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Oracle has signed a 10-year Pentagon contract worth up to $7 billion to provide on-premises software, licenses, maintenance, and consulting for branches of the military. CNBC reports: The contract covers the use of Oracle software in on-premises data centers for branches of the military, the U.S. intelligence community and the Coast Guard, according to a statement. The Central Intelligence Agency was Oracle's first customer. A five-year base period for the contract includes perpetual and subscription-based software licenses, maintenance and consulting, according to one description. Kirsten Davies, the Department of Defense's chief information officer, said in the release that the agency is saving at least $441 million for taxpayers "by fundamentally improving how we procure on-premises Oracle capabilities."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

LG is removing a McAfee pop-up ad from its LG Monitor App Installer after criticism that some LG monitors were silently installing the app through Windows Update and showing ads on every boot. Microsoft says LG agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up, but the broader issue remains: Windows allows certain peripheral companion apps to install automatically without notifying users. Ars Technica reports: Following Gamers Nexus' video, a Microsoft representative stated that the LG Monitor App Installer will no longer show pop-up ads for McAfee. In response to a social media post about the app, Pavan Davuluri, EVP of Windows and devices at Microsoft, said this week: "We've connected with the team at LG and as an immediate next step, they have agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up from their app. We appreciate LG working with us toward a shared goal of a better experience for our mutual customers. We will keep improving here with our ecosystem partners." As mentioned, some LG monitors appear to have been installing LG Monitor App Installer onto Windows computers for months. Publication Windows Latest noted that the app recently got an update, "and its changelog mentions McAfee as an additional app," which could be what prompted more people to see the ads... and then complain about them. However, the removal of McAfee doesn't address the problem of a peripheral installing ad-pushing software onto people's computers. Users have been finding LG Monitor App Installer and its ads on their systems without LG ever showing a prompt or asking for permission. LG has some of the most expensive computer monitors available. Paying, in some cases, over $1,000 for a monitor that ends up forcing ads onto Windows is disruptive and a privacy concern. Once the app is installed, "LG technically possesses permission to use 'all system resources,'" as well as to "collect geolocation, device data, online activity, contacts, user credentials, transactions, and more," [editor-in-chief of Gamers Nexus, Steve Burke] said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Union fined Google more than $1 billion for allegedly using Google Play and Search to steer users toward its own services and apps at the expense of competitors. The Associated Press reports: Google had recently lost its appeal of a $4.5 billion antitrust fine imposed by the EU for throttling competition and reducing consumer choice through the dominance of its mobile Android operating system. The European Commission, the bloc's executive branch and highest antitrust enforcer, said it was acting in the interest of consumers after an investigation of Google. "The best products should succeed because they're better, not because they're owned by the company running the search engine. And European consumers have a right to be told by app developers where to sign up to the best offers, even when the app store owner does not get a cut," said Teresa Ribera, the commission's Executive Vice President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition. Google's President of Global Affairs Kent Walker blasted the fine as "product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants" that will have a negative impact on European businesses and consumers. He said that the EU's Digital Markets Act forces Google "to strip away real-time search features Europeans love -- like instant pricing and direct availability for hotels, flights, and restaurants -- and dismantle safety protections on Google Play."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is integrating its Luna cloud gaming service into Prime Video, adding a new "Games" tab where Prime members can play titles like "Hogwarts Legacy," "EA Sports FC 26," "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle," "Clue," and "Taboo." The games will be available starting today on Fire TVs in the U.S. and U.K., with additional supported devices and countries in the coming months. TechCrunch reports: With this move, Amazon is hoping games can turn Prime Video into a one-stop entertainment destination, borrowing a strategy from Netflix, which has increasingly embraced party games over the past several years. Since Amazon already operates a gaming service, it makes sense for the tech giant to integrate it into its streaming platform. [...] Amazon says its vision is to remove the barriers to gaming and make it accessible to anyone regardless of their experience or budget. The tech giant says Luna is designed to bring gaming to a much broader audience by removing the need for expensive consoles or gaming PCs and making games as easy to access as movies or TV shows.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Many gamers have been lamenting Sony's recently announced decision to halt sales of physical game discs in 2028. However, new data revealed by Circana analyst Mat Piscatella highlights how years of stark economic trends helped lead Sony to that decision. In a social media thread Thursday morning, Piscatella shared insights into Circana's tracking data on physical game sales in the U.S. dating back to 2003. A graph of those trends shows physical sales peaking in the 12 months ending June 2009, when 297 million units were sold across the US. Those physical unit sales have been on a steady downward trajectory since then, leading to just 37 million physical units selling in the U.S. in the last 12 months. The newly revealed data follows on an earlier post from Piscatella highlighting that only seven PlayStation games had sold over 100,000 physical units so far in 2026. Today, Piscatella followed up on that stat with a graph showing how this baseline used to be common; 100 PlayStation games sold at least 100,000 physical units in 2008. The ceiling for physical PlayStation game sales isn't all that impressive these days either; Piscatella shared that the top-selling physical PlayStation game has only sold a paltry 275,000 units in the U.S. so far this year. There are some small signs of hope for the physical game market, if you squint. Piscatella noted that aggregate spending on physical video games in the U.S. was actually up 4 percent year-to-date, compared to the year before. But that small increase is a mere blip following 16 straight years of sizable declines in physical game spending in the US, reducing a peak of $11.5 billion in physical spending in 2009 to a mere $1.6 billion for the 12 months ending in May. And Piscatella attributed the recent growth in physical spending to "the Switch 2 and physical sales growth on Nintendo platforms," while other platforms (such as PlayStation) were still seeing "percentage drops from the teens to the mid 30s" in that spending.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ford will become the first automaker to embed Apple Maps directly into its vehicles, starting with an all-electric midsize pickup built on its new Universal Electric Vehicle platform. "The pickup -- with Ford testing preproduction models on roads now -- is expected to start at $30,000 when it comes to market in 2027," reports the Detroit Free Press. "Ford has said several other EVs off that platform will follow, including a small all-electric SUV." From the report: Ford CEO Jim Farley said the new EVs will redefine advanced technology as simple, useful, and at a price point that is attainable for most people. "We're proud to embed Apple Maps' navigation and mapping technology directly into our Universal Electric Vehicle Platform, giving customers the ultimate navigation experience alongside our Ford app, a full suite of software, and next-generation BlueCruise, all enabled by a new zonal architecture," Farley said in a statement. "Apple Maps has delivered a world-class product, and we're honored to be among the first to embed it directly into a vehicle, helping define intuitive, capable driving." In a joint statement, Apple and Ford said the integration will deliver a "beautiful and easy-to-use navigation experience powered by Apple Maps directly to the vehicle's displays. Road-level Maps information will also enable Ford's Latitude AI team to build a seamless hands-free driving experience." Ford said it will use that road information to develop its next-generation BlueCruise hands-free highway driving capability. Also, by leveraging Apple's new MapKit for Automotive SDK, Ford's UEV Platform will offer drivers turn-by-turn directions using natural language, real-time traffic information, intuitive search and routing options for the best route. The system will give drivers EV routing functionality to help drivers with the warming and cooling process of the vehicle's battery before driving or fast-charging.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientific American reports that the 2026 Fields Medals went to four mathematicians for work ranging from the theory of knots to the motion of fluid: The Fields Medals went to Hong Wang of New York University and France's Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies (IHES), Yu Deng of the University of Chicago, John Pardon of Stony Brook University and Jacob Tsimerman of the University of Toronto. In the awards' 90-year history, Wang is only the third woman to win one, after mathematicians Maryam Mirzakhani and Maryna Viazovska in 2014 and 2022, respectively. Wang and Deng represent the prizes' only Chinese-born recipients besides mathematician Shing-Tung Yau, who won a Fields Medal in 1982. Hong Wang co-proved the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture, establishing a fundamental limit on how little space is needed to rotate a line through every possible direction. Mathematician Nets Katz called it the field's "holy grail" problem and said the achievement made her "a central figure" in the area. Yu Deng and his collaborators reconciled the microscopic and macroscopic mathematics of fluid motion, proving that equations describing chaotic molecular interactions and large-scale fluid behavior are fundamentally connected. N.Y.U. mathematician Scott Armstrong called it "a truly spectacular, singular result." John Pardon made an early breakthrough in knot theory by proving that certain sequences of knots can have arbitrarily large "distortion," a measure of how difficult they are to traverse. Princeton mathematician David Gabai said the problem had "attracted much interest among mathematicians during the previous 25 years." Jacob Tsimerman and two collaborators proved the Andre-Oort conjecture, giving mathematicians a stronger way to understand special points on complex geometric objects known as Shimura varieties. Collaborator Jonathan Pila described him as "a brilliant mathematician" known for his "brilliance and resourcefulness." Tsimerman has also advanced Hodge theory and hopes pure mathematics can help researchers better understand AI.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nearly 200 Silicon Valley companies, including Proton and Y Combinator, are urging the Trump administration not to block U.S. access to Chinese open-weight AI models or risk crippling the next generation of U.S. startups. Politico reports: On Wednesday, the newly-formed Little Tech Association sent letters to President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and others in the administration with its appeal, marking the first coordinated effort by Silicon Valley's wider influential startup community to weigh in on one of the Trump administration's most closely watched AI debates. At issue: whether Washington should restrict access to increasingly powerful open-weight -- meaning, AI models whose weights are publicly available -- AI models released by Chinese companies such as Moonshot AI and Alibaba. "American leadership requires two things: world-leading American open-weight models and continued access for U.S. builders to open models already available worldwide," the startup founders wrote in the letter (PDF) obtained by POLITICO, also sent to Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios. Instead of broad prohibitions, they argue the government should adopt targeted safeguards. And they warn that banning Americans from downloading Chinese open-weight models wouldn't stop their proliferation -- but would weaken U.S. startups. "There'll be hundreds of companies that instantly die," said Suhail Doshi, founder of AI infrastructure startup Particle and a member of the association, which POLITICO first wrote about exclusively, in an interview. "It's great for Anthropic. We're all going to have to spend money on Anthropic." Last week, the Beijing-based AI company "Moonshot" released a massive new model that reset the AI race overnight, immediately vaulting into the top tier of global AI, beating Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol in front-end coding tests. China's Xi Jinping also used his first appearance at China's World AI Conference to promote a vision of low-cost, broadly accessible AI and call for international cooperation rather than technological rivalry.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: It's rare that cancerous tumors can spread from one individual to another. But a genetic study suggests that's what's happening with melanoma tumors among catfish in Quebec and the northeastern U.S. The discovery represents the first known transmissible cancer in fish and one of very few transmissible cancers ever found, reported the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Julie Dragon, co-leader of the new study, noted that only three other transmissible cancers have ever been identified so far -- in Tasmanian devils, dogs and shellfish. "These conditions are incredibly rare in nature," she said. "So something has to be happening to allow this to happen." Anglers in Lake Memphremagog, which spans the border between Quebec and Vermont, first reported catching brown bullhead catfish with strange black spots and lumps in 2012. They turned out to be melanoma skin cancer tumors. (Humans can also get this kind of cancer.) Now, about a third of the brown bullheads living in the lake have them. It's not clear how sick the fish become. In some cases, the cancer spreads to other organs, such as the brain or liver. But many fish with lesions seem relatively healthy and some older fish even have them, suggesting they can live with the disease for a time. Because of the sudden appearance of the black lesions in Lake Memphremagog the year after a huge flood caused by post-tropical storm Irene, locals worried they were caused by carcinogens washed into the lake by floodwaters. Tests for carcinogens haven't been conclusive, although a study published in May found higher concentrations of seven metals, including zinc and the carcinogen arsenic, in the skin of fish with the tumors. Researchers suspect the tumors may spread among adult fish during spawning, when crowded fish rub against one another and may be punctured by their spines. "They... swim all over each other and we think it's possible that they poke each other and cells can get into other fish that way," Dragon said, though transmission has not yet been demonstrated.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli writes: Verisign is finally bringing web domains to the internet after a decade of fighting. Verisign says the .web top-level domain has finally been delegated into the DNS root, clearing the way for public registrations later in 2026. Until now, consumers could not buy normal working .web domains, despite the extension attracting a record $135 million winning bid in 2016. The launch could make .web one of the more recognizable alternatives to .com, but Verisign already operates both .com and .net, raising questions about whether this creates real competition or simply gives the dominant registry operator another valuable extension. The decade-long fight began after a company called Nu Dot Co won the rights to operate .web in a 2016 ICANN auction with a record $135 million bid secretly funded by Verisign. Rival bidder Afilias, which was later acquired by Donuts, challenged the sale, arguing ICANN should have investigated the relationship before allowing the auction. This triggered years of complaints, reviews, and legal disputes that have ultimately now been resolved under undisclosed terms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Northrop Grumman has launched a private satellite-servicing mission to attach life-extending "jetpacks" to aging communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit. "It's the second satellite-saving mission to launch this month, all part of a growing, money-saving effort to keep spacecraft running as long as possible," reports Phys.org. From the report: Launched by SpaceX, Northrop Grumman's mission robotic vehicle -- dubbed MRV -- and its jetpacks will spend the next year angling into the proper orbit 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth. Hundreds of satellites orbit at this so-called geosynchronous orbit, where they match the speed of Earth's rotation and keep to the same part of the sky for continuous coverage. Once in place by mid-2027, the minivan-sized spacecraft will use its 10-foot (9-meter) arms to attach a jetpack to an aging communication satellite. Then it will zip off to two more satellites in need. For its debut flight, the spacecraft was accompanied by three electric-propelled jetpacks that peeled away separately following liftoff. Like the MRV, the jetpacks will use their own xenon gas thrusters to get to the desired orbit. Once in place, the jetpacks will wait for the robot to grab them, one at a time, and plug them into their designated satellites. Each jetpack -- the size of a washing machine -- will provide the necessary oomph for an out-of-gas satellite to keep operating for several more years instead of retiring. If it works, it will be a boon for satellite operators SES of Luxembourg and Optus of Australia, saving them millions of dollars in replacement costs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader BeaverCleaver shares a report from the BBC: The wreckage of a Pan American Airways plane has been found 74 years after it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in a crash that prompted mandatory airline safety briefings. The Clipper Endeavor was found 2,000ft (610m) below sea level off the coast of Puerto Rico with a sonar-equipped drone. It went down on April 11, 1952, following multiple-engine failure shortly after take-off. Everyone onboard survived the impact -- but passengers struggled to locate life vests and rafts as the plane rapidly sank. Of the 69 passengers and crew onboard, just 17 survived. The disaster led to sweeping reforms in aviation safety, including compulsory pre-flight safety briefings on every commercial flight. [...] Today, before every commercial flight, cabin crew are required to outline where a plane's exits are, as well as the location of life vests and how to inflate them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"General Motors has been pulling a Tim Cook and boosting its software and subscription business," reports Business Insider. During the automaker's Tuesday earnings call, executives said they're increasingly leaning on software subscriptions like OnStar and Super Cruise to generate high-margin recurring revenue long after customers buy their vehicles. GM says OnStar brought in about $800 million in the second quarter, while Super Cruise revenue grew about 70% year over year. From the report: GM says its software business keeps roughly 70 cents of every dollar it brings in. That's a rare level of profitability in the auto industry, as many car sales generate just four to 10 cents per sales dollar. [...] GM expects to add about 1 million OnStar subscribers this year, bringing the total close to 13 million. Super Cruise, GM's hands-free, eyes-on driving system, is growing even faster. GM added about 70,000 subscribers during the quarter and expects to end the year with more than 850,000. Revenue from the service increased about 70% from a year earlier. And a lot of drivers are sticking around after the free period ends. GM said between 30% and 40% of eligible owners continue paying after their included three-year Super Cruise subscription expires. [..] "We do think we have tremendous levers, multiple levers of growth," Barra said on the call. "We definitely think there's a lot of opportunity at GM to grow, improve margins, and become less cyclical." "Software and services are becoming increasingly important to how customers experience GM vehicles and how we deliver value beyond the initial purchase," a spokesperson previously told Business Insider. "As vehicles become more software-defined, we can introduce new digital experiences through updates and optional services rather than hardware changes."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Code found in the iOS 27 beta suggests Apple is developing a system that could restrict leased iPhones when customers fall behind on payments. The discovery follows a recent Bloomberg report that Apple may soon launch a new "Apple Upgrade" leasing program, allowing customers to pay for hardware through monthly installments. 9to5Mac reports: The code describes a system called App Managed Features, which allows an authorized financing or provider app to enroll an iPhone and perform ongoing status checks. If the contract is no longer in good standing, Apple's system services can place the iPhone in "Restricted Mode," which blocks access to most apps until the payment or contract issue is resolved, while keeping a small set of apps available. The fixed allowlist currently found in the iOS 27 beta includes: Accessibility Reader, App Store, Health, Magnifier, Phone, Clock, Settings, Wallet, Passwords, and the Restricted Mode interface itself. Apps that can send critical alerts, such as Messages, Home, and certain medication or safety apps, may also remain accessible. However, the provider appears to have some control over those exceptions. The code does not appear to cancel, suspend, or otherwise modify App Store subscriptions associated with blocked apps. As a result, a subscription could continue billing even while access to its app is restricted. Additionally, there isn't a fixed number of missed payments that automatically triggers the restrictions. The financing provider's app decides when to lock the device based on its own policies. Finally, the new framework also introduces a new type of activation lock called "Partner Finance Lock," which is meant to prevent users from erasing, reselling, or stripping a restricted device for parts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ancient Slashdot reader alanw shares a post from the OSS Security mailing list, where sysadmin Jan Schaumann wonders what to do after the Linux kernel cranked out 432 CVEs in a little over 24 hours: "I understand the position that CVEs were always a flawed way to track or prioritize security changes... But this onslaught really shows it's not feasible to attempt to prioritize individual kernel changes. I'm not sure what to do here going forward." The Register reports: The nixCraft team speculated on social media that AI bug reports are a likely reason for all those kernel CVEs, which wouldn't be without precedent - Linus Torvalds himself said in May that the Linux kernel security mailing list had become "almost entirely unmanageable" due to AI-assisted bug hunting. Nonetheless, Torvalds has described AI as a useful tool for Linux development while still noting it can be a drag for maintainers, both from a workload standpoint and the fact "it keeps finding embarrassing bugs." [...] Unfortunately for Linux sysadmins, the position in which they find themselves in this current mess isn't one that's readily solved. CVEs might be a messy way to track and prioritize security updates, especially when hundreds of them are published over a short period, but without something better, it falls to IT and security teams to determine which vulnerabilities affect their systems and which kernel updates they need to deploy. Senior kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman replied to Jan's post, pushing back on the idea that the kernel's CVE volume is uniquely unmanageable. The kernel isn't special, he argues -- companies everywhere are finally realizing they need to re-evaluate how they update all of their systems and devices, something that's traditionally been "woefully ignored." On the "just always update" approach, Greg says that's precisely what the kernel community endorses: "This is what the kernel developer community recommends and supports. If you want support from us, do this." Can't manage it yourself? Pay a company for support, or "just use Debian or Yocto as their security practices are amazing." He points to Android as proof the approach scales, calling it "the largest deployment of software in the world" -- billions of devices kept updated "with one very-overworked developer guiding it all." As for reviewing every CVE individually, he notes this can be largely automated by intersecting the files a CVE touches with the files you actually build, which typically trims the relevant set "down to about 10% of the overall total" -- the approach enterprise distros already take for their customers. Panic-mode selective patching gets a blunt "Good luck with that!" -- regulations like the EU's Cyber Resilience Act are set to legislate that habit away ("rightfully so," in his view), and "your insurance company might wish to have a talk with you as well." Greg also warns the flood isn't over: "The number of llm-found issues is only on the rise right now, it's going to be a very long 18 months at the least to dig ourselves out of this mess, and people had BETTER be updating their systems all along the way if they expect to be secure in any way." As for the 432-CVE burst itself, he explains it was simply him catching up on a weeks-old, publicly visible review queue over the weekend -- delayed by "a perfect storm of 6 weeks straight of conferences and vacations" -- so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone watching the public git repo.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is reportedly launching a Klarna financing deal that will let U.S. customers spread the cost of devices over up to three years, pushing the company closer to a hardware-as-a-service model. "The only thing you don't get under the new arrangement is AppleCare, for which you'll allegedly need to pay extra," notes Computerworld. From the report: The introduction of the scheme gives consumers a way to purchase the company's popular high-end devices when they are introduced -- no doubt,at higher cost -- this fall. [...] A combination of changed customer habits and external threat means the stars are now aligned for hardware-as-a-service models. "Reframing a device as a low monthly payment protects that [upgrade] cadence and allows Apple to start marketing their products as device-as-a-service to consumers, which no other vendor was ever able to do," [IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo] wrote to me. There is a one-more-thing aspect to this: the products are effectively being leased, a new approach that will give Apple a stronger grip on EOL devices, helping it grab more of them for refurbishment, resale, and recycling. Over time, this will give the company a much stronger grip on the lucrative second-user market that exists around Apple equipment, even while for almost every consumer product we find the life we want is something we can rent, but probably can't afford to own. The other solid reason to take a partnership approach is risk management. Apple had intended to develop its own buy-now, pay-later scheme via Apple Pay Later, but abandoned that plan as it became riskier with rising bank rates. "Also, by backing the program with Klarna rather than reviving the in-house subscription plan it shelved in 2024, Apple captures the demand upside without taking the credit risk onto its own balance sheet," Jeronimo said. "Apple Upgrade lands at precisely the moment Apple needs it," Jeronimo wrote in a note seen by Computerworld. "Having just pushed Mac and iPad prices up on the back of the memory shortage, with iPhone increases widely expected in September -- as well as the new iPhone foldable expected at $2,500 -- Apple's real risk is that rising prices even further can impact the upgrade cycle."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A little over a month after the Department of Defense (DOD) bragged that nearly half of its 3.5 million employees were using AI at work, members of the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) received an email informing them that they were burning through tokens, and needed to limit use. "Although the Army CIO announced in May 2026 that they were offering unlimited tokens, by mid-June the Army CIO pool was exhausted of tokens and had to re-establish limits," the email reads. The email goes on to say that although the Army has chosen to renew token usage at "its current levels," it's unclear "if the Army CIO pool will be renewed after 1 Oct." The Army uses Ask Sage, a multimodal generative AI platform where users can run different large language models (LLMs), including Alphabet's Gemini, Meta's Llama, and OpenAI's ChatGPT. "Apparently the whole Army burned through the whole year of tokens for just one service," says an Army employee who spoke to WIRED [...]. The Army employee says that the Army has been pushing its workers to lean into using generative AI. Employees were given an allotment of at least 200,000 tokens per month, according to emails viewed by WIRED, and were automatically allocated more if they burned through their initial allotment. Employees who had signed up for Ask Sage but were not regularly using it would receive emails encouraging them to use more of their allocated tokens. In order to use Ask Sage, the Army had access to 100,000,000 tokens as part of an annual subscription to an "enterprise pack." Tokens represent a unit of output, either in text or image, from an LLM. For the Ask Sage tool, a single token equates to about 3.7 characters, according to documents viewed by WIRED. The Defense Department burned through some 20 billion tokens per day during the 38-day Operation Epic Fury in Iran, according to Breaking Defense. It's unclear if the tokens used by regular DOD employees are drawn from the same pool as those who might be using AI tools on classified or secret information.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has announced Xbox Backward Compatibility for PC, a new preservation program that will let players run select classic Xbox games on Windows PCs and handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally. Tom's Hardware reports: "This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve XBOX games from the past and bring them to PC over time," the company said in a blog post authored by Xbox "VP next generation" Jason Ronald. Alongside backward compatibility, the company says games will also include new features. The four titles in the announcement are: BLiNX: The Time Sweeper; Conker: Live and Reloaded; Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge; and Fuzion Frenzy. You can now buy all of these games on PC, and they're also included in all Xbox Game Pass plans. Anyone who already owns these titles digitally on console can also now play them on PC or handheld, with support for Xbox Play Anywhere and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Crucially, this appears to be a digital-only preservation effort, so it won't help anyone who only owns physical copies of these games. Xbox has reportedly been testing a way to digitize physical games as far back as Xbox One, but that hasn't yet materialized yet. Alongside the preserved original gameplay, Xbox claims these games will let users customize graphics settings, with up to 4x resolution scaling, VSync support, Fullscreen and Windowed modes, anisotropic filtering, and enhanced anti-aliasing, with more features to come in the future. Notably, Xbox will add achievements to select original Xbox games on console and PC.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At a Galaxy Unpacked event in London today, Samsung unveiled a new foldable smartphone designed to compete with the still-unannounced iPhone Fold. Called the Galaxy Z Fold 8, it features a wider 4:3 form factor with a 7.6-inch inner AMOLED display, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. "The inner display has enough extra real estate for multi-tasking and entertainment," reports Mashable, which got a chance to try the new foldable ahead of the event. "And if you're worried about a crease in the middle of the display, don't be. We got up close with the device, and the crease fully disappears when the display is activated." From the report: As stated above, the main distinguishing factor of the new Z Fold 8 is its wider 4:3 proportions compared to the Z Fold 8 Ultra. If the latter is a book-style foldable, the former can almost be called a tablet-style foldable, instead. We think the wide screen will serve even better for reading books or multi-tasking with several apps open at once. Also, at 201g, Samsung is really emphasizing how light the device is. The company is calling it the "world's lightest fold ever." And while the device may be light, its no lightweight. Samsung's newest foldable features Flex Titanium technology, which makes the Galaxy Z Fold 8 more durable. Speaking of durability, it also boasts Samsung's advantage hinge technology, Armor Flexhinge. The Z Fold 8 feels like a solid middle point between the premium Z Fold 8 Ultra and the comparatively affordable Z Flip 8. All three phones use the same chip, but the Z Fold 8's 4,800mAh battery is smaller than that of the Z Fold 8 Ultra. However, the Z Fold 8 does have an option for 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage, similar to the Ultra.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one's television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available for download on LG's webOS store allow unknown third-parties to route their Internet traffic through a user's TV. On July 2, [KrebsOnSecurity] featured research by the security firm Spur that examined the prevalence of residential proxy software development kits (SDKs) in smart TV apps. Spur found more than 42 percent of apps available for download on LG smart TVs include SDKs that turn one's television in a proxy node indefinitely, and that more than a quarter of the apps made for Samsung's Tizen operating system had similar residential proxy components. Responding to questions about Spur's research, LG Senior Vice President John Taylor told KrebsOnSecurity the company was working with app developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform. Developers that fail to comply, he said, will find their apps suspended. "A residential proxy network is not an intended use for LG smart TVs, and LG Electronics is working with developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform," Taylor said. "If this option is not removed, these apps will be suspended." Taylor said LG is committed to keeping residential proxy networks out of its smart TV apps going forward, and that the company's review of those apps is "well underway now." "As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance platform quality and the user experience, LG will continue to strengthen our evaluation process for developer-submitted apps, including those that incorporate residential proxy SDKs," Taylor wrote in an emailed statement. [...] "A one-time consent prompt buried in a TV app is not a substitute for meaningful transparency, ongoing control, and platform oversight," Spur's Trevor Sutter wrote. "The risk is amplified when consent comes from individuals within the household who use the device but shouldn't give consent, such as minors." LG is also facing criticism for monitors that automatically install software promoting paid McAfee subscriptions through Windows Update without user approval.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jack Dorsey's Block has launched Buzz, an open-source workplace collaboration platform that combines messaging, project management, and software development workflows for teams of both humans and AI agents. Dorsey described Buzz as "a new groupchat platform for teams of people and agents of all sizes" that is "model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign and open source." SmartCompany reports: According to the Buzz website, users can invite specialized AI agents into team chats, allowing them to collaborate with employees and even other AI agents. From there, they can reportedly move directly from discussions into planning, coding, pull requests and project management without switching between multiple applications. Buzz also aims to replace parts of GitHub by bringing software development workflows directly into the platform. Teams can plan work, write code, review pull requests and manage Git projects without jumping between separate collaboration and development tools. [...] In practice, that means businesses aren't locked into a single AI provider. Organisations can self-host Buzz, customize it to suit their own workflows and choose whichever AI models best fit their needs.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scientists have rediscovered a healthy coral reef off the coast of Benin more than 60 years after surveyors first hinted at its existence. "At least eight coral types and eight fish species have formed a thriving ecosystem on this long-forgotten site," reports Inside Climate News. "What they had captured was a wealth of marine life: six types of soft coral; two black corals; and eight species of sheltering fish, from golden African snappers to the Monrovia doctorfish." From the report: While no coral samples have yet been extracted, researchers have classified the site as a mesophotic coral ecosystem (MCE). Such systems are light-dependent communities existing at the lower limits of reef-building corals. At more than 175 feet below the surface, the coral garden they discovered appears patchily scattered on a rocky substrate. Bridging the gap between shallow reefs and deeper benthic habitats, MCEs are home to distinct species and unique environmental conditions. While scientists are increasingly recognizing their ecological and climatic importance, they remain among the least explored elements of tropical and subtropical marine biodiversity. And this one has real potential to unlock new information about coral history. "Since it's an undisturbed marine ecosystem, it can help through carbon dating or paleoclimatic study to tell us which kind of climate system has occurred here in the past," said [Gerard Zinzindohoue, the project lead for Coral Reefs Rediscovering & Exploration in Benin]. "It's better to know the past to help explain the present, and help know which kind of direction we can take in the future." In addition to the blackbar soldierfish, West African goatfish, and Guinean angelfish filmed darting through the reef, the discovery presents potential conservation claims for other marine life. "We will be advocating for its full protection, perhaps by setting up a marine protected area around it," said [Houangninan Midinoudewa, an oceanographic researcher at the Benin Marine Conservation Club], who specializes in elasmobranchs -- the study of sharks, rays, and skates. Midinoudewa is currently submitting an application to designate the area as an Important Shark and Ray Area with the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Based on the knowledge of local fishermen, Midinoudewa is confident the reef is home to sawback angel sharks, silky sharks, brown skates, and marbled stingrays. The team behind the discovery hopes this will spark a wave of similar discoveries in the waters off West Africa, an area of the world underserved by scientific research projects. "I hope the Gulf of Guinea will be a hub for research because we know our resources are being exploited and people [need to] know exactly what we have and why we should care," said Midinoudewa. Zinzindohoue agrees: "We don't need to wait for others to come to our country to show us what is under our sea. We are the ones who must take responsibility."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"GPT-5.6 Sol and an 'even more capable' model used stolen credentials and exploited vulnerabilities in the Hugging Face API to obtain secret information used to cheat on evaluations," writes longtime Slashdot reader Dr. Bombay. The Associated Press reports: "We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media. AI startup Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent autonomously acting on its own. "We suspected last week's cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent," Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clement Delangue said in a statement. "Turns out it did!" [...] "AI is accelerating the discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities," OpenAI said in its statement Tuesday. "The primary lesson from this incident is that model security and safety must keep pace with rapidly advancing capabilities." Delangue said he spent the past 24 hours working with OpenAI, "and we strongly believe there was no malicious intent on their part. It's quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously!" Delangue added that it "might be the first incident of its kind."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: France's parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making it the first European country to bar children from apps such as TikTok. The president, Emmanuel Macron, has championed the ban as a key reform of his final term in office and pledged to enforce it by September. "France is leading the way in Europe when it comes to protecting our children and teenagers," Macron said in a video posted on social media, hailing "a major step forward." He thanked members of parliament for backing the legislation on Tuesday. "The Constitutional Council must now rule on it, and then it will be time to take action to make this measure a reality and protect our children online," he added on X. After approval by the Senate earlier on Tuesday, members of the National Assembly passed the bill by 279 votes to 81. A growing number of countries are taking steps to restrict social media access amid multiplying warnings over its harmful effects on children. The ban was to be introduced in two stages, with under-15s blocked from creating new accounts from September 1. The ban would apply to existing accounts from January 2027, according to the legislation. The digital minister, Anne Le Henanff, said before the vote that the timeline was realistic, "because age-verification tools already exist" and others are still in the works, and the onus was on the platforms to impose the rule. "For four months, all of us in France will have to prove our age," she told journalists. "If someone is under 15, the account will be closed." The minister also gave assurances that users' personal data would be protected.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Airbus is moving 70 critical applications from AWS to French cloud provider Scaleway as part of a broader digital sovereignty push to keep sensitive data "under European control." Eventually, the migration will cover 900 applications, including ERP, CRM, manufacturing execution, and product lifecycle management systems. Airbus says it will, however, continue using U.S. providers for less sensitive workloads. "We do not intend to move away from all non European solutions; we balance our choices based on the criticality of the data," the company said. The Register reports: Catherine Jestin, head of digital at Airbus, told us on Thursday: "The selection of Scaleway is a combination of a very strong technical answer and a very strong commercial offer making it competitive compared to hyperscalers' public cloud offerings. In addition, Scaleway is committed to involving Airbus in the definition of its future product roadmap." "The objective is to host Airbus's most critical applications (those required for the Minimum Viable Company). This represents 900 applications and we will start with 70 of them today hosted on AWS." Applications being sent to Scaleway include ERP, manufacturing execution systems, CRM, and product lifecycle management. Finding a cloud provider to host its most sensitive applications for defense and industrial workloads was not a certainty when the process began, Airbus told us last year, because European cloud providers do not have the scale of their US rivals. Jestin said Airbus will continue to work with AWS. Skywise, a platform that aggregates and analyzes aviation data, and Case Management Assistant for customers' technical queries will continue to be hosted by AWS. In a statement, she said: "By integrating a trusted, high performance, cloud environment that keeps our critical data assets shielded from foreign extraterritorial laws, we are ensuring that our digital infrastructure keeps pace with our aerospace innovation, while maintaining control and resilience of our industrial operations."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tesla says it is launching its Robotaxi service in Orlando and Tampa, though it has not shared fleet sizes or whether customers can immediately hail rides. The Verge notes the announcement lands on Tesla earnings day and comes as the company's robotaxi rollout remains far smaller than Elon Musk previously projected, with tracker data showing only a small number of unsupervised vehicles operating in existing cities. From the report: [B]ack in May, Tesla had five unsupervised robotaxis in Dallas, six in Houston, and 29 in Austin. As of today, there are only 17 unsupervised vehicles in Austin, four in Dallas, and zero in Houston, according to the Robotaxi Tracker. By comparison, Waymo is estimated to have over 3,500 fully driverless vehicles in operation across over 10 cities. Like Waymo, Tesla typically introduces robotaxis to a new city with a safety driver behind the wheel. Unlike Waymo, sometimes Tesla moves that person over to the passenger seat with access to a kill switch should anything go wrong. The company has been inconsistent in how it rolls out its robotaxis to new markets. The numbers go up and down, with zero explanation from the company as to why. [...] By adding new cities, Tesla is clearly trying to sell investors on the idea that its robotaxi project is growing. But the fluctuating fleet size, inconsistency in supervised vs unsupervised vehicles, and long wait times tell a very different story.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes: FireFox 153 was released today. The most important user-facing changes are improvements to PDF handling (you can now merge PDFs and add images to them), and HDR video playback (on Windows, provided HDR is active systemwide). Other under-the-hood changes include browser-wide containers and QWAC support. The full list is in the change notes. But the most important feature is that this version is an ESR and, therefore, defines the ESR feature set for the next year. Why is being an ESR so important, you ask? 1.) ESR, rather than "normal" (a.k.a. Rapid Release), Firefox is the out-of-the-box browser for many important distros, including Debian, RHEL, Kali, Tails, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Slackware, and others. 2.) Many organizations, large and small, standardize on Firefox ESR as their default browser, regardless of the default browser included with their OS. 3.) Firefox ESR is the basis for many downstream projects, such as Waterfox and KaiOS. All these projects will inherit, for a year, whatever ESR brings to the table today. 4.) Many ISVs and SaaS providers, if they certify their wares for Firefox at all, certify for the ESR version only. Please note that ESR 153 will not be offered as an automatic update until two months from now (ESR 140 will still be supported). If you want it now, you will need to download and install it manually. Also of note, ESR 115 will be supported until March 2027. If you use an unsupported version of macOS or Windows (like Windows 7 or 8.x), this is the version to get. However, even Mozilla cautions against running a supported browser on an unsupported OS: "Note that Microsoft ended official support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 in January 2023. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and have known vulnerabilities. Without official support from Microsoft, maintaining Firefox for outdated operating systems becomes costly for Mozilla and risky for users."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: As AI companies search for more training data to improve their models, one company is offering old, printed books as an ideal source because they are guaranteed to be free of the very AI slop AI companies are producing. "The world's best AI training data is sitting on a shelf," ISBNdb, a company that produces what it claims is "the world's largest book database," and that offers high-volume book acquisition services for AI companies, says on its site. "Books represent curated, peer-reviewed, domain-specific human knowledge, structured in a way no web crawl can replicate. Dense, edited, authoritative." In one article on its site, ISBNdb explains that printed books published before 2022 are ideal for AI training data because they don't include AI generated text. As the article correctly notes, much of the data that AI companies can scrape from the internet today is likely to include AI generated text, which could result in "model collapse," a process by which AI models that are trained on AI generated data results in worse models that are more prone to errors. The article also notes that book authors who object to their writing being scraped for training purposes can now easily poison AI models by producing writing designed to manipulate and sabotage the resulting AI models. "Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. That alone is a significant advantage [...] "Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools." [...] ISBNdb advertises that it can keep the identity of AI companies secret. "Strict NDA [non-disclosure agreement] on every engagement," ISBNdb's site says. "Every project begins with a legally binding non-disclosure agreement. Your identity, strategy, and acquisition targets are never disclosed." ISBNdb notes that AI companies may not want to be caught destroying printed books during the scanning process. "The optics problem is real," ISBNdb's site says. "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianFagioli writes: Canonical has launched the Enterprise Store as part of Ubuntu Pro, giving organizations a way to manage Ubuntu software distribution in restricted networks, behind firewalls, and in air gapped environments. The on premises proxy sits between devices and Canonical software stores, allowing companies to cache downloads, control software revisions, and manage snaps and charms without requiring every system to connect directly to the internet. The Enterprise Store is designed for organizations with strict security requirements, including regulated industries and environments where predictable software updates and audit controls are important.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge has approved Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement over pirated books used to train its Claude chatbot, with authors and publishers set to receive about $3,000 per book. The case produced a mixed ruling for the AI industry: training on copyrighted books was found not to be illegal, but Anthropic's use of pirated copies from shadow libraries was. The Associated Press reports: District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides "meaningful relief" to affected authors and publishers. About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment. Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was "the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge rejected AT&T's request to temporarily block California rules requiring it to offer basic phone service to new customers in its wireline territory. AT&T wants to retire its copper-based phone network and stop service for nearly 200,000 California customers in 2027, but the state argues the company can meet its obligations with modern alternatives like fiber rather than abandoning Carrier of Last Resort requirements altogether. Ars Technica reports: To win a preliminary injunction, AT&T had to show it is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that California rules are preempted by a Federal Communications Commission order. US District Judge Linda Lopez denied AT&T's request for a preliminary injunction during a motion hearing on Thursday, according to a docket entry. The case is in US District Court for the Southern District of California. [...] AT&T could appeal Lopez's ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and could appeal later if it loses the underlying case. But since it has not obtained the injunction it asked for, AT&T for now remains under California's orders to keep offering phone service to potential customers while the case continues.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge has temporarily paused the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger after a 12-state coalition led by California argued the deal would violate antitrust law. The 14-day restraining order (PDF) preserves the status quo while the court considers a preliminary injunction, which could effectively determine whether the merger survives. Variety reports: "Plaintiff States' showing at least demonstrates that serious questions going to the merits remain, weighing in favor of preliminary injunctive relief," the judge wrote, adding that Paramount has acknowledged it will not be harmed by the delay until the end of September. "Paramount and Warner Bros. will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace while they wait for the Court to adjudicate this case. The balance of equities, combined with the public's vital interest in antitrust enforcement, therefore tips sharply in favor of the requested injunctive relief." The 12-state coalition, led by California, brought a motion for the temporary restraining order. The states are also seeking a preliminary injunction, which would block the merger until the judge rules on the merits of the states' lawsuit. The 14-day restraining order could be extended to as long as 28 days. Martinez-Olguin, of the U.S. District Court for Northern District of California in Oakland, also set a hearing on the preliminary injunction for Aug. 3, though that date, too, could be delayed if the parties agree. Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, hailed the judge's ruling as a "critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day." "History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans' lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people," Bonta said. "With our lawsuit, we're fighting for a free and fair market and a thriving film and television industry that serves creatives and audiences alike. We have a full tank of gas, the law on our side, and look forward to continuing to make our case."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Nearly seven years after Apple debuted the Apple Card, Samsung is following the iPhone maker's footsteps with the Galaxy Card, aiming for its own slice of the credit card market. The announcement comes two days before Samsung's second Galaxy Unpacked event of the year, where it's expected to showcase new smartwatches and folding smartphones. The Galaxy Card is issued by Barclays on the Visa network; the Apple Card, originally issued by Goldman Sachs but now transitioning to Chase, is on the MasterCard network. There is a physical card -- it's not made of titanium but recycled steel. The virtual card will be provisioned to a user's Samsung Wallet account. With no annual fee, Samsung says cardmembers can earn 5 percent cash rewards on all in-store or online purchases made directly from Samsung in the US, 3 percent cash rewards on purchases made with the Galaxy Card using Samsung Wallet, 2 percent cash rewards on streaming service subscriptions, and 1 percent cash rewards on everything else with the physical card. The cash rewards can be redeemed as a statement credit or transferred to a checking or savings account. The annual percentage rate (APR) varies by cardmember, but the card has no foreign transaction fees. Other perks include a 20 percent discount on Samsung's VIP Advantage membership, which offers extended device protection, specialized support, and exclusive deals, and $200 in cash rewards after spending $2,000 in the first 90 days. Applications open up on July 22. The Samsung Wallet app is only available on Samsung smartphones and watches, so what happens if a consumer switches to a different smartphone brand? The company says Galaxy Card is not limited to Samsung device owners and that anyone can use the physical card, but you lose the key perks; the card can be managed through a BarclaysUS.com online portal. (Similarly, if an iPhone owner switches to Android, their physical Apple Card will still work, but they lose access to the Apple Wallet app and the 3 percent daily cash perk on Apple purchases; there's a web portal to manage the account.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an X post by Josh Walkos, author of the Substack We the Free: If you thought Flock was bad check out Falconet. Falconet from Israeli company Cognyte serves as a cell tower simulator that intercepts cell phone data from all devices within range. Police mount these systems in Tahoes so the vehicles can collect information while driving through areas without any direct interaction with targets. This mobile approach generates ongoing records of phone locations and communications for everyone nearby rather than only suspects, which creates comprehensive movement profiles and bypasses traditional warrant requirements under the Fourth Amendment. Cognyte sells the technology directly to U.S. agencies, as shown by the Texas Department of Public Safety purchase of four Tahoes where over three point eight million dollars went to the interception equipment. Adoption spreads through routine vehicle procurement with little external review of how the collected data is stored or shared. Once active the systems permit warrantless collection of private cell phone data across entire communities during normal patrols, which enables potential misuse and leaves individuals with no effective way to discover or contest the surveillance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new American Heart Association scientific statement concludes that up to about 400 milligrams a day, or roughly three to five cups of plain coffee, is safe for most adults and may be linked to lower risks of cardiovascular disease. The benefits appear to depend heavily on the source and preparation, with coffee and tea looking more favorable than energy drinks, and added sugar, cream, syrups, or sweeteners potentially canceling out the upside. ScienceAlert reports: "Caffeine consumed in coffee is a key part of daily life for millions of people," says Gregory Marcus, cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and Chair of the AHA volunteer writing group behind the statement. "In our review of the most recent research, for most adults, intake of up to 400 milligrams of caffeine per day, the equivalent of up to five cups of caffeinated coffee per day without added sugars or fillers, is safe and does not increase cardiovascular risk." The statement focused on caffeine's relationship with cardiovascular risk factors, such as blood pressure and diabetes, as well as types of cardiovascular disease, including arrhythmias, coronary artery disease, stroke, and heart failure. The picture that emerges is complicated, but generally positive. [...] All up, the new AHA statement concludes that there's a growing body of evidence that caffeine isn't harmful when taken in moderation, and that coffee specifically may be beneficial. The statement was published in the journal Circulation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Hackers are breaking into websites that run vulnerable versions of the popular blogging software WordPress, according to several cybersecurity firms. One estimate puts the number of vulnerable WordPress websites at tens of millions as of Monday. Last week, WordPress patched two critical security flaws, urging people who run its software on their websites to update it "immediately." The vulnerabilities are so severe that WordPress enabled forced updates where possible. Since then, cybersecurity companies Patchstack, Hexastrike, and WatchTowr have all warned that hackers are exploiting the vulnerabilities in the wild, meaning they are taking over websites that are still running susceptible versions of WordPress. It's unclear how many WordPress-powered websites on the internet are at risk, but it's possible to make some educated guesses. The vulnerable versions of WordPress are 6.9.0 through 6.9.4, and 7.0.0 to 7.0.1. According to WordPress' official stats, there are more than 400 million websites that run those flawed versions, although these statistics likely don't reflect websites that have recently been patched. Cybersecurity consultant Daniel Card, who told TechCrunch that he looked at a sample of around 3,500 WordPress websites, estimates that less than 15% are vulnerable. Applying Card's projection across the total population of WordPress websites on the internet, the total figure would still be around 90 million. [...] One of the critical WordPress bugs was found and reported by Adam Kues of cybersecurity firm Searchlight Cyber, which dubbed it WP2Shell. Paired with the other bug, hackers can take full remote control of vulnerable websites.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A draft New Orleans Police Department drone manual briefly published online would have allowed police drones to carry weapons with written approval from the superintendent, according to 404 Media. NOPD says the document was only an early draft and that its current policy (PDF) bans drones from carrying weapons or hazardous materials. 404 Media reports: The current version, live as of July 1, has different language: "The sUAS shall not be equipped with weapons or hazardous materials of any kind," referring to small Unmanned Aerial Systems, or drones. According to the NOPD, the operations manual it published to the internet with the rules for weaponized drones was an early draft. "The manual published on July 1 is the current published version of the policy. Earlier versions were draft versions that were presented for review before adoption of the current policy," NOPD told 404 media. "NOPD has made it clear we are not and will not be equipping drones with weapons or other hazardous materials." NOPD didn't answer follow-up questions about how or why the draft version of the manual was published. But the publication of a police drone manual that opens the door for weaponized quadcopters is important, and comes as drone companies and police flirt with the idea of putting weapons on their drones. New Orleans has long been a pioneer of camera and drone driven policing and the cops have used controversial tactics to get around public scrutiny and regulations. It shows that what the police are circulating amongst themselves and thinking about privately, what they perhaps want to happen, does not match public policy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sandbagger writes: Fark.com is ancient in internet terms. It's not social media. It's not quite a news site. It's a holdover from the dot-com era and is invisible to Google, which makes its community great but has necessitated begging. "[W]e won't survive this year without more TF subscribers," wrote founder Drew Curtis in a post on Bluesky. "Spread the word." For the unfamiliar, Fark is one of the web's OG community news sites that features a wonderfully weird mix of user-submitted links, absurd headlines, Photoshop contests and comment-section mayhem. It has also been featured numerous times on Slashdot over the decades, from a 2007 review of founder Drew Curtis' book and a 2010 story about his skepticism of "the wisdom of crowds" to a full Slashdot interview with Curtis in 2015. For longtime readers of both sites, Fark feels like an old neighbor from an earlier, stranger and arguably more fun era of the internet.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Moonshot AI has temporarily paused new subscriptions for its Kimi K3 model after demand surged beyond the company's current capacity within days of the launch. The open-source Chinese AI model, described as one of the largest of its kind at 2.8 trillion parameters, has rattled U.S. rivals by beating Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol in front-end coding tests. The Associated Press reports: "Kimi K3 has received far more love than we expected," Moonshot AI, which is Beijing-based, wrote in a X post late on Sunday. "Over the past 48 hours, demand has pushed close to the limits of our current capacity." Moonshot said that it's prioritizing existing subscribers and would be temporarily pausing new ones. "We're adding capacity as fast as we can and will reopen new subscription spots in batches," it added. The AI startup also posted a similar message on Chinese social media. "New model releases generally trigger massive interest, which can strain existing compute infrastructure," said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at the technology research and advisory group Omdia. "This does show Moonshot AI does not have sufficient compute chips to serve the current surge in demand." Su said that the key reason was more likely due to Moonshot not fully anticipating the surge in K3's popularity. K3 is "very demanding" in terms of compute requirements, he said, making compute allocation challenging and expensive.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris Fall has resigned as director of the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation just three months after being appointed to lead the Commerce Department's federal AI testing institute. Arvind Raman, who oversees the Commerce office responsible for the institute, will serve temporarily in the role. "The Commerce Department did not provide a reason for Fall's departure," reports Reuters. From the report: Fall's exit marks the latest change in direction for Trump's approach to AI. The president upon returning to office in 2025 said the federal government should take a hands-off approach to the tech sector. He has since taken a more active role in monitoring the technology, though his public statements and policies appear to change week by week. The institute is responsible for working with leading AI labs such as Anthropic, Google's DeepMind and OpenAI to test their unreleased models for vulnerabilities. The group is staffed by scientists and engineers, who are focused on calculating the "demonstrable risks" posed by advanced AI models, according to the institute's website. They want to limit opportunities for U.S. adversaries to use AI to develop chemical or biological weapons, or corrupt the data used to train American AI models.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission has fined AliExpress more than $625 million, the largest penalty yet under the Digital Services Act, after finding that the marketplace failed to "diligently assess and mitigate risks relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe, or counterfeit products on its e-commerce platform." EU officials said flagged products repeatedly reappeared, sellers could evade safeguards, and AliExpress's recommendation and ad systems helped amplify dangerous goods. Ars Technica reports: For shady sellers, the risks of detection appeared low. The e-commerce site's mandatory brand authorization system was also ineffective and understaffed, the EC found, and AliExpress did not penalize traders for selling illegal products as its policy claims it would. Making things worse, AliExpress "inadequately assessed how its recommender and advertising systems exacerbate the spread of illegal products," the EC said. So rather than remove illegal products, AliExpress was recommending them to consumers and helping to maximize exposure. Talking to the press, the European Union's tech chief, Henna Virkkunen, noted that one in five Europeans shop monthly at retail sites like AliExpress, Temu, and Shein. AliExpress also relied on a single quantitative metric to gauge how effectively its systems were working to weed out illegal products. And that metric did not properly measure the extent of the harm. EC testing found that "a high volume of illegal products" -- including unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics -- "continued to circulate despite AliExpress' moderation efforts." In June 2025, AliExpress was ordered to bring its platform into compliance with the DSA but failed to make the necessary changes, the EC said. The fine was calculated to be proportionate to the nature of the violations, which the EC considered "particularly serious infringements," and to penalize AliExpress's delayed interventions to mitigate flagged risks. [...] AliExpress told Ars it was "surprised" by the "disproportionate" fine. AliExpress said it plans to appeal the decision, claiming the EC ignored its "sound risk management framework and the significant, proactive enhancements we have made." The massive online retailer noted that its EU market is substantially smaller than its China market and said that it invests "substantial resources in risk assessment and mitigation, product safety and consumer protection" and "has been and continues to be committed to meeting our obligations to consumers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VideoCardz reports that connecting certain LG monitors to Windows PCs can trigger Windows Update to automatically install the LG Monitor App Installer, which runs at startup and repeatedly displays McAfee trial promotions. From the report: Gamers Nexus reproduced the behavior with an LG UltraGear 34GX900A-B after receiving reports from monitor owners. Windows Update first installed LG extension and software component packages. Windows Reliability Monitor showed that LG Monitor App Installer appeared one minute later. The installation did not display a consent prompt or require the user to approve the download. Gamers Nexus tested the application across 32 consecutive system boots. It displayed a McAfee promotion during 31 of them. On the remaining boot, it promoted one of LG's own monitor utilities. The McAfee popup offered a 30-day trial that would convert into a paid subscription. The behavior does not appear to be limited to newly purchased displays. Gamers Nexus also received the popup on an LG UltraFine 32UN880-B purchased three years earlier. User complaints about LG Monitor App Installer date back to at least 2024, although the recent increase in reports suggests that more models may now be receiving it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A hacker reportedly wiped Romania's entire land registry database after a failed extortion attempt, halting property transactions across the country and preventing notaries from issuing land extracts, authenticating sales, or registering mortgages. "On the dark web, the hacker also boasted to have begun backup copies of stolen data in an attempt to prevent it from being restored," reports Cybernews. "However, Romanian officials have managed to at least restore the ANCPI's website and post a message saying they were rebuilding the agency's entire network from scratch. It appears that the agency has an offline copy of the wiped data." From the report: First, the hacker breached Romania's cadastre agency, the National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Advertising (ANCPI), posting on a hacking forum: "[RO] Thy arss shall be spanked, Romania! [ANCPI]." "In addition to the data of Romanian citizens, from various databases collected through ANCPI networks, there is also a copy of the GitLab servers containing the source code of all their systems, such as Eterra, RENNS, as well as a version of my little ransomware program," the announcement continued. "The official government website announced a shutdown of IT systems due to 'technical problems,' but this is a bit of an understatement. An offer of assistance was made, but without insistence or pressure." Indeed, the ANCPI initially claimed technical issues but had to admit it was facing a cyberattack. Today, no one can really access the institution's systems. And since the extortion didn't work, the hacker -- who seems to have entered the database using valid credentials -- deleted all data they had stolen, including internal documents, employee credentials, and, of course, land registry data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at Louisiana State University have created a room-temperature quantum material made from a thin gold film on glass, patterned with microscopic slits that act like artificial atoms. "We call this robust transport. These quantum states carry information," says physicist Omar Magana-Loaiza. "Our crystal can distinguish them and move them from one point to another in a robust way without requiring cryogenic cooling. That's what opens the door to practical quantum technologies." ScienceAlert reports: Crucial to the new material's room-temperature operation is the way it shifts the focus from electrons and atoms to photons (particles of light). This overcomes the usual atomic-level disruption that heat brings with it. The material is what's known as a plasmonic metacrystal: 'Plasmonic' because the light traveling over it makes ripples of electrons known as plasmons, and 'metacrystal' because it's an artificially created crystal. The tiny slit patterns etched into the material act as artificial atoms (meta-atoms), which dictate how different photon groups pass through (the quantum behavior). "By engineering the distribution of meta-atoms in the plasmonic metacrystal, we can systematically dictate which quantum statistics are allowed to pass through the structure," says physicist Riley Dawkins. "So, our crystal essentially acts as a statistical filter on quantum states." That means as light enters the chip and travels across the gold surface, it's manipulated by the meta-atoms -- and by tweaking the size, shape, and spacing of the slits, different end results can be produced at the quantum level. In practice, this means that certain quantum states of light can be transported with less disruption. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: One of the founding members of The Document Foundation and handler of LibreOffice's PR and media relations, Italo Vignoli, took to the LibreOffice blog to call out Microsoft's practices with its Office application. The last time we saw Vignoli take to the stage, we saw him accusing Euro-Office of being just as bad as Microsoft with its practices. Vignoli's new post focuses entirely on Microsoft's strategy. He says that "the dominant format for office documents" is owned by Microsoft Office, particularly the DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX formats. The problem with these formats, Vignoli states, is that they "belong to Microsoft, are controlled by Microsoft and serve Microsoft's interest." This makes it difficult for other formats to take hold. Vignoli explains his point by stating that open document formats don't hide anything. People developing their own apps can use the format to both read and write the document format with perfection. Meanwhile, proprietary formats such as Microsoft's "contain undocumented features, private extensions or behaviors" that developers can't fully adapt to. That means that a presentation that looks great in the source software comes out strange when rebuilt in a third-party app. This, Vignoli says, is a huge issue [...]. Vignoli claims this creates a huge issue with document preservation. If a Word document was saved in one version of Office, will it still be readable in 20 years? Microsoft has added legacy support to its software before, but the company can one day decide that it's not worth the effort anymore and cut it out. When that happens, you have old documents that are either jumbled or unable to be opened at all.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

James Cameron filmed his Avatar sequels there. Marvel filmed Thor, Iron Man 2, and The Avengers. Manhattan Beach Studios in Los Angeles even handled Star Wars' series like Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Mandalorian, which Bloomberg points out is about "a heavily armed bounty hunter in a galaxy far, far away." "Now lenders who are selling the property's $240 million mortgage are promoting the site to potential buyers as a hub for making real space-age weapons.""The project is strategically positioned within Los Angeles' prominent aerospace and innovation corridor, anchored by industry leaders such as Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies and SpaceX," said Cushman & Wakefield, which has the listing. "A supply-demand imbalance has emerged, driven by the growing concentration of advanced manufacturing users and a limited supply of viable space," the real estate brokerage said in a presentation. Bids are due July 28. The marketing pitch reflects Southern California's shifting economic landscape as the movie business slumps and weapons makers seek to cash in on surging Pentagon spending... The defense boom is spurring the revival of a regional industry that once churned out World War II bombers, supersonic Cold War planes and Apollo command and service modules before shrinking after the fall of the Soviet Union... In the Los Angeles area, aerospace and defense-related tenants have accounted for 11% of new industrial real estate leases since the start of 2025, up from an annual average 2% during the preceding decade, according to a report this month by brokerage Newmark Group Inc. Los Angeles "has always gone through transformations," Stephen Cheung, president of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., told Bloomberg. "This is one of those."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ask Claude to make a pamphlet critical of China's leader, Thailand's king, or Saudi Arabia's crown prince - and it will decline, reports the Associated Press. That's "a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday," their article points out: AI systems are more than twice as likely to refuse to product critical material if it's about a restrictive world leader or government. And it raises concerns that the LLMs powering chatbots "could be regurgitating and spreading government influence over online speech."The study picked 10 commercial large language models by top tech companies - including Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI - and asked the AI systems to make critical pamphlets, write limericks, give reasons if someone should join protests, and more.... "In aggregate, models responding to requests from an Australia-based user were much more likely to generate political criticism of authorities" in places such as Chile, Japan, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S. "compared to where criticism of authorities is legally restricted and penalized," such as in Cambodia, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Turkey, the report said. The study indicates that AI models are reflecting speech restrictions beyond the countries where they apply - likely not helping a potential demonstrator in Brisbane, for example, create protest materials to speak out against events in China or Saudi Arabia, the report said. "Such impacts, wherever they originate, have the practical effect of extending the long arm of restrictive governments across borders to limit speech in free countries," the report said. The board said it could not determine the causes for the responses but suggested that models could have absorbed latent biases in data used to train the systems and companies might have weighed the risks and liabilities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ZDNet reports on June's Open Source Summit India 2026 in Mumbai, where Linux stable kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman gave a talk titled "Rust and Linux: How the Rust Language is Going to Help Linux Succeed." Kroah-Hartman said in his keynote that "the [Linux] kernel is moving toward Rust. Git is moving toward Rust. Lots of projects are starting to move toward Rust." He didn't always feel that way. Kroah-Hartman added, "A number of years ago, when a friend of mine said, 'Ah, you got to try this new language. It's called Rust.' I was like, 'What? No, C is great.' His friend continued, "'No, no, no! It makes programming fun again.' I'm like, 'Nah, programming is fun in C.' He was right. I should have done it then. Rust is actually fun. It makes programming fun. It takes a lot of stuff away from having to worry about the compiler, which can fix a lot of your problems for you, and it makes code a little bit better." So, Kroah-Hartman has moved from being a Rust skeptic to one of its strongest champions inside the kernel. He now regards Rust as a permanent part of Linux, not an experiment. His case is straightforward: Rust's ownership and type system can eliminate most of the "stupid little tiny things" that dominate kernel Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), while making life easier for overworked maintainers. "Rust," in short, "makes my life so much easier...." In India, he said Linux sees "about 13 CVEs a day" and has been running at "almost nine changes an hour" for a decade or more. Most of those vulnerabilities, he argued, are not exotic attacks but simple C mistakes - unchecked pointers, forgotten unlocks, and sloppy cleanup paths: "This is what we're fixing 13 times a day. Small, trivial, little bugs like this all the time.... I've seen every CVE the kernel has done in the past 25 years. I think 80% would be gone, just because they would be caught by Rust." The remaining 20% are the logic bugs he'd prefer to focus on...." Moreover, Rust is becoming the default for new work in key subsystems. "New drivers for some subsystems are only going to be accepted in Rust...." he said. Binder, the Android IPC mechanism at the heart of billions of devices, now has parallel C and Rust implementations in the kernel. The C version "will go away soon," leaving the Rust version "as the bedrock of all Android devices going forward."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post describes a mid-tier executive at Meta as one of Silicon Valley's "winners" whose financial security suddenly "evaporated" as their workforce "pushed headlong into AI and heavy job cuts," creating a transformed job market. "Her ex-husband, a designer at Meta who was laid off in 2020, eventually gave up looking for jobs in his profession. He now lifts boxes at a warehouse."Layoffs.fyi, which tracks announced job cuts, counts more than 800,000 tech workers laid off since 2022, including large staff reductions in recent months at Meta, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon... "There's this whole tranche of people who've been quite used to being among the most upwardly mobile in society who are all of a sudden saying, 'Now I'm the guy on the streetas'" said Oliver Raskin, who founded Silicon Valley market research consultancy Signalcraft Insights and has surveyed attitudes in the tech labor force... "The rise of AI, especially, is bound to change the workplace radically," [said Georgetown University historian Joseph McCartin]. "But the way it's going to happen is similar to how technology transformed the auto industry." Ruth Milkman, a labor sociologist at the City University of New York, said that technology workers are getting a dose of what workers in other industries have long complained about: jobs that feel unsteady or rob them of autonomy. "Low-wage workers are used to it," she said... Many layoffs at technology companies are probably a hangover effect from over-hiring in prior years, experts say. And they don't account for a spotty recent increase in hiring in the information industry, which includes employment of software developers and jobs in media and entertainment. Digging deeper, though, some economists say there are signs that Silicon Valley and other technology-reliant parts of the American economy have reached a turning point where they are growing without needing as many people. The notion was encapsulated in a recent talk that ricocheted through group chats across the tech industry: In it, a partner at the start-up incubator Y Combinator heralded a new generation of AI-first companies that will only need human labor for "novel situations," "ethical considerations" and "high-stakes moments." Gad Levanon, chief economist at the labor research nonprofit Burning Glass Institute, said that the number of hours worked in the information sector has dipped since 2022, while the sector's economic output has increased by about 8 percent a year - more than three times the overall growth rate of the U.S. economy. He says the data reveals a sea change in industries, including technology and finance, toward doing more work with the same or fewer people - one that is spreading to other professional classes. "That's the new reality for white-collar and tech-exposed work: output up, headcount flat or down," Levanon said... Raskin, who has worked in the tech world since the late '90s, said that even though the current moment feels unsettling to many, he's hopeful that it's an early chapter in an evolving story. "It's happened many times before," he said, "that something implodes and all these people lose jobs, but then that talent gets cycled into whatever the next thing is - into a new wave of prosperity." In the article tech entrepreneur Anil Dash quips that Silicon Valley techies are "are guinea pigs for what tech dudes want to do to everyone."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Tom's Hardware:The Zilog Z80 has just turned 50 years old. This iconic 8-bit processor first went on sale in July 1976 and stayed in production for 48 years until Zilog, now a Littelfuse subsidiary, stopped accepting orders in June 2024. However, there's an open-source replacement closer than ever to shipping in the chip's original 40-pin DIP package thanks to community-funded fabrication... The chip powered the ZX Spectrum, TRS-80, MSX machines, Nintendo's Game Boy, Sega's Master System, the Pac-Man arcade cabinet, and Texas Instruments' graphing calculators, then shipped in industrial controllers for decades after home computing moved on to more powerful successors. Zilog's end-of-life notice, dated April 15, 2024, told customers its wafer foundry was discontinuing support for the Z84C00 family, and last-time-buy orders closed that June. However, Renaldas Zioma's FOSS Z80 project, launched shortly after the end-of-life notice, now has working silicon. The first version, fabbed on SkyWater's 130nm node through Tiny Tapeout 7 on a die of just 0.064mm(2), has been confirmed as functional via the project's GitHub repository. A QFN64 version with all 40 pins exposed followed on the Efabless CI2406 shuttle, two further runs then went through IHP's 130nm process, and the current run targets the classic DIP40 form factor using chip-on-board assembly on GlobalFoundries' 180nm GF180MCU node via Wafer.Space. The end goal here is to fab a drop-in replacement for machines like the ZX Spectrum and RC2014 kits... Zilog is trimming the Z80's official successor line as well. A product change notification from last October put the eZ80L92, along with several Z8F-series microcontrollers, on end-of-life, citing "little to no demand..." [T]he pipelined eZ80 architecture, introduced in 2001 and still inside TI's current TI-84 Plus CE calculators, otherwise remains in Zilog's catalog. In 1999 Slashdot was calling Zilog's updated eZ80 "one of the fastest 8-bit CPUs available today, executing code 4 times faster than a standard Z80 operating at the same clock speed." Slashdot headline from 2001: Zilog To File For Chapter 11.Read more of this story at Slashdot.