BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla's email subsidiary MZLA Technologies just introduced Thunderbolt, an open-source AI client aimed at organizations that want to run AI on their own infrastructure instead of relying entirely on cloud services. The idea is to give companies full control over their data, models, and workflows while still offering things like chat, research tools, automation, and integration with enterprise systems through the Haystack AI framework. Native apps are planned for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. Thunderbolt allows organizations to do the following:
- Run AI with their choice of models, from leading commercial providers to open-source and local models

- Connect to systems and data: Integrate with pipelines and open protocols, including: deepset's Haystack platform, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and agents with the Agent Client Protocol (ACP)

- Automate workflows and recurring tasks: Generate daily briefings, monitor topics, compile reports, or trigger actions based on events and schedules

- Work seamlessly across devices with native applications for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android

- Maintain security with self-hosted deployment, optional end-to-end encryption, and device-level access controls

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/04/17/1850251/mozilla-thunderbolt-is-an-open-source-ai-client-focused-on-control-and-self-hosting?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Sam Altman's iris-scanning, humanity-verifying World project announced at an event in San Francisco on Friday that Tinder users around the globe can now put a digital badge on their profiles signaling to potential suitors that they're a real human, provided they've already stared into one of World's glossy white Orbs and allowed their eyes to be scanned. The announcement follows a pilot project for Tinder verification that World previously conducted in Japan.

[...] In addition to the Tinder global expansion, Tools for Humanity, the company behind World, announced a number of other consumer and enterprise partnerships on Friday at its Lift Off event in San Francisco. The startup says Tinder users who verify with their World ID will receive five free "boosts," typically a paid feature that increases the number of users who see a profile by up to 10 times for 30 minutes. The videoconferencing platform Zoom also says that users can now require other participants to verify their identity with World before joining a call. Docusign, the contract signing software, will allow users to require World's identity verification technology.

Tiago Sada, Tools for Humanity's chief product officer, tells WIRED the company sees major platform partnerships as key to helping World become a mainstream identity-verification technology. Sada said he's especially interested in working with social media companies in the future, and was encouraged to see that Reddit has started testing World as a solution to help users distinguish bots from real people. [...] World is also launching a tool called Concert Kit, which lets artists reserve concert tickets for verified humans, a pitch aimed squarely at the bot-driven scalping problem that critics say has plagued sites like TicketMaster. World will test the feature on the upcoming Bruno Mars World Tour featuring Anderson .Paak, who is scheduled to play a verified-humans-only show under his alias DJ Pee .Wee in San Francisco on Friday night. "The idea that World ID is not just private, but it's one of the most private things you've ever used, that's not obvious," says Sada. "We're just not used to this kind of technology. Many people used to tape their [iPhone's sensor used to enable] Face ID when it came out, then we got used to it."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/17/2115258/gazing-into-sam-altmans-orb-could-solve-ticket-scalping?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

NIST is narrowing how it handles CVEs in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), saying it will only automatically enrich higher-priority vulnerabilities. "CVEs that do not meet those criteria will still be listed in the NVD but will not automatically be enriched by NIST," it said. "This change is driven by a surge in CVE submissions, which increased 263% between 2020 and 2025. We don't expect this trend to let up anytime soon." The Hacker News reports: The prioritization criteria outlined by NIST, which went into effect on April 15, 2026, are as follows:

- CVEs appearing in the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's (CISA) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.
- CVEs for software used within the federal government.
- CVEs for critical software as defined by Executive Order 14028: this includes software that's designed to run with elevated privilege or managed privileges, has privileged access to networking or computing resources, controls access to data or operational technology, and operates outside of normal trust boundaries with elevated access.

Any CVE submission that doesn't meet these thresholds will be marked as "Not Scheduled." The idea, NIST said, is to focus on CVEs that have the maximum potential for widespread impact. "While CVEs that do not meet these criteria may have a significant impact on affected systems, they generally do not present the same level of systemic risk as those in the prioritized categories," it added. [...]

Changes have also been instituted for various other aspects of the NVD operations. These include:
- NIST will no longer routinely provide a separate severity score for a CVE where the CVE Numbering Authority has already provided a severity score.
- A modified CVE will be reanalyzed only if it "materially impacts" the enrichment data. Users can request specific CVEs to be reanalyzed by sending an email to the same address listed above.
- All unenriched CVEs currently in backlog with an NVD publish date earlier than March 1, 2026, will be moved into the "Not Scheduled" category. This does not apply to CVEs that are already in the KEV catalog.
- NIST has updated the CVE status labels and descriptions, as well as the NVD Dashboard, to accurately reflect the status of all CVEs and other statistics in real time.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/04/17/2127243/nist-limits-cve-enrichment-after-263-surge-in-vulnerability-submissions?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

A new Ipsos poll finds Americans are increasingly getting news from online personalities and comedians instead of traditional TV or newspapers. The survey says nearly 70% get news online in a given week, versus 55% from TV and 25% from newspapers, with figures like Joe Rogan, Greg Gutfeld, Sean Hannity, and late-night hosts ranking prominently depending on political leanings. From the Hollywood Reporter: The poll, which was conducted in March, actually found the conservative politicians and cabinet members, including President Trump, were the top news influencers. When politicos were excluded, Joe Rogan led the list, followed by Fox News personalities Greg Gutfeld and Sean Hannity, and then TuckerCarlson and Ben Shapiro. The only three influencers to crack 10 percent were Trump, Rogan, and JD Vance. Among people who voted for Kamala Harris, the top news personalities were late night hosts, led by ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, followed by CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert, and Daily Show host Jon Stewart.

Just under 70 percent of respondents said they get their news online in a given week, compared to 55 percent for TV, and 25 percent for newspapers. [...] Of traditional media outlets, TV dominated, with Fox News, the broadcast networks, and CNN topping the list of sources. Facebook, YouTube and Instagram were the most popular online news sources. "On these platforms opinionated personalities and comedians appear to drown out anyone who would fit in the traditional journalist category," said assistant professor of practice and Jordan Center Executive Director Steven L Herman. "Even in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, sensationalist and polarizing voices in print and later on air were among the most influential in the political landscape -- such as political satirist Mark Twain and populist Father Charles Coughlin."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/17/2138236/online-personalities-and-comedians-overtake-tv-and-newspapers-as-primary-news-sources?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding "very concerning" as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system and was already known to be at its weakest for 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis. Scientists spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021 and know that the Amoc has collapsed in the Earth's past.

Climate scientists use dozens of different computer models to assess the future climate. However, for the complex Amoc system, these produce widely varying results, ranging from some that indicate no further slowdown by 2100 to those suggesting a huge deceleration of about 65%, even when carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning are gradually cut to net zero. The research combined real-world ocean observations with the models to determine the most reliable, and this hugely reduced the spread of uncertainty. They found an estimated slowdown of 42% to 58% in 2100, a level almost certain to end in collapse.

The Amoc is a major part of the global climate system and brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. A collapse would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50-100cm to already rising sea levels around the Atlantic. The slowdown has to do with the Arctic's rapidly rising temperatures from global warming. "Warmer water is less dense and therefore sinks into the depths more slowly," explains the Guardian. "This slowing allows more rainfall to accumulate in the salty surface waters, also making it less dense, and further slowing the sinking and forming an Amoc feedback loop."

The new research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/0056244/critical-atlantic-current-significantly-more-likely-to-collapse-than-thought?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Линус Торвальдс принял в состав ядра Linux 7.1, релиз которого ожидается в середине июня, набор патчей с новой реализацией файловой системы NTFS, развивавшейся под именем ntfsplus. Новый драйвер включён под именем "ntfs", которое ранее использовалось для удалённого из ядра старого драйвера, работавшего в режиме только для чтения. Драйвер ntfsplus разработал Намджэ Чон (Namjae Jeon), участник проекта Samba, сопровождающий драйвер EXFAT и сервер KSMBD в ядре Linux.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=65233

NASA has revived support for the European Space Agency's long-delayed Rosalind Franklin Mars rover mission. According to the space agency, the current plan is to launch via a SpaceX Falcon Heavy no earlier than 2028. Engadget reports: This is a partnership between NASA and the ESA, with the European agency providing the rover, the spacecraft and the lander. The US will provide braking engines for the lander, heater units for the rover's internal systems and, of course, assistance with the actual launch.

The rover will be outfitted with scientific instruments to look for signs of ancient life on the red planet. These include a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer and an organic molecule analyzer, which will come in handy as the vehicle collects samples at the Oxia Planum landing site. The mission has been stuck in development limbo since 2001, with delays caused by budget problems, technical issues, shifting international partners, and geopolitical fallout. After NASA dropped out, Russia stepped in, then was cut loose after invading Ukraine, and now -- despite NASA rejoining in 2024 and fresh political budget threats -- the rover is tentatively back on track for a 2028 launch.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/0051201/nasa-restarts-work-to-support-europes-uncrewed-trip-to-mars-after-years-of-setbacks?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Опубликован экспериментальный выпуск открытой реализации Win32 API - Wine 11.7. С момента выпуска 11.6 было закрыто 35 отчётов об ошибках и внесено 311 изменений.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=65234

Some failed startups are reportedly selling old Slack messages, emails, and other internal records to AI companies as training data, creating a new way to cash out after shutting down. Fast Company reports: Shanna Johnson, the CEO of now-defunct software company Cielo24, told the publication that she was able to sell every Slack message, internal email, and Jira ticket as training data for "hundreds of thousands of dollars."

This isn't a one-off scenario. SimpleClosure, a startup that helps companies like Cielo24 shut down, told Forbes that there's been major interest from AI companies trying to get their hands on workplace data. Because of this, SimpleClosure launched a new tool that allows companies to sell their wealth of internal communications -- from Slack archives to email chains -- to AI labs. The company said it's processed 100 such deals in the past year. Payouts ranged from $10,000 to $100,000. "I think the privacy issues here are quite substantial," Marc Rotenberg, founder of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, told Forbes. "Employee privacy remains a key concern, particularly because people have become so dependent on these new internal messaging tools like Slack. ... It's not generic data. It's identifiable people."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/014244/shuttered-startups-are-selling-old-slack-chats-emails-to-ai-companies?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Опубликован очередной еженедельный отчёт о разработке KDE, в котором представлены изменения для ветки KDE Plasma 6.7, релиз которой ожидается в июне. Среди недавно внесённых изменений.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=65236

Линус Торвальдс принял в состав ядра Linux 7.1, релиз которого ожидается в середине июня, набор изменений с новой реализацией драйвера для файловой системы NTFS. Новый драйвер включён под именем «ntfs», которое ранее использовалось для удалённого из ядра старого драйвера, работавшего в режиме только для чтения. До сих пор основным NTFS-драйвером в ядре оставался ntfs3, добавленный несколько лет назад компанией Paragon Software.

Новая реализация подготовлена разработчиком ядра Намджэ Чжоном (Namjae Jeon), ранее участвовавшим в развитии exFAT, KSMBD и других подсистем. Работа над драйвером велась около четырёх лет и представляет собой переработку исходного NTFS-драйвера ядра с более чистой кодовой базой, в которую добавлены поддержка записи, более современные возможности и улучшенная интеграция с актуальными механизмами ядра Linux.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/kernel/18269518#cut ) )

Разработчики Linux Mint объявили о переходе на более длинный цикл разработки. Следующий крупный релиз, Linux Mint 23, теперь ожидается лишь к концу 2026 года, а сам проект намерен отказаться от прежнего более частого ритма выпусков, чтобы уделять больше времени не тестированию и упаковке релизов, а собственно разработке новых возможностей.

Одновременно в проекте сообщили ещё об одном заметном изменении: Linux Mint собирается использовать тот же установщик, что и LMDE, то есть live-installer. При этом окончательная схема будущих выпусков пока не утверждена — команда ещё решает, каким именно будет новый цикл, сохранятся ли промежуточные версии и появятся ли альфа-релизы.

https://www.linux.org.ru/news/linux-general/18269394

14 апреля 2026 года компания объявила, что Cal.com уходит в closed source. 15 апреля это было закреплено и в changelog v6.4: открытая часть проекта перезапускается под именем Cal.diy, а код коммерческой редакции Cal.com больше не будет публиковаться. При этом команда подчёркивает, что раньше коммерческая часть была не fully open source, а source-available; теперь она становится уже просто закрытой.

( [ читать дальше... ]( https://www.linux.org.ru/news/proprietary/18269392#cut ) )

Friday Anthropic's CEO met with top U.S. officials and "discussed opportunities for collaboration," according to a White House spokesperson itedd by Politico, "as well as shared approaches and protocols to address the challenges associated with scaling this technology."

CNN notes the meeting happens at the same time Anthropic "battles the Trump administration in court for blacklisting its Claude AI model..."

The meeting took place as the US government is trying to balance its hardline approach to Anthropic with the national security implications of turning its back on the company's breakthrough technology — including its Mythos tool that can identify cybersecurity threats but also present a roadmap for hackers to attack companies or the government... The Office of Management and Budget has already told agencies it is preparing to give them access to Mythos to prepare, Bloomberg reported. Axios reported the White House is also in discussion to gain access to Mythos.

The Trump administration "recognizes the power" of Mythos, reports Axios, "and its highly sophisticated — and potentially dangerous — ability to breach cybersecurity defenses."

"It would be grossly irresponsible for the U.S. government to deprive itself of the technological leaps that the new model presents," a source close to negotiations told us. "It would be a gift to China"... Some parts of the U.S. intelligence community, plus the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA, part of Homeland Security), are testing Mythos. Treasury and others want it.

The White House added they plan to invite other AI companies for similar discussions, Politico reports. But Mythos "is also alarming regulators in Europe, who have told POLITICO they have not been able to gain access..."

U.S. government agency tech leaders sought access to the model after Anthropic earlier this year began testing the model and granted limited access to a select group of companies, including JPMorgan, Amazon and Apple... after finding it had hacking capabilities far outstripping those of previous AI models. This includes the ability to autonomously identify and exploit complex software vulnerabilities, such as so-called zero-day flaws, which even some of the sharpest human minds are unable to patch. The AI startup also wrote that the model could carry out end-to-end cyberattacks autonomously, including by navigating enterprise IT systems and chaining together exploits. It could also act as a force-multiplier for research needed to build chemical and biological weapons, and in certain instances, made efforts to cover its tracks when attacking systems, according to Anthropic's report on the model's capabilities and its safety assessments.

Those findings and others have inspired fears that the model could be co-opted to launch powerful cyberattacks with relative ease if it fell into the wrong hands. Logan Graham, a senior security researcher at Anthropic, previously told POLITICO that researchers and tech firms had been given early access to Mythos so they could find flaws in their critical code before state-backed hackers or cybercriminals could exploit them. "Within six, 12 or 24 months, these kinds of capabilities could be just broadly available to everybody in the world," Graham said.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/039221/us-government-now-wants-anthropics-mythos-preparing-for-ai-cybersecurity-threats?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Nextcloud joined a project to create a sovereign replacement for Microsoft Office called "Euro-Office". But after that project forked OnlyOffice, OnlyOffice suspended its partnership with Nextcloud. "They removed all references to our brand/attribute as required by our license," argued OnlyOffice CEO Lev Bannov on March 30th. ("The core issue here isn't just about what the AGPL license states, but about the additional provisions we, as the authors, have included... If the Euro-Office team believes our approach conflicts with the AGPLv3 license, we invite them to submit an official request to FSF for review.")

But this week the FSF responded (as "the steward of the GNU family of General Public Licenses"), criticizing OnlyOffice's "attempt to impose an additional restriction on the AGPLv3" and calling it "inconsistent with the freedoms granted by the license," in a blog post from FSF licensing/compliance manager Krzysztof Siewicz:

It is possible to modify the (A)GPLv3 with additional terms, but only by adhering to the terms of the license... The (A)GPLv3 makes it clear that it permits all licensees to remove any additional terms that are "further restrictions" under the (A)GPLv3. It states, "[i]f the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term"...

We urge OnlyOffice to clarify the situation by making it unambiguous that OnlyOffice is licensed under the AGPLv3, and that users who already received copies of the software are allowed to remove any further restrictions. Additionally, if they intend to continue to use the AGPLv3 for future releases, they should state clearly that the program is licensed under the AGPLv3 and make sure they remove any further restrictions from their program documentation and source code. Confusing users by attaching further restrictions to any of the FSF's family of GNU General Public Licenses is not in line with free software.

"If FSF determines that our license and project align with AGPLv3, we will continue as an open-source initiative," OnlyOffice's CEO had written in March. "However, if the decision goes against us, we are ready to consider other options."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/0417208/fsf-to-onlyoffice-you-cant-use-the-gnu-agpl-to-take-software-freedom-away?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

The Associated Press looks at the small-but-growing "rebellion" against attention-hogging devices, citing "a growing body of literature calling for people to move away from screens and pay attention to life."

D. Graham Burnett is a historian of science at Princeton University and one of the authors of " Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement," making him a pillar of the growing backlash against the corporate harvesting of human attention. Along with MS NOW host Chris Hayes' bestselling " The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource," his work is part of a growing body of literature calling for people to move away from screens and pay attention to life. Burnett says the "attention liberation movement" is about throwing off the yoke of time-sucking apps. People "need to rewild their attention. Their attention is the fullness of their relationship to the world"....

There are several dozen "attention activism" groups across the United States and Canada, and the movement has also cropped up in Spain, Italy, Croatia, France and England. Burnett said he expects it to spread further.

Some examples cited in the article:

"More than a dozen millennials gathered in a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn and placed their phones in a metal colander before two hours of reading, drawing and conversation."
A few miles away "Nearly 20 people in their 30s stared at their cellphones for a few minutes. Then they set them down and looked at their bared palms for a while. Then those of their neighbors."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader destinyland for sharing the article.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/1712214/can-the-attention-liberation-movement-foment-a-rebellion-against-screens?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

20-year-old Matthew Lane sent a text message to ABC News as his parents drove him to federal prison in Connecticut. "I'm just scared," he said, calling the whole situation "extremely sad."

Barely a year earlier, while still a teenager, he helped launch what's been described as the biggest cyberattack in U.S. education history — a data breach that concerned authorities so much, it prompted briefings with senior government officials inside the White House Situation Room. The breach pierced the education technology company PowerSchool — used by 80% of school districts in North America... [and operating in about 90 countries around the world]. With threats to expose social security numbers, dates of birth, family information, grades, and even confidential medical information, the breach cornered PowerSchool into paying millions of dollars in ransom.

"I think I need to go to prison for what I did," Lane told ABC News in an exclusive interview, speaking publicly for the first time about the headline-grabbing heist and his life as a cybercriminal. "It was disgusting, it was greedy, it was rooted in my own insecurities, it was wrong in every aspect," he said in the interview, two days before reporting to prison... At about 6:30 on a Tuesday morning last April, FBI agents started banging on the door of Lane's second-floor dorm room. "FBI! We have a search warrant," Lane recalled them shouting. They seized his devices and many of the luxury items he bought with "dirty" money, as he put it. He said he felt a "wave of relief.... I'm honestly thankful for the FBI," he said. "After they left, I was like, 'It's over ... I'm done with this'..."

A federal judge in Massachusetts sentenced him to four years in federal prison and ordered him to pay more than $14 million in restitution.

"In the wake of the breach, PowerSchool offered two years' worth of credit-monitoring and identity protection services to concerned customer," the article points out. But it also notes two other arrests in September of teenaged cybercriminals:
- A 15-year-old boy in Illinois who allegedly attacked Las Vegas casinos, reportedly costing MGM Resorts alone more than $100 million
- A British national who when he was 16 helped breach over 110 companies around the world and extort $115 million.

But ironically, Lane tells ABC News it all started on Roblox, where he'd met cheaters, password-stealers, and cybercriminals sharing photos of their stacks of money, creating a "sense of camaraderie"
Lane and others warn that online forums also attract criminal groups seeking to recruit potential hackers. "The bad guys are on all the platforms watching the kids playing," Hay said. "And when they see an elite-level performer, they go approach that kid, masquerading as another kid, and they go, 'Hey, you want to earn some [money]? ... Here are the tools, here are the techniques'...."

According to Lane, he spent his "ill-gotten gains" on designer clothes, diamond jewelry, DoorDash deliveries, Airbnb rentals for him and his friends, and drugs — "lots of drugs." He said he would numb ever-present feelings of guilt with drugs — from high-potency marijuana to acid. But it was hacking that gave him the strongest high. "It's indescribable the adrenaline you get when you do something like that," he said. "It's way more than driving 120 miles per hour. ... Incomparable to any drug at all, as well."

"On Monday, Roblox announced that, starting in June, it will offer age-checked accounts for younger users that limit what games they can play, and add 'more closely align content access, communication settings, and parental controls with a user's age.'"

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/156236/20-year-old-enters-prison-for-historic-breach-ransoming-of-massive-student-database?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader smazsyr writes: A new review says we've had fructose wrong for decades. The nine authors, led by Richard Johnson at the University of Colorado Anschutz, argue that fructose "is not just another calorie." It is a signal. It tells the liver to make fat and brace for a famine that never comes. That made sense for a bear fattening up on autumn berries. It makes less sense for a person drinking soda in March.

The review reframes the WHO's sugar guideline, argues ScienceBlog.com, as "less a recommendation about calories and more a warning about a signalling molecule we have been dosing ourselves with, several times a day, for most of a century."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/0444250/fructose-isnt-just-sugar-it-acts-more-like-a-hormone?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Опубликован релиз Linux-дистрибутива Solus 4.9, не основанного на пакетах других дистрибутивов и развивающего собственный установщик, пакетный менеджер и конфигуратор. Ранее в составе дистрибутива развивался рабочий стол Budgie, но теперь он выделен в независимый проект. Следующую ветку Solus 5 решено развивать на технологиях дистрибутива AerynOS. Код наработок проекта распространяется под лицензией GPLv2, для разработки используются языки Си и Vala. Предоставляются сборки с рабочими столами Budgie, GNOME, KDE Plasma и Xfce. Размер iso-образов 2.6-2.9 ГБ (x86_64).

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=65237

Джейсон Доненфилд (Jason A. Donenfeld), автор VPN WireGuard, представил первый значительный релиз клиентского ПО WireGuard для Windows 1.0, а также драйверов WireGuardNT 1.0 с портом VPN WireGuard для ядра Windows 10 и 11, поддерживающий архитектуры AMD64, x86 и ARM64. Код компонентов для ядра Windows распространяется под лицензией GPLv2, а клиентского ПО под лицензией MIT.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=65238

Джейсон Доненфилд (Jason A. Donenfeld), автор VPN WireGuard, представил первый значительный релиз клиентского ПО WireGuard для Windows 1.0, а также драйверов WireGuardNT 1.0 с портом VPN WireGuard для ядра Windows 10 и 11, поддерживающий архитектуры AMD64, x86 и ARM64. Код компонентов для ядра Windows распространяется под лицензией GPLv2, а клиентского ПО под лицензией MIT.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=65238

Wednesday BleepingComputer reported that more than 30 WordPress plugins "have been compromised with malicious code that allows unauthorized access to websites running them."

A malicious actor planted the backdoor code last year but only recently started pushing it to users via updates, generating spam pages and causing redirects, as per the instructions received from the command-and-control (C2) server. The compromise affects plugins with hundreds of thousands of active installations and was spotted by Austin Ginder, the founder of managed WordPress hosting provider Anchor Hosting, after receiving a tip about one add-on containing code that allowed third-party access.

Further investigation by Ginder revealed that a backdoor had been present in all plugins within the EssentialPlugin package since August 2025, after the project was acquired in a six-figure deal by a new owner.... "The injected code was sophisticated. It fetched spam links, redirects, and fake pages from a command-and-control server. It only showed the spam to Googlebot, making it invisible to site owners," explained Ginder.

"WordPress.org's v2.6.9.1 update neutralized the phone-home mechanism in the plugin," Ginder writes in a blog post. "But it did not touch wp-config.php. The SEO spam injection was still actively serving hidden content to Googlebot.

"And here is the wildest part. It resolved its C2 domain through an Ethereum smart contract, querying public blockchain RPC endpoints. Traditional domain takedowns would not work because the attacker could update the smart contract to point to a new domain at any time."

This has happened before. In 2017, a buyer using the alias "Daley Tias" purchased the Display Widgets plugin (200,000 installs) for $15,000 and injected payday loan spam. That buyer went on to compromise at least 9 plugins the same way.... The WordPress plugin marketplace has a trust problem... The Flippa listing for Essential Plugin was public. The buyer's background in SEO and gambling marketing was public. And yet the acquisition sailed through without any review from WordPress.org.

WordPress.org has no mechanism to flag or review plugin ownership transfers. There is no "change of control" notification to users. No additional code review triggered by a new committer. The Plugins Team responded quickly once the attack was discovered. But 8 months passed between the backdoor being planted and being caught.

Thanks to Slashdot reader axettone for sharing the news.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/0552210/30-wordpress-plugins-turned-into-malware-after-ownership-change?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Представлен релиз десктоп-ориентированного дистрибутива GhostBSD 26.01, построенного на базе FreeBSD 15 и предлагающего сборки с пользовательскими окружениями Gershwin, MATE и Xfce. По умолчанию в GhostBSD применяется файловая система ZFS. Поддерживается как работа в Live-режиме, так и установка на жесткий диск (используется собственный инсталлятор ginstall, написанный на языке Python). Загрузочные образы сформированы для архитектуры x86_64.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=65239

Yesterday the U.S. Congress approved "a short-term extension" of a FISA law that allows wiretaps without a warrant for surveilling foreign targets, reports CNN — but only until April 30. Republican congressional leaders had sought an 18-month extension, but "failed to secure" the votes after "clamoring from some of their members for reforms to protect Americans' privacy."

The warrantless surveillance law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was set to expire on Monday night. Members are hoping the additional time will allow them to come to agreement without ending authorization for the intelligence gathering program, which permits US officials to monitor phone calls and text messages from foreign targets... There was an hour of suspense in the Senate Friday morning when it appeared possible that Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of FISA 702, might block the House-passed extension. But ultimately, he said his House colleagues had assured him "this short-term extension makes reform more likely, and expiration makes reform less likely," and so he chose not to object....

House Republican leaders believed Thursday night they had struck a deal with conservative holdouts who harbor deep and longstanding concerns that a key piece of the law infringes on Americans' privacy rights. But in a pair of after-midnight votes, more than a dozen rank-and-file Republicans rejected the long-term reauthorization plan on the floor, which was the result of days of tense negotiations among leadership, lawmakers and the White House.

The law allows authorized US officials to gather phone calls and text messages of foreign targets, but they can also incidentally collect the data of Americans in the process. Senior national security officials have for years said the law is critical for thwarting terror attacks, stemming the flow of fentanyl into the US and stopping ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure. Civil liberties groups on the left and the right, meanwhile, argue the surveillance authority risks infringing on Americans' privacy.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/1834202/us-congress-fails-to-pass-long-term-fisa-extension-authorizes-it-through-april-30?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"From 2008 to 2024, the number of four-year computer science degrees granted rose about fivefold..." reports the Washington Post. Then in 2025 CS suddenly dropped from the fourth-largest undergraduate major to sixth, they report (citing data from the nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse, which compiles numbers from 97% of U.S. universities.

The 54,000-student drop was "the biggest one-year drop of any major discipline going back to at least 2020." But what major are they choosing instead?

Sarah Karamarkovich, a research associate with the National Student Clearinghouse, pointed to an explanation from the data that we had overlooked. Enrollments in two interdisciplinary majors, data analytics and data science, topped a combined 35,000 in the fall of 2025. That was up from a few hundred when those disciplines were broken out into their own majors in 2020. Those relatively new categories reflect colleges' zeal to create specialized majors, including in AI, data science, robotics and cybersecurity. Some of those disciplines may be counted in the national enrollment data as computer science. Others are not.

The numbers suggest that some of the disappearing computer science majors didn't flee so much as they splintered into related disciplines.... The 8 percent decline in computer science majors last fall was nearly mirrored by a 7.3 percent increase in engineering majors, according to the National Student Clearinghouse data. Within engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering major enrollments increased by the largest absolute amounts — a jump of 11 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/0332245/fewer-us-college-students-major-in-cs-more-choose-data-science-engineering?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader Bismillah shared this report from ITNews:

Research and development engineer Romain Marchand of Paris headquartered Quarkslab obtained a telematic control unit (TCU) from a salvage yard in Poland... Marchand tore down the TCU, which is based on a Qualcomm system on a chip, and extracted the Linux-based file system from the Micron multi-chip package (MCP) which contained NAND-based non-volatile storage memory. The non-volatile storage contained sensitive information, including system configuration data and more importantly, logs that revealed the vehicle's GPS positions over time.

None of that information was encrypted, Marchand told iTnews, which made it possible to collect and retrieve sensitive data of interest. What's more, the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) logs with GPS positions covered the BYD's full journey from the factory in China to its operational life in the United Kingdom, and to its final wrecking in Poland, Marchand explained in an analysis... The issue is not restricted to BYD, and Marchand added that the hardware architecture of the Chinese car maker's TCU is broadly similar to what can be found in other brands.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/0621217/old-cars-tell-tales-by-storing-data-thats-never-wiped?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

"A trailer has been released for the first film to star an authorised generative AI version of a major Hollywood actor," writes The Guardian:

Val Kilmer was cast in western As Deep As the Grave before his death in April 2025. Production delays meant he never shot any scenes, but the creative team worked with UK-based company Sonantic to create an AI speaking voice based on his old recordings. His estate and daughter Mercedes collaborated with the film-makers on the visual deepfake of the actor. Kilmer, who was diagnosed with throat cancer, was also assisted by technology for his cameo in 2022's Top Gun: Maverick...
Writer-director Coerte Voorhees confirmed that Kilmer is seen for around an hour of the film's running time... Voorhees has said that the production followed Sag-Aftra [union] guidelines, and that Kilmer's estate — which provided archival material for them to use — was compensated financially.

"Kilmer's likeness can be seen portraying Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist," adds The Hollywood Reporter. But the AV Club calls it "ghoulish puppet show time."

"Having your AI Val Kilmer puppet whisper 'Don't fear the dead, and don't fear me' in a movie trailer is a bold choice..."

He is accompanied (per Variety) by a whole host of disclaimers, caveats, and explanations offered by writer-director Coerte Voorhees and his associates: Kilmer deeply wanted to be in the movie, but was too sick to do so. His family endorses and supports his inclusion. He was a big fan of technology, including, presumably, its use in turning his own image into a digital avatar to then shove into movies...

The fact is, of course, that nobody would be paying a fraction of this attention to As Deep As The Grave — about early female archeologist Ann Axtell Morris — if it weren't now being used as the stage on which Voorhees was very publicly accepting the dare to go full-on ghoulish with AI tech.

"The filmmakers said they hoped they were showing Hollywood how to use the technology in a positive way..." notes Australia's ABC News. But their articles add that "Some have called the trailer 'terrifying' and 'disgusting' on social media."
Mashable writes:
"Very fitting that this trailer includes a scene where a corpse is unceremoniously yanked out of the ground," read one of the top comments on As Deep as the Grave's trailer at time of writing... [O]nline commenters have labelled it disgusting and disrespectful, not only for digitally reanimating Kilmer but also for the damaging precedent As Deep as the Grave's use of AI could set for the film industry as a whole.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/2010257/new-movie-trailer-shows-first-ai-generated-performance-by-a-major-star-the-late-val-kilmer?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

After Artemis II's astronauts returned to earth, "NASA has Artemis III in its sights," reports the Associated Press:

In a mission recently added to the docket for next year, Artemis III's yet-to-be -named astronauts will practice docking their Orion capsule with a lunar lander or two in orbit around Earth. Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin are racing to have their company's lander ready first. Musk's Starship and Bezos' Blue Moon are vying for the all-important Artemis IV moon landing in 2028. Two astronauts will aim for the south polar region, the preferred location for [NASA Administrator Jared] Isaacman's envisioned $20 billion to $30 billion moon base. Vast amounts of ice are almost certainly hidden in permanently shadowed craters there — ice that could provide water and rocket fuel.
The docking mechanism for Artemis III's close-to-home trial run is already at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. The latest model Starship is close to launching on a test flight from South Texas, and a scaled-down version of Blue Moon will attempt a lunar landing later this year.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/04/18/2227222/spacex-blue-origin-compete-for-artemis-iii-mission?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Last May Duolingo's stock peaked at $529.05. But while the learning app passed $1 billion in revenue in 2025 and 50 million daily active users, today its stock price has dropped more than 81%, to $100.51.

And there's been other changes, reports Entrepreneur:

In April 2025, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn made headlines after writing a memo calling the company "AI-first." In the memo, von Ahn announced that the language-learning platform would track employees' AI use in performance reviews. Now, a year later, von Ahn is backtracking and rethinking how he measures employee performance. He told the Silicon Valley Girl podcast earlier this month that Duolingo no longer considers AI use in performance reviews.

The change arose after employees started to ask, "Do you just want us to use AI for AI's sake?" von Ahn explained. "We said no, look — the most important thing in your performance is that you are doing whatever your job is as well as possible. A lot of times, AI can help you with that, but if it can't, I'm not going to force you to do that," von Ahn said on the podcast. He felt as though the company was "trying to push something that in some cases did not fit" instead of "being held accountable for the actual outcome." The CEO is, however, still sticking to other "constructive constraints" he introduced in the April 2025 memo, including stopping contractor hiring in cases where AI can assume their workload...
Von Ahn also mentioned that a few months ago, Duolingo had a day dedicated to vibe coding, or prompting AI to create an app without manually writing a single line of code. Every single person at the company, from engineers to human resources professionals, had to vibe code an app. Vibe coding has made an impact at the company. One of Duolingo's latest offerings, a course teaching users how to play chess, arose when two people vibe-coded the first prototype of it, the CEO said. Neither of them knew how to play chess or program, but they managed to use AI to create the whole chess curriculum and a prototype of the app in about six months last year. Now chess is Duolingo's fastest-growing course, according to von Ahn. "At this point, we have seven million daily active users that are learning chess," the CEO said on the podcast.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://slashdot.org/story/26/04/19/0136252/duolingo-ceo-says-theyve-stopped-tracking-employees-ai-use-for-performance-reviews?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Back in the 1990s, floppy disks "had a mere capacity of 1.44MB," remembers XDA Developers, "which would soon become absolutely tiny for the increasingly large pieces of software that would come about."

Floppy disks also felt quite fragile, and while we got "superfloppy" formats that were physically larger and had more capacity, those were pretty unwieldy as portable storage. Enter 1994, when a company called Iomega introduced its variant of a "superfloppy", the Zip drive... [T]he initial capacity introduced in 1994 reached a whopping 100MB, which was huge number when put up against the traditional floppy disk. Zip drives also had major performance benefits, with read speeds that could average 1.4MB/s, as opposed to the comparatively sluggish 16kB/s speeds of a traditional floppy disk, as well as a seek time of around 28ms seconds, whereas a floppy disk averaged 200ms. Zip drives weren't quite as fast as desktop HDDs, but for portable storage, this was a huge step forward...

[I]n 1998, Iomega introduced the Zip 250 disks, which increased the capacity to 250MB, and, already in the new millennium, we got the Zip 750, which took that further to 750MB... It was an appealing enough proposition that big computer manufacturers like Dell started including a Zip drive in some of their PCs. Even Apple included Zip drives in some of its Power Macintosh models from the mid-to-late 90s. However, things started to shift towards the end of the decade as other portable formats rose to prominence, most notably CDs and USB flash drives.

Despite their initial success, it didn't take long for users to start noticing a major drawback of Zip drives: many times, they would just fail. It wasn't necessarily related to age or any particular misuse of the disks, it just happened. It was a big enough phenomenon that it became known as the "click of death", and once it happened, your drive was gone. The problem was estimated by Iomega to affect around 0.5% of Zip drives, but while that sounds like a small number, when you sell products by the thousands, it becomes fairly widespread. It was a big enough issue that, in September 1998, a class action lawsuit was filed against Iomega for the common problems. Some of the complaints in that lawsuit were eventually dismissed by the court of Delaware, but others were not, and once the public became aware of the problems with Zip drives, it was hard for the brand to make a comeback.
It didn't help that this happened around the same time as formats such as CDs were becoming more popular... And eventually, USB flash drives became the most popular way to carry data around since they were smaller and offered much faster speeds... Eventually, after seeing its profits plummet by the mid-2000s, Iomega was sold to a company called EMC in 2008, and in 2013, EMC and Lenovo formed a joint venture that took over Iomega's business and removed all of the Iomega branding from its products.
The article does note that "as late as 2014, some aviation companies were still using Zip drives to distribute updates for navigation databases." Are there any Slashdot readers who still remember their own Zip drive experiences?
Share your memories in the comments of that once-so-trendy storage technology from the 1990s...

[ Read more of this story ]( https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/04/19/0222227/remembering-zip-drives---the-trendy-storage-technology-of-the-1990s?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Разработчики проекта OpenBSD представили выпуск переносимой редакции пакета LibreSSL 4.3.0, в рамках которого развивается форк OpenSSL, нацеленный на обеспечение более высокого уровня безопасности. Проект LibreSSL ориентирован на качественную поддержку протоколов SSL/TLS с удалением излишней функциональности, добавлением дополнительных средств защиты и проведением значительной чистки и переработки кодовой базы. Выпуск LibreSSL 4.3.0 рассматривается как экспериментальный, в котором развиваются возможности, которые войдут в состав OpenBSD 7.9. Следом сформирован выпуск LibreSSL 4.3.1, в котором исправлена проблема со сборкой.

https://www.opennet.ru/opennews/art.shtml?num=65240