The first cracks are starting to show in Netflix's push into gaming. The Verge: First reported in Game File and confirmed by Netflix, the streaming company has quietly closed of one of its studios, the first in the three years since the company began its foray into gaming. According to Game File, the shuttered studio was known as Blue. In 2022, Netflix announced it hired former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny to run the studio. Since then, Blue had brought on a number of game industry veterans with experience working on high profile franchises including Halo and God of War. Reportedly, Blue was developing a multi-platform AAA game for an original IP but was closed before the game could be announced or released.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a post: EVs are still winning. But they haven't won yet; only 4% of the global passenger car fleet, 23% of the bus fleet, and less than 1% of delivery trucks are electrified. But at this point I think the writing is on the wall. The phenomenon of a superior technology displacing an older, inferior technology is not uncommon, and it generally looks like the EV transition is looking now. When a new technology passes a 5% adoption rate, it almost never turns out to be inferior to what came before; with EVs, that threshold has now been reached in dozens of countries. In fact, we don't have to rely on trend-based forecasting to understand why EVs are just going to win. There are a number of fundamental factors that make EVs simply better than combustion vehicles. The longer time goes on, the more these inherent advantages will make themselves felt in the market. The first of these is price. Currently, EVs often require government subsidies in order to be price-competitive with combustion cars. But batteries are getting cheaper and cheaper as we get better and better at building them. The cheaper batteries get, the smaller the subsidies required to get people to switch to EVs. Goldman Sachs reports that this crucial tipping point will be reached in about two years: [...] Once batteries cross that tipping point, the EV revolution will take on its own momentum. It will simply be cheaper to buy an EV than a combustion car. People will gravitate toward the cheaper option, especially if it comes with other advantages. And in this case it does. EVs' second advantage is convenience. Most EV owners will almost never have to fill their cars up at a station. This is because they will charge their cars at night, in their own home garages or driveway.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Financial Times: In the paediatric centre at one of London's largest hospitals, doctors are confounded each day by a ward computer that is not connected to a printer. The computer is used for managing the daily list of patients. Doctors can only access and update the list, using one shared account. So twice a day, two doctors on the ward said one of them had to log in to this computer, update the patient list, send the list to themselves via NHS email, and then log in to another nearby computer to print it off for the team. "I am at a top London hospital and yet at times I feel as though we are operating in the Stone Age," said one paediatrician on the ward. Tackling the frustrating delays caused by outdated technology [Editor's note: non-paywalled link] is one of health secretary Wes Streeting and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's core missions, having vowed to shift the service "from an analogue to a digital NHS." The monumental task of moving the world's largest publicly funded health service into the digital age is not lost on doctors working on the frontline of the NHS. While many sectors of the economy have been "radically reshaped" by technology in recent years, a landmark report into the state of the health service in England last month concluded that the NHS stood "in the foothills of digital transformation." But doctors and nurses point out that the basic infrastructure needs to be brought up to a minimum standard, given significant regional variations between hospitals, before politicians extol the virtues of cutting-edge tech. "Some of us just want the printers to work," noted one NHS hospital doctor. "The complete flip-a-coin nature of how equipped your hospital is is mind-boggling," they added. "I have worked in hospitals that are at least 12 years behind others." A report published in 2022 by the British Medical Association, the UK's main doctors' union, estimated that doctors in England lost 13.5mn working hours a year as a consequence of "inadequate IT systems and equipment." One reason for the outdated infrastructure is that the country has spent almost $48bn less than its peers -- such as Germany, France, Australia -- on health assets since the 2010s, according to a government-commissioned study by Lord Ara Darzi last month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A federal rule banning fake online reviews is now in effect. The Federal Trade Commission issued the rule in August banning the sale or purchase of online reviews. The rule, which went into effect Monday, allows the agency to seek civil penalties against those who knowingly violate it. AP: "Fake reviews not only waste people's time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors," FTC Chair Lina Khan said about the rule in August. She added that the rule will "protect Americans from getting cheated, put businesses that unlawfully game the system on notice, and promote markets that are fair, honest, and competitive."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Anthropic has released an upgraded version of its AI model Claude 3.5 Sonnet and announced a new model, Claude 3.5 Haiku, alongside a public beta feature enabling AI to operate computers like humans. The enhanced Sonnet model improved its coding capabilities, scoring 49% on the SWEbench Verified benchmark, surpassing OpenAI and other competitors. The Haiku model matches the performance of Anthropic's previous flagship Claude 3 Opus while maintaining lower costs and faster speeds. The computer use feature, available through Anthropic's API and cloud partners, allows Claude to perform tasks like navigating web browsers, filling forms, and manipulating data. Early adopters include Asana, DoorDash, and Replit, though Anthropic -- backed by investors including Google and Amazon -- acknowledges the feature remains experimental and error-prone. Claude 3.5 Haiku will launch later this month, initially supporting text-only inputs with image capabilities to follow.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, Richard Blumenthal and Representative Katie Porter are demanding the Justice Department prosecute tax preparation companies for allegedly sharing sensitive taxpayer data with Meta and Google through tracking pixels. The lawmakers' call follows a Treasury Inspector General audit confirming their earlier investigation into TaxSlayer, H&R Block, and Tax Act. The audit found multiple companies failed to properly obtain consent before sharing tax return information via advertising tools. Violations could result in one-year prison terms and $1,000 fines per incident, potentially reaching billions in penalties given the scale of affected users. In a letter shared with The Verge, the lawmakers said: "Accountability for these tax preparation companies -- who disclosed millions of taxpayers' tax return data, meaning they could potentially face billions of dollars in criminal liability -- is essential for protecting the rule of law and the privacy of taxpayers," the letter reads. "We urge you to follow the facts and the conclusions of TIGTA and the IRS and to take appropriate action against any companies or individuals that have violated the law."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Companies hiring specialized AI talent are seeing better stock market returns, according to new Barclays research. Analysis shows firms with higher ratios of specialized AI roles to general IT positions outperformed the market, with the top quintile returning 31.78% since October 2023, beating the S&P 500 Equal Weighted index. The findings suggest that targeted recruitment of "wonky IT people" with specific skills in natural language processing, computer vision, and specialized frameworks like TensorFlow could be a subtle indicator of future stock performance, offering investors a new lens for identifying companies poised to capitalize on AI productivity gains.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Session, a small but increasingly popular encrypted messaging app, is moving its operations outside of Australia after the country's federal law enforcement agency visited an employee's residence and asked them questions about the app and a particular user. 404 Media reports: Now Session will be maintained by an entity in Switzerland. The move signals the increasing pressure on maintainers of encrypted messaging apps, both when it comes to governments seeking more data on app users, as well as targeting messaging app companies themselves, like the arrest of Telegram's CEO in August. "Ultimately, we were given the choice between remaining in Australia or relocating to a more privacy-friendly jurisdiction, such as Switzerland. For the project to continue, it could not be centred in Australia," Alex Linton, president of the newly formed Session Technology Foundation (STF) which will publish the Session app, told 404 Media in a statement. The app will still function in Australia, Linton added. Linton said that last year the Australian Federal Police (AFP) visited a Session employee at their home in the country. "There was no warrant used or meeting organised, they just went into their apartment complex and knocked on their front door," Linton said. The AFP asked about the Session app and company, and the employee's history on the project, Linton added. The officers also asked about an ongoing investigation related to a specific Session user, he added. Linton showed 404 Media an email sent by Session's legal representatives to the AFP which reflected that series of events. Part of Session's frustration around the incident came from the AFP deciding to "visit an employee at home rather than arranging a meeting through our proper (publicly available) channels," Linton said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
WordPress sites are being compromised through malicious plugins that display fake software updates and error messages, leading to the installation of information-stealing malware. BleepingComputer reports: Since 2023, a malicious campaign called ClearFake has been used to display fake web browser update banners on compromised websites that distribute information-stealing malware. In 2024, a new campaign called ClickFix was introduced that shares many similarities with ClearFake but instead pretends to be software error messages with included fixes. However, these "fixes" are PowerShell scripts that, when executed, will download and install information-stealing malware. Last week, GoDaddy reported that the ClearFake/ClickFix threat actors have breached over 6,000 WordPress sites to install malicious plugins that display the fake alerts associated with these campaigns. "The GoDaddy Security team is tracking a new variant of ClickFix (also known as ClearFake) fake browser update malware that is distributed via bogus WordPress plugins," explains GoDaddy security researcher Denis Sinegubko. "These seemingly legitimate plugins are designed to appear harmless to website administrators but contain embedded malicious scripts that deliver fake browser update prompts to end-users." The malicious plugins utilize names similar to legitimate plugins, such as Wordfense Security and LiteSpeed Cache, while others use generic, made-up names. Website security firm Sucuri also noted that a fake plugin named "Universal Popup Plugin" is also part of this campaign. When installed, the malicious plugin will hook various WordPress actions depending on the variant to inject a malicious JavaScript script into the HTML of the site. When loaded, this script will attempt to load a further malicious JavaScript file stored in a Binance Smart Chain (BSC) smart contract, which then loads the ClearFake or ClickFix script to display the fake banners. From web server access logs analyzed by Sinegubko, the threat actors appear to be utilizing stolen admin credentials to log into the WordPress site and install the plugin in an automated manner.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NASA will rely on SpaceX's Crew Dragon for two crewed missions to the ISS in 2025 while evaluating whether Boeing's Starliner requires another test flight for certification. SpaceNews reports: In an Oct. 15 statement, NASA said it will use Crew Dragon for both the Crew-10 mission to the ISS, scheduled for no earlier than February 2025, and the Crew-11 mission scheduled for no earlier than July. Crew-10 will fly NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers along with astronaut Takuya Onishi from the Japanese space agency JAXA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. NASA has not yet announced the crew for the Crew-11 mission. Earlier this year, NASA had hoped that Boeing's CST-100 Starliner would be certified in time to fly the early 2025 mission. Problems with the Crew Flight Test mission, which launched in June with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, led NASA to conclude in July that the spacecraft would not be certified in time. It delayed that Starliner-1 mission from February to August 2025, moving up Crew-10 to February. NASA also announced then that it would prepare Crew-11 in parallel with Starliner-1 for launch in that August 2025 slot. "The timing and configuration of Starliner's next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing's path to system certification is established," NASA said in its statement about the 2025 missions. "NASA is keeping options on the table for how best to achieve system certification, including windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: 37Signals is not a company that makes its policy or management decisions quietly. The productivity software company was an avowedly Mac-centric shop until Apple's move to kill home screen web apps (or Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs) led the firm and its very-public-facing co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, to declare a "Return to Windows," followed by a stew of Windows/Mac/Linux. The company waged a public battle with Apple over its App Store subscription policies, and the resulting outcry helped nudge Apple a bit. 37Signals has maintained an active blog for years, its co-founders and employees have written numerous business advice books, and its blog and social media posts regularly hit the front pages of Hacker News. So when 37Signals decided to pull its seven cloud-based apps off Amazon Web Services in the fall of 2022, it didn't do so quietly or without details. Back then, Hansson described his firm as paying "an at times almost absurd premium" for defense against "wild swings or towering peaks in usage." In early 2023, Hansson wrote that 37Signals expected to save $7 million over five years by buying more than $600,000 worth of Dell server gear and hosting its own apps. Late last week, Hansson had an update: it's more like $10 million (and, he told the BBC, more like $800,000 in gear). By squeezing more hardware into existing racks and power allowances, estimating seven years' life for that hardware, and eventually transferring its 10 petabytes of S3 storage into a dual-DC Pure Storage flash array, 37Signals expects to save money, run faster, and have more storage available. "The motto of the 2010s and early 2020s -- all-cloud, everything, all the time -- seems to finally have peaked," Hansson writes. "And thank heavens for that!" He adds the caveat that companies with "enormous fluctuations in load," and those in early or uncertain stages, still have a place in the cloud.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon has reached its goal set earlier this year to completely get rid of plastic air pillows at its warehouses by the end of the year. "As of October 2024, we've removed all plastic air pillows from our delivery packaging used at our global fulfillment centers," the e-commerce giant said in an October 9th blog post. The Verge reports: It's a welcome change following years of pressure from environmental groups to stop plastic pollution flooding into oceans. The company is still working to reduce the use of single-use plastics more broadly in its packaging. The most prolific type of plastic litter near coastlines is plastic film -- a material that makes up those once ubiquitous air pillows, according to Oceana. That film also happens to be the "deadliest" type of plastic pollution for large mammals like whales and dolphins that might ingest it, Oceana says. The company swapped out plastic air pillows and single-use delivery bags for paper and cardboard alternatives in Europe in 2022. It also ditched plastic film packaging at its facilities in India in 2020. The US is Amazon's largest market, and the company hasn't managed to fully eliminate plastic packaging in North America just yet. It says it plans to reduce the amount of deliveries containing "Amazon-added plastic delivery packaging" in North America to just one-third of shipments by December, down from two-thirds in December 2023.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
According to an internal Border Patrol memo, nearly one-third of the surveillance cameras along the U.S.-Mexico border don't work. "The nationwide issue is having significant impacts on [Border Patrol] operations," reads the memo. NBC News reports: The large-scale outage affects roughly 150 of the 500 cameras perched on surveillance towers along the U.S.-Mexico border. It was due to "several technical problems," according to the memo. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue, blamed outdated equipment and outstanding repair issues. The camera systems, known as Remote Video Surveillance Systems, have been used since 2011 to "survey large areas without having to commit hundreds of agents in vehicles to perform the same function." But according to the internal memo, 30% were inoperable. It is not clear when the cameras stopped working.Two Customs and Border Protections officials said that some repairs have been made this month but that there are still over 150 outstanding requests for camera repairs. The officials said there are some areas that are not visible to Border Patrol because of broken cameras. A Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said the agency has installed roughly 300 new towers that use more advanced technology. "CBP continues to install newer, more advanced technology that embrace artificial intelligence and machine learning to replace outdated systems, reducing the need to have agents working non-interdiction functions," the spokesperson said. The agency points the finger at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is responsible for servicing the systems and repairing the cameras. "The FAA, which services the systems and repairs the cameras, has had internal problems meeting the needs of the Border Patrol, the memo says, without elaborating on what those problems are," reports NBC News. While the FAA is sending personnel to work on the cameras, Border Patrol leaders are considering replacing them with a contractor that can provide "adequate technical support for the cameras." Further reading: U.S. Border Surveillance Towers Have Always Been Broken (EFF)Read more of this story at Slashdot.
TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, fired an intern for "maliciously interfering" with the training of one of its AI models. However, the firm "rejected claims about the extent of the damage caused by the unnamed individual, saying they 'contain some exaggerations and inaccuracies,'" reports the BBC. From the report: The Chinese technology giant's Doubao ChatGPT-like generative AI model is the country's most popular AI chatbot. "The individual was an intern with the [advertising] technology team and has no experience with the AI Lab," ByteDance said in a statement. "Their social media profile and some media reports contain inaccuracies." Its commercial online operations, including its large language AI models, were unaffected by the intern's actions, the company added. ByteDance also denied reports that the incident caused more than $10 million of damage by disrupting an AI training system made up of thousands of powerful graphics processing units (GPU). As well as firing the person in August, ByteDance said it had informed the intern's university and industry bodies about the incident.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes: T-Mobile and AT&T say US regulators should drop a plan to require unlocking of phones within 60 days of activation, claiming that locking phones to a carrier's network makes it possible to provide cheaper handsets to consumers. "If the Commission mandates a uniform unlocking policy, it is consumers -- not providers -- who stand to lose the most," T-Mobile alleged in an October 17 filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The proposed rule has support from consumer advocacy groups who say it will give users more choice and lower their costs. T-Mobile has been criticized for locking phones for up to a year, which makes it impossible to use a phone on a rival's network. T-Mobile claims that with a 60-day unlocking rule, "consumers risk losing access to the benefits of free or heavily subsidized handsets because the proposal would force providers to reduce the line-up of their most compelling handset offers." If the proposed rule is enacted, "T-Mobile estimates that its prepaid customers, for example, would see subsidies reduced by 40 percent to 70 percent for both its lower and higher-end devices, such as the Moto G, Samsung A15, and iPhone 12," the carrier said. "A handset unlocking mandate would also leave providers little choice but to limit their handset offers to lower cost and often lesser performing handsets." In July, the FCC approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the unlocking policy in a 5-0 vote. The FCC is proposing "to require all mobile wireless service providers to unlock handsets 60 days after a consumer's handset is activated with the provider, unless within the 60-day period the service provider determines the handset was purchased through fraud."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Disney has appointed former Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman to replace Nike Executive Chairman Mark Parker as board chairman starting in January 2024, "as the media giant lays the groundwork to name a successor for CEO Bob Iger in early 2026," reports CNBC. Iger's contract has been extended until the end of 2026 to ensure the company finds the right fit. CNBC reports: Gorman joined Disney's board less than a year ago and was named the head of the succession planning committee in August. He will continue to lead that committee after he takes over as board chairman from Nike Executive Chairman Parker. "The Disney board has benefited tremendously from James Gorman's expertise and guidance, and we are lucky to have him as our next chairman -- particularly as the board continues to move forward with the succession process," Iger said in a statement. "I'm extremely grateful to Mark Parker for his many years of board service and leadership, which have been so valuable to this company and its shareholders, and to me as CEO." [...] Disney had initially targeted 2025 to announce a successor, as CNBC reported last year. Pushing the date back to early 2026 will give the board more time to conduct due diligence on both internal and external candidates, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In a new teardown video published last week, iFixit reveals a Quest 2 headset "hiding inside" the cheaper yet enhanced Quest 3S. The Verge reports: The first hint of that is the headset's Fresnel lenses, which iFixit's Shahram Mokhtari writes in a blog post are "100% compatible" with those used by the Quest 2. The headset has the older headset's IPD adjustment mechanism, as well; and it shares the same single LCD panel, rather than using one panel per eye, like the Meta Quest 3. Legacy parts aside, iFixit found that the 3S uses two IR sensors for depth mapping instead of a single depth sensor. That "rare iterative improvement over the Quest 3" performed "exceptionally well in unlit spaces," Mokhtari writes in the blog. And of course, it uses the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 SoC as the Quest 3, and works with Meta's newer Touch Plus controllers, which are sold separately. The Quest 3S "costs $299.99, while the Quest 3 is $499.99," notes The Verge. So, not only is the 3S cheaper but replacement parts should be easier to find since the Quest 2 "has already been around for four years."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Hollywood Reporter: A production company for Blade Runner 2049 has sued (PDF) Tesla, which allegedly fed images from the movie into an artificial intelligence image generator to create unlicensed promotional materials. Alcon Entertainment, in a lawsuit filed Monday in California federal court, accuses Elon Musk and his autonomous vehicle company of misappropriating the movie's brand to promote its robotaxi at a glitzy unveiling earlier this month. The producer says it doesn't want Blade Runner 2049 to be affiliated with Musk because of his "extreme political and social views," pointing to ongoing efforts with potential partners for an upcoming TV series. The complaint, which brings claims for copyright infringement and false endorsement, also names Warner Bros. Discovery for allegedly facilitating the partnership. "Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk's massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account," states the complaint. "Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk." [...] The lawsuit cites an agreement, the details of which are unknown to Alcon, for Warners to lease or license studio lot space, access and other materials to Tesla for the event. Alcon alleges that the deal included promotional elements allowing Tesla to affiliate its products with WBD movies. WBD was Alcon's domestic distributor for the 2017 release of Blade Runner 2049. It has limited clip licensing rights, though not for Tesla's livestream TV event, the lawsuit claims. Alcon says it wasn't informed about the brand deal until the day of the unveiling. According to the complaint, Musk communicated to WBD that he wanted to associate the robotaxi with the film. He asked the company for permission to use a still directly from the movie, which prompted an employee to send an emergency request for clearance to Alcon since international rights would be involved, the lawsuit says. The producer refused, spurring the creation of the AI images. [...] Alcon seeks unspecified damages, as well as a court order barring Tesla from further distributing the disputed promotional materials. Musk referenced Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner movie during the robotaxi event. "You know, I love Blade Runner, but I don't know if we want that future," he said. "I believe we want that duster he's wearing, but not the, uh, not the bleak apocalypse." I, Robot director Alex Proyas also took to X last week, writing: "Hey Elon, Can I have my designs back please?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Researchers at the United States Geological Survey and the Arkansas government announced on Monday that they had found a trove of lithium, a critical raw material for electric vehicle batteries, in an underground brine reservoir in Arkansas. From a report: With the help of water testing and machine learning, the researchers determined that there might be five million to 19 million tons of lithium -- more than enough to meet all of the world's demand for the metal -- in a geological area known as the Smackover Formation. Several companies, including Exxon Mobil, are developing projects in Arkansas to produce lithium, which is dissolved in underground brine. Energy and mining companies have long produced oil, gas and other natural resources in the Smackover, which extends from Texas to Florida. And the federal and state researchers said lithium could be extracted from the waste stream of the brines from which companies extracted other forms of energy and elements. The energy industry, with the Biden administration's encouragement, has been increasingly working to produce the raw materials needed for the lithium-ion batteries in the United States. A few projects have started recently, and many more are in various stages of study and development across the country. Most of the world's lithium is produced in Australia and South America. A large majority of it is then processed in China, which also dominates the manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries. "The potential for increased U.S. production to replace imports has implications for employment, manufacturing and supply chain resilience," David Applegate, the director of the United States Geological Survey, said in a statement announcing the study. "This study illustrates the value of science in addressing economically important issues."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has acknowledged the company's late entry into AI, stating, "We weren't the first to do intelligence." Despite this admission, Cook defended Apple's approach, claiming it will be "the best for the customer." The tech giant plans to roll out initial AI features on October 28, with more advanced capabilities expected in 2025. However, internal studies suggest Apple's AI lags behind competitors, with Siri reportedly 25% less accurate than ChatGPT. Cook remains optimistic, asserting that AI will make users' time on iPhones "profoundly different."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Actor Nicolas Cage warned young performers about the dangers of AI in film production during his speech at the Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday. Cage urged actors to protect their craft from employment-based digital replica (EBDR) technology, which allows studios to manipulate performances post-filming. "This technology wants to take your instrument," Cage said. He explained that EBDR enables studios to alter actors' faces, voices, and body language after shooting, potentially compromising artistic integrity. Cage cited his cameo in "The Flash" as an example of EBDR use. He advised actors to consider their rights when approached with contracts permitting EBDR, coining the phrase "MVMFMBMI: my voice, my face, my body, my imagination."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple's latest iOS update has removed the "C" button from its Calculator app, replacing it with a backspace function. The change, part of iOS 18, has sparked debate among users accustomed to the traditional clear function. The removal of the "C" button represents a significant departure from decades-old calculator design conventions, The Atlantic writes. From the story: The "C" button's function is vestigial. Back when calculators were commercialized, starting in the mid-1960s, their electronics were designed to operate as efficiently as possible. If you opened up a desktop calculator in 1967, you might have found a dozen individual circuit boards to run and display its four basic mathematical functions. Among these would have been an input buffer or temporary register that could store an input value for calculation and display. The "C" button, which was sometimes labeled "CE" (Clear Entry) or "CI" (Clear Input), provided a direct interface to zero out -- or "clear" -- such a register. A second button, "AC" (All Clear), did the same thing, but for other parts of the circuit, including previously stored operations and pending calculations. (A traditional calculator's memory buttons -- "M+," "M-," "MC" -- would perform simple operations on a register.) By 1971, Mostech and Texas Instruments had developed a "calculator on a chip," which condensed all of that into a single integrated circuit. Those chips retained the functions of their predecessors, including the ones that were engaged by "C" and "AC" buttons. And this design continued on into the era of pocket calculators, financial calculators, and even scientific calculators such as the ones you may have used in school. Some of the latter were, in essence, programmable pocket computers themselves, and they could have been configured with a backspace key. They were not.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Baidu CEO Robin Li has proclaimed that hallucinations produced by large language models are no longer a problem, and predicted a massive wipeout of AI startups when the "bubble" bursts. From a report: "The most significant change we're seeing over the past 18 to 20 months is the accuracy of those answers from the large language models," gushed the CEO at last week's Harvard Business Review Future of Business Conference. "I think over the past 18 months, that problem has pretty much been solved a" meaning when you talk to a chatbot, a frontier model-based chatbot, you can basically trust the answer," he added. Li also described the AI sector as in an "inevitable bubble," similar to the dot-com bubble in the '90s. "Probably one percent of the companies will stand out and become huge and will create a lot of value or will create tremendous value for the people, for the society. And I think we are just going through this kind of process," stated Li. The CEO also guesstimated it will be another 10 to 30 years before human jobs are displaced by the technology. "Companies, organizations, governments and ordinary people all need to prepare for that kind of paradigm shift," he warned.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Intel and Boeing, once exemplars of American manufacturing prowess, now face existential crises. Their market values have plummeted, jeopardizing not just shareholder wealth but national security. The U.S. is losing its edge in manufacturing high-tech products, crucial in its geopolitical contest with China, a story on WSJ argues. Unlike past manufacturing declines, Intel and Boeing's woes stem from internal missteps, prioritizing financial performance over engineering excellence. Their potential demise threatens America's semiconductor and commercial aircraft industries, with far-reaching consequences for the nation's technological ecosystem. While government intervention is controversial, national security concerns may necessitate support. WSJ adds: So, much as national leaders would like to ignore these companies' woes, they can't. National security dictates the U.S. maintain some know-how in making aircraft and semiconductors. Certainly other countries feel that way: European governments heavily subsidized Airbus. China is pursuing dominance in key technologies regardless of the cost. Its so-called Big Fund has sunk roughly $100 billion into semiconductors while aid to Comac had reached $72 billion in 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Until Comac succeeds in gaining significant global market share, it will continue to run big losses and be bailed out by the Chinese government," said Atkinson, whose organization gets support from Boeing. Both political parties have bought into the idea that manufacturing is special and thus deserving of public support. That raises the question: which manufacturing, and what kind of support? The goal of manufacturing strategy shouldn't be just producing jobs but great, world-beating products. [...]Read more of this story at Slashdot.
News Corp's Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post have sued Perplexity, a startup that calls itself an "AI-powered Swiss Army Knife for information discovery and curiosity," alleging copyright infringement. From a report: "Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company that claims to provide its users accurate and up-to-date news and information in a platform that, in Perplexity's own words, allows users to 'Skip the Links' to original publishers' websites," the companies said in the federal lawsuit, filed Monday. "Perplexity attempts to accomplish this by engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers' copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders. This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity's brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
jd writes: Linus Torvalds is not a happy camper and is condemning hardware vendors for poor security and the plethora of actual and theoretical attacks, especially as some of the new features being added impact the workarounds. These workarounds are now getting very expensive, CPU-wise. TFA quotes Linus Torvalds: "Honestly, I'm pretty damn fed up with buggy hardware and completely theoretical attacks that have never actually shown themselves to be used in practice. "So I think this time we push back on the hardware people and tell them it's *THEIR* damn problem, and if they can't even be bothered to say yay-or-nay, we just sit tight. Because dammit, let's put the onus on where the blame lies, and not just take any random shit from bad hardware and say 'oh, but it *might* be a problem.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
chalsall writes: After more than six years of work since the last discovery, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has found the 52nd known Mersenne Prime number. This is also the largest prime number known to humans. The number is 2^136,279,841-1, which is 41,024,320 decimal digits long. Luke Durant, a researcher from San Jose, CA, found it after contributing a fantastic amount of compute to the GIMPS project.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Egypt was declared malaria-free by the World Health Organization, after nearly a century of work to eradicate the disease in the country. From a report: Egypt saw 3 million cases a year in the 1940s, and the Aswan Dam's development in the 1960s created new bodies of standing water for the mosquitoes to breed in, but by 2001 the disease was "firmly under control," according to the WHO. "The disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to [Egypt's] history," the WHO's chief said. It's the 44th country to be certified, but the wider battle against malaria goes on: The mosquito-borne disease still kills around 600,000 people a year, the large majority of them children in sub-Saharan Africa.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Fans of literature most likely know Kurt Vonnegut for the novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The staunchly anti-war book first resonated with readers during the Vietnam War era, later becoming a staple in high school curricula the world over. When Vonnegut died in 2007 at the age of 84, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest American novelists of all time. But would you believe that he was also an accomplished game designer? In 1956, following the lukewarm reception of his first novel, Player Piano, Vonnegut was one of the 16 million other World War II veterans struggling to put food on the table. His moneymaking solution at the time was a board game called GHQ, which leveraged his understanding of modern combined arms warfare and distilled it into a simple game played on an eight-by-eight grid. Vonnegut pitched the game relentlessly to publishers all year long according to game designer and NYU faculty member Geoff Engelstein, who recently found those letters sitting in the archives at Indiana University. But the real treasure was an original set of typewritten rules, complete with Vonnegut's own notes in the margins. With the permission of the Vonnegut estate, Engelstein tells Polygon that he cleaned the original rules up just a little bit, buffed out the dents in GHQ's endgame, and spun up some decent art and graphic design. Now you can purchase the final product, titled Kurt Vonnegut's GHQ: The Lost Board Game, at your local Barnes & Noble -- nearly 70 years after it was created.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Intuit, the maker of TurboTax software, asked technology news outlet The Verge to delete part of a podcast interview with CEO Sasan Goodarzi, The Verge reported on Monday. The request came after Goodarzi was questioned about Intuit's lobbying efforts against free government tax filing options, a topic that has drawn scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers. The Verge said it declined to remove the segment, instead choosing to highlight the exchange by playing it at the beginning of the episode. In the interview, Goodarzi disputed claims that Intuit lobbies against free tax filing, stating the company spends "a couple of million dollars fighting for simplified taxes." However, The Verge's editor Nilay Patel pressed Goodarzi on reports of Intuit's lobbying against government-provided tax returns. Patel adds: I got a note from Rick Heineman, the chief communications officer at Intuit, who called the line of questioning and my tone "inappropriate," "egregious," and "disappointing" and demanded that we delete that entire section of the recording. I mean, literally -- he wrote a long email that ended with "at the very least the end portion of your interview should be deleted."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Though Sam Altman once called OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft "the best bromance in tech," now "ties between the companies have started to fray" reports the New York Times - citing interviews with 19 people "familiar with the relationship". [Alternate URL here.] Among other things, Satya Nadella "has said privately that Altman's firing in November shocked and concerned him, according to five people with knowledge of his comments. Since then, Microsoft has started to hedge its bet on OpenAI," and reconsidered new investments beyond its initial $13 billion - even as OpenAI expects to lose $5 billion this yearThat tension demonstrates a key challenge for AI startups: They are dependent on the world's tech giants for money and computing power because those big companies control the massive cloud computing systems the small outfits need to develop AI... Over the past year, OpenAI has been trying to renegotiate the deal to help it secure more computing power and reduce crushing expenses while Microsoft executives have grown concerned that their AI work is too dependent on OpenAI... [I]n March, Microsoft paid at least $650 million to hire most of the staff from Inflection, an OpenAI competitor... In June, Microsoft agreed to an exception in [OpenAI's] contract, six people with knowledge of the change said. That allowed OpenAI to sign a roughly $10 billion computing deal with Oracle for additional computing resources, according to two people familiar with the deal. Oracle is providing computers packed with chips suited to building AI, while Microsoft provides the software that drives the hardware... While it was looking for computer power alternatives, OpenAI also raced to broaden its investors, according to two people familiar with the company's plan. Part of the plan was to secure strategic investments from organizations that could bolster OpenAI's prospects in ways beyond throwing around money. Those organizations included Apple, chipmaker Nvidia, and MGX, a tech investment firm controlled by the United Arab Emirates... Earlier this month, OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round led by Thrive Capital, with additional participation from Nvidia, MGX and others. Apple did not invest, but Microsoft also participated in the funding round. OpenAI expected to spend at least $5.4 billion in computing costs through the end of 2024, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. That amount was expected to skyrocket over the next five years as OpenAI expanded, soaring to an estimated $37.5 billion in annual computing costs by 2029, the documents showed... Still, OpenAI employees complain that Microsoft is not providing enough computing power, according to three people familiar with the relationship. And some have complained that if another company beat it to the creation of AI that matches the human brain, Microsoft will be to blame because it hasn't given OpenAI the computing power it needs, according to two people familiar with the complaints. Oddly, that could be the key to getting out from under its contract with Microsoft. The contract contains a clause that says that if OpenAI builds artificial general intelligence, or AGI - roughly speaking, a machine that matches the power of the human brain - Microsoft loses access to OpenAI's technologies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"Several of Europe's biggest carmakers unveiled low-cost electric vehicles at the Paris Motor Show this week," reports CNBC. The automakers are "seeking to jump-start a demand slump and recapture some of the market share now held by Chinese brands.""It feels like Europe is fighting back," Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and e-mobility supply chains at the Transport & Environment campaign group, told CNBC at the Paris Motor Show. "There are so many new models on show, and what is really great is that there are a lot of launches that are more affordable. So, Citroen, Peugeot [and] Renault, they are all showing some smaller affordable models," Poliscanova said. "This is exactly what we need for the mass market, for people to buy those vehicles more, and this is also where the competition from the Chinese is also the hardest," she added... "The storytelling is that people have cooled off on EVs and there is no consumer demand, [but] this is really not true," Transport & Environment's Poliscanova said. "This year in Europe, we did not have affordable models, so people are not buying those overpriced premium vehicles. However, as soon as vehicles come in the right price range next year ... people will flock to buy them." Poliscanova said the launch of several low-cost EVs means electric car sales could account for up to a 24% market share next year, up from 14% this year. Chinese-made EVs typically cost less than half the prices seen in Europe and the U.S. last year, according to figures published by data firm JATO, underscoring the challenge for Western automakers to keep pace with Beijing... Pere Brugal, president and managing director of GM Europe, said that the challenges facing Europe's auto industry should be seen as a transitional phase - and not evidence of a crisis. "The adoption of new technologies and new behaviors is never a linear growth story, but the end is full-electric [vehicles]," Brugal told CNBC at the Paris Motor Show. Meanwhile, GM's CEO "says it will start making money on battery-powered models by the end of the year - becoming the only U.S. automaker aside from Tesla to achieve that feat," reports the New York Times (adding that sales are increasing "and the company just introduced a model that sells for less than $30,000 after a federal tax credit.") And GM "is still committed to doing away with combustion engine cars in the United States by 2035."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"Millions of Cubans remained without power for a third day in a row Sunday," reports CNN, "after fresh attempts to restore electricity failed overnight and the power grid collapsed for the fourth time - all before the arrival of Hurricane Oscar." A report from Reuters notes it was the fourth power grid failure in 48 hours."On the forecast track, the center of Oscar is expected to continue moving across eastern Cuba tonight and Monday, then emerge off the northern coast of Cuba late Monday and cross the central Bahamas on Tuesday," the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The Communist-run government canceled school through Wednesday - a near unprecedented move in Cuba - citing the hurricane and the ongoing energy crisis... Cuba had restored power to 160,000 clients in Havana just prior to the grid's Sunday collapse, giving some residents a glimmer of hope... Energy and mines minister Vicente de la O Levy told reporters earlier on Sunday he expected the grid to be fully functional by Monday or Tuesday but warned residents not to expect dramatic improvements. It was not immediately clear how much the latest setback would delay the government's efforts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shared this report from ComicBook.com:On Saturday, 20th Century Studios announced that the latest entry in the Alien sci-fi horror franchise will get a limited-edition VHS release on December 3 - just in time for the holidays. The VHS release of Alien: Romulus is the first such release from a major studio since 2006... a major win for fans of physical media. In recent months, there has been a great bit of conversation surrounding the so-called death of physical media with the rise of digital and streaming with some retailers even having previously announced that they have or will be stopping sales of physical media. But with streaming platforms removing content for various reasons, there's been a rise in appreciation for physical media which has, in turn, resulted in increased sales, particularly when it comes to limited edition items such as Steelbooks [collectible steel-case disc releases]... Given that the Alien: Romulus VHS release is part of an overall celebration of the franchise for its 45th anniversary year, leaning into that nostalgia for feels pretty spot on. The release will present the movie "in a 4:3 aspect ratio," writes the Verge, "hopefully with well-done pan-and-scan..." (Their post includes a promotional picture showing the "slick, vintage-style" box-cover art.) "The tape has only the film," notes Gizmodo, "and no special featurette attached at the end, like some used to back in the day." Gizmodo also reminds readers of Hulu's 2025 series Alien: Earth and an upcoming videogame sequel to 2014's Alien: Isolation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"After two years of being beaten with the memory-safety stick, the C++ community has published a proposal to help developers write less vulnerable code," reports the Register. "The Safe C++ Extensions proposal aims to address the vulnerable programming language's Achilles' heel, the challenge of ensuring that code is free of memory safety bugs..."Acknowledging the now deafening chorus of calls to adopt memory safe programming languages, developers Sean Baxter, creator of the Circle compiler, and Christian Mazakas, from the C++ Alliance, argue that while Rust is the only popular systems level programming language without garbage collection that provides rigorous memory safety, migrating C++ code to Rust poses problems. "Rust lacks function overloading, templates, inheritance and exceptions," they explain in the proposal. "C++ lacks traits, relocation and borrow checking. These discrepancies are responsible for an impedance mismatch when interfacing the two languages. Most code generators for inter-language bindings aren't able to represent features of one language in terms of the features of another." Though DARPA is trying to develop better automated C++ to Rust conversion tools, Baxter and Mazakas argue telling veteran C++ developers to learn Rust isn't an answer... The Safe C++ project adds new technology for ensuring memory safety, Baxter explained, and isn't just a reiteration of best practices. "Safe C++ prevents users from writing unsound code," he said. "This includes compile-time intelligence like borrow checking to prevent use-after-free bugs and initialization analysis for type safety." Baxter said that rewriting a project in a different programming language is costly, so the aim here is to make memory safety more accessible by providing the same soundness guarantees as Rust at a lower cost. "With Safe C++, existing code continues to work as always," he explained. "Stakeholders have more control for incrementally opting in to safety." The next step, Baxter said, involves greater participation from industry to help realize the Safe C++ project. "The foundations are in: We have fantastic borrow checking and initialization analysis which underpin the soundness guarantees," he said. "The next step is to comprehensively visit all of C++'s features and specify memory-safe versions of them. It's a big effort, but given the importance of reducing C++ security vulnerabilities, it's an effort worth making."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A principal security software engineer at Microsoft described how they use their Azure cloud platform "to hunt phishers at scale," in a talk at the information security conference BSides Exeter. Calling himself Microsoft's "Head of Deception." Ross Bevington described how they'd created a "hybrid high interaction honeypot" on the now retired code.microsoft.com "to collect threat intelligence on actors ranging from both less skilled cybercriminals to nation state groups targeting Microsoft infrastructure," according to a report by BleepingComputer:With the collected data, Microsoft can map malicious infrastructure, gain a deeper understanding of sophisticated phishing operations, disrupt campaigns at scale, identify cybercriminals, and significantly slow down their activity... Bevington and his team fight phishing by leveraging deception techniques using entire Microsoft tenant environments as honeypots with custom domain names, thousands of user accounts, and activity like internal communications and file-sharing... In his BSides Exeter presentation, the researcher says that the active approach consists in visiting active phishing sites identified by Defender and typing in the credentials from the honeypot tenants. Since the credentials are not protected by two-factor authentication and the tenants are populated with realistic-looking information, attackers have an easy way in and start wasting time looking for signs of a trap. Microsoft says it monitors roughly 25,000 phishing sites every day, feeding about 20% of them with the honeypot credentials; the rest are blocked by CAPTCHA or other anti-bot mechanisms. Once the attackers log into the fake tenants, which happens in 5% of the cases, it turns on detailed logging to track every action they take, thus learning the threat actors' tactics, techniques, and procedures. Intelligence collected includes IP addresses, browsers, location, behavioral patterns, whether they use VPNs or VPSs, and what phishing kits they rely on... The deception technology currently wastes an attacker 30 days before they realize they breached a fake environment. All along, Microsoft collects actionable data that can be used by other security teams to create more complex profiles and better defenses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"Who asked for any of this in the first place?" wonders a New York Times consumer-tech writer. (Alternate URL here.) "Judging from the feedback I get from readers, lots of people outside the tech industry remain uninterested in AI - and are increasingly frustrated with how difficult it has become to ignore."The companies rely on user activity to train and improve their AI systems, so they are testing this tech inside products we use every day. Typing a question such as "Is Jay-Z left-handed?" in Google will produce an AI-generated summary of the answer on top of the search results. And whenever you use the search tool inside Instagram, you may now be interacting with Meta's chatbot, Meta AI. In addition, when Apple's suite of AI tools, Apple Intelligence, arrives on iPhones and other Apple products through software updates this month, the tech will appear inside the buttons we use to edit text and photos. The proliferation of AI in consumer technology has significant implications for our data privacy, because companies are interested in stitching together and analyzing our digital activities, including details inside our photos, messages and web searches, to improve AI systems. For users, the tools can simply be an annoyance when they don't work well. "There's a genuine distrust in this stuff, but other than that, it's a design problem," said Thorin Klosowski, a privacy and security analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, and a former editor at Wirecutter, the reviews site owned by The New York Times. "It's just ugly and in the way." It helps to know how to opt out. After I contacted Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google, they offered steps to turn off their AI tools or data collection, where possible. I'll walk you through the steps. The article suggests logged-in Google users can toggle settings at myactivity.google.com. (Some browsers also have extensions that force Google's search results to stop inserting an AI summary at the top.) And you can also tell Edge to remove Copilot from its sidebar at edge://settings. But "There is no way for users to turn off Meta AI, Meta said. Only in regions with stronger data protection laws, including the EU and Britain, can people deny Meta access to their personal information to build and train Meta's AI."On Instagram, for instance, people living in those places can click on "settings," then "about" and "privacy policy," which will lead to opt-out instructions. Everyone else, including users in the United States, can visit the Help Center on Facebook to ask Meta only to delete data used by third parties to develop its AI. By comparison, when Apple releases new AI services this month, users will have to opt in, according to the article. "If you change your mind and no longer want to use Apple Intelligence, you can go back into the settings and toggle the Apple Intelligence switch off, which makes the tools go away."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cybersecurity startup Watchtowr "was founded by hacker-turned-entrepreneur Benjamin Harris," according to a recent press release touting their Fortune 500 customers and $29 million investments from venture capital firms. ("If there's a way to compromise your organization, watchTowr will find it," Harris says in the announcement.) This week they shared their own research on a Fortinet FortiGate SSLVPN appliance vulnerability (discovered in February by Gwendal Guegniaud of the Fortinet Product Security team - presumably in a static analysis for format string vulnerabilities). "It affected (before patching) all currently-maintained branches, and recently was highlighted by CISA as being exploited-in-the-wild... It's a Format String vulnerability [that] quickly leads to Remote Code Execution via one of many well-studied mechanisms, which we won't reproduce here..." "Tl;dr SSLVPN appliances are still sUpEr sEcurE," their post begains - but the details are interesting. When trying to test an exploit, Watchtowr discovered instead that FortiGate always closed the connection early, thanks to an exploit mitigation in glibc "intended to hinder clean exploitation of exactly this vulnerability class." Watchtowr hoped to "use this to very easily check if a device is patched - we can simply send a %n, and if the connection aborts, the device is vulnerable. If the connection does not abort, then we know the device has been patched... " But then they discovered "Fortinet added some kind of certificate validation logic in the 7.4 series, meaning that we can't even connect to it (let alone send our payload) without being explicitly permitted by a device administrator."We also checked the 7.0 branch, and here we found things even more interesting, as an unpatched instance would allow us to connect with a self-signed certificate, while a patched machine requires a certificate signed by a configured CA. We did some reversing and determined that the certificate must be explicitly configured by the administrator of the device, which limits exploitation of these machines to the managing FortiManager instance (which already has superuser permissions on the device) or the other component of a high-availability pair. It is not sufficient to present a certificate signed by a public CA, for example... Fortinet's advice here is simply to update, which is always sound advice, but doesn't really communicate the nuance of this vulnerability... Assuming an organisation is unable to apply the supplied workaround, the urgency of upgrade is largely dictated by the willingness of the target to accept a self-signed certificate. Targets that will do so are open to attack by any host that can access them, while those devices that require a certificate signed by a trusted root are rendered unexploitable in all but the narrowest of cases (because the TLS/SSL ecosystem is just so solid, as we recently demonstrated)... While it's always a good idea to update to the latest version, the life of a sysadmin is filled with cost-to-benefit analysis, juggling the needs of users with their best interests.... [I]t is somewhat troubling when third parties need to reverse patches to uncover such details. Thanks to Slashdot reader Mirnotoriety for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cybersecurity startup Watchtowr "was founded by hacker-turned-entrepreneur Benjamin Harris," according to a recent press release touting their Fortune 500 customers and $29 million investments from venture capital firms. ("If there's a way to compromise your organization, watchTowr will find it," Harris says in the announcement.) This week they shared their own research on a Fortinet FortiGate SSLVPN appliance vulnerability (discovered in February by Gwendal Guegniaud of the Fortinet Product Security team - presumably in a static analysis for format string vulnerabilities). "It affected (before patching) all currently-maintained branches, and recently was highlighted by CISA as being exploited-in-the-wild... It's a Format String vulnerability [that] quickly leads to Remote Code Execution via one of many well-studied mechanisms, which we won't reproduce here..." "Tl;dr SSLVPN appliances are still sUpEr sEcurE," their post begains - but the details are interesting. When trying to test an exploit, Watchtowr discovered instead that FortiGate always closed the connection early, thanks to an exploit mitigation in glibc "intended to hinder clean exploitation of exactly this vulnerability class." Watchtowr hoped to "use this to very easily check if a device is patched - we can simply send a %n, and if the connection aborts, the device is vulnerable. If the connection does not abort, then we know the device has been patched... " But then they discovered "Fortinet added some kind of certificate validation logic in the 7.4 series, meaning that we can't even connect to it (let alone send our payload) without being explicitly permitted by a device administrator."We also checked the 7.0 branch, and here we found things even more interesting, as an unpatched instance would allow us to connect with a self-signed certificate, while a patched machine requires a certificate signed by a configured CA. We did some reversing and determined that the certificate must be explicitly configured by the administrator of the device, which limits exploitation of these machines to the managing FortiManager instance (which already has superuser permissions on the device) or the other component of a high-availability pair. It is not sufficient to present a certificate signed by a public CA, for example... Fortinet's advice here is simply to update, which is always sound advice, but doesn't really communicate the nuance of this vulnerability... Assuming an organisation is unable to apply the supplied workaround, the urgency of upgrade is largely dictated by the willingness of the target to accept a self-signed certificate. Targets that will do so are open to attack by any host that can access them, while those devices that require a certificate signed by a trusted root are rendered unexploitable in all but the narrowest of cases (because the TLS/SSL ecosystem is just so solid, as we recently demonstrated)... While it's always a good idea to update to the latest version, the life of a sysadmin is filled with cost-to-benefit analysis, juggling the needs of users with their best interests.... [I]t is somewhat troubling when third parties need to reverse patches to uncover such details. Thanks to Slashdot reader Mirnotoriety for sharing the article.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For the first time in 50 years, humans will walk on the moon again. Currently planned for as soon as 2026, the Artemis III mission "will be one of the most complex undertakings of engineering and human ingenuity in the history of deep space exploration..." writes NASA. "Two crew members will descend to the surface and spend approximately a week near the South Pole of the Moon conducting new science before returning to lunar orbit..." And they'll be wearing Prada, according to a Space News report from Milan:At a briefing at the International Astronautical Congress here October 16, Axiom and Prada revealed details about the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) suit that Axiom is creating for use by NASA on lunar landing missions starting with Artemis 3... Axiom emphasized the advanced capabilities in the suit, particularly when compared to the suits worn by the Apollo astronauts on moonwalks more than a half-century ago [including greater redundancy and healthy monitoring systems not available in Apollo-era suits]... The unveiling came just over a year after Axiom announced it was working with luxury goods company Prada, an unconventional partnership intended to leverage Prada's expertise in materials and design... [Axiom's executive VP of extravehicular activity Russell Ralston] said Axiom has leveraged Prada's expertise in fabrics and garment design in helping create the outer layer of the suit, which reflects sunlight and keeps dust from getting into interior layers... "If you look across all the different technologies that are needed within the suit, the uniqueness of those technologies and their application, the supply chain has tended to be pretty unstable," he said. "So, one of the things that Prada has really helped us with is bringing stability to that base, especially on the fabric side...." Not surprisingly, Prada also contributed to the appearance of the suit. "One of the things that was important to us was the appeal of the suit, the look of the suit," Ralston said. "Something that Prada brought to the table was helping with the general aesthetic of the suit." One design aspect that brought the two companies together was a prominent red stripe on the suit. Ralston noted that was a nod to a NASA tradition where the mission commander's suit would have that red stripe to distinguish them from another spacewalker... While the current focus of the suit is for walking on the moon, Ralston said the suit can be easily adapted for applications in low Earth orbit, such as spacewalks from the International Space Station or Axiom's future commercial space station. The article adds that 30 people worked on the suit (full- or part-time). "These suits will give the astronauts increased range of motion and flexibility to explore more of the landscape than on previous lunar missions," according to NASA. With "the ability to send high quality images and video to the ground with advanced communication technology, they will be sharing a unique new human experience with the world." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A post shared Saturday on social media acknowledges those admins and developers at the Internet Archive working "literally round the clock... They have taken no days off this past week. They are taking none this weekend... they are working with all of their energy and considerable talent." It describes people "working so incredibly hard... putting their all in," with a top priority of "getting the site back secure and safe". But there's new and continuing problems, reports The Verge's weekend editor:Early this morning, I received an email from "The Internet Archive Team," replying to a message I'd sent on October 9th. Except its author doesn't seem to have been the digital archivists' support team - it was apparently written by the hackers who breached the site earlier this month and who evidently maintain some level of access to its systems. I'm not alone. Users on the Internet Archive subreddit are reporting getting the replies, as well. Here is the message I received: It's dispiriting to see that even after being made aware of the breach 2 weeks ago, IA has still not done the due diligence of rotating many of the API keys that were exposed in their gitlab secrets. As demonstrated by this message, this includes a Zendesk token with perms to access 800K+ support tickets sent to info@archive.org since 2018. Whether you were trying to ask a general question, or requesting the removal of your site from the Wayback Machine - your data is now in the hands of some random guy. If not me, it'd be someone else. The site BleepingComputer believes they know the larger context, starting with the fact that they've also "received numerous messages from people who received replies to their old Internet Archive removal requests... The email headers in these emails also pass all DKIM, DMARC, and SPF authentication checks, proving they were sent by an authorized Zendesk server." BleepingComputer also writes that they'd "repeatedly tried to warn the Internet Archive that their source code was stolen through a GitLab authentication token that was exposed online for almost two years." And that "the threat actor behind the actual data breach, who contacted BleepingComputer through an intermediary to claim credit for the attack," has been frustrated by misreporting. (Specifically, they insist there were two separate attacks last week - a DDoS attack and a separate data breach for a 6.4-gigabyte database which includes email addresses for the site's 33 million users.)The threat actor told BleepingComputer that the initial breach of Internet Archive started with them finding an exposed GitLab configuration file on one of the organization's development servers, services-hls.dev.archive.org. BleepingComputer was able to confirm that this token has been exposed since at least December 2022, with it rotating multiple times since then. The threat actor says this GitLab configuration file contained an authentication token allowing them to download the Internet Archive source code. The hacker say that this source code contained additional credentials and authentication tokens, including the credentials to Internet Archive's database management system. This allowed the threat actor to download the organization's user database, further source code, and modify the site. The threat actor claimed to have stolen 7TB of data from the Internet Archive but would not share any samples as proof. However, now we know that the stolen data also included the API access tokens for Internet Archive's Zendesk support system. BleepingComputer attempted contact the Internet Archive numerous times, as recently as on Friday, offering to share what we knew about how the breach occurred and why it was done, but we never received a response. "The Internet Archive was not breached for political or monetary reasons," they conclude, "but simply because the threat actor could... "While no one has publicly claimed this breach, BleepingComputer was told it was done while the threat actor was in a group chat with others, with many receiving some of the stolen data. This database is now likely being traded amongst other people in the data breach community, and we will likely see it leaked for free in the future on hacking forums like Breached."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Thatmassive geothermal energy project in Utah gets a closer look from the Washington Post, which calls it "a significant advance for a climate-friendly technology that is gaining momentum in the United States."Once fully operational, the project could generate up to 2 gigawatts of electricity - enough to power more than 2 million homes. In addition, the BLM proposed Thursday to speed up the permitting process for geothermal projects on public lands across the country. Earlier this month, the agency also hosted the biggest lease sale for geothermal developers in more than 15 years... White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said in an interview Thursday, "Enhanced geothermal technology has the opportunity to deliver something in the range of 65 million homes' worth of clean power - power that can be generated without putting any pollution in the sky. So we see it as a really meaningful contributor to our technology tool kit...." The developments Thursday come as tech companies race to find new sources of zero-emission power for data centers that can use as much energy as entire cities. With major backing from Google parent Alphabet, Fervo recently got its first project up and running in the northern Nevada desert... The advanced geothermal technology that Fervo is trying to scale up is an attractive option for tech firms. Enhanced geothermal plants do not pose all the safety concerns that come with nuclear power, but they have the potential to provide the round-the-clock energy that data centers need. The challenge Fervo faces is whether it can bring this technology online quickly enough. Fervo (a seven-year-old start-up) was co-founded by Tim Latimer, who previously worked as a drilling engineer, according to the article. But "Early in my career I got passionate about climate change. I started looking at where could a drilling engineer from the oil and gas industry make a difference," Latimer said during a Washington Post Live event in September. "And I realized that geothermal had been so overlooked ... even though the primary technical challenge to making geothermal work is dropping drilling costs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Libreboot is a distribution of coreboot "aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS firmware contained by most computers." So then what exactly is GNU Boot? Its home page explains... In November 2022, Libreboot began to include non-libre code. We have made repeated efforts to continue collaboration with those developers to help their version of Libreboot remain libre, but that was not successful. Now we've stepped forward to stand up for freedom, ours and that of the wider community, by maintaining our own version - a genuinely libre Libreboot, that after some hurdles gave birth to this project: GNU Boot. But today, Phoronix writes:While priding itself on being "100% free", last December [GNU Boot] had to drop some motherboard support and CPU code after discovering they were shipping some files that are non-free by their free software standards. Today they announced another mistake in having inadvertently been shipping additional non-free code. GNU Boot discovered an issue with non-free code affecting not only them but also some of the Linux distributions that pride themselves on being fully free software / 100% open-source. This latest snafu they say is "more problematic" than their prior non-free code discover due to impacting the free software Linux distributions too. The issue at hand though comes down to test data contained within the archive and that containing non-free code in the form of microcode, BIOS bits, and Intel Management Engine firmware. "We also contacted Replicant..." according to the announcement, "a free Android distro that also ships vboot source code." And in addition, "We had to re-release all the affected tarballs." (Which at this point is three release candidates...)Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Neal Stephenson is a sci-fi writer "of exuberant prose who revels in embracing big ideas," according to the New York Times. "With Polostan he enters the realm of the spy novel..." Or, as the Washington Post puts it, Stephenson "drops readers into a bloody, inspiring, conflict-ridden and pivotal period of the early 20th century."With its flair for characterization, precision of language, witty apercus and fecundity of events, the novel delivers what we've come to cherish from the author of such fantastical classics as "The Diamond Age," "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon." But the book is also utterly unlike the majority of Stephenson's work. For one thing, it's short - a far cry from the maximalist "systems novels" that cram in entire worlds with complex interacting power structures, both explicit and hidden. "Polostan" is also devoid of fantastical elements and farcical "hysterical realism," which comes as a bit of a shock given that this is the writer who invented Mafia pizza-delivery guys and cybernetic children's primers. The structure of the book is, likewise, unusually straightforward: a mainly linear narrative dispersed along two timelines... These observations aren't quibbles so much as alerts to the reader that this is new territory for Stephenson - and good for him! Though, because Polostan is the first novel in a planned historical series titled Bomb Light, which aims to capture the excitement and intrigue of the nuclear arms race, we cannot rule out any Stephenson freakiness down the line... Assuming the subsequent books are as good as this one, Stephenson might end up with a series that rivals Michael Moorcock's Pyat Quartet and Edward Whittemore's Jerusalem Quartet as a vivid and canny dissection of a century unlike any other. "Much of the next volume is already written," Stephenson says on Substack, calling it "a project that has been in the works for over ten years". (He also notes that among his novels, "even the stuff that's branded as science fiction tends to contain a lot of history.") Meanwhile in August, Stephenson's blockchain-tech startup Lamina1 announced a collaboration with special effects company Weta Workshop (from "The Lord of the Rings" film franchise) on a "participatory worldbuilding" experience. Variety reports:The experience is expected to offer "a new blueprint for IP expansion through immersive experiences that incorporate fan action and input." Per Lamina1's description for the project, "Stephenson and the Weta team will begin engaging a global community of creators and fans on the Lamina1 platform this fall, inviting them to unravel the lore behind a mysterious set of 'Artefacts' that will build upon the themes and lore from Stephenson's critically-acclaimed catalog of work. Next, the superfan will take on the new role of creator, utilizing their discoveries to contribute directly to the expansion of the universe." "Artefact" will serve as the flagship project in the Lamina1-Weta partnership and first major multimedia property launching on Lamina1's blockchain infrastructure and tooling. Neal Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot's readers in 2004. Now to promote his new novel Polostan, Stephenson will be making several personal appearances this week: At the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison (Sunday at noon)Chicago's Book Stall (Monday at 7 p.m.)A Cary, North Carolina Barnes & Noble (Tuesday at 6 p.m.)New York City's Strand (Wednesday at 7 p.m.)At the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (Thursday at 7 p.m.)Ames, Iowa at Dog Eared Books (Sunday at 6 p.m.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"A technology pioneered by Benjamin Franklin is being revived to build more efficient electric motors," reports the Wall Street Journal, "an effort in its nascent stage that has the potential to be massive."A handful of scientists and engineers - armed with materials and techniques unimaginable in the 1700s - are creating modern versions of Franklin's "electrostatic motor," that are on the cusp of commercialization... Franklin's "electrostatic motor" uses alternating positive and negative charges - the same kind that make your socks stick together after they come out of the dryer - to spin an axle, and doesn't rely on a flow of current like conventional electric motors. Every few years, an eager Ph.D. student or engineer rediscovers this historical curiosity. But other than applications in tiny pumps and actuators etched on microchips, where this technology has been in use for decades, their work hasn't made it out of the lab. Electrostatic motors have several potentially huge advantages over regular motors. They are up to 80% more efficient than conventional motors after all the dependencies of regular electric motors are added in. They could also allow new kinds of control and precision in robots, where they could function more like our muscles. And they don't use rare-earth elements because they don't have permanent magnets, and require as little as 5% as much copper as a conventional motor. Both materials have become increasingly scarce and expensive over the past decade, and supply chains for them are dominated by China. "It's reminiscent of the early 1990s, when Sony began to produce and sell the first rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, a breakthrough that's now ubiquitous..." according to the article. "These motors could lead to more efficient air-conditioning systems, factories, logistics hubs and data centers, and - since they can double as generators - better ways of generating renewable energy. They might even show up in tiny surveillance drones." And the article points out that C-Motive Technologies, a 16-person startup in Wisconsin, is already "reaching out to companies, hoping to get their motors out into the real world." ("So far, FedEx and Rockwell Automation, the century-old supplier of automation to factories, are among those testing their motors.")C-Motive's founders discovered that a number of technologies had matured enough that, when combined, could yield electrostatic motors competitive with conventional ones. These enabling technologies include super fast-switching power electronics - like those in modern electric vehicles - that can toggle elements of the motor between states of positive and negative charge very quickly... Dogged exploration of combinations of various readily available industrial organic fluids led to a proprietary mix that can both multiply the strength of the electric field and insulate the motor's spinning parts from each other - all without adding too much friction - says C-Motive Chief Executive Matt Maroon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It connects people, data, and money, Bill Gates wrote this week on his personal blog. But digital public infrastructure is also "revolutionizing the way entire nations serve their people, respond to crises, and grow their economies" - and the Gates Foundation sees it "as an important part of our efforts to help save lives and fight poverty in poor countries."Digital public infrastructure [or "DPI"]: digital ID systems that securely prove who you are, payment systems that move money instantly and cheaply, and data exchange platforms that allow different services to work together seamlessly... [W]ith the right investments, countries can use DPI to bypass outdated and inefficient systems, immediately adopt cutting-edge digital solutions, and leapfrog traditional development trajectories - potentially accelerating their progress by more than a decade. Countries without extensive branch banking can move straight to mobile banking, reaching far more people at a fraction of the cost. Similarly, digital ID systems can provide legal identity to millions who previously lacked official documentation, giving them access to a wide range of services - from buying a SIM card to opening a bank account to receiving social benefits like pensions. I've heard concerns about DPI - here's how I think about them. Many people worry digital systems are a tool for government surveillance. But properly designed DPI includes safeguards against misuse and even enhances privacy... These systems also reduce the need for physical document copies that can be lost or stolen, and even create audit trails that make it easier to detect and prevent unauthorized access. The goal is to empower people, not restrict them. Then there's the fear that DPI will disenfranchise vulnerable populations like rural communities, the elderly, or those with limited digital literacy. But when it's properly designed and thoughtfully implemented, DPI actually increases inclusion - like in India, where millions of previously unbanked people now have access to financial services, and where biometric exceptions or assisted enrollment exist for people with physical disabilities or no fixed address. Meanwhile, countries can use open-source tools - like MOSIP for digital identity and Mojaloop for payments - to build DPI that fosters competition and promotes innovation locally. By providing a common digital framework, they allow smaller companies and start-ups to build services without requiring them to create the underlying systems from scratch. Even more important, they empower countries to seek out services that address their own unique needs and challenges without forcing them to rely on proprietary systems. "Digital public infrastructure is key to making progress on many of the issues we work on at the Gates Foundation," Bill writes, "including protecting children from preventable diseases, strengthening healthcare systems, improving the lives and livelihoods of farmers, and empowering women to control their financial futures. "That's why we're so committed to DPI - and why we've committed $200 million over five years to supporting DPI initiatives around the world... The future is digital. Let's make sure it's a future that benefits everyone."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A California oil refinery that produces 8% of the state's gasoline is shutting down late next year - a decision the Los Angeles Times says is "driven by climate change, the transition to electric vehicles and demands for cleaner air." "There's no question we are going to lose refineries over time, because demand is going to go down as we transition to electric vehicles, but I did not expect to see any of them exiting this quickly," said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. California "over the medium term" will have to rely more on imports, he said. "I think part of the response the state's going to need to consider is how to make sure that we can import sufficient gasoline to meet our needs...." David Hackett, chairman of Stillwater Associates, an Irvine oil consultancy, said he was contacted by Phillips just before the announcement, and was told the closure was a business decision. He said that although the timing was somewhat surprising, the closure wasn't, given the age of the refineries, their relatively small size and the inefficient layout that connects them by a pipeline. "That plant has been for sale for years. It hasn't found any buyers and I think that this has been an economic decision on their part. They looked at the profitability of the place and compared it with the other businesses that they have, and it didn't make the cut," he said. "The closure is likely to increase California's already high prices at the gas pump, given that much of the replacement gasoline will be shipped in by ocean vessel, analysts say..." according to another article from the Los Angeles Times. "Environmentalists and community activists cheered the news, however, saying it will mean cleaner air for the thousands who live in the area and that the state must continue the transition away from its dependence on fossil fuels."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tom's Hardware reports on some interesting hardware history being shared on X.com:AMD engineer Phil Park identified a curious nugget of PC architectural history from, of all places, a year-old Quora answer posted by former Intel engineer [and Pentium Pro architect] Robert Colwell. The nugget indicates that Intel could have beaten AMD to the x86-64 punch if the former wasn't dead-set on the x64-only Itanium line of CPUs. Colwell had responded on Quora to the question "Shouldn't Intel with its vast resources have been able to develop both architectures?"This was a marketing decision by Intel - they believed, probably rightly, that bringing out a new 64-bit feature in the x86 would be perceived as betting against their own native-64-bit Itanium, and might well severely damage Itanium's chances. I was told, not once, but twice, that if I "didn't stop yammering about the need to go 64-bits in x86 I'd be fired on the spot" and was directly ordered to take out that 64-bit stuff. I decided to split the difference, by leaving in the gates but fusing off the functionality. That way, if I was right about Itanium and what AMD would do, Intel could very quickly get back in the game with x86. As far as I'm concerned, that's exactly what did happen. Phil Park continued the discussion on X.com. "He didn't quite get what he wanted, but he got close since they had x86-64 support in subsequent products when Intel made their comeback." (So, Park posted later in the thread, "I think he won the long game.") Park also shared a post from Nicholas Wilt (NVIDIA CUDA designer who earlier did GPU computing work at Microsoft and built the prototype for Windows Desktop Manager):I have an x86-64 story of my own. I pressed a friend at AMD to develop an alternative to Itanium. "For all the talk about Wintel," I told him, "these companies bear no love for one another. If you guys developed a 64-bit extension of x86, Microsoft would support it...." Interesting coda: When it became clear that x86-64 was beating Itanium in the market, Intel reportedly petitioned Microsoft to change the architecture and Microsoft told Intel to pound sand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Miami Herald reports:Cuba's electrical grid shut down again early Saturday, leaving the island without electricity after authorities tried but failed to restore power following an earlier nationwide blackout on Friday. The island's Electric Union reported a second "total outage" at 6:15 a.m., just hours after officials reported they had restored power in a few "microsystems" all over the island... The country has been going through its worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the government lacks money to buy oil in the international market to meet domestic demand. Cubans irked by the daily blackouts defied the country's Draconian laws punishing criticism of the government and left several comments in official news outlets calling for government officials to resign. The second outage will likely exacerbate public frustration as food begins to spoil because of the lack of refrigeration. Two hours ago, Reuters reported that Cuba's government "said on Saturday it had made some progress in gradually re-establishing electrical service across the island, including to hospitals and parts of the capital Havana..." "Most of Cuba's 10 million people, however, remained without electricity on Saturday afternoon."Traffic lights were dark at intersections throughout Havana, and most commerce was halted... Cuban officials have said even if the immediate grid collapse is resolved, the electricity crisis will continue. Cuba produces little of its own crude oil, and fuel deliveries to the island have dropped significantly this year, as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, once important suppliers, have reduced their exports to Cuba. Mexico experienced a historic drop in production, according to the New York Times, while Venezuela is selling its oil to foreign companies to ease its own economic crisis:The experts had warned for years: Cuba's power grid was on the verge of collapse, relying on plants nearly a half-century old and importing fuel that the cash strapped Communist government could barely afford... Cuban economists and foreign analysts blamed the crisis on several factors: the government's failure to tackle the island's aging infrastructure; the decline in fuel supplies from Venezuela, Mexico and Russia; and a lack of capital investment in badly needed renewable systems, such as wind and solar. Jorge Pinon, a Cuban-born energy expert at the University of Texas at Austin, highlighted that Cuba's electricity grid relies on eight very large power plants that are close to 50 years old. "They have not received any operational maintenance much less capital maintenance in the last 12 to 15 years," he said, adding that they have a lifetime of only 25-30 years. "So, number one, it's a structural problem, they are breaking down all the time and that has a domino effect," he said. Compounding the problems, Cuba burns crude oil as a fuel for its plants. Experts said Cuba's own crude oil production is very heavy in sulfur and metals that can impair the thermoelectric combustion process. "So they have to be constantly repairing them, and they're repairing them with Band-Aids," said Mr. Pinon... "If they can't turn these plants back on there is a concern that this could turn into another mass exodus," said Ricardo Herrero, the director of the Cuba Study Group in Washington. "They are really short on options," he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous readed shared this report from CNN:[U.S. army boats] are poorly maintained and largely unprepared to meet the military's growing mission in the Pacific, a new government oversight report said this week.The Government Accountability Office released a report on Wednesday that concluded there are "wide-ranging" issues facing Army watercraft, which limit the Army's ability "to meet mission requirements in the Indo-Pacific theater where the need for Army watercraft is most pronounced." Despite Army policy requiring the vessels to be at least at a 90% mission capable rate - meaning the vessels are ready to perform their mission - the boats currently have a less than 40% capable rate this year. Overall, the fleet of watercraft has dropped by nearly half since 2018, going from 134 vessels to 70 as of May this year, in part due to divestment of vessels in 2018 and 2019... "Army boats have not been ready, capable, or in a mindset they'll have to do something dangerous or in the real world ... for decades now," a retired warrant officer and former chief engineer on Army watercraft told CNN at the time... [Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith] said that the Army is "actively" working to address gaps in the watercraft's capability as a whole, and prioritizing improving the current fleet while also "investing in a modernized fleet to meet the needs of the 2040 force." Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, told CNN that the Army is also looking at possibly replacing the existing fleet of Army watercraft with autonomous vessels in the future. "What we see is the oil industry and other shipping industries are doing this already, we see that happening all around the world," Butler said. "There's no reason the Army shouldn't be thinking that way ... leaders from down at ship level all the way to the Pentagon are looking at this and determining the best way to deploy our forces... "Maybe the future fleet is all autonomous, we just don't know," he said. "This is all stuff we're looking at in terms of trying to modernize the way we move people, weapons, and equipment." CNN notes that the report "also said the Army is considering leasing civilian watercraft to bolster its existing fleet and moving all of its watercraft to the Pacific." The report also included a response from Army Secretary Wormuth, who said the Army is "actively pursuing a holistic approach to mitigate the gaps in Army watercraft capability and capacity."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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