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Ars Technica's Dan Goodwin writes: Last Tuesday, loads of Linux usersa"many running packages released as early as this year -- started reporting their devices were failing to boot. Instead, they received a cryptic error message that included the phrase: "Something has gone seriously wrong." The cause: an update Microsoft issued as part of its monthly patch release. It was intended to close a 2-year-old vulnerability in GRUB, an open source boot loader used to start up many Linux devices. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 8.6 out of 10, made it possible for hackers to bypass secure boot, the industry standard for ensuring that devices running Windows or other operating systems don't load malicious firmware or software during the bootup process. CVE-2022-2601 was discovered in 2022, but for unclear reasons, Microsoft patched it only last Tuesday. [...] With Microsoft maintaining radio silence, those affected by the glitch have been forced to find their own remedies. One option is to access their EFI panel and turn off secure boot. Depending on the security needs of the user, that option may not be acceptable. A better short-term option is to delete the SBAT Microsoft pushed out last Tuesday. This means users will still receive some of the benefits of Secure Boot even if they remain vulnerable to attacks that exploit CVE-2022-2601. The steps for this remedy are outlined here (thanks to manutheeng for the reference).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Toyota confirmed a breach of its network after 240GB of data, including employee and customer information, was leaked on a hacking forum by a threat actor. The company has not provided details on how or when the breach occurred. BleepingComputer reports: ZeroSevenGroup (the threat actor who leaked the stolen data) says they breached a U.S. branch and were able to steal 240GB of files with information on Toyota employees and customers, as well as contracts and financial information. They also claim to have collected network infrastructure information, including credentials, using the open-source ADRecon tool that helps extract vast amounts of information from Active Directory environments. "We have hacked a branch in United States to one of the biggest automotive manufacturer in the world (TOYOTA). We are really glad to share the files with you here for free. The data size: 240 GB," the threat actor claims. "Contents: Everything like Contacts, Finance, Customers, Schemes, Employees, Photos, DBs, Network infrastructure, Emails, and a lot of perfect data. We also offer you AD-Recon for all the target network with passwords." While Toyota hasn't shared the date of the breach, BleepingComputer found that the files had been stolen or at least created on December 25, 2022. This date could indicate that the threat actor gained access to a backup server where the data was stored. "We are aware of the situation. The issue is limited in scope and is not a system wide issue," Toyota told BleepingComputer. The company added that it's "engaged with those who are impacted and will provide assistance if needed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian, written by Julian Benson: It's been eight years since Civilization 6 -- the most recent in a very long-running strategy game series that sees you take a nation from the prehistoric settlement of their first town through centuries of development until they reach the space age. Since 2016 it has amassed an abundance of expansions, scenario packs, new nations, modes and systems for players to master -- but series producer Dennis Shirk at Firaxis Games feels that enough it enough. "It was getting too big for its britches," he says. "It was time to make something new." "It's tough to even get through the whole game," designer Ed Beach says, singling out the key problem that Firaxis aims to solve with the forthcoming Civilization 7. While the early turns of a campaign in Civilization 6 can be swift, when you're only deciding the actions for the population of a single town, "the number of systems, units, and entities you must manage explodes after a while," Beach says. From turn one to victory, a single campaign can take more than 20 hours, and if you start falling behind other nations, it can be tempting to restart long before you see the endgame. That's why Civilization 7's campaign has been split into three ages -- Antiquity, Exploration and Modern -- with each ending in a dramatic explosion of global crises. "Breaking the game into chapters lets people get through history in a more digestible fashion," Beach says. When you start a new campaign, you pick a leader and civilization to govern, and direct your people in establishing their first settlements and encounters with the other peoples populating a largely undeveloped land. You'll choose the technologies they research, the expansions they make to their cities, and whom they try to befriend or conquer. Every turn you complete or scientific, economic, cultural and military milestone you pass adds points to a meter running in the background. Once that meter hits 200, you and all the other surviving civilizations on the map will transition into the next age. When moving from Antiquity to Exploration and later Exploration to Modern, you select a new civilization to lead. You'll retain all the cities you controlled before but have access to different technologies and attributes. This may seem strange, but it's built to reflect history: think of London, which was once run by the Romans before being supplanted by the Anglo-Saxons. No empire lasts for ever, but they don't all collapse, either. Breaking Civilization 7 into chapters also gives campaigns a new rhythm. As you approach the end of an age, you'll begin to face global crises. In Antiquity, for instance, you can see a proliferation of independent powers similar to the tribes that tore down Rome. "We're not calling them barbarians any more," Beach says. "It's a more nuanced way to present them." These crises multiply and strengthen until you reach the next age. "It's like a sci-fi or fantasy series with a huge, crazy conclusion, and then the next book starts nice and calm," Beach says. "There's a point where getting to the next age is a relief." Here's a round-up of thoughts on Civilization 7 from some of the most respected gaming outlets and reviewers: Civilization VII hands-on: This strategy sequel rethinks the long game -- Ars Technica's Samuel AxonCivilization 7 pairs seismic changes with a lovably familiar formula -- Eurogamer's Chris TapsellCivilization 7 hands-on: Huge changes are coming to the classic strategy series - PC Gamer's Tyler WildeCivilization 7 lets you mix and match history -- and it's a blast - The Verge's Ash ParrishCivilization 7 Hands-On Preview: Creating Your Legacy - Game Rant's Joshua DuckworthSid Meier's Civilization VII preview -- possibly the freshest sequel yet - GamesHub's Jam WalkerHow Civilization 7 Rethinks The Series' Structure - GameSpot's Steve WattsRead more of this story at Slashdot.

U.S. District Judge Ada Brown in Dallas blocked the FTC's rule banning noncompete agreements, arguing the FTC lacks authority to implement such broad regulations and did not adequately justify the sweeping prohibition. Reuters reports: Brown had temporarily blocked the rule in July while she considered a bid by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country's largest business lobby, and tax service firm Ryan to strike it down entirely. The rule was set to take effect Sept. 4. Brown in her ruling said that even if the FTC had the power to adopt the rule, the agency had not justified banning virtually all noncompete agreements. "The Commission's lack of evidence as to why they chose to impose such a sweeping prohibition ... instead of targeting specific, harmful non-competes, renders the Rule arbitrary and capricious," wrote Brown, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump. FTC spokesperson Victoria Graham said the agency was disappointed with the ruling and is "seriously considering a potential appeal.""Today's decision does not prevent the FTC from addressing noncompetes through case-by-base enforcement actions," Graham said in a statement. The Democratic-controlled FTC approved the ban on noncompete agreements in a 3-2 vote in May. The commission and supporters of the rule say the agreements are an unfair restraint on competition that violate U.S. antitrust law and suppress workers' wages and mobility.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI has announced a partnership with Conde Nest, allowing the company's AI products to display content from Vogue, The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler, GQ, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Wired, Bon Appetit and other outlets. CNBC reports: "With the introduction of our SearchGPT prototype, we're testing new search features that make finding information and reliable content sources faster and more intuitive," OpenAI wrote in a blog post. "We're combining our conversational models with information from the web to give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources." OpenAI added that the SearchGPT prototype offers direct links to news stories and that the company plans "to integrate the best of these features directly into ChatGPT in the future." It is the latest in a recent trend of some media outlets joining forces with AI startups such as OpenAI to enter into content deals.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new TV series is capturing the dramatic saga of the The Pirate Bay, the notorious file-sharing website that openly challenged the entertainment industry in the early 2000s. A just-launched teaser is available on YouTube. TorrentFreak reports: A few years ago, news broke that The Pirate Bay story was being turned into a TV series. Written by Piotr Marciniak and directed by Jens Sjogren, who also made the "I am Zlatan" documentary, production was in the hands of B-Reel Films, working for the Swedish broadcaster SVT. American distribution company Dynamic Television scooped up worldwide rights. As far as we know, international deals have not yet been announced. The Swedish premiere on November 8 is coming closer, however, and a few days ago SVT released an official teaser. The founders of The Pirate Bay -- Anakata, Brokep and Tiamo -- are played by Arvid Swedrup, Simon Greger Carlsson and Willjam Lempling. The teaser doesn't give away much, but it's interesting that one of The Pirate Bay's infamous responses to legal threats features prominently. The teaser quotes from Anakata's response to a letter from DreamWorks, written twenty years ago. The movie company sent a DMCA takedown notice requesting the removal of a torrent for the film Shrek 2, but the reply was not what they had hoped for. "As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here," Anakata wrote. "It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ........ morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons." The response was public information and made it into the series. Whether there will be any new revelations has yet to be seen, however, as none of the site's founders were actively involved in production. Instead, the producers used interviews with other people involved, plus the vast amount of public information available on the Internet. That includes the infamous responses to legal threats. Time will tell how the producers and director have decided to tell this story. Production took place in Stockholm, Sweden, but also ventured to other countries, including Chile and Thailand, where Fredrik Neij was arrested and paraded in front of the press in 2014.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Andrew Cunningham: Back in 2013, Nvidia introduced a new technology called G-Sync to eliminate screen tearing and stuttering effects and reduce input lag when playing PC games. The company accomplished this by tying your display's refresh rate to the actual frame rate of the game you were playing, and similar variable refresh-rate (VRR) technology has become a mainstay even in budget monitors and TVs today. The issue for Nvidia is that G-Sync isn't what has been driving most of that adoption. G-Sync has always required extra dedicated hardware inside of displays, increasing the costs for both users and monitor manufacturers. The VRR technology in most low-end to mid-range screens these days is usually some version of the royalty-free AMD FreeSync or the similar VESA Adaptive-Sync standard, both of which provide G-Sync's most important features without requiring extra hardware. Nvidia more or less acknowledged that the free-to-use, cheap-to-implement VRR technologies had won in 2019 when it announced its "G-Sync Compatible" certification tier for FreeSync monitors. The list of G-Sync Compatible screens now vastly outnumbers the list of G-Sync and G-Sync Ultimate screens. Today, Nvidia is announcing a change that's meant to keep G-Sync alive as its own separate technology while eliminating the requirement for expensive additional hardware. Nvidia says it's partnering with chipmaker MediaTek to build G-Sync capabilities directly into scaler chips that MediaTek is creating for upcoming monitors. G-Sync modules ordinarily replace these scaler chips, but they're entirely separate boards with expensive FPGA chips and dedicated RAM. These new MediaTek scalers will support all the same features that current dedicated G-Sync modules do. Nvidia says that three G-Sync monitors with MediaTek scaler chips inside will launch "later this year": the Asus ROG Swift PG27AQNR, the Acer Predator XB273U F5, and the AOC AGON PRO AG276QSG2. These are all 27-inch 1440p displays with maximum refresh rates of 360 Hz.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TV manufacturers are shifting their focus from hardware sales to viewer data and advertising revenue. This trend is driven by declining profit margins on TV sets and the growing potential of smart TV operating systems to generate recurring income. Companies like LG, Samsung, and Roku are increasingly prioritizing ad sales and user tracking capabilities in their TVs, ArsTechnica reports. Automatic content recognition (ACR) technology, which analyzes viewing habits, is becoming a key feature for advertisers. TV makers are partnering with data firms to enhance targeting capabilities, with LG recently sharing data with Nielsen and Samsung updating its ACR tech to track streaming ad exposure. This shift raises concerns about privacy and user experience, as TVs become more commercialized and data-driven. Industry experts predict a rise in "shoppable ads" and increased integration between TV viewing and e-commerce platforms. The report adds: With TV sales declining and many shoppers prioritizing pricing, smart TV players will continue developing ads that are harder to avoid and better at targeting. Interestingly, Patrick Horner, practice leader of consumer electronics at analyst Omdia, told Ars that smart TV advertising revenue exceeding smart TV hardware revenue (as well as ad sale margins surpassing those of hardware) is a US-only trend, albeit one that shows no signs of abating. OLED has become a mainstay in the TV marketplace, and until the next big display technology becomes readily available, OEMs are scrambling to make money in a saturated TV market filled with budget options. Selling ads is an obvious way to bridge the gap between today and The Next Big Thing in TVs. Indeed, with companies like Samsung and LG making big deals with analytics firms and other brands building their businesses around ads, the industry's obsession with ads will only intensify. As we've seen before with TV commercials, which have gotten more frequent over time, once the ad genie is out of the bottle, it tends to grow, not go back inside. One side effect we're already seeing, Horner notes, is "a proliferation of more TV operating systems." While choice is often a good thing for consumers, it's important to consider if new options from companies like Amazon, Comcast, and TiVo actually do anything to notably improve the smart TV experience for owners. And OS operators' financial success is tied to the number of hours users spend viewing something on the OS. Roku's senior director of ad innovation, Peter Hamilton, told Digiday in May that his team works closely with Roku's consumer team, "whose goal is to drive total viewing hours." Many smart TV OS operators are therefore focused on making it easier for users to navigate content via AI.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nothing, a British startup seeking to challenge Apple's smartphone dominance, is hauling its employees back to the office full-time in the quest for growth. From a report: In a lengthy email disparaging remote work, which had been a tenet of Nothing CEO Carl Pei's workplace policy since its creation four years ago, Pei explained why his 450 employees needed to come to the office five days a week. "Remote work is not compatible with a high ambition level plus high speed," Pei said in an email to staff, which he shared on LinkedIn. Pei gave three reasons for the strict return-to-office mandate. First, he said, the logistics of developing a smartphone, where design, engineering, and manufacturing departments collaborate, weren't conducive to remote working. He added that creativity and innovation worked better in person, allowing the company to do more with fewer resources. Third, Pei said Nothing's ambitions to scale to become a "generation-defining company" wouldn't be achievable with remote work. According to Pei's email, the new mandate will take effect in two months, and he intends to hold a town hall in London to answer employees' questions. In his email, the Nothing CEO also suggested that employees who could not commit to five days in the office look for other employment. "We know it's not the right type of setup for everybody, and that's okay. We should look for a mutual fit. You should find an environment where you thrive, and we need to find people who want to go the full mile with us in the decades ahead."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Atari has just announced a renewed version of its 7800 home console from 1986. Polygon: Dubbed the 7800 Plus, the new console will launch later this winter but is already available to pre-order from Atari for $129.99. The 7800 Plus is a scaled-down version of the original hardware equipped with an HDMI connection and has the ability to play first and third-party cartridges for the Atari 2600 and 7800. Additionally, you'll have the option to play your games in their original 4:3 aspect ration, or upscale them to widescreen format. While emulators and other options for playing retro Atari games exist, playing the games on their original hardware remains the definitive way to experience many of these classic titles. Along with its new console, Atari also announced a pair of new wireless controllers. The CX40 Plus wireless Joystick and CX78 Plus Wireless gamepad are loving recreations of the original hardware as they shipped with the Atari 2600 and 7800. Both of the new controllers are compatible with either the Atari 2600 Plus (released last year) or the new 7800 Plus consoles but can also be hooked up to your PC by using the included USB-C adapter -- they're even compatible with an original 2600 or 7800 if you have one lying around. Both peripherals are available from Atari now and cost $34.99.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

North Korean hackers exploited a critical Windows vulnerability to deploy advanced malware, security researchers revealed. The zero-day flaw, patched by Microsoft last week, allowed attackers to gain system-level access and install a sophisticated rootkit called FudModule. Gen, the firm that discovered the attacks, identified the threat actors as Lazarus, a hacking group linked to North Korea. The exploit targeted individuals in cryptocurrency and aerospace industries, likely aiming to steal digital assets and infiltrate corporate networks. FudModule, first analyzed in 2022, stands out for its ability to operate deep within Windows, evading detection by security defenses. Earlier versions used vulnerable drivers for installation, while a newer variant exploited a bug in Windows' AppLocker service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

North America's eight primary data center markets added 515 megawatts (MW) of new supply in the first half of 2024 -- the equivalent of Silicon Valley's entire existing inventory -- according to a new report real-estate services firm CBRE. From a report: All of Silicon Valley has 459 MW of data center supply, while those main markets have a total of 5,689 MW. That's up 10% from a year ago and about double what it was five years ago. Data center space under construction is up nearly 70% from a year ago and is currently at a record high. But the vast majority of that is already leased, and vacancy rates have shrunk to a record low of 2.8%. In other words, developers are building an insane amount of data center capacity, but it's still not enough to meet the growing demands of cloud computing and artificial intelligence providers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Disney has now agreed that a wrongful death lawsuit should be decided in court following backlash for initially arguing the case belonged in arbitration because the grieving widower had once signed up for a Disney Plus trial. "With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss," chairman of Disney experiences Josh D'Amaro said in a statement to The Verge. "As such, we've decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court." The lawsuit was filed in February by Jeffrey Piccolo, the husband of a 42-year-old woman who died last year due to an allergic reaction that occurred after eating at a restaurant in the Disney Springs shopping complex in Orlando. The case gained widespread media attention after Piccolo's legal team challenged Disney's motion to dismiss the case, arguing that a forced arbitration agreement Piccolo signed was effectively invisible.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maria Branyas, who was the world's oldest person, has died peacefully in a Spanish nursing home at the age of 117. From a report: "Maria Branyas has left us. She has died as she wanted: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain," her official X account said, and a spokesperson at the nursing home confirmed the news without providing details. Branyas had suggested that her demise was imminent on Monday on X, saying: "I feel weak. The time is coming. Don't cry, I don't like tears... You know me, wherever I go, I will be happy." Her X account is handled by her daughter. She had turned 117 on March 4, according to Guinness World Records, and had become the oldest person in the world in January 2023. Born in San Francisco, California, in 1907, she moved with her Spanish family back to the northeastern region of Catalonia when she was seven. She spent the rest of her life there, living through the 1936-39 civil war and two pandemics a century apart - the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic. In 1931, she married Catalan doctor Joan Moret, with whom she had three children. Her husband passed away in 1976 and she also outlived her son, August, who died in a tractor accident at the age of 86, Guinness World Records said on its website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI company Anthropic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court by three authors who say it misused their books and hundreds of thousands of others to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude. From a report: The complaint, filed on Monday, by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, said that Anthropic used pirated versions of their works and others to teach Claude to respond to human prompts. The lawsuit joins several other high-stakes complaints filed by copyright holders including visual artists, news outlets and record labels over the material used by tech companies to train their generative artificial intelligence systems. Separate groups of authors have sued OpenAI and Meta over the companies' alleged misuse of their work to train the large-language models underlying their chatbots.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new paper on the National Bureau of Economic Research: Using more than 4,900 assessments, we study changes in the characteristics and objectives of CEOs and top executives since 2001. The same four factors explain roughly half of the variation of assessed CEO characteristics in this larger sample of executive assessments as in Kaplan and Sorensen (2021). After the global financial crisis (GFC), the average interviewed CEO candidate has lower overall ability, is more execution oriented / less interpersonal, less charismatic and less creative/strategic than pre-GFC. Except for overall ability and execution oriented/interpersonal, these differences persist in hired CEOs. Interpersonal or "softer" skills do not increase over time, either for CEO candidates or hired CEOs. Pre- and post-GFC, we find a positive correlation between the ability of assessed CEOs and other C-level executives assessed at the same company, suggesting that higher-ability executives complement each other. Finally, we look at the relation between the objectives for which the CEOs are interviewed and CEO characteristics.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Global technology giants are pushing back against attempts by India's telecom networks to bring internet services under stricter regulation, rejecting arguments that such measures are necessary to create a "level playing field" and address national security concerns. From a report: The Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), a powerful industry body that represents Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix and Spotify, has forcefully argued against inclusion of the so-called over-the-top (OTT) services in the proposed regulatory framework for telecom operators. In a submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the AIC said there are fundamental differences in technology, operations and functionality between OTT services and traditional telecom operations. [...] This resistance comes in response to a coordinated push by India's top telecom operators -- Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea -- to bring OTT services under a new authorization framework. Jio, India's largest telecom operator with more than 475 million subscribers, along with other telco operators have recommended that OTT providers contribute to network development costs based on their traffic consumption, turnover and user base.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

GoPro has announced a restructuring plan that involves cutting about 15% of its workforce. "The company expects to take charges in the range of $5 million to $7 million for the restructuring plan, with cash expenses of $1 million to be recognized in the third quarter and about $4 million to $6 million in the fourth quarter of 2024," reports Reuters. From the report: The layoffs - around 139 jobs - are expected to begin in the third quarter and would be completed by the end of 2024. Shares of the company, which had 925 full-time employees at the end of the second quarter ended June 30, were up 1.5% after the layoffs were announced. Earlier this month, GoPro reported revenue of $186 million for second quarter, down 22.7% compared to last year and operating expenses of $103 million, an increase of 5% from a year ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are facing challenges returning to Earth due to compatibility issues between their Boeing-designed spacesuits and SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. Inc. Magazine reports: The space suits in question are the "intra-vehicular activity" outfits now worn by astronauts. They're simpler than the bulky extra-vehicular space suits used on space walks, and are designed to keep astronauts safe in the capsule in the very unlikely case there's a problem that causes the capsule's atmosphere to be lost. The problem is simple: Should Butch and Suni need to fly back aboard SpaceX's vehicle, their suits won't fit in Dragon's seats. [...] Boeing and SpaceX suits evolved under totally different design sensibilities. If Boeing and NASA deem Starliner unsafe for humans to fly home in, Butch and Suni must head earthward aboard a SpaceX Dragon, but their suits won't be able to plug into Dragon's systems. Like trying to plug an essentially outdated USB A socket into an iPhone's charge port, the suit connectors have different shapes, styles, and functions. The suits themselves have different systems that integrate with their own capsules for purposes like air leak checks during pre-flight testing. So if an emergency situation presents itself and astronauts have to come back to Earth before proper plans are finalized, Butch and Suni will have to return inside the cargo section of a Dragon space capsule "unsuited," according to NASA leadership who spoke on the matter in a press conference last week. Other plans include flying up suitable Dragon-connecting space suits for the two astronauts on a later mission, should Starliner be deemed incapable of bringing them back.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: A student has successfully developed a small nuclear fusion reactor as part of his A-Levels. The 17-year-old built the reactor to generate neutrons as part of his Extended Project Qualification (EPQ). Notably, Cesare Mencarini's work is claimed to be the only nuclear reactor built in a school environment. Showcased at the Cambridge Science Festival recently, the nuclear reactor achieved plasma a few months ago. It also gave Mencarini an A* in his A-Level results, according to reports. [...] Mencarini maintained that the goal of the reactor is to create conditions that are required for fusion. However, the project couldn't get same pressure that's generated by the Sun due to its own gravity. Therefore, to make atoms hot enough, the teen used high voltage. The reactor achieved plasma in June. "Two days ago I achieved plasma, which was brilliant and I'm massively happy about this," wrote Mencarini in a LinkedIn post. "The system is running thanks to a Leybold Trivac E2 roughing pump, which allows me to achieve a minimum pressure of 8E-3 Torr." At that time, he mentioned that Pfeiffer TPH062 would be used later to achieve fusion. "This turbomolecular pump is currently isolated by a VAT Throttling Valve." "The grid is then attached to a 30kV rated High Voltage Feedthrough connected to a 5kV Unilab power supply, which allows me to use the fusor in my school (It is limited to a 2mA output). While running the fusor I experimented with 2 grids which you can see in the images," added Mencarini in the post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Security researcher Brian Krebs writes: New details are emerging about a breach at National Public Data (NPD), a consumer data broker that recently spilled hundreds of millions of Americans' Social Security Numbers, addresses, and phone numbers online. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that another NPD data broker which shares access to the same consumer records inadvertently published the passwords to its back-end database in a file that was freely available from its homepage until today. In April, a cybercriminal named USDoD began selling data stolen from NPD. In July, someone leaked what was taken, including the names, addresses, phone numbers and in some cases email addresses for more than 272 million people (including many who are now deceased). NPD acknowledged the intrusion on Aug. 12, saying it dates back to a security incident in December 2023. In an interview last week, USDoD blamed the July data leak on another malicious hacker who also had access to the company's database, which they claimed has been floating around the underground since December 2023. Following last week's story on the breadth of the NPD breach, a reader alerted KrebsOnSecurity that a sister NPD property -- the background search service recordscheck.net -- was hosting an archive that included the usernames and password for the site's administrator. A review of that archive, which was available from the Records Check website until just before publication this morning (August 19), shows it includes the source code and plain text usernames and passwords for different components of recordscheck.net, which is visually similar to nationalpublicdata.com and features identical login pages. The exposed archive, which was named "members.zip," indicates RecordsCheck users were all initially assigned the same six-character password and instructed to change it, but many did not. According to the breach tracking service Constella Intelligence, the passwords included in the source code archive are identical to credentials exposed in previous data breaches that involved email accounts belonging to NPD's founder, an actor and retired sheriff's deputy from Florida named Salvatore "Sal" Verini. Reached via email, Mr. Verini said the exposed archive (a .zip file) containing recordscheck.net credentials has been removed from the company's website, and that the site is slated to cease operations "in the next week or so." "Regarding the zip, it has been removed but was an old version of the site with non-working code and passwords," Verini told KrebsOnSecurity. "Regarding your question, it is an active investigation, in which we cannot comment on at this point. But once we can, we will [be] with you, as we follow your blog. Very informative." The leaked recordscheck.net source code indicates the website was created by a web development firm based in Lahore, Pakistan called creationnext.com, which did not return messages seeking comment. CreationNext.com's homepage features a positive testimonial from Sal Verini.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo has unveiled its sixth-generation robotaxi, an electric minivan made by Chinese automaker Zeekr. While the company claims it's more advanced than previous generations, it features fewer sensors to help reduce costs. The Verge reports: [W]ithin its high-powered computer, it contains all the learnings of the previous five generations of Waymo's autonomous vehicles, meaning it won't have to do as much real-world testing as past models before it can be rolled out to the public. But looming over Waymo's assertion that its new robotaxi will be cheaper to produce is the possibility that it could also be subject to costly new tariffs against Chinese-made electric vehicles. Earlier this year, the Biden administration said it would quadruple tariffs on EVs from China to 100 percent, from the current 25 percent, as a way to "protect American workers and American companies from China's unfair trade practices." [...] Waymo says the sixth-gen robotaxi will feature a streamlined sensor suite of "16 cameras, 5 lidar, 6 radar, and an array of external audio receivers (EARs)." These sensors will help provide "overlapping fields of view, all around the vehicle, up to 500 meters away, day and night, and in a range of weather conditions." That's the equivalent of over five football fields of visible range. Waymo's use of multiple sensors is important for redundancy, in which multiple sensors and cameras can ensure the vehicle can continue to detect and respond to its surroundings if something fails. It's unclear where and when the new sixth-gen robotaxis will first appear. "Waymo currently operates in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with plans to launch commercial service in Austin, Texas," notes the report. "The company has been manually testing the Zeekr-made minivans on public roads, with the goal of adding them to its commercial fleet sometime soon."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hyundai Motor Group, which includes Kia and Genesis, accounted for 10% of the U.S. EV market through the first seven months of 2024, outpacing Ford (7.4%) and GM (6.3%). Electrek reports: Although IONIQ 5 and 6 sales slipped last month, they are still up 25% and 54% year-to-date, respectively. Meanwhile, sister company Kia continued its record-setting performance in July after EV sales nearly doubled YTD. Kia's new EV9, its first three-row electric SUV, is a major part of its growth. According to Kelley Blue Book, Kia EV9 sales outpaced the Toyota bZ4X, VW ID.4, Nissan Ariya, Rivian R1T, and Tesla Model S in the US through the first half of 2024. It even topped Kia's Niro EV sales. Hyundai's luxury brand, Genesis, remains a dark horse in the US EV market. Genesis is quickly expanding in the US. After adding 21 dedicated retailers in the US this year, including in eight new states, Genesis recently announced it now has 56 standalone facilities. "In two short years, Genesis' retail footprint has grown rapidly from one dedicated retail facility in Louisiana to 56 retail facilities nationwide," Genesis North America COO Claudia Marquez said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Voters in Wyoming's capital city on Tuesday are faced with deciding whether to elect a mayoral candidate who has proposed to let an artificial intelligence bot run the local government. Earlier this year, the candidate in question -- Victor Miller -- filed for him and his customized ChatGPT bot, named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen), to run for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming. He has vowed to helm the city's business with the AI bot if he wins. Miller has said that the bot is capable of processing vast amounts of data and making unbiased decisions. In what AI experts say is a first for US political campaigns, Miller and Vic have told local news outlets in interviews that their form of proposed governance is a "hybrid approach." The AI bot told Your Wyoming Link that its role would be to provide data-driven insights and innovative solutions for Cheyenne. Meanwhile, Vic said, the human elected office contender, Miller, would serve as the official mayor if chosen by voters and would ensure that "all actions are legally and practically executed." "It's about blending AI's capabilities with human judgment to effectively lead Cheyenne," the bot said. The bot said it did not have political affiliations -- and its goal is to "focus on data-driven practical solutions that benefit the community." During a meet-and-greet this summer, the Washington Post reported that the AI bot was asked how it would go about making decisions "according to human factor, involving humans, and having to make a decision that affects so many people." "Making decisions that affect many people requires a careful balance of data-driven insights and human empathy," the AI bot responded, according to an audio recording obtained and published by the Washington Post. Vic then ran through a multi-part plan that suggested using AI technology to gather data on public opinion and feedback from the community, holding town hall meetings to listen to residents' concerns, consulting experts in relevant fields, evaluating the human impact of the decision and providing transparency about the decision-making. According to Wyoming Public Media, Miller has also pledged that he would donate half the mayoral salary to a non-profit if he is elected. The other half could be used to continually improve the AI bot, he said. Miller has faced some pushback since announcing his mayoral campaign. Wyoming's Secretary of State, Chuck Gray, launched an investigation to determine if the AI bot could legally appear on the ballot, citing state law that says only real people that are registered to vote can run for office. City officials clarified that Miller is the actual candidate, so he was allowed to continue. However, Laramie County ruled that only Miller's name would appear on the ballot, not the bot's. OpenAI later shut down Miller's account, but he quickly created a new one and continued his campaign.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's Podcasts app is now available on all major web browsers, allowing you to stream episodes directly from the web at www.podcasts.apple.com. TechCrunch reports: The new dedicated web experience aims to make it easier for anyone with a web browser on any device to access podcasts. Web listening has been available for some time; however, in order to listen to an episode, users had to look up a show on a search engine and go to the show's Apple Podcasts Preview page. Now Apple Podcasts on the web has launched a new interface, allowing users to access features that were previously only available on the app. These include browsing millions of shows, accessing sections like Library and Top Charts, purchasing premium podcast subscriptions, and more. Listeners can sync their Apple Accounts to be able to pause a podcast and save their play progress to listen to later, as well as see their followed shows and subscriptions. Users without an Apple Account can also use the web experience but can only browse and listen. You can try it out by listening to the latest episode of the SourceForge Podcast!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Department of Justice has amended its antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation, alleging that Ticketmaster's introduction of nontransferable tickets and the SafeTix system was primarily intended to stifle competition from rival platforms like StubHub and SeatGeek, rather than merely to reduce ticket fraud. "The complaint, which was amended on Monday after 10 states joined the DOJ's lawsuit, cites internal Ticketmaster documents obtained during the legal process," notes The Verge. From the report: In 2019, Ticketmaster rolled out SafeTix, which replaced static barcodes on electronic tickets with encrypted barcodes that refresh every 15 seconds. Ticketmaster marketed SafeTix as a way of reducing ticket fraud, but the complaint claims reducing competition was "a primary motivation" for the new ticketing system. [...] The amended complaint includes new information about Ticketmaster's dominance of the events market. One internal Live Nation document cited in the complaint notes that Ticketmaster is the primary ticketer for approximately 80 percent of arenas across the country that host NBA or NHL teams. As of 2022, Live Nation-promoted events accounted for 70 percent of all amphitheater shows across the country, according to internal Live Nation events mentioned in the complaint. The DOJ alleges that because of Ticketmaster's conduct, consumers have "paid more and continue to pay more for fees relating to tickets to live events than they would have paid in a free and open competitive market." The exact amount of monetary harm is still unknown, the complaint claims, and will require discovery from Ticketmaster and Live Nation's books, as well as from its third-party competitors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Smonster writes: The maker of the Snoo, a popular high-tech bassinet, touched off a firestorm of outrage after requiring a paid subscription to use several key features. Most new parents are looking for a way to reclaim even a hint of the sleep they used to get pre-infant. So a smart bassinet that uses sensors to detect when a crying baby needs pacifying, simulating the sounds and rhythms of the womb, offers an irresistible promise to sleep-strapped parents: another hour or two of shut-eye. The dream doesn't come cheap: One of the more popular models, the Snoo retails for $1,700, though enterprising parents can score one secondhand from friends, neighbors or relatives whose own children have outgrown it. But last month, that hand-me-down network was dealt a blow when Happiest Baby, the company that makes Snoo, began charging for access to some of the bassinet's premium features -- features that used to be available to Snoo users indefinitely, at no extra cost. Now, access to the app needed to lock in the bassinet's rocking level, to track the baby's sleep and to use the so-called weaning mode, among other features, will cost parents $20 a month. The change has angered secondhand users and original buyers alike. On Reddit, the new subscription model has prompted review bombs, group brainstorms for collective action and detailed instructions for outraged parents seeking recourse. Some have taken to filing complaints with the Federal Trade Commission, Better Business Bureau and state-run consumer protection offices.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader whoever57 writes: A powerful storm sank the "Bayesian," a superyacht that was carrying Mike Lynch and some guests. In total, there is one confirmed death and another six missing, including Mike lynch and his daughter. It is believed that the yacht is effectively owned by Lynch. The 56-meter yacht had an aluminum hull and could carry 12 guests and a crew of up to 10. "Lynch co-founded Autonomy, a software firm that became one of the shining lights of the UK tech scene, in the mid-90s," notes The Guardian. "Once described as Britain's Bill Gates, Lynch spent much of the last decade in court defending his name against allegations of fraud related to the sale of Autonomy to the U.S. tech company Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. The 59-year-old was acquitted by a jury in San Francisco in June, after he had spent more than a year living in effect under house arrest." "He was awarded an OBE for services to enterprise in 2006, and appointed in 2011 to the science and technology council of the then prime minister, David Cameron. He was elected as a fellow to the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2008 and the Royal Society in 2014."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The tech review world has been full of murky deals between companies and influencers for years, but it appears Google finally crossed a line with the Pixel 9. The company's invite-only Team Pixel program -- which seeds Pixel products to influencers before public availability -- stipulated that participating influencers were not allowed to feature Pixel products alongside competitors, and those who showed a preference for competing phones risked being kicked out of the program. For those hoping to break into the world of tech reviews, the new terms meant having to choose between keeping access or keeping their integrity. The Verge has independently confirmed screenshots of the clause in this year's Team Pixel agreement for the new Pixel phones, which various influencers began posting on X and Threads last night. The agreement tells participants they're "expected to feature the Google Pixel device in place of any competitor mobile devices." It also notes that "if it appears other brands are being preferred over the Pixel, we will need to cease the relationship between the brand and the creator." The link to the form appears to have since been shut down.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has finally patched a workaround exploited by users seeking an upgrade path for Windows 11 that dodged the company's hardware requirements. From a report: The tweak arrived without fanfare in the Windows Insider build 27686. There were a few neat tweaks in the build, including updates to the Windows Sandbox Client preview and a much-needed bump from 32 GB to 2 TB for FAT32 when running the command line format function. However, the documentation did not mention an apparent end to one workaround that bypasses Microsoft's requirements check for Windows 11. According to X user @TheBobPony, the "setup.exe /product server" workaround is not supported in the latest build. The Register contacted Microsoft to understand its intentions with the change. The switch still works in the Windows 24H2 update, but the hardware check appears to no longer be bypassed in the latest Canary channel build (27686). The company has yet to respond.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Concerns over the environmental impact of datacenters in the US state of Virginia are being raised again amid claims their water consumption has stepped up by almost two-thirds since 2019, and AI could make it worse. From a report: Virginia is described as the datacenter capital of the world, particularly Northern Virginia where it is understood there are about 300 facilities. According to the Financial Times, water consumption by bit barns in some areas has increased markedly over the past five years by almost two-thirds. It cites data gathered by freedom of information requests to claim that more than 1.85 billion US gallons was used in 2023, up from 1.13 billion gallons in 2019. Those figures came from water authorities in Northern Virginia in Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, and Fauquier counties. Water is typically used in datacenters for cooling, and the FT points to anxiety over expected increases in demand for computing infrastructure due to AI, which is particularly power intensive during processing for training of large models. It reported that some existing facilities are in water-stressed regions, including parts of Virginia suffering from droughts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is denying a recent report that it is no longer making Fitbit smartwatches. From a report: A company spokesperson told Ars Technica today that Google has no current plans to discontinue the Fitbit Sense or Fitbit Versa product lines. On Sunday, TechRadar published an article titled "RIP Fitbit smartwatches -- an end we could see coming a mile away." The article noted last week's announcement of the new Google Pixel Watch 3. Notably, the watch from Google, which acquired Fitbit in 2019, gives users free access to the Daily Readiness Score, a feature that previously required a Fitbit Premium subscription (Pixel Watch 3 owners also get six free months of Fitbit Premium). The publication said that Fitbit has been "consigned to wearable history" and reported: "Google quietly confirmed that there would never be another Fitbit Sense or Versa model produced. From now on, Fitbit-branded devices will be relegated to Google's best fitness trackers: the Fitbit Inspire, Luxe, and Charge ranges. The smartwatch form factor would be exclusively reserved for the Pixel Watch line."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dozens of VPN apps have vanished from Brazil's Apple App Store, including popular services NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark. Simone Magliano, Head of Research at Top10VPN, reports that at least 30 VPN apps have become unavailable, though their store listings remained visible. Proton VPN, a major free VPN provider, confirmed the App Store issues, speculating it could be "a bug, or Apple implementing a secret censorship order." The move follows X, formerly Twitter, announcing over the weekend that it was shutting its Brazil operations, citing a "secret order" to arrest its legal representative if X didn't "comply with his [Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Morae] censorship orders."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

General Motors is cutting around 1,000 software workers around the world in a bid to focus on more "high-priority" initiatives like improving its Super Cruise driver assistance system, the quality of its infotainment platform and exploring the use of AI. From a report: The job cuts are not about cost cutting or individual performance, GM spokesperson Stuart Fowle told TechCrunch. Rather, they are meant to help the company move more quickly as it tries to compete in the world of "software-defined vehicles." For example, Fowle said, that could mean moving away from developing many different infotainment features and instead focusing on ones that matter most to consumers. The shuffle comes after GM has struggled with recent software problems. The automaker temporarily halted sales of its new Blazer EV in late 2023 after early vehicles encountered glitches. In June, GM promoted two former Apple executives to run its software and services division. The promotions were meant to fill the gap left by Mike Abbott, another Apple veteran who had joined GM as its executive vice president of software and services. Abbott left GM in March for health reasons.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Many Procreate users can breathe a sigh of relief now that the popular iPad illustration app has taken a definitive stance against generative AI. "We're not going to be introducing any generative AI into our products," Procreate CEO James Cuda said in a video posted to X. "I don't like what's happening to the industry, and I don't like what it's doing to artists." The creative community's ire toward generative AI is driven by two main concerns: that AI models have been trained on their content without consent or compensation, and that widespread adoption of the technology will greatly reduce employment opportunities. Those concerns have driven some digital illustrators to seek out alternative solutions to apps that integrate generative AI tools, such as Adobe Photoshop. "Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future," Procreate said on the new AI section of its website. "We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Raspberry Pi, the British computer manufacturer, unveiled a new 2GB variant of its flagship Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer on Monday, priced at $50. Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton said the company aims to "bring high-performance general-purpose computing to the widest possible audience" with the new offering. The 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 utilizes a cost-optimized D0 stepping of the BCM2712 application processor, which removes non-essential functionality to reduce manufacturing costs. Upton stated the chip is "functionally identical" to users compared to higher-memory variants. While the reduced RAM may limit multitasking capabilities, Raspberry Pi's optimized OS allows for efficient resource usage. The company expects the 2GB model to suffice for many users' needs, while power users may opt for 4GB or 8GB versions priced at $60 and $80 respectively. The Raspberry Pi 5, launched in October 2023, features a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 CPU running at 2.4GHz, dual 4K display output, and support for PCIe SSDs. Upton noted the latest model is "about 150 times as powerful" as the original Raspberry Pi from 2012.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AMD agreed to buy server maker ZT Systems in a cash and stock transaction valued at $4.9 billion, adding data center technology that will bolster its efforts to challenge Nvidia. From a report: ZT Systems, based in Secaucus, New Jersey, will become part of AMD's Data Center Solutions Business Group, according to a statement Monday. AMD will retain the business's design and customer teams and look to sell the manufacturing division. Closely held ZT has extensive experience making server computers for owners of large data centers -- the kind of customers that are pouring billions into new AI capabilities. The acquisition will "significantly strengthen our data center AI systems," AMD Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su said in the statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From a paper on the National Bureau of Economic Research: We investigate the relationship between physical attractiveness and the time people devote to video/computer gaming. Average American teenagers spend 2.6% of their waking hours gaming, while for adults this figure is 2.7%. Using the American Add Health Study, we show that adults who are better-looking have more close friends. Arguably, gaming is costlier for them, and they thus engage in less of it. Physically attractive teens are less likely to engage in gaming at all, whereas unattractive teens who do game spend more time each week on it than other gamers. Attractive adults are also less likely than others to spend any time gaming; and if they do, they spend less time on it than less attractive adults. Using the longitudinal nature of the Add Health Study, we find supportive evidence that these relationships are causal for adults: good looks decrease gaming time, not vice-versa.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Security Week brings news about CI/CD workflows using GitHub Actions in build processes. Some workflows can generate artifacts that "may inadvertently leak tokens for third party cloud services and GitHub, exposing repositories and services to compromise, Palo Alto Networks warns."[The artifacts] function as a mechanism for persisting and sharing data across jobs within the workflow and ensure that data is available even after the workflow finishes. [The artifacts] are stored for up to 90 days and, in open source projects, are publicly available... The identified issue, a combination of misconfigurations and security defects, allows anyone with read access to a repository to consume the leaked tokens, and threat actors could exploit it to push malicious code or steal secrets from the repository. "It's important to note that these tokens weren't part of the repository code but were only found in repository-produced artifacts," Palo Alto Networks' Yaron Avital explains... "The Super-Linter log file is often uploaded as a build artifact for reasons like debuggability and maintenance. But this practice exposed sensitive tokens of the repository." Super-Linter has been updated and no longer prints environment variables to log files. Avital was able to identify a leaked token that, unlike the GitHub token, would not expire as soon as the workflow job ends, and automated the process that downloads an artifact, extracts the token, and uses it to replace the artifact with a malicious one. Because subsequent workflow jobs would often use previously uploaded artifacts, an attacker could use this process to achieve remote code execution (RCE) on the job runner that uses the malicious artifact, potentially compromising workstations, Avital notes. Avital's blog post notes other variations on the attack - and "The research laid out here allowed me to compromise dozens of projects maintained by well-known organizations, including firebase-js-sdk by Google, a JavaScript package directly referenced by 1.6 million public projects, according to GitHub. Another high-profile project involved adsys, a tool included in the Ubuntu distribution used by corporations for integration with Active Directory." (Avital says the issue even impacted projects from Microsoft, Red Hat, and AWS.) "All open-source projects I approached with this issue cooperated swiftly and patched their code. Some offered bounties and cool swag." "This research was reported to GitHub's bug bounty program. They categorized the issue as informational, placing the onus on users to secure their uploaded artifacts."My aim in this article is to highlight the potential for unintentionally exposing sensitive information through artifacts in GitHub Actions workflows. To address the concern, I developed a proof of concept (PoC) custom action that safeguards against such leaks. The action uses the @actions/artifact package, which is also used by the upload-artifact GitHub action, adding a crucial security layer by using an open-source scanner to audit the source directory for secrets and blocking the artifact upload when risk of accidental secret exposure exists. This approach promotes a more secure workflow environment... As this research shows, we have a gap in the current security conversation regarding artifact scanning. GitHub's deprecation of Artifacts V3 should prompt organizations using the artifacts mechanism to reevaluate the way they use it. Security defenders must adopt a holistic approach, meticulously scrutinizing every stage - from code to production - for potential vulnerabilities. Overlooked elements like build artifacts often become prime targets for attackers. Reduce workflow permissions of runner tokens according to least privilege and review artifact creation in your CI/CD pipelines. By implementing a proactive and vigilant approach to security, defenders can significantly strengthen their project's security posture. The blog post also notes protection and mitigation features from Palo Alto Networks....Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the 1980s, a radio show about home computers was broadcast on a handful of California radio stations. 40 years later, reel-to-reel tapes of the shows were re-discovered - and digitized - by an Internet Archive special collections manager. An Internet Archive blog post tells the story:Earlier this year archivist Kay Savetz recovered several of the tapes in a property sale, and recognizing their value and worthiness of professional transfer, launched a GoFundMe to have them digitized, and made them available at Internet Archive with the permission of the show's creators... Interviews in the recovered recordings include Timothy Leary, Douglas Adams, Bill Gates, Atari's Jack Tramiel, Apple's Bill Atkinson, and dozens of others. The recovered shows span November 17 1984 through July 12, 1985. Many more of the original reel-to-reel tapes - including shows with interviews with Ray Bradbury, Robert Moog, Donny Osmond, and Gene Roddenberry - are still lost, and perhaps are still waiting to be found in the Los Angeles area. [Though there appears to be a transcript of the Gene Roddenberry interview.] The stories of how The Famous Computer Cafe was created - and saved, 40 years later - is explored in an episode of the Radio Survivor podcast. The podcast interviewed show co-creator Ellen Fields and archivist Kay Savetz, providing a dual perspective of how the show was created and how it was recovered. The recovery of these interviews, 40 years after their original airing, holds out hope that many more relics and treasures still await discovery. You get another perspective on the past from the show's advertisements for 1980s software (and from the production values of 1980s-era radio technology). Bill Gates was just 29 when he recorded his interview. And Douglas Adams was 32.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader yeokm1 is the Singapore-based embedded security researcher whose side projects include installing Linux on a 1993 PC and building a ChatGPT client for MS-DOS. Today he writes:When one thinks of modern technologies like Thunderbolt, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet and modern CPUs, one would associate them with modern operating systems. How about DOS? It might seem impossible, however I did an experiment on a relatively modern 2020 Thinkpad and found that it can still run MS-DOS 6.22. MS-DOS 6.22 is the last standalone version of DOS released by Microsoft in June 1994. This makes it 30 years old today. I'll share the steps and challenges in locating a modern laptop capable of doing so - and the challenge of making the 30-year-old OS work on it with audio and networking functions. This is likely among the final generation of laptops able to run DOS natively.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bloomberg's Mark Gruman remembers how Apple's hardware group "allowed Apple to dump Intel chips from its entire Mac lineup." And they're now building an in-house cellular modem:For more than a decade, Apple has used modem chips designed by Qualcomm... But in 2018 - while facing a legal battle over royalties and patents - Apple started work on its own modem design.... It's devoting billions of dollars, thousands of engineers and millions of working hours to a project that won't really improve its devices - at least at the outset... Over the past few years, Apple's modem project has suffered numerous setbacks. There have been problems with performance and overheating, and Apple has been forced to push back the modem's debut until next year at the earliest. The rollout will take place on a gradual basis - starting with niche models - and take a few years to complete. In a sign of this slow transition, Apple extended its supplier agreement with Qualcomm through March 2027... But Qualcomm has said that Apple will still have to pay it some royalties regardless (the chipmaker believes that Apple won't be able to avoid infringing its patents). So it's hard to tell how big the benefits will be in the near term. Down the road, there are plans for Apple to fold its modem design into a new wireless chip that handles Wi-Fi and Bluetooth access. That would create a single connectivity component, potentially improving reliability and battery life. There's also the possibility that Apple could one day combine all of this into the device's main system on a chip, or SoC. That could further cut costs and save space inside the iPhone, allowing for more design choices. Furthermore, if Apple does ultimately save money by switching away from Qualcomm, it could redirect that spending toward new features and components.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"AI is already able to mimic sight and hearing," writes CNBC. And now a startup named Osmo "wants to use the technology to digitize another: smell." Co-founded by a former Google research scientist, the company built an AI that's "superhuman in its ability to predict what things smelled like," the company's co-founder says. And he believes this might actually prove useful. "We've known that smell contains information we can use to detect disease. But computers can't speak that language and can't interpret that data yet... We will eventually be able to detect disease with scent and we're on our way to building that technology. It's not going to happen this year or anytime soon, but we're on our way." CoinTelegraph describes how the company invented a training dataset from scratch - a kind of "smell map" with labelled examples of molecular bond associations to teach the AI to identify specific patterns.The team also hopes to develop a method to recreate smells using molecular synthesis. This would, for example, allow a computer in one place to "smell" something and then send that information to another computer for resynthesis - essentially teleporting odor over the internet. This also means scent could join sight and sound as part of the marketing and branding world.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Indian influencersIt's the largest country on earth - home to 1.4 billion people. But "The Indian government has plans to classify social media creators as 'digital news broadcasters,'" according to the nonprofit site RestofWorld.org. While there's "no clarity" on the government's next move, the proposed legislation would require social media creators "to register with the government, set up a content evaluation committee that checks all content before it is published, and appoint complaint handlers - all at their own expense. Any failures in compliance could lead to criminal charges, including jail term."On July 26, the Hindustan Times reported that the government plans to tweak the proposed Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, which aims to combine all regulations for broadcasters under one law. As per a new version of the bill, which has been reviewed by Rest of World, the government defines "digital news broadcaster" as "any person who broadcasts news and current affairs programs through an online paper, news portal, website, social media intermediary, or other similar medium as part of a systematic business, professional or commercial activity." Creators and digital rights activists believe the potential legislation will tighten the government's grip over online content and threaten the last bastion of press freedom for independent journalists in the country. Over 785 Indian creators have sent a letter to the government seeking more transparency in the process of drafting the bill. Creators have also stormed social media with hashtags like #KillTheBill, and made videos to educate their followers about the proposal. One YouTube creator told the site that if the government requires them to appoint a "grievance redressal officer," they might simply film themselves, responding to grievances - to "make content out of it".Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"From the beginning, we have believed that the right way to build these AI models is with open licenses," says the Open Model Initiative. SD Times quotes them as saying that open licenses "allow creatives and businesses to build on each other's work, facilitate research, and create new products and services without restrictive licensing constraints." Phoronix explains the community initiative "came about over the summer to help advance open-source AI models while now is becoming part of the Linux Foundation to further their cause."As part of the Linux Foundation, the OMI will be working to establish a governance framework and working groups, create shared standards to enhance model interoperability and metadata practices, develop a transparent dataset for training and captioning, complete an alpha test model for targeted red teaming, and release an alpha version of a new model with fine-tuning scripts before the end of 2024. The group was established "in response to a number of recent decisions by creators of popular open-source models to alter their licensing terms," reports Silicon Angle:The creators highlighted the recent licensing change announced by Stability AI Ltd., regarding its popular image-generation model Stable Diffusion 3 (SD3). That model had previously been entirely free and open, but the changes introduced a monthly fee structure and imposed limitations on its usage. Stability AI was also criticized for the lack of clarity around its licensing terms, but it isn't the only company to have introduced licensing restrictions on previously free software. The OMI intends to eliminate all barriers to enterprise adoption by focusing on training and developing AI models with "irrevocable open licenses without deletion clauses or recurring costs for access," the Linux Foundation said. InfoWorld also notes "the unavailability of source code and the license restrictions from LLM providers such as Meta, Mistral and Anthropic, who put caveats in the usage policies of their 'open source' models."Meta, for instance, does provide the rights to use Llama models royalty free without any license, but does not provide the source code, according to [strategic research firm] Everest Group's AI practice leader Suseel Menon. "Meta also adds a clause: 'If, on the Meta Llama 3, monthly active users of the products or services is greater than 700 million monthly active users, you must request a license from Meta.' This clause, combined with the unavailability of the source code, raises the question if the term open source should apply to Llama's family of models," Menon explained.... The OMI's objectives and vision received mixed reactions from analysts. While Amalgam Insights' chief analyst Hyoun Park believes that the OMI will lead to the development of more predictable and consistent standards for open source models, so that these models can potentially work with each other more easily, Everest Group's Malik believes that the OMI may not be able to stand before the might of vendors such as Meta and Anthropic. "Developing LLMs is highly compute intensive and has cost big tech giants and start-ups billions in capital expenditure to achieve the scale they currently have with their open-source and proprietary LLMs," Malik said, adding that this could be a major challenge for community-based LLMs. The AI practice leader also pointed out that previous attempts at a community-based LLM have not garnered much adoption, as models developed by larger entities tend to perform better on most metrics... However, Malik said that the OMI might be able to find appropriate niches within the content development space (2D/3D image generation, adaptation, visual design, editing, etc.) as it begins to build its models... One of the other use cases for the OMI's community LLMs is to see their use as small language models (SLMs), which can offer specific functionality at high effectiveness or functionality that is restricted to unique applications or use cases, analysts said.Currently, the OMI's GitHub page has three repositories, all under the Apache 2.0 license.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have acquired a screenplay called Killing Gawker," reports TechCrunch, for a film which "presumably delves into billionaire VC Peter Thiel's campaign to bury the media outfit for posting excerpts from a Hulk Hogan sex tape."The film is based on a book that details the 2016 court case in which Hogan won a $140 million judgment against a Gawker editor, Gawker founder Nick Denton, and Gawker itself, whose Valleywag site long chronicled Silicon Valley personalities and routinely zeroed in on Thiel. While casting hasn't been announced, it's "been rumored" Hulk Hogan will be played by Ben Affleck, writes Variety. "Gus Van Sant, who previously helmed Affleck and Damon's Good Will Hunting, is set to direct". The script was adapted from the book Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker and the Anatomy of Intrigue, they report - though the movie currently "has no formal start date or production schedule."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A new Mozilla logo appears to be on the way," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu, " marking the company's first major update to its word-mark since 2017."The existing logo, which incorporates the internet protocol "://" and chosen based on feedback from the community, has become synonymous with the non-profit company. But German blogger Soren Hentzschel, an avid watcher of all things Mozilla, recently noticed that a different Mozilla word-mark was accompanying the (unchanged) Firefox logo on Mozilla's 'Nothing Personal' webpage [upper-left]. Some digging uncovered a number of recent code commits readying and referencing a refreshed word-mark and symbol for use in the navigation areas of Mozilla websites, landing pages, and so on... However, what's most exciting (to a nerd like me) with this new logo is the ASCII symbol at the end. It could be viewed as a flag on a pole. Sort of like Mozilla planting its values in the ground to say "we're here, come join". But it's more likely a nod to the original Mozilla mascot (inherited from its Netscape beginnings), which was a red dinosaur (an interesting logo of itself as it was designed by Shepard Fairey who created other seminal design works, and the skate brand OBEY)... Between the inclusion on a live webpage, code commits readying new logo for Mozilla websites, and the fact people can buy official Mozilla merchandise emblazoned with the new design, it seems a formal rebrand announcement is fairly imminent...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is building "a pricey tabletop home device" which uses "a thin robotic arm to move around a large screen," using actuators "to tilt the display up and down and make it spin 360 degree," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Citing "people with knowledge of the matter," Gurman writes that Apple assigned "several hundred people" to the project:The device is envisioned as a smart home command center, videoconferencing machine and remote-controlled home security tool, said the people... The project - codenamed J595 - was approved by Apple's executive team in 2022 but has started to formally ramp up in recent months, they said... Apple has now decided to prioritize the device's development and is aiming for a debut as early as 2026 or 2027, according to the people. The company is looking to get the price down to around $1,000. But with years to go before an expected release, the plans could theoretically change... The idea is for the tabletop product to be primarily controlled using the Siri digital assistant and upcoming features in Apple Intelligence. The device could respond to commands, such as "look at me," by repositioning the screen to focus on the person saying the words - say, during a video call. It also could understand different voices and adjust its focus accordingly. Current models in testing run a customized version of the iPad operating system... The company also is working on robots that move around the home and has discussed the idea of a humanoid version. Those projects are being led, in part, by Hanns Wolfram Tappeiner, a robotics expert who now has about 100 former car team engineers reporting to him. In a job listing published this month, Apple said it has a team "working to leverage and build upon groundbreaking machine learning robotics research, thereby enabling development of generalizable and reliable robot systems." The company said it's seeking experts with experience in "robot manipulation" and creating AI models for robot control. The article calls points out that Apple "still gets roughly half its revenue from the iPhone," and calls the robotics effort "one of a few avenues Apple is pursuing to generate new sources of revenue" - and to "capitalize" on its AI technology. (Apple is also working on both smart eyeglasses and augmented reality galsses.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Data center construction "could delay California's transition away from fossil fuels and raise electric bills for everyone else," warns the Los Angeles Times - and also increase the risk of blackouts:Even now, California is at the verge of not having enough power. An analysis of public data by the nonprofit GridClue ranks California 49th of the 50 states in resilience - or the ability to avoid blackouts by having more electricity available than homes and businesses need at peak hours... The state has already extended the lives of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.'s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant as well as some natural gas-fueled plants in an attempt to avoid blackouts on sweltering days when power use surges... "I'm just surprised that the state isn't tracking this, with so much attention on power and water use here in California," said Shaolei Ren, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside. Ren and his colleagues calculated that the global use of AI could require as much fresh water in 2027 as that now used by four to six countries the size of Denmark. Driving the data center construction is money. Today's stock market rewards companies that say they are investing in AI. Electric utilities profit as power use rises. And local governments benefit from the property taxes paid by data centers. The article notes a Goldman Sachs estimate that by 2030, data centers could consume up to 11% of all U.S. power demand - up from 3% now. And it shows how the sprawling build-out of data centers across America is impacting surrounding communities:The article notes that California's biggest concentration of data centers - more than 50 near the Silicon Valley city of Santa Clara - are powered by a utility emitting "more greenhouse gas than the average California electric utility because 23% of its power for commercial customers comes from gas-fired plants. Another 35% is purchased on the open market where the electricity's origin can't be traced." Consumer electric rates are rising "as the municipal utility spends heavily on transmission lines and other infrastructure," while the data centers now consume 60% of the city's electricity.Energy officials in northern Virginia "have proposed a transmission line to shore up the grid that would depend on coal plants that had been expected to be shuttered."In 2022 an Oregon newspaper discovered Google data centers were consuming 29% of one city's water supply."Earlier this year, Pacific Gas & Electric told investors that its customers have proposed more than two dozen data centers, requiring 3.5 gigawatts of power - the output of three new nuclear reactors."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Washington Post reviews a new book about Microsoft's 68-year-old co-founder Bill Gates:"He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy." That immortal line from Monty Python's Life of Brian kept running through my head as I was reading "Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World," by Anupreeta Das, a reporter at the New York Times... which often feels like an extended list of all the major and minor complaints that Das could find not only about Gates but also about billionaires, nerds and the broader practice of philanthropy... [T]he philanthropist who played a central role in the spectacularly successful fight against diseases like HIV/AIDS; the environmentalist whose net-zero vision has led him to create a multibillion-dollar nuclear-power company - that man barely makes an appearance in this book... Rather than weigh Gates's accomplishments against his failures, Das focuses on his personal weaknesses - his unpleasant management style, his extramarital affairs and, especially, his association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who is featured extensively throughout, including in the beginning of the book's introduction and in a 12-page section that leads off the chapter titled "Cancel Bill." Frustratingly, Das sheds little new light on the Gates-Epstein relationship, beyond suggesting that Epstein first attracted the billionaire by indicating that he might be able to get Gates his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. While I and others have reported that a $2 million donation from Gates to the MIT Media Lab was thought of within MIT as being Epstein money, for instance, Das will go only so far as to say that "the donation may or may not have been at Epstein's recommendation." The Guardian also notes that the Gates Foundation and the Gateses "have prevented millions of deaths, pumping billions of dollars into fighting Aids, tuberculosis and malaria around the world." They co-founded Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which vaccinated half the world's children... [During the pandemic] the Gates-backed Covax partnership was spearheading the global vaccination effort, procuring more than 1bn doses for people in poorer countries. But this doesn't seem to wash with Das, who reports that the foundation is "bigfooting", "neocolonial", "antidemocratic", and "top down", and sees it as an egotistical way for Bill to charity-wash his reputation... The penultimate chapter is titled Cancel Bill, and that's what the whole book feels like: an appeal to public opinion to write Gates off. As yet, and in the context of what other American billionaires do and get away with, it seems a little unfair.Read more of this story at Slashdot.