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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Adobe (ADBE.O), opens new tab on Monday said it has started publicly distributing an AI model that can generate video from text prompts, joining the growing field of companies trying to upend film and television production using generative artificial intelligence. The Firefly Video Model, as the technology is called, will compete with OpenAI's Sora, which was introduced earlier this year, while TikTok owner ByteDance and Meta Platforms have also announced their video tools in recent months. Facing much larger rivals, Adobe has staked its future on building models trained on data that it has rights to use, ensuring the output can be legally used in commercial work. San Jose, California-based Adobe will start opening up the tool to people who have signed up for its waiting list but did not give a general release date. While Adobe has not yet announced any customers using its video tools, it said on Monday that PepsiCo-owned Gatorade will use its image generation model for a site where customers can order custom-made bottles, and Mattel has been using Adobe tools to help design packaging for its Barbie line of dolls. For its video tools, Adobe has aimed at making them practical for everyday use by video creators and editors, with a special focus on making the footage blend in with conventional footage, said Ely Greenfield, Adobe's chief technology officer for digital media. "We really focus on fine-grain control, teaching the model the concepts that video editors and videographers use -- things like camera position, camera angle, camera motion," Greenfield told Reuters in an interview.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One year from today, on October 14, 2025, Microsoft will stop releasing security updates for PCs that are still running Windows 10. From a report: Organizations and individuals will still be able to pay for three more years of updates, with prices that go up steadily each year (Microsoft still hasn't provided pricing for end users, only saying that it will release pricing info "closer to the October 2025 date.") But for most PCs running Windows 10, the end of the line is in sight.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Following moves by both the European Union and India to implement USB-C as the default charging port for all consumer devices, the British government has now begun a consultation on whether it should follow suit and implement a common standard for charging, and if this should be USB-C. From a report: The consultation has been started by the Office for Product Safety and Standards which sits within the Department for Business and Trade, and it calls for manufacturers, importers, distributors, and trade associations to provide their input on the matter. Of course, should the UK decide against adopting USB-C and implement a separate standard, expect that device manufacturers just provide dongles to support this rather than having unique device versions. The Office for Product Safety and Standards stated the following on this topic: "We consider that it would potentially help businesses and deliver consumer and environmental benefits if we were to introduce standardized requirements for chargers for certain portable electrical/electronic devices across the whole UK. We are seeking views from manufacturers, importers, distributors, and trade associations as to whether it would be helpful to do so and, if so, whether this should be based on USB-C a" as adopted by the EU."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 writes: Chinese scientists have mounted what they say is the world's first effective attack on a widely used encryption method using a quantum computer. The breakthrough poses a "real and substantial threat" to the long-standing password-protection mechanism employed across critical sectors, including banking and the military, according to the researchers. Despite the slow progress in general-purpose quantum computing, which currently poses no threat to modern cryptography, scientists have been exploring various attack approaches on specialised quantum computers. In the latest work led by Wang Chao, of Shanghai University, the team said it used a quantum computer produced by Canada's D-Wave Systems to successfully breach cryptographic algorithms. Using the D-Wave Advantage, they successfully attacked the Present, Gift-64 and Rectangle algorithms -- all representative of the SPN (Substitution-Permutation Network) structure, which forms part of the foundation for advanced encryption standard (AES) widely used in the military and finance. AES-256, for instance, is considered the best encryption available and often referred to as military-grade encryption. While the exact passcode is not immediately available yet, it is closer than ever before, according to the study. "This is the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN structured algorithms in use today," they said in the peer-reviewed paper.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A Florida data broker that lost hundreds of millions of Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information in a data breach earlier this year, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as the company faces a wave of litigation. Jericho Pictures, the parent company of the hacked data broker National Public Data, told a Florida bankruptcy court that it was unlikely to be able to repay its debtors or address its anticipated liabilities and class-action lawsuits, including paying "for credit monitoring for hundreds of millions of potentially impacted individuals." In its initial filing, Jericho Pictures' owner, Salvatore Verini, said the company "faces substantial uncertainty facing regulatory challenges by the Federal Trade Commission and more than 20 states with civil penalties for data breaches."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA's Europa Clipper mission lifted off successfully on Monday, marking the agency's first mission to Jupiter in over a decade. The $5.2 billion spacecraft aims to investigate whether Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, could harbor conditions suitable for life. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. Eastern time, lifting the Europa Clipper spacecraft into orbit around Earth. Europa Clipper, NASA's largest-ever interplanetary craft, weighs 12,500 pounds and boasts solar panels spanning 100 feet. Its nine scientific instruments will study Europa's surface and interior in unprecedented detail. After a 1.8 billion-mile journey, the spacecraft will reach Jupiter in April 2030. It will then conduct 49 flybys of Europa over four years, coming within 16 miles of the moon's surface. Scientists believe Europa's subsurface ocean could contain twice as much water as Earth's oceans. The mission will measure ocean depth, analyze surface compounds, and map Europa's magnetic field to gather clues about its internal composition. Instruments will search for warm spots indicating thin ice, potential cryovolcanoes, and plumes of water vapor. The spacecraft will also attempt to identify carbon-based molecules that could serve as building blocks for life. "Europa is certainly the most likely place for life beyond Earth in our solar system," Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist, told the New York Times.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WordPress.org has seized control of WP Engine's Advanced Custom Fields plugin, renaming it "Secure Custom Fields" and removing commercial elements, according to WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The move, justified by alleged security concerns and linked to ongoing litigation between WP Engine and Automattic, marks an unprecedented forcible takeover in the WordPress ecosystem. David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder and chief technology officer of Basecamp-maker 37signals, opines on the situation: For a dispute that started with a claim of "trademark confusion", there's an incredible irony in the fact that Automattic is now hijacking users looking for ACF onto their own plugin. And providing as rational for this unprecedented breach of open source norms that ACF needs maintenance, and since WPE is no longer able to provide that (given that they were blocked!), Automattic has to step in to do so. I mean, what?! Imagine this happening on npm? Imagine Meta getting into a legal dispute with Microsoft (the owners of GitHub, who in turn own npm), and Microsoft responding by directing GitHub to ban all Meta employees from accessing their repositories. And then Microsoft just takes over the official React repository, pointing it to their own Super React fork. This is the kind of crazy we're talking about. Weaponizing open source code registries is something we simply cannot allow to form precedence. They must remain neutral territory. Little Switzerlands in a world of constant commercial skirmishes. And that's really the main reason I care to comment on this whole sordid ordeal. If this fight was just one between two billion-dollar companies, as Automattic and WPE both are, I would not have cared to wade in. But the principles at stake extend far beyond the two of them. Using an open source project like WordPress as leverage in this contract dispute, and weaponizing its plugin registry, is an endangerment of an open source peace that has reigned decades, with peace-time dividends for all. Not since the SCO-Linux nonsense of the early 2000s have we faced such a potential explosion in fear, doubt, and uncertainty in the open source realm on basic matters everyone thought they could take for granted.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The growing use of AI and machine learning in financial services globally can lead to financial stability risks and warrants adequate risk mitigation practices by banks, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India said on Monday. From a report: "The heavy reliance of AI can lead to concentration risks, especially when a small number of technology providers dominate the market," Shaktikanta Das said at an event in New Delhi. This could amplify systemic risks as failures or disruptions in these systems may cascade across the financial sector, Das added. India's financial service providers are using AI to enhance customer experience, reduce costs, manage risks and drive growth through chatbots and personalised banking.The growing use of AI introduces new vulnerabilities like increased susceptibility to cyber attacks and data breaches, Das said. AI's "opacity" makes it difficult to audit and interpret algorithms which drive lender's decisions and could potentially lead to "unpredictable consequences in the market," he warned.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Internet Archive has resumed operations in a read-only state following a cyberattack that took the digital library offline on October 9, coupled with the theft of 31 million user authentication records. "Safe to resume but might need further maintenance, in which case it will be suspended again," said Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive's founder. The website is currently now allowing users to save pages.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta senior research Yann LeCun (also a professor at New York University) told the Wall Street Journal that worries about AI threatening humanity are "complete B.S."When a departing OpenAI researcher in May talked up the need to learn how to control ultra-intelligent AI, LeCun pounced. "It seems to me that before 'urgently figuring out how to control AI systems much smarter than us' we need to have the beginning of a hint of a design for a system smarter than a house cat," he replied on X. He likes the cat metaphor. Felines, after all, have a mental model of the physical world, persistent memory, some reasoning ability and a capacity for planning, he says. None of these qualities are present in today's "frontier" AIs, including those made by Meta itself. LeCun shared a Turing Award with Geoffrey Hinton and Hoshua Bengio (who hopes LeCun is right, but adds "I don't think we should leave it to the competition between companies and the profit motive alone to protect the public and democracy. That is why I think we need governments involved.") But LeCun still believes AI is a very powerful tool - even as Meta joins the quest for artificial general intelligence:Throughout our interview, he cites many examples of how AI has become enormously important at Meta, and has driven its scale and revenue to the point that it's now valued at around $1.5 trillion. AI is integral to everything from real-time translation to content moderation at Meta, which in addition to its Fundamental AI Research team, known as FAIR, has a product-focused AI group called GenAI that is pursuing ever-better versions of its large language models. "The impact on Meta has been really enormous," he says. At the same time, he is convinced that today's AIs aren't, in any meaningful sense, intelligent - and that many others in the field, especially at AI startups, are ready to extrapolate its recent development in ways that he finds ridiculous... OpenAI's Sam Altman last month said we could have Artificial General Intelligence within "a few thousand days...." But creating an AI this capable could easily take decades, [LeCun] says - and today's dominant approach won't get us there.... His bet is that research on AIs that work in a fundamentally different way will set us on a path to human-level intelligence. These hypothetical future AIs could take many forms, but work being done at FAIR to digest video from the real world is among the projects that currently excite LeCun. The idea is to create models that learn in a way that's analogous to how a baby animal does, by building a world model from the visual information it takes in. In contrast, today's AI models "are really just predicting the next word in a text, he says... And because of their enormous memory capacity, they can seem to be reasoning, when in fact they're merely regurgitating information they've already been trained on."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bobby Renfro spent $1,200 to buy a gas-powered electricity generator for a community resource hub he set up in a former church near hurricane-struck Asheville, North Carolina. He's spending thousands more on fuel, reports the Associated Press - though he's just one of many. Right now over 500,000 people are without power in Florida, according to the PowerOutage.us project - with more than 9,000 in Georgia, and over 17,000 in North Carolina"Without it, they can't keep medicines cold or power medical equipment or pump well water. They can't recharge their phones or apply for federal disaster aid... Residents who can get their hands on gas and diesel-powered generators are depending on them, but that is not easy. Fuel is expensive and can be a long drive away. Generator fumes pollute and can be deadly. Small home generators are designed to run for hours or days, not weeks and months. Now, more help is arriving. Renfro received a new power source this week, one that will be cleaner, quieter and free to operate. Volunteers with the nonprofit Footprint Project and a local solar installation company delivered a solar generator with six 245-watt solar panels, a 24-volt battery and an AC power inverter. The panels now rest on a grassy hill outside the community building. Renfro hopes his community can draw some comfort and security, "seeing and knowing that they have a little electricity." The Footprint Project is scaling up its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators and machines that can pull water from the air to 33 sites so far, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries. With donations from solar equipment and installation companies as well as equipment purchased through donated funds, the nonprofit is sourcing hundreds more small batteries and dozens of other larger systems and even industrial-scale solar generators known as "Dragon Wings."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Google is developing a Linux terminal app for Android," reports the blog Android Authority. "The Terminal app can be enabled via developer options and will install Debian in a virtual machine. "This app is likely intended for Chromebooks but might also be available for mobile devices, too."While there are ways to run some Linux apps on Android devices, all of those methods have some limitations and aren't officially supported by Google. Fortunately, though, Google is finally working on an official way to run Linux apps on Android... This Terminal app is part of the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) and contains a WebView that connects to a Linux virtual machine via a local IP address, allowing you to run Linux commands from the Android host... A set of patches under the tag "ferrochrome-dev-option" was recently submitted to the Android Open Source Project that adds a new developer option called Linux terminal under Settings > System > Developer options. This new option will enable a "Linux terminal app that runs inside the VM," according to its proposed description. Toggling this option enables the Terminal app that's bundled with AVF... Google is still working on improving the Terminal app as well as AVF before shipping this feature... What's particularly interesting about the patch that adds these settings is that it was tested on "tangorpro" and "komodo," the codenames for the Pixel Tablet and Pixel 9 Pro XL respectively. This suggests that the Terminal app won't be limited to Chromebooks like the new desktop versions of Chrome for Android.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Some prominent privacy advocates are encouraging customers to pull their data" from 23andMe, reports SFGate. But can you actually do that?23andMe makes it easy to feel like you've protected your genetic footprint. In their account settings, customers can download versions of their data to a computer and choose to delete the data attached to their 23andMe profile. An email then arrives with a big pink button: "Permanently Delete All Records." Doing so, it promises, will "terminate your relationship with 23andMe and irreversibly delete your account and Personal Information." But there's another clause in the email that conflicts with that "terminate" promise. It says 23andMe and whichever contracted genotyping laboratory worked on a customer's samples will still hold on to the customer's sex, date of birth and genetic information, even after they're "deleted." The reason? The company cites "legal obligations," including federal laboratory regulations and California lab rules. The federal program, which sets quality standards for laboratories, requires that labs hold on to patient test records for at least two years; the California rule, part of the state's Business and Professions Code, requires three. When SFGATE asked 23andMe vice president of communications Katie Watson about the retention mandates, she said 23andMe does delete the genetic data after the three-year period, where applicable... Before it's finally deleted, the data remains 23andMe property and is held under the same rules as the company's privacy policy, Watson added. If that policy changes, customers are supposed to be informed and asked for their consent. In the meantime, a hack is unfortunately always possible. Another 23andMe spokesperson, Andy Kill, told SFGATE that [CEO Anne] Wojcicki is "committed to customers' privacy and pledges to retain the current privacy policy in force for the foreseeable future, including after the acquisition she is currently pursuing." An Electronic Frontier Foundation privacy lawyer tells SFGate there's no information more personal than your DNA. "It is like a Social Security number, it can't be changed. But it's not just a piece of paper, it's kind of you." He urged 23andMe to leave customers' data out of any acquisition deals, and promise customers they'd avoid takeover attempts from companies with bad security - or with ties to law enforcement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's electric vehicle subsidies brought a 2-to-1 return on investment, according to a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research. "That includes environmental benefits, but mostly reflects a shift of profits to the United States," reports the New York Times. "Before the climate law, tax credits were mainly used to buy foreign-made cars.""What the [subsidy legislation] did was swing the pendulum the other way, and heavily subsidized American carmakers," said Felix Tintelnot, an associate professor of economics at Duke University who was a co-author of the paper. Those benefits were undermined, however, by a loophole allowing dealers to apply the subsidy to leases of foreign-made electric vehicles. The provision sends profits to non-American companies, and since those foreign-made vehicles are on average heavier and less efficient, they impose more environmental and road-safety costs. Also, the researchers estimated that for every additional electric vehicle the new tax credits put on the road, about three other electric vehicle buyers would have made the purchases even without a $7,500 credit. That dilutes the effectiveness of the subsidies, which are forecast to cost as much as $390 billion through 2031. The chief economist at Cox Automotive (which provided some of the data) tells the Times that "we could do better", but adds that the subsidies were "worth the money invested". But of course, that depends partly on how benefits were calculated:[U]ing the Environmental Protection Agency's "social cost of carbon" metric, they calculated the dollar cost of each model's lifetime carbon emissions from both manufacturing and driving. On average, emissions by gas-powered vehicles impose 57% greater costs than electric vehicles. The study then calculated harms from air pollution other than greenhouse gases - smog, for example. That's where electric vehicles start to perform relatively poorly, since generating the electricity for them still creates pollution. Those harms will probably fade as more wind and solar energy comes online, but they are significant. Finally, the authors added the road deaths associated with heavier cars. Batteries are heavy, so electric vehicles - especially the largest - are likelier to kill people in crashes. Totaling these costs and then subtracting fiscal benefits through gas taxes and electricity bills, electric vehicles impose $16,003 in net harms, the authors said, while gas vehicles impose $19,239. But the range is wide, with the largest electric vehicles far outpacing many internal combustion cars. By this methodology, a large electric pickup like the Rivian imposes three times the harms of a Prius, according to one of the study's co-authors (a Stanford professor of global environmental). And yet "we are subsidizing the Rivian and not the Prius..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To avoid overloading local electric grids, Britain's most productive windfarm "is paid to turn off," reports the Guardian - and across the industry these so-called "constraint payments" amount to billions every year. "Government officials are hoping to correct the clear inefficiencies in the market by overhauling the market itself."Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy, told the Guardian: "It's grotesque that energy costs are rising again this winter, whilst we literally pay windfarms these extortionate prices not to generate. Locational pricing would instead mean that local people got cheap power when it's windy. Scotland would have the cheapest power in Europe, instead of among the most expensive, and every region would be cheaper than today. Companies would invest in infrastructure where we need it - not where they get the highest subsidies." The changes could catalyse an economic osmosis of high energy users - such as datacentres and factories - into areas of the country with low energy prices, creating new job opportunities beyond the south-east. It could also spur the development of new energy projects - particularly rooftop solar - across buildings in urban areas where energy demand is high. This rebalancing of the energy market could save the UK nearly 49bn in accumulated network costs by 2040, according to a study commissioned by the energy regulator from FTI Consulting. But others fear the changes could come at a deeper cost to Britain's climate goals - and bill payers too. The clean energy companies preparing to spend billions on building new wind and solar farms are concerned that a redrawing of the market boundaries could radically change the economics of new renewable energy projects - which would ultimately raise the costs, which would be passed on to consumers, or see the projects scrapped altogether... With stiff competition in the international markets for investment in clean energy, Renewable UK [the industry's trade group] fears that companies and their investors will simply choose to build new clean energy projects elsewhere. "The debate has driven deep rifts across the industry," the article concludes, "between modernisers who believe the new price signals would give rise to a new, rational market and those who fear the changes risk unravelling Britain's low-carbon agenda... "The government is expected to make a decision on how to proceed in the coming months, but the fierce debate between warring factions of the energy industry is likely to continue for far longer." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader Rick Schumann shared this report from the blog AppleInsider:A new paper from Apple's artificial intelligence scientists has found that engines based on large language models, such as those from Meta and OpenAI, still lack basic reasoning skills. The group has proposed a new benchmark, GSM-Symbolic, to help others measure the reasoning capabilities of various large language models (LLMs). Their initial testing reveals that slight changes in the wording of queries can result in significantly different answers, undermining the reliability of the models. The group investigated the "fragility" of mathematical reasoning by adding contextual information to their queries that a human could understand, but which should not affect the fundamental mathematics of the solution. This resulted in varying answers, which shouldn't happen... The study found that adding even a single sentence that appears to offer relevant information to a given math question can reduce the accuracy of the final answer by up to 65 percent. "There is just no way you can build reliable agents on this foundation, where changing a word or two in irrelevant ways or adding a few bit of irrelevant info can give you a different answer," the study concluded... "We found no evidence of formal reasoning in language models," the new study concluded. The behavior of LLMS "is better explained by sophisticated pattern matching" which the study found to be "so fragile, in fact, that [simply] changing names can alter results."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Technical outerwear brand Arc'teryx and wearable technology startup Skip have teamed up to create exoskeleton hiking pants, powered by AI..." reports CNN.After four years of collaboration and testing, the two companies plan to start selling the battery-powered pants in 2025 for $5,000 - but they're also "available to rent and try out now," according to CNN's video report:"You can think of it like an e-bike for walking..." says Skip's co-founder and chief product officer Anna Roumiantseva. "On the way up, it really kind of offloads some of those big muscle groups that are working their hardest. We like to say it gives you about 40% more power in your legs on the way up with every step." ("And then supports their knees on the way down," says Cam Stuart, Arc'Teryx's advanced concepts team manager for research and engineering.) Kathryn Zealand, Skip Co-founder and CEO adds, "There's a lot of artificial intelligence built into these pants," with Roumiantseva explaining that technology "understands how you move, predicts how you're going to want to move next - and then assists you in doing that, so that the assistant doesn't feel like you're walking to the beat of the robot or is moving independently..." Stuart: I think when people think of what an exoskeleton is, they think of this big bionic frame or they think it's like Avatar or something like that. The challenge for us really was how do we put that in a pair of pants...?" Co-founder Roumiantseva: We've done a lot of work to make a lot of the complicated and sophisticated technology that goes into it look and feel as approachable and as similar to a garment as possible. Co-founder Zealand: And so maybe you think about them like a pair of pants. CNN points out it isn't the only "recreational exoskeleton." (Companies like Dnsys and Hypershell have even "developed their own lightweight exoskeletons - through Kickstarter campaigns.") But beyond recreation, this also has applications for people with disabilities. "Movement and mobility, it's such a huge driver of quality of life, it's such a huge driver of joy," says Skip's co-founder and chief product officer. "It does become a luxury - and that's a huge part of why we're building what we're building. Is we don't think it should be."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wall Street Journal reports on a "suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft... as many as a dozen or more" that appeared in Virginia 10 months ago "over an area that includes the home base for the Navy's SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval port." The article notes this was just 10 months after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon... After watching the drones - some "roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour" - there were weeks of meetings where "Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon's UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond..."Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn't qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway... Drone incursions into restricted airspace was already worrying national-security officials. Two months earlier, in October 2023, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear-weapons experiments. The Energy Department's Nevada Nuclear Security Site outside Las Vegas detected four of the drones over three days. Employees spotted a fifth. U.S. officials said they didn't know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones... Over 17 days, the [Virginia] drones arrived at dusk, flew off and circled back... They also were nearly impossible to track, vanishing each night despite a wealth of resources deployed to catch them. Gen. Glen VanHerck, at the time commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had for years been spotted flying around defense installations. But the nightly drone swarms over Langley [Air Force base], he said, were unlike any past incursion... Analysts learned that the smaller quadcopters didn't use the usual frequency band available for off-the-shelf commercial drones - more evidence that the drone operators weren't hobbyists. "Langley officials canceled nighttime training missions, worried about potential collisions with the drone swarm, and moved the F-22 jet fighters to another base... On December 23, the drones made their last visit." But toward the end of the article, it notes that "In January, authorities found a clue they hoped would crack the case." It was a student at the University of Minnesota named Fengyun Shi - who was reported flying a drone on a rainy morning near a Virginia shipyard that builds nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Their drone got stuck in a tree, and ended up with federal investigators who found "Shi had photographed Navy vessels in dry dock, including shots taken around midnight. Some were under construction at the nearby shipyard."On Jan. 18, federal agents arrested Shi as he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket. Shi told FBI agents he was a ship enthusiast and hadn't realized his drone crossed into restricted airspace. Investigators weren't convinced. but found no evidence linking him to the Chinese government. They learned he had bought the drone on sale at a Costco in San Francisco the day before he traveled to Norfolk. U.S. prosecutors charged Shi with unlawfully taking photos of classified naval installations, the first case involving a drone under a provision of U.S. espionage law. The 26-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty and appeared in federal court in Norfolk on Oct. 2 for sentencing. Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard said he didn't believe Shi's story - that he had been on vacation and was flying drones in the middle of the night for fun. "There's significant holes," the judge said in court. "If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known," said Shi's attorney, Shaoming Cheng. "I'm sorry about what happened in Norfolk," Shi said before he was sentenced to six months in federal prison. But "U.S. officials have yet to determine who flew the Langley drones or why..." "U.S. officials confirmed this month that more unidentified drone swarms were spotted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zambia has the largest man-made lake in the world, reports the Associated Press - but a severe drought has left the lake's 128-meter-high (420-feet) dam wall "almost completely exposed". This leaves Kariba dam without enough water to run most of its hydroelectric turbines - meaning millions of people in Zambia now face "a climate-induced energy crisis..."The water level is so low that only one of the six turbines on Zambia's side of the dam is able to operate, cutting generation to less than 10% of normal output. Zambia relies on the dam for more than 80% of its national electricity supply, and the result is Zambians have barely a few hours of power a day at the best of times. Often, areas are going without electricity for days... The power crisis is a bigger blow to the economy and the battle against poverty than the lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Zambia Association of Manufacturers president Ashu Sagar. Africa contributes the least to global warming but is the most vulnerable continent to extreme weather events and climate change as poor countries can't meet the high financials costs of adapting. This year's drought in southern Africa is the worst in decades and has parched crops and left millions hungry, causing Zambia and others to already declare national disasters and ask for aid... Zambia is not alone in that hydroelectric power makes up over 80% of the energy mix in Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia and Congo, even as experts warn it will become more unreliable. "Extreme weather patterns, including prolonged droughts, make it clear that overreliance on hydro is no longer sustainable," said Carlos Lopes, a professor at the Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. While the lake's water level normally rises six meters after it rains, "It moved by less than 30 centimeters after the last rainy season barely materialized, authorities said... "Experts say there's also no guarantee those rains will come and it's dangerous to rely on a changing climate given Zambia has had drought-induced power problems before, and the trend is they are getting worse."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Though native Linux game servers have been scarce over the last two decades, "I've seen people using the Box64 emulator to play x86_64 games on ARM devices," writes Slashdot reader VennStone. "It got me thinking: why not apply this to game servers...? "I thought it would be fun to see if I could build a super low-power Trackmania 2 server using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W." They dubbed the experiment "Trackberry", and shared all the technical details in a blog post at Interfacing Linux (includinga video). For example, they installed PyEnv so it could create a virtual environment for the PyPlanet server controller. ("That's right, your little Pi Zero 2 W is about to compile some software, slowly....") But ultimately "it turns out that the A53 can run not only the server but also the server controller, with minimal effort. Five players push one core to around 50% load, while the others handle the database and controller."WHY STOP THERE? There are a gang of x86 Linux servers that could potentially run with Box64. Imagine playing Pirraria, 7 Days to Pi, Counter-Pi 2, Pitorio, and countless others! Granted, you may need a more powerful device than a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. I'll leave that research up to you. My main takeaway from this experiment? Box64 is straight-up Scandinavian witchcraft and is not to be trifled with. Not even a little bit. That said, it introduces a compelling option for those of us looking to run dedicated game servers that don't require much in the way of system resources. Under load, TrackBerry averages 2.8 watts and, according to the scientific number digits below, ends up running just under $3.00 a year or $0.25 a month. I find the concept of having a stack of microSD cards, each holding a different game server, neat.... You can see TrackBerry in action every Tuesday and Friday on Twitch...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched its Starship rocket on its fifth test flight. But more importantly, CNBC points out, SpaceX "made a dramatic first catch of the rocket's more than 20-story tall booster." Watch the footage here. It's pretty exciting...The achievement marks a major milestone toward SpaceX's goal of making Starship a fully reusable rocket system... The rocket's "Super Heavy" booster returned to land on the arms of the company's launch tower nearly seven minutes after launch. "Are you kidding me?" SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the company's webcast. "What we just saw, that looked like magic," Huot added... Starship separated and continued on to space, traveling halfway around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean as intended to complete the test. There were no people on board the fifth Starship flight. The company's leadership has said SpaceX expects to fly hundreds of Starship missions before the rocket launches with any crew... With the booster catch, SpaceX has surpassed the fourth test flight's milestones... The company sees the ambitious catch approach as critical to its goal of making the rocket fully reusable. "SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success," the company wrote on its website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month C dropped from 3rd to 4th in TIOBE's ranking of programming language popularity (which tries to calculate each language's share of search engine results). Java moved up into the #3 position in September, reports TechRepublic, which notes that by comparison October "saw relatively little change" - though percentages of search results increased slightly. "At number one, Python jumped from 20.17% in September to 21.9% in October. In second place, C++ rose from 10.75% in September to 11.6%. In third, Java ascended from 9.45% to 10.51%..." Is there a larger trend? TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen writes that the need to harvest more data increases demand for fast data manipulation languages. But they also need to be easy to learn ("because the resource pool of skilled software engineers is drying up") and secure ("because of continuous cyber threats.")King of all, Python, is easy to learn and secure, but not fast. Hence, engineers are frantically looking for fast alternatives for Python. C++ is an obvious candidate, but it is considered "not secure" because of its explicit memory management. Rust is another candidate, although not easy to learn. Rust is, thanks to its emphasis on security and speed, making its way to the TIOBE index top 10 now. [It's #13 - up from #20 a year ago] The cry for fast, data crunching languages is also visible elsewhere in the TIOBE index. The language Mojo [a faster superset of Python designed for accelerated hardware like GPUs]... enters the top 50 for the first time. The fact that this language is only 1 year old and already showing up, makes it a very promising language. In the last 12 months three languages also fell from the top ten:PHP (dropping from #8 to #15)SQL (dropping from #9 to #11)Assembly language (dropping from #10 to #16)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

spatwei shared an article from SC World:Attacks on large language models (LLMs) take less than a minute to complete on average, and leak sensitive data 90% of the time when successful, according to Pillar Security. Pillar's State of Attacks on GenAI report, published Wednesday, revealed new insights on LLM attacks and jailbreaks, based on telemetry data and real-life attack examples from more than 2,000 AI applications. LLM jailbreaks successfully bypass model guardrails in one out of every five attempts, the Pillar researchers also found, with the speed and ease of LLM exploits demonstrating the risks posed by the growing generative AI (GenAI) attack surface... The more than 2,000 LLM apps studied for the State of Attacks on GenAI report spanned multiple industries and use cases, with virtual customer support chatbots being the most prevalent use case, making up 57.6% of all apps. Common jailbreak techniques included "ignore previous instructions" and "ADMIN override", or just using base64 encoding. "The Pillar researchers found that attacks on LLMs took an average of 42 seconds to complete, with the shortest attack taking just 4 seconds and the longest taking 14 minutes to complete. "Attacks also only involved five total interactions with the LLM on average, further demonstrating the brevity and simplicity of attacks."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta's Oversight Board "is spinning off a new appeals center," reports the Washington Post, "to handle content disputes from European social media users on multiple platforms". It will operate under Europe's Digital Services Act, "which requires tech companies to allow users to appeal restrictions on their accounts before an independent group of experts.""I think this is really a game changer," Appeals Centre Europe CEO Thomas Hughes said in an interview. "It could really drive platform accountability and transparency." The expansion arrives as the Oversight Board, an independent collection of academics, experts and lawyers funded by Meta, has been seeking to expand its influence beyond the social media giant... [The Board] has tried for years to court other major internet companies, offering to help them referee debates about content, The Post has reported... Oversight Board members and Oversight Board Trust Chairman Stephen Neal said in statements that both the Appeals Centre Europe and the Oversight Board will play critical but complimentary roles in holding tech companies accountable for their decisions on content. "Both entities are committed to improving user redress, transparency and upholding users' rights online," Neal said... Hughes, who used to be the Oversight Board's administration director, said that he was "proud" of what the Oversight Board is accomplishing but that it is different from what the Appeals Centre Europe will offer. When Facebook, YouTube or TikTok removes a post, European social media users will be able to appeal the decision to the center. Users also will also be able to flag the center with posts they think violate the rules but were not removed. While the Appeals Centre Europe's decisions will be nonbinding, the group will generate data that could power decisions by regulators, civil society groups and the general public, Hughes said. By contrast, the Oversight Board's decisions on Meta content are binding. Last year the original Oversight Board completed more than 50 cases, "and is on track to exceed that number in 2024," according to the article. But this board is different, CEO Hughes told the Post. They'll have about two dozen staffers, with expertise in human rights and tech policy - or fluency in various languages. And he added that though the center is funded by an initial grant, future operating costs will be covered by the fees social media companies pay the appeal center - roughly 90 euros ($100) per case.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wall Street Journal delves into the origin story of that teenaged Grand Theft Auto VI leaker.Arion Kurtaj, now 19 years old, is the most notorious name that has emerged from a sprawling set of online communities called the Com... Their youthful inventiveness and tenacity, as well as their status as minors that make prosecution more complicated, have made the Com especially dangerous, according to law-enforcement officials and cybersecurity investigators. Some kids, they say, are recruited from popular online spaces like Minecraft or Roblox.... [William McKeen, a supervisory special agent with the FBI's Cyber Division] said the average age of anyone arrested for a crime in the U.S. is 37, while the average age of someone arrested for cybercrime is 19. Cybersecurity investigators have found posts they say suggest Kurtaj has been involved in online attacks since he was 11. "He had limited social skills and trouble developing relationships, records say - and ultimately looked for approval in the booming world of cybercrime..."[When Kurtaj was 14] he landed in a residential school serving children with severe emotional and behavioral needs. Kurtaj was physically assaulted by a staff member at his school who was later convicted as a result, according to a person familiar with the case. In early 2021, his mother brought him home and removed him from government care, court records say. He never returned to school. He was 16. A month after his mother pulled him out of school, investigators say that Kurtaj was part of a hacking group called Recursion Team that broke into the videogame firm Electronic Arts and stole 780 gigabytes of data. When Electronic Arts refused to engage, they dumped the stolen data online. Within a week of that hack, investigators had identified Kurtaj and provided his name to the FBI. Later in that summer of 2021, according to court records, Kurtaj partnered with another teenager, known as ASyntax, and several Brazilian hackers, and started calling themselves Lapsus$. The group hacked into the British telecommunications giant BT in an effort to steal money using a technique called SIM swapping... The hacks weren't always for money. In late 2021, Lapsus$ hacked into a website operated by Brazil's Ministry of Health and deleted the country's database of Covid vaccinations, according to law enforcement... If the Com has a social center, it's a website called Doxbin, where users publish personal details, such as home addresses and phone numbers, of their online rivals in an attempt to intimidate each other. Kurtaj bought Doxbin in November 2021 for $75,000, according to Chainalysis. But after a few months, the previous owners accused Kurtaj of mismanaging the site and pressured him to sell it back. He relented. Then in January 2022, cybersecurity investigators say, he doxxed the entire site, publishing a database that included usernames, passwords and email addresses that he'd downloaded when he was the owner. For cybersecurity experts, it was a gold mine. "It helped investigators piece together which crimes were done by who," said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, an online investigations firm. Doxbin's owners responded with a dox of Kurtaj and his family, including his home address and photos of him, investigators say - setting up the chain of events that would put Kurtaj in the Travelodge. After two weeks of "protective custody" there - during which time he was supposed to be computer-free - Kurtaj "was arrested a third time and charged with hacking, fraud and blackmail. Authorities said that while at the Travelodge, he broke into Uber and taunted the company by posting a link to a photo of an erect penis on the company's internal Slack messaging system, then stole software and videos from Rockstar Games. Stolen clips had popped up in a Grand Theft Auto discussion forum from a user named teapotuberhacker and stirred a frenzy. "As officers collected evidence, the teen stood by, emotionless, police say...." "Kurtaj's lawyers and some experts on autism have said a potential lifetime of incarceration isn't appropriate for a teenager like Kurtaj..." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thursday the Associated Press reported:One of the two companies that manufacture high-purity quartz used for making semiconductors and other high-tech products from mines in a western North Carolina community severely damaged by Hurricane Helene is operating again. Sibelco announced on Thursday that production has restarted at its mining and processing operations in Spruce Pine, located 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Asheville. [Per Wikipedia, its pre-hurricane population was 2,175.] Production and shipments are progressively ramping up to full capacity, the company said in a news release. "While the road to full recovery for our communities will be long, restarting our operations and resuming shipments to customers are important contributors to rebuilding the local economy," Sibelco CEO Hilmar Rode said... A Spruce Pine council member said recently that an estimated three-quarters of the town has a direct connection to the mines, whether through a job, a job that relies on the mines or a family member who works at the facilities. An announcement last week from Sibelco attributed its resilience to their long-standing commitment to sustainability, "which includes measures to mitigate the impact of extreme weather events such as Hurricane Helene." Initial assessments indicated their operating facilities sustained only minor damage. And "the company previously announced that all its employees are safe," Sibelco reaffirmed in its announcement Thursday:Sibelco, with support from its contractors, has been contributing to the local recovery efforts by clearing debris, repairing roads, providing road building materials to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, installing temporary power generators for emergency shelters and local businesses, and working with the town of Spruce Pine to restart water supply to residents. Additionally, Sibelco has incorporated the Sibelco Spruce Pine Foundation to further support the community's recovery. The company previously announced that it is making an immediate $1 million donation as seed money for the foundation. Anyone interested in learning more or contributing to this initiative should contact the foundation by email or by visiting our website for additional information and donation opportunities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After nearly 30 years of covering Kamala Harris, the San Francisco Chronicle is now letting ChatGPT do it. Sort of... "We're introducing a new way to engage with our decades of coverage: an AI-powered tool designed to answer your questions about Harris' life, her journey through public service and her presidential campaign," they announced this week:Drawing from thousands of articles written, edited and published by Chronicle journalists since 1995, this tool aims to give readers informed answers about a politician who rose from the East Bay and is now campaigning to become one of the world's most powerful people. Why don't we have a similar tool for Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president? The answer isn't political. It's because we've been covering Harris since her career began in the Bay Area and have an archive of vetted articles to draw from. Our newsroom can't offer the same level of expertise when it comes to the former president. The tool's answers are "drawn directly from decades of extensive reporting," according to a notice toward the bottom of the page. "The tool searches through thousands of Chronicle articles, with new stories added every hour as they are published, ensuring readers have access to the most up-to-date information."Our news assistant is powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o mini model, combined with OpenAI's text-embedding-3-large model, to deliver precise answers based on user queries. The Chronicle articles in this tool's corpus span from April 24, 1995, to the present, covering the length of Harris' career. This corpus wouldn't be possible without the hard work of the Chronicle's journalists. Questions go through OpenAI's moderation filter and "relevance check" - and if it asks how to vote, "we redirect readers to appropriate resources including canivote.org..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

wiredmikey writes: As the dust settles following the massive Windows BSOD tech outages caused by CrowdStrike in July 2024, the question is now, how do we prevent this happening again? While there was no current way Microsoft could have prevented this incident, the OS firm is obviously keen to prevent anything similar happening in the future. SecurityWeek talked to David Weston, VP enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, to discuss Windows kernel access and safe deployment practices (or SDP). Former Ukranian officer Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov created a Signal channel where military communications specialists could talk with civilian radio experts, reports MIT's Technology Review. But radio communications are crucial for drones, so...About once a month, he drives hundreds of kilometers east in a homemade mobile intelligence center: a black VW van in which stacks of radio hardware connect to an array of antennas on the roof that stand like porcupine quills when in use. Two small devices on the dash monitor for nearby drones. Over several days at a time, Flash studies the skies for Russian radio transmissions and tries to learn about the problems facing troops in the fields and in the trenches. He is, at least in an unofficial capacity, a spy. But unlike other spies, Flash does not keep his work secret. In fact, he shares the results of these missions with more than 127,000 followers - including many soldiers and government officials - on several public social media channels. Earlier this year, for instance, he described how he had recorded five different Russian reconnaissance drones in a single night - one of which was flying directly above his van... Drones have come to define the brutal conflict that has now dragged on for more than two and a half years. And most rely on radio communications - a technology that Flash has obsessed over since childhood. So while Flash is now a civilian, the former officer has still taken it upon himself to inform his country's defense in all matters related to radio... Flash has also become a source of some controversy among the upper echelons of Ukraine's military, he tells me. The Armed Forces of Ukraine declined multiple requests for comment, but Flash and his colleagues claim that some high-ranking officials perceive him as a security threat, worrying that he shares too much information and doesn't do enough to secure sensitive intel... [But] His work has become greatly important to those fighting on the ground, and he recently received formal recognition from the military for his contributions to the fight, with two medals of commendation - one from the commander of Ukraine's ground forces, the other from the Ministry of Defense... And given the mounting evidence that both militaries and militant groups in other parts of the world are now adopting drone tactics developed in Ukraine, it's not only his country's fate that Flash may help to determine - but also the ways that armies wage war for years to come. He's also written guides on building cheap anti-drone equipment...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In mid-2021 Ameria's National Security Advisor set up a new directorate focused on "advanced chips, quantum computing, and other cutting-edge tech," reports Wired. And the next year as Congress was working on boosting America's semiconductor sector, he was "closing in on a plan to cripple China's... In October 2022, the Commerce Department forged ahead with its new export controls." So what happened next?In a phone call with President Biden this past spring, Xi Jinping warned that if the US continued trying to stall China's technological development, he would not "sit back and watch." And he hasn't. Already, China has answered the US export controls - and its corresponding deals with other countries - by imposing its own restrictions on critical minerals used to make semiconductors and by hoovering up older chips and manufacturing equipment it is still allowed to buy. For the past several quarters, in fact, China was the top customer for ASML and a number of Japanese chip companies. A robust black market for banned chips has also emerged in China. According to a recent New York Times investigation, some of the Chinese companies that have been barred from accessing American chips through US export controls have set up new corporations to evade those bans. (These companies have claimed no connection to the ones who've been banned.) This has reportedly enabled Chinese entities with ties to the military to obtain small amounts of Nvidia's high-powered chips. Nvidia, meanwhile, has responded to the US actions by developing new China-specific chips that don't run afoul of the US controls but don't exactly thrill the Biden administration either. For the White House and Commerce Department, keeping pace with all of these workarounds has been a constant game of cat and mouse. In 2023, the US introduced the first round of updates to its export controls. This September, it released another - an announcement that was quickly followed by a similar expansion of controls by the Dutch. Some observers have speculated that the Biden administration's actions have only made China more determined to invest in its advanced tech sector. And there's clearly some truth to that. But it's also true that China has been trying to become self-sufficient since long before Biden entered office. Since 2014, it has plowed nearly $100 billion into its domestic chip sector. "That was the world we walked into," [NSA Advisor Jake] Sullivan said. "Not the world we created through our export controls." The United States' actions, he argues, have only made accomplishing that mission that much tougher and costlier for Beijing. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger estimated earlier this year that there's a "10-year gap" between the most powerful chips being made by Chinese chipmakers like SMIC and the ones Intel and Nvidia are working on, thanks in part to the export controls. If the measure of Sullivan's success is how effectively the United States has constrained China's advancement, it's hard to argue with the evidence. "It's probably one of the biggest achievements of the entire Biden administration," said Martijn Rasser, managing director of Datenna, a leading intelligence firm focused on China. Rasser said the impact of the US export controls alone "will endure for decades." But if you're judging Sullivan's success by his more idealistic promises regarding the future of technology - the idea that the US can usher in an era of progress dominated by democratic values - well, that's a far tougher test. In many ways, the world, and the way advanced technologies are poised to shape it, feels more unsettled than ever. Four years was always going to be too short for Sullivan to deliver on that promise. The question is whether whoever's sitting in Sullivan's seat next will pick up where he left off.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Former Ukranian officer Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov created a Signal channel where military communications specialists could talk with civilian radio experts, reports MIT's Technology Review. But radio communications are crucial for drones, so...About once a month, he drives hundreds of kilometers east in a homemade mobile intelligence center: a black VW van in which stacks of radio hardware connect to an array of antennas on the roof that stand like porcupine quills when in use. Two small devices on the dash monitor for nearby drones. Over several days at a time, Flash studies the skies for Russian radio transmissions and tries to learn about the problems facing troops in the fields and in the trenches. He is, at least in an unofficial capacity, a spy. But unlike other spies, Flash does not keep his work secret. In fact, he shares the results of these missions with more than 127,000 followers - including many soldiers and government officials - on several public social media channels. Earlier this year, for instance, he described how he had recorded five different Russian reconnaissance drones in a single night - one of which was flying directly above his van... Drones have come to define the brutal conflict that has now dragged on for more than two and a half years. And most rely on radio communications - a technology that Flash has obsessed over since childhood. So while Flash is now a civilian, the former officer has still taken it upon himself to inform his country's defense in all matters related to radio... Flash has also become a source of some controversy among the upper echelons of Ukraine's military, he tells me. The Armed Forces of Ukraine declined multiple requests for comment, but Flash and his colleagues claim that some high-ranking officials perceive him as a security threat, worrying that he shares too much information and doesn't do enough to secure sensitive intel... [But] His work has become greatly important to those fighting on the ground, and he recently received formal recognition from the military for his contributions to the fight, with two medals of commendation - one from the commander of Ukraine's ground forces, the other from the Ministry of Defense... And given the mounting evidence that both militaries and militant groups in other parts of the world are now adopting drone tactics developed in Ukraine, it's not only his country's fate that Flash may help to determine - but also the ways that armies wage war for years to come. He's also written guides on building cheap anti-drone equipment...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many U.S. states now require candidates to disclose when political ads used generative AI, reports the Washington Post. Unfortunately, researchers at New York University's Center on Technology Policy "found that people rated candidates 'less trustworthy and less appealing' when their ads featured AI disclaimers..."In the study, researchers asked more than 1,000 participants to watch political ads by fictional candidates - some containing AI disclaimers, some not - and then rate how trustworthy they found the would-be officeholders, how likely they were to vote for them and how truthful their ads were. Ads containing AI labels largely hurt candidates across the board, with the pattern holding true for "both deceptive and more harmless uses of generative AI," the researchers wrote. Notably, researchers also found that AI labels were more harmful for candidates running attack ads than those being attacked, something they called the "backfire effect". "The candidate who was attacked was actually rated more trustworthy, more appealing than the candidate who created the ad," said Scott Babwah Brennen, who directs the center at NYU and co-wrote the report with Shelby Lake, Allison Lazard and Amanda Reid. One other interesting finding... The article notes that study participants in both parties "preferred when disclaimers were featured anytime AI was used in an ad, even when innocuous."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Formed in 2021 by cybersecurity professionals (and backed by high-powered VCs including Dell Technologies Capital), Halcyon sells an enterprise-grade anti-ransomware platform. And this month they announced they're offering protection against ransomware attacks targeting Linux systems, according to Linux magazine: According to Cynet, Linux ransomware attacks increased by 75 percent in 2023 and are expected to continue to climb as more bad actors target Linux deployments... "While Windows is the favorite for desktops, Linux dominates the market for supercomputers and servers." Here's how Halcyon's announcement made their pitch:"When it comes to ransomware protection, organizations typically prioritize securing Windows environments because that's where the ransomware operators were focusing most of their attacks. However, Linux-based systems are at the core of most any organization's infrastructure, and protecting these systems is often an afterthought," said Jon Miller, CEO & Co-founder, Halcyon. "The fact that Linux systems usually are always on and available means they provide the perfect beachhead for establishing persistence and moving laterally in a targeted network, and they can be leveraged for data theft where the exfiltration is easily masked by normal network traffic. As more ransomware operators are developing the capability to target Linux systems alongside Windows, it is imperative that organizations have the ability to keep pace with the expanded threat." Halcyon Linux, powered through the Halcyon Anti-Ransomware Platform, uniquely secures Linux-based systems offering comprehensive protection and rapid response capabilities... Halcyon Linux monitors and detects ransomware-specific behaviors such as unauthorized access, lateral movement, or modification of critical files in real-time, providing instant alerts with critical context... When ransomware is suspected or detected, the Halcyon Ransomware Response Engine allows for rapid response and action.... Halcyon Data Exfiltration Protection (DXP) identifies and blocks unauthorized data transfers to protect sensitive information, safeguarding the sensitive data stored in Linux-based systems and endpoints... Halcyon Linux runs with minimal resource impact, ensuring critical environments such as database servers or virtualized workloads, maintain the same performance. And in addition, Halcyon offers "an around the clock Threat Response team, reviewing and responding to alerts," so your own corporate security teams "can attend to other pressing priorities..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is "embedding pharmacies in same-day delivery facilities often clustered around major metro areas," reports CNBC. This will enable "a coming expansion of its same-day prescription delivery service," according to Engadget, "with 20 more cities and affiliated metro areas entering the program next year. This expansion will open up the feature to nearly half of US residents." "In most cases, that means a customer can order medication by 4 p.m. and receive it at home by 10 p.m.," Amazon said in their announcement - making the case that their service (and its 24/7 pharmacists) "ensures customers can get care within hours, bridging health care accessibility divides..."A recent study found nearly half of U.S. counties have communities over 10 miles from the nearest pharmacy, limiting their access to medications and pharmacist care. Traditional mail-order prescriptions can take up to 10 days to arrive, leaving many underserved... As of 2019, seven in 10 hospitals relied on fax machines and phone lines to transfer and retrieve patient records or order prescriptions. Nearly a third of physicians have said they spend 20 hours or more a week on paperwork and administrative tasks... The new, smaller pharmacies complement Amazon Pharmacy's existing, highly automated pharmacy fulfillment sites that feature robotic arms and other automation, overseen by a team of highly trained, licensed pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. CNBC adds that in the last year Amazon has also tested prescription deliveries by drone in one Texas city.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week (MIT-licensed) WebAssembly runtime Wasmer announced "a major milestone in making any software run with WebAssembly." The announcement's headline? Running Clang in the browser using WebAssembly...Thanks to the newest release of Wasmer (4.4) and the Wasmer JS SDK (0.8.0) you can now run [compiler front-end] clang anywhere Wasmer runs! This allows compiling C programs from virtually anywhere. Including Javascript and your preferred browser! (we tested Chrome, Safari and Firefox and everything is working like a charm)... - You can compile C code to WebAssembly easily just using the Wasmer CLI: no toolchains or complex installations needed, install Wasmer and you are ready to go...! - You can compile C projects directly from JavaScript...! - We expect online IDEs to start adopting the SDK to allow their users compile and run C programs in the browser.... Do you want to use clang in your Javascript project? Thanks to our newly released Wasmer JS SDK you can do it easily, in both the browser and Node.js/Bun etc... Wasmer's clang can even optimize the file for you automatically using wasm-opt under the hood (Clang automatically detects if wasm-opt is used, and it will be automatically called when optimizing the file). Imagine using Emscripten without needing its toolchain installed - or even better, imagine running Emscripten in the browser. The announcement looks to a future of compiling native Python libraries, when "any project depending on LLVM can now be easily compiled to WebAssembly..." "This is the beginning of an awesome journey, we can't wait to see what you create next with this."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Boeing said Friday it will cull 10 percent of its workforce - roughly 17,000 jobs," reports the Washington Post, "as the aviation giant grapples with mounting losses and manufacturing disruptions amid a machinists strike that has dragged into a fifth week."Executives, managers and production employees will be affected by the cuts, chief executive Kelly Ortberg informed employees Friday in a memo. Boeing will also delay the launch of its 777X plane until 2026 due to ongoing challenges, Ortberg wrote... The layoffs add to the pain at Boeing, where a stalemate between the company's largest employee union dovetails with ongoing legal troubles and safety woes. The strike has halted production of some of the company's best-selling jets, further adding to its financial troubles. In the past five years, Boeing has lost more than $25 billion... "Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together," Ortberg said in the memo. "The state of our business and our future recovery require tough actions...." Now at risk of a downgrade to its credit rating as its circumstances worsen, Boeing has taken other steps to reduce expenses, including imposing a hiring freeze and eliminating unnecessary travel. "The strike by Boeing machinists is costing the company roughly $1 billion a month, according to estimates from S&P Global..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The PC market is not showing many signs of a rebound, despite the hype around AI PCs, with market watchers split over whether unit shipments are up or down slightly. From a report: Those magical AI PC boxes were supposed to fire up buyer enthusiasm and spur the somewhat listless market for desktop and laptop systems into significant growth territory, but that doesn't appear to be happening. According to the latest figures from Gartner, global PC shipments totaled 62.9 million units during Q3 of this year, representing a 1.3 percent decline compared with the same period last year. However, this does follow three consecutive quarters of modest growth. "Even with a full line-up of Windows-based AI PCs for both Arm and x86 in the third quarter of 2024, AI PCs did not boost the demand for PCs since buyers have yet to see their clear benefits or business value," commented Gartner Director Analyst Mikako Kitagawa. This is perhaps understandable when AI PCs are largely just a marketing concept, and vendors can't agree on exactly what the the definition of an AI PC should be. Even worse, some buyers of Arm-based Copilot+ machines discovered that their performance isn't actually very good with some applications.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Imgur announced changes to its content moderation policies, no longer classifying memes with adult humor as mature. Going forward, only memes with sexualized or lewd content will receive the mature tag. The Verge reports: Imgur is making the changes after it collected feedback about its content moderation over the course of this year, including that its policies, "especially surrounding mature content, feel inconsistently applied, too subjective, or just rather confusing as a whole," according to a post from Imgur product manager Martyn O'Neill. Now, mature content consists "solely of sexualized or 'lewd'" content. Following the adjustments, O'Neill says that "warnings / post removals" are down nearly 35 percent month over month. Far fewer posts are being marked as mature as well; that stat has declined by almost 50 percent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA confirmed that it's working with international partners and standards organizations to create a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) for future lunar exploration. This time standard will account for relativity and be scalable for other celestial bodies, supporting long-term missions like Artemis and commercial space activities. From the report: The lunar time will be determined by a weighted average of atomic clocks at the Moon, similar to how scientists calculate Earth's globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Exactly where at the Moon is still to be determined, since current analysis indicates that atomic clocks placed at the Moon's surface will appear to 'tick' faster by microseconds per day. A microsecond is one millionth of a second. NASA and its partners are currently researching which mathematical models will be best for establishing a lunar time. To put these numbers into perspective, a hummingbird's wings flap about 50 times per second. Each flap is about .02 seconds, or 20,000 microseconds. So, while 56 microseconds may seem miniscule, when discussing distances in space, tiny bits of time add up. "For something traveling at the speed of light, 56 microseconds is enough time to travel the distance of approximately 168 football fields," said Cheryl Gramling, lead on lunar position, navigation, timing, and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "If someone is orbiting the Moon, an observer on Earth who isn't compensating for the effects of relativity over a day would think that the orbiting astronaut is approximately 168 football fields away from where the astronaut really is."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are leading efforts to curb the sale of compounded GLP-1 medications. Lilly has issued hundreds of cease-and-desist letters to entities selling compounded tirzepatide, following the end of its FDA-declared shortage. Novo Nordisk, whose semaglutide drugs remain in shortage, is taking a different approach. The company published a peer-reviewed study in Pharmaceutical Research, highlighting quality concerns in compounded semaglutide samples, including lower-than-claimed strength and banned ingredients. These actions signal a broader industry pushback against compounders who entered the market during drug shortages. Wired adds: With mounting evidence that GLP-1s like tirzepatide are an effective treatment for other ailments beyond obesity and diabetes -- including addiction and Parkinson's disease -- demand is only expected to increase. It remains to be seen whether the pharmaceutical companies will be able to keep pace with the demand or if the meds will go back into shortage and compounders will be able to bound back into the market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Imagine three people huddled in a circle so when one speaks, only one other hears. Scientists have created a device that works like that, ensuring sound waves ripple in one direction only. The device, developed by scientists at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, is made up of a disk-shaped cavity with three equally-spaced ports that can each send or receive sound. In an inactive state, sound transmitted from port 1 is audible to ports 2 and 3 at equal volumes. Sound waves bounce back to port 1 as an echo as well. When the system is running, however, only port 2 hears port 1's sounds. The trick is to blow swirling air into the cavity at a specific speed and intensity, which allows the sound waves to synchronize in a repeating pattern. That not only guides the sound waves in a single direction, but gives more energy to those oscillations so they don't dissipate. It's kind of like a roundabout for sound. The scientists say their technique may inform the design of future communications technologies. New metamaterials could be made to manipulate not just sound waves but potentially electromagnetic waves too. "This concept of loss-compensated non-reciprocal wave propagation is, in our view, an important result that can also be transferred to other systems," says senior researcher Nicolas Noiray. The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bluesky, the decentralized social network cofounded by Jack Dorsey, created a Threads account to court users frustrated by Meta's moderation issues. Thurrott reports: This week, the Bluesky team also used Threads to share some tips on how to get started on Bluesky, how to get more engagement, and more. The company also emphasized its decentralized structure and more extensive customization options, with the app recently introducing a new theme font, adjustable font sizing, and the ability to pin posts on top of profiles. Bluesky also couldn't resist to engage in some strange trolling this week. "We're not like the other girls ... we're not owned by a billionaire," the team wrote on Threads yesterday. Of course, this the post that got the most engagement on the Bluesky Threads account with close to 500 comments as of this writing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a copyright infringement verdict against Internet provider Grande, which failed to take action against allegedly pirating subscribers. The jury's $47 million damages award in favor of the major music label plaintiffs is vacated. According to the Court (PDF), individual tracks that are part of an album, should not be counted as separate works. TorrentFreak reports: After hearing both sides, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury verdict yesterday. Grande's arguments, suggesting that the district court mistakenly upheld the verdict earlier, were rejected. "The district court did not err in upholding the jury's unanimous liability verdict because Plaintiffs satisfied each element legally and factually," the decision reads. "The court correctly interpreted the law and instructed the jury on the relevant legal standards in light of the factual issues disputed by the parties, and Plaintiffs introduced ample evidence from which a reasonable jury could find in Plaintiffs' favor." [...] In addition to the material contribution challenge, Grande and its supporters also pointed out that terminating Internet access isn't a "simple measure," as the jury concluded. Instead, it is drastic and overbroad, which could also impact innocent subscribers. The Court of Appeals rejects this reasoning. Instead, it states that the jury could and did conclude that terminations are a simple measure. There is no evidence to reach a different conclusion. All in all, the Court sees no reason to reverse the jury's verdict that Grande is liable for contributory infringement. This means that the jury verdict is affirmed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Casio confirmed it suffered a ransomware attack earlier this month, resulting in the theft of personal and confidential data from employees, job candidates, business partners, and some customers. Although customer payment data was not compromised, Casio warns the impact may broaden as the investigation continues. BleepingComputer reports: The attack was disclosed Monday when Casio warned that it was facing system disruption and service outages due to unauthorized access to its networks during the weekend. Yesterday, the Underground ransomware group claimed responsibility for the attack, leaking various documents allegedly stolen from the Japanese tech giant's systems. Today, after the data was leaked, Casio published a new statement that admits that sensitive data was stolen during the attack on its network. As to the current results of its ongoing investigation, Casio says the following information has been confirmed as likely compromised: - Personal data of both permanent and temporary/contract employees of Casio and its affiliated companies.- Personal details related to business partners of Casio and certain affiliates.- Personal information of individuals who have interviewed for employment with Casio in the past.- Personal information related to customers using services provided by Casio and its affiliated companies.- Details related to contracts with current and past business partners.- Financial data regarding invoices and sales transactions.- Documents that include legal, financial, human resources planning, audit, sales, and technical information from within Casio and its affiliates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR : For the first time, internal TikTok communications have been made public that show a company unconcerned with the harms the app poses for American teenagers. This is despite its own research validating many child safety concerns. The confidential material was part of a more than two-year investigation into TikTok by 14 attorneys general that led to state officials suing the company on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok was designed with the express intention of addicting young people to the app. The states argue the multi-billion-dollar company deceived the public about the risks. In each of the separate lawsuits state regulators filed, dozens of internal communications, documents and research data were redacted -- blacked-out from public view -- since authorities entered into confidentiality agreements with TikTok. But in one of the lawsuits, filed by the Kentucky Attorney General's Office, the redactions were faulty. This was revealed when Kentucky Public Radio copied-and-pasted excerpts of the redacted material, bringing to light some 30 pages of documents that had been kept secret. A group of more than a dozen states sued TikTok on Tuesday, alleging the app was intentionally designed to addict teens, something authorities say is a violation of state consumer protection laws. After Kentucky Public Radio published excerpts of the redacted material, a state judge sealed the entire complaint following a request from the attorney general's office "to ensure that any settlement documents and related information, confidential commercial and trade secret information, and other protected information was not improperly disseminated," according to an emergency motion to seal the complaint filed on Wednesday by Kentucky officials. NPR reviewed all the portions of the suit that were redacted, which highlight TikTok executives speaking candidly about a host of dangers for children on the wildly popular video app. The material, mostly summaries of internal studies and communications, show some remedial measures -- like time-management tools -- would have a negligible reduction in screen time. The company went ahead and decided to release and tout the features. Separately, under a new law, TikTok has until January to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. TikTok is fighting the looming crackdown. Meanwhile, the new lawsuits from state authorities have cast scrutiny on the app and its ability to counter content that harms minors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ecovacs robot vacuums have been hacked across the U.S. to shout racial slurs at unsuspecting people. VICE News reports: The issue is specifically with Ecovacs' Deebot X2 model. The hackers gained control of the devices and used the onboard speakers to blast racial slurs at anyone within earshot. One such person was a lawyer from Minnesota named Daniel Swenson. He was watching TV when he heard some odd noises coming from the direction of his vacuum. He changed the password and restarted it. But then the odd sounds started up again. And then it started shouting racial slurs at him like a surly disgruntled maid. There were multiple reports of similar incidents across the United States and around the same time. One of them happened in Los Angeles, where a vacuum chased a dog while spewing hate. Another happened in El Paso, where the vac spewed slurs until it's owner turned it off. The attacks are apparently quite easy to pull off thanks to several known security vulnerabilities in Ecovacs, like a bad Bluetooth connector and a defective PIN system that is intended to safeguard video feeds and remote access but actually doesn't do any of that at all. A pair of cybersecurity researchers released a report on Ecovacs detailing the brand's multiple security flaws earlier this year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In response to California's new law targeting "false advertising" of "digital goods," Valve has added the following language to its checkout page: "A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam." Ars Technica reports: California's AB2426 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sept. 26, excludes subscription-only services, free games, and digital goods that offer "permanent offline download to an external storage source to be used without a connection to the internet." Otherwise, sellers of digital goods cannot use the terms "buy, purchase," or related terms that would "confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good." And they must explain, conspicuously, in plain language, that "the digital good is a license" and link to terms and conditions. Which is what Valve has now added to its cart page before enforcement of these terms was due to start next year. The company has long made it clear, deeper inside its End User License Agreement (EULA), that a purchase is a license, and those licenses cannot be resold, which avoids issues of one's right to resell a game. Now it is something that every user sees on every purchase, however quickly they click-through to get to their download.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In late September, Shield AI cofounder Brandon Tseng swore that weapons in the U.S. would never be fully autonomous -- meaning an AI algorithm would make the final decision to kill someone. "Congress doesn't want that," the defense tech founder told TechCrunch. "No one wants that." But Tseng spoke too soon. Five days later, Anduril cofounder Palmer Luckey expressed an openness to autonomous weapons -- or at least a heavy skepticism of arguments against them. The U.S.'s adversaries "use phrases that sound really good in a sound bite: Well, can't you agree that a robot should never be able to decide who lives and dies?" Luckey said during a talk earlier this month at Pepperdine University. "And my point to them is, where's the moral high ground in a landmine that can't tell the difference between a school bus full of kids and a Russian tank?" When asked for further comment, Shannon Prior, a spokesperson for Anduril said that Luckey didn't mean that robots should be programmed to kill people on their own, just that he was concerned about "bad people using bad AI." In the past, Silicon Valley has erred on the side of caution. Take it from Luckey's cofounder, Trae Stephens. "I think the technologies that we're building are making it possible for humans to make the right decisions about these things," he told Kara Swisher last year. "So that there is an accountable, responsible party in the loop for all decisions that could involve lethality, obviously." The Anduril spokesperson denied any dissonance between Luckey (pictured above) and Stephens' perspectives, and said that Stephens didn't mean that a human should always make the call, but just that someone is accountable. Last month, Palantir co-founder and Anduril investor Joe Lonsdale also showed a willingness to consider fully autonomous weapons. At an event hosted by the think tank Hudson Institute, Lonsdale expressed frustration that this question is being framed as a yes-or-no at all. He instead presented a hypothetical where China has embraced AI weapons, but the U.S. has to "press the button every time it fires." He encouraged policymakers to embrace a more flexible approach to how much AI is in weapons. "You very quickly realize, well, my assumptions were wrong if I just put a stupid top-down rule, because I'm a staffer who's never played this game before," he said. "I could destroy us in the battle." When TC asked Lonsdale for further comment, he emphasized that defense tech companies shouldn't be the ones setting the agenda on lethal AI. "The key context to what I was saying is that our companies don't make the policy, and don't want to make the policy: it's the job of elected officials to make the policy," he said. "But they do need to educate themselves on the nuance to do a good job." He also reiterated a willingness to consider more autonomy in weapons. "It's not a binary as you suggest -- 'fully autonomous or not' isn't the correct policy question. There's a sophisticated dial along a few different dimensions for what you might have a soldier do and what you have the weapons system do," he said. "Before policymakers put these rules in place and decide where the dials need to be set in what circumstance, they need to learn the game and learn what the bad guys might be doing, and what's necessary to win with American lives on the line." [...] "For many in Silicon Valley and D.C., the biggest fear is that China or Russia rolls out fully autonomous weapons first, forcing the U.S.'s hand," reports TechCrunch. "At the Hudson Institute event, Lonsdale said that the tech sector needs to take it upon itself to 'teach the Navy, teach the DoD, teach Congress' about the potential of AI to 'hopefully get us ahead of China.' Lonsdale's and Luckey's affiliated companies are working on getting Congress to listen to them. Anduril and Palantir have cumulatively spent over $4 million in lobbying this year, according to OpenSecrets."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The oldest human on record, Jeanne Calment of France, lived to the age of 122. What are the odds that the rest of us get there, too? Not high, barring a transformative medical breakthrough, according to research published this week in the journal Nature Aging. From a report: The study looked at data on life expectancy at birth collected between 1990 and 2019 from some of the places where people typically live the longest: Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Data from the United States was also included, though the country's life expectancy is lower. The researchers found that while average life expectancies increased during that time in all of the locations, the rates at which they rose slowed down. The one exception was Hong Kong, where life expectancy did not decelerate. The data suggests that after decades of life expectancy marching upward thanks to medical and technological advancements, humans could be closing in on the limits of what's possible for average life span. "We're basically suggesting that as long as we live now is about as long as we're going to live," said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago, who led the study. He predicted maximum life expectancy will end up around 87 years -- approximately 84 for men, and 90 for women -- an average age that several countries are already close to achieving.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An APT hacking group known as GoldenJackal has successfully breached air-gapped government systems in Europe using two custom toolsets to steal sensitive data, like emails, encryption keys, images, archives, and documents. From a report: According to an ESET report, this happened at least two times, one against the embassy of a South Asian country in Belarus in September 2019 and again in July 2021, and another against a European government organization between May 2022 and March 2024. In May 2023, Kaspersky warned about GoldenJackal's activities, noting that the threat actors focus on government and diplomatic entities for purposes of espionage. Although their use of custom tools spread over USB pen drives, like the 'JackalWorm,' was known, cases of a successful compromise of air-gapped systems were not previously confirmed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

penciling_in writes: Ukrainian authorities have arrested a 28-year-old man in Khmelnytskyi for running an illegal VPN service that allowed users to bypass Ukrainian sanctions and access the Russian internet (Runet). The VPN, active since Russia's invasion, enabled Russian sympathizers and people in occupied territories to reach blocked Russian government sites, social media, and news. Handling over 100GB of data daily and linking to 48 million Russian IP addresses, the VPN may have been exploited by Russian intelligence. Ukrainian cyber police, in collaboration with the National Security Service, seized servers and equipment in multiple locations. The suspect faces charges under Part 5 of Article 361 of Ukraine's Criminal Code, which could lead to a 15-year prison sentence. Investigations are ongoing into further connections and funding sources. The case highlights the growing role of VPNs in the ongoing cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.