMD/NVIDIA removed the classic “reboot to Windows” friction. Gamers who once dual-boot now stay in SteamOS; installers from Arch, Ubuntu, and Mint auto-detect Steam libraries, shrinking setup time to minutes.

Market ripples

• Developers: 7 million new Linux players raise the business case for Vulkan/Proton builds → studios re-budget QA lanes.
• GPU makers: RDNA 4 and RTX 5070 fly off shelves; both firms report Linux-first certification roadmaps → tighter kernel collaboration.
• Microsoft: Windows share dips below 93% on Steam for the first time → accelerated Windows 11/12 feature bundles.
• Gamers: Used-game listings for Windows-only keys soften 5-8% as demand tilts.

What still lags
Anti-cheat compatibility, VR headsets, and niche streaming peripherals remain patchy; “Other” distros collectively outnumber SteamOS 3 users, hinting at fragmentation.

Outlook

• Q3 2026: Linux hits 6%; SteamOS 3 share nears 27%.
• 2027: 7-8% base if AAA publishers ship Proton-native builds.
• 2028: AMD/NVIDIA co-brand “SteamOS-ready” GPUs; Windows share slides toward 88%.

A 150% jump in one month is no longer a rounding error—it’s a signal that the last barrier to mainstream Linux gaming has fallen.

💾 Windows 11 Cuts File-Explorer Lag 75% but RAM Appetite Swells 10% in US Rollout

75% faster File Explorer, 30% quicker Start menu—yet Windows 11 now guzzles 10% more RAM on your 8GB laptop 🚀💾 Microsoft’s “100% native” vow still leaves Outlook & Edge hooked on Chromium. Who’s ready to trade battery life for snappier clicks? — Will your next PC need 16GB just to feel ‘light’?

On 27 March, Microsoft formed a “100 % native” team and vowed to rebuild Windows 11’s inbox apps atop its WinUI 3 framework.
One week later, Insider builds still ship Outlook, Edge, and parts of File Explorer inside Chromium-based WebView2 wrappers, and baseline RAM demand has crept up 5-10 % on 8 GB machines.
The gap between slogan and silicon is now measurable in milliseconds and megabytes.

How the rewrite is (and isn’t) working

WinUI 3 C++ code has replaced three WebView2 bridges in Start, Settings, and Taskbar, cutting File Explorer folder-open latency 75 % (≈2 s → 0.5 s).
Yet every Copilot hook injects a 3-5 MB RAM micro-service; multiply by 15 surface points and the OS quietly swallows an extra 200 MB at boot.
Outlook’s new “native” pilot still compiles 30 % of its UI from React-based components, so WebView2 remains in memory even when the user never opens a web page.

Impacts in parallel

Performance: 0.5 s faster folder opens → 30 % quicker Start launch, but 5-10 % higher RAM use cancels gains on 4 GB tablets.
Trust: “100 % native” marketing clashes with bundled web code → Reddit and enterprise IT threads tagging the release as “Copilot-bloat SP1”.
Competition: macOS Sonoma idles at 3.8 GB RAM on the same hardware → Microsoft’s 8 GB “recommended” baseline now looks like a spec bump, not an optimization.

Institutional response

Microsoft’s 3 April clarification swapped the native absolutism for “disciplined shell improvements” and gave admins a 30-day patch-deferral lever.
The Feedback Hub introduced public latency dashboards—yet still omits per-process RAM tallies.
European customers, citing the Digital Markets Act, are piloting an Outlook Lite image that trims 120 MB from the runtime footprint; no U.S. timetable exists.

Outlook timeline

• Apr–May 2026: Insider channels drop Copilot from Mail, Calendar, and Widgets; RAM target claw-back ~3 %.
• Q3 2026: Outlook native UI preview lands; if parity reached, WebView2 embargo for inbox apps.
• H2 2027: Windows 11 “lite” image ships for 8 GB devices; AI features flip to opt-in; 4 GB class devices moved to cloud-shell option.

Bottom line

Microsoft can shave half-seconds off clicks, but every unchecked web widget adds memory back.
Until Redmond publishes a line-by-line accounting of what “native” actually means, the Windows 11 story reads like a press release fighting its own task manager.